Lady Barbarity: A Romance

TO deny that I am an absurdly handsome being would be an affectation. Besides, if I did deny it, my face and shape are always present to reprove me. Some women I know--we call e...

WE continued to talk with aimless propriety, until the Captain fetched suddenly so huge a sigh out of the recesses of his waistcoat that it called for an heroic repression of my...

I SAW at once that the moon was come, but for my enterprise’s sake I wished it absent. Here she was, however, framed in cloud, with a star or two about her, and a very tell-tale...

They had now halted, and stood confronting one another very close in the dewy grass of the open meadow, while the moon wrapped them in her creepy light. For, perhaps, while one...

I WAS very mystified by the manner of my papa. When I tripped into his presence, I was met with that wonderful sweet politeness that was so much in the marrow of the man that at...

IF the prisoner were retaken in a week, the Earl, my papa, would have a pardon! This was indeed a grim fiat to take to bed and sleep upon. What was this rebel to me that I shoul...

I HAD soon breasted through the trees to the side of a dark runnel that darted through the glade. Arrived there I felt that my enemies were nonplussed, as I had come by a deviou...

AT ten o’clock the soldiers came and reported themselves to their commander. One of them, presumably the officer in charge, was closeted with the Captain in the library for no l...

“Tread upon your toes, sir,” lifting up my skirts a little to show him how; “neater and lighter, my lad. Do not put your foot upon the carpet like a hundred weight of coals. Tip...

IT was our custom at Cleeby to sit down to the evening meal at seven o’clock. We held supper a function in our country day. Then it was that the Earl, my heroical papa, gout or...

I SUPPOSE something must have altered in my face in my effort to conceal the strange emotion that I suffered. For a soft look crept in his eye, and he said in that rich voice th...

IT was a late hour when the lady apparently exposed her soul. She had not one to expose, it is true, but the Captain was deluded into thinking that she had, and persuasion is mo...

THE morrow was full of anxiety and incident. There was a skirmish with my aunt--a diversion to be sure, but one of peril. There was also my distrust. I was compelled to keep an...

ON the fateful morrow the frost still held, and gave no sign of yielding. The Doctor rode over towards noon to attend the Captain’s leg. When he left the library I took his prof...

I AM now come to some grave adventures. Even at the remote hour at which I here retail them, I hardly know whether to shudder or to smile, so whimsical they were, yet so fraught...

“Now what’s the fellow mean by this?” I whispered to the lad. “Is it to give you one more chance while his back is turned, out of pure compassion, or is he fool enough to trust...

CONCLUDING our compact in the quickest fashion, I went back to the prisoner with the news. I chose to tell him simply that he was a free man, and at liberty to go. No more; a ve...

I COULD see them clearly. They were now some distance to the left, apparently in the middle of the first home meadow. Thither I bent my course across wet turf in the piercing ni...

OF our cruel parting I shall speak little. During the forenoon the soldiers buried their commander in the rude military way. Few were the honours that attended him, and perhaps...

ON arriving at our town residence in Bloomsbury it was easy to ascertain that the family of Long Acre had fallen on an evil time. The troops of friends that formerly were so wil...

“Remarkably,” says I, determined to practise for the terrible exhibition of fortitude that I must display. “If all those dear friends of mine have slept as properly, they will n...