Lady William

‘Oh, mother, a great deal,’ said Mab eagerly; ‘don’t discourage him: a little money is such a help. I know people who could be made so happy with just a little. There are the ol...

‘Was she, indeed?’ he said, with a sort of polite attention, but surprised. Perhaps it is curious at any time for a man to realise that his mother may have been beautiful and ad...

‘No, that is just what I think. She is quite satisfied as she is: to go out with her Pakenham cousins, probably to their annoyance and against their will, and to be taken to pla...

‘I hate Mrs. Swinford,’ said Mab; but she walked soberly the rest of the way. Mrs. Swinford was in the same room and chair as she had occupied on the previous night: with flower...

Jim strolled down into the village when the boat came to shore. It was before the hour at which he had concluded he would go home, which, as was natural, was considerably later...

Mab, in short, enjoyed herself so much, and was so frankly delighted with the progress of events, that the questions that were poured upon her by all the old ladies became super...

This was not poor Florry’s natural tone, and the sharpness of it went to one heart at least--that of Miss Grey, who discovered what it meant: and startled the rest, who did not...

‘No, I am afraid not. It is not that I dislike it, however. It is great fun. You should see little Mab Pakenham, who has conceived some doubts of me from what I have told her--s...

‘Well,’ said Mrs. Plowden, ‘they were really more nice to Emmy, though she is only my daughter, than they were to your sister Emily, James. I did not think that Emily was receiv...

‘The Swinfords come back,’ Lady William said to herself, as she sat on the little sofa in the twilight by the light of the little fire. She had been very silent after the Plowde...

‘She has a pitch of voice occasionally which is not at all admirable,’ said Lady William, turning round. Mab, as may be supposed, turned a bright scarlet up to her hat, her very...

‘Oh,’ said Lord Will--‘but I am not surprised,’ he added--‘not even that my cousin should show so much sense: for when she has had the advantage of being trained by such a mothe...

‘Miss Plowden,’ he said, as if a sudden gulf had come between them over which his voice sounded far away, ‘I will not even ask what you mean. I should feel myself a most presump...

Mrs. Brown was not a woman who was easily disconcerted; she could have borne the assault of all the ladies of the parish and given them as good, nay, much more than they could h...

‘Is it necessary to ask? Might he not come to see me, or Leo, whom he knows? But no, no, Artémise, I will not deceive you. He has come to find out about that woman--her rights t...

This, of course, was by no means all that was said as the schoolgirls chattered and the women compared notes. A number of them had perceived as something was up. Some had seen f...

Jim walked on very soberly for a few minutes, thinking of tragic scenes he had seen. Even though he was so young, Heaven help him, he had seen tragic scenes. He had beheld with...

‘What a wonderful thing to do, to shake the dust from her feet, as the Bible says. But we never did anything unkind. I should have laid myself out to be friendly if she would ha...

The entire company pricked up its ears. Mrs. Plowden stopped short, much discomfited, in her explanation of what was the Rector’s opinion, in which Mrs. Swinford had interrupted...

‘A first impression--upon whom?’ said Mab, with all the severity of her age. Seventeen, being as yet scarcely in it, is a severe critic of the ages over twenty which are in poss...

But the conclusion was that the two ladies did go out, and went to the river-side, where Lady William sat down on a bench by the landing-place, while Mab made certain investigat...

It is curious that Mab, an inexperienced little girl, should have known better in this respect than her mother, who was so much more acquainted with the world. She went on with...

The dining-room at the Hall was gloomy but grand. The walls dark, save where they were relieved by scrolls of gilding and ornamental panels, in which were set some full-length p...

‘Well--that perhaps they had no real right. I don’t mean that it would be their fault. She might have been taken in, and never known. I’ve always heard he was a horrible old sca...

‘We are old friends,’ said Leo; but I did not think--in short, it is years since we saw each other. He has come on purpose to make your acquaintance, and his cousin’s.’

‘Florry, darling,’ he said, pressing her arm to his side, ‘it is very funny--but when you are a clergyman’s wife, you know----’ Poor Florry had not had the heart to mimic anybod...

‘I have been to Mrs. Brown. They wanted her to act something. She is a very funny woman. She was at her lunch, or dinner, or whatever she calls it. She gave me an apple, which s...

I will not, I repeat, attempt to follow all that happened from that first impression to the moment when he had made up his mind that without the companionship of Florence life w...

‘We did not venture to send an invitation to the Hall,’ said the General, with an uneasy laugh. ‘We scarcely ventured to hope--though I am happy to say that Mr. Swinford is comi...

Mr. Osborne looked at his visitor for a moment, with as deep a colour as that which Jim had shown when he was being questioned--as much heat of embarrassment, and an air of offe...

It was Leo who led the way, but the Rector was quite uninterested in Leo. His eyes followed to the other young man behind, who came in with something like diffidence, though tha...

It was General FitzStephen’s drawing-room in which this conversation was taking place, in the March afternoon, when evening was falling. It had been cold and boisterous all day,...

As it happened, however, there were several people much occupied about Mrs. Brown on the morning after that wonderful chase with all its consequences. Mab, under one pretext or...

The Rector, as had been perceived, had gone towards the cottage when he went out with care upon his brow. He had not, after all, as the reader will understand, proclaimed the wo...

‘I am sure,’ cried Mab, ‘I never meant to make you angry, and mother is not one to interfere. She only said it to me. But since you’re so full of this, Florry, I think I had bet...

‘I ‘umbly beg your pardon, sir,’ said Morris; and here the conversation stayed. Leo felt that he had done as much as in the meantime it was possible to do. His own faculties alo...

‘Well?’ he said, as he drew a chair opposite to her, and sat down on the other side of the table at which she sat at her work. He bent forward across this little table, fixing u...

‘Yes, my mother is with me. But, so far as that goes, Mrs. Plowden, Paris, where we have chiefly lived, is no great improvement, that I know, upon England. It’s very cold, and n...

The village of Watcham is not a village in the ordinary sense of the word, and yet it is a very pretty place, with a charming picturesque aspect, and of which people say, ‘What...