Pyramids of snow

Upon most of the people who thronged the rooms the incident was lost. Of those who saw it many did not understand its meaning, and the rest were too much absorbed in their own a...

Even while Melville, with despair gnawing at his heart, was speeding on his journey back to England, Sir Geoffrey Holt was keeping festival at Fairbridge Manor. That very evenin...

Rather more than a week elapsed, during which Melville saw practically nothing of the outer world. His chambers were at the top of the house in Jermyn Street, the suite consisti...

Breakfast is a period of probation for many people's temper. It is a comparatively easy matter after dinner in the evening to assume light spirits with one's evening dress, know...

Possession of money has an invigorating effect upon the majority of people, and Melville, who like most gamblers lived only in the present, awoke in the morning feeling a new ma...

It was, indeed, with a very similar sense of satisfaction to that enjoyed by a man who, when playing cut-throat euchre, finds the joker in his hand, that Melville contemplated t...

Melville possessed in an eminent degree the gift of winning the affection of his inferiors. Where no conflict of interest was possible he gave full play to the sympathetic part...

Ralph was disconcerted and not a little puzzled, but neither Melville nor Sir Geoffrey vouchsafed any explanation, and there was a traditional discipline maintained by the uncle...

From the drawing-room window Melville watched Sir Ross prancing down the garden path, and then he turned to Mrs. Sinclair as she came in holding his flowers. He would have assum...

Lucille's forebodings were justified by the event. Days passed by and Sir Ross Buchanan neither wrote nor called; but while the maid was filled with real concern at this interru...

Melville's absence from The Vale occurring thus simultaneously with Sir Ross Buchanan's defection made the time hang heavy on Mrs. Sinclair's hands, and, her other visitors bein...

In spite of Melville's hope that rain might come to prevent the proposed excursion up the river, the following day dawned bright and sunny, and as he stood by the front door wai...

Sheltered by the leafy elms which Melville had pointed out to Lavender was an oblong inlet from the river, artificially constructed by Sir Geoffrey Holt to serve as a private ba...

Scared by the fearful intensity of the storm, all the people flocked away from Longbridge regatta, those who could manage to find room there hurrying in to the single inn the pl...

Had Ralph not lingered on the houseboat to see that Gwendolen crossed the garden in safety he must almost have taken his brother red-handed in what was tantamount to parricide....

That Sir Geoffrey's violent end should have an almost paralysing effect upon the household that loved him so much was, of course, only to be expected, but it is impossible to te...

It was the fact that Melville shirked a conversation with his brother immediately after the reading of the will; the mental strain had been so great that he could not be sure of...

For Ralph, in the period of forced inactivity that followed, existence became a nightmare; the charge against him being one of murder, bail was not granted, and his innocence, i...

Lavender was alone at the time, and the shock caused by the sight of the poster was so violent that her carriage had nearly completed the circuit of the Park before she fully re...

However preposterous the charge against Ralph might appear to those who knew the man, the magistrates decided that a _primâ facie_ case had been made out against him, and at the...

If fate was playing a joke upon Ralph Ashley, her humour erred upon the side of grimness. His friends met with no success in their endeavours to find some other possible culprit...

Melville's faculty of reading character did not err when it satisfied him that he might rely upon Lavender Sinclair keeping faithfully any secret which she had passed her word n...

For some little time, however, no opportunity arose, and Mr. Tracy was, in addition, conscious of a certain diffidence in calling upon a lady to whom he was utterly unknown, sim...

Lavender never ceased to regret the impulse which had prompted her to persuade Melville to let her accompany him on that fateful visit to Fairbridge. Missing the constant attend...

The pleasant anticipation of her trip abroad, and the little mild excitement promised by her prospective dinner at a restaurant, among well-dressed people and brightened by ligh...

He controlled his agitation until the door closed upon the man, and then, turning the key in the lock, threw his cape upon the couch. In an instant he realised to the full what...

When Lavender knocked away the keystone of the vaulted arch beneath which Ralph Ashley was confined, the fabric fell to pieces easily. Provided with a copy of her depositions, t...