Little golden cloudlets, like winged living creatures, were hanging high up in the rosy glow above Santa Maria della Salute, and all along the Grand Canal the crowded gondolas were floating in a golde...

There was nothing but fair weather for the P. and O. steamer Berenice between Venice and Alexandria⁠—fair weather and a calm sea; and John Vansittart had ample leisure in which to think over what he h...

Nearly three years had gone by since that fatal night in Venice. It was midwinter, only a few days after Christmas, and Mrs. Vansittart and her son were spending their Christmas holidays within twenty...

While the Lancers were being danced to the good old hilarious tunes, which always give an air of boisterous gaiety to a public ballroom, Vansittart, ignoring all further obligations to his home party,...

It was long since Vansittart had been haunted by the face of a woman as he was haunted by the face of Eve Marchant. He had not come to nine and twenty years of age without one or two grandes passions,...

Why should he not marry Colonel Marchant’s daughter? Vansittart asked himself, in the quiet of those night watches which are said to bring counsel. Why should he not marry Eve Marchant? asked Jack Van...

The luncheon at Redwold Towers was a very sociable meal. Lady Hartley was at all times a gracious hostess, and she was perhaps a little more attentive to Colonel Marchant’s daughters than she would ha...

Vansittart spent five weeks at Merewood, hunting a good deal, dining with some of his neighbours once a week or so, and occasionally entertaining them at dinner or luncheon; tiring himself prodigiousl...

Vansittart tore open the blank envelope under one of the lamps at the back of the vestibule, while the crowd about the doors was gradually melting away, and the question “Cab or carriage?” was being a...

Before two o’clock next day Vansittart had been up and down more stairs than he ever remembered to have mounted and descended in a single day. He had inspected flats in the neighbourhood of the Strand...

Vansittart’s heart was lighter than it had been for a long time, the day he left Charles Street for Waterloo on his way to Haslemere. He longed to see Eve Marchant, with all a lover’s longing, and he ...

“And Mr. Sefton,” asked Vansittart, “what has he to do with this?” “He was with my brother at Cambridge⁠—in the same year, at the same college, Trinity. It was not till the year before last that he ev...

When a man is sole master of his estate and thoroughly independent of his kindred, his choice of a wife, if not altogether outrageous and unpardonable, must needs be accepted by his belongings. Vansit...

Lady Hartley, once being reconciled to the inevitable, was full of kindness for her brother’s future wife. Eve had seen nothing of London and its gaieties, and as the Hartleys had taken a house in Bru...

Sefton lifted his hat and passed quickly. Vansittart stood mutely watching his retreating figure, till it was lost among other figures moving to and fro along the Embankment. An empty hansom came cree...

Vansittart had made up his mind. Were that which he accounted but a dark suspicion to be made absolute certainty he meant still to cleave to the girl whom he had chosen for his wife, and who had given...

If Easter had been a time of happiness for Vansittart and Eve, bringing with it the revelation of mutual love, Whitsuntide was no less happy; happier, perhaps, in its serene security, and in the famil...

What a happy honeymoon it was, along the porphyry walls of Western England; what joyous days that were so long and seemed so short! There never was a less costly honeymoon, for the bride’s tastes were...

December’s fogs covered London as with a funeral pall, and hansom and four-wheeler crept along the curb more slowly than a funeral procession. It was the winter season, the season of cattle-shows, and...

If there were blue skies now and then in a London February, what was February along the Riviera but the most exquisite springtime? And perhaps on all that favoured shore, Cannes has the richest firstf...

Vansittart and his wife never went to the village in the mountains, where all things had been made ready for their coming. Eve spent that afternoon which should have been her last at Cannes in the bur...

Another Easter over, another season beginning, and with all the usual auguries of a season of exceptional splendour⁠—auguries to be exchanged later for dismal elegies upon a season of surpassing dulln...

It was summertime in London; the butterfly season, in which the metropolis of the world puts on such a splendour of gaiety and luxury that it is hard to remember the fog and damp and dreariness of a l...

Sophy arrived next day with portentous punctuality, in time for luncheon, intent on pleasure, and dressed in a style which she believed in as the very latest Parisian fashion; for this damsel credited...

Although in his leisurely ascent to the third story Mr. Sefton had time to recover the appearance of serenity, he was by no means master of himself as he waited for Lisa’s door to be opened. Still les...

Eve was very sorry for her husband after that tragical scene in the study; but what profiteth a jealous wife’s sorrow if she is unconvinced; if heart and brain are still racked with doubts and angry q...

Before addressing his confidences to Sophy Marchant, Mr. Sefton had assured himself that she did not belong to that exceptional order of womankind who, in honour and discretion, are on a level with wi...

Eve had learnt Madame Vivanti’s address from Lady Hartley the day after the singer’s appearance in Hill Street. So her letter to her husband written, and her mind made up, she had only to drive to Don...

Vansittart was the first to break that agony of silence. “Does this mean the end of love?” he asked. “Is all over and done with between you and me? Is love only a dream that we have dreamed?” “Yes; it...

Hail, dark mother of wanderers, parched nurse of lions! Amidst thy romantic wildernesses grief and dishonour may forget themselves; with thee man is only man! He leaves that other half of himself, rep...

As soon as Eve was well enough to be moved she left the rock and went to finish the winter at Dinard. The doctor who attended her through her illness suggested the south of France, Cannes for instance...

It was April, the third springtime after the parting of the wedded lovers, and to Eve it seemed as if many years had come and gone since she looked upon her husband’s face. She had endured her life so...

Pale, quiet, resolute, with her mind made up as to what she had to do, Eve Vansittart crossed the Piazzetta towards Florian’s Caffè, and slowly, very slowly, passed in front of the windows, looking at...