General Books

It was a calm and hazy morning of Southern summer that on which I turned my face seaward from the "keep" of Beauseincourt, never, I knew, to see its time-stained walls again, save through the mirage of memory. There is an awe almost as solemn to me in a consciousness like this as that which attends the death-bed parting, and my straining eye takes in its last look of a familiar scene as it... more...

Just After The Ball. The storm-door closes with a bang! My escort, a stupid fellow, has said "Good-night!" He drives down the street in his old rattletrap of a coupe. I am so glad he is gone! And yet I am always afraid of burglars—or—something dreadful, whenever I go into the house alone so late at night. I bolt the inside door. I mount the hall-chair, left waiting by papa, and, trembling... more...

CHAPTER I THE STOWAWAY An English mist was rolling lazily inland from the sea. It half enveloped the two great ocean liners that lay tugging at their moorings in the bay, and settled over the wharf with a grim determination to check, as far as possible, the traffic of the morning. But the activity of the wharf, while impeded, was in no wise stopped. The bustle, rattle, and shouting were, in fact,... more...

CHAPTER I THE ESCAPE A great shout of applause went through the crowded hall as the Dragon-Fly Dance came to an end, and the Dragon-Fly, with quivering, iridescent wings, flashed away. It was the third encore. The dance was a marvellous one, a piece of dazzling intricacy, of swift and unexpected subtleties, of almost superhuman grace. It must have proved utterly exhausting to any ordinary being; but to... more...

CHAPTER I I To take Mark Sabre at the age of thirty-four, and in the year 1912, and at the place Penny Green is to necessitate looking back a little towards the time of his marriage in 1904, but happens to find him in good light for observation. Encountering him hereabouts, one who had shared school days with him at his preparatory school so much as twenty-four years back would have found matter for... more...

THE ENCHANTED RING. One of the most imposing buildings in Boston twenty years ago was a granite hotel, whose western windows looked upon a graveyard. Passing up a flight of steps, and beneath a portico of dignified granite columns, and so through an embarrassing pair of swinging-doors to the roomy vestibule,—you would there pause a moment to spit upon the black-and-white tessellated pavement. Having... more...

CHAPTER I HUSBANDS AND WIFE. Brock was breakfasting out-of-doors in the cheerful little garden of the Hôtel Chatham. The sun streamed warmly upon the concrete floor of the court just beyond the row of palms and oleanders that fringed the rail against which his Herald rested, that he might read as he ran, so to speak. He was the only person having déjeuner on the "terrace," as he named it to... more...

CHAPTER I. PLACE: TIME: CIRCUMSTANCE. Burleigh-Singleton is a pleasant little watering-place on the southern coast of England, entirely suitable for those who have small incomes and good consciences. The latter, to residents especially, are at least as indispensable as the former: seeing that, however just the reputation of their growing little town for superior cheapness in matters of meat and drink,... more...

CHAPTER I. SCHOOL BEGINS. Forty years ago Mr. Savory Gray was a prosperous merchant. No gentleman on 'Change wore more spotless linen or blacker broadcloth. His ample white cravat had an air of absolute wisdom and honesty. It was so very white that his fellow-merchants could not avoid a vague impression that he had taken the church on his way down town, and had so purified himself for business.... more...

CHAPTER I. A NEW DISCOVERY DEEPENS A MYSTERY. When Mrs. Montague entered her room, an hour after Mona went up stairs, there was a deep frown upon her brow. She found Mona arrayed in a pretty white wrapper, and sitting before the glowing grate reading a new book, while she waited for her. "What are you sitting up for, and arrayed in that style?" she ungraciously demanded. "I thought you... more...