The Heart of a Woman

Everything went on just as convention--whose mouth-piece for the moment happened to be Lady Ryder--desired; just as Louisa surmised that everything would; the letters of congrat...

Sir Thomas put down the paper which he had been reading, when his niece entered. He did not seem at all astonished to see her. No doubt the exercise of his profession had taught...

Luke was sitting at a desk, writing, when Louisa entered his room. Only one lamp shaded with yellow silk hung above the desk, throwing golden light on paper and blotting pad and...

They met at dances and at musical At Homes, for the world wagged just as it had always done, and here--don't you think?--lies the tragedy of the commonplace. Luke and Louisa, wi...

The two men had sat in silence for quite a considerable time after Frederick Power had marched out of the room. Colonel Harris buried in thought was in no hurry to talk things o...

No! No! she was not going to gush!--Not even though there was nothing in the room at this moment to stand up afterward before her as dumb witness to a moment's possible weakness...

When Colonel Harris once more arrived at the Langham he found Luke and Louisa comfortably installed in front of the fire in the private sitting-room up stairs. She was leaning b...

And now it was Luke de Mountford's turn at last. A wave of excitement swept over the crowd, every neck was craned forward, every eye fixed on this next witness, as he rose from...

Colonel Harris sent in his card to Sir Thomas Ryder. He had driven over from the Langham in a hansom--holding taxicabs in even more whole-hearted abhorrence than before. He inqu...

As for the man who had made the extraordinary assertion, he seemed quite unconscious of the effect which it had produced: as if the fact that the supposed heir to an earldom, be...

Louisa reached the landing slightly out of breath. She knew her way about the old house very well. Two doors now were opposite to her. One of these had been left ajar--intention...

As to what occurred in the heart of the fog on that night in November four years ago, most of you no doubt will remember. Those who do not I must refer to the morning papers of...

She knew of course from the first that the subject which interested every one in the house more than any other subject could ever do was not to be mentioned in Lord Radclyffe's...

When at ten o'clock the next morning Louisa Harris entered the Victoria coroner's court accompanied by her father, the coroner and jury were just returning from the mortuary at...

The world had wagged on its matter-of-fact way for more than six months now, since that day in April when Philip de Mountford--under cover of lies told by Parker--had made his w...

The curtain went up on the first act of the play. It was not perhaps so interesting from the outset as the audience would have wished, and the fashionable portion thereof showed...

Luke had had time--on the day preceding the inquest--to put some semblance of order in his uncle's household. The doctor had sent in the nurses, and he had seen to a nice capabl...

When Luke arrived at his uncle's house early the next morning, he was met in the hall by Doctor Newington, who was descending the stairs and who gravely beckoned to the young ma...

And whilst the morning papers were unfolded by millions of English men and women, and the details of the mysterious crime discussed over eggs and bacon and buttered toast, Phili...

Louisa sat beside the fire and read. The notes were written in Sir Thomas's clear caligraphy, in short, jerky sentences, just as the sick man had spoken them, usually in reply t...

And now a month and more had gone by, and the whole aspect of the world and of life was changed for Luke. Not for Louisa, because she, woman-like, had her life in love and love...

By the time the police officers reached the outer hall door, Luke had received his order of dismissal. He stood on the step for a moment, undecided what to do, and saw the two m...

"Luke," she said, "it's all very well, but the matter does concern you in a way; far more so, in fact, than it does Lord Radclyffe. Nothing can make any difference to Lord Radcl...

It seems that coroner and jury had not spent quite so much time over luncheon as the more or less interested spectators. When the crowd began to file back again into the seats,...

They walked up the gravelled walk under the chestnut trees, whereon the leaf buds, luscious looking, with their young green surface delicately tinged with pink, looked over read...

When the coroner, rising from his seat, gave the signal for general exodus, she had felt her father's firm hand grasping her arm, and leading her out of the fog-ridden, stuffy r...

I won't have you think that there was anything remarkable about the man, or anything that would--even momentarily--distinguish him from any number of other hall porters, who wea...

A very little while ago she had hated the idea of his going. Luke--a fugitive from justice--was a picture on which it was intolerable to look. But now the womanly instinct rose...

It did not take poor little Edie very long to get her things on and to make ready to go away with Colonel Harris and with Louisa. Something of the truth had to be told to her, a...

Frederick Power, hall porter of the Veterans' Club had finished his evidence. With the precision of a soldier he had replied curtly and to the point to every question put to him...

From within the hum of a man's voice--speaking low and insistently--still came softly through. Luke, with the prodigality of youth, would have given ten years of his life for th...

Since Lord Radclyffe was too ill to attend to anything, or to see any one, it devolved upon Luke to make what arrangements he thought fitting for the lying in state and the subs...

There was no restraint between the three of them. It was as natural to them all to avoid speaking of important matters on the door step of a neighbour's house, as it was to eat...

Louisa knew the flat in Exhibition Road very well. She had helped Edie to furnish it, and to make it pretty and cosey, for Edie's passion was for dogs and for golf; drawing-room...

Once more Louisa was sitting in the dark corner of a cab, seeing London by night, as the motor flew past lighted thoroughfares, dark, narrow streets, stately mansions and mean h...

The luncheons at Grosvenor Square were always rather dull and formal, but Louisa did not mind that very much. She was used to dull and formal affairs: they were part and parcel...

Though the hour was getting late, no one among the crowd thought of leaving the court. Even the desire for tea, so peculiarly insistent at a certain hour of the day in the whole...

The note-book fell out of Louisa's hands on to her lap. How simple the tragedy seemed, now that she knew. How understandable was the mystery of Luke's silence. He knew that "Unc...

I have often smiled myself at the recollection of Luke de Mountford walking that selfsame afternoon with Louisa Harris up and down the long avenue of the Ladies' Mile: the selfs...

He had been writing, slowly but incessantly, ever since he sat down beside the sick man, and put his first question to him. Lord Radclyffe, with the tenacity peculiar to a stron...

"I shall," replied Luke, "call at Grosvenor Square. I may find Uncle Rad, or Philip, or both at home. I mean to have a good tussle about this wintering abroad. It's really most...

You don't suppose for a moment, I hope, that a girl like Louisa would allow her mind to dwell on such horrors. Mysterious crimes in strange cities--and in London, too, for a mat...