Old Mr. Tredgold

It would be absurd to suppose that Mrs. Shanks and Miss Mildmay had not heard the entire story of Stella’s escape and all that led up to it, the foolish venture and the unexpect...

Thus it will be seen that Katherine’s new position as the only daughter of her father was altogether like a new beginning of life, though she had been familiar with the place an...

Stella, however, courageous as she was, was not bold enough to address Sir Charles and his companion as Charlie and Algy when they appeared, not next day, but some days later; f...

Not only Sliplin, but the entire island was in commotion next day. Stella Tredgold had disappeared in the night, in her ball dress, which was the most startling detail, and seiz...

The evening passed in a whirl, such as Katherine, altogether unused to the strange mingled life of family occupations and self-indulgence, could not understand. There was not a...

But whether the result of this awaking would have told for anything in Katherine’s life had it not been for another incident which happened shortly after, it would be impossible...

It proved not at all difficult to find out everything, or almost everything, about the runaway pair. The doctor’s mission, though it seemed likely to be the most important of al...

Lady Jane walked into the room squarely, with her short skirts and her close jacket. She looked as if she were quite ready to walk back the four miles of muddy road between her...

“Bravo, Charlie!” said Lady Jane. “I never knew anything better or quicker done. My congratulations! You have proved yourself a man of sense and business. Now you’ve got to tack...

But Stella neither shuddered nor hesitated. She was in the highest spirits, flying everywhere, scarcely touching the ground with her feet. “Oh, yes! I’m engaged to Sir Charles,”...

A picnic is a very doubtful pleasure to people out of their teens, or at least out of their twenties; and yet it remains a very popular amusement. The grass is often damp, and i...

Everything now began to converge towards the great ball which was to be given in Sliplin to the regiment before it went off to India. It was in its little way something like tha...

The doctor had made himself a very important feature in Katherine’s life during those dull winter days. After the great snowstorm, which was a thing by which events were dated f...

A whole week had still to pass before the arrival of the _Aurungzebe_. After such a revolution and catastrophe as had happened, there is always a feeling in the mind that the st...

When Katherine came into the room again at the call of her father’s solicitor it was with a sense of being unduly disturbed and interfered with at a moment when she had a right...

Katherine was perhaps not in very good condition after Lady Jane’s visit, though that great personage found it, on the whole, satisfactory, and felt that she had settled the fut...

“I only wonder to find you holding up your head at all. Your people must be very silly people, and no mistake. What, to spend a whole night out in the bay with Charlie Somers an...

Lady Jane gave Katherine a great deal of good advice before she allowed her to return home. They talked much of Stella, as was natural, and of the dreadful discovery it was to h...

But though Dr. Burnet had been ’umble about his position at Steephill, and considered himself only as the physician of the servants’ hall, he was not invariably left in that sec...

The village society in Sliplin was not to be despised, especially by a girl who had no pretensions, like Katherine. When a person out of the larger world comes into such a local...

Mr. Tredgold had no relations to speak of, and not very many old friends. Mr. Turny the elder, who was one of Mr. Tredgold’s executors, came down for the funeral, and so did the...

“Kate, Kate, Kate!” cried Stella. All had been quiet between the two rooms connected by that open door. Katherine was fastening the ribbon at her neck before the glass. This mad...

I will not enter in detail into the feelings of the father and sister on this alarming and dreadful night. No tragedy followed, the reader will feel well assured, or this histor...

Katherine had put herself unconsciously in her usual place at the head of the luncheon table before Stella came downstairs. At the other end was Sir Charles with little Job, set...

This made again a delay in Dr. Burnet’s plans. You cannot begin to make love to a girl when you have just told her of the serious illness, not likely to end in anything but deat...

Job answered with a kick from the little boot which had just come in somewhat muddy from a walk--a kick which, as it happened to touch a tender point, elicited from Katherine a...

A river-sea between two widely separated banks, so calm that it was like a sea of oil bulging towards the centre from over-fullness; a big ship upon an even keel, moving along w...

The public of Sliplin gave Lady Jane the _pas_. Though every individual who had the least right of acquaintance with Lady Somers longed to call, to see how she was looking, to s...

The regiment had been six years in India and was ordered home before that lingering and perpetually-recurring malady of Mr. Tredgold’s came to an end. It had come and gone so of...

The company in the house on the cliff was, however, very considerably changed, though the visitors were not much lessened in number. It became, perhaps, more _bourgeois_, certai...

It will perhaps be thought very unfeeling of Katherine to have received as she did this unlooked for elderly lover. All Sliplin, it is true, could have told her for some time pa...

It is very difficult to change every circumstance of your life when a sudden resolution comes upon you all in a moment. To restless people indeed it is a comfort to be up and do...

Mr. Sturgeon had carried off the old will with him from Mr. Tredgold’s bureau, the document drawn up in his own office in its long blue envelope, with all its details rigorously...

When Stella was first able to appear out of the shelter of her father’s grounds for a walk, she was the object of a sort of ovation--as much of an ovation as it is possible to m...

Mr. Sturgeon arrived that evening with all his accounts and papers. He had not come, indeed, when Lady Somers left her sister to entertain James Stanford and joined her husband...

Katherine scarcely heard what Stanford said to her after that astounding speech about his little child. She rose to her feet as if it had touched some sudden spring in her; thou...

Stella had always been the spoilt child of the Tredgold family. Her little selfishnesses and passions of desire to have her own way, and everything she might happen to want, had...

Lady Jane Thurston was a fine lady in due place and time; but on other occasions she was a robust countrywoman, ready to walk as sturdily as any man, or to undertake whatever at...

Perhaps the village society into which Katherine was now thrown was not much more elevating than the Turnys, &c.; but it was different. She had known it all her life, for one th...

It turned out that there was indeed a great deal more to be said. Dr. Burnet came back after the extraordinary revelation of that evening. He left Katherine on the cliff in the...

It was afterwards discovered that Stella had calculated her elopement in a way which justified most perfectly the unwilling applause elicited from her father--that she was a chi...

But though Lady Jane had so fully made up her mind to it, and awaited the result with so much excitement, and though Katherine herself was thrilled with an uneasy consciousness,...

The next morning the new world began frankly, as if it was nothing out of the usual, as if it had already been for years. When Katherine, a little late after her somewhat melanc...

Katherine was restless that afternoon; there was not much to delight her indoors, or any place where she could find refuge and sit down and rest, or read, or write, or occupy he...

Katherine’s life at Sliplin was in no small degree affected by the result of the Rector’s unfortunate visit. How its termination became known nobody could tell. No one ventured...

There was great consternation at Steephill when Somers came back, not indeed so cowed as when he left the Cliff, but still with the aspect more or less of a man who had been bea...

It shut the mouths of all the gossips, or rather it afforded a new but less exciting subject of comment, when it was known that Stella Tredgold had gone off on a visit to Steeph...

They were not exactly of that conventional type which used to be common whenever two sisters had to be described--the one dark and the other fair, the one sunny and amiable, the...