At Last: A Novel

ALMOST sixteen months had passed since the dewless September morning, when Mabel had gathered roses in the garden walks, and her brother's return had shaken the dew with the blo...

MRS. AYLETT was in her best feather that night; the suave chatelaine, the dutiful consort; the tactful warder of the interesting pair whose movements she had not ceased to watch...

Mrs. Rachel Sutton was a born match maker, and she had cultivated the gift by diligent practice. As the sight of a tendrilled vine suggests the need and fitness of a trellis, an...

“Unique--is she not?” were queries bandied from one to another of the various parties of guests scattered through the extensive parlors of the most fashionable of Washington hot...

“COME in! I want to talk to you!” said Mrs. Aylett, beckoning Mabel into her chamber, from the door of which she had hailed her. “Sit down, my poor girl! You are white as a shee...

If Mrs. Sutton had raised horrified eyes and despairing hands upon learning the date of her nephew's proposed marriage, it was because she miscalculated his executive abilities,...

“Although I know you must be very busy with your accounts, and so forth, having been away from the plantation for so long,” she said, deprecatingly, yet accepting the invitation...

THE snows of ten winters had powdered the nameless stranger's grave in the servant's burial-ground of the Ridgeley plantation. For nine years the wallet taken from his person ha...

“A SLY, artful, treacherous jade?” articulated Mrs. Sutton, energetically. “I have no patience with her. And they say she is so overjoyed at her conquest that she trumpets the e...

Mabel aroused herself from her intent attitude, and looked at the window. There was a brassy glimmer in the cloudy west; the rest of the sky was covered by thick vapors.

MABEL was still turning the vexed question of right and expediency over in her fast-heating brain, the next evening, as she sat in the parlor, and feigned to hearken to the dili...

“YOUR letter notifies me, in general terms, that the answers returned to your inquiries as to my antecedents and present reputation are the reverse of satisfactory. You feel con...

The shadow of death drew on apace to the sight of all, save the consumptive, and her semi-imbecile mother. These seemed alike blind to the fatal symptoms that were more strongly...

“OLD Mrs. Tazewell has departed this life at last!” said Winston Aylett, entering his own parlor one bleak November evening on his return from the village post-office. “I met Al...

“Not well! Bless me!” exclaimed Mrs. Sutton, starting up. “Rosa, love, excuse me for three seconds, please. I must see what is the matter. I do hope there is no bad news from--”...

“I beg your pardon!” said a deep, familiar voice. Then the formality vanished from face and address. “Is this YOU?” holding out his hand in hearty friendliness that instantly di...

THE only malady that put Herbert Dorrance in frequent and unpleasant remembrance of his mortality was a fierce headache, which had of late years supervened upon any imprudence i...

IT was a peculiarity of Winston Aylett that he was never discomposed in seeming, however embarrassing or distressing might be his position. In his childhood he was one to whom,...

“DORRANCE!” repeated Frederic, after his betrothed, when she rehearsed to him in their moonlight promenade upon the piazza the leading incidents of her brother's wooing. “She li...

“NO, no! my dear!” said Mrs. Sutton, earnestly. “I am shocked and astonished that you should ever have labored under such a delusion. Frederic told me the story, and a dreadful...