My Lady Nobody: A Novel

For one moment we look, with clearer eyes than the poor old Dowager’s, across the cruel waste of waters into a very real dreamland, and we see Gerard, Baron van Helmont, after t...

So the old Baron slept in the church-yard under the shadow of the “Devil’s Doll,” which he himself had erected on the grave of his children. Opposite, outside the chancel-wall,...

The day after his wife’s funeral Mynheer Mopius sat in the gilded drawing-room of Villa Blanda. His demeanor was properly, pleasantly chastened, for the cud of the pompous exequ...

That evening some household duty called Ursula into the unused up-stairs corridor, which as a rule she avoided. And as she passed the “Death-rooms” she very nearly came into col...

As ill-luck would have it, Helena wrote to announce her visit for the last evening of Theodore’s stay at the Manor-house. She arrived before dinner, bringing the unwilling Willi...

The rebuilding of the cottages was undertaken without delay, and, chiefly to comply with Mynheer Mopius’s injunction, an entertainment was organized by Ursula in honor of her bi...

“Yes, uncle, I should like to go back to Horstwyk to-day,” Ursula was saying at breakfast. “I have had a letter from father, and Aunt Josine seems far from well.”

Ursula descended from a cab in the full light of the early summer evening, and hurried away into the Van Trossarts’ gloomy hall. Her shoulders blushed as the footman took her wr...

She languidly entangled her fingers in the meshes of her darling’s soft white hair. The lapdog, on her crimson cushion, laid two delicate little slender-wristed paws, that looke...

Next day, the spring weather being mild and clawless, like a couchant cat, Mynheer Mopius arrived at Horstwyk station. He wore a silk neckerchief and new galoshes, for Harriet w...

The next day passed in an atmosphere of sombre expectation. Ursula and Harriet barely spoke to one another; the latter seemed to be holding aloof. Mynheer Mopius took his niece...

“Yes, my dear, yes,” repeated Mevrouw Mopius, closing her faded eyes. Her cheeks were faded, her hair was faded, her flannel dressing-gown was faded. In the fading light, compla...

She stood on the terrace, amid the gloom of the placid, moonless night. The great house gleamed dully white behind her, and the wealth of foliage that embowered it stretched in...

The Christmas party at the Manor-house broke up not over-pleasantly. Everybody seemed to realize the vague clouds that hung over the dark end of the year. Some particulars regar...

Translated, this meant that Mynheer Mopius considered his wife had been taking a liberty. For, although Mynheer Mopius despised wit or humor of any kind, and but rarely condesce...

Ever since Otto’s sudden death the Freule Louisa had felt stirred to practical philanthropy. Something about “redeeming the time” had got wedged in one of her ears. With her own...

In the servant’s face she read disaster. She had not missed any of the menials in the hour of danger, presuming them to be hidden away under bedsteads up-stairs, but she had bee...

The next day dawned for Ursula in unclouded brightness. Those few of us who remember a youth no longer ours will forgive her the excess of an expectancy she was unable to curb b...

“Do take care, Otto,” cried the Baroness, sharply. Her voice was shrill with irritation. “I wish you would sit down. You have trodden on poor Plush’s tail! And there really was...

Ursula sat by herself in the veranda through the sweetly fading silence of the summer Sabbath evening. She had now been back in her tranquil home for more than four-and-twenty h...

“Gird up your loins!” cried the Dominé, striking his only hand into the pulpit-cushion. The peasant congregation, with bodies huddled awry in wondrously diversified angles of dr...

Looking down the straight vista of her shaded past, she could not have discovered, within measurable distance, an event to compare with this departure from home. Hitherto her wo...

For the next three months Otto worked in a sugar-distillery at Boxlo, a little town among the wilds of Brabant. It was rough work, indeed, as the Dominé had foretold. Night afte...

“Your share shall be paid to you,” Otto had said, perusing the carpet-pattern. “Mother and Aunt Louisa will combine to make that possible. I think that is all, Gerard. Good-bye.”

Next morning, so it happened, the Dominé awoke to a moderately disagreeable task. While dressing, he grumbled over the speck in his tranquil sky, as mortals will do when unaware...

“I suppose so,” replied Willie, eating a great hunch of plum-cake; “but you mustn’t ask me, because I don’t understand. However, it’s so idiotic that I dare say it’s law.”

Meanwhile, untouched by the bustle and slush of the market-town, or the still greater turmoil and filth of its more distant metropolis, the little village and wide demesne of Ho...

On the Saturday following the Van Trossarts’ garden-party--two days, therefore, previously to the events just narrated--Gerard van Helmont called in the early morning at the hou...

In the gray loneliness of Ursula’s married life there was, however, very little solitude. The house contained too many various elements for that. And county society, which was p...

“What now?” exclaimed Ursula, still standing where Mopius had left her, by the great unused fireplace. “I cannot even trust Noks, who chatters. Poor father knows nothing about b...

Before the house next morning, in the dull gray dawn, the two antagonists met. It was bitterly cold and misty, with that wet frost, all shadow and shiver, that precedes the late...

“Who is that yellow-frock among the yellow flowers?” asked Otto van Helmont. “But, of course, I can guess,” he added, immediately. “That was the parsonage we just passed. The ‘n...

It was quite true that the days at the Horst were drab-colored. They seemed to be that even all through the long and brilliant summer, and their darkening could hardly be called...

“Debt is theft,” thought Otto. “How can he find it in his heart to laugh with such debts as his?” And the Baron bent once more, with a resolute sigh, over his weary pile of acco...

“How cross he looks!” said the Dominé, benignly, dangling his grandson on one awkward knee. “I believe he disapproves of existence. Do you know, children, it has struck me from...

Baron van Helmont could have dug out no better epithet to apply to himself and his race than the word which rose naturally to the top, “easy-going.” He knew he was “easy-going.”...

That evening every one was to help Ursula in the arrangement of her Christmas entertainment; but, as usual, a couple of willing spirits did the work, and the rest lounged about...

“Supposing I had told my secret?” reflected Hephzibah, peeping through the key-hole. “Supposing I had told my secret? If I hadn’t met that woman at Klomp’s I believe I really sh...

As she emerged into the avenue Ursula noticed a figure in front of her which she immediately recognized. It was walking at a deliberate pace, a valise and an overcoat thrown ove...

“No one can afford to brave his servants’ opinion,” the Freule rejoined, with asperity. “No, not the bravest. Even Cæsar said he was glad to feel sure that all the servants thou...

The two brothers stood face to face by the stables. Otto, running round for Ursula’s carriage, after the brief interview with his parents, had almost knocked up against Gerard....

So Otto and Ursula were married with all the customary paraphernalia of vulgar exposure--paraphernalia which cause a sensible man to resolve, as he runs the gantlet on his way b...

“Ursula,” began the Dominé, with shaking voice. He went back to the door and pressed his hand against it to make sure that it was properly closed. “My dear child, I have Otto va...

Ursula awoke from a long dream of suffering. The world was very dark all around her, and she strove to lie still. But even while she did so she knew by the steady pulse once mor...

Ursula walked back through the darkening fields. She knew herself now to be safe, yet she hung as one trembling in the recoil from the flash across a sudden abyss. _Supposing_ s...

Mynheer Mopius was slowly dying. He amused himself with playing the part and schooling Harriet, little realizing that her willingness to accept the fiction found its source in h...

It was a white-hot July morning. Long ago the impatient earth had cast aside her thin veil of summer twilight; already she lay, a Danae, in exultant swoon beneath the golden sun...

When the Baronial invitation reached Villa Blanda, Uncle Mopius immediately said “No.” He wanted so exceedingly to go that he revolted from himself, and then stuck to his assert...

“Let us go in to breakfast,” said the Dominé. Father and daughter passed up between the stiff stalks of the gooseberry-bushes, among the sallow, swollen fruit. Both of them walk...

XXXIII. INTRIGUE 267 XXXIV. THE NEW LIFE 276 XXXV. “MRS. GERARD” 281 XXXVI. THE DEAD-AWAKE 291 XXXVII. POLITICS 297 XXXVIII. THE OLD BLOT 308 XXXIX. THE COUNSELLOR 316 XL. THE N...

XVII. BROTHERLY HATE 136 XVIII. THE DUTY OF THE PARENT 142 XIX. FORFEITS ALL ROUND 151 XX. MYNHEER MOPIUS’S PARTY 159 XXI. BARON VAN HELMONT 169 XXII. GERARD’S SHARE 174 XXIII....

I. URSULA 1 II. THE DOMINÉ 6 III. HOME 10 IV. THE VAN HELMONTS 18 V. LE PREMIER PAS--QUI COÛTE 25 VI. UNCONSCIOUS RIVALS 34 VII. HARRIET’S ROMANCE 43 VIII. THE TRYST 53 IX. OTTO...