The Evil Genius: A Domestic Story

The front windows of Brightwater Cottage look out on a quiet green lane in Middlesex, which joins the highroad within a few miles of the market town of Uxbridge. Through the pre...

As a lawyer, Randal’s guest understood that a narrative of events can only produce the right effect, on one condition: it must begin at the beginning. Having related all that ha...

Arrived at the limits of the lawn, two paths opened before him. One led into a quaintly pretty inclosure, cultivated on the plan of the old gardens at Versailles, and called the...

Mrs. Presty had read (and destroyed) the letters of Lady Myrie and Mrs. Romsey, with the most unfeigned contempt for the writers--had repeated what the judge had really said, as...

The weather had been unusually warm. Of all oppressive summers a hot summer in London is the hardest to endure. The little exercise that Sydney could take was, as Randal knew, d...

That was the message. In taking the long journey to Cumberland, Mrs. Linley’s legal adviser sacrificed two days of his precious time in London. Something serious must assuredly...

Widely as the lot in life of one differed from the lot in life of the other, they presented a contrast in personal appearance which was more remarkable still. In the prime of li...

To the disappointment of the large audience assembled, no defense was attempted on the part of the husband--a wise decision, seeing that the evidence of the wife and her witness...

More than once, on one and the same day, the Captain had been guilty of a weakness which would have taken his oldest friends by surprise, if they had seen him at the moment. He...

The stealthy influence of distrust fastens its hold on the mind by slow degrees. Little by little it reaches its fatal end, and disguises delusion successfully under the garb of...

Preferring the request suggested to her by Mrs. Presty, Kitty had hastened the presentation of the birthday gifts, by getting into her mother’s bed in the morning, and exacting...

She locked the door of her bedchamber, and threw off her walking-dress; light as it was, she felt as if it would stifle her. Even the ribbon round her neck was more than she cou...

Catherine listened to the fall of water in the basin of the fountain. She was conscious of a faint hope--a hope unworthy of her--that Kitty might get weary of the gold-fishes, a...

A clever old lady, possessed of the inestimable advantages of worldly experience, must submit nevertheless to the laws of Nature. Time and Sleep together--powerful agents in the...

Having read Mrs. Linley’s answer, Mr. Sarrazin looked out of the breakfast-room window, and saw that the fog had reached the cottage. Before Mrs. Presty could make any remark on...

Not a breath of wind was stirring; the lazy mist lay asleep on the further shore of the lake. Here and there only the dim tops of the hills rose like shadows cast by the earth o...

When the servant at the lodgings announced a visitor, and mentioned his name, Sydney’s memory (instead of dwelling on the recollection of the Captain’s kindness) perversely reca...

With a heart lightened by reconciliation (not the first reconciliation unhappily), with hopes revived, and sweet content restored, Sydney’s serenity of mind was not quite unruff...

Belonging to the generation which has lived to see the Age of Hurry, and has no sympathy with it, Mrs. Presty entered the sitting-room at the hotel, two hours before the time th...

Of the friends and neighbors who had associated with Herbert Linley, in bygone days, not more than two or three kept up their intimacy with him at the later time of his disgrace...

No horror of her solitude, no melancholy recollections, no dread of the future disturbed Sydney’s mind. The one sense left in her was the sense of fatigue. Vacantly, mechanicall...

Captain Bennydeck met Catherine and her child at the open door of the room. Mrs. Presty, stopping a few paces behind them, waited in the passage; eager to see what the Captain’s...

Her eyes followed him as long as he was in sight, but her thoughts wandered. To look at him now was to look at the little companion walking by his side. Still, the child reminde...

He had spoken a few commonplace words--and yet he had said enough. She saw the truth in his eyes, heard the truth in his voice. A fit of trembling seized her. Linley stepped for...

The one hotel in Sandyseal was full, from the topmost story to the ground floor; and by far the larger half of the landlord’s guests were invalids sent to him by the doctors.

Mrs. Linley’s first impulse in ordering the carriage was to use it herself. One look at the child reminded her that her freedom of action began and ended at the bedside. More th...

The fair complexion of the Captain’s youthful days had been darkened by exposure to hard weather and extreme climates. His smooth face of twenty years since was scored by the te...

The garden of the hotel at Sydenham had originally belonged to a private house. Of great extent, it had been laid out in excellent taste. Flower-beds and lawns, a handsome fount...

The Captain’s attention was first attracted by the visitor whom he found in the room. He bowed to the stranger; but the first impression produced on him did not appear to have b...

NOT far from the source of the famous river, which rises in the mountains between Loch Katrine and Loch Lomond, and divides the Highlands and the Lowlands of Scotland, travelers...

Robed in a dressing-gown of delicately-mingled white and blue, and luxuriously accommodated on the softest pillows that could be placed in an armchair, Mrs. Linley was meditatin...

On the next day but one, Randal arranged his departure for Sydenham, so as to arrive at the hotel an hour before the time appointed for the dinner. His prospects of success, in...

Linley had one instant left, in which he might have drawn, back into the library in time to escape Sydney’s notice. He was incapable of the effort of will. Grief and suspense ha...

In the autumn holiday-time friends in the south, who happened to be visiting Scotland, were invited to stop at Mount Morven on their way to the Highlands; and were accustomed to...

On the evening of Monday in the new week, the last of the visitors had left Mount Morven. Mrs. Linley dropped into a chair (in, what Randal called, “the heavenly tranquillity of...

Mrs. Presty waited in the garden to be joined by her daughter and Captain Bennydeck, and waited in vain. It was past her grandchild’s bedtime; she decided on returning to the ho...

When she was not eating her meals or asleep in her bed, absolute silence on Mrs. Presty’s part was a circumstance without precedent in the experience of her daughter. Mrs. Prest...

Not having heard from Captain Bennydeck for some little time, Randal thought it desirable in Sydney’s interests to make inquiries at his club. Nothing was known of the Captain’s...

Randal could deny that he had seen Catherine, with perfect truth--and did deny it in the plainest terms. Herbert was satisfied. “In all my remembrance of you,” he said, “you hav...

Winter had come and gone; spring was nearing its end, and London still suffered under the rigid regularity of easterly winds. Although in less than a week summer would begin wit...

The divorced husband looked at his mother-in-law without making the slightest sacrifice to the claims of politeness. He neither offered his hand nor made his bow. His frowning e...

Mr. Herbert Linley arrived at his own house in the forenoon of the next day. Mrs. Linley, running out to the head of the stairs to meet her husband, saw him approaching her with...

Speaking first, as master of the house, Herbert Linley offered his opinion without hesitation. His impulsive kindness shrank from the prospect of reviving the melancholy recolle...

Waiting for Sydney to come into the bedroom as usual and wish her good-night, Kitty was astonished by the appearance of her grandmother, entering on tiptoe from the corridor, wi...

As the year advanced, the servants at Mount Morven remarked that the weeks seemed to follow each other more slowly than usual. In the higher regions of the house, the same impre...

Brisk and smiling, Mrs. Presty presented herself in the waiting-room. “We have got rid of our enemy!” she announced, “I looked out of the window and saw him leaving the hotel.”...

“Mr. Herbert Linley, I ask permission to reply to your inquiries in writing, because it is quite likely that some of the opinions you will find here might offend you if I expres...

In a cottage on the banks of one of the Cumberland Lakes, two ladies were seated at the breakfast-table. The windows of the room opened on a garden which extended to the water’s...

Mrs. Presty had not very seriously exaggerated the truth, when she described her much-indulged granddaughter as “a child who had never been accustomed to wait for anything since...

Strong as the impression was which Captain Bennydeck had produced on Randal, Mrs. Presty’s first words dismissed it from his mind. She asked him if he had any message for his br...

She was not the same woman whom he had last seen at Sandyseal, returning for her lost book. The agitation produced by that unexpected meeting had turned her pale; the overpoweri...

Pale, worn, haggard with anxiety, Sydney Westerfield entered the room, and looked once more on the faces which she had resigned herself never to see again. She appeared to be ha...

During the first week there was an improvement in the child’s health, which justified the doctor’s hopeful anticipations. Mrs. Linley wrote cheerfully to her husband; and the be...

Self-revealed by the family likeness as Herbert’s brother, Randal Linley was nevertheless greatly Herbert’s inferior in personal appearance. His features were in no way remarkab...

In the dull season, a solitary traveler from the North arrived at the nearest post-town to Mount Morven. A sketchbook and a color-box formed part of his luggage, and declared hi...