The cost of wings, and other stories

Sheldrick, returning, refreshed and exhilarated, from a spin with a friend who had brought down a racing car of forty horse-power and an enthusiasm to match, found his wife sitt...

“He did. At first he seemed to hesitate, glancing toward Mademoiselle Binet. But she slept soundly, and, indeed, with cause, having over-eaten herself that day at the twelve o’c...

And Mr. Brown went down to dinner. Somewhat to his surprise, he was placed impartially, served without prejudice, and conversed with as an equal. The De Courvaux were charming p...

As she uttered these words the servant returned. His mistress begged the ladies to come upstairs. He delivered his message, and then, with well-trained gravity, lifted the compr...

“Our Lady sent me word you would return to-day, and even as I was upon my way to thank her for such grace, I turned back thinking. ‘If he should come and miss me!’”

“The deuce!” said Sir Alured. “Is that dee-d young scoundrel, Juxon, going to settle down? Seems too good to be true. Why, the old _Paradise_ was hell when Juxon wasn’t in the c...

“I sent him to the Major’s--I mane papa’s--quarters ten minnits ago, wid a flea in his ear!” said Peggy, folding her red hands about the elbow of her captive, and rubbing her ch...

The woman rocked with silent laughter. It seemed to the man behind the curtain that her eyes, across his wife’s shoulder, glared full into his--that her coarse jeers were levele...

The friend of Mrs. Maudslay-Berrish, whom we may know as “Teddy,” gasped one or two private gasps as the _Beata_ shot up to an altitude of three thousand feet, and Chiswick Gasw...

The eyes of the commissionaire were fastened upon the woman’s white, ringed, well-manicured hand, as in its turn it lifted the Blue Diamond--slightly set in platinum as a pendan...

Yethill was not behind his fellows in this respect. When he had said his little say upon the Theory of Wireless Photophony, the Detection of Subterranean Mines by the K Rays, an...

“She took possession of me. I had her constantly about me. She brought me everything I wanted. I was never tired of gloating over my new-found treasure. Every accent of her voic...

The tone betrayed an absolute lack of attention. She had once been used to take a keen interest in his occupations; to be cast down by his failures and elated by his successes....

“But why should the management object, Miss--Mademoiselle?” asked Mr. Lanter, standing, very red and stiff and embarrassed, at Miss Minota’s knee, like a somewhat dull little bo...

“Though in this family it’s been like a fate, or a doom, or whatever you might please to term it,” said Mrs. Ansdey, “that the course of true love, the deeper it was and the tru...

“‘Just like wot I calls our beastly, blooming luck!’ sighed the third stranger who was sitting in the car, and who, though polite, was not in the least a refined sort of person....

I must say Josie Le Moser seemed to like me talking to her and explaining things more than she seemed to when the weedy chap with the ghost of a red mustash was trying to. After...

“Close up here, close up!” A police-sergeant, hurrying from the bottom of the alley, herded the struggling queue before the door of the casual ward into a compact bunch. Then th...

“The money, with the exception of several smaller legacies, goes, with the consent of the Mayor and Corporation of Helsham, to purchase and lay out a Public Park for the people...

“As long as he chooses!” said the Distinguished Surgeon, putting down the gold fruit-knife, and rising with the easy air of the well-bred host. “He is no longer a mere man, but...

“I won’t go so far as to say that he would not have done something desperate,” continued the man who was telling the story, “had not Mariette--who may or may not have suspected...

He lifted his eyebrows in interrogation, and the eyeglass leaped into the folds of his well-chosen cravat, the kind of subdued yet hopeful thing in shades a man of taste and bra...