Red Pottage

"I will get out," said Hugh Scarlett to himself, seeing no bars, but half conscious of a cage. "I will get out," he repeated, as his hansom took him swiftly from the house in Po...

Hugh had gone through the first room, and, after a quarter of an hour, found himself in the door-way of the second. He had arrived late, and the rooms were already thinning.

When Lady Newhaven slipped out of the supper-room after her husband and Hugh, and lingered at the door of the study, she did not follow them with the deliberate intention of eav...

When Hugh awoke the morning after Lady Newhaven's party the day was already far advanced. A hot day had succeeded to a hot night. For a few seconds he lay like one emerging from...

It was Sybell Loftus's first season in London since her second marriage with Mr. Doll Loftus. After a very brief sojourn in that city of frivolity she had the acumen to discover...

Many sarcastic but true words have been said by man, and in no jealous spirit, concerning woman's friendship for woman. The passing judgment of the majority of men on such devot...

walked hand in hand in front of their nursery-maids, what the London sparrows said to each other in the gutters, and how they considered the gravel path in the square was a deep...

A fortnight had passed since the drawing of lots, and Lady Newhaven remained in ignorance as to which of the two men had received his death-warrant. Few have found suspense easy...

"I lay low till I got my clothes," said Dick, "and then I went to the Duke of ----. I've just been looking at a hack for him. He says he does not want one that takes a lot of si...

There is a little stream which flows through Middleshire which seems to reflect the spirit of that quiet county, so slow is its course, so narrow is its width. Even the roads do...

"Of course, Hester," said Mr. Gresley, leading the way to his study and speaking in his lesson-for-the-day voice, "I don't pretend to write"--("They always say that," thought He...

The children, who had reached the pear stage, looked with round, awed eyes at "Auntie Hester" as she sat down at the luncheon-table beside the black bottle which marked her plac...

But perhaps it is a mistake to feel compassion for persons like Hester, for if they have many evil days and weeks in their usually short lives, they have also moments of sheer b...

Originality irritates the religious classes, who will not be taken out of their indolent ways of thinking; who have a standing grievance against it, and "heresy" and "heterodoxy...

Only those who know the supremacy of the Intellectual life--the life which has a seed of ennobling thought and purpose within it--can understand the grief of one who falls from...

If you are travelling across Middleshire on the local line between Southminster and Westhope, after you have passed Wilderleigh with its gray gables and park wall, close at hand...

Rachel had left London precipitately after she had been the unwilling confidante of Lady Newhaven's secret, and had taken refuge with that friend of all perplexed souls, the Bis...

Hester did not fail a second time to warn the Gresleys of the arrival of guests. She mentioned it in time to allow of the making of cakes, and Mr. Gresley graciously signified h...

If, after the departure of the Pratts, Rachel had hoped for a word with Hester, she was doomed to disappointment. Mr. Gresley took the seat on the sofa beside Rachel which Ada P...

"And so you cannot persuade Miss Gresley to come to us next week?" said Lord Newhaven, strolling into the dining-room at Westhope Abbey, where Rachel and Dick were sitting at a...

Si l'on vous a trahi, ce n'est pas la trahison qui importe; c'est le pardon qu'elle a fait naître dans votre âme. . . . Mais si la trahison n'a pas accru la simplicité, la confi...

Both exacted attention, and if they were in the same room together it seldom contained enough attention to supply the needs of both. Both were conscious, like "Celia Chettam," t...

Rachel arrived after tea at Wilderleigh, and went straight to her room on a plea of fatigue. It was a momentary cowardice that tempted her to yield to her fatigue. She felt conv...

With aching hands and bleeding feet We dig and heap, lay stone on stone, We bear the burden and the heat Of the long day, and wish 'twere done! Not till the hours of light retur...

Il le fit avec des arguments inconsistants et irréfutables, de ces arguments qui fondent devant la raison comme la neige an feu, et qu'on ne peut saisir, des arguments absurdes...

It was Sunday afternoon. Mr. Tristram leaned on the stone balustrade that bounded the long terrace at Wilderleigh. He was watching two distant figures, followed by a black dot,...

Every one who knows Middleshire knows that the little lake of Beaumere is bounded on the one side by the Westhope and on the other by the Wilderleigh property, the boundary bein...

The main difference between people seems to be that one man can come under obligations on which you can rely--is obligable--and another is not. As he has not a law within him, t...

Hester always took charge of the three elder children and Fräulein of the baby during the six-o'clock service, so that the nurse might go to church. On this particular Sunday af...

Hugh was not ill after what Mr. Gresley called "his immersion," but for some days he remained feeble and exhausted. Sybell quite forgot she had not liked him, insisted on his st...

The superficial reader of these pages may possibly have forgotten, but the earnest one will undoubtedly remember that in an earlier chapter a sale of work was mentioned which wa...

It was the third week of November. Winter, the destroyer, was late, but he had come at last. There was death in the air, a whisper of death stole across the empty fields and bar...

If we could choose our ills we should not choose suspense. Rachel aged perceptibly during these last weeks. Her strong white hands became thinner; her lustreless eyes and haggar...

It was nearly dark when Rachel reached Westhope Abbey. A great peace seemed to pervade the long, dim lines of the gardens, and to be gathered into the solemn arches of the ruins...

Winter had brought trouble with it to Warpington Vicarage. A new baby had arrived, and the old baby was learning, not in silence, what kings and ministers undergo when they are...

Two nights had passed since Lord Newhaven had left the Abbey. And now the second day, the first day of December, was waning to its close. How Rachel had lived through them she k...

"He has managed it well," she said to herself. "No one could suspect that it was not an accident. He has played his losing game to the bitter end, weighing each move. None of th...

Le nombre des êtres qui veulent voir vrai est extraordinairement petit. Ce qui domineles hommes, c'est la peur de la vérité, à moins que la vérité ne leur soit utile.--AMIEL.

Sleep, that fickle courtier of our hours of ease, had deserted Hugh. When the last hour of the last day was over, and the dawn which he had bound himself in honor not to see fou...

Mr. Gresley had often remarked to persons in affliction that when things are at their worst they generally take a turn for the better. This profound truth was proving itself equ...

Mr. Gresley was troubled, more troubled than he had ever been since a never-to-be-forgotten period before his ordination, when he had come in contact with worldly minds, and had...

And we are punished for our purest deeds, And chasten'd for our holiest thoughts; alas! There is no reason found in all the creeds, Why these things are, nor whence they come to...

"I am not really anxious," said Mr. Gresley, looking out across the Vicarage laurels to the white fields and hedges. All was blurred and vague and very still. The only thing tha...

Mrs. Gresley had passed an uncomfortable day. In the afternoon all the Pratts had called, and Mr. Gresley, who departed early in the afternoon for Southminster, had left his wif...

He had gone over in his mind a hundred times all that he should say to her on that occasion. If he had said all that he was fully resolved to say, it is hardly credible that any...

His escape had been too narrow. He shivered at the mere thought of it. It had never struck him as possible that Rachel and Lady Newhaven had known of the drawing of lots. Now th...

"My mind misgives me, Dick!" said the Bishop, a day or two later, as Dick joined him and his sister and Rachel at luncheon at the Palace. "I am convinced that you have been up t...

"A marriage has been arranged, and will shortly take place, between Hugh St. John Scarlett, of Kenstone Manor, Shropshire, only son of the late Lord Henry Scarlett, and Rachel,...

She smiled at him mechanically, but her face relapsed at once into the apathetic expression which sat so ill upon it. Her lustreless eyes fixed themselves again on the fire.

That help should come through such a recognized channel as a Bishop could surprise no one, least of all Lady Newhaven, who had had the greatest faith in the clergy all her life,...

The Bishop's sister, Miss Keane, whose life was a perpetual orgy of mothers' meetings and G.F.S. gatherings, was holding a district visitors' working party in the drawing-room a...

I thought, "Now, if I had been a woman, such As God made women, to save men by love-- By just my love I might have saved this man." --ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

How Hugh shook off Lady Newhaven when she followed him out of the Palace he did not know. There had been some difficulty. She had spoken to him, had urged something upon him. Bu...

The doctor was very late. Rachel, who was going to the Watch Service, waited for the Bishop in the hall till he came out of his study with the curate, who had doubts.