In the small breakfast parlour of Oulton, a pretty girl, Miss Alice Maybell, with her furs and wrappers about her, and a journey of forty miles before her⁠—not by rail⁠—to Wyvern, had stood up to hug ...

In about an hour and a half this chaise reached the Pied Horse, on Elverstone Moor. Having changed horses at this inn, they resumed their journey, and Miss Alice Maybell, who had been sad and abstract...

The excited nerves of children people the darkness of the nursery with phantoms. The moral and mental darkness of suspense provokes, after its sort, a similar phantasmagoria. Alice Maybell’s heart gre...

Wyvern is a very pretty old house. It is built of a light gray stone, in the later Tudor style. A portion of it is overgrown with thick ivy. It stands not far away from the high road, among grand old ...

Alice Maybell grew up very pretty; not a riant beauty, without much colour, rather pale, indeed, and a little sad. What struck one at first sight was a slender figure, with a prettiness in every motio...

He talked very little that night in the old-fashioned drawing-room, where Alice played his favourite old airs for him on the piano, which he still called the “harpsichord.” He sat sometimes dozing, so...

Thus was old Squire Fairfield unexpectedly transformed, and much to the horror of pretty Alice Maybell, appeared in the character of a lover, grim, ungainly, and without the least chance of that brigh...

Swiftly she went to the window and raised it without noise, and in a moment they were locked in each other’s arms. “Darling, darling,” was audible; and⁠— “Oh, Ry! do you love me still?” “Adore you, da...

The sun, as I have said, was sinking among the western clouds with a melancholy glare; Captain Fairfield was pacing slowly to and fro upon the broad terrace that extends, with a carved balustrade, and...

The old Squire of Wyvern wandered from room to room, and stood in this window and that. An hour after the scene on the terrace, he was trembling still and flushed, with his teeth grimly set, sniffing,...

“Oh, darling, I can scarcely believe it,” she murmured, smiling, and gazing up with her large soft eyes into his, “it seems to me like heaven that I can look, and speak, and say everything without dan...

The high wall that surrounded the courtyard, and the towering foliage of the old trees, were gloomy. Still if the quaint stone front of the house had shown through its many windows the glow of life an...

Through an open door, at the end of this short gallery, the pleasant firelight gleamed, sufficiently indicating the room that had been prepared for her reception. She felt a little oddly and frightene...

Alice looked a little paler, her husband a little discontented. Each had a different way of reading her unpleasant speech. “Don’t mind that old woman, darling, don’t let her bore you. I do believe she...

Six o’clock came, and seven, and not until half-past seven, when they had nearly given him up, did Henry Fairfield arrive at the Grange. “How does Madam Fairfield?” bawled Master Harry, as he strode a...

“I’d tip you a stave, only I’ve got a hoarseness since yesterday, and I’d ask Alice to play a bit, only there’s no piano here to kick up a jingle with, and Charlie never sang a note in his life, and”⁠...

As she reached the top of the stairs she called to the old servant, not, I think, caring to traverse the haunted flooring that intervened alone. She heard Dulcibella talking, and a moment after her ol...

When the host and his guest had gone out together, to the paved yard, it was already night, and the moon was shining brilliantly. Tom had saddled the horse, and at the first summons led him out; and H...

When at last her husband entered the room where she awaited him that night⁠— “Oh! Charlie, it is very late,” said Alice, a little reproachfully. “Not very, is it, darling?” said he, glancing at his wa...

It was about four o’clock one afternoon, while Charles was smoking a cigar⁠—for notwithstanding his self-denying resolutions, his case was always replenished still⁠—that his brother Harry rode into th...

At last Harry, looking out of the window as he leaned back in his chair, said, in a careless sort of way, but in a low tone⁠— “Did you ever tell Alice anything about it before you came here?” “Alice?”...

Down the glen, all the way to the ruined windmill, sauntered Charles Fairfield, before he put his rod together and adjusted his casting line. Very nervous he was, almost miserable. But he was not a ma...

The carriage which Charles Fairfield had seen rounding the picturesque ruin of Gryce’s Mill, was that of Lady Wyndale. Mrs. Tarnley opened the door to her summons, and acting on her general instructio...

When Charles Fairfield came into the wainscoted dining-room a few minutes later it looked very cosy. The sun had broken the pile of western clouds, and sent low and level a red light flecked with trem...

That night the broad-shouldered child, Lilly Dogger, was up later than usual. An arrear of pots and saucepans to scour, along with customary knives and forks to clean, detained her. “Bustle, you hussy...

“You suffers dreadful, ma’am,” said Mildred Tarnley. “Do you have them toothaches still?” “ ’Twas not toothache⁠—a worse thing,” said the stranger, demurely, who, with closed eyes, and her hand proppi...

This stalwart lady stumbled and groped her way back to her chair, and sat down again in the kitchen. The chair in which she sat was an old-fashioned armchair of plain wood, uncoloured and clumsy. When...

“Will that beast never go to bed⁠—even there, I mind, she used to sleep with an eye open and an ear cocked⁠—and nowhere safe from her never⁠—here and there, up and down, without a stir or a breath, li...

When she reached the foot of the stairs that leads to the gallery on which the room occupied by Alice opens, instead of pursuing her way to the kitchen she turned into a narrow and dark passage that i...

The “Dutchwoman” resumed in a minute, and observed⁠— “Well, old Tarnley, there’s no good in talking where you can’t right yourself, and where you can revenge, there’s no good in talk either; but gone ...

A pretty medley was revolving in old Mildred’s brain as she stood outside this door, on the gallery. The epileptic old soldier, the puce gros de Naples, Tom on outpost duty on Cressley Common⁠—had he ...

In spite of her troubles, as she sat by the fire, looking out through the window, fatigue overcame Mildred, and she nodded. But her brain being troubled, and her attitude uneasy, she awoke suddenly fr...

Charles Fairfield talked of sleeping. There was little chance of that. He placed the candle on one of the two old oak cupboards, as they were still called, which occupied corresponding niches in the w...

In his dream, a pale frightened face approached him slowly, and recoiling uttered a cry. The scream was horribly prolonged as the figure receded. He thought he recognised someone⁠—dead or living he co...

Some lean, nervous temperaments, once fairly excited, and in presence of a substantial cause of uneasiness, are very hard to reduce to composure. After she had got back again, Mildred Tarnley fidgeted...

Alice had slept quietly for some time. The old clock at the foot of the stairs had purred and struck twice since she had ceased listening and thinking. It was for all that time an unbroken sleep, and ...

Alice had not gone far when she was seized with a great shivering⁠—the mediate process by which from high hysterical tension, nature brings down the nerves again to their accustomed tone. The air was ...

Her husband was at hand⁠—that is to say, under the same roof, and at that moment in the room in which the blind woman was now sitting, bleeding from head and hand, and smiling as she talked, with the ...

So far as a man not very resolute can be said to have made up his mind to anything, Charles Fairfield had quite made up his, driven thus fairly into a corner, to fight his battle now, and decisively. ...

Having her own misgivings as to the temper in which her master would take this coup of the arrest, Mildred Tarnley prudently kept her own counsel, and retreated nearly to the kitchen door, while the é...

In their homely sitting-room, with old Dulcibella in friendly attendance, Mildred Tarnley found Alice. It is not always that a dreadful impression makes itself immediately manifest. Nature rallies all...

Charles Fairfield, in true Fairfield wrath, had ridden at a hard pace, which helped to keep his blood up, all the way to the bridge of Wykeford. He had expected to overtake the magistrate easily befor...

Charles rode his horse slowly homeward. The moon got up before he reached the wild expanse of Cressley Common, a wide sea of undulating heath, with here and there a grey stone peeping above its surfac...

A few days had passed and a great change had come. Charles Fairfield, the master of the Grange, lay in his bed, and the Wykeford doctor admitted to Alice that he could not say what might happen. It wa...

The dreaded day came and passed, and Charles Fairfield was not dead, but better. The fever was abating, but never did the vital spark burn lower in living man. Seeing that life was so low in his patie...

About an hour after, old Dulcibella came to the door and knocked. Charles Fairfield had slept a little, and was again awake. Into that still darkened room she came to whisper her message. “Mr. Harry’s...

When a sick man dies he leaves his bed and his physic. His best friend asks him not to stay, and sweetheart and kindred concur in putting him out of doors, to lie in a bed of clay, under the sky, come...

In the evening Tom had looked in at his usual hour, and was recruiting himself with his big mug of beer and lump of bread and cheese at the kitchen table, and now the keen edge of appetite removed, he...

At dead of night Alice was very ill, and Tom was called up to ride across Cressley Common for the Wykeford doctor. Worse and worse she grew. In this unknown danger⁠—without the support of a husband’s ...

Harry Fairfield, when, crossing Cressley Common, he reached the road that diverges eastward, took that turn, and rode towards Hatherton. Surely enough he looked when he slackened his pace to a walk at...

Harry Fairfield was a captain in his county militia. It was right that the House of Fairfield should be represented in that corps. Charlie, who was of an easy compliant temper, would have taken the co...

Harry proved how hungry he was by eating a huge dinner. He had the old dining-room to himself, and sipped his brandy and water there by a pleasant fire of coal and spluttering wood. With a button or t...

A few days later Harry Fairfield rode from Wyvern into the picturesque little town of Wykeford, and passing the steep, narrow bridge, pulled up near the church, at the door of Dr. Willett. Harry had s...

In less than ten minutes the doctor came down. “Well?” said Harry, over his shoulder, turning briskly from the window. “No material change,” replied the doctor. “It’s not a case in which medicine can ...

Dr. Willett called regularly at the Grange, and kind Lady Wyndale was daily there, taking the doctor’s directions about jellies, wines, and such other good things as the depressed state of the patient...

The old folk can’t go on living always. The King’s messenger had called at Wyvern, and the old Squire must needs get up and go. Sickness was a cross he had never been used to bear, and now that it was...

In order to throw a light upon the nature of some of the duties of Mr. Archdale, we must convey the reader in spirit, to some little distance. In the sequestered country, about twelve miles south of T...

Marjory Trevellian was what is accounted among her class “a good scholar,” and she had taught the little boy to read and write, to “say his tables,” and to “cipher,” as she termed the initiatory arith...

I am going now to describe the occurrences of a particular evening on which my young friend drank tea at Stanlake Farm, which was the name of the house with the old garden to which I have introduced t...

Little Miss Amy had a slight cold, and the next tea-party was put off for a day. On the evening following Harry’s visit at Stanlake Farm, Marjory Trevellian being at that time absent in the village to...

Suppertime came, and Tom Orange did not return. Darkness closed over the old cottage, the poplar trees and the town, and the little boy said his prayers under the superintendence of worthy Marjory, an...

“I think, ma’am, the boy’s in the house. You’d best give him up, for I’ll not go without him. How many rooms have you?” “Three and a loft, sir.” The Sergeant stood up. “I’ll search the house first, ma...

At Noulton Farm each day was like its brother. Inflexible hours, inflexible duties, all proceeded with a regimental punctuality. At meals not a word was spoken, and while the master of the house was i...

The next day the Sergeant was away in his gig to Wyvern, a long journey, to report to the Squire, and obtain leave of absence from his duties for a day or two. He was to spend that night at Hatherton,...

At the George Inn, a little way out of Hatherton, the boy, to his inexpressible delight, at last found Tom Orange. He told Tom at once of his adventure at the shop window, and the occurrence darkened ...