The Athelings; or, the Three Gifts. Complete

One of them is very pretty--you can see that at a glance: under the simple bonnet, and through the thin little veil, which throws no cloud upon its beauty, shines the sweetest g...

The house is old for this locality--larger than this family could have afforded, had it been in better condition,--a cheap house out of repair. It is impossible to see what is t...

Dearest friend! most courteous reader! suspend your judgment. It was not her fault. This poor child had no more blame in the matter than Marian had for her beauty, which was equ...

Marian Atheling had as little choice in respect to her particular endowment as her sister had; less, indeed, for it cost her nothing--not an hour’s thought or a moment’s exertio...

This big boy was about as far from being handsome as any ordinary imagination could conceive: his large loose limbs, his big features, his swarthy complexion, though they were r...

The father of this family, as we have already said, was a clerk in a merchant’s office, with a salary of two hundred pounds a-year. He was a man of fifty, with very moderate abi...

And, indeed, there it was upon the fair and legible page, in Agnes’s best and clearest handwriting, “The End.” She had written it with girlish delight, and importance worthy the...

It was made into a parcel, duly packed and tied up; not in a delicate wrapper, or with pretty ribbons, as perhaps the affectionate regard of Agnes might have suggested, but in t...

“I’ve been thinking,” said Charlie Atheling slowly. Having made this preface, the big boy paused: it was his manner of opening an important subject, to which the greater part of...

They went in very sedately out of the darkness, their eyes dazzled with the sudden light. Bell and Beau were safely disposed of for the night, and on the side-table, beside Char...

The music, we are grieved to say, was not at all worth listening to--it would not have disturbed Bell and Beau had the two little beds been on the top of the piano. Though Maria...

Mrs Atheling has been calling upon Miss Willsie, partly to intercede for Hannah, the pretty maid, partly on a neighbourly errand of ordinary gossip and kindliness; but in decide...

Killiecrankie Lodge held a dignified position in this genteel locality: it stood at the end of the road, looking down and superintending Bellevue. Three square houses, all duly...

It was ten o’clock, and now only this little family circle was left in the Lodge of Killiecrankie. Miss Willsie, with one of the big silver candlesticks drawn so very close that...

“I suppose we are not going to hear anything about it. It is very hard,” said Agnes disconsolately. “I am sure it is so easy to show a little courtesy. Mr Burlington surely migh...

It would be impossible to describe, after that first beginning, the pleasant interest and excitement kept up in this family concerning the fortune of Agnes. All kinds of vague a...

“Here! there’s reading for you,” said Miss Willsie, throwing upon the family table a little roll of papers. “They tell me there’s something of the kind stirring among yourselves...

The best room was not by any means so bright, so cheerful, or so kindly as the family parlour, with its family disarrangement, and the amateur paperhanging upon its walls. Befor...

Charlie came in, but not to punch the head of Mr Endicott. The big boy gloomed upon the dignified American, pushed Harry Oswald aside, and brought his two grammars to the table....

“Do you remember how you spoke of her last night?--only last night--my Aunt Bridget, of whom we have not heard for years? I could almost be superstitious about this,” said Papa....

Steadily and laboriously these early summer days trudged on with Charlie, bringing no romantic visions nor dreams of brilliant fortune to tempt the imagination of the big boy. H...

We will not attempt to describe the excitement, astonishment, and confusion produced in the house of the Athelings by the next communication received from Mr Burlington. It came...

The big window very nearly filled up the whole room. The little place had once been the inmost heart of a long suite of apartments when this was a fashionable house--now it was...

Driving slowly along while the coachman ruminated, Agnes and Marian, in awe and astonishment, looked in each other’s faces--then they put up their hands simultaneously to their...

Papa was away from home. That very day on which the charmed light of society first shone upon his girls, Papa, acting under the instructions of a family conference, hurried at r...

Mr Atheling’s visit to the country had, after all, not been so necessary as the family supposed; no one seemed disposed to pounce upon the small bequest of Miss Bridget. The Hal...

They were bewildered, yet they lost nothing of the scene. The great rooms radiant with light, misty with hangings, gleaming with mirrors--the magnificent staircase up which they...

“It is time for us to go,” she said with eager shyness, “but I did not like. May we follow you? If it would not trouble you, it would be a great kindness, for we know no one here.”

When the fly jumbled into Bellevue, the lighted window, which always illuminated the little street, shone brighter than ever in the profound darkness of this late night, when al...

The morning, like a good fairy, came kindly to these good people, increasing in the remembrance of the girls the impression of pleasure, and lessening that of disappointment. Th...

It was a July day, brilliant and dazzling; the deep-blue summer sky arched over these quiet houses, a very heaven of sunshine and calm; the very leaves were golden in the flood...

Mayfair came in, radiant, blooming, splendid, with a rustle of silks, a flutter of feathers, an air of fragrance, like a fairy creature not to be molested by the ruder touches o...

Suddenly arrested by the solemnity of this preamble, the girls paused--they were just going up-stairs to their own room on the last evening before setting out for the Willows. M...

But the young adventurers had sufficient time to speculate upon their “fate,” and to make up their minds whether this journey of theirs was really a fortnight’s visit to Richmon...

The Willows was a large low house, with no architectural pretensions, but bright as villa could be upon the sunniest side of the Thames. The lawn sloped to the river, and ended...

“Strange creature!” said Sir Langham Portland, who had joined the girls almost before they were aware; “Odd girl! If Lucifer had a sister, I should know where to find her; but a...

But Rachel did not join the party either in their drives, their walks, or their conversations. She was not to be seen during the whole day, either out of doors or in, and did no...

The next morning, and the next again, Agnes and Marian vainly sought the little bower of willows looking for Rachel. Once they saw her escape hastily out of the shrubbery as the...

When the first ice was broken, Rachel became perfectly confidential with her new friends--_perfectly_ confidential--far more so than they, accustomed to the domestic privateness...

That night, faithful to her purpose, Rachel did not appear in the drawing-room. How far her firmness would have supported her, had she been left to herself, it is impossible to...

For Agnes, we are grieved to confess, had fallen into all the sudden fervour of a most warm and enthusiastic girlish friendship. She forgot to watch over her sister, though Mrs...

To this most difficult question Agnes could not find any satisfactory answer. Marian, though so nearly concerned in it, gave her no assistance whatever. Marian went wandering ab...

But there was a wonderful difference between this high-minded and impetuous girl, as she crossed the lawn with a hasty foot, which almost scorned to sink into its velvet softnes...

And now it had come to an end--all the novelty, the splendour, and the excitement of this first visit--and Agnes and Marian were about to go home. They were very much pleased, a...

And now they were at home--the Fly dismissed, the trunks unfastened, and Agnes and Marian sitting with Mamma in the old parlour, as if they had never been away. Yes, they had be...

It came to be rather an exciting business to Agnes and Marian making their report of what had happened at the Willows--for it was difficult to distract Mamma’s attention from Si...

It stood upon the verge of a wood, and the side of a hill, looking down into what was not so much a valley as a low amphitheatre, watered by a maze of rivers, and centred in a f...

The upper floor of the Old Wood Lodge consisted of three rooms; one as large as the parlour down stairs, one smaller, and one, looking to the back, very small indeed. The little...

And with an excitement which they could not control, the two girls hastened in to the Old Lodge, and to Miss Bridget’s dim parlour, where the two candles shed their faint summer...

The next day the family walked forth in a body, to make acquaintance with the “new neighbourhood.” There was Papa and Mamma first of all, Mrs Atheling extremely well dressed, an...

Several weeks after this passed very quietly over the Old Wood Lodge and its new inhabitants. They saw “Mr Louis,” always a rapid and sudden apparition, pass now and then before...

September had begun, but my lord and his expected guests had not yet arrived at the Hall. Much talk and great preparations were reported in the village, and came in little rivul...

“But, mamma, if she was just on the eve of the same, why is she only Miss Rivers now?” asked Marian, very curious on this subject of betrothments and marriages.

“Yes, I only came to-day,” said Rachel, who kept her eyes wistfully upon Mrs Atheling, though she spoke to Agnes. “They made me go to town after you left, and then kept me _so_...

It may be supposed that, after all they had heard of him, the Athelings prepared themselves with a little excitement for the visit of Louis. Even Mrs Atheling, who disapproved o...

The next morning, while the mother and daughters were still in the full fervour of discussion about this same remarkable Louis, he himself was seen for the first time in the ear...

What Louis did or said, or how he made interest for himself in the tender heart of Mamma, no one very well knows; yet a certain fact it was, that from henceforward Mrs Atheling,...

This state of things continued for nearly a fortnight after the arrival of Lord Winterbourne and his party at the Hall. They saw Mrs Edgerley passing through the village, and in...

The visit of Miss Rivers was the most complimentary attention which she could show to her new friends, for her visits were few, and paid only to a very limited number of people,...

Marian, whom her mother tenderly put to sleep that night, as if she had been a child, yet who lay awake in the long cold hours before the dawn in a vague and indescribable emoti...

The end of it all was, of course--though Louis had an amount of trouble in the matter which that impetuous young gentleman had not counted upon--that Marian yielded to his prote...

The next day, somewhat to the consternation of this disturbed and troubled family, they were honoured by a most unlooked-for and solemn visit from the Rector. The Rector, in sta...

The next day was the day of Charlie’s arrival. His mother and sisters looked for him with anxiety, pleasure, and a little nervousness--much concerned about Papa’s opinion, and n...

“And now, Charlie, my dear boy, I quite calculate on your knowing about it, since you have been so long at the law,” said Mrs Atheling: “your father is so much taken up about ot...

Early on the next morning, accordingly, Charlie set out for Abingford. It was with difficulty he escaped a general superintendence of his toilette, and prevailed upon his mother...

When Charlie reached home again, very tired, and in a somewhat moody frame of mind, he found the room littered with various old boxes undergoing examination, and Agnes seated be...

Louis had not been told till this day of the peril which threatened the little inheritance of the Athelings. When he did hear of it, the young man gnashed his teeth with that im...

After a long and most laborious investigation of the old parchment, Charlie at last triumphantly made it out to be an old conveyance, to a remote ancestor, of this very little h...

The visit of Miss Rivers was an early one, some time before their mid-day dinner; and the day went on quietly after its usual fashion, and fell into the stillness of a sunny aft...

Mrs Atheling and her son were in Charlie’s little room, with its one small lattice-window, overshadowed and embowered in leaves--its plain uncurtained bed, its small table, and...

That night Charlie had need of all his diplomatic talents. Before he returned from Oxford, his mother, by way of precaution lest Agnes should betray the sudden and mysterious vi...

Charlie Atheling was not at all of an imaginative or fanciful turn of mind. His slumbers were not disturbed by castle-building--he wasted none of his available time in making fa...

“I can’t tell, mother; but it will not be a day longer than I can help,” said Charlie, who had the grace to be serious at the moment of parting. “There’s only one thing, you kno...

Louis passed the night in the Rector’s library. He had no inclination for sleep; indeed, he was almost scornful of the idea that he _could_ sleep under his new and strange circu...

That was all Marian said when she came to the door to meet her mother and sister, who paused in the porch, overcome with fatigue, haste, and anxiety. Mrs Atheling was obliged to...

Lord Winterbourne, all his life, had been a man of guile; he was so long experienced in it, that dissimulation became easy enough to him, when he was not startled or thrown sudd...

They had heard from Charlie, who had already set out upon his journey; they had heard from Louis, whom Mr Foggo desired to take into his office in Charlie’s place in the mean ti...

So said Marian, coming languidly into their sleeping-room, and quite indifferent to Miss Anastasia. She was rather glad indeed to hasten Agnes away, to make an excuse for hersel...

Miss Anastasia “preferred not to see” Rachel--yet, with a wayward inclination still, was moved to drive by a circuitous road in front of the Old Wood House, where the girl was....

No one knew the real effect of the blow which had just fallen upon Lord Winterbourne. The guests, of whom his house was full, dispersed as if by magic. Even Mrs Edgerley, in the...

Agnes’s rambles out of doors had now almost always to be made alone. Rachel was much engrossed with the invalid of the Old Wood House, who had “taken a fancy” to the gentle litt...

In the mean time, immediate interest in their own occupations had pretty nearly departed from the inhabitants of the Old Wood Lodge. Agnes went on with her writing, Mamma with h...

While the Lodge remained in this ferment of suspense and uncertainty, Miss Anastasia had taken her measures for its defence and preservation. It was wearing now towards the end...

After this the family made immediate preparations for their return. Upon this matter Rachel was extremely uncomfortable, and much divided in her wishes. Miss Lucy, who had been...

Once more the Old Wood Lodge stood solitary under the darkening wintry skies, with no bright faces at its windows, nor gleam of household firelight in the dim little parlour, wh...

After Louis, the most urgent business in the house of the Athelings was that of Rachel, who was so pertinaciously anxious to be employed, that her friends found it very difficul...

Yet the household felt, in spite of itself, a difference by no means agreeable between the Old Wood Lodge and Bellevue. The dull brick wall of Laurel House was not nearly so ple...

The Rector became a very frequent visitor during the few following weeks at Bellevue. Louis had gone to see him, as he desired, and Mr Rivers anxiously endeavoured to persuade t...

While the Athelings at home were going on quietly, but with anxiety and disturbance of mind in this way, they were startled one afternoon by a sudden din and tumult out of doors...

The girls could not be persuaded to go to rest, let Mamma say what she would. Rachel, the only one who had no pretence, nor could find any excuse for sitting up, was the only on...

It was far from an easy achievement to get her safely conveyed up the stairs. She turned round and delivered addresses to them in most lively and oratorical Italian, eloquent on...

“You may say what you like, young Atheling,” said Miss Rivers, “you’ve a very good right to your own opinion; but I’m not a lawyer, nor bound by rule and precedent, mind. This i...

The first thing to be done in the morning, before it was time even for the postman, was to hasten to Killiecrankie Lodge, and ascertain all that could be ascertained concerning...

This evening was extremely quiet, and something dull, to the inhabitants of Bellevue. Though everybody knew of the little adventure of Mr Endicott, the young people were all too...

April, as cloudless and almost as warm as summer, a day when all the spring was swelling sweet in all the young buds and primroses, and the broad dewy country smiled and glisten...

“I do not know how he takes it, mother,” said Charlie. “I do not know if he takes it at all; he has not spoken a single word all the way home.”

It would not be easy to describe the state of mind of the feminine portion of this family which remained at home. Marian, in a strange and overpowering tumult--Marian, who was t...

Louis and Rachel returned that night with Miss Anastasia to the Priory, which, the old lady said proudly--the family jointure house for four or five generations--should be their...

It was September--the time when all Englishmen of a certain “rank in life” burn with unconquerable longings to get as far away from home as possible--and there was nothing remar...

Lord Winterbourne had been in Italy, going over the ground which Charlie Atheling had already examined so carefully. Miss Anastasia’s proverb was coming true. He who all his lif...

It was winter, but the heavens were bright--a halcyon day among the December glooms. All the winds lay still among the withered ferns, making a sighing chorus in the underground...

“The Winterbournes” had been for some time at home--they were now in London, and Marian had appeared at court in the full splendour of that young beauty of hers; which never had...

Many lesser changes had been involved in the great revolution which made the nameless Louis head of the family, and conferred upon him the estates and title of Lord Winterbourne...

Agnes Atheling was alone in old Miss Bridget’s parlour; it was a fervent day of July, and all the country lay in a hush and stillness of exceeding sunshine, which reduced all th...