On the wings of fate

Fractiousness was the keynote of the mental atmosphere in a certain substantial-looking South Kensington house on a certain Monday morning. Not that this bad-tempered atmosphere...

“I am Polly—I mean Mary—Pennington,” the girl drew herself up to her full height, “and may I ask who you are?” she queried, in her own peculiarly frank manner.

A prettier country could hardly be imagined than that to which Grace Ambleton and her brother were being swiftly conveyed, after a lengthy absence abroad. They occupied, as a re...

It might truly be said to have been Polly’s first experience of sadness, for hitherto life had run along smoothly and merrily enough. But with that curious, painful scene in whi...

Polly had no time to devote to self-adornment on this occasion. She had given her attention to her mother instead, and it had warmed her heart with pleasure to see how the news...

Christmas with the Ambletons was usually made the time for a small but cheery family gathering, and for this particular Christmas following her sojourn abroad Grace had planned...

In her sealskin coat and cap she looked strikingly handsome, but more than one of the people who knew her well had remarked a difference in the girl’s usually bright, happy expr...

Firstly, this interview had been more satisfactory than she had anticipated, and the report she had to carry to her mother would be cheering in a sense, and then, for some pecul...

“We can, of course, find a small house somewhere, but by the time we have moved and the rent and the rates and taxes paid, you see if we are not more out of pocket than if we re...

He made absolutely no reference to the dismissal from the Dower House. He wrote tersely, and put Grace’s wish into as few words as possible, and he directed the letter, as usual...

She was deeply attached to her brother; in truth, despite her girlish infatuation for Christina’s beauty, Polly had always had more sympathy with the bright, mischievous boy, wh...

“After all, if Sacha does not see the matter with our eyes all the speaking in the world will not alter things,” he said to himself. “It is, of course, his own business to go wh...

Harold Pennington passed rapidly from one alarming stage of illness to another. He was in a high fever when Polly arrived to crouch down by his bedside, and when the doctor came...

Sacha, of course, had his own theory in connection with this graciousness. Few women had aught but smiles for him, and Christina, though beautiful, was, after all, only an ordin...

Christina found herself opening the envelope brought to her in her own room an hour or so later, with a new sensation stirring in her veins—that of an excitement that was strong...

The house did, indeed, seem chilly and gloomy after his own bright home. There was so much that was old and shabby in it. It seemed to him a grave of hopes and joys, the last sp...

“She looks as yellow as a guinea,” was Winnie’s observation to herself. “In another year or so Polly will be absolutely plain. And what a nasty temper she has! Of course, she is...

She had never pretended any regret or sympathy for her husband’s grandmother, therefore she did not pose as a mourner when the end came, and she had a sneer for Sir Mark when he...

While she was spending her days in fretting over her fate, and chafing sorely at the failure of her scheme to force the man she called her enemy to become her friend, destiny—a...

“I confess I do not understand you, Polly,” she was saying, and her tone was fretful in the extreme. “No one has been more severe than you have been on the faults of others. Whe...

No, Polly knew nothing of what was true. It was not given to her to read into Valentine’s heart and see what was written there, and her own heart grew cold as she remembered how...

He wished vaguely he could know where she was, he had a distinct dislike to feeling that she had passed out of his radius, as it were. And then he wished vaguely that he could f...

When luncheon had come and gone she donned her rough, old-fashioned ulster, buttoned on her stout pair of boots, and pinned her sailor hat securely on her dark curls, then off s...

She sat expecting Valentine all the afternoon, and as dinner drew near and he had not come, she got cross as well as bored, and she fell back upon Polly as a vent for her ill te...