The Unseen Bridegroom; Or, Wedded For a Week

"MOLLIE DANE,--Come to me at once, if you want to find out who you are, who your parents were, what Carl Walraven is to you. This is your wedding-night; but come. I am very ill-...

There was a dead pause; blank amazement sat on every face; no one stirred for an instant. Then, with a great cry of joy, the Welsh baronet sprung forward and caught his lost bri...

Mrs. Susan Sharpe was up with the lark, or, rather, with the sea-gulls whirling and shrieking out on the tossing waters. The early morning sun streamed in the little chamber; th...

Dr. Oleander was by no means a coward, yet it is safe to say his heart was bumping against his ribs, with a sensation that was near akin to fear, as he ascended the stairs. He w...

She was lying on a lounge in a strange room, and Mrs. Susan Sharpe was seated in an elbow-chair before her, nodding drowsily. At Mollie's exclamation she opened her eyes.

A dark November afternoon--wet, and windy, and wild. The New York streets were at their worst--sloppy, slippery, and sodden; the sky lowering over those murky streets one unifor...

A miserable attic chamber, dimly lighted by one dirty sky-light, a miserable bed in one corner, a broken chair, an old wooden chest, a rickety table, a few articles of delf, a t...

The little provincial theater was crowded from pit to dome--long tiers of changing faces and luminous eyes. There was a prevalent odor of stale tobacco, and orange-peel, and bad...

"There is no need to be in a hurry," the young lady said to her elderly adorer; "and I want to be safely at home before I overwhelm them with the news. There is always such fuss...

Elegant and handsome, in a superb dinner-dress of rose-bloom silk and pale emeralds, Mrs. Walraven lay back on her sofa and looked up in the face of her cousin Guy.

The twilight was falling without--the last silvery radiance of the dying day streamed through the dirty, broken attic window, and lighted, as with a pale glory, Mollie's droopin...

"How on earth can I say so until I've seen him?" said Mrs. Sharpe, poising her glass and clapping her eye to it, one hand over the other, after the fashion of the sex.

Dr. Oleander descended the stairs, passed through the lower hall, and entered the kitchen--a big, square room, bleak and draughty, like all the rest of the old, rickety place, b...

Mollie Dane sat alone in her pretty room. A bright fire burned in the grate. Old Mme. Walraven liked coal-fires, and would have them throughout the house. It was very late--past...

On that eventful night of wind and rain upon which the Reverend Raymond Rashleigh performed that mysterious midnight marriage, Mr. Carl Walraven paced alone his stately library,...

No one interfered; every one gazed in breathless interest as Miss Dane quitted her post and confronted the haggard apparition. The woman uttered a cry at sight of her, and caugh...

Of all the hundreds who may have perused and wondered over them, probably there were but four who understood in the least what was meant--the two most interested, and Miriam and...

An artist stood in his studio, overlooking busy, bright Broadway. He stood before his easel, gazing in a sort of rapture at his own work. It was only a sketch, a sketch worthy o...

The big Dutch clock on the kitchen mantel struck nine. The silence of the grave reigned within the house. With the first clear chime Mrs. Susan Sharpe rose from the bed on which...

The April day had been very long, and very, very dull in the handsome Walraven Fifth Avenue palace. Long and lamentable, as the warning cry of the banshee, wailed the dreary bla...

"So sorry, Mollie," said an odious voice in her ear. "Quite shocked, I am sure, to have you faint; but you've not been insensible half an hour. It wasn't my fault, you know. You...

"No; the man who drove the carriage--who, with the girl Sarah, witnessed the marriage--brought me. Sarah bound me, although there was no occasion, and the man led me down and pu...

Mr. Carl Walraven heard this sad account of his wife's health with a grimly fixed countenance. He looked as though he had passed a restless night himself, and looked worn and ha...

For an instant there was dead silence; a bomb bursting in their midst could hardly have startled them more. Mollie dared not look in their faces, lest the inward laughter that c...

The Reverend Raymond Rashleigh sat before a blazing sea-coal fire, in his cozy study, in comfortable, after-dinner mood. He lay back in his cushioned and carved arm-chair, a flo...

"You shrink from me, Mollie," Hugh Ingelow said; "you will not even look at me. I knew it would be so. I know I deserve it; but if I were never to see you again, I must tell you...

Mr. Carl Walraven sat alone in his private room in a Broadway hotel, smoking an after-breakfast cigar, and looking lazily at the stream of people hurrying up and down. It was th...

There was a dead pause of unutterable consternation. All stood rooted to the spot with staring eyes and open mouths. Before the first electric charge had subsided, Mollie Dane a...

Mollie Dane made herself very much at home at once in the magnificent Walraven mansion. The dazzle of its glories scarcely lasted beyond the first day, or, if it did, nobody saw...