Gloria Mundi

At noon on a day late in September the express train from Paris rested, panting and impatient, on its brief halt in the station at Rouen. The platform was covered with groups of...

The sky was dappled azure overhead, the water calm and fresh-hued below. When the ship’s company had disposed itself, and the vessel was making way outside, there were numerous...

Many builders in their day have put a hand to the making of Caermere Hall. Though there were wide differences of race and language among them and though the long chain of time w...

Upon the garden side of Caermere is a very large conservatory, built nearly fifty years ago, at the close of the life of the last duchess. The poor lady left no other mark of he...

Christian began his walk with swift, energetic steps, and a guiding eye fixed resolutely on a distinguishing mark in the distant line of tree-tops beyond, as if both speed and d...

At the foot of the terraced slope, the wide, graveled path down which Lady Cressage had led Christian described a formal curve to the right, across a lawn which he recognized as...

What Christian first perceived about the duke’s apartments was that they had an odor quite peculiar to themselves. The series of small and badly lighted anterooms through which...

The music of a spirited and tireless band of robins helped Christian to wake next morning. The character of their cheerful racket defined itself very slowly to his drowsy consci...

Emanuel Torr, at the age of forty, was felt by those who knew and loved him almost to have justified the very highest of the high hopes which his youth had encouraged. This inti...

Under the illumination of the shaded lamp and the glowing bank of peat on the study hearth, Emanuel in his velvet jacket and slippered ease had seemed a delicately refined creat...

At the end of a fortnight Christian found himself able to confront the system, and even look it in the face, with a certain degree of mental composure. He was far from imagining...

It has done Emanuel a world of good to have you here,” said Kathleen, on the morning of Christian’s leave-taking. “Of course it has been a delight to us both--but he has had a p...

He had been in England for over six months, when all at once he became conscious of this queer sensation: the experiences of his half year put themselves together before his men...

The two young men dined at the Café Royal. “It’s as good a kitchen as there is in London, and in the matter of people it isn’t such a tiresome repetition of those one meets ever...

You’ve altered so much since I saw you! It was odds against my recognizing you at all,” declared Cora, beaming forth into conversation before Christian had fairly grasped the si...

Christian discovered that he was not sorry to be alone. Cora’s company had been amusing and vivifying, no doubt, but it was even better now to have his own thoughts. He observed...

Christian climbed the stairs at Duke Street, and let himself into his apartments, with painstaking precautions against being overheard. There was an excess of zeal about Falkner...

meditative detail the countenance before her--delicately modeled, dark, nervously high-spirited even in repose. Associations came back as she gazed--the tender eagerness of the...

I don’t think I like your being here,” Frances remarked to the young man after a brief frowning inspection. She spoke slowly, and with a deliberate gravity and evenness of tone.

Christian and Frances ate their luncheon in an upper chamber, close to a kind of balcony window, which gave upon one of the city’s most crowded thoroughfares. An unceasing and u...

Christian strolled aimlessly about for a long time in the closely packed congeries of streets, little and big, behind St. Paul’s. It happened to be all new ground to him, and so...

On the morning of the funeral, six days later, Christian rose very early, and took coffee in his library shortly after seven. Then, lighting a cigarette, he resumed work upon se...

Several thousand people caught that day their first curious glimpse of the new master of Caermere. At the most there were but a handful of aged persons, in the throng clustered...

It was not a very easy task,” Kathleen found opportunity to say to Christian, half an hour later, as the family were assembling in his library. They stood together by the window...

During the progress of the luncheon, Christian found no opportunity for intimate conversation with Emanuel’s wife. The elderly and ponderously verbose Lord Chobham sat upon her...

Kathleen had disappeared somewhere, and without her he seemed curiously helpless. He did not as yet know the house well enough to be sure about its exits. The result of one furt...

The spring had laid upon this great rolling common a beauty of its own. Everywhere, on thorns and furze and briars, the touch of the new life had hung emeralds to bedeck and hid...