The Millionaire Baby

There was no moon that night, and the copse in which our pavilion stands was like a blot against the starless heavens. As I drew near it, my dog, the invariable companion of my...

"No, or I should have been laying for him long before this. Why, it is not only there you can see it. I found it pinned to the carriage cushions one day just as I was going to d...

"So!" The word came with difficulty. "So you _did_ play the detective, even as a boy. Pity I had not recognized your talents at the time. But no--" he contradicted himself with...

I had reached the step on which she crouched. I could catch sight of the child's eyes over her shoulder, a shoulder that quivered--was it with the storm of the last interview, o...

I took the implied rebuke and entered the door she indicated. A man was sitting within, but he rose and went out when he saw us. He wore a policeman's badge and evidently recogn...

"It is late," she murmured with a final glance towards those dismal hangings which in my present mood I should not have been so greatly surprised to see stir under her look. "Ho...

"He says that he caught her back with the remark that he was glad she liked it because it was hers and many more like it. But she insists that he did not say a word, only smiled...

Was I playing with her curiosity or anxieties or whatever it was that affected her? I hardly knew; I spoke as impulse directed and waited in cold blood--or was it hot blood?--to...

The nursery-governess whose heart was divided between her duty to the child and her strong love of music, was chosen as their unconscious accomplice in this fraud. As the time f...

But would Mrs. Ocumpaugh do this? I own that I had my doubts. Some hidden cause or instinct which I had not been able to reach, though I had plunged deep into the most galling s...

I was standing very still and in almost total darkness. The shock, therefore, was great when, in finally making up my mind to move, I became conscious of a presence near me, tot...

"Nor I," she repeated, with a hoarse catch in her breath. "It is thirty-six hours since we lost her. Time enough for the current to have carried her sweet little body far away f...

"It is--it was--a secret. I have to confess to the abnormal. The child did not love me; has never loved me. Lavish as I have been in my affection and caresses, she has never don...

She had come up as she had promised, and had seated herself on the bed with her face turned toward the window. I could thus catch its whole expression--an expression this time i...

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"So she declared herself, but she had on her neck under her coat a string of beads which were both valuable and of exquisite workmanship. I know, because it broke just as she wa...

Her Infinite Variety represents Mr. Brand Whitlock, the author, in holiday mood. It is from first to last a clever little comedy, full of delicious and unexpected satire, the wh...