The Dim Lantern

Jane, in Baldy’s absence, dined on Sunday with the Follettes, in the middle of the day. In the afternoon she and Evans went for a walk, and came home to tea in the library.

“Oh, but it’s good to be back,” Jane was telling Baldy at breakfast. The windows were wide open, the fragrance of lilacs streamed in, there were pink hyacinths on the table.

Sherwood Park is twelve miles from Washington. Starting as a somewhat pretentious suburb on the main line of a railroad, it was blessed with easy accessibility until encroaching...

Her room was icy. She climbed out of bed, and closed the windows, lighted the lamp on her little table, wrapped herself in a warm robe, and sat up among her pillows, to think th...

Edith Towne had lived with her Uncle Frederick nearly four years when she became engaged to Delafield Simms. Her mother was dead, as was her father. Frederick was her father’s o...

It was very cold and the clouds were heavy with wind. But neither cold nor clouds could damp his ardor--at his journey’s end was a lady with eyes of burning blue.

The evening wrap which Jane wore with her old white chiffon was of a bright Madonna blue with a black fur collar. Jane, as has been said, loved clear color, and when she dyed di...

Mrs. Allison and the three old ladies with whom Jane was to drink tea, were neighbors. Mrs. Allison lived alone, and the other three lived in the homes of their several sons and...

“Baldy, darling: The operation is over, and the doctor gives us hope. That is the best I can tell you. I haven’t been allowed to see Judy, though they have let Bob have a peep a...

It was the morning of the day that she was going to the Delafield Simms, and Jane was packing her bag. She felt unaccountably depressed. During this week-end her engagement woul...

“Edith insisted that I should stay all night. She’s a perfect darling, so absolutely and utterly exquisite, and yet so human. She and her uncle simply can’t look at things from...

It was just before New Year’s that Lucy Logan brought a letter for Frederick Towne to sign, and when he had finished she said, “Mr. Towne, I’m sorry, but I’m not going to work a...

Life for Evans Follette after Jane went away became a sort of game in which he played, as he told himself grimly, a Jekyll and Hyde part. Two men warred constantly within him. T...

Mrs. Follette had been born in Maryland with a tradition of aristocratic blood. It was this tradition which had upheld her through years of poverty after the Civil War. A close...

When young Baldwin Barnes had ridden out of Sherwood that morning on his way to Washington, his car had swept by fields which were crisp and frozen; by clumps of trees whose poi...

Lucy was still to Eloise Harper the stenographer of Frederick Towne. Out of place, of course, in this fine country house, with its formal gardens, its great stables, its retinue...

The two boys were on their way to Castle Manor. They wanted books. Evans’ library was a treasure-house for youthful readers. It had all the old adventuring tales. And Evans had...

The shops were full of valentines--many of them of paper lace--the fragile old-fashioned things that had become a new fashion. They had forget-me-nots on them and hearts with go...

So Christmas Eve came, and the costume ball at the Townes’. There were, as Baldy had told Jane, just six of them at dinner. Cousin Annabel was still in bed, and it was Adelaide...

“It is going to be a dreadful night,” young Baldwin, heavy with gloom, prophesied. He thought of Edith, in the storm in her buckled shoes. Had she found shelter? Was she frighte...

The thing that Frederick Towne got out of his niece’s flight was this. “She wouldn’t let anybody sympathize with her. Simply locked the door of her room, and in the morning she...

Once more the Washington papers had headlines that spoke of Delafield Simms. He had married a stenographer in Frederick Towne’s office. And it was Towne’s niece that he had dese...

“Yes, Baldy.” Jane sat up in bed, dreams still in her eyes. She had been late in getting to sleep. There had been so much to think of--Frederick Towne’s proposal--the startling...

To the right was a great open space--with desks boxed in by glass partitions. The wall paper was green, so that the people at the desks had the effect of fish in an aquarium. Th...

Bob had cried when the news came from the hospital. It had been dreadful. Jane had never seen a man cry. They had been hard sobs, with broken apologies between. “I’m a fool to a...

Young Baldwin Barnes, on Saturday morning, ate breakfast alone in the little house. He read his paper and drank his coffee. But the savor of things was gone. He missed Jane. Her...

Ghosts, ghosts, ghosts; holding out appealing hands to her. And always she had turned away. But now she did not turn. Over and over again she lent her ears to those whispering w...

Evans had found his mother at noon, lying on the couch at the foot of her bed. He had stayed at home in the morning to help her, and at ten o’clock she had gone up-stairs to res...

“It isn’t a question of right or wrong. If things turn out with these new people as I hope, I’ll be painting like mad for the next two months. And you’ll have your work cut out...