The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes

Yes, he would escape from Mrs. Leadbatter and her Rosie; he would write to that popular composer--he had noticed his letter lying on the mantel-piece the other day--and accept t...

The accusation of loving her set all his suppressed repugnances and prejudices bristling in contradiction. He cursed the weakness that had got him into this soul-racking situati...

The full significance of this tragedy of a noble young life cut short had hardly time to filter into the public mind, when a fresh sensation absorbed it. Tom Mortlake had been a...

"Thank you," said the swarthy young man, taking it. "I would rather see you in it, but as there's only one I know you wouldn't be feeling a gentleman; and that would make us bot...

"Thank you for the compliment," he said, with a grimace. "But I'm not up in the classics, so the comparison didn't strike me. But what did strike me, after the first moment of a...

The coroner proceeded to sum up the evidence. "We have to deal, gentlemen," he said, "with a most incomprehensible and mysterious case, the details of which are yet astonishingl...

"On the day I was born," said Wimp's grand-mother-in-law, "over a hundred years ago, there was a babe murdered."--Wimp found himself wishing it had been she. He was anxious to g...

"Let them go to the devil with their ballads!" roared Lancelot, and with a sweep of his arm whirled _Good-night_ and _Good-by_ into the air. Peter picked it up and wrote somethi...

"Then the murder wouldn't have happened, that's all. In due course Arthur Constant would have awoke, or somebody else breaking open the door would have found him sleeping; no ha...

The stage! Why should he just stumble upon the word, to chill her with the awful question whether she would have to tell him. She was late at her engagements, her performance wa...

"I shall not sleep under your roof another night." Mrs. Maper paused so abruptly that her forefinger fell limp. She was not sure she meant to give her companion notice, and have...

After dinner Denzil usually indulged in poetic reverie. But to-day he did not take his nap. He went out at once to "raise the wind." But there was a dead calm everywhere. In vai...

"Believe me, my dear," he said tenderly, raising his head; "I wouldn't make fun of you for two million million dollars. It is the truth--the bare, miserable, wretched truth. I a...

She, on her side, was no less ardent for the great step. She raged against the world's law, the injustice by which a husband's cruelty was not sufficient ground for divorce. "Bu...

All this time Lancelot was displaying prodigious musical activity, so much so that the cost of ruled paper became a consideration. There was no form of composition he did not es...

Nelly O'Neill thought, "And to give too many." Eileen said, "Yes, you've given me my evenings to myself as it is, and considering the new work is only in the evenings, I did thi...

Afterwards Eileen wondered who Bob was, but at the moment she could think of nothing but the farcical complications arising from the idea of Mrs. Maper's providing Mr. Maper wit...

The sentimentality of the Fatherland seemed to have crept into his soul; a divinely sweet, sad melody was throbbing in his brain. How glad he was he had met Peter again!

"You ought to be taking her an umbrella," he said coldly. Amber looked up at the sky. Had it been blue, she would have felt it grey. As it _was_ grey, she felt it black.

Sir CHARLES BROWN-HARLAND, Q.C., rose with a swagger and a rustle of his silk gown, and proceeded to set forth the theory of the defence. He said he did not purpose to call many...

"Oh, I dream--what do I not dream? Sometimes I fly--oh, so high, and all the people look up at me, they marvel. But I laugh and kiss my hand to them down there."

Madame la Proprietaire shrugged her shoulders. "I am not at my first communion. I have grown grey in the service of lodgers. And this is how they reward me." She called Jacques,...

"Then what do you mean by desertin' them now?" the irate old woman retorted. "First you deserts your mother, and then your husband and children. You must go back to them as need...

"P. S.--Since writing the above lines, I have, by the kindness of Miss Brent, been placed in possession of a most valuable letter, probably the last letter written by the unhapp...

They both styled themselves "Madame," but only the younger of the old ladies had been married. Madame Valiere was still a _demoiselle_, but as she drew towards sixty it had seem...

"_Parfaitement_" said Madame Depine. They had slid out of pretending that they had large sums immediately available. Certain sums still existed in vague stockings for dowries or...

"A man who's devoted his whole life to propping up the crumbling Fads of Religion and Monarchy. But, for all that, the man has his gifts, and I'm burnin' to hear him."

He looked despairingly at the blank winter sky, where leaden clouds shut out the stars. "Poor, poor young fellow! To-night alive and thinking. To-morrow night a clod, with no mo...

"What!" John forgot to whisper. It was the greatest shock his recluse life had known, compact as it was of horror at the revelation, shamed confusion at her candour, and delicio...

In the middle of February, the great trial befell. It was another of the opportunities which the Chancellor of the Exchequer neglects. So stirring a drama might have easily clea...

"Why not? What do you offer me? The love of one man. But my public loves me as one man--with a much more voluminous love--I love it in return. Why should I change?"