Her mother's secret

How they missed Leonidas at Mondreer can be felt by all who have ever had a dear one leave the family for an absence of years in far distant lands.

"Here is a most serious charge laid against both of you, young gentlemen--a charge of so grave a nature, indeed, as to compel me, in my character as justice of the peace, to hav...

"I am not hysterical, Le! I am not hysterical; but I am false--faithless! Despise and forget me, Le! for I am not worthy of your remembrance. I am false and faithless!"

"I am going to ride over to Greenbushes this morning, sir; can I do anything for you before I go?" inquired Leonidas, entering the sanctum where the master of the house sat writ...

When Odalite had signified her acceptance of the suit of Anglesea, although she had expressed herself in not too flattering language, the gallant colonel would have assumed the...

They were all equipped in their warm, brown cloth coats, buttoned up before, and their brown, beaver poke bonnets tied under their chins. They carried little baskets in their ha...

Mrs. Force, seeing that the gossip between Mrs. Anglesea and Miss Sibby Bayard would be sure to turn on the character and antecedents of the gallant Col. Angus Anglesea, and thi...

"Oh, Aunt Sukey," she said, as she buttoned up her blue bombazet pelisse--"oh, to think that we had got into such an interesting part of 'The Children of the Abbey!' Amanda had...

"Let us go over to Greenbushes this morning, Le. It is such a fine morning. We can walk through the woods, and rest on the bridge at Chincapin Creek, and then we shall not be to...

Never, in the memory of the people, had such a snowfall been seen in that section. Yet it could scarcely be called a snowstorm, for there was no wind, not a single whiff, and th...

"Sukey: I saw Miss Sibby Bayard's Gad go by the house this morning on the mule, with a bag of wheat before him, taking it to old Killman's mill to be ground, and I know she is g...

Having given her last instructions, Miss Meeke returned to the drawing room, where she found the new guest, extended at length on the blue, velvet sofa, with her chubby hands cl...

"Oh, yes, of course I do. I only meant to say that I would not have asked those two ladies if I had not known that they would be welcome. But I am going to tell how it was that...

There was her workstand, her workbox, her easy-chair and her footstool, in their cozy corner between the open fire and the side window, but she did not come to occupy them.

But, unhappily, in the height of midsummer, Abel Force, believing that he acted from the purest motives of affection, but--no doubt--as the event proved, deceived and misled by...

She took it at once, and, when he held her hand close to his throbbing heart, she did not draw it away. What should he say to her? How should he understand her? She seemed conte...

"Mother, I don't know. I dare not trust myself to go through with to-day's work. I have such strange, wild, mad risings in my heart, in my nerves, in my brain! I want something...

"It is, indeed," said the rector, examining the document. "It is, indeed, a certificate of the marriage of Angus Anglesea, colonel in the Honorable East India service, Anglewood...

Mondreer was one of the finest old places on the western shore of Maryland. The estate covered fifteen hundred acres of richly cultivated, heavily wooded and well-watered land,...

"Dear Leonidas, leave her to me. You know your room, dear boy! Go to it and call for whatever you want. Jake will wait on you as before you went away," said Mrs. Force, gently p...

"Aunt Elfrida, dear, I want to speak to you. Can you give me a few moments, quite alone, this morning?" inquired Le of Mrs. Force, in a low voice, as they left the breakfast roo...

"Aunty," said Leonidas, taking the hand of Odalite, and leading her up to Mrs. Force, who stood before the grand piano, putting away the sheets of music before closing the instr...

The squire and the rector went out on the front porch to look at the weather, just in time to see old Miss Sibby Bayard, in her brown riding skirt and beaver-cloth jacket and ho...

"The woman is a lunatic escaped from some madhouse, I suppose. She had best be arrested. Where are your constables?" growled the bridegroom, drawing the arm of his bride within...

The family of Mondreer, on account of the party at Oldfield on the previous evening, and the long sleigh ride home "in the wee, sma' hours" before the dawn, slept later than usu...

The "Minotaur" did persist, you may be sure! A beautiful girl and a rich inheritance were not to be given up by him for any scruples of conscience or movements of pity.

Leonidas Force, after leaving Forest Rest, put spurs to his horse and galloped all the way to Greenbushes, only pausing when it became necessary to open a gate that crossed the...

Miss Sibby opened a door in the corner near the fireplace and led her visitors up a steep and narrow flight of stairs to a small upper chamber in the roof, which was lighted by...

"Now, tell the truth, and shame the devil, Roland Bayard! Where have you been for the last twenty-four hours?" inquired Miss Sibby, on the afternoon of the same day that witness...

He went to the stables, mounted his cob and ambled all over his plantation, looking after such work as could only go on at this season of the year--mending of fences, repair of...

And Mr. Force, in the presence of the whole family, said that henceforth all these consultations were to be suspended, as Miss Force had nothing further to do with the fitting u...

"Come into the parlor! Come into the parlor! It is too cold out here! You look quite blue! Come in, and let's get a better view of you!" continued Mr. Force, leading the way int...

All the family met around the breakfast table in high spirits, with the exception of Mrs. Force and her daughter, Odalite, both of whom were pale and almost silent, trying to ov...

He never met Odalite except at meal times, and then their chairs were so placed that neither need look in the face of the other. Odalite's seat was near the head of the table. L...

"No, my own! hearts never break, or one heart, I know, must have broken long ago. Besides," she added, in a firmer tone, "honor must be saved, though hearts be sacrificed."

Mrs. Anglesea was up with the sun the next morning. She replenished the smoldering fire from wood that she found in a box at the bottom of the closet. Then she threw open the fr...

They were met by attentive servants, who were eager to behold the returning bride and bridegroom, and looked astonished to see the bride return in charge of her parents, accompa...

"It was a letter from him, mother, written on Saturday morning, an hour before he sailed for Liverpool. It was directed on the outside to Miss Odalite Force, but, on the inside,...

"Go, now, young gentlemen, into Mrs. Force's sitting room, and pay your respects to the ladies there. They know nothing whatever of the affair that brought you here to-day; nor...

He promptly kept his word. He struck into the woods, made a short detour, and came out again upon the path some yards in front of Odalite and her guardian. Walking rapidly, he a...

Leonidas arose on the morning of Christmas Eve with one thought predominant in his mind: He should see Odalite--see her for the first time since that eventful day when her marri...

When young Roland Bayard left the Forest Rest, with Leonidas Force's supposed challenge in his pocket and on warlike thoughts intent, he walked rapidly on toward the Calvert Hou...

Which words being translated into practice, meant that Mr. Force, from the time the party left the Cataract House, paid all the colonel's traveling expenses from Niagara to Mond...

"Come into the library with me, my dear boy, I want to have a private talk with you," said Mr. Force, some hours later in the afternoon, as he led the way into his little sanctu...

Sunrise on Christmas morning found all the family of Mondreer assembled in the drawing room, which had been already restored to order by the servants, and where no vestige of th...

The next morning Dr. Ingle called to keep an appointment with Miss Meeke. He came in his gig to take her to the village to inspect a certain house that he thought of leasing. Bu...

"Take it easy, young gentlemen, and you shall be treated as such," said old Tom Bowen, a grave, gray-haired, most respectable old man, an elder in the church and county constabl...

And Abel Force, thinking it to be some little domestic matter that might not be discussed before a stranger, and perfectly unsuspicious of anything secret or serious--thinking n...