The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers

I was on the point of leaving India and returning to England when he sent for me. At least, to be accurate--and I am always accurate--I was not quite on the point, but nearly, f...

I was all right next day. I suppose I had had what women call _nerves_. I never knew what nerves meant before, because no two women I ever met seemed to have the same kind. If i...

I did not much like the arrangement of Jane's new house when I came to stay in it. The way the two bedrooms, hers and mine, were shut off from the rest of the house by a door, b...

I really think adventures, like misfortunes, never come single. Would you believe it? Our house was broken into that very night. Nothing serious came of it, wonderful to relate,...

Stoke Moreton is a fine old Elizabethan house standing on rising ground. As we drove up the straight wide approach between two rows of ancient fantastically clipped hollies, I w...

But far from being better the following morning, Denis was much worse. Charles, who had sat up most of the night with him, and who came down to breakfast more cool and indiffere...

It was nearly eight o'clock when I came down. The play was to begin at eight. The hall, which was brilliantly lighted, was one moving mass of black coats, with here and there a...

It is very seldom I cannot sleep, but I could not that night. There was something in the intense quiet and repose of the great house, after all the excitement of the last few ho...

This was easier said than done. But it _was_ done after a sufficiently long parley; and Lady Mary retired under the impression that Ralph was sitting alone with his father, who...

did not go to bed. The more I thought it over the more certain I felt that Carr would not let slip such an opportunity, the more convinced that an attempt would be made that ver...

The room seemed strangely quiet after the stormy interview in the sick-chamber which we had just left. The pale winter sunlight was stealing in aslant through the low windows. T...

"We shall have Marston back to-morrow," said Charles, as the gong began to sound. "We cannot take any step till then, especially if we don't want to put our foot in it. I have b...

I passed an uneasy night. The wind moaned wearily round the house, at one moment seeming to die away altogether, at another returning with redoubled fury, roaring down the wide...

The engine and trucks stopped, the men shouldered their tools and tumbled out, and we followed them. A few hundred paces in front of us was a railway bridge, over which a road p...

"Dear heart, Miss Ruth, my dear, now don't ye be a-going yet, and me that hasn't set eyes on ye this month and more--and as hardly hears a body speak from morning till night."

On this particular July afternoon Mr. Alwynn, or, as his parishioners called him, "The Honorable John," was sitting in his arm-chair in the little drawing-room of Slumberleigh R...

Atherstone was a rambling, old-fashioned, black-and-white house, half covered with ivy, standing in a rambling, old-fashioned garden--a charming garden, with clipped yews, and g...

"I've done Uncle Charles a button-hole, and put it in his water-bottle," said Molly, in an important _affairé_ whisper, as she came into Ruth's room a few minutes before dinner,...

Molly awoke early on the following morning, and early informed the rest of the household that the weather was satisfactory. She flew into Ruth's room with the hot water, to wake...

After the glare and the noise, the shrill blasts of penny trumpets, and the sustained beating of penny drums, the silence of the Slumberleigh woods was delightful to Ruth; the c...

In these days of great brand-new imitation of intensely old houses, where the amount of ground covered measures the purse of the builder, it is pleasant to come upon a place lik...

"Not in the least, I assure you," said Charles, shutting his novel. "What is regarded as study by the feminine intellect is to the masculine merely relaxation. I was 'unbending...

Dare arrived at Atherstone the following afternoon. Evelyn and Ralph, who had enlarged on the state of morbid depression of the lonely inhabitant of Vandon, were rather taken ab...

"My dear," said Mrs. Alwynn to her husband that morning, as they started for church across the glebe, "if any of the Atherstone party are in church, as they ought to be, for I h...

It was the end of August. The little lawn at Slumberleigh Rectory was parched and brown. The glebe beyond was brown; so was the field beyond that. The thirsty road was ash-white...

During the whole of the following week Dare appeared no more at Slumberleigh. Mrs. Alwynn, whose time was much occupied as a rule in commenting on the smallest doings of her nei...

At Slumberleigh you have time to notice the change of the seasons. There is no hurry at Slumberleigh. Spring, summer, autumn, and winter, each in their turn, take quite a year t...

It was Sunday morning at Atherstone. In the dining-room, breakfasting alone, for he had come down late, was Sir Charles Danvers. His sudden arrival on the previous Saturday was...

Great philosophers and profound metaphysicians should by rights have lived at Slumberleigh. Those whose lines have fallen to them "ten miles from a lemon," have time to think, i...

For many years nothing had given Mr. Alwynn such heart-felt pleasure as the news Ruth had to tell him, as he drove her back next morning to Slumberleigh, behind Mrs. Alwynn's lo...

The last week of September found Charles back at Stoke Moreton to receive the "friends" of whom Mrs. Alwynn spoke. People whose partridges he had helped to kill were now to be g...

"It is most natural, I am sure, my dear, that you should wish to get home," said Mr. Alwynn, looking with sympathetic concern at his niece; "and why your aunt has not forwarded...

In the long evening that followed Ruth's departure from Stoke Moreton, Charles was alone for once in his own home. He was leaving again early on the morrow, but for the time he...

Dare returned to Vandon in the highest spirits, with an enormous emerald engagement-ring in an inner waistcoat-pocket. He put it on Ruth's third finger a few days later, under t...

The 18th of October had arrived. Slumberleigh Hall was filling. The pheasants, reprieved till then, supposed it was only for partridge shooting, and thinking no evil, ate Indian...

Reserved people pay dear for their reserve when they are in trouble, when the iron enters into their soul, and their eyes meet the eyes of the world tearless, unflinching, makin...

Charles sat quite still where Ruth had left him, looking straight in front of him. He had not thought for a moment of following her, of speaking to her again. Her decision was f...

If conformity to type is indeed the one great mark towards which humanity should press, Mrs. Thursby may honestly be said to have attained to it. Everything she said or did had...

Dare left Slumberleigh Hall early the following morning, and drove up to the rectory on his way to Vandon. After being closeted with Mr. Alwynn in the study for a short time, th...

Charles left Slumberleigh Hall a few hours later than Dare had done, but only to go back to Atherstone. He could not leave the neighborhood. This burning fever of suspense would...

Charles watched the detective and the policeman hoist Raymond into the dog-cart and drive away, supporting him between them. No doubt it had been the wheels of that dog-cart whi...

It was close on dressing-time when Charles came into the drawing-room, where Evelyn and Molly were building castles on the hearth-rug in the ruddy firelight. After changing his...

Dare was down early the following morning, much too early for the convenience of the house-maids, who were dusting the drawing-room when he appeared there. He was usually as lat...

Mr. Alwynn had returned from his eventful morning call at Vandon very grave and silent. He shook his head when Ruth came to him in the study to ask what the result had been, and...

It was still early on the following morning that Dare, forgetting, as we have seen, his promise to Charles, arrived at Slumberleigh Rectory--so early that Mrs. Alwynn was still...