The Great House

The riot at Riddsley found its way into the London Press, and gained for the contest a certain amount of notoriety. The _Morning Chronicle_ pointed out that the election had bee...

Within twenty-four hours there were signs that Bosham’s brush with his lordship and the show of feeling outside Hatton’s Works had set a sharper edge on the fight. Trifles as th...

Basset knew every path that crossed the Chase, and had traversed them at all seasons, and in all weathers. But when, some hours later, he halted on a scarred and blackened waste...

Not a word or hint of John Audley’s illness had come to Basset’s ears. At the time of the alarm he had been in London, and it was not until some days later that he took his seat...

For a few moments Audley had certainly hoped that he was going to learn all that Toft knew, and to learn it for nothing. He had been baulked in this. But when he came to think o...

The impression which the events of the evening had made on Mary’s mind was still lively when she awoke next day. It was not less clear, because like the feminine letter of the ’...

Mary Audley, crossing the moor to a week-day service, was but one of many who in the ’forties were venturing on new courses. In religion there were those who fancied that by a r...

It is within the bounds of imagination that death may make no greater change in our inner selves than is wrought at times by a new mood or another outlook. When Mary, an hour be...

The Gatehouse, placed on the verge of the upland, was very solitary. Cut off from the vale by an ascent which the coachmen of the great deemed too rough for their horses, it was...

But his face was not one to betray his thoughts, and as he drew up beside Mary, horses fretting, polechains jingling, the silver of the harness glittering from a score of points...

Basset had been absent the greater part of the day, and returning at sunset had learned that Miss Audley had not come back from Brown Heath. The servant had hinted alarm—the Cha...

Gratitude and liking, and the worship of strength which is as natural in a woman as the worship of beauty in a man, form no bad imitation of love, and often pass into love as im...

Mrs. Toft bringing in candles, and looking grave enough herself, noticed the girl’s pale face and chid her gently. “I don’t believe that you’ve sat down this blessed day, Miss!”...

Stubbs was the first to collect himself, but a minute elapsed before he spoke. Then, “He must be mad,” he cried, “mad, to expose himself to the weather at his age. If I had not...

Mary scrambled into her clothes without pausing to do more than knot up her hair. She tried to steady her nerves and to put from her the thought that it was her visit which had...

When ladies were at home to their intimates in the Paris of the ’forties, they seated their guests about large round tables with a view to that common exchange of wit and fancy...

Mary laughed with him, but she was not comfortable. What she had seen of the stranger, a man plain in feature and ordinary in figure, one whom the eye would not have remarked in...

Basset had obtained the missing Bible very much in the way the lawyer had indicated—partly by purchase and partly by pressure. Shocked as Toft had been by his master’s sudden de...

Basset’s view of Toft, if it did not hit, came very near the mark. For many years the man had served his master with loyalty, the relations between them being such as were commo...

Mary had passed through twenty minutes of tense excitement. The risk had been slight, after the first moment of intervention, but she had not known this, and she was still tremb...

Mary Audley was one of the last to hear the news. Etruria brought it from the town one day in January, when the evenings were beginning to lengthen, and the last hour of dayligh...

Toft had gone into Riddsley on the polling-day, but had returned before the result was known. “What the man was thinking of,” his wife declared in wrath, “beats me! To be there...

It was about a week after this that two men stood on the neglected lawn, contemplating the long blind front of Beaudelays House. With all its grandeur the house lacked the digni...

It was noon on that day, the day of the meeting at Riddsley, and Mary was sitting in the parlor at the Gatehouse. She was stooping over the fire with her eyes on the embers. The...

The window of the clumsy carriage was narrow, but Mary gazed through it as if she could never see enough of the flying landscape, the fields, the woods, the ivy-clad homes and r...

Cherbuliez opens one of his stories with the remark that if the law of probabilities ruled, the hero and heroine would never have met, seeing that the one lived in Venice and th...

Basset moved in his chair. He was unhappy and ill at ease. He looked at the fire, he looked askance at Mary. “But do you mean,” he said, “that you knew nothing about this until...

It was Tuesday, market-day at Riddsley, and farmers’ wives, cackling as loudly as the poultry they carried, elbowed one another on the brick pavements or clustered before the wi...

He had been right in his forecast when he told Mary that a political crisis was at hand. That which had been long whispered, was beginning to be stated openly in club and market...

Angry with Stubbs as he was—and with some reason—Lord Audley was not the man to bite off his nose to spite his face. He pondered long what he would say to him, and more than onc...

It is doubtful if even the great Reform Bill of ’32, which shifted the base of power from the upper to the middle class, awoke more bitter feelings that did the _volte face_ of...

Audley was suspicious and ill at ease. Standing on the hearth-rug with his back to the fire, he fixed the visitor with his eyes, and with secret anxiety asked himself what he wa...

The girl’s temple was bruised and there was blood on her cheek; more than one of the blows aimed at her lover had fallen on her. But she said eagerly that it was “Nothing! Nothi...

The business which had taken Audley away on the morrow of his engagement had been no mere pretext. The crisis in political life which Peel’s return to office had brought about w...

An hour later Basset was seated on one side of a wide hearth, on the other John Audley faced him. The library in which they sat was the room which Basset loved best in the world...

Half an hour later Lord Audley paused in the hall at Meurice’s, and having given his cloak and hat to a servant went thoughtfully up the wide staircase. He opened the door of a...

Had any one told Basset, even that morning, that before night he would seek the advice of the Riddsley curate, he would have met the suggestion with unmeasured scorn. Probably h...

In the corner of the light diligence, seating six inside, which had brought her from Montreuil, Mary Audley leant forward, looking out through the dingy panes for the windmills...

A man can scarcely harbor a more bitter thought than that he has lost by foul play what fair play would have won for him. This for a week was Lord Audley’s mood and position; fo...

On an evening in March in the ’forties of last century a girl looked down on the Seine from an attic window on the Ile St. Louis. The room behind her—or beside her, for she sat...