Complete Project Gutenberg Works of George Meredith

"Who composed--how I love him!--that lovely "la, la, la, la," and the "te-de, ta-da, te-dio," that pleases you, out of "Il Maladetto." And I am descended from him! Let me hope I...

Now, when the sun was lost to earth, and all was darkness, Bhanavar fixed her eyes upon an opening arch of foliage in the glade through which the youth her lover should come to...

"I shan't open it," she repeated, defiantly. "And it ain't," she gathered up her comfortable fat person to assist the words "it ain't good--no, not the best pious ones--I shall,...

And I: 'The girl must be studied. The family is good. While Charles is in Wales, you must have her at Dayton. She laughs rather vacantly, don't you think? but the sound of it ha...

Not unwilling to hear him, I took his hand, leaving my companion, the miller's little girl, Mabel Sweetwinter, at a toy-stand, while Bob, her brother and our guardian, was shyin...

The fog choked us. Perhaps it took away the sense of hunger by filling us as if we had eaten a dinner of soot. We had no craving to eat until long past the dinner-hour in Temple...

"It's the beginnin' that's the worst, and that's over, thank the Lord! So I'll speak, Sir Austin, and say my say:--Lord speed me! Believin' our idees o' matrimony to be sim'lar,...

She jeered him as they journeyed, and made the soul of Shibli Bagarag merry, so that he jerked in his seat upon the Ass. Now, as they ascended the mountain they came to the open...

The logic of the appeal was no doubt distinctly visible in the lady's mind, though it was not accurately worded. I saw that I stood marked to be the scape goat of the day, and h...

And Algernon went on spouting unintelligible talk under a torrent of blows. He lost his temper and fought out at them; but as it speedily became evident to him that the loss lai...

Said Shibli Bagarag, 'Now is he the red-maned lion, the bristling boar, the uncombed buffalo, the plumaged cock, but soon will he be like nothing else save the wrinkled kernel o...

Now, the twain lived together the circle of a full year of delightful marriage, and love lessened not in them, but was as the love of the first day. Little cared they, having ea...

She was indeed glad to feel the stout chains of her anchor restraining her when Lady Romfrey talked of Nevil; they were like the safety of marriage without the dreaded ceremony,...

He cooled, thinking, 'I will use a spell.' So he touched the lips of an animal with the waters of Paravid, and the animal prated volubly in our language of the kick this ass had...

Summoning my manful resolution, I made the attempt to step across the children swaddled in matting and straw and old gowns or petticoats. The necessity for doing it with a rush...

'Shall I counsel the moon in her ascending? Stay under that tall palm-tree through the night; Rest on the mountain-slope By the couching antelope, O thou enthroned supremacy of...

Aunt Dorothy looked at me. 'Come now,' she said; 'come with me, Harry.' Her trembling seized on me like a fire. I said, 'Yes,' though my heart sank as if I had lost my father wi...

It may have been that Caroline felt then, that to speak of something was to forfeit something. A light glimmered across the dewy blue of her beautiful eyes. Desire to breathe it...

Over a fire in one of the upper sitting-rooms of the Pilot Inn, Robert sat with his friend, the beloved friend of whom he used to speak to Dahlia and Rhoda, too proudly not to s...

But laughter did not console me for the public aspersion of him I loved. I walked off the grounds, and thought to myself it was quite time I should be moving. Wherever I stayed...

Then came a glorious morning for sportsmen. One sniffed the dews, and could fancy fresh smells of stubble earth and dank woodland grass in the very streets of dirty Bevisham. So...

That idea drew him up in his run, to meditate on the part he should play; and by drove little Dr. Corney on the way to Rendon and hailed him, and gave his cheerless figure the n...

"But," he added suddenly, "I say to you, if you cannot afford to speculate, run away from it as ze fire. Run away from it, and hold up your coat-tail. Jump ditches, and do not s...

'Going to give my maid Polly a whipping for losing a letter she ought to have delivered to me last night,' said Rose, in a loud voice, looking at Drummond. 'And then going to Ma...

Lady Charlotte mounted to ride to the battle daily. She talked of her brother Rowsley, and of 'Aminta,' and provoked an advocacy of the Countess of Ormont, and trampled the plea...

'Great Will,' my father called Shakespeare, and 'Slender Billy,' Pitt. The scene where Great Will killed the deer, dragging Falstaff all over the park after it by the light of B...

Austin looked at Adrian keenly, and questioned him whether he thought the farmer was justified in his suspicions. The wise youth was not to be entrapped. He had only been given...

It was not till he had sight of his poor home; the solitary company of chairs; the sofa looking bony and comfortless as an old female house drudge; the table with his desk on it...

Mrs. Chump was choked by her grief. The ladies, unbending to some curiosity, eliminated from her gasps and sobs that Mr. Pole had, in the solitude of his library below, accused...

Then the Vizier smote his forehead in the madness of utter perplexity, changing his eye from Bhanavar to the tomb of Almeryl, doubting her truth, yet dreading to disbelieve it....

"From her to that woman! It may be priceless. Stop! Let me see what remains. Amalia! are you mad? Oh! you false friend. I would have sacrificed my right hand to see it."

'Yes, on the proviso that ours are respected. But, one instant, Lord Fleetwood, pray. She is--I have to speak of her as my sister. I am sure she regrets . . . She writes very ni...

'Oh, if it's about old Mel, I 'll sing you material enough,' said Mr. George. 'There! you talk of it's being unnatural, his dining out at respectable tables. Why, I believe--upo...

Is it any waste of time to write of love? The trials of life are in it, but in a narrow ring and a fierier. You may learn to know yourself through love, as you do after years of...

'But will Philip O'Donnell tell me that Ireland should lie down with England on the terms of a traveller obliged to take a bedfellow? Come! He hasn't an answer. Put it to him, a...

Had Lady Jocelyn's intellect been as penetrating as it was masculine, she would have taken him and turned him inside out in a very short time; for one who would bear to see his...

Poor Colonel Poltermore, as he came to be called, was clearly a victim of the sudden affability of Duchess Susan. The transformation of a stiff military officer into a nimble Pu...

"Eh! poor old Bob!" Stephen sighed and sipped. "I can cry that with any of you. It's worse for me to see than for you to hear of him. Wasn't I always a friend of his, and said h...

The effect of the evening on Clara was to render her distrustful of her later antagonism. She had unknowingly passed into the spirit of Miss Dale, Sir Willoughby aiding; for she...

She could almost have said: 'Know me better'; and she would, sincere as her passion in its shallow vessel was, have been moved to say it for a warning while yet there was time t...

"Holloa! Hackbut, how's this?"--"I'm a bit late, sir, morning."--"Late! you were late yesterday evening, weren't you?"--"Why, sir, the way the clerks at that Bank of Mortimer an...

"You deceived me," she murmured; and again, "You deceived me." Rhoda did not answer. In trying to understand why her sister should imagine it, she began to know that she had in...

In the case of any other woman than Cecilia Halkett he would not have been obstructed by the minor consideration as to whether he was wholly heart-free to ask her in marriage th...

Know, that when I was a babe, I lay on my mother's bosom in the wilderness, and it was the bosom of death. Surely, I slept and smiled, and dreamed the infant's dream, and knew n...

No sooner had she done so, than a strange fluttering desire to look on Robert awoke within her bosom. She left the house, believing that she went abroad to seek her uncle, and w...

Accompanied by a smile the words would have seemed impudent; but spoken as a plain fact, and with a grave face, it set Old Tom blinking like a small boy ten minutes after the whip.

"Girls always try to persuade you you're ill--that's all," returned Mr. Pole. His voice was subdued; but turning to Cornelia, he fired up: "It's preposterous to tell a man who c...

Shibli Bagarag sighed when he heard the King, and thought to himself, 'How unfortunate is the race of barbers, once honourable and in esteem! Surely it will not be otherwise til...

So Mrs. Berry, to whom Richard had once made mention of Lady Blandish as the only friend he had among women, bundled off in her black-satin dress to obtain an interview with her...

The young cavalier perused that letter again in memory. Genuine, or a joke of the enemy, it spoke wakening facts to him. He leapt from the spell Rose had encircled him with. Str...

Clotilde had been in this room; she had furnished proof that she could be trusted now. She had committed herself, perished as a maiden of society, and her parents, even the sens...

He welcomed Austin with every show of manly tenderness, and sadness at heart. Austin he had always associated with his Lucy in that Hesperian palace of the West. Austin waited p...

Now, when he had set his face from the Princess he descended through the roof of the palace, and met the seven youths returning, and they accompanied him through the halls of th...

Thereupon he swung a circle, and alighted her behind the pole of awning on the roof, and vanished, and the circle of flame rose up, and Kadza passed through it slightly scorched...

In such a place, at such a time, there is no wizardry like a woman's voice. Emilia had gained in force and fulness. She sang with a stately fervour, letting the notes flow from...

He declared himself nevertheless much refreshed by his visit to Dr. Shrapnel. 'We shall have to sleep tonight in this unhallowed town, but I needn't be off to Holdesbury in the...

She counted it a piece of information gained, and jumped to her seat, bidding the driver start. To have pretty well lost her character for a hero changed into a patron's dog, wa...

It has been hinted before of a strange effect upon the minds of men who knew what they were going to, when they received an invitation to dine with Tinman. For the sake of a lit...

Now, when he awoke the second time he was in the bosom of darkness, and the Lily gone from his hand; so he lifted the phial to make certain of that, and groped about till he cam...

'Would this ambitious little head know everything?' said Alvan, putting his lips among the locks. 'Well, we met: he requested it. We agreed that we were on neutral ground for th...

Before I could demand explanations of my father with regard to this terrible rumour involving Ottilia, I found myself in the box of the City widow, Lady Sampleman, a grievous pe...

For that purpose, Captain Welsh handed us over to the care of his trusted mate Mr. Joseph Double, and we were soon in the streets of the city, desirous of purchasing half their...

Now Captain Con was by nature ruddy as an Indian summer flushed in all its leaves. The corners of his face had everywhere a frank ambush, or child's hiding-place, for languages...

"Yes! yes!" Mrs. Doria did not require any of his elucidations. "Pray be quiet, Adrian, and let me speak. Brandon! it cannot be! it's quite impossible! Can you stand there and t...

They can boast of nothing more than having read Nymriey's Letters and Correspondence, published, fortunately for him, when he was no longer to be called to account below for his...

Now, the promise of food and provision was powerful with Shibli Bagarag, and he looked up gloomily. And the old woman smiled archly at him, and wriggled in her seat like a dusty...

It has been known to the patriotic mountaineer of a hoary pile of winters, with little life remaining in him, but that little on fire for his country, that by the brink of the p...

She fixed her eyes on him, expressing certainty of his unalterable stedfastness. The look allured. It changed: her head shook. She held away and said: 'No, leave me; leave me, d...

Now that the engagement with Charlotte assumed proportions of a series of battle, properly to be entitled a campaign, he had, in his loneliness, fallen into the habit of reflect...

From that hour till the day Heriot's aunt came to see me, I lived systematically out of myself in extreme flights of imagination, locking my doors up, as it were, all the faster...

Surely the world darkened before the eyes of Mashalleed, and he arose and called to his guard hoarsely, 'Have off their heads!' They hesitated, dreading the Queen, and he roared...

Countess Ammiani quitted Brescia for Bergamo before the worst had happened; when nothing but the king's retreat upon the Lombard capital, after the good fight at Volta, was know...

The moments were of the palpitating order for Gower, although his common sense lectured the wildest of hearts for expecting such a possibility as the presence of his lofty lady...

The contemplation of the curious littleness of the lives of men and women lived in this England of ours, made me feel as if I looked at them out of a palace balcony-window; for...

"Perhaps, Rhoda, we ought not to stand in his way. He wishes to do what a man can do in his case. So he tells me, and I'm bound not to disbelieve him. He says he repents--says t...

"Leastways," the widow hastened to add, "if he thought it was only devils against him. I've heard him say, 'It's a fool that holds out against God, and a coward as gives in to t...

'Ay,' said he, 'but for all that the alderman is lighter on his feet: I back him to be across the Channel first. The object of my instructions to you will be lost, Richie, if I...

'Only the pain of the good-bye to my beloved,' said Diana. 'I have never been happier--never shall be! Now you know him you think with me? I knew you would. You have seen him as...

"We're the Independence on two legs, warranted sound, and no competition;" and saying to Dahlia: "Lor' bless you! there's no retort in 'em, or I'd say something worth hearing. I...

It was startling to me to wake up to twilight in the open air and silence, for I was unaware that I had fallen asleep. The girl had roused me, and we crept down from the cart. H...

January was watering and freezing old earth by turns, when the Hon. Peter travelled down to the sun of his purse with great news. He had no sooner broached his lordship's immedi...

'Why, sir, wasn't he on show at the Court he applied to for relief and damages? as we heard when we were watching the case daily, scarce drawing our breath for fear the innocent...

'Transferred to me in the Bank, and intelligence of the fact sent to Dettermain and Newson, my lawyers,' he replied. 'Beyond that, I know as little as you, Richie, though indubi...

He said, after a pause: "But the world is not likely to be impressed by anything not immediately gratifying it. People change, I find: as we increase in years we cease to be the...

'Pretend? I pretend in the teeth of all concerned to establish her happiness and yours, and nothing human shall stop me. I have you grateful to me before your old dad lays his h...

Happily for Evan, she was not ready with her packing by half-past eleven. It was near twelve when he, pacing in front of the inn, observed Polly Wheedle, followed some yards in...

Our curiosity being satisfied, we held debate upon our immediate prospects. The difficulty of making sure of a bed when you are once detached from your home, was the philosophic...

Angelo knelt and coaxed the fire, whose appetite, like that which is said to be ours, was fed by eating, for after the red jaws had taken half-a-dozen sticks, it sang out for mo...

"Verily, for no other reason than that I have a wicked curiosity, and that you come from Rome," said Laura, now perfectly frank, and believing that she had explained her enigmat...

They had fun at the dinner-table. Richard would have it; and his gaiety, his by-play, his princely superiority to truth and heroic promise of overriding all our laws, his handso...

Edward saw that by forfeiting simplicity, in order to catch his father's peculiar cast of mind, he had left him cold and in doubt as to the existence of the powerful impulse by...

Then said Shahpesh, 'O Khipil, I see no distinction between one part and another; excellent are all parts in beauty and proportion, and there can be no part incomplete in this p...

"You're two to one, if it's a transaction," he said, nodding to Robert to close the library door. "Take seats. Now then, what is it? And if I make a face, just oblige me by thin...

Mrs. Mel examined him with those eyes of hers that compassed objects in a single glance. She drew her finger on each side of her upper lip, and half smiled, saying:

She is a generous woman, a magnanimous woman; wear her chains and she will not brain you with her club. She is the light, the centre of every society where she appears, like wha...

He gazed intently into her eyes, and as the question shot like a javelin, she tried ineffectually to disengage her fingers; her delusion waned; she took fright, but it was too l...

Nevertheless, the sight of Master Gammon was like a comforting medicine to all who were in the house. He was Mrs. Sumfit's clock; he was balm and blessedness in Rhoda's eyes; An...

There was heard a noise like the noise of a wind coming down a narrow gorge above falling waters, a hissing and a rushing of wings, and behold! Bhanavar was circled by rings and...

He related how he had courted the young woman, "bashful-like," and had been so; for she was a splendid young woman; not so handsome now, as she used to be when he had seen her i...

'Young gentlemen, I've finished it while you 've been barking at me. If I 'd had him early in life on board my vessel, I hope I'm not presumptuous in saying--the Lord forgive me...

A thought brushed by her: How if he were absent? It relaxed her stroke of arms and legs. He had doubled the salt sea's rapture, and he had shackled its gift of freedom. She turn...

'Grandada is coming to you, Harry,' Janet said. 'He has business in London, or he would have been here now. Our horses and carriages follow us: everything you would like. He doe...

'I've got enough to think over. Hold him fast to stand up to me within forty-eight hours, present time; you know who I mean; I've got a question or two for him. How he treats hi...

Sometimes the meeting occurred twice during the stupid march-out, when it became so nearly vexatious to boys almost biliously oppressed by the tedium of a day merely allowing th...

She received a tenderer kiss for that. It was her avowal, and it was understood: to know that she had loved or had been ready to love him, shadowed her in the retrospect.

The prizefighter had adopted drinking for his pursuit; one of her aunts was dead, and she was in quest of money to bury the dead woman with the conventional ceremonies and shows...

Lucy was very inquisitive about everything and everybody at Raynham. Whoever had been about Richard since his birth, she must know the history of, and he for a kiss will do her...

"No, no! not for my intentions! And do not thank me. Think of him...think of your dear boy... Our Richard, as we have called him.--Oh! do not think it a foolish superstition of...

"Not if you keep your tongue from wagging," interposed Ugo Corte, fevered by this unseasonable exhibition of what was to him manifestly a lover's frenzied selfishness. He moved...

Her command was instantly obeyed. Herr Johannes looked her in the face. 'You are very decided, my dear lady.' He seemed to have lost his own decision, but handing Vittoria in, h...

'Dimly-scarcely. To some extent I knew it, but it did not stand out in broad daylight. I have been learning the world's wisdom recently. Would you have had me neglect it? Surely...

He lifted her off the steps and set her on the ground, as one who had an established right to the privilege and she did not contest it, nor did her people, so kingly was he, arr...

At dinner she had tales of uxorious men, of men who married mistresses, of the fearful incubus the vulgar family of a woman of the inferior classes ever must be; and her animadv...

In fine, it is Hippogriff. And right loath am I to continue my partnership with a fellow who will not see things on the surface, and is, as a necessary consequence, blind to the...

But he declined to look thus low, and stood pitifully smiling:--This spectacle, together with some subtle spur from the talk of love, roused Emilia from her lethargy. The warmth...

She insisted on this, until the tears streamed from her eyes, telling me that my grandfather was the most upright and unsuspicious of men, and precisely on that account the seve...

Willoughby did his duty to the joke, but the Rev. Doctor, though he wore the paternal smile of a man that has begotten hilarity, was not perfectly propitiated, and pursued: "Nor...

Father and son were alone in the railway carriage. Both were too preoccupied to speak. As they neared Bellingham the dark was filling the hollows of the country. Over the pine-h...

Tinman was pursuing amicably, "When we are united--" But the frightful charge brought against his temper drew him up. "Fiery I may be. Annette has seen I am forgiving. I am a Ch...

"--instead of fretting like a man, and questioning Providence, and turning herself and everybody else inside out, and seeing the world upside down, what does the practical anima...

But that she should have a reason, and think it good, in spite of me, and cling to it, defying me, and that she should do hurt to a sentient human creature, who was my father, f...

Aminta had softened herself with the allusion to the shortness of his time with them. Her aunt's coarse hint, and the thought of his loss, and the banishment it would be to her...

"Mr. Morton (who does me the honour to call me Young Mephisto, and Socrates missed) leaves to-morrow to get Master Ralph out of a scrape. Our Richard has just been elected membe...

Violetta had escaped an exposure--a rank and naked accusation of her character and deeds. She feared nothing but that, being quite indifferent to opinion; a woman who would not...

Evan debated whither to turn when Rose was lost to his eyes. He had no heart for dancing. Presently a servant approached, and said that Mr. Harry particularly desired to see him...

She did wrong to let that fellow Morsfield accompany her. Possibly he had come across her on the road, and she could not shake him off. Judging by all he knew of her, the earl b...

"My dear! annything that's lots o' words, Ye may call me," returned Mrs. Chump, "as long as it's no name. Ye won't call me a name, will ye? Lots o' words--it's onnly as if ye pe...

The sweat was on Edward's forehead. "In a few minutes it will be half-past--half-past eleven! I expect a friend; that makes me impatient. Mr. Eccles"--Edward showed his singular...

'Bless the honey heart of the girl! Life's in you, my dear, and calls for fuel. I'm glad to see that Mr. Colesworth too can take a sight at the Sea-God after a night of him. It...

Annette gazed at her father open-mouthed, as he had predicted; now with a little chilly dimple at one corner of the mouth, now at another--as a breeze curves the leaden winter l...

Pity was in Lady Blandish's eyes, though for a different cause. She doubted if she did well in seconding his father's unwise scheme--supposing him to have a scheme. She saw the...

'Why, sir,' observed another, stepping forward, 'as you truly say--yes. But--ah! Mr. Andrew Cogglesby? Pleasure of meeting you once in Fallow field! Remember Mr. Perkins?--the l...

"Can I give you a proof, Willoughby? I am so utterly incapable of it that--listen to me--were you to come to me to tell me, as you might, how much better suited to you Miss Dale...

Their hands grasped firmly: thereupon becoming fists of a hostile couple in position. And simply to learn which of us two is the better man! Or in other words, with four simple...

CONTENTS: The Shaving of Shagpat The Ordeal of Richard Feverel Sandra Belloni Rhoda Fleming Evan Harrington Vittoria The Adventures of Harry Richmond Beauchamp's Career The Egoi...

Algernon had turned back to the great thoroughfare. He was afraid that ten pounds must be forfeited to this worrying demon in the flesh, and sought the countenance of his well-d...

He was too happy, to go away willingly; and the great Jew City of London was exceedingly hot for him at that period; but to stay and risk an exposure of his extinct military car...

'I don't,' Grossby sighed. 'In he comes with his "Good morning, Grossby, fine day for the hunt, Grossby," and a ten-pound note. "Have the kindness to put that down in my favour,...

Her face was burning; she would gladly have gone out, but the squire refused to permit it, and she nodded over her crossed hands, saying that she was in no hurry.

I shut my lips. Prince Leboo knew that he must go, and a good gallop reconciled me to circumstances. Then I was put to jumping little furzes and ditches, which one cannot preten...

"I verily believe we are directing the girl to dissect a caprice. Such things are seen large by these young people, but as they have neither organs, nor arteries, nor brains, no...

"Because, Dahlia, if you do not I know I have no right to fancy you do not. How is it? Tell me. Marriage is an awful thing, where there's no love. And this man, whoever he is--i...

So much his sister Louisa. His sister Harriet offered him her house for a home in London, thence to project his new career. His sister Caroline sought a word with him in private...

These being his reflections, he at once accepted a view of her that so agreeably quieted his perplexity, and he leapt out of his tangle into the happy open spaces where the roma...

"I swear to heaven that my lowest cynical ideas of women, and the loathing with which their simply animal vagaries inspires a thoughtful man, are distanced and made to seem a be...

"Yes; I am relieved. Go, dear friend," she sobbed; "you have given me tears, as I hoped. You will not turn him; had it been possible, could I have kept you from him so long? I k...

The graceful head it had fallen from was dimmer in his mental eye. He went so far in this charmed meditation as to feel envy of the possessor of the severed lock: passingly he w...

"If you will. She makes a mouth at porcelain. Toujours la porcelaine! For me, her pettishness is one of her charms, I confess it. Ten years younger, I could not have compared th...

'You take an interest in the boys,' he said, glowing. 'Yes, well, they have their talks. I happened to be a cricketer, counting wickets and scores. I don't fancy it's remembered...

A girl's voice gave out the mountain carol ringingly above. His heart and all his fancies were in motion at the sound. He leaned on an elbow to listen; the slide threatened him,...

He judged of the well-favoured girl that she could steer her way through cities: mouth and brows were a warning to challenger pirate craft of a vessel carrying guns; and the red...

Late at night he mounted to Gower's room. The funeral of the day's impressions had not been skaken off. He kicked at it and sunk under it as his talk rambled. 'Add five thousand...

'It is indelicate and base of Captain Baskelett to complain and to hint. Nevil had to submit to the same; and Captain Baskelett took his revenge on the housedoor and the bells....

An order for the immediate arrest of Vittoria was brought round to the stage at the fall of the curtain by Captain Weisspriess, and delivered by him on the stage to the officer...

Count Serabiglione continued to be buoyed up by his own and his daughter's recent display of a superior intellectual dexterity until the carriage was at the door and Laura prese...

"And you think me such an Egoist!--dear ladies! The suggestion of so cruel a piece of selfishness wounds me. I would not have had you leave the Hall. I like your society; I resp...

And your poets are in a like predicament. Your poets are the most persuasive of springs to a lively general patriotism. They are in the Celtic dilemma of standing at variance wi...

'An article like that,' said Timothy, winking, and a little surer of his man now that he suggested his possession of ideas, 'an article like that is the best cloak you can put o...

"You look as young as ever, ma'am," Mr. Pole complimented her cheerfully, while he stamped his feet on the floor, and put forward Emilia as one of his girls; but immediately too...

"You seek to foil me with sophisms," said Georgiana, warming. "A woman--even a girl--should remember what is due to herself. You are attracted by a passionate nature--I mean, me...

Meantime Beppo, oppressed by his custody of the fan, and expecting that most serviceable lady's instrument to be sent for at any minute, stood among a strange body of semi-feuda...

'It is,' Zotti pursued his idea, with fingers picturesquely twirling in a spider-like distension; 'it is like the damned, and they have but a crumb of a chance of Paradise, and...

'It will fall on me!' she said to Tresten, in her emphatic tone. 'He will have his interview with the girl. He will subdue the girl. He will manacle himself in the chains he mak...

He slept. Near upon morning he roused with his tender fit strong on him, but speechless in the waking as it had been dreamless in sleep. It was a happy load on his breast, a lif...

'Just a plunge and a dozen strokes,' Dartrey said; 'and you'll come to my hotel and give me ten minutes of the "recreation"; and if you don't come willingly, I shall insult your...

"Do I?" replies Berry. "Belike I do. Since what you done's so good, my darlin', I'm agreeable to anything. A fig for all the lords! They can't come anigh a baby. You may read Vo...

Sir Lukin could not let him go. He yearned to preach to him or any one from his personal text of the sinner honourably remorseful on account of and notwithstanding the forgivene...

In fact, Ripton had protested that he would defy his parent and remain by his friend in the hour of adversity and at the post of danger. Sir Austin signified his opinion that a...

Two weeks back Renee's expression of a wish that he would marry had seemed to him an idle sentence in a letter breathing of her own intolerable situation. The marquis had been s...

With this apology for himself, Lord Fleetwood grew tolerant of the person honourably avowed as his wife. So; therefore, the barrier between him and his thoughts of her was broke...

'Well did I hate the name! I heard it first over in France. Our people wrote to me of her; and it's a name to set you thinking: Is she tender, or nothing like a woman,--a stone?...

"And don't believe it? He has. He's only waiting now, over there in Paris, to get comfortably out of a scrape--you remember what I told you at Fairly--and then Mrs. Lovell's goi...

Eveleen and the old mother had searched for me upon the heath, and having haled me head and foot to their tent, despatched a message to bring Kiomi down from London to aid them...

Crossjay turned his full face to the doctor. "I haven't seen her for such a long time! But he saw me last night, and he might have told her that, if she's anxious.--Good-morning...

She gathered up her skirts. Without a word to him, she ran, and running shouted to the little ones around and ahead: 'In! in! indoors, children! "Blant, i'r ty!" Mothers, mother...

Mr. Beamish reassured him. The wit and sprightliness of Chloe were so famous as to be considered medical, he affirmed; she was besieged for her company; she composed and sang im...

Rhoda's devotions in church were frequently distracted by the occupants of the Blancove pew. Mrs. Lovell had the habit of looking at her with an extraordinary directness, an exp...

Nevil hastened to make this a true report; but they had to wait for tide as well as breeze, and pilot through intricate mud-channels before they could see the outside of the Lid...

'I was fond of the place? Thank Blazes, I'm not what I was!' He paced about. 'There's not a corner of the place that doesn't screw an eye at me, because I had a dream there. La...

The squire recommended a draught of old ale. The captain accepted it. His comportment was cheerful in a sober fashion, notwithstanding the transparent perturbation of his spirit...

"So we keep you in the family," she said. "And now look here: you ought to know my brother's ways, if you're going to serve him. You'll have to guess at half of everything he te...

There were preparations for the arrival of an important visitor. The margravine spoke of him emphatically. I thought it might be her farcically pompous way of announcing my fath...

'And when the poor fellow's cranium's cracking to fling his cap in the air, and physician and politician are agreed it's good for him to do it, or he'll go mad and be a dangerou...

'On my way to the Wells!' she exclaimed softly. 'Why, how could anybody promise me a thing before ever he saw me? I call that a strange thing to ask a person. No, to-day, while...

A young lady who can have male friends, as well as friends of her own sex, is not usually pressing and secret in her confidences, possibly because such a young lady is not alway...

After a minute or so, the wise youth was but a fly buzzing about Richard's head. Three weeks of separation from Lucy, and an excitement deceased, caused him to have soft yearnin...

Thus painfully revolving matters of fact and feeling, Sir William cantered, and, like a cropped billow blown against by the wind, drew up in front of Mrs. Lovell, and entered in...

A spur of laughter at Harry's generous nod brought on Juliana's cough. Harry watched her little body shaken and her reddened eyes. Some real emotion--perhaps the fear which heal...

Luigi could not see the deduction. He was incapable of guessing that it might apply forcibly to Vittoria, who had undertaken a grave, perilous, and imminent work. Nothing but th...

By what frightful mischance, then, does he miss his dinner? By placing the smallest confidence in the gentlemanly feeling of another man! Algernon deduced this reply accurately...

The writing of a letter to Dahlia had previously been attempted and abandoned as a sickening task. Like an idle boy with his holiday imposition, Edward shelved it among the nigh...

Then, with Beppo at their heels, bearing water, wine, and brandy, the women walked in the paths of carnage, and saw the many faces of death. Laura whispered strangely, "How ligh...

She did not affect the feminine simplicity which can so prettily misunderstand and put by an implied accusation of that nature. Doubtless her sharp instinct served her by tellin...

'Those old gentlemen are very odd,' Jack pursued, 'very strange. He wouldn't have judged me by my attire. Admetus' flocks I guard, yet am a God! Dress is nothing to those old co...

Mrs. Mountstuart rocked herself "My poor Sir Willoughby! What a fate!--And I took you for a clever girl! Why, I have been admiring your management of him! And here am I bound to...

A sketch was the consequence, in which a withered Cupid and a fading Psyche were seen divided by Wilsonople, who keeps them forcibly asunder with policeman's fists, while courte...

Arms were in the city. With hatred to prompt the blow, with arms to strike, so much dishonour to avenge, we need not wonder that these youths beheld the bit of liberty in prospe...

'He took my sister,' she went on, 'and his cruelty killed her. He persecuted me even in the lifetime of my good man. Last night he came here in the middle of the storm with a yo...

"Not your truth, but the accuracy of your perceptions and your knowledge of your real designs. You are certainly deceiving yourself at this instant. In the first place, the rela...

Otherwise there was no interpreting his lordship. To think of herself as personally disliked by a nobleman stupefied Mrs. Pagnell, from her just expectation of reciprocal dealin...

Redworth struck on a southward line from chalk-ridge to sand, where he had a pleasant footing in familiar country, under beeches that browned the ways, along beside a meadowbroo...

They were in the midst of mulberries, out of sight of the army; green mulberries, and the green and the bronze young vine-leaf. It was a delicious day, but she began to fear tha...

'Grey Dawn. 'You are greeted. This, if you have been tardy on the journey home, will follow close on the heels of the prowest, I believe truest, of knights, and bear perhaps to...

His watch went slowly. She was beginning to drop her eyelids in front of Tresten. Oh! he knew her so well. He guessed the length of her acting, and the time for her earnestness....

'The Earlsfont Arms, I went to. And Mrs. Jenny at the door, watching the rain. Destiny directed me. She caught the likeness to Philip on a lift of her eye, and very soon we sat...

A month later, after a night of sharp frost on the verge of the warmer days of spring, Mr. Fellingham entered Crikswich under a sky of perfect blue that was in brilliant harmony...

Excited by suggestive recollections of Nooredeen and the Fair Persian, and the change in the obscure monotony of his life by his having quarters in a crack hotel, and living fam...

The battle of the sophist victorious within him was done in a flash, as Evan measured his qualities beside this young man's, and without a sense of lying, said: 'I have.'

BOOK 2. XII. MISS MATTOCK XIII. THE DINNER-PARTY XIV. OF ROCKNEY XV. THE MATTOCK FAMILY XVI. OF THE GREAT MR. BULL AND THE CELTIC AND SAXON VIEW OF HIM: AND SOMETHING OF RICHARD...

The Lenkenstein ladies returned to Milan proudly in the path of the army which they had followed along the city walls on the black March midnight. The ladies of the Austrian ari...

Janet's 'Good-bye, Harry,' ended everything I lived for, and seemed to strike the day, and bring out of it the remorseless rain. A featureless day, like those before the earth w...

She did not request him to stay: his announcement produced no effect on her. Consequently, thought he--well, what? nothing: well, then, that she might not be minded to stay hers...

She had to resign herself to the chances of a clash of men, and, as there were two to one, she requested help of Weyburn's hand, that he might be near her.

Mrs. Sumfit then intertwisted her fingers, and related how that she and Master Gammon had one day, six years distant, talked on a lonely evening over the mischances which befel...

'Our Jorian says that women's letters must be read like anagrams. To put it familiarly, they are like a child's field of hop-scotch. You may have noticed the urchins at their ga...

Dr Middleton stood frowning over MS notes on the table, in Vernon's handwriting. He flung up the hair from his forehead and dropped into a seat to inspect them closely. He was n...

"You have not mentioned it to me, to my knowledge. As to the reason, I might hear a dozen of your reasons, and I should not understand one. It's against your interests and again...

Between sincerity and a suspicion so cloaked and dull that she did not feel it to be the opposite of candour, she fancied she was passionless because she could accept the visibl...

Dinner over, Richard looked hurriedly at his watch, and said, with much briskness, "I shall just be in time, sir, if we walk. Will you come with me to the station?"

Sleep had long held its reign in Fallowfield. Nevertheless, Mr. Raikes, though blind windows alone looked on him, and nought foreign was to be imputed to him in the matter of pr...

"Where are you going, Lieutenant?" His frank reply to the question was, "I am going to be killed;" and it grew notorious that this meant Tinman's table. We get on together as we...

Holy to them grew the stillness: the ripple suffused in golden moonlight: the dark edges of the leaves against superlative brightness. Not a chirp was heard, nor anything save t...

That afternoon, in the midst of packing and preparations for the journey, at all of which Lady Gosstre smiled with a complacent bewilderment, a card, bearing the name of Miss La...

We moved from town to town along the South coast; but it was vain to hope we might be taken for simple people. Nor was he altogether to blame, except in allowing the national in...

'Well! how?' 'Foolish curiosity?' 'I think I have made her of service. I did not bring the lady here.' 'Of service to whom?' 'Why, to Victor!' 'Has Victor commissioned you?' 'Yo...

'You have said (I have it written) that men who are liked by men are the best friends for women. In which case, the earl should be worthy of our friendship; he is liked. Captain...

'It is life-like! it is really noble! it is a true Prince!' exclaimed Miss Sibley. She translated several exclamations of the ladies and gentlemen in German: they were entirely...

The battle was over before the young ladies knew. They wondered to see Matey shuffling on his coat and hopping along at easy bounds to pay his respects to Miss Vincent, near who...

A laugh was circling among the ladies of whom Adrian was the centre; first low, and as he continued some narration, peals resounded, till those excluded from the fun demanded th...

"She was right, my dear, if she was a ten-thousander. She wasn't right as a farmer's daughter with poor expectations.--I'd say humble, if humble she were. As a farmer's daughter...

Pericles accompanied him into a caffe, the picture of an enamoured happy man. He waived aside contemptuously all mention of Vittoria's having enemies. She had them when, as a vi...

They forgot the presence of Temple and me, but spoke as if they thought they were whispering. The captain assured his brother that Squire Beltham had given him as much fair play...

'Take the rich by the throat and show them in the kitchen-mirror that they're swine running down to the sea with a devil in them.' She had set him off again, but she had enticed...

Here, with an aphorism worthy a place in The Pilgrim'S Scrip, she broke off to go posseting for her dear invalid. Lucy was quite well; very eager to be allowed to rise and be re...

He fought his duello with empty air till he was exhausted. A last letter written to his father procured him no reply. Then, said he, I have tried my utmost. I have tried to be d...

Wilfrid stared at the writing. "What! all this time she has been thinking the same thing!" Her constancy did not swim before him in alluring colours. He regarded it as a species...

On the steps of the door where his horse stood saddled, he met Wilfrid, and from this promised brother-in-law received matter for the challenge. Wilfrid excitedly accused Anna o...

"Memory didn't happen to be handy at the first mention of the lady's name. As the general said of his ammunition and transport, there's the army!--but it was leagues in the rear...

The very name of the Island shocked Richard's blood; and he had to walk up and down before he could knock at Lucy's door. That infamous conspiracy to which he owed his degradati...

Beppo knew by her eyes that her ears were locked against him; and, though she spoke softly, there was an imperiousness in her voice not to be disregarded. He showed plainly by t...

The likening of one to Satan does not always exclude meditation upon him. Clotilde was anxious to learn in what way her talk resembled Alvan's. He being that furious creature, s...

Carinthia sat beside the fire, seeing nothing in the room or on the road. Up in her bedchamber, the girl Madge was at her window. She saw Lord Fleetwood standing alone, laughing...

Gower Woodseer could not know that he was drawn on to fortune and the sight of his Hesper by Admiral Fakenham's order that the visitor was to stay at his house until he should b...

Now she was aware that Alvan moved behind the screen concealing him. A common friend of Alvan and her family talked to her of him. He was an eminent professor, a middleaged, gra...

Emma read in it, that it would complete her happiness, possibly by fortifying her sense of security; and that seemed right. Her own meditations, illumined by the beautiful face...

I have never been able to procure the book or pamphlet, but I know she was the best of mothers, and of wives too. And she, with her old husband, growing like a rose out of a wea...

"You've been and spent a night at the young squire's, I hear, brother Tony. All right and well. No complaints on my part, I do assure ye. If you're mixed up with that family, I...

'A strange couple!' He appeared perplexed by his old friend's approval of them. 'There we decidedly differ,' said he, when the case of Dr. Shrapnel was related by the colonel, w...

Observing the quick change in Tony's eyes, Emma exclaimed: 'How you looked disdain when you asked whether he had told me! But why are you the handsome tigress to him, of all men...

Carinthia reached Esslemont near noon. She came on foot, and had come unaccompanied, stick in hand, her dress looped for the roads. Madge bustled her shorter steps up the park b...

She shook her head; she could not see it. She would admit none of the notorious errors, of the world; its backbiting, selfishness, coarseness, intrusiveness, infectiousness. She...

Caseldy acquiesced; his wits were clouded, and an illustration even coarser and more grotesque would have won a serious nod and a sigh from him. 'Yes, we are moved by other hands!'

Journalists have an excessive overestimate of their influence. They cannot, as Diana said, comparing them with men on the Parliamentary platform, cannot feel they are aboard the...

Like sunshine after smart rain, the Port shone on these brothers. Like a voice from the pastures after the bellowing of the thunder, Andrew's voice asked: 'Got rid of that twing...

Our yacht winged her way home. Prince Ernest of Eppenwelzen-Sarkeld, accompanied by Baroness Turckems, and Prince Otto, his nephew, son of the Prince of Eisenberg, a captain of...

She wished her view of the yoke to be considered purely personal, drawn from no examples and comparisons. The excellent Sir Lukin was passing a great deal of his time in London....

He felt that a chance had been. More sagacious than Lady Dunstane, from his not nursing a wound, he divined in the abruptness of Diana's resolution to accept a suitor, a sober r...

'And I say that a gentleman has no business with idols,' the colonel fumed as he spoke. 'Those letters of Shrapnel to Nevil Beauchamp are a scandal on the name of Englishman.'

Singularly enough, the man of these feelings was far from being a social rebel. His Diana conjured them forth in relation to her, but was not on his bosom to enlighten him gener...

She had moved back, showing a harder figure, or the "I love you, love you!" would have sounded with force. It came, though not so vehemently as might have been, to the appeal of...

But thirst is not enjoyment, and a satiated thirst that we insist on over-satisfying to drown the recollection of past anguish, is baneful to the soul. In Rome Cecilia's vision...

'I do not see it, because I will not see it,' she said, and she found a personal cooling and consolement in the phrase.--We have this power of resisting invasion of the poetic b...

De Craye proceeded: "Patrick O'Neill passes over from Hibernia to Iberia, a disinherited son of a father in the claws of the lawyers, with a letter of introduction to Don Beltra...

That great couchant dragon of the devouring jaws and the withering breath, known as our London world, was in expectation of an excitement above yawns on the subject of a beautif...

The difficulties which tasked the amiable duchess to preserve an outward show of peace among the antagonistic elements she gathered together were increased by the arrival at the...

I replied, 'I think I do, if I may dare to'; and catching breath: 'Herr Professor, dear friend, forgive my boldness; grant me time to try me; don't judge of me at once; take me...

'Henrietta Fakenham! no mistake about her; driving out from a pothouse; man beside her, military man; might be a German. And, if you please, quite unacquainted with your humble...

There were the Douglas and the Percy on the wall. It was a happy and a glorious time, was it not, when men lent each other blows that killed outright; when to be brave and cheri...

'Just as I remarked, you are not thorough. You have genius and courage out of proportion, and you are a dead failure, Roy; because, no sooner have you got all Covent Garden befo...

The magic of the weather brought numerous butterflies afield, and one fiddler, to whose tuning the little women danced; others closer upon womanhood would have danced likewise,...

'Good; that is fixed fact.' The Signor Antonio drove at his moustache right and left. 'I give you, see, Italian money and German money: German money in paper; and a paper writte...

"Inalterable, are they?--like those of an ancient people, who might as well have worn a jacket of lead for the comfort they had of their boast. The beauty of laws for human crea...

'Enough to have saved you, fair maid,' he muttered hoarsely. 'Gratitude never was a woman's gift. Say to your father that I shall make excuses to him for the conduct of my men.'

Lady Jocelyn belonged properly to that order which the Sultans and the Roxalanas of earth combine to exclude from their little games, under the designation of blues, or strong-m...

Now, Baba Mustapha was persuaded by the scimitars of the guard to a second essay on the head of Shagpat, and the second time he was shot away from Shagpat through the crowd and...

"Listen, Clare! Richard is going. He says he has an engagement. What possible engagement can a young man have at eleven o'clock in the morning?--unless it's to be married!" Mrs....

'You will regret to hear that the project of Captain Beauchamp's voyage is in danger of being abandoned. A committee of a vacant Radical borough has offered to nominate him. My...

But Noorna clung to her, and spake in her ear, 'Wilt thou blow the fire that menaces him, O Kadza? and what are two women against the assailants of such a mighty one as he?' The...

He was of a nature as quick as Clara's. Experience pushed him farther than she could go in fancy; but experience laid a sobering finger on his practical steps, and bade them han...

'It seems to us unnecessary to heap on coal when the chimney is afire; but he may know the proper course,' Diana said, convulsing Danvers; and there was discernibly to Redworth,...

A principal charm of the life at Fairly to him was that there was no one complaining. No one looked reproach at him. If a lady was pale and reserved, she did not seem to accuse...

At that period, when threats of invasion had formerly stirred up the military fire of us Islanders, the great Mel, as if to show the great Napoleon what character of being a Bri...

'That pretty pout will alone suffice to make him deviate, then,' said the Countess, with her sweetest open slyness. 'I am now on the point of accepting your most kind invitation...

'I do think I shall now have courage to stay out the pic-nic,' she continues. 'I really do not think all is known. Very little can be known, or I am sure I could not feel as I d...

Amiable though they were, and mutually affectionate, they came to a stop in their walk, longing to separate, and not seeing how it was to be done, they had so knit themselves to...

Her weeping ceased, and she closed the window, and undressed as far away from the mirror as she could get; but its force was too much for her, and drew her to it. Some undefined...

Giacomo Piaveni was a noble Italian of the young blood, son of a General loved by Eugene. In him the loss of Italy was deplorable. He perished by treachery at the age of twenty-...

Suppose he went to her, would she be trying at domination? The woman's pitch above woman's beauty was perceived to be no intermittent beam, but so living as to take the stamp of...

"My book!" she answered, her delicious curls swinging across her shoulders to the stream. Then turning to him, "Oh, no, no! let me entreat you not to," she said; "I do not so ve...

"She might a done it here," said Mrs. Berry. "There's no prettier sight, I say. If her dear husband could but see that! He's off in his heroics--he want to be doin' all sorts o'...

Ripton had an eye for lords. An ambrosial footman, standing at the open door of Lord Mountfalcon's house, and a gentleman standing on the doorstep, told him that he was addresse...

"I suppose I must go down there," he said to himself, keeping a meditative watch on the postscript, as if it possessed the capability of slipping away and deceiving him. "Does s...

She had expected some of the kindness she wanted to reject, for he could speak very kindly, and she regarded him as her doctor of medicine, who would at least present the futile...

So one day as I leaned from my casement looking on the garden seaward, I saw a strange red and yellow-feathered bird that flew to the branch of a citron-tree opposite, with a ri...

Love, with his accustomed cunning, managed thus to lift her out of the mire and array her in his golden dress to idealize her, as we say. Reconciled for the hour were the contes...

She was distressed; she moaned: 'My girl! my girl: I should wish to leave her with one who is more fixed--the old-fashioned husband. New ideas must come in politics, but in Soci...

"It is never too late for beauty to waken love," returned the baronet, and they trifled a little. They were approaching Daphne's Bower, which they entered, and sat there to tast...

Agostino threw himself on his back and closed his eyes. "That, then, is more than you have done, signor Tuquoque. Look on the Bernina yonder, and fancy you behold a rout of phan...

Lady Dunstane despatched a few words of the facts to Diana. She hoped to hear from her; rather hoped, for the moment, not to see her. No answer came. The great day of the nuptia...

'Coming through town, for the first time yesterday. I had it--of all men!--from a Sir Abraham Quatley, to whom I was recommended to go, about my husband's shares in a South Amer...

Your Lion, my dear sir, may have nothing in his head, but his tawniness tells us he imbibes good sound stuff, worthy of the reputation of a noble brewery. Whereas your, Unicorn,...

"You don't think much of it. Why, there ain't another man but myself Boyne's Bank would trust. They've trusted me thirty year:--why shouldn't they go on trusting me another thir...

Farmer Blaize reached his hand to the bell. It was answered in an instant by little Lucy, who received orders to fetch in a dependent at Belthorpe going by the name of the Banta...

The possibility of an expedition of ladies now struck Seymour vividly, and said he: 'I 'll be secretary'; and began applying to the ladies for permission to put down their names...

For this had happened to his knowledge: the gentleman accompanying the lady had refused to make anything of a halt at the Red Lion, and had said he was sure there would be a sma...

"An ideal, perhaps. I lay no stress on sacrifice. I strongly object to separations. And therefore, you will say, I prepare the ground for unions? Put your influence to good serv...

During the term of Clara's walk with Laetitia, Sir Willoughby's shrunken self-esteem, like a garment hung to the fire after exposure to tempestuous weather, recovered some of th...

She passed into music, as she always did under motion of carriages and trains, whether in happiness or sadness: and the day being one that had a sky, the scenic of music swung h...

'That Demerara Supple-jack, Victor! Don't listen to Simeon; he's a man of lean narrative, fit to chronicle political party wrangles and such like crop of carcase prose: this is...

"Ah!" Hippias wagged a melancholy head, "you've got the Golden Bride! Keep her if you can. That's a pretty fable of your father's. I gave him the idea, though. Austin filches a...

As a dog, that cannot ask you verbally to scratch his head, but wishes it, will again and again thrust his head into your hand, petitioning mutely that affection may divine him,...

'If I could still charge it on neglect, Nevil! Neglect is very endurable. He rewards me for nursing him . . . he rewards me with a little persecution: wives should be flattered...

In the fields he was genially helpful; commending them to the study of the South-west wind, if they wanted to forecast the weather and understand the climate of our country. 'We...

I shuddered. Ottilia divined that her burning blush had involved me. Divination is fiery in the season of blushes, and I, too, fell on the track of her fair spirit, setting out...

At last he believed in her reluctance. All that had been wanted to bring him to the belief was the scene on the common; such a mere spark, or an imagined spark! But the presence...

At the Club he heard of the major as having gone to London and being expected down in the afternoon. Colonel Sudley named the train: an early train; the major was engaged to din...

Mrs. Pagnell, 'quite enjoying the company,' as she told her niece, was dismayed to hear her niece tell her of a milliner's appointment, positive for three o'clock; and she had w...

Many eyes were on Mr. Pericles, who occasionally inspected the cornices and corbels and stained glass to right and left, or detected a young lady staring at him, or anticipated...

But even in the red heat of passion his born diplomacy withheld his own signature. It was not difficult to override Braintop's scruples about presenting himself, and Wilfrid pac...

Comedy is a game played to throw reflections upon social life, and it deals with human nature in the drawing-room of civilized men and women, where we have no dust of the strugg...

His way of speaking of Dahlia indicated that he and she had enough of one another; but of the peculiar object of his extraordinary visit not even the farmer had received a hint....

Was she not colour in the sight of men? Here was one, a mouthpiece of numbers, who vowed that homage was her due, and devotion, the pouring forth of the soul to her. What was th...

'Fire smoothes the creases, yes; and fire is what they're both wanting in. Though Priscy has Concert-pathos in her voice:--couldn't act a bit! And Pempton's 'cello tones now and...

'Hem!' he resumed. 'Now, sir, understand, before you speak a word, that I can see through any number of infernal lies. I see that you're prepared for prevarication. By George! i...

'And take her himself!' cried the squire. 'Harry, you wouldn't go and do that? Why, the law, man, the law--the whole country 'd be up about it. You'll be stuck in a coloured car...

So, very soon the public bosom closed. She had, under the fresh interpretation of affairs, too small a spirit to be Lady Willoughby of Patterne; she could not have entertained b...

An editor devoid of malice might probably have forborne to print a letter that appealed to Lady Charlotte, or touched her sensations, as if a glimpse of the moon, on the homewar...

'No,' added Lady Camper, 'it is no triumph for me, but it is one for you, if you like to make the most of it. Your fault has been to quit active service, General, and love your...

Men and officers were lying at a stone's-throw distant. The Tyrolese had lit a fire for cooking purposes, by which four of them stood, and, lifting hands, sang one of their moun...

That was the origin of the alliance between the young statesman and a newspaper editor. Whitmonby, accepting proposals which suited him, quitted the house, after an hour of poli...

'And my nephew Reginald. We have named them, if that advances us. Now, the end of such meetings is marriage, and the sooner the better, if they are to continue. I would rather t...

'Guessed the work was going well; you sing so lightsomely to-day, Grete! Very pretty! And that's Drachenfels? Bones of the Virgins! what a bold fellow was Siegfried, and a lucky...

"Certainly," said the doctor. "You will admit, Sir Austin, that, compared with continental nations--our neighbours, for instance--we shine to advantage, in morals, as in everyth...

Clara looked round. "Who? I? Did you hear an echo of papa? He would never have put Rhadamanthus over European souls, because it appears that Rhadamanthus judged only the Asiatic...

'Invasion, is it?--and you mean, we're not to hit back?' the pork-butcher bellowed, and presently secured a murmured approbation from an audience of three, that had begun to com...

Not to earth was vouchsafed the honour of commencing the great battle of that night. By an expiring blue-shot beam of moonlight, Farina beheld a vast realm of gloom filling the...

"We must try to make her happy as we best can, sir. She may have her reasons--a young lady's reasons!" He laughed, and left the Rev. Doctor considering within himself under the...

"I said," Adela went on, "Think as you will, papa, we know we are right." He looked really angry. He said, that we have the absurdest ideas--you tell me to repeat his words--of...

"Shall I sing anything to you?" Emilia addressed Mr. Pericles. The latter shrugged to express indifference. Nevertheless she sang. She had never sung better. Mr. Pericles clutch...

After the first stupor Adela proposed to go to her father instantly, and then suggested that they should all go. She continued talking in random suggestions, and with singular h...

'But, for mercy's sake!' resumed the Countess, in alarm at the sigh, 'do not be too--too touched. Do, pray, preserve your wits. You weep! Caroline, Caroline! O my goodness; it i...

Now, Arabella had always seen Edward as a thing that was her own, which accounts for the treatment to which, he had been subjected. A quick spur of jealousy--a new sensation--wa...

"Oh, that, like our Dante, I had lived in the days when souls were damned! Then would I uplift another shout, believe me! As things go now, we must allow the traitor to hope for...

She was listening to the voices of Mr. Romfrey and Beauchamp in a fever. Ordinarily the lord of Steynham was not out of his bed later than twelve o'clock at night. His door open...

"As to the individual, as to a particular person, I may be wrong. Precisely because it is her case I think of, my strong friendship inspires the fear: unworthy of both, no doubt...

Meanwhile, he learnt that Lady Camper had a nephew, and the young gentleman was in a cavalry regiment. General Ople met him outside his gates, received and returned a polite sal...

'Richmond, your last little bit of villany 's broken in the egg. I separate the boy from you: he's not your accomplice there, I'm glad to know. You witched the lady over to poun...

'I 'm of the opposite party,' said the colonel; as conclusive a reply as could be: but he at once fell upon the rotten navy of a Liberal Government. How could a true sailor thin...

The creature beside him is a franked issue of her old pirate of a father in one respect--nothing frightens her. There she sits; not a screw of her brows or her lips; and the coa...

"Why, girl, I only ask you to come down and see your husband," he remarked with an attempt at kindliness of tone. "What's the harm, then? Come and see him; that's all; come and...

'Don't think that I am blaming her,' he added, trying to feel as honestly as he spoke. 'I was mad to come here. I see it all now. Let us keep to our place. We are all the same b...

"My dear Mrs. Mountstuart, you have been listening to tales. I am not a tyrant. I am one of the most easy-going of men. Let us preserve the forms due to society: I say no more....

"You loved me.--You are silent?--but you confessed it. Then you confess it was a love that could die! Are you unable to perceive how that redounds to my discredit? You loved me,...

Lady Busshe dropped her voice. She took the liberty permitted to her with an inferior in station, while treating him to a tone of familiarity in acknowledgment of his expected r...

The story of the shattered chiwal-glass and the visit of Tinman's old schoolmate fresh from Australia, was at many a breakfast-table before. Tinman heard a word of it, and when...

The sick night-light burned steadily in Juliana's chamber. On a couch, beside her bed, Caroline lay sleeping, tired with a long watch. Two sentences had been passed on Juliana:...

On the other side, be it said (since in our modern days every hero must have his weak heel), that now he had gone this distance it was difficult to recede. It would be no laughi...

"My daughter," he addressed her. The chapter on human error was opened:" We are all of one family--all of us erring children--all of us bound to abnegate hatred: by love alone a...

'The Three Ravens! When my father's guests from London flooded The Crossways, The Three Ravens provided the overflow with beds. On nights like this I have got up and scraped the...

'It is a friend's duty. The word is too harsh; it was his friend's desire. He did not ask it so much as he sanctioned it. For to him what has my sitting beside him been!'

Dr. Shrapnel conceived that the day was to be a Radical success; and he, a citizen aged and exercised in reverses, so rounded by the habit of them indeed as to tumble and recove...

He left the table a little after eleven o'clock. A short dialogue ensued upon the subject of the ladies. They must have gone to bed? Why, yes; of course they must. It is good th...

Martha Skepsey had given him a son to show the hereditary energy in his crying and coughing; and it was owing, he could plead, to her habits and her tongue, that he sometimes, t...

During six days of travels from port to port along the Southern and Western coasts, she joined in the inspection of the English contingent about to be shipped. They and their ch...

Richard alone was decently kind to Hippias; whether from opposition, or real affection, could not be said, as the young man was mysterious. He advised his uncle to take exercise...

'And I exonerate him from the charge of "adventuring" after Rose. George Uplift tells me--I had him in just now--that the mother is a woman of mark and strong principle. She has...

Her thoughts were at this time singularly lucid upon everything about her; with the one exception of the reason why she had come to favour Dudley, and how it was she had been sm...

The month was August, four days before the closing of Parliament, and Diana fancied it good for Arthur Rhodes to run down with her to Copsley. He came to her invitation joyfully...

"Her father. And the lady aunts declare it was the cousin she refused!" Willoughby's brain turned over. He righted it for action, and crossed the room to the ladies Eleanor and...

She responded to the salute, and Mr. Sullivan Smith proceeded to tell her, half in speech, half in dots most luminous, of a civil contention between the English gentleman and hi...

The histrionic self-deceiver may be a persuasive deceiver of another, who is again, though not ignorant of his character, tempted to swallow the nostrums which have made so gall...

At half-past twelve of the noon next day Lord Ormont was at Lady Charlotte's house door. She welcomed him affectionately, as if nothing were in dispute; he nodded an acceptance...

"There was a steinbock with a beard; Of no gun was he afeard Piff-paff left of him: piff-paff right of him Piff-paff everywhere, where you get a sight of him."

He would walk up to a bookcase and take down a volume, when the interjectional fit waxed violent, flip the pages, affecting a perplexity he would assuredly have been struck by h...

Looking upward, not quite awakened out of a transient doze, at a fair head circled in dazzling blossom, one may temporize awhile with common sense, and take it for a vision afte...

A convenient open door of offices invited him to drag his receptacle, and possible counsellor, into the passage, where immediately he bethought him of a postponement of the dist...

From the Tagus to the Thames the Government sloop-of-war, Jocasta, had made a prosperous voyage, bearing that precious freight, a removed diplomatist and his family; for whose u...

Angelo indulged him. Jacopo knelt by the wayside and prayed for an easy ankle and a snoring pillow and no wakeners. After this he was refreshed. The sun sank; the darkness sprea...

"But there's a worse danger to encounter in the 'on view', my lady," said De Craye; "and that's the magnetic attraction a display of wedding-presents is sure to have for the ine...

'Well, it helps you to a human kind of talk. It carries out your theories. I never disbelieved in your honesty. The wisdom's another matter. Did you ever tell any one, that ther...

The captain praised her frankness, and he liked it. The trembling of her frame still fascinated his eyes, but her courage and the absence of all womanly play and cowering about...

"Emilia is (am I chronicling a princess?)--she is in London with Signor Marini; and Wilfrid has not seen her. Lady Charlotte managed to get the first boat full, and pushed off a...

The plain speaking from the wound he dealt her was effective with a gentleman who would never have enjoyed his privileges had he been of a nature unsusceptible to her distinct w...

The excitement of the varletry in the square, they say, was fearful to hear. So the principal noblemen and gentlemen concerned thought it prudent to hurry the young woman into t...

Lady Charlotte put a stop to the subject by rising pointedly. Watch in hand, she questioned the ladies as to their occupations, and told them what time they had to dispose of. T...

Well, footmen and courtiers and Scottish Highlanders, and the corps de ballet, draymen too, have legs, and staring legs, shapely enough. But what are they? not the modulated ins...

He took advantage of her modesty in speaking to exclaim. "Where are we now? Bride is bride, and wife is wife, and affianced is, in honour, wedded. You cannot be released. We are...

'Surely not, ma'am. There is no first claim. A man's wife and children have a claim on him for bread. A man's parents have a claim on him for obedience while he is a child. A ma...

"'Sir Willoughby!'" her father ejaculated in wrath. "But will you explain what you mean, epitome that you are of all the contradictions and mutabilities ascribed to women from t...

Isentrude sat with her,'and said it was fearful!--beyond blasphemy! and that she looked like a Bible witch, sitting up drinking and swearing and glaring in her nightclothes and...

Nevil's ship, commanded by Captain Robert Hall (a most gallant officer, one of his heroes, and of Lancashire origin, strangely!), flew to the South American station, in and abou...

These two now one by united good-will for the junction Lord Fleetwood himself drove through Loudon to the hills, where another carriage awaited them by his orders, in the town o...

Now, at these words the beasts with men's heads wagged their tails, all of them, from right to left, and kept their jaws from motion, staring stupidly at the dishes; but the dis...

They skirted the chateau, and Beauchamp had the history of Dame Philiberte recounted to him, with a mixture of Gallic irony, innuendo, openness, touchingness, ridicule, and char...

"The people have been indemnified for their pains. To pay them more would be to spoil them. You disperse money too liberally. There was no fever in the place. Who could have ant...

Philosophy withdrew him from his temporary interest in the tricks of a circling white marble ball. The chuck farthing of street urchins has quite as much dignity. He compared th...

Mrs. Pagnell soon perceived that the secretary was in favour. My lord and this Mr. Weyburn had their pet themes of conversation, upon which the wary aunt of her niece did not ga...

'I am with Livia to-morrow. Janey starts for Wales to-morrow morning, a voluntary exile. She pleaded to go back to that place where you had to leave her, promising she would not...

The head of a strange musician, belonging to the band stationed outside, was thrust through one of the window apertures. Mr. Pericles beckoned him imperiously to retire, and per...

Carinthia had a study of the humours of English character in the person of the wounded man she nursed on little Croridge, imagining it the most unobserved of English homes, and...

Mr. Barrett quoted the favourite sage, concluding: "But a brilliant home and high social duties bring consolation. I do acknowledge that an eminent station will not only be grac...

Yet is it most true that the younger has the passions of youth: whereof will come division between them; and this is a tragic state. They are then pathetic. This was the state o...

The instances of her drollery are rather hinted by the Diarists for the benefit of those who had met her and could inhale the atmosphere at a word. Drolleries, humours, reputed...

To be patient in contention with women, however, one must have a continuous and an exclusive occupation; and the tax it lays on us conduces usually to impatience with men. My lo...

The party walked round the Gardens unmolested nor have we grounds for supposing they assumed airs of state in the style of a previous generation. Only, as it happened, a gentlem...

Jane's face was clear as the sky when she handed the letter back to Philip. In doing so, it struck her that the prolonged directness of his look was peculiar: she attributed it...

And still she asked herself between-whiles whether it could be true of an English lady of our day, that she, the fairest stature under sun, was ever knowingly twisted to this co...

'Oh, she is safe,--ze minx'; cried Antonio-Pericles, laughing and saluting the Duchess of Graatli, who presented herself at the front of her box. Major de Pyrmont was behind her...

At last, one morning, arrived a letter from a French gentleman signing himself Comte Cresnes de Croisnel, in which Everard was informed that his nephew had accompanied the son o...

When the sun takes to shining in winter, and the Southwest to blowing, the corners of the earth cannot hide from him--the mornings are like halls full of light. Robert had spent...

Life surged to her with the thought, that she could decide and take her step. Many were the years back since she had taken a step; less independently then than now; unregretted,...

Henrietta's case was a secondary affair. What with her passion--it was nothing less--and her lover's cunning arts, and her father's consent given, and in truth the look of the t...

Heart and mind laugh out at Don Quixote, and still you brood on him. The juxtaposition of the knight and squire is a Comic conception, the opposition of their natures most humor...

Vittoria placed her hand for Ammiani to take it. He joined his own to the fevered touch. The heart of the young man swelled most ungovernably, but the perils of the morrow were...

More he said on this theme, blaming himself emphatically, until, startled by the commonplaces he was uttering, he stopped short; and the stopping was effective, if the speech wa...

Here too is a further peril; for the gallant spirits distinguishing them in the state of independence may (he foresaw the melancholy experience of a later age) abandon them utte...

Cecil dramatized the fun to amuse Mr. Culbrett. Apparently Beauchamp had been staggered on hearing himself asked for the definite article he claimed. He had made a point of spea...

'I heard of Harry Richmond before I saw him. My curiosity to behold the two fair boys of the sailor kingdom set me whipping my pony after them that day so remote, which is alway...

He had to drive North-westward: his word was pledged to one of his donkey Ixionides--Abrane, he recollected--to be a witness at some contemptible exhibition of the fellow's musc...

Captain Weisspriess had gone down to Camerlata, accompanied by a Colonel Volpo, of an Austro-Italian regiment, and by Lieutenant Jenna. At Camerlata a spectacled officer, Major...

It was midwinter when Dame Gossip, who keeps the exotic world alive with her fanning whispers, related that the lovely Mrs. Warwick had left England on board the schooner-yacht...

The notes had been less conspicuously placed, and the search for them was tedious and vain. Papers, not legal, or the fruits of study, were found, that made Mr. Thompson more in...

'With all my heart. And forgive me for beating my drum. I see what others don't see, or else I feel it more; I don't know; but it appears to me our country needs rousing if it's...

"Upon my soul, we're all going to live comfortably in Old England, and no more quarreling and decamping," was the stupid rejoinder. "Except that I did n't exactly--I think you s...

Barto probably read nothing of the mind of his spy, but understood that it was a moment for distrust of him. Vittoria and her mother lodged at the house of one Zotti, a confecti...

'You are a perfect man of honour, my friend, and a woman would adore you. Girls are straws. It's part of Renee's religion to obey her father. That's why I was astonished! . . ....

The antagonists, between whom was no pretence of their being other after the performance of a creditable ceremony, bowed and exchanged civil remarks: and then Lord Romfrey was i...

Money! The ladies proclaimed it a mere material test; Diana, gazing on sunny sea, with an especial disdain. And name us your sort of virtue. There is more virtue in poverty, He...

Gower wrote in a language transparent of the act, addressed to a reader whose memory was to be impregnated. His reader would have flown away from the simple occurrence on arabes...

He answered, "I will tell you this much: I can be struck vitally through you. In the game I am playing, I am able to defend myself. If you enter it, distraction begins. Stay wit...

Each lay down on his strip of couch-matting; rose and ate, and passed the dreadful untamed hours; nor would Wilfrid ask whether it was day or night. We belong to time so utterly...

Practically humane though he was, and especially toward cattle and all kinds of beasts, Mr. Romfrey entertained no profound fellow-feeling for the negro, and, except as the repr...

'She has done it,' Heriot burst out abruptly. 'She has done it!' he said again. 'Upon my soul, I never wished in my life before that I was a marrying man: I might have a chance...

From Lady Pennon's table Diana passed to Lady Crane's, Lady Esquart's, Lady Singleby's, the Duchess of Raby's, warmly clad in the admiration she excited. She appeared at Princes...

The mention of his dinner and the Dauphin crazed him with laughter. He begged me as a man to imagine the scene: the old Bloated Bourbon of London Wall and Camberwell! an Illustr...

"It was then I began to think of you. I had not to study the matter long to learn that I did not love you: and I will not trust my own feelings as they come to me now. I judge m...

We were joined by Admiral Loftus and Lord Alton. They queried and counterqueried as to passages between my father and the newspapers, my father and the committee of his Club, pr...

Tourdestelle enjoyed the aristocratic privilege of being twelve miles from the nearest railway station. Alighting here on an evening of clear sky, Beauchamp found an English gro...

Sewis held the garment ready. The squire jumped from the bed, fuming speechlessly, chafing at gaiters and braces, cravat and coat, and allowed his buttons to be fitted neatly on...

The middy is jilted by his FRENCH MARQUEES, whom he 'did adore,' and in his wrath he recommends himself to the wealthy widow Bevisham, concerning whose choice of her suitors the...

One reason was, as she discerned through her confusion at the thought, that the day drew near for her speaking fully to Nesta; when, between what she then said and what she said...

'How nice this sea-air is!' she spoke in English. 'England and sea go together in my thoughts. And you are here! I have been down very low, near the lowest. But your good old se...

'Lots of them, Beauchamp. Take my word for it. I do know women. They haven't a shift, nor a trick, I don't know. They're as clear to me as glass. I'll wager your Miss Denham goe...

'Not he. And the odd thing is, it isn't the Radicals he catches. He won't go against the game laws for them, and he won't cut down army and navy. So the Radicals yell at him. On...

He departed at the hour settled for him. Rosamund sat at her boudoir window, watching the carriage that was conducting him to the railway station. Neither of them had touched on...

She bowed her head to heaven for forgiveness. The murderous hope stood up, stood out in forms and pictures. There was one of a woman at her ease at last in the reception of gues...

His eulogies were not undeserved. But she danced as lightly and happily with Mr. Fred Rubrey as with Harry Richmond. I congratulated myself on her lack of sentiment. Later, when...

Van Diemen turned a pair of stupefied flat eyes on Herbert, who cast a sly look at the ladies. Tinman had sprung down. But not before the. world, in one tempestuous glimpse, had...

The policeman passed, and for an hour endured this spectacle. At last he felt compelled to explain to Emilia what were the sentiments of gentlefolks with regard to their doorste...

'See the case. You have lots of courage. We can't withdraw. Her intention is mischief. I believe the woman keeps herself alive for it: we've given her another lease!--though it...

No, not he the man to have pity of women underfoot! That was the thought, unrevolved, unphrased, all but unconscious, in Nesta: and while her heart was exalting him for his gene...

'So you trifle with me? I'm dangerous for that game. Mind you of Blass-Gesell? I made a better beast of him by sending him three-quarters of the road to hell for trial.' Bellowi...

Emilia was posted by the ladies in a corner of the room. Receiving her assurance that she was not hungry, they felt satisfied that she wanted nothing. Wilfrid came up to her to...

Skepsey was shy of this gentleman's bite; and he fancied his defence had been correct. Perceiving a crumple of the lips of Mr. Durance, he took the attitude of a watchful dubiety.

Colney cast a weariful look backward on the 'regiments of Anglo-Chinese' represented to him by the moneyed terraces, and said: 'The face of a stopped watch!--the only meaning it...

'Mrs. Melville and her dreadful juvenile are here, as you may imagine--the complete Englishwoman. I smile on her, but I could laugh. To see the crow's-feet under her eyes on her...

Woodseer had risen. Lord Fleetwood motioned him down. He kept an eye dead--as marble on Corby, who muttered: 'You can't mean that you ask me . . . ?' But the alternative was for...

'Did you draw?' the captain inquired, yawning. 'You needn't say it in quite so many words, if you did. I shall be asked by the General presently; and owing to that duel pending...

Laetitia swallowed her thoughts as they sprang up. Why was he torturing her?--to give himself a holiday? She could bear to lose him--she was used to it--and bear his indifferenc...

The figures of the hurtled fair ones in sky were wreathing Nelson's cocked hat when Victor, distinguishably bright-faced amid a crowd of the irradiated, emerged from the tideway...

Now, with her mother, and her maid Giacinta, and Beppo gathered about her, for three weeks Vittoria had been in full operatic career, working, winning fame, believing that she w...

"Ye don't go.--Pole, they're all here. And I've been robbed, I have. Avery note I had from ye, Pole, all gone. And my purse left behind, like the skin of a thing. Lord forbid I...

While Emilia was giving Wilfrid her history in the garden, the ladies of Brookfield were holding consultation over a matter which was well calculated to perplex and irritate the...

It was not in the best taste, nor was it perhaps good policy (if I may quote the Tinley set), for the ladies of Brookfield to subscribe openly to the right of certain people pre...

Victor was like a swimmer in morning sea amid the exclamations encircling him. He led through the straight passage of the galleried hall, offering two fair landscapes at front d...

Gentlemen on horseback dashed up to us. Captain Bulsted seized my hand. He was hot from a ride to fetch engines, and sang sharp in my ear, 'Have you got him?' It was my father h...

Now Mr. George Uplift, who usually rode in buckskins whether he was after the fox or fresh air, was out on this particular morning; and it happened that, as the cavalcade wound...

It happened that the gay and good-humoured young Lord Palmet, heir to the earldom of Elsea, walking up the High Street of Bevisham, met Beauchamp on Tuesday morning as he sallie...

Her eyes fell on his, and the beauty of those great dark eyes made her fondness for him legible. He caused her a spasm of anguish, foreknowing him doomed. She thought that haply...

Nobody at Brookfield could remember afterwards who took Arabella down to dinner; she declaring that she had forgotten. Her sisters, not unwilling to see insignificance banished...

'The coming out of it! . . . However, I understand her story, that she travelled from a village inn, where she had been left-without resources. She waited weeks; I forget how ma...

Three days would bring the anniversary of Richard's birth, and though Tom was close, the condition of the mare, and the young gentleman's strange freak in riding her out all nig...

Those two were in the middle of the table, and it is beyond mortal, beyond Irish, capacity, from one end of a table of eighteen to whip up the whole body of them into a lively u...

On the morrow he was off to batter at doors which would have expected rather the summons of an armed mob at his heels than the strange cry of the Radical man maltreated by love.

"Well, then, my squire," she touched his cheek and ran her fingers through his hair, "learn as quick as you can not to be all hither and yon with a hundred different attractions...

Merthyr did not sleep, and in the morning Vittoria said to him, "You want to be active, my friend. Go, and we will wait for you here. I know that I am never deceived by you, and...

"This woman, I repeat, is rich, and we want money. Oh! not the ordinary notion of wanting money, but the more we have the more power we have. Our position depends on it."

'But where do you draw the line?' quoth Tuckham, very susceptible to a sneer at the colonel, and entirely ignorant of the circumstances attending Beauchamp's position before him...

'She may. She's a better woman for having met her. Don't suppose we're for supernatural conversions. The woman makes no show of that. But she has found a good soul among her sex...

Their beds were not homely to them. Dorothea thought that Virginia was long in settling herself. Virginia did not like the sound of Dorothea's double sigh. Both listened anxious...

On a round of the mountains rising from Osteno, South eastward of Lugano, the Esquart party rose from the natural grotto and headed their carriages up and down the defiles, halt...

But an honest woman who is a feeling woman, when she consents to play hypocrite, cannot do it by halves. From writing a short cold letter, Aminta wrote a short warm one, or very...

A big drum sounded on the confines of the Brookfield estate. Soon it was seen entering the precincts at one of the principal gates, followed by trombone, and horn, and fife. In...

Mr. Radnor had a quaint experience of the effects of the infinitely little while threading his way to a haberdasher's shop for new white waistcoats. Under the shadow of the repr...

She was sitting near one end of the booth, singing as Wilfrid had never yet heard her sing: her dark eyes flashing. Behind her stood Captain Gambier, keeping guard with all the...

Meantime the Jocasta, as smoothly as before she was ignorant of how the world wagged, slipped up the river with the tide; and the sun hung red behind the forest of masts, burnis...

The Countess remembered nothing of the sort. No doubt could exist of its having been the Portuguese Marquis de Col, because he had confided to her the whole affair, and indeed c...

'Dear me, no,' said Mr. Tuckham. 'It's the opening of a campaign. He's off to the North, after he has been to Sussex and Bucks. He's to be at it all his life. One thing he shows...

'Janey is with her brother down at Lekkatts. Things are at a deadlock. A spice of danger, enough to relieve the dulness; and where there is danger Janey's at home.' Henrietta mi...

Rumour for the nonce had a stronger spice of truth than usual. Poor little Clare lay ill, and the calamity that had befallen Farmer Blaize, as regards his rick, was not much exa...

"And you can't mend it," added Speed-the-Plough. "It's bad, and there it be. But I'll tell ye what, master. Bad wants payin' for." He nodded and winked mysteriously. "Bad has it...

Adrian really bore the news he had heard with creditable disinterestedness, and admirable repression of anything beneath the dignity of a philosopher. When one has attained that...

The duchess, however, had much more to say for the magnanimity of Major Weisspriess, who, if he saw him, had spared him; she compelled Laura to confess that Weisspriess must hav...

Her performances down mines were things of the underworld. England clapped hands, merely objecting to her not having changed her garb for the picador's or matador's, before she...

Congreve's Way of the World is an exception to our other comedies, his own among them, by virtue of the remarkable brilliancy of the writing, and the figure of Millamant. The co...

She and Chillon had on the previous day accomplished a pilgrimage to the resting-place of their father and mother among humble Protestants, iron-smelters, in a valley out of the...

The General plunged forward: 'The honour you do us now:--a mature experience is worth:--my dear Lady Camper, I have admired you:--and your objection to early marriages cannot ap...

The young maiden had in heart stuff to render such small gossip a hum of summer midges. She did not imagine the dialogue concerned her in any way. She noticed Mr. Stuart Rem's a...

A single night at the Pilot Inn had given life and vigour to Robert's old reputation in Warbeach village, as the stoutest of drinkers and dear rascals throughout a sailor-breedi...

A little before dusk the bells of the city ceased their hammering, and when they ceased, all noises of men and musketry seemed childish. The woman who had promised to lead Wilfr...

'What!' he cried, 'to draw breath day by day, and not to pay for it by striking daily at the rock Iniquity? Are you for that, Beauchamp? And in a land where these priests walk w...

"I am sure he is very kind to you. I dare say you think Mr. Whitford rather severe. You should remember he has to teach you, so that you may pass for the navy. You must not disl...

The 'LEAVES FROM THE DIARY OF HENRY WILMERS' are studded with examples of the dinner-table wit of the time, not always worth quotation twice; for smart remarks have their measur...

'The first principles of commercial activity have retreated to earth's maziest penetralia, where no tides are! is it not so, Skepsey?' said Mr. Fenellan, whose initiative and ex...

Feshnavat became the Master's Vizier, and Abarak remained at the right hand of Shibli Bagarag, his slave in great adventure. No other condition than bondage gave peace to Abarak...

He did not say that he had shown it parentally while the tragedy was threatening, or at least there was danger of a precipitate descent from the levels of comedy. The parents of...

His fork on his plate released the couple. Barely half a dozen words, before the sitting to that niggard restoration, had informed Carinthia of the step taken by her brother. Sh...

'Yes, yes, an opinion formed by a woman is inflexible; I know that: the fact is not half so stubborn. But at present there are two more important actors: we are not at Elsinore....

M. Saint-Marc Girardin, the excellent French essayist and master of critical style, tells of a conversation he had once with an Arab gentleman on the topic of the different mana...

Mr. Barmby remained humbly silent. Affectionate deep regrets moved him to say: 'A loss irreparable. We have but one voice of sorrow. And how sudden! The dear lady had no sufferi...

Skepsey's case appeared in the evening papers. He confessed, 'frankly,' he said, to the magistrate, that, 'acting under temporary exasperation, he had lost for a moment a man's...

Emilia checked her tears. His hand being raised to beat time, she could not withstand the signal. "Sempre;"--there came two struggling notes, to which another clung, shuddering...

'Medole,' he said, 'has the principal conduct of the business in Milan, as you know, countess. Our Chief cannot be everywhere at once; so Medole undertakes to decide for him her...

Evan heard him across the table. Lacking the key of the speaker's previous conduct, the words might have passed. As it was, they, to the ale-invaded head of a young hero, feelin...

Such was Adrian Harley, another of Sir Austin's intellectual favourites, chosen from mankind to superintend the education of his son at Raynham. Adrian had been destined for the...

'"Professors, prophets, masters, each hitherto has had his creed and system to offer, good mayhap for the term; and each has put it forth for the truth everlasting, to drive the...

Dudley was ushered into Mr. Inchling's room and introduced to the figure-head of the Firm of Inchling, Pennergate, and Radnor: a respectable City merchant indeed, whom Dudley co...

Five minutes later, in the midst of the group surrounding and felicitating Victor, he had sight of Fenellan conversing with fair ones, and it struck a light in him; he went thre...

That evening's report of the demeanour of the young Irish secretary in harness was not so exhilarating as John Mattock had expected, and he inclined to think his sister guilty o...

His outcry was no more than the confidential communication of a genial spirit with that distinctive article of his attire. At the same time, for these friendly people about him...

"It would have impoverished my mother's income to put aside a small allowance for me for years. She would not have hesitated. I then set my mind on the profession of schoolmaster."

'I am only affected by living with one who does,' Miss Asper observed, and the lofty isolation of her head above politics gave her a moral attractiveness in addition to physical...

Men unaccustomed to a knot in their system find the prospect of cutting it an extreme relief, even when they know that the cut has an edge to wound mortally as well as pacify. T...

At this ingenuous question, woefully uttered, mademoiselle was pricked, to smile pointedly. Nesta had a tooth on her under-lip. Then, shaking vapours to the winds, she said: 'It...

'Not so good. And a solid bat, or bludgeon, to defend the poor stumps, is surer. But there is the difference of cricket:--when your stumps are down, you are idle, at leisure; no...

A woman rises to her husband. But a man is what he is A share of pity for the objects she despised A sixpence kindly meant is worth any crown-piece that's grudged A youth who is...

'Be generous,' I surprised her by saying. 'Go back at once. I have seen you! Let my father escort you the road. You will meet the margravine, or some one. I think, with you, it...

Lady Charlotte was too late for Emilia, when she went forth to her to speak for Wilfrid. She found the youth Braintop resting heavily against a tree, muttering to himself that h...

Hence arose the Santuario delle Grazie. Here, as at Loretto and other holy localities of Italy, a fair is held, in which, amongst a great number of worldly things, rosaries, hol...

Arrived on the grounds, they took opposite sides in a game of rounders, at that moment tossing heads or tails for innings. These boys were slovenly players, and were made unhapp...

In the middle of the wood there was a sandy mound, rising half the height of the lesser firs, bounded by a green-grown vallum, where once an old woman, hopelessly a witch, had s...

Barto lay against the heap of rubbish, waiting for the approach of his trained lad, Checco, a lanky simpleton, cunning as a pure idiot, who was doing postman's duty, when a kick...

You go yourself, or send your friends instantly to Fallow field. Bring with you that girl and her child. Stop: there is such a person. Tell her she is to be spoken to about the...

Meanwhile the sun of Victor Radnor's popularity was already up over the extended circle likely to be drenched by a falsification of his daring augury, though the scud flew swift...

'Really Fredi's doing--chiefly,' said Victor, as soon as Dartrey and he were alone, comfortably settled in the smoking-room. 'I played the man of pomp with Marsett--good heavy k...

She went to Pericles for a loan of money. Pericles remarked that there was not much of it in Turin. "But, countess, you whirl the gold-pieces like dust from your wheels; and a s...

Lady Charlotte mentioned incidentally her want of a tutor for her grandson Leo during the winter holidays. He suggested an application to the clergyman of her parish. She was at...

A country of compromise goes to pieces at the first cannon-shot A lady's company-smile A superior position was offered her by her being silent A whisper of cajolery in season is...

'You are leagued with him, then, sirrah! Expect no thanks from me. Cologne, I say, is cursed! Meddling wretches! could ye not leave Satan alone? He hurt us not. We were free of...

Nevil declined to come to Steynham, clearly owing to a dread of hearing Dr. Shrapnel abused, as Rosamund judged by the warmth of his written eulogies of the man, and an ensuing...

Fenellan eyed benevolently the worthy attorney, whose innermost imp burst out periodically, like a Dutch clocksentry, to trot on his own small grounds for thinking himself of th...

A woman who has mastered sauces sits on the apex of civilization A style of affable omnipotence about the wise youth A maker of Proverbs--what is he but a narrow mind wit A youn...

This is Mr. Bull, our image before the world, whose pranks are passed as though the vivid display of them had no bad effect on the nation. Doubtless the perpetual mirror, the sl...

The mention of that positive captaincy drowned Diana in morning colours. She was dominated, physically and morally, submissively too. What she craved, in the absence of the publ...

'Dorothy, you've sold out twenty-five thousand pounds' worth of stock. You're a truthful woman, as I said, and so I won't treat you like a witness in a box. You gave it to Harry...

'The Giudecca was a place kept apart for the Jews, I believe. You have seen their burial-ground on the Lido. Those are, I think, the Euganean hills. You are fond of Petrarch.'

We three are on the cedar-shadowed lawn; My friend being third. He who at love once laughed Is in the weak rib by a fatal shaft Struck through, and tells his passion's bashful d...

Sullivan Smith leaned over to Whitmonby and Dacier amid the ejaculations, and whispered: 'A lady's way of telling the story!--and excuseable to her:--she had to Jonah the adject...

VIRGINIA: In great oratory, great poetry, great fiction; you try it by the pathos. All our critics agree in stipulating for the pathos. My tears were no feminine weakness, I cou...

'The woman is hateful!' she said to her father; she was ready to agree with him about the woman and Alvan. She was ashamed to have hoped anything of the woman, and stamped down...

Things are quiet outside an ant-hill until the stick has been thrust into it. Mr. Gladstone's Bill for helping to the wiser government of Ireland has brought forth our busy citi...

At eleven, Cecilia sat in her pony-carriage giving final directions to Mrs. Devereux where to look out for the Esperanza and the schooner's boat. 'Then I drive down alone,' Mrs....

To speak at all, and arrange his ideas, was a vexation to the poor merchant. He was here like an irritable traveller, who knocks at a gate, which makes as if it opens, without l...

She spoke it plainly; when speaking of the dear good ladies, she set a gentle humour at play, and comforted him, as she intended, with a souvenir of her lively spirit, wanting o...

'--Why, there's the ale-house bench: The furze-flower shining round: And there's my waiting-wench, As lissome as a hound. With "hail Britannia!" ere I drink, I'll kiss her with...

They raced; their brothers yelled them on, and broke In act to follow, but as one they snuffed Wood-fumes, and by the fire that spoke Of provender, its pale flame puffed, And ro...

Queen Theodolind has built In the earth a furnace-bed: There the Traitor Nail that spilt Blood of the anointed Head, Red of heat, resolves in shame: White of heat, awakes to fla...

The consequence of the enlistment of the whole school in Heriot's interests was that at cricket-matches, picnics on the hills, and boating on the canal, Mr. Boddy was begirt wit...

If Diana had any faults, in a world and a position so heavily against her! He laughed to himself, when alone, at the neatly implied bitter reproach cast on the wife by the forsa...

A little later, Lady Dunstane questioned Redworth, and he smoothed her apprehensions, delivering himself, much to her comfort, thus: 'In no case would any lady's name have been...

It was the admission of a doubt that he might expect to enroll them collectively. Eyeing the men, he felt his command of them. Glancing at congregated women, he had a chill. The...

Comedy, we have to admit, was never one of the most honoured of the Muses. She was in her origin, short of slaughter, the loudest expression of the little civilization of men. T...

A grand duo between Montini and Vittoria silenced all converse. Camilla tells Camillo of her dream. He pledges his oath to discover her mother, if alive; if dead, to avenge her....

'"'Twas Ensign Baynes of our parish."--Ah, ah, Miss Charlworth, the one Our Tom fought for a young lady? Come, now we've got into the fun! - "I shouldered him: he primed his pis...

The three walking in the park, with their bright view, and black view, and neutral view of life, were a comical trio. They had come upon the days of the unfanned electric furnac...

Chillon imagined him to be sighing. He had to listen further. 'Soul' had been an uttered word. When the dishonouring and mishandling brute of a young nobleman stuttered a compli...

Some time after Beauchamp had been seen renewing his canvass in Bevisham a report reached Mount Laurels that he was lame of a leg. The wits of the opposite camp revived the FREN...

'The river winds to within a five minutes' walk of Dianet; we could go by boat,' Renee said musingly. 'I thought of the boat. But does it not give the man a triumph that we shou...

Many hours, much labour and anxiety of mind, Mrs. Berry had expended upon this breakfast, and why? There is one who comes to all feasts that have their basis in Folly, whom crim...

O nightingale! how hast thou learnt The note of the nested dove? While under thy bower the fern hangs burnt And no cloud hovers above! Rich July has many a sky With splendour di...

Mr. Romfrey edged round to Colonel Halkett, conjecturing in his mind: They have not hit it; as he remarked: 'Breakfast and luncheon have been omitted in this day's fare,' which...

Lord Ormont had not greatly relished certain of the flowery phrases employed by this young foreigner. 'Truth his bride,' was damnable: and if a story had to be told, he liked it...

Mr. Beauchamp knew the virtue of punctiliousness in epithets and phrases of courtesy toward a formal people, and as the officers of the French Guard were gentlemen of birth, he...

Just as his uncle Everard predicted, he came home from his first voyage a pleasant sailor lad. His features, more than handsome to a woman, so mobile they were, shone of sea and...

Now, giving and taking's a proper exchange, Like question and answer: you're both content. But buying and selling seems always strange; You're hostile, and that's the thing that...

Who cheerfully the little bird becomes, Without a fall, and pipes for peck at crumbs, May have her dolings to the lightest touch; As where some cripple muses by his crutch, Unwi...

Tales we drank of giants at war with Gods above: Rocks were they to look on, and earth climbed air! Tales of search for simples, and those who sought of love Ease because the cr...

Yet space is given for breath of thought Beyond our bounds when musing: more When to that musing love is brought, And love is asked of love's wherefore. 'Tis Earth's, her gift;...

The bed shook again. Wilfrid stood eyeing the mysterious hangings, as if some dark oracle had spoken from behind them. In fear of irritating the old man, and almost as much in f...

Night on the rolling foliage fell: But I, who love old hymning night, And know the Dryad voices well, Discerned them as their leaves took flight, Like souls to wander after deat...

'Come, Sir Lover! lend me a help to give back what we've borrowed to its rightful owner. 'S blood! but I feel an appetite. This night-air takes me in the wind like a battering r...

From Lusia I followed General Medici's division to Motta, where I left it, not without regret, however, as better companions could not easily be found, so kind were the officers...

I walked to observe, not to feel, Not to fancy, if simple of eye One may be among images reaped For a shift of the glance, as grain: Profitless froth you espy Ashore after billo...

'When you see me running at her heels, it'll be with my head off. Stir your hardest, and let it thicken. That man Morsfield's name mixed up with a sham Countess of Ormont, in th...

Rocco's music in the opera of Camilla had been sprung from a fresh Italian well; neither the elegiac-melodious, nor the sensuous-lyrical, nor the joyous buffo; it was severe as...

As I am not far from Borgoforte, I am able to learn more than the mere cannon's voice can tell me, and so will give you some details of the action against the tete-de-pont, whic...

"Bibber besotted, with scowl of a cur, having heart of a deer, thou! Never to join to thy warriors armed for the press of the conflict, Never for ambush forth with the princelie...

- My sister, as I read them in my glass, Their field of tares they take for pasture grass. How waken them that have not any bent Save browsing - the concrete indifferent! Friend...

A pride of legs in motion kept Our spirits to their task meanwhile, And what was deepest dreaming slept: The posts that named the swallowed mile; Beside the straight canal the h...

'Perfectly,' said Diana, giving her hand and offering the lips. 'I'm only having a warm morning bath in bed,' she added, in explanation of a chill moisture that the touch of her...

Brother and sister preserved their little secrets of character apart. They could not be expected to unfold what they declined personally to examine. But they were not so success...

Now the meadows with crocus besprent, And the asphodel woodsides she left, And the lake-slopes, the ravishing scent Of narcissus, dark-sweet, for the cleft That tutors the torre...

Demeter devastated our good land, In blackness for her daughter snatched below. Smoke-pillar or loose hillock was the sand, Where soil had been to clasp warm seed and throw The...

He paused, and in the moment's pause, His eyes and Willie's strangely glistened. Nearer came Joan, and Bessy hung With face averted, near enough To hear, and sob unheard; the yo...

At the coming up of Phoebus the all-luminous charioteer, Double-visaged stand the mountains in imperial multitudes, And with shadows dappled men sing to him, Hail, O Beneficent!...

Away over heaven the young heart flew, And caught many lustres, till some one said (Or was it the thought into hearing grew?), NOT THOU AS COMMONER MEN! Thy stature puffed and i...

'The youngster is used to south-western showers in that climate of his,' Mr. Adister replied. 'I dare say we could find the Jesuit in him somewhere. There's the seed. His cousin...

Compassion for the man thus noble nerved The pity for herself she felt in him, To wreak a deed of sacrifice, and save; At least, be worthy. That our soul may swim, We sink our h...

Summer glows warm on the meadows, and speedwell, and gold-cups, and daisies Darken 'mid deepening masses of sorrel, and shadowy grasses Show the ripe hue to the farmer, and summ...

- But your fierce Yes and No of butting heads Now rages to outdo a horny Past. Shades of a wild Destroyer on the vast Are thrown by every novel light upraised. The world's whole...

Angelic love that stoops with heavenly lips To meet its earthly mate; Heroic love that to its sphere's eclipse Can dare to join its fate With one beloved devoted human heart, An...

{8} Terence did not please the rough old conservative Romans; they liked Plautus better, and the recurring mention of the vetus poeta in his prologues, who plagued him with the...

A pride of legs in motion kept Our spirits to their task meanwhile, And what was deepest dreaming slept: The posts that named the swallowed mile; Beside the straight canal the h...

Not unappeased was He who smites the waves, When to his stormy ears the warrior's vow Entered, and from his foamy pinnacle Tumultuous he beheld the prostrate form, And knew the...

Earth was not Earth before her sons appeared, Nor Beauty Beauty ere young Love was born: And thou when I lay hidden wast as morn At city-windows, touching eyelids bleared; To no...

That at the Italian headquarters something has been decided upon which may hasten the forward movement of the army, I infer from the fact that the foreign military commissioners...

Quickened of Nature's eye and ear, When the wild sap at high tide smites Within us; or benignly clear To vision; or as the iris lights On fluctuant waters; she is ours Till set...

Her spacious garden and her garden's grant She offers in reward for handsome cheer: Choice of the nymphs whose looks will slant The secret down a dewy leer Of corner eyelids int...

Sunless rose the morning. The blanketed figures went out to salute a blanketed sky. Drizzling they returned, images of woefulness in various forms, including laughter's. Alvan f...

The song of the bird was wine in his blood, And woman the odorous bloom: His master's great adventure stirred Within him to mingle the bloom and bird, And morn ere its coming il...

Mark where a credible ghost pulls bridle to view that bare Corpse of a field still reddening cloud, and alive in its throes Beneath her Purgatorial Saint's evocative stare: Bran...

The common Tyrant's frenzies, rancour, spites, He knew as little as men's claim on rights. A kindness for old servants, early friends, Was constant in him while they served his...

Thus their prayer was raved and ceased. Then had Vengeance of her feast Scent in their quick pang to smite Which they knew not, but huge pain Urged them for some victim slain Sw...

Enough, poor prodigal boy! Thou hast listened with patience; another had howled. Repentance is proved, forgiveness is earned. And 'tis bony: denied thee thy succulent half Of th...

Morn! when the fate of all mankind Hangs poised in doubt, and man is blind. His duties of the day will seem The fact of life, and mine the dream:

They are with her now, and in her ears, and known. 'Tis they that cast her to the dust for Strength, Their slave, to feed on her fair body's length, That once the sweetest and t...

Now had her glut of vengeance left her grey Of blood, who in her entrails fiercely tore To clutch and squeeze her snakes; herself the more Devitalizing: red washer Auroral ray;...

'No, we will not be impatient. We are poor insignificant people!' she said; and turning to her mother, added: 'And yet I doubt not you think the smallest of our landed gentry eq...

You must love the light so well That no darkness will seem fell. Love it so you could accost Fellowly a livid ghost. Whish! the phantom wisps away, Owns him smoke to cocks of da...

ASTRAEA: For the sake of peace and silence I consent, You should be warned that you will cruelly Disturb them. But 'tis best. You should be warned Your pleading will be hopeless...

What splendour of imperial station man, The Tree of Life, may reach when, rooted fast, His branching stem points way to upper air And skyward still aspires, we see in him Who sa...