Greatheart

The early dusk of February was falling, together with a fine, drenching rain. The trees that over-hung the muddy lane were beating their stark branches together as though in des...

Old Biddy stooped over her charge, her parchment face a mass of wrinkles. Isabel was lying in bed, but raised upon one elbow in the attitude of one about to rise. She looked at...

There is nought in life more solemn than the waiting hush that falls before the coming of that great Change which men call Death. And it is to the watchers rather than to the pa...

The bridal dress with its filmy veil still lay in its white box--a fairy garment that had survived the catastrophe. Dinah sat and looked at it dully. The light of her single can...

Secretly Dinah had dreaded their meeting, fearing that innate antagonism which her mother invariably seemed to cherish against the upper class. But within a quarter of an hour o...

"No, it wasn't. It was kind. And I--I was a perfect pig not to listen. I want you to know that, Mr. Studley. I want you to know that I'm very, very sorry I didn't listen." She s...

It was soon after nine on the following morning that Scott presented himself on horseback at the gate of Dinah's home. It had been his intention to tie up his animal and enter,...

Dinah spent her Sunday afternoon seated in a far corner of the verandah, inditing a very laboured epistle to her mother--a very different affair from the gay little missives she...

The return home was to Dinah like a sudden plunge into icy depths after a brief sojourn in the tropics. The change of atmosphere was such that she seemed actually to feel it in...

When they went down the hill again to the hotel, Dinah felt as if she were treading on air. The whole world had magically changed for her. Fears still lurked in the background,...

Dinah looked again towards Scott. He stood against the mantelpiece, as grimly upright as his brother and again oddly she was struck by the similarity between them. She could not...

Dinah's strength came back to her in leaps and bounds, and three weeks after the de Vignes's departure she was almost herself again. The season was drawing to a close. The holid...

She turned back to him. "I should have missed you if I hadn't been so busy. Isabel is going to help me with my trousseau. And oh, Eustace, I am to have such a crowd of lovely th...

A large and merry party of guests were congregated in the great hall at Perrythorpe Court, having tea. One of them--a young soldier-cousin of the Studleys--was singing a sentime...

It was growing late on that same evening that Scott came through the hotel vestibule after a rehearsal of the concert which was to take place that evening and at which he had un...

But ere she finished, the tears were running down her face again. He set down the glass, and with his own handkerchief he wiped them away. Then he sat upon the low tree-trunk, a...

Isabel uttered no reproaches to her charge as, quivering with shame, she returned from her escapade. She exchanged no more than a low "Good night!" with Scott, and then turned b...

Dinah gave a little start. She was standing close to him, but she had not seen him. She looked at him for a second with far-away eyes, as if she did not know him.

The night fell like a black veil, starless and still. Up in Isabel's room the watchers came and went, dividing the hours. Only the nurse and old Biddy remained always at their p...

The actual turning-point in Dinah's illness seemed to date from that brief interview with Sir Eustace. They had drawn her back half against her will from the land of shadows, bu...

"Yes," she said. "Yes. It has done me good." She lay looking at him with a smile still in her eyes. "I hope little Dinah is resting," she said. "She was with me nearly all night...

That sleigh-drive was to Dinah the acme of delight, and for ever after the jingle of horse-bells was to recall it to her mind. The sight of the gay red trappings, the trot of th...

The afternoon was well advanced when Scott returned to Perrythorpe Court. No sounds of revelry greeted him as he entered. A blazing fire was burning in the hall, but no one was...

It was three days later that Dinah began at last the long and weary pilgrimage back again. Almost against her will she turned her faltering steps up the steep ascent; for she wa...

She was lying on a couch under a purple rug belonging to Isabel. Very fragile and weak she looked, but her face was flushed and eager, her eyes alight with welcome. She thought...

Dinah received the suggestion with eagerness. She was possessed for the moment by an urgent desire to get back to the commonplace. She had been whirled off her feet, and albeit...

Rose de Vigne, very slim and graceful, with her beautiful hair mounted high above her white forehead and falling in a shower of golden ringlets behind after the style of a hundr...

When Dinah descended to breakfast the next morning, she encountered Scott in the hall. He had evidently just come in from an early ride, and he was looking younger and more anim...

Down on the skating-rink below the hotel, a crowd of people were making merry. The ice was in splendid condition. It sparkled in the sun like a sheet of frosted glass, and over...

They returned to the hotel by a circuitous route that brought them by a mountain-road into the village just below the hotel. The moon was rising as they ascended the final slope...

She turned round to Dinah, looking at her with shrewd darting eyes. "Ye'd better be getting along to your lover, Miss Dinah," she said. "He'll be wanting ye to dance with him."

As a matter of fact, she had intruded upon the Colonel and Lady Grace in the secret hope of finding a propitious moment for once again pressing her request to be allowed to acce...

Of the long hours that followed that wonderful dawning Dinah never had any very distinct recollection. Even Scott seemed to forget her for a while, and it was old Biddy who pres...

The darkness of the night lay like a black pall upon the mountain. The snow was falling thickly, and ever more thickly. It drifted in upon Dinah, as she crouched in the shelter...

Sir Eustace was standing by the window of the little boudoir when his brother entered, and Scott joined him there. He also lighted a cigarette, and they smoked together in silen...

All through that afternoon Dinah and Billy played like cubs in the snow. They were very inexperienced in the art of luging, but they took their spills with much heartiness and a...

What happened after the passing of her vision Dinah never fully knew, so slack had become her grip upon material things. Her spirit seemed to be wandering aimlessly about the mo...

When Dinah met her lover in the morning she found him in a surprisingly indulgent mood. The day was showery, and he announced his intention of accompanying them in the car up to...

He rose at once to join her. "Why, how quick you have been! Or else the time flies here. Eustace is still skating. I had no idea he was so accomplished. See, there he is!"

With his usual quietness of demeanour, he crossed the vestibule, and looked into the smoking-room. Sir Eustace was not there either, and he was closing the door again when the m...

The trains from the junction to Heath-on-Sea were few and invariably late. Scott had been pacing the platform for half an hour on the evening of the day that followed his own ar...

Biddy Maloney stood at the window of her mistress's bedroom, and surveyed the world with eyes of stern disapproval. There was nothing of the smart lady's maid about Biddy. She a...

Billy had already departed upon Scott's mount era he and Dinah set forth to walk to the Court. It was threatening to rain, and the ground beneath their feet was sodden and heavy.

Softly the strains of _Simple Aveu_ floated along the corridor. It came like fairy music, now near, now far, haunting as a dream, woven through and through with the gold of Roma...

She looked at him with a faint smile as if in pity for his disappointment. "Too late, I am afraid, Captain Brent. I have promised Sir Eustace to skate with him."

She and Billy were generally in the best of spirits, and the room usually rang with their young laughter. But that morning even Billy was decorously quiet, and his sister scarce...

He grasped her hands very tightly. His pale eyes smiled their welcome, but--it came to her afterwards--he scarcely said a word in greeting. In a second or two he set her free.

After that interview with Scott there followed a long, long period of pain and weakness for Dinah. She who had never known before what it meant to be ill went down to the Valley...

The _salon_ was a blaze of lights and many shifting colours. The fantastic crowd that trooped thither from the _salle-à-manger_ was like a host of tropical flowers. The talking...

"Hullo, Stumpy!" said a voice. "Are you here? What have you done with Miss Bathurst? She's engaged to me for the next dance." Eustace entered with the words, but stopped short o...

They were married in the early morning at the little old church that had nestled for centuries among its trees in the village on the cliff. The absolute simplicity of the servic...

She looked at him with swift apprehension, even with a tinge of guilt. His lecture of the previous morning was still fresh in her mind. Could he have seen her on the ice with Si...

A long, curling wave ran up the shingle and broke in a snow-white sheet of foam just below Dinah's feet. She was perched on a higher ridge of shingle, bareheaded, full in the gl...

"If I had known that this was going to happen, I would never have troubled to cultivate their acquaintance," said Lady Grace fretfully. "I knew of course that that artful little...

A small figure was already standing outside the station when the car Sir Eustace drove whirled round the corner of the station yard. He was greeted by the waving of a vigorous h...

Dinah rose nervously to receive the new-comer--a tall, thin man, elderly, with a grave, intellectual face and courteous manner, who looked at her with a gleam of surprise as he...

Dinah could not sleep that night. For the first time in all her healthy young life she lay awake with grim care for a bed-fellow. When in trouble she had always wept herself to...

He was lounging in the easiest chair in the room, smoking an excellent cigar, preparatory to indulging in his afternoon nap. His wife reclined upon a sofa with a French novel wh...

With the morning Dinah found her anxieties less oppressive. Isabel was becoming so much more like herself that she was able to put the matter from her and in a measure forget it...

That she had scarcely slept all night was a fact that no one suspected. Work-a-day Dinah, as her father was wont to call her, was not an object of great solicitude to any in her...

I. The Wanderer II. The Looker-On III. The Search IV. The Magician V. Apollo VI. Cinderella VII. The Broken Spell VIII. Mr. Greatheart IX. The Runaway Colt. X. The House of Bond...

I. Cinderella's Prince II. Wedding Arrangements III. Despair IV. The New Home V. The Watcher VI. The Wrong Road VII. Doubting Castle VIII. THE VICTORY IX. THE BURDEN X. THE HOUR...