Bess of the Woods

He was still in a fever about Bess, and unable to bear with any calmness the thought of her sacrifice to the lewd cunning of her cousin. Jeffray felt that his word had been pled...

“You leave it to me, my dear,” he said. “I like your honesty and the way you have trusted me. It is a pleasure to help those who are willing to help themselves. You can make you...

Had Richard Jeffray seemed less innocent a youth, Isaac might have winked at him, and grown gay over so disinterested a proposal. Old Grimshaw was a fair connoisseur of rogues,...

“Ah, dame,” he said, “I can remember when Jeremy brought ye your wedding-ribbons and a ring at Rookhurst. You were a merry bit of mutton then. Do you call to mind old Stumpy Job...

There was silence between them for a moment. Bess was breathing deeply, her face shining white under her black hair as she suffered the revelation to sink slowly into her soul....

Isaac turned into his cottage for a moment to count out the eighty guineas he had promised Ursula and to lock the rest of the gold in his strong box at the bottom of the oak hut...

“I am taking my own life in my hands, Dick,” he said. “There is nothing else for me to do. They are desperate men, you say; I grant it you. They will murder this woman, Dick, an...

What wonder that Miss Hardacre’s influence grew less and less, and that mere airy and fragile sentiments weighed like gossamer against the gold of love. Time and the Lady Letiti...

A sharp skirmish occurred in the great drawing-room that night after that stately chamber had been emptied of its guests. Richard, chafing under Sir Peter’s honest outburst of w...

Into the sweet dusk of the wet woods rode Jeffray with Bess beside him. The western sky was still streaked with gold beyond the trees, but the woods before them were tangled dee...

“Dear lad, how innocent you are! Your virginity is better than a sermon. A pity Miss Jilian Hardacre cannot say the same about her sweet person. Well, Richard, if you take an ol...

“Certainly, my dear nephew,” she said, with an ironical twist of the mouth. “I am a little older than Miss Jilian Hardacre. We are both of us out of temper, sweet Jill and your...

It was a great sigh of contentment that escaped her. Jeffray’s arms drew yet closer. He would not have loosed her at that moment had twenty Lots set their swords at his throat.

“You have not grown fatter, Richard,” he said. “I could still make an Apollo of you in the nude, as I did that day when you bathed at Baiæ. What a graceful trunk, sir!—what a ha...

“Childish, sir, and if they are childish, you should thank Heaven for their innocence. As for Pope, he’s nothing but a pedant setting prose on stilts, and trying to make her tre...

Wilson, who was pulling Dame Meg’s ears, watched Jeffray go lightly along the terrace as though he had forgotten such trifles as fever, physics, and small-pox scars. The flushed...

It was easy to see that the man’s attitude of tragic self-righteousness roused all the scorn in the woman’s nature. Jeffray did not appear to realize how dishonorable his sentim...

The sport sacred to Shrove-Tuesday had begun as Richard and the painter came down towards the green. A crowd of jabbering, hairy-faced boors were swearing and screaming on the g...

Wilson bowed down his head and half turned towards the window. He laid his pipe upon the sill, thrust his hands into his breeches-pockets, and stood with sloped shoulders, the a...

“Now don’t pretend you don’t know how brave and noble you are. Ah, Heavens, only to think of it; the wretch might have killed you! It makes me shudder, Richard; it does indeed.”

The snow was still lying an inch deep over the grass when Jeffray bowed over Sir Peter’s gnarled and gouty hand, smiled sheepishly at Lot, and mounted his mare for Rodenham. Mis...

“You were generous to me, Bess,” he said, grimly; “and how often I have hated myself, you cannot tell. Still, child—” and he looked up at her with brightening eyes—“it is not fo...

Miss Jilian was sitting on one of the benches in the great oriel that bayed out from the right of the raised dais. The perpendicular window itself was filled with white glass, b...

The coach drew up before an inn close to the quay, with a few sailors lounging on the benches under the windows, and a weathered sign-board bearing a rude painting of the “King...

“Do not hope for anything in this life, sir,” she said; “take pleasure as it comes, and make the most of it. Do not be deceived by sentimental notions of propriety, and do not c...

Richard Jeffray thrust back his chair from Sir Peter Hardacre’s dining-table, and stood stiff and ill at ease, like a man but half sure of his own dignity. The Dutch clock had s...

She had started back from Jeffray with all the soft, glamourish light gone from her face, her eyes growing hard and fierce under her black brows. With a significant gesture she...