Charlotte's Inheritance

The early fast train by which Valentine Hawkehurst travelled brought him into town at a quarter past nine o'clock. During the journey he had been meditating on the way in which...

Two months had elapsed since the bleak spring morning on which Gustave Lenoble found the solitary lady under the leafless trees of the Luxembourg gardens. The inmates of the Pen...

Having pledged herself to visit Omega Street on Thursday, Diana considered herself bound to perform that promise. She felt, however, that there was some touch of absurdity in th...

"I say, Lenoble," Captain Paget began abruptly one afternoon when his daughter and his future son-in-law were in attendance upon his sofa, "when are you and Diana to be married?...

In the days when the Bourbon reigned over Gaul, before the "simple, sensuous, passionate" verse of Alfred de Musset had succeeded the _debonnaire_ Muse of Beranger in the affect...

"My child, he positively worships the ground you walk upon. Ah, my love, _it is something to have a father_! I need scarcely tell you that his first idea of your excellence was...

After that first summons to Chelsea, Diana went many times--twice and three times a week--to comfort and tend her invalid father. Captain Paget's novel regard for his only child...

George Sheldon went his ways, picking up as good a living as he could from that chivalrous assertion of the rights of the weak which has been already described; and the thought...

Captain Paget's return was made known to the Sheldon circle by a letter from the returning wanderer to his daughter. The Captain was laid up with rheumatic gout, and wrote quite...

While George Sheldon was still in the depths of the City Valentine Hawkehurst arrived at the gothic villa, where he asked to see Mrs. Woolper. Of the woman herself he knew very...

The summer sun shone upon the village of Harold's Hill when Charlotte arrived there with Mrs. Sheldon and Diana Paget. Mr. Sheldon was to follow them on the same day by a later...

My darling Lotta,--As you extorted from me a solemn pledge that I would write you a full and detailed account of my adventures, I seat myself in Mademoiselle Lenoble's pretty li...

My dear sir,--I arrived here last evening just in time to run against Hawkehurst on the platform, which was rather a provoking encounter at the outset. He went further north by...

"I dare say the port will do me good, mamma, in time. No doubt I shall be as strong as that person who strangled lions and snakes and dogs with incalculable heads, and all that...

Fitful and feverish were the slumbers which visited Mr. Hawkehurst on that balmy summer's night. His waking hours were anxious and unhappy; but his sleeping hours were still mor...

The little fleet of paper boats which Mr. Sheldon had pioneered so skilfully over the commercial seas came to grief very soon after the disappearance of the admiral. A bill draw...

Since the beginning of her illness, Charlotte Halliday had been the object and subject of many anxious thoughts in the minds of several people. That her stepfather had his anxie...

Yes, it was in due form. A certified copy of the certificate of a marriage performed that morning at the church of St. Matthias-in-the-fields, Paddington, and duly witnessed by...

Once in possession of the connection between the intestate John Haygarth and the Halliday family, Captain Paget's course was an easy one. He understood now why his investigation...

After that midnight interview between the two girls in Miss Halliday's bedroom, life went very smoothly at the gothic villa for two or three days, during which the impulsive Cha...

Gustave went back to his old life, and was not much disturbed by the grandeur of his destiny as future seigneur of Cotenoir and Beaubocage. It sometimes occurred to him that he...

The summer darkness closed round the Bayswater villa, but of sleep there was little for any one in that household during this sad night. Is there not, in almost every household,...

The idea of this visit to the Sussex village by the sea seemed delightful to every one except Gustave Lenoble, who was still in town, and who thought it a hard thing that he sho...

Between Philip Sheldon and his brother there was at this time a state of feeling somewhat akin to the relations between a subjugated country and its conqueror. The vanquished is...

Alone, Philip Sheldon breathed more freely. He paced the room, waiting for the appearance of the doctor; and with almost every turn he looked at the clock upon the chimneypiece.

While the invalid in the pleasant lodgings overlooking Hyde Park grew day by day weaker, there was a change as marked in the bright young creature whose loving spirit had first...

For a week of long days and longer nights there was no step sounded on the stair, no opening or shutting of a door in the old dilapidated house where he lay languishing on the b...

Horatio Paget left the Lawn after the foregoing interview, fully convinced that Mr. Sheldon was only desirous to throw him off the scent, in order to follow up the chase alone,...

On the day after Miss Paget's departure Mr. Sheldon came home from the City rather earlier than usual, and found Charlotte alone in the drawing-room, reading a ponderous volume...

Not with pomp or with splendour, with rejoicing or strewing of summer blossoms in the pathway of bride and bridegroom, had the marriage of Valentine and Charlotte been solemnize...

He went down stairs and out into the pitiless cold and snow, and made his way down Fetter Lane, and across Blackfriars Bridge to the Surrey side of the water, stopping to beg he...

"He came for something for Miss Charlotte, sir; some books as she'd had from the library. They'd not been sent back; and he came to see about their being sent."

The manner in which Mr. Sheldon would act in the future was a matter of considerable fear to his wife. She had a hazy idea that he would come to the pleasant Kilburn lodgings to...

A year and a half had passed since the disappearance of Philip Sheldon from the circle in which he had been considered a person of some importance. The repudiation of those bill...

Seven years after that miserable summer night at Beaubocage on which Gustave Lenoble was disowned by his father, a man and woman, with a boy five years of age, were starving in...

Once having offered up the fondest desires of her own heart on the shrine of duty, Diana Paget was not a person to repent herself of the pious sacrifice. After that Christmas ni...

A cab conveyed Mr. Sheldon swiftly to a dingy street in the City--a street which might have been called the pavement of wasted footsteps, so many an impecunious wretch tramped t...

Three days elapsed after the delivery of this letter. Upwards of a week had gone by since the return of Mr. Sheldon and his family from Harold's Hill: and as yet Philip Sheldon...

Captain Paget went his way to Rouen in a placid but not an exulting mood, after parting with his young friend Valentine Hawkehurst at the London Bridge terminus of the Brighton...

While Mr. Hawkehurst arranged his affairs with the clerk of St. Matthias-in-the-fields, in the parish of Marylebone, George Sheldon sat in his brother's office writing a letter...

For four days and four nights there were fear and watching in Mr. Sheldon's house; and in all that time the master never quitted it, except stealthily, in the dead of the night,...

The little Gustave grew and flourished. Such love was lavished on him as rarely falls to the lot of children, though the spring of many lives may be rich in love's pure white bl...

Captain Paget returned to town, mystified by that sudden summons from his patron, and eager to know what new aspect of affairs rendered his further presence in Ullerton useless...

Valentine Hawkehurst called upon Mr. Greenwood, of the firm of Greenwood and Greenwood, within a week of his marriage, and exhibited the certificate to that gentleman. Mr. Green...

Diana informed Mrs. Sheldon of her father's wish that she should leave Bayswater. Before doing this, she had obtained the Captain's consent to the revelation of her engagement t...

After those stormy emotions which accompany the doing of a desperate deed, there comes in the minds of men a dead calm. The still small voice of Wisdom, unheard while Passion's...

Monsieur and Madame Lenoble went to Brighton for their honeymoon. A letter or a telegraphic message would bring them thence swiftly to the bedside of the dying Captain, should t...

Diana and her husband did not linger long at Brighton; they went back to town in time to see the last of that old wayfarer whose troubled journey came to so peaceful an ending....

Who heeds the cloud no bigger than a man's hand amidst a broad expanse of blue ether? The faint, scarce perceptible menace of that one little cloud is lost in the wide brightnes...