The Bath Comedy

"Now! I shall find my lady in tears. What a strange world it is! The girl you woo is as merry as a May day: the wife you wed is like naught but early November. Equinoctial gales...

In the white moonlight Sir Jasper Standish paced up and down the cobble-stoned yard with as monotonous a restlessness as if he had been hired this night to act the living sign a...

Lady Standish was one of those clinging beings who seem morally and physically to be always seeking a prop. Before adversity she was prostrate, and when his lordship the Bishop...

Mr. Stafford, gradually recovering from his paroxysms, had begun to bestow some intelligent interest upon the scene. There was a mist of doubt in his eyes as he gazed from the v...

He was sitting on a stool at Mrs. Bellairs' feet. She had abandoned to him one plump taper-fingered hand. The gay little parlour of the Queen Square house was full of sunshine a...

Mistress Kitty Bellairs poised her dainty person on one foot and cast a mocking, somewhat contemptuous, yet good-humoured glance at the slim length of sobbing womanhood prone on...

Mistress Bellairs was up betimes. In truth she had slept ill, which was a strange experience for her. What her thirty-seven lovers had never had the power to wring from her--a t...

There must have been a curious magic in the words, "My future wife," for no sooner had he pronounced them than Lord Verney became several inches taller, a distinct span broader...

The side-rays of the chaise-lamps played on the widow's soft, saucy face, threw beguiling shadows under her eyes, and fleeting dimples round those lips that seemed perpetually t...

As he stood turning the seething brew of his dark thoughts, there came a pair of knowing raps upon the street-door, and in upon him strode with cheery step and cry the friends h...

The Honourable Denis O'Hara, son and heir of Viscount Kilcroney in the peerage of Ireland, entered with a swift and easy step, and saluted airily. He had a merry green eye, and...

Denis O'Hara appropriately lived in Gay Street. As all the world knows, Gay Street runs steeply from the green exclusiveness of Queen Square, to the lofty elegance, the columnal...

In ten minutes a fair lady may do much to enhance her fairness. As Mistress Bellairs took a last look at her mirror, while Lydia bustled out to call a hired chair, she bestowed...

"Sir Jasper," quoth she, and shot out a timid hand. "Oh, Sir Jasper, will you not listen to me? This is the most terrible mistake. Sir Jasper, I swear I am true to you, not only...

Lord Markham was a person of indefinite appearance, indefinite age and indefinite manners. He wore an ill-fitting wig, but he had a high reputation as a man of honour. He sat be...

Mistress Kitty (seated between O'Hara and Stafford at the end of the table, while Lord Verney and Sir Jasper faced each other), continued, unmoved, to sip her fragrant brew and...

"How?" cried Lady Standish, waking with a start out of the heavy sleep of trouble, and propping herself upon her elbow, to gaze in blinking astonishment at the irate pink counte...

Beyond a _gavotte_ with Lord Verney, she had not danced, but sat for half-an-hour on the chair next to Lady Maria, who presented her with the vision of a shoulder-blade which ha...

It was about ten o'clock of the evening that his impatient hand upon the knocker sent thunder through the house, startled the gambling footmen in the hall below and the fat butl...

"My Lord," clamoured Captain Spicer at the door, "the coach is waiting and we have but half an hour to reach Bathwick Meadows. Egad, Lord Verney, would you be last at the meeting?"

_The precise year, however, may not be given. A sufficient reason for reticence in the matter of exact date will be found in the unfortunate predicament of the then Bishop of Ba...

"La, ma'am," said Miss Lydia, as with nervous fingers she uncoiled one powdered roll and curl after another, "all the morning the gossip was upon Sir Jasper's meeting with Colon...

As the carriage rolled homewards on the Bath Road, Lady Standish, both hands folded over the mysterious letter, sat staring out of the window with unseeing eyes. The dawn had be...

When Mistress Kitty had sipped half a glass with great show of relish and rakishness, and Lady Standish, under protest, had sucked a few spoonfuls; when Lady Maria, stuck in the...

"Bear you malice, is it?" said he, stopping to kiss each finger-tip of the hand which he contrived somehow should never be long out of his clasp. "Me darling, sure, won't I love...

Upon their last meeting, his behaviour to the Bishop having roused in her gentle bosom a feeling as nearly akin to resentment as it was capable of harbouring, she would not be (...