Hard-Pan: A Story of Bonanza Fortunes

"I didn't know where it came from. I believed him. Oh, Mr. Gault, if he told me what was not true, you can't blame him. You've never known what it feels like to have some one yo...

"John may be selfish and mean and all that, and I've no doubt he is; but he's not mean enough, he's not contemptible enough, to do what you think he's doing. I'll not believe th...

"Oh, they don't know Viola," said the colonel--not with bitterness, but as one who states a simple and natural fact; "the old woman's educated them out of all that. But, as I wa...

"What a dreadful afternoon you've had! I'm sorry." Then, with an abrupt change of tone: "Who picks up the leaves of the deodar and ties them up in those neat little bundles?"

"You hid away your friendship with her as if it were shameful. You acted as if you were ashamed of her and of your knowing her--as if there was something wicked about her, so yo...

Her mother had been an actress--one of the stars of San Francisco's hectic youth. Dissimulation might be instinctive with a woman of Viola Reed's heredity. It was the whole art...

But poor Viola was not of the women who find in the exercise of the brain a method of healing the hurts of a wounded heart. At times a sense of piercing misery possessed her. Th...

Viola had spent the morning in the garden, sitting under the great fig-tree, sewing. The house was unbearable to her, and she wondered why her father had chosen to remain there,...

As they retraced their steps the broad, yellow glow of the sunset deepened behind them, and before them burned on the windows of houses that climbed the hillsides still farther...

The Italian and Spanish quarter was even more interesting. It was farther round, on one of the steepest faces of the hill. The streets seemed to share the characteristics of the...

Before Miss Reed had left the city she had given the package to the boy, with the instructions that he should not deliver it till the day set by her, some time after her departu...

The next day Viola appeared to be herself, though she looked white and listless, and Mrs. Cassidy resolved to impart to her a piece of information that, with great effort of wil...

Dinner was coming to an end. The Chinaman, soft-footed in his immaculate white, had just finished his circuit of the table, leaving a tiny gold-rimmed coffee-cup at each of the...

"Oh, of course, in comparison with the past," assented the old man. "Slow? Slow is not the word. Dead, my dear friend! San Francisco is a dead city--dead as Pompeii."

John Gault had gone to this dinner reluctantly. The thought of Letitia's marriage with Tod was as repulsive to him after a month had familiarized his mind with it, as it had bee...