The Forsaken Inn: A Novel

The long expected move has been made. This morning madame asked me if I had not some room on the ground floor which I could give to her daughter and her in exchange for the one...

Did Marah Leighton will the coming of her old lover to my inn on that fatal night? That is the question I asked, when, with the first breaking of the morning light, I discovered...

It is sixteen years since I wrote the preceding chapters of this history of mystery and crime. When the pen dropped from my hand--why did it drop? Was it because of some noise I...

"You want to hear about Edwin Urquhart. Well, you shall, but first I promise you that I shall talk much less of him than of another person. Why? because it is on account of this...

"Well," observed the latter, "as I have seen only this room, and as this room is anything but ghostlike at the present moment, I hardly consider myself competent to judge."

I was riding between Albany and Poughkeepsie. It was raining furiously, and my horse, already weary with long travel, gave unmistakable signs of discouragement. I was, therefore...

The girl shook her head. A smile as exquisite as it was sad made her mouth beautiful. "From--" she began, but stopped, whether from an instinct of maidenly shame or some secret...

"Great heaven! why had I not noticed Miss Dudleigh before! In her changed face, and in the wasting of her delicate form, I saw that my fears were not all vain, inasmuch as they...

"Two weeks after this I was sitting beside my solitary hearth, musing upon my misery and longing for the blessed relief of sleep. There was no one with me in the house. I had di...

All was quiet in the halls, but as I proceeded toward their room I perceived a figure standing near the doorway, which, in another moment, I saw to be that of Burritt. He was tr...

Subjected as I have been in the last three hours to distress and turmoil, I was delighted to find mademoiselle asleep, and to behold her peaceful face. Gazing at it, and noting...

RESPECTED MADAM: Appreciating your anxiety, I hasten to give you the particulars of an interview which I have just had with a person who knew Edwin Urquhart. They must be accept...

"When we became positively assured that Miss Leighton had disappeared from the house and would not be on hand to take the stage to Schenectady, the excitement, which had been in...

Never have I felt such relief as when, upon my resuscitation, I remembered that I had put upon paper all the events and all the suspicions which had troubled me during that fata...

Have only twenty-four hours elapsed? Is it but yesternight that all the terrible events took place, the memory of which are now making my frame tremble? So the clock says, and y...

Events crowd. This morning the one girl I have taken into my confidence came to my room with a strange tale. A stranger had arrived, an elegant young gentleman of foreign appear...

For a moment I sat and watched him; then, as I realized all that I must yet gather from his lips, I broke the stillness by saying, in my lowest and most suggestive tone, these t...

I was not mistaken. Madame is not only interested in, but has serious designs upon the oak parlor. Not content with roaming up and down the hallway leading to it, she was detect...

"Miss Dudleigh, moved, perhaps, by the unpleasant _eclat_ which had followed the broken-off marriage of her cousin, chose to celebrate her own wedding in her own house, and with...

Two excitements to-day. First, the appearance at my doors of the person of whose coming I was advised by Mr. Tamworth. He came in his own carriage, and is a meager, hatchet-face...

How fearful! To hear a spade in the night and know that this spade is digging a grave! I sit at my desk and listen to hear if any one in the house has been aroused or is suspici...

"'You think I am playing with you,' she murmured. 'I am not. I have sickened of these nuptials and am going back. If you want to, you may kill me where I sit. You carry a dagger...

"As for myself," continued Mark Felt, "I stood crushed, and after the first torrent of emotion had swept by, lifted my head like a drowning man and looked wildly about, as if, i...

"But I did not pass it. A sound struck my ear. It was that of a smothered sob, and it came from the room where I had first seen Miss Dudleigh. Instantly a vision of that sweet f...

But the events of the night are not over. As soon as I had seen mademoiselle comfortably ensconced in my old room up stairs, I returned to the sitting room, where the marquis st...

"I drew back," he said, "and clenched my hands to keep myself from strangling Urquhart. Then I broke into hurried pants, that subsided gradually into words of perplexity and ama...

My eyes turned immediately in the direction of the secret chamber. Its entrance was closed, but I knew she was hidden there as well as if the door had been open and I had seen her.