Mrs. Stone

“ May be another case of 'out of the frying-pan into the fire'—a toss-up 'twixt 'Cilla and Charybdis, but——"
"Good Lord!" cried Stone, "and what did I say? You don't mean she's going to marry Dwight?"
"She can't help herself. He won't take no for an answer."
"Well—I'll—be—hanged," said Stone, reflectively, "and I ought to be. It's just what my wife said—when the daily readings were going on—would likely be the upshot of the whole business. She said more than that—and she knows women, too—that Priscilla Sanford would make for him the best kind of a wife." ”

“ Stone interrupted her. “Miss Ames, do you really think you killed your niece’s husband?”
“Oh, sir—I don’t know! I can’t think I did—”
“Of course, you didn’t, Aunt Abby!” Mason Elliott rose from his seat and paced up and down the room. “I must say, Mr. Stone, this is a childish performance! What makes you think any of us would say so, if we had killed Embury? It is utterly absurd!”
“You’re absurd, Elliott,” cut in Hendricks. “Mr. Stone is a psychologist. He learns what he wants to know not from what we say—but the way we say it. Right, Mr. Stone?” ”

“ Play-acting all the time, all dressed up in purple satin trousers and a green satin jacket all glittery with gold braid! I wish I had lots of money, so I could send them all tickets to come to the carnival,” her thoughts ran on, as homesickness for the place she had hoped never to see again rose up, treacherous and unwelcome, to dim her joy in the glorious miracle of David’s love.
“I suppose,” she confessed forlornly, “that Mrs. Stone is the only mother I’ll ever know. I wish I’d always been good, so she wouldn’t believe the awful things Clem Carson said about me. ”

“ Any time, almost, that may lead to such symptoms as you noted at parade."
"Lucky Dwight isn't a drinking man," said Stone grimly. "There won't be any more Banner of Light descriptions of our depravity for a time, anyhow; but—fancy the story that would make in expert hands—and a Prohibition sheet. God grant no worse scandal come to us," he added piously, and in guarded tone, as the surgeon took his leave.
It was barely nine o'clock when, some garrison callers having departed, Mrs. Stone picked up a light wrap and said she believed she would stroll down the line and see Mrs. Ray. ”

“ Hundreds of times, when I have been busy with my lessons, she has come to the study, and, rapping at the door, has asked to speak to my governess. I could hear her plainly saying: "Do you think Sir Roland would like this?" And they would consult most eagerly about it. I never once heard my name mentioned.
"Miss Reinhart," I asked her one morning. "Why do you never think or speak of my mother? Mrs. Stone never inquires what she would like." ”

“ His wife cannot stay under the same roof and live, says the maid. Madame must repose herself, or die. Mrs. Stone says she might take the mistress under our roof, but she'll be damned if she'll take the maid—at least she meant that. I said it. The maid says the mistress will die if they are separated an instant, which suggests a happy end to one of our troubles, and the cause of all the rest; and to cap the climax, Billy Ray's boy has done the maddest thing ever dreamed of in Dakota. Why, doctor, I tell you it can't be doubted! Foster wires the identification was complete. ”

“ Stone.
She was not afraid of startling them. The story of her return had leaked out; the Boston papers had given it publicity. So she went in Mrs. Stone's carriage the next morning to the great jewelers, and was received by them with the greatest affability. They overwhelmed her with congratulations on her resurrection. But when she asked about her diamond necklace they told her an amazing story. Ivan Belmont had come to them soon after her supposed death, and redeemed the necklace by the payment of a thousand dollars, acting, he claimed, under the instructions of his mother. ”

“ Stone was seated before the fire, reading the newspaper. A comprehensive cigar was securely wedged in the corner of his mouth, and his long legs, culminating in their ungainly feet, dangled like overweighted pendulums from the arm of the chair.
Sprague laughed. He advanced on Stone, executing a hornpipe like a maniac, and laughed still louder when the American gazed up at him without a semblance of a smile. He slapped him on the back like a fool, and laughed again at his discomfiture. The world—even the Gray's Inn Road—was an intensely amusing place that morning. ”

“ Kathleen has mysteriously disappeared under circumstances that hint of foul play.
"Benjamin Carew."
[Pg 187]
"Kathleen gone! Oh, Heaven! my little darling!" groaned the young man, forgetting all about his new fancy in real grief and dismay.
Mrs. Stone burst into tears, and for a few minutes one could not comfort the other.
But women are more quick-witted than men, and Mrs. Stone, who knew nothing about Ivan Belmont and the diamonds, quickly leaped to a conclusion.
"Those asylum people—the fools!—have captured her again, and carried her off to their old prison!" ”

“ Ah, many's the time, when my poor dear husband was alive, did I pine for a kind word, and get a black look instead! And a woman can turn to no one in a trouble like that. She feels as if her own door had been slammed in her face. What you want is a cheerful outing with a sympathetic friend, but I hear you're little more than a prisoner in your own house."
"Who told yer that?" cried Ada, flushing angrily.
"A little bird told me," said the woman, with a false grin.
"Well, I'd wring its neck, if I 'eard it," cried Ada. "And as fer bein' a prisoner, I'm goin' out this very afternoon." ”

“ This is not one of Mr Stone's happiest efforts, but it is a nice picture, and we prefer it to his other in the same exhibition, The Gardener's Daughter, a young lady attitudinising under a rose-tree, with a pair of admiring swains in the distance. This artist is too apt to give his male lovers a sickly look, as if their love disagreed with them. The best picture he has shown this year is one in the British Institution—Sympathy—two very pretty maidens, with an expression of pleasing sentiment in their faces. Barring a little occasional mannerism, Mr Stone is a very delightful painter ”

“ Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Colonel Higginson, and my dear pastor, James Freeman Clarke. But here was also Lucy Stone, who had long been the object of one of my imaginary dislikes. As I looked into her sweet, womanly face and heard her earnest voice, I felt that the object of my distaste had been a mere phantom, conjured up by silly and senseless misrepresentations. Here stood the true woman, pure, noble, great-hearted, with the light of her good life shining in every feature of her face. Here, too, I saw the husband whose devotion so ably seconded her life-work. ”

“ Six months after the death of Mrs Yabsley, Ada and Mrs Herring sat in the back parlour of the Angel sipping brandy. They had drunk their fill and it was time to be going, but Ada had no desire to move. She tapped her foot gently as she listened to the other woman's ceaseless flow of talk, but her mind was elsewhere. She had reached the stage when the world seemed a delightful place to live in; when it was a pleasure to watch the people moving and gesticulating like figures in a play, without jar or fret, as machines move on well-oiled cogs. ”

“ It is a hard thing for a man to find himself by reason of illness suddenly stripped of the robe of command and forced to become only a lay figure, but it is harder yet to many a woman whose social powers were dependent mainly upon the rank of her husband to see herself, through his prostration, suddenly set aside as though of only vicarious consequence. Naturally, Mrs. Stone could not bear Captain Devers,—few of the women could,—and it was only through his own wife that the gossip of the garrison was apt to reach him, and Mrs. ”

“ As far as a man can be said to resemble a woman, so did, in looks and character, Timothy Stone his niece, save that his once coal-black hair is now white; his fishy eyes sunken, though keen as a razor; in height, five feet ten; of spare, alert figure, active as a prize racer, knowing as the jockey who rides him.
Elizabeth Stone is an older counter-part of her niece, save that she wears that fashionable mantle of to-day—the cloak of religion, in which, unlike her brother, she is so comfortable as never to allow it to fall from her angular shoulders. ”

“ I said, in an effort to speak lightly, for Stone's face had an ominous look, as if he were learning grave truths.
"Walls not only have ears, they have tongues," he returned. "These walls have already told me much of Miss Van Allen's character."
"Oh, how?" cried Winnie, "do tell us how you deduce and all that!" ”

“ For of its blank checks but one had been torn out, and the remaining stub gave the information that it was a check for ten thousand dollars drawn to the order of Anita Austin.
Those who looked at it stared incredulously.
“It is dated,” Stone said, “the date that Doctor Waring died.”
It was. Had this too, been given to the strange young woman, whom Stone was beginning to designate to himself by the title of adventuress? Was it possible that young girl, who seemed scarce more than a child, had some how maneuvered to get all this from a man whom she had deliberately fascinated and infatuated? ”

“ The more she gazed at the overflowing hay, the more she wished that he might lie there, if only for a little while till he grew warm and she could rest; the stone floor was so cold, and her arms were so tired. Surely, she thought, Mother Mary would not forbid her, she looked so loving and compassionate; and the white-winged angels, had they not all come down from the sky? So perhaps they would pity little brother and would take him with them when they flew back to heaven where everything was bright and happy. ”

“ The big chest laboured, was convulsed, and then quiet.
"He's gone!" said Healy, his voice sharp with greed and anger. "Gone—and he never told us where it was. Wasted his time talking about his fool wife and kid."
"Forget that," said Stone, crisply, himself trembling with excitement. "He was trying to tell us in his own way. Keep the women out of it, Healy. Give me that whisky. Lefty."
The Cockney did so, his eyes still glittering as he watched Stone's efforts to get some liquor between the old prospector's teeth, worn and stained, but stubbornly resisting. ”

“ Awaiting the arrival of Anita Frayne, Stone thought rapidly. Forming his judgments, as always, more by impressions than by words, he found himself believing in Pauline Stuart. She had bought the paper snake, she had lied about it, but many women would have done the same. Knowing that the purchase of the toy meant definite suspicion, wouldn’t any innocent girl have feared and dreaded that exposure? If she had been guilty, she would scarcely have dared deny the facts of buying it, lest it be proved against her, and make matters worse. ”

“ She met me with such an unsuspicious look, Philo, and bore herself with such an innocent air, that I not only could not say what I meant to say, but have promised to do what I have sworn never to do—accept the Colonel's unwelcome gift, and make her mistress of the new stone house."
"You are—a man," I answered. For what are men but fools where women of such enchantment are concerned!
He groaned, perhaps at the secret sarcasm hidden in my tone, and sat down unbidden at the table where I was writing. ”

“ Miss Mystery looked from Stone’s impassive face to Fibsy’s eager boyish countenance. Then she looked at Maurice Trask.
The latter showed deepest sympathy and interest but Trask also had a wary air, as if ready to interrupt any disclosures that might be damaging to the girl.
“First of all,” Stone said, “who sent you that telegram from San Francisco?”
“I don’t know.” The calm little face was as expressionless as Stone’s own, and she made her statement as straightforwardly as if it had been true.
“Miss Austin,” Stone spoke severely now, “it’s to your own advantage to adopt a more amenable manner. ”

“ But there was a murmur of dissatisfaction, and presently a tall man, very black, stood up and said he had nothing against Miss Stone personally, but he was free to confess that he did not like the idea of being taught by a woman. ”

“ Do you think Miss Carrington bought it herself?”
“I am sure she did not,” returned Pauline, but her voice and intonation were such that Stone turned quickly to look at her. She had gone pale, and her eyes looked frightened. “Oh, no,” she went on, hurriedly, “Aunt Lucy would never buy such a thing. She hated snakes.”
“I know that, but she must have gotten it somewhere. It is easier to think she put it round her throat herself than to think she let some one else do it.” ”

“ Stone sent us after her spectacles," explained Ann. "She left them in your sitting-room, ma'am, when she was up there seeing to the curtains this afternoon. She sent us, Miss Ella; she'd not go up herself at dark for the world."
"Did she send both of you?" was the almost sarcastic question.
"Ma'am, she knows neither one of us would dare to go alone."
"You are a pair of silly, superstitious girls," rebuked Miss Winter. "What is there in the north wing to frighten you, more than in any other part of the house? I am surprised at you ”

“ Oh, wake up, man! There are lots of good things left in life if you only get out and look for them.”
Stone gazed fixedly into the darkness.
“Please don't say any more,” he said. “It won't do any good, and I don't like to hear it; it's worse than the laugh.”
“Look here, Stone,” said Sprague firmly, “you're going to stay with me in London. We're going to take rooms that I know of in the Gray's Inn Road—not a very salubrious neighborhood for a man with slathers of money, but cheap and central for me. You'll come to the rehearsals and take an interest in 'Lorette' in spite of yourself. ”