The Wicked Marquis

Lady Margaret, who chanced to be the first arrival on the night of the dinner party in David Thain's honour, contemplated her sister admiringly. Letitia was wearing a gown of iv...

David, suddenly stifled, threw open the cottage window. When he came back into the little circle of lamp-light, his face was pale and set. He was filled with a premonition of evil.

Marcia, more especially perhaps during these later days, felt her sense of humour gently excited every time she crossed the threshold of Trewly's Restaurant. The programme which...

The Marquis, if he had been a keen physiognomist, might perhaps have read all that he had come to London to know in Marcia's expression as he made his unexpected entrance into h...

David Thain, a few hours later, lounged in a basket chair in the one corner of his lawn from which he could catch, through the hedge of yew trees, a furtive glimpse of Mandeleys...

The Duchess, a few mornings later, leaned back in her car and watched the perilous progress of her footman, dodging in and out of the traffic in the widest part of Piccadilly. H...

"I feel like the German lady," Marcia observed, as she stood before her little sideboard and mixed a whisky and soda, "who went on cutting bread and butter. The world falls to p...

The Marquis devoted the remainder of that afternoon, as he did most others, to paying a call. Very soon indeed after David Thain's departure, he left the house, stepped into the...

The Duchess waved her sugar tongs imperiously, and David, who had hesitated upon the threshold of her drawing-room, made his way towards her. There were a dozen people sitting a...

The Marquis, with several account books and Mr. Merridrew, who had ridden over from his office on a motor-bicycle, had settled down to a laborious evening. The former, for no pa...

A queer atmosphere of depression seemed about this time to have affected the two inhabitants of Number 94 Grosvenor Square. The Marquis had suddenly become aware of an aimlessne...

Lady Letitia Thursford, the only unmarried daughter of the Marquis, stood in a corner of the spacious drawing-room at 94 Grosvenor Square, talking to her brother-in-law. Sir Rob...

David ate his three cutlets and, both as regards appetite and in other ways, was a great success at the little luncheon party. Afterwards, they finished the bottle of Marsala un...

Gossett in the country was a very different person from Gossett in Grosvenor Square. An intimate at Mandeleys was not at all the same thing as a caller in town, and David found...

"I have not the least intention of boring myself, my dear Letitia," she said, in reply to some conventional remark of her niece's. "So long as I get plenty of fresh air during t...

She nodded, turned away, lifted the latch of the gate and made her way towards the cottage,--curiously silent, and with no visible sign of habitation except for the smoke curlin...

During those few hours of strenuous, almost fierce work into which David threw himself after the funeral, he found in a collection of belated cablegrams which his secretary hand...

David Thain, arrived at the end of his journey, seated himself on the second stile from the road, threw away his cigar and looked facts in the face. He who had run the gamut of...

Mr. Wadham, Junior, a morning or so later, rang the bell at Number 94 Grosvenor Square and aired himself for a moment upon the broad doorstep, filled with a comfortable sense th...

It was obvious that the Marquis was pleased with himself when he was shown into Marcia's little sitting room later on that same afternoon. He was wearing a grey tweed check suit...

Marcia Hannaway called upon her publisher during the course of the following day. She found the ready entree of a privileged client--with scarcely a moment's delay she was usher...

The Marquis, with an after-breakfast cigarette in his mouth, strolled out of his front door, a few mornings later, to find himself face to face with Richard Vont. He called Leti...

"I should have explained," David continued, "that I spent this last week-end at Cromer. There I visited an agent and told him that I would like to take a furnished house in the...

The Marquis, as he sat at his study table after lunch, was not inclined to regard his first day at Mandeleys as a success. The only post of the day had been delivered, and the l...

Messrs. Wadham, Son and Dickson were not habited in luxury. Theirs was one of those old-fashioned suites of offices in Lincoln's Inn, where the passages are of stone, the doors...

Sir Robert preferred to join his wife and sister-in-law in the drawing-room after luncheon. The Marquis, with a courteous word of invitation, led his remaining guest across the...

Reginald Philip Graham Thursford, Baron Travers, Marquis of Mandeleys, issued, one May morning, from the gloomy precincts of the Law Courts without haste, yet with certain evide...

At a few minutes after nine, the following morning, the Marquis entered the room where breakfast was usually served. The Duchess, in travelling clothes and a hat, was lifting th...

Marcia, who had dreamed all night of blue skies flecked with little fragments of white cloud, a soft west wind and sun-bathed meadows, descended the creaking stairs of the Inn a...

David proved himself such a very satisfactory incoming tenant that the Colonel insisted upon his staying to lunch and hastened off into the cellar to find a bottle of old Marsal...

Richard Vont was buried in the little churchyard behind Mandeleys, the churchyard in which was the family vault and which was consecrated entirely to tenants and dependents of t...

Richard Vont, a few mornings later, leaned upon his spade and gazed over towards Mandeleys with set, fixed eyes. His clothes and hands were stained with clay, the sweat was pour...

"There is perhaps some misunderstanding," the Marquis remarked. "In any case, he would not know that you were here for so short a time, Caroline. After luncheon I will walk acro...

Grantham, who had been unusually silent throughout the service of dinner, slipped away from the room a few minutes before the other men. He found Letitia arranging a bridge tabl...

Letitia and her escort pulled up their horses at the top of Rotten Row. Letitia was a little out of breath, but her colour was delightful, and the slight disarrangement of her t...

There was just one drop of alloy in the perfect contentment with which the Marquis contemplated his new prospects, and that was contained in a telephone message from Mr. Wadham,...