The Star-Gazers

Mrs Alleyne leaned forward with every curve in her face as well as her eyes contradicting the form of her words. "Pray speak," sounded and looked like a command to speak at once...

Rolph dined at Brackley that evening, and found Sir John in the best of spirits. Glynne was bright and eager to show him the progress she had made with her painting, at the sigh...

Mrs Rolph did not see much of her son, who divided his time between Brackley and Aldershot, when he was not away to attend some athletic meeting. But she was quite content, and...

Lucy Alleyne was very pretty. Everybody said so--that she was pretty. No one said that she was beautiful. Now, Lucy was well aware of what people said, and, without being concei...

Cook let it off in triumph one day at dinner. She had been very silent for some time, and then began to smile, till Morris, the butler, who had noted the peculiarities of this l...

It was about a mile from the Alleynes' where the sandy lane, going north, led by an eminence, rugged, scarped, and crowned with great columnar firs that must have sprung from se...

There was no mistaking the figures, no possibility of erring in judgment upon the meaning of the meeting? and Oldroyd could not help admiring the physical beauty of the group as...

"I think it was very foolish of your brother to invite them, Lucy," said Mrs Alleyne, austerely. "All these preparations are not made without money; and when they are made, we h...

A poaching affray was too common an affair in the neighbourhood of Brackley to make much stir. Sir John went in for two or three discussions with his keepers, and the rural poli...

The dinner, with its pleasant surroundings of flowers and glittering plate and glass, with the finest and whitest of linen, was delightful to Lucy, though to her it was as if th...

With his grey hair starting out all over his head in a peculiarly fierce way, Major Day was standing and musing just at the edge of the wood, and a few yards from the path, very...

Sir John nodded and went straight back to Brackley to find Glynne dressed and impatiently pacing the drawing-room, pale even to ghastliness, and with eyes dilated and looking la...

The gentlemen were seated over their claret at the Hall, and the party had become very quiet. Sir John had been preaching on the subject of the value of a cross of the big, coar...

Three men, one of whom was the last night's messenger, Caleb Kent, a stranger to Oldroyd, were lounging about by the cottage gate as the doctor stepped out, and their looks aske...

Sir John went upstairs furiously, taking three steps at a time--twice. Then he finished that flight two at a time; walked fast up the first half of the second flight, one step a...

"Humph!" ejaculated Sir John. "You've a good income, my boy, and you're a fine, sound fellow; but I don't much like the idea of my little Glynne marrying into the army."

About two years after his marriage, Philip Oldroyd was some five miles from home on the capital cob, a present from Sir John, one of his own breeding, when temptation fell in hi...

It was astonishing how great the interest in the stars had now become in the neighbourhood of Brackley. Glynne was studying hard so as to learn something of the wondrous orbs of...

About a couple of hours earlier there was a ring at the gaunt-looking gate at the Firs, and that ring caused Mrs Alleyne's Eliza to start as if galvanised, and to draw her feet...

Lucy's life about this time was not a happy one. Mrs Alleyne was cold and distant, Moray was growing more silent day by day, taking exercise as a duty, working or walking furiou...

About an hour later Oldroyd called; and, as the bell jangled at the gate and Eliza went slowly down, Lucy's face turned crimson, and she ran to the window and listened, to hear...

Lucy's pretty face fired up a deeper crimson for a few moments under this examination. Then she grew pale as she rose from her seat and stood confronting her mother.

He was busy as ever at Brackley, with people in a humbler walk in life and there was an attraction there for a person who plays no prominent part in this narrative, to wit, Thom...

"Save that I would not have anyone witness of so holy a joy as that kiss was to me," whispered Oldroyd, "the whole world might see my love for you, little wife to be. There's no...

"Satisfactory! the place has gone to rack and ruin. I don't believe those cursed poachers have left a head of game on the estate; but I know who's at the bottom of it, and he'd...

In the drawing-room at The Warren, Mrs Rolph, a handsome, dignified lady of five-and-forty, was sitting back, with her brows knit, looking frowningly at a young and pretty girl...

Glynne Day was seated in her favourite place--a bright, cheerful-looking room connected with her bedchamber on the first floor at Brackley, and turned by her into a pleasant nes...

"Miss Day! you here?" cried Alleyne, as she rose from her seat, and then as each involuntarily shrank from the other, there was a dead silence in the room--a silence so painful...

Moved as if by the same set of nerves, Sir John Day and his brother dashed themselves against the door again and again, but the panelling was strong, and it was evidently well f...

Glynne Day stood with her uncle at the edge of the dark wood, where the slippery fir-needles lay thickly, and kept every blade of verdure from thrusting forth a relief to the du...

"Better get it over," said Captain Rolph, the next day, as he indulged himself in what he called a short "spin" down the lane by the side of The Warren, and in the direction of...

"My dear madam, I would advise you directly to persuade him to go up to town and see any of our magnates, but it would be so much money wasted."

Want of exercise and incessant study had placed their effects on Alleyne. The greyness was showing in streaks in his hair, and the lines seemed deeper in his forehead, as Lucy c...

Sir John and his brother had just reached an opening in Brackley Wood, a fine old pheasant preserve, when the former became aware of the fact that his child and the lady whom sh...

Ben Hayle, keeper, stepped out of his rose-covered cottage in Thoreby Wood; big, black-whiskered, dark-eyed and handsome, with the sun-tanned look of a sturdy Englishman, his br...

Judith Hayle was busy "tidying up" the keeper's cottage, which looked brighter since her return home, for there were flowers in glasses set here and there, and she was mentally...

The time was drawing nigh, and Sir John and his brother were sitting over their wine, when the former began upon matters connected with the wedding. Rolph had only left them tha...

"There, I think everything is in train," said Sir John, as he and his brother sat together over a final cigar before retiring for the night, for Glynne and the friends staying i...

"Poor old soul, she can't be long for this world," said Oldroyd one day on receiving a message from Lindham, and, mounting Peter, he rode over across the commons to the old cott...

A few moments later there was a faint rustling noise as of some one hurrying over the fir needles, and a lightly-cloaked figure came for an instant into the moonlight, but shran...

He was gazing through one of his glasses intently upon some celestial object, for the night was falling fast, and first one and then another star came twinkling out in the cold...

There was but one thought in the minds of father and uncle at Brackley, and that was to silence busy tongues, get Glynne sufficiently well to move, and go right away abroad; and...

For that day, Marjorie had come down dressed for a walk--a saunter, to find a few botanical specimens, she told Mrs Rolph, who smiled and was quite content, so long as her niece...

"Eh? Are you?" he said, with an assumed look of ignorance; but the corners of his eyes were twitching, and he was asking himself how he was to tell his child matters that would...

The secret of the poverty of Mrs Alleyne's home was read by the major and Sir John, as they followed their host and Glynne along a bare passage and through two green-baized door...