Margaret Maliphant

I think I saw the dawn that day on which the ball was to be. Whether I did or not, the morning was still very gray and cold when I crept out of my bed and stole to the wardrobe...

Trayton Harrod did not leave Knellestone. I think we had to thank the squire for that. Father and he being so proud and obstinate, they would never have come to an understanding...

Time dragged heavily on my hands after the excitement of the squire's ball was over. It was not only that I had to go back to the routine of every-day life--for there was still...

The elections were over. They had passed quietly enough, and Mr. Farnham was returned for our division of Sussex, as Squire Broderick had always said he would be. As far as I re...

I lay awake quite half an hour that night, and I made up my mind--just as seriously as though my feelings were likely to prove an important influence--that I would in no way try...

Father led his usual life, and seemed in no way worse than he had been for some time; so that the sick fear within me was lulled for a while to rest, and, realizing the emptines...

Girls such as we were got little time for sentimental brooding, however, and though up-stairs in the little attic where Joyce and I had always slept, I threw myself on the bed a...

There is no season so bad but there are some fine days in it, and there is no time so heavy but it has some happy hours. That stormy summer-time had its happy hours, although I...

Two whole days passed without Mr. Harrod coming to the Grange. I dare say nobody else noticed it; I dare say _I_ should not have noticed it if--if I had not thought that he woul...

The reply to my letter came on the morrow from Frank Forrester. What a day it was! I recollect it well. All the summer had gone in one terrible storm of wind. Alas! Reuben had b...

What more is there to say? If I had written all this ten years ago I should have said that there was nothing more to say, I should have said that my life was ended. But now I am...

I verily believe I had forgotten all about him during the past few days, but that very morning I had remembered that he was most likely at the Priory for that garden-party to wh...

Three weeks had passed since the day when Captain Forrester drove us out from town. Winter was gliding slowly into spring. The winds were still cold and piercing, and the bright...

Thursday was the day for making the butter, and one Thursday in the beginning of June of the year I am recording, I walked along the flag-stones of the court-yard towards the da...

That was what the terror in my sister's voice had meant when she had called down the garden to me through the chill darkness. Her cry had roughly summoned me from the contemplat...

On the day of father's funeral the sun shone and all the summer had come back. Against a pale, fair sky, dashed with softest clouds, golden boughs of elms made delicate metallic...

My sister Joyce is older than I am. At the time of which I am thinking she was twenty-one, and I was barely nineteen. We were the only children of Farmer Maliphant of Knelleston...

The next morning the sun shone, and the world was as gay as ever. Father declared himself well and hearty; complained of no pain and betrayed no weakness, was merry at the break...

Joyce had been gone a week before Mr. Trayton Harrod arrived. I had preserved my gloomy silence on the subject of his coming, although I was dying to know all about it; and as f...

For two days not a word was spoken on the sore subject between father and Mr. Harrod, and on the evening of the second day the squire returned from town.

And now let me pause a while and think. Ten years have passed since the time of which I write. I am a woman, twenty-nine years old--a woman in judgment as well as in years, for...

A fortnight passed. I had seen little or nothing of Mr. Harrod till one afternoon when, with a volume of Walter Scott under my arm, I had taken my basket to get some plovers' eg...

A week or more had passed by since the night when I had drawn the nets. It was the first of September, and my birthday. I was nineteen years old. A hot, fair day; all the cloudi...

From that time forth I gave myself up unreservedly to following the squire's advice. Yes, I did not even shrink from any possible charge of inconsistency. Deborah might laugh at...

Joyce and I sat in the apple orchard one May afternoon. It was not often we sat idle; but Joyce was going away on the morrow on a visit to Sydenham, and we wanted a few minutes'...

The squire came that night to visit us, as Joyce had predicted. We were still sitting round the supper-table when he came in--a gloomy party. How unlike the merry, argumentative...

The time was coming near when Joyce was to come home, and I had done positively nothing in the matter in which I had promised to fight her battle. It is true that she had begged...

As I stood there in the cool, gray dawn, with my wet habit, the dew-drops still standing on the curls of my red hair, my face--I make no doubt--pale with distress, and my gray e...

"I don't think it's at all nice of your father not to let you help us canvass for Mr. Thorne, Margaret Maliphant," said she, tartly. "Father says he can't make it out at all. He...

I had spent the last days in a trance; I seemed to have lost all count with myself, only, as I look back across the years that intervene, I am certain of one thing--I was glad t...

I remember that mother upbraided him for having been so many days absent, and that he made some kind of an excuse for himself; and I remember that I blushed as he made it, and f...

I did not escape Mr. Hoad by my walk. He had stayed to tea. I do not think that he was a favorite of mother's, but she always made a great point of welcoming all father's friend...

Mother very rightly upbraided me for it, and in a way that showed me that she was more than ever determined that Joyce should not marry Captain Forrester if she could help it. S...

Captain Forrester was the hero of the romance that I had fashioned in my head for Joyce. One bright, frosty winter's day I had driven her into town to market. The sky was blue,...

I had jumped down as we ascended the hill, and had walked by the side of the cart. Captain Forrester had turned round now and then to say a word to me, making pleasant general r...

I was dying to hear what had been the subject of the difference between Squire Broderick and father, for that it was somehow related to something more closely allied to our own...

When I came into supper that evening my friend of the fog was standing beside father on the parlor hearth-rug. Directly I saw him, I wondered how I could have been such a fool a...

I went into the sunlight and stood leaning upon the garden-hedge looking out over the glittering plain of snow to the glittering blue of the sea beyond. The whole scene was set...

It was a quarter of an hour before I reached the parlor, for I did mend my frock in spite of my bit of temper. The cloth was laid for dinner--a spotless cloth, for mother was ve...

I got up the next morning just as usual. Nothing should have induced me to confess that there was anything the matter with me, although my arm was so stiff that it was with the...

I do not suppose that I had the dimmest notion at the time that this man, whom I considered my foe, had sprung surely, and as soon as I saw him, into that mysterious blank space...

her, but, what was far more difficult, to mother also. So that when mother put her head in at the kitchen door and summoned me to the parlor, I guessed what it was about, and I...