Fiction Books

CHAPTER I HERMIA Titine glanced at the parted curtains and empty bed, then at the clock, and yawned. It was not yet eight o'clock. From the look of things, she was sure that Miss Challoner had arisen and departed for a morning ride before the breaking of the dawn. She peered out of the window and contracted her shoulders expressively. To ride in the cold morning air upon a violent horse when she... more...

On his fortieth birthday Martin Sutter decided life was too short to continue in the rut that had been his existence for more than twenty years. He withdrew his savings from the Explosion City Third Federal Bank, stopped in a display room and informed a somewhat surprised clerk he was taking the electric runabout with the blue bonnet. The ground-car, complete with extras, retailed for a tidy three... more...

MADE TO MEASURE Mr. Mott brought his niece home from the station with considerable pride. Although he had received a photograph to assist identification, he had been very dubious about accosting the pretty, well-dressed girl who had stepped from the train and gazed around with dove-like eyes in search of him. Now he was comfortably conscious of the admiring gaze of his younger fellow-townsmen.... more...

MAN PROPOSES. "H'm! And you scarcely remember your mother, I suppose?" "No, Lucian; I was such a mere babe when she died, I have often wondered what it would be like to have a mother. Auntie Hagar was always very kind to me, however; so kind, in fact, that my step-father, fearing, he said, that I would grow up self-willed and disobedient, sent her away, and procured the services of the... more...

Chapter I There was a new snow over the village. Indeed, it had ceased to fall only at sunset, and it was now eight o'clock. It was heaped apparently with the lightness of foam on the windward sides of the roads, over the fences and the stone walls, and on the village roofs. Its weight was evident only on the branches of the evergreen-trees, which were bent low in their white shagginess, and lost... more...

Guy de Maupassant Guy de Maupassant was born at the Chateau de Miromesnil, near Dieppe, on August 5th, 1850. The Maupassants were an old Lorraine family who had settled in Normandy in the middle of the Eighteenth Century. His father had married in 1846 a young lady of the rich bourgeoisie, Laure Le Poittevin. With her brother Alfred, she had been the playmate of Gustave Flaubert, the son of a Rouen... more...

"Yes! I'm not mistaken at all! It's the same woman!" whispered the tall, good-looking young Englishman in a well-cut navy suit as he stood with his friend, a man some ten years older than himself, at one of the roulette tables at Monte Carlo, the first on the right on entering the room—that one known to habitual gamblers as "The Suicide's Table." "Are you quite... more...

We are accustomed to speak with a certain light irony of the tendency which women have to gossip, as if the sin itself, if it is a sin, were of the gentler sex, and could by no chance be a masculine peccadillo. So far as my observation goes, men are as much given to small talk as women, and it is undeniable that we have produced the highest type of gossiper extant. Where will you find, in or out of... more...

CHAPTER I. SCENE. Deck of an ocean steamer. Characters:Mrs. Jerrold, matron and chaperon in general.Edith Jerrold, her daughter.Albert Madden, a young man on study intent.Eric, his brother, on pleasure bent.Norman Mann, cousin of the Jerrolds, old classmate of theMaddens.Mae Madden, sister of the brothers and leading lady. "It's something like dying, I do declare," said Mae, and as she... more...

CHAPTER IIN NOLLAFor nearly twenty years the fine old castle had stood silent and deserted on the mountain-side. In its neighborhood not a sound could be heard except the twittering of the birds and the soughing of the old pine-trees. On bright summer evenings the swallows whizzed as before about the corner gables, but no more merry eyes looked down from the balconies to the green meadows and richly... more...