The Midnight Queen

The effect of the whisper was magical. Everything that had been dark before, became clear as noonday; and Sir Norman sat absolutely astounded at his own stupidity in not having...

The interim between Miranda setting down her lamp on the dungeon floor among the rats and the beetles, and the dwarf's finding her bleeding and senseless, was not more than twen...

In one instant Sir Norman was on his feet and his hand on his sword. In the tarry darkness, neither the face nor figure of the intruder could be made out, but he merely saw a da...

Presentiments are strange things. From the first moment Sir Norman entered the city, and his thoughts had been able to leave Miranda and find themselves wholly on Leoline, a hea...

The plague raged in the city of London. The destroying angel had gone forth, and kindled with its fiery breath the awful pestilence, until all London became one mighty lazar-hou...

I am not aware whether fainting was as much the fashion among the fair sex, in the days (or rather the nights) of which I have the honor to hold forth, as at the present time; b...

In an instant all was confusion. Everybody sprang to their feet--ladies shrieked in chorus, gentlemen swore and drew their swords, and looked to see if they might not expect a w...

“Think? Don't ask me yet.” said Sir Norman, looking rather bewildered. “I'm in such a state of mystification that I don't rightly know whether I'm standing on my head or feet. F...

“Love is like a dizziness,” says the old song. Love is something else--it is the most selfish feeling in existence. Of course, I don't allude to the fraternal or the friendly, o...

Sir Norman Kingsley's consternation and horror on discovering the dead body of his friend, was only equalled by his amazement as to how he got there, or how he came to be dead a...

All this time, the attendant, George, had been sitting, very much at his ease, on horseback, looking after Sir Norman's charger and admiring the beauties of sunrise. He had seen...

The night was intensely dark when Sir Norman got into it once more; and to any one else would have been intensely dismal, but to Sir Norman all was bright as the fair hills of B...

“And taken away my appetite for supper,” added a youthful and elegant beauty beside her. “My Lord Gloucester was hideous enough when living, but, mon Dieu! he is ten times more...

When Mr. Malcolm Ormiston, with his usual good sense and penetration, took himself off, and left Leoline and Sir Norman tete-a-tete, his steps turned as mechanically as the need...

Shocks of joy, they tell me, seldom kill. Of my own knowledge I cannot say, for I have had precious little experience of such shocks in my lifetime, Heaven knows; but in the pre...

The two friends looked at each other in impressive silence for a moment, and spake never a word. Not that they were astonished--they were long past the power of that emotion: an...

When Sir Norman Kingsley entered the ancient ruin, his head was full of Leoline--when he knelt down to look through the aperture in the flagged floor, head and heart were full o...

If things were done right--but they are not and, never will be, while this whirligig world of mistakes spins round, and all Adam's children, to the end of the chapter, will cont...

The by-path down which Sir Norman rode, led to an inn, “The Golden Crown,” about a quarter of a mile from the ruin. Not wishing to take his horse, lest it should lead to discove...

The search was given over at last in despair, and the doctor took his hat and disappeared. Sir Norman and Ormiston stopped in the lower hall and looked at each other in mute amaze.

As the last glimpse of moonlight and of Hubert's bright face vanished, Leoline took to pacing up and down the room in a most conflicting and excited state of mind. So many thing...

Probably not one of you; my dear friends, who glance graciously over this, was ever shut up in a dungeon under expectation of bearing the unpleasant operation of decapitation wi...