CHAPTER I Much as I wished to see him I had kept my letter of introduction three weeks in my pocket-book. I was nervous and timid about meeting him–conscious of youth and ignorance, convinced that he was tormented by strangers, and especially by my country-people, and not exempt from the suspicion that he had the […]

CHAPTER I Much as I wished to see him I had kept my letter of introduction three weeks in my pocket-book. I was nervous and timid about meeting him–conscious of youth and ignorance, convinced that he was tormented by strangers, and especially by my country-people, and not exempt from the suspicion that he had the […]

Mrs. Highmore’s errand this morning was odd enough to deserve commemoration: she came to ask me to write a notice of her great forthcoming work. Her great works have come forth so frequently without my assistance that I was sufficiently entitled on this occasion to open my eyes; but what really made me stare was […]

I find, as you prophesied, much that’s interesting, but little that helps the delicate question–the possibility of publication. Her diaries are less systematic than I hoped; she only had a blessed habit of noting and narrating. She summarised, she saved; she appears seldom indeed to have let a good story pass without catching it on […]

I. FROM MISS AURORA CHURCH, AT SEA, TO MISS WHITESIDE, IN PARIS. . . . My dear child, the bromide of sodium (if that’s what you call it) proved perfectly useless. I don’t mean that it did me no good, but that I never had occasion to take the bottle out of my bag. It […]

CHAPTER I. I was not rich–on the contrary; and I had been told the Pension Beaurepas was cheap. I had, moreover, been told that a boarding- house is a capital place for the study of human nature. I had a fancy for a literary career, and a friend of mine had said to me, “If […]

CHAPTER I Yes indeed, I say to myself, pen in hand, I can keep hold of the thread and let it lead me back to the first impression. The little story is all there, I can touch it from point to point; for the thread, as I call it, is a row of coloured beads […]

PART I. I. She was certainly a singular girl, and if he felt at the end that he did n’t know her nor understand her, it is not surprising that he should have felt it at the beginning. But he felt at the beginning what he did not feel at the end, that her singularity […]

CHAPTER I. It was at Homburg, several years ago, before the gaming had been suppressed. The evening was very warm, and all the world was gathered on the terrace of the Kursaal and the esplanade below it to listen to the excellent orchestra; or half the world, rather, for the crowd was equally dense in […]

CHAPTER I “They’ve got him for life!” I said to myself that evening on my way back to the station; but later on, alone in the compartment (from Wimbledon to Waterloo, before the glory of the District Railway) I amended this declaration in the light of the sense that my friends would probably after all […]

CHAPTER I It has long been the custom of the North German Lloyd steamers, which convey passengers from Bremen to New York, to anchor for several hours in the pleasant port of Southampton, where their human cargo receives many additions. An intelligent young German, Count Otto Vogelstein, hardly knew a few years ago whether to […]

CHAPTER I The poor young man hesitated and procrastinated: it cost him such an effort to broach the subject of terms, to speak of money to a person who spoke only of feelings and, as it were, of the aristocracy. Yet he was unwilling to take leave, treating his engagement as settled, without some more […]

“There are several objections to it, but I’ll take it if you’ll alter it,” Mr. Locket’s rather curt note had said; and there was no waste of words in the postscript in which he had added: “If you’ll come in and see me, I’ll show you what I mean.” This communication had reached Jersey Villas […]

I The houses were dark in the August night and the perspective of Beacon Street, with its double chain of lamps, was a foreshortened desert. The club on the hill alone, from its semi-cylindrical front, projected a glow upon the dusky vagueness of the Common, and as I passed it I heard in the hot […]

I The train was half an hour late and the drive from the station longer than he had supposed, so that when he reached the house its inmates had dispersed to dress for dinner and he was conducted straight to his room. The curtains were drawn in this asylum, the candles were lighted, the fire […]

I She had walked with her friend to the top of the wide steps of the Museum, those that descended from the galleries of painting, and then, after the young man had left her, smiling, looking back, waving all gayly and expressively his hat and stick, had watched him, smiling too, but with a different […]

I ‘Why, Cousin Raymond, how can you suppose? Why, she’s only sixteen!’ ‘She told me she was seventeen,’ said the young man, as if it made a great difference. ‘Well, only just!’ Mrs. Temperly replied, in the tone of graceful, reasonable concession. ‘Well, that’s a very good age for me. I’m very young.’ ‘You are […]

I It was one of the secret opinions, such as we all have, of Peter Brench that his main success in life would have consisted in his never having committed himself about the work, as it was called, of his friend Morgan Mallow. This was a subject on which it was, to the best of […]

“And I–what I seem to my friend, you see– What I soon shall seem to his love, you guess. What I seem to myself, do you ask of me? No hero, I confess.” A Light Woman.–Browning’s Men and Women. April 4, 1857.–I have changed my sky without changing my mind. I resume these old notes […]

CHAPTER I. “I wondered whether you wouldn’t read it to me,” said Mrs. Alsager, as they lingered a little near the fire before he took leave. She looked down at the fire sideways, drawing her dress away from it and making her proposal with a shy sincerity that added to her charm. Her charm was […]