Of High Descent

Madelaine rose as the brothers entered the room, and before coming to the bed, where Van Heldre lay rapidly mending now, George Vine took the girl's hands, looked down in her pa...

Madelaine Van Heldre had seen the object of Uncle Luke's vexation before he called attention to it; and at the first glance her eyes had lit up with pleasure, but only to give p...

Uncle Luke was in very good spirits. He had rid himself of his incubus, as he called the sum of money, and though he would not own it, he always felt better when he had had a li...

Dark days of clouds with gloomy days of rain, such as washes the fertile soil from the tops of the granite hills, leaving all bare and desolate, with nothing to break the savage...

Pradelle was seated in a low chair with his head resting on his hand. He looked up curiously at Harry as the young man hastily closed and locked the door.

"I have no doubt you know what you are about in London, sir," said Leslie quietly, "but this is not a pavement in the Strand, and it is not safe to take the boat closer."

"Where is Harry?" said George Vine that same evening, as he sat in his study, surrounded by his living specimens of natural history, and with the paper before him that he had va...

"Bother him!" muttered Harry, as he took his place at his desk, opened a big account book Crampton placed before him, with some amounts to transfer from one that was smaller, an...

Then came another whistle from far back on the other side of the harbour, and in a shrill voice from between his hands Uncle Luke yelled: "Leslie, another boat, man, for the lov...

There was no reply, and he sat there listening, still with the impression strong upon him that he had heard some one knock at his bedroom door and call him by name.

George Vine, gentleman, as he was set down in the parish books and the West-country directory, lived in a handsome old granite-built residence that he had taken years before, wh...

Vine senior leaned over a shallow glass jar, with a thin splinter of wood in his hand, upon which he had just impaled a small fragment of raw, minced periwinkle, and this he thr...

Trembling, her eyes dilated with horror, Louise Vine stood watching the dimly-seen pleading face for some moments before her lips could form words, and her reason tell her that...

As Duncan Leslie walked up the steep path leading to the old granite house he could not help thinking of the absurdity of his act, and wondering whether Louise Vine and her fath...

The thin, little, sharp-featured, grey-haired man on a rock looked sharply round, saw the big one coming, stooped, picked up a large basket, and, fishing-rod in hand, stepped ba...

How was he to pass that day? At home in a state of agony, starting at every word, trembling at every knock which came to the door? He felt that he could not do that, and that he...

"Oh, yes, you're a very brave fellow, no doubt," said Pradelle. "Everybody says so. Perhaps if I could have handled an oar as well as you did I should have come too. But look he...

"No. I must go home," said Leslie slowly, and in a measured way, as if he were trying to frame his sentences correctly in carrying on the conversation while thinking of somethin...

He looked out to see that in a very short time the total aspect of the sea had changed. The sky had become overcast, and in the dim light the white horses of the Atlantic were d...

"As far as actual work to be done, no; but I will tell you plainly why I took on the young man. I wish to help my old friend in a peculiarly troubled period of his life."

"No, Master Vine, not to-night. Sea brimes. Why, if we cast a net to-night every mash would look as if it was a-fire. Best at home night like this. Going down town?"

"Harry, dear Harry!" said Louise, as they stood together in a shabbily-furnished room in one of the streets off Tottenham Court Road, "I feel at times as if it would drive me ma...

"What have I done? what have I done?" groaned Vine. "I might have forgiven him and let him escape, and then--Louise, Louise, my child, come with me. We must find him and help."

Duncan Leslie was a sturdy, manly young fellow in his way, but he had arrived at a weak period. He thought over his position, and what life would become had he a wife at home he...

The Vines had hardly reached their home when quietly and in a furtive way boat after boat put off down the harbour, from the little punt belonging to some lugger, right up to th...

Louise and Madelaine went on down by the water's edge, in profound ignorance of the fact that they were followed at a distance of about a couple of hundred yards.

The old clerk had on one of his most sour looks when Van Heldre raised his eyes from the ledger he was scanning, and he made no remark; but looking up again he saw the scowl app...

Duncan Leslie sought patiently and well, but he was as unsuccessful as the rest, and after searching from a boat and being pulled close in along the shore, he rose at daybreak o...

The wreck of a ship on the threshold of the home where every occupant is known, is a scene of excitement beyond the reach of pen to adequately describe; and as the two young men...

Naturalists and students of animal life tell us that the hunted deer sheds tears in its agony and fear, and that the hare is ignorant of what is before it, for its eyes are stra...

"Now, now, now," he cried piteously, but with exceeding tenderness, as he laid his hand upon her brow, and pressed her back till her head rested on the pillow. "Your head's gett...

"I could not--I could not. A wife should accept her husband, proud of him, proud of herself, the gift she gives him with her love; and I should have been his disgrace. Impossibl...

Harry Vine had but one thought as he dashed out of his father's house, and that was to escape--far away to some other country where neither he nor his crime was known--to some p...

If ever miserable wretch prayed for the light of returning day that wretch was Harry Vine. It seemed hours of agony, during which the water hissed and surged all round him as if...

"Yes," said Dr Knatchbull, confidently; "he will get over it, now. Can't say," he said, rubbing his hands in his satisfaction, "whether it's the doctor's physic, or the patient'...

Duncan Leslie was standing at a table on which was a photograph of Louise, as she entered the room silently; and as, after a long contemplation of the counterfeit, he drew a lon...

Pradelle had thrust himself forward offensively, and in a threatening manner so near that the old man had only to dart out one hand to seize him by the throat; and quick as ligh...

"Gone, my dear. Left here last night. No," he continued, "we know nothing except what her letter says. She has good reason for what she has done, no doubt, but it is very terrib...

Uncle Luke was seated, in a very shabby-looking grey tweed Norfolk jacket made long, a garment which suited his tastes, from its being an easy comfortable article of attire. He...

"Not I," was the reply; and going out of the dining-room, where he always sat when he had his evening pipe, the merchant went into the study, where by the dim light he saw that...

Breakfast-time, with George Vine quietly partaking of his toast and giving furtive glances at a _Beloe_ in a small squat bottle. He was feeding his mind at the same time that he...

It was a dream from which he was aroused three hours later--a wild dream of a banquet served in barbaric splendour, but whose viands seemed to be snatched from his grasp each ti...

George Vine sat in his easy-chair in front of the fireplace, gazing at the cut paper ornaments and willow shavings, and seeing in them the career of his son, and the dismal scen...

"She shall go. I always knew she was a thief," said Aunt Marguerite, as she stood by her open window, listening to a whispered communication going on. "Wait till Louise can act...

"_Pro tem._, young man. And it is a usurpation of our rights. One lunatic family is enough in a town. We're all off our heads, so you had better keep sane."

The day wore on with the storm now lulling slightly, now increasing in violence till it seemed as if the great rolling banks of green water must end by conquering in their attac...

"No, no, no, Mr Vine--I mean no, no, no, George Vine," sobbed Mrs Van Heldre; "I did, I know, feel bitter and full of hatred against one who could be so base as to raise his han...

He looked at her with so deep a sense of passionate longing in his eyes, that as she met his ardent gaze her eyes sank, and her colour began to heighten.

"Why doesn't Leslie come?" said Uncle Luke impatiently, as he rose from a nearly untasted breakfast the next morning to go to the window of his private room in the hotel and try...

It was a week before the London doctor said that Louise Vine might undertake the journey down home, but when it was talked of she looked up at her father in a troubled way.

She saw Pradelle go out, and she smiled and beamed as he turned to look up at her window, and raised his hat before proceeding down into the back lanes of the port to inveigle a...

It was a brisk quarter of an hour's walk to the Van Heldres', which lay at the end of the main street up the valley down which the little river ran; and on entering the door, wi...

"Louise! Where is Louise?" The step on the stairs sounded like that of a younger man; and as the door was tried, Harry had reached the window, from whence he was about to climb,...

Louise Vine stood trembling in her own room, listening till she heard the door close, and Duncan Leslie's step on the gravel. Her agitation was terrible, and in place of being c...

He had a glass globe on the table, and from time to time he went on feeding with scraps of mussel the beautiful specimens of actiniae attached to a fragment of rock.

Since he had been sufficiently recovered she had taken her father's task, and read the chapter and prayers night and morning in his bedroom--a little later on this night, for Ge...

Seeing more and more that if an alteration was to be made in their present position, the change must come from her urging, Louise attacked her brother soon after breakfast the n...

As they stood together at the lower end of the rocky point listening and waiting, it seemed to Louise Vine as if she were about to be an actor in some terrible scene.

Late dinner was nearly over--at least late according to the ideas of the West-country family, who sat down now directly Harry returned from his office work. Aunt Marguerite, aft...

After, as it were, a race for life, the breathless competitors seemed to welcome the restful change, and the sleep that came almost unalloyed by the mental pangs which had left...

"Let's hear first what you propose," shouted the old man, so as to make his voice heard above the rattle of the cab-windows--four-wheelers Jehu's enemies, which lose him many a...

"Why do you not speak?" cried Madelaine. "Can you not see how your silence troubles me? Mr Leslie, what is the matter? You were found hurt--and Louise--gone! What does it mean?"

The silence as if of death reigned for days and days at Van Heldre's house, which, unasked, old Crampton had made his residence. In a quiet furtive way he had taken possession o...

As Harry Vine left his father's house, and hurried down the slope, he gazed wildly out to sea. There were no thoughts of old Huguenot estates, or ancient titles, but France lay...

Harry Vine checked his headlong pace as soon as he was out of the lane, and walked swiftly along by the harbour till he reached the sea. Here, in the shelter of a rock, he stoop...

He had been down to Hakemouth, and by careful inquiry had tracked the missing pair to Plymouth, where he had missed them. But, after the fashion of a huntsman, he made long cast...

"And come upon him like a curse," said Harry, as there was a tap at the door, which neither heard in the excitement of the moment, for, eager to help him, and trembling lest he...

"I will say no more," he said tenderly. "Yes, to be my help and comfort in all this trouble and distress. You are right, it is no time for thinking of such things as that."