The Open Question: A Tale of Two Temperaments

After several years' supremacy as "the greatest dancer on the earth," that brilliant career was suddenly abandoned. It was evident that a mistake had been made. Val's true desti...

It struck Mrs. Gano the next day, as they were out driving, that Val was unusually subdued. She seemed to see nothing that they passed, hear nothing that was said. But it could...

He was really coming this time; in less than an hour he would be at the Fort. They were all sitting in the parlor, waiting, in festal array. Late as it was in the year, the clea...

The next afternoon Mrs. Gano and her son took Ethan out driving in state. Val and Emmie watched them off with eyes of envy. Ethan looked back at the young people with something...

Naturally so clannish a woman as Mrs. Gano had not let the years go by without much solicitude on behalf of her orphan grandchild. After the death of her eldest son, Mrs. Gano w...

Close as was her relationship with her father, there was more than one thing she never told him. She never spoke of her grandmother's brutality. She sympathized with him silentl...

Val fought hard and long against abandoning her darling scheme of spending the winter abroad, not giving her persistency its right name. To Ethan's "Why?" she would answer, coax...

Driscoll was better next morning, and able to eat breakfast. Gano had got into the habit of making coffee in the invalid's room in the morning as well as at night. Driscoll had...

And day after day, week after week, while he sought an opening, he very nearly starved. In a couple of months he had arrived at the conclusion that the fight in London was more...

"Grandma is not so well to-day," said Emmie's letter the next morning. "I think you oughtn't to be away long. She is surprised to have only a 'safe arrival' telegram from you an...

Ethan was not allowed to repeat his visit, and life went on for several years without incident at the old Fort. Yet, since "it is in the soul that things happen," these were sti...

Mrs. Gano sat with Emmie that evening in the long room. The little girl had been having restless nights, and had fallen asleep just before supper. Val went alone into the parlor...

They went abroad at once. At first, in a rhythm of rapture and of terror, the time went by, now with flying, now with faltering feet. But albeit living on the volcano's brink is...

It had pleased Val's love of travel by water, and helped her to endure the thought of her long overland journey to the Pacific, that they should go down by river to the great ra...

After Ethan had gone, life seemed to stand still for a long, long time. The only real events were his letters, not to Val, although she had written him the very night after he w...

Emmie had begun to teach a class in the Infant Sunday-school. She would go off soon after breakfast, the others following an hour or so later, and meeting her at morning service.

One peculiarity of life at the Fort was that although visitors in general were in high disfavor, everybody, from Mrs. Gano down to Jerusha--especially Jerusha--was always hoping...

Although this visit was the only one Ethan was destined to pay to New Plymouth before he came to man's estate, he carried back with him to Boston at the holiday's end something...

In spite of Ethan's somewhat heathen faith in the power of Yaffti, and the efficacy of rites and spells, he was a true Gano, in that he early developed a deep concern about Chri...

It was when Ethan was seven years old that he was permitted to go to New Plymouth to spend his summer holidays. He was brought by his uncle Elijah Tallmadge, who, on his way to...

Val's unwonted silence and aloofness the evening before had not been lost upon her cousin. He recalled these unaccustomed manifestations the next morning, smiling to himself, an...

Despite the distractions of a host of wandering fancies, Ethan Gano had been kept fairly closely at his studies till he had passed his twentieth birthday. To be sure, there had...

A letter by the late post from cousin Ethan! It would be the last before he himself would appear. Emmie watched, with luminous eyes, her grandmother's opening of the envelope. V...

The morning was warm and balmy. Val put on her blue muslin gown, thinking rebelliously how Ethan had once said that a serge coat, and skirt, and sailor hat were the proper "togs...

Nothing seemed to matter now that her mother was dead. It was plain Val would never be happy again. Leaving her home, to which she was devotedly attached, was hardly a misfortun...

She sank back exhausted. Val could not read in Ethan's eyes that he had abandoned hope. But the girl's heart was full of dread. She went softly out of the room.

At the close of the war the Ganos were ruined. The rambling, verandaed house was sold for a song to the Gano-Lees, and the question was, where could John with his delicate healt...

But although Val was worsted in this encounter, the race _was_ sometimes to the swift and the battle to the ingenious. For instance, that very night in bed she discovered a way...

One of the things nobody had been able to get Val to do any more was to sing. This had been at first set down to the death of her father, and a special association of him with m...

"Well, Mazeppa, we've had a good run for it; but it's ill-going when one's bound--and when death follows." Only her lips stirred at the opening of the door. "That you, Ethan?"

How good he was to her! How he indulged her! How wonderful it was to be loved by such a man! Soon they'd be off again on their travels, seeing the beautiful Old World. Oh, Life...

The _concierge_ appeared, angry and shivery, and bade him either come in or go out. He was in the act of doing the latter when he remembered Driscoll. He turned back and faced t...

He stayed with his uncle for a month, and then sent for the despised Drouet, who was an excellent nurse. As he grew weaker, John Gano developed not only a tolerance, but a likin...

It is not always easy to trace the origin of an American family, even when the immediate progenitor did not begin life as a boot-black or a prospector, without so much as a "gru...

In a dim way Val was relieved on second thoughts that Ethan should not be summoned. He and she had been plotting treason. The poignant fear and grief that swayed her would wear...

That night Mrs. Gano was prostrated by a feverish cold. The doctor was sent for, and Val carried out his instructions so faithfully that in twenty-four hours the patient was com...