The Doctor's Wife: A Novel

A solemn calm came down upon the house at Graybridge, and for the first time Isabel Gilbert felt the presence of death about and around her, shutting out all the living world by...

Mrs. Gilbert recovered very quickly from her fainting-fit. She had been frightened by Mr. Lansdell's story, she said, and the heat had made her dizzy. She sat very quietly upon...

It happened that the very day after Isabel's little outbreak of passion was a peculiar occasion in George Gilbert's life. It was the 2nd of July, and it was his wife's birthday,...

The garden at the back of Mr. Sleaford's house was a large square plot of ground, with fine old pear-trees sheltering a neglected lawn. A row of hazel-bushes screened all the le...

While George Gilbert was thinking of Isabel Sleaford's pale face and black eyes; while, in his long rides to and fro among the cottages of his parish patients, he solemnly debat...

The young surgeon went home to Midlandshire with his fellow-excursionists, when the appointed Monday came round. He met Miss Burdock and her sister on the platform in Euston Squ...

The moon was slowly rising behind a black belt of dense foliage,--a noble screen of elm and beech that sheltered Lord Ruysdale's domain from the common world without,--as Roland...

Mr. and Mrs. Gilbert went to church arm-in-arm as usual on the morning after the picnic; but Sigismund stayed at home to sketch the rough outline of that feudal romance which he...

Roland Lansdell dined with his uncle and cousin at Lowlands upon the day after the picnic; but he said very little about his afternoon ramble in Hurstonleigh Grove. He lounged u...

Brown Molly's fetlocks were neatly trimmed by Mr. Jeffson's patient hands. I fancy the old mare would have gone long without a clipping, had it not been George's special pleasur...

Mr. Roland Lansdell did not invite Lady Gwendoline or her father to that bachelor picnic which he was to give at Waverly Castle. He had a kind of instinctive knowledge that Lord...

It was eleven o'clock when Isabel woke; and it was twelve when she sat down to make some pretence of eating the egg and toast which Mrs. Jeffson set before her. The good woman r...

What could Isabel Gilbert do? The fabric of all her dreams was shivered like a cobweb in a sudden wind, and floated away from her for ever. Everybody had misunderstood her. Even...

While Mr. Lansdell remembered Isabel Gilbert as a pretty automaton, who had simpered and blushed when he spoke to her, and stammered shyly when she was called upon to answer him...

The Tuesday was a fine day. The August sunshine--the beautiful harvest-time sunshine which was rejoicing the hearts of all the farmers in Midlandshire--awoke Mrs. Gilbert very e...

Mr. Sigismund Smith was a sensation author. That bitter term of reproach, "sensation," had not been invented for the terror of romancers in the fifty-second year of this present...

The two young men acted very promptly upon that friendly warning conveyed in Mrs. Sleaford's farewell message. The maid-of-all-work went to the greengrocer's, and returned in co...

"See that some hothouse grapes and a pine are sent to Mr. Gilbert at Graybridge," Roland said to his valet on the morning after Isabel's visit. "I was sorry to hear of his serio...

After that scene in the church at Hurstonleigh, Roland Lansdell went back to Mordred; to think, with even greater bitterness, of the woman he loved. That silent encounter--the s...

All through the autumnal months, all through the dreary winter, George Gilbert's wife endured her existence, and hated it. The days were all alike, all "dark and cold and dreary...

George Gilbert accepted his wife's explanation of her prolonged absence on that March afternoon. She had carried her books to Thurston's Crag, and had sat there reading, while t...

When the chill discomfort of that first evening at Graybridge was past and done with, Isabel felt a kind of remorseful regret for the mute passion of discontent and disappointme...

Mrs. Gilbert stayed at home all through the day which succeeded her parting from Roland Lansdell. She stayed in the dingy parlour, and read a little, and played upon the piano a...

Isabel was happy. He had returned; he had returned to her; never again to leave her! Had he not said something to that effect? He had returned, because he had found existence un...

The Sunday after Roland Lansdell's visit to his cousin was a warm May day, and the woodland lanes and meadows through which the master of Mordred Priory walked to Hurstonleigh w...

Mr. Lansdell did not seem in a hurry to make any demonstration of his return to Mordred. He did not affect any secrecy, it is true; but he shut himself a good deal in his own ro...

The parish surgeon lay in his darkened bedchamber at Graybridge day after day and night after night, and Mr. Pawlkatt, coming twice a day to look at him, could give very small c...

Isabel Sleaford was "engaged." She remembered this when she woke on the morning after that pleasant day in Hurstonleigh grove, and that henceforward there existed a person who w...

Mr. Gilbert took his young wife to an hotel at Murlington for a week's honeymoon--to a family hotel; a splendid mansion, Isabel thought, where there was a solemn church-like sti...

There were two surgeons in the little town of Graybridge-on-the-Wayverne, in pretty pastoral Midlandshire,--Mr. Pawlkatt, who lived in a big, new, brazen-faced house in the midd...

"Not on any account. I know what to do as well as he does. If I should happen to get delirious by-and-by, you can send for him, because I dare say you'd be frightened, poor girl...

After that farewell meeting with Mr. Sleaford in Nessborough Hollow, a sense of peace came upon Isabel Gilbert. She had questioned her father about his plans, and he had told he...

Mrs. Gilbert spoke very little during the homeward drive through the moonlight. In her visions of that drive--or what that drive might be--she had fancied Roland Lansdell riding...

George Gilbert was something more than "knocked up." There had been a great deal of typhoid fever amongst the poorer inhabitants of Graybridge and the neighbouring villages late...

There was no omnibus to take Mrs. Gilbert back to Graybridge after the service at Hurstonleigh; but there had been some Graybridge people at church, and she found them lingering...

George went back to the Seven Stars, where Mr. Jeffson was waiting with the horses. He went back, after watching the open vehicle drive away; he went back with his happiness whi...

Isabel had met Mr. Lansdell on Thursday; and by Saturday night all her preparations were made, and the white dress, and a white muslin mantle to match it, were in the hands of M...