Wrecked in Port: A Novel

"Ah! so likely Dr. Osborne would tell that old beast! Why was its name throughout doctors are the silentest fellows in the world. My uncle Robert is a doctor, and I know all abo...

The Reverend James Ashurst had been head master of the Helmingham Grammar School for nearly a quarter of a century. Many old people in the village had a vivid recollection of hi...

The little child who was so long prayed for, and who came at last in answer to James Ashurst's fervent prayers, had nothing during her childhood to distinguish her from ordinary...

At a time when it seemed as though the unchildlike qualities which had distinguished the child from her playmates and coevals were intensifying and maturing in the girl growing...

"You will be better when you have made the effort, mother," said Marian Ashurst to the widow, one day, when the beauty of the summer was at its height, and death and grief seeme...

There are few streets in London better known to that large army of martyrs, the genteelly poor, than those which run northward from the Strand, and are lost in the two vast trac...

"I beg your pardon, I don't quite clearly understand you, I'm sorry to say"--for Walter knew by the tone of his voice that the old man was annoyed--"I'm very weak and rather stu...

Marian Ashurst dearly loved her home. To her concentrative and self-contained nature local associations were peculiarly precious; the place in which she had lived the life so es...

Hetherington House stands in Beaufort Square, forming one side of that confessedly aristocratic quarter. The house stands back in melancholy "grounds" of dirty gravel, brown tur...

Marian Ashurst had begun, soon after their parting, to feel that she had been somewhat too sanguine in her anticipations of the immediate success of Walter Joyce. Each little di...

Mr. Creswell's only son, who was named after Mr. Creswell's only brother, by no means resembled his prototype either in appearance, manners, or disposition. For whereas Tom Cres...

Some few minutes passed before Marian felt sufficiently recovered to move. The attack had been so unexpected and so brutal that she would have been perfectly paralysed by it eve...

"Very well. Tell Lady Caroline---- Oh, here you are! I was just sending to tell you that tea was ready. I saw you come in from your ride before the curtains were drawn."

The Lady Caroline liked late hours. She was of a restless temperament, and hated solitude, though she was also intolerant of anything like dulness in her associates, and had suf...

After the ladies left the dining-room, Walter Joyce, in the general re-arrangement of seats thereon ensuing, found himself placed next to Mr. Gould. It was soon obvious that his...

The interest which Walter Joyce had awakened in Lady Caroline Mansergh on the night of the dinner-party by no means died out, or even waned. Flirtation is certainly not an excep...

"Mr. Radford, the agent from Brocksopp, have been with him for the last half-hour, miss; but he's on the point to go. I saw him getting on his gloves as I left the room."

Of course Walter Joyce was a hero of heroes for days after the ice-accident. Lady Hetherington for the time being threw off every semblance of insolence and patronage, complimen...

Marian held the letter in her hand for a moment, irresolute whether to open it and read it at once, or to defer its perusal until another opportunity, when her mind might be les...

Saturday morning, the day after that on which Joyce had sent off the eventful letter to Marian. Twelve o'clock, and no appearance as yet of Lady Caroline Mansergh, who had sent...

The step which Mr. Creswell took in asking Marian Ashurst to become his wife was not taken without due care and consideration. As, during a lifetime which had now exceeded half...

It is a conventional, but by no means a correct, notion, that at the time of a social separation those who are left behind have so very much the worst of it. People imagine that...

Lord Hetherington was a powerful man, who had great influence in most things, but he could not get his letters delivered at Westhope before eleven o'clock. Not that he had not t...

It has been seen that Mr. Creswell's marriage with Marian Ashurst was sufficiently popular amongst the farmer class at Helmingham, but it was by no means so warmly received in o...

Gertrude Creswell was not wrong in her supposition that Mr. Benthall intended asking her to become his wife. It is not often that mistakes are made in such matters, despite all...

It was the autumn of the year, in the spring of which Walter Joyce had returned to London from Westhope. Six months had elapsed since he had read what he had almost imagined to...

The intention, one of the first which Marian Creswell had expressed after her marriage, and one which had so incensed Gertrude, of converting the girls' music-room into a boudoi...

Mr. Bokenham did not improve in the estimation either of the constituency of Brocksopp, or of those in London who had the guidance of electioneering matters in the borough in th...

Splendid as was the opportunity just offered to Walter Joyce by the parliamentary agents, it is more than probable that he would have declined to profit by it had the scene of a...

Marian remained standing where Walter Joyce had left her, gazing after his retreating figure until it had passed out of sight. At first so little did she comprehend the full mea...

Mr. Benthall's neat cob was not standing in a loose box in the Woolgreaves stable, as was its usual wont when its master had paid a visit to that hospitable mansion. On this occ...

The fact that his nieces had actually left the shelter of his roof, although, as he had hitherto believed, that result had been brought about by their own wilfulness and impatie...

Dr. Osborne's opinion of Mr. Creswell's serious state, and the absolute necessity for the old gentleman's immediate withdrawal from everything calculated to cause worry or excit...

The lives of the two girls at Lady Caroline's were so completely happy, that they were induced to doubt whether they had ever really lived before. The difference between their r...

The communication which Mr. Benthall, in his bluff offhand manner, had made to Walter Joyce, had surprised the latter very much and embarrassed him not a little. Ever since the...

Both Lord and Lady Hetherington were in the dining-room when Joyce entered, the former with his brown velveteen suit splashed and clay-stained, and his thick boots rich with the...

To have an income of fifteen thousand a year, and to be her own mistress, would, one would have imagined, have placed Marian Creswell on the pinnacle of worldly success, and ren...

The second day after Mrs. Creswell's visit to Helmingham, Walter Joyce was sitting in his chambers hard at work. The approaching change in his condition had affected him very li...