When presented to the object of his devotion the earl could not suppress his sentiments. The Lady Gwendolin saw them as plainly as if they had been branded upon his brow. Her agitation was comparable to his. All the pent-up emotion of her deep, womanly nature surged to her countenance and paralyzed her so that she was unable to offer her hand. She consequently contented herself with a graceful inclination of the head. The Earl was excessively disappointed. Turning upon his heel he bowed and walked away.
Gwendolin retired to the conservatory and uttered a deep-drawn sigh, then, returning to the ballroom, flung herself into the waltz with an assumed ecstasy that elicited wide comment.
From “La Belle Damn.”
Under the harvest moon, now at its best, the corpse of Ronald showed ghastly white, the frost sparkling in its beard and hair. Clementine’s consciousness of its impulchritude was without a flaw. Had she ever really experienced an uncommon, an exceptional, tenderness for an object boasting so little charm? She was hardly able to take that view of the matter. All seemed unreal, indistinct and charged with dubiety. A sudden rustling in the circumjacent vegetation startled her from her dream, suggesting considerations of personal safety. Surveying the body for the last time, she impelled the stiletto into a contiguous tarn and left the scene with measured tread.
From “The Recrudescence of Squollander.”
“Clifford,” said Isabel, earnestly yet softly, “are you sure that you truly love me?”
Clifford presented such testimony and evidence as he could command, and requested her decision on the sufficiency of what he had advanced.
“Oh, Clifford,” she said, laying her two little hands in one of his comparatively large ones, “you have extirpated my ultimate uncertainty.”