Saved from herself

It is composed, mainly, of popular copyrighted titles which cannot be had in any other lines at any price. The authors, as far as literary ability and reputation are concerned,...

She spoke to her own reflection in the glass with an angry frown. What was the good of an exquisite toilet, of a face that did not look within ten years of its age, when seated...

Lord Abbotsford stood in front of the fire and broke what had been a long silence. He was tall and rather good-looking; years younger than the woman who sat opposite him, her ha...

“Look.” Mrs. Trelane’s face was radiant as she threw a note across the luncheon-table to Ismay the next day. It was from Lord Abbotsford. “Look, he wants to see me this afternoo...

He had taken a deep interest in the affairs, as became a barrister in fair standing, and now the verdict of the coroner’s jury stared him in the face. So important a thing had c...

The great house lay very still in the evening sunshine that slanted soft and red on its gray old walls and turned its many windows to amber fires, its castellated roof to a rose...

“Mother,” she repeated, “there isn’t any milk, and the milkman won’t leave us any unless we pay for it. Haven’t you any money?”--running her fingers impatiently over the bedroom...

“Mrs. Trelane is father’s second cousin; and she and her daughter are coming here for a visit; daddy has to go away, and he can’t take me, and he won’t leave me alone.”

He felt curiously ill; far worse than he had ever known himself; he breathed with an effort that made his man servant nervous as he stood behind his chair. Parker alone knew the...

Ismay Trelane stood alone in the great hall at Marchant’s Hold, immaculately dressed in tight-fitting, dark-green cloth that showed every curve of her slim body and seemed refle...

Things had played into her hands at last. Toward half-past two o’clock, warm and lovely with her quick walk, she stood at Miles Cylmer’s gates. They were heavy iron, hung from c...

“Where have you been? Why did you go out like that and stay so long?” she demanded fiercely. “I have been almost wild here, with no one to speak to. Do you know that we’re ruine...

Three days after his arrival in London he was still there, and he sat now in Mr. Bolton’s private office listening impatiently to the old man’s precise sentences. He had been pu...

The solemn memorial service in the parish church for Gaspard le Marchant was over. Mr. Bolton had come away from it a puzzled man. Helen Trelane and her daughter had sat facing...

“Do you think I should have a crape veil?” Mother and daughter sat alone in the comfortable sitting-room that was Ismay’s own, when a week had passed after the reading of the wi...

Just how long she sat crouched in the dark Ismay Trelane never knew. She heard a bell ring and lamps brought that shone through the chink straight on her. Then there was a tinkl...

Cristiane, behind the great urn, was changed from yesterday; a peace was on her face, and for the first time since the news of her father’s death her eyes bore no traces of a ni...

It was tea-time when Cristiane appeared again from her bedroom, where she had fled in her anger with Cylmer. She came straight to Ismay, where she sat in the drawing-room with h...

The household retired to rest early, at Marchant’s Hold, and Ismay was in her bed and asleep by ten o’clock, but with a purpose in her mind that made her wake to the minute as t...

She missed the freedom, missed the theaters, the little suppers at restaurants, missed more than either the companionship of the men who were wont to gather round her in London-...

A cold black void; a struggle that was agony to get out of it; a falling through deep waters that were loud in her ears, then blackness once more, deep and awful. Slowly, slowly...

Could Cylmer have seen her through that night of wan fear? In and out of her bed, like a restless ghost, she who had always before slept like a baby; crouching sullenly over her...

Thomas, waiting that evening on the dinner-party, beamed as he directed his subordinates, so joyful was he to see the old light of happiness and gaiety on his young mistress’ face.

Mr. Wray sat by the library fire the next night as the clock chimed twelve. There was whisky beside him, and soda, but he was not drinking, only staring at the hearth, and tappi...

The frost still held. The river that ran through Cylmer’s Ferry was skimmed with ice; the lake at Marchant’s Hold was a shining, glittering thing as Ismay passed it on her way t...

The sun shone sweetly on the frozen world, the robins came confidently to the dining-room window, red-breasted, certain of crumbs; the lake shone as glittering glass; the cold,...

To Wray he gave no thought; it never occurred to him that that astute person was keeping out of the way, for fear of comments of his idiocy in having taken Cristiane on ice he k...

Cylmer thought long that night, in a weary circle that led back to the same horror. The original of that photograph had been Mrs. Trelane, and if Abbotsford’s death lay at her d...

Ismay was gay as any lark that next morning. Her path, that had been so hard to tread, seemed sure and easy now; her course of action plain. When Miles came, as of course he wou...

White, tense, her nerves like an overstrung bow that goes near to breaking, Ismay ran through the dark to Marchant’s Hold. And as she entered the great hall door any pity that m...

In the sickness of her suspense Ismay turned to the bootblack. Her mouth was so stiff and dry that she questioned him chiefly to see if her tongue would obey her.

Wray suppressed a bad word. All the previous evening Cristiane, whose successes had gone to her head, had fairly flung herself at his head. She had sung to him, talked to him, b...

Mrs. Trelane, lying sleepless in her bedroom, where she had been sent like a beaten dog by one glance from Wray, sprang up with causeless terror. Only the remembrance of Ismay’s...

Over that quiet body, that had been so quick to dare and do, and need do neither any more, a furious struggle in the dark, of three men against one, who saw himself caught red-h...

For a day and a night he watched her as she lay. Sometimes he leaned over her in sudden fright that she had ceased to breathe; sometimes he fancied she stirred, that her eyelids...

Among them were perhaps a dozen people who sickened at the hideous scene. Sir Gaspard, Mr. Bolton, Cylmer--turned away from the man in the dock as his crimes were brought before...