The Man in Black: An Historical Novel of the Days of Queen Anne

Did you ever examine an ant-hill, dear reader? What a wonderful little cosmos it is--what an epitome of a great city--of the human race! See how the little fellows run bustling...

Emily's night was not peaceful. The very idea that her father's fate was in the power of any other man, was, in itself, trouble enough; but in the present case there was more. W...

There was a man lay upon the road in the darkness of the night for some five or six minutes, and a horse galloped away snorting, with a broken bridle hanging at his head, on the...

Mrs. Hazleton was an observer of all small particulars. She never seemed to give them any attention indeed, but it is not those who notice them publicly who pay most attention t...

Decorum came in with the house of Hanover. I know not whether men and women in England were more virtuous before--I think not--but they certainly were more frank in both their v...

I must now follow the groom on his road, first to the cottage of good Jenny Best, where he learned that Mr. Atkinson had gone away some five minutes before, and then to the hous...

Marlow was soon on horseback, and riding on to the country town. But he had lingered longer with Emily than he imagined, and the day declined visibly as he rode along.

Philip Hastings had calculated much upon his Roman firmness; and he could have borne death, or any great and sudden calamity, with fortitude; but small evils often affect us mor...

John Ayliffe, as we may now once more very righteously call him, was seated in the great hall of the old house of the Hastings family. Very different indeed was the appearance o...

Let me take you into an old-fashioned country house, built by architects of the early reign of James the First. It had all the peculiarities--I might almost say the oddities--of...

John Ayliffe got out of the park gates quite safely, though he rode down the slope covered with loose stones, as if he had no consideration for his own neck or his horse's knees...

There are seasons in the life of man, as well as in the course of the year; and well, unhappily, have many poets painted them in all their various aspects. But these seasons are...

We must go back a little, for we have somewhat anticipated our tale. Never did summons strike more joyfully on the ear of mortal than came that of her recall home to Emily Hasti...

"I have not seen you or dear Lady Hastings for many months; nor your sweet Emily either, except at a distance, when one day she passed my carriage on horseback, sweeping along t...

Marlow reasoned with his own heart. For the first time in his life it had proved rebellious. It would have its own way. It would give no account of its conduct,--why it had beat...

We must now turn on more to Sir Philip Hastings as he sat in his lonely room in prison. Books had been allowed him, paper, pen, and ink, and all that could aid to pass the time;...

It was long ere Emily Hastings slept. There was a bright moonlight; but she sat not up by the window, looking out at the moon in love-lorn guise. No, she laid her down in bed, a...

Mrs. Hazleton was up in the morning early. She was at all times an early riser, for she well knew what a special conservator of beauty is the morning dew, but on this occasion c...

Circumstance will always have its finger in the pie with the best-laid schemes; but it does not always happen that thereby the pie is spoiled. On the contrary, circumstance is s...

Mrs. Hazleton was looking as beautiful as she had been at twenty--perhaps more so; for the few last years before the process of decay commences, sometimes adds rather than detra...

Men have lived and died in the pursuit of two objects the least worthy, on which the high mind of man could ever fix, out of all the vain illusions that lead us forward through...

Emily was as gay as a lark. The light of love and happiness was in her eyes, the hue of health was upon her cheek, and a new spirit of hope and joy seemed to pervade all her fai...

Sir Philip Hastings sat at breakfast with his daughter the morning of the same day on which Mrs. Hazleton in the still-room was subjected to her dear friend's unpleasant intrusi...

Mrs. Hazleton fancied herself in high good luck; for just as she was passing through the door into the hall, Lady Hastings' maid crossed and made her a curtsey. Mrs. Hazleton be...

Mrs. Hazleton found Mr. Shanks, the attorney, the most difficult person to deal with whom she had ever met in her life. She had remarked that he was keen, active, intelligent, u...

This must be a chapter of rapid action, comprising in its brief space the events of many months--events which might not much interest the reader in minute detail, but which prod...

Occasionally in the life of man, as in the life of the world--History--or in the course of a stream towards the sea, come quiet lapses, sunny and calm, reflecting nothing but th...

When the surgeon entered the room of Lady Hastings there was a profound silence. Sir Philip Hastings was standing by his wife's bedside, motionless as a statue; gazing with a kn...

I must not dwell long upon the youthful scenes of the lad I have just introduced to the reader; but as it is absolutely needful that his peculiar character should be clearly und...

It was about ten o'clock in the day when Marlow returned to the Court, as it was called. The butler informed him that Miss Emily was not down--a very unusual thing with her, as...

From the house of Sir Philip Hastings Mr. Short rode quickly on to the cottage of Mistress Best, which he had visited once before in the morning. The case of John Ayliffe, howev...

Mrs. Hazelton entered the carriage, I have said, at the end of the last chapter, without the slightest appearance of agitation or excitement. Although now and then a flush, and...

"Quite, I thank you, Miss Hastings," replied John Ayliffe, in a quiet and respectful tone; but then he added, "the interest you kindly showed on the occasion, I believe did much...

Solitude and silence, and bitter thought are great tamers of the human heart. "As ye sow, so shall ye reap," says the Apostle, and John Ayliffe was now forced to put in the sick...

Emily Hastings was not three hundred yards from the house when Mrs. Hazleton drove away from the house door. She had never been more than three hundred yards from it during that...

Mrs. Hazleton was or affected to be a good deal flustered by the event which had just taken place, but after a number of certain graceful attitudes, assumed without the slightes...

Mrs. Warmington became a person of some importance with the people of Hartwell. All thoughts were turned towards her house. Everybody wished they could get in and see and hear m...

Enough of boyhood and its faults and follies. I sought but to show the reader, as in a glass, the back of a pageant that has past. Oh, how I sometimes laugh at the fools--the cr...

The stone which covered the vault of the Hastings family had been raised, and light and air let into the cold, damp interior. A ray of sunshine, streaming through the church win...

"I am very ill indeed this morning," said Lady Hastings, addressing her maid about eleven o'clock. "I feel as if I were dying. Call my husband and my daughter to me."

Before the door of a large brick building, with no windows towards the street, and tall walls rising up till they overtopped the neighboring houses, stood two men, about an hour...

The two horsemen rode on their way. Neither spoke for several minutes. Sir Philip Hastings pondering sternly on all that had passed, and his younger companion gazing upon the sc...

Mrs. Hazleton was very consoling. She was with Mrs. Hastings two or three times in the week, and poor Mrs. Hastings required a considerable degree of consolation; for the arrest...

There was a lady, a very beautiful lady indeed, came to a lonely house, which seemed to have been tenanted for several years by none but servants, about three years after the de...

When Mr. Short, the surgeon, left the presence of Sir Philip Hastings, he found the butler seated in an arm-chair in the hall, cogitating sadly over all the lamentable events of...

things make them worse, I think. However, I suppose you have gone too far to go back; and so I must go to a strange out of the way country and hide myself and live quite lonely....

Reader, can you go back for twenty years? You do it every day. You say, "Twenty years ago I was a boy--twenty years ago I was a youth--twenty years ago I played at peg-top and a...

"_Oui, monsieur_," replied the other, taking a pinch of snuff, and perfectly indifferent whether he was gentle or not,--for the Commissary had the honor, as he termed it, of ass...

Mrs. Hazleton found the inconvenience of having a dear friend. It was in vain that she tried to get rid of her visitor. The visitor would not be got rid of. She was deaf to hint...

The Italian singing-master was a peculiar man, and well worthy of a few words in description. He was tall and thin, but well built; and his face had probably once been very hand...

but her daughter did not think it right to tell her the strange demeanor of Sir Philip, but sitting down as calmly ass he could by her mother's side, talked to her for several m...

Sir Philip Hastings, I have said, was reading a Greek book when Mr. Short entered the library. His face was grave, and very stern; but all traces of the terrible agitation with...

Sir Philip Hastings returned to his own house earlier than had been expected, bringing with him the physician he had gone to seek, and whom--contrary to the ordinary course of e...

sum of two hundred pounds per annum, as long as she demeans herself with propriety and decorum. I will also leave directions in my will for securing to her and her son, on their...

In a very gaudily furnished parlor, and in a very gaudy dress, sat a lady of some eight or nine and thirty years of age, with many traces of beauty still to be perceived in a fa...