The Island Pharisees

When he had read this note, Shelton put it down beside his sleeve-links on his dressing table, stared in the mirror at himself, and laughed. But his lips soon stopped him laughi...

Shelton assented; he was too busy thinking of his encounter with the dons to heed the soreness of his feet. This, too, was the last day of his travels, for he had not altered hi...

From the interview, which Shelton had the mixed delight of watching, between Ferrand and the Honourable Mrs. Dennant, certain definite results accrued, the chief of which was th...

Shelton walked away; he had been indulging in a nightmare. “That old actor was drunk,” thought he, “and no doubt he was an Irishman; still, there may be truth in what he said. I...

Holm Oaks stood back but little from the road--an old manor-house, not set upon display, but dwelling close to its barns, stables, and walled gardens, like a good mother; long,...

The waiting in London for July to come was daily more unbearable to Shelton, and if it had not been for Ferrand, who still came to breakfast, he would have deserted the Metropol...

A quiet, well-dressed man named Shelton, with a brown face and a short, fair beard, stood by the bookstall at Dover Station. He was about to journey up to London, and had placed...

Shelton continued to travel with his college friend, and on Wednesday night, four days after joining company, they reached the village of Dowdenhame. All day long the road had l...

That night, after the ride, when Shelton was about to go to bed, his eyes fell on Ferrand's letter, and with a sleepy sense of duty he began to read it through a second time. In...

. . . Aunt Charlotte is ever so much better, so mother thinks we can go home-hurrah! But she says that you and I must keep to our arrangement not to see each other till July. Th...

The luncheon hour at Holm Oaks, was, as in many well-bred country houses--out of the shooting season, be it understood--the soulful hour. The ferment of the daily doings was the...

That night, having gone up to his room, Shelton filled his pipe for his unpleasant duty. He had resolved to hint to Ferrand that he had better go. He was still debating whether...

The last sunlight was playing on the roofs when the travellers entered that High Street grave and holy to all Oxford men. The spirit hovering above the spires was as different f...

He went into the library of his club, and took up Burke's Peerage. The words his uncle had said to him on hearing his engagement had been these: “Dennant! Are those the Holm Oak...

After his journey up from Dover, Shelton was still fathering his luggage at Charing Cross, when the foreign girl passed him, and, in spite of his desire to say something cheerin...

On Tuesday morning he wandered off to Paddington, hoping for a chance view of her on her way down to Holm Oaks; but the sense of the ridiculous, on which he had been nurtured, w...

“My dear Richard” (wrote Shelton's uncle the next day), “I shall be glad to see you at three o'clock to-morrow afternoon upon the question of your marriage settlement....” At th...

They reached the corner house in an angle of a dismal street, through the open door of which two men had just gone in. Following, they ascended some wooden, fresh-washed stairs,...

He had seen this lugubrious stone cage before. But the magic of his morning walk across the moor, the sight of the pagan tors, the songs of the last cuckoo, had unprepared him f...

Five years before the journey just described Shelton had stood one afternoon on the barge of his old college at the end of the summer races. He had been “down” from Oxford for s...

The individual on the doorstep had fallen into slumber over his own knees. No greater air of prosperity clung about him than is conveyed by a rusty overcoat and wisps of cloth i...

The morning was sultry, brooding, steamy. Antonia was at her music, and from the room where Shelton tried to fix attention on a book he could hear her practising her scales with...

Leaving the theatre, they paused a moment in the hall to don their coats; a stream of people with spotless bosoms eddied round the doors, as if in momentary dread of leaving thi...

A difference had come in their relations since that kiss; outwardly she was the same good comrade, cool and quick. But as before a change one feels the subtle difference in the...

He reached his rooms at midnight so exhausted that, without waiting to light up, he dropped into a chair. The curtains and blinds had been removed for cleaning, and the tall win...

Just as Shelton was starting to walk back to Oxford he met Mr. Dennant coming from a ride. Antonia's father was a spare man of medium height, with yellowish face, grey moustache...

Still looking for Antonia, Shelton went up to the morning-room. Thea Dennant and another girl were seated in the window, talking. From the look they gave him he saw that he had...

It was seven and more when Shelton returned, from his walk; a few heat drops had splashed the leaves, but the storm had not yet broken. In brooding silence the world seemed pent...

The dinner at the Casserols' was given to those of the bride's friends who had been conspicuous in the day's festivities. Shelton found himself between Miss Casserol and a lady...

In the sky was mingled all the languor and the violence of the spring. The trees and flowers wore an awakened look in the gleams of light that came stealing down from behind the...

“I bet old Benjy's feeling a bit cheap,” said he, as they got out of their cab at the church door and passed between the crowded files of unelect, whose eyes, so curious and pit...

One day towards the end of August Shelton took Antonia on the river--the river that, like soft music, soothes the land; the river of the reeds and poplars, the silver swan-sails...

Antonia, in a sunny angle of the old brick wall, amid the pinks and poppies and cornflowers, was humming to herself. Shelton saw the stained-glass man pass out of sight, then, u...