The Venetians

Little golden cloudlets, like winged living creatures, were hanging high up in the rosy glow above Santa Maria della Salute, and all along the Grand Canal the crowded gondolas w...

There was nothing but fair weather for the P. and O. steamer _Berenice_ between Venice and Alexandria--fair weather and a calm sea; and John Vansittart had ample leisure in whic...

Nearly three years had gone by since that fatal night in Venice. It was mid-winter, only a few days after Christmas, and Mrs. Vansittart and her son were spending their Christma...

While the Lancers were being danced to the good old hilarious tunes, which always give an air of boisterous gaiety to a public ball-room, Vansittart, ignoring all further obliga...

It was long since Vansittart had been haunted by the face of a woman as he was haunted by the face of Eve Marchant. He had not come to nine and twenty years of age without one o...

Why should he not marry Eve Marchant? asked Jack Vansittart of Counsellor Night. He was lord not only of himself but of a handsome income and a desirable estate. He had nobody t...

The luncheon at Redwold Towers was a very sociable meal. Lady Hartley was at all times a gracious hostess, and she was perhaps a little more attentive to Colonel Marchant’s daug...

Vansittart spent five weeks at Merewood, hunting a good deal, dining with some of his neighbours once a week or so, and occasionally entertaining them at dinner or luncheon; tir...

Vansittart tore open the blank envelope under one of the lamps at the back of the vestibule, while the crowd about the doors was gradually melting away, and the question “Cab or...

Before two o’clock next day Vansittart had been up and down more stairs than he ever remembered to have mounted and descended in a single day. He had inspected flats in the neig...

Vansittart’s heart was lighter than it had been for a long time, the day he left Charles Street for Waterloo on his way to Haslemere. He longed to see Eve Marchant, with all a l...

“He was with my brother at Cambridge--in the same year, at the same college, Trinity. It was not till the year before last that he ever spoke to me about Harold, or that I knew...

When a man is sole master of his estate and thoroughly independent of his kindred, his choice of a wife, if not altogether outrageous and unpardonable, must needs be accepted by...

Lady Hartley, once being reconciled to the inevitable, was full of kindness for her brother’s future wife. Eve had seen nothing of London and its gaieties, and as the Hartleys h...

Sefton lifted his hat and passed quickly. Vansittart stood mutely watching his retreating figure, till it was lost among other figures moving to and fro along the Embankment. An...

Vansittart had made up his mind. Were that which he accounted but a dark suspicion to be made absolute certainty he meant still to cleave to the girl whom he had chosen for his...

If Easter had been a time of happiness for Vansittart and Eve, bringing with it the revelation of mutual love, Whitsuntide was no less happy; happier, perhaps, in its serene sec...

What a happy honeymoon it was, along the porphyry walls of Western England; what joyous days that were so long and seemed so short! There never was a less costly honeymoon, for...

December’s fogs covered London as with a funeral pall, and hansom and four-wheeler crept along the curb more slowly than a funeral procession. It was the winter season, the seas...

If there were blue skies now and then in a London February, what was February along the Riviera but the most exquisite springtime? And perhaps on all that favoured shore, Cannes...

Vansittart and his wife never went to the village in the mountains, where all things had been made ready for their coming. Eve spent that afternoon which should have been her la...

Another Easter over, another season beginning, and with all the usual auguries of a season of exceptional splendour--auguries to be exchanged later for dismal elegies upon a sea...

It was summer-time in London; the butterfly season, in which the metropolis of the world puts on such a splendour of gaiety and luxury that it is hard to remember the fog and da...

Sophy arrived next day with portentous punctuality, in time for luncheon, intent on pleasure, and dressed in a style which she believed in as the very latest Parisian fashion; f...

Although in his leisurely ascent to the third story Mr. Sefton had time to recover the appearance of serenity, he was by no means master of himself as he waited for Lisa’s door...

Eve was very sorry for her husband after that tragical scene in the study; but what profiteth a jealous wife’s sorrow if she is unconvinced; if heart and brain are still racked...

Before addressing his confidences to Sophy Marchant, Mr. Sefton had assured himself that she did not belong to that exceptional order of womankind who, in honour and discretion,...

Eve had learnt Madame Vivanti’s address from Lady Hartley the day after the singer’s appearance in Hill Street. So her letter to her husband written, and her mind made up, she h...

“Yes; it is a dream,” she answered, looking at him with tearless eyes, which had more misery in them than all the tears he had ever seen in the eyes of women. “It is something p...

Hail, dark mother of wanderers, parched nurse of lions! Amidst thy romantic wildernesses grief and dishonour may forget themselves; with thee man is only man! He leaves that oth...

As soon as Eve was well enough to be moved she left the rock and went to finish the winter at Dinard. The doctor who attended her through her illness suggested the south of Fran...

It was April, the third springtime after the parting of the wedded lovers, and to Eve it seemed as if many years had come and gone since she looked upon her husband’s face. She...

Pale, quiet, resolute, with her mind made up as to what she had to do, Eve Vansittart crossed the Piazzetta towards Florian’s Caffè, and slowly, very slowly, passed in front of...