"Startlingly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... so lightly from those lips, caused Rainham to quiver, as though she had rasped raw wounds. It was the concrete touch giving flesh and blood to his vision of her past. It made the girl's old relation with Eve's husband grow into a very present horror, startlingly ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... I had turned a bend of the chestnut avenue near the Park gates, I came upon a couple of familiar figures—familiar, that is to say, individually, but startlingly unfamiliar in conjunction. They were a young man and girl, Randall Holmes and Phyllis Gedge. Randall had concluded a distinguished undergraduate career at Oxford last summer. He was a man of birth, position, and, to a certain extent, of fortune. ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... the hoary bargee, was pushing them off with his boat-hook, wishing them luck with deferential familiarity. The raft was thronged with Old Judasians—mostly clergymen—who were shouting hearty hortations, and evidently trying not to appear so old as they felt—or rather, not to appear so startlingly old as their contemporaries looked to them. It occurred to the Duke as a strange thing, and a thing to be glad of, that he, in this world, would never be an Old Judasian. Zuleika's shoulder pressed his. He thrilled not at all. To all intents, he was ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... something hardly human about the colonel's wolfish pursuit of pleasure, and his chronic resolution not to go home till morning had a touch of the hideous clarity of insomnia. He was a tall, fine animal, elderly, but with hair still startlingly yellow. He would have looked merely blonde and leonine, but his blue eyes were sunk so deep in his face that they looked black. They were a little too close together. He had very long yellow moustaches; on each side of them a fold ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... ex-officer had sought employment, indoor or outdoor, congenial or uncongenial. The quest was vain. Once he had broached the matter haltingly to an influential acquaintance. The latter's reception of his distress had been so startlingly obnoxious that he would have died rather than repeat the venture. Then Smith of Dale's, Old Bond Street—Smith, who had cut his hair since he was a boy, and was his fast friend—had ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... informed. I have an announcement of my own to make. Listen!" He gave a command. Instantly, startlingly, in the fog-shrouded spaces of the valley rang out a salvo of gun fire. Many rifles spat. The sound rolled in long echoes along the gorge and was banged back by ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... Pierre's silence. She thought that he had dropped the brand and was sitting near the table with his face hidden. How long the stillness of pain and fury and horror lasted there was no one to reckon. It was most startlingly broken by a voice. "Who screamed for help?" it said, and at the same instant a draught of icy air smote Joan. The door had opened with suddenness and violence. With difficulty she mastered her pain and turned ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... Brackett and Bim sang and howled in concert, until their repertory was exhausted, when they lay down on the floor of the hut, and with the facility of those to whom camp life has become a second nature, were quickly asleep. From this slumber Billy Brackett was startlingly awakened, some time later, by Bim's bark, and a pistol shot that rang out from the profound stillness of the forest like a thunder-clap. He grasped the dog's collar and sat up. Before he could rise any ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... over two hundred and twenty pounds of bone, flesh and muscle. He swung a pot-belly of startling proportions under the silk shirting he wore, and his face, with its wide nose, small eyes and high forehead, was half highly mature, half startlingly childlike. In an apparent effort to erase those childlike qualities, Boyd sported a fringe of beard and a moustache which reminded Malone of ...
— Brain Twister • Gordon Randall Garrett
... attribute so often seen in women, from char-woman to duchess. But Felicity was not destined to misfortune. Ridokanaki sometimes compared her to a ray of sunshine, and her sister to a moonbeam. The comparison, if not startlingly original, was fairly just. Felicity retorted by saying that the Greek was like a wax-candle burnt at both ends and in the middle, while Woodville resembled a carefully shaded electric light. She was anxious to know the words in which Ridokanaki would propose, and had already had several ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... to recollect how she had looked on him that day in Hyde Park, when she "bade him take care of his own life, while so devoted to that of his dying friend!" and how she "blessed him in his task," with a voice of tenderness so startlingly sacred to his soul in its accents, that in remembering her words now, when so near the moment of his again seeing and hearing her, his soul expanded towards her, agitated, ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... brush was the gaunt, emaciated form of a woman lying stretched out at full length. At first glance, one might have mistaken her for a mummy, so still and lifeless she lay; her face, too, carried out the resemblance startlingly, for it was furrowed and seamed with countless wrinkles, the skin appearing like parchment in its dry, leathery texture. Only the eyes gave assurance that this was no mummy, but a living, sentient body—eyes large, full-orbed and black as midnight, arched by heavy brows that frowned with ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... of the boar's head which crested his helmet, flashed and gleamed wherever his presence was most needed to encourage the flagging or spur on the fierce. And there seemed to both armies something ghastly and preternatural in the savage strength of this small slight figure thus startlingly caparisoned, and which was heard evermore uttering its sharp war-cry, "Gloucester to the onslaught! Down ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... led past the willows to the lode, slipping as silently as possible through the shadows, though now and then a stone clinked beneath their feet, or a stick or twig snapped as they passed, with a sound that seemed startlingly loud. Nobody, however, seemed to hear them, and at last they sank down amidst a brake of tall fern near a little, neatly-squared stake which had been driven into the soil. The brake was in black shadow, ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... High School the boys, being mere freshmen, could not expect to enter any of the school's athletic teams. Yet, as our readers know, Dick and his friends found many a quiet way to boost local interest and pride in High School athletics. Dick & Co. also indulged in many merry and startlingly novel pranks. Dick secured an amateur position as space reporter on "The Blade," the morning newspaper of the little city, and was assigned, among other things, to look after the news end of the transactions of the Board of Education. ...
— The High School Captain of the Team - Dick & Co. Leading the Athletic Vanguard • H. Irving Hancock
... away swiftly enough on the high seas of life; more swiftly still in the little bubbling back-water of the quadrangle; so that we see there, on a scale startlingly diminished, the flight of time and the succession of men. I looked for my name the other day in last year's case-book of the Speculative. Naturally enough I looked for it near the end; it was not there, ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... wife, as if it were suddenly and startlingly a subject of physics, "whatever is the ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... cloud; the soul its clay. Can I forget the hand I took in mine, Pale as pale violets; that eye, where mind And matter met alike divine?—ah, no! May God that moment judge me when I do! O! she was fair; her nature once all spring And deadly beauty, like a maiden sword, Startlingly beautiful. I see her now! Wherever thou art thy soul is in my mind; Thy shadow hourly lengthens o'er my brain And peoples all its pictures with thyself; Gone, not forgotten; passed, not lost; thou wilt shine In heaven like a bright spot ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... could illume his dark stretches and level Mary-Clare's vague reachings to a common level. Both Larry and Mary-Clare were conscious now of being face to face with a grave human experience. They stood revealed, man and woman. The big significant things in life are startlingly simple. ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... there was in that likeness a providential instruction which the king ought to have heeded; I say that your mother committed a crime in rendering those different in happiness and fortune whom nature created so startlingly alike, of her own flesh, and I conclude that the object of punishment should be only to ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... was only thinking. He had it! He remembered that he had just seen his paragon, the brilliant Stacey, coming from the boundary woods. What more poetical and startlingly effective than to connect him with Cressy? He ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... who stood up from a couch as Trigger came into the small spaceport lounge next evening looked startlingly similar to Major Quillan's Dawn City assistant, Gaya. Standing, you could see that she was considerably more slender than Gaya. She had all of Gaya's ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... in gold and silver, the remains of one of Mr. Unwin's bursts of affection: those explosions of spontaneous love for myself, which, such is the perfect order and harmony of his mind, occur at startlingly exact intervals ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... the Malmaison estate and that of the Pennroyals; and the ornamentation consisted of two flights of steps leading down to the water, and of half a dozen willows whose twisted trunks bent over the surface. Although of no great area, this pond was startlingly deep, and the bottom, when you got to it, was of the softest and most unfathomable mud. Had not Aunt Jane been seen just as she was sinking for the third time, therefore, the chances are that she would never have been seen till doomsday; there ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... the motive of providing Clermont with a plausible excuse for suicide that Chapman so startlingly transformed the personality of Henry of Guise? The Duke as he appears in The Revenge has scarcely a feature in common either with the Guise of history or of the earlier play. Instead of the turbulent and intriguing noble we see a "true tenth worthy," who realizes ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... is not the case, is evident from the fact that the reactions often increase in definiteness during the first two or three days and then suddenly disappear entirely. But even if this were not true, it would seem extremely improbable that the mouse should become accustomed to a sudden and startlingly loud sound with so few repetitions as occurred in these tests. On any one day the sounds were not made more than five to ten times. Moreover, under the same external condition, the common mouse reacts ...
— The Dancing Mouse - A Study in Animal Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... ill-assorted marriages I had known. Suddenly there hurried along the gravelled path which crossed mine obliquely a half-indistinguishable throng of pathetic men and women: two by two they filed before me, each becoming startlingly distinct for an instant as they passed—some with tears, some with hollow smiles, and some with firm-set lips, bearing their fetters with them. There was little Alice chained to old Bowlsby; there was Lucille, ...
— A Midnight Fantasy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... lumber near the building that we worked hard to save, but the flames were so hot we had to desist, and some cried out "Save the Eyry!" Turning on my heel I went to the greenhouse for water buckets, and entering saw the flowers lighted up with a heavenly glow of color, and so startlingly beautiful that in spite of my haste I lingered a moment to look at them. Roses and camellias, heaths and azaleas—whatever flowers there were in bloom looked superbly glorified in the transcendent light, and I uttered an exclamation of surprise at ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... who lives in Milwaukee. It seemed so queer to hear her speak of Mrs. Langdon as 'Sue'! If you should see her once,—" turning to Bert, who sat beside her,—"you would appreciate it. She is almost a fierce-looking old lady, and she says the most startlingly frank things if she chooses. I don't believe any ordinary person could help being a little afraid of Mrs. Langdon, but Madam Kittredge seems to think her a delicious joke. But I started to tell about the present. You see, this ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... the new West, at once startlingly and attractively true. * * * The heroine is a strange, sweet mixture of pride, wilfulness and lovable courage. The characters are superbly drawn; the atmosphere is convincing. There is about it a sweetness, a wholesomeness and a sturdiness ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... place and region have gone back to the insignificance from which Edison's genius lifted them so startlingly. A glance from the car windows reveals only a gently rolling landscape dotted with modest residences and unpretentious barns; and there is nothing in sight by way of memorial to suggest that for nearly a decade ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... table, in the sudden flood of light, two men stood looking at each other curiously. They were so startlingly alike, in height and carriage and every feature, that there was something weird and unpleasant ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... DEMOCRITUS.—In the teachings of Empedocles (about 492-432 B.C.) and Democritus (about 460-370 B.C.) we meet with many speculations respecting the constitution of matter and the origin of things which are startlingly similar to some of the doctrines held by modern scientists. Empedocles, with the evolutionists of to-day, taught that the higher forms of life arise out of the lower; Democritus conceived all things to be composed of invisible atoms, all alike ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... met in Jena,—saw the lively interest I was taking in the book, and, in fact, I talked it over with him many a time. One day, after we had been to see an important picture-gallery together, he addressed me in these words, which from his mouth sounded startlingly strange, and which at the time seemed to ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... may seem incongruous and unnecessary to teachers used to more conventional methods, but I feel sure that an actual experience of it would modify that point of view conclusively. The children of the schools where story-telling and "dramatising" were practised were startlingly better in reading, in attentiveness, and in general power of expression, than the pupils of like social conditions in the same grades of other cities which I visited soon after, and in which the more conventional methods were exclusively ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... one thing that burthens me a good deal in my patriotic garrulage, and that is the black ignorance in which I grope about everything, as, for example, when I gave yesterday a full and, I fancy, a startlingly incorrect account of Scotch education to a very stolid German on a garden bench: he sat and perspired under it, however, with much composure. I am generally glad enough to fall back again, after these political interludes, upon Burns, toddy, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... pure voice of tragic sorrow. It is in the terrible moment when, after the heroic strain of the sacrifice is over, Virginius realizes the meaning of what he has done. Presumably wild with grief, he raves in language so startlingly akin to the ludicrous despairs of Pyramus and Thisbe that the modern reader, acquainted with the latter, is almost ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... young man, tall and slender, but pale to ghastliness, with haggard cheeks and hollow eyes, stood, wrapped in a long cloak, beside the Captain. He had been handsome, you could see, even through that bloodless pallor, and there was a look in his great blue eyes that startlingly reminded ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... years; he still had good clothes—a very taking, good-looking fellow he was, they say—and he'd a decent lodging. But in spring 1904 he was living on the proceeds of chance betting, and was sometimes very low down, and in May of that year he disappeared, in startlingly sudden fashion, without saying a word to anybody, and since then nobody has ever seen a vestige or ever heard ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... country I did note, and that was the entire disappearance of two of the most beautiful of the little crystal cities that adorned the northward range. The gale of the night had wrought havoc, and the unsubstantiality of this dazzling kingdom of ice was made startlingly apparent by the evanishment of the delicate glassy architecture, and by those four white hills floating like ships under their courses and topsails out upon the flashing hurry and leaping blue and yeast of ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... a gently rounding summit; took several deep breaths into the uttermost cells of our distressed lungs; walked forward a dozen steps—and found ourselves looking over the sheer brink of a precipice. So startlingly unforeseen was the swoop into blue space that I recoiled hastily, feeling a little dizzy. Then I recovered and stepped forward cautiously for another look. As with all sheer precipices, the lip on which we stood seemed slightly to overhang, so that in order to see one had apparently to crane ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... guides down through a trail to another clearing planted with potatoes. On the farther side of this they stopped, hand in hand, at the woods' fringe, and awaited us in a startlingly sudden repose. ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... until just as the train was crawling out of the station, for we had asked Brigit and Monny not to see us off, and they had been startlingly acquiescent. We had a two-berthed compartment together, and talked most of the night, in low voices; of the mountain; of the legends concerning it, and the papers of the dead Egyptologist Ferlini, which indirectly ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... gathered in massy coils over her head and fastened there by a spiral torque of gleaming gold. Her mantle, entirely black, which fell to her feet, made her features seem more strangely young, more startlingly in contrast with the monastic severity of the room. It was draped round with some dark unfigured hangings. A couch with a coverlet of furs, single chair of carved oak, the little table, and a bronze censer from which a faint aromatic odor escaping ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... stood listening and straining their ears in the direction from which the sounds had come, but there was a faint whispering as of running water down below, a trickling gurgle, and then startlingly loud came the nasal quant of some night-heron at the ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... plushy fur, extended down his backbone and along the outside of his well muscled arms and legs, and was tawny-yellow, blue-gray or white. To Terran eyes the broad faces, now all turned in their direction, lacked readable expression. The eyes were large and set slightly aslant in the skull, being startlingly orange-red or a brilliant turquoise green-blue. They wore loin cloths of brightly dyed fabrics with wide sashes forming corselets about their slender middles, from which gleamed the gem-set hilts of their claw knives, the possession of which proved their adulthood. Cloaks as ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... wondering how this denouement would have been affected if Avery had been, say, a dentist, or of any other calling than the one that so obviously loaded the dice in his favour. I repeat, however, a distinctly well-written and human story, almost startlingly topical too in one place, where Dr. Avery observes, "There's a lot of grippe in town, and it's a thing that isn't reported to the Health Department." The obvious inference being that it ought to be. Avery, you ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 29, 1919 • Various
... toiled not, neither did she spin, and yet! If all these folk were like poor, stupid, docile Jennie it would be simpler, but what earthly sense was there in trying do to anything with a girl like Zora, so stupid in some matters, so startlingly bright in others, and so stubborn in everything? Here, she was doing some work twice as well and twice as fast as the class, and other work she would not touch because she "didn't like it." Her classification ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... doctrine that the South had become a social unit. Though a believer in slavery under the conditions of the moment, Davis had none of the passion of the slave baron for slavery at all costs. Furthermore, as events were destined to show in a startlingly dramatic way, he was careless of South Carolina's passion for state rights. He was a practical politician, but not at all the old type of the party of political evasion, the type of Toombs. No other man of the moment ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... present. Consolatory promise to give the next one. Indian visitors. Head-dresses. "Very tight and very short shirts". Indian mode of life. Their huts, food, cooking, utensils, manner of eating. Sabine-like invasion leaves to tribe but a few old squaws. "Startlingly unsophisticated state of almost entire nudity". Their filthy habits. Papooses fastened in framework of light wood. Indian modes of fishing. A handsome but shy young buck. Classic gracefulness of folds of white-sheet ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... in London and New York. Mr. Van Druten's new play deals with the women of one family, women so unlike that they set one another off startlingly. There is the tart, querulous old Mrs. Venables, and there are her three daughters—Nellie who is married and whose life has slipped away from her in the provinces; Liz who is divorced and whose life has been brilliant and unconventional on the Continent; and Evie ...
— Why the Chimes Rang: A Play in One Act • Elizabeth Apthorp McFadden
... earlier works leading up to it, while Master Olof appeared where nobody had any reason to expect it. This very fact militated against its success, of course; it was too unexpected, and also too startlingly original, both in ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... there, and a deep, solemn hush fell upon us, in which the deep, hoarse, tumbling roar of a whirl-pool at no great distance, and the gurgle and rush of the turbid river past the schooner's hull became almost startlingly audible. But as long as we were able to see them the lines of native warriors still stood, silent and motionless, guarding the whole river front of the town. As a matter of precaution, I now ordered the boarding nettings to be triced up all round the ship, the ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... the same crew had left that field in their Vickers-Vimy. This beats the former record of 36 days and some odd hours, made in 1913 by John Henry Mears, by the substantial margin of approximately 12 days. It is a big gain—a startlingly short time for encompassing the world as compared with the ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... amiss, as he saw the instant he unlocked the door and pulled it open, for the first lifting of the lantern made the cause of the darkness startlingly plain. The shallow glass globe which should have been in the centre of the ceiling had been smashed, ragged fragments of it still clinging to their fastenings, and the three electric bulbs had been removed bodily. A downward glance showed him that both ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... these little tales are deduced from every day life, as they are easily recognizable. To those not yet favored by a residence in this Northland I would say that I have written each tale with a well defined purpose. With truthfulness could each one have been more vividly, yes startlingly, told; but I have no wish to unduly disturb my readers. It has been my aim, however, to picture not only character, but also the vast and wonderful gold producing region, so plainly that even the young may better know Alaska, and learn somewhat from glimpses of the ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... critically taking him in. She let her appraisal begin at the dark hair which the water had twisted into a curling lawlessness and end at his feet which were somewhat small for his stature. The general impression of that scrutiny was one which she secretly acknowledged to be startlingly, almost thrillingly, favorable. Then she realized that while one of her hands continued to dangle a wet stocking, the other was still tightly clasped in his own and that he was repeating ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... traits to humanity, the stricken deer, weeping big, piteous tears, the fawning affection and noble fidelity of the dog, the architectural skill of the beaver, the wise aspect of the owl, the sweet plaint of the nightingale, the shrieks of some fierce beasts, and the howls of others startlingly like the cries of children and the moans of pain, the sparkling orbs and tortuous stealthiness of the snake; and the hints at metempsychosis are obvious. Standing face to face with a tiger, an anaconda, a wild ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... be mentioned as the most distressing and obstinate in its nature, a species of epilepsy not unfrequently terminating in trance itself—trance very nearly resembling positive dissolution, and from which her manner of recovery was in most instances, startlingly abrupt. In the mean time my own disease—for I have been told that I should call it by no other appellation—my own disease, then, grew rapidly upon me, and assumed finally a monomaniac character of a novel and extraordinary form—hourly and momently gaining vigor—and at ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... stood out startlingly from the rest. On the others only an infrequent trailing vine or a faded bunch of flowers told of loving effort to cover death's nakedness. But this one, which lay in the centre of the enclosure, was covered from headstone to foot-cross with a dense growth of ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... this mysterious dwelling, and yet now that the moment had come, how gladly would they have found themselves safely at home in the Vicarage! Pennie and Ambrose had vied with each other in providing strange and weird articles of furniture and ornaments for it; but the reality was almost startlingly different. When, after several knocks, the boys were told to "come in," they entered a room which was just like that in any other cottage, except that it was barer. There was, indeed, scarcely any furniture at all, ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton
... ingoing men all the cigarettes, chocolates, writing-paper, mouth-organs, Keating's, pencils, and newspapers we could lay hands on before we started, and we could have done with thousands of each. Every few minutes one of our guns talked with a startlingly loud noise somewhere near, but Captain R. said it was an exceptionally quiet day, and we didn't hear a single German gun or see any bursting shells. It was a particularly warm sunny day, and the men going into the trenches were so cheerful and jolly that it didn't seem at all tragic or depressing, ...
— Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front, 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... swans, having exhausted the lake, the general curiosity reverted to the break in the trees at the farther end—remarked a startlingly artificial object, intruding itself on the scene, in the shape of a large red curtain, which hung between two of the tallest firs, and closed the prospect beyond from view—requested an explanation of the curtain ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... the gift, for her heart was beyond the capture of any man. She was the shuttered house of a vanished happiness, inhabited by a restless ghost. The gold light from the lamp fell in a pool about her. It revealed startlingly the whiteness of her arms and throat, the blueness of her eyes and the primrose gleam of her polished head. She seemed insubstantial as a dream, environed by shadows. And what did she mean by saying that all her best lay in the past? Surely she had misjudged! ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... Superintendent of Police he was as much beloved for the goodness of his heart as he was by the city editor for the goodness of his grammar. Once upon a time SPIFFKINS had the opportunity of trying his hand at dramatic criticism, and adopted a startlingly new system, which consisted simply in telling the truth. The consequence was that his newspaper obtained a great reputation for high moral tone, and lost all its theatrical advertisements. Even when ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various
... his own manner became easy and happy. He looked once or twice at the lady whom he considered his mentor, Mrs. Grayson, and expected to see approval and satisfaction on her face, too, but she was stern and impenetrable, and the "King" said to himself that after all she was not so startlingly acute. ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... mistake about Francis Sales, but her imagination, finding occupation where it could, began to endow him with romance, and that scene among the primroses, the startlingly green grass, the pervading blue of the air, the horse so indifferent to the human drama, the dog trying to understand it, became the salient event of her life because it had awakened her capacity ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... been our good fortune to inspect the superb line of folding library-bedsteads which Professor Thorpe offers to the public at startlingly low figures, and we are surprised at the ingenuity and the learning apparent in these contrivances. The Essay bedstead is a particularly handsome piece of furniture, being made of polished mahogany, elaborately carved, ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... misapprehension, and then went down-stairs, to find another blood-curdling tale in progress, and the girls sitting breathless, while the firelight threw fantastic shapes upon the wall, and the shadows looked startlingly black by contrast. ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... see nothing but a fierce yellow glare. She turned the screw and gradually the desert came to her, startlingly distinct. The boulders of the river bed were enormous. She could see the veins of colour in them, a lizard running over one of them and disappearing into a dark crevice, then the white tower and the Arabs beneath it. One was an old man ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... is supposed to have helped the Prince at this time. There had been among his Life Guards a handsome youth named Roderick Mackenzie, son of a jeweller in Edinburgh, who in face and figure was startlingly like the Prince. This lad was actually 'skulking' among the Braes of Glenmoriston at the time when the Prince was surrounded in Knoydart. A party of soldiers tracked him to a hut, which they surrounded. ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... as the comparative narrowness of the slip will let her, after they have cut the ropes holding her to the dock. Here, again, a model vessel in a built-up miniature slip supplied the means of obtaining a startlingly realistic effect. The scene lasted only a few seconds, so that little opportunity was given the spectator to see how it was worked, but the effect of the brief ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... the meal, but within five minutes a second gun-shot sounded startlingly near at hand. The Virginian's appearance at the door was coincident with a clear hail of "Aho-oy, Amber!"—unmistakably Quain's voice, raised at a distance of not ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... keen and impassioned, but, not fitting the actual facts, sometimes unjust and cruel. Tender and sensitive as a child, his indignation is so uncompromising that it often involves injustice and wrong. But the beauty in him is often startlingly pure, and reveals itself in unexpected conditions and environment. I cannot do better in an attempt to present him and his history than to quote voluminously from his letters to me, adding only what is necessary for the sake of clearness. He wrote for me the following ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... great solitude is quick with life. Myriads of insects, gaudy as the flowers They flutter over, gentle quadrupeds, And birds, that scarce have learned the fear of man, Are here, and sliding reptiles of the ground, Startlingly beautiful. The graceful deer Bounds to the wood at my approach. The bee, A more adventurous colonist than man, With whom he came across the eastern deep, Fills the savannas with his murmurings, And hides his sweets, ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... his knees apart with all the power of his burly calves. The cords cut into his bulging muscles, cut into and through his skin. The veins stood out on his forehead, his neck was a corded pillar, his teeth bit through his lip as he stifled a scream of pain. Then, startlingly, the fibers snapped. His legs at least were free! He could fight, die fighting, and take these others ...
— The Great Dome on Mercury • Arthur Leo Zagat
... far, you may say, there is nothing which need particularly interest either of us. But I think you will be as much surprised as I was when I tell you that the description given by the people at Aldborough of Miss Bygrave's appearance is most startlingly and unaccountably like the description of Magdalen's appearance. This discovery, taken in connection with all the circumstances we know of, has had an effect on my mind which I cannot describe to you—which ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... organization. By virtue of this endowment, she speedily demonstrated her peculiar fitness for this new mission. Her eloquence and inspiration charmed the multitude from a thousand rostrums. Her work in this new field was so startlingly brilliant, important and successful as to attract the attention of the whole civilized world; affording a remarkable object lesson which demonstrated her possession, as the mouth-piece of inspiration, of a ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... not dark, but lighted with the startlingly brilliant phosphorescence of the fungi growing on the trunks, and trimmed into bizarre ornamental shapes. In cages of transparent fibre, glowing insects as large as a hand hummed ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... of the dead, or works of art more than usually skittish in the subject. It was perhaps in the hope of finding something of this last description that M'Naughten's comrade pulled aside the curtain of the first. He was startlingly disappointed. There was no picture. The frame surrounded, and the curtain was designed to hide, an oblong aperture in the partition, through which they looked forth into the dark corridor. A person standing ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... late in the afternoon when they met a man in a dog-cart driving at a great pace. He pulled up when he saw them. His face was the colour of lead, his eyes were startlingly bloodshot. ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... She would soon be as well dressed as anybody, and no one would stare any more. In one window there were displayed, not only gowns, but hats and cloaks, and exquisite furs, all shown on wax models with fashionably dressed hair and coquettish faces. One pink and white creature with a startlingly perfect figure wore a filmy robe of that intense indigo just taken on by the sea. Underneath a shadowlike tunic of dark blue chiffon there was a glint of pale gold, a sort of gold and silver sheath which encased the form of the ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... She was tall and straight and slim, as are English and Polish and Danish girls, and none other in all the world. But the colouring of her face and hair was more pronounced than in the fairness of Anglo-Saxon youth. For her hair had a golden tinge in it, and her skin was of that startlingly milky whiteness which is only found in those who live round the frozen waters. Her eyes, too, were of a clearer blue—like the blue of a summer sky over the Baltic sea. The rosy colour was in her cheeks, ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... 1920, came out of Bolshevik Russia, as startlingly as though from the grave, Corp. Prince of "B" Company, who had been wounded and captured at Toulgas, March 1, 1919. This leads to our story of the captives in Bolshevikdom. One of the interesting incidents of the spring defensive was the exchange of prisoners. It was brought about quite ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... mention the name o' Simon Girty," replied Younker, in a deliberate and startlingly solemn tone, "I al'ays call down God's curse upon the fiendish ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... of her glorious head scorched his face. He flung his hat far away, and his suddenly lowered eyelids brought out startlingly his resemblance to antique bronze, the profile of Pallas, still, austere, bowed a little in the shadow of the rock. "Oh! If you could only understand the truth that ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... miles from me, and forms that the earth had long before covered over. A death-like chill came over me: by a sudden impulse, I rushed forward, and awoke. With bewildered feelings, I rose on my elbow, and gazed around. The moon had risen; her cold, clear light making every object near me either startlingly distinct, or else a mass of dark shade, while a deep and solemn silence reigned around. All had vanished—the singer and the dancers—the flaming, sparkling, roaring fires, and the noisy groups around them; and I might have imagined that I had awaked to find myself in another world, had ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... rustled mournfully. With the exception of the riders and an occasional Gila monster, no life was discernible. Cacti of all shapes and sizes reared aloft their forbidding spines or spread out along the sand. All was dead, ghastly; all was oppressive, startlingly repellent in its sinister promise; all was the ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... on all sides, for the fate of this portentous measure, that fully one-half the Representatives kept tally at their desks as the vote proceeded, while the heads of the gathered thousands of both sexes, in the galleries, craned forward, as though fearing to lose the startlingly clear responses, while ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... Dalton and his family, therefore, had, in the eyes of many of the people, nothing in it so startlingly oppressive as might be supposed. On the contrary, the act was looked upon as much in the character of a matter of right on his part, as one of oppression to them. Long usage had reconciled the peasantry to it, and up to the period of our tale, there had been no one ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... trifling fiction, until it thus rather startlingly reappeared on his lips. She might easily have let it die naturally, had she chosen; but she could not choose. She had a whim to ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... twelve, wearing a sailor suit and the surly expression of an active boy detained within walls while other boys were shouting in the park. Beside it was a water color of Janet at the age of two, even then startlingly like her grandmother. She had been Mrs. Oglethorpe's favorite descendant until the resemblance had become too accentuated by ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... great care. They had partly been trimmed that day; and the evening dampness brought out the faint, solemn odour of the leaves, which I never have noticed since without thinking of that night. The roses were in bloom, and the snow-ball bushes were startlingly white, and there was a long border filled with lilies-of-the-valley. The other flowers of the season, were all there and in blossom; yet I could see none well but the white ones, which looked like bits of snow and ice in the summer shadows,—ghostly flowers ...
— An Arrow in a Sunbeam - and Other Tales • Various
... eminent place, he is set an arduous feat in sight of the multitude. Mr. Wilson's task was manifestly congenial to him, for it was deliberately chosen by himself, and it comprised the most tremendous problems ever tackled by man born of woman. The means by which he set to work to solve them were startlingly simple: the regeneration of the human race was to be compassed by means of magisterial edicts secretly drafted and sternly imposed on the interested peoples, together with a new and ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... was no light in the window. No homely pungency of wood-smoke breathed welcome on the bitter air. The cabin looked startlingly deserted. ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... own line, the crest and motto of the Bruce. It could not have been more than a minute that the blue lightning lingered there, yet to his excited spirit it was long enough to impress indelibly and startlingly every trace of that strange vision upon his heart. The face was turned to his, with a solemn yet sorrowful earnestness of expression, and the mailed hand raised on high, seemed pointing unto heaven. ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... "It is startlingly original," I said, and her bright and innocent smile showed her appreciation of the compliment. "How many have you ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... consternation, Gatton and I stood looking at one another—standing rigidly like men of stone one on either side of that long, thin body stretched upon my study floor. The hawk face in profile was startlingly like that of Anubis as it lay against the ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... odd little encounter, that left vague and dubitable impressions in her mind. She was aware of him—a silk-hatted, shiny-black figure on the opposite side of the Avenue; and then, abruptly and startlingly, he crossed the road and ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... for their very strength and hardihood made them the more ragingly resent being thus tumbled about as though they were bales or boxes rather than men. Rayburn's language was not open to the charge of weakness; but the words in which Young gave vent to his feelings were so startlingly vigorous that even a Wyoming cow-boy would have been surprised by them; yet I must confess that at the moment—so greatly was my own anger aroused—I thought his observations exceedingly appropriate to the occasion that called them forth, and I even was disposed to envy him the command of a technical ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... about his cartridges, wishing he had more in his clothes. When he had left the hotel that Tuesday evening he had thrust the loaded revolver in his pocket, but he had already discharged it twice at the beginning of their flight.... And then he startlingly reflected that the Captain could easily cause their arrest for stealing those camels, and wild and dreadful thoughts of native jails and mixed tribunals darted into his harassed and anxious mind. As a long ridge of sand intervened between them and their pursuers ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... scrutiny. He remembered that such a gaze was said to demand a response where a certain amount of affinity existed between the people involved, and put out his strength to try the truth of the statement in his own case. The proof came almost startlingly soon. Cornelia's head turned over her shoulder, and her eyes lightened with a flash of recognition. She smiled at him, nodded her head, and arched her brows, signalling a message, which he could easily divine to be an invitation to come to speak to her between the acts. When the curtain ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Initiate, as well as High-degree Master. Understanding this, one may imagine the disgust inspired in John by the amorous solicitations of Salome, which caused him to lose his life rather than to break the vows of his Order, as is so startlingly pictured in the stage productions of ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... startlingly fresh appearance, after the heavy rains. The gravel walk had the prim neatness of a Peter de Hoogh garden path. The white balustrades and flights of steps around the great circle, the statuary and the fountains in the middle lake, flashed pure. The ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... interruption was the report of a gun, sounding startlingly distinct on the quiet air. That, so far as could be judged, came from near the spot whither was ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... a man to be startlingly affected by any communication; nevertheless he felt the importance of this, for Lord ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... places for centuries, seem to leap from their foundations and tear their way with resistless force into the valley below. This was probably one of those accidental displacements, liable to occur at any hour of the day or night, which had come so startlingly near crushing ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... heels of this sound came another. A muffled buzzing somewhere in the house—again! again! And then, startlingly clear from the room over the garage, the burglar alarm went ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive - or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails • Victor Appleton
... thinker. Science has found evidence that known substance is not less a product of evolution than mind,—that all our so-called "elements" have been evolved out of "one primary undifferentiated form of matter." And this evidence is startlingly suggestive of some underlying truth in the Buddhist doctrine of emanation and illusion,—the evolution of all forms from the Formless, of all material phenomena from immaterial Unity,—and the ultimate return of all into "that state which is empty of ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... in the "Provincial Letters," plays like the diffusive sheen of an aurora borealis over the whole surface of the composition. It does not often deliver itself startlingly in sudden discharges as of lightning. You need to school your sense somewhat, not to miss a fine effect now and then. Consider the broadness and coarseness in pleasantry, that, before Pascal, had been common, almost universal, in controversy, and you will better understand what a ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... recognize that the departure from the standard type is in the direction of advancement and gain, rather than of retrogression and loss—a plus attribute, rather than a minus one. The illustration is startlingly true and in accordance with the facts of the case, as many thoughtful persons know only to well, ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... him with her subtle, tigerish glide, swiftly, startlingly, and with the dart of a cobra her hand gripped his which held the dagger. Her warm body again pressed closely to him, her red lips, parted still, almost touched his cheek; her hair smothered him with its fragrance; and while his senses swam her supple ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... swinging his old straw hat in his hands, and whispering angrily to himself as he went. His grizzled hair, not trimmed for a month, blew back from his damp forehead in the warm breeze; his reddened eyes stared hard at nothing from under blinking lids; and one side of his face twitched startlingly from time to time;—children might have run from him, or ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... forehead appears a description: "Mystery [or explanation of mystery], Babylon the great, the mother of harlots and of the abominations of the earth." This woman is riding upon a strange beast; it is scarlet-colored, with seven heads and ten horns, and full of blasphemous names. This is the startlingly ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon
... abruptly, and as startlingly to her as if she had just dropped from a sphere whose inhabitants had other methods of expressing their sympathy, he slipped his arm around her and bent his keen ugly melting ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... the stairs, and with a trembling hand knocked at the door. On entering, she was about to rush into her newly-found relative's arms, but, on casting her eyes around, she perceived her father and him standing side by side, so startlingly alike in feature, expression, and personal figure, that her heart, until then bounding with rapture, sank at once, and almost became still. The quick but delicate instincts of her nature took the alarm, and a sudden weakness seized her ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... was molding her dress upon her rounded form till she seemed like the statue of a goddess—a goddess of freedom, loveliness, and joy, sculptured in the living flesh—a figure vibrant with glowing health and youth, startlingly set in the desert's gray austerity. With the sunlight flinging its gold and riches upon her, what a marvel of color she presented!—such creamy white and changing rose-tints in her cheeks—such a wonderful brown in her hair and eyes—such crimson ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... held part. In his defiance and egotism he had muddled things in a desperate way. In the cold, clear light of conventional relations the past few weeks, shorn of the glamour cast by his romantic love and supposed contempt for social restrictions, stood forth startlingly significant. At the moment Truedale could not conceive how he had ever been capable of playing the fool as he had! Not for one instant did this realization affect his love and loyalty to Nella-Rose; ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... be as startlingly clever as Carol, but Hallowe'en, which comes this year on October 31st, offers a splendid opportunity for originality and "peppy" fun. The following suggestions are presented to ambitious hostesses with the absolute guaranty that no matter ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... called up cheerily, in the same startlingly deep sweet voice that had caught Elinor's ear on the September afternoon before the door of Sunrise, and out in the edge of her consciousness the thought played in again, "I'd rather be here with you than over the river with anybody ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... millions of American slaves of African descent, but made slavery forever impossible in the great Republic, and gave a new impulse to the cause of human freedom. Its influence upon American slaves was immediate and startlingly revolutionary, lifting them from the condition of despised chattels, bought and sold like sheep in the market, with no rights which the white man was bound to respect,—to the exalted plane of American citizenship; made them ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... breakfast was over, the combatants withdrew to the quiet of the library, and the door was closed. Elfride seemed to have an idea that her conduct was rather ill-regulated and startlingly free from conventional restraint. And worse, she fancied upon Knight's face a slightly amused look ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... it must be, and with one accord we turned to on the foresail. With the peak of it hoisted we moved a trifle faster, though the schooner lay over at a perilous angle. A moment later the fogs parted to show us the cliffs looming startlingly near. There were the donkey engine and the works we had constructed for wrecking—and there beside them, watching us reflectively, ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... night the harbor was swept by storm. But in spite of torrents of rain East Battery and the rooftops were thronged. "The wind was inshore and the booming was startlingly distinct." At the height of the bombardment, the sky above Sumter seemed to be filled with the flashes of bursting shells. But during this wild night Sumter itself was both dark and silent. Its casements did not have adequate lamps and the ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... side of the bed, looking at her mother. Her hands were clasped behind her, too. In that moment, as she stood there, she resembled her mother and her father so startlingly and simultaneously that the two, had they been less absorbed in their own affairs, must have ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... lit the light and surveyed her surroundings with an increasing satisfaction. It was a startlingly ugly room, but she thought it a bower of elegance. What gave her authority on the stage, what had already lifted her above the mass, seemed to fall from her with her costume. That unwavering sense of beauty and grace, that instinctive taste which lent her performance poetry and distinction, ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... Perhaps it was his fleeting air of weakness combined with daring that drew her to him. She could not tell. She only knew, as she walked among the shy roses, that the casual touch of his hand—a hand, too, that was very like a girl's—had communicated to her quite a startlingly strong emotion. Alas! the motherly feeling seemed to have had its little day, and to have been swept off the stage on which her mental drama was being acted. It had played a principal part, but now an understudy appeared, more full-blooded, stronger, wilder. ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... its red coloration; there was nothing in its normal surroundings with which this coloration harmonized; so far as it had any effect whatever it was always a revealing and not a concealing effect. When the animal fled the black of the erect tail was an additional revealing mark, although not of such startlingly advertising quality as the flag of the whitetail. The whitetail, in one of its forms, and with the ordinary whitetail custom of displaying the white flag as it runs, is found in the immediate neighborhood ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... startlingly in my inner ear as I sat in meditation at my Mt. Washington headquarters. Traversing ten thousand miles in the twinkling of an eye, his message penetrated my being like a ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... artificial and plainly stating facts known to both races, would be the most reasonable way to attempt to open contact. The tape sent a series of cardinal numbers—one to five. Then an addition table, from one plus one to five plus five. Then a multiplication table up to five times five. It was not startlingly intellectual information to be sent out in tiny clicks ranging up and down the radio spectrum. But it ...
— The Aliens • Murray Leinster
... the sacred home of the king!" His voice had again changed. A metallic hardness came into it, his words were vibrant with a strange excitement which he strove hard to conceal. It was still light enough for Captain Plum to see that the old man's black, beady eyes were startlingly alive ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... hauling logs up to the mill, and being sheltered, was comparatively free from drifts. The doctor turned into it, and passed into the breathless silence of the cedar swamp. His horse's bells sounded startlingly clear in the tense Stillness. To his right lay the cold, drear stretches of the Drowned Lands; the gaunt tree-trunks were but dimly discernible against the gray landscape, and looked more ghostly than ever, standing there, ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... pounded on a square box, which represented the Quackahl drum. Two warriors were deputed to watch Hammasoloe while he circled around the fire, for the usual ending to the dance is startlingly realistic. Usually the dancer becomes so excited that he bites the arms of those present in imitation of the actions of the great spirit on the mountains. Whenever his eyes glared and his looks became ferocious the warriors grasped his arms and ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... all conversation along natural lines and do no probing. And now,—this brother whom all had thought dead, come to life with menace in his acts and conversation! Also a sister,—but this sister he had no belief in. The coincidence was too startlingly out of nature for him to accept a brother and a sister too. A brother or a sister; but not both. Not even Mr. Harper's assurances should influence his credulity to this extent. "Money! money is at the bottom of it all," was his final decision. "She ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... of invisibility removed, they were welcomed by Dantor, a tall white-haired Rulan who was startlingly like ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... something so startlingly frank, so hopelessly self-satisfied, so contagiously good-humored in the woman's perfect moral unconsciousness, that even if Mrs. Tucker had been less preoccupied her resentment would have abated. But her eyes were fixed on the gloomy face of Patterson, who was beginning to unlock ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte |
