The Sorceress (complete)

Imagine to yourselves such a young family, all in the very heyday of life, parents and children alike. It is true that Mrs. Kingsward was something of an invalid, but nobody bel...

I have now to explain how it was that Mr. Aubrey Leigh was so interesting and so melancholy, and thus awoke the friendship and compassion, and secured the ministrations of the K...

It was just two days after the interview in the wood described above, that the Kingsward party got under weigh for home, accompanied, I need not say, by Aubrey Leigh. Bee had no...

There was no merry dinner that night in the verandah of the hotel under the clinging wreaths of green. Mrs. Kingsward went up to her room still with her heavy shawl about her sh...

But Aubrey had not gone away. He had gone out in the dizziness of a great downfall, scarcely knowing how to keep his feet steady as he wandered along the dark street, not knowin...

Emboldened by this thought Bee went downstairs to breakfast, which was spread again in the verandah in the warm sunshine of the autumnal morning. The new hope, though it were a...

Mrs. Kingsward’s opening speech was a wonder to hear. She sat and looked at them all for a moment, trying to steady herself, but there was nothing to steady her in what she saw...

It was a slow train. The slowest train that there is, is, of course, far, far quicker than any other mode of conveyance practicable in a land journey, but it does not seem so. I...

The story which Aubrey Leigh had to tell was indeed made as short as possible. To describe the most painful crisis in your life, the moment which you yourself shudder to look ba...

Other claims! What other claims? Aubrey Leigh went out of the office in Pall Mall with these words circling through his mind. They seemed to have nothing to do with that which o...

The party of travellers whose progress had hitherto been like that of a party of pleasure, who had been interested in everything they saw, and hailed every new place with deligh...

Bee stole into her mother’s room as she went upstairs before that first dinner at home which used to be such a joyous meal. How they had all enjoyed it--until now. The ease and...

husband; the severity of his character showed little at home. His wife was aware of it, and so were the servants, and Charlie, I think, had begun to suspect what a hand of iron...

It was not possible, however, to remove Mrs. Kingsward to Kingswarden next day. She was too much fatigued even to leave her bed, and the doctor who came to see her, her own fami...

I will not attempt to follow in detail the course of that autumn. It was a fine season, and Mrs. Kingsward was taken to her home in the country and recovered much of her lost he...

This communication made a little breach between Bee and her mother and planted a thorn in Mrs. Kingsward’s breast. She had been getting on so well; the quiet (which meant the ri...

Bee’s look of scared and horrified misery was something new in Mrs. Kingsward’s experience. The girl had not known any trouble. Her father’s rejection of her lover and the appar...

IT was perhaps a very good thing for Bee at this distracting and distracted moment of her life, that her mother’s illness came in to fill up every thought. Her own little fabric...

THIS night was the strangest in Bee Kingsward’s life. She had never known what it was to remain silent and awake in the darkness and warmth of a sick room, which of itself is a...

THE week passed in the sombre hurry yet tedium of a house lying under the shadow of death--that period during which when it is night we long for morning, and when it is morning...

MRS. KINGSWARD said nothing of the communication her husband had made to her. Did she understand it? He went about heavily all day, pondering the matter, going and coming to her...

AUBREY LEIGH had been living a troubled life during the time which had elapsed since the swallowing up in the country of the family in which he had become so suddenly interested...

AUBREY stayed at the village public-house day after day, hoping for some sign or message. He wrote to Bee, this time by the post; but he had no better success. Was it only becau...

IT was with a sort of stupified bewilderment that Aubrey read over and over the little letter of Bee’s. Letter! To call it a letter. Those straggling lines without any beginning...

BUT though Mrs. Leigh said this it is by no means certain that she meant it even at the first moment. It is only a very prudent woman who objects to being asked to interfere in...

MRS. LEIGH went back to her son with a sense of humiliation which was rare in her consciousness. She had been completely unsuccessful, which was a thing which had very rarely ha...

TO set oneself to find out without any clue or guidance what it is which has affected the thoughts of a girl for or against her lover--without any knowledge of her surroundings,...

THERE is nothing more curious in life than the way in which it closes over those great incidents that shape its course. Like a stone disappearing in a pool, the slow circles of...

“He says, papa, that it is easier to get on when you have all your books about you--and when you can arrange all your way of living for that, instead of the interruptions at home.”

COLONEL KINGSWARD, however, could not be moved either by Bee’s representations or by anything said by his son to grant to Charlie the permission, and the funds necessary, to pur...

THIS made, however, but a very temporary breach between Bee and her brother. They were a little stiff next morning at breakfast, and elaborately refrained from talking on any bu...

PORTMAN SQUARE had seemed to Bee the first step into the world, after all that had happened, but when she was there this gentle illusion faded. It was not the world, but only an...

THE year went on in its usual routine, the boys came back from school, there was the usual move to the seaside, all mechanically performed under the impulse of use, and when the...

CHARLIE was not in his rooms at College, he had not been there for some days, and nobody could furnish any information as to where he was. Colonel Kingsward had left Bee in the...

TO do Colonel Kingsward justice, he was taken entirely by surprise by Bee’s outburst. He had no remembrance of the name. The name had been wholly unimportant to him even at the...

WHEN Charlie Kingsward fled from Oxford, half mad with disappointment and misery, he had no idea or intention about the future left in his mind. He had come to one of those stra...

MEANWHILE Colonel Kingsward had remained in Oxford. It was necessary that he should regulate all Charlie’s affairs, find out and pay what bills he had left, and formally sever h...

I WILL not repeat the often described scene of anxiety which existed in Kingswarden for some time after. Colonel Kingsward returned, as Bee had done, to find that nothing had be...

THE house that had been so peaceful was thus full of agitation and disturbance, the household, anxious and alarmed, turning their weapons upon each other, to relieve a little th...

COLONEL KINGSWARD had been flattered, he had been pleased. He had felt himself for a moment one of the exceptional men in whom women find an irresistible attraction, and then he...

IT was not with any intention, but solely to deliver himself from the dilemma in which he found himself--the inconceivable error he had made, imagining that it was necessary to...

WHILE all these things were going on, Bee was left at Kingswarden alone. That is to say, she was so far from being alone that her solitude was absolute. She had all the children...

IN the afternoon of the next day, Bee was again alone. The old aunt had come down for lunch, but gone up to her room again to rest after that meal. It was a little chilly outsid...

IT was to a house in one of the streets of Mayfair that Mrs. Leigh conveyed her young companion; one of those small expensive places where persons within the circle of what is c...

BEE saw no more of Charlie that night. When she came out of his room, where there was a certain meaning in her presence, she seemed to pass into the region of dreams. She was ta...

BETTY KINGSWARD lived in what was to her a whirl of pleasure at Portman Square, where everybody was fond of her, and all manner of entertainments were devised for her pleasure....

AND yet all this time there lay upon Betty’s table, concealed under the pretty laced handkerchiefs which she had pulled out of their sachet to choose one for the party, Bee’s li...

BEE had passed the whole day with Charlie, the Friday of the dinner party at Portman Square. She had resisted as long as she could writing the letter which had brought so much e...

Bee was startled by having a tray brought to her bedroom with her breakfast when she was almost ready to go downstairs. “Mrs. Leigh thought, Miss, as you had been so tired last...

BUT the nurse went out for her walk and came in again and nothing happened, and Charlie had his invalid dinner, which in his excitement he could not eat, and Bee was called down...

SHE left Charlie’s room, having soothed him and reduced him to quiet in this inconceivable way, with a smile on her face and the look of one who was perfectly mistress of the si...

THOSE who were left behind were not very careful of what Colonel Kingsward did. They were not thinking of his concerns; in the strain of personal feeling the most generous of hu...

She had the sensation of having fallen from a great height, after the excitement of having fought bravely to keep her place there, and of having anticipated every step of a comb...

WHAT more is there to say? It is better, when one is able to deal poetic justice all round, to reward the good and punish the evil. Who are the good and who are the evil? We hav...