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More "Furtive" Quotes from Famous Books



... Mr Markham took some annoyance from the glances of his fellow-passengers. They were furtive, almost reverential, and this could only be set down to his exploit of yesterday. He thanked Heaven they forbore to ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... rudely made by John; there had been guns and traps and snowshoes, hides, skins, the wings of birds, a couple of fishing-rods—John made his living by legal and illegal trapping and killing. He had looked like a trapped or hunted creature himself, small, furtive, very dark, with long fingers always working over his mouth, a great crooked nose—a hideous man, surely a hideous father. He hardly ever spoke, but sometimes, coming home from the town which he visited several times a year, but to which he had never ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt

... her. He's a prim, Sententious sage. If she is bored by him, The lady doth not show it. But there's a furtive glancing of her eye Toward the entry. There comes MARX M'KAY, The ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 1, 1890 • Various

... furlongs of corridor in the big building in Whitehall might have offered points of interest to a visitor not too exhausted to take notice. By one window was usually to be seen a posse of parsons, of furtive aspect, each nervously twiddling a lissom hat, a love-your-neighbour-as-yourself look frozen on their countenances, and not by any means conveying for the time being an impression of the church militant: they were candidates for the post of army chaplain, and were about to ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell

... the poor creature's age might have been anywhere from fifteen to thirty-five; for the twisted and misshapen body, angular and hard; the scrawny, wry neck; the old-young face, thin and sallow, with furtive, beady-black eyes, gave no hint of her years. As a matter of fact, I happened to know that Judith Taylor, daughter of the notorious Ozark moonshiner, Jap Taylor, was just past twenty the year she went to ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright

... a few furtive inquiries, and secured the names of several men who were preparing for immediate departure. She was wise enough to take a look at these worthies before committing herself to their charge, and most of them did not please ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild

... later on. We were now quite near the craters, and while we ate our rice, we heard the roaring, so that the boys grew nervous, till the joker of the company made them laugh, and then the meal absorbed their attention. Still, they occasionally sent furtive glances skyward, to see if any lava ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... course of that first evening of their acquaintance, Gilbert was surprised to see how often Stephen Whitelaw looked at him, with a strangely-attentive expression, that had something furtive in it, some hidden meaning, as it seemed to him. Whenever Gilbert spoke, the farmer looked up at him, always with the same sharp inquisitive glance, the same cunning twinkle in his small eyes. And every time he happened ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon

... that Mrs. Shelley, with true womanly delicacy, avoids saying, in so many words, that the student omitted to equip his abnormal creation with a pair of ——. But Frankenstein's oversight in this matter will, I think, sufficiently account for that furtive besiegement of human homes, that pathetic fascination for the neighbourhood of man, which so long refused to accept rebuff. With ——, man is whole as the marble, founded as the rock, as broad and general as the casing air. Without ——, unaccommodated man is no more ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... with passion. Fear, confusion, and undefined soul-longing seemed to move rapidly across it, each leaving its momentary impression, and all mingling at times in a surging flood that swelled the veins of his temples to the point of rupture. Mechanically he paced his narrow cell, throwing frequent furtive glances at the closed door, as if he suspected himself watched. Often he stopped abruptly, and with head bowed and brows furrowed, seemed to surrender his soul to the forces with which it was wrestling. ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... true quicker than Gurdon had expected, for out of the gloom there presently emerged the yellow face of Mark Fenwick. He came in with a furtive air, like some mean thief who is about to do a shabby action. He was palpably looking for something. He made a gesture of disappointment when he saw that the table where he had dined was now stripped of everything except the flowers. He did not seem to see the other two men there at all. Venner ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White

... comfortable. There's nobody else on this floor but Letty and the baby, but you don't look as if you would be easily frightened." Astonished, not so much by her words as by the furtive look she gave me, I laughed as I repeated "Frightened? What ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green

... of our friends, and knowing perfectly well that a single false step might bring ruin not only upon ourselves, but upon many others, we were obliged to be extremely cautious, and not to meet too often. A few furtive interviews now and again for the interchange of news, a few sparsely attended rendezvous for the purpose of keeping the threads of our organisation together, were pretty nearly all that we thought safe to permit ourselves. This mode of life—so tranquil to outward ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... now and then Eleanor's furtive guilty look sought the girl's face. Sometimes a flying terror would grip her by the heart. Was Lucy graver—paler? Were there some new lines round the sweet eyes? That serene and virgin beauty—had it suffered the first withering ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... What furtive and anxious glances we cast into those dim-looking shadows! With what apprehensions we proceeded, ignorant at what moment we might be greeted by the javelin of some ambushed savage. At last my companion paused, and directed my attention to ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville

... those words of hers, coupled with that furtive yellow face still lurking at the window, which made me realise the imminence of my danger. No one in France had any reason to take an interest in me. If I were to pass away there was no one who could make inquiry—I ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle

... generations of bitter experience. After a while I threw out a second piece, and he started to trot alongside, still half turned away; he kept at a distance of about two hundred yards to the west running in a furtive, half guilty-looking way, with his tail down and his eye on me. After that he became my regular companion, an expected feature of my return trips, running with me every time for a while and coming a little bit closer till about the middle of November ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove

... breath she should have left by the time she reached the end. On one of the landings she caught sight of a sandy cat and felt a little reassured at meeting such an every-day creature in this grim abode; she gave it a furtive stroke as she passed, and would have felt it a protection if she could have picked it up and taken it with her. That would have been undignified, however, and by the time she reached the editor's room only a very observant person could ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall

... me through the dusk, furtive, uncertain. "Lizard," I said, indifferently. He came up, my gun ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers

... several minutes communing with his own thoughts. His companion made no offer to disturb his meditations; though the furtive glances, he often cast in the direction of the other's musing eye, betrayed some little anxiety to learn the result ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper

... the procession began, a straggling procession of the dirtiest, meanest-looking ruffians ever seen. There was waggon after waggon, swarming with ragamuffins of both sexes and all ages. The men were mostly on foot, casting furtive glances to right and left, evident snappers-up of unconsidered trifles, truculent, ragged, wearing evil-looking knives by their sides. During their transit the village had shut itself up, as Coventry did for Godiva's ride. When we all ventured forth again the ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick

... show of lingering after we joined them in the drawing-room; but there were furtive glances at the clock, and presently her guests began to bid Mrs. Strange good-night. When I came up and offered her my hand, she would not take it, but murmured, with a kind of passion: "Don't go! I mean it! Stay, and tell us about ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells

... he had stepped on to the wooden platform, Mr. Hamilton Fynes showed no particular impatience to continue his journey. He stood in the shadow of one of the sheds, looking about him with quick furtive glances, as though anxious to assure himself that there was no one around who was taking a noticeable interest in his movements. Having satisfied himself at length upon this point, he made his way to the London and North Western Railway Station, and knocked at the door of the station-master's ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... has much finer breeding than the mother, Mrs. Barrington mused. She almost fancied she detected something furtive about Mrs. Boyd. Was she being won by the girl's proud face to the detriment of the mother? It seemed to her that Mrs. Boyd stood in awe ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... writings of Paine marked a man from his fellows and invested him in children's minds with a horrid fascination. The writings themselves were only to be seen in bookshops of evil reputation, and, when hastily turned over with furtive glances, proved to be printed in small type and on villainous paper. For a boy to have bought them and taken them inside a decent home would have been to run the risk of fierce wrath in this life and the threat of it in the next. If ever there was a hung dog, his ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell

... himself; but made furtive inquiries of his new-found friends and of the slaves and neighbors, none of which enabled him to discover the slightest clue to the fugitives. So far as he could learn, the earth might have opened and swallowed them, and so when he had exhausted ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss

... entrance, walking stealthily, and casting furtive glances toward that part of the building where the guest had hitherto remained. Apparently satisfied that the coast was clear, he crept to the ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond

... of such a marriage? I found, before long, that I was married to a boor. She could not comprehend one subject that interested me. Her dullness palled upon me till I grew to loathe it. And after some time of a wretched, furtive union—I must tell you all —I found letters somewhere (and such letters they were!) which showed me that her heart, such as it was, had never been mine, but had always belonged to a ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray

... and returned in quarrelsome state at a late hour smelling of bad whisky and worse gin. Nor did she aspire to have sprung from the Teutonic stock that perpetrated more respectable but equally noisy outings in the vicinity of Woodward's Gardens. But she had a furtive and sly desire to float oil-like upon the surface of this turbid sea, touching it at certain points, yet scarcely mixing with it. Indeed, this inclination to taste the core of life without committing herself the further indiscretion of swallowing it grew to such proportions that at the age of ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie

... soon the hero came into the hall. His kingly grace and warlike bearing were such that Gunther dared not raise his guilty eyes from the ground; and Hagen's furtive glances were, for the moment, freighted with fear and shame. The message of the heralds was repeated to Siegfried; ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin

... while the messenger was gone; and they strove when he returned with assistance; they strove with might and main, until not a man among them had the strength of a child, and the boldest of them were blanching with a fearful, furtive excitement none dared to show. A crowd had gathered round by this time—men willing and anxious to help, women suggesting new ideas and comforting the wounded man in rough, earnest style; children clinging to their ...
— One Day At Arle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... Grace stole one furtive glance at his steady, resolute face. She was perfectly unmoved by the manly consideration for her which Julian's last words had expressed. All she understood was that he was not a man to be trifled with. Future opportunities would offer themselves of returning secretly to the house. She ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins

... myself. I repeated it aloud to the breeze that came coolly and soothingly through the green boughs, to fan the burning cheeks of the fugitive. At length the dread of pursuit subsiding, I slackened my steps, and cast a furtive glance behind me. The cupola of the academy gleamed white through the oak trees that surrounded it, and above them the glittering vane, fashioned in the form of a giant pen, seemed writing on ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz

... And in the course of dinner, Catalina was led to judge, from the behavior to each other of this gentleman and the lady, the Alcalde's beautiful wife, that they had an improper understanding. This also she inferred from the furtive language of their eyes. Her wonder was, that the Alcalde should be so blind; though upon that point she saw reason in a day or two to change her opinion. Some people see everything by affecting to see nothing. The whole affair, however, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... would have seemed slight indeed. She was an affectionate, house-wifely creature, who would have made the best of wives and mothers if it had been so ordained by Fortune, and something of her natural instincts found outlet in the furtive service she paid her sister, who became the empress of her soul. She darned and patched the tattered hangings with a wonderful neatness, and the hours she spent at work in the chamber were to her almost as sacred as hours spent at religious duty, or as those nuns and novices ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... a marvel such as had been seen in no nursery before, Dion had suggested letting it be. Another brick and it must surely fall. The moment was at hand when he must see the last of Robin. He had had a furtive but strong desire to see the tower he and his son had built still standing slenderly erect when he went out of the nursery. Just then he had been the man who seeks a good omen. Robin had agreed with his suggestion ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens

... 'Merican Joe, with a furtive glance into a nearby thicket. "Me—I got nuff. I know we ain' goin' fin' no track. Tamahnawus don' ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx

... an attentive father to her, and often promenaded with her hanging on his arm, past the forlorn bearer of secret dispatches, who would look up now and then out of his reveries, and cast a furtive glance of wonder, as if he thought ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... Leslie found a seat half-way up on the other side from the plain-faced girl, and sat down. No one noticed them save for furtive glances, and no one came near them. The three giggling girls began to talk a little louder. One with her hair bobbed and a long view of vertebrae above her blue dress-collar began to prattle of a ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill

... Walter Cope, and a stout-hearted lady, who doubtless took pride in encouraging the entertainments her late lord's foes had tried so hard to suppress. Alexander Goffe, "the woman-actor at Blackfriars," acted as "Jackal" on the occasion of these furtive performances. He had made himself known to the persons of quality who patronised plays, and gave them notice of the time when and the place where the next representation would "come off." A stage-play, indeed, in those days was much what a prize-fight has been in later times—absolutely ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... scolded. "One morning," says Mr. Bennett, "I was writing, the Ape being present in the cabin, when, casting my eyes toward him, I saw the little fellow taking the soap. I watched him without him perceiving that I did so: and he occasionally would cast a furtive glance toward the place where I sat. I pretended to write; he seeing me busily occupied, took the soap, and moved away with it in his paw. When he had walked half the length of the cabin, I spoke quietly, without frightening him. The instant he found I saw him he walked back again and deposited ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various

... the hair had the look of being dyed; a long, thick black mustache covered his upper lip, but it could not quite conceal the hard, cynical and sneering expression of his mouth; great bags of flesh hung beneath the small, furtive eyes. Altogether the face reminded me of the portraits of Napoleon the Third, who was thought by many to have had little of Napoleon ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly

... when we were to make our start, the guide who was "well acquainted with the mountains" turned up—as villainous-looking a person as I have ever set eyes on. He was sullen and furtive. I judged him at sight to be half Hindu, half Tibetan. He had a dark complexion, between brown and tawny; narrow slant eyes, very small and beady-black, with a cunning leer in their oblique corners; a flat nose much broadened at the wings; a cruel, thick, sensuous mouth, ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen

... present, sitting with their bodies hanging forward, their hats tightly clutched between their knees, their eyes fixed on the floor. The women and children, on the contrary, followed every movement of the young women on the platform with furtive eagerness. ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various

... and casting away, Fits new reeds to his mouth with the weird earth-melody in them, Piercing, alive with a life able to mix with the god's. Then, as he blows, and the searching sequence delights him, the goat-feet Furtive withdraw; and a bird stirs and flutes in the gloom Answering. Float with the stream the outworn pipes, with a whisper,— "What the god breathes on, the god never can wholly evade!" God-breath lurks in ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts

... was a single iron hook in a beam. This was my wardrobe, chest of drawers, and an integral part of my bed; for from it swung the hammock. We were packed almost as thickly as the horses; and that is saying a great deal. The morning was spent in fatigue duties of all sorts, from which we snatched furtive moments with our friends on the crowded quay. For hours a stream of horses and mules poured up the gangways; for two other corps were to share the ship with us, the Oxfordshire Yeomanry and the Irish Hospital. At two the last farewells had been said, and we narrowed ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers

... hurried from the hotel, he was singularly agitated for a man merely suffering from the shyness of the desert wanderer in the presence of a pretty woman. His furtive looks and the uneasy glances he cast behind him, no less than the panicky character of his flight, might have aroused further question on the part of those he left, had they been in a position to observe ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter

... perverse imagination of hers always pictured him as waiting, constant, ready. There was a particular tree in the glen behind which she had so frequently represented him to herself as standing patiently while she approached with furtive steps, that when she came home and went to look at it, there was a feeling almost akin to surprise in her mind at seeing the place drenched in sparkling dew, and all overgrown with moss. Footsteps that are feigned never tread anything down; ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow

... party where three is more than a crowd, and she was a critical, disgusted third party. The young woman found herself taking a similar attitude to the love-making, found herself inhibiting her emotions and had a furtive feeling of being ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson

... Steve. A subdued and furtive Steve. Kirk's heart leaped at the sight of him. It was as if he had found something solid to cling to in ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse

... he seemed to fill with his stalwart sunburnt presence, he looked from one twin to the other, half amused, half indignant. The brothers shuffled their feet and wriggled in their chairs. Their motions were identical, and the furtive glance which Mr. Sam cast at Calvin was mirrored by Mr. Sim. "I can hear fust rate if you sit there, Cal!" ...
— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards

... fool enough to think of going down the Ghauts, Hastings?' But I did not look at that as equivalent to a direct order—whatever I should do now," the colonel put in, on seeing a furtive smile on the faces ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty

... place was usually thronged by people who seemed to know each other in a furtive sort of way, and who sometimes would call others ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter

... previous meals. My object in denying myself, and accepting simply hermit fare, was to convey to observers my grief for my bereavement. I have always deemed it proper for persons of distinguished birth to deplore the loss of friends in public. Hunger, if extreme, can always be reduced by furtive supplies from ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various

... attract special attention, although noted and commented on afterwards. For just a few days after Sheikh Ahmed had gone away the monsoon had burst, and the stormy weather would account for Baji Lal and his wife remaining much at home. But as time wore on, and their furtive ways grew more and more pronounced, people began to talk, and from talking they took to watching and spying. For, believe me, there is nothing so all-absorbing as for once respected and well-thought-of ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell

... the venom of his thoughts now. He was silent, and appeared thinner, as if consumed slowly by an inward rage at the injustice of men and of fate. He was ignored by all and spoke to no one, but his hate for every man dwelt in his furtive eyes. He talked with the cook only, having somehow persuaded the good man that he—Donkin—was a much calumniated and persecuted person. Together they bewailed the immorality of the ship's company. There could be no greater criminals than we, who by our ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad

... had such a rich moistness. They sat on the carriage cushions and ate their supper with Grandma Padgett. It was placed on the side of an empty box, between them and the pedlerman. He divided his attention betwixt eating and chanting rhymes, interspersing both with furtive laughs, into which he tried to draw the children. Grandma Padgett overawed him; but he evidently felt on a level with aunt Corinne and her nephew. In his foolish red face there struggled a recollection of having gone fishing, or played marbles, or hunted ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... as to be almost lost in their recesses behind his sandy eyelashes, and he kept them screwed up close, with the intent watchful gaze of an animal about to make a spring. His whole aspect, his shifty, restless manner, his furtive looks, all were antipathetic and to his great advantage. I did not take to him at all, and plainly showed him that I had no desire for his talk or ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths

... a degree of curiosity not very unnatural under the circumstances. The truth is, the general effect of the schoolroom, with its scores of young girls, all their eyes naturally centring on him with fixed or furtive glances, was enough to bewilder and confuse a young man like Master Langdon, though he was not destitute of self-possession, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various

... twigs sounded like so many cracks of a pistol. At first the silence struck Norris as merely curious, a little later as very lonesome. Once or twice he stopped his horse with a sudden jerk of the reins, and sat crouched forwards with his neck outstretched, listening. Once or twice he cast a quick, furtive glance over his shoulder to make certain that no one stood between himself and the entrance to the hollow. He forgot the buffalo; he caught himself labouring his breath, and found it necessary ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason

... with his inner world. Though so coloured by outer impressions, it wove a secret curtain about him, and he came and went in it with the same joy of furtive possession. One day, of course, some one would discover it and reign there with him—no, reign over it and him. Once or twice already a light foot had reached the threshold. His cousin Clare Dagonet, for instance: there had been a summer when her voice had ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton

... doorway at night. I wonder if that fox chanced to catch a glimpse of her the other night when he stealthily leaped over the fence near by and walked along between the study and the house? How clearly one could read that it was not a little dog that had passed there. There was something furtive in the track; it shied off away from the house and around it, as if eying it suspiciously; and then it had the caution and deliberation of the fox—bold, bold, but not too bold; wariness was in every footprint. If it had been a little dog that had chanced ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs

... for the great Sandeman to occupy. There came to Lowes-Parlby a sudden abrupt misgiving. What sort of wife would this be to him when they were not just fooling? He immediately dismissed the curious, furtive little stab of doubt. The splendid proportions of the room calmed his senses. A huge bowl of dark red roses quickened his perceptions. His career.... The door opened. But it was not La Toccata. It was one of ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors

... "if the orthodox are really sincere in declaring that life to be so sacred and desirable, why on earth don't they treat it frankly and reverently and teach their girls to understand and respect it, instead of allowing a furtive, sneaky, detestable spirit ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... walked softly down the passage with a candle held in his hand. He was in shirt and trousers, with no covering to his feet. I could merely see the outline, but his height told me that it was Barrymore. He walked very slowly and circumspectly, and there was something indescribably guilty and furtive in ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle

... densest—the others caught him fixing hard some object of minor interest, fixing even at moments nothing discernible, as if he were indulging it with a truce. When he met Strether's eye on such occasions he looked guilty and furtive, fell the next minute into some attitude of retractation. Our friend couldn't show him the right things for fear of provoking some total renouncement, and was tempted even to show him the wrong in order to make him differ with triumph. There were moments ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James

... has silently followed the scene from the sofa, presumably engrossed in his book, but at times has cast over a furtive glance, makes a motion as if to rise). If I'm disturbing you, you only need to say ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various

... met Gainsborough essaying a furtive entry into Blentmouth and heading toward the curiosity-shop—with a good excuse this time. It was Cecily's birthday, and the occasion, which was to be celebrated by a dinner-party, must be marked by a present also. Neeld went with the little gentleman, and they bought a bit of old ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope

... was brought by the guidwife, who paused, as she put it down, to wipe her eyes with her apron. She gave John Paul one furtive glance and betook herself again to her knitting with a sigh, speech having failed her likewise. The captain grasped ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... those which had foreshadowed Donnelly's death—and he began to spend sleepless nights. His daylight hours were passed in a strained expectancy; he fought constantly to hold his fears in check; he began sitting with his face to doors; he turned wide corners and avoided side streets. He became furtive and watchful; his eyes were forever flitting here and there; he chose the outer edges of the sidewalks, and he went nowhere after nightfall unattended. The time was past when he could doubt the constancy of his purpose; but he did fear a nervous breakdown, and even shuddered at the thought of possible ...
— The Net • Rex Beach

... the Pole, seating himself on the edge of the table, while the Italian leaned against the mantelpiece, and glanced round the room with furtive eye, as if to detect its innermost secrets, or decide where safest to drop a Lucifer-match for its conflagration,—"confrere," said the ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... this short section of our story we shall cram two months of history, taking but a furtive peep or two at our personages as they ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson

... and his Emma, for the lucky youth who held that drifting nymph seemed most unhappy in his pride. The girl was talking amiably, but the man was grim and furtive and as careless of his ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes

... takes no account of the enemy's apprehensions, nor of the decisive difficulty of running vessels of a size to transport the heavy stores, without which the army could not remain. No one familiar with maritime affairs will deny the impossibility of wholly suppressing all furtive movement of small coasters, but it is equally certain much can be done to impede that full course of supplies which constitutes security of communication. To Chauncey's affirmation, Drummond gives an incidental reply, September 2: "The enemy's blockading squadron ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

... signal for a general breaking up, and as the young folks rose to say good-bye they stole furtive glances ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Army Service - Doing Their Bit for the Soldier Boys • Laura Lee Hope

... been reading the most enthralling essays on it, written by a newspaper man who first fell desperately in love with it at seven—an age when the whole glittering town was symbolized for him by the fried-fish shop at the corner of the High Street. With him I have been going through its gray and furtive thoroughfares in the dead of night, and sometimes we have kicked an ash-barrel and sometimes a romance. Some day I might show that London to you—guarding you, of course, from the ash-barrels, if you are that kind. On second thoughts, ...
— The Agony Column • Earl Derr Biggers

... went for them whom should Greenleaf light upon around a corner of the panelled chimney-breast but that secret lover of the Union and all its defenders, Mademoiselle Valcour. Her furtive cordiality was charming as she hurriedly gave and withdrew a hand in ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable

... of journalists, on the occasion of the founding of a new magazine. The millionaire ate little, spoke little, and sat throughout the feast with an anxious cloud upon his brow. I recognised the same furtive look of apprehension in his eyes that I had seen in the eyes of my stock-broking friend long before. As I glanced round the room I found myself able to pick out all the men of wealth by that same look. It would seem that the anxieties of getting money only beget the ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson

... The presence of a furtive irony of the sweetest kind is the sure sign of the visit of that unlooked-for muse. With all spirit and subtlety does Marvell pretend to offer the little girl T. C. (the future "virtuous enemy of man") the ...
— Flower of the Mind • Alice Meynell

... un" alluded to heard all these comments with the subdued and doleful air which seemed habitual to her, only scanning, with a keen and furtive glance of her flickering eyes, the ornaments which Jane wore in her ears. When arrayed at last in a suit of decent and whole clothing, her hair cropped short to her head, Miss Ophelia, with some satisfaction, said she looked more Christian-like than she did, and in her own mind began to mature ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... they had to turn their backs upon the body left lying face downward in the cold, damp woods. Men of no compassion, unreached by ordinary sympathies, they felt the furtive skulking back, step by step, along ways commonplace enough in the daytime, but begirt with terrors now and full of ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green

... wondered if their friend knew of the dreadful accusation. They felt that whatever they said or did would be wrong in that spotless, silent place, which was subject to rules and customs that they did not understand. Finally, with furtive glances at the nurses, they ventured to sit upon the edge of the cot. Then they felt ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... We stopped, I close beside the stooping metal figure. The Robot's voice was a furtive sepulchral whisper that filled me ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various

... stitches which catch back the folds and laces of their dress. The poet could see nothing of it; and the saddened grandmother spent her life in waiting for her darling's visit, in watching for him in the street, when he walked out with a servant; and these furtive kisses and hasty glances only augmented her maternal ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet

... vibration that kept him there, in his atmosphere of deadly peril. He volplaned, he looped the loop. His behaviour was unsurpassable. For his case, if you like, was desperate. I tell you he had seen the effect of his Tudor hall and drawing-room. He had been watching; and nothing, not a murmur, or a furtive snigger, not the quiver of an eyelash, had escaped him. And consider what it meant to him. In a furious climax of expenditure he had achieved the arresting spectacle of his house in Mayfair, and his first night, his house-warming, was turning under his eyes into a triumph for ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair

... weather. Fortune favoured the plan: fog hid the island from the sight of all men. But the faces of the crew grew longer as the work advanced; and the voice of the rat-eyed little clerk fell lower, and his manner turned still more furtive, and his hand ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan

... this—for years" Miss Pickett continued, and wiped away a furtive tear. "Poor girl. After all, we shouldn't be surprised. I'm afraid she comes by it naturally. There was a mystery ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne

... in the "Fasti" (i. 433), describes the confusion of Priapus when, in the night following a feast of sylvan and Bacchic deities, the braying of the ass of Silenus wakened the company to detect the god in a furtive amatory expedition. ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... Rumania, in Galicia and even in the United States. In "The Jewish State" Herzl alludes to the language of The Jewish State and passes Hebrew by as a manifestation of no great significance. He has a poorer opinion of Yiddish, the common language of Jews, which he regards as "the furtive language of prisoners." This was obviously an oversight. With the advent of Herzl, however, Zionism was no more a matter of domestic concern only. It was no longer internal Jewish problem only, not a theme for discussion only at Zionist meetings, not a problem ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl

... themselves by me as I eat my noonday meal. The one, red-eyed, furtive, lies on his side with restless, clutching hands that tear and twist and torture the living grass, while his lips mutter incoherently. The other sits stooped, bare- footed, legs wide apart, his face grey, almost as grey as his stubbly ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless

... due. Pyatinka and Nedelka also did Jurgen commend for such demolishments as have enregistered their names in the calendar of saints, no less. Ah, but there was none like Mother Sereda: hers was the centre of that power which is the Leshy's. The others did but nibble at temporal things, like furtive mice: she devastated, like a sandstorm, so that there were many dustheaps where Mother Sereda had passed, but ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell

... have not as yet found out the fatal secret of Good and Evil—they have not as yet eaten the forbidden fruit. But, on the contrary, look into the faces of the degenerates and fallen souls of our civilized life. See the furtive glance and the self-consciousness of "Wrong" evident in every face. And this consciousness of "Wrong" bears heavily upon these people—it is heavier than the punishments heaped upon them That nameless something called "conscience" may be smothered for a while, ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka

... whose instincts held him still because he saw no way of flight, but whose heart was beating frightfully against his captor's fingers. He looked from side to side of the room, and made a motion to rise from the pillow. It was a wild, furtive motion, as of one who has often been obliged to fly for safety, yet still has unlimited courage. There was also in his glance the gentle harmlessness and appeal of the winged thing ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill

... had risen at nightfall, and it came softly across the snow, and tried the doors and windows as with a furtive hand. She could hear it coming as from an immense distance, passing with a sigh, returning plaintive, homeless, forlorn, to whisper round ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley

... man's furtive preparations for self-defense. His rifle lay across his knees, and ostensibly he was in the act of cleaning it, but in reality he was holding it ready for Bill's first offensive move. He had known ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall

... underworld. I studied the men and women at the tables curiously, without seeming to do so. But there could be no concealment here. Whatever we might be, they seemed to know that we were not of them, and they greeted us with black looks and now and then a furtive scowl. ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve

... transient expression, but the prevailing modes of thought and feeling leave their unmistakable impress just as surely as does a prevailing wind mould the form of all the trees growing in its path. The man who is sly, furtive, secretive, and fundamentally dishonest need not deceive you with his carefully manufactured expression of open-eyed frankness and honesty. If you have ever been "taken in" by a confidence man or a swindler, you either ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb

... upon the sidewalk. There was a furtive gleam in his eyes, his face was flushed; he was in the grip of a passion that thoughts of Ruth Hamlin had brought to him. He had seen the girl a number of times; he had talked with her twice. Each time when he had talked with her he had felt the heat of a great desire seize him. And during his talk ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer

... CHILDREN through the door, which has half-opened and which closes again behind them. BREAD wipes away a furtive tear, SUGAR and WATER, etc., all in tears, flee precipitously and disappear in the wings to the right and left. The DOG howls behind the scenes. The stage remains empty for a moment and then the scenery representing ...
— The Blue Bird: A Fairy Play in Six Acts • Maurice Maeterlinck

... When it arrives at the end of the quay, which was bedecked as for a holiday, the furtive little shadow pauses at the steps leading down ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... little city as it was one afternoon in early December. The population of 17,000 had then shrunk to about 900, and only a little furtive life lingered in the town. My promenade began at the river-bank by the wooden footbridge crossing from the shore to the remaining arches of the graceful eighteenth-century stone bridge blown up in September, 1914. There is always something melancholy about a ruined bridge, ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan

... surrounded the breakfast table next morning that we might almost have imagined ourselves in Chicago. A small, young priest with furtive brown eyes cowered at one of the side tables, and at another a broad-shouldered, unsmiling lady, dressed in black, with brows and a slight moustache to match, dispensed food to a sallow and shrinking object of preternaturally serious aspect who seemed to be her husband, and a little ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... Hercules, Phoebus, and Jove; not like the forms abounding in the streets of modern cities, wherein the face is a confused blur of features, but composed of incorrupt, sharply defined and symmetrical features, whose eye-sockets are so formed that it would be impossible for such eyes to squint and take furtive glances on this side and on that, but they must turn the whole head. The manners of that period are plain and fierce. The reverence exhibited is for personal qualities; courage, address, self-command, justice, strength, swiftness, a loud voice, a broad chest. Luxury and elegance are not ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... far in the jungle lost their individuality in a sob. Grasshoppers clinked in the forest, the hum of bees and beetles, the fluty plaint of a painted pigeon far in the gloom, the furtive scamper of scrub fowl among leaves made tender by decay, the splash of startled fish in the shadows, commingled and blended to the accompaniment of that subdued aerial buzz by which Nature manifests the more secret of her functions ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... Penelope, regarding her with a furtive but tender glance. "How must he have felt, when he thought what grief he ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown

... stood in doubt. He would knock, and he would not; the mystery of an undefined fear was over him; and yet, what had he to fear? For half a century the inmates had been changed, no doubt, over and over again, and he would be as unknowing as unknown. At length the trembling finger achieves the furtive tap, and the door was opened by a woman, whose figure could only be seen by him in coming between him and the obscure light that came in by the half-sunk window in front; nor could she, even if she had had the power of vision, see more of him, for ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various

... supper and afterward while the half-breed was washing the dishes, the Texan eyed him sharply, and several times caught the flash of a furtive smile upon ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx

... that, after trying for a couple of hours to coax her into confidence and unreserved feminine fluency, I began to feel almost impatient. It was fortunate that, just as my tone involuntarily betrayed to her quick and watchful ear some shade of annoyance, just as I caught a furtive upward glance that seemed to ask what error she had committed and how it might be repaired, a scratching on the door startled her. She did not, however, venture to disengage herself from the hand which now held her own, but only moved half-imperceptibly ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... laughter of his was heard no more, or at best gave place to a feeble tittering; his stories dropped from his lips with but flat pungency; and instead of performing his lady-love's 'chores' with a mirthful readiness, he went through them in a heartsick way, the while directing towards her furtive looks of supplication. The true state of matters was now obvious to all Old Bill was another fatally-stricken victim of that spooney archer-boy who next to death holds dominion over men; and with his case, thus ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... gaily, with a furtive side-glance at Alec. He had had nothing to say to her since her outburst up-stairs, and now, ignoring her pleasantries, he walked into the kitchen in his ...
— Flip's "Islands of Providence" • Annie Fellows Johnston

... a moment listening at my patio window. I could see the kitchen from here; there was no one in it. I started back for the living room. That furtive instinct was still on me. I made no noise. And abruptly I heard Spawn's voice, floating out softly in the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various

... and of the compass of a big woman, who descended by the aid of Mr. Pole. Safely alighted, she waved her pocket-handkerchief afresh. The ladies of Brookfield did not speak to one another; nor did they move their eyes from the object approaching. A simultaneous furtive extinction of three pocket-handkerchiefs might have been noticed. There was no ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... the tragic poet calls him a furtive fire, an unknown flame. Solomon calls it furtive waters. Samuel named it the whisper of a gentle wind. The which three significations show with what sweetness, gentleness, and astuteness, in seas, on earth, in sky, does this fellow come and tyrannize ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno

... stole a furtive glance at Miss Slome, which was an absurd parody on a glance of a man under similar circumstances, and Miss Slome, who had had experience in ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... at a 'cheap shop;' the junior partner in a slippery firm of some three weeks' existence. The dignified evanishment of the hero of Oak Lodge, on this unexpected recognition, could only be equalled by that of a furtive dog with a considerable kettle at his tail. All the hopes of the Maldertons were destined at once to melt away, like the lemon ices at a Company's dinner; Almack's was still to them as distant as the North Pole; and Miss Teresa had as much ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... our furtive way among the shadows. She was swift and sure, and made good time. She knew where she was going. It was a broad open space deep within the city. On three sides were wide closed doors like hangar doors. The fourth was a massive structure of rose granite, ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell

... what the earnest-voiced preacher said. The two girls sitting directly in front of me listened intently, as they passed a little bag of peppermints back and forth, and I envied them the friendship which that furtive bag of peppermints betokened. If I had had any prospect of getting a job the following week, I too could have listened to the preacher. As it was, my ears were attuned only to the terrifying refrain which had haunted me all week: "WORK OR STARVE, WORK OR STARVE!" ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson

... doctor's advice, and took to haunting the crossroads and the village on the chance of meeting him alone. This never happened. Fate, rather late in the day, seemed to have taken her good name into its keeping. They met, of course, but under the furtive, curious gaze of others. Usually, too, Jacques had his boy beside him. It was as if he were ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly

... rather meek threat, led to another long silence. It was continued till they had nearly reached the shore. But, meantime, Rosa's furtive eyes scanned Christopher's face, and her conscience smote her at the signs of suffering. She felt a desire to beg his pardon with deep humility; but she suppressed that weakness. She hung her head with a pretty, sheepish air, and asked ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade

... horrible. The interest of quality does not by any means depend upon its beauty. The point is whether it is strongly and markedly itself. What could be more crammed with quality than an enormous old pig, with its bristles, its elephantine ears, its furtive little eyes, its twitching snout? What a look it has of a fallen creature, puzzled by its own uncleanliness and yet unable to devise ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson

... his hat, and bent down sideways till his flat cheek rested on the knight's stone shin, and he blew out the flame with one well-aimed puff. Lady Maud did not look at the top of his head, nor steal a furtive glance at the strong muscles and sinews of his solid neck. She did nothing of the kind. She bobbed the tea-ball up and down in the saucepan by its chain, and watched how ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford

... wall as he turned the Aigle into the hotel courtyard, and by this feat disposed of the chauffeur's evening, which was spent in hard work at the garage. Such dinner as Jack got, he ate there, in the shape of a furtive sandwich or two, otherwise we should not have been able to leave in the morning at the early hour suggested by ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

... eye every morning when he opened the door of his bedroom; it was there when he came home late at night, and seemed to be sitting up for him, in the reproachful, feminine fashion. When he was writing his letters, there it was, with a prim, furtive air of looking on. It was not like a mere slipper; it had traits and an individuality of its own; there were moments when the jet beads in the buckle sparkled with a sort of intelligence. Sitting at night, reading under the drop-light, Lynde often had an odd sensation as if the ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... friends who had trusted him in the lurch. And then—there was the other thing. He had paid a great price for this woman's salvation. Had he succeeded? She had given up all her old ways. She dressed, she lived, she carried herself through life even with a furtive, almost a pathetic, attempt to reach his standard. Often he caught her watching him as though fearful lest some word or action of hers had been displeasing to him. And yet—he wondered—was this what she had hoped for? Had he given her what she ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... was not tremulous, but, rather, vibrant, a taut mechanism played on by the rage that possessed her. Her eyebrows, high on her forehead, reminded him of things that crawled. Her eyes, brilliant like clear ice with sunshine on it, were darting, furtive, always ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay

... his part perfectly. He suddenly shut up, and, with furtive looks around him, began to jabber to me in a low voice. He was the very picture of the old ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan

... back settlements are almost as shy and furtive as the animals. Even the men look a little scared when you stop them by your questions. The children dart behind their parents when you look at them. As we sat on a bridge resting,—for our packs still weighed fifteen or twenty pounds each,—two ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs

... entrance of Johanna, the Christian, who saluted the legate, and then stood confused and embarrassed by the side of Apollinaris's bed. The furtive glance she cast first at the side-room and then at Nemesianus did not pass unobserved by the quick eye of the commander, and with soldierly firmness he insisted on knowing what was ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... wearing the regulation uniform of blue-striped homespun, appeared comparatively neat; but sordid, sullen, repulsively coarse and brutish were many of the countenances bent over the daily task, and now and then swift, furtive glances from downcast eyes betrayed ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... the departing carriage and met Maria's last disturbed look at the Hall, that he found time to carry Will's request and Fletcher's check to Christopher Blake. The girl had shown her single trace of emotion over the boy's pillow, where she had shed a few furtive tears, and the thought of this was with Carraway as he walked meditatively along the red clay road, down the long curves of which he saw the carriage rolling leisurely ahead of him. As a bride, Maria puzzled him no less than she had done at their first meeting, and the riddle of ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow

... who was now standing in the middle of the room. Her elbow touched the shoulder of a young man on her left. The fur tippet slipped again and lay at the young man's feet. He picked it up, and as he handed it to her he stared into her face, and sleeked his little moustache above a furtive, objectionable smile. His companion (Jane's uninteresting man), roused from communion with the spirit of Veuve Cliquot, fixed on the lady a pair of blood-shot eyes in ...
— The Immortal Moment - The Story of Kitty Tailleur • May Sinclair

... these were his followers. Of the first—his friends—there were not many left. Of the second group there were millions that multiplied themselves. Of the third there had been at the outset but a timorous and furtive few, and they mostly men and women who spoke English, if they spoke it at all, with the halting speech and the twisted idiom that betrayed their foreign birth; being persons who found it entirely consistent to applaud the preachment ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... gold in it. Her skin was very fair and soft as the softest velvet. Her eyes were blue, and in bright moments they had the softness of the sky of a Swedish summer night. But when the clouds of depression closed in upon her, they grew pale and light less and disturbingly furtive, so that Keith's glance found ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman

... the bag towards her. She gave a furtive glance in the direction of Madame—a glance not free from fear—then clutched the bag. Before releasing my hold upon it I ventured upon a word of explanation. I got no further, for at this ...
— The Bronze Hand - 1897 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)

... visions; we talked of how Coralie should make fame and he money; he grew enthusiastic, guttural, and severe on the Steinberg. I ordered more Steinberg, and fished for more enthusiasm. I put my purse at his disposal; he dipped his fingers deep, with an anxious furtive eagerness. The loan was made, or at least pledged, before it flashed across my brain that the money was destined for Wetter—he wanted to pay off Wetter. We ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope

... the girl with the discontented upper lip. Then she sent the elevator boy to carry the girl's suit-case. As the matron came back to the office, a baggy man with cushioned tires hustled out of the open door into the street, having first cast back a keen, furtive glance that searched every ...
— The Mystery of Mary • Grace Livingston Hill

... and Ted's. Now, seeing the whole scheme nipped in the fair bud by Ted's recklessness, small wonder if his heart grew hard. Presently, however, catching sight of Ted's face of misery, stained with one or two furtive tears, his wrath began ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts

... round of testing, talk, and questions, hushed voices and furtive glances, hurried trips from place to place; only this time it was all sharper, shorter, more decisive, and there was no operation. It was not the time for that now, the doctors said. Moreover, this time dad did not laugh, or joke, or even talk ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter

... narrow lane, very dirty and very little used, because, whatever might have been in old times, it led now from nowhere to nowhere. Meadows received by this entrance one or two persons whom he never allowed to desecrate his knocker. At the head of these furtive visitors was Peter Crawley, attorney-at-law, a gentleman who every New Year's Eve used to say to himself with a look of gratified amazement—"Another year gone, and I not struck off ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade

... clearing a fragrant path. Her hat was off, and lay at a distance behind her, where it floated, boat-like, on some blue-stem tops. Still farther behind was Simon, cropping industriously, and keeping a furtive watch upon his mistress out of the corner of ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates

... like Mohammed's coffin, between heaven and earth, then the force of gravity asserted itself. Pongo fell with a sharp crack and disintegrated. And as it did so there was a knock at the door, and in walked a dark, furtive person, who to the inflamed vision of Mr. Daniel Brewster looked like something connected with the executive staff of the Black Hand. With all time at his disposal, the unfortunate Salvatore had selected this moment for stating ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse

... gained by attempting to conceal even from the young the inevitability of this natural function, so long as dogs eat publicly in the streets, and the poultry regale themselves just as candidly, and the house-flies also. Instead, the knowledge that this function is not to be talked about induces furtive and misleading discussion among these children, and, though lack of proper instruction in the approved etiquette of eating, they often commit ...
— Taboo - A Legend Retold from the Dirghic of Saevius Nicanor, with - Prolegomena, Notes, and a Preliminary Memoir • James Branch Cabell

... it. I am even now in doubt as to whether they are all gone. Indians are strangely furtive people, and I fully expect that a couple of them are lying down among the trees to watch us, for fear we should try to communicate with the others. I am afraid now that I made a mistake in settling down so far ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn

... He regarded the concierge with furtive eyes. He, Adelbert, had lived in the house with this man of parts for years, and had regarded him ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... description, but the scenes I have witnessed of misery are something dreadful, and I must say that your wish for me to return with the work incomplete would not be expressed if you saw the state of these poor people. The horrible furtive looks of the wretched inhabitants hovering around one's boat haunts me, and the knowledge of their want of nourishment would sicken anyone. They are like wolves. The dead lie where they fall, and are in some cases trodden quite flat by the passers-by. I hope to get the Shanghai ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... long silence. Ralph had rarely been heard to speak so bitterly. It was clear that opposition had gone far enough. Sim's watery eyes were never for an instant still. Full of a sickening apprehension, they cast furtive glances into every face. The poor creature seemed determined to gather up into his wretched breast the scorn that was blasting it. The turf on the hearth gave out a great heat, but the tailor shivered as with ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine

... Mrs. Burke was watching a bent and decrepit-looking old man laying the cloth. He gave a furtive glance at Durham as he entered ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott

... The king was on his throne surrounded by his men of science. In a cluster of ladies in court dress, the Englishman recognized Bernardino. Catching his eye, she looked startled for an instant, and, then, with a furtive glance at the king, she swept her eyes back to Thorndyke and raised them significantly toward his chambers. He understood, and his quick movement was his reply. He turned immediately to an elevator that was going up, and ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben

... part of the premises was by a short, narrow lane, very dirty and very little used, because, whatever might have been in old times, it led now from nowhere to nowhere. Meadows received by this entrance one or two persons whom he never allowed to desecrate his knocker. At the head of these furtive visitors was Peter Crawley, attorney-at-law, a gentleman who every New Year's Eve used to say to himself with a look of gratified amazement—"Another year gone, and I not ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade

... infinite variety of methods which are thrust upon us in these days rather than a genuine desire to develop their musical aims. Music is acquiring a technology as confusing and as extensive as bacteriology. There seems to be no end to the new kinds of methods in the minds of furtive and fertile inventors. Each new method in turn seems to breed another, ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke

... nothing but horrified repulse. You will notice that Mrs. Shelley, with true womanly delicacy, avoids saying, in so many words, that the student omitted to equip his abnormal creation with a pair of ——. But Frankenstein's oversight in this matter will, I think, sufficiently account for that furtive besiegement of human homes, that pathetic fascination for the neighbourhood of man, which so long refused to accept rebuff. With ——, man is whole as the marble, founded as the rock, as broad and general as ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... on in silence, stealing furtive glances at Tom, as if he had been a guest from the other world, but not disbelieving his story in the least. He had seen, as most old navy men, so many strange things happen, that he was prepared to give credit to any ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... Westley, listening intently, smiling wistfully at her big girl, in spirit lived with her through each experience, happy or trying, rejoicing that she had had them. And yet in her eyes there lingered a furtive questioning. Jerry, reveling in her own happiness, did not realize that her mother was watching her every expression with the anguishing fear that her Jerry might have changed. And she had changed; she had grown, though she was still as straight as one of Kettle's young fir trees; ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott

... conscience and a sharp appetite would now become painfully perceptible on the countenance of Brusa as well as in the relaxation of his tail. As he approached the tempting morsel nothing could be more abject than his manner—stealing furtive glances at the eyes of his master, and trying to conciliate him by wagging the downcast tail between his legs. Alas, poor Brusa! I suspected it from the beginning. What do you think of yourself now? Grabbed by the back of the neck in the powerful hands of Geir ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... returned with the tramp already known to the reader. He was a little dirtier and grimier than on the morning he had addressed Maruja at La Mision Perdida; but he wore the same air of sullen indifference, occasionally broken by furtive observation. His laziness—or weariness—if the term could describe the lassitude of perfect physical condition, seemed to have increased; and he leaned against the door as the Doctor regarded him with slow contempt. The silence continuing, he deliberately allowed himself to slip ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte

... redwood-clad ruggedness of the Santa Cruz range. And he was not seeing this loveliness of landscape at all. He was looking far beyond and his eyes were full of miles upon miles of untrodden forest, the sanctuary of silence and furtive living things, of mountains that lifted snowy spires to heaven high over the glaciers that scarred their sides. And the smells that for a moment rose strongly in his nostrils were not the smells of palm and gum and poppy-dotted fields, but odors of pine and spruce and the ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... fierce blaze of the tropical sun, without other refreshment than an occasional furtive drink of tepid water, had reduced us to a pitiable condition of weakness, so much so that the skipper judged it prudent, as soon as the fluke-chains were passed, to give us a couple of hours' rest. As soon as the sun had set we were all turned to again, three ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen

... observed to open with great caution. This door, as the least imaginative reader may easily conjecture, did not open itself. It was opened by Miss Margaret Callaghan, who immediately closed it softly behind her, paused for a few seconds with an embarrassed air on the stone step, and then, throwing a furtive glance up at the second-story windows, passed hastily down the street towards the river, keeping close to the fences and garden ...
— A Rivermouth Romance • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... the shelter of the houses, his mackintosh turned up to his ears, his hands buried in his pockets, a man walked swiftly along. At every block he hesitated and looked around him. His manner was cautious, almost furtive. Once the glare of an electric light fell upon his face, a face pallid with fear, almost hopeless with despair. He walked quickly, yet he seemed to have little idea as to his direction. Suddenly ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... abashed at this reply, but could not refrain from casting furtive glances across the way. The afternoon was fine, and the street filled with well-dressed people. The little girl watched the passers-by, holding her needle listlessly in her ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various

... make himself understood, gave up the effort, and with an awkward good-bye resumed his tramp southward. Uncertain of what whim might suddenly take possession of him, Deerfoot, while also moving in the opposite direction, kept a furtive watch to the rear. He did not see the dwarf look behind him and it is not probable that he ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis

... the new man, was much moved, and came home talking about him with a stammering unction, and many furtive looks at David. He had tried to remonstrate several times on the lad's desertion of chapel and Sunday school, but to no purpose. There was something in David's half contemptuous, half obstinate silence ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Grand Jury, with much secrecy, returned a true bill, and a day later a considerable detachment of infantry started on a dusty hike up Misery. Furtive and inscrutable Hollman eyes along the way watched them from cabin-doors, and counted them. They meant also to count them coming back, and they did not ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck

... been so red!) and dumb, Waldron yielded. Together, furtive as the criminals they were, these two world-masters slunk toward the steel door, while without, their empire was crashing down in smoke, ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England

... and no one had moved except the little boy. With furtive glances and trembling hands he had crept to the old well in the corner and drunk a cup of the poisoned water. Then he ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy

... courier grew more and more enthusiastic. We were traveling in a four-seated carriage, Baeader on the box, pointing out to us in English, after furtive conversations with the driver in French, the principal points of interest. With many flourishes he led us to Parame, one of those Normandy cities which consist of a huge hotel with enormous piazzas, a beach ten miles from ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith

... these rebels. I have no talent for description, but the scenes I have witnessed of misery are something dreadful, and I must say that your wish for me to return with the work incomplete would not be expressed if you saw the state of these poor people. The horrible furtive looks of the wretched inhabitants hovering around one's boat haunts me, and the knowledge of their want of nourishment would sicken anyone. They are like wolves. The dead lie where they fall, and are in some cases trodden quite flat by the passers-by. ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... voluptuous; it is only befitting as between lovers, and not only do fathers refrain from kissing their children except when very young, but even the mothers only give their children a rare and furtive kiss. Among some of the hill-tribes of south-east India the olfactory kiss is found, the nose being applied to the cheek during salutation with a strong inhalation; instead of saying "Kiss me," they here say "Smell me." The Tamils, I am told by a medical ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... king was on his throne surrounded by his men of science. In a cluster of ladies in court dress, the Englishman recognized Bernardino. Catching his eye, she looked startled for an instant, and, then, with a furtive glance at the king, she swept her eyes back to Thorndyke and raised them significantly toward his chambers. He understood, and his quick movement was his reply. He turned immediately to an elevator that was going up, and entered it. Again he was alone ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben

... to her forehead. She felt utterly bewildered, and a cold fear, the dread of exposure and discovery, gave a furtive miserable ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade

... back into place; unpinning the lace curtains and draping them carefully in their folds; drawing chairs across the carpet until the casters squealed; uncovering the piano. At the business of dusting the mantelpiece she lingered, stealing furtive glances ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst

... lost to J. Wilkes Booth. He did not catch the spirit of the delighted audience, of the flaming lamps flinging illumination upon the domestic foreground and the gaily set stage. He only cast one furtive glance upon the man he was to slay, and thrusting one hand in his bosom, another in his skirt pocket, drew forth simultaneously his deadly weapons. His right palm grasped a Derringer pistol, ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend

... in classical Arab. signs with the finger (beckoning); Aum with the hand; Ramz, with the lips; Khalaj, with the eyelids (wink); and Ghamz with the eye. Aumz is a furtive glance, especially of women, and Ilhz, a side-glance from lahaza, limis oculis intuitus est. See Preston's Al-Hariri, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton

... and imagination there is for instance, in the metaphor which describes a man doing a midnight flitting as "shooting the moon"? It expresses everything about the run away: his eccentric occupation, his improbable explanations, his furtive air as of a hunter, his constant glances at the blank clock in ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton

... interest the table group wove together, kept flashing up her furtive desire to be away, to be at home, to see what had happened to the sapphire. Of course, she knew that nothing could have happened; but she wanted to look at it, to open the casket and see the flash of it before ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain

... we need say any more to the lads," whispered the major as the officers crept together for a few final words. "They all know that the striking of a match for a furtive pipe would be ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn

... horses were neighing, and hounds were baying. The townsfolk had come down to welcome their friends from the other side, but no Newnham man approached the master of Dean Tower. There was some whispering, some furtive glancing in his direction, and the Arlingham folk cut him as completely as ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan

... in fact what he said was very just, and he knew it; but he could perceive that he had suffered loss with her. A furtive glance at Mrs. Bowen did not assure him that he had made a compensating gain in that direction, where, indeed, he had no right to wish ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells

... for many years have been a New-Yorker, yet not know Avenue B, where Jewish apartment-houses and bakeries are sullenly held back by the gas-house district and three-story houses of muddy halls and furtive people who have lost ambition. The genus "furnished housekeeping room" is a filthy box with a stove, a table, a bed, a few seats, many cockroaches, and from one to twenty people, all thrown in and shaken up, like a grab-bag. Here in this ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis

... with eyes that were red with weeping. She had been wiping them with fierce furtive rubs of her handkerchief; now she was rubbing the handkerchief, a hard ball, in the palm of one hand. Perhaps grief at Susannah's loss had been dominant until Ephraim's accusation had fanned her anger. "She'd better have ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall

... She, with her face at first with pallor spread, Then tinted with a blush of coral dye, 'The ball is best!' did cry, Gentle in tone and smiling as she spake. But from her eyes celestial forth did break Favour at parting; and I well could see Young love confusedly Enclosed within the furtive fervent gaze, Heating his arrows at their beauteous rays, For war with Pallas and with Dian cold. Fairer than mortal mould, She moved majestic with celestial gait; And with her hand her robe in royal state Raised, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... the streets at night, with the furtive, stealthy gait of wild beasts prowling in the shadow in quest of food. As if unsexed, she made the advances, she solicited brutes, she took advantage of drunkenness, and men yielded to her. She walked along, peering on every side, ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt

... continuing without a break, and plenty of amused and interested glances were cast at the young couple of successful players. They were taking it all so easily, with a careless, light-hearted enjoyment that was rather refreshing to turn to after a glimpse of some of the furtive, vulture-like faces gathered round the tables. Meanwhile, the grey-eyed Englishman continued to lose with the same persistency as his young compatriots were winning. Apparently he was playing on a system, for, in spite of his want of success, he continued steadily backing certain definite combinations. ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler

... were restless and constantly wandered in the direction of the tall woman with the red hair, who sat calmly talking to her friends, never noticing him. He seemed waiting for a look that never came; his glances were furtive and quickly withdrawn, as if he feared he was being watched. When she got up to leave, Owen came forward and spoke to her, but she barely replied, and left the room alone. Evelyn saw all this, and she was surprised when Owen came rapidly through the room and sat ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore

... he indeed proved to be, for after casting a furtive look, not unmingled with surprise and suspicion, at his brother redskin, he opened a small bag which hung at his girdle, and delivered to McLeod senior ...
— Wrecked but not Ruined • R.M. Ballantyne

... curse towards the place assigned him. He was followed by a sallow-faced, long-nosed man, with black oily hair and an affected smirk which twitched the corners of his thin lips. Singling out his master's family with a furtive glance from a pair of sinister greenish eyes, he made a low bow and ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston

... heard all these comments with the subdued and doleful air which seemed habitual to her, only scanning, with a keen and furtive glance of her flickering eyes, the ornaments which Jane wore in her ears. When arrayed at last in a suit of decent and whole clothing, her hair cropped short to her head, Miss Ophelia, with some satisfaction, said she looked more Christian-like than she did, and in her own mind began ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... vastness, which a cursory view from the summit at noon-day was apt to obscure. Melancholy, impressive, lonely, yet accessible from every part of the town, the historic circle was the frequent spot for appointments of a furtive kind. Intrigues were arranged there; tentative meetings were there experimented after divisions and feuds. But one kind of appointment—in itself the most common of any—seldom had place in the Amphitheatre: that ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy

... Wagg, having taken it upon himself to keep close tabs on Vaniman's state of mind, noted the prisoner's rebellious restlessness with deepening interest and coupled a lot of steady pondering with his furtive espionage. ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day

... more pleasing expression, but the timid furtive look, the ungainly gait, and the ungraceful contour of their abak skirts, detract from the moderate beauty that they possess in their youth. After marriage their beauty wanes ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... satisfied that it had never been opened since the night of her father's death; for the seals which she had induced Francisco to place upon the lock next day were still there. But all the while she was thus scrutinizing the door, the lock, and the seals, she could not help occasionally casting a furtive glance around, to convince herself that the tall, dark, muffled form was not standing behind her: and, as she retraced her way to her own apartments, she stopped now and then through dread that other footsteps beside her own echoed in the long and lonely ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds

... four o'clock when we at last, after passing through the beautiful Stroud Valley, and over the broad gleaming Severn, found ourselves at the pretty little country-town of Ross. A lean, ferret-like man, furtive and sly-looking, was waiting for us upon the platform. In spite of the light brown dustcoat and leather-leggings which he wore in deference to his rustic surroundings, I had no difficulty in recognising Lestrade, of Scotland Yard. With him we drove ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... other, was highly characteristic. Chingachgook, a noble, tall, handsome and athletic young Indian warrior, first examined his rifle with care, opening the pan to make sure that the priming was not wet, and, assured of this important fact, he next cast furtive but observant glances around him, at the strange habitation and at the two girls. Still he spoke not, and most of all did he avoid the betrayal of a ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... slight furtive glance of the urchin, I perceived that he recognised me; he spoke a couple of words to his father, who, turning his head in the direction where I stood, muttered an interjectional "Ugh!" and resumed his previous calm attitude, contrasting oddly with the insouciant look and merry ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power

... come to recognize me in the street?" demanded Billy, feeling a strong distrust of the stranger, who had little rat-like eyes and a furtive manner. ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... for them whom should Greenleaf light upon around a corner of the panelled chimney-breast but that secret lover of the Union and all its defenders, Mademoiselle Valcour. Her furtive cordiality was charming as she hurriedly gave and withdrew a hand in joy ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable

... Will, casting a furtive glance behind him, to make sure that no one from Garthowen was following in his footsteps, "Morva, lass, where hast come from? I will begin to think thou art one of the spirits thy mother says she sees. I thought thee wast busy in the ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine

... impolite; yet the way being the same deign to grant the favour of your strength." In the petition her face was wreathed in admiring smiles at Rokuzo's fine figure of a man. A light in the eyes, captious and coquettish, the furtive glances at his broad shoulders and stout neck, betrayed him into the indiscretion of volunteering a service promptly accepted. This done, the lady, without losing sight of display of her charm of manner, ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville

... night, and lifted out his pied calfskin vest to find his strop, the little handkerchief brought all the old remembrances, the old tenderness, back in a sentimental flood. He fancied there was still a fragrance of violet perfume about it as he held it tenderly and pressed it to his cheek after a furtive glance around. He folded it small, put it in a pocket of the garment, which he hung on the foot of ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden

... found in the morning at the St. Malo post-office, and which she had not opened in the boat, loaded with passengers. At once, after breakfast, she had closeted herself in her room, and there, her letters unfolded on her knees, she relished hastily her furtive joy. She was to drive at two o'clock on the mall with her father, her husband, the Princess Seniavine; Madame Berthier-d'Eyzelles, the wife of the Deputy, and Madame Raymond, the wife of the Academician. She had two letters that day. The first one she read exhaled a ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France

... in the right proportion, and in the end he was always satisfied with the nimble fiver. But I'm afraid things are going harder with him. He has lost his old alert gaiety, and he's a little down at heel in character as well as in person. There's a furtive look about him, as though he were ready for undertakings that were not quite above board, and there's a shiftiness in his eye which makes his ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham

... you look so furtive?" she retorted. "Gregg, there's something strange about this voyage. I'm no fool, nor you, and you know it as well as ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various

... together through the lane of cottages, where furtive forms lurked in door-ways and behind curtains. And Paul had only one word of advice to give, upon which he harped continually: "Be thou very courageous—be thou very courageous." Nothing new, for so it was written in the oldest book of all. The starosta was ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman

... while a smile brightened his countenance. It was so long since Maurice had seen him smile that even that strange, half-wild, inexplicable kindling up of the wan face was pleasant to behold. As they descended the stair, the count looked back several times, and gave furtive glances around him, smiling more and more; then he rubbed his hands and chuckled as though at some idea which he could not yet communicate. At the carriage-door he paused again, and again looked all around, continuing to rub his ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... "Poor Folk" and "Crime and Punishment" and "The Despised and Rejected."... Monstrous groups of flats towered above us, and in the gathering dusk the figures that slipped in and out of the doors were furtive shadows and ghosts. No one seemed to speak; you could see no faces under the spare pale-flamed lamps, only hear whispers and smell rotten stinks and feel the snow, foul and soiled under ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole

... he were merely neighborhood chums, and quarreled with a wholesome and violent lack of delicacy; but now and then, after the color and scent of a dance, they were silent together and a little furtive, and Babbitt ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis

... face turned toward him for a moment, and he felt himself looked over from head to foot. At first there was an expression of vexation at the interruption, and then, as if from the ludicrousness of his appearance, the old laughing, scornful look returned. Casting a quick, furtive glance at the picture, which seemed to satisfy him, Dennis, with hot cheeks, gathered up his tools and beat a hasty retreat. As he passed out, Mr. Ludolph asked, good naturedly, "Why, ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe

... by the entrance of Johanna, the Christian, who saluted the legate, and then stood confused and embarrassed by the side of Apollinaris's bed. The furtive glance she cast first at the side-room and then at Nemesianus did not pass unobserved by the quick eye of the commander, and with soldierly firmness he insisted on knowing what was ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... three is more than a crowd, and she was a critical, disgusted third party. The young woman found herself taking a similar attitude to the love-making, found herself inhibiting her emotions and had a furtive feeling of ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson

... somewhat different nature from what I expected, and during the recital, I could not prevent myself from casting furtive and ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green

... willing guest that he was forcing upon her was almost more than she could play, and the necessity of sitting still and responding was taxing her endurance to the utmost. And all the time she was aware acutely of his constant surveillance. Reluctantly her own furtive glance was drawn frequently to his face, and always his dark fierce eyes were watching her with a steadiness that racked her nerves, till she was reminded irresistibly of an exhibition that she had seen in a circus in Vienna, where a lion tamer had concluded an unusually ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull

... singularly plain face, good teeth, much elongated eyes, and the heavy droop of his eyelids almost caricatures the usual Japanese peculiarity. He is the most stupid-looking Japanese that I have seen, but, from a rapid, furtive glance in his eyes now and then, I think that the stolidity is partly assumed. He said that he had lived at the American Legation, that he had been a clerk on the Osaka railroad, that he had travelled through northern Japan by the eastern route, and in Yezo with ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... footfall not unlike that of a man. She had not been married long enough to know the sound of her husband's step, and she felt a thrill of joy and fear alternately. It might be he, and it might be a stranger! She was loath to look up, but at last gave a furtive glance, and met squarely the eyes of a large grizzly bear, who was seated upon his haunches not ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... Ashe observed the furtive study that the Grosville girls could not help bestowing upon her—upon her shoulder-straps and long, bare arms, upon her high waist and the blue and silver bands in her hair. Kitty herself sat in a pensive ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... not tremulous, but, rather, vibrant, a taut mechanism played on by the rage that possessed her. Her eyebrows, high on her forehead, reminded him of things that crawled. Her eyes, brilliant like clear ice with sunshine on it, were darting, furtive, ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay

... showing those things usually concealed behind walls and under cover of the darkness. According to the purists here youth of both sexes was debauched, losing both money and souls. To speak of seeing Barbary Coast brought furtive looks and lowered voices, as if contamination even from the thought were possible. No slumming party was completed without a visit to the "Coast," after Chinatown's manufactured horrors had ...
— Bohemian San Francisco - Its restaurants and their most famous recipes—The elegant art of dining. • Clarence E. Edwords

... observes Cherokee, an' he's sarcastic while he menaces with the knife at Silver Phil; 'that contraption is shorely plenty sagacious! But it don't go here. Shove in your chips.' Silver Phil obeys: an' he shows furtive, ugly, an' alarmed, an' all of 'em at once. He don't say a word. 'Now pull your freight,' concloods Cherokee. 'If you ever drifts within ten foot of a game of mine ag'in I'll throw this knife plumb through you—through ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis

... was, Podgers, is he silent, or talkative, or does he get angry? Does he seem furtive, suspicious, anxious, terrorised, calm, excitable, ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr

... peril. He volplaned, he looped the loop. His behaviour was unsurpassable. For his case, if you like, was desperate. I tell you he had seen the effect of his Tudor hall and drawing-room. He had been watching; and nothing, not a murmur, or a furtive snigger, not the quiver of an eyelash, had escaped him. And consider what it meant to him. In a furious climax of expenditure he had achieved the arresting spectacle of his house in Mayfair, and his first night, his house-warming, was turning under his eyes into a triumph for ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair

... moment Miss Wort reappeared in a sort of furtive hurry. She gave a timid, sidelong glance at the doctor, and then addressed Bessie. Mr. Carnegie had his eye upon her: she was the thorn in his professional flesh. She meddled with his patients—a pious woman for whom other people's souls and internal complaints supplied the ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr

... on Butler grew more and more puzzled and restive as to his duty in regard to his daughter. He was sure by her furtive manner and her apparent desire to avoid him, that she was still in touch with Cowperwood in some way, and that this would bring about a social disaster of some kind. He thought once of going to Mrs. ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser

... when he stealthily leaped over the fence near by and walked along between the study and the house? How clearly one could read that it was not a little dog that had passed there. There was something furtive in the track; it shied off away from the house and around it, as if eying it suspiciously; and then it had the caution and deliberation of the fox—bold, bold, but not too bold; wariness was in every footprint. If it had been a little dog that had chanced to wander that ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs

... impatiently. "Will I win or will you? What's it worth?" He clipped his words short, his eyes darted furtive glances ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach

... with some consternation, notwithstanding all the plotting, that Kate observed the big pistols at the Captain's side and the heavy sword which jangled against his leg. That jangling sword gave her the tremors, and she cast many furtive glances toward its chain and scabbard. At last ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon

... box to the horrible old woman, who was so disconcerted by this piece of audacity that in her confusion she took every one of the sugar-plums. Nevertheless, whilst emptying the box into the palm of her hand, black as that of a mummy, she cast a furtive and frightened glance at the circus, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various

... down, rubbed an imaginary protuberance smooth with his foot, and glanced up at me again with a quick, furtive expression,—"he's got his face set in the grating of 47, and danged if a man Jack of us can get ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes

... It was all so mellow, so strangely aloof from the modern world of feverish change, this life of the peasants of Almorox. Everywhere roots striking into the infinite past. For before the Revolution, before the Moors, before the Romans, before the dark furtive traders, the Phoenicians, they were much the same, these Iberian village communities. Far away things changed, cities were founded, hard roads built, armies marched and fought and passed away; but in Almorox the ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos

... is unable to civilize Chicago, it at least shows Chicago and America what a civilization might be like. Friendly, where our cities are friendless, beautiful, where they are ugly; sociable and open, where our daily life is furtive; work a craft; art a participation—it is in miniature the goal of statesmanship. If Chicago were like Hull House, we say to ourselves, then vice would be no problem—it would dwindle, what was left would be the Falstaff in us ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann

... understanding the proof." They "cannot investigate; they may remember." She warns the girls whom she is addressing that if they will steal knowledge, they must learn, like the Spartan youths, to hide their furtive gains. "The thefts of knowledge in our sex are only connived at while carefully concealed, and if displayed ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford

... others. There is nothing sadder than that page of the 'Confessions,' in which he relates how he often placed himself at the window to observe the dismission of a school, in order to listen to the conversations of children as a furtive and ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley

... suffered greatly. She did not love him, he concluded. If she had loved him she would have been crushed. For two days he lived a miserable existence upon his high perch. He consoled himself by thinking of how unhappy he was, and by swift, furtive glances at the loved face. At any rate he was in her presence, and he could get a good view from his perch when there was no interference by the little ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane

... glittering and clinking with a dull thin metallic sound, and was then rolled up anew. Suddenly he remarked one packet which had rolled a little farther than the rest, and stopped at the leg of the bedstead, near the head. By a rapid and furtive motion he seized this packet, gazing the while at the old man to see whether he remarked it. But he was too busy. He collected the remaining packets, replaced them in the bag, and, without looking at the artist, retired ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... impulsive blind affection and desire. Reflective dealings with the material of instruction is constrained and half-hearted; attention wanders. The topics to which it wanders are unavowed and hence intellectually illicit; transactions with them are furtive. The discipline that comes from regulating response by deliberate inquiry having a purpose fails; worse than that, the deepest concern and most congenial enterprises of the imagination (since they center about the things dearest to desire) are casual, concealed. They ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey

... the spade over my shoulder, dragging my snake. Her exultation was contagious. The great land had never looked to me so big and free. If the red grass were full of rattlers, I was equal to them all. Nevertheless, I stole furtive glances behind me now and then to see that no avenging mate, older and bigger than my quarry, was racing ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather

... morning Ashby was up and out. He walked over the town in all directions, with a strange, furtive watchfulness in his eyes, as though on the lookout for some one. Who was the object of his search? Was it Katie, whose answer to his proposal had not yet been given? Was it Dolores, whom he had tracked on the previous evening? Or was it his rival Lopez, with whom he had yet to stand in mortal ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille

... moment or so, while she examined the woods about them with furtive, searching glances as though their shadows ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White

... behind her noiselessly; then she crossed the room and closed the door leading into the dining-room. Henry watched her with furtive eyes. He was horribly dismayed without knowing why. When Sylvia had the room completely closed she came close to him. She extended her right hand, and he saw that it contained a little sheaf of yellowed newspaper ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... after the hearth of your childhood?" "After our fathers' home!" was Louis's emphatic reply. "After the home of our childhood!" was Catharine's earnest answer. Hector's lips echoed his sister's words, while a furtive troubled glance fell upon the orphan stranger; but her timid eye was raised to his young face with a trusting look, as she would have said. "Thy home shall be my home, thy God ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill

... the children out, etc., before she can have her brief sweet interview through the area-railings with Boopis, the policeman. All day long have his heels to beat the stale pavement before he has the opportunity to snatch the hasty kiss or the furtive cold pie. It is only at moments, and away from these labours, that we can light upon one character or the other; and hence, though most of the persons of whom we are writing have doubtless their grave ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... allowed to pitch your camp on one of the mossy headlands of Castor Ville, and enjoy your luncheon, in this sylvan spot, that is, always presuming you were deemed competent to fully appreciate nature's wildest charms, and rejoice, like a true lover, in her coyest and most furtive glances. ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... who peeps From the gallery stair, Smiles palely, redly weeps, With feverish furtive air As though not ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy

... the same dreary round of testing, talk, and questions, hushed voices and furtive glances, hurried trips from place to place; only this time it was all sharper, shorter, more decisive, and there was no operation. It was not the time for that now, the doctors said. Moreover, this time dad did not laugh, or joke, or even talk on the homeward journey. But that, ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter

... at once hung his head below its previous level; the one necessary for business. It appeared as if he desired to be thought absorbed, with more than common fidelity, in his task. Being addressed, he glanced up, but with what seemed a furtive, diffident air, which sat strangely enough on his weather-beaten visage, much as if a grizzly bear, instead of growling and biting, should simper and cast sheep's eyes. He was asked several questions concerning the voyage—questions purposely referring to several particulars ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville

... spring, formidable piratical attempts were made along an extended line of coast. Generally such attempts were frustrated when any weapons of offence were possessed by the attacked; for these enterprises, although furtive and made by considerable numbers, were seldom conducted or maintained with spirit. Thus, in April, the Christian, while on her passage from Liverpool to Westport, with a cargo of Indian corn, was suddenly boarded, seven or eight miles off Broadhaven, by three boats' ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... I have described, unwise to the ways of man, having had no experience to teach them fear and caution, would be gentle and trusting, and approachable. I was doomed to disappointment. I found that no matter how remote the region, how primeval its forests or how Eden-new its streams, its beasts were furtive, wary, distrustful. ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills

... the mystery of an undefined fear was over him; and yet, what had he to fear? For half a century the inmates had been changed, no doubt, over and over again, and he would be as unknowing as unknown. At length the trembling finger achieves the furtive tap, and the door was opened by a woman, whose figure could only be seen by him in coming between him and the obscure light that came in by the half-sunk window in front; nor could she, even if she had had the power of ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various

... doing anything to embarrass the Allies. The waiting policy has served. Germany was driven by the logic of her original aggression to threaten the security of all neutrals connected with the rest of the world by maritime communications. The Russian autocracy was overthrown, because it betrayed its furtive kinship with the German autocracy. Finally, President Wilson used the waiting period for the education of American public opinion. His campaign speeches prophesied the abandonment of American isolation in the interest of a League of Peace. His note of last ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman

... sea hissed "like twenty thousand kettles." That's his simile, not mine. I fancy there was not much wind after the first gust; and he himself had admitted at the inquiry that the sea never got up that night to any extent. He crouched down in the bows and stole a furtive glance back. He saw just one yellow gleam of the mast-head light high up and blurred like a last star ready to dissolve. "It terrified me to see it still there," he said. That's what he said. What terrified him was the thought that the drowning was not over yet. No doubt he ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... time gone. The dome of pines took on an uncanny stillness; the moving patches of sun seemed furtive and unnatural; the ferns swayed without noise. In the midst of it, patient and nervous, sat Joyce, watching always that spot in the bushes where a blue overall and a brown head had disappeared. The under-note of alarm which stirred her senses died down; a child finds it hard to spin out a ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon

... nothing odd in M. Guillaume's presence, however little the lady or the Captain had suspected it. The surprise he gave was a reprisal for that which he had suffered when, after the Captain's exit, he had recovered his full faculties and heard a furtive movement within the hut. It was the inspiration and the work of a moment to raise himself with an exaggerated effort and a purposed noise, and to take his departure with a tread heavy enough to force itself on the ears of the unknown person ...
— Captain Dieppe • Anthony Hope

... the daytime there would have been nothing to distinguish it above the other ramshackle buildings on the street, except that the other houses were cluttered with children and baby-carriages, while this one was vacant, the front door closed, and the blinds tightly drawn. As we approached, a furtive figure shambled from the basement areaway and slunk off into the crowd for the night's business of ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve

... still lived at the dressmaker's in Oxford Street, and I was not out of my teens when the old Jew in St. Mary Axe took me into keeping. But when Jack was by, I had no chance of admiration. All the eyes were glued upon him, and his poor doxy had to be content with a furtive look thrown over a stranger's shoulder. At Barnet races, the year before they sent me across the sea, we were followed by a crowd the livelong day; and truly Jack, in his blue satin waistcoat laced with ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley

... bluntly accused him of loafing on the job,—he sauntered past the Nixon cottage. His soul was full of bitterness. He was baffled. Harry Squires was right; he had accomplished nothing—and what was worse, he wasn't likely to accomplish anything. He sauntered back, casting furtive glances into the spacious front-yard, and concluded to ease his restless legs by leaning against a tree and crossing them in an attitude of profound nonchalance. The tree happened to be almost directly in front of the Nixon gate. Not to seem actually employed in shadowing the house, he decided ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon

... And Darius was pitched into a large crowd of other boys, all clothed like himself. He now understood the reason for shame; it was because he could have no distinctive clothes of his own, because he had somehow lost his identity All the boys had a sullen, furtive glance, and when they spoke it ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... with Gilbert's request, and they continued on their way with bowed heads and in gloomy silence. Stephane alone, with her cap drawn over her eyes, occasionally uttered disconnected words and alternately cast a furtive glance at Gilbert, or gazed sadly at the moon. Arriving at the castle, they crossed the court and ascended the stairs without meeting anyone; but entering the vestibule of the first story, in which all the lamps were lighted, they heard a noise of steps ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne

... if you'd care to have supper with me," he said with an unlighted cigarette in his hand—his mind troubled with ideas of a furtive administration of chloral. "Only cold mutton, you know, but passing sweet. Welsh. And a tart, I believe." He repeated ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells

... dislike for him as a man. It seemed to her that he had been actually bribed to save Pete's life, and had pocketed the bribe . . . again it was The Spider . . . What a name for a human being—yet how well it fitted! The thin bow-legs, the quick, sidling walk, the furtive manner, the black, blinking eyes . . . Doris yawned and shivered. Dawn was battling its slow way into the room. A nurse stepped in softly. Doris rose and made a notation on the chart, told the nurse that her patient had been sleeping since ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... together, for Vere had been between them. It was dark under the fig-trees. They could see each other's faces, but not quite clearly. There was a small breeze which made the trees move, and the leaves rustled faintly now and then, making a tiny noise which joined the furtive noise of the sea, not far ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens

... and fearful. He helped round up the cows, casting furtive glances ahead and on each side at every footstep. Before entering the house, he slunk, although still agonized with fear, through the golden twilight to the abhorred bathing-pool and the languidly fluttering cross-bars of the ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten

... too, there are some who might, probably with more reason, boast their proficiency in mysterious lore—fellows of smooth aspect and polite demeanour, whom at first you imagine to have become casual spectators from mere lack of better pastime, but whose furtive glances and vagrant attention betray the familiars of the police—that complex and mighty engine of modern structure, which, far more surely than the "ear of Dionysius," conveys to the tympanum of power each echoed sigh and reverberated ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 273, September 15, 1827 • Various

... because—well, it didn't sound like a cat," he wound up, guiltily conscious of his other reason for certainty on this point. "Perhaps Isis has climbed down from her pedestal to stretch herself," and he smiled, but his eyes were anxious, and he shot a furtive ...
— The False Gods • George Horace Lorimer

... wide common, where the gorse was in full bloom, then under the trees of the wood, Estelle's thoughts were with Aunt Betty, whom she was to see so soon; or with Dick, and the wonderful surprise she was bringing him. Now and then she took a furtive glance at Jack, and wished the happiness of the one did not mean the unhappiness ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various

... women, who, in the minority, made their presence felt by their showy gowns, rustling movements, and attitudes of superior boredom. In a vast building like this extremes touch with eagerness on the part of the poor, to whom these furtive views of the rich and indolent brought with them ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker

... a manner of open confidence. The furtive whisperings did not appear to arouse his curiosity, nor did he intercept any of the knowing looks that sometimes were exchanged. But all the time his brain was busy with questions. What were they up to? What was it they ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine

... tongue not two hundred white folk in India understood; and the men were their children, all drawn from the Bhils, who are, perhaps, the strangest of the many strange races in India. They were, and at heart are, wild men, furtive, shy, full of untold superstitions. The races whom we call natives of the country found the Bhil in possession of the land when they first broke into that part of the world thousands of years ago. ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling

... do the work of the gods, answering the prayers of men or smiting them, and ever They sent Their swarthy servant Time to heal or overwhelm. And Time went forth into the worlds to obey the commands of the gods, yet he cast furtive glances at his masters, and the gods distrusted Time because he had known the worlds or ever the ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]

... croupiers' furtive eyes Will all be wringing wet; Even the Prince will hardly mince The language of regret At entertaining unawares The ...
— The Battle of the Bays • Owen Seaman

... for the wedding went on gaily, and whatever inclination to revolt may have lurked in George Fairfax's breast, he made no sign. Since his insolent address that night in the corridor he had scarcely spoken to Clarissa; but he kept a furtive watch upon her notwithstanding, and she knew it, and sickened under it as under an evil influence. He was very angry with her—she was fully conscious of that—unjustifiably, unreasonably angry. More than once, when Mr. Granger was especially attentive, she had ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... kind eyes from under stern brows. He seemed to be awkwardly pleased with their pleasure, yet scarce able to be one with them; as if that inner white spirit of his fluttered more than its wont to be free, yet found only tiny exits for its furtive flashes of light. ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson

... evening hour together, an hour when the chain of talk sagged heavily, broke, and fell into a sea of silence. Then either Kathryn wiped her eyes with ostentatious secrecy, arose and went away to bed; or else Brenton, after a furtive glance or two in the direction of her head, bent down above her sewing, stole out of the room as noiselessly as he was able and betook himself to the study where, often and often, the light burned ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... harsh, and she had studied its control as part of her training when she began to teach. The little tricks of tone and gesture one used to overawe young girls would not frighten a man. For all that, when she first spoke there was a hint of fear in his furtive eyes. ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss

... shoulder. By the second Sunday they had mastered their bashfulness and both came shuffling their hats in awkward hands and sitting side by side on a log. Leff, who had never been to church in his life, was inclined to treat the occasion as one for furtive amusement, at intervals casting a sidelong look at his companion, which, on encouragement, would have developed into a wink. David had no desire to exchange glances of derisive comment. He was profoundly moved. The sonorous words, the solemn ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner

... Dios, now strongly reinforced and on its guard, was not an easy nut to crack. But Panama? Panama meant a risky march inland and a still riskier return by the regular treasure trail. But with the help of the Maroons, who knew the furtive byways to a foot, the thing might yet be done. Ranse thought the game not worth the candle and retired from the partnership, much ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood

... on my head, I could not have felt a greater shock than was communicated to me by these words. I know not what I said in reply, or how I got home. Elizabeth, doubtless, observed my agitation, but she made no remark on it. I felt her arm tremble upon mine as we walked along, and by a furtive glance at her face saw that she was pale as death. Not a word passed between us during our walk back to the tower, on reaching which she shut herself up in her room. I pleaded a severe headach and wish to lie down; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... went off to visit his patients. His step had grown light, his face had lost its look of alert yet furtive dread. He looked twenty years younger. And no wonder. He no longer had to dodge Potter at every turn, and a big package of receipted bills, endorsed and dated, lay snugly in his desk, the fear of duns exorcised ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various

... and afterwards, when we sat smoking and sipping black coffee in the veranda, we were unusually quiet, even to gravity, which caused the two white-clad servants that waited on us—the brown-faced subtle-eyed old Hindu butler and an almost blue-black young Guiana Negro—to direct many furtive glances at their master's face. They were accustomed to see him in a more genial mood when he had a friend to dine. To me the change in his manner was not surprising: from the moment of seeing him I had divined that he had determined to open the shut and clasped volume of which I had spoken—that ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson

... sight of their wounded and dead brethren, were only restrained from taking summary vengeance by the dread of the artillery. Even this fear could not prevent their occasionally venturing near enough to fire upon the settlers and their new allies,—these furtive and for the most part futile indications of malignity, were, however, always easily repelled by a single shot from a four or six-pounder, which usually put the assailants for the time being to an immediate flight. But it ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman









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