|
|
|
More "Secretive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... close-cropped, so close that it showed the lean, wolfish line of his jaw. All his features were of striking sharpness. His eyes, of a singularly brilliant blue, were yet cold and pale. The brow had a serious, thoughtful cast; long furrows sloped down the cheeks. It was a strange, secretive face, full of a power that Shefford had not seen in another man's, full of intelligence and thought that had not been used as Shefford had known them used among men. The face mystified him. It had so much more than the strange aloofness so characteristic ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... after occasional voyages, where Robin More still drowsed over his books; where Alan Donn still hunted and fished and golfed, haler at five and fifty than a boy in his early twenties; and where his mother sat and did beautiful broidery, dumbly, inimically, cold as a fish, secretive as a badger, there he would meet the women of the Antrim families, women who knew of the disaster of his marriage, and they would look approvingly at his firm face and smiling, steady eyes, and they would say: "A man, thon! He could be a good friend. You could trust ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... decisive step till his father's death. But he began to be well known for his "gentlemanly" ideas to many persons of high position in Petersburg, with whom he strenuously kept up connections. He was secretive and self-contained. Another characteristic: he belonged to that strange section of the nobility, still surviving in Russia, who set an extreme value on their pure and ancient lineage, and take it too seriously. At the ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... secured a big stretch of the field close to the claim pegged out by Mike and Josh Peetree, and they were thought to have possession of the most profitable part of the alluvial deposit, but worked their claims with great caution, and were as secretive as so many mopokes, so that the whites really had no idea what their ground was like, excepting such as the experienced miners could gather from the general trend of the richer wash dirt. Extraordinary stories of the success ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... dreadful to see how she sank under that, how she cringed before him, her anger gone, her colour gone, the light fled from her eyes—eyes grown suddenly secretive. It was a minute, it seemed a minute at least, before she could frame a word, a single word. Then, "What do you know?" she whispered. But for the wall against which she leant, she must ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... But as a matter of fact, it has a far greater value; for while repeating his purpose to practise writing—"to acquire facility and elegance in the expression" of his thought—it gives an introspective glimpse into the naturally secretive mind, revealing an intense desire, if not for the "flesh pots of Egypt," at least for such creature and intellectual comforts as would enable him and those close to him "to bask themselves in the warm sunshine of the brief day." This paper is ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... a cooler moment, I hasten to blab the whole simplicity of it, to blab on Roscoe and the other navigators and the rest of the priesthood, all for fear that I may become even as they, secretive, immodest, and inflated with self-esteem. And I want to say this now: any young fellow with ordinary gray matter, ordinary education, and with the slightest trace of the student-mind, can get the books, and charts, and instruments and teach himself navigation. Now ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... across the office. There seemed to be more or less mystery about this man who had provoked all those curses from the secretive ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... immediate comment; secretive she might have to be, but to a deliberate pretence she would not stoop. So she did not even say, "Indeed!" but merely, after a pause, "You are something of a botanist yourself, then, Mrs. Woodgate?" For they had been talking ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... "We're somewhat secretive—yes, sir," Tom replied. "That is only because we regard the method we are going to use as being mainly the concern of the A., G. & N. M. No ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... but that they produce fertile seed only when pollen from another plant is carried to them. Yet how difficult they make dining for their benefactors! The bumblebee, which can reach the nectar, but not lap it conveniently, often "gets square" with the secretive blossom by nipping holes through its spur, to which the hive bees and others hasten for refreshment. We frequently find these punctured flowers. But hive and other bees visiting the blossom for pollen, some rubs off against their breast when they depress the two middle petals, ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... course," said Mrs. Gilbert with meticulous carelessness, "Gloria never makes me her confidante. She's very secretive. Between you and me"—she bent forward cautiously, obviously determined that only Heaven and her nephew should share her confession—"between you and me, I'd like to see ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... dreadful suggestion," she said. "No such idea ever occurred to me. Secretive I thought Susan might be, but immoral, never. I must forget you ever thought that. Let's talk about something less painful. Perhaps you would like to tell ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... back, "it is none of my business. But I warn you, Mr. Berwin, that others are more curious than I am. Several times people have been known to be in your house while you were absent, and your mode of life, secretive and strange, does not commend itself to the householders in this neighbourhood. If you persist in giving rise to gossip and scandal, some busybody may bring the police ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... optical instruments of a certain Bressieux, then in Paris, who had for two years been chief workman in that line for Descartes. They were anxious to make him a present of some good glass from London, because he was rather secretive about his workmanship, and such a present would go a great way towards ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... Tampering. He had the greatest possible esteem for Mrs. Fisher, but he did at times find her a little difficult. She liked him, he was sure, and she was in a fair way, he felt, to become a client, but he feared she would be a headstrong and secretive client. She was certainly secretive, for though he had been skilful and sympathetic for a whole week, she had as yet given him no inkling of what was so evidently ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... "Dobbin, dear old secretive Dobbin, what difference does it make to you whether you feel the guiding hand or not? You know when the courtship begins, the brisk drives about town to all points of interest, to the pond, the poorhouse, and the cemetery; you know how the courtship progresses, the long drives in the country, the ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... and steady and not too comical, both had a certain kind of expression, now—like amused and secretive gorillas. Frank wasn't sure whether he got the meaning of this or not, but right then he felt sort of sympathetic ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... you to know that I have wit enough to contrast your secretive manner with Maillot's willingness to talk, and to draw ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... Pat McCormick. "Mac," with his grim, set face and his silent, secretive habits, fitted perfectly to Peter's conception of a dynamiter. Also "Mac" was Peter's personal enemy; "Mac" had just returned from his organizing trip in the oil fields, and had been denouncing Peter and gossiping about him in the various radical groups. "Mac" was the ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... was a living, sentient thing now, secretive, shrouding the secret that lay beyond ...
— Where the World is Quiet • Henry Kuttner
... pain the sullen, secretive girl had turned instinctively to the one person who had been uniformly gentle and kind to her throughout all her trouble. Nothing that Amy had done or said, had turned Ruth from her; and the barriers of girl's nature and of her evil passions were ...
— Ruth Fielding in Moving Pictures - Or Helping The Dormitory Fund • Alice Emerson
... tossing out the sixty thousand pounds' worth of bonds to Tracy, who was waiting with his three warning lights, failed because of old Blumenfeld's sleeplessness, but it was substituted by a far more secretive yet simple plan—one never even dreamed of by the astute police attached to the Paris, Lyons and Mediterranean Railway. It being daylight at Lyons, the blinds ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... loveliness, that the one seems almost to include the others. Where the meadows are the fairest, there the rivers gleam and sparkle in the summer sun of memory. The Isis, stately stream, proud of the great oarsmen she has taught, and of historic boats that she has borne; the Cherwell, winding, secretive, alluring, willow-girt, whispering of men and maidens, and of the dream days of ambitious youth. Each river has its bridge. The mightier stream, as is most fitting, spanned where for centuries the road has passed from Oxford into Berkshire; ...
— Oxford • Frederick Douglas How
... changed—for the time being at least—Helen's nature. From a frank, open-hearted, loving girl she became suspicious, morose and secretive. The first words she heard held her spell-bound—an unintentional eavesdropper. And what she heard made her determined to appear to her unkind relatives quite as they expected her ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... to be room, me dear, for I've come to stay. How dare you be ill by yourself? It's a bad effect London has had on you to make you so close and secretive. You! Who yelled the roof down if you as much as scratched your finger! We ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... Vienna, had a better perspective than Boston then afforded. Even Mr. Norton, Lowell's dear friend and associate upon the North American Review, thought in 1862 that the President was timid, vacillating, and secretive, and, what now seems a queerer judgment still, that he wrote very poor English. But if the editors of the North American showed a typical Anglo-Saxon reluctance in yielding to the spell of a new ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... seated at a desk before him, a thin-featured, thin-haired man of forty, with the crumpled-up eye-corners peculiar to the face that masks a circuitous and secretive mind. It was a face full of that weary concern, that alert indifferency, which is companion to the spirit of repeated compromise. It was far from an open face: it seemed to betray only two things, ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... clothes with him as I did with Clara; he's too big, but one way or other I'll save him," said Cap, to herself. She said it to no one else, for the more difficult the enterprise the more determined she was to succeed, and the more secretive she grew ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... secretive person who vaguely refers to "a certain party" when he has occasion to speak of another is the exact opposite of ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... returned promptly. "I'm never secretive against you, Anstey, old man and the only reason I don't talk at once is that I don't know just what I want to say. But remember—-8.15. By that time I think I shall have solved myself into ...
— Dick Prescott's Second Year at West Point - Finding the Glory of the Soldier's Life • H. Irving Hancock
... where writing-paper was supplied gratis. "Couldn't have come ashore after I left him: he'd paid his bill at the Rest and his bag was aboard. Must have had this in his pocket all the time; might just as well have handed it to me—with instructions not to open it—and saved the stamp. What a secretive old ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... might direct suspicion to you. In this way we may work all summer without detection. The Border Legion will become mysterious and famous. It will appear to be a large number of men, operating all over. The more secretive we are the more powerful the effect on the diggings. In gold-camps, when there's a strike, all men are mad. They suspect each other. They can't organize. We shall have them helpless.... And in short, if it's as rich a strike as looks due here in ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... apprehended defeat at the hands of the unofficial majority in the legislative Councils. But the Indian public remained generally in ignorance of the extent to which the influence of the Indian representatives made itself felt, either for good or for evil, on Government. The bureaucracy, more secretive in India than elsewhere, had never realised the importance of guiding public opinion, or, a fortiori, the necessity of keeping it informed if you wish to guide it. The politicians, on the other hand, preferred to make capital out of those questions on which they failed to make any ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... survived; he could not write the simplest words correctly, and his speech was a brusque medley of slang, jargon, dialect and profanity. It was said of him that he could swear more forcibly, variously and frequently than any other man of his generation. Like the Astors, he was cynical, distrustful, secretive and parsimonious. He kept his plans entirely to himself. In his business dealings he was never known to have shown the slightest mercy; he demanded the last cent due. His close-fistedness was such a ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... was Helen quiet of disposition, but strangely secretive on certain subjects. For instance, she seldom said anything about her home or relatives. She lived in Villa Park, a small town midway between Westmoreland and Hollyhill. Her father was dead, and, when not at school, she ...
— Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains - or, A Christmas Success against Odds • Stella M. Francis
... Willa glanced up quickly, but she could not meet his eyes. "She is very secretive, you know, and jealous of the old legends which to her form the sacred history of her beloved country. Suppose you tell me the ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... aware," he observed calmly, "that I have ever been unduly secretive so far as you are concerned. During the last few months, however, of our life together, you must remember that you chose to receive on terms of friendship a person whom ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to yourself, please. The boys have been doing a little research, and it's clear these unidentified flying objects people have been seeing come from Swamp Creek. That points to the old mansion, especially since Mr. Merlin is so secretive about himself. We decided to get up before the people at the mansion were likely to be about, and look the place over. If it looks promising, we'll try keeping an eye ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin
... parts of Russia behave, as though by agreement, precisely in the same way as this young man, and in all these cases the government has adopted the same timorous, undecided, and secretive course of action. Some of these men are sent to the lunatic asylum, some are enrolled as clerks and transferred to Siberia, some are sent to work in the forests, some are sent to prison, some are fined. And at this very ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... managed. The only regrettable thing will be the death of two—two brilliant detectives. It may interest you to know that you will be found dead—shot—which will account for my having waited for you in vain at Whiteladies to-night. You have helped me greatly by being secretive to-day and not arriving here until after dark. Your death will be a nine days' wonder, but it will be a mystery which will ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... briefly, while disclosing nothing at variance with or unfindable in his published speeches. Of some of them he repeated apposite slices; to others he referred for further enlightenment as to his views on imperial federation. Really he was neither secretive nor newly informative. The Premier of Canada at any time is governed, much as I have endeavored to show how the electors are, by that natural, instinctive course of the general loyal Canadian mind, which constitutes "the situation" and controls Governmental ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... bathroom, requesting that doors be locked, or wish to play in a bedroom securely away from mother and the caretaker. Under no circumstances should this be allowed. Let the child early learn that good wholesome play in the open is better than secretive misdemeanor behind ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... and wrong. The kleptomaniac is generally recognized as being a well-defined class of the insane. Most of the shop-lifters are women. This is especially a female crime. It is useless to explain why. It is not a daring crime; it is secretive in its nature; it requires more stealth than courage; it especially appeals to women on account of their taste for the finery exhibited at stores. The kleptomaniac, however, is generally a rich or influential woman. She steals something she does not need, and she is therefore held ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow
... "Commissioner So-and-So has the matter in hand—refer to him." And so, when a new danger appeared on the distressed horizon, Amir Khan and a hundred thousand massed horsemen, Captain Barlow was sent to consult with the Resident. That was the way; a secretive, trusty, brave man, for in India the written page ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... for a time, but after a wrangle he gave up the ticket, intending to take it from Tommy when primed with the necessary tale. So they parted until evening, and Tommy returned to Elspeth, secretive but elated. For the rest of the day he was in thought, now waggling his head smugly over some dark, unutterable design and again looking a little scared. In growing alarm she watched his face, and at last she slipped upon her knees, but he had her up at ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... turn without seeing a girl working for dear life to attract the man she wants; if she can't secure him, some other man; and in lieu of him, any man at all, in preference to none. Life shows us woman on the age-old quest every day, everywhere we go; why be so secretive about it? Why not say honestly what we want, and take it if we can get it? At any rate, that is the most important thing inside my sunbonnet. ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... had grown so familiar that every eye and ear was on the strain, and finger upon trigger, as tree, shrub, and grassy clump was expected momentarily to develop into a foe. The secretive nature of these people made our position at times more painful and exciting, as we knew that at any moment they might come close to us in the darkness, and almost before the alarm could be given, dash up to the ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... remarked, "seems to have been what you might call a secretive sort of person. Nobody appears to know anything about him. I remember when he was staying here before that he had no callers, and seemed to spend most of his time sitting in ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... together and compared notes and decided that the boys were "real mean, so now!" To pay Chet and Lance and Billy Long for being so secretive about the person they suspected of having caused the injury to the stranger Saturday evening, the three girls went alone that Sunday afternoon to the hospital to ...
— The Girls of Central High Aiding the Red Cross - Or Amateur Theatricals for a Worthy Cause • Gertrude W. Morrison
... bear. Whether or not his knife was meant for me, I can not say. Nor have I sufficient proof openly to accuse him, but of this much I am convinced. Themar's presence near the camp of Miss Westfall is, in the face of your peculiar and secretive errand, ominously significant." ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... greatness, as did also the private mansions, which preserved a kind of mystery behind their high-walled gardens and massive double doors. There was one such which I never passed at night without thinking of the Sieur de Maletroit's door. The streets were narrow, tortuous, and secretive, with many blind alleys and dark closes, and it required no great effort of the imagination—especially at night when not a light showed—to call to mind the ambuscades and adventures with the watch which they must have witnessed ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... influence of Horace Walpole and Wyat. It was backed by a rookery of old and enormous elms. It was approached on one side by a fine avenue of limes, and was otherwise surrounded by gardens with gray walls or secretive laurel hedges. Here was a water tank in the form of a Strawberry Hill chapel. Here was a greenhouse unaltered since the days of George II. Everywhere, though everything was antique, there were signs of punctilious care, and morning by morning a bevy of female villagers would be raking the gravel ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... because stranded, and then, just because his corn twinges, or it may be the gout, what execrations, and, dear me, to hear him talk of money, taking out his leather purse and grudging even the smallest silver coin, secretive and suspicious as an old peasant woman with all her lies. Strange paralysis and constriction—marvellous illumination. Serene over it all rides the great full brow, and sometimes asleep or in the quiet spaces of the night you might fancy that ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... her work, and her eager interest in this little knot of people whose lives she had shaped was more possessive than ever. Hurd, indeed, was often silent and secretive; but she put down her difficulties with him to our odious system of class differences, against which in her own way she was struggling. One thing delighted her—that he seemed to take more and more interest in the labour questions she discussed with him, and in that ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... mysterious and secretive on that point," Dulcie answered. "I asked him to tell me what the car was like, if he had any idea whose it was. He said it was a grey car, but he wouldn't tell me more than that. He said he believed he had 'hit the line,' ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... Vladimir Nicholaievitch, who was naturally compelled to curry favour with the Father, and consequently sometimes visited him even against his inclination, no doubt. He was a long, rather narrow-faced, bearded man, with a pair of deep-set eyes and a secretive air, subtle by temperament, and keenly alive to his own interests as well ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... it be? I'm not a leper, and she—she's no longer in love!' Why should he be put to the shifts and the sordid disgraces and the lurking defeats of the Divorce Court, when there she was like an empty house only waiting to be retaken into use and possession by him who legally owned her? To one so secretive as Soames the thought of reentry into quiet possession of his own property with nothing given away to the world was intensely alluring. 'No,' he mused, 'I'm glad I went to see that girl. I know now what I want most. If only Irene will come back I'll ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... negotiable; and the impulse I had towards self-deception, to sustained and consistent self-devotion, disturbed and detached and pointless as it was at that time, he had indeed a sort of admiration for but no sympathy. Like many fantastic and ample talkers he was at bottom secretive, and he gave me a series of little shocks of discovery ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... is strange; but he is a secretive Dutchman by nature. He specializes in prying into the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... anxious curiosity and the same commonness, not to say vulgarity of interest, and the book was certainly unique in one respect, and that was the absolute sincerity of the author with himself. Montaigne is conscious that we are looking over his shoulder, and Rousseau secretive in comparison with him. The very fact of that sincerity of the author with himself argued a certain greatness of character. Dr. Hickes, who attended Pepys at his deathbed, spoke of him as 'this great man,' and said he knew no one who died so greatly. ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... lemon—the surprising but agreeable compound accidentally invented by Nellie on the previous day at the pier buffet. The little thing must have spent a part of the previous afternoon in preparing it, and she must have put the package in the post at Crewe. Secretive and delightful little thing! After his recent experience beyond the bay he had imagined himself to be incapable of ever eating again, but it was not so. The lemon gave a peculiar astringent, appetising, settling quality to the chocolate. And he ate even with gusto. The result ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... interesting men of the age, and his character has been drawn by many hands; but Machiavelli, who was an envoy at his court in 1507-8, reveals the secret of his many failures when he describes him as a secretive man, without force of character—ignoring the human agencies necessary to carry his schemes into effect, and never insisting on the ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... on to another valley. Would it have been warmer than this? Oh, Marchese, I don't like you when you are subtle and secretive. It reminds me that we are of different countries—as different as the north can be from the south. Do tell me what is really in your mind. Why do you hate this valley? Why has coming into it tied your tongue, and made you look as if you ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... while. I feel sort of drawed to her. But she won't have no truck with me... nor nobody.... She hain't never left nothin' layin' around her room that a body could git any idee about her from. Secretive, I ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... say a word to her about it." However, she was conscious of no evil motive; it was simply because she was naturally secretive. She looked ...
— Jane Field - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... glared upon all the besiegers, till his pock-marked face grew white as leprosy, and every spot in his secretive eye faded out in the glitter of ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... a secretive devil," said I. "What's the book about? Tell an old friend. Get it off your mind. It ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... with the hope of Sunday ice-cream; while the boys, experiencing some solace in that they were finally out where a person could at least scratch himself if he had to, yet oppressed by the decorous necessities of the day, marched along, furtively planning, behind imperturbably secretive countenances, various means for the later ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... and huddled against its foundations had cramped themselves into ledges and boulders like men making their last stand in a mountain battle. The streets were tunnels, with vistas of long, dark stone stairways running up and down into mystery. Here and there above secretive doorways were beautiful carvings set into the thick stone walls, relics of the castle's decorations. At sharp corners were tiny shops with dark interiors, and strange assortments of golden oranges, big pearly onions, ruby beets, and bright green, peasant pottery in low-browed windows ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... feverish activity suddenly spread through the house. They met and passed each other, hurrying, troubled, secretive; the servants stumbled and quarrelled in their purposeless haste. To Belden, quieting when he could, sternly optimistic everywhere, at heart heavy and uncertain, it seemed that the one anchor of their hopes was this calm, clear-eyed woman in her ...
— In The Valley Of The Shadow • Josephine Daskam
... artists, oftentimes oracular personages, dangerous of approach by outsiders having opinions (such must generally expect a direct snubbing, polite indifference, or silent scorn), knowing much but not everything, no single one infallible, highly honorable as members of a guild, secretive as doctors or lawyers, chary of talking shop to the uninitiated, hardworking, conscientious, half luring, half scoffing at the glorious visions of the creative imagination granted them chiefly of all men, wonder workers, world reformers, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... walked to the back of the hall to telephone, Katherine, an anxious figure, a secretive one, beckoned Bobby to the library. He went with her, wondering ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... instructions of Brighton-Pomfrey—he had now experimented ignorantly and planlessly with one or two narcotics and sleeping mixtures that friends and acquaintances had mentioned in his hearing. For the first time in his life he became secretive from his wife. He knew he ought not to take these things, he knew they were physically and morally evil, but a tormenting craving drove him to them. Subtly and insensibly his character was being undermined by ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... at Carlisle, and wondered if she possibly had refused Mr. Canning, and, if so, why Mr. Canning had skipped back just to stay over Sunday and not go near her, and why Cally was so mysterious and secretive all of a sudden. She always told Cally every single thing about her affairs, reporting in detail what was "the most" each man said to her, and always bringing her their letters to read, even Mr. Dudley's, ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... and there, the staring R, the blazoned arms looked down on a vacant floor. Only on a little stool by the farther door, sat a quiet-faced man in black, who read, or pretended to read, in a little book, and never looked up. One of those men, blind, deaf, secretive, who fatten in ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... close to her thin face walked across the state to Tarrytown. Several times during the five years after leaving Lem's scow she walked to Tarrytown, returning only when she had seen the little boy, to take up her squatter life in her father's hut. So secretive was she that no one had been taken into her confidence; neither had she interfered with her child in any way. Never once, hitherto, had her senses left her on those long country marches toward the east; but often when she turned backward she would ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... a crook; his face is hard, stern, bigoted, secretive, but honest. Yet if he didn't do it himself what was he trying to tell when death cut off his wind? If he did it, where did he hide the plunder? Here in this house? His family must have known every nook ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... exaggerations of misdoings, though he registered the knowledge he guessed at for future guidance. It was against Ishmael's nature to be expansive, and if he had been so on that occasion he would probably never have felt so easy with the Parson again. As it was, he began, in his secretive way, to copy Boase at all points that seemed good to him, doing things of his own initiative which he would have rebelled from being told. When the Parson got him a pony at fair-time, Ishmael soon gathered ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... handsome species, with plumage of glossy brown, yellowish buff, black and white; length seven inches. They are very shy and secretive, and are probably more common than generally supposed. Their nesting habits are the same as those of the preceding. Their eggs are of a rich buff color, speckled in the form of a wreath about the large end, with reddish brown. They are relatively narrower than those of other Rails. ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... diminished and her severity increased. "Oh, if you want the whole story," she said, "you'd better have it and have done; that is, so far as I know it myself. There are certain ins and outs that I don't know even yet, for Rufus can be very secretive if he likes. Well then, yes, he did come back, and he brought Mr. Knight with him. They were washed up by a great wave that dropped 'em high and dry near the quay. Mr. Knight was half drowned, and Rufus ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... are your instructions. Then, that is all except'—here Midmore half rose, but Mr. Sperrit's little grey eyes held his large brown ones firmly—'except about Rhoda Dolbie, Mrs. Werf's maid. I may tell you that we did not draw up your aunt's last will. She grew secretive towards the last—elderly people often do—and had it done in London. I expect her memory failed her, or she mislaid her notes. She used to put them in her spectacle-case.... My motor only takes eight minutes to get to the station, Mr. Midmore ... but, as I was saying, whenever ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... so secretive," Frank said. "You have a straight out and out theory of that night's work, and you won't tell me ...
— Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone - The Plot Against Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... Parliament called him Vladimir Ulianov, and that's what he called himself. He had proved to be reticent, secretive, deceitful, diligent, and utterly unhuman. His lower lip was shaped as though something dripped from it. Blood, perhaps. His eyes were brown and not entirely unattractive. But God makes the eyes; the mouth is ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... quite make out. It always seemed as though it was something that Mr. Morris wanted. At first I got the notion that it was something that he wanted to buy and which Mr. Hume refused to sell; but later I changed my mind. There seemed to be more to it than appeared on the top. Both were very secretive about it." ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... I said in an appealing tone. I feared that his secretive instincts would get the better of him, and he would delay giving his reasons, out of the pure love of mystification that was inherent in the old fellow's nature. I was too anxious to be patient; but my appeal ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... a bad tool, at once stubborn and secretive, cunning enough to recognise and to resent handling, thickheaded and vain enough to blunder ruinously. And Elmur found at the last and most important moment that for some unexplained reason he had lost the ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... Grimm was repeating, "I've had to be pretty shrewd and secretive. For it wouldn't do to let either of them suspect too soon. And I flatter myself they didn't. Here's my notion. I made up in my mind to keep Katje in the family. I'm a rich man. And so I've had to guard against young fellows who would dangle around after a girl for her money. ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... getting away from business even in the country and pointing at the half dozen telephones on top of the big flat desk with a derisive gesture while detailing to Oliver the fondness that Sargent Piper has for secretive private wires and the absurd precautions he takes to keep them intensely private. "Why he went and had all his special numbers here changed once just because I found out one of them by mistake and called him up on it for a joke—the ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... those that go mad, like yours!' 'Lor', miss,' said Farmer Hendry, 'he haven't been pastured here for three weeks. I keep him six mile away. There ben't nothing but gentle cows in the home medder.' But I didn't think that you knew, you secretive person! I dare say you planned the whole thing in advance, in order to take advantage ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the girl, with the secretive instinct of self-reliance hiding the unhappiness his abrupt question set ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... Knowing his secretive and tortuous nature, this sudden zeal for openness seemed almost unnatural. He began by unrolling his own blanket, inside of which appeared a miscellaneous collection of articles. I remember among them a spare pair of very dirty trousers, ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... somewhat meaninglessly to one another), but because the group display on the whole, all round, a greater amount of intelligence, of cleverness, and of adaptability to circumstances than any other birds, including even their cunning and secretive rivals, the ravens, the jackdaws, the crows, ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... I tell you, I'd give years of my life to be able to do what all entomologists are wild to do—study the depths of a termite mound. God! What wouldn't I give for the privilege of shrinking to ant-size, and roaming loose in that secretive-looking ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... of Cold Spring Coulee. For a month he never left the ranch unless business compelled him to do so, and his return was speedy, his eyes anxious until he knew that all was well. After that his confidence returned. He grew more secretive, more self-assured, more at ease with his guilt. He looked the Wishbone men squarely in the eye, and it seldom occurred to him that he was a thief; or if it did, the word was but a synonym for luck, with shrewdness behind. Sometimes he regretted his timidity. Why three calves only? ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... of the race, which loves intelligence. Christophe met financiers there, engineers, newspaper proprietors, international brokers, slave-dealers of a sort from Algiers—the men of affairs of the Republic. They were clear-headed and energetic, indifferent to other people, smiling, affable, and secretive. Christophe felt sometimes that behind their hard faces was the knowledge of crime in the past, and the future, of these men gathered round the sumptuous table laden with food, flowers, and wine. They were almost all ugly. But the women, taken as a whole, were quite brilliant, ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... sentimentalist in art than Mr. Abbey had been. He was quiet, undemonstrative, alert, and wholly willing to let the public dictate the course of the establishment. Outwardly he was always calm, urbane, neither communicative nor secretive. I sat behind him during all the years of his divided and undivided directorship, and never failed of a pleasant greeting, no matter what the expression of The Tribune had been on the morning of the day. He accepted congratulations ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... in lighting his pipe, had shown his face. At the thought of a warm engine-room and the company of his fellow creatures, David's heart leaped with pleasure. He advanced quickly. And then something in the appearance of the tug, something mysterious, secretive, threatening, caused him to halt. No lights showed from her engine-room, cabin, or pilot-house. Her decks were empty. But, as was evidenced by the black smoke that rose from her funnel, she was awake and awake to some purpose. David stood uncertainly, ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... not step out of my place without occasion; but I see how much evil has flowed in the past to all of your noble house from that unhappy and secretive fault of reticency, and the papers on which I venture to call your attention are family papers, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his spirit there returned the old haunting pangs—the memory of Allie Lee, the despairing doubts of life or death for her. Beyond the camp loomed the dim hills, mystical, secretive, and unchangeable. If she were out there among them, dead or alive, to know it would be a blessed relief. It was this horror of ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... excitement, cowed the Cuban. Never had he been able to penetrate into his fellow-conspirator's thoughts. But that Cecil should have talked loosely of so vital, so terrible a secret? No. The grave itself was not more secretive than that quiet schemer, of whom nothing ever seemed to be known. And to a negro boy! ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... regarding a dusty and dirty old house in that part of the Heights in Brooklyn whence all that is fashionable had not yet taken flight, a house of mystery, yet not more mysterious than its owner in his secretive comings and goings in the affairs of men of a generation beyond his time. Further than the facts that he was reputed to be very wealthy and led, in the heart of a great city, what was as nearly like the life of a hermit as possible, I knew little or nothing, "What ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... not to be wondered at that when a soul is in the throes of such experiences as these, it is a time of storm and stress. Yet often the struggle is carried on alone, in silence, for life becomes secretive. The open frankness of childhood is gone, and only to one in close sympathy will thoughts and feelings which sound foundation depths be revealed. It does not at all follow that because there is a physical tie between two lives, that there will be union ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... with him as I did with Clara; he's too big, but one way or other I'll save him," said Cap, to herself. She said it to no one else, for the more difficult the enterprise the more determined she was to succeed, and the more secretive she grew ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... did," answered Marian. "I so love one spot that I have been most secretive about it. I am certain I never went further than to say there was a place on which I would love to build for myself the house of my dreams. I have just about finished getting that home on paper, and I truly have ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... one of your lot, I suppose?' said Mr Inspector, taking a few notes in his pocket-book—a secretive little article which shut with ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... is secretive and not given to expressed emotion—excepting in his union songs. The bosses don't like his songs either. But the logger isn't worried a bit. Working away in the woods every day, or in his bunk at night, he dreams his dream of the world ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... only reality. Equally real is the passionate revolt of my heart against cruelty, and the deep fluctuating impulse not to pretend, to set aside fear and jealousy, to come nakedly out of the compromises and secretive methods of every-day living into the light, into a wide impersonal love, into a new way of ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... Elsmere had not confided in her, though she was unable to count the openings she had given him thereto. For one of the frankest of men he had kept his secret, so far as words went, with a remarkable tenacity. Probably the neighbourhood of Mrs. Thornburgh was enough to make the veriest chatterbox secretive. But notwithstanding, no one possessing the clue could live in the same house with him these June days without seeing that the whole man was absorbed, transformed, and that the crisis might be reached at any moment. Even the vicar was eager ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and still no Loring, and the round of drinks were getting monotonous. Judge Pardee, a bibulous and oracular limb of the law, had been chosen inquisitor-general, with powers to call for all the news that was stowed away in that secretive "knowledge-box" on the shoulders of the Engineer. Gate City had resolved and "'lowed" that a man reputed to know so much should be held up and compelled to part with at least a little. Jimmy Peters, the ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... plan of tossing out the sixty thousand pounds' worth of bonds to Tracy, who was waiting with his three warning lights, failed because of old Blumenfeld's sleeplessness, but it was substituted by a far more secretive yet simple plan—one never even dreamed of by the astute police attached to the Paris, Lyons and Mediterranean Railway. It being daylight at Lyons, the blinds ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... small doubt but that the friendship and trust which characterized her feelings towards him would soon have ripened into more passionate love, but for the advent into her life of the mysterious hero, who by his personality, his strange, secretive ways, his talk of patriotism and liberty, at once took complete possession of her ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... of which is remarkable under these circumstances—he was very secretive, giving as his reason for taking no apprentice, his desire that no one else should ever know or ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... tangle of false circumstances, which, by their seeming plausibility, make the task of reaching the truth one of peculiar difficulty. As Colwyn sat motionless, with his chin resting on his hand, brooding over the sullen secretive surface of this dark mystery, the feeling grew upon him that the murder had been preconceived with the utmost cunning and caution, and that the facts so far brought to light, including his own discoveries, did not penetrate ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... residuum of my grievance was not with the secretive methods of the Bulgarians—they were wise and necessary—but with the wild fictions which some correspondents thought to be the proper response to ...
— Bulgaria • Frank Fox
... way among them, and became acquainted with their children, there had sprung up a most curious sort of understanding between the Butterfly Man on the one side, and the half-articulate foreigners in the factory and the sly secretive mill-workers on ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... all but forgotten. The Preventive men were secretly as much on the alert as when the smugglers were most active. They purposely adopted an apparent indifference with the idea of luring the rovers into over-confidence. Each party took into account the possibility of being betrayed. In all secretive illegal societies there are suspects. Jimmy Stone having changed his mode of life, suspicion fell very naturally on him; but though he sometimes darkly hinted at the identity and the secrets of his late allies, he was never known to definitely divulge anything that would incriminate ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... age. During the first year, however, she suffered greatly from pains in her head and abdomen, and, a common condition in hysteria—all four of her limbs were contracted. She passed neither urine nor faeces. Margaret, though only ten years old—hysteria develops the secretive faculties—played her part so well that, after being watched by the priest of the parish and Dr. Bucoldianus, she was considered free from all juggling, and was sent home to her friends by order of the King, "not," the doctor adds, "without great ...
— Fasting Girls - Their Physiology and Pathology • William Alexander Hammond
... of boyhood. But whereas the boy is secretive and reticent about the particular associations his pocket holds, the man will ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... connived at by a multitude. One man was its head and heart; its accessories were so numerous that the trouble is not whom to suspect, but whom not accuse. Damning as the result must be to the character of our race, it must be admitted, in the light of facts, that Americans are as secretive and as skillful plotters as any people in the world. The Rye House plot, never fully understood; the many schemes of Mazzini, never fastened upon him sufficiently well for implication, yield in extent, ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... Minamoto descent, and an aristocrat to the marrow of his bones. As a soldier he was scarcely inferior to Hideyoshi, whom he once defeated,—but he was much more than a soldier, a far-sighted statesman, an incomparable diplomat, and something of a scholar. Cool, cautious, secretive,—distrustful, yet generous,—stern, yet humane,—by the range and the versatility of his genius he might be not unfavourably contrasted with Julius Caesar. All that Nobunaga and Hideyoshi had wished to do, and failed to [278] do, Iyeyasu speedily accomplished. After fulfilling Hideyoshi's ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... door leading into the women's building, and Brigit and Monny entered the same secretive sort of vestibule they must have remembered in the House of the Crocodile. A screen-wall prevented them from seeing what was beyond; and the dead silence frightened them a little, so easy was it to make of this ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... girl raised her head quickly; her deep violet eyes seemed also to leap with a sudden suspicion, and with a half-mechanical, secretive movement, that might have been only a schoolgirl's instinct, her right hand had slipped a paper on which she was scribbling between the leaves of her book. Yet the next moment, even while looking interrogatively at her mother, she withdrew the paper quietly, ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... was something that Mr. Morris wanted. At first I got the notion that it was something that he wanted to buy and which Mr. Hume refused to sell; but later I changed my mind. There seemed to be more to it than appeared on the top. Both were very secretive about it." ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... at this moment caused by a victory won over her Cousin Lisbeth's perversity; she had just wrung from her an avowal she had been hoping for these three years past. However secretive an old maid may be, there is one sentiment which will always avail to make her break her fast from words, and that is her vanity. For the last three years, Hortense, having become very inquisitive on such matters, had pestered her cousin with questions, which, however, bore the stamp of ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... Toni matured to statelier maidenhood. The plump girl, half-child, droll and naive, grew to be a thoughtful, silent young woman, secretive and very sure of her aims. She condescended to the guests and took no notice of the desperate admiration which surrounded her. Her glowing eyes looked into emptiness, her infinitely tempting mouth smiled carelessly ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... the unofficial majority in the legislative Councils. But the Indian public remained generally in ignorance of the extent to which the influence of the Indian representatives made itself felt, either for good or for evil, on Government. The bureaucracy, more secretive in India than elsewhere, had never realised the importance of guiding public opinion, or, a fortiori, the necessity of keeping it informed if you wish to guide it. The politicians, on the other hand, preferred to make capital out of those questions on which they failed to make any impression ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... word that might direct suspicion to you. In this way we may work all summer without detection. The Border Legion will become mysterious and famous. It will appear to be a large number of men, operating all over. The more secretive we are the more powerful the effect on the diggings. In gold-camps, when there's a strike, all men are mad. They suspect each other. They can't organize. We shall have them helpless.... And in short, if it's as rich a strike as looks due here in these hills, before winter ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... method of handling the subjects of negotiation the more readily because he was by nature and by inclination secretive. He had always shown a preference for a private interview with an individual. In his conduct of the executive affairs of the Government at Washington he avoided as far as possible general conferences. He talked a good deal about "taking common counsel," but showed no disposition to ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... it is out one hears the men, in places and then all along, detach themselves from their secretive stillness, get up, and resume the ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... were out of the house, while he went to find or to wait for his dear Hattie. But his mother did not know all this, and Kit did not tell her. The quick poison of the unreal life about her had already begun to affect her character. She had grown secretive and sly. The innocent longing which in a burst of enthusiasm she had expressed that first night at the theatre was growing into a real ambition with her, and she dropped the simple old songs she knew to practise the detestable coon ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... statues in the least, and your comparison is unnaturally far-fetched. Another thing, and this annoys me even more: my secretive friend sends flowers from the cheapest florist he can find. I argue from this that he is poor, and cannot afford to send me flowers ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... answered Roger, and then began to get ready to go to bed. He could not help but wonder what the business was, and why Dave was so secretive about it. ...
— Dave Porter and His Rivals - or, The Chums and Foes of Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer
... 16. The reserved or secretive should marry the frank. A cunning man cannot endure the least artifice in a wife. Those who are non-committal must marry those who are demonstrative; else, however much they may love, neither will feel sure as to the other's affections, and each will distrust the other, while their children ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... seek in vain for the early stages of Lincoln's ideas. His mind will never reveal itself until the moment at which it engages the world. No wonder, in later times, his close associates pronounced him the most secretive of men; that one of the keenest of his observers said that the more you knew of Lincoln, the less ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... Emmeline, even as a child she had never been talkative. There was something mysterious in her personality, something secretive. Her mind seemed half submerged in twilight. Though she spoke little, and though the subject of their conversations was almost entirely material and relative to their everyday needs, her mind would wander into abstract fields and the land ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... self-fertilization, but that they produce fertile seed only when pollen from another plant is carried to them. Yet how difficult they make dining for their benefactors! The bumblebee, which can reach the nectar, but not lap it conveniently, often "gets square" with the secretive blossom by nipping holes through its spur, to which the hive bees and others hasten for refreshment. We frequently find these punctured flowers. But hive and other bees visiting the blossom for pollen, some rubs off against their breast when ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... so much for your note which Albert gave to me. How very, very kind of you to come here like this and to say that you would help me. And how clever of you to find me after I was so secretive that day in the cab! You really can help me, if you are willing. It's too long to explain in a note, but I am in great trouble, and there is nobody except you to help me. I will explain everything when ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... "The air of secrecy infects one. I am not a secretive man. All the world knows my opinions. And here am I plotting like a friar. Can ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... instant—perhaps he is reading. He is close by. If I shouted, he might hear...." And yet she was utterly cut off from him. Again, in the late dawn, she saw the same building, pale and clear, but just as secretive and enigmatic as in the night. "He is asleep yet," she thought. "Why did he not call? Is ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... unventilated; narrow, cramped; close-mouthed, secretive, reticent, reserved, uncommunicative, taciturn; dense, solid, compact, imporous; near, adjacent, adjoining; intimate, confidential; parsimonious, stingy, penurious niggardly, miserly, illiberal, close-fisted; exact, literal, faithful; ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... wonder why he is so secretive about this business. Evidently he knows all about it, so why shouldn't he come right out and tell what he knows. It's ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle
... some passionate rejoinder. Then, all at once, she checked herself, and again Sara was conscious of that curiously secretive expression in her eyes, as though she ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... pleasure in the city by the Golden Gate and he explored any that offered entertainment—those that led to tables green as grass under the blaze of electric lights, those that led to the poker game behind Soledad Lanza's pink-fronted restaurant, those that led up alleys to dark, secretive doors, and that which led to ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... post; but they removed the bars quietly by wrapping their scrapes around the chain, to prevent the noise alarming the watchman. The steam engine was running day and night, and the watchman had orders to go the rounds of the place every hour during the night; but the Apaches were so skillful and secretive in their movements that not the least intimation of their presence on the place was observed,—not even by the watchdogs, which generally have a ...
— Building a State in Apache Land • Charles D. Poston
... the future of so separate and almost secretive an adventure of the English, the present writer will not permit himself, even for an instant, to prophesy. The Victorian Age made one or two mistakes, but they were mistakes that were really useful; that is, ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... it. At worst an unhappy victim of his own carelessness in loosing a peril upon his neighborhood. You're forgetting a connecting link; the secretive red-dot communications from New York City addressed by Moseley to himself on behalf of some customer who ordered simply by a code of ink dots. He was the man I had to find. The giant luna moths ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... while the boys, experiencing some solace in that they were finally out where a person could at least scratch himself if he had to, yet oppressed by the decorous necessities of the day, marched along, furtively planning, behind imperturbably secretive countenances, various means for the later dispersal of an ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... type of detective work. He had a remarkable memory for faces and could pierce any disguise, he was as persistent as a ferret, and his knowledge of the underworld of San Francisco was illimitable. But his chief assets were that he looked so little like a detective, and that, so secretive were his methods, his calling was practically unknown. He had set up a cheap restaurant with a gambling room behind at which the police winked, although pretending to raid him now and again. He was a large soft man with pendulous cheeks streaked with red, a predatory nose, and ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... returned Gian Maria, in chagrined accents. "It was ever the way of that secretive vassal. Damn him! He frankly told me that if I knew, I would talk. Heard you ever of such insufferable insolence to a prince? All that he would let me learn was that there was a conspiracy afoot to supplant me, and that he was going to capture the conspirators, together with the man whom they were ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... or her lawyer. There is that double possibility. But I am inclined to think neither. Women are naturally secretive, and they like to do their own secreting. Why should she hand it over to anyone else? She could trust her own guardianship, but she could not tell what indirect or political influence might be brought to bear upon a business man. Besides, remember that she had resolved ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... specification, of which the above constitutes one claim, he states that he has discovered "special and specific efficacy in the use of this combination of the caloric rays of the sun and the electric blue light in stimulating the glands of the body, the nervous system generally, and the secretive organs of man and animals." He also states that he finds that vegetation is vastly improved by the transmitted blue light. These alleged re-discoveries—for the General only claims to have devised the method of utilizing them—were extensively promulgated through the press early in 1871. Subsequently, ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various
... lull in our affairs just now. We agreed yesterday that never in our lives had we begun to learn as much as in the last four months. And the last month particularly, there has been almost too much food to be digestible. Talk about the secretive and wily East. Compared, say, with Europe, they hand information out to you here on a platter (though it must be admitted the labels are sometimes mixed) and sandbag ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey
... shapeliness, and the comely external utterance that they make of their internal comfort. Now the others are, as I have said, both furtive and bedevilled; they are sly and grotesque; they combine their sort of feverish grandeur with their sort of secretive baseness, after the manner of a Charles the Ninth. They are peopled for me with persons of the same fashion. Dwarfs and sinister people in cloaks are about them; and I seem to divine crypts, and, as ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was scarcely encouraging, and the other relapsed into silence and continued to fidget. But when they were close to the Loulia, almost under the blue light that shone at her mast-head, he said, in a low and secretive voice: ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... conduct, and never owns it until the final surrender. "When was the first moment you began to love me, dear?" "Why, the first moment, that day; didn't you know it then?" This we are led to believe is common experience with the shy and secretive sex. It is enough, in a thousand reported cases, that he passed her window on horseback, and happened to look her way. But with such a look! The mischief was done. But this foundation was too slight for Philip to build such a ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... querulousness—"Since you arrived we have been talking nothing but generalities and Church matters. Heavens, how sick I am of Church matters! Yet I know you see a change in me. I am sure you do—and you will not say it. Now you never were secretive—you never said one thing and meant another—so speak the truth as you have always done! I AM ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... we use the same studio, and if I seemed fearful he would be angry at once. He's a strange nature, Thorpe. Morbid and secretive, yet a good friend and a first-rate living companion. You see, we've separate bedrooms, of course, but we've only the one big room that's studio and sitting-room combined. We have to use it together, but as our friends are pretty ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... At the end of a week she regarded him as an unknown quantity. A man of one idea, extraordinarily concentrated, methodical, abstracted, without friends, no outside interests whatever. That is all she could gather. Silent, yet hardly secretive, he merely gave her the impression that he had nothing he wished to impart. He was not curious about other people, why should they want to know about him? Not by any stretch of imagination could she connect him with a human emotion. He never asked her ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... changed and his blood quickened whenever a horseman showed upon the rim of Cold Spring Coulee. For a month he never left the ranch unless business compelled him to do so, and his return was speedy, his eyes anxious until he knew that all was well. After that his confidence returned. He grew more secretive, more self-assured, more at ease with his guilt. He looked the Wishbone men squarely in the eye, and it seldom occurred to him that he was a thief; or if it did, the word was but a synonym for luck, with shrewdness behind. Sometimes he regretted ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... fact that so much of his pleasure had to be kept secret from the world made it all the more necessary for him to babble when alone. True, in the early days his confidences are innocent enough. Pepys began to write in cipher some time before there was any purpose in it save the common prudence of a secretive man. Having built, however, this secret and solitary fastness, he gradually became more daring. He had discovered a room to the walls of which he dared speak aloud. Here we see the respectable man liberated. He no longer needs to be on his official behaviour, ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... when they hear the reason they will admit that the result is worth the sacrifice. It will be the making of you!—and of me!" added the black eyes with a secretive gleam. ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... hustled along in the early morning crowd, "it was only yesterday afternoon that I saw Minturn at his office and he made an appointment with me for this very morning. He was a very secretive man, but he did tell me this much, that he feared his life was in danger and that it was in some way connected with that Pearcy case up in Stratfield, Connecticut, where he has an estate. You ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... afraid of them, especially those that go mad, like yours!' 'Lor', miss,' said Farmer Hendry, 'he haven't been pastured here for three weeks. I keep him six mile away. There ben't nothing but gentle cows in the home medder.' But I didn't think that you knew, you secretive person! I dare say you planned the whole thing in advance, in order to ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... any overt sign of being impressed. Phillips knew that the others, like himself, were scrutinizing the old man with cold, secretive stares. They had learned through harsh experience to keep their own counsels. Varret shrugged. "Well, then," he said dryly, "I might as well call the roll. I have been supplied with ...
— This World Must Die! • Horace Brown Fyfe
... persons, the three principals and four servants. Of the servants I had seen three, the old butler, the nurse, and the housemaid, Ellen. I now liked Ellen; she appeared equally alive and trustworthy; of the butler I could not say as much. He struck me as secretive. Also, he had begun to manifest a certain antagonism to myself. Whence sprang this antagonism? Did it have its source in my temperament, or in his? A question possibly not worth answering and yet it very well might ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... would act in this secretive way, he thought. There had been strange "goings-on" lately; and the least he could do was to communicate his fears to Lord Kingsborough, in case his guest should be "up to some mischief." His lordship, who was away from home, hurried back to Mitchelstown, convinced, ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... explain that somewhat cryptical remark, and presently he left her and went to his room. Mary V felt that she was not being trusted by a person who surely ought to know by this time that he needn't be so secretive about his thoughts and intentions. If she had not proved her loyalty and her friendship by this time, what did a person want her ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... at last lifted several of the curtains that draped the larger part of the octagonal walls. Under the first two that I raised only a blank space of dark wood was visible, but under the third I was surprised to find a small, secretive-looking door. ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... decision: does His Majesty go to Washington or shall the Chautauqua lecturer extend his professional tours to include London?" Graves gave his sly secretive laugh. Then as if ashamed of his momentary levity, and changing his entire manner, he said: "Well, gentlemen, ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... went back to the sick-room. How much she knew of the situation she never told. But Peggy was not a secretive person, and Peggy had arrived at a point with Logan where he told her a good deal, if she coaxed. They never got it out of the old lady, at ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... growing too secretive! Do you know, Vin, he and Mrs. Wayne quarreled like mad last evening, and he never told me ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... and meditative, and so changed from her old self, might well have awakened the wonder of her friend. But whatever Hilda may have thought, and whatever wonder she may have felt, she kept it all to herself; for she was naturally reticent, and so secretive that she never expressed in words any feelings which she might have about things that went on around her. If Zillah chose to stay by herself, or to sit in her company without speaking a word, it was not in Hilda to question her or to remonstrate with her. She rather chose to accommodate ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... the part. His reputation led one to expect a sort of cross between Uriah Heep and Sherlock Holmes, but there was nothing secretive or insinuating about his appearance. He was a bluff and hearty man of middle age, rather heavy-set, fresh-faced and clean-shaven, and with very bright blue eyes—evidently a man with a good digestion and a comfortable conscience. ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... of the serenata. She had followed it with an acquaintance from the hotel, and she had seen not only Kitty and Madame d'Estrees, but also—the solitary man in the heavy cloak. She knew quite well that Cliffe was in Venice; though, true to her secretive temper, she had not mentioned the ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a word. Tampering. He had the greatest possible esteem for Mrs. Fisher, but he did at times find her a little difficult. She liked him, he was sure, and she was in a fair way, he felt, to become a client, but he feared she would be a headstrong and secretive client. She was certainly secretive, for though he had been skilful and sympathetic for a whole week, she had as yet given him no inkling of what was ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... never dropped a case of hers into that cumbrous relief machine and then let it slip out of her sight. She did the hard thing, she followed it up. She had learned, as I had in my work, to "get on the inside" of this secretive city, to go to the gods behind it all and so have her cases shoved. One day when one of them, a woman, was in a hospital so desperately ill that her very life depended on being moved to a private room—"It can't be done," said the superintendent. Eleanore ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... Translations, as a rule, take up a great deal of valuable time, and it was their curtailment on this occasion, apparently, which caused the 'Transvaal Leader' — a morning paper of the Rand — to complain that Natives had become unusually secretive and had ceased to be as communicative as at previous meetings. The 'Rand Daily Mail', on the other hand, referred to the closing session in a very few lines. It said: "Last evening, a number of Native women attended the Native Congress, attired as befitting the solemnity ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... and Austria, and even Germany, I was interested from the first. And when he went further, and spoke of the Society, it was I who persuaded Dorset to join. Dear man, he is very earnest, but very slow, and very averse to anything at all secretive. I am sure the reflection that he is a member of a secret society, even although it is simply a linking together of the aristocracy of Europe in their own defence, has kept him awake ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... various other kinds of hairs to which I might refer—glandular hairs, secretive hairs, absorbing hairs, etc. It is marvellous how beautifully the form and structure of leaves is adapted to the habits and requirements of the plants, but I must not enlarge ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... "Sociable, scheming, secretive; poor judge of men; lacking seriously in executive ability; decidedly a 'one-man-job' man; does not plan ahead; clannish, narrow-minded; very low intelligence for a foreman. Any organization he builds will be close-mouthed, unreliable, and selfish ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... a very shrewd idea what girls John Thomas had taken out. She went to Nora Purdy. Nora was a tall, rather pale, but well-built girl, with beautiful yellow hair. She was rather secretive. ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... "A most horrible and gory dream this night! I thought I was in the wood; James Mottram lay before me, done to death by that puffing devil we saw slithering by so fast. His head nearly severed—a la guillotine, you understand, my love?—from his poor body——" There was a curious, secretive smile on ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... taciturn, until at last he rarely said anything at all. He merely watched her—watched her wherever she went, and whatever she did; and he watched the children—particularly the children—with the same expression, the same undefinable secretive expression that harmonized so well with the shadows and whispers. And it was this treatment—the treatment she now received from her husband—that made Tina appreciate the company of her children. Before, they had been ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... rather have confessed her wildest dreams of hurricane and prairie than the fact that, upstairs, alone in her room, she rose early in the morning or sat up late at night to... work at mathematics. No force on earth would have made her confess that. Her actions when thus engaged were furtive and secretive, like those of some nocturnal animal. Steps had only to sound on the staircase, and she slipped her paper between the leaves of a great Greek dictionary which she had purloined from her father's room for this purpose. It ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... a big stretch of the field close to the claim pegged out by Mike and Josh Peetree, and they were thought to have possession of the most profitable part of the alluvial deposit, but worked their claims with great caution, and were as secretive as so many mopokes, so that the whites really had no idea what their ground was like, excepting such as the experienced miners could gather from the general trend of the richer wash dirt. Extraordinary stories ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... discomfort. Bubbles had worked like a Trojan. All this could not have happened but for her; and yet—and yet Varick again told himself that he could very well have dispensed with Bubbles from his Christmas house party. There was growing up, in his dark, secretive heart, an unreasoning, violent ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... characterized by the appearance of shyness, of modesty, especially in girls, of self-consciousness and consequent efforts toward self-repression; by the inhibition of the spontaneous, impulsive love-demonstrations so freely indulged in during the previous stage. The boys are more secretive than the girls, but the tendency to conceal the love is present in both. This is the reason why fewer returns came for the years eight to twelve than for the years before and after this period. The children were to a degree ...
— A Preliminary Study of the Emotion of Love between the Sexes • Sanford Bell
... the straw, eating a substantial lunch. Kurt was angry and did not care. His appearance, however, did not faze the strangers. One of them, an American, was a man of about thirty years, clean-shaven, square-jawed, with light, steely, secretive gray eyes, and a look of intelligence and assurance that did not harmonize with his motley garb. His companion was a foreigner, small of stature, with eyes like a ferret and deep pits in his ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... on his conditions, and feign ignorance of all that he does n't tell," she reminded herself. "But fancy his being so secretive!" ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... truth;—what she had been doing, that afternoon, at three o'clock, when he had called,—a truth of which he would never possess any more than these falsifications, illegible and divine traces, a truth which would exist henceforward only in the secretive memory of this creature, who would contemplate it in utter ignorance of its value, but would never yield it up to him. It was true that he had, now and then, a strong suspicion that Odette's daily activities were ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... the newspapers regarding a dusty and dirty old house in that part of the Heights in Brooklyn whence all that is fashionable had not yet taken flight, a house of mystery, yet not more mysterious than its owner in his secretive comings and goings in the affairs of men of a generation beyond his time. Further than the facts that he was reputed to be very wealthy and led, in the heart of a great city, what was as nearly like the life of a hermit as possible, I knew little or nothing, "What has ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... But his studies had by no means been confined to the one theme. History had also interested him profoundly. He had published a work on the old houses of England. The Priory figured among them. It was not difficult to discover from the conversation of this singular man, whose subtle and secretive instincts were contradicted, at times, by a strange inconsequent frankness, that his genuine feeling for the picturesque was accompanied by an equally strong predilection for the appurtenances of wealth and ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... a while was silence save for the small secretive rumors of the forest. One of the large green locusts which frequent the Island of Leuke ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... that his other friends had not the same faith in Pierce's veracity he became more strongly a partisan of the pro- slavery cause on that account. Longfellow frankly admitted that he did not understand Hawthorne, and he did not believe that anyone at Bowdoin College understood him. He was the most secretive man that he ever knew; but so far as genius was concerned, he believed that Hawthorne would outlive every other writer of his time. He had the will ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... after puberty, when it is equally common in both sexes, it is more frequently found in men, but that women masturbate with more passion and imaginative fervor.[308] Kellogg, in America, says it is equally prevalent in both sexes, but that women are more secretive. Morris, also in America, considers, on the other hand, that persistent masturbation is commoner in women, and accounts for this by the healthier life and traditions of boys. Pouillet, who studied the matter with considerable thoroughness in France, came to the conclusion ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... own life but that of his fellow-officer, Lieutenant Conder, who had been beaten to the earth with an Arab club. He continued his work indeed with prosaic pertinacity, and developed in the survey of the Holy Land all that almost secretive enthusiasm for detail which lasted all his life. Of the most famous English guide-book he made the characteristic remark, "Where Murray has seven names I have a hundred and sixteen." Most men, in speaking or writing of such a thing, ...
— Lord Kitchener • G. K. Chesterton
... said Denzil, drawing back, "it is none of my business. But I warn you, Mr. Berwin, that others are more curious than I am. Several times people have been known to be in your house while you were absent, and your mode of life, secretive and strange, does not commend itself to the householders in this neighbourhood. If you persist in giving rise to gossip and scandal, some busybody may bring the police ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... parrots only chatter somewhat meaninglessly to one another), but because the group display on the whole, all round, a greater amount of intelligence, of cleverness, and of adaptability to circumstances than any other birds, including even their cunning and secretive rivals, the ravens, the jackdaws, the crows, ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... like Frank. In fact, he was envious of Merriwell's popularity, although he did his best to keep the fact concealed. Being a sly, secretive person, it was but natural that Rains should come to be considered as modest and unassuming. In truth, he was not modest at all, for, in his secret heart, there was nothing that any one else could do that he did not believe he could do. And so, while appearing to be very modest, he ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... without comment upon the incident, but when they had reached the yard, Bowers detached himself from Kate's side and made a rush to the nearest light where, turning his back with a secretive air, he took from the inner pocket of his inside coat the worn and yellowed photograph that Mullendore had recognized in Bowers's wagon. He looked ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... several motives for not letting his subordinate into the knowledge of all his complicated schemes; among them one springing from a moral peculiarity. He is of a strangely-constituted nature, secretive to the last degree—a quality or habit in which he prides himself. It is his delight to practice it whenever the opportunity offers; just as the thief and detective officer take pleasure in their respective callings ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... the tale would stop abruptly, and it was impossible to find out what men said across the border. The Afghans were always a secretive race, and vastly preferred doing something wicked to saying anything at all. They would be quiet and well-behaved for months, till one night, without word or warning, they would rush a police-post, cut the throats of a ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... it was, he made a spectacle of himself. My suspicion is"—and here every lady stopped eating and sat up straight—"that the Sawyer girls have lost money. They don't know a thing about business 'n' never did, and Mirandy's too secretive ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... you act. You are, if I may say so, too secretive. When you wanted to make amends for Claude de Buxieres's negligence, and proposed that I should live here with you, I accepted without any ceremony. I hoped that in giving me a place at your fire and ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... mem, in a wild scene of woods and hills, where we have come to visit a waterfall. I never saw finer or more copious hemlocks, many of them large, some old and hoary. Such a sentiment to them, secretive, shaggy—what I call weather-beaten and let-alone—a rich underlay of ferns, yew sprouts and mosses, beginning to be spotted with the early summer wild-flowers. Enveloping all, the monotone and liquid gurgle from the hoarse impetuous copious fall—the greenish- tawny, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... only a year younger than you are, my dear, and much more worldly wise. I've had my eyes open and I've seen a great deal. She is getting quite secretive, and she isn't always gracious to Gerald. Mr. Morley's back of it all, you ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... don't know anything about Holton," replied Amzi, who had, in strictest truth, told them nothing of the kind. He experienced the instant regret suffered by secretive persons who watch a long-guarded fact slip away beyond reclamation; but repentance could avail nothing, so ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... him with a shrewd hostility. He saw the young Yorkshire recruits drinking in the open spaces. Sergeants' eyes caught and measured him, appraising his physique. Behind and among them he saw Drayton's, and Reveillaud's, and Stephen's eyes; and young Wadham's eyes, strange and secretive and hard. ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... Sabre and the girl together during Sabre's leave. Any particular occasion? Well, did it really matter? Must he really answer? Yes, notably in the Cloister tea rooms late one evening. Well, yes, had thought their behavior odd, secretive. Sabre's position in the office? Well, was it really necessary to go into that? Well, had to admit Sabre was no longer a member of the firm. Had been suspended during intimacy with the deceased, now dismissed consequent upon ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... striking characteristic of Lincoln's character was his honesty. Some men are naturally secretive: Lincoln was naturally open as sunshine. The exact fact, truth in the hidden parts, openness, these were the innermost fibre of his being. Machiavelli laid out the diplomat's career on the line of deceit, and concealing the cards. Lincoln would have made a poor diplomat,—he spread all ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... After capture, was given into the care of Dr. Itard by Abbe Sicard. Dermal sense duller than in animals; gaze wandering; language wanting and ideas few; food—raw potatoes, acorns, and fruit; would eagerly tear open a bird and eat it raw; indolent, secretive; would hide in the garden until hunger drove him to the kitchen; rolled in new snow like an animal; paid no heed to the firing of a gun, but became alert at the cracking of a nut; sometimes grew wildly angry; all his powers were then enlarged; was delighted with hills and woods, and always ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... spurned the notion as a preposterous one; nevertheless, a remembrance crossed him of the old days when the popular belief at Verner's Pride had been, that the younger of the Massingbirds was of a remarkably secretive and also of a revengeful nature. But all that he barely glanced at; the terrible ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... memories. The lost Tony came vividly before him, and beside his darling boy arose the dark form of the Red Man, whose mode of taking his revenge had been to him so terrible, all the more terrible that the nature of the old man was secretive in regard to sorrow. His joys he was ever ready to share with every one, but his griefs he smothered in his own breast, and scorned to let his countenance betray ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... was not to be drawn. Much of his success in the paths of crime, both at school and afterwards, was due to his secretive habits. He ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... has a secret constantly on her mind is bound to become secretive, not to say deceitful in other ways. What is her secret?" she asked abruptly. "Has she negro blood in ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... the following week. Day after day, she had hurried swiftly to the letter-rack on her arrival at college in the morning, and during the intervals between lectures. Several times, swiftly, with secretive fingers, she had plucked his letter down from its public prominence, and fled across the hall holding it fast and hidden. She read her letters in the botany laboratory, where her corner was ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... entered St. Honore. I was in a maze what I was to expect from him; and overjoyed as I was at my present deliverance, had a sneaking fear that I might be courting a worse fate in this inquiry; so grim and secretive was my guide's face, and so much did that sombre dress—which gave him somewhat of the character of an inquisitor—add to the weight of his silence. However, when he had crossed St. Honore ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... poison, for goodness' sake, what does he use?" she asked indignantly aloud, after a period of deep thought. "I don't see why he wants to be so terribly secretive. He might be human enough to tell a person what he means. I'm sure I'd tell him, all right. I don't believe it's wolves at all. I don't see how—and still—I don't believe Ward would really ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... country of compromise goes to pieces at the first cannon-shot A lady's company-smile A superior position was offered her by her being silent And it's one family where the dog is pulled by the collar Arch-devourer Time As if she had never heard him previously enunciate the formula As secretive as they are sensitive Be politic and give her elbow-room for her natural angles Becoming air of appropriation that made it family history Constitutionally discontented Decency's a dirty petticoat in the ...
— Quotations from the Works of George Meredith • David Widger
... an abnormal, because a lonely, childhood, he was in some ways very mature, in other ways still very babyish. He was at once secretive and—whenever anything touched his heart—emotionally expansive. To the indifferent observer Timmy appeared to be an exceptionally intelligent, naughty, rather spoilt little boy, too apt to take every advantage of a certain physical delicacy. This was also the view taken of him by his half-brothers, ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... modern giants as Dreiser and Hergesheimer and Cabell. For these artists, each in his due place, we have only the most genial respect. But when the passion of our youth is impugned as "idolatry" we feel in our spirit an intense weariness. We feel the pacifism of the wise and secretive mind that remains tacit when its most perfect inward certainties are assailed. One does not argue, for there are certain things not arguable. One shrugs. After all, what human gesture more eloquent (or more satisfying to ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... silent and secretive sort where he could not hope to find intelligent sympathy. This, and some cloudy compromise with his sense of filial dutifulness, will perhaps explain why he passed six years as a student of medicine without any serious purpose ...
— The Hound of Heaven • Francis Thompson
... trust I would not step out of my place without occasion; but I see how much evil has flowed in the past to all of your noble house from that unhappy and secretive fault of reticency, and the papers on which I venture to call your attention are family papers, and all ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... confide his story to some capitalist of California it is likely he might have raised the needed funds, but the nature of the man was both suspicious and secretive and he had guarded his knowledge all these years ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... shaped after what seemed a Mongol inspiration. Only upon the top of the head was actual hair perceived, the rest appearing to be nudity. And even more than by any difference in mode he was set apart by his look and manner, in which there seemed to be a brooding, secretive and jeering superiority and this was most vividly expressed when he felt called upon for his loud, short, lop-sided laugh. Whenever he uttered it Alice laughed, too, as loudly as she could, to ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com
|
|
|
