The Master Craftsman

‘Yes, Sir George,’ said the lawyer, looking mighty serious. ‘We have at length ascertained how you stand. Your father conducted--misconducted--his affairs without consulting us-...

Lady Frances, daughter of the famous Earl of Clovelly, once, twice, three times Premier, and of the even more illustrious Countess, the last of our great political ladies, was a...

In these days of self-restraint we neither weep nor rage; we pour out neither lamentations nor curses. People used formerly to accept evil fortune with all the outward indicatio...

How does one get to Wapping? It is not, I believe, generally known that there are trains which take the explorer to this secluded hamlet. They are the same trains which go under...

The old house proved to be even older than it looked. ‘It was built,’ said the present owner, ‘by the first of the Wapping Burnikels. I don’t know where he came from; but he was...

Tea was served in the room on the other side of the Hall. Like the study, this room was a lovely old room also, completely wainscoted with cedar. There were the same carvings ov...

Robert shut the study door carefully, as if to exclude any chance of being overheard. The room was growing dark now, save for the gas-lamp on the opposite side of the street. He...

That was how it began. We entered upon this exchange without understanding what was to follow--who ever understands what is to follow? If we were to understand what is to follow...

‘My turn now,’ I said. ‘If I can only get this aching out of my shoulders. I am now going to be your coach--a judicious coach. The first point I am told that a judicious coach o...

I pass over as irrelevant, or at least superfluous, the very disagreeable interview in which I revealed my plans to Frances. She had found a new opening for me--I was to be appo...

‘We shall have to drive right through London,’ I told her. ‘You will see first the trade end of the West; then the lane of the country visitors, called the Strand; then the lane...

We passed into another street, really the same, but called by a different name, where there were no sailors and no sailors’ friends. It was, however, filled with people walking...

When we assembled for early dinner on Monday I looked to see some effect of our little afternoon voyage and talk on Isabel. Alas! the cloud hung again over her head--a visible,...

I gave her new music, some books of songs, some books of poetry, and some novels of a kind that I thought she would like. I filled the windows with flowers, insomuch that Robert...

I set myself to work, as I had done with Robert, systematically. I had to drag a girl out of a miserably narrow groove in which she had lived and moved for five years without an...

Then and there was the emancipation of Isabel begun. It was effected, you have seen, by making her physically strong and well, by giving her courage, by providing her with somet...

What might have happened after this act of open rebellion I do not know. Perhaps these terrifying overtures were the first signs of a real but as yet unconscious passion, just c...

Despite the changes, suppressions, repressions, and new conditions which have been imposed upon the good old election, there is still some excitement left. We may sigh and pine...

Then followed the meeting of the newly-elected Commons. Our own member went off with a quiet air of self-reliance, not arrogance. ‘I am not in the least afraid of my own powers,...

‘I could have desired nothing better,’ he said, ‘than such a chance. So far as I can learn, there will be a good many more such chances before long. What does Isabel say? But, o...

A few days afterwards Robert came over to the yard. He came during the men’s dinner-hour, when a delightful calm settles down upon Wapping, and even the cranes and the donkey-en...

Then came the second opportunity. It was three weeks after the first. The occasion was the first reading--or was it the second?--of a Bill for the prohibition of more than five-...

And now I have to relate the occurrence of a very surprising incident. It was not only surprising in the way it happened, accompanied by circumstances that have a kind of supern...

Never before, I am quite sure, was transformation more rapid than that which changed the Hon. Member for Shadwell in less than six months from a man out of the world to a man of...

It was about the middle of October that Frances came up from the country. Considering that her uniform practice was to remain there until the middle of January every year, it wa...

Thence I proceeded straight to Robert. Man, I discovered, is in these matters more difficult than woman. Pride, to begin with--you shall see how horrid an obstacle was pride. Ne...

I found my mistress--it was nearly nine o’clock in the evening--in the parlour playing her thoughts to herself. The room had no light except that of the street-lamp, which showe...

I should very much like to tell you exactly what Robert said, and what Frances said, and how he played the wooer, and how she accepted the wooing. I cannot, however, for the ver...