Barren Honour: A Novel

When Helen came into the cedar drawing-room (the place of assembly before dinner) she found her father alone. His face was rather thoughtful and grave, but it brightened as she...

Fifteen or sixteen months are come and gone, and the faces of people and things are but little changed. Yes, one of our dramatic personages is a good deal altered for the worse-...

One of our characters need trouble us no more. The summer passed, and autumn came on quickly; but Bernard Haldane never saw the leaves change. Life had been flickering within hi...

It was the third evening after that one recorded in the last chapter; the party at Dene remained the same, though a large reinforcement was expected on the morrow. Only the youn...

The new-comer was an elderly man, in a clerical dress. His figure, originally massive and powerful, had thickened and filled out of late years till little of fair proportion or...

The purveyors of scandal, wholesale and retail, were utterly routed and disconcerted. The romance was a promising one, but it had not had time to develop itself into form and su...

There were all sorts of rooms at Dene, ranging through all degrees of luxury, from magnificence down to comfort. To the last class certainly belonged especial apartment, which,...

The noon of night is past, and Helen Vavasour is alone in her chamber, without a thought of sleep. In truth, the damsel is exceeding fair to look upon--though it is a picture ov...

Are you curious to know how, all this while, it fared with the Great Earl and his beautiful bride? If the truth is to be told, I fear the answer must be unsatisfactory. No one,...

A man must be very peculiarly constituted--indeed, there must be something wrong about his organization--if he does not entertain a certain partiality for his female cousins, ev...

Do not they look and sound just as fresh as ever--those two pretty words? And yet, they have been harder worked than the tritest of school-copies, by successive generations of r...

"Look into a man's Past, if you would understand his Present, or guess at his Future." So spake some sage, name unknown, but probably intermediate in date between the Great King...

Wyverne's valedictory note to Mrs. Lenox, though kindly and courteous, was brief and decisive enough to satisfy Helen perfectly. The answer came in due course; there was no ange...

If the Squire's study was the most comfortable room in the Dene, the prettiest, and to a refined taste the most attractive, without contradiction, was "my lady's chamber." It wa...

That same year was drawing to its close, in a damp dreary December--one of those "green Yules" which greedy sextons are supposed to pray for, and which all the rest of the world...

On the morning after the most disastrous of all his bad nights at hazard, Charles Fox was found by a friend who called, in fear and trembling, to offer assistance or condolence,...

Harding Knowles had never been a hard-working man. Very little more reading would have turned a good Second in classics into an easy First, and this was so well known at Oxford...

We have been comfortable in our country-houses for centuries. Even in those rough-and-ready days--when the hall was strewn with rushes, and the blue wood-smoke hung over the hea...

Helen Vavasour came of a race whose women, if tradition speaks truth, could always look, at need, on battle or broil without blenching; but it is probable she would hardly have...

It is needless to explain, that on Harding Knowles Wyverne's anger was chiefly concentrated. Clydesdale came in for his share; but, so far, it was difficult to establish the ext...

It is said, that when a man is struck blind by lightning, he never forgets afterwards the minutest object on which his eyes rested when the searing flash shot across them. Even...

The season opened early, and promised brilliantly. There was an unusually good entry of "maidens;" but among these one held easily, from the first, an undisputed pre-eminence. T...

So Wyverne went on his way--not rejoicing; and Helen would have been left "sighing her lane," if she had been at all given to that romantic pastime. But they were not a sentimen...

A very central place is Newmanham, both by local and commercial position--a big, black, busy town, waxing bigger and blacker and busier day by day. For more than a century that...

It is a clear breezy night, out in the midst of the Atlantic, the mighty steam-ship _Panama_ ploughs her way through the long, sullen "rollers," steadily, and calmly, strongly,...

It would be rather difficult to define Wyverne's feelings after his interview with Knowles. I fear that the utter humiliation of his enemy failed entirely to satisfy him; but, o...

Day succeeded day, and Alan Wyverne still lingered at Dacre Castle. He could hardly have told you what kept him there. The shooting certainly was a great attraction, for, though...