The Benefactress

Stralsund is an old town of gabled houses, ancient churches, and quaint, roughly paved streets, forming an island, and joined to the mainland by dikes. It looks its best in the...

A low, white, two-storied house, separated from the forest only by a circular grass plot and a ditch with half-melted snow in it and muddy water, a house apparently quite by its...

When Anna woke next morning she had a confused idea that something annoying had happened the evening before, but she had slept so heavily that she could not at once recollect wh...

When a wife says "Go?" in that voice, if she is a person of determination and her husband is a person of peace, he does not go; he stays. Gustav stayed. It is true that at first...

He sent the advertisement by the evening post to two or three of the best newspapers. He had seen the pastor after morning church, who had at once poured into his ears all about...

As soon as Baroness Elmreich found herself alone in her bedroom, she proceeded to examine its contents with minute care. Supper, she had been told, was not till eight o'clock, a...

The old man died at Christmas, and in the following March, when Anna was going about more sad and listless than ever, the news came that, though his inherited estates had gone t...

Anna watched the light in silence, her face paler than ordinary, her hair blown about by the hot wind. The trees in the dark garden swayed and creaked, the air was parching and...

Anna seemed always to be walking away during the days that separated Karlchen's first visit from his second. Frau von Treumann noticed it with some uneasiness, and hoped that it...

So Anna was left to herself again. She was astonished at the rapidity of Trudi's movements. Within one week she had heard of her, met her, liked her, begun to like her less, and...

Anna drove into Stralsund the next morning to her banker, accompanied by Miss Leech. When they passed Axel's house she saw that his gate-posts were festooned with wreaths, and t...

The ordinary young man, German or otherwise, hungrily emerging from boyhood into a toothsome world made to be eaten, cures himself of his appetite by indulging it till he is ill...

It was an odd and a nearly invariable consequence of Anna's cold morning bath that she made resolutions in great numbers. The morning after the fire there were more of them than...

She was an exceedingly pretty girl, who ought to have been enjoying herself. She had a soft, irregular face, charming eyes, dimples, a pleasant laugh, and limbs that were long a...

It was late the same afternoon, and Princess Ludwig had come into the bedroom where the Stralsund doctor was still vainly endeavouring to bring the baroness back to life, to ask...

The philosopher tells us that, after the healing interval of sleep, we are prepared to meet each other every morning as gods and goddesses; so fresh, so strong, so lusty, so ser...

Neither Trudi nor Anna had ever worked so hard as they did during the few days that ended March and began April. Everything seemed to happen at once. The house was in a sudden u...

But if Susie's rage was such that she refused to say good-bye, and terrified Miss Leech while she was waiting in the hall for the carriage by dark allusions to strait-waistcoats...

Anna put on her hat and went out to think it over. Fräulein Kuhräuber was apparently still asleep. Letty, accompanied by Miss Leech, had to go to Lohm parsonage for her first le...

What the Princess Ludwig thought of her new place it would be difficult to say. She accepted her position as minister to the comforts of the hitherto comfortless without remark...

"Manske had a pile of letters for you, and could not get them to you because he has a pastors' conference at his house. I was there and saw the letters, and thought you might wa...

Long before the carriage bringing the three chosen ones from the station could possibly arrive, Anna and Letty began to wait in the hall, standing at the windows, going out on t...

Klutz sped, as fast as his shaking limbs allowed, to Lohm. When he passed Anna's house he flung it a look of burning contempt, which he hoped she saw and felt from behind some c...

The May that year in Northern Germany was the May of a poet's dream. The days were like a chain of pearls, increasing in beauty and preciousness as the chain lengthened. The lil...

The next morning early, Anna went over to the farm to ask Dellwig to lend her any newspapers he might have. She was anxious to advertise as soon as possible for a companion, and...

There was a grave beauty, an austerity almost, about this betrothal in the prison. Here was no room for the archnesses and coynesses of ordinary lovemaking. All that was not sim...

What Anna most longed for in the days that followed was a mother. "If I had a mother," she thought, not once, but again and again, and her eyes had a wistful, starved look when...

But in spite of this little outburst of gratitude and appreciation from Fräulein Kuhräuber, the first evening of the new life was a disappointment. The Fräulein, who entered the...

There was a German relation of Anna's, her mother's brother, known to Susie as Uncle Joachim. He had been twice to England; once during his sister's life, when Anna was little,...

Peter, meditating on the banks of the river at Estcourt, came to the conclusion that a journey to London would be made unnecessary by the equal efficacy of a congratulatory letter.

When Axel came in two hours later, bringing Dellwig and Manske and two or three other helpers, farmers, who had driven across the plain to do what they could, he found his house...

Looking up from her breakfast the morning after the fire to see who it was riding down the street, Frau Manske beheld Dellwig coming towards her garden gate. Her husband was in...