The lady's mile

It was high tide--spring tide, if you will--at half past-six o'clock on a warm June evening: not the commonplace ebb and flow of a vulgar river; but the mighty tide of fashion's...

When the brilliant stream of carriages had poured out of Apsley Gate; when the Serpentine blushed redly in the low western sunlight; when the fashionable world had gone homeward...

The trio in the little breakfast-parlour in Sea-View Cottage, Fortinbras, was perhaps one of the pleasantest parties that ever met at so simply furnished a board. The spirit of...

The Captain did not appear at the breakfast table next morning, and it was some time after breakfast when he came into the drawing-room where Cecil sat alone writing letters. He...

Hector Gordon kept his word. He left Fortinbras by the evening train, in despite of his aunt's lamentations, and in despite of something which pierced his heart more cruelly tha...

Returning from the Fountains one day after a pleasant morning spent half in the garden, half in Mr. Crawford's painting-room, Cecil found the dowager in one of her worst humours.

The dowager was of a lively disposition, and by no means inclined to spend her evenings in the dusky solitude of her drawing-room in Dorset Square, where the departed General's...

"Because the dreadful man is a very distinguished person--in the law; and as Mr. Horley, the Indian judge, dines with us next Wednesday, I thought I could not do better than ask...

To the dowager Mr. O'Boyneville had been very confidential. He was as frank and ingenuous as some lovesick schoolboy in his revelation of that sudden affection with which Cecil...

Before the season was over, Lady Cecil enjoyed the honour of an introduction to Florence Crawford's wealthy admirer. Mr. Thomas Lobyer, of Pevenshall Place, Yorkshire, and of th...

Mr. Horatio Mountjoy, the Anglo-Indian judge for whom Mrs. MacClaverhouse had made her little dinner, had been one of the departed general's most intimate friends, and having no...

The Nasedale picnic, or the Nasedale archery-meeting, was a success; but it may be that the noble supply of sparkling wines, the gorgeous banquet of delicate viands, set forth u...

Before the end of the year Cecil Chudleigh had become Cecil O'Boyneville. The barrister was not a man to lose time in making himself master of the citadel that had capitulated,...

Another season had commenced. The carriages in the Lady's Mile were gathering thicker every day, though as yet there was not a leaflet on the trees in Hyde Park, nor a ray of wa...

After driving about half-a-mile Mr. Crawford halted in a little lane leading out of the high road, and within five minutes' walk of Hyde Park,--an obscure corner, in which one w...

The slow days, the long weeks, the interminable months dragged themselves out, and Cecil lived alone with her husband in the stately solitude of the northern side of Brunswick S...

There were other men besides Laurence O'Boyneville who found it pleasant to pitch their tents and kindle their household fires within the limits of Bloomsbury. Sigismund Smythe,...

After considerable parley, and much supplication on the part of the devotee Mr. Lobyer, it had been arranged that Miss Crawford's marriage should take place on the last day of J...

For Lady Cecil the summer months in Bloomsbury were very dreary. And it may be here confessed that Bloomsbury is rather dreary in the summer evenings, when the rifleman's "littl...

Pevenshall Place was a noble modern mansion, which Thomas Lobyer the elder had built for himself in the days when he still hoped to find a worthy successor to his commercial glo...

If Cecil had sighed for a life which should be a complete change from the dull round of existence in Brunswick Square, she could not have found any where a more perfect realisat...

Christmas-day at Pevenshall was very much like every other day. There was perhaps a little more eating and drinking than usual in the servants' hall, where the male portion of t...

The German diplomatist took Cecil in to dinner, and she found herself seated a very long way from Major Gordon, who was quite hidden from her by a barrier of hothouse flowers, c...

While the splendours and gaieties of Mr. Lobyer's household afforded conversation for the neighbourhood of Pevenshall, William Crawford the painter worked his hardest at a pictu...

Mr. O'Boyneville presented himself at Pevenshall early in the month of February, in response to Cecil's renewed entreaty that she might be allowed to return to her home and its...

Mr. O'Boyneville was to leave London for his circuit-work a week after the departure of the 11th Plungers; and again there was a discussion as to the disposal of Cecil's life du...

Lady Cecil stayed at Pevenshall. Her first thought on hearing that Hector Gordon was to be an inmate of the house had been to go straight back to London, without having so much...

While the butterflies of fashion enjoyed the bright summer time, and brazen bands brayed their loudest in horticultural gardens, and foreign glee-singers carolled in every imagi...

Mr. O'Boyneville enjoyed himself amazingly at Pevenshall. The man whose ordinary existence was one unceasing round of hard work was the most social of creatures when once set fr...

The august afternoon was almost stifling in its sultry heat; and most of the Pevenshall idlers had taken shelter in the drawing-room. A group of young ladies were clustered unde...

"I don't believe a bit in Mr. O'Boyneville's summons," said Flo; "you are tired of us, and you want to go away, Cecil; you are deceiving me just as you deceived me before. Howev...

Psyche and the Zephyrs waited the last touches of the master's hand; but William Crawford painted no more. The eminent oculist would not give him any decided opinion as to the u...

The autumn wore away, and the Pevenshall coverts afforded sport for a succession of visitors. This second autumn of Mr. Lobyer's married life was very much like the first. The o...