Circe's Daughter

It was Saturday morning, and a very warm day, when Claudia started out from the house to meet her sister. The station was nearly a mile away through the fields. She had refused...

“Sir Richard said definitely to-day that everything has now been tried,” said the nurse sadly, for both the day and the night nurse had grown fond of their odd little patient. “...

To her surprise Claudia found that the assembled company included her father and mother-in-law. Mrs. Rivington’s set was absolutely antipodal to Lady Currey’s, but as the Genera...

Lady Currey was not at all pleased with her son’s engagement, and she said so. She came to town for this purpose, and made Gilbert give her lunch while she strongly disapproved,...

Two days later Claudia was wrinkling her brows over her visiting-list, and sadly contemplating the people she had been shunting, and who _must_ be asked to dinner, when she was...

The small dining-room of Frank’s studio-flat had that cosy, friendly air that only a small room can achieve. That there was little more space than was occupied by the table laid...

By the hats and overcoats lying about the spacious hall of their flat in Albert Hall Mansions, Carey Image knew he was not the only man who had hastened to congratulate Claudia...

“She’s so keen on your coming,” urged Jack. “She’s taken a tremendous fancy to you. And, you know, she’s such a kid. She’s no end proud of her turn. You _must_ come and see her.”

There is some uncatalogued sense in man which seems immediately aware when a woman is at a loose end, when there is _une chambre à louer_ in her heart. There is a story told of...

The following Monday morning brought an ugly scene with Gilbert, who learned not only the tragic and sensational news from the daily paper, but his wife’s part in it. For someho...

Later the same day Claudia awakened to the sound of snortings and snufflings. Exasperated puffings sounded in her ear. For an instant she dreamed that she was being pursued down...

Claudia was spending the week-end out of town at Holme Court, Wargrave, where one of her aunts, Mrs. Armesby Croft, always spent a good part of the summer. Gilbert had also been...

She was lunching _tête-à-tête_ with Claudia at the flat, for she and her husband had quartered themselves most considerably upon her directly they had heard of Gilbert’s illness...

Richards looked carefully over the table with the eye of the well-trained manservant. He retouched a bowl of lilac that offended against his slavish idea of symmetry and then pu...

It was still only a little past five when the two men departed, and Claudia found herself alone with a very restless mood. Had it been earlier she would have gone out and walked...

“Our respected mother has what you would call a tarnished reputation.” Pat said it in a mild and thoughtful manner, as she and Claudia exercised Billie in the Park to try and ke...

“Ah! Mrs. Currey, you’re back early from your dinner-party.” Claudia was a little impatient of Fritz Neeburg because of a certain German stolidity and lack of imagination, but h...

Gilbert did not prove an easy patient to manage, because though he was still in need of treatment, being well had become a habit. He was impatient of any restraint, and sometime...

From the day that Gilbert was brought back to England, some weeks later, Claudia’s life became one of deadly rustic monotony. Neeburg had not been surprised at the seizure. Card...

The dance was at its height when Gilbert entered the ball-room. He thought of Jack Iverson’s protest as the strains of the waltz from the _Count of Luxembourg_ began to float ov...

“Claudia, is that you? Oh, for God’s sake, old girl, come back. I have blurted out the truth to Fay. She cornered me, and I confessed to her there wasn’t any chance.... It’s dre...

In the weeks that followed, Wynnstay was galvanized into life through the political and economic fray brought about by the discontent at Langton. Sir John and Gilbert talked the...

Claudia had been giving a little luncheon-party, and she had kept Mr. Littleton, the American publisher, in order to have a talk with him on a new volume of poetry she had been...

For a moment Claudia’s dark eyes, still heavy with sleep, stared at her vaguely. Then she sat up in bed with a look of alarm. “What time is it? Half-past eight, and mother wants...

Claudia was leisurely dressing for the dinner _à quatre_ at Frank’s studio, leisurely, because there was something in the warm May air, stealing in through the windows, that mad...

Claudia had slept but little that night, her thoughts going over the scene in the studio again and again, sometimes accusing herself, sometimes wondering at herself. One fact st...

“Well, I’ve been an unsuccessful man as the world counts success,” said Image, as though the thread of their early conversation had never been broken, “but I’ve had fifteen year...

Claudia did not belong to the tribe of unpunctual women who stretch the minutes at their will and snap derisive fingers at Greenwich. The person who was unpunctual in their hous...

Claudia had never been behind the scenes of a theatre, and she found the _va et vient_, the bustle and hurry of a music-hall almost bewildering, so that she received the vaguest...

Fritz Neeburg was busily writing in his study when his man came to tell him that Carey Image had called to see him. He was just starting a chapter of his new book, entitled “Neu...

Such confusion as existed in Fay’s flat that night Claudia had never conceived possibly. Life in Circe’s household had been somewhat erratic occasionally, but there had been a s...

The windmill was creaking in the same protesting, painful manner as Claudia climbed the hill where she and Colin had stood more than a year ago and looked at the view. But the w...