"Maidenly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... youngest daughter. I never saw a girl more cheerful, more lovable, more worthy of long life—nay, of immortality. She had not yet completed her fourteenth year, and she had already the prudence of an old woman, the gravity of a matron, and still, with all maidenly modesty, the sweetness of a girl. How she would cling to her father's neck! how affectionately and discreetly she would greet us, her father's friends! how she loved her nurses, her attendants, her teachers,—everyone according to his service. How earnestly, how intelligently, ...
— A Handbook for Latin Clubs • Various
... weary, too weak from the revulsion of feeling that had come on learning that her lover instead of being a dastardly spy was a wonderful hero, to make even a pretense at maidenly modesty. She wanted to see Frederic too much to ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston
... It was the same impetuous Katya who had thrown herself on the mercy of a young profligate to save her father; the same Katya who had just before, in her pride and chastity, sacrificed herself and her maidenly modesty before all these people, telling of Mitya's generous conduct, in the hope of softening his fate a little. And now, again, she sacrificed herself; but this time it was for another, and perhaps only now—perhaps only at this moment—she felt and knew how dear that other ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... it, how inevitably, but how purely, it yields itself up to the sudden curve! It does not embrace this curve with a sensuous sweep, nor does it, like Sappho, throw itself with quick passion into the tide. It enters with maidenly and dignified reserve into its new Life; and then how is this new Life spent? As you glance at it, it seems almost ascetic, and reminds you of the rigid fatalism of Egypt. Its grace is almost strangled, as those other serpents were in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... any sense of emotion, although nothing could have been so novel—a number of groups of young Manchu women, some clothed in beautiful robes, some in an undress which was hardly maidenly. They were sitting and standing scattered round a large courtyard, and hidden somewhere above them in the yellow tiled roofs were more of those cooing doves with that strong accent of Marseilles: "Roucoulement, ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... him every thing about your mother, but there was not much to tell. She never mentioned his name after her marriage. There were gay parties given in honor of the wedding, and her delicate, drooping, phantom-like figure hung upon the arm of her handsome, elegant husband. People said that her maidenly shyness was beautiful to behold, and that she clung to her husband like the waving ivy ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... husbands are alike—sordid. The hope of money is even more debasing than the hoarding. Do you understand me? I must speak or my heart will burst. Are you a wizzard that you have so drawn me on? Dare I speak? Is it maidenly that I should? There is a spell upon me. Go to your chamber—there is a spy upon me; I am seen, and I fear I have been overheard; go to your chamber—here, take this book and read it if you never have—dinner is at hand, and ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... else—that Mr. Blake was talking eagerly and gathering the coloured leaves at random, as though he hardly knew what he was doing, and that, after that first look, he was avoiding her eye, as though he were afraid that he had betrayed himself. Audrey's maidenly consciousness was up in arms in a moment. The gleam in Cyril's eyes had opened hers. Some instinct of self-defence made her suddenly entrench herself in stiffness; the soft graciousness that was Audrey's chief charm seemed ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... of the sixteenth century, she was indulged in her love of study, and afforded every opportunity to advance in the arts and sciences. "She revelled in the realm of beauty, and crystallized her enthusiasm in graceful, sweet, maidenly verses. Young, lovely, of generous impulses and keen intellectual powers, her ambition set upon lofty attainments, a favorite of the muses, Sara Copia charmed ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... to her before the maids of the household, and before some of the townspeople, in a way that she could not stand; and that you yourself by your manner to her last night showed how she had lost your respect. She added, with her face of pure maidenly truth, that he had come into such close contact with her only the instant before your sister had ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... Enid felt that she had gone quite as far as her self-respect and maidenly pride would permit her to go. As she looked up at him she saw the pallor of his face change almost to grey. His hand was resting lightly on her arm, and she felt it tremble. Then he drew it gently ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... again for shame at her self-betrayal, for sheer helplessness and dismay, for the sudden realization of what the long days now would be without him, for what life might be if he never came back. With all her pride and strength and maidenly reserve she was struggling hard to fight back the sob that was rising to her throat, the tears that came welling to her eyes, but he would have the tribute of both, and ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... were incomparable; her blond hair gave weight to the poise of her delicate head by its rich and decent masses. She had a look of independent innocence, an angelic expression of extremely nice young fellow blending with a subtle maidenly charm. She indicated her surprise at seeing Mr. Arbuton by pressing the point of her sun-umbrella somewhat nervously upon the floor, and blushing a very little. Then she gave him her hand with friendly frankness, and smiled ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... At first he endeavoured, by attention and flatteries, to win her favour; but her avoidance of his advances and society increased the violence of his passion, until at last he spoke his wishes with brutal frankness. With maidenly pride and dignity, the lady repelled his suit, and severely stigmatized his insolence. Foaming with rage, the duke left her presence, and from that moment his love was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... instinctively she knew whose hand had written it. It was the first letter she had received from him; what would it say to her? No doubt it was to tell her why he had not been able to meet her that morning, to ask her to meet him later in the day. With a blush of maidenly shame she lifted the envelope to her lips ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... and more attractive form than Dinah Morris or Romola di Bardi, Fedalma or Mirah Cohen. In her sweet young enthusiasm, often unguided or misguided by its very intensity, but always struggling and tending on toward the highest good; in the touching maidenly simplicity with which she at once identifies and accepts Mr Casaubon as her guide and support toward a higher, less self-contained and self-pleasing, more inclusive and all-embracing life; in the yearning pain with which the first dread of possible disappointment ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... thus; and yet I could not say him nay, and I longed to hear the words spoken that should bind us to each other. But I dare not tell my father! I trow both he and my mother would chide full sternly. In truth, I fear me it were scarce a maidenly act. But, O Cuthbert, love is so strong—so hard a task master. Where he drives, it seems that one needs must go;" and she looked up at him with such arch appeal that he felt those glances would go far to soften ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Miss Caroline's maidenly mind seemed chiefly oppressed with the immodesty of being rescued from drowning by a member of ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... I mien or face, In which more plainly I could trace Benignity and home-bred sense Ripening in perfect innocence. Here scattered, like a random seed, Remote from men, thou dost not need The embarrassed look of shy distress, And maidenly shamefacedness: Thou wear'st upon thy forehead clear The freedom of a mountaineer: A face with gladness overspread! Soft smiles, by human kindness bred! And seemliness complete, that sways Thy courtesies, ...
— Memories • Max Muller
... upon them, so as to leave her hands and arms to the elbow free for her occupations. But most of all I loved her simplicity and her quietness and her discretion. Her father bade her expressly to shew me all the house; or she would not have done it, for she was very maidenly and modest; but as soon as he said that, she did it without affectation. She shewed me the parlour too, with the hangings upon the walls, and the chapel of the Grail, with the Grail itself upon an altar within, ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... appease Chu Chu. She certainly looked beautiful in her glittering accoutrements, set off by her jet-black shining coat. With an air of demure abstraction she permitted me to mount her, and even for a hundred yards or so indulged in a mincing maidenly amble that was not without a touch of coquetry. Encouraged by this, I addressed a few terms of endearment to her, and in the exuberance of my youthful enthusiasm I even confided to her my love for Consuelo and begged her to be "good" and not disgrace herself ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... we throw ourselves unasked at your Excellency's feet (courtesy), if we appear unsought before the light of your Excellency's eyes (courtesy), if we err in maidenly decorum in thus seeking unbidden your Excellency's presence (courtesy), believe us, it is the fear of some greater, some graver indecorum in our conduct that has withdrawn your Excellency's person from us since you have graced our roof with your ...
— Two Men of Sandy Bar - A Drama • Bret Harte
... should have said anything more than becoming. But I banished the doubt instantly as faithlessness in the womanly instincts of my child. For we men are always so ready and anxious to keep women right, like the wretched creature, Laertes, in Hamlet, who reads his sister such a lesson on her maidenly duties, but declines almost with contempt to listen to a word from her as to any co-relative obligation on ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... him!—was it possible to make a more unlimited declaration of predilection? The language of affection has not, within the limits of maidenly delicacy, a stronger expression. She is lost to me wholly, and for ever; and nothing remains for me now, but vengeance for my own wrongs, and for those which are hourly inflicted ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... terrible blow to him, striking to the very root of his love. He hates mystery; and to find this girl, whom he had thought perfect in her maidenly pride and purity, stealing out in the dark from her father's house ...
— Only an Irish Girl • Mrs. Hungerford
... when the Rev. Mr. Denham Halloway was called to the vacant parish of St. Joseph's and fell down in its maidenly midst like a meteor from an unexplored heaven,—a young, handsome divine, in every way marriageable, though still unmarried, and in every way attractive, though still to the best of hope and belief unattracted,—this was why no girl of them ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... indeed, quite a dimpled, bright-eyed, rosy, innocent pair, though I think Leonidas was the more maidenly. ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... there is a boy-and-girl attachment between you; that he won your attachment under a disguised identity, and that you were thus innocently deceived,—and that, in order to satisfy his own honourable scruples, as well as your sense of maidenly virtue, he has, still under a disguise, gone through the ceremony of marriage with you. Therefore, it seems that you now imagine yourself to be his lawful wife. This is a very natural mistake for a girl to make who is as young and inexperienced ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... nothing of that sort. And these people fancy that earthquakes, volcanoes, and all such little escapades will be over, they will, in lawyer's phrase, 'cease and determine,' as soon as our Earth reaches the age of maidenly bashfulness. Poor thing! It's quite natural, you know, in a healthy growing girl. A little overflow of vivacity, a pirouette more or less, what harm should that do to any of us? Nobody takes more delight than I in the fawn-like sportiveness of an innocent girl, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... everything. I do not—I can not understand. I can not comprehend. You have rejected me—I have offered myself to you a second time—after the refusal of last night. Where is my Spanish pride? Where is my maidenly modesty? That reserve that should be the better part of woman is gone. I know not honor—duty—I only know that though you reject me, I am yours. I, too, am a slave. I love you. Nay, I can not marry Don Felipe de Tobar. 'Twere to make a sacrilege ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... cheeks certainly added brilliancy. There stood this most singular apparition, holding before her a fan about the size of a modern tea-tray; while at each repetition of her name by the servant, she curtesied deeply, bestowing the while upon the gay crowd before her a very curious look of maidenly modesty at her solitary ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... your scheme of life had not been precisely that of an anchorite. Pray understand that I have never supposed it was so, and that I rather honour your attempt to indicate the fact to me without outraging my maidenly—old maidish, ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... her—the surprise in it—the tender appeal. She could not take hers from it. But the disturbance in him deepened. For in the face she raised to him there was no flood of maidenly joy. Suddenly—her eyes were those of a culprit examining her judge. A cry ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in a low, lounging chair with a big ostrich feather fan in her hand, and she looked up expectantly into her lover's face. There was nothing else for it, and he took the plunge valiantly—and with precisely the correct amount of maidenly hesitancy, Lady Ethel named a day for their marriage. And then—somehow there seemed nothing more to be ...
— If Only etc. • Francis Clement Philips and Augustus Harris
... the door open for her, and, still expressing his regret, accompanied her down-stairs to the door. Miss Hartley, somewhat embarrassed, and a prey to suspicions which maidenly modesty forbade her to voice, ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... dancing with her at the inaugural ball. She was my first, if not my only love; and although she threw me over for Pinkie Hill, by whose effulgent aurora borealis she was hypnotized, and took to wearing pantaloons in public despite my protest, she has since repented and given all her maidenly heart to me; hence it will be my duty and my pleasure to manage her campaign. Rebecca may safely consider herself elected and discount her salary whenever the Post gets into a pinch. I am willing to do anything for Rebecca except pay off the mortgage ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... the old gardener produced no effect—not so much as to make him shut his toothless mouth. Then he remembered that the man was stone deaf. All that time the girl struggled, not with maidenly coyness, but like a pretty, dumb fury, kicking his shins now and then. He continued to hold her as if in a vice, his instinct telling him that were he to let her go she would fly at his eyes. But he was greatly humiliated by his position. At last she gave up. She was more exhausted than appeased, ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... am promulgating a new theory of love; I know that in Olive Rothesay I dare to paint a woman full of all maidenly virtues, who has yet given her heart away unrequited—given it to a man who knows not of the treasure he has never sought to win. The case, I grant, is rare. I believe that a woman seldom bestows her love save in return for other love—be it silent or spoken—real ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... interest in the story, and its poetic capacities. The overmastering passion of love was evidently as present to the Indian mind as to that of the mediaeval Italian. In New as well as in Old Spain it could break the barriers of rank and overcome the hesitations of maidenly modesty. Love clouding the soul, as night obscures the day, is a figure of speech, used, I remember, by the most ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... smiling unconcern was nothing more than the dull hopelessness of a worn-out heart. She did not see that Hortense smiled now only in order that Duroc should not observe that she suffered. Her love for him was dead, but her maidenly pride had survived, and it dried her tears, and conjured up a smile to her struggling lips; it, too, enabled her to declare that she was ready to accept the husband whom her mother ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... he pondered her, so fair and fresh to behold, so entirely maidenly and yet so entirely frank ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... colored light. Even these should be weighed rigorously, at the instant; for, in another instant, the imagination seizes on them as its property, and stamps them with its own arbitrary value. But Hilda's maidenly reserve had given her lover no such tokens, to be interpreted either by his ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the banks of the Ayr; But by the sweet side o' the Nith's winding river, Are lovers as faithful, and maidens as fair: To equal young Jessie seek Scotland all over; To equal young Jessie you seek it in vain, Grace, beauty, and elegance, fetter her lover, And maidenly ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... the hips, without moving her feet, in the style of a Nautch girl. She was waiting for some one, since to right and left she swung with a delicate hand curved behind her ear. Suddenly she started, as if she heard an approaching footstep, and in maidenly confusion glided to a distance, where she stood with her hands across her bosom, the very picture of a surprised nymph. Mentally, the dance translated itself to Lambert somewhat after ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... grandanima. Magnet magneto. Magnetise magnetizi. Magnetism magnetismo. Magnificent belega. Magnify pligrandigi. Magnitude grandeco. Magpie pigo. Mahogany mahagono. Mahomet Mahometo. Mahometan Mahometano. Maid frauxlino. Maiden virgulino. Maidenly virga. Maid-servant servistino. Mail posxto. Mail (armour) masxo. Maim vundegi. Mainly cxefe. Maintain subteni. Maintain (assert) pretendi. Maintenance subtenado. Maize maizo. Majestic ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... forgotten—but must not forget— An orator, the latest of the session, Who had deliver'd well a very set Smooth speech, his first and maidenly transgression Upon debate: the papers echoed yet With his debut, which made a strong impression, And rank'd with what is every day display'd— 'The best first speech ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... I have already urged the knight on the point you mention, and I find him as fixed as Cheviot. I am truly sorry my fair cousin should be pressed to give up any of her maidenly rights. Sir Frederick consents, however, to leave the castle with me the instant the ceremony is performed, and we will raise our followers and begin the fray. Thus there is great hope the bridegroom may be ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... Senorita Lucia Lavarona, though I am sorry to say that Pedillo did not perform his part of the business as well as I had expected of him, from his practice in the morning. He stammered a good deal, and when he raised the crucifix to the lips of the young girl, her innocent looks and maidenly majesty of deportment so struck my coadjutor with confusion that he let the crucifix fall to the deck at her dainty feet. This little incident caused me some displeasure; but, reflecting ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... young lady, though she does not appear in a very bad light, her wilfulness being the result of maidenly pride, which is ashamed to appear weak before the stronger sex. She finds her master in Petrucchio however and after a hard and bitter fight with her feelings, she at last avows herself conquered, less by her husband's indomitable will, ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... he had just discovered her, and walked straight to her, his hands extended. She was not looking toward him; but she saw him and turned to face him. Hers was the advantage; for she had known, for some hours, of his presence in Vincennes, and had prepared herself to meet him courageously and with maidenly reserve. ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... described as a woman almost perfectly conformed to type, presenting fewer variations than elsewhere, either in the form of youthful prettinesses and follies, or in the strenuous opinion of mature years. She is neither a flirt as a girl, nor a radical as a woman. Color has not yet come into her maidenly days, nor violence of opinion into her womanly years. She affects neither fashion nor intellectual eccentricity. Yet she attains to a better average of reasonable, sensible action than she could otherwise do. She knows less of the impulsive, emotional prettiness of adolescence than ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... these blue-eyed German girls to say whether or not Hedwig had ever before thought of her unknown singer as an unknown lover. But the emotions of the previous night had shaken her nerves a little, and had she been older than she was she would have known that she loved her singer, in a distant and maidenly fashion, as soon as she heard the baroness speak of him as having been her property. And now she was angry with herself, and ashamed of feeling any interest in a man who was evidently tied to another ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... not interrupt me. I shall not reproach you. You are the master of your own actions. You have one daughter who is twelve years old; in a short time she will be a marriageable girl. I have not come to this house to make a scene, nor do I wish to preach about morality, or religion, or God, or maidenly innocence, subjects which great men and grand gentlemen simply sneer at as the stock-in-trade of hypocrites. I will therefore tell you in a couple of words why I have come. All I ask is that you deliver over to me your youngest daughter. ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... having released the petticoat, were clenched at her sides. Her cheeks were crimson, and her dark eyes, peering out from the shade of the close-fitting hood of her black bonnet, smouldered with wrath,—and, if he could have read them better, a very decided trace of maidenly dismay. ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... she resists, thinking it meant as an insult; on a word of explanation, she submits with cheerful apology. As the last act, all being now ready, they take the neckerchief from her neck: a blush of maidenly shame overspreads that fair face and neck; the cheeks were still tinged with it, when the executioner lifted the severed head, to shew it to the people. 'It is most true,' says Foster, 'that he struck the cheek insultingly; for I saw it with my eyes: the Police imprisoned him for it.' ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... got out of the wagon backwards, making a maidenly effort to keep the connection between the hem of her black silk skirt and the top of her calf-skin shoes inviolate, and brushing the dust of the wagon wheel from her dress carefully after her safe arrival in the dog-fennel. Marg'et Ann ignored the chair which had been placed beside the wagon for ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... Possibly, also, his princess had recovered from her disappointment. Maybe she had been married off to some nobody of Portugal, or France, or Austria, for state reasons, and had entered on the usual loveless life of royalty. Or she may have beguiled her maidenly solitude by drinking much wine of Oporto, Madeira, and Xeres with her dinner, thereby acquiring that amplitude of girth, that ruddiness of countenance, and that polish of nose, which add so little to romance. At all events, we hear nothing more of ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... help commiserating the while the faithful soul who floated beneath me. The stream was swift but noiseless, the water rather rare than cold, yet, despite all the philosophy beaming out of her maidenly eyes across the smooth surface of the tide, Rosinante must have preferred from the bottom of her ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... he often bitterly invayeth. Underfonge, undermyne, and deceive by false suggestion." The immoral flippancy of the remarkable dialogue between the disreputable Parolles and the otherwise sweet and maidenly Helena, in Act I. Scene i. of All's Well that Ends Well, has often been noticed by critics as a peculiar lapse in dramatic congruity on the part of Shakespeare. This is evidently one of several such instances in his plays ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... and she knew that this man who lay bleeding and ghastly before her was dearer to her than her own life. The sudden rush of this consciousness sweeping like a flood over her soul broke down and carried away the barrier of her maidenly reserve. Leaning over him in a passion of self-abandonment, she breathed, "Oh, Jack, dear, dear Jack." As he lay there white and still, into her love there came a maternal tender yearning of pity. She lifted his head in her arm, and murmured brokenly, "Oh, my love, my dear love." She kissed him ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... when she asked herself in anxious discomfort whether she was not possibly a transgressor against a deeper and simpler law than that of station—whether she was altogether maidenly in the encouragement she had given and was giving to the painter. It must not be imagined that she had once visited him without a companion, though that companion was indeed sometimes only her maid—her real object being covered by the true pretext of sitting for her portrait, which Lady Bellair ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... of the real reason of Sophy Viner's departure, had thought it "extremely suitable" of the young girl to withdraw to the shelter of her old friends' roof in the hour of bridal preparation. This maidenly retreat had in fact impressed Madame de Chantelle so favourably that she was disposed for the first time to talk over Owen's projects; and as every human event translated itself for her into terms of social and domestic detail, Anna had perforce to travel ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... prince, my fond heart is gushing With thoughts that no language can ever reveal; With the sweetest affection this warm cheek is blushing, And hopes to my maidenly bosom will steal, Of a time when our souls, with united expression, Shall mingle with harmony more than divine; And the priest—be he Greek, or of any profession— Shall bless this poor hand ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... had told him almost word for word, as it was implanted upon my memory, the story June Jenrys had written to her friend, the story of that ante-Lenten party—just the fact, omitting her expressions of preference. I told the story as I would have told it of a dear sister whose maidenly pride was precious to me; told how she had gone, at his request, to speak with him in the conservatory, and how, there, she had heard, herself unseen, those flippant, unmanly words, so unlike him, yet from the lips of someone ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... breathing of summer's ease (Sweet breath, whereof the violet's life is made!) Through lips moist-warm, as thou hadst lately stayed 'Mong rosebuds, wooing to the cheeks of these Loth blushes faint and maidenly—rich Breeze, Still doth thy honeyed blowing bring a shade Of sad foreboding. In thy hand is laid The power to build or blight rich fruit of trees, The deep, cool grass, and field of ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... hair as fine as silk, and pleasant, serene, gray eyes. She was dressed very simply in white, with a blue band across her hair, and a blue scarf and sash around throat and waist. Her face, though showing signs of quiet strength, and of a self-confidence which was the flower of maidenly modesty and innocence, was not beautiful according to any recognized standard. Bressant, from his intuitive perception of form and proportion, was aware of this. The forehead was too high, the nose irregular, the mouth lacked the perfect curve, and the teeth, ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... was too generous to use the knowledge, however flattering it might be to him. In a reassuring tone he said, turning away the keen eyes she feared, "I give you my word I never will, charming as it might be to study the white pages of a maidenly heart. I find plenty of others to read, so rest ...
— The Abbot's Ghost, Or Maurice Treherne's Temptation • A. M. Barnard
... and the sacred vessels and utensils arranged, as in a well-ordered household. In a word, they were to be, in purity, in industry, in neatness, in order, and in patience and vigilance, the perfect impersonation of maidenly virtue as exhibited in its own proper field of duty ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... appearance for nearly two hours, at length he heard a few notes of the lute, and presently the lattice opened right above the little postern door at which Marthon had admitted Hayraddin, and Isabelle, in maidenly beauty, appeared at the opening, greeted him half kindly, half shyly, coloured extremely at the deep and significant reverence with which he returned her courtesy—shut the ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... Elizabeth was full of maidenly hesitation. She was too old for him; perhaps he would not think her beautiful, and so on; but she took care to say that there was no one else she could marry, as she would not wed a subject. The Huguenots actively pushed the proposal, and Leicester pretended to favour it, though ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... blear-eyed, or more properly speaking sightless, if he aims at a heart, be it ever so small, hits it and pierces it through and through with his arrows. I have heard it said too that the arrows of Love are blunted and robbed of their points by maidenly modesty and reserve; but with this Altisidora it seems they are sharpened rather ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... eloquence of divers glances they exchanged, he was amazed at La Zambinella's continued reserve toward him. She had begun, it is true, by touching his foot with hers and stimulating his passion with the mischievous pleasure of a woman who is free and in love; but she had suddenly enveloped herself in maidenly modesty, after she had heard Sarrasine relate an incident which illustrated the extreme violence of his temper. When the supper became a debauch, the guests began to sing, inspired by the Peralta and the Pedro-Ximenes. There were fascinating duets, Calabrian ballads, Spanish ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... 'To look on her was enchantment; her eyes called you to love her; her smile was like heaven; if you heard her speak, you were conquered. Her whole person was a miracle of beauty, and her deportment had a certain maidenly pride, springing from a pure heart and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various
... will for ever and ever say,—that nowhere, neither in gorgeous hall, nor gilded opera-box, nor in any other place, nor under any other circumstances, may such bewildering and insidious power of maidenly enchantment be exercised as at the billiard-table; especially when the enchantress is utterly ignorant of the duties required of her, and confidingly seeks manly encouragement and guidance. Controlled by the hand of beauty, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... go at once to her mother—so she called my cousin—and tell her so. Thus saying, she left me. And I—I did not then understand the struggle and the victory of the poor girl over herself. I did not reflect that no maidenly blush, no charming confusion, announced my happy destiny,—no kiss, no caress, no sign that the heart's citadel had surrendered; but, instead, a calmness, a composure, and a hastening from my presence. No, I thought nothing of this; I only considered that now the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... with solemn face and quiet tread, Miss Hester moved about the room, placing one thing here, another there, but ever doing or changing something, all with maidenly neatness. What a childish fancy this is of humanity's, tiptoeing and whispering in the presence of death, as if one by an incautious word or a hasty step might wake the sleeper from such ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... cold desolation of winter was at its worst, she had half regretted the sacrifice she had made, and only maidenly reserve had kept her from writing him that her loneliness and heart-hunger were more than ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... take a melancholy pleasure in contemplating the sacrifice of herself to the man whom a maidenly sense of propriety compelled her to regard as her only possible husband. She would meet him, and do all that lay in her power to marry him. To guard against a relapse, a note was at once despatched to ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... would admit; but still it appeared as if the extreme intimacy of childhood had been broken off, and that it was necessary that a renewed intimacy under another aspect should take place, to restore us to our former relations. Here it was for me to make the first overtures; not for her, as maidenly reserve would not permit it. Bramble seemed to be most anxious that such should be the case—indeed, considered it as a matter of course: perhaps Bessy thought so too in her own bosom; and the continual raillery of Bramble did more harm than good, as it appeared ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... the house said to the Easterling: "In an evil hour hath my daughter Gudruna humbled herself, and broken the point of her maidenly pride, and lain by thy side as thy wife, when thou wilt not dare to follow thy father-in-law, and thou must be ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... compulsory examinations both in his own handwriting and in that of the Protector. And some of these cases, as the records we have copied show, were those of perfectly innocent girls, acknowledged to be virgins, until assaulted by these abominable medical officials and robbed of the fresh bloom of maidenly chastity. ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... wantonness of his host. For his reason was stronger than his impetuosity, and curbed his increasing rage. Then the smith approached the girl with open shamelessness, and cast himself in her lap, offering the hair of his head to be combed out by her maidenly hands. ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... modern painter with more force and fire of fancy than in the "Galatea." The tenderness of Christian feeling has found no more exalted expression than in the multitudes of the Madonnas, one more lovely than another, like roses on a tree in June, from the maidenly "Madonna del Gran' Duca" to the celestial vision of the San Sisto, that sublimest lyric of the art of Catholicity.[260] It is only by hurrying through a list like this that we can appreciate the many-sided perfection of ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... remembered how Charlotte Carroll's skirts had rustled as she went out of the store that last afternoon when he had spoken to her. There was a soft crispness of ruffling lawns and laces, a most delicate sound, a maidenly sound which had not been unlike the sound of the young leaves of the willows overfolding and interlacing with one another when the soft breeze swelled high. Now and then all the afternoon came a slow, soft wave of warm wind out of the west, and all sounds deepened ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... her beauty; and he before whose power the whole world was kneeling, prostrated himself before a pretty woman. The following is the account of her first introduction to Caesar, as given by the historian. It shows that she had no maidenly scruples as to the mode of ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... effort of maidenly reserve over feminine sympathy Josephine refrained from throwing her arms round his neck and weeping on his shoulder for pity at his past sorrow. She had none of the vice of jealousy, and she could honestly and tenderly pity the man ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... wondering these last three days? Well, tell me what you think my purpose was in abandoning all maidenly reserve and throwing myself at ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... heaven, Her life is that heaven brought down; Oh, never to mortal was given So rare and bejewelled a crown! I'll wear it as saints wear the glory That radiantly clasps them above— Oh, dower most fair! Oh, diadem rare! Bright crown of her maidenly love. ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... and equalled to the Princess Elizabeth, and yet nothing could be more dissimilar or incomparable than these two beauties. Elizabeth's was wholly earthly, voluptuous, glowing with youth and love, but Eleonore's was chaste and sublime, pure and maidenly. Elizabeth allured to love, Eleonore ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... blusters, threatens, orders off the cowering Danaids to the ships and finally attempts to drag them away. Pelasgus interposes with a force, drives off the Egyptians and saves the suppliants. Danaus urges them to prayer, thanksgiving and maidenly modesty, and the grateful chorus pass away to the shelter offered ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... a trying moment, but Genevieve was too simple, genuine, and grateful to pause in selfish embarrassment. Had she toyed with Gilbert's affection, she could not have met his father with such maidenly modesty, and sweet sympathy and respect in her blushing cheek and ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... woman who would deny that proposition if asked by the right person, and I hope he would have sense enough not to believe her if she did. I do not object to a girl making herself attractive to men in a modest and maidenly way. On the contrary, I heartily approve of it. But I would have her select a man who belonged to no other girl, and to know that nothing but misery can result from the taking of a lover ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... it, Berna, I don't like it at all. I hate you to know the like of such people, such things. I just want you to be again the dear, sweet little girl I first knew, all maidenly modesty ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... and stood in her maidenly dignity, confronting the pirates, who fell back a step, as ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... take a group of them and endeavor to say on paper what makes each species so peculiar. The form, color, and expression of the boles are to be noted. A reader may smile at the phrase "expression," but look at a tattered old birch, or a silvery young beech-hole, "modest and maidenly, clean of limb," or a lightning-scarred pine. Tree-study has advantages because it is always within reach. The axe has been so ruthlessly wielded that you must go far into the woods to get the best specimens of the pine, ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... her best silk dress, with her mother's cameo brooch at her throat, and with the full, maidenly ripeness of twenty-nine years upon her brow, with her hair demurely parted on said brow, where there was the faintest hint of a wrinkle coming—which Miss Morton attributed to a person she called "the dratted ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... herself back from the chatter around her to remember that something pleasant had happened. Not that there was any foolishness in her thoughts. There was too much dignity and simplicity about the girl, young as she was, to allow her to deal even with her own thoughts in any but a maidenly way, and it was not in the ordinary way of a maid with a man that she thought of this young soldier. He was so far removed from her life in every way, and all the well-drilled formalities, that it never occurred to her to think of him in ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... genial and beautiful hours of the autumntide of their long life, have I heard my dear father tease "Jen" about her maidenly intentions in the stealing of that bonnet; and often have heard her quick mother-wit in the happy retort, that had his motives for coming to that retreat been altogether and exclusively pious, he would probably have found his way to the other side of the wood, but that men who prowled about ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... wooing conduct of Miss Euphemia which, notwithstanding her beauty and the softness that was its vehicle, filled him with the deepest disgust. He could not trace real affection in her words or manner; and that any woman, instigated by a mere whim, should lay aside the maidenly reserves of her sex, and actually court his regard, surprised whilst it ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... and as fair as could be, With her tempting smiles And maidenly wiles, And he was a trifle past seventy-three: Now what she could see Is a puzzle to me, In a ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... elbow contrived to throw over a glass, which fell on the floor and broke. Everybody was looking now at the father and daughter, and words came to Dolly's ears which made her cheek burn. But she stood calm, self-possessed, waiting with a somewhat lofty air of maidenly dignity; helped her father solve the reckoning, paid for the glass, and at last got hold of his arm and drew him away; after a gentle, grave salutation to the attendant which he answered profoundly, and which brought everybody in the little shop to his feet ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... the shy star goes forth in heaven All maidenly, disconsolate, Hear you amid the drowsy even One who is singing by your gate. His song is softer than the dew And he ...
— Chamber Music • James Joyce
... tried to read her every feature—her pale cheeks—her lips proud, nay, almost sullen—her eyes, from which the softness so lately visible had changed into inquietude and trouble. There was in her all maidenly innocence—no one could doubt that; but nothing could be more unlike the shy tenderness of a bride, ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... ways of preserving her power and her dignity; she has risked so much for love, that she must bid him pass through his myriad transformations, while her too submissive rival gives a sense of too serene security which palls. If the one sacrifices her maidenly pride, the other immolates the honor of a whole family. A girl's coquetry is of the simplest, she thinks that all is said when the veil is laid aside; a woman's coquetry is endless, she shrouds herself in veil after veil, she satisfies every ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... two fair young creatures, ready with their oaths. They are asked to fix all time to the moment, and they do so. If there is hesitation at the immense undertaking, it is but maidenly. She conceives as little mental doubt of the sanity of the act as he. Over them hangs a cool young curate in his raiment of office. Behind are two apparently lucid people, distinguished from each other by sex and age: the foremost a bunch of simmering black satin; under ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the army, and had come into contact with all sorts of men, things and ideas. He was himself a man, and had outgrown most boyish fallacies and illusions, but he had not outgrown Hilda. She was there, in the heart of the forest, in the towers of Sigmundskron, away from the world he had seen, and maidenly ignorant of all it contained, waiting for him, the incarnation of all that was lovely, and young, and fair, and spotless. He pitied his fellow-students, who loved vulgarly whatever came into their way. He could ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... sat down, expecting her little mistress to return directly. No thought of anxiety crossed her mind: how should one, in broad sunlight, on a mountain-side, in the first of summer, and with the long day before them? So, there sitting in peace, Nicie fell into a maidenly reverie, and so there Nicie sat for a long time, half dreaming in the great light, without once really thinking about anything. All at once she came to herself: some latent fear had exploded in her heart: yes! what could have become of her little mistress? She jumped to her feet, and shouted ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... sat down to breathe. "Suppose he should ask you to let him show you the Mississippi, or the Pacific?" And the hot flush rushed over her and she hid her face, as if even from herself. "He will not. But what if he should?" Mrs. Starling had raised the question. Diana, in very maidenly shame, tried to beat it down and stamp the life out of it. But that was more than ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... the Baptist was so clearly part of that of Jesus, that Mary could hardly recall the one without the other. And, besides, Elisabeth, as the angel said, was her kinswoman—perhaps her cousin—to whom she naturally turned in the hour of her maidenly astonishment and rapture. Though much younger, Mary was united to her relative by a close and tender tie, and it was only natural that what had happened to Elisabeth should have impressed her almost as deeply as her own memorable experiences. So it is possible that ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... were a wonder, and whose creditors were legion,—and he was sincerely sorry to see that even gentle and pretty Susie Prescott had taken to a new mode of doing her hair, which, though elaborate, did not suit her at all, and gave an almost bold look to an otherwise sweet and maidenly countenance. ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... and great Jupiter, After so many conquests won in field, After so many monsters quelled by force, Yielded his valiant heart to Omphale, A fearful woman void of manly strength. She took the club, and wear the lion's skin; He took the wheel, and maidenly gan spin. So martial Locrine, cheered with victory, Falleth in love with Humber's concubine, And so forgetteth peerless Gwendoline. His uncle Corineius storms at this, And forceth Locrine for his grace to sue. Lo here the ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... brought against the young ladies of the present day, that, as compared with their mothers and grandmothers, they are rather forward and fast, and that husband-hunting in their hands, is gradually being developed to an extent scarcely compatible with the old-fashioned theories about maidenly modesty and reserve. The change may be considered the effort of modern civilization to remedy an evil of its own creation. The tide advances in one direction because it recedes in another. If the men will not come forward, the women must. It is all very well for satirists to call this immodest, ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... gone. She made a few rapid dives in search of it. Had she, or had she not, seen him putting something in his pocket? And why had she behaved so unlike herself? In a few miles Miss Wood entertained sentiments of maidenly resentment toward her rescuer, and of maidenly hope to ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... a wonderfully lovely maidenly face, with rich curls falling around it, and in the costume of the last ten years of the preceding century, was now unveiled. A good breakfast, like that of yesterday, stood on the table. With a moistened eye, and turning to the portrait, he said: 'Therese, to thy ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... commiserating the wolves who have so long made havoc in our country," cried Kirkpatrick; "methinks such maidenly mercy is rather ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... almost every youthful heart, of the brightest and most brilliant threads that compose the web of existence. It may not be said that this forest maiden was deeply and foolishly smitten at first sight. All reasonable time and space were granted to the claims of maidenly modesty. As for Boone, he was incurably wounded by her, whose eyes he had shined, and as he was remarkable for the backwoods attribute of never being beaten out of his track, he ceased not to woo, until he gained the heart ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... red-embroidered rosebuds slipped from Kate's hand. All innocent of malicious intent, Frank's shot had scored. The cry of the Pack that leaped about her could not touch Kate after this. She was frozen in by maidenly prudery, by childish self-consciousness, by Madigan perversity. When the bell rang she went in to dinner in her old pink gingham, her head high, her lips set, ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... can appreciate Miss Sally's-ah-maidenly dislike, in fact, her quite proper dislike of a loan from-ah-one who aspires—— In fact," he said, boldly breaking away from all attempt to speak bookishly, "from me. She don't want to borrow from me, and it would be the same thing if you borrowed for her from me. The same thing. I am courting ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler
... painfully with the hopelessness of further argument. He bowed silently, but as he passed through the little gate the sound of the hastily closed door followed him up the hill to Hatton Hall. Lugur went into the parlor to look for his daughter; she had gone to her room. Some feeling of maidenly reserve had led her to take this step. She never asked herself why or wherefore; she only felt that it would be good for her to be alone, and the need had been so urgent that she forgot her father's usual good-night kiss and blessing. Lugur ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... have mistaken for a man as they bulged and heaved even before the strings of the breastplate were uncut by his sword. And then she sat up and hailed the sun, and Georgie felt for a moment that he had quite taken the wrong turn in life, when he settled to spend his years in this boyish, maidenly manner with his embroidery and his china-dusting at Riseholme. He ought to have been Siegfried.... He had brought a photograph of her in her cuirass and helmet, and often looked at it when he was not too busy with something else. He had even championed his goddess ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... there in her maidenly white dress. They had twined a wreath of green leaves with white flowers about her head, and for a moment I saw again the vision I had at the ball. The delicate hands now lay meekly folded upon her breast, and on the engagement finger I recognised with tears my own old bronze ring with the ...
— The Visionary - Pictures From Nordland • Jonas Lie
... succeeding winter the same symphony was performed in Leipzig. "There is a resistless and audacious energy in the thoughts, a stormy bold progression, and yet withal a maidenly artlessness in the expression of the main motives that lead me to hope for much from the composer;" so wrote Laube, with whom Wagner had shortly before become acquainted. Here again we recognize the stormy, restless activity of the time, which thenceforth did ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... Now an actual, imminent, and fearful peril confronted her. Under such circumstances most women would have fainted, and, indeed, if Gwen had herself been asked how she would have acted under such a supreme test, she would have prophesied the same maidenly course as her own, yet, in the real exigency—how little do we know of ourselves, save what actual experience has taught us!—this is precisely what she did not do. When the horrible apparition first rose in her very face, as it were, a momentary weakness caught ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... tree was afflicted with too many branches. There were little dry twigs of maidenly cousins, knotted and dwarfed stumps of half-gone uncles and aunts, vigorous, demanding shoots of nephews and niece's, all of whom had hitherto imposed upon the Doctor's slender income, and his too ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... made his income a really splendid one. Certainly he spared no expense upon his ward. She was taught reading, writing, grammar, music, and embroidery by the best tutors the town could provide, and she grew daily, we are told, in beauty and maidenly charm. ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... influences of the ghetto. We have seen how well Recha had been educated and her daughter Kathinka was being brought up in the same way. She was independent in thought as well as in action, but never at the cost of maidenly sentiment. Piety and purity shone in her lustrous eyes. Superior to her position, she possessed the faculty of adapting herself to her surroundings. There was no pride in her breast save that which might arise from the consciousness of doing right. The poor had a commiserating ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... infinitely better at night. It was not altogether the wine which made him think that, either: the girl displayed a side she veiled in the day time. A girl, far less a princess, is not supposed to know more than agrees with a man's notion of maidenly ignorance, ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... sisters, and her nearest relatives were cousins living in the far West. The only human being in whom she felt any special personal interest was a certain captain in her father's regiment, who had paid her some attention. She had loved this man deeply, in a maidenly, modest way; but he had gone away without speaking, and had not since written. He had escaped the fate of many others, and at the close of the war was alive and well, ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... was tender, maidenly, English, shrank lacerated. But the steel held her. She put both her hands on the table and ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... you know that he might, just possibly, be falling in love with you. But then it is very interesting, too. To be loved, even by the wrong person, seems in youth's selfish eyes to light up the world as the candle lights the Japanese lantern. And besides, after all, one can't be sure. And it is not maidenly to say "No," even by the vaguest movements of retreat, to a question that has not been asked and perhaps never ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... that no excuses would be taken from either master or mistress; Miss Lou dusted the parlor, and listened stolidly to the gallantries of her cousin. He was vastly amused by her reserve, believing it to be only maidenly coyness. ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... Silvio contrasts with tender and romantic Mirtillo. Corisca's meretricious arts and systematized profligacy enhance the pure affection of Amarilli. Dorinda presents another type of love, so impulsive that it conquers maidenly modesty. The Satyr is a creature of rude lust, foiled in its brutal appetite by the courtesan Corisca's wiliness. Carino brings the corruption of towns into comparison with the ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... which—being alternately pushed forward into a conspicuous expression by the irresistible instincts of her temperament, and then immediately checked in obedience to the decorum of her sex and age and her maidenly condition—gave to her whole demeanour, and to her conversation, an air of embarrassment, and even of self-conflict, that was almost distressing to witness. Even her very utterance and enunciation often suffered in point of clearness and steadiness, from the agitation of her excessive organic ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... continued gazing into my face, those happy tears still shining in her eyes, listening to my words; but alas! on that sweet, beautiful face, so full of changeful expression, there was not the expression I sought, and no sign of that maidenly shame which gave to Genevieve in the ballad such an exquisite grace in ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... wires of the storm wind's three-stringed harp. Yet the dryad dwells within them as well, and on gentler days they show her in many phases of queenly womanhood. They mother the romping shrubs, the slender, maidenly birches, the maples, vainglorious in their dainty spring colors, their voluminous summer robes, their gorgeous autumn gowns, and they do it all with a kindly dignity that endears, while they stand high above all these in their perfection of simplicity. They can be tender without unbending, and ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... her at once savagely as his own, that was the line of conduct to which temptation prompted him. How could she look at him so sweetly, how could she stand before him, ministering to him with all her pretty maidenly charms brought so close to him, without intending that he should love her? But he did refrain. 'Blood is thicker than water,' said he. 'That's the real reason why ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... was supposed to be my maidenly modesty cut me like a knife, but I could not permit myself to explain, so my Aunt Bridget ran ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... low-spirited," Tish said. "I expect she liked the first young man better than she thought she did. I intend to give her a piece of my mind as soon as I get a chance. This playing hot and cold isn't maidenly, to say ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... not above the maidenly dignity of quite big and buxom lasses. One of these, a really superb young creature, not too liberally clothed to rob one's eyes of her noble contours, caught my attention by the singularity of something she carried. It was an enormous axe, the shining blade balanced easily on her ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... Nanny goat, tabita; ewe, cow; lioness, tigress; vixen. gynecaeum^. estrogen, oestrogen. consanguinity &c 166 [Female relatives], paternity &c 11. lesbian, dyke [Slang]. V. feminize. Adj. female, she-; feminine, womanly, ladylike, matronly, maidenly, wifely; womanish, effeminate, unmanly; gynecic^, gynaecic^. Pron. she, her, hers.' Phr. a perfect woman nobly planned [Wordsworth]; a lovely lady garmented in white [Shelley]; das Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan [Goethe]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... for him with that mixture of maidenly feelings of which the discreet novelist only details a selection. It is not customary to dwell upon thoughts of vague regret at the approaching withdrawal of a universal admiration—at the future necessity for discreet and humdrum behaviour quite devoid of the excitement that lurks in a double meaning. ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... while in the water the princess was very like other people. And besides this, she was not so forward in her questions or pert in her replies at sea as on shore. Neither did she laugh so much; and when she did laugh, it was more gently. She seemed altogether more modest and maidenly in the water than out of it. But when the prince, who had really fallen in love when he fell in the lake, began to talk to her about love, she always turned her head towards him and laughed. After a while she began to look puzzled, ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... as you may guess, I saw nothing of the strange lady. And on the morrow until dinner-time I had but a glimpse of her. This was in the forenoon. She stood, with her hound beside her, in an embrasure of the wall, looking over the sea: to the eye a figure so maidenly and innocent and (in a sense) forlorn that I recalled Gil Perez' tale as the merest frenzy, and wondered how I had come to listen to it with any belief. Her seaward gaze would be passing over the very spot where we had laid him: only a low wall hiding the freshly turned earth. My Master ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... was a pensive thoughtfulness beyond her years. But as she now sat by the open window arranging flowers in a glass bowl, a book lying open on her lap, you would never have said, "What a handsome woman!" you would have said, "What a charming girl!" All about her was maidenly, innocent, and fresh. The dignity of her bearing was lost in household ease, the pensiveness of her expression in an untroubled ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... this bower a clump of shrubbery veils the view from the street and in between shrubs and arbor lies a small pool of water flowers and goldfish. On the arbor's right, in charming privacy, masked by hollyhocks, dahlias and other tall-maidenly things, lie beds of strawberries and lettuce and all the prim ranks and orders of the ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... most satisfying habits was to evoke from the realm of the future a proper hero, shining with zeal and virtue like Sir Galahad, in whose arms she would picture herself living happily ever after a sweet courtship, punctuated by due maidenly hesitation. This fondness for letting her fancy run riot and evolve visions splendid with happenings for her own advancement and gladness was not confined to matrimonial day-dreams. On the morning when she entered the school-house door for the first time the eyes of her ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... of green shade. But they are hardly to be met with. Those rather futile fields and songs of birds and bud-spangled trees are all very well, if you have the narrow mind of the Nature-lover; but how much sweeter are the things of the hands, the darling friendliness of the streets! The maidenly month of April makes little difference to us here. We know, by the calendar and by our physical selves, that it is the season of song and quickening blood. Beyond London, amid the spray of orchard foam, ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... clear tan of one much abroad in wind and sun. The eyes were tired and yet merry, great grey eyes as clear and deep as a moorland lake.... Suddenly she understood. It may have been the sight of the full laughing lips, or the small maidenly breasts outlined by the close-fitting linen. At any rate she did not draw back when the stranger ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... when he almost regretted that he had a clever friend. Ansell remained absolutely motionless, moving neither hand nor head. Such behaviour is so unknown that Miss Pembroke did not realize what had happened, and kept her own hand stretched out longer than is maidenly. ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... Dunning," exclaimed Spikeman, with ill-suppressed rage. "Have you so far forgotten the modesty of your sex as to make this declaration in public? I knew before, that this boy had bewitched you, but dreamed not that he had triumphed over all maidenly reserve." ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... of girlish gratification. She had been sorry herself to miss that half hour among the roses but she was still too young and too happy to know how few are such hours, how irrevocable such losses. Also, it had seemed good to her maidenly pride that Dr. Callandar should know—well, that he should see—just exactly what he should know and see she did not formulate. But underneath her temporary disappointment she felt as light and glad as a ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... daughter (was his syncophant word) to have it put in my power to convince all the world that there never was a truer penitent. And why, why this anger, dear Madam, (for she struggled to get her hand out of his,) these violent airs—so maidenly! [impudent fellow!]—May I not ask, if Miss Howe ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... this all made plain, arose And curtsey'd to the Spaniard. Ah, methinks I yet behold her, gracious, innocent, And flaxen-haired, and blushing maidenly, When turning she retired, and his black eyes, That hunger'd after her, did follow on; And I bethought me, 'Thou shalt see no more, Thou goodly enemy, my ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... mingled with the equally cool, easy slang of my mysterious acquaintance. When I came down to the sitting-room I was surprised, however, to find the self-styled Kearney quietly seated on the sofa, the gentle May Sylvester, the "Lily of Lone Valley," sitting with maidenly awe and unaffected interest on one side of him, while on the other that arrant flirt, her cousin Kate, was practicing the pitiless archery of her eyes, with an ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... Mr. Oxenham swaggered into the tavern, followed by his new men; and the boy took his way homewards, nursing his precious horn, trembling between hope and fear, and blushing with maidenly shame, and a half-sense of wrong-doing at having revealed suddenly to a stranger the darling wish which he had hidden from his father and mother ever since he was ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... seemed constrained and distant in his manner, but I knew, that is, I thought—I mean I felt—oh, you know—he looked as if he were glad to see me and I—I, oh, God! I was so glad and happy to see him that I could hardly restrain myself to act at all maidenly. He must have heard my heart beat. I thought he was in trouble. He seemed to have something he wished to ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... this room after that conversation, sir, I sank down on my knees and implored God that He might remain with me in this loneliness to which you had doomed me, and I implored my pride to sustain and support me, and I swore to my maidenly honor that I would preserve it unsullied ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... Gaston laughed; it was all very familiar, sounded very old, and was ludicrously wide of the mark. She had not been careless, she had not suffered from the dangerous stupidity of ultra-maidenly blindness, she knew quite well how Quisante felt. Accordingly she would not acquiesce in Mrs. Baxter's diplomatic ignoring of the only material point—how she felt herself. Of course if all Mrs. Baxter meant to convey was her ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... direct acknowledgment to Robert: his tones, his gestures, his looks, all thanked him; but he shrunk from words, with the maidenly shamefacedness that belongs to true feeling. He would even assume the authoritative, and send him away to his studies, but Robert knew how to hold his own. The relation of elder brother and younger was already established between them. Shargar likewise took his share in the ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... accounts of Lady Elizabeth's temper after marriage are not much better founded than those of her maidenly or unmaidenly conduct before it. Dryden's supposed to almost all his contemporaries in belles-lettres. There is no sign in his letters of any conjugal unhappiness, and Malone's "respectable authority" is family gossip a century ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... Smith in making the selections for his series. A choice of old authors should be a florilegium, and not a botanist's hortus siccus, to which grasses are as important as the single shy blossom of a summer. The old-maidenly genius of antiquarianism seems to have presided over the editing of the "Library." We should be inclined to surmise that the works to be reprinted had been commonly suggested by gentlemen with whom they were especial favorites, or who ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various |
