The Beckoning Hand, and Other Stories. Allen Grant
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Название: The Beckoning Hand, and Other Stories

Автор: Allen Grant

Издательство: Bookwire

Жанр: Языкознание

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isbn: 4057664608840

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СКАЧАТЬ II.

       III.

       IV.

       V.

       VI.

       VII.

       VIII.

       ISALINE AND I.

       I.

       II.

       III.

       PROFESSOR MILLITER'S DILEMMA.

       IN STRICT CONFIDENCE.

       I.

       II.

       III.

       IV.

       V.

       THE SEARCH PARTY'S FIND.

       HARRY'S INHERITANCE.

       I.

       II.

       III.

       IV.

       V.

       A List of Books

       Chatto & Windus ,

       THREE-VOLUME NOVELS IN THE PRESS.

       THE PICCADILLY NOVELS.

       CHEAP EDITIONS OF POPULAR NOVELS.

       POPULAR SHILLING BOOKS.

      1887

      PREFACE.

       Table of Contents

      Of the thirteen stories included in this volume, "The Gold Wulfric," "The Two Carnegies," and "John Cann's Treasure" originally appeared in the pages of the Cornhill; "The Third Time" and "The Search Party's Find" are from Longman's Magazine; "Harry's Inheritance" first saw the light in the English Illustrated; and "Lucretia," "My Uncle's Will," "Olga Davidoff's Husband," "Isaline and I," "Professor Milliter's Dilemma," and "In Strict Confidence," obtained hospitable shelter between the friendly covers of Belgravia. My title-piece, "The Beckoning Hand," is practically new, having only been published before as the Christmas supplement of a provincial newspaper. My thanks are due to Messrs. Smith and Elder, Longmans, Macmillan, and Chatto and Windus for kind permission to reprint most of the stories here. If anybody reads them and likes them, let me take this opportunity (as an unprejudiced person) of recommending to him my other volume of "Strange Stories," which I consider every bit as gruesome as this one. Should I succeed in attaining the pious ambition of the Fat Boy, and "making your flesh creep," then, as somebody once remarked before, "this work will not have been written in vain."

      G. A.

       The Nook, Dorking,

       Christmas Day, 1886.

       Table of Contents

       Table of Contents

      I first met Césarine Vivian in the stalls at the Ambiguities Theatre.

      I had promised to take Mrs. Latham and Irene to see the French plays which were then being acted by Marie Leroux's celebrated Palais Royal company. I wasn't at the time exactly engaged to poor Irene: it has always been a comfort to me that I wasn't engaged to her, though I knew Irene herself considered it practically equivalent to an understood engagement. We had known one another intimately from childhood upward, for the Lathams were a sort of second cousins of ours, three times removed: and we had always called one another by our Christian names, and been very fond of one another in a simple girlish and boyish fashion as long as we could either of us remember. Still, I maintain, there was no definite understanding between us; and if Mrs. Latham thought I had been paying Irene attentions, she must have known that a young man of two and twenty, with a decent fortune and a nice estate down in Devonshire, was likely to look about him for a while before he thought of settling down and marrying quietly.

      I had brought the yacht up to London Bridge, and was living on board in picnic style, and running about town casually, when I took Irene and her mother to see "Faustine," at the Ambiguities. As soon as we had got in and taken our places, Irene whispered to me, touching my hand lightly with her fan, "Just look at the very dark girl on the other side of you, Harry! Did you ever in your life see anybody so perfectly beautiful?"

      It СКАЧАТЬ