Lucinda

HIS “Business Ambassador” was the title which my old chief, Ezekiel Coldston, used to give me. I daresay that it served as well as any other to describe with a pleasant mixture...

BY now it was past the half-hour; the arrivals dwindled to a few late stragglers, who were promptly turned away by the beadle; the crowd of onlookers dispersed with smiles, shru...

I HAVE said so much about Waldo’s “rages” that I may have given quite a wrong impression of him. The “rages” were abnormal, rare and (if one may not use the word unnatural about...

AS Sir Paget had suggested, we—we three Rillington men and Aunt Bertha—spent the Twelve Days, the ever-famous Twelve Days before the war, at Cragsfoot. On the public side of tha...

I DO not want to say more about the war or my doings during it than is strictly necessary to my purpose. The great man to whom I have referred took a note of my qualifications....

THE instructions for which I was waiting did not reach me for three days: I found reason to suspect, later on, that bribery had been at work; they had almost certainly been dela...

LUCINDA told me nothing about how “the end of Venice” struck or affected Mrs. Knyvett. Some bewilderment of that good lady may be conjectured; whether she wisely asked no questi...

ON the way home I made Waldo promise not to tell about our engagement till I agreed. He did promise, but I think he must have given a pretty strong hint at home. There was such...

IT was in May, 1916, that Waldo got a severe wound in the right shoulder, which put him out of action for the rest of the war and sent him, after two or three months in a hospit...

“YES,” said my uncle, as he warmed himself before the library fire, “a young man of very considerable ability, I think. One might trust old Jonathan Frost to make no mistake abo...

THE family history during the rest of the war—up to the Armistice, that is—will go into a brief summary. Waldo was discharged from the army, as permanently unfit for service, ea...

I STAYED longer at Cragsfoot than I had intended. The old folk there seemed rather lonely and moody; and, if the truth must be told, not quite so fully in harmony with one anoth...

ARSENIO VALDEZ was in the highest of spirits that evening—the effect of the registered letter, no doubt! His fun and gayety brought back, or even bettered, the boy that he had b...

I AWOKE the next morning with my head full of Lucinda; the thought of her haunted me. My desire to see her, to know how she fared, had been constant since I came to Mentone; it...

I WAS in Paris for full four weeks, representing Sir Ezekiel (who was laid up with asthma) on the International Commercial Conference on the Regulation and Augmentation of the W...

THAT Lucinda had once got the better of Nina had been the thing about her which most stirred Godfrey’s curiosity; that Lucinda now laughed at Nina evidently aroused in him an al...

THERE was the situation; for Godfrey was quick enough to see what had happened as soon as he had read Arsenio’s letter; he finished it, which was more than I had done, and so fo...

THEN came the astonishing turn of fortune’s wheel—that is almost fact, scarcely metaphor—which seemed to transform the whole situation. It came to my knowledge on the very day o...

SUCH, then, was Lucinda’s state of mind with regard to the matter. Her encounter with Nina at Cimiez had opened her eyes; after that, no evasions or lies from Arsenio could avai...

THE “housewarming” so adroitly suggested by Arsenio duly took place; it was followed by other meetings of the same kind. Louis had evidently received his instructions; every eve...

WHEN I awoke the next morning, it was with the memory of one of the queerest hours that I had ever spent in my life. After I had drunk my coffee, I lay late in bed, reviewing it...

WALDO’S was a business letter; any feelings that might be influencing the proposed transaction, any sentiment that might be involved—whether of Nina’s, of his own, of his father...

SINCE I was not to play host that evening, I decided to let Arsenio be first on the gaudy scene which he had prepared. He should receive the other guests; he should take undivid...

ARSENIO opened the door of the apartment with his latchkey and stood aside to let me pass in first. The door of his sitting room, the long, narrow room which I have described be...

LUCINDA’S mental idiosyncrasy resisted any attempt at idealization; for all that she had accused me of making the attempt. Though she would not persist in cruelty, and would rem...

It was late summer. I had arrived that day to pay him a visit and, incidentally, to complete the transaction by which Waldo was to convey to me the reversion to Cragsfoot. My un...

Sir Paget had received her with affectionate, but perhaps somewhat ceremonious, courtesy; there was a touch of ratifying a treaty of peace in his manner. She was minded to come...