There & Back

The rector had often wished his wife could in some natural way get hold of Miss Wylder; he suspected something exceptionally fine in her: how else could she, with such a father...

On a lovely summer morning she woke to a sense of returning health. She had been lying like a waste shore, at low spring-tide, covered with dry seaweeds, withered jelly-fishes,...

The same afternoon appeared Barbara--as none knew when she might not appear--before the front windows of the house, perched upon her huge yet gracious Miss Brown. Arthur was in...

The godless old man was strangely moved. He rose, but instead of ringing the bell, hobbled after Richard to the door. As he opened it, however, he heard the hall-door close. He...

The bickerings between her father and mother had had not a little to do with the peculiar features of Barbara's life in the colony. As soon as she saw a cloud rising, having lea...

He hurried back over the bare, moon-white road. He had seen Miss Wylder come that morning, and hoped to reach the house, which was not very far off, before she should have gone...

Hardly had Lestrange left the room, when Barbara entered, noiseless as a moth, which creature she somehow resembled at times: one observant friend came to see that she resembled...

It was the middle of the day before they were missed. Their absence caused for a time no commotion; the servants said nurse must have taken the child for his usual walk. But whe...

It was a happy thing for both Richard and Barbara, that Barbara was now under another influence besides Richard's. The more she saw of Mr. and Mrs. Wingfold, the more she felt t...

A new experience had come to Mrs. Wylder. Her passion over the death of her son; her constant and prolonged contention with her husband; her protest against him whom she called...

their letters were exchanged, and without a word they parted. As Barbara reached the door, she turned one moment to look for him, and he saw a depth of care angelic in her eyes....

At school, Richard had been friendly with a boy of gentle nature, not many years older than himself. The boy had stood his friend in more than one difficulty, and Richard hearti...

But while thus Richard suffered, scarce knew, and cared nothing, how the days went and came, he did his best to conceal his suffering from his father and mother, and succeeded w...

As they went, neither said much. Both seemed to avoid the subject of their conversation as they came. They talked of poetry and fiction, and did not differ. Though Barbara there...

It would be but stirring a muddy pool to inquire--not what motives induced, but what forces compelled sir Wilton Lestrange to marry a woman nobody knew. It is enough to say that...

Mr. Wingfold went as he had come, thoughtful even to trouble. What was to be done for the woman? What was his part, as parson of the parish, with regard to her behaviour in chur...

Mr. Wylder was lord of the manor, and chief land-owner, though his family had never been the most influential, in the parish next that in which lay Mortgrange. He was not much f...

Barbara's brother, her father's twin, was fast following her mother's to that somewhere each of us must learn for himself, no one can learn from another. While they were in Lond...

It was a lovely morning when Richard, his heart beating with a hope whose intensity of bliss he had never imagined, stopped at the station nearest to Mortgrange, and set out to...

Soon after his visit to Mortgrange, the young bookbinder went home, recalled at last by his parents. John Tuke was shocked with the hardness and blackness of his hands, and call...

It was about a year after Richard's return to his trade, when one morning the doctor at Barset was roused by a groom, his horse all speckled with foam, who, as soon as he had gi...

But Richard soon began to recover both from the separation and from his disappointment in regard to his letter. He was satisfied that whatever might be the cause of her silence,...

When Richard reached London, he went straight to Clerkenwell. There he found Arthur, in bed and unattended, but covered up warm. Except one number of _The Family Herald_, he had...

Simon Armour was past only the agility, not the strength of his youth, and in his feats of might and skill he cherished pride. Without being offensively conceited, he regarded h...

Two days after, on a lovely autumn evening, Barbara rode Miss Brown across the fields, avoiding the hard road even more carefully than usual. For Miss Brown, as I have said, was...

Simon and Richard followed the man through a narrow door in the thick wall, across a wide passage, and then along a narrow one. A door was thrown open, and they stepped into a s...

It was into the first of the London fogs of the season that Richard, after a slow parliamentary journey, got out of his third-class carriage, at the great dim station. He took h...

Barbara rode home with strange things in her mind. Here was a romance brought to her very door! She was nowise hungry after romance, being of the essence of romance her own love...

The same evening Barbara rode to the smithy, in the hope of hearing some news of Richard from his grandfather. The old man was busy at the anvil when he heard Miss Brown's hoofs...

She went to find him, told him what had happened to the young man, and, feeling her way, proposed that he should go to his grandfather's for a few days. Arthur started. Send him...

For a few weeks, things went smoothly enough. Not a jar occurred in the feeble harmony, not a questionable cloud appeared above the horizon. The home-weather seemed to have grow...

He went to bed, and after a dreamless night, rose to find the world overflowed with bliss. The sun was at his best, and every water-drop on the grass was shining all the colours...

From so early an age had Richard been accustomed to despise a certain form he called God, which stood in the gallery of his imagination, carved at by the hands of successive gen...

The next post brought a letter from Simon Armour, saying, after his own peculiar fashion, that it was time the thing were properly understood between the parties concerned; but,...

The day after, well wrapt from the cold, he took his place in a slow train, and at the station was heartily welcomed by his grandfather, who had come with his pony-cart to take...

One evening Richard went to see his grandfather, and asked if he would allow him to give Miss Wylder a lesson in horseshoeing: she wanted, he said, to be able to shoe Miss Brown...

Barbara had more than once or twice heard Mr. Wingfold preach, but had not once listened, or oven waked to the fact that she had not listened. Unaccustomed in childhood to any s...

Before the next Monday, he had learned the outlets of the hall, and the relations of its divisions to its doors. But he fared no better, for whether again he mistook the door or...

It was the height of the season, and sir Wilton and lady Ann were in London--I cannot say _enjoying themselves_, for I doubt if either of them ever enjoyed self, or anything els...

Some men hunt their fellows to prey upon them, and fill their own greedy maws; Richard hunted and caught his brother and sister that he might feed them with the labour of his ha...

All things belong to every man who yields his selfishness, which is his one impoverishment, and draws near to his wealth, which is humanity--not humanity in the abstract, but th...

Richard was willing enough, and it only remained to settle what they would do with their holiday. Suppressing a chuckle, Simon proposed that they should have a walk, and a look...

The more sir Wilton's anger subsided, the more his heart turned to Richard, and the more he regretted that he had begun by quarrelling with him. Sir Wilton loved his ease, and w...

It was now late in the autumn. Several houses in the neighbourhood were full of visitors, and parties on horseback frequently passed the door of the smithy--well known to not a...

Barbara turned her mare across the road, and sent her at the hedge. Miss Brown cleared it like a stag, and took a bee-line along the grass for Wylder Hall. Richard stood astonis...

Mr. Wylder could not well object to sir Richard Lestrange on the ground that his daughter had loved him before she or her father knew his position the same he was coveting for h...

The rumour of sir Wilton's marriage was, as rumour seldom is, correct. Before the year was out, lady Ann Hardy, sister to the earl of Torpavy, representing an old family with a...

It would have been difficult for Arthur himself to say whether in his heart rage or contempt was the stronger, when he saw the lady he loved walking in a field, turning and retu...

As the dinner-hour drew nigh, Richard went to the drawing-room, scrupulously dressed. Lady Ann gave him the coldest of polite recognitions; Theodora was full of a gladness hard...

The day so often in Wingfold's thought, arrived at last--the anniversary of the death of sir Wilton. He rose early, his mind anxious, and his heart troubled that his mind should...

“There's this to be considered,” said the bookbinder, “that, if you go there, you lose your connection here--in a measure, at least. Therefore you cannot do the work at the same...

While the two talked in the same pulverous fashion, the words came very differently from the two mouths. In the speech of the mother was more than a tone of the vulgarity of a c...

The spring advanced; the days grew a little warmer; and at length, partly from economic considerations, it was determined they should go home. When they reached London, they fou...

He turned and walked home--but with a heart how different! The world was folded in winter and night, but in his heart the sun was shining, and it made a wonder and a warmth at t...

Theodora, so named by her mother because she was born on a Sunday, was a very different girl from Barbara. Nominally friends, neither understood the other. Theodora was the best...

Richard took Barbara home, and the same night started for London. Barbara prayed him to take what money she had, but he said that by going in the third class he would have somet...

She read until every sound had died in the house, every sound from garret to cellar, except the ticking of clock, and the tinkling cracks of sinking fires and cooling grates. In...

When he came to the parsonage, which he had to pass on his way to the Hall, he saw Mr. Wingfold through the open window of the drawing-room, and turned to the door. The parson m...

The moment he received his wages from his father at the end of the week, Richard set out for Everilda street, Clerkenwell, a little anxious at the thought of encountering the dr...

The same afternoon, Richard was mending the torn title of a black-letter copy of Fox's Book of Martyrs. Vixen had forgotten her former fright, and her evil courage had returned....

Arthur Lestrange was sharply troubled when he found he was to see no more of Barbara. He went again and again to Wylder Hall, but neither mother nor daughter would receive him....

Thomas Wingfold closed his book, replaced it in his pocket, got down from the stile, turned his face toward home, crossed field after field, and arrived just in time to meet his...

After some talk, it was settled that Richard should work in the large oriel of the library. Mrs. Locke was called, and the necessary orders were given. Employer and workman were...

To make all this quite credible to a doubting reader, it would be necessary to tell Mrs. Wylder's history from girlhood. She had had a very defective education, and what there w...

When the first delight of their meeting was abated, Simon sent to let Arthur Manson know that his brother was there. For Arthur had all this time been with Simon, to whom Richar...

Barbara went yet oftener to Mr. and Mrs. Wingfold. By this time, through Simon Armour, they knew something about Richard, but none of them all felt at liberty to talk about him.

He had caught cold and was feverish. After his hot haste to reach his brother and sister, he had stood on the stair till his temperature sank low. When at length he slept, he ke...