When we reached the terraced walk, which my father made a little before his death, and which, running under the windows at the rear of the Chateau, separates the house from the new lawn, St. Alais looked round with eyes of scarcely-veiled contempt. "What have you done with the garden?" he asked, his lip curling. "My father removed it to the other side of the house," I answered. "Out of sight?" "Yes," I said; "it is beyond the rose garden." "English fashion " he answered with a shrug and a polite sneer. "And you prefer to see all this grass from your windows?" "Yes," I said, "I do." "Ah And...

M. de Tavannes smiled. Mademoiselle averted her eyes, and shivered; as if the air, even of that close summer night, entering by the door at her elbow, chilled her. And then came a welcome interruption. "Tavannes " "Sire " Count Hannibal rose slowly. The King had called, and he had no choice but to obey and go. Yet he hung a last moment over his companion, his hateful breath stirring her hair. "Our pleasure is cut short too soon, Mademoiselle," he said, in the tone, and with the look, she loathed. "But for a few hours only. We shall meet to-morrow. Or, it may be-earlier." She did not answer,...

"Horry I am sick to death of it " There was a servant in the room collecting the tea-cups; but Lady Betty Stafford, having been reared in the purple, was not to be deterred from speaking her mind by a servant. Her cousin was either more prudent or less vivacious. He did not answer on the instant, but stood gazing through one of the windows at the leafless trees and slow-dropping rain in the Mall. He only turned when Lady Betty pettishly repeated her statement.

In the dining-room of a small house on the east side of Arlington Street, which at that period--1742--was the Ministerial street, Mr. and Mrs. Northey sat awaiting Sophia. The thin face of the honourable member for Aldbury wore the same look of severity which it had worn a few weeks earlier on the eventful night when he had found himself called upon to break the ties of years and vote in the final division against Sir Robert; his figure, as he sat stiffly expecting his sister-in-law, reflected the attitudes of the four crude portraits of dead Northeys that darkened the walls of the dull...

Midway in that period of Ireland's history during which, according to historians, the distressful country had none-to be more precise, on a spring morning early in the eighteenth century, and the reign of George the First, a sloop of about seventy tons burthen was beating up Dingle Bay, in the teeth of a stiff easterly breeze.

That the untimely death at the age of fifty-eight of that great prince, Charles, Duke of Shrewsbury, my most noble and generous patron, has afflicted me with a sorrow which I may truly call acerbus et ingens, is nothing to the world; which from one in my situation could expect no other, and, on the briefest relation of the benefits I had at his hands, might look for more. Were this all, therefore, or my task confined to such a relation, I should supererogate indeed in making this appearance. But I am informed that my lord Duke's death has revived in certain quarters those rumours to his...

It was the eve of All Saints, and the famous autumn horse-fair was in progress at Fecamp--Fecamp on the Normandy coast, the town between the cliffs, which Boisrose, in the year '93, snatched for the Great King by a feat of audacity unparalleled in war. This only by the way, however; and that a worthy deed may not die. For at the date of this fair of which we write, the last day of October, 1637, stout Captain Boisrose, whom Sully made for his daring Lieutenant-General of the Ordnance, had long ceased to ruffle it; the Great King had lain in his grave a score of years or more; and though...

About a hundred and thirty years ago, when the third George, whom our grandfathers knew in his blind dotage, was a young and sturdy bridegroom; when old Q., whom 1810 found peering from his balcony in Piccadilly, deaf, toothless, and a skeleton, was that gay and lively spark, the Earl of March; when bore and boreish were words of haut ton, unknown to the vulgar, and the price of a borough was 5,000l.; when gibbets still served for sign-posts, and railways were not and highwaymen were--to be more exact, in the early spring of the year 1767, a travelling chariot-and-four drew up about five in...

'Marked cards ' There were a score round us when the fool, little knowing the man with whom he had to deal, and as little how to lose like a gentleman, flung the words in my teeth. He thought, I'll be sworn, that I should storm and swear and ruffle it like any common cock of the hackle. But that was never Gil de Berault's way. For a few seconds after he had spoken I did not even look at him. I passed my eye instead-smiling, BIEN ENTENDU-round the ring of waiting faces, saw that there was no one except De Pombal I had cause to fear; and then at last I rose and looked at the fool with the grim...

The House of the Wolf (1890) Get set for a thrill ride of supernatural proportions with Stanley J. Weyman's The House of the Wolf. Though billed as a romance, this suspenseful tale is packed with action and adventure that will appeal to a broad audience. Stanley John Weyman (7 August 1855 - 10 April 1928) was an English novelist sometimes referred to as the "Prince of Romance."Weyman (pronounced "why-man") was born at Ludlow, Shropshire. The second son of a solicitor, he was educated at Shrewsbury School, and at Christ Church, Oxford. He took his degree in modern history in 1877, and was...