Doctor Grimshawe's Secret — a Romance

High up in the old carved roof, meanwhile, the spiders of centuries still hung their flaunting webs with a profusion that old Doctor Grimshawe would have been ravished to see; b...

Redclyffe was now established in the great house which had been so long and so singularly an object of interest with him. With his customary impressibility by the influences aro...

The two children approached, and stood before the Doctor and his guest, the latter of whom had not hitherto taken particular notice of them. He now looked from one to the other,...

After the two friends had parted from the young lady, they passed through the village, and entered the park gate of Braithwaite Hall, pursuing a winding road through its beautif...

The guests were now rapidly taking their departure, and the Warden and Redclyffe were soon left alone in the antique hall, which now, in its solitude, presented an aspect far di...

The children, after this conversation, often introduced the old English mansion into their dreams and little romances, which all imaginative children are continually mixing up w...

To return from this long discussion, the Warden took kindly, as we have said, to Redclyffe, and thought him a miraculously good fellow, to have come from the rude American repub...

The next day he called for his clothes, and, with the assistance of the pensioner, managed to be dressed, and awaited the arrival of the surgeon, sitting in a great easy-chair,...

It is very remarkable that Ned had so much good in him as we find there; in the first place, born as he seemed to be of a wild, vagrant stock, a seedling sown by the breezes, an...

After lunch, the Warden showed a good degree of kind anxiety about his guest, and ensconced him in a most comfortable chair in his study, where he gave him his choice of books o...

At the breakfast-table the next morning, however, appeared Doctor Grimshawe, wearing very much the same aspect of an uncombed, unshorn, unbrushed, odd sort of a pagan as at othe...

A traveller with a knapsack on his shoulders comes out of the duskiness of vague, unchronicled times, throwing his shadow before him in the morning sunshine along a well-trodden...

The patient [Endnote: 1] had a favorable night, and awoke with a much clearer head, though still considerably feverish and in a state of great exhaustion from loss of blood, whi...

On entering the old palmer’s apartment, they found him looking over some ancient papers, yellow and crabbedly written, and on one of them a large old seal, all of which he did u...

“A print of blood!” said the grim Doctor, breaking his pipe-stem by some sudden spasm in his gripe of it. “Pooh! the devil take the pipe! A very strange story that! Pray how was...

Considering that Doctor Grimshawe, when we first look upon him, had dwelt only a few years in the house by the graveyard, it is wonderful what an appearance he, and his furnitur...

Lord Braithwaite came into the principal door of the library as the priest was speaking, and stood a moment just upon the threshold, looking keenly out of the stronger light int...

Redclyffe, apparently, had not communicated to his agent in London his change of address, when he left the Warden’s residence to avail himself of the hospitality of Braithwaite...

About an hour thereafter there lay on a couch that had been hastily prepared in the study a person of singularly impressive presence: a thin, mild-looking man, with a peculiar l...

A long time ago, [Endnote: 1] in a town with which I used to be familiarly acquainted, there dwelt an elderly person of grim aspect, known by the name and title of Doctor Grimsh...

Doctor Grim [Endnote: 1] had the English faith in open air and daily acquaintance with the weather, whatever it might be; and it was his habit, not only to send the two children...

So Redclyffe left the Hospital, where he had spent many weeks of strange and not unhappy life, and went to accept the invitation of the lord of Braithwaite Hall. It was with a t...

Doctor Grimshawe, after the foregone scene, began a practice of conversing more with the children than formerly; directing his discourse chiefly to Ned, although Elsie’s vivacit...

When awake [Endnote: 1], or beginning to awake, he lay for some time in a maze; not a disagreeable one, but thoughts were running to and fro in his mind, all mixed and jumbled t...

There is--or there was, now many years ago, and a few years also it was still extant--a chamber, which when I think of, it seems to me like entering a deep recess of my own cons...

_Note 1._ The following passage, though it seems to fit in here chronologically, is concerned with a side issue which was not followed up. The author was experimenting for a cha...

_Note 4. Author’s note_.--“It is understood from the first that the children are not brother and sister.--Describe the children with really childish traits, quarrelling, being n...

_Note 1._ The Doctor’s propensity for cobwebs is amplified in the following note for an earlier and somewhat milder version of the character: “According to him, all science was...

_Note 1._ This is not the version of the story as indicated in the earlier portion of the romance. It is there implied that Elsie is the Doctor’s granddaughter, her mother havin...

_Note 3._ In the original the following occurs, but marked to indicate that it was to be omitted: “And kissed his hand to her, and laughed feebly; and that was the last that she...

_Note 3._ These two children are described as follows in an early note of the author’s: “The boy had all the qualities fitted to excite tenderness in those who had the care of h...

_Note 5. Author’s note_.--“Perhaps the recognition of the pensioner should not be so decided. Redclyffe thinks it is he, but thinks it as in a dream, without wonder or inquiry;...

_Note 1._ In a study of the plot, too long to insert here, this new character of the steward is introduced and described. It must suffice to say, in this place, that he was inti...

_Note 1. Author’s note_.--“Redclyffe lies in a dreamy state, thinking fantastically, as if he were one of the seven sleepers. He does not yet open his eyes, but lies there in a...

_Note 2. Author’s note_.--“For example, a story of three brothers, who had a deadly quarrel among them more than two hundred years ago for the affections of a young lady, their...

a struggle that took place between them; and that his confinement in the secret chamber is voluntary on his own part,--a measure of precaution to prevent arrest and execution fo...