"Secretive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... positively humiliating for me to be treated like this, after all the years we have known each other. I wish you would try to cultivate the virtue of frankness. You are far too secretive. Something will really have to be ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... time, but after a wrangle he gave up the ticket, intending to take it from Tommy when primed with the necessary tale. So they parted until evening, and Tommy returned to Elspeth, secretive but elated. For the rest of the day he was in thought, now waggling his head smugly over some dark, unutterable design and again looking a little scared. In growing alarm she watched his face, and at last she slipped ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... his seat to the ground was deliberate, even for him; his silent nod to those wide-eyed, loose-jawed old men upon the sidewalk was the very quintessence of secretive dignity, and yet had he taken up his position there on the corner of the uneven boardwalk and cried aloud his sensation, like a bally-hoo advertising the excellence of his own particular side-show, he could not have equaled ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... of mental weakness is emotional in nature. Here is a young fellow who as a boy was always a cry-baby and mamma's darling. He is afraid to stand up for himself, afraid of athletics, afraid of girls; and, because of all this, he is lonely, morose, and secretive. Here is a girl of great ability and charm but subject to fits of deep depression. Another young man loses his temper very easily and cherishes resentment for a long time over trivial matters. The girl whom he is interested in is extremely ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... kind of brotherhood, and outside the charmed circle they are secretive as members of the Mafia, the Camorra, ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... could pierce any disguise, he was as persistent as a ferret, and his knowledge of the underworld of San Francisco was illimitable. But his chief assets were that he looked so little like a detective, and that, so secretive were his methods, his calling was practically unknown. He had set up a cheap restaurant with a gambling room behind at which the police winked, although pretending to raid him now and again. He was a large soft man with pendulous ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... There were two men on the forward deck of the boat, Kellogg and another man who would be Ernst Mallin. A third man came out of the control cabin after the boat was off contragravity. Jack didn't like Mallin. He had a tight, secretive face, with arrogance and bigotry showing underneath. The third man was younger. His face didn't show anything much, but his coat showed a bulge under the left arm. After being introduced by Kellogg, Mallin introduced him as ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... of you as a likely person to be the bearer of a message, some one of your age and height being needed, and of grave, secretive temperament, such as I notice you to possess. Get everything in readiness, as I intend to send you as courier to his Imperial Majesty. I am going to write to him from here, and you shall bring me back his ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... her sons, John and Charles, was as beautiful as it was extraordinary. Very few parents ever really get acquainted with their offspring. Parents who fail to keep their promises with their children, and who prevaricate to them, have children that are secretive and sly. But often no one person is to blame, for children do not necessarily have any spiritual or mental relationship to their parents: their minds are not attuned to the same key—they are not on the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... breath of smoke and blew it forth again in gentle puffs. "Ah! She never told you that? She was always a secretive young woman. Yes, we had some very jolly times together on the sly, till one day the doctor-fellow caught us kissing under the apple-trees. Then of course she was afraid he'd split, so it was all up." He ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... had grown so familiar that every eye and ear was on the strain, and finger upon trigger, as tree, shrub, and grassy clump was expected momentarily to develop into a foe. The secretive nature of these people made our position at times more painful and exciting, as we knew that at any moment they might come close to us in the darkness, and almost before the alarm could be given, dash up to the ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... had in its furniture grown more and more hideous to the eye as early and mid-Victorian fashions and ideals receded and modern taste shook itself free from what was tawdry, fluffy, stuffy, floppy, messy, cheaply imitative, fringed and tasselled and secretive. ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... great number of these works in the course of the term, as well as faces in pen and ink with moving tongues and rolling eyes, and these he would present to a few favoured friends with a secretive and self-depreciatory giggle. ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... odder still that there had been no talk of her in the Bloomsbury house since the night on which Henry and Ninian had discussed Gilbert's outburst of anger when her name was mentioned. Gilbert, could be very secretive, Henry thought.... ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... and the doctor walked to the back of the hall to telephone, Katherine, an anxious figure, a secretive one, beckoned Bobby to the library. He went with her, wondering what ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... come along to such modern giants as Dreiser and Hergesheimer and Cabell. For these artists, each in his due place, we have only the most genial respect. But when the passion of our youth is impugned as "idolatry" we feel in our spirit an intense weariness. We feel the pacifism of the wise and secretive mind that remains tacit when its most perfect inward certainties are assailed. One does not argue, for there are certain things not arguable. One shrugs. After all, what human gesture more eloquent (or more satisfying to the performer) than ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... contrary, though she was secretive with her near acquaintances, she would become greatly communicative with a casual vendor of books, or even a vagrant to whom she had given a cup of tea, that English equivalent for a cup of cold water. She was so fearful of falling behind in ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... a narrow, stone-flagged path, crowded in between two houses which block its view from the street. There are four windows in a row on the front facade, all with the curtains drawn. These four blind windows add to the secretive appearance. Over the front steps the yellowing leaves of a lime tree rustled in the wind and detached ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... better perspective than Boston then afforded. Even Mr. Norton, Lowell's dear friend and associate upon the North American Review, thought in 1862 that the President was timid, vacillating, and secretive, and, what now seems a queerer judgment still, that he wrote very poor English. But if the editors of the North American showed a typical Anglo-Saxon reluctance in yielding to the spell of a new political ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... first, it will be seen that the hollow space extends wholly round the toe, and as far back as the commencement of the quarters. In the latter position one is able to observe laminae still in their normal positions and condition. At the toe, however, the horny and secretive laminae are widely separated, and the space between them filled with a yellow, semi-solid material, the remains of the inflammatory exudate and new horn secreted by the keratogenous membrane. The laminae, both horny and sensitive, are greatly enlarged. This is ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... bluff trimmings. In camp and field he quickly learned the routine of duty, and then his daring, active temperament led him gradually into the scouting service. Now, although so young, he was a veteran in experience, frank to friends, but secretive and ready to deceive the very elect among his enemies. Few could take more risks than he, yet he had not a particle of Mad Whately's recklessness. Courage, but rarely impulse, controlled his action. As we have seen, he could instantly stay his hand the second a deadly enemy, seeking ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... critic who had courage to point out his defects pleased him; and plainness of speech excited in him no hostility. It was against the cunning rather of the secretive person that he guarded himself, ...
— Agesilaus • Xenophon
... secretive and tortuous nature, this sudden zeal for openness seemed almost unnatural. He began by unrolling his own blanket, inside of which appeared a miscellaneous collection of articles. I remember among ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... she whispered to herself softly; "he is waiting for me to help him." She remembered that she must make that act of faith. Yet was it Laurie who had looked in at his mother's door...? Well, the door was locked now. But that secretive visit seemed to ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... swaying feelings to Arthur—she had of late grown far more secretive about herself—as for him, he took things as they came. He found a wondrous quiet in this time, when he was allowed to serve Joanna as in days of old. He did not think of marrying her—he knew that even if it was true that ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... leading into the women's building, and Brigit and Monny entered the same secretive sort of vestibule they must have remembered in the House of the Crocodile. A screen-wall prevented them from seeing what was beyond; and the dead silence frightened them a little, so easy was it to make of ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... a big stretch of the field close to the claim pegged out by Mike and Josh Peetree, and they were thought to have possession of the most profitable part of the alluvial deposit, but worked their claims with great caution, and were as secretive as so many mopokes, so that the whites really had no idea what their ground was like, excepting such as the experienced miners could gather from the general trend of the richer wash dirt. Extraordinary stories of the success of the Chinese were ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... Unfortunately, the sight of so much wealth had roused in the heart of Stumps feelings of avarice, which heretofore had lain dormant, and he stuffed many glittering and superb pieces of jewellery into his bag in a secretive manner, as if half ashamed of his new sensations, and half afraid that his right to them might ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... up a great deal of valuable time, and it was their curtailment on this occasion, apparently, which caused the 'Transvaal Leader' — a morning paper of the Rand — to complain that Natives had become unusually secretive and had ceased to be as communicative as at previous meetings. The 'Rand Daily Mail', on the other hand, referred to the closing session in a very few lines. It said: "Last evening, a number of Native women attended the Native Congress, attired as befitting the solemnity and importance of the occasion. ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... with him for a year and know him no better than she did now. At the end of a week she regarded him as an unknown quantity. A man of one idea, extraordinarily concentrated, methodical, abstracted, without friends, no outside interests whatever. That is all she could gather. Silent, yet hardly secretive, he merely gave her the impression that he had nothing he wished to impart. He was not curious about other people, why should they want to know about him? Not by any stretch of imagination could she connect him with a human ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... of sixteen, very short, in fact almost a dwarf, and, as his name implies, disfigured by a hump. He was sharp, however, and secretive, and, though he could not help understanding the character of the men who employed him, was not likely to betray them. He had a pride in deserving the confidence which he saw was ...
— Rufus and Rose - The Fortunes of Rough and Ready • Horatio Alger, Jr
... professor's wizened face screwed up wisely. "A year ago, when he was back from one of those mysterious long excursions he takes in that weirdly different aircraft of his, about which he is so secretive, he told me that he was conducting experiments to prove his belief that the human brain generates electric current, and that the electrical impulses in the brain set up radioactive waves that some day, among other miracles, will ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... There is that double possibility. But I am inclined to think neither. Women are naturally secretive, and they like to do their own secreting. Why should she hand it over to anyone else? She could trust her own guardianship, but she could not tell what indirect or political influence might be brought to bear upon a business man. ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... suggests something marvellous in the fact," replied Ah Cum, ironically. "Why shouldn't a Chinaman be honest? Ah, yes; I know. Most of you Americans pattern all Chinese upon those who fill a little corner in New York. In fiction you make the Chinese secretive, criminal, and terrible—or comic. I am an educated Chinese, and I resent the imputations against my race. You Americans laugh at our custom of honouring our ancestors, our many-times great grandfathers. On the other hand, ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... it was that Richard Saint Leger was of a secretive disposition, or whether he had some other motive for keeping the matter a secret, I know not; but certain it is that he never made the slightest reference to the matter—even to his son Hugh, who was sailing ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... extremely secretive about the whole thing. He had marched into Jack's rooms in Jesus Lane one morning nearly a ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... Ellen heard his hoarse voice. As she approached he ceased talking and his listeners relaxed their attention. Ellen's glance ran over them swiftly—Daggs, with his superb head, like that of a hawk, uncovered to the sun; Colter with his lowered, secretive looks, his sand-gray lean face; Jackson Jorth, her uncle, huge, gaunt, hulking, with white in his black beard and hair, and the fire of a ghoul in his hollow eyes; Tad Jorth, another brother of her father's, younger, red of eye and nose, a weak-chinned drinker of rum. Three ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... information briefly, while disclosing nothing at variance with or unfindable in his published speeches. Of some of them he repeated apposite slices; to others he referred for further enlightenment as to his views on imperial federation. Really he was neither secretive nor newly informative. The Premier of Canada at any time is governed, much as I have endeavored to show how the electors are, by that natural, instinctive course of the general loyal Canadian mind, which constitutes "the situation" and controls ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... he wouldn't even have known that babies were called babies. Like all fathers he deceived himself that there was nothing he didn't know about baby-lore. What was very much more surprising, by whispering and looking secretive he managed to impress the animals with his new-found learning and ...
— Christmas Outside of Eden • Coningsby Dawson
... with sudden querulousness—"Since you arrived we have been talking nothing but generalities and Church matters. Heavens, how sick I am of Church matters! Yet I know you see a change in me. I am sure you do—and you will not say it. Now you never were secretive—you never said one thing and meant another—so speak the truth as you have always done! I AM changed, ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... were out of the house, while he went to find or to wait for his dear Hattie. But his mother did not know all this, and Kit did not tell her. The quick poison of the unreal life about her had already begun to affect her character. She had grown secretive and sly. The innocent longing which in a burst of enthusiasm she had expressed that first night at the theatre was growing into a real ambition with her, and she dropped the simple old songs she knew to practise the detestable coon ditties which ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... tossing out the sixty thousand pounds' worth of bonds to Tracy, who was waiting with his three warning lights, failed because of old Blumenfeld's sleeplessness, but it was substituted by a far more secretive yet simple plan—one never even dreamed of by the astute police attached to the Paris, Lyons and Mediterranean Railway. It being daylight at Lyons, ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... had formed any plan for relief, refused to communicate it. Mayne and the rest of us were compelled to take what hope we could from his confident if secretive bearing. ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... another! I can't change clothes with him as I did with Clara; he's too big, but one way or other I'll save him," said Cap, to herself. She said it to no one else, for the more difficult the enterprise the more determined she was to succeed, and the more secretive she grew as to ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... it back from her brow with a wistful, caressing tenderness. He had never understood her; she had always been a mystery to him; the harsh savagery of his nature had never been able to enter into or comprehend the refined grace of hers; but he had loved her with all the fierce, tenacious, secretive power of his being, a power that neither time nor death could change. Now he spoke to her, his low tones sounding weird in that house of the dead,—a strange place for words ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... agreeable compound accidentally invented by Nellie on the previous day at the pier buffet. The little thing must have spent a part of the previous afternoon in preparing it, and she must have put the package in the post at Crewe. Secretive and delightful little thing! After his recent experience beyond the bay he had imagined himself to be incapable of ever eating again, but it was not so. The lemon gave a peculiar astringent, appetising, settling quality ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... was a favourite with the mediaeval Arabs. Its effect varies greatly with men's characters, making some open-hearted and communicative, and others more cunning and secretive than in the normal state. So far it is an excellent detection of disposition, and many a man passes off well when sober who has shown himself in liquor a rank snob. Among the lower orders it provokes what the Persians call Bad-masti (le vin ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... Povey, a person universally esteemed, both within and without the shop, the surrogate of bedridden Mr. Baines, the unfailing comfort and stand-by of Mrs. Baines, the fount and radiating centre of order and discipline in the shop; a quiet, diffident, secretive, tedious, and obstinate youngish man, absolutely faithful, absolutely efficient in his sphere; without brilliance, without distinction; perhaps rather little-minded, certainly narrow-minded; but what a force in ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... like Frank. In fact, he was envious of Merriwell's popularity, although he did his best to keep the fact concealed. Being a sly, secretive person, it was but natural that Rains should come to be considered as modest and unassuming. In truth, he was not modest at all, for, in his secret heart, there was nothing that any one else could do that he did not believe he could do. And so, while appearing to ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... throat, and laughs heartiest when his own jokes amuse the listeners. He is not fashioned in a strong mould, but is an elegant marcher, and light of limb; he may be a clerk in business, but as he is naturally secretive we know nothing of his profession. Kore is also a punster who makes abominable puns; these amuse nobody except, perhaps, himself. Teak, a good fellow, is known to us as Bill Sykes. He has a very pale complexion, and has the most delightful nose in all the world; ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... Uraga has several motives for not letting his subordinate into the knowledge of all his complicated schemes; among them one springing from a moral peculiarity. He is of a strangely-constituted nature, secretive to the last degree—a quality or habit in which he prides himself. It is his delight to practice it whenever the opportunity offers; just as the thief and detective officer take pleasure in their ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... this memorandum in a wild scene of woods and hills where we have come to visit a waterfall. I never saw finer or more copious hemlocks, many of them large, some old and hoary. Such a sentiment to them, secretive, shaggy, what I call weather-beaten, and let-alone—a rich underlay of ferns, yew sprouts and mosses, beginning to be spotted with the early summer wild flowers. Enveloping all, the monotone and liquid gurgle from the hoarse, impetuous, copious fall—the greenish-tawny, darkly transparent ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... holes when he came on board, and noticed it had the ribbon of the Iron Cross and that of some other decoration in the button-hole. He showed me his Iron Cross and was very proud of it, but what he got it for I did not gather. He seemed rather secretive about it. The other decoration, with a red-and-white ribbon, was the "Hamburg Cross," which is given to all officers and men belonging to the town who get the Iron Cross. I believe the other Hansa towns follow the ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling
... to Annie herself about it. "Haven't you something else written that you can show me?" She had even suggested the possibility, the desirability, of Annie's taking up a literary career, but she had found the girl very evasive, even secretive, and had never ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... she said. "He is active about something at this very instant—perhaps he is reading. He is close by. If I shouted, he might hear...." And yet she was utterly cut off from him. Again, in the late dawn, she saw the same building, pale and clear, but just as secretive and enigmatic as in the night. "He is asleep yet," she thought. "Why did he not call? Is ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... "I've forgotten. Some principle of latent heat involved, I believe. Ask Webb. If he could live long enough he'd coax from Nature all her secrets. He's the worst Paul Pry into her affairs that I ever knew. So beware, Amy, unless you are more secretive than Nature, which I cannot believe, since ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... trust I would not step out of my place without occasion; but I see how much evil has flowed in the past to all of your noble house from that unhappy and secretive fault of reticency, and the papers on which I venture to call your attention are family papers, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Ulster, whither he went after occasional voyages, where Robin More still drowsed over his books; where Alan Donn still hunted and fished and golfed, haler at five and fifty than a boy in his early twenties; and where his mother sat and did beautiful broidery, dumbly, inimically, cold as a fish, secretive as a badger, there he would meet the women of the Antrim families, women who knew of the disaster of his marriage, and they would look approvingly at his firm face and smiling, steady eyes, and they would ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... Mollenhauer, sly and secretive himself, was apparently not at all moved by this unexpected development. At the same time, never having thought of Stener as having any particular executive or financial ability, he was a little stirred and curious. So his treasurer ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... by the Golden Gate and he explored any that offered entertainment—those that led to tables green as grass under the blaze of electric lights, those that led to the poker game behind Soledad Lanza's pink-fronted restaurant, those that led up alleys to dark, secretive doors, and that which led to Pancha's ugly ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... work, or those inner pre-occupations which held him. But it had once or twice crossed his mind that Pamela might be interested in Arthur; and there had been certain hints from Beryl, who was, however, he was certain, scarcely better informed than he was. Pamela was a most secretive and independent young woman. He doubted whether even Desmond, whom she ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of passion, romance, and tragedy; like a tone of pathos giving deep character to some splendid pageant, which praises whilst it commemorates, proclaiming conquest while the grass has not yet grown on quiet houses of the children of the sword who no more wield the sword. Evasive, cautious, secretive, creator of her own policy, she had sacrificed her womanhood to the power she held and the State she served. Vain, passionate, and faithful, her heart all England and Elizabeth, the hunger for glimpses of what she had never ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... danger in ordinary life of any such "block" as this. But there is very great danger of the pore being deprived of its secretive power, and of its power to open its mouth when that is so much wanted. Warm olive oil sets millions of pores to full work sometimes ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... "The lady is secretive," thought Kecskerey. "I know that they are making their palace at Pest habitable. We shall get to the bottom ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... company she would no doubt have recovered her mental balance and moral health, when, by a stupid accident—a passing carriage—they were killed before her eyes. The poor thing went mad ... with the silent, secretive madness which you imagined. Some time afterwards, when I was appointed to an Algerian station, I brought her to France and put her in the charge of a worthy creature who had nursed me and brought me up. Two years later, I made the acquaintance of the woman who was to ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... Montalais flicked away her cigarette and sat forward, elbows on knees, hands laced, her level gaze holding his. "It is true, our acquaintance is barely three weeks old; but you do injustice to my insight if you assume I have learned nothing about you in all that time. You have not been secretive with me. The mask you hold between yourself and the world, lest it pry into what does not concern it, has been lowered when you have talked with me; and I have had eyes to ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... seem to keep out of it. It takes a hold on a man that I never could get away from; and when I reach my second childhood and the boys have turned me out, I reckon I'll potter along trying to look knowing and secretive, like the rest of the has-beens, letting on as if I still had a place inside. Lord, if I'd put in the energy at my business that I've frittered away on small politics! But what's the use ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... he said. "He is so secretive. But Mrs. Wellington can't be pleased at having a Navy man masquerading about. Why ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... were your informants," Anita said. "No one except my father's three closest associates had any possible conception of how much he possessed, even approximately, for he was always secretive and conservative in his dealings. Only to Mr. Mallowe, Mr. Rockamore and Mr. Carlis did he ever divulge his plans to the slightest extent. A bankrupt! My father a bankrupt? The very words seem meaningless to me. Dr. Franklin, there must ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... The lumber-jack is secretive and not given to expressed emotion—excepting in his union songs. The bosses don't like his songs either. But the logger isn't worried a bit. Working away in the woods every day, or in his bunk at night, he dreams his dream of the world as he thinks it should be—that "wild wobbly ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... to see Maslova only twice between Nijhni and Perm—once in Nijhni while the prisoners were being placed on a net-covered lighter, and again in the office of the Perm prison. On both occasions he found her secretive and unkind. When he asked her about her prison conditions, or whether she wanted anything, she became confused and answered evasively and, as it seemed to him, with that hostile feeling of reproach which she had manifested before. And this gloomy ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... excellence of which is remarkable under these circumstances—he was very secretive, giving as his reason for taking no apprentice, his desire that no one else should ever ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... face. At the thought of a warm engine-room and the company of his fellow creatures, David's heart leaped with pleasure. He advanced quickly. And then something in the appearance of the tug, something mysterious, secretive, threatening, caused him to halt. No lights showed from her engine-room, cabin, or pilot-house. Her decks were empty. But, as was evidenced by the black smoke that rose from her funnel, she was awake and ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... drawing back, "it is none of my business. But I warn you, Mr. Berwin, that others are more curious than I am. Several times people have been known to be in your house while you were absent, and your mode of life, secretive and strange, does not commend itself to the householders in this neighbourhood. If you persist in giving rise to gossip and scandal, some busybody may bring the police ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... not show his father's letter to Christina, nor, indeed, I believe to anyone. He was by nature secretive, and had been repressed too much and too early to be capable of railing or blowing off steam where his father was concerned. His sense of wrong was still inarticulate, felt as a dull dead weight ever present day by day, and if he woke at night-time ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... with a walking-stick, not only saved his own life but that of his fellow-officer, Lieutenant Conder, who had been beaten to the earth with an Arab club. He continued his work indeed with prosaic pertinacity, and developed in the survey of the Holy Land all that almost secretive enthusiasm for detail which lasted all his life. Of the most famous English guide-book he made the characteristic remark, "Where Murray has seven names I have a hundred and sixteen." Most men, in speaking or writing ...
— Lord Kitchener • G. K. Chesterton
... not his knife was meant for me, I can not say. Nor have I sufficient proof openly to accuse him, but of this much I am convinced. Themar's presence near the camp of Miss Westfall is, in the face of your peculiar and secretive errand, ominously significant." ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... I don't know anything about Holton," replied Amzi, who had, in strictest truth, told them nothing of the kind. He experienced the instant regret suffered by secretive persons who watch a long-guarded fact slip away beyond reclamation; but repentance could ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... At worst an unhappy victim of his own carelessness in loosing a peril upon his neighborhood. You're forgetting a connecting link; the secretive red-dot communications from New York City addressed by Moseley to himself on behalf of some customer who ordered simply by a code of ink dots. He was the man I had to find. The giant luna moths helped to ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... no nest of its own, but puts its eggs out to hatch, choosing for the purpose the nests of numerous small birds which it knows to be suitable. Further investigation of the habits of this not very secretive bird, shows that she first lays her egg on the ground and then carries it in her bill to a neighbouring nest. Whether she first chooses the nest and then lays the egg destined to be hatched in it, or whether she lays each egg when so moved and then hunts about for a home for it, ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo
... of Browning's inner or outer life in 1833 and 1834. It was a secretive, not a productive period. One by one certain pinnacles of his fair snow-mountain of Titanic aim melted away. He began to realise the first disenchantment of the artist: the sense of dreams never to be accomplished. ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... of the serenata. She had followed it with an acquaintance from the hotel, and she had seen not only Kitty and Madame d'Estrees, but also—the solitary man in the heavy cloak. She knew quite well that Cliffe was in Venice; though, true to her secretive temper, she had not mentioned the fact ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... he was; and to me, as I casually met his gaze, looked to be obstinate, secretive and small minded. But who can explain those sudden antagonisms that ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... Chronicle, bless their dear hearts, want to know if La Belle Ariola"—he waved his hand towards a poster which showed chiefly a toreador hat, a pair of flashing eyes, and a whirl of white draperies—"is engaged or no to the Prince of Sardinia. I find the maiden coy, not to say secretive——" ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... in him was the tragedy to the old; the sudden silence of the man the danger to the secretive. Harrington was already an old man; Quarrier's own weapon had always been secrecy; but the silence of Plank confused him, for he had never learned to parry well another's use of his own weapon. The left-handed swordsman dreads to cross with a man who fights ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... moment. This idea was disagreeable to her, and she was reminded again, with pain, of her aunt's secretive habits. Morris, the reader may be informed, had had the tact not to tell her that he sat in her father's study. He had known her but for a few months, and her aunt had known her for fifteen years; and yet he would not have made the mistake of thinking that Catherine would see the joke of the ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... act in this secretive way, he thought. There had been strange "goings-on" lately; and the least he could do was to communicate his fears to Lord Kingsborough, in case his guest should be "up to some mischief." His lordship, who ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... to say which is our finest or most beautiful wild flower, but certainly the most poetic and the best beloved is the arbutus. So early, so lowly, so secretive there in the moss and dry leaves, so fragrant, tinged with the hues of youth and health, so hardy and homelike, it touches the ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... the homeward journey, referred to the "hen" in which he and his friend from Chicago were mutually interested. It was not until nine o'clock that evening, when supper was over and Zoeth, having locked up the store, was with them in the sitting-room, that the hitherto secretive fowl came off ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... manager and the institution rose steadily. Mr. Grau was no more of a sentimentalist in art than Mr. Abbey had been. He was quiet, undemonstrative, alert, and wholly willing to let the public dictate the course of the establishment. Outwardly he was always calm, urbane, neither communicative nor secretive. I sat behind him during all the years of his divided and undivided directorship, and never failed of a pleasant greeting, no matter what the expression of The Tribune had been on the morning of the day. He accepted congratulations with a "Thank you!" which had cordiality ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Mrs. Gilbert with meticulous carelessness, "Gloria never makes me her confidante. She's very secretive. Between you and me"—she bent forward cautiously, obviously determined that only Heaven and her nephew should share her confession—"between you and me, I'd like to see her ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... over his German-silver spectacles, and a sudden dread came into my mind that he might carry away something of my secret. I tried to keep between him and the concentrating apparatus I had arranged, and that only made him more curious. What was I doing? Why was I always alone and secretive? Was it legal? Was it dangerous? I paid nothing but the usual rent. His had always been a most respectable house—in a disreputable neighbourhood. Suddenly my temper gave way. I told him to get out. He began to protest, to jabber of his right ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... caught fire. I searched the panels for a bell, but found none, and at last lifted several of the curtains that draped the larger part of the octagonal walls. Under the first two that I raised only a blank space of dark wood was visible, but under the third I was surprised to find a small, secretive-looking door. ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... it is out one hears the men, in places and then all along, detach themselves from their secretive stillness, get up, and resume the task ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... He was a secretive sort of man and didn't whisper his purchase to nobody; but the next Sunday, when Cora came to Hartland to tea and for a walk on the moor and a bit of love-making after, James fetched out the prize when they were alone. It had grown to be high summer time just then, and ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... in the fall he had rented a small one-story house situated just off Main Street, set well back from the sidewalk among clumps of oleanders. Into this he retired as a snail into its shell. At first he took his meals at the hotel, but later he imported an impassive, secretive man-servant, who took charge of him completely. Neither master nor man made any friends, and in fact rebuffed all advances. One Sunday, Carroll and Orde, out for a walk, passed this quaint little place, with ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... dungeon door closed upon Dorothy, John went to his father and whispered a few words to him. Then he came to me, and in the same secretive manner said:— ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... She is a most secretive person, twiddles us all round her fingers and never lets us know anything until it's done. It is most exasperating. Oh, I say, Kate," added Harry, suddenly, "would you mind dropping me at ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... unable to count the openings she had given him thereto. For one of the frankest of men he had kept his secret, so far as words went, with a remarkable tenacity. Probably the neighbourhood of Mrs. Thornburgh was enough to make the veriest chatterbox secretive. But notwithstanding, no one possessing the clue could live in the same house with him these June days without seeing that the whole man was absorbed, transformed, and that the crisis might be reached at any moment. Even the vicar was eager and watchful, and playing up to his wife in fine ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... successes, lies in its collective character, in the fact that every fruitful experiment is published, every new discovery of relationships explained. In a sense scientific research is a triumph over natural instinct, over that mean instinct that makes men secretive, that makes a man keep knowledge to himself and use it slyly to his own advantage. The training of a scientific man is a training in what an illiterate lout would despise as a weakness; it is a training in blabbing, in blurting things out, ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... more and more taciturn, until at last he rarely said anything at all. He merely watched her—watched her wherever she went, and whatever she did; and he watched the children—particularly the children—with the same expression, the same undefinable secretive expression that harmonized so well with the shadows and whispers. And it was this treatment—the treatment she now received from her husband—that made Tina appreciate the company of her children. Before, they had been quite a tertiary consideration—Ivan had come ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... looked at Carlisle, and wondered if she possibly had refused Mr. Canning, and, if so, why Mr. Canning had skipped back just to stay over Sunday and not go near her, and why Cally was so mysterious and secretive all of a sudden. She always told Cally every single thing about her affairs, reporting in detail what was "the most" each man said to her, and always bringing her their letters to read, even Mr. Dudley's, ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... for the presidential campaigns of twenty-five years. From the beginning the Standard Oil had always been a close corporation. Originally it had had only ten stockholders, and this number had gradually grown until, in 1881, there were forty-one. These men had adopted a new and secretive method of combining their increasing possessions into a single ownership. In 1873 the Standard Company had increased its capital stock (originally $1,000,000) to $3,500,000, the new certificates being exchanged for interests in the great New York and Philadelphia refineries The Standard Oil ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... was spent, compelling them to go through the mush ice at Five Fingers, and the drift ice at Fort Selkirk, and had landed them safely at Dawson almost against their will, the last boat through before the Klondike froze up, with this secretive hang-dog individual who slunk through an unpeopled wilderness, twisting his neck from side to side, as though he already felt the halter there—like a Seven Dials assassin, fearful of arrest. There he sat by the window, with eyes fixed ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... Wieland from Bern, they followed the latter to Weimar, where the poet Wieland, the dean of the remarkable group of great authors gathered at Weimar, received Kleist kindly, and made him his guest at his country estate. With great difficulty Wieland succeeded in persuading his secretive visitor to reveal his literary plans; and when Kleist recited from memory some of the scenes of his unfinished Guiscard, the old poet was transported with enthusiasm; these fragments seemed to him worthy of the united genius of AEschylus, Sophocles, and Shakespeare, and he was ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... for us, nowhere. He carries everywhere his child's heart, man's body, hungry unfed soul, unique power of feeding his goodness into others. The all-round (the world) man; the sea-limited man; the man whose life is made up of storms and stars; the most secretive and the most open-hearted man of any. . . . Now I will do all the clumsy stuff. You pull it all up into the ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... Jim, I tell you, I'd give years of my life to be able to do what all entomologists are wild to do—study the depths of a termite mound. God! What wouldn't I give for the privilege of shrinking to ant-size, and roaming loose in that secretive-looking ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... play the game on his conditions, and feign ignorance of all that he does n't tell," she reminded herself. "But fancy his being so secretive!" ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... recalled a number of his species. And he knew that under their veneer of apparent servility was a thing of courage and daring which needed only the right kind of incentive to rouse it. And when roused, it was peculiarly efficient in a secretive, artful-dodger sort of way. It would not stand up before a gun. But it would creep under the mouths of guns on a black night. And Kent was positive his fifty dollars would bring him results—if ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... Toni matured to statelier maidenhood. The plump girl, half-child, droll and naive, grew to be a thoughtful, silent young woman, secretive and very sure of her aims. She condescended to the guests and took no notice of the desperate admiration which surrounded her. Her glowing eyes looked into emptiness, her infinitely tempting mouth smiled ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... told Wonota the details of his imprisonment or not, the white girls never knew. Wonota, too, was inclined to be very secretive. But she was ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson
... so many ramifications, that any poor fellow breaking stones on the road is able to claim relationship with the greatest personages of the island, and is thereby able to exert a serious influence. These complications are aggravated still more by the national temperament, which is proud, secretive, scheming, and vindictive; so it follows that one has to be careful how one walks amid the network of threads stretching from one extremity of the people to ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... Sagan was a bad tool, at once stubborn and secretive, cunning enough to recognise and to resent handling, thickheaded and vain enough to blunder ruinously. And Elmur found at the last and most important moment that for some unexplained reason he had lost ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... December 5, it was evident that the terms of peace would be sharply criticised by both the parties in opposition, the followers of North and of Fox. Shelburne was disliked and distrusted by his colleagues, who considered him secretive and inclined to act alone, and the government soon showed signs of dissolution. Richmond retired from the cabinet in January, 1783, though he kept his office; the next day Keppel resigned the admiralty because he was dissatisfied with the ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... strawstack. They were comfortably sitting down, backs to the straw, eating a substantial lunch. Kurt was angry and did not care. His appearance, however, did not faze the strangers. One of them, an American, was a man of about thirty years, clean-shaven, square-jawed, with light, steely, secretive gray eyes, and a look of intelligence and assurance that did not harmonize with his motley garb. His companion was a foreigner, small of stature, with eyes like a ferret and deep pits in ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... original—here the critics could see through the millstone—while a lady remarked "It's a pity his appearance is so insignificant." This reached the composer's ear and caused him an evil quarter of an hour for he was morbidly sensitive; but being, like most Poles, secretive, managed to hide it. ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... resident of that suburb, where he has carried on his business as a builder for many years. Mr. Oldacre is a bachelor, fifty-two years of age, and lives in Deep Dene House, at the Sydenham end of the road of that name. He has had the reputation of being a man of eccentric habits, secretive and retiring. For some years he has practically withdrawn from the business, in which he is said to have amassed considerable wealth. A small timber-yard still exists, however, at the back of the ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... anarchy, and there can be no question that, if continued, it has in it the power of making many McNamaras, if not Bakounins. It will be fortunate, indeed, if there do not arise new Johann Mosts, and if the United States escapes the general use in time of that terrible, secretive, and deadly weapon of sabotage. Sabotage is the arm of the slave or the coward, who dares neither to speak his views nor to fight an open fight. As someone has said, it may merely mean the kicking of the master's dog. Yet no one is so cruel as the weak and the cowardly. And should it ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... as the two stood there facing each other, so sharp was the contrast. The man, the Mongolian, small, weazened, leather-colored, secretive—a strange, complex creature, steeped in all the obscure mystery of the East, nervous, ill at ease; and the girl, the Anglo-Saxon, daughter of the Northmen, huge, blond, big-boned, frank, outspoken, simple of composition, open as the day, bareheaded, her great ropes of sandy hair falling over ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris |
