The Brightener

Brightening continued to be fun. As time went on I brightened charming people, queer people, people with their hearts in the right place and their "H's" in the wrong one. I was...

I didn't know who these somebodies were, and I didn't much care. For the first instant the one thing I did care about was, that they should remain outside my arbour, instead of...

She had, it seemed, already given up her lodgings in the village near Robert Lorillard's cottage. Opal Fawcett had offered the hospitality of her house for a fortnight, and whil...

When the trip finished where it had begun, instead of travelling up to London with most of my friends, I stopped behind in Plymouth. If any one fancied I was going to Courtenaye...

The only way in which I could keep Joyce with me for a little while longer was by pretending to be ill. _That_ fetched her. And it wasn't all pretense, either, because I was hor...

I hoped to shock Mrs. Carstairs, in order to see what the nicest old lady on earth would look like when scandalized. But I was disappointed. She was not scandalized. She asked f...

Then she had gleamed wraithlike in the purple dusk of her purple room, with its purple-shaded lamps. Now she stood in full daylight, against the frank background of a country co...

That night was one of the worst in my life. I was so fond of Robert Lorillard, and I'd grown to love Joyce Arnold so well that the breaking of their love idyll hurt as if it had...

I went back to Bath, and Mrs. Percy-Hogge; but I no longer felt that I was enjoying a rest cure. Right or wrong, I had the impression of being _watched_. I was sure that Sir Jam...

Jim wished to go with me, to be on hand in case of trouble. But the reason why I'd hoped to find him at the Abbey was because we have a secret room there which everyone knows (i...

It wasn't only the romance of Terry falling out of love with his Princess, and in love with a face, which held me. There was more in the affair than that. The impression I had r...

Mrs. Percy-Hogge was, and is, exactly what you would think from her name; which is why I don't care to dwell at length on the few months I spent brightening her at Bath. It was...

Sitting up in bed, hugging her knees, she started at my words so that the springs shook. Whatever it was she had meant to say, she forgot it for the moment, and challenged me: "...

Jim and I witnessed Ralston Murray's will, which left all he possessed to "Mrs. Rosemary Brandreth." No reference was made in the document to the fact that Rosemary was engaged...

"Ah, the lovely girl has begun to talk very fast now! I can hardly understand what she says, because she's half crying. It's to you she speaks, sir; I don't know your name! But,...

There were the old-world gardens; the statues; the fountains (it was a detail that they didn't fount!); there were the white peacocks (moulting); there was the moat so crammed w...

You know, when you're on shipboard, how new people appear from day to day, long after you've seen everyone on the passenger list! It is as if they had been dropped on deck from...

Just for an instant I was chilled with doubt of last night's impression, for her face was so pale and anxious that she was more like Rosemary than had been the red-rose vision a...

Well, he dared to offer, through Mr. Carstairs, to do that very thing, "for the family's sake." At least, he proposed to pay off all our debts and allow me an income of four hun...

"Avalesco--the Princess Avalesco." I felt suddenly frightened. I'd been playing with the public as if people were my puppets. Now I had a vague conviction at the back of my brai...

This was the first time I'd seen Roger's cabin, and I had no eyes now for its charm of decoration; but I saw that it was large, and divided by a curtained arch into a bedroom an...

"Not empty. No. There was something there. Will you come to my cabin and see what it was? Don't look frightened. There's nothing to alarm you. And--Princess, the rest of the pla...

"Look here, Bertie," I said, "what I've been thinking of is this: you'd better hide, and let me go alone to find Krammie. _Suppose_ your mother has looked in your room! She'll k...

It seemed to us that hours dragged heavily by, between the time that the motor left and the time when we heard it draw up at the front door. A moment later, and Gaby Jennings wa...

He had dropped in to see me on each of these days, for one reason or other: to tell me what Sir Humphrey said; to sneer at the treatment; to beg a cigarette when his store had g...

I had a headache the last day out but one, and stayed in my cabin all the afternoon. It seems that Mrs. Brandreth asked Jim if she might visit me for a little while, and he cons...

It was amazing what Terry and I accomplished in the next few days, I at Dawley St. Ann, close to Dun Moat, he flashing back and forth between there and London!

From that time on I was haunted by Rosemary's thin, beautiful face, the suppressed anguish in her eyes, and the wretched conviction that I was of no use--that I'd stumbled again...

"You won't regret it," I prophesied. "You will find Major Murray an interesting man, and as enthralling a case as you ever met. As for the bride, you'll fall in love with her. E...

He had said to Gaby Jennings that he would always want Rosemary back whatever he heard about her past; but now, believing Gaby's story with its additional proofs, at all events...

I thought I knew what that "something" was. I thought that Gaby wished to "tame" Sir Beverley, and make him so much her slave that he would appoint Paul to understudy him with M...

I did all I could to make dinner a lively meal, and with iced Pommery of a particularly good year as my aide-de-camp, superficially at least I succeeded. But whenever there was...

"My darling, adored man!" I exclaimed. "You know perfectly well that you're the background and undercurrent and foundation of all my thoughts, every minute of the day and night....

Major Murray's face changed. "Of course, there's one idea which presents itself instantly to the mind," he said. "But it's such an obvious one! I confess I had it myself at firs...

I invited Terry to breakfast with me at nine precisely next day, and each of us was solemnly pledged not to look at a newspaper until we could open them together.

When Sir Beverley Drake undertakes a case, he puts his whole soul into it, and no sacrifice of time or trouble is too much. I loved the dear man when he quietly announced that h...

Jim is not a bad amateur detective, and he didn't abandon his efforts to get behind the portrait mystery. But we had decided that, for Murray's sake, "discretion was the better...