The wild fawn

Mrs. Carter sighed. She could not understand the gap in her son’s correspondence. William was her eldest and the pride of her heart. At twenty-seven he had been a success in bus...

For the first time in his life Daniel’s heart sank at the sound of Virginia Denbigh’s voice. He came up, hat in hand, to answer her, and Virginia was startled, in her turn, for...

Mr. Carter gave utterance to a sound that seemed to be a cross between a grunt and a bellow, but the thunderous arrival of the engine drowned all other noises, and he fell silen...

She laughed, but he saw that the hand which held Virginia’s picture was trembling. She did not answer him in words, but turned and looked at him over her shoulder, her dark eyes...

As she spoke there was a flutter and stir in the audience, and Mrs. Payson retreated hastily to a front seat. Judge Jessup had just appeared on the platform with a tall, thin ma...

Yet she felt that heavy silence of her husband, the stiffness of his body as he sat there, and she had caught a glimpse of his ghastly face. She bit her lips, staring out into t...

So did she; but Virginia was a brave woman. She could not help seeing his face, and, being a woman, she knew. She could shape the whole story easily now. She had heard rumors of...

“We never meant to do that--I mean your father and I!” cried Mrs. Carter with emotion. “I can’t see why those two children adore her so. Emmy says Leigh would die for her!” she...

After her daughter went up-stairs, she sat for a long time, waiting. She was puzzled by the silence in the library. From time to time she went to the window and looked out anxio...

Something in her tone had made Daniel take the books from the pile on her arm. It was a set, prayer-book and hymnal bound in one and prettily mounted. He slipped the clasp and o...

“Your brother’s wife, eh?” he sneered. “Look here, child, you go home and eat your supper. Don’t you get worked up over Fanchon. I’ve known the lady quite a spell. If I whistled...

Daniel walked slowly at first. He did not want people to think that he was slinking home because his brother was in the station-house, charged with murder. The main street of th...

“I’ll tell you. I was divorced--it was legal in California, though Aristide swore it wasn’t. He came at me like a wild beast. He tried to get the decree set aside. He threatened...

“I don’t know how to answer that, colonel. He’s heartbroken over Leigh, I think. He and his wife”--Daniel hesitated, his eyes on Virginia--“have separated,” he concluded in a lo...

THE trial dragged its way through the rest of the afternoon and all the next day, the colonel sitting dutifully beside his good friend, Johnson Carter. The old man leaned forwar...

In the corner, alone and morose, sat William. Leigh turned his eyes that way only once. He found his brother’s haggard face unpleasant to look at. He sat again with his eyes dow...

“Yessuh, so Miss Jinny tole me. Great trial, suh! Mirandy, Miz Carter’s collud girl, she ’phoned me ’bout it. She say she got so excited she went out in de yard an’ killed the w...

“He was good, and he loved me. He asked me to marry him, and I lied. I said I’d never been married before. I needn’t have said it, but I was afraid. I lied. And he hates me.” He...

They were silent after that, walking between the hedgerows, until they came to a grassy slope that was left to go wild, because Virginia loved wild flowers. Here, in the spring,...