PREFACE I have been writing books for five-and-twenty years, novels of which I believe myself to be the author, in spite of the fact that I have been assured over and over again that they are not my own work. When I have on several occasions ventured to claim them, I have seldom been believed, which seems the more odd as, when others have claimed them, they have been believed at once. Before I put my name to them they were invariably considered... more...

CHAPTER I. I was on the point of leaving India and returning to England when he sent for me. At least, to be accurate—and I am always accurate—I was not quite on the point, but nearly, for I was going to start by the mail on the following day. I had been up to Government House to take my leave a few days before, but Sir John had been too ill to see me, or at least he had said he was. And now he was much worse—dying, it seemed,... more...

In tragic life, God wot,No villain need be! Passions spin the plot:We are betray'd by what is false within.—GEORGE MEREDITH. "I can't get out," said Sterne's starling, looking through the bars of his cage. "I will get out," said Hugh Scarlett to himself, seeing no bars, but half conscious of a cage. "I will get out," he repeated, as his hansom took him swiftly from the house in Portman Square, where he had been dining, towards that other... more...

CHAPTER I Grim Fate was tender, contemplating you,And fairies brought their offerings at your birth; You take the rose-leaf pathway as your due,Your rightful meed the choicest gifts of earth. —Arthur C. Legge. Fay stood on her balcony, and looked over the ilexes of her villa at Frascati; out across the grey-green of the Campagna to the little compressed city which goes by the great name of Rome. How small it looked, what a... more...