Idols

It was Irene Merriam’s hour of greatest content when she looked into her heart for a fugitive desire and smiled at finding none. And this was a source of all the more comfort, b...

The Merriams lived in a comfortable detached house on Sunnington Heath, most convenient and pleasant of London suburbs. A year or so before they had persuaded Hugh Colman to lea...

Meanwhile a problem of some complexity remained to be solved. Hugh devoted the morning’s clear-headedness to vain attempts at solution. From the position in which he found himse...

Minna Hart was an only child. She had lost her mother early in life, and had been left to the casual care of a series of governesses, with none of whom, save one, had she contra...

As Minna had taken care to have completed the fifteen days’ residence required of one of the parties for a marriage by license, it was she who, accompanied by Hugh, gave the nec...

The speaker was Israel Hart. The place, his study, a commodious apartment overlooking the front drive, of which the most striking features were a great library table and a solid...

Irene spoke warmly. The person she addressed was Harroway, an elderly solicitor, an intimate friend of Hugh and the Merriams. His wife Selina, who had brought him to pay an afte...

An anxious face met Hugh as he was shown into the drawing-room. Minna had grown into a woman since her illness, and had hardened considerably during the process. Instead of the...

He threw off his dress clothes with the repulsion that every man feels for such garments after an all-night sitting. He was tired out, capable only of attending to the trivial a...

From that moment Hugh walked on the edge of a volcano. To keep his thoughts from dizzy hoverings over the abyss, he chained them down, with desperate will, to the work he had on...

He was remanded for a week: a week of feverish public excitement and of great suspense for those that loved him. His name was dragged through the mire of the roadways, then held...

When a human being has not slept for five or six nights, especially if that human being is a woman of romantic temperament, many queer things are bound to happen. The sensory ne...

It was the second day of the trial. Irene held her husband’s hand in a nervous grasp. They were sitting together among a crowd of well-dressed men and women, many of them friend...

“He has been in and gone out again, ma’am. He told me to let you have this note when you arrived.” She handed her mistress the brass letter-tray where it was lying. Irene tore o...

She was an austere woman of primitive views, to whom Irene had ever been a puzzle. As the heroine of this amazing scandal, her niece was a dark and inscrutable enigma. Its trans...

“But there can’t be any doubt. The whole thing hangs together. Colman was over head and ears in love with her before our marriage. He has been openly in love with her ever since...

The train drew up slowly beside the platform at Victoria, three-quarters of an hour late. Hugh stood by the half-opened door, in a fume of impatience. He had telegraphed from Pa...

The months passed. The decree nisi was pronounced, in due course made absolute. It was a period for Irene of entire calm and repose. The strong soul braces itself to stand the s...

Her divine and selfless nature had made the offer. He had unequivocally refused it. The incident was therefore closed. Ostrich-wise he hid his head from its consequent influence...

Minna had rushed to London, which she loathed, from Nice, which she adored, and was occupying a suite of apartments in the Hotel Métropole. And the cause of her journey was Hugh...

For a while the sun of his happiness declined and the shadow of his danger rested upon Hugh. But presently it was noontide again, and, after the manner of men, he forgot the dan...

An idle, average sensual man, and an idle woman from whom wantonness emanates like a perfume, cannot meet each other every day for a couple of weeks without finding themselves p...

Why Minna sent the note of acquiescence she herself could not tell. Her caprices were past accounting for. Vanity had its share. The man whom she had regarded as the most contem...

Gerard gave the man who was holding the ponies a five-franc piece, and drove back at a break-neck pace. Minna’s revelation and taunts had set him in a frame of mind bordering on...

Hugh put the boy’s photograph with mechanical precision in its accustomed place, then turned away and threw himself into the nearest chair and rested his head on his hand. Now,...