"Vacantly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... saloon was too utterly dark and dismal at that hour to tempt the bravest of them. Second thoughts reminded me of that certainty, and I looked again. The figure raised its head from its drooping posture, and gazed vacantly, out of a pair of dim blue eyes, at me. The eyes were the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... vacant chair by the stove, staring at nothing. The sun poured in. It filled the room with warmth. Andy's eyes rested on it vacantly. The stillness was warm and big. It seemed a kind of presence. Andy drew his hand across his eyes and got up. He went over and stood by the lounge, peering out. The smoke was gone. Juno turned her head and blinked an eye or two, indifferent. She ignored him pointedly. Her gaze returned ...
— Uncle William - The Man Who Was Shif'less • Jennette Lee
... metaphysicians, in every age, and will perplex them all to the end of time. No wonder, therefore, that it could not be solved by the poor simple Scotswoman. But as she stood hushing the child to her breast, and looking vacantly out of the window at the far mountains which grew golden in the sunset, she was unconsciously soothed by the scene, and settled the matter in a way which wiser heads might often do ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... children, in chairs drawn close together, were impatiently drumming with tin spoons on the wood. A haggard woman, in a soiled blue gingham dress, was bringing a pot of coffee from the adjoining room; and in one corner, on a sofa from which the stuffing sagged in bunches, a man sat staring vacantly at a hole in the rag carpet. Tied in a high chair, which stood apart as if it were the pedestal of an idol, a baby, with the smooth unlined face not of an infant, but of a philosopher, was mutely surveying ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... and entered, followed by Ashton-Kirk. The place was crowded; the air was thick with the smoke of poor tobacco; the fox-like young men still made the skilful strokes at the tables, and the walls were lined, as usual, with men who either stared vacantly, or ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... tedious conversations with them on platonics, the blisses of matrimony, and the chief causes of love, show plainly that he had a "wandering eye." He had a deal to say also of his lady customers (who were much the same in olden times as nowadays)—one simple soul who turned over his books rather vacantly till he asked her "in Joque" whether she wanted "Tom Thumb" (a penny chapbook). To his surprise she answered, "Yes;" and he said, still guying, "in Folio and with marginal notes?" and the dull creature replied, "Oh the ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... composed of one third butter, one third flour, one third saleratus, and the crisping bean, surmounted by crimped pork, showed that a Providence Yankee might well find an appropriate entertainment. But again the eyes of Roseton looked vacantly on, and again, amid strains of music, the walls of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... wandered about in the hot streets, bought a cheap suit-case and some underclothes, and then went down to the port in search of a little hotel he remembered there. An hour later he was sitting in the coffee-room, smoking and glancing vacantly over the papers while he waited for dinner, when he became aware of being timidly but intently examined by a small round-faced gentleman with eyeglasses who sat ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... painted, but in a fit of gloomy disgust destroyed everything. So it went on for a few weeks. Miss Marston was more regular than an alarm-clock; sometimes she brought some work, but oftener she sat vacantly watching the young man at work. Her only standard of accomplishment was quantity. One day, when Clayton had industriously employed a rainy afternoon in putting in the drapery for the figure, she was so much pleased by the ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... with torches were clearly being used as guides through this black maze of streets, and I stopped one such and offered him a guinea to do his office for me. He was a lean, shabby, hungry-looking man, who might be forty by the look of him. He stared vacantly at me for a few seconds, and then hurriedly led the way, holding his ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... made another attempt to escape, gazed vacantly at Peterkin again without moving, except in regard to the ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... he asked vacantly, and then: "Look-ut here, Munsher D'Himecourt, one of uz is crazy. I ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... head like one awakened from a deep sleep, glanced vacantly round the deserted decks, pulled strongly two or three times at his long-extinguished pipe, and then two tears welled slowly up into his eyes, and, overflowing the lids, rolled one down either cheek. Then he rose quietly to his feet ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... sun is strong, I'd lounge in the gateway all the day long, With her Majesty's footmen in crimson and gold. I'd care not a pin for the waiting-lord; But I'd lie on my back on the smooth greensward With a straw in my mouth, and an open vest, And the cool wind blowing upon my breast, And I'd vacantly stare at the clear blue sky, And watch the clouds that are listless as I, Lazily, lazily! And I'd pick the moss and the daisies white, And chew their stalks with a nibbling bite; And I'd let my fancies roam abroad In search of a hint for ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... the balcony, Agnes looked vacantly into the black void beneath. Her thoughts reverted to the miserable man who had broken his pledged faith to her, and who had died in that house. Some change seemed to have come over her since her arrival in Venice; some new influence appeared to be at work. For the first ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... prone and bound on the deck, showed signs of recovering from his swoon. His eyes opened, and he gazed vacantly around. At length he caught sight of the Prince, who approached him with the ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... and I was pinned by the arms. I must have stood vacantly, with a foolish smile, while unchained fury raged round me. I seemed to hear Laputa's voice saying, 'It is the storekeeper.' His face was all that I could see, and it was unperturbed. There was a mocking ghost of ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... light of her little domain, fitted with a charming shade of Japanese silk, and removing her coat (purchased locally at a price which she had considered preposterous) she stood gazing vacantly into the little square mirror above the mantelpiece behind the china clock. It reflected the figure of a slim girl wearing a blue serge skirt, a blue jersey coat and a grey velour hat—a very pretty girl indeed, her colour heightened by ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... the landlady herself appeared to present to Madame Palm the bill she had called for. She found Anna sitting quietly at the window, her hands folded on her lap, her head leaning on the high back of the chair, and her dilated eyes staring vacantly at the sky. Her small travelling-trunk stood ready and locked in the ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... himself—unnecessarily, mark you—for the third time. Why did he? He had his chance; two chances in fact. But this is folly, for of course he had no chance at all. Fate stood by that news-stall, with the blear-eyed, frousy woman that tended it looking vacantly on; Fate, veiled, too, and not even monosyllabic in his behalf. I should have known this, I think, even if I had not lived those curious, long eight months in Algeria and slept those dreamless nights under the Algerian stars that got into my blood and call me back now and then; imperiously ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... rain-water butt, mewing peevishly at a sparrow which had perched upon the clothes-line. The young master was in his room, coughing; he had already gone to bed. Pelle bent over the edge of the well and gazed vacantly over the gardens. He was hot and dizzy, but a cool draught rose from the well and soothingly caressed his head. The bats were gliding through the air like spirits, passing so close to his face that he felt the wind of their flight, ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... limp, in his chair, supporting his head vacantly on his hands, trying to think and fearing to think, de Spain heard Pardaloe's measured tread on the descending steps, and listened mechanically to the retreating echoes of his footsteps down the shaded street. Minute after ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... mother sail about it and about in ever narrowing circles, heard herself commended for her promptitude in leaving Wanless, answered enquiries as to Ingram's behaviour under what Mrs. Percival otiosely called "his bereavement," echoed speculations at to his whereabouts—played, in short, vacantly an empty part, and kept her mother upon tenterhooks. She gained civil entreaty ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... bed and began to dress, her nervous hands fumbling at the buttons on her clothes. Her eyes, deeper and shadowed in dark rings, stared vacantly at the white canvas before her. Lawrence was talking again, and she listened. Presently he started across the room and bumped into a chair. The incident was one which had become long familiar to her, and ordinarily she would have thought nothing of it, but ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... colleague protected on condition that this colleague voted for the ones in whom they were interested. Others, however, taking no part in these intrigues, either from austerity or indifference, finished the interval in smoking a cigarette and gazing vacantly about them. ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... old man calculated that even with the utmost economy Bruce must have been two days without food. He looked pinched and shrivelled as he stared vacantly at the mouth of the canyon into which ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... rose from his arm-chair. The president and vice-president followed his example, and the other members of the council bowed and retired. The Margrave of Baden and Count von Starhemberg remained standing by the green table, while the emperor, who had crossed the room, now stood vacantly staring out of a window, drumming with his fingers on ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... she recovered her consciousness; she then slowly opened her eyes and fixed them wonderingly on me, but with no look of recognition in them. A long shiver passed over her, and she sighed heavily once or twice as she looked vacantly at the letter on the floor. I was terrified, and seized the letter, to gain, if possible, some explanation of the miserable state of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... turning over the leaves of the blocks, gazing vacantly at the lines of writing while he pondered his problem when his attention was attracted to a slight difference of color in the ink of an entry on one of the blocks. The consignment was a mixed one, containing different kinds of spirituous liquors. The lowest entry was for three twenty-five ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... wisdom, and thought it not inexpedient to go downstairs, after the doctor's departure, and give her customer a word of exhortation. He was seated at the table as before, twirling the glass in his fingers, and gazing vacantly out of window. ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... and looked vacantly out of the window, with a vague dissatisfaction at heart. Unrecognized fully as yet, the great law of nature, which brings to each a distinct and separate existence, was beginning to operate. As she had said to ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... word Cazotte's face grew locked and rigid, his eyes dwelt vacantly on space, and in a low, ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... these he constructed a sort of Eastern divan, upon which he perched himself cross-legged, with an ounce of shag tobacco and a box of matches laid out in front of him. In the dim light of the lamp I saw him sitting there, an old briar pipe between his lips, his eyes fixed vacantly upon the corner of the ceiling, the blue smoke curling up from him, silent, motionless, with the light shining upon his strong-set aquiline features. So he sat as I dropped off to sleep, and so he sat when a sudden ejaculation ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... gold was to accompany it to its destination. Thompson said no more, but stood there in the doorway with McNab's rum under his arm. He did not stir, nor did he seem to notice the "good-bye" that came down the winding trail through the pines, but remained there stolid and immovable, gazing vacantly at the writing-paper on the rough table. Suddenly he straightened himself up to his full height, and taking the bottle from under his arm, held it out at arm's length and apostrophized it in terms which Mr. McNab would have regarded as a personal ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... moment Archie stood in solemn silence, hands crossed on his breast and thumbs revolving rapidly. His lips made odd movements, although from them came no sound, and vacantly he stared ahead of him, in his eyes no expression, in his manner no hint of what was coming. Short and fat, with face round and red, hair red and curly, and ears of a prodigious size, he made a queer picture; and, ignorant of his power of mimicry and impersonation, I kept my seat on the piano-stool. ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... Jack's fall might have seemed to her bewildered fancy as a part of her frantic act, for she fell forward vacantly on the railing. But by this time Jack had grasped her arm as if to ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Dick and his brothers and Stanley stared somewhat vacantly at the president and the professors. The students wanted to speak several times, but Doctor Wallington waved ...
— The Rover Boys at College • Edward Stratemeyer
... his eyes down from the sky, fixed them vacantly upon Lynde, and made no response. Presuming him to be deaf, Lynde repeated his question in a key adapted to the exigency. Without a change in his mild, benevolent expression, and in a voice whose modulations were singularly musical, the ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... way-bill which accompanied the pouch, and were duly checked off. The poor messenger was thunder-struck, and for a time acted like an idiot, plunging his hand into the vacant pouch over and over again, and staring vacantly at the way-bill. The Assistant Superintendent of the Southern Division was in the Atlanta office when the loss was discovered, and at once telegraphed to Maroney for an explanation. Receiving no reply before the train started for Montgomery, he got aboard and ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... the window gazing vacantly at the scene below. All the morning I had sat there with that empty feeling in my soul. From time to time my mother spoke to me, but I answered without turning my head. Since my illness I seemed to have lost all interest in life, ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... his will as if she had none of her own left. She passed the envelope to him, and stared at him vacantly while he examined it. He read on the back of the package: "Withers Estate—old papers—of no ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... ears that affected deafness. In the presence of his most deadly foe, and a captive, Conanchet was not a man to suffer his resolution to waver. He looked coldly and vacantly on the speaker, nor could the most suspicious or the most practised eye have detected in his mien his knowledge of the English language. Deceived by the stoicism of the prisoner, Meek muttered a few words, in which the Narragansett was strangely ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... nothing. He merely sat, rigid, silent, white-faced, tossing aside stub after stub of cigarettes, and gazing, vacantly, into the spaces of past and future, trying to reconstruct the broken life of that starving boy ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... and dizzy, had recovered consciousness, and sat gazing vacantly around him, till the cries and yells without, the agonized face within, thrilled every nerve into feeling. Starting up, he rushed to the window, but recoiled at the awful sight. Here, he saw, there ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... could also be seen to stare vacantly at the distance while they strained their ears to listen. As for Hugh himself he found it hard to believe his senses, for the absolute quiet and dead calm brooding all day long over that retired spot in ...
— The Boy Scouts with the Motion Picture Players • Robert Shaler
... somewhat dull and somewhat mad. He will at times miss his signals and stare vacantly when he might well act, while at other times he will run off into convulsions and raise a dust in his own brain to no purpose. These imperfections are so human that we should hardly recognise ourselves if we could shake them off altogether. Not to retain any dulness would mean to possess ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... battle in the bicker on the Castle Brae. A small stone which I dislodged now rolled down the rock, and tumbled into the abyss close beside him. He turned his head, and after looking at me for a moment somewhat vacantly, he resumed his former attitude. I drew yet nearer to the horrible edge; not close, however, for ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... vent to this bit of paradox, Johann inhaled as much smoke as his leathery lungs could contain and relapsed into silence. Vjera, the Polish girl, glanced at the tobacco-cutter and went on with her work. The insignificant girl beside her giggled vacantly. Dumnoff did not seem to ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... by mighty efforts, with a heavy stone, to turn the handle of the door, and thus liberate me from my cage, I perceived that the host came forward and said something to him—on replying, to which, he ceased his endeavours to open the door, and looked vacantly about him. Upon this I threw down the ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... on the card was left blank to receive the statement of regimen, etc. A nurse was giving the patient an iced drink. After swallowing feebly, the man relapsed into a semi-stupor, his eyes opening and closing vacantly. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... is lost, his vision has deserted him. It may be that weariness has overcome the power of his illusion, for he stares vacantly about. He looks back, and the breadth of what he sees conveys no meaning. The woods, with the sound of life coming up to him in deadly monotony of tone; the hills, beyond, rising till the sun, like a ball of deep red fire, seems to ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... throngs—Moorish, Frank, Negro, Colon—paused as they pushed their way over the uneven road, and stared at him vacantly where he stood. There was something in his attitude, in his look, which swept over them, seeing none of them, in the eager lifting of his head, in the excited fire in his eyes, that arrested all—from the dullest muleteer, plodding on with his string of patient beasts, ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... son!" the woman answered as she looked vacantly at him. "You are my son, my very own, ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... and her eyes wandered vacantly from one to the other of her strange visitors. She saw tears of goodness in their eyes, and her own soul's ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... vacantly from the zenith to the nadir, and from west to east, when suddenly his eyes fell on the Abbot of Antinoe. His face grew pale with a holy terror, and his eyeballs reflected ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... was deeply pained; and impatient, and angry with himself, he also rose and paced the room with hurried steps. At length he stopped, and putting one hand upon the shoulder of his brother, who stood gazing vacantly from the window, pointed with the other towards that part of the apartment in which both their parents had ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... in hand, eyes vacantly reviewing a countryside of notable charms adrowse in the lethargic peace of a mid-summer morning—what the dickens ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... was one destined to remain unasked. As she stood gazing vacantly outward, her hands clasped in perplexity, something moving arrested her attention. A small figure in white, or what seemed white in that light. It was circling the pond where the water-lilies grew and was swaying ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... the fact that two weeks of Radville had driven Duncan to desperation; on the morning of the fifteenth day he wakened in his room at Miss Carpenter's and lay for a time abed staring vacantly at the gaudily papered ceiling, not through laziness remaining on his back, but through sheer inertia. The prospect of rising to ramble through another purposeless, empty day appalled his imagination; it had been all very well when the humour of his project intrigued him, ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... vacantly at her for a while and then said, "Though I don't see why I didn't leave years and years ago; I knew all this then, as well as I do now." The wife looked away from him as she replied: "Yes, I should have known you would know. I knew ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... man saw the gleam of her eyes. She had followed his movements and was holding him now, but half vacantly. The pity of it all touched him; the rest of the story cleared. Her tongue was like a blown bag, the blackness of it apparent even in the dark. She was dying of thirst, the bullet wound in the shoulder turned up to him. The little ones ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... fervently, as he poured down Midwinter's throat some drops of the raw whisky which the flask contained. The stimulant acted instantly on the sensitive system of the swooning man. He sighed faintly, and slowly opened his eyes. "Have I been dreaming?" he asked, looking up vacantly in Allan's face. His eyes wandered higher, and encountered the dismantled masts of the wreck rising weird and black against the night sky. He shuddered at the sight of them, and hid his face on Allan's knee. "No dream!" he murmured to himself, ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... we were having one day as he "assisted" at the founding of a temple; and while he reproached his fate that he was powerless to "point the end of his walking-stick" with absolute power at the peppery and presumptuous Monsieur Aubaret, he vacantly flung gold and ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... bending over a wash-tub filled to the brim with smoking linen, just out of a boiling suds. Darting one fiery glance toward her forceless husband, sitting humped up over the stove, his head supported on his hands, she exclaimed, "What does this mean?" Mr. Pimble looked up vacantly; Peggy turned round from her occupation of washing the dinner dishes, and Dilly kept to her wash-tub. No one seemed to understand to whom the stately mistress addressed her brief interrogatory. "Have you all lost your tongues?" at length exclaimed Mrs. Pimble, in ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... is a lethargy in the true sense of that word—a forgetfulness. A forgetfulness of past discontents and future joys; a forgetfulness of toil that is gone and leisure to come; a mere breathing existence in which one stands vacantly eyeing the human scene, living in a gentle simmer of the faculties like a boiling kettle when ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... of black hats. By and by, when this crowd had become somewhat less disorderly and a lane had been formed as far as the exit and Nana was again applauded as she went off with Price hanging lifelessly and vacantly over her neck, she smacked her thigh energetically, lost all self-possession, ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... had been staring vacantly out of the window during the captain's soliloquy, straightened at the sound of his nickname, and asked hastily, "Yes, sir? What will you have, sir?" Captain Elisha laughed in huge enjoyment, ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... donned his old dressing-gown again, and made deep dints with his nails to mark the place in the book of dialogues to which we were to learn by heart. Woloda began working diligently, but I was too distracted to do anything at all. For a long while I stared vacantly at the book; but tears at the thought of the impending separation kept rushing to my eyes and preventing me from reading a single word. When at length the time came to repeat the dialogues to Karl (who listened to us with blinking eyes—a ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... vacantly; the words of Lucilla were weighing at his heart, like a prophecy working towards its fulfilment: "Come what may, you will never find the happiness you ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... stand in with that wicked corpse for, sir? He'll have you, too," he ended, blinking his glazed eyes vacantly. ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... gazing vacantly into the varying flames, performed anew the journey, not from Kennons to Troy on the Hudson, but from the latter city, via New York, back to his Virginian plantation. His sister and Ellice Linwood were his companions, for it had been arranged ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... vague passive perfection, but without any renunciation; and in a world devoid of evil and full of excellent brocade and armour and eatables, and lovely maidens who dress and undress you, and chastely kiss you on the mouth; a world without desire, aspiration, or combat, vacantly happy and virtuous. A world purely ideal, divorced from all reality, unsubstantial like the kingdom of Gloriana, but, unlike Spenser's, quite unshadowed by any puritan sadness, by any sense of evil, untroubled by allegorical vices; cheerful, ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... it. They sat silent themselves, keeping a watchful eye on poor Stevie, lest he should break out into one of his fits of loquacity. He faced Mr Verloc across the table, and remained very good and quiet, staring vacantly. The endeavour to keep him from making himself objectionable in any way to the master of the house put no inconsiderable anxiety into these two women's lives. "That boy," as they alluded to him softly between ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... the bread and meat with lean, long-nailed hands that looked like claws. After his first mouthful of the food, he stopped, considered vacantly with himself, and broke the bread and meat into two portions. One portion he put into an old canvas wallet that hung over his shoulder; the other he devoured voraciously. ...
— The Frozen Deep • Wilkie Collins
... so bright and mild that Lady Flora left open the door as she entered; she seated herself at the table, and, unmindful of her pretended employment, suffered the portefeuille to remain unopened. Leaning her cheek upon her hand, she gazed vacantly on the ground, and scarcely felt the tears which gathered slowly to her eyes, but, falling not, remained within the fair lids, chill and motionless, as if the thought which drew them there was born of a sorrow less agitated than fixed ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... were all sitting under the trees before the hotel, resting rather vacantly after a hard romp. Celia perched high on a root, her curls against the brown bark, her hat dangling by its elastic from a forefinger, her lips parted, her eyes vacant. Gerald leaned gracefully against the trunk. Bobby sat cross-legged on the ground watching her—and ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... invalid, rallying from her swoon, opened her eyes and gazed vacantly at the stranger, not understanding her words ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... be that Glory Goldie met some person in the street," he blurted out, his half-dead eyes vacantly staring at space. He seemed not to know what ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... Kolimsk men, to whom such scenes were not new, followed his advice; but Ivan walked up and down before the tent. A huge fire had been made, which was amply fed by the wood of the river bank, and it blazed on high, showing in bold relief the features of the scene. Ivan gazed vacantly at everything; but he saw not the dark and glancing river—he saw not the bleak plain of snow—his eyes looked not on the romantic picture of the tent and its bivouac-fire: his thoughts were on one thing alone. He it was who had brought them ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... the fisherman leaning against the open kitchen-door, a basket of fish at his feet, and his clear grey eyes fixed vacantly upon the silver waves, which flashing and murmuring in the sunlight, came racing to the beach below. The old sailors' wrinkled face, once so ruddy and bronzed, was as white as his hair; his cheeks ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... rose, and, with an urgent request that Randall should call on her and see her husband, bade him a cordial adieu. He stood there watching her out of sight with an unconscious smile of the most refined and subtle cynicism. Then he sat down and stared vacantly at the close-cropped grass on the opposite side of the path. By what handle should he lay ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... opened her eyes and looked timidly around the dim ward. All was strange and unaccountable. She feared that she was in another world. But as she raised her hand to her head, as if to clear away the mist of uncertainty, a sparkle from the diamond caught her eye. For a long time she stared vacantly at it, with the weak, vague feeling that in some sense it might be a clew. Its faint lustre was like the glimmer of a star through a rift in the clouds to a lost traveller. Its familiar light and position remind him ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... elaborate dusting of the apartment. She began at the door, and by the time she had worked round to Elizabeth at the window, she had made by many times a more careful survey of her mistress than of any piece of furniture in the room. Elizabeth's head had drooped; and her eyes were looking, not vacantly, but with no object in ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... stool, before his easel, looking vacantly at the unfinished picture, as one stunned and breathless. For the purport of this message was not to be mistaken. Nor did his conscience leave him in doubt as to his duty, O God! was this, indeed, the end? Had he toiled, and hoped, and prayed, and lived the life of an anchorite these ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... he was ferried across the busy Scheldt, the white blaze of his passion cooled; but the biting irony of his estate ate, corrosive, into his soul. Hollow-eyed he glared vacantly into space, pale lips unmoving, his features wasted ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... bell, which he rang most energetically at the door, shortly after summoned the company, the auction being about to commence. On a table inside, a negress, of a little over middle age, was standing, vacantly gazing with grief-worn countenance on the crowd that now thronged to the table. On the floor stood two children, of about the ages of ten and thirteen respectively. The auctioneer, with the customary volubility of such men in America, began by stating, that the lots now to be offered were the ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... lids, and surveyed the room vacantly. Her glance passed over the medical man as if he were not within the range of her vision. She gazed at Lafe only, with but a faint glimmer of recognition, then on to Peg wavered ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... moment they stood with their arms around each other, then tenderly his visitor kissed him, and went out. He remained looking after her vacantly until the chug-chug of her automobile, as it moved off down the road, was lost in the distance, then turned again to ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle
... not know. Let me see," said Ermentrude, rising; but at the window her pale blue eyes gazed vacantly as if she did not know what she was ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... bed, and I went ben the house. In another two minutes we were a group of four in the kitchen, staring vacantly. Death could not have startled us more, tapping thrice that quiet ...
— A Window in Thrums • J. M. Barrie
... but looked round vacantly. The light of the lamp, coming suddenly out of the darkness, the finding herself face to face with the marchesa, dazzled ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... reply at once. His eyes were gazing vacantly up at a wreath of blue smoke from his cigar, then ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... even while he was still on the platform I noted how ill he seemed. He dropped into the corner over against me with a sigh, made an incomplete attempt to arrange his travelling shawl, and became motionless, with his eyes staring vacantly. Presently he was moved by a sense of my observation, looked up at me, and put out a spiritless hand for his newspaper. Then he glanced again in ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... nor his companions saw Lilac; they all appeared absorbed in their own reflections, and the former had fixed his gaze vacantly on the copse beyond the orchard. A little while ago she would have passed quickly on without a moment's hesitation, but now she felt a sort of sympathy with Peter. She was lonely, and he was lonely; besides, he had ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... head on my hand again, and stared vacantly as before. Exhaustion had almost become stupor, and it was in a sort of dream that I watched the stout figure moving softly to and fro, lighting the fire, and bringing an air of comfort over the dreary little parlour. Then she was gone for a little bit, and I felt a little ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... few moments. Her face had regained its composure, and her eyes were bent vacantly upon her tapestry frame as she turned over in her mind all that ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... snappy as the day was, still there was something oppressive in the air that hung about the house of death. I looked at the lifeless windows. Staring vacantly, utterly expressionless of the swift-moving tragic drama that had been enacted behind them, failing to foreshadow what was yet to transpire here, they all at once brought forcibly to my mind Alexander Burke. Thus did his eyes hide, instead ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... she said, looking straight before her vacantly at the children, who at once began to cry again. "Oh, my God! Look here, miss"—her voice dropped, her swollen eyes fixed themselves on Marcella—the words came out in a low, hurried stream—"It was just ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... from her cheek. "Tell her all!" she repeated vacantly; then suddenly she turned upon him eagerly, and said, "But what ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... sitting in a large room which served in winter as a kitchen and in summer as a sort of sitting-room, smoking a pipe and gazing vacantly into the pine-branches in the open fireplace before him. He had been out all day on his marsh, but he had been home a couple of hours. His wife—kindly soul—received Captain Pelham at the door, wiping her hands upon her apron, and modestly ...
— By The Sea - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... Adister. He turned to the virgin Adiante, sat down and shut his eyes, fetching a breath. He looked vacantly at Patrick. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Vacantly I walked beside her. On the earth mine eyes were cast; Swift and keen there came unto me Ritter memories of the past On me, like the rain in Autumn On the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... areas open for selection were not on the Geelong side, and one of the obliging officials placed a plan before him, showing the lands on which he was free to choose a future home. The selector looked vacantly at the map, but at length became attracted by a bright green allotment, which at once won his capricious fancy, indicating as it did such luxurious herbage; but, much to his disgust, he found that 'the green lot' had already been selected. At length ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... in the unembodied spirits vitality exists; but not yet in all the universe of God has the vitality been united to the matter; animal life, to even the profound apprehension of the fallen angel, is an inconceivable idea. Meanwhile, as the scarce reckoned centuries roll by, vacantly and dull, like the cheerless days and nights over the head of some unhappy captive, the miserable prisoners of our planet become aware that there is a slow change taking place in the condition of their prison-house. Where a low, dark archipelago of islands raise their flat backs over the ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... the land except the Gods that made it—the Gods to whom his village prayed nightly—the Gods who were in all men's mouths and about all men's ways? He could not raise his head or stir a finger for the trance that held him, and Peroo was smiling vacantly at ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... the inkstand. But the merchant did not write. He had not written that day. His white, bony hand rested upon the port-folio, and the long fingers drummed upon it at intervals, while his eyes half-vacantly wandered out into the store and saw the long shrouds drawn over the goods. Occasionally a slight sigh of weariness escaped him. But he did not seem to care to distract his mind from its gloomy intentness; for the morning paper lay ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... with a yet more unearthly and incredible enchantment. It is in the Piazza, and the Austrian band is playing, and the promenaders pace solemnly up and down to the music, and the gentle Italian loafers at Florian's brood vacantly over their little cups of coffee, and nothing can be more stupid; when suddenly every thing is changed, and a memorable tournament flashes up in many-glittering action upon the scene, and there upon the gallery of the ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... Don vacantly. He remembered then that Lawton roomed in Number 20 Billings, directly above Number 6. ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... cigar, leaned back in his chair and looked vacantly at the ring of smoke which floated in the still air. A smile played on his lips, but his eyes were grave. Then he looked at the captain. There was in his gross obesity something extraordinarily repellent. He had the plethoric self-satisfaction of the very fat. It was an outrage. It set Neilson's ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... total neglect of personal neatness. The pride of the girl's heart had vanished with her self-respect, and she stood before the strange group with a bold front and unbending brow; yet her eye wandered vacantly from face to face, as if perfectly unconscious of the ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... his eyes from the sea, and rested them vacantly upon her face for a moment. His dark mustache added to the pallor of his face, but did not conceal the faint smile that came to his lips; he had heard her but had ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... reached the main street, where a great number of people had collected, when they were suddenly joined by Bousquier, who exhibited a strange demeanor, now laughing, now shaking his head, now gazing vacantly before him. Colard cast a shy, sidelong glance at him, and the shopkeeper, who thought of nothing but the murder and saw in all this the manifestations of a bad conscience, observed the man keenly. Those around them, too, became watchful, and it at once struck everybody that if any one had a ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... Frewen catch at one of the shrouds and stand gazing at him vacantly, and then I felt quite pleased, for Bob Hampton was there along with ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... none. The number of Franks resident here is too small to call for a place of general recreation, and the Turk never feels a want of this kind. The most he does is to saunter slowly from the bath to the coffee-house, and there to kill his time with the help of a pipe and a cup of coffee, staring vacantly on the ground before him. Although the coffee- houses are more frequented than any other buildings in the East, they are often miserable sheds, being all small, and generally built only ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... of thought, suggested perhaps by the last remark, made her glance in passing at Martin. It was so quick that only Martin saw it. At all events, Paul Deulin appeared to be looking rather vacantly in ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... flickerings of the wick of a lamp, liable at a moment to become extinct; but the endeavours of those present supplied the needful oil, and by slow degrees the cadaverous hue disappeared from Fred's face; his breathing became firmer and more regular; and at last his eyes opened, staring vacantly at the ceiling, and those bending over him; but, after another lapse of time, a light seemed to be added to the vacant look, and, to the intense delight of all, a smile came over his pale face as he recognised Mr and Mrs Inglis. It was thought better that the lads should not come in at ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... as a writhen mask of fear, should appear in the light of his room with her calm restored, with nothing but some disorder of her hair and dress to betoken her troubles. Even the child in her arms, worn out with weeping perhaps, had fallen asleep. He stared at the pair of them vacantly. His lamp, his music, all the apparatus of his gentle and decorous existence were as he had left them; their familiar and prosaic quality made his adventure appear by ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... river bank in a terrible excitement, or sitting in some solitary place with his eyes staring vacantly, or with head buried in his trembling hands, through which the tears would trickle, a man might have been seen haunting the neighborhood of Blackrock. It was Mr. Morton, so altered that those who knew him best almost failed to recognize ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... sergeant, looking vacantly across the table at his wife, who had given vent to a cry of horror. "Murdered!" he repeated, as though seeking to assure himself of the truth of the butler's statement by a repetition of ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... mental and physical made him think that all things were revolting and abominable. He groped his way to a seat, and sat there, staring vacantly at the garden, seeing only broad black patches amid the general gloom. Sad, dismal ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... and, breaking from him, went to one of the windows and looked vacantly out into blackness, which reflected the long room, with its dingy greenish maps, and the desks and forms glistening in ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... seen approaching. The assailants fled, leaving the friar, bleeding and weak, but kneeling beside his mistress, whose white skin was splashed and striped with red, and whose liquid eyes stared vacantly at the sky. As the boat touched the shore the corregidor leaped from it, and the friar now confronted a new peril. His flight had been discovered, the town-crier had bawled it through the streets, commanding the people to refuse shelter to the guilty ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... went, scribbling hasty notes in dog-eared notebooks, he, a human statue of Amaze, gazed at the open window, continuously and vacantly. Jostled by the crowds of curious and interested visitors, he stood, the most surprised ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... anything—'pon my word, quite s'prise." The events of to-day, the House of Commons, the City, had little interest for him. All the children went up and shook him by the hand, with awe in their looks, and he patted their yellow heads vacantly and kindly. He asked Clive (several times) where he had been? and said he himself had had a slight 'tack—vay slight—was getting well ev'y day—strong as a horse—go back to Parliament d'rectly. And then he became a little peevish with Parker, ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Hamilton Gregory paused irresolutely. He did not know what course to pursue, so he repeated vacantly, "I am ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... for the examination came; the French ballet did not prove a good preparation; Ralph failed. It quite shook him for the time, and he felt humiliated. He had not the courage to tell his father; so he lingered on from day to day, sat vacantly gazing out of his window, and tried vainly to interest himself in the busy bustle down on the street. It provoked him that everybody else should be so light-hearted, when he was, or at least fancied himself, in trouble. ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... whatever, not even swab the deck. It was only with difficulty that he could limp along, and every move caused him violent pain. He grew listless and dejected, and sat all day on the vessel's side, eagerly straining his eyes to catch any sight of land, or gazing vacantly into the weary sameness ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... class, formed a part of the scene, though appearing only on its outskirts. A canal ran along at the rear of the dust-heap, and on the banks of its opposite side slowly wandered by—with hands clasped and hanging down in front of him, and eyes bent vacantly upon his hands—the forlorn figure of a man in a very shabby great-coat, which had evidently once belonged to one in the position of a gentleman. And to a gentleman it still belonged—but in what a position! ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... handle of his riding-whip against his chin, he stared vacantly up the lane, muttering "We must wait, ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... enormous tail, she would bound shrieking after him in among the trees and disappear! Martin usually wakened at this point, and found the marmoset gazing in his face with an expression of sorrowful solemnity, and the old sun-dried trader staring vacantly before him as he steered his light craft down the ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... leisure hours in a room which is chiefly furnished, as far as I can see, with scrubbing brushes. And when the human race has progressed to the stage where seventeen thousand chairs are manufactured on every day except Sunday—" he paused. Rose and Key regarded him vacantly. "Will you tell me," went on Peter, "why you choose to rest yourselves on articles, intended for the transportation of water from one ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... the lowest boy in the day-school, too idle to learn or even play. See how vacantly he stands gaping at the men clearing the snow from the house-tops, with his hand in his pocket because he has lost his glove, having placed the hot shoulder of mutton down in the cold snow. No wonder ...
— The Royal Picture Alphabet • Luke Limner
... over the man, her hot tears falling on his face. He opened his eyes and looked vacantly at her for a moment or two, then smiled in recognition. It was the most pathetic smile she had ever imagined. "Don't worry," he whispered, "I'm ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... socks, scalded, and my face and shoulders blackened by the smoke. His face was a fair weakness, his chin retreated, and his hair lay in crisp, almost flaxen curls on his low forehead; his eyes were rather large, pale blue, and blankly staring. He spoke abruptly, looking vacantly away from me. ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... lounging against the door-sill, enormously grown and developed, to be sure, but with restless eyes and ever-open mouth, and every now and then setting up a strange kind of howling cry, and then smiling vacantly to himself at the sound he had made. As the two old labourers passed him, they looked at each other ominously, and ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell
... into a taxi-cab presently, and when she had gone stood vacantly staring after the cab until a hand clapped him smartly on the shoulder. Turning, he found Rathbury grinning ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... me as charmingly naive, but I did not let this appear, for I saw at once that the prudent course was to allow her to believe herself much deeper and cleverer than her daughter. So I only stared vacantly and she was delighted. I kissed her hands repeatedly, telling her how happy it made me to be so treated and to feel at my ease with her. I even confided to her my previous tremors. She smiled, put her arm round my neck, and drawing me towards ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac |
