Category: Novels

The Gilded Chair: A Novel

When the train crept out of Euston into the wet night the Marchesa Soderrelli sat for a considerable time quite motionless in the corner of her compartment. The lights, straggling northward out of London, presently vanished. The hum and banging of passing engines ceased. The d...

Chapters

2. CHAPTER II--THE HOUSE OF THE FIRST MEN

One, arriving over the Caledonian railway at Doune, will at once notice how that station exceeds any other of this line in point of nice construction. The framework of the build...

12. CHAPTER XII--THE SERVANTS OP YAHVEH

The Duke of Dorset was mistaken when he imagined that a new land would rid him of these fancies. To remove a passion to the desert, a wise man hath written, is but to raise it t...

25. CHAPTER XXV--THE WANDERING

At noon they set out through the mountains, the Marchesa Soderrelli riding the mule, the old man leading with the rope bridle over his arm, and the sack swinging on his shoulder...

22. CHAPTER XXII--THE IRON POT

At the word the Marchesa caught Caroline Childers by the arm, and hurried with her through the corridor; the Duke followed. They crossed the south wing of the château; through p...

19. CHAPTER XIX--THE CHAMBER OP LIGHT

This dialogue, running before so charged a situation, seemed to the man like some sort of prelude to a drama. The moment became, for him, a vivid, luminous period. In it impress...

10. CHAPTER X--THE RED BENCH

There is a raised bench of two broad steps, covered with red cloth, running, like a great circular dais, around the curious old ballroom of the Oban Gathering. The effect of it...

24. CHAPTER XXIV--THE TASTE OF DEATH

There is no phenomenon of weather so swiftly variable as that of mist. It may lie at a given moment on the sea or on the mountain--a clinging, opaque mass, as dense and impenetr...

1. CHAPTER I--THE TRAVELER

When the train crept out of Euston into the wet night the Marchesa Soderrelli sat for a considerable time quite motionless in the corner of her compartment. The lights, straggli...

23. CHAPTER XIII--THE GREAT PERIL

The remote sounds, caught by the man's trained ear, were now audible to the women. They arose. The Marchesa Soderrelli moved over to where the Duke stood looking up at the sky.

14. CHAPTER XIV--THE PLACE OP PROPHECY

The Duke of Dorset got up slowly and stood looking out over the mountains, with his hands clasped behind him. Below the dark-green canopy of fir tops descended to a gleam of wat...

13. CHAPTER XIII--THE JOURNEYING

The road into which they presently came astonished the Duke of Dorset. It was sixty feet wide, smooth as a boulevard and drained with tile. It was supported below by a stone wal...

4. CHAPTER IV--THE MAIDEN OP THE WATERS

A flood of sun entered--the thin, brilliant, inspiring sun of the sub-Arctic. A sun to illumine, to bring out fantastic colors, to dye the sea, to paint the mountains, to lay fo...

9. CHAPTER IX--THE USURPER

The Marchesa went up to the deck of the yacht. She had dressed early and there was yet an hour to wait. A deep topaz twilight lay on the world. There was no darkness. It was as...

21. CHAPTER XXI--THE IMPOTENT SPELL

From the moon, sheets of light, entering through the long windows, lay here and there, white, across the steps, and red across that bronze frieze wherein satyrs danced. Although...

7. CHAPTER VII--THE COUNSEL OP WISDOM

The Marchesa Soderrelli and Cyrus Childers remained on the yacht. When the small boat came alongside the Duke asked to be allowed to take the oars, and so the two had gone alone...

15. CHAPTER XV--THE VULNERABLE SPOT

The sun was in the sky when the Duke awoke. He had slept eight hours under the narcotics of the forest. He arose and stretched his limbs. The packing cases were set in order; th...

17. CHAPTER XVII--THE STAIR OF VISIONS

That fantastic illusion, as of one come, after adventures, to the kingdom of some Magus, was preserved to the Duke of Dorset by the days that followed. He was for the most part...

6. CHAPTER VI--THE MENACE

The Duke of Dorset had gone to tea on the American yacht. It was a thing which he had not intended to do when he came to Oban. The general conception of that nation current on t...

20. CHAPTER XX--THE MOVING SHADOW

The presence of Caroline Childers in the door brought the Duke of Dorset forward into the room. He alone had some understanding of the incident; but for the moment he said nothi...

8. CHAPTER VIII--THE WOMAN ON THE WALL

Caroline was dressing. The Marchesa sat with her elbows on the Buhl table; her chin in her palm; her eyes following the young girl, being prepared, under the maid's hands, for t...

3. CHAPTER III--THE HERMIT'S CRUST

This room was in structure similar to the one she had just quitted, except for the two long windows cut through the south wall--flood gates for the sun. The table was laid with...

5. CHAPTER V--THE GATHERING

The custom of the Scottish clans to meet for a day of games, piping and parade, had its origin anterior to the running of the Gaelic memory. A durbar it may be called, and yet a...

18. CHAPTER XVIII--THE SIGN BY THE WAY

At noon on a certain Thursday, seven days after his arrival, the Duke of Dorset set out to shoot quail in the river bottom south of the château. A shower of rain had fallen in t...

11. CHAPTER XI--THE CHART OP THE TREASURE

When the Duke of Dorset came into the hotel dining room at ten o'clock for breakfast, he met a hall boy, calling his name and "letter please," after the manner of the English ho...

16. CHAPTER XVI--THE LESSON IN MAGIC

At the door of the château the Duke found a Japanese servant. This servant led him into a court paved with mosaic, set with palms and marbles about a fountain in which nymphs, s...

26. CHAPTER XXVI--THE CITY OF DREAMS

But for the fire burning in the grate, nothing had changed in the dining room at Old Newton. The table was laid with a white cloth to the floor; the same massive howl, filled wi...