Dust: A Novel

When the Marquise Desmoines received from Fillmore a letter announcing that the defendants in the case of Desmoines _vs._ Lancaster declined to defend, she uttered a sharp cry,...

The first week of May had passed by, and Sir Francis Bendibow was sitting in his private room at the bank, with one elegant leg crossed over the other, and his hands folded over...

Toward the close of the month, Sir Francis Bendibow, having seriously turned the matter over in his mind, wrote a note to his solicitor, Merton Fillmore, asking him whether he c...

One morning Lady Flanders, enveloped in a dressing-gown bought at a bazaar in Damascus, which made her look like the Grand Vizier in the Arabian Nights, knocked at the room whic...

Mr. Grant, like other men in whom a quiet demeanor is the result rather of experience than of temperament, was very observant; and he had observed several things during and afte...

When Philip Lancaster and Mr. Grant reached the landing at the head of the stairs, they faced each other for a moment; and then, by mutual impulse as it were, Grant tacitly exte...

The morning after Bendibow’s death, Merton Fillmore sent word to the Marquise Desmoines that he would call upon her that evening, if she found it convenient to receive him. She...

The history of the house of Bendibow & Son--or of Bendibow Brothers, as it came to be called--was broadly the history of the eighteenth century in England. Persons who deal in m...

We may assume, for the present, that Mr. Grant’s object in calling upon Sir Francis Bendibow was to make arrangements whereby the bank might charge itself with the investment an...

When Mr. Grant got to the door of the building, he found Sir Francis Bendibow awaiting him in a small but stylish turn-out with two horses. He took his seat beside the baronet o...

Mr. Grant, although he had doubtless been the victim of some bitter experiences, had possessed enough native generosity and simplicity not to have become embittered by them. His...

The next day Mr. Grant hired a saddle-horse, and rode up to London, where, among other business, he made the call at Bendibow Bank, which has been already mentioned. His affair...

The most natural sequel to a mutual understanding, such as this between the two lovers, would be that they should get married with the least possible delay; and, as a matter of...

Perdita had planned to attend the opera that evening, and afterwards she meant to look in at Lord Croftus’ party, which had more or less of a political significance. Her carriag...

Mrs. Lockhart’s house at Hammersmith had been considered a good house in its day, and was still decent and comfortable. It stood on a small side street which branched off from t...

June in England sometimes combines the tender afternoon of spring with the dawning beauty of summer. There is joyful potency in the sunshine, but no white colorless glare; it se...

When a man is dying, or just dead, it often seems, to those interested in the matter, that he is taken off prematurely; that he leaves his life incomplete; that his usefulness w...

Meanwhile the inscrutable Providence, whose apparent neglect of the affairs of men is only less remarkable than its seeming interference with them, had decreed that these affair...

The drive back to Hammersmith was not a particularly agreeable one. Philip began by maintaining a grave silence: he felt his dignity somewhat impaired by the almost peremptory s...

Sir Francis Bendibow, the last of his race, and once held to be the greatest and most successful banker in England, was meanwhile lying on a bed in a small room, in a house not...

The next day, London awoke to a sensation. As early as ten o’clock in the morning, it was known that something astounding had happened; though the general public still lacked in...

A certain change was no doubt observable in Marion. It might have been supposed that a life so secluded and reserved as hers had been thus far, would not have encountered the no...

There was in Perdita a strong element of adventurousness and Bohemianism, which had not as yet been so fully gratified as to lose its poignancy. A longing came over her, occasio...

The words which Philip had heard, and the shock of surprise which they gave him, combined with the unexpectedness of the whole scene in Mrs. Lockhart’s little sitting-room, rend...

As Tom Bendibow left London and approached Kensington, the afternoon was warm and still, and slight puffs of dust were beaten upward by each impact of his horse’s hoofs upon the...

Philip Lancaster had gone to bed early this night; he sat up all the night before, trying to compel unwilling rhymes to agree with one another, and was now resolved to discover...

Mrs. Lockhart met Sir Francis at the door; he greeted her in a voice louder than ordinary, but harsh, as if the conventional instinct in him had overstrained itself in the effor...

It had been Fillmore’s intention to call on Perdita the next morning, and acquaint her with the details of what had happened. She was, theoretically at all events, nearly intere...

The dead man’s horse had disappeared, and was probably trotting back to his stable in Twickenham. But Tom Bendibow’s steed, which knew its master, could be heard cropping the he...

It now becomes our duty to follow for a time the fortunes of Mr. Thomas Bendibow. This honest and prosperous young gentleman, had he been as familiar with the text of Shakspeare...

The Marquise Desmoines had, at the end of the summer, relinquished her abode in Red Lion Square and gone to live in more luxurious quarters further west. Apparently, her experim...

The great banking-house of Bendibow Brothers, like many other great things, had a modest beginning. At the beginning of the eighteenth century there was a certain Mr. Abraham Be...

That same day the Brighton coach was bowling along the road to London at the rate of something over five minutes to the mile, a burly, much be-caped Jehu on the box and a couple...

The third of May passed away, and, beyond the hanging up in the window of the card with “Lodgings to Let” written on it, nothing new had happened in the house at Hammersmith. Bu...

They had not made more than a quarter of a mile, when the tramp of hoofs and trundle of wheels caused them to turn round with an exclamation of surprise that the coach should so...

It came to the knowledge of Sir Francis, during the ensuing week, that Mr. Grant was going to have a business interview with Fillmore. He thereupon took pen and paper, and wrote...

The time at which this story begins was a time of many beginnings and many endings. The Eighteenth Century had expired the better part of a score of years before, and everything...