Mabel's Mistake

All night long the slave woman crouched down in the middle of her bed, with the blankets drawn over her like a tent, and her eyes looking out into the darkness, waiting for the...

General Harrington was alone in his library. His hat and cloak lay in a heap on a sofa near the door, an indication of unwonted perturbation, for with him, a misplaced article w...

"I turned away without answering, only ordering Zillah to have done with such nonsense, and go to her mistress. She walked on a little behind me, with more meekness than was nat...

Lina ran for the crystal flask pointed out, and began to sprinkle Mabel's face, sobbing and moaning all the time. Agnes opened the sash door, that led to a stone balcony full of...

Another knock at the door, a rambling timid knock, as if every knuckle of a great hand lent its own sound to the wood. Mabel was impatient and cried out, "come in, come in."

The carriage which conveyed General Harrington, went at a rapid speed, till it entered the city. The General seemed unconscious of his unusual progress, and was lost in what see...

Harrington was, indeed, surprised when he saw this woman. She was evidently ten years older than she had appeared at a distance, and, though that seemed an impossibility, darker...

General Harrington had no power to comfort the poor creature at his feet. More deeply moved than he had been for years, the strangeness of his own feelings paralyzed his action....

A new chambermaid had been introduced into Gen. Harrington's household, and it was this woman who addressed James Harrington as he sat in the remote chamber which had fallen to...

There are moments in every human life when we would gladly flee from ourselves and plunge into action of any kind, to escape from the recognition of our own memories. This recoi...

Lina had slept sweetly through all this turmoil of the elements and of human passions. Beautifully as a dove she lay in her pretty white bed, with its snowy curtains brooding ov...

While this was going on in that struggling heart a black shadow had crept close to the man, and Agnes Barker stood between him and Mabel, leaving her in the firelight, but shutt...

Ben altered his course with a great effort, and forced a passage to the broken shore. He was too busy in preserving his boat from being dashed upon the rocks, to remark with wha...

Directly after James Harrington left the General's room, the waiting-woman Zillah entered cautiously, and with breathless eagerness. She stood some moments partly behind the Gen...

"The cathedral was magnificent. All its rich properties in velvets, silver and gold, had been brought forth for its adornment. The altar was one blaze of light--tapers of snow-w...

General Harrington spent the entire day at home. After the rather uncomfortable breakfast we have already described, he went to his library, discontented and moody. All day he w...

"The next morning there came a knock at the door; it was my maid. She came to inform me that the General was ready to start, and desired to bid me good-bye.

Ralph Harrington and Lina French had been out upon the river, since the shadow began to fall eastward upon its waters. The day had been so calm, and everything their eyes fell u...

Ben threw down the ash branch and plunged one hand into a pocket in search of his tobacco box. With great deliberation he rolled up a quantity of the weed and deposited it under...

One morning General Harrington came forth from his bed chamber, harassed and anxious. He had slept little during the night, and the weariness of age would make itself felt, afte...

Ralph had been away from home since the day before Mabel was taken ill. He had left suddenly, after a conversation with Agnes in the breakfast-room; and, though the governess sa...

James Harrington left the breakfast-table with a restless desire to be alone in the free air. He had not slept during the night, but spent the silent hours in thought, which fil...

It was autumn, one of those balmy Indian summer days which, if the eyes were closed, would remind you of Andalusia when the orange trees put forth their blossoms with the mature...

While Ben Benson was landing Ralph Harrington and Lina, he lost sight of the boat which had so effectually aroused his interest, and when he was ready to put out again, it was l...

"Miss Eaton was enthusiastic about the scenery of the river, as the boat swept over its amber-hued waves, and the scenery became more and more Arcadian. She was a little romanti...

Ralph took Lina's hand and spoke to her in a sad broken voice, "On one condition, Lina; go home with me now--my mother will receive you joyfully. This miserable absence has not...

Mabel left her boat and followed the path till she reached a natural terrace in the hills, narrow and green, upon which a small, one-story house was snugly bestowed. The terrace...

"Of the remainder of that week, while we were waiting for the General's return, there are no events to record. The time passed quietly enough; Mrs. Harrington, in spite of her p...

"I left off with a half-finished sentence. Mrs. Harrington's maid broke in upon me at the moment with a message from the young master, as she calls him. In a hollow among the hi...

It was an uncomfortable breakfast-table to which the Harringtons sat down that morning. The lady of the house and Lina, its morning-star, were both absent, and the servant, who...

"The Holy Week is over, carriages once more appear in the streets. The world claims its own again. I have been to a bull fight and am even now shivering with disgust of myself....

In less than an hour after Lina French fell so helplessly upon the snow drifted around that old house, the storm swept by, and forcing the leaden clouds aside, came the moon, fo...

"While I was lying in my room, shocked by the day I had spent, Mrs. Eaton came in, sun-burned, excited, and panting for breath. 'Wasn't it a terrible thing! Such an imposition....

"A year to-day since I became a wife, a year into which has been crowded an eternity of sorrow and regret; can I never learn to endure in silence! Did my husband mean to deceive...

"Dreaming!" she said. "No. This is the time for us to act; no, not us--you shall have nothing of this but the advantage. You are my child, his child, and I love you; therefore,...

Zillah drew a deep breath, and raised herself up, like a panther which a ball has grazed. A wild illumination shot over her face, and seizing the General's hands, she kissed the...

Ben Benson was never at home now; he went into the woods daily to snare partridges, and set box-traps for rabbits, he said; and the inmates of General Harrington's mansion were...

"I felt my cheeks tingling with impatience and indignation. What did this eagerness and solicitude mean? Did he forget how unbecoming it was--did he not remember how this strang...

James Harrington and Lina left the same roof within a few hours of each other, without warning or explanation. Was it strange that Mabel should be tortured with wild doubts, or...

Harrington gathered up a quantity of the seared grass, and heaped a dry couch upon which Ben laid his charge within the genial heat that came from the cedar tree. Then they gath...

"Mammy, this is too much. I can endure it no longer. You keep me working in the dark, and every step I take but adds to my own misery. I am baffled, defeated, almost exposed, an...

As General Harrington hurried through his wife's journal, his eyes grew bright and cold, like steel when the sun strikes it; his lips, always so soft and sensual in their expres...

"We had no particular object in touching the coast of Spain but the health of Mrs. Harrington. Strange enough, the shock and tumult of the storm seems to have done her good. She...

"We know each other!" he said, shaking his finger at the younger Harrington, and drawing closer and closer, till it almost touched his face. "You have been the traitor in my hou...

Ralph dared not confide in his brother James, as he had proposed to himself, and the elder Harrington was so occupied with his own conflicting thoughts that the momentary annoya...

As Ralph Harrington was returning from Benson's cabin one night, he met Agnes Barker. It was yet early in the evening, but the sharp, frosty air rendered it singular that a youn...

Mabel saw him depart almost unconsciously. The morning had been one of surprises and painfully conflicting feelings. She felt that a crisis in her life had arrived, that the tim...

"No, girl, I will not startle your nerves and confuse your intellect with a history that, as yet, you could not understand. Do not importune me again; I will not submit to it."

"It is but right," he reflected, controlling the first honorable impulse which revolted at this secret method of gaining information; "there is some mystery which can never be f...

Ralph saw Lina pass, from the breakfast-room window, and his heart smote him. What had she done, poor, dear girl, to warrant his present feelings? What evil spirit possessed him...

General Harrington had spent a good many years of his life abroad, and no American ever went through that slow and too fashionable method of expatriation with more signal effect...

"As I passed the _salon_, the door was open, and I saw the girl, Zillah, standing before James, talking eagerly, and evidently in a fierce state of excitement. Her cheeks were f...

Lina could not rest. She went to her room, but it seemed so changed, so unlike her old home, that a terror, that was almost insanity, fell upon her. The rich blue curtains, to h...

"'I sent for you, dear, because James wanted to go out for a while,' she said. 'Some way I don't just like being left alone--you don't mind sitting with me?'

"There is an American family on board--some persons whom the Harringtons have met before in the South, and who have attempted to renew the acquaintance. The old people seem to m...

"In the morning my head and heart both ached with the strain of thought which had racked them so piteously. I shrank nervously from appearing before any of my tormentors. But th...

"No," said Ralph, earnestly, "do not ask it; I will not give even this evidence of a doubt which I never can feel again. Go yourself, and see her alone. Learn, if possible, by w...

"I went into my room and threw a world of bitter energy into my toilet, angry with myself for not being beautiful enough to win one heart from that pretty face, angry with him t...

"Zillah was really ill, and for her sake we were detained in that little hamlet on the coast for three weeks. Even then she was unable to travel, and General Harrington resolved...

The sound of sleigh-bells stopping suddenly and a sharp knock at his own door, aroused Ben from his mournful prayers. He got up and turned the latch. To his astonishment, it was...

Agnes Barker rushed into the cold night so wrathfully that even the shadow that followed her seemed vital with hate. On they walked together--the girl and this weird shadow--bla...

And Lina wandered off, deep, deep into the woods--her head aching with overcharged thought, her heart lying wounded and cold in her bosom. Hour after hour she toiled on, wild wi...

As General Harrington was dining at his club that day, a note was sent up to him; and, as his meal had reached the last stage of a luxurious dessert, he quietly broke open the e...

Down upon the shore, so built as to form a picturesque feature in the landscape, stood an old boat-house, in which Ben Benson made his home when out of active service at the Man...

Mabel sat, hour after hour, week after week, passive, still, and sad, with a world of sorrow in her face, looking back upon the jewels that had dropped away from her life, mourn...

"Soon after Zillah left me, a servant came to announce that the carriage was ready. I found the whole party assembled in the salon, Zillah waiting outside the door. I never reme...

And now Mabel was left alone, with the cup of bitter trial removed from her lips, and a flood of thankfulness gushing up from her heart. How she loved those two young people! Ho...

Mabel had been very ill; the sense of humiliation, the outrage on every feeling of delicacy that had beset her after the fragments of that vellum book were placed in her hand, f...

An old man sat in a room above the one just deserted by its inmates. He was watching the sunset also, with unusual interest, not because it brought back loving or sad memories,...

"Now the procession commenced. Lines of solemn monks, with their gray gowns fastened at the waist with rope girdles, came out of their monasteries and reverently followed the pa...

About an hour after General Harrington drove up to his stables, with such a clash of bells, and stole from it so noiselessly, there came another sleigh along the high road, the...

General Harrington looked sharply up as James came forward, but did not speak; there was a force and dignity in his aspect that filled even that worldly old man with respect, am...

There was a slight stir in the hall, and Ralph came into Mrs. Harrington's room followed by Lina, both brilliant and smiling, as if the conservatory in which they had loitered a...

"Mrs. Harrington gathered up the cloud-like drapery of her white dress, and glided out of the room. She was certainly a lovely woman, sweet and gentle as a child, with nerve and...

"We come in sight of Seville, the high tower of the Giralda, cutting against the blue of the sky, first won my attention; then a portion of the old city came in view, backed by...

"I answered him pleasantly; he was so elegant and thorough-bred that one was insensibly forced to restrain even pettish thoughts in his presence. But I was abashed all the while...

The woman took from among the folds of her dress, a small writing-case of satin wood, formed like a scroll. Touching a spring, she opened it, took out implements for writing, an...

Agnes went out quietly, as if there had been neither anger nor suspicion in Mrs. Harrington's voice. The poor lady sat trembling from head to foot, still searching the room wild...

The rigid ideas of female propriety which General Harrington enforced in his family, had been greatly outraged that day. This well-regulated home was thrown into disorder by the...

When Lina awoke, she was alone in a chamber that seemed both unfamiliar and unpleasant, though sumptuous objects met her on every side. The atmosphere was stifling, as if some p...

"Alive and on land. In the country, back a little from the coast, we have found a shelter from the shipwreck. That we live at all is owing to the bravery of a seaman who superin...