Probation

You, at any rate, Lancashire reader, know this place; the large somewhat low room; the long lines of looms; the wheels, straps, and beams; the rows of standing work-people, men,...

It was August of the year 1861--the year succeeding that which might almost be called the apotheosis of the cotton trade. The goods of Lancashire were piled in every port; her m...

The brother and sister walked together down the sloping street already mentioned, and which was, as usual at that time, full of work-people, streaming out of the numberless fact...

‘I love my lady; she is very fair; Her brow is wan, and bound by simple hair: Her spirit sits aloof, and high, But glances from her tender eye, In sweetness droopingly.’

Myles walked home, not in the ‘kind of dream’ proper for a hero under the circumstances, but thinking very lucidly and very connectedly during his pretty long walk, from the end...

Monday morning, with the business of this work-a-day world in full swing, or rather in preparation for the week’s swing of labour. In the freshness and rawness of a six o’clock...

Six o’clock was the time at which the work-people ‘knocked off.’ Myles and Mary had not spoken as they went to their work, and of course not during the afternoon; and it was onl...

Mary also seemed less constrained, though nothing would have induced her to own that she was glad her mother had left them. She moved about more freely, and as she passed to and...

After that evening Myles found himself in a position which he at least found full of difficulties. Two things happened, both of which he had looked upon as probable; the news of...

It was a lovely Sunday afternoon on which Myles took his way to Stonegate. He found Adrienne alone. She said her uncle was taking his afternoon airing in his bath-chair in the g...

That visit was but the first of a long series. Mr. Blisset was pleased to see the young man who listened so patiently and so deferentially to him, and Myles had an ever-growing...

During the following forenoon Myles sat alone in the outer office, employed exactly as he had been on the day of Mrs. Mallory’s visit, weeks before. Wilson was going his usual r...

on as long as there is cotton to be had, and then--I trust, for your sakes, and mine, and that of humanity at large, that it will not be long that I shall have to help you in yo...

Sebastian and Hugo drove away from the factory, accompanied by Mr. Sutcliffe, the manager and head man of the business. Arrived at the Oakenrod, Mallory and his manager retired...

Mrs. Mallory came into her drawing-room twenty minutes before the dinner-hour, and found her son already there, alone, already dressed, and stretched, in an attitude of extreme...

In a week from that time the master’s face was beginning to be familiar to his work-people; and his business and its details were beginning to be a little less strange to him. W...

One evening--it was Sunday, the day after that drive into the country--Sebastian Mallory strolled into the drawing-room where his mother sat, and, glancing round, seated himself...

The scene once again the drawing-room of Mr. Blisset’s house; its occupants, Myles and Adrienne: he just arrived; she smiling to receive him, and he smiling in answer, as one mi...

Mr. Mallory contrived to make his visit so delightful to Mr. Blisset that that gentleman pressed him, with an eagerness unwonted to him, to remain a little longer; and Sebastian...

Castle Hill, the Spenceley mansion, was a large, new, imposing residence of red brick, with massive stone facings. It had been the dwelling of Mr. Spenceley and his family for s...

The year 1861 had closed in thick clouds and a great darkness, with the mutter of war in the far west, and with the threatening of famine at home. The year 1862 dawned, but with...

Sebastian Mallory, Mr. Sutcliffe, and Wilson, holding a council of war together, late in the afternoon of that eventful day, discussed the means to be taken for the preservation...

Towards eight o’clock on the following evening, Mary Heywood and Edmund were the only occupants of the kitchen. The lad was somewhat better and less feverish, and Myles had carr...

For the space of some six weeks--that is, from early March to the middle of April, Adrienne, Helena, Mr. Sutcliffe, Hugo, Sebastian, and others who worked with them or under the...

‘Death, with most grim and grisly visage seene, Yet is he nought but parting of the breath; Ne ought to see, but like a shade to weene, Unbodièd, unsoul’d, unheard, unseene.’

The merry month of May, in the year of grace 1862, and in that part of her Majesty’s dominions known as the County Palatine of Lancaster, wore a face even less smiling and colde...

When Myles began his work at the Committee Office, one conspicuous member of the Ladies’ Committee was temporarily absent. Adrienne Blisset was then occupied in learning the con...

Mr. Spenceley, the millionaire, the richest man in Thanshope, the man of boundless wealth and boundless callousness, was amongst those cotton lords who, to their lasting shame a...

A committee meeting had been called for a certain Tuesday afternoon. An appeal for help had been sent out to all the persons of any position in the neighbourhood. Canon Ponsonby...

One fine morning, Mrs. Mallory, her son, and Hugo von Birkenau sat at breakfast, and the young men maintained a decorous silence while the lady held forth on what was at present...

Sebastian did not find any opportunity that afternoon for carrying out his purpose. He was fully occupied; so was Adrienne, and he was forced to see her, half an hour before he...

Myles Heywood’s life had become worse and darker than merely a sad life. It was filled with a wretched pain and unrest, which had been growing like a disease for weeks. His was...

Mary Heywood, all the weary afternoon of that weary day, sat beside Edmund’s bed and nursed him, with fear at her heart that the nursing would be of no long duration. The fever...

The day that followed was naturally a sad one. Mary was too much occupied in mourning her loss to notice Myles as she otherwise might have done. Harry left the house about five...

The few days intervening between her dispute with her son and the Spenceleys’ ball were, as may be supposed, not particularly pleasant ones to Mrs. Mallory. Sebastian, after his...

The rooms at Castle Hill were nearly full, and the ball had just begun, when the Oakenrod party arrived. Sebastian offered his arm to his mother, and she took it, both of them h...

Sebastian’s first thought naturally resolved itself into the words, ‘A thief in the night;’ some evil-disposed person who thought to penetrate to some of the bedrooms, in the co...

It was not until late in the afternoon of the following day that Sebastian, not forgetting his appointment with Myles Heywood, found it possible to return to his own home.

‘I trust never to return to England,’ replied Myles, standing up in Sebastian’s study, in the act of going. ‘I am afraid it will seem ungracious to you when I say I don’t care m...

It was August; the second August since that memorable one in 1862. This year, that of 1864, was in many respects a remarkable one in the annals of commerce, more especially in t...

Towards five o’clock on the following Tuesday afternoon, a hansom-cab drove rapidly up that Manchester thoroughfare known as Oxford Street, and the address given by the man who...

It was more than three weeks later. The month of August had almost come to its close. The scene was again the bright and cheerful city of Manchester, on one of its typical days....

‘My dear Mallory, I am glad to see you here at last! Were you unexpectedly detained?’ asked Canon Ponsonby, greeting Sebastian at the door of the room in the town-hall in which...

What is the difference, save in size, between one manufacturing town and another? How will you say, reader, on the first view, where this town lies to which I am about to lead y...

Two days later, Myles took his way, in the evening, towards Herr Süsmeyer’s house. The travellers had arrived, he had heard, early in the forenoon. There had been a ceremonious...

The following forenoon, while it was yet early, Myles saw Sebastian coming through the great yard, towards the office where he sat. His face wore an expression of gravity--even...

‘Yet, ere the phantoms flee, Which that house, and heath, and garden, made dear to thee erewhile, Thy remembrance, and repentance, and deep musings are not free From the music o...

The spell--the long silence--was broken at last. One evening towards the end of April, when he had been seven months in Thanshope, he first had any news of Adrienne. The Mallory...