Colonel Quaritch, V.C.: A Tale of Country Life

“Well,” he said, when Harold had done, “blow me if that ain’t a master one. And yet there’s folks who say that there ain’t no such thing as Providence—not that there’s anything...

“I caught her that time,” he said to himself; “she can do a good deal in the way of deceit, but she can’t keep the blood out of her cheeks when she hears that fellow’s name. But...

Ida and her father reached the vestibule to find Edward Cossey standing with his face to the mantelpiece and nervously toying with some curiosities upon it. He was, as usual, dr...

“Is that you, father?” said a voice, a very sweet voice, but one of which the tones betrayed the irritation natural to a healthy woman who has been kept waiting for her dinner....

Ida, for obvious reasons, said nothing to her father of her interview with Edward Cossey, and thus it came to pass that on the morning following the lawn tennis party, there was...

“I don’t know what is coming to this country, I really don’t; and that’s a fact,” said the Squire to his companion, after they had walked some paces in silence. “Here is the far...

Meanwhile things had been going very ill at the Castle. Edward Cossey’s lawyers were carrying out their client’s instructions to the letter with a perseverance and ingenuity wor...

At the best of times this is not a gay world, though no doubt we ought to pretend that humanity at large is as happy as it is represented to be in, let us say, the Christmas num...

“Come stow that and let me out,” replied the adored Edithia sharply; and in another moment a large man in evening clothes, a horrible vulgar, carnal-looking man with red cheeks...

Two days after his receipt of the second letter from the “Tiger,” Mr. Quest announced to his wife that he was going to London on business connected with the bank, and expected t...

Time went on. Mr. Quest had been back at Boisingham for ten days or more, and was more cheerful than Belle (we can no longer call her his wife) had seen him for many a day. Inde...

At last the weary journey was over, and to George’s intense relief he found himself upon the platform at Boisingham. He was a pretty tough subject, but he felt that a very littl...

Six weeks passed, and in that time several things happened. In the first place the miserly old banker, Edward Cossey’s father, had died, his death being accelerated by the shock...

Edward Cossey drove from the Castle in a far from happy frame of mind. To begin with, the Squire and his condescending way of doing business irritated him very much, so much tha...

This is a troublesome world enough, but thanks to that mitigating fate which now and again interferes to our advantage, there do come to most of us times and periods of existenc...

Edward Cossey did not come away from the scene of his engagement in a very happy or triumphant tone of mind. Ida’s bitter words stung like whips, and he understood, and she clea...

There are things and there are faces which, when felt or seen for the first time, stamp themselves upon the mind like a sun image on a sensitized plate and there remain unaltera...

Ten days had passed. The tragedy had echoed through all the land. Numberless articles and paragraphs had been written in numberless papers, and numberless theories had been buil...

When Edward Cossey had gone, Ida rose and put her hands to her head. So the blow had fallen, the deed was done, and she was engaged to be married to Edward Cossey. And Harold Qu...

They began the afternoon with several small drives, but on the whole the birds did very badly. They broke back, went off to one side or the other, and generally misbehaved thems...

“Now for the row,” said he to himself. “I hope that the governor was right in his tale, that’s all. Perhaps it would have been wiser to say nothing till I had made sure,” and he...

“How do you do, Colonel Quaritch?” she said. “It is very good of you to come, especially as you don’t play tennis much—by the way, I hope you have been studying that cypher, for...

As soon as her father had gone, Ida rose and suggested that if Colonel Quaritch had done his wine they should go into the drawing-room, which they accordingly did. This room was...

The next morning was fine and still, one of those lovely autumn days of which we get four or five in the course of a season. After breakfast Harold Quaritch strolled down his ga...

Ida shook hands coldly enough with the lawyer, for whom she cherished a dislike not unmixed with fear. Many women are by nature gifted with an extraordinary power of intuition w...

It was on the day following the one upon which Harold proposed to Ida, that Edward Cossey returned to Boisingham. His father had so far recovered from his attack as to be at las...

All that afternoon and far into the evening Mr. Quest was employed in drafting, and with his own hand engrossing on parchment certain deeds, for the proper execution of which he...

The hour of his revenge was come. He had played his cards and he had won the game, and fortune with it, for his enemy lay in the hollow of his hand. He looked behind him at the...

“It is stifling in here,” she said, “let us go out.” She rose, took up a shawl that lay beside her on a chair, and stepped through the French window into the garden. It was a lo...

George carried out his intention of going to London. On the second morning after the day when Mr. Quest had driven the auctioneer in the dog-cart to Honham, he might have been s...

As Colonel Quaritch was contemplating these various views and reflecting that on the whole he had done well to come and live at Honham Cottage, he was suddenly startled by a lou...

Mr. Quest and Harold bore the bleeding man—whether he was senseless or dead they knew not—into the house and laid him on the sofa. Then, having despatched a servant to seek a se...

Harold glanced at the clock; it was nearly one in the morning, time to go to bed if he was going. But he did not feel inclined to go to bed. If he did, with this great discovery...

Mr. Quest entered the house by a side door, and having taken off his hat and coat went into the drawing-room. He had still half an hour to spare before starting to catch the train.

The two great doctors came, and the two great doctors pocketed their hundred guinea fees and went, but neither the one nor the other, nor eke the twain, would commit themselves...

“What?” said the Squire in astonishment, for George had never been known to go out of his own county before. “Why, what on earth are you going to do in London?”

After George had drunk his glass of wine and given his opinion as to the best way to deal with the dangerous pinnacle on the Boisingham Church, he took the note, untied the fat...

Mr. Quest lived in one of those ugly but comfortably-built old red brick houses which abound in almost every country town, and which give us the clearest possible idea of the wa...

At last he spoke. “You have taken a most serious and painful step, Ida,” he said. “Of course you have a right to do as you please, you are of full age, and I cannot expect that...

The day following that of the conversation just described was one of those glorious autumn mornings which sometimes come as a faint compensation for the utter vileness and bitte...

The Squire turned and entered the house. He generally was fairly noisy in his movements, but on this occasion he was exceptionally so. Possibly he had a reason for it.

Most people of a certain age and a certain degree of sensitiveness, in looking back down the vista of their lives, whereon memory’s melancholy light plays in fitful flashes like...

The state of mind is difficult to picture which could induce a peaceable christian-natured individual, who had moreover in the course of his career been mixed up with enough blo...

After this very chilling reception at the hands of the object of his affection, Edward Cossey continued his drive in an even worse temper than before. He reached his rooms, had...

This text was prepared from an 1889 edition published by Longmans, Green and Co., printed by Kelly and Co., Gate Street, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, W.C.; and Middle Mill, Kingston-on...