The Three Brothers; Complete

People are apt to talk of Sunday in the country as a pleasant thing, and yet there are few things which require a more delicate combination of circumstances to make it bearable....

Forrester went back very full of his discovery, and there was a certain solemnity in his manner which made it evident to his master that he had something to tell. When he had de...

Nothing could be more satisfactory in every way than the notice in the ‘Sword.’ It was not eloquent, nor too long, and Slasher was pleased. ‘By Jove, Laurie, I was afraid you’d...

When Laurie left the Hydrographic in company with his friend Slasher, he had still a hope of being able to present himself for a few moments in the Square to report how he had s...

It was not very long after this that Frank Renton was accosted by one of his friends in the regiment with what seemed to him a very odd sort of request. ‘Look here, Frank,’ said...

It will be perceived, from all that has been said, that Nelly Rich used more freedom in the expression of her sentiments than is generally expected from girls of her age. A well...

It was on a beautiful afternoon, in one of the last days of May, that Ben Renton went back to his father’s house. When he left it, he had not the slightest intention of separati...

When Laurie Renton arrived in town, he went with the story of his family’s fortune and his own, as was natural, to the padrona, who had now a double interest in the tale. She ha...

The day of Hillyard’s visit was full of trial and excitement to Mary. To live in a household where everything is talked of freely, with the consciousness of having various matte...

On the next morning Ben went away without a word, no repentance of his intention or lingering desire to postpone it having apparently crossed his mind. He took leave of his moth...

It was Hillyard’s behaviour at this meal which gained him the regard of the various members of the Renton family. He took such pains to attend to the strangers, and give to the...

If I do not enter very particularly into the family arrangements which were made after this settlement, it is because, in the circumstances, so much detail is unnecessary. Had B...

It was on the 15th of September that Ben came home. The day appointed for reading the will was a week later, and none of the others had arrived when Ben’s letter came announcing...

The padrona was not a woman given to little ailments,--headaches, or the other visionary sufferings which are conventional names for those aches of the heart or temper to which...

When Frank Renton had sent off his note to Nelly, accepting the invitation for the birthday fête, and adding such little compliments as have been recorded, a kind of sensation o...

The readers of this history must be prepared to pass over an interval of something less than seven years from the end of the last chapter. I allow that it is a most undesirable...

Rising full of anxious thoughts of the excitement which must have taken possession of Ben from the revelations of the night, Mary was much taken aback to meet her cousin, in, to...

There are moments in life which are so sweet as to light up whole weeks of gloom; and there are moments so dreadful as to make the unfortunate actors in them tremble at the reco...

When the Rentons were all seated together in the drawing-room after dinner, doing their best to get through the Sunday evening, a note was brought to Mrs. Renton, to the amazeme...

The address was Guildford Street, Manchester Square, a narrow, dingy, very respectable street, with a good many public-houses in it, and livery stables under three or four diffe...

About a week after the arrival of the visitors from The Willows, an arrival of a very different kind happened at Renton;--and yet it could not be called an arrival. There had be...

The first grand question to be decided, when Laurie settled in Charlotte Street, was what his first picture was to be. It is true that Mr. Welby, and even the padrona, who was s...

Some days after Mr. Ponsonby’s visit, Mary Westbury saw from her room, where she happened to be sitting, a carriage drive up the avenue. It was only about twelve o’clock, an unu...

Frank was not in spirits to go to his club, or anywhere else, after the events of the afternoon. He made a rush for the train instead, thirsting for the quiet of his quarters, i...

It must be admitted that the counsel thus bestowed upon Laurie in respect to his work had rather a discouraging than a stimulating effect upon him. It disgusted him, no doubt, w...

I have already mentioned that Frank Renton, being up in town on the business of negotiating the change he desired into a regiment of the line, was taken one evening by his broth...

Laurie’s removal was not accomplished with the passionate haste which distinguished that of his brother Ben. There was no particular hurry about it. The padrona, with the natura...

There are different ways of being penniless, as we have said. The man who does his work from day to day may have nothing, and yet be easy enough; and the man who has wealth or e...

When Ben received Mrs. Tracy’s letter his mind was in a condition which it would be very difficult to describe. He had taken, as he thought, a step which would decide his whole...

For the next six months Ben Renton lived a strange life,--strange at least for him, who up to this time had been a young man of fashion,--répandu in the world,--with an interest...

It was twenty-four hours before the brothers met to consult over their darkened prospects. Their mother could kiss and weep over them, but she was not the kind of woman to direc...

When Laurie reached No. 375 with his budget of news, the padrona was out! It was nothing very dreadful to be sure. She did go out sometimes, like everybody else; and in all like...

The young men separated when they left the Manor,--one to his farm, and another to his merchandise, as Laurie said. It is our business at the present moment to follow only the e...

Space forbids the historian to attempt any description of the difficulties which Mary had to encounter in her benevolent undertaking. By Frank’s urgent desire,--for his courage...

Next day was the day of the private exhibition made in the artists’ houses of their pictures before they were sent off to the Academy; not a day in which a man could make his ap...

Ben rushed up the narrow stairs three steps at a time, while Millicent sat listening with her heart beating against her breast. If he had known the flutter it was making, how gl...

When Laurie left Mr. Welby’s studio he had not, however, satisfied himself either with No. 375, Fitzroy Square, or with the advice on art subjects which he had come to seek. Old...

The reason why Mr. Renton’s sons were sent out into the world in the humble manner, and with the results we are about to record, must be first told, in order that their history...

Old Welby, R.A., lived in No. 375 Fitzroy Square. He had lived there or thereabouts all his life; but his immediate dwelling-place was one which he had not occupied for above a...

Mrs. Severn’s society was of a peculiar kind,--it had something of the ease of French society, with the homeliness of the true Briton. Very rarely, indeed, did she make calls. S...

And it was not later than the Wednesday after when Mrs. Renton, moved to the pitch of heroism by the possible advantages to her boy, and fortified by a large cupful of arrowroot...

When Laurie Renton drove from the padrona’s door in Mr. Rich’s carriage, opposite to that patron of art, it was his sense of the comicality of the situation which came uppermost...

There was great consternation in the family when this sudden misfortune came upon it. All the bustling household from the Cottage overflowed into the Manor in the excitement of...

Before Frank returned to his quarters, he had received his mother’s promise that she would call at Richmont. ‘I have given up all that sort of thing on my own account,’ Mrs. Ren...

It has been seen that Frank Renton was not, in any sense of the words, a model young man. He was not offensive nor disagreeable, but as a pure matter of fact, the centre of his...

Alice Severn was very innocent and very young,--just over sixteen,--a child to all intents and purposes,--as everybody thought around her. Old Welby, who had taken to meddling i...

Laurie arrived on the Friday, coming in, in his usual unexpected way, through the window, when they were all in the drawing-room after dinner. The brothers had met in town, wher...

‘MY DEAR MR. RENTON,--Millicent has placed your most kind and generous letter in my hands. It is everything I have said, but it is a very extraordinary letter as well; and it is...

Laurence Renton’s state of mind when he left the Manor immediately after his father’s death was very different from that of his brother Ben. He was a different man altogether, a...

I doubt whether it is in my power to give any clear impression of the reflections naturally produced in a young man’s mind by the first suggestion of marrying money. In ordinary...

Frank was alone on his second expedition to Richmont, which was a satisfaction to him. He was full of his scheme, and anxious to see how the land lay, and what Laurie’s prospect...

Frank found it very difficult to make out, both at that and a subsequent period, how it was that no dog-cart came for him from the Manor on that Saturday night. To be sure, the...

‘Let us run to the Cottage for five minutes, and see mamma,’ said Mary, as they made their way back. ‘Fancy, Ben, she does not know you have come home!’

Everybody who has ever passed by that passage of life’s poignant yet ordinary way, knows what a reaction there is when the one is gone who has thus occupied the first place in t...

Mothers were like that,--calculating, merchandising creatures, not worthy to unloose the shoes of the fair and innocent angels who, by some strange chance, were in their hands,-...

While Ben was thus, unconsciously to himself, being drawn back across the threshold of wholesome life, the morning was passing in a very different way at No. 10, Guildford Stree...