The House of Dreams-Come-True

JEAN, sculling leisurely down the river which ran between Staple and Willow Eerry, looked around her with a little thrill of enjoyment--the sheer, physical thrill of youth uncon...

There was such an immeasurable anguish of reproach in the low, quick-spoken whisper that Burke felt glad Judith was not there to hear it. Had it been otherwise, she might have r...

A slender young moon drifted like a curled petal in the dusky blue of the calm sky, its pale light faintly outlining the tops of the trees and the dim, gracious curves of distan...

AUGUST seemed determined to justify her claim to be numbered amongst the summer months before making her exit. Apparently she had repented her of having recently veiled the coun...

THE moorland air, warm with its subtle fragrance of gorse--like the scent of peaches when the sun is shining on them--tonic with the faint tang of salt borne by clean winds that...

JEAN, surprisingly revived by a hot bath and a hot drink, and comfortably tucked up beside the fire in her room, was recounting the day’s adventure to Madame de Varigny.

ORION had fully justified Blaise’s opinion of his capabilities. As though the great horse had gathered that there was trouble abroad to which he must not add, he had needed neit...

It was written in a flowing, foreign hand and expressed with a quaintly stilted, un-English turn of phrase. The heading of the notepaper upon which it was inscribed was that of...

THE great spaces of the hall seemed to slope away into impenetrable gloom; velvet darkness deepening imperceptibly into sable density of panelled wall; huge, smoke-blackened bea...

“I DON’T think I want any champagne,” said Claire smilingly, as Nick filled a glass and handed it to her. “Being utterly free like this produces much the same effect. I feel dru...

JEAN woke to find the chill, wintry sunlight thrusting in long fingers through the space between the casements and the edges of the window-blinds. At first the unfamiliar look o...

“But it is a pleasure!” Madame de Varigny reassured her warmly. “My husband and I are here for another week yet. After that we go on to St. Moritz. He is suddenly discontented w...

THROUGHOUT the day following that of the expedition to Dartmoor, Nick seemed determined to keep out of Jean’s way. It was as though he feared she might force some confidence fro...

“I’m never bored with you, madonna; you know that,” he said. “And hotel life is always more or less amusing. One comes across such queer types. There’s one here this evening has...

TWO months had elapsed since Fate’s dividing sword had fallen, forever separating Jean from the man she loved, and the subsequent march of events, with the many changes involved...

They had been lodging at the Green Dragon for the past fortnight, and he had discovered that English milords, whatever else they might be, were not niggardly with their money. T...

Spring was in the air--late comer to this eastern corner of Europe--but, at last, even here the fragrance of fresh growing things was permeating the atmosphere, strips of vivid...

It was a cosy enough little room in winter-time. A cheery fire crackled in the open grate, while a heavy velvet curtain was drawn across the door that gave egress to the terrace...

SLOWLY, reluctantly, Tormarin’s hands loosened their clasp of Madame de Varigny’s throat, and with a swift, flexible twist of the body she slipped aside and stood a few paces aw...

THE chalcedony of the spring skies had deepened into the glowing sapphire of early June--a deep, pulsating blue, tremulous with heat. On the sundial, the shadow’s finger pointed...

JEAN was immensely puzzled at the abrupt change which had occurred in Mrs. Craig’s manner immediately upon hearing that she was the daughter of Glyn Peterson, and, as soon as th...

“Oh, I had tea with Claire. Sir Adrian was away”--with a small grimace--“so we had quite a nice little time together. But, yes, madonna”--Jean had fallen into the use of the gra...

The Recalcitrant Parent, the Other Woman--be she never so guileful--or the Other Man, as the case may be, are none of them as potent a menace to the ultimate happy issue of even...

IT was over. A bare twenty yards from the brow of the bill the man had won, and now the mare was standing swaying between the shafts, shaking in every limb, her flanks heaving a...

Burke made the announcement without preface. He and Judith were sitting together on the verandah at Willow Perry, where their coffee had been brought them after lunch. Judith in...

JEAN arrived in London with a good three hours to spare before the South-Western express, by which she proposed to travel to Devonshire, was due to leave Waterloo Station. She e...

GOLD of gorse and purple of heather, a shimmering haze of heat quivering above the undulating green of the moor, and somewhere, high up in the cloud-flecked blue above, the exul...

AS Jean stepped outside the hut it seemed as though she had walked straight into the heart of the storm. The bitter, ice-laden blast that bore down from the mountains caught awa...

THE dawn of a new day possesses a curious potency of readjustment. It is as though Dame Nature, like some autocratic old nurse, wakes us up and washes and dresses our minds afre...

JEAN was standing looking out from the window of her room in the hotel at Montavan. In the distance, the great white peaks of the Alps strained upwards, piercing the mass of dri...

“ENCORE _une fois!_ Bravo! That went better!” Monsieur Griolet’s understudy had amply justified his claim to capability. After a morning’s tuition at his hands, Jean found her p...

A FEW days later, Jean, coming in from a long tramp across country in company with Nick and half a dozen dogs of various breeds, discovered Tormarin lounging in a chair by the f...

It had acted as a brake upon the swiftly turning wheels of two lives precariously poised at the top of that steep hill of which no traveller can see the end, but which very sure...

LADY ANNE sat gazing absently into the heart of the fire, watching the restless leap of the flames and the little scattered handfuls of sparks, like golden star dust, tossed upw...

She was still looking pale and worn, strung up to face her self-imposed exile from the country which now held everything that was dear to her, but no enormity of sorrow, would e...

IN the task of arranging her roses in the various bowls and vases Baines had set in readiness for her, Jean found a certain relief from the feeling of terror which had invaded h...

THERE are some people to whom love comes in a single blinding flash; it is as though the heavens were opened and the vision and the glory theirs in a sudden, transcendant revela...