Innocent

The Eastwoods lived in an old house in one of the southwestern suburbs of London. It was one of those houses which, dating only from the prosaic age of Queen Anne, have come to...

Mrs. Eastwood had scarcely uttered these mysterious and affecting words, when a roll of wheels, a resounding knock, a peal at the outer door, announced visitors. “Oh, call Brown...

A bright spring morning, sharp and cold, but with floods of sunshine everywhere--sunshine on the grass, turning the delicate rime into a network of pearls, and glittering along...

This mysterious hint did not dwell upon Ellinor’s mind as it might have done in the mind of a young person less occupied. I am afraid she was of a superficial way of thinking at...

Frederick Eastwood had leave for a fortnight from his office. He was not hardworked, as a rule. Leave was dispensed freely enough, without any very profound investigation into t...

Frederick had left Paris between the lamps and the stars, as I have said, on a chilly night, when the darkness and confusion in his own mind agreed better with the mist and roll...

A long, bare room, the walls painted in distemper, with a running border of leaves and flowers, and the same design running across the rafters overhead; three huge windows, with...

This little scene was odd and somewhat embarrassing to a young Englishman utterly unaccustomed to have his hand kissed; but I think it highly probable that Frederick would have...

When Mrs. Eastwood received, after a long and anxious waiting, Frederick’s letter from Leghorn, telling her of his illness and detention in Paris (“the last place in the world o...

To the reader who is better acquainted with the causes and character of Frederick Eastwood’s detention on his journey than either his mother or her Privy Councillor, the fears e...

All the events of that evening passed like a dream over the mind of Innocent. The warm, curtained, cushioned, luxurious room, with its soft carpets, its soft chairs, its draperi...

I am obliged at this moment to interrupt the history of Innocent’s entrance into English life by the intrusion of another event which occurred quite suddenly, and without adequa...

The commotion produced in The Elms by the above event was very great. It was the first experience of the family in this kind of thing, and it affected everybody, from Mrs. Eastw...

The course of Nelly’s true love did not, however, run so absolutely smooth as might have been supposed from this beginning. Her own family received it, as has been recorded, as...

Innocent, it may well be supposed, had been thrown into the shade by these great events in Nelly’s history, and yet she was, notwithstanding, a most important element in the dis...

Innocent had remained quite unconscious that she was the subject of this conversation. She was still a little in doubt even of the words of a dialogue carried on by others. The...

This companion was Frederick Eastwood. He had dined out, and he had looked in for half an hour at his club, and he was now walking leisurely home with a friend who was going the...

The result of this day’s proceedings was not on the whole satisfactory to Frederick. If, as he, like the maids, felt assured, Innocent’s escapade had been entirely on his own ac...

I do not know if any prevision of the fate which was about to befall him was in Frederick’s mind on that eventful night. He had a few words with his mother, which were not altog...

The story of such sudden passions as this, which had come upon Frederick Eastwood, are common enough and well known. Love is a subject which concerns and interests the whole wor...

While this wild love-fever of Frederick’s had run its course, Nelly’s little drama had also enacted itself, and the interview between Mrs. Eastwood and Mr. Molyneux, Q.C., had t...

Frederick was in so strangely disturbed a state of mind that this evening’s entertainment--as well as all the other incidents of these hurrying days, which seemed years as they...

Frederick’s fever had come to a crisis. The next day was Saturday, and, without waiting his mother’s answer, he went down to Sterborne in the afternoon. He could wait no longer....

Amanda was not so eager as her lover. She held back. To do her justice, though she was glad of the prospect of marrying a gentleman, and doubly glad, for reasons of her own, to...

It is impossible for any story, unless comprised within a very short space, to be written in full detail, and therefore I must beg the gentle reader to pardon me if I pass over...

Innocent walked in unsuspectingly through the great open window in the drawing-room, which looked dusky and dim after the sunshine. The flowers peeped through the glass doors of...

The evening of the day on which the above incidents occurred was that of a periodical banquet, feared and staved off as long as possible by all the Eastwoods. Since the time of...

This evening was an eventful evening at The Elms. When Mrs. Frederick had rested sufficiently and calmed down, she was carried off by her husband with the very briefest and drie...

In consequence of this interview between Mrs. Eastwood and John Vane it was arranged that Innocent should pay Miss Vane a visit at the High Lodge, near Sterborne, where that lad...

in her eyes were the only indications that it affected her at all. Somehow this change in her life associated itself in her ideas with Amanda’s proposal to render her of use--a...

“I must take you to see the Minster, Innocent,” said Miss Vane. “You cannot be in this part of the world without seeing the Minster. You will be quite happy in it, you who are s...

“If we find Amanda in an excitable state, you must not mind it,” he said; “you must not be frightened. Forgive her because she is ill. It is her way----”

The inhabitants of the Villa were well used to the sudden sounds and sudden stillnesses which marked the changes of Amanda’s moods, and on ordinary occasions no one thought of i...

I will not attempt to describe the state of the house out of which Innocent had fled--the dismal excitement of all the attendants, the sudden turning of night into day, the whol...

“I feel for you very deeply,” said Mrs. Eastwood. “It is a terrible calamity. Your child, whom you hoped would close your eyes, whom you never thought to see taken before you----”

That was a day never to be forgotten at The Elms. Innocent had been partially soothed during the long Sunday by the constant presence of her aunt and Nelly, and the careful tend...

After this crisis there came a great lull. Innocent was ill. She lay for some weeks under the power of a mysterious disorder which was sometimes called low fever, and sometimes...

When Mrs. Eastwood came back she found that Innocent had gone to bed with a headache, and Frederick, with an agitated face, sat silent, brooding over the fire by himself. He had...

“Oh, Frederick!” said Mrs. Eastwood, “you take everything for proved; and nothing is proved, not even the very first step. Neither you nor any one at Sterborne had the slightest...

“I have come--because I promised,” said Innocent--“no one knows. You were to help me if I wanted help; I have come--for that. If I ever wanted to go away--to have some one to he...

It was thought best that Innocent should be brought back that evening to The Elms, where Mrs. Barclay accompanied her full of smiles and congratulations. “Since he could not hav...

The marriage of Innocent took place on one of the first days of February, a day of the “seasonable” kind, with black skies, a dark gray atmosphere, and occasional downpours of s...

The ball at Mrs. Barclay’s was brilliant, and the Eastwood family were, as was natural, the most honoured guests. And I suppose that Nelly and her brothers, being young, enjoyed...

Some time after the above events, Frederick’s little house in Mayfair--which had been the only advantage poor Amanda had gained by marrying him, and which had been furnished acc...

Longueville Hall, the principal residence of Sir Alexis Longueville, Bart., is one of the first houses of its class in the south of England. It is not of the first magnitude, bu...

The next morning after this event, Ernest Molyneux, with a newspaper in his hand, jumped out of a hansom at the door of The Elms and rushed into the house. The door was open; a...

Her voice was tranquil as usual; but her eyes were dilated and full of woe, like the eyes of a dumb creature hardly used. The scene had strangely changed for her. Instead of the...

The trial of Lady Longueville for the wilful murder of Amanda Eastwood came on about the 2nd of April, after some unimportant business had been got over. The trial was one which...

Next day the Town Hall was more crowded than ever. The sleep of the town--I might say of the county also--had been uneasy and broken. The place was torn asunder by faction as it...

The jury were not agreed. Though the case lay in a nutshell, the nut was for the moment too hard for them. One or two indignant Battyites held the field against the gentler soul...

“Nelly, where is Molyneux?” asked her brother abruptly. Jenny had just come back from the railway-station, where he had been seeing Innocent off. He was not in a very light-hear...

The Eastwoods spent several weeks at the High Lodge. They saw it at its very best, in all the spring blossoming, when the trees put on their most delicate greenery, and all the...

Sir Alexis took his wife abroad early in the summer. His former intentions of spending the season in town, and producing his beautiful new prize in the world for the envy of all...

Some time after this last calamity a large party was assembled, one bright October morning, in the drawing-room at The Elms. The house was full of flowers,--it was full of commo...