The Crown of Life

In the saloon of a homeward-bound steamer, twenty-four hours from port, and that port Southampton, a lady sat writing letters. Her age was about thirty; her face was rather piqu...

Once in the two years' interval he had paid a short visit to England. He came on disagreeable business--to see his brother Daniel, who had fallen into the hands of the police on...

When he awoke next morning from a heavy sleep, Piers suffered the half-recollection of some reproachful dream. His musty palate and dull brain reminded him of Alexander's whisky...

On one of those evenings at the seaside, Dr. Derwent, glancing over the newspapers, came upon a letter signed "Lee Hannaford." It had reference to some current dispute about the...

The night being fair, Piers set out to walk a part of the way home. It was only by thoroughly tiring himself with bodily exercise that he could get sound and long oblivion. Hour...

On the journey homeward, and for two or three days after, Piers held argument with his passions, trying to persuade himself that he had in truth lost nothing, inasmuch as his lo...

"I will be frank with you, Piers," said Daniel Otway, as he sat by the fireside in his shabby lodgings, his feet on the fender, a cigarette between his fingers. He looked yellow...

The passionate temperament is necessarily sanguine. To desire with all one's being is the same thing as to hope. In Piers Otway's case, the temper which defies discouragement ex...

"That morning my guests leave, and we shall be quiet--except for the popping of guns round about. Which reminds me that my big, healthy Englishman of a cousin (him you met in to...

Without investigating her motives, Irene Derwent deferred as long as possible her meeting with the man to whom she had betrothed herself. Nor did Arnold Jacks evince any serious...

Strangers with whom Piers Otway had business at this time saw in him a young man of considerable energy, though rather nervous and impulsive, capable in all that concerned his s...

Irene passed a restless night. The snatches of unrefreshing sleep which she obtained as the hours dragged towards morning were crowded with tumultuous dreams; she seemed to be a...

A semi-detached dwelling in a part of Hammersmith just being invaded by the social class below that for which it was built; where, in consequence, rents had slightly fallen, and...

Again Irene was going down into Cheshire, to visit the two old ladies, her relatives. It was arranged that she should accompany Mrs. Hannaford to Malvern, and spend a couple of...

Piers Otway spent ten days in Yorkshire. His father was well, but more than ever silent, sunk in prophetic brooding; Mrs. Otway kept the wonted tenor of her life, apprehensive f...

At the head of Wensleydale, where rolling moor grows mountainous toward the marches of Yorkshire and Westmorland, stands the little market-town named Hawes. One winding street o...

A week went by, and Piers was as far as ever from resuming his regular laborious life. One day he spent in London. His father's solicitor had desired to see him, in the matter o...

For half an hour Irene sat idle. She was waiting, and could do nothing but wait. Then the uncertainty as to how long this suspense might hold her grew insufferable; she was afra...

The lad he employed in his office was run over by a cab one slippery day, and all but killed. Piers visited him in the hospital, thus seeing for the first time the interior of o...

At home again, Piers wrote to Olga, the greater part of the letter being occupied with an account of what had happened at Liverpool. It was not a love-letter, yet differed in to...

"I saw you together," said Kite absently, but not resentfully. "I half thought of coming up to be introduced to him. But I'm rather shabby, I feared you mightn't like it."

A little apart from the village of Ewell, within sight of the noble trees and broad herbage of Nonsuch Park, and looking southward to the tilth and pasture of the Downs, stood t...

His manner was that to which she had grown accustomed, or differed so little from it that, in ordinary circumstances, she would have remarked no peculiarity. He might have seeme...

Straying about Kensington Gardens in the pleasant sunshine, his mind occupied with Daniel's information, Piers Otway lost count of time, and at last had to hurry to keep his eng...

The breakfast hour was nine o'clock. Dr. Derwent, as usual, came down a few minutes before, and turned over the letters lying for him on the table. Among them he found an envelo...

Olga knew that by her mother's death she became penniless. The income enjoyed by Mrs. Hannaford under the will of her sister in America was only for life by allowing a third of...

Clad for a long railway journey on a hot day; a grey figure of fluent lines, of composedly decisive movements; a little felt hat close-fitting to the spirited head, leaving full...

At lunch Piers was as silent as at breakfast; he hardly spoke, save in answer to a chance question from Mrs. Hannaford. His face had an unwonted expression, a shade of sullennes...

"The circumstances are these. On the day after I said good-bye to him, my father went for his usual morning walk, and was absent for two hours. He returned looking very pale and...

A few days after her return, Irene left home in the morning to make an unceremonious call. She was driven to Great Portland Street and alighted before a shop, which bore the num...

From this retreat, Irene wrote to her cousin Olga Hannaford, and in the course of the letter made inquiry whether anything was known at Ewell about a severe illness that had bef...

She sat by her open window, which looked over the dale to the long high ridge of moors, softly drawn against a moonlit sky. Far below sounded the rushing Ure, and at moments the...

After his day's work, he had spent an hour among the pictures at Burlington House. He was lingering before an exquisite landscape, unwilling to change this atmosphere of calm fo...

There had only been time to satisfy Daniel's profound and touching interest in his brother's work for the examination when the tea bell rang, and they went down to the drawing-r...

When Piers Otway got back to Ewell, about four o'clock, he felt the beginning of a headache. The day of excitement might have accounted for it, but in the last few weeks it had...

Again it was springtime--the spring of 1894. Two years had gone by since that April night when Piers Otway suffered things unspeakable in flesh and spirit, thinking that for him...

Amid the throng of suburban arrivals volleyed forth from Waterloo Station on a May morning in the year '86, moved a slim, dark, absent-looking young man of one-and-twenty, whose...