Luke's wife

Rachel's voice trembled a little when she began to sing, as a sense of mystery and wonder enveloped her. The dark sea beyond them; the earnest face of her husband lit up by the...

Rachel leant back in the railway carriage and watched the fields and hedges rapidly passing. But her thoughts were far away. She was going home, but not to the old familiar plac...

Mrs. Greville blinked as she opened the drawing-room door and faced the bright light. Her economical soul saw at a glance that all three lights were lighted, but she refrained f...

Rachel stood looking down at the sirloin of beef she had ordered from the butcher and which now lay on the kitchen table. She was rather dismayed at the size of it and wondered...

Luke was beginning to feel acutely the great necessity of a study. When his mother had lived with him she had left the dining-room entirely for his use in the mornings, and had...

The Bishop was in his garden, surrounded by the Clergy of his diocese and their wives. He was a grey-haired man, upright and spare of build. His face was full of kindness and lo...

After the sudden suspicion that he had been unconsciously giving way to selfishness in not encouraging Rachel to work, he made up his mind that he must talk the matter over.

"I expect that Gwen has been in one of her naughty moods," said Rachel, as she passed the letter she had received from her mother to Luke when they were at breakfast. "I was the...

Rachel was not very sorry to remember that Gwen would be leaving in a few days. She might do a great deal of mischief if she stayed longer with them. Anyhow she would probably m...

It had not taken Rachel long to discover that she had married an untidy man. Being very tidy and dainty in her ways herself, this discovery was rather a shock to her. But she ca...

"I ran home after Church just now and I heard father telling mother that they had all made up their minds to keep away as the Vicar had taken no notice of their letters."

"It will be a wonder if she hasn't. It simply poured with rain all the time. I knew it was useless to try and stop her as she was bent on getting up this choir. What a charming...

That Spring was a crisis in Rachel's life. She felt to have travelled far along the road of experience since that moonlight night last summer, when she had thought that she had...

Rachel took out her pearls from the jewel box and looked at them. They were certainly very beautiful. She had not worn them since her wedding day; and she did not see any chance...

"That she had been too ill for the last half year to come to the services but she was proud to say she had not missed a single Whist Drive."

The four members who had left the Church Council when the vote went against Whist Drives for Church purposes, did not leave the Church. They valued their Vicar too much to do so...

"Next year," said Rachel one day, as she and Luke were on their way to Church, "next year we may not be able to afford a holiday. So I am resolved that we shall have a good one...

"I am not silly; I am only thinking of what Rachel is doing in that horrible Trowsby. No girl could do all that she is doing and not pay for it. There is Luke in the first place...

Mrs. Greville had been as good as a curate to Luke; and she was now laid aside unable to do any work at all. She lay thinking and worrying over the fact that she was no longer a...

Mrs. Greville's illness not only gave Rachel more work to do in the parish, but took up a certain amount of her time in visiting her and seeing that she was well looked after. A...

Rachel did not hurry to see a doctor, but having promised to do so she knew she must keep her word, so the second day after the Bishop's visit, knowing that Luke would be away a...

He found her crouching over the fire in the big horsehair chair, the only armchair in the room. He was surprised that she did not look round at the sound of his footsteps and gi...

Luke paced up and down the lawn of his pretty Rectory. The moon was shedding its silver light on grass and trees; the flowers were flinging their perfume around him; a nightinga...

"We must have a Baby Show before the summer is over," said Mrs. Greville, as she sat in the garden by Rachel's side darning stockings, "and next year a Flower Show. The village...

"But then what is he doing all day? He is young and strong and ought to be at work," said Mrs. Greville, standing in front of Rachel as if she was in some way to blame. Her face...

Rachel noticed a marked difference in her mother-in-law's behaviour to her after finding her talking with Luke in his study. She was perplexed as to its cause and it worried her...

Gwen came to stay at the Rectory. She was much impressed with two things. First she was terribly upset at the look of Rachel. She had had no idea that she had grown so thin and...

She was feeling frightened and unstrung and as if she had lost Rachel. Since that fearful moment when the floor of the cottage gave way and Luke was buried in its ruins, her sis...