The New Magdalen

Late in the evening a skirmishing party of the French and a skirmishing party of the Germans had met, by accident, near the little village of Lagrange, close to the German front...

“I will put it in another way,” said the nurse. Its unnatural hardness and sternness of tone passed away from her voice, and its native gentleness and sadness returned, as she m...

“There is the retreat sounded!” said the surgeon. “The captain is not a man to think twice about what he does. We are left to take care of ourselves. In five minutes we must be...

Some letters, tied together with a ribbon, attracted Mercy’s attention first. The ink in which the addresses were written had faded with age. The letters, directed alternately t...

THE youngest of the three strangers--judging by features, complexion, and manner--was apparently an Englishman. He wore a military cap and military boots, but was otherwise dres...

The dining-room of the ancient mansion called Mablethorpe House, situated in the London suburb of Kensington, is famous among artists and other persons of taste for the carved w...

“Yes! Don’t think me presuming; only think me vain. I can’t hear you say too often that you have learned to like me. Is it really a pleasure to you to have me in the house? Have...

After an interval of rest Mercy was aroused by the shutting of a glass door at the far end of the conservatory. This door, leading into the garden, was used only by the inmates...

LADY JANET’S curiosity was by this time thoroughly aroused. Summoned to explain who the nameless lady mentioned in his letter could possibly be, Julian had looked at her adopted...

FOR a moment Horace stood thunderstruck, looking in blank astonishment at Lady Janet. His first words, as soon as he had recovered himself, were addressed to Julian. “Is this a...

JUST inside the door there appeared the figure of a small woman dressed in plain and poor black garments. She silently lifted her black net veil and disclosed a dull, pale, worn...

In the cry of alarm which burst from him, as he raised her for a moment in his arms, in the expression of his eyes when he looked at her death-like face, there escaped the plain...

The hospitable table bears once more its burden of good things for lunch. But on this occasion Lady Janet sits alone. Her attention is divided between reading her newspaper and...

“I WENT first to Mannheim, Lady Janet, as I told you I should in my letter, and I heard all that the consul and the hospital doctors could tell me. No new fact of the slightest...

The easy tone in which he put the question--a tone, as it were, of proprietorship in “Grace”--jarred on Lady Janet at the moment. For the first time in her life she found hersel...

The one terrible necessity which had been present to her mind at intervals for a week past was confronting her at that moment. She owed to Grace Roseberry the tardy justice of o...

He shook his head. “I am far from thinking that,” he replied. “No courage could have sustained the shock which fell on you. I don’t wonder that you fainted. I don’t wonder that...

GRACE ROSEBERRY, still listening in the conservatory, saw the door open, and recognized the mistress of the house. She softly drew back, and placed herself in safer hiding, beyo...

RECOVERING from the first overpowering sensation of surprise, Mercy rapidly advanced, eager to say her first penitent words. Grace stopped her by a warning gesture of the hand....

The disturbed faces of both the women told him but too plainly that the disaster which he had dreaded had actually happened. They had met without any third person to interfere b...

She had secured one half hour of retirement in her own room, designing to devote that interval to the writing of her confession, in the form of a letter addressed to Julian Gray.

IN the great emergencies of life we feel, or we act, as our dispositions incline us. But we never think. Mercy’s mind was a blank as she descended the stairs. On her way down sh...

The maid had delivered her mistress’s note to Mercy, and had gone away again on her second errand to Grace Roseberry in her boudoir. Lady Janet was seated at her writing-table,...

An interval passed--a long interval, measured by the impatient reckoning of suspense--after the cab which had taken Grace Roseberry away had left the house. The minutes followed...

“I knew it!” he said, with an assumption of sardonic composure. “If I could only have persuaded Lady Janet to bet, I should have won a hundred pounds.” He advanced to Julian, wi...

The moments passed--and not one of the three moved. The moments passed--and not one of the three spoke. Insensibly the words of supplication died away on Julian’s lips. Even his...

“My mother (as I have heard her say) ruined her prospects, when she was quite a young girl, by a marriage with one of her father’s servants--the groom who rode out with her. She...

Her eyes still rested on Horace. After hearing what he had heard could he resist that gentle, pleading look? Would he forgive her? A while since Julian had seen tears on his che...

“Mr. Gray!” she exclaimed, “why have you delayed my message? If you knew all, you would know that it is far from being a kindness to me to keep me in this house.”