The House of Armour

February passed away, and March came—"March that blusters and March that blows, March the pathway that leads to the rose"—the month hailed with delight because it breaks the bac...

Various apocryphal stories are told of Brian Camperdown’s doings on the night that Stargarde Turner promised to be his wife. It is said that his blood being in too much of a tum...

Just as the city clocks struck ten on the last Saturday morning of January of the year of which we write, Dr. Camperdown came down the steps and into the street from the large,...

With much inward chafing and impatience he listened to Judy, who prattled of her speedy return, and to Mrs. Colonibel who over their late breakfast table talked with languid irr...

“Me no diggum up,” said Joe decidedly. He stood knee deep in pale green ferns growing among heavy shadows formed by the interlaced branches of trees overhead, his eyes fixed on...

Stanton Armour was a man who dwelt apart from other men as far as his inner life was concerned. A large number of people saw him going daily to his office; a smaller number had...

“The outlook seems more gory than usual,” muttered Valentine, with a groan, placing his handsome figure in a partially-shaded corner, “probably because all the lamps are going....

“No; I had to see some merchants who are going away early in the morning. The sleigh was sent in for me, so I thought I would call for you and Miss Delavigne.”

A strong north wind raged like a wild beast over the peninsula on which the city of Halifax is built, driving before it a blinding snow storm. Up and down, backward and forward,...

Vivienne and Judy were having afternoon tea in their room, when the lame girl, who was amusing herself by twirling round and round on the piano stool while she ate her bread and...

Early one evening Stargarde was sitting sewing in her room when she heard on the veranda the blustering noise that usually accompanied Dr. Camperdown’s arrival. She smiled and g...

The house was only pleasantly filled, and there was no crush anywhere. Shaking hands and bowing to many people on his way, Armour passed through the drawing rooms, the library,...

The spring was long, cold, and trying. The sun shone brightly, but the north wind sweeping over the ice-fields in the Gulf of St. Lawrence breathed chill and disconsolate on shi...

Dr. Camperdown lived in a large, bare stone house a few blocks distant from his office. Late one afternoon he stood at one of the back windows from which he commanded a magnific...

The door swung slowly open and a small, miserably thin child stood narrowly inspecting them through black, curly wisps of hair that hung down over her forehead and made her look...

Trucks, low sleds, and huge wagons emerged in a steady stream from lanes leading down to the wharves, where ships great and small lay moored. Rumbling out of these lanes with mu...

Late in the afternoon of St. Patrick’s Day, Camperdown, in a smart new buggy that he had bought to please Zilla, but with Polypharmacy—whom he had refused to give up—harnessed t...

He sat in a corner of his drawing room, his eyes riveted on Stargarde’s back as she stood holding aside the lace window curtain and gazing out into the street.

He gazed mournfully toward the big house, shook his head, and uttered a number of times a long-drawn, musical “Ah-a-a-a,” of regret and dismay. Then as if he were forced to it b...

Vivienne was spending the day with her, and together they were walking up and down the Pavilion courtyard. The brilliance of the afternoon sunshine and the purity of the earth,...

Miss Zilla Camperdown sat on the top step of the second staircase in the house of her adoption, carefully nursing a small parcel done up in white tissue paper, and watching pati...

On a dull, windless morning, when the snow clouds hung low in the air, Captain Macartney, encased in a dark uniform and looking exceedingly trim and soldierlike, stepped out of...

The afternoon was fine and brilliantly sunny, and Polypharmacy unharried by a check-rein, and almost happy for once that he had blinders on, kept his head down and his eyes half...

“The Armours have really little power to afflict me,” she said, getting out of bed with a gay laugh. “My attachment to them is altogether a thing of duty, not affection. If they...

Opening the door of a small closet in his room he looked on an upper shelf, where he found nothing but a few crumbs on empty dishes, and a huge black teapot standing with its pr...

Stargarde had had a busy afternoon. The table in the middle of the room was littered with account books, in the midst of which she had cleared a small space so that she might ta...

At ten o’clock on the evening of the day that Captain Macartney made his call on Dr. Camperdown Judy was restlessly hitching herself up and down the big front hall at Pinewood.

On a calm Sunday afternoon Vivienne left Mrs. Colonibel’s room and went to wander about under the pines. Absently straying nearer the cottage than she was in the habit of doing,...

One of the long wharves was sprinkled with people watching the “Acadian” come in from the sea. Custom-house officials were there, wharf laborers, sailors, loafers, and at the ve...

For eight weary weeks Stargarde had, in the opinion of her friends, been afflicted by the terrible being who undoubtedly was her mother. But to Stargarde it was no affliction. F...

Zilla Camperdown was strutting up and down Hollis Street after the fashion of a small peacock airing itself. Back and forth she went, now in front of the shops, now passing hote...

In the southeastern extremity of Canada, jutting out into the blue waters of the Atlantic, holding on to the great mainland of North America only by one narrow arm or isthmus, i...

“There’s a puffing, panting sound on the staircase,” she said, “as if a steam-tug were approaching. It must be your Irish friend. I’ll decamp, for I don’t want to see her.” She...

Early in the afternoon Vivienne was on her knees before her boxes when a housemaid knocked at her door and announced to her that there was a “person” downstairs who wished to se...

A bright-faced lad with dark blue Irish eyes and glossy hair came hurrying down the deck, his hands thrust into the pockets of his long ulster, his whole expression that of one...

Two gentlemen, the one old, the other young, were seated in arm-chairs drawn up on each side of the blazing fire. They were both in evening dress and both held newspapers in the...

“Good boys,” she returned with a laugh. It was not the password. “Death to the traitor,” was the signal for the night; but they knew her voice, and a boy opened the door and sli...

Armour would never see her like that again. Her face was flushed and contorted, her head held high, and in all her tempers and mental disturbances she had never flung him so pas...

It was just dinner time at Pinewood. All the house doors and windows were open, and the sound of the gong reached the ears of a man who was mincing down the avenue. “Ha,” he sai...

Some weeks later Armour and his wife, with Judy and Mr. Delavigne, installed themselves in a suite of apartments in the principal hotel of a gray old English town. Outside Armou...

Lord and Lady Vaulabel withdrew early from the ball that evening, and accompanying them to Government House went a very white and unnaturally composed girl. Upon reaching their...

Judy was curled up like a dog on the library door mat. “I will not get up—I will not get up,” she cried, groveling at Vivienne’s feet, as she came out, “till you tell me that yo...