The Lion's Share

Audrey had just closed the safe in her father's study when she was startled by a slight noise. She turned like a defensive animal to face danger. It had indeed occurred to her t...

"Of course I don't. But I could if I liked. I simply won't look it because I don't care to be made ridiculous. I should start to look my age at once if father stopped treating m...

Audrey and Miss Ingate were in the late Mathew Moze's study, fascinated--as much unconsciously as consciously--by the thing which since its owner's death had grown every hour mo...

Half an hour later the woman and the girl, still in the study and severely damaged by the culminating events of Mr. Cowl's visit, were almost prostrated by the entirely unexpect...

Audrey was wakened up that night, just after she had gone to sleep, by a touch on the cheek. Her mother, palely indistinct in the darkness, was standing by the bedside. She wore...

The estuary, in all the colours of unsettled, mild, bright weather, lay at her feet beneath a high arch of changing blue and white. The capricious wind moved in her hair, moved...

Audrey did not deem that she had begun truly to live until the next morning, when they left London, after having passed a night in the Charing Cross Hotel. During several visits...

The carriage had emptied, and the two adventurers stood alone among empty compartments. The platform was also empty. Not a porter in sight. One after the other, the young widow...

Miss Thompkins and Miss Nickall were a charm to dissipate all the affrighting menace of the city beyond the station. Miss Thompkins had fluffy red hair, with the freckles which...

Just as the café-restaurant had been an intensification of ordinary life, so was the ball in Dauphin's studio an intensification of the café-restaurant. It had more colour, more...

It was these words in a highly emotionalised voice from Miss Nickall that, like a vague murmured message of vast events, drew the entire quartet away from the bright inebriated...

Audrey was in a white piqué coat and short skirt, with pale blue blouse and pale blue hat--and at the extremity blue stockings and white tennis shoes. She picked up a tennis rac...

In the north-east corner of the Luxembourg Gardens, where the lawn-tennis courts were permitted by a public authority which was strangely impartial and cosmopolitan in the matte...

Audrey was lighting the big lamp in the Moncreiff-Ingate studio. It made exactly the same moon as it had made on the night in the previous autumn when Audrey had first seen it....

The next day, after a studio lunch which contained too much starch and was deficient in nitrogen, Miss Ingate, putting on her hat and jacket, said with a caustic gesture:

On the second following Friday evening, Audrey's suite of rooms at the Hôtel du Danube glowed in every corner with pink-shaded electricity. According to what Audrey had everywhe...

"Monsieur Foa--which floor?" Audrey asked once again of the aged concierge in the Rue d'Aumale. This time she got an answer. It was the fifth or top floor. Musa said nothing, pe...

The entire company was sitting or standing round the table in the dining-room. It was a table at which eight might have sat down to dinner with a fair amount of comfort; and per...

In the setting of her own boudoir Madame Piriac equalled, and in some ways surpassed, the finest pictures which Audrey had imagined of her. Her evening dress made Audrey doubt w...

It was the afternoon of the day following their arrival in London from Paris, and it was a fine afternoon. They were walking from the Charing Cross Hotel, where they had slept,...

It was two minutes past five, and Miss Ingate and Audrey, followed by Nick with her slung arm, entered the sheeted living-room. Tremendous feats had been performed. All the Monc...

Audrey and Miss Ingate were writing letters to Paris. Jane Foley had gone forth again to a committee meeting, which was understood to be closely connected with a great Liberal d...

The Blue City, now no more, was, as may be remembered, Birmingham's reply to the White City of London, and the imitative White City of Manchester. Birmingham, in that year, was...

The house of the Spatts was large, imposing and variegated. It had turrets, balconies, and architectural nooks in such quantity that the unaided individual eye could not embrace...

It was upon this evening that Audrey began alarmingly to develop the quality of being incomprehensible--even to herself. Like most young women and men, she had been convinced fr...

Soon afterwards Audrey, who had put on a hat, went out with Mr. Spatt to look for Musa. Not until shortly before the musical performance had the Spatts succeeded in persuading M...

The next morning, after a night spent chiefly in thought, Audrey issued forth rather early. Indeed she was probably the first person afoot in the house of the Spatts, the parlou...

Audrey had left the astonished but dispassionate gardener at the hedge, and was now emerging from the scanty and dishevelled plantation close to the boundary wall of the estate....

Audrey leaned back in the car. And as speed increased the magnificence of the morning again had its effect on her. The adventure pleased her far more than the perils of it, eith...

A few days later an automobile--not Audrey's but a large limousine--bumped, with slow and soft dignity, across the railway lines which diversify the quays of Boulogne harbour an...

The hemisphere of heaven was drenched in moonlight, and--rare happening either on British earth or on the waters surrounding it, in mid-summer--the night was warm. In the midst...

The owner was at the wheel. But he had not got there at once. This singular man, who strangely enough was wearing one of his most effulgent and heterogeneous club neckties, had...

It was true that the yacht had not been berthed at Lousey Hard until between two and three o'clock in the morning, and that no guest had slept until after the job was done, thou...

"No," said Audrey. "How could I? We're yachting. Madame Piriac, you know Miss Ingate, don't you? And this is my friend Jane Foley." She spoke quite easily and naturally, though...

"It was quite true what I told the detective. So I suppose you've finished with me for evermore!" Audrey burst out recklessly, as soon as she and Madame Piriac were alone togeth...

When the pair got back to the sea-wall the tide had considerably ebbed, and where the dinghy had floated there was nothing more liquid than exquisitely coloured mud. Nevertheles...

That night, which was an unusually dark night for the time of year, Audrey left the yacht, alone, to fetch Jane Foley. She had made a provisional plan with Jane and Aguilar, and...

When Audrey, having been put ashore in execution of a plan arranged with those naturally endowed strategists, Aguilar and Jane Foley, arrived at the Hard by way of the sea-wall,...

She pointed at one of the large white-curtained windows of the restaurant, through which was visible a round column covered with advertisements of theatres, music-halls, and con...

Audrey got away from the group in front of the restaurant with stammering words and crimson confusion. She ran. She stopped a taxi and stumbled into it. There remained with her...

The Salle Xavier, or Xavier Hall, had been built, with other people's money, by Xavier in order to force the general public to do something which the general public does not wan...

The most sinister feature of entertainments organised by Xavier was the intervals. Xavier laid stress on intervals; they gave repose, and in many cases they saved money. All Par...

After the Spanish Symphony not only the conductor but the entire orchestra followed Musa from the platform, and Audrey understood that the previous interval had not really been...

The first item after the true interval was the Chaconne of Bach, which Musa had played upon a memorable occasion in Frinton. He stood upon the platform utterly alone, against a...

The next afternoon Audrey sat nervous and expectant, but highly finished, in her drawing-room at the Hôtel du Danube. Miss Ingate had gone out, pretending to be quite unaware th...

Audrey was walking along Piccadilly when she overtook Miss Ingate, who had been arrested by a shop window, the window of one of the shops recently included in the vast edifice o...