Lady Good-for-Nothing: A Man's Portrait of a Woman

His villa being destroyed, they had carried Sir Oliver out to Belem, to one of the wooden hospitals hastily erected in the royal grounds. There the King's surgeon dressed his wo...

In the end they came to a compromise. That Dame Justice should be hustled in this fashion--taken by the shoulders, so to speak, forced to catch up her robe and skip--offended th...

"Must not!" mimicked Master Dick. "You're getting stupider and stupider, living up here. If you don't look out, one of these days you'll turn into an old maid--just like Miss Qu...

She was not unprepared. She had indeed dressed with special care in the hope of it; but she went to her glass and stood for a minute or two, touching here and there her seemly t...

She did not believe in any scriptural God. But she believed--she could not help believing--in an awful Justice overarching all human life with its law, as it overarched the very...

Behind it--so Sir Oliver had learnt from old Strongtharm--lay an almost flat table-land, of pine-forest for the most part, through which for maybe half a dozen miles their river...

"SIR,--You will in all likelihood have heard before this of the inexpressible Calamity befallen the whole Maritime Coast, and in particular this opulent City, now reduced to a h...

She spent a week in Port Nassau, recognised by none. She walked its streets, her features half hidden by a veil; and among the Port Nassauers she passed for an English lady of q...

The cabin stood close above the fall. It was built of oak logs split in two, with the barked and rounded sides turned outward. Pete Vanders would have found pine logs more tract...

The wooden Jail and the wooden Court-house of Port Nassau faced one another across an unpaved grass-grown square planted with maples. To-day--for the fall of the leaf was at han...

The dinner set before Captain Vyell comprised a dish of oysters, a fish chowder, a curried crab, a fried fowl with white sauce, a saddle of tenderest mutton, and various sweets...

"Have you not finished yet?" Miss Diana closed the door, glanced from one to the other, and laughed with a genial brutality. "Well, it's time I came. Dear mamma, you seem to be...

She awoke at daybreak to the twittering of birds. Raising herself little by little, she bent over him, studying the face of her beloved. He slept on; and after a while she slipp...

Farmer Cordery had six grown sons--Jonathan, George, William, Increase, Homer, and Lemuel--the eldest eight-and-twenty, the youngest sixteen. All were strapping fellows, and eac...

Ruth was happy. To-day, and for a whole week to come, she was determined to be purely happy, blithe as the spring sunshine upon the terrace. For a week she would, like Walton's...

The wine was at Ruth's lip, scarcely wetting it. She lowered the glass steadily and turned half-about in her chair at the moment when, as before a whirlwind, the curtain flew wi...

Viewed from the tall cliffs--along the base of which, on a strip of beach two hundred feet below, it crawled between the American continent and the Atlantic Ocean--Captain Olive...

Though the wind hummed among the chimneys and on the back of the roof, on either side of the lamp over the gateway the maples stood in the lee and waved their boughs gently, she...

Manasseh announced it from the doorway and stood aside. Of the company four had already succumbed and slid from their chairs. The others staggered to their feet, Sir Oliver as p...

Mr. Hanmer had accepted the boy's invitation to pay him a visit ashore and help him to rig a model cutter--a birthday gift from his father; and the pair had spent an afternoon u...

Captain Oliver Vyell, as we have seen, set store upon pedigree: and here, as well in compliment to him as to make our story clearer, we will interrupt it with a brief account of...

This happened on a Thursday. On the following Wednesday, a while before day-break, he met her on horseback by the gate of Sabines, and they rode forth side by side, ahead of the...

Sir Oliver rode back to Boston that same evening. Ruth had stipulated that his promise to her folk in the beach cottage still held good; that when the three years were out, and...

Now, in his twenty-eighth year, Oliver Vyell, handsome of face, standing six feet two inches in his stockings, well built and of iron constitution, might fairly be called a sens...

She had left it all to him, receiving his instructions by letter. It was to be quite private, as he had told Mr. Trask. She would ride down to the village in her customary grey...

"Your Honour's pardon for troubling," she said, and laying a gold coin on the table, drew back with a slight curtsy. "But I think you gave me this by mistake; and now is my only...

The auto-da-fe was but a preliminary to the festivities and great processions of All Saints. For a whole week Lisbon had been sanding its squares and streets, painting its signb...

He called again, next morning. He came on horseback, followed by a groom. The groom led a light chestnut mare, delicate of step us a dancer, and carrying a side-saddle.

Mr. Langton was right. Theologians, preaching mysteries, are helpless before the logical mind until they abandon defence and boldly attack their opponents' capital incapacity, s...

The breakers boomed up the beach, and in the blown spray Old Josselin pottered, bareheaded and barefoot. His eyesight had grown dimmer, but otherwise his bodily health had impro...

For two hours she had searched, and for the time her strength was nearly spent. Dust filled her hair and caked her long eyelashes. Her face, haggard with woe and weariness, was...

. . . . . You ask me, my dear Sir, why I linger on year by year in this land of Cherokees and Choctaws, as you put it, at the same time hinting very delicately that now, with my...

The road--the same by which he had arrived last night--mounted all the way and led across the neck of the headland. His business, however, lay out upon the headland itself and a...

Ruth Josselin came down from the mountain to the stream-side, where, by a hickory bush under a knoll, her mare Madcap stood at tether. Slipping behind the bush--though no living...

The Reverend Nahum Silk, B.A., sometime of St. Alban's Hall, Oxford, had first arrived in America as a missioner seeking a sphere of labour in General Oglethorpe's new colony of...

They left the beach, climbed a road across the neck of the promontory, and rattled downhill into Port Nassau. Dusk had fallen before they reached the head of its cobbled street;...

Sir Oliver wrote cheerfully. His lawsuit was prospering; his prompt invasion of the field had disconcerted Lady Caroline and her advisers. He had discovered fresh evidence of th...

The first bad suggestion almost certainly came from Mr. Silk. Two or three of the company afterwards put their heads together and, comparing recollections, agreed that either Si...

"By the way," said Sir Oliver, "I want you to make occasion to visit Eagles now and again, and pay your respects. I shall write to you as well as to her; and the pair of you can...

Even the beginning of the descent was far from easy, for the high walls that had protected the villa-gardens of Buenos Ayres lay in heaps, cumbering the roadway, and in places o...

Next morning, at ten o'clock, the Collector's coach-and-six stood at the Inn gate, harnessed up and ready for the return journey. In the road-way beyond one of the grooms waited...

Upon the stroke of nine the procession filed forth into the Square. It was headed by about a hundred Dominican friars, bearing the banner of their founder. The banner displayed...

They would dine at four o'clock. On Sundays Sir Oliver chose to dine informally with a few favoured guests; and these to-day would make nine, not counting Mr. Langton, who might...

Ruth stood in the middle of the wretched room, with her hands hanging slack and her eyes bent wearily upon her mother, who had collapsed upon a block of sawn timber, and sat the...

The minutes passed, and still she leaned there. At long intervals, when a sob would not be repressed, her shoulders heaved and fell. But it was characteristic of Ruth Josselin t...

She turned and walked slowly back to the house. Once within the front door and out of his sight, she was tempted to rush across the hall and up the stairs to her own room. She w...

With a slight bow she led the way through a low window that opened upon the Corderys' best parlour, through that apartment, and across a passage to the door of a smaller room li...

Mr. Trask had not concluded the bargain for his winter fodder. Just a week later he rode over from Port Nassau, to clinch it, and had almost reached the foot of the descent to t...

Manasseh had wrapped Master Dicky up warm in a couple of rugs, and spread a third about his feet. In the ample state seat of the coach the child reclined as easily as in a bed....