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Vacantly   Listen
adverb
Vacantly  adv.  In a vacant manner; inanely.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Vacantly" Quotes from Famous Books



... she and her parents left us. When their footfalls had died out in the distance down the empty stone corridors an uncanny silence and solemnity ensued which was dismaler to me than the mute march past the bastilles. We sat looking vacantly at each other, and it was easy to see that no one there was comfortable. The longer we sat so, the more deadly still that stillness got to be; and when the wind began to moan around the house presently, it made me sick and miserable, and I wished I had been brave enough to ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain

... and Lieutenant Devereux—I—I—dear me! yes. Gentlemen, your most obedient,' murmured Loftus vacantly, and knocking his head smartly on the top of the window frame, in recovering from a little bow. 'I'll be wi' ye, gentlemen, in a moment.' And the ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... I've ever understood, how little I've ever known myself," she thought, staring vacantly at a severe spinster, with crimped hair and a soured expression, who sat before the opposite window. "I've gone on in the dark, making mistakes and discoveries from the very beginning, undoing and doing over again, creating illusions and then destroying them—always ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow

... well fed, his eyes half-sheathed in their membraneous lids, he gazed out vacantly across the waving herbage of the shallows, across the slow, pale tides whose surface boiled from time to time above the rush of some unseen giant of a ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts

... not acquainted. He was certain that the one he wished to ascertain about was among them, but from the darkness of the advancing evening he was unable to distinguish her. He adopted a device for doing so. He hummed, as he looked vacantly around, the "Ishi-kawa,"[79] but instead of the original line, "My belt being taken," artfully, and in an arch tone, substituted the ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various

... who were wantonly murdered in their houses by English soldiers, their brains dashed out, and their bodies hacked and stabbed. Women in childbirth were not exempt from the brutal fury of the flower of the British army; and an idiot boy was deliberately shot as he sat on a fence, vacantly staring at the passing rout. All, or most of the towns in the neighborhood of Boston contributed their able-bodied men to the American force during the day; but there was never more than a few hundred ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne

... was supping Off plates of gold. Never an echo Rilled through the sea Of the feasting and dancing And minstrelsy. They called—called—called: Came no reply: Nought but the ripples' Sandy sigh. Then glum and silent They sat instead, Vacantly brooding On home and bed, Till both together Stood up and said:— 'Us knows not, dreams not, Where you be, Turvey, unless In the deep blue sea; But axcusing silver— And it comes most willing— Here's us two paying ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)

... man stunned almost to insensibility, Kearney crossed his hands before him, and sat gazing out vacantly before him. ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... her empty hands with a gesture of appeal. The old man's mind still burned with the fever of his fanatical inspiration. He hardly saw her, and did not understand all the import of her words. He looked at her vacantly, and caught sight of her ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White

... Vacantly I walked beside her. On the earth mine eyes were cast; Swift and keen there came unto me Ritter memories of the past On me, like the rain in Autumn On the dead leaves, cold ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... a kindly brown bear who pleads humanly for buns, and her I have fed into a sort of friendship. I stand vacantly in front of the cage finding in the beast an odd companionable sympathy. She turns her head on one side, regards me with melting brown eyes, and squatting on her haunches thrusts her paws beseechingly through the bars. Just so did Carlotta beseech and plead. I have bemused myself ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... heathenish way. But being now interrupted, he put up the image; and pretty .. soon, going to the table, took up a large book there, and placing it on his lap began counting the pages with deliberate regularity; at every fiftieth page —as I fancied —stopping a moment, looking vacantly around him, and giving utterance to a long-drawn gurgling whistle of astonishment. He would then begin again at the next fifty; seeming to commence at number one each time, as though he could not count more than fifty, and it was only by such ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... the Seventh Pillar, by which the twain had entered that kingdom. And Shibli Bagarag saw as in a dream the shattered door, shattered by the bar, remembering dimly as a thing distant in years the netting of the Queen, and Noorna chained upon the pillar; he remembered Shagpat even vacantly in his mind, as one sheaf of barley amid other sheaves of the bearded field, so was he overcome by the awfulness of that sight behind the veil of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... interrupted him and he looked up. She was staring at him vacantly, as though ransacking the ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry

... answer, but let his eyes rove vacantly over the room, and since his head was turned the other way, Haw-Haw Langley allowed a sneer to twist at his lips ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand

... constructed a sort of Eastern divan, upon which he perched himself cross-legged, with an ounce of shag tobacco and a box of matches laid out in front of him. In the dim light of the lamp I saw him sitting there, an old briar pipe between his lips, his eyes fixed vacantly upon the corner of the ceiling, the blue smoke curling up from him, silent, motionless, with the light shining upon his strong-set aquiline features. So he sat as I dropped off to sleep, and so he sat when a sudden ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... to assent, and hardly knew why he stood vacantly watching the doctor make his way down the steep road to the shore and the fisher's cottage. Then he threw off thoughts he had not examined, or even consciously entertained, and walked slowly and rather heavily back to the ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton

... [Laughs vacantly: all gather round him, shaking their heads, his Mother falls fainting at his feet, as Curtain falls upon a strong and moral, though ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari Volume 98, January 4, 1890 • Various

... fisherman leaning against the open kitchen-door, a basket of fish at his feet, and his clear grey eyes fixed vacantly upon the silver waves, which flashing and murmuring in the sunlight, came racing to the beach below. The old sailors' wrinkled face, once so ruddy and bronzed, was as white as his hair; his cheeks had fallen in, and deep hollows had gathered about his ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie

... court-room, "His Honor," with a startled glance at Judge Hardin, who is gazing vacantly at the two figures before him, says, "Which of these young ladies ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage

... Goldie met some person in the street," he blurted out, his half-dead eyes vacantly staring at space. He seemed not to know what ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof

... hurried home after midnight the cook, who opened the door to him, looked pale, and was trembling so violently that she could not utter a word. His wife, Elizaveta Trofimovna, a flabby, overfed woman, with her grey hair hanging loose, was sitting on the sofa in the drawing-room quivering all over, and vacantly rolling her eyes as though she were drunk. Her elder son, Vassily, a high-school boy, pale too, and extremely agitated, was fussing round her ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... Jackson, prone and bound on the deck, showed signs of recovering from his swoon. His eyes opened, and he gazed vacantly around. At length he caught sight of the Prince, who approached him with ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett

... stared vacantly at her for a while and then said, "Though I don't see why I didn't leave years and years ago; I knew all this then, as well as I do now." The wife looked away from him as she replied: "Yes, I should have known you would know. I knew your ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White

... seems to me that every man I talk to prates vacantly about impossibilities. Damn it, when I need a train I need a train.... You understand me, ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck

... Only once, for a few minutes, they seemed to resume their elasticity, and they vibrated again. Old melodies were played, and played in time. Old images seemed to start up before him. They vanished—all glimmering of reason vanished, and he sat again staring vacantly around, without thought, without mind. It was to be hoped that he did not suffer anything. His dark eyes had lost their intelligence; they looked only like black ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen

... mental and physical made him think that all things were revolting and abominable. He groped his way to a seat, and sat there, staring vacantly at the garden, seeing only broad black patches amid the general gloom. Sad, dismal ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef

... or inclination for gossip. But she had far less confidence in Jacques Monnier's wisdom, and thought it not inexpedient to go downstairs, after the doctor's departure, and give her customer a word of exhortation. He was seated at the table as before, twirling the glass in his fingers, and gazing vacantly out of window. ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter

... said, staring vacantly at me, and moving her hands slowly to and fro in the air. "I see him! But he's a long way off; he can't hear our secrets, and he does not suspect you as mother does. Don't tell me that about him any more; my flesh creeps at it! What ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins

... his brows and looked vacantly up through the leafy roof of the bower, as if in profound meditation. Some of the brighter stars were beginning to twinkle in the darkening sky by that time, and one of them seemed to wink at him encouragingly, for he suddenly turned to the middy with all the energy ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne

... which from his childhood his imagination had been filled by the study of history. 'With a person of my turn,' he said, 'the minute touches are of as great interest, and perhaps greater, than the most important events. Spending so much time as I do in solitude, my mind would have rusted by gazing vacantly at the shop windows. As it is, I am no sooner in the streets than I am in Greece, in Rome, in the midst of the French Revolution. Precision in dates, the day or hour in which a man was born or died, becomes absolutely necessary. ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan

... a word more, sat down by the pillar and looked vacantly before him while the new prisoners told their story. Ben Aboo was a villain. The people of Tetuan had found him out. His wife was a harlot whose heart was a deep pit. Between them they were demoralising the entire bashalic. The town was worse than Sodom. Hardly a child in the streets was safe, ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine

... But the glow was all that was cheerful. To-morrow, when the hard daylight should jeer away the screening shadows, it would unbare a desolate, shabby home. She knew; struck with the white leprosy of poverty; the blank walls, the faded hangings, the old stone house itself, looking vacantly out on the fields with a pitiful significance of loss. Upon the mantel-shelf there was a small marble figure, one of the Dancing Graces: the other two were gone, gone in pledge. This one was left, twirling her foot, and stretching out her hands in a dreary sort of ecstasy, ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis

... docile and cheerful servant, with nothing in his look to recall the proud gentleman of the Tidewater. Donaldson sat on a log, contentedly smoking his pipe, while Ringan, whistling a strathspey, attended to the horses. Only Shalah stood aloof, his eyes fixed vacantly on the western sky, and his ear intent on the multitudinous ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan

... lawyer, scrutinizing her sharply. She stared away vacantly out of the window. He took to the attentive study of his finger-nails once more. "And ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence

... a furtive glance at the interlocutor, then stared vacantly, but with head erect, before him. His eyes were glassy ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier

... They were not of the dregs of humanity, who might be said to fall into animality when the restraints of society and of discipline were removed. They were many of them men who had respected positions and refined surroundings at home. These were the victims who looked vacantly with glazed eyes and could mumble no intelligent response when asked their names, where was their home, what was the name of the mother ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... awhile before he answered. His eyes looked vacantly around him. By this time they had left the more thickly-settled parts of the village considerably behind them. But a few more dwellings lay along the path on which they were approaching. On the left, a gorge ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms

... death's head, about half an inch in width, with eye-sockets staring vacantly, and grisly mouth gaping in a wide and horrible smile, made the more horrible by the two rows of protruding teeth. The girl almost dropped the letter, as full realization of the significance of the design ...
— The Film of Fear • Arnold Fredericks

... that, flinging up the moist soil with an asperated "a-ah" that punctuated regularly each heave of his shoulder muscles. In a little he climbed out and helped Mike rig a windlass over the hole. Mike pottered a good deal, and stood often staring vacantly, studying the next detail of their work. When he was not using them, his hands drooped helplessly at his sides, a sign of mental slackness never to be mistaken. He was willing, and what Murphy told him ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower

... turf became invisible beneath the sea of black hats. By and by, when this crowd had become somewhat less disorderly and a lane had been formed as far as the exit and Nana was again applauded as she went off with Price hanging lifelessly and vacantly over her neck, she smacked her thigh energetically, lost all self-possession, ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola

... the last of her house, she mused in her lonely home. A faint fire flickering on the hearth just revealed the form and face of the Mexican maiden. Her mantilla lay on the floor beside her, the black hair, thick and straight, hung to the waist, her brilliant, piercing eyes were bent vacantly on the fire, her dark cheek perfectly colorless ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans

... the sheriff grinning vacantly into the dark. There was a peculiar something in Jig's smile that ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand

... loud cry and sank unconscious to the floor. While Baptiste and the marquise's maid hurried to her assistance, Fougereuse gazed vacantly before him, and then raising ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere

... vitality exists; but not yet in all the universe of God has the vitality been united to the matter; animal life, to even the profound apprehension of the fallen angel, is an inconceivable idea. Meanwhile, as the scarce reckoned centuries roll by, vacantly and dull, like the cheerless days and nights over the head of some unhappy captive, the miserable prisoners of our planet become aware that there is a slow change taking place in the condition of their prison-house. Where a ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller

... younger woman, catching some of the excitement of her mother. She stood tensely, drawn up near the fire, gazing vacantly but intently across the kitchen, as if she would will it so passionately that Kevin should live that he would live. She moved suddenly, swiftly, noiselessly across the floor and ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly

... from whose neck and flanks the sweat rolled like lather. Yet he was not conscious how intent had been his purpose until he felt a sudden instinctive shock on seeing that the ferryboat was gone. For an instant his wonderful self-possession abandoned him; he could only gaze vacantly at the leaden-colored bay, without a thought or expedient. But in another moment he saw that the boat was returning from the distance. Had he lost his only chance? He glanced hurriedly at his watch; he had come more quickly than he imagined; there would still be time. ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte

... the pangs of hunger. Then he glanced at Grenfell, who lay fast asleep close by, with his blanket falling away from him. The man's face was half buried among the withered needles which were thick in his unkempt hair, and he lay huddled together, grotesque and unsightly in ragged disarray. Weston vacantly noticed the puffiness of his cheeks, and the bagginess beneath his eyes. The stamp of indulgence was very plain upon him, and the younger man, who had led a simple, strenuous life, was sensible of ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss

... stiff and sore in every bone and muscle, and, although the cannon and rifles were silent, there was still a hollow roaring in his ears. His eyes were yet dim from the smoke, and his head felt heavy and dull. He gazed vacantly at the forest in front of him, and wondered dimly why the Southern army was not still there, attacking, as it had attacked for ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler

... the truth does not come to him—he reads it again. Edith is dying. And then a grayish pallor comes over his face, from brow to chin, and he stands for a moment, staring vacantly at the paper he holds, seeing nothing—hearing nothing but these words: "Edith is dying." In that moment he knows that all his imaginary hardness and indifference have been hollow and false—a wall of pride that crumbles at a touch, and the old love, stronger than life, stronger ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming

... echoed Don vacantly. He remembered then that Lawton roomed in Number 20 Billings, directly above Number ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour

... while with her fingers upon the window sash; and when she turned to old Tamar, who brought in her tiny tea equipage, it seemed as if the shadow of the dell, into which she had been vacantly gazing, still rested ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... she closed the door of her room, there came from her throat a low and agonized groan. She stood leaning for a space against the panels with her hands stretched out gropingly against the woodwork. Her lips moved vacantly, then her knees gave way and she crumpled down and lay insensible ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck

... this the man, looking vacantly out across the city walls to where the sea birds dipped on the rippling waves, was apparently oblivious. Nor did he manifest the slightest interest in the animated scene before him until a tall, heavy-set young priest emerged from the entrance of the dormitory below and stopped ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... Yes: it will depend on what happens to him. (He look vacantly at her.) Don't you see? It will depend on how he comes to learn what love really is. I mean on the sort of woman who ...
— Candida • George Bernard Shaw

... life: a baby's cradle hangs in mid-air, some tin boxes have fallen through from the box-room in the attic to the ground floor. Shops are shivered and their contents strewn on all sides; the interiors of other houses have been hollowed out by fire. There is a toy-shop with dolls grinning vacantly at the ruins or bobbing brightly on ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan

... third flour, one third saleratus, and the crisping bean, surmounted by crimped pork, showed that a Providence Yankee might well find an appropriate entertainment. But again the eyes of Roseton looked vacantly on, and again, amid strains of music, the walls of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... drummer who had turned the tide of battle in the bicker on the Castle Brae. A small stone which I dislodged now rolled down the rock, and tumbled into the abyss close beside him. He turned his head, and after looking at me for a moment somewhat vacantly, he resumed his former attitude. I drew yet nearer to the horrible edge; not close, however, for fear was ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... place at Dr. Stuart's house a few minutes after I left, sir," he said. "I'm going back there, now, for particulars. It sounds as though the 'phone message might have been intended to get me away." He stared down at the pencilled slip which the Assistant Commissioner had handed him, but stared vacantly, and: "Do you mind if I call someone up, sir?" he asked. "It ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer

... lips parted, and the blue eyes, brighter than ever, stared vacantly around. The sound of her father's voice seemed to have roused her, for she began to speak a little prayer: "God bless papa and mamma, and God bless all on board this ship. God bless me, and make me a good girl, for Jesus Christ's ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke

... the circumstances that surrounded him, and gazed vacantly at the judge and jury. He was a dull, stupid fellow, and did not ...
— The Boat Club - or, The Bunkers of Rippleton • Oliver Optic

... talk Dick and his brothers and Stanley stared somewhat vacantly at the president and the professors. The students wanted to speak several times, but Doctor Wallington ...
— The Rover Boys at College • Edward Stratemeyer

... him vacantly for the numbness following the first shock was passing away and all the eating agony of my loss began to fix its ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard

... his arm-chair. The president and vice-president followed his example, and the other members of the council bowed and retired. The Margrave of Baden and Count von Starhemberg remained standing by the green table, while the emperor, who had crossed the room, now stood vacantly staring out of a window, drumming with his fingers on one ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach

... the boy somewhat, for he opened his eyes and looked vacantly round. But a fit of sickness followed this partial recovery, and again ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... the dreary rain was a relief, because of the sound it made; a relief, also, because it moved, and had some faint suggestion, in consequence, of life and companionship in it—while he was standing at the window, and looking vacantly into the black darkness outside, he heard a distant church-clock strike ten. Only ten! How was he to pass the time till the house was ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens

... his arms she looked at him wildly, and murmured and muttered in the vain attempt to speak. "Look at me again," he said. "Don't you remember the man who had some talk with you to-day?" She still stared at him vacantly: he tried again. "Don't you ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins

... gazing vacantly on the averted face of the merchant's daughter, and muttering inly to himself: this conference, with which he had hitherto only trifled, amusing himself with the credulity and vanity of his visitor—might it ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

... the word "yammerschooner," which means "give me." After pointing to almost every object, one after the other, even to the buttons on our coats, and saying their favourite word in as many intonations as possible, they would then use it in a neuter sense, and vacantly repeat "yammerschooner." After yammerschoonering for any article very eagerly, they would by a simple artifice point to their young women or little children, as much as to say, "If you will not give it me, surely you will to ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin

... on the door... the steps drew nearer. The door opened and Nejdanov, supported under the arm by Pavel, appeared in the doorway. He was deadly pale, without a cap, his dishevelled hair hung in wet tufts over his forehead, he stared vacantly straight in front of him. Pavel helped him across the room (Nejdanov's legs were weak and shaky) and made him ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev

... was one destined to remain unasked. As she stood gazing vacantly outward, her hands clasped in perplexity, something moving arrested her attention. A small figure in white, or what seemed white in that light. It was circling the pond where the water-lilies grew and was ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond

... a large room which served in winter as a kitchen and in summer as a sort of sitting-room, smoking a pipe and gazing vacantly into the pine-branches in the open fireplace before him. He had been out all day on his marsh, but he had been home a couple of hours. His wife—kindly soul—received Captain Pelham at the door, wiping her hands upon her apron, ...
— By The Sea - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin

... of every nationality on earth. There were Turkish regulars in their queer conical khaki helmets, and wild-looking levies who had no kin with Europe. There were squads of Germans in flat forage-caps, staring vacantly at novel sights, and quick to salute any officer on the side-walk. Turks in closed carriages passed, and Turks on good Arab horses, and Turks who looked as if they had come out of the Ark. But it was the rabble that caught the eye—very ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan

... lifted her face in turn and stared vacantly at her sister. It was so blurred and swollen with incessant crying that if Maud had not known it was her sister who lay crouched there before her, she could scarcely ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler

... a deep orange-colour with the henna, and who rattled and clinked as they moved and the barbaric ornaments of silver and gold which circled their arms and ankles shifted upon their small-boned limbs. The blind man was singing loudly. The women, staring vacantly, held the corners of their cloaks mechanically to their already covered faces. The man with the bristling beard talked violently with friends, and occasionally, interrupting himself abruptly, joined almost furiously in the blind man's ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens

... look vacantly into the wall. "Sometimes, you know, I seem to wake up with a clear mind—but the day clouds it. We shouldn't believe so many falsities, Aunt Bell, if they didn't pinch our brains into it at a tender age. I should know Allan through and through at a glance to-day, ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson

... was a small tragedy in its way. The little citizen in spectacles, who had been standing on the opposite corner vacantly eating an apple out of a paper bag, had unwisely chosen his moment to try the crossing. He was evidently an indoors sort of man and no shakes at crossing streets, owing to the introspective nature of his mind. A grocery wagon shaved him by an inch. It was doing things to the speed-limit, ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... their natural gait, he picked up his dream where he had been interrupted. Where his body went mattered little to Johnny Jewel, so long as he was left alone with his thoughts. So presently his eyes were once more staring vacantly at the dim trail, while in spirit he was soaring high and swooping downward with the ease of a desert lark, while thousands thrilled to watch ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower

... presently discovered tilted back in a chair on the piazza, gazing vacantly into the vacant street with that air of endurance that fathers of families put on at such resorts. But he brightened up when Mr. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... had recovered consciousness, and sat gazing vacantly around him, till the cries and yells without, the agonized face within, thrilled every nerve into feeling. Starting up, he rushed to the window, but recoiled at the awful sight. Here, he saw, there was no human power within reach or call that could interfere. The whole block, from street ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson

... a soul hears this music, unless it is the watchers at the bedside of Mr. Leonard Tappleton, the richest man in town, who has lain dying these three days, and can not last till sunrise. Or perhaps some mother, drowsily hushing her wakeful baby, pauses a moment and listens vacantly to the birds singing. But ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various

... began at the door, and by the time she had worked round to Elizabeth at the window, she had made by many times a more careful survey of her mistress than of any piece of furniture in the room. Elizabeth's head had drooped; and her eyes were looking, not vacantly, but with no object in view, out of ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner

... no reply, but looked round vacantly. The light of the lamp, coming suddenly out of the darkness, the finding herself face to face with the marchesa, dazzled and ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot

... their faces, impotent in the face of such a calamity. Two first field dressings, one open and the contents trod on the ground, the other fresh as when it left the hands of the makers, (p. 066) lay idle beside the dead man. A little distance to the rear a youngster was looking vacantly across the parapet, his eyes fixed on the ruined church in front, but his mind seemed to be deep in something else, a problem which ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill

... the table at her husband, but he was slouched in his chair, his eyes staring vacantly ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... the hands of these photographers, you may see stately pictures of papa and mamma, Johnny and Bub and Sis or a couple of country cousins, all smiling vacantly, and all disposed in studied and uncomfortable attitudes in their carriage, and all looming up in their awe-inspiring imbecility before the snubbed and diminished presentment of that majestic presence whose ministering spirits are the rainbows, whose voice is the thunder, whose awful front ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... as he stared vacantly around the room, he could realize nothing save a dull, leaden weight of pain. In this dreary obscurity of suffering, distinct causes of trouble and fear began to shape themselves. There was a mingled sense of misfortune and guilt. He had a confused memory ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe

... Augustus fidgeted. He kept touching my arm, half in an outburst of affection and half to keep my attention from wandering from him. He blustered politenesses to Lady Tilchester, who smiled vacantly while she was attending to something else. Then my fiance suggested that we should dance. I agreed; it would be an opportunity to get rid of my cauliflower bouquet, which I flung viciously into a ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn

... little more pertaining in an indifferent way to the above household, but Virgie had read enough, and the letter fell from her nerveless fingers, while she sat staring vacantly before her, her brain almost turned by the heartless words she had just read, her heart broken with its weight of woe, while a feeling of utter wretchedness and desolation made her long for death to steep her senses ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... who should be alive in the land except the Gods that made it—the Gods to whom his village prayed nightly—the Gods who were in all men's mouths and about all men's ways? He could not raise his head or stir a finger for the trance that held him, and Peroo was smiling vacantly at the lightning. ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling

... Garry had left it, upon a table, and while he was loosening the latter's clothing Steve shook it, experimentally, and found it empty. He swung it aloft and drove it through a window. The crash of shivered glass made the other stir. He opened his eyes and stared vacantly up into ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans

... enormous tail, she would bound shrieking after him in among the trees and disappear! Martin usually wakened at this point, and found the marmoset gazing in his face with an expression of sorrowful solemnity, and the old sun-dried trader staring vacantly before him as he steered his light craft down the broad stream of ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... she seemed to take in only what Mr. Peck had thought of the dance and supper; at the end she said, rather vacantly, "What nonsense!" ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells

... her hand, Alma passed into the sitting-room, where she stood at the window, watching till Mrs. Frothingham's sunshade had disappeared. Then she moved about, like one in search of occupation; taking up a book only to throw it down again, gazing vacantly at a picture, or giving a touch to a bowl of flowers. Here, as in the dining-room, only the absence of conventional superfluities called for remark; each article of furniture was in simple taste; the result, an impression ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing

... "Alessandro" so earnestly, that Father Salvierderra advised bringing Alessandro into the room, to see if by any chance there might have been something in his mind that he wished to say to him. But when Alessandro stood by the bedside, Felipe gazed at him vacantly, as he did at all the others, still repeating, ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson

... tedious conversations with them on platonics, the blisses of matrimony, and the chief causes of love, show plainly that he had a "wandering eye." He had a deal to say also of his lady customers (who were much the same in olden times as nowadays)—one simple soul who turned over his books rather vacantly till he asked her "in Joque" whether she wanted "Tom Thumb" (a penny chapbook). To his surprise she answered, "Yes;" and he said, still guying, "in Folio and with marginal notes?" and the dull creature replied, "Oh the best." Another hectored him by ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle

... his seat, looked about him vacantly and caught the eye of the angry farmer, who nodded, broke off his speech in the middle of a sentence, and asked in a ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... Lester looked up vacantly into the dark-gray eyes. "I—I was in a hurry to close my books at the office; that is ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey

... the sergeant, looking vacantly across the table at his wife, who had given vent to a cry of horror. "Murdered!" he repeated, as though seeking to assure himself of the truth of the butler's statement by a ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees

... chamber of death, the door was heard to open, and some one entered noiselessly; but the draught caused by the open window closed the door sharply behind the visitor. Mauer opened his eyes at the sound, and looked up vacantly as if he did not recognize Jonathan. Carmen also raised her head; but when she saw who it was, she immediately hid her face again, for she felt it quite impossible to speak to him now. Kneeling between the bed and the wall, her form was completely ...
— Sister Carmen • M. Corvus

... upon me with such force, and brought me such emotion, that I dare say for a little while I sat vacantly staring at her, with an air of preoccupation. Anyhow, all at once she laughed, and cried out, 'Well, when you get back...?' and, 'Perhaps,' she questioned, 'perhaps you think it polite to go off wool-gathering ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland

... fiercely at the savage-looking intruder, but fortunately he held his hand and bent over his companion wonderingly, and hardly able to believe what he saw; for as the dog nuzzled about Nic's face, the young man, partly aroused by the shaking, opened his eyes, looked vacantly at the brute for some moments, and then, as if his intellectual powers were returning, he smiled, the animal stopping short and staring down at ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn

... his room with her calm restored, with nothing but some disorder of her hair and dress to betoken her troubles. Even the child in her arms, worn out with weeping perhaps, had fallen asleep. He stared at the pair of them vacantly. His lamp, his music, all the apparatus of his gentle and decorous existence were as he had left them; their familiar and prosaic quality made his adventure ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon

... refugees have told me that she has always administered the vast estate with liberal kindness to all. And now you will tell me of her?" The tremulous hand of Wieniawski raised a brimming glass of brandy to his lips. He stared about vacantly when ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage

... sitting on a bench near the bunk-house one day at twilight, when I noticed a profile silhouetted against the window. I had seen only one profile like that in my life, and that was when I was a boy. I moved closer. The man sat like a statue. His face was very pale and he was gazing vacantly at the walls in the rear of the building. Finally, I went over ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine

... hastily obeyed the summons which I had received from her mother. What a commotion was that bustling family thrown into. The physicians pronounced her sickness a brain fever. When I reached her bedside, she was raving, and her beautiful eyes gazed vacantly on the nearest and dearest of her friends; even the mother that bore her hung over her unrecognized. She had retired as usual the night before, her mother said, apparently well; but at midnight the family had been awakened by her shrieks and cries. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various

... you—for the third time. Why did he? He had his chance; two chances in fact. But this is folly, for of course he had no chance at all. Fate stood by that news-stall, with the blear-eyed, frousy woman that tended it looking vacantly on; Fate, veiled, too, and not even monosyllabic in his behalf. I should have known this, I think, even if I had not lived those curious, long eight months in Algeria and slept those dreamless nights under the Algerian stars that got into my blood and call me back now and ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell

... of the same opinion. Van Sneck was lying on the bed looking vacantly about him. He seemed older and more worn, perhaps, because his beard and moustache were growing ragged and dirty on his face. He pressed his hand to his head in ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White

... I can't find Master Piers anywhere in the house or garden, Sir Beverley," he said, looking straight before him and blinking vacantly at the lamp. "I'm inclined to believe, sir, that he must ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell

... over on the bed with a kitten-like motion and, stretching her arms above her head, lay taut for a second, then relaxed suddenly. Head tucked in the pillow, she apparently was lost in thought, for her brown eyes, slightly narrowed, stared vacantly at the frilling of the pillow-slip. Then she gave a soft little sound that had it not been so pretty would have been a giggle, wriggled round, and slipped off the bed. She ran to the mirror and began to take down her tumbled hair. As she raised her arms her round breast ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse

... main street, where a great number of people had collected, when they were suddenly joined by Bousquier, who exhibited a strange demeanor, now laughing, now shaking his head, now gazing vacantly before him. Colard cast a shy, sidelong glance at him, and the shopkeeper, who thought of nothing but the murder and saw in all this the manifestations of a bad conscience, observed the man keenly. Those around them, too, became watchful, and ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various

... for the birth of Christ! She heard, and she thought— Vacantly—of her man, that was long since dead, The smell of the Christmas food, and the drink they had bought Together, the year ...
— The Lord of Misrule - And Other Poems • Alfred Noyes

... his porter, and even while he was still on the platform I noted how ill he seemed. He dropped into the corner over against me with a sigh, made an incomplete attempt to arrange his travelling shawl, and became motionless, with his eyes staring vacantly. Presently he was moved by a sense of my observation, looked up at me, and put out a spiritless hand for his newspaper. Then he glanced again ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... caught at seemed, as it fell upon the air, to impregnate it with some benumbing quality. The husband and wife looked dumbly, almost vacantly at one another, for what ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic

... interrupted, he put up the image; and pretty soon, going to the table, took up a large book there, and placing it on his lap began counting the pages with deliberate regularity; at every fiftieth page—as I fancied—stopping a moment, looking vacantly around him, and giving utterance to a long-drawn gurgling whistle of astonishment. He would then begin again at the next fifty; seeming to commence at number one each time, as though he could not count ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... himself on his place and stared at me, got down again, and repeated the same proceedings several times. It was not until after a long hour that he laid the hatchet on one side, remained sitting on the waggon, and contented himself with gaping vacantly at me every now and then. At the end of a second hour we reached the station where my servant was, and I did not allow him to ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer

... in his chair, supporting his head vacantly on his hands, trying to think and fearing to think, de Spain heard Pardaloe's measured tread on the descending steps, and listened mechanically to the retreating echoes of his footsteps down the shaded street. Minute after minute passed. De Spain made no move. A step so light that it could only ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman

... vacantly from the zenith to the nadir, and from west to east, when suddenly his eyes fell on the Abbot of Antinoe. His face grew pale with a holy terror, and his eyeballs reflected ...
— Thais • Anatole France

... the call. His blue eyes clouded with anxiety and he fumbled the adjustments, coaxing the current into perfect action before he called again. Answer came, and Swan bent over the table, listening, his eyes fixed vacantly upon the opposite wall of the dugout. Then, his fingers flexing delicately, swiftly, he sent the message that told how completely his big heart ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower

... fell upon the two, while the sweet summer scents stole in at the window,—the breath of the cinnamon rose, of growing, grass and good brown earth. Mrs. Pettis pondered, looking vacantly before her, and Old Lady Lamson knit hastily on. Her needles clicked together, and she turned her work with a jerk in beginning a row. But neither was oppressed by lack of speech. They understood each other, and no more thought of "making talk" than of pulling up a seed to learn whether it had germinated. ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown

... door for a moment or two after it had closed upon the slender, dimly seen figure. Then he went to his own rooms, and began briskly enough to move about between the mirrors and dressing room, windows and bed. But two or three times he stopped short, and found himself staring vacantly into space, all movement arrested, even thought arrested for whole ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris

... residence. In the handsomely appointed library on the second floor were seated Dr. Bernstein, Mr. Jeffries and the judge. Each was absorbed in his own thoughts. Dr. Bernstein was puffing at a big black cigar; the banker stared vacantly into space. The judge, at his desk, examined some legal papers. Not a word was spoken. They seemed to be waiting for a fourth man who had not yet arrived. Presently Judge ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow

... breezes, and are little frequented. We found here a solitary gentleman, who was sauntering up and down with his hands in his pockets, and a look at once stupid and disconsolate. Sometimes he paused, looked vacantly over the waters, whistled, yawned, and turned away to resume his solemn walk. On a trifling remark addressed to him by one of our party, he entered into conversation, with all the eagerness of a man, whose tongue had long been kept in most unnatural ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson

... and mild that Lady Flora left open the door as she entered; she seated herself at the table, and, unmindful of her pretended employment, suffered the portefeuille to remain unopened. Leaning her cheek upon her hand, she gazed vacantly on the ground, and scarcely felt the tears which gathered slowly to her eyes, but, falling not, remained within the fair lids, chill and motionless, as if the thought which drew them there was born of a sorrow less agitated than fixed ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... could also be seen to stare vacantly at the distance while they strained their ears to listen. As for Hugh himself he found it hard to believe his senses, for the absolute quiet and dead calm brooding all day long over that retired spot in the wilderness had been rudely shattered by a most ...
— The Boy Scouts with the Motion Picture Players • Robert Shaler

... one else was always ample reason for his doing it. The starving, freezing prisoners used to collect in considerable numbers before the gate, and stand there for hours gazing vacantly at it. There was no special object in doing this, only that it was a central point, the rations came in there, and occasionally an officer would enter, and it was the only place where anything was likely to occur to vary the dreary ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... of Henry Chatillon was necessary for the subsistence of the party in my absence; so I called Raymond, and ordered him to prepare to set out with me. Raymond rolled his eyes vacantly about, but at length, having succeeded in grappling with the idea, he withdrew to his bed under the cart. He was a heavy-molded fellow, with a broad face exactly like an owl's, expressing the most impenetrable ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... Prospector, 'they found him lying in the hot sand away off on the desert, with his head propped up against a rock, nearly dead for want of water. When they tried to rouse him he stared at them vacantly. They gave him a little water, and as soon as he had swallowed it he fought like a wild animal for more. It took three or four of them to hold him. He cursed and swore at them because they would not give him all he wanted, ...
— Montezuma's Castle and Other Weird Tales • Charles B. Cory

... parcel around to Mr. Pascoe. His cobbler's shop was in a street that had the look of having retired from the hurry and press of London, aged, dispirited, and indifferent even to its defeat, and of waiting vacantly for what must come to elderly and shabby despondence. Each grey house in the street was distinguished but by its number and the ornament which showed between the muslin curtains of its parlour window. The home of the Jones's had a geranium, and so was different ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson

... to have all he wanted to eat. It was a treat to see him. He accepted these things without surprise, without spoken thanks; just as he would have accepted an increased supply of work and kicks. Before his little fire he squatted all day, gazing vacantly off into space, or gnawing on a piece of the meat he always kept roasting on sticks. He spoke to no one; he never smiled or displayed any obvious signs of enjoyment; but from him radiated a feeling ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White

... at his employment, and John Smith slowly felt his way to his own door. His wife, already up, opened it. "Thee varmint! thee never gi'ed I that shilling last night for the baker." Smith felt hopelessly in his pocket, and then looked at her vacantly. "Thee drunken, nasty old——," said the infuriated woman, almost unconsciously lifting her hand. Perhaps it was that action of hers which suggested the same to his mind, which was in a mechanical state. Perhaps the stinging words of last night had at last sunk deep enough to ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies

... vacantly around). "How did I wander? Perhaps the well is there, perhaps not. I don't know. ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... by the haste with which the two bailiffs approached the lapidary, who would not part with the body of his infant. The old woman ceased to howl, rose from her bed, slowly approached Morel, and passing her hideous and stupid face over his shoulder, gazed vacantly on the corpse of her grandchild. The features of the idiot retained their usual expression of ferocity. After a little time, she uttered a sort of hoarse, hollow groan, like a hungry beast, and returning to her bed, she threw herself upon it, crying ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue

... I am mad!" quoth Miss Peggy to herself, "How truly gratifying! I must foster the delusion." She turned her magazine ostentatiously upside down, smiled vacantly at the pictures, and feigning to fall asleep, watched beneath her eyelashes the compassionate glances with which she was regarded, shaking the while with ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey

... Gregory paused irresolutely. He did not know what course to pursue, so he repeated vacantly, ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis

... the bed. Then he struck another match and leaned close to examine her. The flare of the sulphur illuminated the room and shot two rectangles of light against the outer blackness where the unglazed windows stared vacantly upon the road beyond, bringing to a sudden halt a little company of muddy and bedraggled men who slipped, ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... to wrench himself free. "Huh," he said vacantly. He stared at the youth for a moment. At last he spoke as if dimly comprehending. "Oh! Inteh ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane

... if once the brave, kind eyes of his old friend should meet his own, concealment would be no longer possible; yet, for the sake of that promise he had sworn in the past night, it must be maintained at every hazard, every cost. Vacantly he sat and watched the play of the sunshine in the prismatic water of the courtyard fountain, and the splashing, and the pluming, and the murmuring of the doves and pigeons on its edge. He felt meshed in a net from which there was no escape—none—unless, ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... of conviction in Mrs. Brown's manner of speaking that grieved Ann Holland sorely. She accompanied her departing guest to the door, and long after she was out of sight stood looking vacantly down the darkened street. There was little light or sound there now, except in the Upton Arms, where the windows glistened brightly, and the merry tinkling of a violin sounded through the open door. Her brother was there, she knew, and would not be home before midnight. He had ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton

... Vacantly her eyes rested on this sky-Hecla, and its splendor passed away unheeded, for she was looking far beyond the western gates of day, and saw a pool of blood—a ghastly face turned up to the sky—a coffined corpse strewn with white poppies and rosemary—a wan, dying woman, whose ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans



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