This Man's Wife

If that hat had occupied its proper place it would have been perched upon a stake to scare the sparrows away from the young peas, but the wretched weather-beaten structure was u...

The reception had been so simple and homely, that, once having secured his coat and donned it, the doctor's volunteer assistant felt more at his ease. His disposition to retreat...

The speaker was Miss Heathery, in the morning costume of a plum-coloured silk dress, with wide-spreading bonnet of the same material, ornamented with several large bows of broad...

"I think that's all, Mr Hallam, sir," said Mrs Pinet, looking plump, smiling, and contented, as she ran her eyes over the tea-table in the bank manager's comfortably-furnished r...

Time glided very rapidly by at King's Castor, for there were few things to check his progress. People came to the market and did their business, and went away. Most of them had...

First love is like furze; it is very beautiful and golden, but about and under that rich yellow there are thorns many and sharp. It catches fire, too, quickly, and burns up with...

"Oh, yes, I'll be careful. I say, Bayle, I wish you would look in as you go by; I forgot to open the cucumber-frame, and the sun's coming out strong. Just lift it about three in...

He looked piteously in the handsome pale young face before him, his heart sinking, and a feeling of misery, such as he had never before known, chilling him so that he strove in...

She laid down the pen, and ran over her conduct--all that she had said and done since her first meeting with the curate; but ended by shaking her head, and declaring to herself...

When Thisbe was huffy, and in consequence hard, it was because, as she expressed it, "Things is awkward;" and when things were like that, Thisbe went and made the beds.

"But--but I don't like it, my dear," said Mrs Luttrell, wiping her eyes, and looking up at the doctor, as he stood rubbing his hands softly, to get rid of the harshness produced...

"Quite, Sir Gordon--more than satisfied," replied Mr Trampleasure, who was standing with his hands beneath his coat-tails, balancing himself on toe and heel, and bowing as he sp...

He was still frowning, and trying to get over the mystery of why James Thickens should be at Miss Heathery's when that lady was out, and his ideas were turning in the direction...

There is one very pleasant element in country-town life, and that is the breadth of the feeling known as neighbourly. It is often veined by scandal, disfigured by petty curiosit...

A dark-haired, thoughtful-looking child of about six years old loosened her grasp of Thisbe King's dress, and crossed the room slowly towards where Robert Hallam sat, newspaper...

Nature, or rather the adaptation from Nature which we call civilisation, deals very hardly with unmarried ladies of twenty-five for the next ten or a dozen years. Then it seems...

Some men would have gone home to smarten up before visiting a lady to take tea, but James Thickens was not of that sort. His idea of smartness was always to look like a clean, d...

Dr Luttrell had taken a rake, and gone down the garden, according to his custom, and, as soon as he had left the house, Mrs Luttrell went to the window and watched him; after wh...

"Bless my soul! no, man!" cried Sir Gordon hastily. "The very last place. Let's get out in the fields, and talk there. More room, and no tattling, inquisitive people about. No G...

There was not much garden, but James Thickens was proud of it, because it was his own. It was only a strip, divided into two beds by a narrow walk of red bricks--so many laid fl...

"God help me! What shall I do?" groaned Christie Bayle, as he paced his room hour after hour into the night. A dozen times over he had been on the point of going to Thickens, aw...

"He--he--he--he--he! how cunning they do think themselves! What jolly owd orstridges they are!" chuckled old Gemp, as he saw Bayle leave the clerk's house, and return home to hi...

"Examining some of the old furniture there, my dear," said Millicent, looking up with a smile. "I think he is going to have it turned into a play-room for you."

No more; her eyes bespoke the mother's joy at this breaking down of the ice between father and daughter. Then a look of surprise and pain came into those loving eyes, for Hallam...

"I don't know that there is anything to fear," said Thickens dryly. "What I know is this, and I've thought it over. You are not going up to town with him, but by yourself, to ge...

"I am off for a short run. I cannot bear this confinement any longer. It is dark, and no one will see me if I go out for a change."

The woman who had been acting the part of nurse to old Gemp was seated by the table, busily knitting a pair of blue worsted stockings by the light of a tallow candle, and every...

"My poor darling!" sobbed Mrs Luttrell, holding her child to her breast and rocking to and fro, while the doctor sat with wrinkled face nursing and caressing Julia, who clung to...

There was only one bit of business going on in King's Castor that morning among the mechanics, and that was where two carpenters were busy nailing boards across the gaping windo...

One of many visits to the gloomy, stone-built, county gaol where Hallam was waiting his trial--for all applications for the granting of bail had been set aside--Millicent had in...

"I know'd--I know'd it all along," said Old Gemp to his friends, for the excitement of his loss seemed now to have acted in an opposite direction and to be giving him strength....

Whether Gemp would have it or no, Millicent Hallam was on her way to Sir Gordon's quiet, old-fashioned house on the North Road--a house that was a bit of a mystery to the Castor...

"How is she now, dear Mrs Luttrell--how is she now?" Miss Heathery looked up from out of the handkerchief in which her face was being constantly buried, and it would have been h...

"Hah! That confounded Scott! Colonel Scott at the club set it about that I'd been away for two years so as to get myself cut down and have time to sprout up again, I looked so y...

The meeting was painful, for Millicent Hallam and Sir Gordon had never stood face to face since that day when he had himself opened the door for her on the occasion of her appea...

"No, Thisbe, not yet," said Mrs Hallam, in a low, dreamy voice, and without a word the faithful follower of her mistress in trouble went softly out, closing the door, and leavin...

There was quite a change in the little house in the Clerkenwell Square. Life had been very calm and peaceful there for Julia, though she made no friends. Any advances made by ne...

"The villain!" he said in an angry whisper. "How dare he write to her! She suffered, but it was a calm and patient suffering, softened by time. Now he has torn open the wound to...

No, not even to Julia--his own child--for that part of the letter was a commission for her alone to execute. After all these long years of absence he sent her his orders--he, th...

Millicent Hallam was closely veiled as she descended from the coach at the inn-door, while Julia's handsome young face was free for the knot of gossips of the little town to not...

It was as if that forlorn cry uttered by Millicent Hallam pervaded their visit to the old home. It was a happy reunion, but how full of pain! Joy and sorrow were hand in hand. I...

"She be going to look over the owd house again, Gorringe," shouted Gemp, as he watched the dark veiled figure. "You mark my words; they're a coming back, and he'll be keeping ba...

Tom Porter had a way of his own when he was puzzled as to his course, and that was to go to the door and keep a bright look-out; in other words, follow old Gemp's example, and s...

It was a painful evening that last. Every one was assuming to be light-hearted, and talking of the voyage as being pleasant, and hinting delicately at the possibility of seeing...

"Is--is it true, mother?" said Julia, as the town with its docks and shipping seemed to be growing less and less, while the Isle of Wight, and the land on their right looked dim...

"No," said Tom, giving his rough head a roll, as he stood with his legs very far apart, looking quite the sailor now, in place of the quiet body-servant of the St James's pantry...

It was a long voyage, for in those days the idea of shortening a trip to the Antipodes had not been dreamed of, and the man who had suggested that the time would come when power...

"Don't--pray don't look so agitated, dear, mother," whispered Julia, as they left the cabin one morning, after an announcement by the captain that before many hours had passed,...

"Yes; that's how I like to hear you speak," cried Julia. "That is how you used to speak to me, and not in that grave, measured way, as if you were dissatisfied."

It was evening when Bayle went on deck again, his old calm having returned. He stopped short, and the elasticity of spirit that seemed to have come back--a feeling of hopefulnes...

A glorious day, with a brisk breeze, and the white sails curving out, and the great vessel, that had borne them safely to their destination, careening gently over, with the whit...

It had been hard work to persuade her, but Mrs Hallam had consented at last to rest quietly in the embryo hotel, while Bayle obtained the necessary passes for her and her daught...

"Be firm, my darling," whispered Mrs Hallam; and as they followed their guide, hand in hand, Julia seemed to take strength and fortitude from the proud, pale face, and eyes brig...

Bayle looked up from the book he was reading in the pleasant room that formed their home, one which Tom Porter had found no difficulty in fitting up in good cabin style.

Millicent Hallam had found that all her husband had said was correct. There was no difficulty at all in the matter, and few questions were asked, for the Government was only too...

"What have we done, wifie, that we should be consigned to such quarters as these?" said Captain Otway one day with a sigh. "I don't think I'm too particular, but when I entered...

He looked at her rather wistfully, and made no reply. "Look here, Mr Bayle," she said, "I don't think you mind my speaking plainly, now do you? Come, that's frank."

"No hurry, Steve, my lad," said Hallam, as he turned over the newspaper that had come in by the last mail, and threw one of his booted legs upon a chair.

Stephen Crellock was fifty yards behind, with his horse completely blown, when Julia quickly slipped from her saddle, threw the rein over the hook at the door-post, and ran upst...

It was as if the shock had blunted and confused her understanding, so that she could not think clearly or make out any plan for her future proceeding. And all the time she was h...

It was evening, and the sun was shining in at the open window, lighting up Julia's dark hair as she sat with her face in the shadow, careworn and evidently suffering deeply.

"Oh, yes; but that is past now," said Bayle. "One doesn't look upon you as one would upon a thief or a swindler, and even if you had been both these worthies, a man of my cloth...

Panting, and with his throat dry with excitement as much as with exertion, he toiled on, feeling as if every few paces had brought him nearly to a haven of refuge, but only on r...

Julia escaped the interview that she dreaded; for, just as they entered the hall, there was the thudding of horses' feet coming over the road, and Hallam came out of his room wi...

The doctor examined the injury to the head, which was sufficiently grave, and then proceeded to re-bandage the shoulder that had been dislocated, watching the young man's face,...

"Ah! Phil, Phil, Phil!" exclaimed Mrs Otway as she sat facing Eaton some mornings later, while he lay back in a Chinese cane chair, propped up by pillows. "Come, this will not do."

"Lucky for him, for I've got into a state of mind that does not promise much good for any one who stands in my way," said Crellock, with an unpleasant look in his eyes. "And now...

"Where are you going?" said Crellock roughly, as prowling about the verandah, in pursuance of a determination to take care that there should be no further interference with his...

That night, after the roughly-prepared meal that topic the place of dinner, and at which mother and daughter resumed their places as of old, Hallam sat for some time with Crello...

"I am trying, Julie. I am fighting so hard, but you cannot realise the step I am trying to take; you cannot see it, my child, as it is spread before me."

"Let them come if they dare, my dear," said Thisbe stoutly. "I've only waited for this. You know how I've never said word against him, but have seen and borne everything."

It was close upon evening before the trouble Thisbe expected came. Tom Porter had been again, tapped at the door, and when Thisbe went to the window he had contorted his face in...

"Don't be rough on a fellow, Sir Gordon. I've been a big blackguard, I know, but somehow I never had a chance from the first. I want to do the right thing now."

Sir Gordon Bourne looked ten years younger as he walked towards the cottage on the bluff. The hill was steep to climb, and the sun was torrid in its heat; but he forgot the disc...

"Let her live her few hours in rest and peace," he said. "It would be madness to attempt such a thing." And so all thought of the journey home was set aside, and Mrs Hallam was...

The place the same. Not a change visible in all those years. The old church with its mossed tiles and lichened walls; the familiar tones of the chiming clock that gave notice of...