Category: Novels
He is a handsome man, with severe, regular features; a man of whom his dependents would certainly stand in awe, and his family would fear more than love. There is sternness in the glance of his keen eyes, in the cut of the closely-trimmed grey moustache and whisker, and in eve...
"Are you, dear?" said the rector, glancing up with a pleased smile at Olive, as she stood in his study door attired for walking, and making the sweetest possible picture in cont...
19. CHAPTER NINETEEN.Roland Dorrien walked from his father's door with quick, angry strides. Everything had turned out exactly as he had expected, and the halle of his ancestors would know him no mo...
31. CHAPTER THIRTY ONE.A fortnight had slipped away since Hubert Dorrien's disappearance, and still the stranger stayed on at "The Silver Fleece," in Battisford. Those who had at first marvelled what...
46. CHAPTER FORTY SIX.The prisoner, re-entering after the adjournment for lunch, found himself idly wondering whether, when next he should pass through the dock gate, it would be as a free man or as...
30. CHAPTER THIRTY.When first it was reported that his room was undisturbed and his bed had not been slept in, Mrs Dorrien's chief care was to keep the knowledge from her husband, but soon her fea...
5. CHAPTER FIVE.Wandsborough at the period of our story was what might be called an out-of-the-way place. The nearest railway station was fully three miles off, and even that only found itself...
38. CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT.It was Monday morning, and a bright and beautiful day. Three people sat at breakfast at Cranston Hall, the third being Frank Marsland, Roy's quondam purchaser. The wintry sun sh...
9. CHAPTER NINE."Before Colonel Neville, Mr Pagnell and the Rev John Croft, Stephen Devine, a notorious offender, charged with snaring two leverets in a field on the outskirts of Cranston Manor...
14. CHAPTER FOURTEEN."Oh, no, Mr Dorrien," answered Margaret gaily, turning away from the window. "I haven't been long back from evensong, and the only problem I was trying to solve was, what can ha...
24. CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR."Because--well, do you know anything about the state of his affairs? I mean, had he any interest in this Tynnestop Bank? I've a sort of hazy idea he had, don't you see?"
1. CHAPTER ONE.He is a handsome man, with severe, regular features; a man of whom his dependents would certainly stand in awe, and his family would fear more than love. There is sternness in t...
45. CHAPTER FORTY FIVE.When the Court met again next morning there was no abatement in the attendance of the public; if anything, it was increased, for it was pretty well known that the verdict would...
8. CHAPTER EIGHT."I sat, Nellie, the ancient couple are getting quite dissipated in their old age. What's at the bottom of it?" And Roland Dorrien, lounging at ease in the stern cushions of the...
35. CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE.Again we must ask the reader to stand with us in the cheerful dining-room within which he obtained his first introduction to Cranston Hall. Now, as then, the breakfast table loo...
44. CHAPTER FORTY FOUR.In answer to a call for Mrs Eliza Clack, a hatchet-faced harpy entered the box, and, the first diffidence over, tried all she knew to justify her patronymic. From this propensit...
29. CHAPTER TWENTY NINE."Pooh! What a fool I am, and what fancies a course of starvation and mooning will put into a man's head!" exclaimed the stranger impatiently. "A wreath of mist over the sea, and...
21. CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.They were discussing a letter which the former had received from the absent Roland, also an eventuality concerning Johnston, the Cranston gardener, and the bite he had received...
43. CHAPTER FORTY THREE.To Eustace succeeded his father, and the appearance of Dr Ingelow in the witness-box gave rise to not a little expectation on the part of many. They wondered what card the prose...
15. CHAPTER FIFTEEN.In due course, Roland availed himself of the invitation to which we heard his father make reference, and transferred himself and his luggage to the ancestral home of the Nevilles.
42. CHAPTER FORTY TWO.To describe the state of excitement into which Wandsborough was thrown, when the tidings of Roland Dorrien's arrest were bruited about--as they very soon were--would battle the...
33. CHAPTER THIRTY THREE.The tone was the faintest of whispers, but the voice was as if the silvern echoes of heavenly harps had suddenly been wafted to the listener's anxious ear. He could hardly murmu...
41. CHAPTER FORTY ONE.Olive was rather unwell on the morning after the picnic. It was nothing to worry about, she declared. She supposed she had overdone it, and was a little tired. Any way, she woul...
3. CHAPTER THREE.The Church of Saint Peter and the Holy Cross at Wandsborough is full from end to end for the great service of the forenoon. It is Whitsun Day and the High Celebration is about t...
18. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN."Do you mind coming this way, Roland?" said the General soon after breakfast the next morning. "Neville writes to say," he went on, closing the library door behind them, "that t...
23. CHAPTER TWENTY THREE.A pair of dingy rooms in a dingy London street, communicating with each other by means of a folding door, which is at present shut. A table, decidedly unsteady on its pins and b...
16. CHAPTER SIXTEEN."Rather perfect? I should just think it was," cries Olive, gazing around. "Confess now, you hardened cynic, that in all your wanderings you never saw anything so perfectly lovel...
34. CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR.Hubert Dorrien's sad fate soon came to be recognised as an accepted fact by Wandsborough and its neighbourhood. He had fallen down Smugglers' Ladder in the dark, for had not you...
40. CHAPTER FORTY.It was May--bright, flowery, laughing May--neither spring nor summer, but something of both. The sun's rays were not too powerful this glorious afternoon, as with a delicious wa...
32. CHAPTER THIRTY TWO.His face was ghastly with the horror of his self-reproach and desperation. The two were standing now, locked in each other's embrace, beneath the cliff, watching the narrow stri...
28. CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT."Yes, sir. Our town's bigger nor Wandsbro'--more go-ahead like. It didn't use to be so, you see, but when them works at Wandsbro' were shut up, why, then it fell back and we wen...
11. CHAPTER ELEVEN."Quiet, Roy, old man! Don't lift up that beautiful voice of yours, or your gallant grandparent will be for abolishing you altogether on the ground that you disturb his slumbers....
36. CHAPTER THIRTY SIX.Although the neighbourhood had by this time got thoroughly accustomed to the new state of things at Cranston, and had voted it a great improvement on the old, yet the said vicin...
26. CHAPTER TWENTY SIX.For three days Roland lay in his shabby lodgings, too ill to stir from his bed; and but for the consciousness that, if he would accomplish his purpose, he must rouse himself, an...
2. CHAPTER TWO.Before a house in Cambridge Terrace a hansom draws up with that series of jerks peculiar to its kind, and discharges its freight--a man, a dog and a portmanteau, and while the f...
48. CHAPTER FORTY EIGHT."What an awful young brute I must have been in those days, Roland! By Jove! any kicks that may have travelled my way I jolly well deserved." And Hubert Dorrien puffed out a grea...
25. CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE.If you are blessed with a sufficient income, a snug club, a cheerful abode and a good digestion, there is nothing very terrible in the above. But, if your shillings are scanty i...
13. CHAPTER THIRTEEN."I sat, Nell," said Hubert Dorrien, coming into the morning-room, where his sister sat alone. "What the very dickens is wrong now? The veteran's in an exemplary state of grumps."
17. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN."Can I see Mr Dorrien?--Yes, certainly. Show him in here," and the rector, making a hasty note on the margin of his paper, laid aside his pen as Roland was shown into the study.
7. CHAPTER SEVEN.A glance around told him that it was a pleasant room to be in. The elegant furniture, the pictures on the walls, the innumerable knick-knacks bestowed about, were all in the mos...
39. CHAPTER THIRTY NINE.The bright, frosty weather lasted nearly a month, and was followed by a whole month of rain and squalls, culminating in a truly furious March. The trees in the park bent and gro...
10. CHAPTER TEN.It may or may not be the mission of the fiction-writer to point a moral, in other words to idealise. It assuredly is his function to adorn a tale; in short, to take the world-st...
22. CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.It may seem strange that to a man of Dr Ingelow's standard of principle and pronounced beliefs, such a cordial intimacy as that which had sprung up between himself and Roland Do...
20. CHAPTER TWENTY."Things are never so bad but that they might be worse," is a clap-trap disguised beneath the gold leaf of philosophy. When a man's leg has to come off--without chloroform--it do...
47. CHAPTER FORTY SEVEN.The fateful word rang through the room, producing something like a shuddering gasp among the close-packed audience. It rang in the brain of the prisoner, "Guilty! Dorrien of Cra...
4. CHAPTER FOUR.On the face of the foregoing chapter, it is needless to explain that Dr Ingelow was a very "advanced" Anglican indeed. He was even too advanced for the bulk of his clerical bret...
27. CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN.Christmas had come and gone, and Eustace Ingelow was at home again, but things were not going well with him, and he was in consequence proportionately gloomy. Never, since the d...
6. CHAPTER SIX.Roland Dorrien paced slowly up and down the little garden in front of his lodgings, smoking his after-breakfast cigar, and making up his mind to the discharge of an unpleasant d...
37. CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN.General Dorrien's widow occupied a semi-detached villa in Maida Vale. She had, as we have seen, persistently and even fiercely refused her son's repeated offers of a settlement,...