Wild Margaret

It had come so unexpectedly that it overwhelmed her. There are a great many princes in Italy--they are commoner there than with us, but still a prince is a prince, and this one...

She had read of love, had painted it, but hitherto she and it had been perfect strangers; and now--and now all wonderful mysterious sweetness of it suffused her whole being. "He...

It was a week after Margaret's wedding in the moldy and dilapidated old church at Sefton, and she and Lord Blair--she and her husband!--were sitting on the cliff at Appleford lo...

"Well," said Ambrose slowly, "you are awkwardly placed, you see. I imagined from all you have told me that you and the earl do not get on very well together as it is."

It was autumn, but such an autumn as often puts summer to shame. The skies were as blue, the air as soft, as those of July; but that the leaves had changed their emerald hues fo...

For a minute or two she felt frightened and had an idea of calling for help. Lottie was not altogether a bad girl; indeed, the persons who are either altogether bad or altogethe...

Margaret did not raise her head from her work as Lord Blair Leyton moved reluctantly and impatiently down the gallery, but when the echo of his footsteps had died away she looke...

The earl kept his eyes on the floor for a moment, then nodded as an indication that Lord Blair was to be shown in, and Mr. Larkhall went out to the drawing-room, where Lord Blai...

The girl, without looking behind her or vouchsafing even a glance of farewell, walked on until she reached the great iron gates. There she rang the bell which hung like a huge i...

Blair came back to town, thin, and pale, and haggard, with only one desire in his heart: to forget the past and kill the present! He had been wild and reckless as a youth, and i...

When the train drew up at the small station of Leyton Ferrers, which it did in the slowest and most lazy of fashions, two persons got out. One was a young girl, who alighted fro...

In the morning, while the Rose was sailing along the coast, she went to the captain and requested that she and her husband might be taken as near Appleford as possible, that the...

About four o'clock the same evening a group of people was gathered round a young lady who sat on a magnificent and strong-looking horse, standing with well-bred patience near th...

Mr. Austin Ambrose was spending an extremely unpleasant evening. It sounds as if it would be a very nice thing to play with one's fellow creatures as if they were puppets--to pu...

"Is it so absurd, do you think? Consider. Violet, have you been dreaming all these months? You should know me well enough to feel that I am not a mere straw to be idly blown hit...

About twelve months after what the newspapers called "The Mystery in High Life at Naples," on a very bright day in June, the Earl of Ferrers and Margaret, his wife, were standin...

Ten minutes after Lottie fell senseless beside the stone steps of the Palace Augustus, a slight, girlish figure came quickly down the street. It was dressed in black, the only s...

Christmas had gone and there was a vague suggestion of spring in the air; but it was cold still, and a huge fire burned in the great drawing-room of Leyton Court. It was after d...

To be loved is a nice thing, a grand thing, a fact which gilds even the most prosaic life and makes it bright; but to be loved by such a man as Lord Blair--so handsome, so brave...

Just at this period a singular change came over Mr. Austin Ambrose's mode of life. As a rule he rarely left London. At a certain hour of the day you would find him in his chambe...

It was only when she had left the earl that Margaret noticed how kind and gracious he had been. He had not only bought the copy of the Guido, and commissioned another picture of...

Blair rode on toward Ilfracombe, his cigar between his lips, his handsome face wearing its best and brightest look. He was, as he would have expressed it, as happy as a sandboy;...

I do not think I have at any time held up Lord Blair Leyton as an example to youth, and I am less likely than ever to do so now, now that he has reached an epoch in his life whe...

Margaret ran into the house, her heart beating fast, the color coming and going in her cheeks. To her amazement and annoyance, she felt that she was actually trembling! Well, if...

Prince Rivani opened the door with a low bow, and the two men went back to the _salon_. The prince was pale but perfectly self possessed, and Blair very grave and quiet. The pic...

Mr. Austin Ambrose was pacing up and down, in tiger fashion, the extremely luxurious sitting-room, waiting for Blair to return from the Rivanis'; and Austin Ambrose was anything...

What should she do? Pass by him without a word, or murmur some kind of apology? How upset and annoyed her grandmother would be when she heard of her trespass, and its discovery...

Blair sprung forward and picked up the prince's sword, and was offering it to him when one of the women released her grasp of the prince, and turning to Blair with outstretched...

Few men would have been sharp enough to notice, in the midst of such excitement, so trivial a fact that Mrs. Day's shawl was dry; but Mr. Austin Ambrose was not an ordinary man,...

A month later, the sun, which in England was shining with a sickly affectation of geniality, was pouring a flood of warmth and light on every house and street in Naples. Color,...

Blair wrote his letters--there were not many, for Austin Ambrose had so entirely undertaken the management of the vast estates that Blair knew very little about any business per...

Margaret had never been in love. If any one had asked her why not, she would have said that she was too busy, and hadn't time. Young men had admired her, and some few, the artis...

Austin Ambrose had chambers in the Albany. He was not a rich man, as he had remarked, but the rooms were comfortably, even luxuriously furnished, and the taste displayed in thei...