The reigning belle

Around her were such glowing colors, in masses, or floating airily through the room, that a face less richly tinted would have seemed pale by contrast. Behind her was a pile of...

While Mrs. Lambert was completing the purchase of her shawl, the young man moved quietly about the room, carrying his cane in one well-gloved hand, with which he manifested a li...

Up town, where vacant lots can still be found, stood a small wooden building, scarcely more than a shantie in dimensions, but perfectly finished, so far as it went, and neat in...

Little James Laurence gave himself no time for cowardly thoughts, but ran bravely towards a grocery store, where the family provisions had been bought in better times, but where...

John Smith had done his best to obey these confused demands. He brought water, and held it in a stone pitcher, while Mrs. Smith thrust her hand to the bottom and sprinkled littl...

A sudden burst of sunshine had come in on the Laurence family, brightening the darkness around them. It glinted through the white curtains, where they floated over the window, a...

Eva Laurence was radiant that day as she walked down to the wareroom, which scarcely seemed to her like a place of toil. For the first time in weeks she had left a really cheerf...

“Well Herman, don’t you think I have been kept waiting about long enough? One gets out of patience, Miss, especially when one is used to being studied and waited on by no end of...

The Lamberts were a proud family, aristocratic in birth intellect and breeding. This branch with which our story deals, had added great wealth to its other possessions by marria...

Little James Laurence worked manfully in his new vocation. He carried home packages of tea, pounds of sausages, and paper bags stuffed with crackers, quicker than any boy of his...

James received the basket, and carried it off manfully, but began to drag in his walk, and set the heavy load down for a moment’s rest after he had carried it a block or two, fo...

It was the voice of little James, who had been modestly waiting to be noticed while this eager conversation went on, and now addressed Ellen as the most important person in the...

Ruth Laurence though an invalid, was pining for something which might occupy the slender hands which seemed all too frail for labor. She could do many pretty trifles, however, w...

“It was during the Rebellion,” said Mrs. Laurence, “when the laboring-classes of the city went wild with a mad idea that the draft was intended to oppress them and favor the ric...

The woman ceased speaking. During her whole narrative she had shed no tears, but her voice was low and cold, like the air that comes from a tomb. Her lips never quivered, but th...

Ruth lifted her sweet voice a little, and spoke with some excitement, for she was taken quite by surprise by the appearance of a magnificent carriage before the gate; a carriage...

“I should think as much. But that is neither here nor there. If old women choose to cut up rusty they are welcome, for anything I care. But we were talking about the picters for...

The door of the little parlor opened, and Mrs. Smith stood in the passage. From her place behind the counter she had seen the splendor of that carriage before Mrs. Laurence’s ga...

Mrs. Smith settled her shawl with great anxiety, and going up to the little mirror, smoothed out the bows of her bonnet-strings, which certainly appeared all the better for it....

Kate Gorman had received a hint from her mistress and drawn the table out from against the wall, a trouble she seldom undertook merely for the household. She also spread a clean...

“My dear,” said Smith, looking around the table as if he missed something, “have you nothing better than water to offer Mrs. Carter, and this the first time she has honored us?”

Ruth Laurence kept her secret. An idea had entered her head which she was resolved to carry out, unaided and alone. At first she longed to tell her good fortune to her mother; b...

Herman Ross became a constant visitor at the Laurence cottage after his sister had called there. Sometimes he spent hours together in the little parlor, instructing Ruth in her...

“My Friend—One night, while on my beat in the upper part of the city, a young woman, carrying something in her arms, which a large and very rich shawl completely covered, passed...

Ross never took his gaze from the paper until he had read it through: then he folded the pages back and reperused every word, with a burning, eager question in the eyes, that se...

A dull, dreary place was this pawn-office; its narrow counter all grim with use; its walls studded from floor to ceiling with miserable looking bundles; its boxes partitioned of...

Mrs. Carter had that profound respect for her own taste which springs out of utter ignorance; and her great party would have been something wonderful in the way of shoddyism, bu...

Mrs. Lambert spoke calmly, but with a cold intonation of the voice that her step-son understood as something far more expressive than an outburst of anger; but his answer was as...

A card was brought into the dainty boudoir in which Mrs. Lambert was conversing with her son. This was followed so quickly by Miss Lucy Spicer, that there was no possibility of...

It was some moments before Miss Spicer’s voice died away at the front door; and for a long time Mrs. Lambert walked to and fro on that moss-like carpet, treading down its cluste...

Miss Spicer was not given to much ceremony at the Lambert mansion. In an hour after she went down those broad steps with Ivon Lambert, her high-heeled boots pattered up them aga...

Eva Laurence was dressing for her first party, and the very anticipation of its delights gave resplendence to the wonderful beauty of her face. She was young, ambitious, and ric...

“No, no, James! only as he was coming the same way. Don’t believe it, Ruth. I never did more than that,” cried Eva, eager to defend herself, yet trembling with a sense of shame.

Mrs. Carter’s party had been the grand sensation of a week. Fashionable circles were profoundly agitated by the great social question it evolved. The word “shoddy” became ineleg...

An hour before Mrs. Lambert commenced her toilet, Mrs. Carter entered her own private sitting-room in full dress, ready for her duties as a hostess. Her brother had sent up word...

Ross and his sister parted; she went into her husband’s room, and found him in the agony of putting on a new dress coat, rather too small, and which fitted him like a straight j...

No wonder Mrs. Carter gave voice to her admiration. While she was in her dressing-room, chandeliers and wax-lights enough to turn night into noonday, had been kindled down the v...

Among the last of the guests was Mrs. Lambert, with Ivon and Miss Spicer. The lady had lost something of her usual graceful repose, and her eyes shone excitedly under the light...

The two people were Mr. and Mrs. Smith, she in the glory and amplitude of her moire antique, with the yellow feather in her hair—an addition Kate Gorman had insisted on with spi...

They stood under the shade of a tall drooping tree, starred with soft, yellow blossoms, that rose out of a little jungle of tropical plants in one end of the conservatory. Aroun...

A handsomer couple than Ivon Lambert and Eva Laurence never measured perfect happiness to music. Tall, graceful, thrilled with a glow of unspoken love, they fairly floated throu...

His wife. Eva had not thought of that. It had been enough that he loved her, and she loved him. Now an idea of the future flashed through her happiness, and she remembered how f...

Ross was about to lead her away, when she uttered a faint exclamation, and clung nervously to his arm. Mrs. Lambert was making her way toward the hostess, and the very sight of...

Jared Boyce had a taste for society, and managed to enjoy a good deal of it from the side-walk and park-benches wherein he could get an hour or two in the day-time, or close the...

Meantime, Boyce and Kate Gorman were enjoying themselves in a most aristocratic fashion, in front of Mrs. Carter’s dwelling. They had taken a good position, and saw the whole co...

The next morning after the ball Mr. Smith arose very cross, and Mrs. Smith slept late, so late that Jerusha Maria grew fearfully impatient, and, having slept off her liberal sha...

That day Boyce carried some groceries to Mrs. Lambert’s kitchen. He was very intimate in that region, especially with Robert the footman; who had a face not unlike his own, and...

“That man, Mr. Ross, I mean, once forced himself into our garden, trampled down the beds, and insisted on finding madam in one of the green-houses, where he did find her, and th...

Ellen Post went down to the kitchen just after Boyce entered it with his basket of groceries, and there she found Robert conversing in a low, eager voice with the grocer’s clerk...

The most mournful thing that I have ever witnessed was a child in prison. Once I saw a hardened little sinner of twelve years, laughing at his mother through the gratings of a c...

Smith had acted with a stern, secret energy. Without consulting his wife, or any one but an iron-hearted detective, he had quietly arrested little James Laurence, and lodged him...

That morning, a woman, rather young but meanly clad, and appearing miserably over-worked, came into Mrs. Lambert’s kitchen. She was conducted to the laundry by the cook, whose d...

“Hush! Step in here; the cook is always prowling in and out of that room. That’s right. Shut the door. You were asking about news. Yes, indeed, that boy was arrested yesterday....

Eva Laurence had no appetite for breakfast, and lingered about home long after she should have been at her duties at the store. There was something so unusual in her mother’s go...

Eva did not reply to her sister’s question, for she had hurried to the door, and found not her mother, as she eagerly expected, but Mrs. Smith, with her bonnet awry, and her sha...

Miss Ellen Post was taking in the waist of Miss Spicer’s white silk dress, and had altered the trimming till it really seemed as good as new. Miss Spicer, herself, had come down...

When Mrs. Laurence heard this wild cry from her boy, she turned suddenly and held out her arms. The poor little fellow rushed into them, and clung to her, trembling under a fier...

Then Smith the grocer took the stand. There was human feeling in this man, and he bitterly repented the step he had taken after his wife learned of it, and put in her passionate...

A young woman, evidently of the working classes, was talking eagerly with a policeman, stationed at the door of the court-room, which disturbed the judge, who looked that way wi...

There is not, upon the face of the earth, more harassing trouble than that which springs out of ignorance and suspense. Eva and Ruth Laurence had but a wild and vague idea of th...

A master will had been at work and removed all the principal reasons that kept Eva Laurence in the old home at the cottage. James had never been permitted to return to his work...

Eva obeyed. Perhaps she was glad to accept the respite which Mrs. Carter offered her. Still her hands trembled as she fastened the tiny bonnet on her head, and covered her face...

“Oh, how good you are! How I love you! Can we do anything—anything on earth to repay all this?” she cried, in a warm outburst of gratitude. “It seems to me that I could fall dow...

The prettiest park phaeton you ever set eyes on, drove up to the Laurence cottage; a pair of white ponies with snowy tails that took the wind like banners, stopped with the doci...

Eva had no heart to enjoy her sister’s happiness after that one glimpse of Ivon Lambert seated by the woman who had so cruelly broken up the sweetest hope of her life. His cold...

“Here at last? You have found it then? The shawl!—the shawl! Oh, sister, you have it! But how can you tell if it is the same? I must be assured of that.”

A newspaper was in Mrs. Lambert’s hand. In the listlessness of a mind utterly prostrated, she had taken little heed of passing events, and of the little drama which had been ena...

Another ring brought a servant to the front door, where a gentleman with a package in his hand, stood waiting. The man reached out his hand for the parcel, but in its place, rec...

A moment after these words left her lips, Mrs. Lambert started up. The idea that her child lived had seized upon her with force; for the first time, her face, still colorless, w...

Mrs. Carter and Eva still remained in the reception-room. The passionate words of Herman Ross had filled them with amazement if not alarm. They could not believe the thing he ha...