The Yellow House; Master of Men

I believe that I took off my clothes and made some pretence of going to bed, but in my memory those long hours between the time when I left father in the study and the dawn seem...

This was a faithful and exact account of my meeting with the first of those two of our neighbors who seemed, according to Lady Naselton’s report, to remain entirely outside the...

I went straight to my father’s room, with only a very confused sense of what I wanted to say to him floating in my mind. But to my amazement, when I had softly opened the door a...

Naturally I expected that some time that night my father would have spoken to me concerning the strange meeting at the house of the woman whom he had called Marcia. In a sense I...

Positively every one, with two unimportant exceptions, had called upon us. The Countess had driven over from Sysington Hall, twelve miles away, with two anæmic-looking daughters...

Friday passed without any sign of my father’s return, and when on Saturday morning we found no letter from him upon the breakfast table, the vague disquiet of the day before ass...

Three days after that memorable conversation with my father a fly drove up to the door, and from where I was sitting in our little drawing room I heard a woman’s anxious voice i...

There are days marked in our lives with white stones. We can never forget them. Recollections, a very easy effort of memory, seem to bring back even in some measure the very thr...

I was determined to keep my word with Olive Berdenstein with absolute faithfulness. For nearly a week I stayed in the house except for a short walk in the early morning. Three t...

The days that followed were, in a sense, like the calm before the threatened storm. As the date of my father’s promised return to Eastminster drew near, every day I expected to...

On the Thursday following my father’s departure for London Lady Naselton sent her carriage for me, and a note marked urgent. It contained only a few lines, evidently written in...

We stood looking at them in wonder. Her face had seemed suddenly to light up in some mysterious way, so that for the moment one quite forgot that she was plain at all.

By some means or other the news had spread in the village, and such a congregation as I had never seen filled our little church long before the usual time. In a dark corner I sa...

It seemed to me during the days that followed that I was confronted with a problem of more than ordinary complexity. I at any rate found it so. To live through childhood and gir...

My father’s first sermon was a great success. As usual, it was polished, eloquent, and simple, and withal original. He preached without manuscript, almost without notes, and he...

In the wood half-way between the Yellow House and home I met Bruce Deville. I should have hurried on, but it was impossible to pass him. He had a way of standing which took up t...

A note was brought in to me at luncheon time, addressed in a bold yet delicate feminine hand which was already becoming familiar. It was from Adelaide Fortress, and it consisted...

As may easily be imagined I had seen quite enough of Olive Berdenstein for one day at any rate, if not for a long time to come. But to my surprise, on that same afternoon, as I...

It was at evensong in the great cathedral that she tasted the first fruits of her triumph. During the earlier portion of the service the shadows had half enveloped the huge body...

After tea my father went to his study, for it was late in the week, and he was a most conscientious writer of sermons. I read for an hour, and then, tired alike of my book and m...

Despite a certain amount of relief at leaving a neighborhood so full of horrible associations, those first few weeks in London were certainly not halcyon ones. My post was by no...

When the thought first came to me I flung it away and trampled it under foot, I could almost have imagined I was going mad. I, jealous! What an ugly word! I jealous of that sall...

“Father is not getting up until this afternoon, at any rate,” she announced. “He is very unwell. I wish he would let us send for a doctor. He has looked so dreadfully ill since...

From my low chair I watched my father cross the room. So far as I could see there was no change in him. He came over to my side and took my hand with an air of anxious kindlines...

I rose to my feet and stood apart from her. For a moment it was like the end of the world--like the end of all sensation. I was trembling in every limb. I believe that I gasped...

She left me alone in the room, and I stood there for a minute or two without moving. I heard his quick step on the gravel path outside and then his summons at the door. Mechanic...

There followed for me after these solemn words of the Bishop a phantasmagoria of human faces, and sky, and tree-tops, and a singing in my ears, now loud, now soft, in which all...

“She is a very determined young woman,” I continued. “Perhaps I ought not to say so, but she seemed to feel more angry than broken-hearted. She is vindictive, I am sure. She wil...

Two very weary days dragged themselves by. We had no news whatever from my father. We did not even know where he was. Alice and I were hard at work packing, and already the hous...

The two women were standing face to face. Bruce Deville and I had fallen back. There was a moment or two’s breathless silence. Then Adelaide Fortress, with perfect composure, mo...

I was talking to empty space. Bruce Deville was already almost out of sight, striding along across the short turf, with his broad back turned to me. Soon he had vanished amongst...