Diana Tempest, Volume II

Some one rejoiced exceedingly when, in those burning August days, John came back to Overleigh. Mitty loved him. She was the only woman who as yet had shown him any love at all,...

"The moving Finger writes; and having writ, Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a line, Nor all your tears wash out a Word of it." OMAR KHAYYÁM.

"Oh, Love's but a dance, Where Time plays the fiddle! See the couples advance,-- Oh, Love's but a dance! A whisper, a glance,-- 'Shall we twirl down the middle?' Oh, Love's but...

John was dragging himself feebly across the hall to the smoking-room, after a dutiful cup of tea with his aunt, who was prostrate with a headache, when the door-bell rang, and h...

It was Sunday morning, and it was something more. There was a subtle change in the air, a mystery in the sunshine. Autumn and summer were met in tremulous wedlock. But the hand...

"These are troublous times, granny," said Di to Mrs. Courtenay, coming into her grandmother's room on a hot afternoon early in September. "I can't get out, so you see I am reduc...

"It's a deep mystery--the way the heart of man turns to one woman out of all the rest he's seen i' the world, and makes it easier for him to work seven year for _her_, like Jaco...

"Di," said Archie, sauntering up to her on the terrace at Cantalupe, where she was sitting the morning after the ball, and planting himself in front of her, as he had a habit of...

The dreams of youth and love so frequently fade unfulfilled into "the light of common day," that it is a pleasure to be able to record that Madeleine saw the greater part of her...

It was the middle of July. The season had reached the climax which precedes a collapse. The heat was intense. The pace had been too great to last. The rich sane were already on...

It was the time of afternoon tea. Miss Fane rolled off the sofa, and with the hydraulic sniff that can temporarily suspend the laws of nature, proceeded to pour out tea. Present...

Miss Fane, John's aunt, was one of those large, soft, fleecy persons who act as tea-cosies to the domestic affections, and whom the perspicacity of the nobler sex rarely allows...

"Austerity in women is sometimes the accompaniment of a rare power of loving. And when it is so their attachment is strong as death; their fidelity as resisting as the diamond."...

It was Saturday morning. The few guests had departed by an early train. The painter cast a backward glance at Overleigh and the two figures standing together in the sunshine on...