Aurora the Magnificent

Early in Lent the weather treated Florence to what Aurora and Estelle called a cold snap. Their surprise and indignation were extreme. That Italy, sunny Italy, should feel herse...

Aurora, unable to see beyond the footlights, had never dreamed but Gerald was among the audience. Her capers had at moments been definitely directed at him. Discovering that he...

Aurora, of the excellent three-times-a-day appetite, Aurora of the good sound slumbers, picked at her food and slept brokenly for part of a week at that period, such was her imp...

There was dancing at the Fosses' on two Fridays in the month. It was their contribution toward the gaiety of the winter. They did not often give a formal dinner, and when such a...

Brenda, reaching home after the ball, had asked her parents to hear a thing she must tell them, and, very pale, informed them of the manner in which she had taken the direction...

She felt herself blush for the dismay she had not been able to conceal, and to hide this embarrassment she lifted to her face--not the handkerchief or the bouquet with which bea...

After the Fosses had helped the lessees of the Haughty Hermitage to make it habitable; found for them a coachman who had a little French and, when told what they desired to buy,...

Upon a day not much later in the month--a goodly day which thousands without a doubt were thinking all too short for the useful or merely delectable things they wanted to do--a...

The house where Gerald lived was the same one he had lived in since the days of Boston and Charlestown. His mother, coming to Florence with her two children, a boy of ten, a gir...

The Brenda who came back from America was not quite the one who had gone there. Gerald saw it in the first instant. She had gained in definiteness, assurance, even in beauty. Bu...

No festivity has quite the vast and varied glitter of a _veglione_. It takes a whole city to make a party so big and bright. And the last _veglione_ of the season is rather brig...

The loveliness of Florence at this point of the year, while inspiring poets, made the rest feel helpless before the task of finding words for it. Even Aurora, who could not be c...

When the latter occurrences had shaken down in Aurora's mind, Gerald's letter, which she from time to time re-read, impressed her as a most gentle and reasonable production of h...

Lending her spacious front room for the Christmas bazaar in aid of the church, and beholding it full of bustle and brightness, was the thing that brought to the acute stage Mrs....

It could not be said that Estelle did not like Gerald Fane. Considered by himself, she did like him, much more, she believed, than he liked her. His odd distinction, too subtle...

So many forces had been enlisted, into so many hands the white card given, to make Mrs. Hawthorne's ball a success, that it could hardly fail to be somewhat splendid. On a platf...

"The _signorina_ is in the _salottino_," he said. From which Leslie understood that the person whom she chiefly had come to see was out. It did not really matter, for she had ti...

Near sunset, one day in early October, not too long ago for some of us to remember with distinctness, Mr. Foss, United States consul at Florence, Italy, took a cab, as on other...

"If this is the way it was going to be, and I'd known it before, I'd have kept better watch over my affections," said Aurora to herself, reflecting upon Gerald in Leghorn, where...

When a thing is too successful, it is seldom natural; and so when there appeared in our city a _signora_, blond of hair, azure of eye, with the complexion of delicate, luminous...

On their last day together Gerald had asked Aurora to find the key of a certain desk-drawer and to bring him the miniature strong-box locked in it. He had taken out one by one,...

The room in which Mrs. Hawthorne went to bed an hour or two after taking leave of the dwindling company at Villa Foss was large and luxurious. Its windows were enormous, arched...

And so because, in his uncalled-for chivalry, he had made himself guide to a lady in a ball-room, Gerald, one thing leading to another, was once more committed to serving as a g...

Even had Aurora been able to apprehend the measure and quality, the fine shades, of Gerald's dislike to the thought of her doing a turn in the society variety-show, it is more t...