Love's Shadow

'I went for a bicycle ride yesterday and plucked these flowers for you, hoping you wouldn't mind accepting them. If you have a moment's time to give me, I wonder if you would le...

'I don't know. I must consider. I must think it over.' He paused a minute. 'I am pained. Pained and surprised. A girl like Hyacinth, a friend of yours, behaving like a housemaid...

For the last few days Bruce had been greatly depressed, his temper more variable than ever, and he had managed to collect a quite extraordinary number of entirely new imaginary...

'The little Ottleys,' as they were called (they were a tall, fine-looking couple), found themselves in a small circle of people who were all most pleasing to the eye, with the s...

'So that's why he wouldn't take me to see her! He's been meeting her in secret. My instinct was right, but I didn't think he would do that now. Oh, to think he's been deceiving...

Since Bruce had had the amateur-theatrical trouble, he had forgotten to have any other illness. But he spent many, many half-hours walking up and down in front of the glass rehe...

Like all really uncommon beauties, Hyacinth could only be adequately described by the most hackneyed phrases. Her eyes were authentically sapphire-coloured; brilliant, frank eye...

'Ah, but it isn't that only; but the trend of public taste is so bad--it gets worse and worse. Good heavens, I can't write down to the level of the vulgar public!'

Lady Cannon got up one morning earlier than usual and tried on a dress of last season, which she found was a little too tight. For this, naturally, she blamed her maid with some...

'Certainly not, Bruce,' answered Edith sedately. She was seated opposite her husband at breakfast in a very new, very small, very white flat in Knightsbridge--exactly like thous...

'I have news for you, Cecil,' said his uncle; 'but, first, you really have made up your mind, haven't you, to try your luck with Hyacinth? What a pretty perfumed name it is--jus...

Lady Cannon had never been seen after half-past seven except in evening dress, generally a velvet dress of some dark crimson or bottle-green, so tightly-fitting as to give her a...

It was about six o'clock, and Hyacinth was sitting in her boudoir alone. It was a lovely room and she herself looked lovely, but, for a bride of four months, a little discontent...

Hyacinth had come to see Edith, and was waiting for her in the little drawing-room of the flat. The neat white room with its miniature overmantel, pink walls, and brass fire-iro...

One day Bruce came into the flat much more briskly than usual. There was a certain subdued satisfaction in his air that Edith was glad to see. He sat down, lit a cigarette, and...

Lord Selsey often said he disapproved of the ordinary subdivisions of a house, and, especially as he lived alone, he did not see why one should breakfast in a breakfast-room, di...

'Well, the last time I met him, he came up and asked me if I knew the difference between a sardine and a hedgehog. Of course I said no, thinking it was some riddle, but he only...

'Not very well. You can't think how much jealousy there is in these things! When you rehearse with people day after day you begin to find out what their real characters are. And...

'Don't be so horribly explicit. Don't you think his having to go the other day--because of Lady Cannon--would lead to a sort of crisis? I mean, either he wouldn't come here agai...

It was with considerable difficulty and self-restraint that Cecil succeeded in waiting till the next day to see Mrs Raymond after his uncle's party. He was of an age and of a te...

The mere thought of confiding in Lord Selsey was at once soothing and bracing. He was a widower with no children, and Cecil was by way of being his heir. Since the death of his...

Lady Cannon looked more than ever like a part of her own furniture, being tightly upholstered in velvet and buttons, with a touch of gold round the neck. She was distinctly put...

Lady Cannon sat in her massive, florid clothes, that always seemed part of her massive, florid furniture, and to have the same expression of violent, almost ominous conventional...

'West Kensington. It's off the map. I'm not an explorer--I don't pretend to be.' He paused a moment, then went on, 'And it's not only the frightful distance and the expense of g...

Early that afternoon Hyacinth was sitting in the library in the depths of depression when Sir Charles Cannon was announced. She had forgotten to say she was not at home, or she...

From time to time invitations had been received from the Selseys, all of which Cecil had asked Hyacinth to refuse on various pretexts. As she was convinced that he intended neve...

All women love news of whatever kind; even bad news gives them merely a feeling of pleasurable excitement, unless it is something that affects them or those they love personally.

As Sir Charles was walking back from the Reeves' house, he met Anne Yeo in Piccadilly. She had just taken the telegram from Eugenia. He greeted her warmly and asked her to walk...

'Oh, Bruce,' said Edith, as she looked up from a Sale Catalogue, 'I _do_ wish you would be an angel and let me have a little cash to go to Naylor and Rope's. There are some marv...

'No, thank goodness!' exclaimed Anne. 'I know I'm useful and practical, and I don't mind that; but anyhow, I'm not cheerful, musical, and a perfect lady, in exchange for a comfo...

'Why not? What a question! Because it would be a terrible fatigue for me. I shouldn't be able to stand it. In fact I'm not sure that I ought to see Raggett at all.'

It was Sunday afternoon, and Bruce, lunch still pervading his consciousness, found himself reading over and over again and taking a kind of stupefied interest in the 'Answers to...

By the end of their drive Eugenia had quite come to the conclusion that Cecil was as foolish as ever, and that she would not be alone with him again. At first it had amused her...

'_Such_ a play,' said Bruce. 'A really strong, powerful piece--all wit and cynicism like Bernard Shaw--_but_, full of heart and feeling and sentiment, and that sort of rot. It'l...

which gave to her glance an amusing slyness. It was a very misleading physiognomical effect, for she was really unusually frank. She wore a dull grey dress that was neither arti...

Anne sat, a queer-looking figure, in an unnecessary mackintosh and a golf-cap, on a bench in a large open space in Hyde Park, looking absently at some shabby sheep. She had come...

'Mrs Reeve has had a terrible quarrel with her husband. She would have left him this morning, but that I persuaded her to wait. I came to tell you because I felt sure you would...

'It ought to be. Would you like to know what I've done to it? I've cut the point into a square, and taken four yards out of the skirt; the chiffon off my wedding-dress has been...

Like all weddings it had left the strange feeling of futility, the slight sense of depression that comes to English people who have tried, from their strong sense of tradition,...

The wedding was over. Flowers, favours, fuss and fluster, incense, 'The Voice that breathed o'er Eden,' suppressed nervous excitement, maddening delay, shuffling and whispers, a...

expansiveness, had simply fallen hopelessly in love with him at first sight. It was at that party at the Burlingtons. She realised now that she had practically thought of nothin...

The lady who thus scornfully rejected a proposal was no longer young, and had never been beautiful. In what exactly her attraction consisted was perhaps a mystery to many of tho...