Sir Robert's Fortune: A Novel

Lily was very reluctant to let Helen go. She kept her on pretence of the child, who had to be exhibited and adored. A great event annihilates time. It seemed already to Lily tha...

Robina had become more and more anxious and uneasy as they approached Edinburgh. She did not seem to share the anxious elation with which her mistress hailed the well-known feat...

It may be imagined that after this there was very little said of the house in Edinburgh, which now, indeed, it was impossible to do any thing about till the term at Martinmas. B...

The days that succeeded were very much like this first day. In the morning Lily went out “among the beasts,” and visited, with all the interest she could manage to excite in her...

Helen was in all her crape, and yet her upper garment was not “deep,” like that of a woman in her first woe. It was a cloak which suggested travelling rather than any formality....

Only a few of the gentlemen returned with him to the house. Two of them were the husbands of the two ladies who had been with Lily, and who now, with each a volume in her face,...

Lily had an agitating and troubled day between this strange pair, which had the good effect upon her, however, of turning her thoughts entirely away from her own affairs, the st...

I do not think that Lily in the least realized what had happened to her when her uncle died. She grieved for him with a very natural, not excessive, sorrow, as a daughter grieve...

It was a very little, homely lodging in which Lily was, the little parlor of an old-fashioned poor little house, intended at its best to receive an Edinburgh lawyer’s clerk, or...

It did not snow that year: the weather was mild and wet. There was not the exhilaration, the mystery, the clear-breathing chill, of the snow, the great gorgeous sunsets over the...

Lily was no more visible that day. She retired to her room, having, indeed, much need of repose, and to be alone and think over all that had passed. He said a great deal more to...

Sir Robert had not at this time a happy life. His friends went away at last, having exhausted the little shootings of Dalrugas and finding that social amusement of any kind was...

The dead calm into which Lily fell after all the agitations of this wonderful period was like death itself, she thought, after the tumult and commotion of a climax of life. Thos...

When Sir Robert went in somewhat reluctantly to Lily’s room--for he was not accustomed to illness, and did not know what to do or say, or even how to look, in a sick room--he fo...

It was not without much thought that Lumsden decided to leave his wife unmolested when she fled from him. It did not cost him much trouble to discover where she had gone, and he...

These words were breathed rather than spoken in the dim recess of a window, hidden behind ample curtains, the deep recess in which the window was set leaving room enough for two...

When it was settled that Lily was to have the change upon which she insisted, her health improved day by day, and with the increase of her strength, or perhaps as the real fount...

Next night the supper was much prolonged in the kitchen at Dalrugas. The three _convives_--for Sandy tumbled off to sleep and was hustled off to bed at an early hour--told stori...

“I have been a fool,” said Lily. “I have not said any thing that I meant to say. I had a great many good reasons all ready, and I did not say one of them. I just said silly thin...

“Ye think so!” he said rather fiercely, as if it were a dogma to question. And then he added: “There’s that big Beenie creature, that is, I suppose, as much with her as ever--se...

“At last,” said Ronald, coming upstairs with his light-springing foot three steps at a time, “at last, Lily, I have settled with Dougal, and I am starting to-morrow morning: at...

Alick Duff went away from the valley of the Rugas, calling on heaven and earth to witness that he would never be seen there more, and that from henceforward he was to be conside...

There was great excitement in the Tower when the gig from “the toun” was seen slowly climbing the brae. Almost every-body in the house was in commotion, and Beenie, half crazy w...

The next day after any thing, whether happiness or disaster, is different from the day on which the event took place. The secondary comes in to complicate and confuse the origin...

Lily, at least in her own mind, would admit of no doubt. She was transported in a moment from the depths to the heights. So much the more as it had been impossible yesterday to...

There had been a pause after Lily called to Marg’ret to bring the baby on the night when Ronald left her. Marg’ret, though very kind, was a person who liked her own way. If the...

This New Year’s Eve remained, amid all the experiences of Lily, a thing apart. It became painful to her to think of it in after times, but in the present it was like a completio...

When she was sure that the travellers were out of sight, Lily flew down the spiral stairs, snatched her plaid from where it hung as she passed, and rushed out to the only shelte...

Ronald walked into Kinloch-Rugas after the plentiful lunch upon which Katrin had made so many remarks. His head was buzzing and his bosom thrilling with the excitement natural a...

Ronald started back on his way to Dalrugas in the beginning of the wintry night in a condition very different from that in which he came. His head was dazed and swimming; someth...

“But I couldn’t forget,” said Lily firmly. These words, however, roused her to sudden self-reproach. If she had not been so exact, perhaps the crisis might have been tided over...

It was not with a very easy mind that Ronald Lumsden had executed the great _coup_ which had, so far as Lily was concerned, such disastrous consequences. He had been deeply perp...

The snow-storm lasted for about a week, day after day, with an occasional interval, with winds that drifted it, and dreadful nights of frost that made it shrink, but covered it...

Sir Robert arrived, as they had been warned, next day. An express came in the morning, preceding him, to order rooms to be prepared for three guests--to the great indignation of...

The situation of Ronald Lumsden, for whom Lily felt herself to have sacrificed so much, and who showed, as she felt at the bottom of her heart, so little inclination to sacrific...

It was all like a dream, a scene without light or sound, shadows moving in the faint twilight, at first not a word said. Beenie remained at the door, holding the handle to guard...

Lily kept the secret to herself as long as it was in mortal power to do so. She sent Beenie off to bed, entirely mystified and unable to explain to herself the transformation wh...

Katrin stood under the doorway, looking out for the party: a spare, little, active woman, in that native dress of the place, which consisted of a dark woollen skirt and pink “sh...

Helen stayed till the first shade of the darkening stole over the moor, and till the minister’s man had told all the “clash” of the countryside to Katrin and Dougal, and receive...

Ronald was, as he had prophesied, a long time getting well. Even Helen was a little puzzled, she who thought no evil, at the persistency of his suffering; at the end of the seco...

The spring advanced with many a break and interval of evil weather. The east winds blew fiercely over the moor, and the sudden showers of April added again a little to the decei...

When Lily got up next morning, it was to the cheerful sounds of the yard, the clucking of fowls, the voices of the kitchen calling to each other, Katrin darting out a sentence a...

Lily could not believe her eyes. That it was Ronald who approached the house, leaping over the big bushes of ling, seeking none of the little paths that ran here and there acros...

The day was one of those Highland days which are a dream of freshness and beauty and delight. I do not claim that they are very frequent, but sometimes they will occur in a clus...

This agitating episode in Lily’s life was a relief to her from her own prevailing troubles. They all apologized to her for bringing her into the midst of their annoyances, but i...

A highland moor is in itself a beautiful thing. When it is in full bloom of purple heather, with all those breaks and edges of emerald green which betray the bog below, with the...

Lily’s room was faintly illuminated by a couple of candles, which, as it was a large room with gloomy furniture, made little more than darkness visible, except about the table o...

“Indeed and alas, I meant it, Lily. It is the middle of the session. How could I stay longer? It was, as I said to the minister--though you never more than half believe what I s...

“It does not please me!” she said; “I would like to cheat nobody. It is a new thing to me--I did not think of that. Oh, Ronald, take me away! I laugh and I chatter, but my heart...

it does not mend my practice that I’ve been so often here in the North. Don’t tell me I need not come unless I like; that’s a silly woman’s saying, it is not like my Lily. I am...