The Husband's Story: A Novel

Several years ago circumstances thrust me into a position in which it became possible for the friend who figures in these pages as Godfrey Loring to do me a favor. He, being bot...

I rather thought I deserved it. But it has ever been one of my vanities to pretend to take my successes as matters of course, and even to depreciate them. They say the English i...

After ten months of married life Edna fell ill. All you married men will prick up your ears at that. Why is it that bread winners somehow contrive to keep on their feet most of...

If my wife had been interested in any of the important things of the world, I could have been of the greatest assistance to her and she to me. And we should have grown ever clos...

“Not at all,” cried she. “How slow you are! No; for the present, even if we do live in New York, I think it best for Margot to keep on living at the school. She’s barely started...

I had not intended to say this. There had been a half-formed resolution in my mind to oppose those plans. But her anger roused in me such a desire to pacify her that I promptly...

I shan’t here go into the ways I discovered or invented for finding that money. They were not too scrupulous, but neither were they commercially dishonorable. I must smile there...

There is a shallow fashion of describing this or that as peculiarly New York, usually snobbishness or domestic unhappiness or wealth worship, dishonest business men or worthless...

“I’ve always treated her as a duchess, and have made the servants do it, and have trained her to treat them as if she were a duchess.” A proud smile came into her face, transfor...

Why had I refused to help her in the way she suggested? Not on moral grounds, gentle reader. There I should have been as free from scruple as you yourself would have been, as yo...

“Oh, come now! Cheer up!” cried he, with laughing irony. “After all, you can’t blame the American woman. She has no training for the career of woman. She has no training for any...

We were at home, so she could escape from me. And I, for my part, was as glad to be quit of her society as she could possibly have been to get rid of me. I was beginning to real...

“If it only were a good time--to be ignorant and snobbish and lazy, to drive instead of walking, to eat and drink instead of thinking, to be waited upon instead of getting the e...

This speech so depressed the ladies that their last remnant of vivacity fled, not to return. You are sympathizing with them, gentle reader, and they are welcome to your sympathy...

In the depths of the morass we came upon her. She was in man’s clothes--laboring man’s clothes. Her face and neck were protected by veils, her hands by gloves. She was toiling a...

“I think he would have if I had encouraged him.... I liked the way he spoke of you, and”--I hesitated, could not hold back the words--“and I am not easy to please there.” Those...

That impressed me. “I have not said I would not consent to this marriage,” I reminded her. “As a matter of fact, I’m in favor of it. I can see no future for Margot in America----”

I was the only inharmonious figure in that round of festivals. But no one observed me. I simply got the reputation of being a man of reserve, a thinker rather than a talker--as...

She led me to a smelly, low-ceilinged little room, like a segment out of a hovel. It was her boudoir, she informed me. In one wall, in a dinky fireplace burned a handful of fire.

She saw him as soon as she could make herself presentable--and her delay gave him a chance to tone up his nerves and to smooth out his face. That afternoon I was able to telegra...

“No doubt,” I went on, “you’re willing to stay here where you’re unhappy, and for my sake to jam the house night after night with people you care nothing about, and disport your...

“Quite that,” said she, and I saw her making a mental note of the comparison for future use--one of her best tricks. “Really, I prefer the business men to them. But one cannot g...

Never had I seen her looking so well. You may say what you please, but an American woman who knows how to dress, in touch with a French dressmaker who is rather artist than dres...

You are waiting to hear what was the matter with Edna. No, it was not a fake illness to draw me within reach for some further trimming. She had indeed fallen dangerously ill--di...

At last she was completely restored. The doctors and nurses could find no pretext for lingering, and that in itself was proof positive of her health and strength. She was having...

“You’re as fond of your freedom as I am. And nothing on earth could induce me to marry again. When women--English women--look at me I see them fairly twitching to get me where t...

It puzzled me to note how much the world had taught her in some ways, and how little in others. But that is a familiar puzzle--the unexpected, startling ways in which knowledge...

“You can get a very good one,” said I. “Money--what would have bought you a wife as a man--what buys most men their wives--will buy you a husband. And he’ll be grateful and lovi...

The only terms on which Dugdale would consent to go were that I should keep him away from New York not less than two months, and that I should take no one else. I promptly assen...

Another story of “the storm country.” Two beautiful children are kidnapped from a wealthy home and appear many years after showing the effects of a deep, malicious scheme behind...