The Phantom Lover

The question was, how best to help her, and quickly. He was thankful she had made a friend of June. June was one of the best, the loyalest pal a man could ever have.

Esther woke from a troubled sleep that night, to find June standing beside her. Pale moonlight shone into the room from half-drawn blinds, filling it with an eerie light, as Est...

Somewhere out in the night a woman was crying, crying desolately. The sad, rather monotonous sound broke the silence of the street and floated through the open window of a room...

"I am. He's a dear! I should love to see him happily married to a girl with a heart of gold like his own. I think I know him better than most people, and his little corner of th...

He had heard so much of this girl--Ashton had talked about her times without number--Lallie he had called her; now he came to think of it, Micky could not remember having ever h...

"Eh?" said Micky vacantly; the words opened the door of memory, and he sat up with a start. It was New Year's Day, and last night ... ye gods! what had not happened last night?...

It was late that night when Micky turned up at the Delands'. He had taken extravagant pains with his toilet, lingering over it as long as possible. Ever since the arrival of tha...

"I don't know what you mean. I'll never forgive June if she sent you after me. I'm going to Paris. I'm not a child to be followed and looked after like this.... Let me go."

Esther wrote to Mrs. Ashton that same night and told her she must regretfully decline the offered position; she gave no reason, but she permitted herself a little sigh of regret...

It was the following afternoon, and she had been helping June paste labels on to the little mauve pots. She looked up as she spoke, with the paste brush still in her hand and he...

Looking back to that night at the theatre it always seemed to June Mason that she had been most extraordinarily blind in not seeing before that it was Esther for whom Micky Mell...

Mrs. Raymond Ashton! Raymond's mother! The woman of whom he had spoken so often and so bitterly. The woman who had raised such a fierce objection to her marriage with Raymond.

June introduced Micky and Esther with a sort of hurried self-consciousness. It was not by her invitation that Micky was here this afternoon, and the fact that she had asked him...

She looked at him half fearfully. Was this the same man who had followed her from Enmore with such passionate haste and eagerness? He was perfectly undisturbed now at all events...

Esther had spent a week indoors with a cold, and it was the longest she could ever remember. June was kindness itself, and fussed and petted and made much of her, but the days d...

"Any one would think we were going to the other side of the world," June told him. "Do you know, my good man, that it's only a couple of hours' run to Enmore?"

As she looked up into his handsome face it seemed to Esther that all the past hours of grief were as if they had never really existed; he was smiling down at her in the same old...

"The question is," said June critically, looking out of the window to the street where a fine drizzle of rain was falling, "does one, or does one not, wear one's best hat to go...

Micky went to Paris. "No, I shan't want you, Driver," he told his man awkwardly. "I'm only going for a day or two. I--er--I shan't want you," he said again lamely.

Micky shivered as he stood waiting while a porter lugged his traps down from the rack. He had felt depressed in Paris, but now London seemed a thousand times worse. The sight of...

June raked up another appointment for the following day. "I'm behaving like an angel to you," she told Micky. "Yesterday I tramped about the fields till I was worn out so that I...

Outside in the road Micky suddenly started up the engine of his car. The dull throb, throb, came faintly to Esther as she sat there as motionless as if she had been carved in st...

It seemed impossible that he had ever managed to have a good time over here--the noise and bustle of the streets got on his nerves; the things that had always amused him before...

Micky passed three days before he made any attempt to see Esther Shepstone again; days that seemed like a month at least, and during which he lost his appetite and forgot to smoke.

Esther unconsciously put out her hand and grasped June's arm; she would have given anything had it been possible to run away. She saw Mrs. Ashton turn and look towards where the...

The train was gathering speed; he let down the window with a run and looked out; the station was out of sight altogether; they were crossing the bridge under which the silent Th...

Esther was out. She knew now that it was to see Esther he came. She was quite reconciled to the fact, and had got over her first pang of jealousy, but Esther's indifference to h...

The ceremony, so the paper declared, which had taken place quietly in Paris would be a complete surprise to everybody. Mrs. Clare, as all the world knew, inherited something lik...

Micky had just reached the unpretentious inn in the village where he had taken a room, when he was hailed from across the road by June; a very cheerful looking June, in a busine...

She stood still for a moment in amazement; she thought perhaps she had made a mistake and come to the wrong room, but a glance reassured her; the number of her room was 23, and...

It seemed impossible that she had even really seen and spoken to Raymond Ashton; impossible that instead of loving him desperately, she could only shudder at the memory of him.

Micky's pencil jerked suddenly, sending an aimless scrawl across the paper; for an instant he stared at his companion with blank eyes. Fortunately June Mason was too intent on t...

A wave of bitterest jealousy surged through him. He fell back a step, struck dumb by the force of his emotions, and Esther fled away from him down the street.

Esther trudged to and fro from the agency where the stiff and stately lady presided so many times during the next few days that she began to hate the sight of the tall building...

A long moment of silence followed Micky's broken confession. He dared not look at Esther, though she was staring at him, staring hard, with a curious sort of wonderment in her g...

"Are they?" said Esther. The mention of Micky's name always seemed to make her heart quiver. She wondered if June knew why he never came to the house now, and what she thought a...

She was looking quite her prettiest, in dark furs with a bunch of violets in the breast of her coat, but Micky would not have noticed if she had been shabby, his thoughts were e...

Esther climbed the stairs of the agency again the following morning. There was a little feeling of despondency in her heart. She had slept badly, and she had not been able to fo...