The Bars of Iron

There came the sound of a splashing leap, and bare feet raced across the bathroom floor. The door was wrenched from Sir Beverley's grasp, and flung open. Piers, quite naked, sto...

He was curiously light-hearted again that morning. The soft Southern air with its many perfumes exhilarated him like wine. The scent of the orange-groves rose as incense to the...

Stanbury Cliffs was no more than a little fishing-town at the foot of the sandy cliff--a sheltered nest of a place in which the sound of the waves was heard all day long, but wh...

No bells had rung at the young Squire's wedding. It had been conducted with a privacy which Miss Whalley described as "almost indecent." But there was no privacy about his retur...

There was no combating the Vicar's decision. Avery realized that fact from the outset even before Mrs. Lorimer's agitated note upon the subject reached her. The fiat had gone fo...

As Miss Whalley had predicted, Ina Rose's wedding was a very grand affair indeed. Everyone who was anyone attended it, and a good many besides. It took place in the midst of a s...

"He has gone for his ride as usual," Victor said, speaking through pursed lips. "But he is very, very feeble to-day, _Monsieur Pierre_. We beg him not to go. But what would you?...

During the week that followed, no second summons came to Piers from his wife's room. He hung about the house, aimless, sick at heart, with hope sinking ever lower within him lik...

Jeanie rallied. As though to comfort Avery's distress, she came back for a little space; but no one--not even her father--could doubt any longer that the poor little mortal life...

She spoke to him at last, half-frightened by his silence, yet by his attitude wholly reassured. For he wanted her still, of that no doubt remained. His hands were clasped behind...

It was a blustering spring day, and Avery, caught in a sudden storm of driving sleet, stood up against the railings of the doctor's house, sheltering as best she might. She was...

"I doubt if the County will call," said Miss Whalley, "unless the fact that Sir Piers is to stand for the division weighs with them. And Colonel Rose's patronage may prove an ad...

For a week after Piers' arrival, Jeanie was better, so much better that she was able to be carried downstairs and into the garden where she loved to lie. There was a piano in th...

He strode across the garden with that high, arrogant air of his as of one who challenges the world, and threw himself into the vacant chair by the tea-table at which his wife sat.

How many times had he paced up and down the terrace? Piers could not have said. He had been there for hours, years, half a lifetime, waiting--waiting eternally for the summons t...

"Hooray! No more horrid sums for a whole month!" Gracie Lorimer's arithmetic-book soared to the ceiling and came down with a bang while Gracie herself pivoted, not ungracefully,...

How long was it since the fight round the château? Piers had no idea. The damp chill of the autumn night was upon him and he was cold to the bone.

"No," said Piers. "Aunt Avery may kiss me if she likes." He looked at Avery with his sudden, boyish laugh. "But I know she doesn't like, so that's an end of the matter."

Like a prince masquerading! How vivid was the picture those words called up to Avery's mind! The regal pose of the body, the turn of the head, the faultless beauty of the featur...

It had been one of those strange soft days that sometimes come in the midst of blustering March storms, and though the sun had long gone down the warmth still lingered. It might...

"Yes, I know. That is the hardest part. But be patient a little longer! So much depends on it. I was told only this morning that any agitation might be fatal. No one seems to un...

"It's much better than learning by heart," said Jeanie, with her tired little smile. "Somehow, you know, I can't learn by heart--at least not long things. Father says it is beca...

It was certainly not Caesar's fault. Caesar was as well-meaning a Dalmatian as ever scampered in the wake of a cantering horse. And if Mike in his headlong Irish fashion chose t...

Victor, busily engaged in laying out his clothes, cast a wicked eye back over his shoulder as his young master pounced upon them, then with a shrug resumed his task, smiling to...

The preparations that must inevitably precede a departure for an indefinite length of time kept Avery from dwelling overmuch on what had passed on that gusty afternoon when she...

Up and down, up and down, in a fever of restlessness, Avery walked. She felt trapped. The gloomy, tapestried room seemed to close her in like a prison. The whole world seemed to...

It was the Reverend Stephen Lorimer's custom to have all letters that arrived by the morning post placed beside his breakfast plate to be sorted by him at the end of family pray...

The surgery-bell pealed imperiously, and Tudor looked up from his book. It was his custom to read far into the night, for he was a poor sleeper and preferred a cosy fireside to...

A splendid fire of logs blazed before him on the open hearth, and the light from a great chandelier beat mercilessly down upon him. His hair was thick still and silvery white. H...

She had so nearly finished her task that she had sent the children in to prepare for tea, declaring that she would follow them in five minutes, and then just at the last a whole...

There came the swift drumming of galloping hoofs, the check and pause of a leap, and then close at hand the thud of those same hoofs landing on the near side of the hedge. The r...

Avery was already dressed when she heard Piers enter his room and say a word to Victor. She stood by her window waiting. It was growing late, but she felt sure he would come to...

"Mrs. Denys, may I come in?" Jeanie Lorimer's small, delicate face peeped round the door. "I've brought my French exercise to do," she said half-apologetically. "I thought perha...

"Fight? I'll fight you with pleasure, but I shall probably kill you if I do. Do you want to be killed?" Brief and contemptuous the question fell. The speaker was a mere lad. He...

He shrugged his shoulders, and his brown face slightly smiled. "Because of the hunting?" he said, and turned his eyes upon her fresh, girlish face. "But there's always next year...

"The honour is ours to get you," Avery declared. She sat on the terrace whither she had conducted him, and smiled at him across the tea-table with eyes of shining friendship.

"Eternal sunshine!" said Piers, with a grimace at the deep, deep blue of the slumbering water that stretched below him to the horizon. "And at night eternal moonshine. Romantic...

Mrs. Marshall at the lodge was a hard-featured old woman whose god was cleanliness. Perhaps it was hardly to be expected of her that she should throw open her door to the whole...

With the morning came a general feeling of relief. The Vicar was almost jocose, and Mrs. Lorimer made timid attempts to be mirthful though the parting with her children sorely t...

He came at last out of what had almost been a stupor of inertia, sat slowly up, turned his brooding eyes upon the door through which Piers had passed. A tremor of anger crossed...

Local gossip regarding her estrangement from her husband had practically exhausted itself some time before, and in any case it would have been swamped by the fevered anxiety tha...

The bride and bridegroom departed amid a storm of rice and good wishes, Ina's face still wearing that slightly contemptuous smile to the last. Piers, in the foremost of the crow...

"Why, Avery dear, is it you? Come in!" Mrs. Lorimer looked up with a smile of eager welcome on her little pinched face and went forward almost at a run to greet her.

The encounter was so amazing, so utterly unlooked for, that Avery had a moment of downright consternation. The child's whole air and expression were so exactly reminiscent of he...

The light from Crowther's unshaded lamp flared full upon him. In his faultless evening dress he looked every inch an aristocrat. That air of the old-Roman patrician was very str...

Seated at the schoolroom piano, Piers was thoroughly in his element. He had a marvellous gift for making music, and his audience listened spell-bound. His own love for it amount...

The Reverend Stephen Lorimer was writing his sermon for the last Sunday in Advent. His theme was eternal punishment and one which he considered worthy of his utmost eloquence. T...

"My good Mrs. Denys, it is quite fruitless for you to argue the matter. Nothing you can say can alter the fact that you took the children trespassing in the Rodding Park preserv...

Avery was very early at the church on the following morning, and had begun the work of decorating even before Miss Whalley appeared on the scene. It was a day of showers and fle...

She and Mrs. Lorimer were preparing a Christmas Tree for the children, a secret to which only Jeanie had been admitted. The tree itself was already procured and hidden away in a...

"It's always the same," moaned Mrs. Lorimer. "My poor children! They're never out of trouble." Avery stood still. She had fled to the drawing-room to recover herself, only to fi...

He made her a graceful bow, nearly sweeping the path outside the Vicarage gate with his cap. "Even so, madam! On you! But as I perceive you are not at home to callers, may I be...

"Look here, boy!" Very suddenly, almost fiercely, Sir Beverley addressed his grandson that evening as they sat together over dessert. "I've had enough of this infernal English c...

At ten o'clock that night, Avery went round to bid each child good-night. She found Gracie sleeping peacefully with her bed pushed close to Jeanie's. The latter was awake and wh...

They were walking together in the February twilight along the long, dark avenue of chestnuts that led to Rodding Abbey. Avery moved with lagging feet that she strove vainly to f...

"Give her everything she wants!" How often in the days that followed were those words in Avery's mind! She strove to fulfil them to the uttermost, but Jeanie seemed to want so l...

Tudor tramped up to the hearth, looking very square and resolute. "I've come from the schoolroom," he said, "where I went to take a look at Jeanie. But I found Gracie required m...

After all, it was Crowther who broke that tragic silence; perhaps because he could bear it no longer. The path on which they stood was deserted. He laid a very steady hand upon...

Lennox Tudor spent hours at the Vicarage that day in close attendance upon Mrs. Lorimer in company with Avery who scarcely left her side. Terrible hours they were, during which...

"That is just where you make a mistake, my good Crowther. You're an awfully shrewd chap in some ways, but you understand women just about as thoroughly as I understand theology."

"The matter is settled," said the Reverend Stephen Lorimer, in the tones of icy decision with which his wife was but too tragically familiar. "I engaged Mrs. Denys to be a help...