the tip of her nose nearly met the tip of her chin.

the tip of her nose nearly met the tip of her chin

very, very

business.

She looked at herself in profile

Polly was a slim girl of nineteen

Their passage had been booked. Could she still draw back after all he had done for her? He

I knew that two candles must be set at the head of a corpse

She was tired.

It was a dark rainy evening and there was no sound in the house.

E

The Halfpenny Marvel.

H’m, h’m! Well, well. Perhaps so...

smiling that peculiar little half-smile that women found so fascinating. Ah, Harold was too handsome, too handsome by far; that had been the trouble all along. No man had a right to such eyes, such lashes, and such lips; it was uncanny

Bill and Dennis ate enormously

William got up and went through the French windows into the garden, and as he stood there in the shadow he heard the bathers coming up the sandy road; their voices rang through the quiet

very cool.

William

It couldn’t wait; it was dancing already.

Laurie leaned forward and put his hand on Laura’s knee.

Exactly when the ball began Leila would have found it hard to say

But the difference between that dusty-smelling hall—with calico texts on the walls, the poor terrified little woman in a brown velvet toque with rabbit’s ears thumping the cold piano, Miss Eccles poking the girls’ feet with her long white wand—and this was so tremendous that Leila was sure if her partner didn’t come and she had to listen to that marvellous music and to watch the others sliding, gliding over the golden floor, she would die at least, or faint, or lift her arms and fly out of one of those dark windows that showed the stars.

Mrs. R.

a white hat with purple feathers,

I saw

impatient voice

timid, faintly astonished, but deeply admiring

leghorn

“I’ve forgotten too.”

What possible excuse could they make? It sounded such an appallingly heartless thing to do. Such a wicked advantage to take of a person because he happened to be helpless at the moment

white, terrified blancmange

What would it do?

almost frighteningly alive

squiz

Against the karakas.

green t

green b

Chapter I

Mr. Godfrey, for instance–though professionally a sort of consoler-general–seemed to be at a loss where to look for his own resources. Having no company to amuse him, and getting no chance of trying what his experience of women in distress could do towards comforting Miss Rachel, he wandered hither and thither about the house and gardens in an aimless uneasy way.

The true story of the broken marriage engagement comes first in point of time, and must therefore take the first place in the present narrative. Tracing my way back along the chain of events, from one end to the other, I find it necessary to open the scene, oddly enough as you will think, at the bedside of my excellent client and friend, the late Sir John Verinder.

We will not say this was the language of remorse–we will say it was the language of hysterics.

You live a great deal too much in the society of women. And you have contracted two very bad habits in consequence. You have learnt to talk nonsense seriously, and you have got into a way of telling fibs for the pleasure of telling them.

We had a meeting that evening of the Select Committee of the Mothers’-Small-Clothes-Conversion-Society. The object of this excellent Charity is–as all serious people know–to rescue unredeemed fathers’ trousers from the pawnbroker, and to prevent their resumption, on the part of the irreclaimable parent, by abridging them immediately to suit the proportions of the innocent son

I should call, unbecomingly flushed.

On Friday, nothing happened–except that one of the dogs showed signs of a breaking out behind the ears. I gave him a dose of syrup of buckthorn, and put him on a diet of pot-liquor and vegetables till further orders. Excuse my mentioning this. It has slipped in somehow. Pass it over please. I am fast coming to the end of my offences against your cultivated modern taste. Besides, the dog was a good creature, and deserved a good physicking; he did indeed.

Bating her lame foot and her leanness (this last a horrid draw-back to a woman, in my opinion), the girl had some pleasing qualities in the eye of a man. A dark, keen, clever face, and a nice clear voice, and a beautiful brown head of hair counted among her merits. A crutch appeared in the list of her misfortunes. And a temper reckoned high in the sum total of her defects.

In a minute more, Miss Rachel came downstairs–very nicely dressed in some soft yellow stuff, that set off her dark complexion, and clipped her tight (in the form of a jacket) round the waist. She had a smart little straw hat on her head, with a white veil twisted round it. She had primrose-coloured gloves that fitted her hands like a second skin. Her beautiful black hair looked as smooth as satin under her hat. Her little ears were like rosy shells–they had a pearl dangling from each of them. She came swiftly out to us, as straight as a lily on its stem, and as lithe and supple in every movement she made as a young cat. Nothing that I could discover was altered in her pretty face, but her eyes and her lips. Her eyes were brighter and fiercer than I liked to see; and her lips had so completely lost their colour and their smile that I hardly knew them again. She kissed her mother in a hasty and sudden manner on the cheek.

as you may have noticed, very severe.

But she seems to have lost pride, and proper feeling, and everything. She frightened me, father, when Mr. Franklin said those words. They seemed to turn her into stone. A sudden quiet came over her, and she has gone about her work, ever since, like a woman in a dream.”

“And mind, if you ever take to growing roses, the white moss rose is all the better for not being budded on the dog-rose, whatever the gardener may say to the contrary!”

throwing me off.

My lady rallied a little after having opened her heart to me–being, naturally, a woman of a high courage, as I have already told you.

“I told you I was uneasy about her,” he said. “And now you see why.”

melancholy

We reached the house, in the temper of two strange dogs, coupled up together for the first time in their lives by the same chain.

o miserably lean that he looked as if he had not got an ounce of flesh on his bones in any part of him.

How, and with what result, you shall presently see.

For all I can tell, everybody in the house may have known where the jewel was, last night

Then she remembered that the Diamond might take to shining of itself, with its awful moony light in the dark

If you know anything of the fashionable world, you have heard tell of the three beautiful Miss Herncastles. Miss Adelaide; Miss Caroline; and Miss Julia–this last being the youngest and the best of the three sisters, in my opinion; and I had opportunities of judging, as you shall presently see.

They were nearly as big as their brother; spanking, yellow-haired, rosy lasses, overflowing with super-abundant flesh and blood; bursting from head to foot with health and spirits.

Was the legacy of the Moonstone a proof that she had treated her brother with cruel injustice? or was it a proof that he was worse than the worst she had ever thought of him?

June the sixteenth brought an event which made Mr. Franklin’s chance look, to my mind, a worse chance than ever.

Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do

(Samuel, the footman)

Miss Rachel so particular about the dressing of her hair, and had never seen her look so bright and pretty as she did when she went down to meet Mr. Franklin in the drawing-room.

in the interests of truth

nd I declare, on my word of honour, that what I am now about to write is, strictly and literally, the truth.