Imprudence

Edward Morgan came in immediate response to his wife's letter. It was highly inconvenient with the press of business at the mills for him to leave; but he spent the night in tra...

More credit is given to heroism which arises from physical courage than is accorded usually to moral bravery. Yet the standard of physical courage, however loudly acclaimed, ran...

With Bobby's return to college, life for Prudence reverted to the old dreary routine of ceaseless exasperating duties and increasingly curtailed liberty. She had a strong suspic...

There was a great deal which she might have said, Steele thought, as he held her sobbing in his arms, and tried to convince her that happiness for both of them lay in following...

Prudence slipped a cloak over her evening dress and softly unlatched her bedroom door and stepped out on to the landing. There was no show of hesitation in her movements now. Sh...

One sorry satisfaction attends on circumstance which admit no prospect of great happiness or pleasurable development, disappointment and disillusion are alike avoided. During fi...

Prudence looked up from her occupation. The sunlight was in her surprised blue eyes, in her hair; it shone on her white dress, and on the pale wilting flowers in her hand. The e...

It detracted somewhat from Prudence's enjoyment when, having lunched delightfully off viands which would have met with less favour eaten off a plate from an ordinary dining-tabl...

Matilda's departure from the family circle made strangely little difference. She had made no particular place for herself in the home which she had occupied for thirty years, ha...

Edward Morgan came into Prudence's life again at a time when the dulness and restriction of her home were peculiarly galling, when her spirit was in fierce revolt against the pe...

The troubles of youth are none the less real because to riper age they appear trivial in the retrospect. In the constant fret against the irksome restrictions of her life Pruden...

Mr Graynor looked not unnaturally amazed. Prudence's wants had never assumed such extravagant proportions before: it puzzled him to understand what she could possibly require to...

"And now," Major Stotford remarked, as he turned in at the gates of Court Heatherleigh and drove slowly along the smooth gravelled path which led to the house, "for explanations...

On the morning that Edward Morgan left Wortheton it was arranged that Prudence should drive with him to the junction and see the train off. It was never clear to Prudence with w...

Prudence poured out the tea while Major Stotford sat with his back to the light, attentively observant of her actions, causing her considerable confusion by the intensity of his...

Having yielded on the most important point. Prudence conceded every other. She no longer seemed to possess any will, or, if the will were there, she had no heart to express her...

Though not serious, Prudence's injuries confined her to the house for some time. It proved an irksome time for the members of her family as well as for herself. She was not pati...

Christmas came and brought with it Edward Morgan's gift to his fiancee, a rope of pearls, so beautiful and costly that Prudence, on taking the shining thing from its bed of velv...

The meeting with Bessie Clapp set Prudence's mind working in new directions. She realised, with an immense pity and a growing wonder for the complexities of human emotions, that...

Mr Edward Morgan arrived on the following afternoon. Prudence watched him from the window disentangling himself from the carriage rugs, and fussing with the muffler which he wor...

It was strange that in this bitter crisis of her life the old home, from which she had longed so impatiently to escape in the days of her impulsive girlhood, should seem to Prud...

The Edward Morgans left the dance early, at whose suggestion Prudence never remembered. She was quite willing to go home. The misery of meeting again Philip Steele after the lap...

He stooped over her, and laid his hands on her shoulders and held her, looking into her upturned face. "I thought myself at first _you_ were a dream," he said--"a vision which t...

The moonlight fell softly on Prudence's bright hair, touching the curls lovingly with a wan brilliance that, paling their shining gold, added a purer sheen to replace the beauty...

Summer was on the wane and autumn was busy early colouring the leaves. Edward Morgan had intended returning to Wortheton before the finish of the warm weather; but many things p...

"I heard you," Miss Matilda said in tones of immense reserve to her youngest sister on the following morning when they met on the landing at the top of the stairs, "talking from...

An intolerable fortnight went by. Prudence bore with the displeasure of the family, which manifested itself in a gloomy reserve in her presence, with such cheerfulness as she co...

Prudence was not allowed to return home that day as she wished to do. Old Mrs Morgan insisted upon writing first to Mr Graynor to prepare him for his daughter's unexpected retur...

Prudence leaned with her arms on the sill of her bedroom window, looking out on the night-shadowed garden and the white line of the road beyond its shrub-hidden walls. This was...

That night Prudence asked Edward Morgan for her release. The dance to which she had looked forward so gladly, and which she had not enjoyed, had galvanised her into a fixed dete...

Bobby made the acquaintance of the curate very soon after that talk. They met for the first time at the vicarage garden party, which, according to an invariable rule, was held o...

"I've been thinking," Bobby remarked one evening to Prudence, when they strolled up the road together in the dusk, "about our talk the other afternoon; and I've come to the conc...

During the days which followed Prudence strove continually to overcome her prejudices and adapt herself to Mrs Morgan's ways. She tried, too, to blind herself to what she now re...

Alone in the spacious bedroom allotted to her, Prudence spent the rest time allowed her before dinner in the indulgence of her favourite occupation, leaning from the window, los...

That was the first hitch in the amicable relations between her and her fiance. Mr Morgan could see no reason why they should not marry immediately. He had less time than she to...

In the big ugly morning-room at Court Heatherleigh six people sat engaged with different degrees of interest on six ugly pieces of coarse material which were being fashioned int...

Mr Jones was spared the necessity of describing the conditions under which he had met Prudence by Prudence's own frank confession immediately on her arrival at the house. She wa...

A bomb falling in their midst could scarcely have caused a greater sensation than was produced by Prudence's request. The effect of her speech and of her action was electrical....

Having announced his intention of accompanying his wife to the dance which Mrs Henry was giving, Edward Morgan, despite a growing disinclination for spending an evening in this...

It was the wisest thing which Edward Morgan could have done to go away and leave what he had it in his mind to say unsaid. Prudence missed him after he left, missed his kindly a...

"Now came still evening on." The fading light, warm and faintly glowing from the last rays of the May sun, lay with a lingering mellowness upon the fields, upon the light green...