"Maidenly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... looked. There was not a person in the room that carried her head so nobly, nor whose pose was so stately and graceful; yet, stately as it was, it had no air of proud self-consciousness, nor of pride at all; it was not that; it was simple, maidenly dignity, not dignity aped. Betty read so much, and rapidly read what else she could see. She saw that the figure she was admiring was dressed but indifferently; the black silk had certainly seen its best days, if it was not exactly shabby; no ornaments whatever ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... any moment we were liable to be discovered and separated, the marriage must take place at once. A consumptive hastens his wedding, a wounded tree is quick to bear, and the fright we had experienced taught me how slight was the thread on which my happiness hung; but Manmat'ha was calm with a maidenly content with little, which in my hasty resentment at even a suspicion of opposition to my plan, I was ready to ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... the color deepened in her cheeks as she answered with a pretty mixture of maidenly shyness ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... a crumpet, and blinked at Lady Enid, who was airily sipping her tea with a slightly detached air of calm and maidenly dignity. ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... 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 modesty fixes the chain. ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... What had her fair, unclouded brow, her innocent face, her maidenly bearing in common with the vain, voluptuous, and corrupt women around, who were so lost to shame as not only to do homage to the king's mistresses, but to envy them the infamous ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... Simon, turning to his master, with an utter disregard of Miggs's maidenly affliction, 'a box of things upstairs. Do what you like with 'em. I don't want 'em. I'm never coming back here, any more. Provide yourself, sir, with a journeyman; I'm my country's journeyman; henceforward that's MY line ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... 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 the least." ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... 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
... away; For never saw I mien or face In which more plainly I could trace Benignity and home-bred sense Ripening in perfect innocence. Here scatter'd like a random seed, Remote from men, Thou dost not need The embarrass'd 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, about thee plays; With no restraint, but such as springs From quick ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... times welcome! Your coming proves to me that your heart has found the strength which I expected; that my sweet sister has recovered herself, her maidenly ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... year's end." And she gave the promise. Connachar got for her a woman-teacher and merry modest maidens fair that would lie down and rise with her, that would play and speak with her. Deirdre was clever in maidenly duties and wifely understanding, and Connachar thought he never saw with bodily eye a ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... Instead, she gave him that little, half-smiling, half-piteous glance, to which he responded with a lighting up of his whole face and lift of his hat. Then Evelyn smiled entirely, and her backward glance at him was wonderfully alluring, yet maidenly, almost childish. Wollaston, on his way home, thought again how different it would be if Evelyn, instead of Maria, were his wife. Then he put it out of his ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... was also a forfeit play, with the difference that the kiss was more certain, being taken of mere choice—though delivered, of course, with due maidenly reluctance and a show of resisting—whenever the girl facing one could be caught over the line. All the young people played it; all the elders deprecated it. At the bottom of Judith's heart lay one reason for making a play-party and bidding ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... passengers, who, to escape for a time the boredom of a long, dull voyage, were eager to make a pet of the interesting and mysterious hero; but Jim's moroseness deepened under the attacks, and at length he escaped with only a glance of almost maidenly coyness whenever circumstances threw him in the ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... But something more than maidenly modesty and pride made Alice shy and reserved when with Harcourt. She would think more about him, but talk less to him than to others when in company. She was a peculiarly sensitive, diffident girl, and instinctively shrank from the man who had for ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... be, my lord," returned Christina with drooping, blushing face; "it would not be maidenly in me. Oh, my lord, you are kind and generous, make it not hard for me to do what other maidens less lonely have friends ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... aimlessness she swept the wood with a reconnoitring glance, and then with eyes of maidenly desperation fixed ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... tongue played a prominent part. Tall and fully developed, but no looks. Clever, masculine brain, and strong physically. Skillfully concealed her passionate nature, which, however, was long in developing and was long kept in check by maidenly modesty. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... 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
... 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 ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... fond of striking to and fro, to make one another glow in the frosty weather of a single-state; but which, when a man comes in between the pretended inseparables, is given up, like their music and other maidenly amusements; which, nevertheless, may be necessary to keep the pretty rogues out of active mischief. They then, in short, having caught the fish, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... would extremely astonish more polished lovers, they are carried on honorably, it being, at least, as usual for the Pastoras of the mountains to go from the bed of courtship to the bed of marriage as unpolluted and maidenly as the Chloes of fashion; and yet you are not to conclude that this proceeds from their being less susceptible of the belle-passion than their betters; or that the cold air which they breathe has 'froze the genial current of their souls.' By no means; if they ...
— Bundling; Its Origin, Progress and Decline in America • Henry Reed Stiles
... of Capri. Nothing could be simpler or brighter. The brick walls were hung with ivy greener than emeralds, and enamelled with white bell-flowers; on the ground floor was a fairly spacious apartment, in which the men slept and the family took their meals; on the floor above was Nisida's little maidenly room, full of coolness, shadows, and mystery, and lighted by a single casement that looked over the gulf; above this room was a terrace of the Italian kind, the four pillars of which were wreathed with vine branches, while its vine-clad arbour and wide parapet were overgrown with ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... a 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 fills ...
— Only an Irish Girl • Mrs. Hungerford
... loves never addresses such a question; but the feminine heart was a book in which he was a very poor speller. He imagined that Reine was only asking him as a matter of form, and that it was from a feeling of maidenly reserve that she adopted this passive method of escaping from openly declaring her wishes. She no doubt desired his friendly aid in the matter, and he felt as if he ought ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... of the golden age? Full many a story Poets have sung in its praise, simply and touchingly sung— Of the time when the holy still wandered over life's pathways,— When with a maidenly shame every sensation was veiled,— When the mighty law that governs the sun in his orbit, And that, concealed in the bud, teaches the point how to move, When necessity's silent law, the steadfast, the changeless, Stirred ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... her was all very pleasant. It gave an instant rose colour to her life. She had achieved such a character down at Exeter for maidenly reserve, and had lived so sternly, that it was hardly in her memory that a man had squeezed her hand before. She did remember one young clergyman who had sinned in this direction, twelve years since, but he was now a Bishop. When she heard the other day ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... blooming gay plants lay the maidenly form raised upon cushions, pale, in a white robe, her lovely slender hands folded and holding a crucifix, her eyes closed, dark black tresses hanging full and heavy round her head, on which a wreath of roses and cypress ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... back 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 said; ...
— If Only etc. • Francis Clement Philips and Augustus Harris
... up from her work once—twice—with no small curiosity; she saw so few strangers, and of men, and young men, almost none, from year's end to year's end. Yet it was a look as frank, as unconscious, as maidenly as might have been Miranda's ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... Nowak came closest. After months and months, and because he had been busy with the other woman mentioned, of whom she knew nothing, she came to enter sometimes with a sense of suffocation, sometimes of maidenly shame. It would never have occurred to her to admit frankly that she wanted Cowperwood to make love to her. It would have frightened her to have thought of herself as yielding easily, and yet there was not a detail of his personality that was not now burned in her brain. ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... sensation among the handful of men gathered round the helpless girl in her prison, bringing the stake in all its horror before the eyes of the judges as before her own. No other thing could have been suggested by that piteous prayer. The stake, the scaffold, the fire—and the shrinking figure all maidenly, helpless, exposed to every evil gaze, must have showed themselves at least for a moment against that dark background of prison wall. It was enough that it should be long—to hide her as much as was possible ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... to keep the interior of the temple and the shrines pure and clean, 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 ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... misery of this interview. It surprised me very much to meet you here, as I had no desire to cross your path. I shall not enter this house again, and Kingston will soon see the last of me. It would have been better, I think—more maidenly, if you will allow me to say so—to have met me as a perfect ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... boiled, upon the cupboard, the dressing table, the desk at which she wrote, and the torn and mended curtains before the single window. Though she neither apologised nor showed in her manner the faintest embarrassment, he felt instinctively that her fierce maidenly pride was ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... two hours, for we must go by the Black Sail and come back to Wastdale Head, and that's round-about, thou knows." "So you'll take them on Wastdale Head, then, eh?" said Liza, turning her head aside as though in the abundance of her maidenly modesty, but really glancing slyly under the corner of her bonnet in the direction taken by the mourners, and wondering if they could ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... with eyes whose glow made her eyelids fall in maidenly defence. "I am capable of anything you ask," he ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... Polly Gookin felt not thus. The pair were now promenading the room; Feathertop with his dainty stride, and no less dainty grimace; the girl with a native maidenly grace, just touched, not spoiled, by a slightly affected manner, which seemed caught from the perfect artifice of her companion. The longer the interview continued, the more charmed was pretty Polly, until, within the first quarter ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... I said, with a trembling wish to have every thing right and maidenly. "I have seen so much harm from misunderstandings, and they are so simple when it is too late—let me ask you one or two questions, Uncle Sam. You always answer every body. And to you ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... to the pillow and repeated in low soft tones the simple words she had used from childhood on such occasions. Owen's name was mentioned without faltering, but in the other case, maidenly shyness was too strong even for religion, and that when supported by excellent intentions. At the name of Edward she stammered, and her voice sank to the faintest whisper in ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... go, let us go with you," said Marie, forgetting in her excitement her usual maidenly reserve, and laying her little hand as she spoke upon her lover's arm; then blushing, she withdrew it, and ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... laborious politeness with a cachinnation like that of a Cheshire cheese, which strikes me all of a heap. Her female parent excuses to me such flabbergasting demeanour on the plea that her daughter is afflicted with great shyness and maidenly modesty, but, on perceiving that she can be skittish and genial in the company of other masculines, I am forced to attribute her contumeliousness to the circumstance that I am a native gentleman of ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... 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 ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... quietly, made sad by the years that had gone by. In Ellen's mind was neither jubilation nor reproach. She was cautious with regard to him—almost as shy as the first time they met; behind all her goodness and care lay the same touch of maidenly reserve as at that time. She received his caresses silently, she herself giving chiefly by being something for him. He noticed how every little homely action she did for him grew out of her like a motherly caress and took him into her heart. He was grateful for it, but it was not that of which he ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... constituted that I simply cannot bear to see any creature whatsoever suffer, not even the meanest. (Looking at her critically, but with dignity.) And for you, my child, I am sincerely sorry; I may say that much, after you have so far fought down your maidenly pride as to wait for me here. But please, Miss Coeurne, do take into account the life I have to lead. Just think of the mere question of time! At least two hundred, may be as many as three hundred charmingly attractive young girls of your age saw me on the stage ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... might call a romp; but not a hoyden, observe; no horse-play; oh, no, 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 ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... 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
... pompadour to advantage, and there was no special reason, as they had the afternoon before them, why they should not have taken some of the by-paths that the girl perceived to lead out from the subject into breathless wonder. She had ways, which were maidenly and good, of opening up to Peter comfortable little garden plots of existence which, though they lay far this side of the House and the Lovely Lady, had in the monotony of the long climb up the scale of Siegel Brothers, moments of ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... 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 her ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... 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 sprang to ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... first one thing more,' said the Princess Julia, suddenly rising from her mother's side, but with a forced and trembling courage, 'which remains for me to do. If there appear any want of maidenly reserve in what I say, let the cause, good friends, for which I speak and act, be my excuse. It is well known to you who are familiar with the councils of the state, that not many months past Persia sought through me an alliance with Palmyra. But in me, you, my mother and Queen, ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... ill-defined and apparently causeless dread. 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 her and she clung to the sash ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... heart, "and these things are above love, above 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 ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... 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 ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... little about Mr. Wendover from his cousins, stimulated her curiosity about him, and intensified her interest in him. Brian's merits were a subject which the Wendover children always shirked, or passed over so lightly that Ida was no wiser for her questioning; and maidenly reserve ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... a New England anemone. Her face was oval in shape and as smooth and pale as a pearl. Her hair was dark, not very heavy, and as soft as a child's. Her lips were delicate and sensitive, her eyes a cool gray,—clear, steady, and shaded by darker lashes. When John Hathaway met her shy, maidenly glance and heard her pretty, dovelike voice, it is strange he did not see that there was a bit too much saint in her to make her a willing comrade of his gay, roistering life. But as a matter of fact, John Hathaway saw nothing at all; nothing but that Susanna ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... by the large proportion of young people in the place, of all classes, both sexes, and strongly contrasting faces. Delicate girls looking with the sweet wistfulness of maidenly hearts for something strong to lean upon and love; sad-eyed women turning to heaven for the consolations or the satisfactions earth could not give them; anxious mothers perplexed with many cares, trying to find light and strength; young men with ardent ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... these doubts, these fears, constantly recurred to my mind whenever I found myself in the presence of Theresa, but during my absence I listened to nothing but the flattering insinuations of my own heart, and I succeeded in persuading myself that her coldness arose solely from maidenly reserve, and from the annoyance of being too much the object of public attention. I remembered the sweetness of her manner, when one day in reply to some fond anticipation of my future happiness, she assured me, although she could not promise me at ...
— Theresa Marchmont • Mrs Charles Gore
... face not pale with fear, her exquisite lips moving softly as she repeats the De Profundis of her last appeal to God. Let the axe not fall. Let her stand there for ever in the spotless purity that cost her life on earth and set her name for ever among the high constellated stars of maidenly romance. ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... 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 ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler
... Amy had grown into girlhood, and was, in truth, as beautiful as a poet's dream. She was timid, gentle, and silent; no strength of mind was enshrined in that faultless casket; and her transparent, maidenly brow, was never shadowed by the conflict of thought. Her words were few and commonplace, but they were spoken by a voice exquisitely musical, and her surpassing personal loveliness disarmed mental criticism. Theresa would regard her in unutterable ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... teasing Emlyn the charm and delight of home. In trouble, or for real aid, they went to Patience, but who was like Emlyn for drollery and diversion? Who ever made Stead laugh as she could, or who so played with Ben, and never, like Rusha, tried to be maidenly, discreet, nay, dull? ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... if monarchy falls in Germany, and a republic, socialistic or merely democratic, rises on the ruins, then it is more than likely that the superfluous women will be encouraged to transfer themselves and their maidenly dreams to the ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... on his. The protest in her heart was still urgent, but she dared go no further. Some instinct of maidenly reticence curbed the passionate rebellion against his decision. If she said more, she might say too much. With a swift, sinuous turn of the slender body she ran into the house and ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... that it is too true," continued Kilcullen. "He has forgotten you, and you cannot blame him that he should do so, now that you have rejected him; but he neglected you even before you did so. Is it wise, is it decorous, is it maidenly in you, to indulge any longer in so vain a passion? Think of this, Fanny. As to myself, Heaven knows with what perfect truth, with what true love, I offered you, this morning, all that a man can offer: how ardently I hoped for an answer different from that you ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... tiny lambkin. Presently the birds appeared,—a pair of the solitary vireo. They came flitting from point to point, alighting only for a moment at a time, the male silent, but the female uttering this strange, tender note. It was a rendering into some new sylvan dialect of the human sentiment of maidenly love. It was really pathetic in its sweetness and childlike confidence and joy. I soon discovered that the pair were building a nest upon a low branch a few yards from me. The male flew cautiously to the spot and adjusted something, ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... artist, to wit, Charlie Bryant. And how do you take it? You—a man-hunter? Why, you run like a rabbit from Fyles. Courage? Oh, dear. The mention of his name is enough to send you into convulsions of trepidation and maidenly confusion. And all the time you secretly admire him. As for the other, you have turned yourself into a sort of hospital nurse and temperance reformer. You've taken him up as a sort of hobby, until, in his lucid intervals, ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... No time or chance for any maidenly hesitation or softening aureole of words. Aunt and Mrs. Saxby had almost reached the point where they invariably turned. I had barely time to spell out a plain, blunt "yes" ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... countenance of Charlotte wears the same still smile. The executioners proceed to bind her feet; 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 her fair face and neck; the cheeks were still tinged with it when the executioner lifted the severed head, to show it to the people. "It is most true," says Forster, "that he struck the cheek insultingly; for I saw it with my eyes; the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... 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
... piazza, talking and laughing, begging to see the manuscript, teasing Theodora about her secretiveness, and congratulating her again and again. It was an attractive group, Theodora in the midst, a tall, handsome girl in the full ripeness of her maidenly beauty, her arm linked in that of her twin brother, while pretty Hope stood facing them, with Archie at ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... degenerate into insult. And when the fair girl has once won this violently beating heart, and becomes the warrior's bride, she turns as coy as a western damsel in her teens. After marriage the fading of her early maidenly beauty is concealed as much as possible from the uxorious eye; in her white mantle her form is always graceful; by the evening fireside her presence never ceases to be a natural ornament and charm; and thus is kept up through a period ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... was handsome and desirable. However, he tried to persuade himself that, for him, her charm was a spiritual, not a physical one, this being, as he thought, a nobler, finer definition, though it was precisely this maidenly purity and innocence of hers which fired his blood and aroused desire. Ever since the evening when he first met her, he had felt a vague yet vehement longing to sully her innocence, a longing indeed that the presence of any ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... pray For thee when I am far away: For never saw I mien, or face, In which more plainly I could trace 25 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, 30 And maidenly shamefacedness: Thou wear'st upon thy forehead clear The freedom of a Mountaineer: A face with gladness overspread! Soft smiles, [6] by human kindness bred! 35 And seemliness complete, that sways Thy courtesies, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... gave him the hand, she must also let him—in this first tremor of a pure passion—take the kiss which was now his by right. That she should flush and draw away from him as she did, seemed to him the most natural thing in the world, and the most maidenly. ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a time in the room, only broken by Diodoros's angry questions and the pacifying exclamations of the freedman. She felt as if she must return to her lover and tell him herself what she had been forced to do in these last days, but maidenly shyness restrained her, till at last Andreas came out. The freedman's honest face expressed the deepest solicitude, and his voice sounded rough and hasty as he exclaimed, "You must fly—fly ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... a pretty Norman girl, rather stout, with fair hair of a golden tint, an animated face lighted by intelligent eyes, and distinguished by a finely curved thoroughbred nose, with a maidenly air in spite of a certain swaying Spanish manner of carrying herself, possessed all the points that a young girl born just above the level of the masses is likely to acquire from whatever close companionship a mistress is willing to allow her. Always suitably dressed, with modest bearing and manner, ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... psychological hinterland whereof his townsmen knew nothing. To Hazelhurst his celibacy was the banker's caution, waiting for something of value in the matrimonial market: to him it was a bashful and palpitant—almost maidenly—expectancy of the approach of some radiant companion of his soul, like those which spoke to him from the pages of his ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... eighteen, 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, ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... amid the imposing circumstance of arms, Bloemfontein lost something of its charm. The noise and dust and commotion of the army did violence to its pastoral quietness, and the pretty shops put up their shutters at midday as though in maidenly horror at the eagerness of crowds of soldiers running amuck like children with their Saturday pennies. I entered the town early enough to see what its normal condition must be, and there was something rude and unkind in the din of the multitude breaking on this ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... Virgile; but here is meant a person unknowne and secrete, against whome 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 ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... hindered by the consideration that, in that case, the cost of supporting them would probably be transferred from the grim Doctor's shoulders to those of the community. Nevertheless, they did what they could. Maidenly ladies, prim and starched, in one or two instances called upon the Doctor—the two children meanwhile being in the graveyard at play—to give him Christian advice as to the management of his charge. But, to confess the truth, the Doctor's reception of these fair missionaries ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... he was worth a thought, was Mr. Canning, proud stranger within the gates—"house-guest," as the society column prefers it—for whom, if reports were true, many ladies fair had sighed, sickened, and died. And she, alone in her maidenly coterie, had already met the too exclusive metropolitan—four days ago, by the lucky fluke of turning in at the Country Club at an out-of-the-way morning moment, when she might have motored straight on home, and had been ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... eyes shone darker than usual. She sat very quiet as he gathered up the reins, and it was not until they were well on their way along the Trumansburg road that the boy turned to her. How beautiful she looked, her shoulders completely covered with dusky-dark curls and her head bowed in maidenly shyness! All his doubts as to the expediency of his act were set at rest. She was deeply essential to his happiness, to his progress. To know she was his wife, married to him, so that none could separate them, would make his absences from Tessibel much easier to bear. He had in the ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... exploits, beloved hero, how poor were my love, did I not let you go! One single care restrains me, fear of the insufficiency of all I could bestow. What I learned from the gods I have given you, a rich treasury of holy runes, but the maidenly staff of my strength the hero took from me, before whom I now bow. Despoiled of wisdom, though filled with desire to serve; rich in love, but devoid of power, oh, despise not the poor lover who can only wish you, not give ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... from the interest in the safety of her person, which is in constant jeopardy from the jealousy of her half-sister, Elizabeth wins upon the reader by her modest, maidenly bearing, her frankness of manner, and by a playfulness of disposition which readily adapts itself to the restraints which the Queen is ever placing upon her person, and which endears her to the people, who, could the hated Mary be got ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... found out that 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 ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... too great for me to gainsay you," replied Edith, "but these ladies can, if they will, bear me witness that it was your Highness who proposed such a wager, and took the ring from my finger, even while I was declaring that I did not think it maidenly to gage ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... reasonable hope. But what of that? Were they not together, alone, practically, in these blessed solitudes? Would they not meet to-morrow, and next day, and the day after? Were not time and opportunity all his own? How kind her looks are even now! Courage! And through that maidenly kindness his own passion shall ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Abigail's bedroom opened hastily, and that pink of maidenly propriety stepped out into the hail in her night-gown—the only indecorous thing I ever knew her to do. She held a lighted candle in her hand and looked like a ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... of a hero; and, had his form corresponded with the giant strength of his glance, he would have been a Titan, and might have crushed the world like a toy in his hand. But his slender, symmetrical, and graceful form was more weak than powerful, more maidenly than heroic. ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... Bourne they found in the studio, talking to the great Academician himself. These two young ladies were even taller, as they likewise were fairer in complexion, than their married sister; moreover, they were much more dignified in demeanor than she was, though that may have merely arisen from maidenly reserve. But when Mr. Mellord exhibited at the Royal Academy his much-talked-of picture of the three sisters, most people seemed to think that though the two younger ladies might have carried off the palm for their ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... is only one side of the shield; there is a reverse side, at least equally prominent and alarming. The second side upholds maidenly claims, finds nothing good enough to match with them, and is tempted to scout and flout, laugh and mock at the rival claims of the lover upon trial. This is true even in the most innocent of dove-cots, where satire is still as playful and harmless ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... back from him as if she had been stung. Her face went white on the instant, not from maidenly embarrassment, but from the anger which he could see flaming ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... expression of intimate thought or cherished fancy was for your eyes only; it was my first approach to your maidenly heart, a mystical wooing, which neglected no resource, near or remote, for the enhancement of its charm, and so involved all other mystery ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... sir, my hand, and so may you." She held it out and made an impudent little curtsy. "I protest the gentleman is all maidenly. That is why he and I ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... lovingly, lingeringly: for 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 and kissed each ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... nevertheless fain to rest there, and gradually study the 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")
... I trust that I am not deficient in maidenly modesty," said Lady Julia, "when it is not incompatible with what I deem a higher virtue—sincerity. Now and ever, frankness is, and shall be, my only policy. The confidence I am about to repose in you, sir, is the strongest proof ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... the delicate oil from the cruse of gold, sit by the stream and eat their meal, and, refreshed, mistress and maidens lay aside their veils and play at ball, and Nausicaa begins a song. Though all were fair, like Diana was this spotless virgin midst her maids. A missed ball and maidenly screams waken Ulysses from his sleep in the thicket. At the apparition of the unclad, shipwrecked sailor the maidens flee right and left. Nausicaa alone keeps her place, secure in her unconscious modesty. To the astonished Sport of Fortune the vision of this radiant girl, in shape and stature ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the touch. He was about to speak, when her father suddenly appeared, with a dark and forbidding aspect. He began to chide, and the stranger, with a glance she could not erase from her recollection, disappeared. It was this glance which subdued her proud spirit to its influence. Her maidenly apprehensions became aroused; she attempted, but in vain, to drive away the intruder: the vision haunted her deeply—too deeply for her repose! Marks of some outward impression were yet visible on her ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... straight, moderately flexible. But she had no softness; she could admire herself in my presence; she claimed possession of me openly, and at the same time openly provoked a siege from the remainder of my sex: she was not maidenly. She caught imagination by the sleeve, and shut it between square whitewashed walls. Heriot thought her not only handsome, but comparable to Mrs. William Bulsted, our Julia Rippenger of old. At his meeting with Julia, her delicious loss of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... without it, that I have feloniously detained this airy gewgaw as a souvenir, as, so to speak, a gage d'amour. And, in that event, she ought to be very much pleased and a bit embarrassed; and she will preserve upon the topic of handkerchiefs a maidenly silence. Do you know, Robert Etheridge Townsend, there is about you the making of ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... last was the reason, unseen and unrecognized at first, manifesting itself merely in the spontaneous and unconscious shattering of her maidenly reserve, but distinctly visible now. It was not that Bob McGraw had come to her out of the desert at a time when she needed him most; it was not that he came in all the bravery and generous sacrifice of youth, shedding his blood that ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... 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 ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... 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 his ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... 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
... you run, then?" she asked him coolly, standing slim and straight before him, all in white and very maidenly save in her unnatural composure. "I am pressed," she informed him. "So you will forgive me if I ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... done in this instance!" promptly responded the baroness, proffering, without affectation of maidenly coyness, the ceremonial kiss, and cordially shaking hands with the vice-palatine. ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... mare; she goat, 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
... and earn her own bitter bread alone,—at that moment she knew that she had been true to the memory of the man. What had occurred since, to alter her purpose so violently? Was it the presence of the man she did love, and the maidenly instincts which forbade her to declare her passion in his presence? Or was it simply the conviction that her promise to Mr Whittlestaff had been twice repeated, and could not now admit of being withdrawn? But in spite of her asseverations, there must have been present to ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... we two, sitting on one cushion, both singing one song, with our needles working the same flower, both on the same sampler wrought; growing up together in fashion of a double cherry, scarcely seeming parted? Hermia, it is not friendly in you, it is not maidenly, to join with men in scorning ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Does it mean that I am to be consoled by the splendor that is to attend this—execution? Does it mean that my maidenly blushes—the blushes that betray my secret love—are to be hidden by a veil of priceless lace? Does it mean that the chains, with which your peerless empress will fetter my arms, are to be of gold, secured with diamonds? Have you taken care to provide the myrtle-wreath, the emblem of love, wherewith ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... lineage, and one, too, who by his marriage with herself would endow her with wealth sufficient to make that rank splendid as well as illustrious? But if it were not so, what had the girl meant by saying that it was impossible? That the word should have been used once or twice in maidenly scruple, the Countess could understand; but it had been repeated with a vehemence beyond that which such natural timidity might have produced. And now the girl professed herself to be ill in bed, and when the subject was broached would only weep, and repeat the one word with which she ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... no escape for Hypatia; pride forbade her to follow her own maidenly instinct, and to recoil among the crowd behind her; and in another moment the Amal had lifted Pelagia from her mule, and the rival beauties of Alexandria stood, for the first time in their lives, ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... 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
... 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 same way she thought of her ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... 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 same round again. ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... up by a venerable old man and an ancient matron, to whom the occasion had given more agility than might have been expected from their years. A Zamora bagpipe regulated their motions, which being no less sprightly and graceful than their looks were modest and maidenly, more lovely dancers were never ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... or face In which more plainly I could trace Benignity and home-bred sense Ripening in perfect innocence. Here scatter'd like a random seed, Remote from men, Thou dost not need The embarrass'd 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, about thee plays; With no restraint, but such as springs From quick and eager visitings ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... from one to another. "You see, I never dared say anything at all about love before Grandma or Heppie, but it is talked about so much in books, I thought I might mention it in company. I'm sorry if I've not been maidenly, which Miss Hepburn is always telling me ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... turned round to hail her father's approach, but both the young people looked up at her instinctively, and saw her little start, the falling of her knitting-needles, the little flutter of colour which surprise brought to her maidenly, middle-aged cheek. How they both divined it I cannot tell, but it certainly was no surprise to either of them when a tall embarrassed figure, following the portly one of Mr Wodehouse, stepped suddenly from the noisy gravel ...
— The Rector • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... overgrown; for an English maiden in her teens, though very seldom so pretty as our own damsels, possesses, to say the truth, a certain charm of half-blossom, and delicately folded leaves, and tender womanhood shielded by maidenly reserves, with which, somehow or other, our American girls often fail to adorn themselves during an appreciable moment. It is a pity that the English violet should grow into such an outrageously developed peony as I have attempted to describe. I wonder whether a middle-aged ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... 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 ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... 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
... interested in him she could not have failed to observe the furtive look of anxiety with which he advanced to meet her; his demeanour was as different from the ordinary eagerness of a newly-accepted lover as could well be imagined. Nor did she betray these signs of maidenly shyness and trembling joy which in the circumstances she might have been expected ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan |
