The Peacock Feather: A Romance

General Carden, V.C., C.B., D.S.O., was sitting at breakfast in his house in Sloane Street. He was not a young man--in fact, he had just passed his seventy-seventh birthday--but...

And so these two entered into partnership--a partnership that, on the side of Democritus, was marked by an entire adoration, the full and overwhelming love and trust of a dog's...

DEAR ROBIN ADAIR,--I have met another admirer of your book, a delightful old man of courtly manners of the style of the eighteenth century. At first he assumed disparagement of...

"Here, Robin Adair, is a night-stock from below my terrace. I enclose it while it is white and fragrant. It will reach you brown and shrivelled; but, as you say, less shrivelled...

Peter was sitting under a hedge, playing on a penny whistle. Behind him was a bush, snowy with the white flowers of the hawthorn. In front of him was a field, warm with the gold...

He was sitting by the window of his cottage, engaged--truth will out--in darning a pair of green socks. Occasionally he lifted his head from his work and gazed through the windo...

If at the beginning of the last chapter Miss Haldane was perturbed, worried, perplexed, so, rather more than two months later, Muriel Lancing was perturbed, worried, perplexed,...

Up at the White House Lady Anne Garland was entertaining Millicent Sheldon. The entertainment to Lady Anne proved somewhat weighty. The carefully mended Millicent was a differen...

Lady Anne Garland was sitting in Mrs. Cresswell's drawing-room. It was a charming room, with its domed ceiling, its panelled walls, its long windows, its curtains and brocades o...

And now if this history be inclined to jump from one place to another in a somewhat inconsequent fashion, perhaps it will be forgiven, for with its hero wandering away by himsel...

Peter was partaking of a noonday meal of bread and cheese and beer when a knock came on his cottage door. For a moment or two he thought his ears must have deceived him, and he...

"Poor chap!" ejaculated Tommy, delivering himself of a huge sigh. He was standing on the hearthrug, immaculately attired in dinner jacket, white shirt-front, and all the rest of...

Muriel Lancing, having partaken of breakfast in her own room, was now lying in luxurious and dainty _négligé_ among a pile of extremely snowy pillows. Anne, who had breakfasted...

Late one afternoon Peter set off to walk to the market-town. He was expecting a letter from his publishers. He had given them the market-town post-office as his permanent addres...

And here it is necessary to introduce another character to the reader, one of whom there has already been a momentary glimpse, but who now comes forward to play his speaking par...

At last, however, he saw the roofs of cottages, and realized that he was approaching a village. The square tower of a church, and a big house half-hidden by trees on higher grou...

For ten days, however, the journeys made by him were fruitless, and he began to cast about despairingly in his mind for the memory of anything in his own letter that could have...

Bundle on back, his hands deep in the pockets of a rough frieze overcoat he had purchased some three months previously, he tramped along the road, Democritus at his heels. It mi...

They were sitting, these two, in a wide window-seat at the end of a passage. They had the full length of it before them. It was a post of vantage. With what generalship Peter ha...

Peter came out from the cottage door in the early morning. The rain of the previous night had ceased, only the trees, bushes, and grass were hung with myriads of drops sparkling...

Lady Anne Garland was sitting by a rosewood writing-desk in her morning-room. She had finished her letters, and was now sitting idle, gazing through the window on to the terrace...

Thus Peter entered upon his estate, since there was evidently no man would say him nay. He, the wayfarer, who for two years had slept by the hedge-side or in barns, found himsel...

Something was wrong at the White House. Dickie had slept peacefully throughout the night, and with the extraordinary recuperation of children, had demanded bread and milk on awa...

And here it is necessary to record certain things which led up to this--to Peter--most extraordinary of meetings: things which those who do not believe in the miracles wrought b...

You know how there are times in our lives when the days hang heavily, each moment dragging on leaden feet, weighted all the more grievously because we are ready to protest to ou...

Here, now, are the present employment and emotions of five of our characters--Tommy, with car and chauffeur, off to Devonshire, which was to be the starting-point of his search...

"The day after to-morrow I shall be in my garden, revelling in its beauty and in the perfume of my night-stocks. The scent of ballrooms and theatres will be left behind in this...

"By the guidance of Providence," announced Tommy. "It's been the oddest search imaginable, and if it hadn't been for that blessed peacock feather I'll dare swear it had been fru...

There were a good many people in the streets, for it was market-day, and there was an air of leisurely business about the place; completed business chiefly, for already stalls w...

General Carden in his smoking-room was listening, waiting. Fifty times already in the last half-hour he had looked over the curtain that veiled the lower half of the window. Fif...

Lady Anne Garland was sitting by her bedroom window. It was wide open, and the perfume of the night-stocks below the terrace rose fragrant in the still air. The atmosphere was d...

"It is the last time I shall write to you, but I ask you to condone my conduct--at least, sufficiently to read what I have written. I know I have no excuse to make. To say that...