Birds of Prey

_November_ 3 _d_. The most wonderful event has befallen--surely the most wonderful that ever came to pass outside the realms of fiction. Let me set down the circumstances of yes...

_October 10th_. I found the villa inhabited by Miss Hephzibah Judson very easily, and found it one of those stiff square dwelling-houses with brass curtain-rods, prim flower-bed...

Amongst the many imprudences of which Horatio Paget--once a cornet in a crack cavalry regiment, always a captain in his intercourse with the world--had been guilty during the co...

The little villa at Bayswater was looking its brightest on a resplendent midsummer afternoon, one year after Diana Paget's hurried hegira from Foretdechene. If the poor dentist'...

Of all places upon this earth, perhaps, there is none more obnoxious to the civilized mind than London in October; and yet to Valentine Hawkehurst, newly arrived from Ullerton p...

Diana Paget left the Kursaal, and walked slowly along the pretty rustic street; now dawdling before a little print-shop, whose contents she knew by heart, now looking back at th...

The sand which ran so swiftly in the glass which that bright young urchin Love had wrested from the hand of grim old Time ran with an almost equal swiftness in the hour-glasses...

_October 15th_. I left Omega-street for the City before noon, after a hasty breakfast with my friend Horatio, who was somewhat under the dominion of his black dog this morning,...

Valentine Hawkehurst did not make his appearance at the Lawn on Christmas-eve. He devoted that evening to the service of his old ally. He performed all friendly offices for the...

Fitzgeorge-street was chill and dreary of aspect, under a gray March sky, when Mr. Sheldon returned to it after a week's absence from London. He had been to Little Barlingford,...

_Oct. 5th_. My dreams last night were haunted by the image of gray-eyed Molly, with her wild loose hair. She must needs have been a sweet creature; and how she came amongst thos...

Nancy Woolper had lost little of her activity during the ten years that had gone by since she received her wages from Mr. Sheldon, on his breaking up his establishment in Fitzge...

Mr. Sheldon's visitors arrived in due course. They were provincial people of the middle class, accounted monstrously genteel in their own neighbourhood, but in nowise resembling...

_Oct. 7th, Midnight_. I was so fortunate as to get away from Spotswold this morning very soon after the completion of my researches in the vestry, and at five o'clock in the aft...

It was not very long before Valentine Hawkehurst had reason to respect the wisdom of his legal patron. Within a few days of his interview with George Sheldon he paid his weekly...

Life at the Lawn went by very smoothly for Mr. Sheldon's family. Georgy was very happy in the society of a companion who seemed really to have a natural taste for the manufactur...

_November 1st_. This is Huxter's Cross, and I live here. I have lived here a week. I should like to live here for ever. O, let me be rational for a few hours, while I write the...

The next morning dawned gray and pale and chill, after the manner of early spring mornings, let them ripen into never such balmy days; and with the dawn Nancy Woolper came into...

Miss Halliday returned to the gothic villa at Bayswater with a bloom on her cheeks, and a brightness in her eyes, which surpassed her wonted bloom and brightness, fair and brigh...

I found the house at Dewsdale without difficulty. It is a stiff, square, red-brick dwelling-place, with long narrow windows, a high narrow door, and carved canopy; a house which...

_Oct. 10th_. Yesterday and the day before were blank days. On Saturday I read Mrs. Rebecca's letters a second time after a late breakfast, and spent a lazy morning in the endeav...

Eleven years had passed lightly enough over the glossy raven locks of Mr. Philip Sheldon. There are some men with whom Time deals gently, and he was one of them. The hard black...

The holidays at Hyde Lodge brought at least repose for Diana Paget. The little ones had gone home, with the exception of two or three young colonists, and even they had perpetua...

Valentine found the apartments near the Edgeware-road in every manner eligible. The situation was midway between his reading-room in Great Russell-street and the abode of his de...

In the very midst of the Belgian iron country, under the shadow of tall sheltering ridges of pine-clad mountain-land, nestles the fashionable little watering-place called Foretd...

We stood at the white gate talking to each other, my Charlotte and I. The old red-tiled roof which I had seen in the distance sheltered the girl I love. The solitary farm-house...

Mr. Sheldon had occasion to see Captain Paget early the following day, and questioned him closely about his _protege's_ movements. He had found Valentine a very useful tool in s...

As the work I am now employed in is quite new to me, and I am to keep Sheldon posted up in this business day by day, I have decided on jotting down the results of my inquiries i...

Mr. Hawkehurst had no excuse for going to the Lawn before his departure; but the stately avenues between Bayswater and Kensington are free to any man; and, having nothing better...

Never, in his brightest dreams, had Valentine Hawkehurst imagined the stream of life so fair and sunny a river as it seemed to him now. Fortune had treated him so scurvily for s...

Miss Halliday had an interview with her mother that evening in Mrs. Sheldon's dressing-room, while that lady was preparing for rest, with considerable elaboration of detail in t...

Upon the evening of the day on which Mrs. Halliday and the dentist had discussed the propriety of calling in a strange doctor, George Sheldon came again to see his sick friend....

In my confidences with my dear girl I had told her neither the nature of my mission in Yorkshire, nor the fact that I was bound to leave Huxter's Cross immediately upon an explo...

For George Sheldon the passing years had brought very little improvement of fortune. He occupied his old dingy chambers in Gray's Inn, which had grown more dingy under the hand...

After that interview in Gray's Inn, there were more interviews of a like character. Valentine received further instructions from George Sheldon, and got himself posted up in the...

There was no such thing as idleness for Valentine Hawkehurst during these happy days of his courtship. The world was his oyster, and that oyster was yet unopened. For some years...

"What about?" There are some houses whereof the outward aspect is sealed with the seal of respectability--houses which inspire confidence in the minds of the most sceptical of b...

At an early hour upon the day on which Valentine Hawkehurst telegraphed to his employer, Philip Sheldon presented himself again at the dingy door of the office in Gray's Inn.

Mr. Sheldon's prophecy was fully realised. Tom Halliday awoke the next day with a violent cold in his head. Like most big boisterous men of herculean build, he was the veriest c...

"On Thursday last past, being ye 19 Sep'tr, A.D. 1774, was interr'd ye bodie off onne Matthewe Haygarthe, ag'd foure yeres, remoov'd fromm ye Churcheyarde off St. Marie, under y...