Within the Precincts

Lottie made her way down the Slopes alone, with feelings which had greatly changed from those of a few minutes ago. How happy she had been! The hour that had passed under the fa...

Captain Temple was an old soldier, whose habit it was to get up very early in the morning. He said afterwards that he had never got up so early as on that morning, feeling a cer...

The night after that decisive talk upon the Slopes was a trying one for Rollo Ridsdale. He went home with the fumes of his resolution in his mind. Now the die was cast. Whatever...

There are some victories which feel very much like defeats. When Polly had scattered her adversaries on every side, driven forth Lottie and got rid of Law, and silenced Captain...

Captain Despard put on his best coat after his return from the Abbey on the morning of Rollo’s departure. He brushed his hat with more than his usual care; he found, after much...

“I waited half an hour. I was not very happy,” said Rollo. “It is never cold when you are here, but last night the wind went through and through me. That is the consequence of b...

The bells began to ring for evensong soon after the bridal party dispersed. Some of them, indeed, stayed for the beautiful service, which was a thing that visitors from a distan...

And what a problem it was with which Lottie Despard was thus left alone! The house was still, no one moving in it--nothing to distract her thoughts. Now and then a swell of musi...

Lottie stood as if in a dream, hearing the ringing of the horses’ hoofs, the roll of the carriage, and nothing more; all the sounds in the world seemed to be summed up in these....

The next morning dawned very strangely on all the members of the little household. Lottie was down early, as she generally was; but the advantages of early rising were neutralis...

If this history had proposed to settle and bring to a dramatic conclusion even one single human life, the writer would falter here, feeling her task all unfulfilled; for what ha...

Lady Caroline was in the drawing-room at the Deanery alone. Now that her daughter was married this was no unusual circumstance. It was late in the summer evening, after dinner,...

Lottie could do nothing but stand bewildered and gaze at this new claimant of her regard. Surprise took all the meaning, all the intelligence out of her face. She stood with her...

Lottie had gone home that night, it need not be said, with her head full of excitement. Had she not good reason to look upon this evening as of importance in her life? She had m...

It was not to be supposed that the visit of Rollo and his companion should pass unnoticed in so small a community as that of St. Michael’s, where everybody knew him, and in whic...

Lottie was sadly disheartened by the events of that day. She came home alike depressed and indignant, her heart and her pride equally wounded. She had scarcely seen Rollo for th...

“Oh, he did not say much,” Law replied to Lottie’s questioning when he went home in the afternoon. “He was very jolly--asked me to stay, and gave me lunch. How they live, those...

The moment after a man has made a proposal of marriage, and has been accepted, is not always a moment of unmitigated blessedness. There are ups and downs in the whole business f...

Mr. Ashford, the Minor Canon, had, anyone would have supposed, as tranquil yet as pleasantly occupied a life as a man could have. He had not very much of a clergyman’s work to d...

The Signor’s house was one of those which, when general peacefulness had made the battlements round St. Michael’s unnecessary, had grown within the outer wall. It was more like...

Mr. Ashford had not said much to Miss Despard on the way home; it was but crossing the road, a brief progress which left little room for conversation, and the Signor was better...

There were two factions in the workroom by the side of the river where Mrs. Wilting’s daughters worked, with Polly Featherston for their forewoman. One of these, though very sma...

The Despard family became a great centre of interest to many people both within and without the Abbey precincts at this period of their history. Without any doing, so to speak,...

Lottie was entirely unconscious of the intimation that had been made to her father, and of the excitement which had risen among her neighbours about Mr. Ridsdale. It did not occ...

While the time went on in this dream for Lottie it did not stand still with the rest of the world. Her absorption in her own affairs, which for the moment had become complete, a...

Next morning found young Purcell in a state of excitement and nervous agitation still greater than that of the previous night. He had not slept during the natural time for sleep...

Lottie scarcely knew how she got through that afternoon. Rollo presented himself for but a moment at the Signor’s, in great concern that he could not stay, and begging a hundred...

Captain Temple was not happy about the events of that evening. He had begun to grow very fond of Lottie, and he was not pleased that she should have “made an exhibition of herse...

Mr. Ashford took Lottie home that evening, walking with her to her own door. There was not much said; for, notwithstanding the armour of personal hope and happiness which she ha...

Lottie ran out while Rollo Ridsdale was getting his hat to accompany her home. She caught up her shawl over her arm without pausing to put it on, and ran through the dark Cloist...

Mr. Ridsdale had perhaps never touched, and rarely heard, anything so bad as the old cracked piano which Lottie had inherited from her mother, and which was of the square form n...

Rollo did not come away from the strange excitement of that interview on the Slopes with the same feelings which filled the mind of Lottie. The first intense sensation of shame...

It turned out, however, that Rollo could not accomplish the object, which he had aimed at with so much eagerness and hope, in the only legitimate way. He could not get his Manag...

The name of a Chevalier of St. Michael sounds very splendid to innocent and uninstructed ears. It is a title which stands alone in England at least. Poor Knights have been heard...

Lottie went up the Dean’s Walk hastily, feeling as if she had taken flight. And she was taking flight. She could not bear to meet the people coming from the Abbey, among whom no...

Law had been living a busy life at the time of this crisis and climax of his sister’s existence. He had spent day after day in London, lost in that dangerous and unaccustomed de...

The Signor came in with some suppressed excitement about him, which he concealed under an air of perfect calm, but which betrayed itself in the gleam of his eyes and the rapidit...

When Lottie got up next morning the world seemed to have changed to her. It had changed a little in reality, as sometimes one day differs from another in autumn, the world havin...

The Abbey Church of St. Michael’s stands on a low hill in a flat and fertile country. The holy places which are sacred to the great archangel seem to settle naturally upon a mou...

The appearance of the new Mrs. Despard in the Abbey made a very great impression. The brilliancy of her blue silk and the bushiness of her orange-blossoms were calculated to str...

It was not only in the mind of young Purcell that Lottie’s circumstances and prospects were the subject of thought. Rollo Ridsdale had not watched and worshipped as the young mu...

Morning service at the Abbey was more business-like than the severe ritual in the afternoon. The evening prayers were more pleasurable. Strangers came to them, new faces, all th...

It was late before Law got home. In the first place he read the _Family Herald_ through to his interested and busy auditors. Their needles flew like lightning along the lengthy...

Law had left Mr. Ashford, not knowing, as the vulgar have it, if he stood on his head or his heels. He had somewhat despised the Minor Canon, not only as a clergyman and an inst...

Law went with his sister dutifully to the door in the great cloister. He did not care much for the honour and glory of going to the Deanery, but he was pleased to walk with Lott...

displeased by the fuss she made; as if _she_ could have any new revelation of the meaning of a thing which, if not absolutely written for St. Michael’s, as good as belonged to t...