Poor Miss Finch

More than one charming blind girl, in fiction and in the drama, has preceded "Poor Miss Finch." But, so far as I know, blindness in these cases has been always exhibited, more o...

I remarked one born gentleman among the inhabitants, and he was a sheep-dog. He alone did the honors of the place. He had a stump of a tail, which he wagged at me with extreme d...

He was plainly on the point of inquiring next, whether Lucilla had been at Exeter--when he checked himself. In the breathless interest which she felt in what was going on, she h...

The will avowed the object of this last condition in the plainest words. "I die as I have lived" (wrote uncle Batchford), "a High Churchman and a Tory. My legacy to my niece sha...

The two passed each other on the road in opposite directions. After a certain lapse of time--estimated as being half an hour--the farm-bailiff had occasion to pass back along th...

THERE walked in, at the open door of the room--softly, suddenly, and composedly--a chubby female child, who could not possibly have been more than three years old. She had no ha...

"Eight pounds of soap? Where does it all go to I wonder!" groaned Mrs. Finch to the accompaniment of the baby's screams. "Five pounds of soda for the laundry? One would think we...

We were not startled by any second appearance of the two ruffians at Browndown--neither was any change made by Oscar in his domestic establishment. He was favored with more than...

He found himself lying, giddy and bleeding, on the floor; and he saw the child (who must have strayed into the room while he was senseless) standing petrified with fear, looking...

"Let me be!" she broke out impatiently. "Leave me by myself!" She rose, repenting the words the moment they were uttered--she put her arm round my neck, and kissed me. "I didn't...

"It must be a secret from Lucilla," he said, speaking very earnestly. "If she attempts to find it out, she must be kept--for the present, at least--from all knowledge of it. Nob...

But distance has a very strange effect in altering one's customary way of thinking of affairs at home. Being in Italy instead of in England, I dismissed Lucilla's antipathies an...

Oscar walked off with his prisoner to the house. Jicks trotted along by his side, unconscious of the mischief she had done, singing another verse of the nursery song. I rejoined...

Oscar said no more. Once, twice, three times, Lucilla's hand passed slowly over Nugent's face. He submitted to it, silently, gravely, immovably--a perfect contrast to the talkat...

"I agree with you--though I _am_ the most opinionated man living. The chances now seem to me to be all in Oscar's favor, Lucilla's antipathy is not what I feared it was--an anti...

"He has no idea how it happened. He owns--when he found himself face to face with her--that his presence of mind completely failed him: he didn't himself know what he was saying...

I stopped short; looking at him in silent surprise. He smiled, and held out the open letter to me. Before we could speak, we heard the door of the room closed. Oscar had followe...

When I look back at that eventful morning, I recall a scene of confusion and suspense, the bare recollection of which seems to upset my mind again, even at this distance of time...

"My reasons are based on surgical considerations which it requires a professional training to understand," Mr. Sebright replied. "I can only tell you that I am convinced--after...

You may consider me a heartless woman if you will. I remained entirely unmoved even by this. Lucilla's interests and my interests, you will observe, were now one. I had resolved...

Thinking afterwards of the new side of her mind which Lucilla had shown to me, I derived one consolation from what had passed at the breakfast-table. If Mr. Sebright proved to b...

The days of Lucilla's imprisonment, were also the days when my favorite disappointed me, for the first time. He and his brother seemed to change places. It was Nugent now who ap...

Not the slightest sign in my face of any sort of suspicion of him rewarded the close and continued scrutiny with which he regarded me. I saw in his perplexed expression, the cer...

No tears! no flaming-up of the quick temper that I knew so well! Nothing in his face, nothing in his voice, nothing in his manner, but a composure miserable to see--the composur...

I laid down the letter for a moment. It cut me with such keen regret; it fired me with such hot rage--that I was within a hairsbreadth of tearing the rest of it up unread, and t...

I returned to my place. He took his own chair on the other side of the table, and covered his face with his hands. We waited awhile in silence. I looked at him, once or twice, a...

It was said by a fool: it would never have been said at all, if he had not written his wonderful letter. Still, it echoed, with a painful fidelity, the misgiving secretly presen...

He had found my limit at last. I was obliged to own (heartily as I disliked doing it) that there was, for the present, no choice left but mercifully to conceal the truth. Having...

I went round at once to the other side of the house. If Mr. Finch had returned to the rectory, after the catechizing was over, well and good. If not, I should be obliged to inqu...

"When we meet again, I shall be prepared to defeat the conspiracy. Till that time comes--as you value your happiness and mine, don't let Madame Pratolungo suspect that you have...

Although there was everything to please me in those words, there was something that startled me--I cannot describe it--in his look and manner when he said them. I made no answer...

My defence produced no effect on him. He summed it up coolly so far. "She compared me disadvantageously with Nugent; and she allowed Nugent to personate me in speaking to you, w...

"You are to understand this, madam. In the face of the goot sea-airs, Miss your niece is fretting herself ill. I sent her to this place, for to get a rosy face, for to put on a...

At seven I was still writing in my Journal, and the mist was still over everything in the room. Persons in the lower ranks of life are curiously unobservant of the aspects of Na...

My observation led me to form two conclusions. First conclusion, that time and absence had not produced the slightest change in the love which the poor fellow bore to Lucilla. S...

In the second place--assuming it to be always possible that we might see Lucilla at the rectory--the risk of abruptly presenting Oscar to her in his own proper person might, for...

"You remember, Madame Pratolungo, I took high ground in this matter from the first. I protested against the proceedings of the man Grosse, as involving a purely worldly interfer...

"I don't want to go away," Lucilla went on; "I don't want to leave him. All I ask for, is a little more time. Time _must_ help me to get back again to my old self. My blind days...