Romance Books

CHAPTER I The clock in the tower of the village church had just struck the quarter. In the southeast a pale dawn light was beginning to show above the curving hollow of the down wherein the village lay enfolded; but the face of the down itself was still in darkness. Farther to the south, in a stretch of clear night sky hardly touched by the mounting dawn, Venus shone enthroned, so large and brilliant,... more...

CHAPTER I The Master is inordinately fond of young fools. That is why they are permitted to rush in where angels fear to tread—and survive their daring! This supreme protection, this unwritten warranty to disregard all laws, occult or apparent, divine or earthly, may be attributed to the fact that none but young fools dream gloriously. For such of us as pretend to be wise—and we are but fools in a... more...

"You don't think it's too young for me, girls?" "Young for you—par exemple! I should say not," her niece replied, perking the quivering aigrette still more obliquely upon her aunt's head. Carolyn used par exemple as a good cook uses onion—a hint of it in everything. There were those who said that she interpolated it in the Litany; but Carolyn, who was born Caroline... more...

CHAPTER I “I sometimes think that one’s past life is written in a foreign language,” said Mrs. Bowring, shutting the book she held, but keeping the place with one smooth, thin forefinger, while her still, blue eyes turned from her daughter’s face towards the hazy hills that hemmed the sea thirty miles to the southward. “When one wants to read it, one finds ever so many words which one cannot... more...

CHAPTER I A great roar of British voices pierced the jewelled curtain of the Indian night. A toast with musical honours was being drunk in the sweltering dining-room of the officers' mess. The enthusiastic hubbub spread far, for every door and window was flung wide. Though the season was yet in its infancy, the heat was intense. Markestan had the reputation in the Indian Army for being one of the... more...

I Next morning he saw her again. He had left his very new law office, just around in Bienville Street, and had come but a few steps down Royal, when, at the next corner below, she turned into Royal, toward him, out of Conti, coming from Bourbon. The same nine-year-old negro boy was at her side, as spotless in broad white collar and blue jacket as on the morning before, and carrying the same droll air... more...

I A flash of lightning. t the stair-foot the landlord stopped me. "Here, lad, take a candle. The stairs are dark, and, since I like your looks, I would not have you break your neck." "And give the house a bad name," I said. "No fear of that; my house has a good name. There is no fairer inn in all Paris. And your chamber is a good chamber, though you will have larger, doubtless, when... more...

CHAPTER I From John Grant's Diary Have I shown wisdom or made an arrant, egregious fool of myself? This, I suppose, is a question every man puts to himself after taking a sudden decision upon which a great deal depends. I have shaken the dust of the great city by the Hudson and forsaken its rich laboratories, its vast hospitals, the earnest workers who were beginning to show some slight interest... more...

SOUNDS FROM A DISTANT "C." -… — .-… -. Just a noise, that is all. But a very significant noise to Miss Nathalie Rogers, or Nattie, as she was usually abbreviated; a noise that caused her to lay aside her book, and jump up hastily, exclaiming, with a gesture of impatience:— "Somebody always 'calls' me in the middle of every entertaining chapter!" For that noise, that... more...

PRESENTS A SHAMELESS HEROINE After a day of rain the sun came out suddenly at five o'clock and threw a golden bar into the deep Victorian gloom of the front parlour. On the window-sill, midway between the white curtains, a pot of blue hyacinths stood in a cracked china plate, and as the sunlight shone into the room, the scent of the blossoms floated to the corner where Gabriella was patiently... more...