Doubly false

A splendidly bright day in early spring. The ocean was unusually calm; but a pleasant sunshine broke up its greenish blue, and dashed its tiny ripples with the restless glory of...

Fire! Fire! Fire! This withering cry stopped every pulse of life as it ran through the ship. For one awful second it held that crowd in the cabin motionless and pallid as if a s...

They would have gone quietly over, but a dozen others, stricken with new terror by this sudden outburst of flame, rushed over them and separated the father from his child. It wa...

Up the Hudson river—no matter how far—stands a mansion that would be wonderfully beautiful in any country where the leaf never falls. In the summer time it is a splendid place e...

The two men carried Mrs. Lander to her room and laid her down on the white bed, with a canopy of lace falling mercifully over the selfishness of her agony. Through the delicate...

In this pretty room Mrs. Lander found a woman who had for years acted partly as her maid, partly as a general superintendent of the household. This person was some years older t...

Eunice found her brother Joshua in his room over the carriage-house, busy with a harness which he was putting in order. This man was a heavy, shambling fellow, younger by ten ye...

There was a heavy rain falling the next morning, and the whole house took a dreary aspect, spite of the fragrance that came up from the flowers with every light gush of wind, an...

A young man entered an eminent banking house in the lower part of the city, with the air of a stranger, and presented a bill of exchange so large in amount as to occasion some s...

Mrs. Lander had taken possession of her brother-in-law’s estate under the will, and for the first time in her life began to enjoy the power of wealth, the sublime egotism of pos...

The next day Joshua went to the city with the chestnut horses, proud of his commission, and resolved to stay a week in town rather than return without the animals his mistress h...

Joshua Hurd went down to the hotel where Seymour was staying to get the gold for his horses, and chanced to pass up the hall just as Cora and her cousin were standing within the...

Cora remained in the room some time after Seymour left it, walking up and down, sometimes slowly, sometimes with the quick, impetuous tread of an empress whose power was threate...

“Know you! know you! I was dreaming of those eyes, but not of you. My child was younger, frailer, lovelier. She is drowned! She is drowned! What do you want of me? I do not know...

Mrs. Lander sprang out of bed and ran to the window, resolved to call her daughter back and revoke the evil promise she had made. She leaned out into the chill air, careless of...

That night, while Cora Lander was working out her evil plans and Virginia had fallen asleep, with tears in her eyes, thinking of her loneliness, Brian Nolan and the hunchbacked...

Eunice Hurd was almost invariably out of sorts when in her normal condition. The particular morning when we join her again she was unusually crabbed, and disposed to be rather l...

Eunice hesitated, and stood in the middle of the chamber eyeing her mistress venomously; one would have supposed that the lady had deprived her attendant of some great fortune b...

Aunt Eunice had gone off to the back regions of the house with her nose high in the air, and her thin lips pressed together in fierce wrath. There was something going on of whic...

Eunice Hurd was in a state of fierce indignation when she left that girl in the chamber which she was morally certain belonged of right to another. So fiery and intense was her...

Eben Stone was in his office, sitting at a black walnut desk, honey-combed with pigeon-holes and bristling with papers, given endwise to the light. He occupied the most remote o...

Mr. Stone sat a long time after the two women left him, playing idly with his paper-knife, dissatisfied, he could not tell why, and restless even to irritability. Why was it tha...

The railroad depot, which we have had occasion to mention more than once, stood a little in advance of a small cluster of houses which occupied a space of flat ground lying betw...

The door in which the lovers stood was darkened by the hemlock; so Seymour drew the young girl into the cabin close to a little window that looked out upon the rustic bridge. It...

“Why if this eternal room, with its stifling perfumes and endless clouds of lace, isn’t being alone, I should like to know what is,” said the girl, with careless disdain. “I sho...

The door opened and Virginia Lander passed through. Her face was sad and pale, violet shadow lay faintly under her eyes, and the long, sweeping folds of her black dress trailed...

The town house which had once been the property of Amos Lander was a small building, old in itself, but to which modern improvements had given an air of elegance more than in ke...

It was finished. Money, the great magician, had done its work, and a prettier place than that modernized little house in the heart of a great city could not well be met with. Th...

It was not exactly a dressing-room, nor was it a boudoir, in which Cora Lander stood robing herself for that secret marriage, but one of those elegant snuggeries which bespeak u...

Cora Lander ran down stairs into the parlor, whose frescoed ceiling, dove-tinted walls and thickly carpeted floors were lighted up for the first time, and there, standing as it...

It was October now—gorgeous, beautiful October. All the trees on the Hudson felt the ripeness of the year in their foliage, which had taken rich gleams of crimson into its green...

Seymour went into the parlor and threw himself on a couch, wiping the moisture from his face as he waited for the brandy. It was the couch on which he and Cora had seated themse...

Cora arose the next morning with a delicious sense of home-life upon her. She entered her dressing-room in a pretty morning robe, looking fresh as a flower, and informed Alice t...

Cora went up to the house on the river, heavy-hearted, but with a certain sense of relief which she could not quite understand. The parting scene with her husband had exhausted...

A stranger arrived by the railway and came up from the river hotel to pay his respects to the family. He had been a travelling companion and old friend of Amos Lander in Europe,...

Mrs. Lander went up to her room and read the letter through. It brought the blood to her cheek and the old pride into her heart. “Did he think her everything, and my child the d...

Virginia and Ellen had reached the edge of the woods, and ran like children down a footpath which led to the little log cabin. On the other side of the bridge stood a huge chest...

“What, out walking? What a glorious day it is! But what has become of you, cousin? I missed you at dinner yesterday and at breakfast this morning. Do be a little more sociable—I...

Cora’s motive for trying that black pony on the lawn was explained the next morning, when Clarence Brooks came riding up the carriage road on a horse that might have matched tha...

Cora Seymour—we cannot honestly call her Lander, though others did—had her fit of abstraction also. She had been in the drawing room all the evening, anxious, feverish, indignan...

Cora Lander lay still a full half hour. No sob stirred her bosom, not a tear reached the feverish hotness of her eyes. Her very hands thrown upward above the pillows were white...

On the next day, that pic-nic in the woods came off, and a pleasant affair it was. The brook that filled the ravine with its music found its source in a spring that came from a...

Ellen Nolan was prompt, both in action and thought. Virginia, in the full security of a first passion, believed herself safe in the shelter of her lover’s strength, but with a p...

In the exuberance of her spirits, Virginia was delighted with this idea of a ride, the first that she had thought of taking since her return to America. So, later in the day, sh...

Cora went directly to her house the moment she reached the city. She hated the place now, and nothing but an important purpose would have induced her to enter it. The servants w...

That night, a little after dark, Alfred Seymour came to that almost deserted house, and, letting himself in with a latch-key, walked directly up stairs, not with his usual elast...

The moment Cora returned home, she sent a note to Clarence Brooks, challenging him to ride that afternoon as some compensation for the one she had so unexpectedly deprived him o...

When once in her own room, Cora Lander read Seymour’s letter again, pondered over it darkly for a time, then threw it on her desk with a burst of sudden animation.

“Come in, if it’s you, Eunice,” said a voice from within, “only don’t go to pitching in about the whisky; I mean to drink a hot punch every night of my life—two on ’em—three on...

Early in the morning, Cora sent a note to Clarence Brooks, full of regrets that she had not been able to receive him the day before. Her aunt was better, she said, and she wishe...

Clarence Brooks sat on the stoop, into which his room opened, that night, thinking over the last few weeks in his mind. How could he have been so utterly deceived. Why had this...

The first step that Virginia Lander took in the business that brought her to town was, as we have seen, to visit Lawyer Stone, who gave her some vague encouragement about raisin...

That great Egyptian monster, crouching like an embodied pestilence in the heart of New York, concentrating all the horrors of a prison with the awful solemnity of a tomb, never...

A person entered the room and stood close to Ellen. It was Cora, just come in from her ride; she stood motionless, grasping her whip tightly in one hand; masses of heavy dark cl...

The winter came, sharp and cold, while Virginia lay ill; for the fever left her helpless as a child, and the physician said that, without great care, she must sink into a declin...

“Ellen Nolan, there’s a thing that sets hard on Josh’s and my mind. You sent a letter once down to the tavern from her, and that Mr. Brooks sent one back agin. Besides, Josh say...

The Governor of New York was alone in his private office one day, when his Secretary came in, followed by a little creature that would have appeared like a child but for a face,...

Cora Lander had been a good deal into society during the latter part of her season in town. With her great beauty and reputation for enormous wealth, there was no difficulty in...

A man lay sick almost unto death in that stone farm-house. Hot fever was preying upon his brain; an awful sorrow gnawed at his heart. He did not even know that sweet-voiced, gen...