Sir Tom

The east rooms in which Madame di Forno-Populo had been placed on her arrival at the Hall were handsome and comfortable, though they were not the best in the house, and they wer...

"Go to your father." Bice did not know what Lucy meant. The words bewildered her beyond description, but she did not hesitate what to do. She went downstairs to Sir Tom, who sat...

Bice was taken away in the cab, there being no reason why she should remain in a house where Lucy was no longer lonely or heartbroken--but not by her patroness, who was doubly h...

Sir Tom was concerned and anxious, but not alarmed like the women. After all it was a complaint of which children recovered every day. It had nothing to do with the child's lung...

When it happens to an innocent and simple soul to find out suddenly at a stroke the falsehood of some one upon whose truth the whole universe depends, the effect is such as perh...

It was thus that Bice was engaged while Lucy imagined her asleep in her innocence, unaware of the net that was being spread for her unsuspecting feet. Bice was neither asleep no...

Lucy went up to the nursery when breakfast was over. It was her habit to go and take counsel of little Tom when her heart was troubled or heavy. He was now eighteen months old,...

That morning the whole party came down to breakfast expectant, for, notwithstanding the Contessa's habit of not appearing, it was supposed that the young lady whom most people s...

The door was open. The long drawing-room afforded a sort of processional path for the newcomer. Her dress was not white like that of the ordinary _débutante_. It had a yellow go...

On the very next day after this conversation took place a marked change occurred in the manner of the Contessa. She had been always caressing to Lucy, calling her by pretty name...

The Dowager Lady Randolph had never found the Hall so dull. There was nothing going on, nothing even to look forward to: one formal dinner-party was the only thing to represent...

"To give away!" Few things in all her life, at least in all her later life, had so moved the Contessa. She was walking about the pretty room in an excitement which was like agit...

In a few days after the arrival of Madame di Forno-Populo, there was almost an entire change of aspect at the Hall. Nobody could tell how this change had come about. It was invo...

Young Lady Randolph had herself been much changed by the progress of these years. Marriage is always the great touchstone of character at least with women; but in her case the c...

The Contessa did not turn her head or change her position when Bice entered. She said, "You have not been out?" in a tone which was half question and half reproof.

Lady Randolph's ball was one of the first of the season, and as it was the first ball she had ever given, and both Lucy and her husband were favourites in society, it was looked...

Sir Tom paid his wife a visit when she was in the midst of her toilette for dinner. He came in, and looked at her dress with an air of dissatisfaction. It was a white dress, of...

Lucy stood out stoutly to the last gasp. She did not betray herself, except by the paleness, the seriousness which she could not banish from her countenance. Her guests thought...

Ten thousand pounds! These words have very different meanings to different people. Many of us can form little idea of what those simple syllables contain. They enclose as in a g...

They drove away again with scarcely a word to each other. It was a bright, breezy, wintry day. The roads about Farafield were wet with recent rains, and gleamed in the sunshine....

"Have I? I have amused myself very much. I am not fatigued, no. I could continue as long--as long as you please," Bice answered, who was sitting up in her corner with more bloom...

Easter was very early that year, about as early as Easter can be, and there was in Jock's mind a disturbing consciousness of the holidays, and the manner in which he was likely...

Other eyes than those of her lovers followed Bice through this brilliant scene. Sir Tom had been living a strange stagnant life since that day before he left the Hall, when Lucy...

Sir Tom came home later, so much later than he intended that he entered the house with such a sense of compunction as had not visited him since the days when the alarm of being...

"Come and sit beside me and tell me everything," said the Contessa. She had appropriated the little sofa next the fire where Lady Randolph generally sat in the evening. She had...

The outcry that rose when, after Montjoie's comic song, a performance of the broadest and silliest description, was over, it was discovered that Bice had disappeared, and especi...

The time after this seemed to fly in the great quiet, all the entertainments of the Christmas season being over, and the houses in the neighbourhood gradually emptying of guests...

Lucy did not see her visitors till the hour of dinner. She had expected them to appear in the afternoon at the mystic hour of tea, which calls an English household together, but...

After this it may perhaps be surprising to hear that Lucy did nothing to carry out that great trust with which she had been charged. She had felt, and did feel at intervals, for...

In the meantime something had been going on behind-backs of which nobody took much notice. It had been discovered long before this, in the family, that the Contessa's young comp...

John Trevor, otherwise Jock, arrived at the Hall in a state of considerable though suppressed excitement. It was not in his nature to show the feelings which were most profound...

Lucy knew nothing of this till the next forenoon after breakfast, and after the many morning occupations which a lady has in her own house. She looked wistfully at both her brot...

The little house in Mayfair was very bright and gay. What conventional words are those! It was nothing of the kind. It was dim and poetical. No light that could be kept out of i...

The Contessa, but perhaps not more than half, believed what she said. Everything was on the cards in this capricious society of England, which is not governed by the same absolu...

After this it came to be a very common occurrence that Jock and Bice should meet in the afternoon. He for one thing had lost his companionship with Lucy, and had been straying f...

Lucy contrived somehow to elude all private intercourse with her husband that morning. She was not alone with him for a moment. To his question about little Tom and her anxiety...

"What young lady?" To suppose for a moment that Jock did not know who was meant would be ridiculous, of course; but, for some reason which he did not explain even to himself, th...

And it was with very mingled sensations that Sir Tom heard from Lucy (for it was from her lips he heard it) the intimation that Madame di Forno-Populo was going to be so good as...

"I never sing," said the Contessa, with that serene smile with which she was in the habit of accompanying a statement which her hearers knew to be quite untrue. "Oh never! It is...

Lady Randolph found her visit dull. It is true that there had been no guests to speak of on previous Christmases since Sir Tom's marriage; but the house had been more cheerful,...

Lucy found her life much changed when Jock had gone, and she was left alone to face the change of circumstances which had tacitly taken place. The Contessa said not a word of te...

Lucy's mind had sustained a certain shock when her husband appeared. During her short married life there had not been a cloud, or a shadow of a cloud, between them. But then the...

"It was only something that Jock was saying," said Lucy, "but, Tom, I will tell you another time. I wish you had come in before Lady Randolph went upstairs. I think she was a li...

She had been hearing from her husband about the Contessa di Forno-Populo, who had promised to pay them a visit at Christmas. He had laughed a great deal while he described this...

Lucy Trevor, when she married Sir Thomas Randolph, was the heiress of so great a fortune that no one ventured to state it in words or figures. She was not old enough, indeed, to...

Lucy came into the morning-room shortly after, a little paler than usual, but with none of the agitation about her which Lady Randolph expected from Sir Tom's aspect to see. Luc...

Little Tom did not die, but he became "delicate,"--and fathers and mothers know what that means. The entire household was possessed by one pervading terror lest he should catch...

Lucy was much startled by her brother's demand. It struck, however, not her conscience so much as her recollection, bringing back that past which was still so near, yet which se...

This interview had an agitating and painful effect upon Lucy, though she could not tell why. It was not what she expected or feared--neither in one sense nor the other. He had n...

Sir Thomas Randolph had lived a somewhat stormy life during the earliest half of his career. He had gone through what the French called a _jeunesse orageuse_; nothing very bad h...

Sir Tom stepped out into the night some time after, holding Jock by the arm. The boy had a sort of thrill and tremble in him as if he had been reading poetry or witnessing some...

The Dowager was a woman far more clever than Lucy, who knew the world. And she was apt perhaps, instead of missing the meaning of the facts around her, to put too much significa...