The Victim and The Worm

“You could make a skipping run over the face of the earth and not find a quieter place to decline in than England, and yet while you’re declining the English get things done. Th...

Mr. Brett was aroused from his reverie by a firm, heavy tread along the brick path. He tilted his hat further back and watched the approaching figure with a kindly eye.

She knew that it was half an hour after John’s usual time, but there was nothing expectant in her attitude. She was doing embroidery. As she bent her head over her work, the sun...

John called twice upon Hermione in London. On each occasion he was told that the Princess was extremely sorry but she was too ill to receive visitors. However, Elise assured him...

For three years he had held Arcady against all the enemies of life. And now, young, poor and maimed, he was master of his happiness, and owner of Mambles. It was enough to turn...

The Princess Girla had a very strong sense of duty; from her earliest years she had believed in doing right, and she had known that she ought to have what she wanted. There was...

When Mr. Brett reached the house his steps became slower. The look on his face was that of a man who foresees and dreads the weight of a task which he has already experienced.

Mr. Brett listened. Mambles was a solid, deep-built house and his rooms were on the opposite wing to his daughter’s, but he could distinctly hear a high travelling sound like th...

She was able, however, on the following morning to refer indirectly to Bodger. She asked in a low, broken whisper if Bichette was perfectly safe. Bichette was full in view at th...

If you devote your life to studying the feelings of others you may get a little overtired, and see things out of proportion, but you are not likely to be mistaken in what these...

“You can’t really mean, Sir,” he said with a momentary trembling of his hand, as he turned over the mass of papers, “that _all_ your work is to be left with me. The reconstructi...

Miss Onoria Strickland lived in a semi-detached villa, and had no nonsense about her. Many women repose through life upon lesser attributes, they may have a handsome profile, a...

Elsie Andrews was exactly the kind of girl Miss Strickland disliked most. Nobody really liked Elsie very much because it is difficult to like a child who constantly squirms. She...

All the other teachers, and the objects of their efforts, slipped past her. She saw them vaguely as trees walking, and bumped into them from time to time with some severity. She...

She believed that for pure drama Little Ticklington outshone Paris. Its crimes were more lurid, its adventures more romantic, its types of character more truly representative of...

It is the least successful of the vices, for by its nature it implies that you find yourself less attractive than somebody else, and you are conscious that in the exercise of it...

He lived well under his income and his cheques went into the garden. As he often romantically said (when there was no danger of Onoria overhearing him), his ideas literally crea...

Miss Strickland had great self-control, and she needed it. When her amazed eyes rested upon Elsie and Peter Gubbins, she could hardly believe them. Disobedience and deceit unite...

It was at this point in her meditations that Prendergast moved. He wanted attention and at last he received it. Miss Strickland made up the fire and brought him a little warm mi...

He raced from the Cathedral to the Station as a man flees from a burning building: his one idea was not to be caught by Onoria. Even if he had envisaged Onoria’s face at one end...