Miss Arnott's Marriage

The inquest, which was held at the "Rose and Crown," was productive of one or two pieces of what the local papers were perhaps justified in describing as "Startling Evidence." I...

The next day Mr Hugh Morice fulfilled his threat--he paid his ceremonial call at Exham Park. The word "ceremonial" is used advisedly, since nothing could have been more formal a...

Mr Baker had some uncomfortable experiences. When he was brought before the magistrates it was first of all pointed out--as it were, inferentially--that he was not only a danger...

During the days and weeks which followed it was as though she were the chief personage in a strange, continuous dream. Always she expected an awakening--of a kind of which she d...

She was sitting peacefully reading--she was not one of those ladies who indulge in "fancy work," and was always ready to confess that never, under any circumstances, if she coul...

She looked up with a start--to find that a man was observing her who seemed to be unusually tall. She lay in a hollow, he stood on the top of the bank; so that perhaps their rel...

One day a desire seized Miss Arnott to revisit the place where she had first met Mr Morice. She had not been there since. That memorable encounter had spoilt it for her. It had...

As the chairman of the Sessions Court pronounced the words, the prisoner turned right round in the dock, and glanced towards where he knew his wife was standing. He caught her e...

Miss Arnott was restless. She had to entertain her two self-invited guests--Mr Stacey and Mr Gilbert, and she was conscious that while she was entertaining them, each, in his ow...

Mr Stacey was a tall, portly gentleman, quite an accepted type of family lawyer. He was white-headed and inclined to be red-faced. He carried a pair of nose glasses, which were...

At the foot of the broad flight of steps leading up to her own hall door she stopped for the first time. It was late. What was the exact hour she had no notion. She only knew th...

They were silent. To her it seemed that the silence shrieked aloud. He looked at her with an expression on his face which she was destined never to forget--as if he were hard of...

Yet Mr Gilbert hesitated. He took his cigar from between his lips, carefully removed the ash, sipped at his coffee, and all the time kept his glance on Hugh Morice, as if he wer...

Miss Arnott soon realised what Mrs Stacey had meant by insisting on the impossibility of her living a solitary life. So soon as she arrived upon the scene, visitors began to app...

In her right hand Wilson held a knife--the knife. Miss Arnott needed no second glance to convince her of its identity. In her left a dainty feminine garment--a camisole, compact...

Outwardly she was the calmer of the two. She stood upright and motionless; he was restless and fidgety, as if uneasy both in mind and body. She kept her eyes fixed steadily upon...

All that day nothing happened. Miss Arnott went in the morning to church; in the afternoon for a run on her motor, which had been neglected during the whole period of her absenc...

Her first feeling, when she knew herself in truth to be alone, was of thankfulness so intense as almost to amount to pain. He knew! As he himself had said, thank goodness! Her r...

When the travellers returned it was after nine o'clock. So soon as they set foot indoors they were informed that dinner was ready to be served; an announcement which, as they ha...

"My dear Miss Arnott, I think I'm unexpected." He was; so unexpected that, in the first flush of her surprise, the girl was oblivious of his outstretched hands. He went on, igno...

As Miss Arnott went to her visitor she had premonitions that more disagreeables were at hand. No one whom she was desirous of seeing would have uttered such a speech as that whi...

A young gamekeeper was strolling through the forest with his dog. The dog, a puppy, strayed from his side. He did not notice that it had done so till he heard it barking. When h...

It chanced that night that Mr Day, the highly respected butler at Exham Park, paid a visit to a friend. It was rather late when he returned. The friend offered to put him into a...

Mr And Mrs Granger looked at each other. Then the husband dropped down into the chair which he had just vacated with a sound which might be described as a snort; it was perhaps...

Mr William Granger, of the County Police, was just finishing tea in his official residence when there came a rap at the door leading into the street. Mr Granger was not in the b...

After Hugh Morice had left her, Miss Arnott had what was possibly the worst of all her bad half hours. The conviction of his guilt had been so deeply rooted in her mind that it...

She hurried along as rapidly as she could in the darkness which had followed the eclipse of the moon. Momentarily she expected to hear his footsteps coming after her. But, so fa...

Hugh Morice was the first to leave the four crossroads; Miss Arnott stood some time after he had gone, thinking. Life had had for her some queer phases--none queerer than that w...

Miss Arnott was not happy. Money had not brought her anything worth having. In her case, fortune had been synonymous with misfortune. Young, rich "beyond the dreams of avarice,"...

"She actually says that people have seen me walking about the woods in the middle of the night in my nightdress. That a postman, named Briggs, saw me doing so last night. I beli...

"It's not a question of belief but of fact. I'll tell you afterwards what she's been saying. What we want to do is to get at the truth. I fancy we shall do it if you let me have...

Miss Arnott was so astounded at the appearance which Mrs Plummer presented that, in her bewilderment, she was tongue-tied. What, in the absence of tonsorial additions--which the...

Miss Arnott wrote to Mr Ernest Gilbert--the famous lawyer whose name Mr Stacey had given her--asking him to make all necessary arrangements for Jim Baker's defence. She expresse...

"I shall be at the Wycke Cross--at the four crossroads--this afternoon at half-past three, alone. I shall be glad if you will make it convenient to be there also. There is somet...

Miss Arnott displayed somewhat singular unwillingness to break the seals. She watched Mr Adams retreating on his bicycle; not only till the machine itself was out of sight, but...

Hugh Morice had been resorting to that medicine--in whose qualifications to minister to a mind diseased he more than half believed--a ride upon his motor car. Of late he had fou...

She expired that same night without having uttered an intelligible word. In a sense her end could hardly have been called an unfortunate one. It is certain that, had she lived,...

At each repetition Mrs Plummer brought her hands together with quite a smart clap. Miss Arnott looked down at the excited little woman as if she was still divided between two mo...

The charge against Jim Baker was withdrawn at the earliest possible moment. Hugh Morice was released that night from the confinement which he had himself invited. When Mr Nunn a...