Cursed by a Fortune

"What are you going to do, dear? Oh, you don't know what a relief it is to me. I was going to beg you to have the pike pond dragged."

Kate Wilton raised her head from where it rested against the bed as she crouched upon the floor, and gazed round wonderingly, conscious that someone had called her by name, but...

Kate's conductress had stopped at a door on the first floor, above which an old portrait hung, so that when the woman held the candle which she carried above the level of her he...

Kate Wilton needed all her strength of mind to bear up against the depression consequent upon her self-inflicted position. As she sat back in a corner of the carriage, dimly lit...

Her action had its effect, for the door was slowly pressed open again, and the bow of the washed-out cotton handkerchief which bandaged the woman's face gradually appeared, the...

"Did you?" said the young man, making an effort to be at his ease. "Rather a rough morning for a walk--roads so bad. I've run down for a few hours to see how Kate Wilton was. Th...

The bell had rung, and after Mrs Wilton had been up twice to her niece's room, and reported the ill success of her visits to her lord, Wilton growled out:

"Of course you haven't been well, Kitty--I say, I shall call you Kitty, you know--you can't expect to be well moping upstairs in your room. I'll soon put you right, better than...

The days passed calmly enough with Kate Wilton, and no more was said on either side about communicating with anyone. Garstang was there at breakfast, and left till dinner time,...

"Well, I am. Can't help it; he's so jolly smooth with a fellow, and has such good cigars--I say, guv'nor, rather different to your seventeen-and-six-penny boxes of weeds. I woul...

In the hope that an opportunity would soon come, and to be ready at any moment, one of Kate's first acts that morning was to write plainly a few words on a sheet of paper, beggi...

"It can cause no greater than has come to us, my child. I was half-way to London, but I could not go on; so I got out at a station ten miles away, walked into the village close...

For the better part of two days Pierce Leigh went about like one who had received some terrible mental shock; and Jenny's pleasant little rounded cheeks told the tale of the anx...

Claud Wilton took to the search for his cousin with the greater eagerness that he found it much more pleasant to be where he was not likely to come in contact with Pierce Leigh,...

"Ever so much, my dear. Mr Leigh has done you a deal of good. I do wonder at finding such a clever gentlemanly Doctor down in an out-of-the-way place like this. You like him, do...

"To compass those plans, he will stop at nothing, even force. But supposing I defeat him in that, for I tell you frankly I should make every effort, he would set the law to work...

"Hush, you foolish girl," was whispered, angrily, and she was caught by a strong arm thrown round her, the wrist released, and a hand was clapped upon her lips. "Do you want to...

"Oh yes, I'll keep the beggar down," said Claud, cocking the pistol. "Do you hear, you sir? You move a hand and as sure as I've got you here, I'll fire. Send for a doctor someone."

A week had passed since the scene in the library, and during that period she had calmly resumed her old position in the house, meeting her enemy at the morning and evening meals...

The words--tender and gentle as if it were a woman's voice, fierce and loud as from an enraged man--seemed to come out of a thick mist in which Kate felt as if she were sick unt...

"Yes, ma'am," Sarah continued, "there it was, and when I opened the door I could only get it a little way, for something was just inside, and as I stood there trembling, there c...

The speaker was mounted on a rather restive cob, which he now checked by the gate of the pretty cottage in one of the Northwood lanes; and as he spoke he sprang down and placed...

Pierce Leigh returned home after a long weary day of watching. From careful thought and balancing of the matter, he had long come to the conclusion that Claud Wilton's ideas wer...

"Will that Doctor never come!" muttered plump Mrs Wilton, who had been for the past ten minutes running from her niece's bedside to one of the front casement windows of the fine...

Leigh hardly heard his sister's words, for he hurried out and sprang into the dog-cart, where the groom was full of the past day's trouble, and ready to pour into unwilling ears...

Before morning Kate was sufficiently recovered to be removed to Leigh's house; but it was days before her senses had fully returned, and her brain was thoroughly awake to the pr...

"If I could only get poor Pierce to believe in me again!" sighed Jenny, as she lay back in an easy chair at the cottage, after a month of illness; for in addition to the violent...

Jenny was almost breathless when she reached the park palings of the Manor House, some little distance from the gate at the end of the avenue; and here she paused for a few mome...

He began after the fashion taught by education, but nature was too strong. He broke off and tried to seize Claud by the throat; but, active as the animal mentioned, the young fe...

For a few moments Kate Wilton was passive in Garstang's arms. The suddenness of the act--the surprise, stunned her, and his words seemed so impossible that she could not believe...

Jenny had not been seated alone many minutes after the carriage had driven off, dwelling excitedly upon her visitor's words respecting Kate's disappearance, when the front door...

Pierce Leigh paid no heed to the hails which reached his ears as he was crossing Bedford Square one morning; but he stopped short and turned angrily when a hand was laid heavily...

The words kept repeating themselves in Pierce Leigh's brain like the beating of some artery charged to bursting, and the agony seemed greater than he could bear; while the revel...

The memories of her slight friendship with the Leighs--slight in the rareness of their meetings--grew and grew as the days passed on, till Kate Wilton found herself constantly t...

"No, I won't be silenced now," cried the woman. "You're my master, and I've done everything you told me up to now, for I thought she was only holding back, and that at last she'...

John Garstang stood with his back to the fire in his well furnished office in Bedford Row, tall, upright as a Life Guardsman, but slightly more prominent about what the fashiona...

James Wilton stood for a few moments staring searchingly at his son. Then, in a sudden access of anger, he rushed to the library door, flung it open, came back, caught the young...

Claud Wilton, aged twenty, with his thin pimply face, long narrow jaw, and closely-cropped hair, which was very suggestive of brain fever or imprisonment, stood leering at his f...

Wilton pere and mere had not been gone five minutes when there was a gentle tap at Kate's door, and she started and turned her fearful face in that direction, but made no reply....

"Yes, decidedly it was," he said, still speaking in the same quiet, thoughtful way. "You set me thinking, too, my dear, whether I have done right by you in bringing you here. Ye...

"Only the falling to pieces of your castle in the air," he said, with a mocking laugh. "The marriage you arranged between the pauper physician and the rich heiress. I can easily...

It was a splendid grand piano whose tones rang, through the house, and brought poor Becky, with her pale, anaemic, tied-up face, from the lower regions, to stand peering round c...

"One of the medical brokers, as they call themselves--the man I wrote to;" and the young doctor tossed the missive contemptuously across the breakfast table to his sister, who c...

"Be quiet, Kitty, and don't make me so miserable. Dying is only going to sleep when a man's tired out, as I am, with the worries of the world, money-making, fighting for one's o...

The soft light of the moon attracted Kate to her bedroom window, where she drew up the blind, and after standing gazing at the silvery orb for some minutes, she unfastened and t...

"Yes, that is how you treat me now," she said, piteously; "your troubles have made you doubting and suspicious. Have I not suffered enough without you turning cruel to me again?"

Jenny was standing at the window, watching the people go by, when a cab drew up and Leigh sprang out, to let himself in with his latch-key; and she was half-way down to meet him...

"I should very much like to know what particular sin I have committed that I should have been plagued all my life with a stupid, garrulous old woman for a wife, who cannot be le...