Miss Sinclair

“ Sinclair noted, furthermore, that the other had a proper cowpuncher's pride in his dress. His bench-made boots molded his long and slender feet to a nicety and fitted like gloves around the high instep. The polished spurs, with their spoon-handle curve, gleamed and flashed, as he stepped with a faint jingling. The braid about his sombrero was a thing of price. These details Sinclair noted. The rest did not matter.
"The kid's asleep?" asked the stranger, casting a careless glance at the slim form of Jig. ”

“ I was reveling in the felicity of these anticipations and contrasting this hour of ardent hope with others of whose dissatisfaction and gloom I was yet mindful, when a sudden shadow fell across the broad band of light issuing from the library window, and Sinclair stepped out.
He had the appearance of being disturbed; very much disturbed, I thought, for a man on the point of marrying the woman for whom he professed to entertain the one profound passion of his life ”

“ I thought of Sinclair. He had given no token of the watch he was keeping, but I knew he was sitting with his ear to the door, listening for the alarm which must come soon if it came at all.
But would it come at all? Were we not wasting strength and a great deal of emotion on a dread which had no foundation in fact? What were we two sensible and, as a rule, practical men thinking of, that we should ascribe to either of these dainty belles of a conventional and shallow society the wish to commit a deed calling for the vigour and daring of some wilful child of nature? ”

“ He had never seen anything like the prettiness, the dainty precision that she brought to it. He had never seen anything so pretty as Ally herself, in the rough gray tweed that exaggerated her fineness and fragility; never anything so distracting and at the same time so heartrending as the gray muff and collar of squirrel fur, and the little gray fur hat with the bit of blue peacock's breast laid on one side of it like a folded wing. ”

“ Sinclair exploded. "You're a queer bird, Jig. What do you mean by 'friend'?"
"Why not?" asked this amazing youth, and the quiet of his face brightened into a smile. "I'd be swinging from the end of a rope if it weren't for you, you know."
Sinclair shrugged away this rejoinder. He trod heavily to the bookshelves, took up two or three random volumes, and tossed them heedlessly back into place.
"Well, kid, you're going to be yanked out of this little imitation world of yours pretty pronto." ”

“ Sinclair saved his life. He's gone away, and I've waited and waited for him to come back—and perhaps I'll never see him again. But oh! dear lady, I'll never forget what your husband did. He's a good man, and he deserves the love of a dear good woman like you, and if I dared I'd pray for you both, night and day.”
She stopped suddenly and sank back in her seat, pale as before, and as if frightened by her own emotion. Mrs. Sinclair had listened with sympathy and increasing interest. ”

“ Sinclair was an English artist who had settled in Canada some time previous to our arrival, and, being generally well informed, as well as a shining light in his own profession, he was made much of by the English residents here, and had as pupils many of the wives and daughters of the officers of the garrison, besides some of the more cultivated Canadians. Mrs. Sinclair was a refined English lady of good family, and had several children, mostly girls, who were greatly admired not only for their beauty, but also for their many and various accomplishments. ”

“ I doubted if Sinclair had remembered him either. Yet he must have been unconsciously sharing our watch from start to finish; must even have heard the cry as only a waking man could hear it. Should I ask him if this was so? No. Perhaps I had not the courage to hear his answer.
Shortly after my return into the main hall I heard steps on the grand staircase. Looking up, I saw the two girls descending, followed by Sinclair. He had been successful, then, in inducing Dorothy to come down. What would be the result? Could I stand the suspense of the impending interview? ”

“ Sinclair, as he bent his head and touched with his lips the sunken cheek dearer to him now than it had been in all its girlish roundness. The blood had begun to cast a slight tinge of red into the lips of Mary Sinclair before Captain Percy had left the room in search of the men whom he was unwilling to leave behind him, and when he returned, the tremor of her form and the close clasp with which she clung to her father, proved that her consciousness and her memory were awake. ”

“ Sinclair, bears the solemn impress of his presence. Beside the bed on which the lifeless limbs have been composed with tender care, the pastor kneels. His prayer is no longer, "Let this cup pass from me"—he is struggling for power to say, "Father, not my will, but Thine be done!" In an upper room lies Mary Sinclair. Tears are falling fast as summer rain-drops from her closed eyes; but she utters neither sob nor moan, and by the dim light of the shaded lamp she seems to the two women, who, with well-meant but officious kindness, have insisted on watching with her through the night, to sleep. ”

“ Every reader of The Divine Fire, in fact every reader of any of Miss Sinclair’s books, will at once accord her unlimited praise for her character work. The Three Sisters reveals her at her best. It is a story of temperament, made evident not through tiresome analyses but by means of a series of dramatic incidents. The sisters of the title represent three distinct types of womankind. In their reaction under certain conditions Miss Sinclair is not only telling a story of tremendous interest but she is really showing a cross section of life. ”

“ United we stand, divided we fall, Sinclair; and let there be no moaning of the bar when a Cardigan puts out to sea.”
Smiling, he rose from his desk, patted the bewildered Sinclair on the latter's grizzled head, and then reached for his hat. “I'm dining out to-night, Sinclair, and I wouldn't be a kill-joy at the feast, for a ripe peach. Your confounded figures might make me gloomy; so we'll just reserve discussion of them till to-morrow morning. Be a sport, Sinclair, and for once in your life beat the six o'clock whistle. ”

“ Sinclair was a woman who lived for society; she had long ago cast aside as Puritanical the wholesome restraints that had governed her girlhood. What with parties, operas and theatres, she was a very busy woman. Her young family was much neglected and she was only too glad to transfer to her old mother what little care she did give them. ”

“ At last, one morning, as soon as Laura got up, Lady Harriet gravely led her towards a large table on which all the ill-used frocks had been laid out in a row; and a most dismal sight they were! Such a collection of stains and fractures was probably never seen before! A beggar would scarcely have thanked her for her blue merino; and the green silk frock looked like the tattered cover of a worn-out umbrella.
“Laura,” said Lady Harriet, “in Switzerland a lady’s wardrobe descends to many generations; but nobody will envy your successor! ”

“ He could hardly believe that she was the same woman he had known in the old days; she was so quiet—so hard! It struck fear to his heart to watch her.
Then suddenly she gave a glance at him. "You look as if you had been having a rough time of it yourself," she said.
"I have," he answered. "I haven't a cent in my pockets, and nothing to do." ”

“ He looked at the girl, who sat staring before her, bent forward, her arms hanging limply over her knees.
"Mary," he said, "you must go away from here! It's no place for a tenderhearted girl to be. It's no place for any one!" ”

“ It will be remembered that Miss Sinclair had registered from Philadelphia, or, rather, Ben had done so for her.
"Have you any young lady here without escort?" asked Mr. Campbell.
"No, sir. There is a young lady from Philadelphia, but she arrived with her cousin, a lad of fifteen or sixteen."
"That cannot be the one I am in search of," said the unsuspecting guardian.
Of course, as the reader will readily surmise, Ida Sinclair was not the young lady's real name, but it is the name by which we shall know her for the present.
After supper Ben went to Miss Sinclair's room, as directed. ”

“ As she crossed the road a shell fell in the open field beyond, and burst, throwing up a great splash and spray of brown earth. She stiffened herself in an abrupt gesture of defiance. Her mind retorted: "You've missed, that time. You needn't think I'm going to put myself out for you." To show that she wasn't putting herself out (in case they should be looking) she strolled with dignity to her car, selected carefully the kind of splint she needed, and returned. She thought: Oh well—supposing they do hit. We must get those men out before another comes.
John looked up as she came to him. ”

“ After Stella had gone, Mrs. Sinclair sank down on the sofa by the heavily draped window to hold brief communion with herself as was her wont when questions or thoughts of more than usual importance arose in her mind. There was only a few moments in which to thus commune, but Mrs. Sinclair possessed that distinctly feminine ability to evolve various extraordinary theories on a given subject and yet deduct therefrom a logical conclusion in about half the time it would take a less intuitive brain to lose itself completely in an inextricable tangle of reasons and vagaries. ”

“ No man, having once seen this, ever wants to witness it again. Concentrated hell and torture with every moment, stabbing and pulling at each heart and then—then the sad, mournful face of Andrew Marshall as he steps forward slowly past Mag Robertson, past Jean Fleming, past Jenny Maitland, past them all, and at last putting a kindly hand on the shoulder of Nellie Sinclair, he says, with a catch in his voice that would break a heart of granite: "Come awa' hame, Nellie. Come awa' hame. Ye'll need to bear up." ”

“ Literary characters, the literary life, and sex problems enter pretty largely into Miss Sinclair’s novels, but she has never like so many of the successful settled down to run in a groove; she does not repeat herself. She has not accepted ready-made formulas of art but has been continually reaching out for new ways of advance. ”

“ In the person of Ralph Sinclair, her woman's ready wit had been quick to discover a man of more than ordinary intelligence, capable of noble actions from honourable motives. Well-formed, and strongly-built, with a pair of dark, thoughtful-looking eyes beneath a broad, high forehead, his appearance won her admiration,—-a sentiment, circumstance, or feeling, known only to herself, and carefully hidden within the treasury of her own breast. ”

“ Her arrogance had been beyond all bearing since John, the third son, had been born.
And it was Frances, after all, who had made him buy West End House for her own reasons. Both the day nursery and the night nursery had windows to the south. It was the kind of house she had always dreamed of living in, and of Michael, or Nicky living in after she and Anthony were gone. It was not more than seven minutes' walk from the bottom of the lane to the house where her people lived. She had to think about the old people when the poor dears had come up to London in order to be thought about. ”

“ He told about the part Mary had played in the strike; trying to entertain the poor old man, he told how he had seen her mounted upon a snow-white horse, and wearing a robe of white, soft and lustrous, like Joan of Arc, or the leader of a suffrage parade.
"Sure," said Mary, "he's forever callin' attention to this old dress!"
Hal looked; she was wearing the same blue calico. "There's something mysterious about that dress," said he. "It's one of those that you read about in fairy-stories, that forever patch themselves, and keep themselves new and starchy. A body only needs one dress like that!" ”

“ It wasn't as if she had been a cold and selfish woman like her sister. She wasn't cold; and, as for selfish, he had seen her with Agatha and the little girls. It was through the little girls that he had made love to her, that being the surest and shortest way. He had worked it through Ninon and Odette; he had carried them on his back by turns that very afternoon, in the heat of the sun, all the way, that terrible winding way, up the Californie Hill to the Observatory at the top, where they had sat drinking coffee and eating brioches, he and Vera and Ninon and Odette. ”

“ He admired and envied George Sinclair profoundly. To return after three years’ fighting with a pierced lung and covered with glory was a splendid record in young John’s estimation. He awaited Sinclair’s return impatiently, eager for first-hand information of the wonderful doings in which he had longed to take part; while Esmé awaited his coming with misgivings, and wondered what she would find to say to him when they met. She recalled very vividly his coming to say goodbye to her on the evening before he sailed. ”

“ Her elbow touched the shoulder of a young man [11] on her left. The fur tippet slipped again and lay at the young man's feet. He picked it up, and as he handed it to her he stared into her face, and sleeked his little moustache above a furtive, objectionable smile. His companion (Jane's uninteresting man) , roused from communion with the spirit of Veuve Cliquot, fixed on the lady a pair of blood-shot eyes in a brutal, wine-dark face.
She stood there, strangely still, it seemed to Lucy, before the pitiless stare that went up, right and left, to her appealing face. ”

“ Sinclair was full of zeal and set off next day after breakfast. From the drawing-room window we watched his triumphant entry into the farm-yard at the foot of the hill. But he came back in a dejected frame of mind.
"She's called Suzanne," he told us, "and she's quite a nice-looking sort of woman, and she handles a turnip-cutter like an expert; but she talks nothing but Flemish."
"We might have thought of that," said the Reverend Henry. "Still, I daresay they'll manage all right."
"On the contrary," said Sinclair. "Henderson sent Suzanne to get the letters last night. ”