Florence Warden

“ She was dressed in écru-colored lace over pale pink, and her sunshade matched her gown. A hat of pale pink with écru-colored outstanding feathers completed an elaborate and handsome toilet.
Gerard was suddenly convinced, as he had not been before, that it was she, and no other, whom he had met, in the shabby frock and battered hat, that night in the crowd. He went up to the side of the carriage and raised his hat, feeling, as he did so, as if the excitement and the suspicions he felt must be discernible in his looks. ”

“ Tregenna thought there was something of despair in his attitude, and in the wild gaze with which he looked about him, staring first at the gray sea, the edge of which was like a roll of white vapor, and then at the frowning cliff above him. He seemed to be listening for some voice, some footstep.
“Come,” said the lieutenant, in a cheery tone, “don’t lose thy spirit, boy; thou showedst enough and to spare but an hour since. Thy comrades are gone, ’tis true, and thou art left alone. ”

“ The whole of this most unexpected scene formed only a hazy and harmonious background in George Lauriston’s eyes; for in front of him on the divan, between the two trellised windows, lay a creature so bewitchingly unlike anything of flesh and blood he had ever seen or dreamed of, that the young Englishman felt his brain swim, and held his breath with a great fear lest the dazzling vision before him should melt away, with the scents and the soft lights and the rustle of the night air in the hanging draperies, into the drizzling rain and the damp and the darkness of the street outside. ”

“ It was the other figure that absorbed all their powers of vision—a slender girl in a print frock, with a white cotton blouse and an enormous straw hat. This was the Nell who wasted the time of half the young men of Stroan, and who would have wasted the time of half the young men of London if they had only once seen her. A beauty of pure Saxon type she was, with the opaque white skin which the sun does not scorch or redden, with rose-pink cheeks, a child’s pouting mouth, and big blue eyes that made a young man hold his breath. ”

“ Lady Sarah went into her dressing-room, and, being able to dress in the most surprisingly rapid fashion when she chose, emerged thence a quarter of an hour later radiant and refreshed, in a clinging gown of golden-brown satin, veiled in net of gold thread, and trimmed with a huge bunch of red velvet flowers on the left hand side of her bodice. With a butterfly of gold thread in her dark hair, and a single row of big diamonds round her throat, Lady Sarah looked as beautiful as a Princess in a fairy tale. ”

“ A cry of horror broke from her lips when, turning her eyes at once towards a big divan which stood under the window, she saw lying at full length upon it the body of the woman in the white dress.
Her white hat was crushed and bent under her poor lifeless head; one hand, still in its long wrinkled white kid glove, was outstretched as if in a last convulsion; one white kid, high-heeled walking shoe lay on the floor. The white ostrich feather boa which had floated round her shoulders when Audrey saw her alive was twisted round her thin throat. ”

“ The appearance of the beautiful country girl, with her modest, straightforward manner, and handsome, yet most innocent, eyes, had been like a draught of fresh, sweet air to a man coming out of a chamber foul with asphyxiating gases—not without a certain chilling effect, but refreshing, invigorating, pure—reminding him of the wholesome joys of the life he had left, and contrasting them with the feverish, soul-deadening pleasures of the life he was leading. ”

“ At dinner-time Mr. Rayner did not appear; I was too shy to ask Mrs. Rayner the reason, and I could only guess, when tea-time came and again there was no place laid for him, that he had gone away somewhere. I was sure of it when he had not reappeared the next morning, and then I became conscious of a slow but sure change, a kind of gradual lightening, in Mrs. Rayner’s manner. She did not become talkative or animated like any other woman; but it was as if a statue of stone had become a statue of flesh, feeling the life in its own veins and grown conscious of the life around it. ”

“ She offered him a chair, and he took it, while Joan, round about whose wide mouth a malicious smile was playing, disappeared into her own precincts of scullery and back-kitchen.
For some minutes there was dead silence, not the happy silence of two friends so secure in their friendship that they need not talk—the old-time silence which they had both loved, but a constrained, uncomfortable taciturnity, a leaden, speechless pause, during which Bram watched with feverish eyes the little face as it bent over her work, and noted that the outline of her cheek had grown sharper. ”

“ I knew by my own feelings that the shock of this tragic return to her would be a hundred times more severe to Babiole than if her bosom had been palpitating with sweet expectancy for the clasp of a loving husband's arms. Instead of the passionate yearning sorrow of a woman truly widowed, she would feel the far crueller stings of remorse none the less bitter that her conduct towards him had been blameless. ”

“ Scarcely a trace was left of the south aisle or the south transept. Between the ruined west front and the pillars on the south side of the choir there was nothing left but grass-grown mounds of fallen masonry and one solitary pillar, massive and erect as when, seven hundred years ago, pious hands placed the stones which were to defy, through long centuries, the biting sea air, the keen north wind, the storms which beat upon the cliffs, and the waves which, decade by decade, had sapped and swallowed up, bit by bit, the once fertile Abbey lands. ”

“ Her mind was filled with fears for the future—for her own, for her husband’s, for Lilian’s, for George’s, for that of all the family at the Grange, and for Aubrey’s. She did hate him deeply, this man who had cheated her into making her look upon him as the most gentle, most courteous, brightest of companions and the most devoted of friends, when he was really nothing but a volatile, unprincipled flirt, who made love indifferently to her, or to a coarse woman like Miss West, or to a little giddy creature like the girl to whom Miss Taylor had said he was engaged. ”

“ There were only two things left to dread: the death of her darling Gerard, which Lord Clanfield had almost told her to expect, and which she told herself she would not long survive; or her husband’s discovery of her desperate situation.
Deeply as he loved her, Audrey felt, with a sort of calm despair, that even his love would not be proof against the skill with which Mr. Candover would build up a case against her. And that this diabolically clever and cunning man, whom she had been simple enough to take for a friend, would add that last drop to the cup of her misery she felt convinced. ”

“ Shingle End was a pretty, tumbledown house, which stood at the angle formed by two roads. It had once been white, but neglect and hard weather had made it a mottled gray; while cracked and dusty windows, rickety shutters and untrimmed trees and bushes combined to give the place a dreary and unprosperous appearance.
Behind the house was a garden, with a poultry-run and a paddock; and Otto had seen, as they passed, the colonel reading his paper under an apple-tree, while the flutter of a petticoat in the background among the trees seemed to confirm their suspicions. ”

“ Gerard burst into a tirade of which the salient features were that he would have remained her friend if she had actually been one of the gang themselves, if she had been a card-sharper, if she had been a shop-lifter, if she had been a pickpocket. He loved her, and he knew that, whatever she might have done, she would never have been anything at heart but the noble and good woman whom he loved as he had always done. ”

“ When we got to Ballater the little shed of a station was crowded by rough villagers, all eagerly enjoying the splendid excitement of the arrival of the train. A dense, wet Scotch mist enveloped us as we stepped on to the platform, chilled by our cold journey; still, they both smiled with persistent happiness, which grew rapturous when we all got into a roomy fly which Mrs. Ellmer called 'your carriage.' They were charmed with the village, which looked, through the veil of fine rain, a most depressing collection of stiff stone and slate dwellings to my blasé eyes. ”

“ Sitting on the edge of the couch he put his arms round Nouna, drew her to him, and calmed her outburst of tearful petulance with tender, yearning caresses, so fond, so warm, with such depths of almost paternal protectiveness toning down and mingling with the ardent passion of the lover, that her fitful nature was soothed in a very few moments, and her arms made instinctively for his neck again as a baby turns to its mother’s breast, and the tears dried on her cheeks as she began to smile up confidingly into his face. ”

“ A little woman, plump, pink, childlike in face and figure, with wavy fair hair, infantine blue eyes, and a red-lipped mouth which was all the more lovable, more attractive for not being on the strict lines of beauty, Mrs. Dale had, so Mabin felt, exactly the right features and the right expression for the sweet voice she had just heard. And through the beauty, and through the voice, the girl, inspired perhaps by the mourning dress, thought she detected a sadness which seemed to her the most pathetic thing in the world. ”

“ The hall was full of people and of great bales of goods, which were piled upon the center-table and heaped up all around it.
"Doreen!" he called, sharply.
Out of the crowd there rushed a girl—such a girl! One of those radiant creatures who explain the cult of womanhood; who make it difficult even for sober-minded, middle-aged men and matrons to realize that this is nothing but flesh and blood like themselves; one of those beautiful creatures who claim worship as a right and who repay it with kindness and brightness and sweetness and laughter.
No house was ever dull that held Doreen Wedmore. ”

“ The air round the house seemed never free from mist; the pond overflowed and covered the bricks that had formed the footstool of my nest; the lower part of the garden that touched the marsh was a bog; the moss grew greener and thicker on the pillars of the portico, the untrimmed ivy that clung round the house and made it so beautiful dripped all day long, and bright green stains grew broader and broader down the side of that wing of the house where Mr. and Mrs. Rayner’s room was. ”

“ Rees Pennant’s brain was growing heated under the spell which the glittering fancy cast upon him. With stealthy feet he soon was pacing underneath the walls, as Amos Goodhare had done the winter and the summer long, now caressing the rugged old stones, now tearing away the ivy which covered them, maddened by that idea of hidden treasure to be had for the finding, which has played havoc with the reason of stronger men. ”

“ The blood has not yet cooled to any great extent at six and thirty, and blue eyes that have haunted you for seven years lose none of their witchery at that age, when the demon Reason throws his weight into the scale on the side of Evil, and tells you that the years are flitting by, carrying away the time for happiness, and that the beauty which steeps you to the soul in longing has been left unheeded by its possessor like a withered flower. But Babiole's perfect confidence was her safeguard and mine, and like the wind among the pines, I kept my tumults within due bounds. ”

“ The bare, ill-lighted cellar grew empty of all except the leader as if by magic, the men seeming to disappear into the bowels of the earth. As she looked, bending her head lower and lower with straining eyes to spy out the reason of this, Freda involuntarily drew a long breath of amazement. The solitary man left in the cellar looked up, as he was in the act of filling his own glass once more from the stone jar. The girl drew back with a cry, for a look of intense malignity passed over the man’s wrinkled face. ”

“ George Lauriston was of the highly nervous, imaginative temperament to which ambition, hope, devotion are as the springs of life; when these were stopped or dried up, he became at once the withered husk of a man, a helpless log, not chafing at his confinement, not resigning himself to it, but living through the dull days like a brute, without emotion, almost without thought, weighed down by a leaden depression which threatened to end in the most fearful of all madness—a haunted melancholy. He learned without interest on the second day after his arrest that Mr. Gurton was dead. ”

“ Olivia watched his retreating figure as long as it was in sight, and then, feeling sick and cold slunk back into her rooms, not forgetting to lock the outer door of the passage safely behind her. Like most women, however brave, when they have been through an exciting crisis, she felt exhausted, limp, almost hysterical. She staggered as she entered the bedroom, and it was with a reeling brain that she walked up and down, up and down, unable to sleep, unable even to rest. ”

“ The mysterious visitor, as much on the alert as the girl was, closed the door softly between her and himself.
Mabin, however, sprang forward and seized the door-handle. She heard the sound of rapid footsteps on the other side, and for one moment she hesitated to go in pursuit. With the clearness of intellect which belongs to the night, when there are no sounds of busy life, no distractions of bright light and vivid color to divert the attention, she saw both the dangers on the one hand, the attractions on the other, of a deeper dive into the mystery which surrounded her. ”

“ She was soon satisfied: first the distant mutterings, far underneath her feet, then the mounting of slow feet up stone steps; the voices subdued, but nearer; the moving of heavy burdens; a sound of weights falling; the chink of glasses; a low murmur of talk in men’s voices, the sounds gradually dying away. That was all. An hour, by the little clock on her mantelpiece, from the first sound to the last. Then all was quiet till morning, when Freda, after a disturbed night of short snatches of sleep, woke with a start to the memory of her undertaking. ”