Starvecrow Farm

For a full hundred yards Henrietta walked on with her head in the air, too angry to accost or even to look at her companion; who, on his part, tripped meekly beside her. Then a...

Henrietta, high-spirited and thoughtless, was more prone to anger than to fear, to resentment than to patience. But all find something formidable in the unknown; and the presenc...

Henrietta crouched beside the lamp, lulling the child from time to time with a murmured word. She held the boy, whom she had come to save, tight in her arms; and the thought tha...

Cheerful lights shining from the open doorway and the red-curtained windows of the inn, illumined the road immediately before it; and if these and the change in all the surround...

When Henrietta rose on the second morning of her imprisonment, and opened her door and looked out, she met with an unpleasant surprise. Snow had fallen in the night, and lay alm...

Bishop, in his corner of the chaise, made his burly person as small as he could. He tried his best to hide his brown tops and square-toed boots. In her corner Henrietta sat upri...

Nadin and the others had not left her more than ten minutes when Henrietta heard his voice under the window. She was still flushed and heated, sore with the things which they ha...

Mr. Sutton slept as ill on the night of his resignation as he had ever slept in his life. And many times as he tossed and turned on his bed he repented at leisure the step which...

Anthony Clyne had made no moan, but, both in his pride and his better feelings, he had suffered more than the world thought through Henrietta’s elopement. He was not in love wit...

It was daylight when she awoke; but it had not been daylight long. Yet some one was knocking; and knocking loudly at the door of her bedroom. She rose on her elbow, and looking...

It was night, and the fire, the one generous thing in the house-place at Starvecrow Farm, blazed fitfully; casting its light now on Walterson’s brooding face as he stooped over...

When she had filled her band-box, and with a tearful laugh looked her last on the cell, she emerged from the yard. She found Captain Clyne awaiting her with his hand on the key...

Behind the closed door the two haggard-faced women looked at one another. Mrs. Tyson had not left her bed for many days. But she had heard the knocking at the outer door and the...

Youth feels, let the adult say what he pleases, more deeply than middle age. It suffers and enjoys with a poignancy unknown in later life. But in revenge it is cast down more li...

When Henrietta had read this letter twice, shivering and drawing in her breath as often as she came to the passionate cry for mercy that broke its current, she sat gazing at the...

Meanwhile the man whom she had left in the gloom of the staircase waited. The sound of the girl’s tread died away and silence followed. But she might be taking the news, she mig...

The distance to the house was short. Before Henrietta had done more than taste the bliss of the open night, had done more than lift her eyes in thankfulness to the dark profundi...

The company at Mrs. Gilson’s, impressed by the appearance of a gentleman of Captain Clyne’s position, scarce gave a second thought to the doctor’s retreat. But to Tyson, stridin...

“By your leave,”—the voice, a little breathless, was Mrs. Gilson’s—“I’m coming in too.” And she came in at that, and brusquely. “I think you are over many men for one woman,” sh...

The men followed Bess’s lead, and as they supped never ceased to make Henrietta the butt of odious jests and more odious gallantries; until, now pale, now red, the girl was eage...

Henrietta lifted her tear-stained face from the pillow and awaited the answer. Three hours earlier, her head aching, her heart full, uncertain what to do or what would follow, s...

Bess knocked twice, and, stooping to the keyhole, repeated the owl’s hoot. Presently a bar was drawn back, and after a brief interval, which those within appeared to devote to l...

Two minutes after Bishop had passed from sight, Henrietta rose from a dip in the fern; in which she had lain all the time, as snugly hidden, though within eyeshot of him, as a h...

The substance followed the shadow so quickly that Henrietta had not time to consider her position before the latch rose. The door opened, and a girl entered hurriedly. The surpr...

“I will not do it! I will not do it!” Those had been Clyne’s last words on the subject; uttered and repeated with a heat which proved that, in coming to this decision, he fought...

Henrietta sat and listened to the various sounds which told of a household on its way to bed; and she held her courage with both hands. Slip-shod feet moved along the passages,...

We left Mr. Bishop standing in the middle of the woodland track and following Henrietta with his eyes. He had suspected the girl before; his suspicions were now grown to certain...

There was a loud drumming in Henrietta’s ears, and a dimness before her eyes. In the midst of this a voice, which she would not have known for her own, cried loudly and clearly,...

“I understand,” he said, without letting his eyes meet hers—he was stiffness itself, but perhaps he too had his emotions—“that you preferred to see me here rather than indoors?”

When the chaise which carried the prisoner to Kendal had left the inn, and the search parties had gone their way under leaders who knew the country, and the long tail of the las...

It was Thursday, and three days had passed since the Sunday, the day of many happenings, which had cleared up the mystery and restored Henrietta to Mrs. Gilson’s care. The frost...

In one particular at least the Bow Street runner was right. The Government which ruled England in that year, 1819, was made up of brave men; whether they were wise men or great...

Mr. Bishop of Bow Street alone watched the clerk’s pen with a look of doubt. He had his own views about the girl. But he did not interfere, and his discontent with the posture o...

Mr. Sutton was a vain man and sensitive, and though he clung to hope, Henrietta’s words hurt him to the quick. The name of Chaplain was growing obsolete at this time; it was beg...

To return to Bishop. Thrown off the trail in the wood, he pushed along the road as far as Windermere village. There, however, he could hear nothing. No one of Henrietta’s figure...

The postchaise had nearly cleared the sands. Behind it the low line of Lancashire coast was fading from sight. Before it the long green hill of Cartmel had risen so high and dra...