The Temptress

"A few years ago in Paris," continued Mademoiselle Debriege, turning to her companions, "there lived, as you know, three artists, named Holt, Glanville, and Egerton. At that tim...

Already the gas had been lit, for the dull yellow light of the wintry London moon was insufficient to illuminate the sombre Court. Upon the bench, at the rear of which hung a la...

Upon a veranda overlooking the clear, rippling Ourthe, and protected from the hot sun by a striped awning, Valerie and Pierre were laughing and sipping kummel. Lounging lazily i...

A calm, boundless waste of sunlit sea. Three men, haggard, blear-eyed, and staring, sat in dejected attitudes in a small, open boat. The blazing noonday sun beat down mercilessl...

The girl who had listened with disgust to the Sunday morning sermon preached by the Rev. Hubert Holt, and who had afterwards gone round to the vestry of the church of St. Barnab...

"She had admitted that she loved me," he said, in a low quivering tone of anguish. "But the fact of her relations with the rich Englishman, Nicholson, was forced on me with proo...

Standing pensively before the fire in his own den at Coombe a fortnight after his marriage, he was examining the photograph and partially destroyed letters, the unaccountable pr...

Before Valerie had resided at Coombe six weeks she grew weary of the monotony of country life. In her discontented mood her surroundings were dull and uninteresting, while the l...

In London, evening was gradually creeping on. The mellow light that had penetrated into the studio in Fitzroy Square was fast fading, still Jack Egerton worked on in silence, gl...

When the door of the boudoir was forced open, old Jacob was the first to enter and find his mistress rigid in death. While Nanette and two of the domestics were endeavouring to...

The great ballroom of the Casino at Spa was filled with a cosmopolitan well-dressed crowd, who glided over its polished floor to the strain of a seductive waltz. The huge salon,...

The morning was oppressive and sultry. Valerie, coming from her room, thrust open the window of the sitting-room, with an impatient exclamation, and sat with her elbows upon the...

In the ballroom, the excited revellers continued their antics, and the fair gleeful angels, now thoroughly resigned to their sable attendant spirits, allowed themselves to be wh...

Heedless of the heavy rain and biting east wind that swept in violent gusts along the dismal, deserted Strand, Hugh Trethowen, with bent head, plodded doggedly on towards Westmi...

In the decorations, flags and palms had been used, and the ferns and evergreens ornamenting the walls contrasted well with the bright dresses of the dancers. The myriad lights i...

"Look here, old fellow," continued Hugh, walking over to his companion, and looking him earnestly in the face. "Now, before we start, tell me why you are so strangely indifferen...

Bateman's Buildings, Soho--where, on the second floor of one of the houses, this apartment was situated--is a thoroughfare but little known, even to dwellers in the immediate vi...

The giant mountains rose in the west, sheer and steep--purple barriers between the land and the setting sun. A golden fire edging their white crests, that grew from their own de...

The house, to which a long elm avenue formed the principal approach, was an imposing pile, and dated for the most part from the reign of Queen Anne. Standing out prominently, it...

Sheltered from the blazing afternoon sun, Trethowen and Valerie were seated together under one of the ancient elms in the picturesque Promenade de Sept Heures. It was the hour w...

One of the most pleasant thoroughfares in Brussels is perhaps that broad boulevard, lying on the La Cambre side, between the Fontaine Debroeckere and the Porte de Hal. The Boule...

On the following afternoon there was held in the Floral Hall of the Devonshire Park one of those brilliant orchestral performances which always attract the fashionable portion o...

In his comfortable chambers in Jermyn Street, Hugh Trethowen sat alone. The graceful indifference of the Sybarite had vanished, the cloud of apprehension had deepened, and with...

The paragraph he had read contained nothing startling to the ordinary newspaper reader. It was merely an announcement that the will had been proved of the late Mr. Hugh Trethowe...

"Well, don't knock under without a struggle, my dear old chap. Men work for fame and fortune, but expect happiness as a gift. Confide in me, and perhaps we may arrange things."

This whispered conversation took place in the upper room at Bateman's Buildings, on the same evening that Hugh had visited Valerie, and the two men who stood aside talking in al...

"A lady, Jacob," exclaimed Hugh Trethowen, who was in the lazy enjoyment of a cigar and a novel in his sitting-room, at the close of a dull, wet January day. "Who is she?"

Two years later. A frosty evening, clear and starlit--one of those dry nights in early spring so delightful to the dweller in London, too familiar with choking fog, drizzling ra...

In the exquisite little drawing-room of a first-floor flat in Victoria Street, Westminster, where tender lights filtered through the golden shadows of silken hangings, sat Valer...

"No, that is so," she replied; "he is such a prosaic old bachelor. Why, I assure you that ever since I have known him he's never hinted at love. I am his model, his friend--that...

"Oh, of course. Some frivolous tale; but I'll not hear a word of it. Some people are never satisfied unless they are polluting a fair name, or washing their neighbour's dirty li...

The office was small, dingy, and undusted, with a threadbare carpet that had once been green, long rows of pigeon-holes filled with faded legal papers, and windows so dirt-begri...

"By a most fortunate circumstance. We saw one day, in the _Independance Belge_, that an unknown Englishman, apparently a gentleman, had died at the Hotel du Nord at Antwerp. Pie...

Upon a tawdry altar, in a small bare chapel, two candles flickered unsteadily. The gloomy place was utterly devoid of embellishment, with damp-stained, white-washed walls, a sto...

His elbows rested upon his littered writing-table, his pince-nez poised upon his thin nose, and he was absorbed in the technicalities of a document when his lad entered with a c...

The streets were quiet, almost deserted; the trees in the boulevards were stirred slightly by the soft wind, and the long lines of gas lamps flickered and cast an uncertain ligh...