Hilda: A Story of Calcutta

Miss Howe pushed the portière aside with a curved hand and gracefully separated fingers; it was a staccato movement, and her body followed it after an instant's poise of hesitat...

Miss Livingstone handed her brother his tea as she spoke, but turned her eyes and her delicate chin toward Duff Lindsay with the protest. Lindsay's cup was at his lips, and his...

The fact that Stephen Arnold and Duff Lindsay had spent the same terms at New College, and now found themselves again together in the social poverty of the Indian capital, would...

When Alicia Livingstone, almost believing she liked it, drove to Number Three, Lal Behari's Lane and left cards upon Miss Hilda Howe, she was only partially rewarded. Through th...

Mr. Llewellyn Stanhope's Company was not the only combination that offered itself to the entertainment of Calcutta that December Saturday night. The ever-popular Jimmy Finnigan...

While Alicia Livingstone fought with her imagination in accounting for Duff Lindsay's absence from the theatre on the first night of a notable presentation by Miss Hilda Howe, h...

There was a panic in Dhurrumtolla; a "ticca-gharry"--the shabby oblong box on wheels, dignified in municipal regulations as a hackney carriage--was running away. Coolie mothers...

"I have outstayed all the rest," Lindsay said, with his hat and stick in his hand, in Alicia Livingstone's drawing-room, "because I want particularly to talk to you. They have l...

That same Sunday Alicia had been able to say to Lindsay about Hilda Howe, "We have not stood still--we know each other well now," and when he commented with some reserve upon th...

The door of Ensign Sand's apartment stood open with a purposeful air when Captain Filbert reached headquarters that evening; but in any case it is likely that she would have gon...

Miss Howe was walking in the business quarter of Calcutta. It was the business quarter, and yet the air was gay with the dimpling of piano notes, and looking up one saw the brig...

I find myself wondering whether Calcutta would have found anything very exquisitely amusing in the satisfactions which exchanged themselves between Mr. Llewellyn Stanhope's lead...

The compulsion which took Stephen Arnold to Crooked lane is hardly ours to examine. It must have been strong, since going up to Mrs. Sand involved certain concessions, doubtless...

Mrs. Sand found it difficult to make up her mind upon several points touching the visit of the Reverend Stephen Arnold. Its purport, of which she could not deny her vague, appre...

Under the Greek porch of No. 10, Middleton street, in the white sunlight between the shadows of the stucco pillars, stood a flagrant ticca-gharry. The driver lay extended on the...

For three days there had certainly been, with the invalid, no sign of anything but convalescence. An appetite to cry out upon, a chartered tendency to take small liberties, to m...

Hilda left the road, with a trace of its red dust on the hem of her skirt, and struck out into the Maidan. It spread before her green where the slanting sun searched through the...

Finally the days of Laura Filbert's sojourn under the Livingstones' roof followed each other into the past that is not much pondered. Alicia at one time valued the impression th...

"Not long ago," said Hilda, "I had a chat with him. We sat on the grass in the middle of the Maidan, and there was nothing to interfere with my impressions?"

Nobody could have been more impressed with Hilda's influence upon Mr. Llewellyn Stanhope's commercial probity than Mr. Llewellyn Stanhope himself. He was a prey to all noble fee...

It is difficult to be precise about such a thing, but I should think that Hilda gave herself to the marvellous aspect of what had come and gone between them for several hours af...

Only the Sphinx confronted them, after all, when they arrived at the theatre, the Sphinx and Lady Dolly. The older feminine presentment sent her belittling gaze over their heads...

"That's quite a different thing--and if I hadn't Llewellyn Stanhope would. Stanhope cherishes Duff as he cherishes the critic of the _Chronicle_. He refers to him as a pillar of...

If Duff Lindsay had apprehended that the reception of Miss Filbert by the Simpsons would involve any strain upon the affection his friends bore him, the event must have relieved...

The Sister Superior had a long upper lip, which she was in the habit of drawing still further down; it gave her an air of great diplomatic caution, almost of casuistry. Her face...

The labours of the Baker Institution and of the Clarke Mission were very different in scope, so much so that if they had been secular bodies working for profit there would have...

They talked a great deal in Plymouth about the way the time was passing in Calcutta during those last three months before Laura should return, the months of the rains. "Now," sa...

While the _Coromandel_ was throbbing out her regulation number of knots toward Colombo, October was passing over Bengal. It went with lethargy, the rains were too close on its h...

She was speaking to Alicia Livingstone in the dormitory, changing at the same time for a "turn" at the hospital. It was six o'clock in the afternoon. Alicia's landau stood at th...

Doctor Livingstone's concern was personal, that was plain in the way he stood looking at the floor of the corridor with his hands in his pockets, before Hilda reached him. Regre...