... By J. R. HARRIS BURLAND ONE summer afternoon the Comtesse de Lusignac sat alone in the gorgeous drawing-room that looked out across the green expanse of Hyde Park. She lay back wearily on a large Chesterfield couch, and fanned herself slowly with a cheque-book. Two visitors had just departed, and they had taken £30 with them for the Restoration of the Church. The Rev. Mr. Gillxflower, in his ...

... By MARK KISSING When Edith and I decided upon Switzerland wherein to spend our honeymoon, my friend, Bobby Woods, who knows the Continent thoroughly, and especially Switzerland, strongly advised us not to. If you go there, he said, you'll be sure to get into trouble. Mark my words Trouble we both exclaimed in chorus. What kind of trouble Oh, the police or something like that he answered. ...

... By ELLA MacMAHON Jermyn was standing at the door of the Hotel Bristol. He had an unlighted cigar in his fingers, and seemed preoccupied. So he was preoccupied, and with his own affairs, too, which was not usual. In appearance, he was an Englishman of medium height very strongly built, rather of that build, to which the epithet hulking is sometimes applied. But Lionel Jermyn was not hulking he ...

... By MAUD H. YARDLEY I. Mrs. Wentworth Bailey put her toes upon the fender-bar, surveyed the shining patent leather, and smiled the smile of the well content. It was her inward boast that she allowed nothing and nobody to come between her and her pet wishes and up to now she had little reason to consider that inward boast a vain one. She was the mother of five beautiful daughters, and her object ...

... By ELLA MACLACHLAN I Sir Digby Frant was bringing his young wife home. The journey had been a long and tiring one, but as the carriage came slowly up the drive a small, dark face peered curiously from the window. Lady Frant's eyes were bright with excitement. This was her first introduction to her husband's ancestral place. It was a turreted mansion of grey stone, partly covered with ivy. As ...

... I FIRST LOVE A MERE EPISODE By FRANK HARRIS My boyhood and youth were passed in Brighton. I entered the College there as a boy of ten, and went through every class on the Modern side in the usual seven years. I only tell this to show that from the beginning my father intended me to go into business, and that I was not particularly clever at books. I loved football as much as I hated French, ...

... By JOHN F. MACDONALD Yes-- in Dumpton, a romance, a veritable romance! Were this the month of August there would be no reason to marvel at romance in Dumpton: for, at that season, graceful as well as dashing visitors from the London suburbs pace the Dumpton pier, and idle on the Dumpton sands, and at sunset and in the moonlight --sentimental hours-- softly and emotionally agree that life is ...

... O, blow profitable interposed Mr. Plumley. And you didn't jump at the chanst neither To play a part for you, went on the actor unruffled. Well, am I to be Agnew, or Christie, or Sotheby, or who? My commission's five per cent. Well, I don't object to that, said Plumley, relieved. On the vally of the picture to Gardener, that's to say. Call it done, and call yourself what you like. One man ...

... BY PAUL CRESWICK The Eminent Novelist was in a dull mood. For some minutes now he had been regarding rather blankly the equally blank sheets of paper lying before him on his desk. It was a June morning, and-- somehow-- memories of another June morning, far- off in the long ago, obtruded. Mayhap, it was the bright sunshine streaming in through the open London window, filling the air with ...

... By ARCHIBALD MARSHALL When the will of the ninth Earl of Cowes came to be read, it was found that he had left the bulk of a not very large fortune to his elder son, and to the younger the sum of five thousand pounds and his blessing. The Honourable Frederic Wrest, the younger son in question, was about twenty-eight years of age at the time, and, recognising quite clearly that the interest of ...

... By ALBERT KINROSS It was never published; in fact, it has disappeared, said Lutterworth. I had just asked him which among the numerous and varied performances that had gained him a conspicuous place in contemporary English letters he considered the very best, the topmost blossom of his remarkable and many-sided gift. Genius is a strong word: and I forebear to use it. Yet here, if ...

... By RITA All down the long corridor of the Hotel the boots stood in rows or pairs. Sometimes large and small together, betokening matrimonial couples, sometimes only a single pair of either size. At one door the small boot of a child stood eloquently beside the guardianship of a No. 4: Woman's. (Very few modern women take anything smaller than No. 4 nowadays: twos and threes have gone out of ...