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More "Tete-a-tete" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pinkiness, I want to slap it—and into talking about those confounded Tuftons with a gusto only provoked by a glass or two of impeccable port after a good dinner. One would have thought, considering the anguished scene of the night before, that it would have been one of the most miserably impossible tete-a-tete breakfasts in the whole range of such notoriously ghastly meals. But here was Betty, serene and smiling, as though she had been accustomed to breakfast with me every morning of her life, off to the hospital, with a hard little idea in her humorous head concerning ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... for a gay winter,—that is, the plans were gay; Ruth's presence could hardly be termed so. The old spontaneous laugh was superseded by a gentle smile, sympathetic perhaps, but never joyous. She listened more, and seldom now took the lead in a general conversation, though there was a charm about a tete-a-tete with her that earnest persons, men and women, felt without being able to define it. For the change, without doubt, was there. It was as if a quiet hand had been passed over her exuberant, happy girlhood and left a serious, thoughtful woman in its stead. A subtile change like this is not speedily ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... on a tete-a-tete, as she did once, when by chance she had sniffed the curative smell of spirits of camphor on the air of a room through which her mother had passed, and came to drag her off that night to share her own ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... I soon got the name of an intolerable proser, and should in a little while have been completely excommunicated had I not changed my plan of operations. From thenceforth I became a most assiduous listener, or if ever I were eloquent, it was tete-a-tete with an author in praise of his own works, or what is nearly as acceptable, in disparagement of the works of his contemporaries. If ever he spoke favorably of the productions of some particular friend, I ventured boldly to dissent from him, and to prove that ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... all speed. But at this moment he was informed that he was not to appear, for fear that he might be influenced by the memory of his ancient friendship for the prisoner, whom he only saw tete-a-tete. The commissioners and himself had previously and rapidly received the cowardly depositions of the Duc d'Orleans, at Villefranche, in Beaujolais, and then at Vivey,—[House which belonged to an Abbe d'Esnay, brother of ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... flourishing city of Ludhiana once stood on its bank. Ludhiana and its dak bungalow, provides refreshments and a three hours' siesta beneath the cooling and seductive punkah, besides an interesting and instructive tete-a-tete with a Eurasian civil officer spending the day here. Among other startling confidences, this olive-tinted gentleman declares that to him the punkah is unbearable, its pendulous, swinging motion invariably ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... American Beauties and the beribboned bonbon box was taking her coffee as usual in bed. This luxurious habit had never been hers until she came to Bel-Air; but it was her mother's custom, and rather than undergo a tete-a-tete breakfast with her ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... said Denham. "We are leaving Soeur Angelique and Miss Vernor to have a regular tete-a-tete of it, are we not? But you evade my question in a very unbecoming way, Miss Phebe. Tell me, what ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... was doubtless a very good scholar, and an excellent man, and the classics were unquestionably very well worth reading; yet that a young man of twenty should ride seven miles and back again each day in the week, to hold this sort of TETE-A-TETE of three hours, was a zeal for literature to which he was not prepared to give entire credit. Little art was necessary to sift the Dominie, for the honest man's head never admitted any but the most direct and simple ideas. 'Does Miss ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... request, and putting her hand into the one extended to help her, jumped lightly down. It was a welcome means of according an innocent tete-a-tete to her devoted lover, and both felt as if they were treading on air, they were so happy to find themselves alone together, as, arm in arm, they walked briskly forward, until they were out of sight of their companions. Then they paused to look long and lovingly into each ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... Forty-second Street offices that commanded a view of two rivers and a vast battledoor and shuttlecock of the city, it was the first time in all those years that stretched from the night at the Waldorf that they had sat thus tete-a-tete. The day of the move she had ridden up from the old Union Square offices with him, a stack of files in her lap. Once, too, on a Saturday, the day of Zoe's invariable luncheon downtown and subsequent opera matinee, he had strolled by what seemed mischievous ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... as good as her word. She knew nothing of the finesse of diplomacy in the manipulation of her company. Her method was straightforward dragooning. Observing the persistent attempts of Dr. Bulling during the early part of the trip to secure Iola for a tete-a-tete, she called out across the deck in the ears of the whole company, "See here, Bulling, I won't have you trying to monopolise our star. We're out for a good time and we're going to have it. Miss Lane is not your ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... discussing them with a beautiful young lady, who expresses so much enthusiasm for your 'patria,' and who, moreover, tells you to your face that your countrymen are 'simpaticos.' There is no telling what conversation such topics might lead to, if Cachita's mamma, Dona Belen, did not interrupt our tete-a-tete by coming to inform her daughter that the ball is nearly over, and that it is time ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... her lips; and her magnificent hair was as dark as ebony and long enough to serve her as a mantle. Chopin and Maria saw each other every evening at the house of her uncle, the Palatine Wodzinski. The latter concluded from their frequent tete-a-tete at the piano and in corners that some love-making was going on between them. When he found that his monitory coughs and looks produced no effect on his niece, he warned his sister-in-law. She, however, took the matter lightly, saying ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... Alicia sailed in. I suppose she had found out from Bessie who my caller was, and felt rather worried over the length of our tete-a-tete. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Square, dined with us twice, I think, in London. In Trinity Chapel is the monument of Eau de Cologne, just as it is now exhibiting at the Diarrhoea in the Regent's Park. It was late when we got to Dover. We walked about while our dinner was preparing, looking forward to our snug tete-a-tete of three. We went to look at the sea—so called, perhaps, from the uninterrupted view one has when upon it. It was very curious to see the locks to keep the water here, and the keys which are on each side of them, all ready, I suppose, to open them if they are wanted. We were awake with ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... other side of the hall was Mrs Gaskoin's boudoir, where she and her husband were sitting over the fire, awaiting the result of the tete-a-tete in ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various
... was too late for that. The young man, at first almost as much startled as his companion at the uncanny apparition, naturally experienced a revulsion of indignation at such an extraordinary interruption to his tete-a-tete, and stepped up to Mr. Morgan as if about to inflict summary chastisement. But perceiving that he had to do with an elderly man, he contented himself with demanding in a decidedly aggressive tone what the devil he meant by such ...
— A Summer Evening's Dream - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... his face. If that were so, then Kitty had blundered in her strategy and hurt Charley's cause; for after the two came Gazza, as obviously "sent" as any emissary ever looked: Kitty took care of the singing, while Gazza intercepted any tete-a-tete. I rose and made a fourth with them, and even as I was drawing near, the devilment in Hortense's face ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... tete-a-tete conversation in the presence of others, or refer to any topic of conversation which is not of common interest and commonly known. Mysterious allusions or assumed understandings with one or two members of a group are insults ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway
... what manner to address her whom he had been lately so anxious to meet with, and embarrassed by a TETE-A-TETE to which his own timid inexperience, gave some awkwardness, the party had proceeded more than a hundred yards before Darsie assumed courage to accost, or even to look at, his companion. Sensible, however, of the impropriety of his silence, he turned to speak to her; and observing ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... feminine palate, ordered Vero Capri. It was, Ann Veronica felt, as a sip or so of that remarkable blend warmed her blood, just the sort of thing that her aunt would not approve, to be lunching thus, tete-a-tete with a man; and yet at the same time it was a perfectly innocent ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... In a tete-a-tete one should talk about persons, and in general Society about things. The state of the weather is always an excusable exordium, but it is convenient to have a paradox or heresy on the subject always ready so as to direct the conversation into other channels. Really domestic ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... highest rank too, says Brantome. Indeed, historians concur in stating that to a brilliant understanding, he joined the most captivating person. We accordingly find that the Dutchess of Burgundy and several others were by no means cruel to him; and he had been supping tete-a-tete with Queen Isabeau de Baviere, when, in returning home, he was assassinated on the twenty-third of November 1407. His amorous intrigues at last proved fatal to the English, as you will learn from the following story, ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... circumstances; it was quite unembarrassed and natural, though, of course, there was more reserve than during the years they had lived so much together, almost as brother and sister. We are obliged to leave the ladies for the present, and follow Hazlehurst to his tete-a-tete dinner with Mr. Henley. ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... lingered obstinately in Maud Matchin's mind. She gave herself no rest from dwelling on them. Her imagination was full, day after day, of glowing pictures of herself and Farnham in tete-a-tete; she would seek in a thousand ways to tell her love—but she could never quite arrange her avowal in a satisfactory manner. Long before she came to the decisive words which were to kindle his heart to flame in the imaginary dialogue, he would ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... Frank! Mind you go to that tutor to-morrow,"—he said, handing me the address he had hastily scribbled down; and, he went out on some errand of mercy, leaving Miss Pimpernell and myself to resume our tete-a-tete conversation, which he had so ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Smith was just at dinner, but the vicar was, nevertheless, shown into the bachelor's little dining-room. But what was his disgust and disappointment at finding his late pupil tete-a-tete over a comfortable fish-dinner, opposite a burly, vulgar, cunning-eyed man, with a narrow rim of muslin turned down over his stiff cravat, of whose profession there could be ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... not escape the notice of the Cubans. Nor did the flag of Cuba Libre picked out in electric lights over the entrance of a restaurant near the theatre, nor other significant sights and sounds. But they warily held their peace. I looked for some show of feeling, but there was none. A tete-a-tete with Mercedes was out of the question, and for this I fervently thanked the gods! There was no telling the havoc that bewitching face might have wrought. Principles, opinions, and theories might have withered and fallen utterly consumed beneath the fire of ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... carefully manipulated advertising campaign and personal efforts among his friends and business associates, they were not by any means the first arrivals. Half a dozen laughing groups were distributed about the round tables in the center space, while several tete-a-tete couples were confidentially ensconced in corners and at cozy tables for two, craftily sheltered by some of the most imposing of ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... answered the well-known voice of the commandant. "I had no idea I was interrupting a tete-a-tete. In fact, I did not associate you ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... said: "My dear Bertha, since this singular chance has brought up together after a separation of six years—a quite friendly separation—are we to continue to look upon each other as irreconcilable enemies? We are shut up together, tete-a-tete, which is so much the better or so much the worse. I am not going to get into another carriage, so don't you think it is preferable to talk as friends till the ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... connection with Kitty, went everywhere that he was likely to meet her, and her joy at meeting him easily betrayed itself in her eyes and her smile. And he did not refrain from actually making love to Anna on the occasions when they were able to engage in tete-a-tete conversations. Nor was he positively repelled. Soon the acquaintance became more and more intimate. Meantime, Aleksei as usual would come home and, instead of seeking his wife's society, would bury himself in his library amongst his books. But suddenly the idea that his wife ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... in upon them, put an end to their tete-a-tete. She entered softly, her face alight and tender, and laid her two hands upon Grange's great shoulders as he sat before ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... mysterious or uncomplimentary. You either care nothing for a tete-a-tete with her, or you will gladly send her out of ...
— The Abbot's Ghost, Or Maurice Treherne's Temptation • A. M. Barnard
... is not presented even the picture called for by the German libretto. Nevertheless, morn is dawning, birds are twittering, and the young lover, kneeling before his mistress on a divan, is bemoaning the fact that day is come and that he cannot publish his happiness to the world. The tete-a-tete is interrupted by a rude boor of a nobleman, who come to consult his cousin (the princess) about a messenger to send with the conventional offering of a silver rose to the daughter of a vulgar plebeian just elevated to the nobility because of ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Laurence, having incautiously admitted that he had some slight acquaintance with the young beauty and her chaperon, found himself victimized by half a regiment at a time. Patsy soon had partners in plenty, and the Prince Eitel, who had looked forward to a pleasant tete-a-tete, retired to a corner from which he gloomed more and more murkily. He folded his arms and regarded ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... unfailing kindliness; and with her friends she was frankness itself. With two men on Miss Reynier's hands for entertainment, it seemed to Aleck unlikely that either one could make any alarming progress. Besides, he was glad of a tete-a-tete ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... Hermitage Castle, where Bothwell was living, and covered the distance at a stretch, although it was twenty miles, and she had to go across woods, marshes, and rivers; then, having remained some hours tete-a-tete with him, she set out again with the same sped for Jedburgh, to which she returned in ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... furnished as the one they had quitted, but in its shelves, cupboards, and closely fitting boarding bearing out the general nautical suggestion of the house—and seated themselves before a small table on which their frugal meal was spread. In this tete-a-tete position Jim suddenly laid down his knife and fork ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... of the white-and-gold restaurant at the Ritz on the following evening, Prince Shan and Immelan dined tete-a-tete, Immelan in the best of spirits, talking of the pleasant trifles of the world, drinking champagne and pointing out notabilities; Prince Shan, his features and expression unchanging, and his face as white as the perfectly fitting shirt he wore. His clothes were fashionable and distinctive, ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... The tete-a-tete thus established, Miranda at once began to excuse herself for the means she had taken to attract Odo's attention at the theatre. She had heard from the innkeeper that the Duke of Pianura's cousin, the Cavaliere Valsecca, was expected that day ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... and was leading her to like better to have Marie or Aunt Hannah in the room when he called. She discovered, too, that she welcomed William, and even Bertram, with peculiar enthusiasm—if they happened to interrupt a tete-a-tete with Cyril. ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter
... leaving her mother's or father's side, and never venturing into the hallways without a previous peep to see that they were empty. As the weeks wore on without any attempt on the commissary's part to surprise her into a tete-a-tete, to recur to the words he had forced her to utter, or to be anything but a polite, entertaining, and thoughtful host, the girl gained courage, and little by little took life more equably. She would have been been less ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... was propped among the cushions of a divan with a book. Her daughter occupied the undivided half of a tete-a-tete chair with a blond athlete in a clerical coat and a reversed collar. Miss Virginia was sitting alone at a window, but she rose and came ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde
... (I read it to him in manuscript) and is in short 'my literary father'. Pretty nearly the same thing did he for Miss Martineau, as she has said somewhere. God knows I forget what the 'talk', table-talk was about—I think she must have told you the results of the whole day we spent tete-a-tete at Ascot, and that day's, the dinner-day's morning at Elstree and St. Albans. She is to give me advice about my worldly concerns, and not ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... and red lips and bare throats, sat alone at tables or tete-a-tete with men too old or too young, and ate; but drank ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... type of young men pay few, if any, party calls, because they work and they exercise, and whatever time is left over, if any, is spent in their club or at the house of a young woman, not tete-a-tete, but invariably playing bridge. The Sunday afternoon visits that the youth of another generation used always to pay, are unknown in this, because every man who can, spends the week-end in ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... upon me hourly; his heart is uncommonly pure, his affections delicate, and his benevolence enlivened, but not sicklied, by sensibility. He is assuredly a man of great genius; but it must be in a "tete-a-tete" with one whom he loves and esteems that his colloquial powers open:—and this arises not from reserve or want of simplicity, but from having been placed in situations, where for years together he met with no congenial ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... the princess, who had remarked the long tete-a-tete of her niece and Saint-Herem with much impatient anxiety, "it is growing late, and we promised Madame de Sardaigne to ...
— A Cardinal Sin • Eugene Sue
... a means of scenting the whereabouts of a fleet that mere censorship of letters cannot balk. There were at least half a dozen mothers in the foyer of the big, garish hotel on the sea-front. Some were tete-a-tete with their sons in snug, upholstered corners, learning aspects of naval warfare that no historian will ever record. Others presided over heavily laden tea-tables at which their sons and their sons' more intimate friends were dealing with eggs and buttered toast, marmalade, watercress, ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... life? he replied, "It was that year in which he spent one whole evening with M—-y As—n. That, indeed," said he, "was not happiness, it was rapture; but the thoughts of it sweetened the whole year." I must add that the evening alluded to was not passed tete-a-tete, but in a select company, of which the present Lord Killmorey was one. "Molly," says Dr. Johnson, "was a beauty and a scholar, and a wit and a Whig; and she talked all in praise of liberty: and so I made this ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... He was so great, so noble, that anything she might say would be inane, tawdry, inconsequent; so she waited, patiently happy, taking no count of time, nor the sunshine, nor the lilt of the birds, nor even the dissolution of conventionality in the unsupervised tete-a-tete. ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... the golden velvet hangings which shrouded the entrance to the dimly lighted conservatory, he espied a half-dozen couples disposed on as many small benches under the drooping fronds in varied attitudes of tete-a-tete. ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... Kennedy, with well-simulated excitement, was racing me in the car up to the Greenes' again. We literally burst unannounced into the tete-a-tete ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... While I was ushered into the princess's room, he remained with the countess in the ante-chamber: in spite of the people and servants who were hanging about, I doubt not that they managed a tete-a-tete; but I had no leisure to think of them, for I was playing the most delicate move in all my difficult game. I had to keep the princess devoted to me—and yet indifferent to me: I had to show affection for her—and not ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... behold Mrs Wimbush and Mr. Tom Brookshank seated tete-a-tete at an evening party, where the music which was going on was sufficiently loud to render private conversation inaudible save to those ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... tramp, who had been looking out of the window. "The house is watched!" And with this announcement Banborough's tete-a-tete came to an ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... than attractive, he is positively FASCINATING," she said to herself in the solitude of her room after the tete-a-tete over the Welsh rarebit that evening. "I don't know when I have felt such a pleasure in a man's presence. Not since—" But the Baroness did not allow herself to go back so far. "If there is any fruit I DETEST, it is DATES," she often said laughingly. "Some people delight in a ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Miss Bluett are all the time absorbed in their commercial tete-a-tete. Pan Chao and the doctor amused me for a time, but they are not equal to it now. The actor and the actress are of no use without opportunity. Kinko, Kinko himself, on whom I had built such hopes, has passed the frontier without difficulty, he will reach Pekin, he will marry Zinca Klork. ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... afternoon and Mary sat on the veranda steps with him, while Helen made hay with Wally on a tete-a-tete above. ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... come; I have really talked myself out of breath; but that is always the way, with me, as you know, of old." And the two girls, hand-in-hand, ran lightly up stairs, where Elinor, making an excuse of Mrs. Taylor's note, left them to a confidential tete-a-tete. ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... the library. He knew the resources of his own mansion in the matter of nooks for a tete-a-tete interview; now he was particularly assisted by remembrance of Stewart's habits in the old days. He found his daughter and the mayor of Marion cozily ensconced among the cushions of a ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... "that the Pastor and Helga might come to us to-morrow, John, and that, as you are so impatient for a tete-a-tete interview with Helga, you can have a ramble in your woods at Rosendal, while I discuss the matters that have to be ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... of footmen. They point out how plenteously footmen abounded before 1790, and how steadily their numbers have declined ever since. I do not dispute the statistics. One knows from the Table Talk of Samuel Rogers that Mr. Horne Tooke, dining tete-a-tete with the first Lord Lansdowne, had counted so many as thirty footmen in attendance on the meal. That was a high figure—higher than in Rogers' day, and higher far, I doubt not, than in ours. What I refuse to believe is that the wearing of powder has caused among footmen an ever-increasing ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... of his life I breakfasted alone with Sir Charles whenever he was at Pyrford. It was his "softer hour," and showed him in a specially endearing light. Not only was he fresh from his night's rest, full, often, of matter interesting or amusing in his letters which he had just read, but the tete-a-tete brought out his finest social nature. In large companies, as we saw him at Dockett, he was occasionally insistent, iterative, expressing himself, to use a term of his own, with a "fierceness" corresponding to the strength of his convictions. With me at our breakfasts ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... generalities, and generalities between two have their limits of entertainment. Then there is the awful possibility that the neighbors at table may have nothing to say to each other; and in the best-selected company one may sit beside a stupid man—that is, stupid for the purpose of a 'tete-a-tete'. But this is not the worst of it. No one can talk well without an audience; no one is stimulated to say bright things except by the attention and questioning and interest of other minds. There is little inspiration in side ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... one night, as they sat opposite each other in the great, high-ceilinged dining-room. They were, for a marvel, alone, and unlike the ordinary quiet jog-trot couple who welcome any casual stranger to break the monotony of five years of table tete-a-tete, they delighted in this happy chance that recalled their honeymoon meals together. They were so much sought after, and Lestrange's position required so much and such varied entertaining, that they could ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... assimilated into the party as if he had been one of them from childhood, he found little opportunity to be alone with Conscience. Indeed the idea came to him at first vaguely, then persistently, that she herself was seeking to avoid anything savoring of the quality of a tete-a-tete. ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... red-coloured, piratical-looking pennon of audacity she had allowed to float a minute in the air, was furled, and the broad, sober-hued flag of dissimulation again hung low over the citadel. I did not like her thus, so I cut short the TETE-A-TETE and departed. ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... already made all her preparations for dining in her own room tete-a-tete with one of her favorite books. And then, as your highness has six other young ladies who would be delighted to accompany you, I did not make my proposal to La Valliere." Madame did not say a word ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... just as I was leaving town. I had not time to ask him any particulars about you, and indeed he is not exactly the man from whom I would ask news about my friends. I dined tete-a-tete with him some time ago, and he served up his friends as he served up his fish, with a squeeze of lemon over each. It was very piquant, but it rather set ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... Lucille shuddered. This tete-a-tete did not amuse her. She rose and looked over one of the bridge tables for a minute. The Prince, who was dealing, looked ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... it was absurd! She looked them over. Dull-eyed, blase, frayed by the social whirl, worn out, pulseless, all of them. They talked automobile, bridge, women, and self in particular; in the seclusion of a tete-a-tete they talked love with an ardor that lost most of its danger because it was from force of habit. One of the men was even now admitting in her ear that he had not spent an evening alone with his wife ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... decency of jolting their paradise in a posting-chaise, of breaking up their mystery with clic-clacs, of taking for a nuptial bed the bed of an inn, and of leaving behind them, in a commonplace chamber, at such a night, the most sacred of the souvenirs of life mingled pell-mell with the tete-a-tete of the conductor of the diligence and the ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... carried on by Cherry, and all were sent off in sound condition. No catastrophe occurred; and the continual occupation and responsibility drove away all the low spirits that so often had tried the home-keeping girl. She did enjoy those tete-a-tete evenings, when Felix opened to her more than he had ever done before; and yet it was an immense relief to have the day fixed for Wilmet's return, and how much more to have her walking into the room with all the children clinging about her in incoherent ecstacy, which ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... he reluctantly went below for lunch. The prospect of a tete-a-tete with the captain was anything but pleasant. He understood about half that the officer said, and with that half he usually disagreed. His ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... less weary at each day's end. And nobody worries them at all. There has not been the faintest suspicion of an insult or an advance from any one of the thousands of men and boys of all classes whom they have ridden with upon their 'lifts,' sometimes in dense crowds, sometimes in an involuntary tete-a-tete. ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
... Continental Hall in one of the White House automobiles. The President walked over, accompanied by his military aid, Col. Harte, and the secret-service men. Before he left the White House he had stood for several minutes leaning over the side of the automobile having a tete-a-tete ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... she came," he muttered, as soon as he was once more alone. "Wynston is provoking and fiery, too. Were I, in my present mood, to seek a tete-a-tete with him, who knows what might come of it? Blood; my own heart ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... I recall with any definiteness was a tete-a-tete conversation which I held with my lover on a certain yellow divan at the end ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... then on his return from Chevydale's, soon joined them, and they proceeded in the direction of his father's, Dora and Hanna having, with good-humored consideration, gone forward as an advanced guard, leaving Bryan and Kathleen to enjoy their tete-a-tete behind them. ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... their touch the color fled from her face and did not return. With attentive courtesy Lord Vincent handed her to a seat and remained standing near, seeking to interest and amuse her with his conversation. But just as the tete-a-tete was growing unsupportable to Claudia, the door opened and Beatrice entered. Too many times had Bee come in upon just such a tete-a-tete to suspect that there was anything more in this one than there had been in any other for the last six ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... together, dining tete-a-tete, on a night when it must have needed more than ordinary courage for either of them to have been seen in public at all," Wilmore ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... into a stall and tied him fast. "Yuh might tell me how it happened that you're here," he hinted, looking at her over the saddle. He had apparently forgotten that he had intended leaving the horse saddled until he had rested and eaten—and truly it would be a shame to hurry from so unexpected a tete-a-tete. ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... they were enjoying a tete-a-tete by the fireside, she would place on the tea table the leather box containing the "trash," as M. Lantin called it. She would examine the false gems with a passionate attention as though they were in some way connected ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... she avoided me; on the contrary I had many a tete-a-tete with her, for her mother and sister were anxious for me to deposit some part of my pension in the Musical Banks, this being in accordance with the dictates of their goddess Ydgrun, of whom both Mrs. Nosnibor and Zulora were great devotees. I was not ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... twin; dual, dualistic, double; binary, binomial; twin, biparous[obs3]; dyadic[Math]; conduplicate[obs3]; duplex &c. 90; biduous[obs3], binate[obs3], diphyletic[obs3], dispermic[obs3], unijugate[obs3]; tete-a-tete. coupled &c. v.; conjugate. both, both the one and ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... obstacles might arise. He might be secretly engaged for all she knew to the contrary. But now she felt quite sure of him. With Fate playing into her hands like this—with romance and adventure and the possibilities of an uninterrupted tete-a-tete, she knew she could have him if she wanted him. And the point was that she did. At least she supposed she did. She felt as many a young man feels when he lands his first job—triumphant, but ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller
... second habitue of the "Lion d'Or") frequently put back his dinner-hour in hope that some traveler might come to the inn, with whom he could chat in the evening. On the days when his work was done early, he had, for want of something else to do, to come punctually, and endure from soup to cheese a tete-a-tete with Binet. It was therefore with delight that he accepted the landlady's suggestion that he should dine in company with the newcomers, and they passed into the large parlour where Madame Lefrancois, for the ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... that question as we sat tete-a-tete after dinner, Dora having gone to carry Harold some fruit, and being sure to stay with him as long as ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and his bright, beady eyes; and when he told poor Lady Fermor, right out before every one, that she did not care a bit for music, but was extremely fond of musicians, it was generally felt that cheiromancy was a most dangerous science, and one that ought not to be encouraged, except in a tete-a-tete. ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... nor third, Captain.—The truth is, I want a tete-a-tete with Mr. Mowbray of St. Ronan's," replied the Earl; "and, besides, I have to beg the very particular favour of you to go again to that fellow Martigny. It is time that he should produce his papers, if he has any—of which, for one, I do not believe ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... said Mr. Bendigo, bowing and quitting the room, and leaving Mrs. Walker to the pleasure of a tete-a-tete with her husband. ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... short visit to Mrs. Allen, in which Henry talked at random, without sense or connection, and Catherine, rapt in the contemplation of her own unutterable happiness, scarcely opened her lips, dismissed them to the ecstasies of another tete-a-tete; and before it was suffered to close, she was enabled to judge how far he was sanctioned by parental authority in his present application. On his return from Woodston, two days before, he had been met near the ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... more than a whim to her. They deferred a little to her because she knew the great world—New York, Vienna, London, Paris. Great names fell from her lips casually and carelessly. She referred familiarly to princes and famous statesmen, as if she had gossiped with them tete-a-tete over the teacups. She was full of spicy little anecdotes about German royalty and the British aristocracy. It was no wonder, Gordon Elliot thought, that she had rather stunned the little social set ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... unhappily, confirmed him in his mistake. For Miss Bussey, overcome by the various trials of the day before, kept her bed, and when Laing came down, the first sight which met his eyes was a breakfast-table, whereat Mary and John sat tete-a-tete. He eyed them with that mixture of scorn and envy which their supposed situation awakens in a bachelor's heart, and took a place from which he could survey them at leisure. There is a bright side to everything; and that of Laing's mistake was the pleasure he derived from his delusion. ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... began to arrive before either was quite ready, so engrossed were they in happy gossip. And Palla looked up in blank surprise that almost amounted to vexation when the bell announced that their tete-a-tete ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... this scene, which Europe related far more amusingly than it can be written, because she told it with much mimicry, Carlos and Lucien were breakfasting tete-a-tete. ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... good-natured barbarians - are all painful ingredients and all help to falsify relations. It is not till we get clear of that amusing artificial scene that genuine relations are founded, or ideas honestly compared. In the garden, on the road or the hillside, or TETE-A-TETE and apart from interruptions, occasions arise when we may learn much from any single woman; and nowhere more often than in married life. Marriage is one long conversation, chequered by disputes. The disputes are valueless; they but ingrain the ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... came down to breakfast she was disappointed to find that Bud was not there, and she was obliged to suffer a breakfast tete-a-tete with West. By dint, however, of asking him questions instead of allowing him to take the initiative, she hurried through her breakfast quite successfully, acquiring a superficial knowledge of her fellow-boarder quite distant and satisfactory. ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... toward Edith. Perhaps she was not wholly to blame. She remembered the night Edith had endeavoured to escape a tete-a-tete with Alden and she herself had practically forced her to stay. Regardless of the warning given by the crystal ball, in which Madame now had more faith than ever, she had not only given opportunity, but had ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... was interested in that statement she had just made that it was for Peter's sake she had remained behind. It revealed an amazingly dense ignorance of both her brother's position and Marjory's. On no other theory could he make it seem consistent for her to encourage a tete-a-tete between a married woman and a man as deeply in love with some one else ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... on the ottoman, and would thus have secured a sort of tete-a-tete; but Eleonora did not choose to leave Mrs Miles Charnock out, and handed her each photograph in turn, but could only elicit a cold languid "Thank you." To Anne's untrained eye these triumphs of architecture were only so many dull representations of 'Roman ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... one reads of in idyls and romances. She would willingly have spent her life in. contemplating the King,—in loving and adoring him without ever opening her mouth; and to her, the sweet silence of a tete-a-tete seemed preferable to any conversation enlivened ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... the receptacle containing her manuscript, and set a brisk pace, at which she insured the passing of the other guests along the road, making visible her triumph over circumstance and at the same time obviating untimely intrusion of a tete-a-tete conversation. ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... of eagerness and followed her, wondering if her intriguing sentence before breakfast had been nothing more than a clever piece of chicane, planned to entice me into a tete-a-tete. ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... ceremonious politeness with which she attended her mistress. It had not escaped Mrs. Rylands, however, who ever since Jack's abrupt departure had noticed this change in the girl's demeanor to herself, and with a woman's intuitive insight of another woman, had fathomed it. The comfortable tete-a-tete with Jack, which Jane had looked forward to, Mrs. Rylands had anticipated herself, and then sent him off! When Joshua thanked his wife for remembering the pepper-sauce, and Mrs. Rylands pathetically ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... avoid a tete-a-tete with Olga, and she took the first opportunity of introducing him to Elsa. She rebelled in her soul now at the thought of their marriage, but her will drove her to the fulfilment of her purpose, to that extent at least. But it was ...
— The Devil - A Tragedy of the Heart and Conscience • Joseph O'Brien
... Mrs. Armine seemed quite unaware of his scrutiny, but Nigel spoke to him almost immediately, making some remark about the ship in English. The stranger answered in the same language, but with a strong foreign accent. He seemed quite willing to talk. He apologized for interrupting their tete-a-tete, but said he had no choice, as the saloon was completely full. They declared they were quite ready for company, Nigel with his usual sympathetic geniality, Mrs. Armine with a sort of graceful formality beneath which—or so her ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... for Jim's shoes. Missy racked her brains. What do you say to boys who don't know the same people and affairs you do? Back there at the party things had gone easily, but they were playing cards or dancing or eating; there had been no need for tete-a-tete conversation. How do you talk ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... Majesty will make him come here, will interrogate him yourself, TETE-A-TETE, without witnesses, and that I shall see your Majesty as soon as you ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Their tete-a-tete was uninterrupted for an hour; and although nothing that would be called decided, by an experienced matron, was said by the gentleman, he uttered a thousand things that delighted his companion, who retired to her rest with a lighter heart than she had felt since the arrest ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... should have seen his fury (the young one's, I mean) when he found me in the duchess's room this evening, tete-a-tete with the heiress, who deigned to receive a bouquet from ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... retired to his room for a quiet morning. The prospect for the afternoon pleased him greatly, and a long tete-a-tete with Annie among the grand and beautiful solitudes of nature had for him an attraction that he could ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... flew to Arkwright's face at sight of herself was construed at once by Alice as embarrassment on his part at being found tete-a-tete with Bertram Henshaw's wife. And she did not like it. She was not pleased that he was there. She was less pleased that he blushed for ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... Simpkins never passed the black altar without a backward glance, as if he were fearful of an attack from behind. And he had determined that nothing should tempt him to a tete-a-tete with the statue behind the veil. But having so senseless, so cowardly a feeling was one thing, and letting Mrs. Athelstone know it another. So ...
— The False Gods • George Horace Lorimer
... from these rides she asked him in for a cup of tea. Occasionally, when she was overheated, or damp from the fog, she would excuse herself and slip into a soft negligee. With lamp and fire lit they made a very cozy tete-a-tete. He smoked contemplatively; she stitched at the inevitable embroidery of the period. Occasionally they talked animatedly; quite as frequently they sat in sociable silence. Gringo slept by the fire dreaming ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... keenly, studying her play of expression, seeking, according to his habit, to make his guarded estimate of a new factor in his household. From Virginia's face his eyes went swiftly now and then to his daughter's, animated in her tete-a-tete with the sheriff. Once, when Virginia turned unexpectedly, she caught the hint of a ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... Lincoln's Inn. Arthur Ansard at a briefless table, tete-a-tete with his wig on a block. A. casts a disconsolate look ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... effort to make conversation—to manufacture out of the thin crisp air of that November morning and the random impressions of their progress up the Avenue, something with a general resemblance to tete-a-tete dialogue as he understood it. He ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... smoked in the patio, the noise of their laughter and their heavy voices penetrated no louder than the dim humming of bees to the ear of Red Jim Perris, sitting tete-a-tete with Marianne in an inner room. And he did not envy the sprawling freedom ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... the bailiff's corpse. Asked by M. Goron what were her sensations during this ghastly vigil, she replied with a smile, "You'd never guess what a funny idea come into my head! You see it was not very pleasant for me being thus tete-a-tete with a corpse, I couldn't sleep. So I thought what fun it would be to go into the street and pick up some respectable gentleman from the provinces. I'd bring him up to the room, and just as he was beginning to enjoy himself say, 'Would you like to see a bailiff?' open the trunk ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... stretched on a frame before her, but had paused in her labor, and was looking down as if lost in mute attention. I felt a glow of self-satisfaction, but I recollected, at the same time, with a kind of pique, the advantage she had enjoyed over me in our tete-a-tete. I determined to push my triumph, and accordingly kept on with redoubled ardor, until I had fairly exhausted my subject, or ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... bring with them the fine salmon which was to have been cooked for dinner at the parsonage?" Of course they would—only too eagerly did they make ready and allow the messenger to guide them to the patriot's place of concealment. There, while the lovers enjoyed a tete-a-tete, Adams and Aunt Lydia made the feast ready, and they were all about to enjoy it, when a man rushed ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... not yet finished their evening's tobacco. The awning had been removed, the stars were shining in the moonless sky, the poop guard had shifted itself to the quarter-deck, and Miss Sarah Purfoy was walking up and down the deserted poop, in close tete-a-tete with no less a person than Captain Blunt himself. She had passed and repassed him twice silently, and at the third turn the big fellow, peering into the twilight ahead somewhat uneasily, obeyed the glitter of her great eyes, and ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... Further tete-a-tete was interrupted by the appearance of Mr. Arnault. The young men were courteous and even cordial to each other, but before half an hour had passed they recognized that they were rivals. Graydon's lips grew firm, and his eyes sparkled with the spirit of one ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... the poky living room, which smelt of meals, and had tea, and the sort of barren talk that the presence of the third person necessitated. Mary seemed purposely to avoid a TETE-A-TETE. When Miss Goldsworthy went to fetch the baby, Ruby was kept at her step-mother's side. Only when the black-eyed boy appeared did Mary brighten into a likeness to her old self. She was a born mother, and her child consoled her. Then, in the midst of the baby ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... dine with her on that very day, and went on board to dress himself as fine for her as he had for the widow Vandersloosh. The lovely widow admired his uniform, and gave him many gentle hints upon which he might speak: but this did not take place until a tete-a-tete after dinner, when he was sitting on a sofa with her (not on such a fubsy sofa as that of Frau Vandersloosh, but one worked in tapestry); much in the same position as we once introduced him to the reader, to wit, with the lady's hand ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... alarmed look; and finding a gap in the tete-a-tete between her sister and Sir Ronald, struck smilingly in. He was small and he was homely, but he was a baronet and worth eight thousand a year, and Rose brought all the battery of her charms to bear. In vain. She ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... present. However, don't let that bother you, and above all, don't think of coming out to this place which makes you miserable, and where you can't work. What a queer menage you must be at the Abbey now! You and the Star who has risen from the ocean—she ought to have been called Venus—tete-a-tete, and the, I gather, rather feeble and uninteresting old gentleman in bed upstairs. I should like to see you when you didn't know. Why don't you invent a machine to enable people at a distance to see as well as to hear each ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... devotion was caused more by a wish to while away his idle hours than from any other motive; and it was also quite evident that the young lady herself took the same view. She gave a light and humorous aspect to everything she said, and permitted him scarcely an opportunity for a solitary "tete-a-tete." In vain he placed his bays ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... pleasantly with Merivale, Kinglake, and Stirling, I hurried off to the House." In later years, when his voice grew low and his hearing difficult, he preferred that the diners should resolve themselves into little groups, assigning to himself a tete-a-tete, with whom at his ease ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... stage be a large vis-a-vis, Reserved for the polished and great, Where each happy lover might see The nymph he adores tete-a-tete; No longer I'd gaze on the ground, And the load of despondency lug, For I'd book myself all the year round To ride ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... the fields at this time of day is hardly fitting for young ladies to take alone," said Mr. Lathom, anxious no doubt to escape from his tete-a-tete drive with my lady, and possibly not quite prepared to go to the illegal length of prompt measures, which ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... a very brave young man," she replied with a roguish look at Bennett's discomfiture over the interruption of the tete-a-tete. ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... have cost him dearly. Happily, he had done nothing of the kind, but had re-entered the house unobserved, while Diana and Gustave were conversing close to the window, having preferred to leave his fly at the end of the street, rather than to incur the hazard of interrupting a critical tete-a-tete. The interval that had elapsed since his return had been spent by the Captain in his own bedchamber, and in the immediate neighbourhood of the folding-doors between that apartment and the parlour. What he had heard had been by no means satisfactory ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... led the shy Elizabeth had been a clearing-house of confused ideas during their long tete-a-tete. Madame le Claire had explained the mystery of dual personality as well as it can be explained, with some comment on the fact that such things happen to people occasionally, no one knows why. Alvord and ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... stream; but how is it that the face of the chevalier does not appear? is he too much occupied with his chicken to have heard the carriage? Let us see. As to you, monseigneur," continued Dubois, "be assured; I will not disturb your tete-a-tete. Enjoy at your pleasure this commencement of ingenuity, which promises such happy results. Ah! monseigneur, it is certain that ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... mutely and persistently. What would they be to one another? What would this life be that they were about to begin together? What joys, what happiness, or what disillusions were they preparing in this long, indissoluble tete-a-tete of marriage? And it seemed to them as if they had never yet seen ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... sheltered from the boisterous afternoon trade winds by the opposite side of the court. But Susy did not seem inclined to linger there long that morning, in spite of Mrs. Peyton's evident desire for a maternal tete-a-tete. The nervous preoccupation and capricious ennui of an indulged child showed in her pretty but discontented face, and knit her curved eyebrows, and Peyton saw a look of pain pass over his wife's face as the young girl suddenly and half-laughingly ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... away From meadow to tree branch, now there and now here, So, from beach to Casino, each day at the Pier Flock the gay pleasure seekers. The balconies glow With beauty and color. The belle and the beau Promenade in the sunlight, or sit tete-a-tete, While the chaperons gossip together. Bands play, Glasses clink; and 'neath sheltering lace parasols There are plans made for meeting at drives or ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... birthday. After keeping me for two hours and a half she dismissed me; and I am sure I could not say what she said, except that it was an olio of decousus and heterogeneous things, partaking of the characteristics of her mother, grafted on a younger scion. I dined tete-a-tete with my dear old aunt: hers is always a sweet and soothing society ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... prophecy was fulfilled even before it was concluded. A group of loudly chattering girls and their escorts of the moment bore down upon Julia, and shattered the tete-a-tete. Dislodged from Julia's side by a large and eager girl, whom he had hated ever since she was six years old and he five, Noble found himself staggering in a kind of suburb; for the large girl's disregard of him, as she shouldered in, ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... of the family." Another cousin, perhaps? What was the matter with the devil, anyway? If he needed exercise why didn't he go and get it? Certainly I didn't want to spend an afternoon antiquarianizing with him. How was I to get him out of the way, so that I could get a tete-a-tete with K.? ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley
... ill, was being nursed by his wife,—a painful task, a duty without reward. The sick man tormented the poor creature, who was now doomed to learn what venomous and spiteful teasing a half-imbecile man, whom poverty had rendered craftily savage, could be capable of in the weary tete-a-tete of each endless day. Delighted to turn a sharpened arrow in the sensitive heart of the mother, he had, in a measure, studied the fears that Oscar's behavior and defects inspired in the poor woman. When a mother receives from her child a shock like that of the affair at Presles, ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... first of their tete-a-tete, she sounded him cautiously, trying to discover if his feelings toward Linton were inspired wholly by political differences. She seemed to suspect there was something more behind it, even at the risk of flattering herself. But she ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... utmost tact on his part did he finally succeed in establishing tete-a-tete relations with Cornelia herself; and even then if the house had been a tower ten stories high, Cornelia's mother, rustling up the stairs, could not have swished her skirts any more ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... remained leaning over the balcony, side by side, touching elbows, with their heads overhanging the darkness of the street, and the brilliantly lighted sala at their backs. This was a tete-a-tete of extreme impropriety; something of which in the whole extent of the Republic only the extraordinary Antonia could be capable—the poor, motherless girl, never accompanied, with a careless father, who had thought only of making her learned. ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... the first, conceived a great antipathy to Rose, whom she considered a dangerous rival, and generally avoided, excepting when Mr. Dinsmore was with her; but she always interrupted a tete-a-tete between them when it was in her power to do so without being guilty of very great rudeness. This, and the covert sneers with which she often addressed Miss Allison had not escaped Mr. Dinsmore's notice, and it frequently ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley
... and impulsiveness which might compromise him—or of a possible jealousy that might seek revenge. Yet he had no reason to believe that Susy's nature was jealous, or that she was likely to have any cause; but the fact remained that Miss Faulkner's innocent intrusion upon their tete-a-tete affected him more strongly than anything else in his interview with Susy. Once out of the atmosphere of that house, it struck him, too, that Miss Faulkner was almost as much of an alien in it as himself. He wondered what she had been doing ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... in their setting out from the town, and Marty South took advantage of it to hasten forward, with the view of escaping them on the way, lest they should feel compelled to spoil their tete-a-tete by asking her to ride. She walked fast, and one-third of the journey was done, and the evening rapidly darkening, before she perceived any sign of them behind her. Then, while ascending a hill, she dimly saw their vehicle drawing near the ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... whatever would give him pleasure; providing he looked kindly at her, she was happy all day." Mme. de Caylus wrote: "That poor princess had such a dread of the king and such great natural timidity that she dared neither to speak to him nor to run the risk of a tete-a-tete with him. One day, I heard Mme. de Maintenon say that the king having sent for the queen, the latter requested her to go with her so that she might not appear alone in his presence: but that she (Mme. de Maintenon) conducted her only to the door of the room and there ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... the town, and as a matron who had never before been suspected of things of the kind, she was highly offended when she heard the stories, and very justly so: with the result that her poor young daughter, though innocent, had to endure about as unpleasant a tete-a-tete as ever befell a maiden of sixteen, while, for his part, the Swiss footman received orders never at any time to admit Chichikov ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... the doctor's and my dining tete-a-tete on a hastily improvised dinner,—it was then close upon eight, and our normal dinner hour is 6:30,—but it was such an improvised dinner as I am sure Mrs. McGurk never served him. Sallie, wishing to impress me with her invaluableness, did her absolutely Southern best. And after dinner we ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... evening the baroness and her brother might have been seen engaged in a tete-a-tete, seated in two comfortable armchairs, and anyone who was near enough might have heard the ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... adjoining room, and soon the closely cropped head of Vankin, the assistant school instructor, appeared in the doorway. "Whom have you been kissing here? A-a-ah! Very good! Sergey Kapitonich! A fine old man indeed! With the female sex tete-a-tete!" ...
— The Slanderer - 1901 • Anton Chekhov
... then became general, and the girl did not look up for several seconds; but the young man on her right, who had not missed a word of the previous tete-a-tete, could not give attention to the story Mrs. Blackwell was telling, for ...
— The Mystery of Mary • Grace Livingston Hill
... show that I was not abashed by her haughty, reproachful air. Other passengers were strolling in. Here was Mr. John Van Blarcom, who, at the sight of Miss Falconer and myself to all appearances cozily established for a tete-a-tete meal, stopped in his tracks and fastened on me the hard, appraising scrutiny that a policeman might turn on a hitherto respectable acquaintance discovered in converse with some notorious crook. For an instant he ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... There is, however, of course much individual difference even with reference to this, and some take much more kindly and readily to cleanliness, no doubt to godliness too, than some others. I met Abraham, and thought that, in a quiet tete-a-tete, and with the pathetic consideration of my near departure to assist me, I could get him to confess the truth about the disappearance of the mutton; but he persisted in the legend of its departure through the locked door; and as I was only heaping sins ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... and, for the sake of your uncle, I asked him to dine with me, and take a bed at my new house. Ah! I little thought what a dear bargain it was to be. He accepted my invitation, for I fancy—no offence, Sir,—there were few invitations that Mr. Geoffrey Lester ever refused to accept. We dined tete-a-tete,—I am an old bachelor, Sir,—and very entertaining he was, though his sentiments seemed to me broader than ever. He was capital, however, about the tricks he had played his creditors,—such manoeuvres,—such escapes! After dinner he asked me if I ever corresponded with ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... with a great show of cordiality. I was handed over to the manservant, a melancholy, swarthy individual, who led the way, my bag in his hand, to my bedroom. The whole place was depressing. Our dinner was tete-a-tete, and though my host did his best to be entertaining, his thoughts seemed to continually wander, and he talked so vaguely and wildly that I could hardly understand him. He continually drummed his fingers on the table, gnawed his nails, and gave other signs of ...
— The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Jim's shoes. Missy racked her brains. What do you say to boys who don't know the same people and affairs you do? Back there at the party things had gone easily, but they were playing cards or dancing or eating; there had been no need for tete-a-tete conversation. How do you talk to ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... possessed it in the past and had just made such a sacrifice to please her. She consented to accept his declaration and permitted him to believe that she was not unmoved by his passion. The arrival of the Duchess, her mother-in-law, put an end to this tete-a-tete, and prevented the Duc from ...
— The Princess of Montpensier • Madame de La Fayette
... wore on, and still Theodora's fears kept her from allowing a tete-a-tete when he dismounted and joined ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... begged her once more to be seated and to atone for all that was unkind in the past by letting me talk to her. There could have been no better place, outside of her cozy cabin, for this long-dreamed-of tete-a-tete, which now at last was to have a realization, than this she had herself chosen. The pile of pelts at her back kept off the east wind, the young moon in the west shone full upon her face, so that I could feast my eyes upon its glorious beauty (for the last time, I said to myself) ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... advanced to such a point that a clattering noise within the tabernacle, as of machinery put in motion, intimated to the travellers that Freya, who perhaps had some qualities in common with the classical Vesta, thought a personal interruption of this tete-a-tete ought to be deferred no longer. The curtains flew open, and the massive and awkward idol, who, we may suppose, resembled in form the giant created by Frankenstein, leapt lumbering from the carriage, and, rushing on the intrusive traveller, dealt him, with its wooden hands and ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... imitate fashions, and get rid of provincial manners and prejudices. His friends never knew where he learned anything. When a Frenchman of title was basking in New York drawing-rooms it was found that Millard was equal to a tete-a-tete with the monolingual foreigner, though his accent was better than his vocabulary was copious. His various accomplishments of course represented many hours of toil, but it was toil of which his associates never heard. He treated himself ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... embarrassed one who had been used to mariners' laconic directness of speech. She looked at him, teasing him with her eyes. He was a bit relieved when the pale-faced secretary came dragging himself up the ladder and broke in on the tete-a-tete. ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... the quick beat of her eyelids and in the subtle quiver of her lips. "And behold! the same notion had occurred to Azzolati. Imagine that for this tete-a-tete dinner the creature had got himself up as if for a reception at court. He displayed a brochette of all sorts of decorations on the lapel of his frac and had a broad ribbon of some order across his shirt front. An orange ribbon. Bavarian, I should ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... necessary for you to show your dislike to Dona Rosita quite so plainly," she said, coldly, slightly accenting the Puritan stiffness, which any conjugal tete-a-tete lately ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... promoted into the Ringdove, and Griffin became first of the Proserpine. This, of course, made Yelverton second, and left one vacancy. Thus far the orders had been made out, when Cuffe dined with the admiral, by invitation, tete-a-tete. ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... western wing and found the Tressilvains tete-a-tete over a card-table, deeply interested in something that resembled legerdemain; and he stood at the door and watched them with a smile ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... span. V. pair [unite in pairs], couple, bracket, yoke; conduplicate^; mate, span [U.S.]. Adj. two, twin; dual, dualistic, double; binary, binomial; twin, biparous^; dyadic [Math.]; conduplicate^; duplex &c 90; biduous^, binate^, diphyletic^, dispermic^, unijugate^; tete-a-tete. coupled &c v.; conjugate. both, both the one and ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... uneven surface, or flew about us with such confiding curiosity, that by reaching out my hand I could touch their wings as they poised themselves in the air alongside. There was one old sober-sides with whom I passed a good ten minutes tete-a-tete, trying who could stare the other ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... hour before he returned. When he did, it was to find Hazen and the lawyer awaiting him in ill-concealed impatience. These two were much too incongruous in tastes and interests to be very happy in a forced and prolonged tete-a-tete. ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... 'wild one'?" Lilda asked her husband one night, as they sat opposite each other in the great, high-ceilinged dining-room. They were, for a marvel, alone, and unlike the ordinary quiet jog-trot couple who welcome any casual stranger to break the monotony of five years of table tete-a-tete, they delighted in this happy chance that recalled their honeymoon meals together. They were so much sought after, and Lestrange's position required so much and such varied entertaining, that they could ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... I saw his face. If that were so, then Kitty had blundered in her strategy and hurt Charley's cause; for after the two came Gazza, as obviously "sent" as any emissary ever looked: Kitty took care of the singing, while Gazza intercepted any tete-a-tete. I rose and made a fourth with them, and even as I was drawing near, the devilment in Hortense's face sank ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... that the face of the chevalier does not appear? is he too much occupied with his chicken to have heard the carriage? Let us see. As to you, monseigneur," continued Dubois, "be assured; I will not disturb your tete-a-tete. Enjoy at your pleasure this commencement of ingenuity, which promises such happy results. Ah! monseigneur, it is certain ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... wouldn't be ordinary—to me. And so far as I am concerned," she insisted, with a shade of restlessness in her manner, "that finishes the subject. You must please devote yourself to telling me at least some of the things I want to know. What is the use of having one of the world's successful men tete-a-tete, a prisoner to my hospitality, unless I can make him gratify ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... enjoying his cup of unexpected tea at Mrs. Derrick's, Squire Deacon and Miss Cilly had a sociable tete-a-tete over theirs; for Joe Deacon, who was in the full enjoyment of some fourteen years of boyhood, scarcely made a third in the conversation until his appetite ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... at her house in Newport ever since. Came down yesterday to try to earn some money," he continued, cheerfully making himself agreeable. "Deuced clever woman, much too clever for me and Jerry too. Always in a tete-a-tete with an antiquarian or a pathologist, or a psychologist, and tells novelists what to put into their next books and jurists how to decide cases. Full of modern and liberal ideas—believes in free love and all that sort of thing, and gives Jerry ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... mere man of the world, with no feeling of any kind: tolerable in company, but tiresome beyond description in a tete-a-tete. I did not choose that he should bestow ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... some embarrassment on the limbs of four visitors who had just been ushered into its glories. After hesitating before one or two gorgeous fawn-colored brocaded easy-chairs of appalling and spotless virginity, one of them seated himself despairingly on a tete-a-tete sofa in marked and painful isolation, while another sat uncomfortably upright on a sofa. The two others remained standing, vaguely gazing at the ceiling, and exchanging ostentatiously admiring but hollow remarks about the furniture in unnecessary whispers. Yet they ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... I believed was really uneasy if his company would not drink hard. JOHNSON. 'That is from having had people about him whom he has been accustomed to command.' BOSWELL. 'Supposing I should be tete-a-tete with him at table.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, there is no more reason for your drinking with HIM, than his being sober with YOU.' BOSWELL. 'Why, that is true; for it would do him less hurt to be sober, than ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... obtaining histories at one house to be detailed at another, and thus earning the character of being universally intimate. The sentiments of the young bride of Martindale had been, throughout her visit, matter of curiosity; and even this tete-a-tete left them guess work. Theodora's were not so difficult of discovery; for, though Jane had never been the same favourite with her as her more impetuous sister, she had, by her agreeable talk and show ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... at the evening's dinner, when Lady Anne would be occupied about Sir Brian, and would be sure to be putting the children to bed, and, in a word, would give him a quarter of an hour of delightful tete-a-tete with the ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... longer the young ladies and their favored attendants strolled about the room in quiet tete-a-tete, and then the gentlemen bowed ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... and a change of costume by Cora occasioned a long postponement. Justice demands the admission that her reappearance in a glamour of lilac was reward for the delay; nothing more ravishing was ever seen, she was warrantably informed by the quicker of the two guests, in a moment's whispered tete-a-tete across the banisters as she descended. Another wait followed while she prettily arranged upon the table some dozens of asters from a small garden-bed, tilled, planted, and tended by Laura. Meanwhile, Mrs. Madison constantly turned the other cheek to the cook. ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... to walk on the veranda for a bit of exercise. There was a large swing-seat, upholstered in red, which he declared was just the place for a tete-a-tete. ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells
... faithful hound Breaks rudely on our tete-a-tete; Too well I understand that sound! A mendicant is ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... occur when a young lady indulges in tete-a-tete forest rambles with an old friend, instead of waiting at home for her mother's letters and telegrams," remarked Captain Winstanley, caressing his neat whisker with ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... they all wanted to stay and be amused by him. But Tess got rid of them at last by begging Samson to go first ostentatiously and set them an example, which he did after extracting a promise from her to see him tete-a-tete again at ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... as plainly furnished as the one they had quitted, but in its shelves, cupboards, and closely fitting boarding bearing out the general nautical suggestion of the house—and seated themselves before a small table on which their frugal meal was spread. In this tete-a-tete position Jim suddenly laid down his knife and fork and ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... now in the new Forty-second Street offices that commanded a view of two rivers and a vast battledoor and shuttlecock of the city, it was the first time in all those years that stretched from the night at the Waldorf that they had sat thus tete-a-tete. The day of the move she had ridden up from the old Union Square offices with him, a stack of files in her lap. Once, too, on a Saturday, the day of Zoe's invariable luncheon downtown and subsequent opera matinee, he had strolled by what seemed mischievous chance into the tea room where ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... house last evening. Apparently it was to have been a tete-a-tete dinner, but my arrival changed it to a partie carree." She talked on about Wilsey and the conversation of the evening, but it made little difference what she said, for her full idea had reached Adelaide ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... after the guests had gone ashore that Monty discovered Mr. and Mrs. Dan holding a tete-a-tete in the ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... conversation and secretly watching the girl keenly, studying her play of expression, seeking, according to his habit, to make his guarded estimate of a new factor in his household. From Virginia's face his eyes went swiftly now and then to his daughter's, animated in her tete-a-tete with the sheriff. Once, when Virginia turned unexpectedly, she caught the hint of a troubled frown in ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... particulars which he talked over with the authoress in a promenade on the platform while Dolores was left in the waiting-room; but afterwards he indulged his niece with a tete-a-tete, asking her father's address, and mourning over the length of time it would take to obtain an answer from Fiji. Mr. Mohun had promised to help him, solemnly and kindly promised, for the sake of her whom they had both loved so much, and here ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to this request, and putting her hand into the one extended to help her, jumped lightly down. It was a welcome means of according an innocent tete-a-tete to her devoted lover, and both felt as if they were treading on air, they were so happy to find themselves alone together, as, arm in arm, they walked briskly forward, until they were out of sight of their companions. ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... white faces and red lips and bare throats, sat alone at tables or tete-a-tete with men too old or too young, and ate; but drank with ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... then left tete-a-tete. He had on his face no appearance of disquietude or menace; decidedly ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... for that. The young man, at first almost as much startled as his companion at the uncanny apparition, naturally experienced a revulsion of indignation at such an extraordinary interruption to his tete-a-tete, and stepped up to Mr. Morgan as if about to inflict summary chastisement. But perceiving that he had to do with an elderly man, he contented himself with demanding in a decidedly aggressive tone what the devil he meant by such ...
— A Summer Evening's Dream - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... what a vast amount of mutual biography two young persons of the opposite sexes can exchange in a brief tete-a-tete. By the time Milly and the young artist were strolling slowly northward in the sombre city twilight, they had become old friends, and Milly was hearing about the girl in Rome, the fascination of artist life in Munich, the stunning things in the last Salon, ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... the first time in her days, Was much embarrass'd, never having met In all her life with aught save prayers and praise; And as she also risk'd her life to get Him whom she meant to tutor in love's ways Into a comfortable tete-a-tete, To lose the hour would make her quite a martyr, And they had wasted now ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... light-minded cardinal approach the object of his love, and procured for him an interview with the queen. That is all that can be charged upon me; I procured for the queen the fine necklace of Messrs. Bohmer and Bassenge; I gave the cardinal, as the price of a part of the necklace, a tender tete-a-tete with the queen. The cardinal will not deny that in the garden of Versailles he had a rendezvous with the queen, that he kissed her hand and received a rose from her; and the queen will be compelled to confess in the end that the necklace ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... must all know that when we are with friends to whose moods and emotions we are attuned, there takes place a singular degree of thought-transference, quite apart from speech. I had once a great friend with whom I was accustomed to spend much time tete-a-tete. We used to travel together and spend long periods, day after day, in close conjunction, often indeed sharing the same bedroom. It became a matter at first of amusement and interest, but afterwards an accepted fact, that we could often realise, even after a long silence, ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... for Peter's sake she had remained behind. It revealed an amazingly dense ignorance of both her brother's position and Marjory's. On no other theory could he make it seem consistent for her to encourage a tete-a-tete between a married woman and a man as deeply in love with some one else as ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... closed door came stealing the soft music of a waltz, while from another corner came the sound of a whispered tete-a-tete. Very still was the girl as she sat in the big arm-chair, with the man pleading passionately at her side. Once she caught her breath quickly when he recalled the time gone by—the time before her mother's political ambitions had ruthlessly waged war on her, and done their best ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... the country he is cut off from all his usual habits, and soon feels the dragging hours, no matter how attentive his friends may be to him. Therefore, because it is so impossible to prolong in a tete-a-tete conversations that are soon exhausted, the master and mistress of a country-house are apt to say, calmly, "You will be terribly bored here." It is true that to understand the delights of country life one must have something ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... an embargo on every subject. At last she recollected that she had been travelling, and they talked of Matlock and Dove Dale with great perseverance. Yet time and her aunt moved slowly—and her patience and her ideas were nearly worn our before the tete-a-tete was over. On Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner's coming up they were all pressed to go into the house and take some refreshment; but this was declined, and they parted on each side with utmost politeness. Mr. Darcy handed the ladies ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... stranger if he would not serve instead of begging. And he protests, "I am a Dervish at the door of Allah." "And I am a Spirit in Allah's house," she rejoins. They enter: and the parley in the vestibule is followed by a tete-a-tete in the parlour and another in the dining-room. They agree: and the stranger is made a member of the Spiritual Household, which now consists of her and him, the Medium and ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... at the far end of the table, and Howard was dimly and amusedly conscious that this tete-a-tete was of the nature of a romantic adventure to the little lady. He was surprised, when they came to talk, to find how much they appeared to have read of a solid kind. He asked if they had ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... in the patio, the noise of their laughter and their heavy voices penetrated no louder than the dim humming of bees to the ear of Red Jim Perris, sitting tete-a-tete with Marianne in an inner room. And he did not envy the sprawling freedom ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... Martin into a tete-a-tete corner with her, but after a polite quarter of an hour, he declared he must move around and confer with a few people concerning their parts ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... supposed that they dined tete-a-tete; no, no— the corporal and his wife were not so churlish as that. The dinner party consisted of a chosen set, the most particular friends of the corporal. Mr Short, first officer and boatswain, Mr William Spurey, Mr and Mrs Salisbury; and last, although not the least important ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... really think the ball has gone off well?" she asked incredulously. "It seems to me to have been an elaborate failure." She was thinking of those two whom she had surprised tete-a-tete in the balcony, and wondering what George Fairfax could have been saying to produce Clarissa's confusion. Clarissa was her protegee, and she was responsible to her sister Geraldine for any mischief brought ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... fashions of her bigger sister across the border in more ways than one, he could not be expected to know that de Cartier loved not his wife and did love the pretty Louise. Nor could his pride have been convinced that the young woman at his side was enjoying the tete-a-tete chiefly because de Cartier was fiercely cursing the misfortune which had thrown this new element into conflict. It may be unnecessary to say that Mrs. Garrison was delighted with the unmistakable signs of admiration manifested by the ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... pleaded, "forgive me if for a moment I forgot how altered things are. Indeed, it was not a matter of choice with me. Of course, it will give me the greatest pleasure to dine tete-a-tete ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Mrs. Vavasour, breaking in upon this little tete-a-tete, "have you seen those curious spiders that my brother brought home from South America? You might fetch Uncle Horace's case, Madge, and show them to Mr. Morris; they are worth looking at, ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... man has to resort to alcohol to keep his nerves up to concert pitch, things are in a bad way with him, you may be sure of that,—but then you have never known what it is to stand in momentary expectation of a tete-a-tete ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... convenient for the landlord to favor him with his company over a bottle of wine. This was the almost invariable plan adopted, when he was unaccompanied with his 'better half.' It will readily be conceived that in these tete-a-tete gossipings, a great fund of anecdote and legendary tales had been gleaned, which were made subservient to the entertainment of friends when assembled around the social board. It is from this fund of gossip to which I have so often listened, that ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... the waiter at her elbow with pad and pencil poised for her order, unconscious also of her husband, now her happy tete-a-tete, she spoke aloud: 'One ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 5, 1920 • Various
... aware that dowager lady Chia had given her over to Pao-yue, so that her present behaviour was likewise no transgression. And subsequently she secretly attempted with Pao-yue a violent flirtation, and lucky enough no one broke in upon them during their tete-a-tete. From this date, Pao-yue treated Hsi Jen with special regard, far more than he showed to the other girls, while Hsi Jen herself was still more demonstrative in her attentions to Pao-yue. But for a time we will make no further ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... exclaimed Maud, as she emerged from the big closet where Polly kept her stores. "Such a cunning teakettle and saucepan, and a tete-a-tete set, and lots of good things to eat. Do have toast for tea, Polly, and let me make it with the new toasting fork; it 's such fun to ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... more at Fernley House; peace and cheerfulness, and much joy. It was not the same peace as of old, when Margaret and her uncle lived their quiet tete-a-tete life, and nothing came to break the even calm of the days. Very different was the life of to-day. The peace was spiritual purely, for the lively and varied round of daily life gave little time for repose and meditation, at least for Margaret. She had begun to give the children short but regular ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards
... give my dog dinner from my own plate," said Rebecca, laughing mischievously; and having enjoyed for some time the discomfiture of my lord, who hated poor Briggs for interrupting his tete-a-tete with the fair Colonel's wife, Mrs. Rawdon at length had pity upon her admirer, and calling to Briggs, praised the fineness of the weather to her and bade her to take out the ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Francesca Bassington sat alone in her well- beloved drawing-room. The visitor who had been enjoying the hospitality of her afternoon-tea table had just taken his departure. The tete-a-tete had not been a pleasant one, at any rate as far as Francesca was concerned, but at least it had brought her the information for which she had been seeking. Her role of looker-on from a tactful distance had necessarily ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... plant himself against a corner of the mantelpiece, and remain a fixture till Clarissa departed. It was half-an-hour's talk that was almost a tete-a-tete. Bessie Lovel counted for so little between those two. Half-an-hour of dangerous happiness, which made all the rest of Mrs. Granger's life seem dull and colourless; the thought of which even came ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... was affected. She had some embroidery stretched on a frame before her, but had paused in her labor, and was looking down as if lost in mute attention. I felt a glow of self-satisfaction, but I recollected, at the same time, with a kind of pique, the advantage she had enjoyed over me in our tete-a-tete. I determined to push my triumph, and accordingly kept on with redoubled ardor, until I had fairly exhausted my subject, or ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... accompanist, for instance." She rose to dispense Scotch and soda. Stillman sat in thoughtful silence, while Mrs. Condor talked to very trivial purpose. She seemed suddenly to have grown tired of the subject of Claire Robson. The arrival of the expected dressmaker broke in upon the rather one-sided tete-a-tete. ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... where there was a folding green table with cards on it. The captain, the commander of our division, went to our tent to sleep; the other gentlemen also separated, and Guskof and I were left alone. I was not mistaken, it was really very uncomfortable for me to have a tete-a-tete with him; I arose involuntarily, and began to promenade up and down on the battery. Guskof walked in silence by my side, hastily and awkwardly wheeling around so as not ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various
... manner, never did I have a moment's time to regard my inner self in the mirror of consciousness. No mental analysis now; no long hours of retrospection, no tete-a-tete interviews with my soul. At times I felt as if I had lost my identity. I was a slave of the genie Gold, releasing it from its prison in the frozen bowels of the earth. I was an automaton turning a crank in the frozen stillness of ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... Italian educational experiences; then as a young girl, very determined to form her own character, and sure, with her father to second her assurance, that boarding-school was the proper place to form it. Eddy was also at school, and Mrs. Upton, with the alternative of flight or an unbroken tete-a-tete with her husband before her, chose the former. There was no breach, no crash; any such disturbances had taken place long before; she simply slid away, and her prolonged absences seemed symbols of fundamental and long recognized divisions. She came ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... attitude of mind conveyed itself to Nan, and the latter was rebelliously conscious of the older woman's efforts to dominate her. It came as an inexpressible relief when at last their tete-a-tete was interrupted. ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... throne,' to confide to a man's own publisher (who has 'bought,' or rather sold, 'golden opinions' about him) such a damnatory parenthesis! 'Between you and me,' quotha—it reminds me of a passage in the Heir at Law—'Tete-a-tete with Lady Duberly, I suppose.'—'No—tete-a-tete with five hundred people;' and your confidential communication will doubtless be in circulation to that amount, in a short time, with several additions, and in several letters, all ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... across the table, with reference to the action of one of his country's Ministers, was referred to him. He replied to it and drifted quite naturally into a general conversation. Without any evident effort, he seemed to desire to bring his tete-a-tete with Catherine to a close. She showed no sign of disappointment; indeed she fell into his humour and made vigorous efforts to attack the subject of Y.M.C.A. huts with her neighbour on the right. The rest of the meal passed in this manner, ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... his wife's temporary absence in the country, had not been in the best of spirits for several days, during the course of our tete-a-tete dinner at Luigi's became suddenly and unexpectedly animated. The change in him was so noticeable that I leaned forward in my place to see what ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... than Littleton's, Lansdowne House excepted,—and perhaps Lord Milton's, which is also in Grosvenor Place. He gave me a dinner of dinners. I talked with Denison, and with nobody else. I have found out that the real use of conversational powers is to put them forth in tete-a-tete. A man is flattered by your talking your best to him alone. Ten to one he is piqued by your overpowering him before a company. Denison was agreeable enough. I heard only one word from Lord Plunket, who was remarkably silent. He spoke of Doctor Thorpe, ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... one who has begun the quarrel and separated will be the first to fall ill and even die, perhaps, if the separation comes off. I know for a positive fact that several times Stepan Trofimovitch has jumped up from the sofa and beaten the wall with his fists after the most 'intimate and emotional tete-a-tete with Varvara Petrovna. ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... city of Ludhiana once stood on its bank. Ludhiana and its dak bungalow, provides refreshments and a three hours' siesta beneath the cooling and seductive punkah, besides an interesting and instructive tete-a-tete with a Eurasian civil officer spending the day here. Among other startling confidences, this olive-tinted gentleman declares that to him the punkah is unbearable, its pendulous, swinging motion ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... discovered what he required in regard to Ferdinand Ardayre before they went into the hall for coffee—there was nothing further to be gained by having another tete-a-tete with Harietta, so he sat down by Stanislass and suggested that the other two should go on to the Coliseum without them, and Harietta was obliged to depart reluctantly with Ferdinand, having arranged that Stepan should ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... had conceived, reasonably or unreasonably, doubts as to the medium's honesty in the matter, and she determined to try him in the matter of this unanswered question. Talking one day with him in tete-a-tete, she turned the subject of maladies of the chest, of which they had been speaking, to the special case of her late brother-in-law, discussing the powerful influence of climate, and remarking that she ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... had to offer her his hand to assist her in entering her carriage; he could ride near the door of her coach; he accompanied her on water excursions and pleasure rides, and these last were so much the more important because they afforded him, to a certain extent, opportunity for a tete-a-tete with the queen. For only the master of horse was permitted to ride at her side; he even had precedence of the ladies of the suite, so as to be able to give the queen immediate assistance in case of any accident, or the stumbling of her horse. Therefore, no one ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... proper under the circumstances; it was quite unembarrassed and natural, though, of course, there was more reserve than during the years they had lived so much together, almost as brother and sister. We are obliged to leave the ladies for the present, and follow Hazlehurst to his tete-a-tete dinner with Mr. Henley. ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... light-hearted, was a delightful companion and the meal passed off cheerily. When we rose and the mayor left us for some necessary business it was with a look of satisfaction in my direction which was the best possible preparation for my approaching tete-a-tete with his moody ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... thousand miles away. Neither we, nor the day, nor the beauty of the drive had power to woo their glances from coming back to the focal point of interest they had found in each other. They were beginning to talk, not about each other but of themselves—the danger-signal of all tete-a-tete adventures. ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... from the first, conceived a great antipathy to Rose, whom she considered a dangerous rival, and generally avoided, excepting when Mr. Dinsmore was with her; but she always interrupted a tete-a-tete between them when it was in her power to do so without being guilty of very great rudeness. This, and the covert sneers with which she often addressed Miss Allison had not escaped Mr. Dinsmore's notice, and it frequently cost him quite an effort to treat Miss Stevens with the respectful politeness ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley
... young men pay few, if any, party calls, because they work and they exercise, and whatever time is left over, if any, is spent in their club or at the house of a young woman, not tete-a-tete, but invariably playing bridge. The Sunday afternoon visits that the youth of another generation used always to pay, are unknown in this, because every man who can, spends the week-end ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... of the Triumphs of Cally's Life, and the Tete-a-tete following, which vaguely depresses her; of the Little Work-Girl who brought the Note that Sunday, oddly remet at Gentlemen's ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... eyes; and when he told poor Lady Fermor, right out before every one, that she did not care a bit for music, but was extremely fond of musicians, it was generally felt that cheiromancy was a most dangerous science, and one that ought not to be encouraged, except in a tete-a-tete. ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... rude, raised a great hue and cry and everything changed. What she said of me I don't know but it made a most amusing difference. General Walker galloped a half mile across the desert to give me his own copy of the directions for the sham battle, and I was to have met Cromer at dinner tete-a-tete, and General Kitchener sent apologies by two other generals and all the subalterns called on me in a body. That was the day before I left. I don't know what Lady Gower-Browne said, but it made a change which I am sorry I could not ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... had come from the prisons of St. Pelagie with my distinguished and unfortunate friend Madame Roland (in two volumes which I bought for two francs each, at the book-stall in the Place de la Concorde, Paris, at the corner of the Rue Royale). Deciding to pass the evening tete-a-tete with Madame Roland, I derived, as I always do, great pleasure from that spiritual woman's society, and the charms of her brave soul and engaging conversation. I must confess that if she had only some more faults, only a few more passionate failings of any kind, I ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... She knew that Wilmet would not like her affairs to be discussed without her own permission; but it seemed unfair that when all the Harewoods were open-mouthed, her own sister should know nothing. After all, much would depend on the chances of a tete-a-tete. ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Midshipmen have a means of scenting the whereabouts of a fleet that mere censorship of letters cannot balk. There were at least half a dozen mothers in the foyer of the big, garish hotel on the sea-front. Some were tete-a-tete with their sons in snug, upholstered corners, learning aspects of naval warfare that no historian will ever record. Others presided over heavily laden tea-tables at which their sons and their sons' more intimate friends were dealing with eggs and buttered toast, marmalade, ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... personal efforts among his friends and business associates, they were not by any means the first arrivals. Half a dozen laughing groups were distributed about the round tables in the center space, while several tete-a-tete couples were confidentially ensconced in corners and at cozy tables for two, craftily sheltered by some of the most imposing of the marble figures ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... not?' said Attwater. 'Well, well, we are left tete-a-tete. A glass of wine with you, ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... which might compromise him—or of a possible jealousy that might seek revenge. Yet he had no reason to believe that Susy's nature was jealous, or that she was likely to have any cause; but the fact remained that Miss Faulkner's innocent intrusion upon their tete-a-tete affected him more strongly than anything else in his interview with Susy. Once out of the atmosphere of that house, it struck him, too, that Miss Faulkner was almost as much of an alien in it as himself. He wondered what she had been doing there. Could ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... with a gusto only provoked by a glass or two of impeccable port after a good dinner. One would have thought, considering the anguished scene of the night before, that it would have been one of the most miserably impossible tete-a-tete breakfasts in the whole range of such notoriously ghastly meals. But here was Betty, serene and smiling, as though she had been accustomed to breakfast with me every morning of her life, off to the hospital, ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... from the hot midday sun by sloping roofs and awnings, and sheltered from the boisterous afternoon trade winds by the opposite side of the court. But Susy did not seem inclined to linger there long that morning, in spite of Mrs. Peyton's evident desire for a maternal tete-a-tete. The nervous preoccupation and capricious ennui of an indulged child showed in her pretty but discontented face, and knit her curved eyebrows, and Peyton saw a look of pain pass over his wife's face as the young girl suddenly and half-laughingly ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... ornament, and its ancient cross and mouldering yew-tree behind. Harry sat below in the boat, propped on the cushions, reading the last number of the 'Nineteenth Century;' Ernest and Edie took their seat upon the bank above, and had a first chance of an unbroken tete-a-tete. ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... out the scientific tete-a-tete going on behind the azalea, and Steve grinned as he peeped, then grew sober and said in a tone of despair: "If you had seen the pains I took with that fellow, the patience with which I brushed his wig, the time I spent trying to convince him that he must wear thin boots, and the fight I had ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... impressed with her, notwithstanding his connection with Kitty, went everywhere that he was likely to meet her, and her joy at meeting him easily betrayed itself in her eyes and her smile. And he did not refrain from actually making love to Anna on the occasions when they were able to engage in tete-a-tete conversations. Nor was he positively repelled. Soon the acquaintance became more and more intimate. Meantime, Aleksei as usual would come home and, instead of seeking his wife's society, would bury himself in his library amongst his books. But ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... with envy swell, Because they see me used so well: 'How think you of our friend the dean? I wonder what some people mean; My lord and he are grown so great, Always together, tete-a-tete: What, they admire him for his jokes— See but the fortune of some folks!' There flies about a strange report Of some express arrived at court; 110 I'm stopp'd by all the fools I meet, And catechised in every street. 'You, Mr Dean, frequent the great; Inform us, will the Emperor treat? ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... comes back kind of hot. "But Pyramid Gordon was white enough to want to divide his pile among the poor prunes he'd put out here and there along the way. You're on the list too, and the chief object of this little tete-a-tete is to frame up some plan of givin' you ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... Court he was brought before the Duke of Berwick, who addressed several questions to him, which Catinat answered; he then told the duke he had something of importance to impart to him and to him alone. The duke was not very anxious for a tete-a-tete with Catinat; however, having ordered his hands to be securely bound, and telling Sandricourt not to go away, he consented to hear what the prisoner ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... word. She knew nothing of the finesse of diplomacy in the manipulation of her company. Her method was straightforward dragooning. Observing the persistent attempts of Dr. Bulling during the early part of the trip to secure Iola for a tete-a-tete, she called out across the deck in the ears of the whole company, "See here, Bulling, I won't have you trying to monopolise our star. We're out for a good time and we're going to have it. Miss Lane is not your property. She belongs to us all." ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... his; again she flashed sufficient message to redden Longstreet's cheeks and make his own eyes burn with embarrassment. And since it was obvious that henceforward the combat must be waged in the open, she did not await the unlikely opportunity of some distant tete-a-tete to emphasize her intention. Before she mounted she managed to allow the glowingly embarrassed man to hold her two hands; and she ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... breakfast she was disappointed to find that Bud was not there, and she was obliged to suffer a breakfast tete-a-tete with West. By dint, however, of asking him questions instead of allowing him to take the initiative, she hurried through her breakfast quite successfully, acquiring a superficial knowledge of her fellow-boarder ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... He never strained after effect. His words seemed to crystallize into wit or poignant humor before he had time to reflect on what he was going to say. But these qualities were perhaps seen at their best in tete-a-tete encounters or correspondence. At all events, it is from such occurrences that illustrations of them can be ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... old man. In vain, at first, Abner Nott strove with profound levity to indicate his arch comprehension of the situation, and in vain, later, becoming alarmed, he endeavored, with cheerful gravity, to indicate his utter obliviousness of any but a business significance in their tete-a-tete. ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... that no one but a book reviewer ever reads prefaces, so I seize upon the opportunity to have a tete-a-tete with my critics. Gentlemen, my cards are face up on the table. I have declared to the publisher that nearly every American who knows how to read longs to find his way into print, and should appreciate some of the dearly ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing
... was taken of her birthday. After keeping me for two hours and a half she dismissed me; and I am sure I could not say what she said, except that it was an olio of decousus and heterogeneous things, partaking of the characteristics of her mother, grafted on a younger scion. I dined tete-a-tete with my dear old aunt: hers is always a sweet and soothing society ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... luncheon the girl approved her escort's manner and bearing as unexceptionable. No sooner had they entered into the implied intimacy of the tete-a-tete across a table than a subtle change manifested itself in his attitude. Gayety was still the keynote of his talk, but the note of the personal and insistent had gone. And, at the end, when he had paid the bill and ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... gay winter,—that is, the plans were gay; Ruth's presence could hardly be termed so. The old spontaneous laugh was superseded by a gentle smile, sympathetic perhaps, but never joyous. She listened more, and seldom now took the lead in a general conversation, though there was a charm about a tete-a-tete with her that earnest persons, men and women, felt without being able to define it. For the change, without doubt, was there. It was as if a quiet hand had been passed over her exuberant, happy girlhood and left a serious, thoughtful ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... to Manton and Enid, a troubled something in his expression. I could see that the promoter was making the most of his tete-a-tete with the girl, but she seemed perfectly at ease and quite capable of handling the man, and I, certainly, was more disturbed at the ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... extinct, her temporary candour shut up; the little, red-coloured, piratical-looking pennon of audacity she had allowed to float a minute in the air, was furled, and the broad, sober-hued flag of dissimulation again hung low over the citadel. I did not like her thus, so I cut short the TETE-A-TETE and departed. ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... period of his past life? he replied, "It was that year in which he spent one whole evening with M—-y As—n. That, indeed," said he, "was not happiness, it was rapture; but the thoughts of it sweetened the whole year." I must add that the evening alluded to was not passed tete-a-tete, but in a select company, of which the present Lord Killmorey was one. "Molly," says Dr. Johnson, "was a beauty and a scholar, and a wit and a Whig; and she talked all in praise of liberty: and so I made this epigram upon her. She was the ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... fields at this time of day is hardly fitting for young ladies to take alone," said Mr. Lathom, anxious no doubt to escape from his tete-a-tete drive with my lady, and possibly not quite prepared to go to the illegal length of prompt measures, which she had ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... a tete-a-tete, in the family room, whither I had led Lucy, feeling that this little ceremony was due to my wife. Everything around us recalled former scenes, and tears were in the eyes of my bride as she gently extricated herself ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... them, put an end to their tete-a-tete. She entered softly, her face alight and tender, and laid her two hands upon Grange's great shoulders as he sat ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... of the hall was Mrs Gaskoin's boudoir, where she and her husband were sitting over the fire, awaiting the result of the tete-a-tete in the drawing-room. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various
... on the contrary I had many a tete-a-tete with her, for her mother and sister were anxious for me to deposit some part of my pension in the Musical Banks, this being in accordance with the dictates of their goddess Ydgrun, of whom both Mrs. Nosnibor and Zulora were great devotees. I was not sure whether I had kept ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... whirled on this roundabout for a bit, and then had the fortune to fall off into a tete-a-tete with a lady whom my aunt introduced as Mrs. Mumble—but then she introduced everybody to me as Mumble that afternoon, either by way of humour ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... his thoughts to her because of whom he can find no repose; and yet he has plenty of time and opportunity to speak, if he were not afraid of being repelled; for now he can see her every day, and sit beside her "tete-a-tete" without opposition or hindrance, for no one sees any ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... visitors, the countess was so tired that she gave orders to admit no more, but the porter was told to be sure to invite to dinner all who came "to congratulate." The countess wished to have a tete-a-tete talk with the friend of her childhood, Princess Anna Mikhaylovna, whom she had not seen properly since she returned from Petersburg. Anna Mikhaylovna, with her tear-worn but pleasant face, drew her chair nearer ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... made a hearty effort, but was generally too lazy to throw her leg over it.) "Society! I'm dwenched to death with it. If I could only catch fiah like other women, and love somebody, I would much rather have a tete-a-tete with him than go teawing about all day and all night, from one unintwisting cwowd to another. To be sure," said she, puzzling the matter out, "you are a beauty, and would be ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... going to describe his first tete-a-tete with his violin. Perhaps he returned from it somewhat disappointed. Probably he found her coy, unready to acknowledge his demands on her attention. But not the less willingly did he return with her to the solitude of the ruinous factory. On every safe occasion, becoming more and more frequent as ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... train, in the first of their tete-a-tete, she sounded him cautiously, trying to discover if his feelings toward Linton were inspired wholly by political differences. She seemed to suspect there was something more behind it, even at the risk of flattering herself. But she had detected certain suggestive symptoms in ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... midnight. Half a dozen couples danced lazily in the central dancing space. Other couples remained tete-a-tete ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... cannot ask?" said Flora. "I don't know why I spoke to you! Ah! come in! Why, George, that is a finer egg than ever," as he entered with a Shanghai egg in each hand, for her to mark with the date when it had been laid. Poultry was a new hobby, and Ethel had been hearing, in her tete-a-tete dinners with George, a great deal about the perfections of the hideous monsters that had obtained fabulous prices. They had been the best resource for conversation; but she watched, with something between vexation and softness, how Flora roused herself to give her full ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... are leaving Soeur Angelique and Miss Vernor to have a regular tete-a-tete of it, are we not? But you evade my question in a very unbecoming way, Miss Phebe. Tell me, what were you ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... between Mary Standish and John Graham's agent, Alan thought. There were not half a dozen people left at the tables, and the scheme was that Rossland should be served tete-a-tete with Miss Standish, of course. That, apparently, was why she had greeted him with such cool civility. Her anxiety for him to leave the table before Rossland appeared upon the scene was evident, now that ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... might rest there, no longer visited it, fearing to find himself in the midst of a large and merry company, by whom he did not wish to be seen. This came about through his having once arrived to dine tete-a-tete with Marguerite, and having fallen upon a party of fifteen, who were still at lunch at an hour when he was prepared to sit down to dinner. He had unsuspectingly opened the dining-room door, and had been greeted by a burst of laughter, and had had to retire precipitately before the impertinent ...
— Camille (La Dame aux Camilias) • Alexandre Dumas, fils
... very brave young man," she replied with a roguish look at Bennett's discomfiture over the interruption of the tete-a-tete. ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... the fact. Simpkins never passed the black altar without a backward glance, as if he were fearful of an attack from behind. And he had determined that nothing should tempt him to a tete-a-tete with the statue behind the veil. But having so senseless, so cowardly a feeling was one thing, and letting Mrs. Athelstone know it another. ...
— The False Gods • George Horace Lorimer
... sounded he reluctantly went below for lunch. The prospect of a tete-a-tete with the captain was anything but pleasant. He understood about half that the officer said, and with that half he usually disagreed. His first ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... saw in Elviry only an unwelcome presence interfering with another tete-a-tete, and the hostile hardening of his eyes angered her so that the girl tossed her head, and wheeling haughtily she swept into the house. A minute later he saw her still flushed and wrathful stalking indignantly ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... the picnic party, donned their slippers and smoking jackets, and having lighted their cigars, and slipped into the easiest possible attitudes, prepared to devote the next few hours to a confidential tete-a-tete. The next day Rutherford would start on his journey to the coast, and naturally there were many topics of mutual interest to be discussed on this, their last night together for a number ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... Nor did the flag of Cuba Libre picked out in electric lights over the entrance of a restaurant near the theatre, nor other significant sights and sounds. But they warily held their peace. I looked for some show of feeling, but there was none. A tete-a-tete with Mercedes was out of the question, and for this I fervently thanked the gods! There was no telling the havoc that bewitching face might have wrought. Principles, opinions, and theories might have withered and fallen utterly consumed beneath the fire of those ardent glances and the magic of that ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... ended in the doctor's and my dining tete-a-tete on a hastily improvised dinner,—it was then close upon eight, and our normal dinner hour is 6:30,—but it was such an improvised dinner as I am sure Mrs. McGurk never served him. Sallie, wishing to impress me with her invaluableness, did her absolutely Southern best. And after ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... color that flew to Arkwright's face at sight of herself was construed at once by Alice as embarrassment on his part at being found tete-a-tete with Bertram Henshaw's wife. And she did not like it. She was not pleased that he was there. She was less pleased that he blushed for ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... to impart a similar confidence into the breast of Colonel Dickinson, with whom Sir Richard dined that night tete-a-tete. Dickinson was inclined to think that Sir ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... went straight to the library. He knew the resources of his own mansion in the matter of nooks for a tete-a-tete interview; now he was particularly assisted by remembrance of Stewart's habits in the old days. He found his daughter and the mayor of Marion cozily ensconced among the ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... when they were enjoying a tete-a-tete by the fireside, she would place on the tea table the leather box containing the "trash," as M. Lantin called it. She would examine the false gems with a passionate attention as though they were in some way connected with a deep and secret joy; and she often insisted on passing ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... in on a tete-a-tete, as she did once, when by chance she had sniffed the curative smell of spirits of camphor on the air of a room through which her mother had passed, and came to drag her off that night to share ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... This tete-a-tete was delightful, Maitre Lebrument having shown just the proper amount of delicacy. He had taken as his motto: "Everything comes to him who waits." He knew how to be at the same time patient and energetic. His success was rapid ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... might say would be inane, tawdry, inconsequent; so she waited, patiently happy, taking no count of time, nor the sunshine, nor the lilt of the birds, nor even the dissolution of conventionality in the unsupervised tete-a-tete. ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... with the laurels of his fine victory, he is side by side with the lovely Alcmene enjoying the delights of a charming tete-a-tete. They are tasting the pleasures of being reconciled, now their love-tiff has blown over. Take care how you disturb their sweet privacy, unless you wish him to punish ...
— Amphitryon • Moliere
... who had particular reasons for wishing that Clara should first see Colonel Le Noir with other company, to have an opportunity of observing him well and possibly forming an estimate of his character (as a young girl of her fine instincts might well do) before she should be exposed in a tete-a-tete to those deceptive blandishments he knew so well how to ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... During our after-dinner tete-a-tete on the day now referred to, my friend the cannonier had shown himself exceedingly unreserved, and, without any attempt on my part to draw him out, he had elucidated, with a frankness that must have satisfied the most inquisitive, whatever small ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... whom I knew so slightly. He opened the door himself, however, and greeted me with a great show of cordiality. I was handed over to the manservant, a melancholy, swarthy individual, who led the way, my bag in his hand, to my bedroom. The whole place was depressing. Our dinner was tete-a-tete, and though my host did his best to be entertaining, his thoughts seemed to continually wander, and he talked so vaguely and wildly that I could hardly understand him. He continually drummed his fingers on the table, ...
— The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge • Arthur Conan Doyle
... His yellow moustache was to be seen at all manner of unexpected and unwelcome times. If that great honour, a walk with papa, was granted, out he popped from Marine Hotel, or a seat in the public gardens, evidently lying in ambush to spoil their walk. Or he was found tete-a-tete with mamma before the five-o'clock tea, talking, no doubt, 'Raphaels, Correggios, and stuff,' as in the Royal Wardour days. Even at Clipston, or in the coves on the beach, he was only too apt to start up from some convenient post for sketching. ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... though, of course, there was more reserve than during the years they had lived so much together, almost as brother and sister. We are obliged to leave the ladies for the present, and follow Hazlehurst to his tete-a-tete dinner with Mr. Henley. ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... or less by reading, and her conversation was apt to be garnished with literary allusions, even with familiar quotations. Vogelstein hadn't had time to observe this element as a developed form in Pandora Day; but Alfred Bonnycastle hinted that he wouldn't trust her to keep it under in a tete-a-tete. It was needless to say that these young persons had always been to Europe; that was usually the first place they got to. By such arts they sometimes entered society on the other side before they did so at home; it was to be added at the same ...
— Pandora • Henry James
... Clapart, who was ill, was being nursed by his wife,—a painful task, a duty without reward. The sick man tormented the poor creature, who was now doomed to learn what venomous and spiteful teasing a half-imbecile man, whom poverty had rendered craftily savage, could be capable of in the weary tete-a-tete of each endless day. Delighted to turn a sharpened arrow in the sensitive heart of the mother, he had, in a measure, studied the fears that Oscar's behavior and defects inspired in the poor woman. When a mother receives from her child a shock like that of the affair at Presles, ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... have been an engrossing tete-a-tete, for the call to supper had sounded twice before they heard and hurried into the house. The march had formed with Louise radiantly leading on the arm of papa. Claralie tripped by with Leon. Of course, nothing remained for ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... some other excuse, generally a witticism or bit of sarcasm at his own expense. I am sorry now that I did not urge him with more persistence, for he might have yielded in the end, and I would have got a more intime idea of his playing; for after all a musical tete-a-tete like that is preferable to any public hearing. I never heard Grieg play at a concert, but I am sure that the hour I sat near him in his Bergen home, while he played and his wife sang, gave me a better appreciation of his skill as an interpreter than I could have got in a public hall with an audience ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... having a migraine that afternoon, the two friends had the pleasure of a tete-a-tete dinner at half-past six. They sat by one of the great windows of what used to be the chapel of the monastery, but is now the dining-room of the Inselhaus, and enjoyed the sweet lake breeze, while their ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... in the first of their tete-a-tete, she sounded him cautiously, trying to discover if his feelings toward Linton were inspired wholly by political differences. She seemed to suspect there was something more behind it, even at the risk of flattering herself. But she had ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... ladies, with the evident understanding that he preferred them. He would simply have to make the best of it and show his collection as gracefully as possible and leave out the rose-garden and the delicious little tete-a-tete with this young rose of a girl and think of something else. For Karl von Rosen in these days was accustoming himself to a strange visage in his own mental looking-glass. He had not altered his attitude toward women but toward ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... I have a moment's time to regard my inner self in the mirror of consciousness. No mental analysis now; no long hours of retrospection, no tete-a-tete interviews with my soul. At times I felt as if I had lost my identity. I was a slave of the genie Gold, releasing it from its prison in the frozen bowels of the earth. I was an automaton turning a crank in the frozen stillness of the ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... dropping her voice a little, and intimating by the slight movement of her head towards him, that their conversation was to become a tete-a-tete. "Well," she continued, "I suppose that life is that with all of us, only you see with us poor frivolous people, a search means nearly always the same thing—a search for amusement or distraction, whichever you choose to ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... never passed the black altar without a backward glance, as if he were fearful of an attack from behind. And he had determined that nothing should tempt him to a tete-a-tete with the statue behind the veil. But having so senseless, so cowardly a feeling was one thing, and letting Mrs. Athelstone know it another. ...
— The False Gods • George Horace Lorimer
... countess was so tired that she gave orders to admit no more, but the porter was told to be sure to invite to dinner all who came "to congratulate." The countess wished to have a tete-a-tete talk with the friend of her childhood, Princess Anna Mikhaylovna, whom she had not seen properly since she returned from Petersburg. Anna Mikhaylovna, with her tear-worn but pleasant face, drew her chair nearer to ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... breaking in upon this little tete-a-tete, "have you seen those curious spiders that my brother brought home from South America? You might fetch Uncle Horace's case, Madge, and show them to Mr. Morris; they are worth looking at, ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... meet her, and her joy at meeting him easily betrayed itself in her eyes and her smile. And he did not refrain from actually making love to Anna on the occasions when they were able to engage in tete-a-tete conversations. Nor was he positively repelled. Soon the acquaintance became more and more intimate. Meantime, Aleksei as usual would come home and, instead of seeking his wife's society, would bury himself in his library amongst his books. But suddenly the idea that his wife ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... want them, I ate a few of the radishes just to show that I was not abashed by her haughty, reproachful air. Other passengers were strolling in. Here was Mr. John Van Blarcom, who, at the sight of Miss Falconer and myself to all appearances cozily established for a tete-a-tete meal, stopped in his tracks and fastened on me the hard, appraising scrutiny that a policeman might turn on a hitherto respectable acquaintance discovered in converse with some notorious crook. For ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... Dick's carefully manipulated advertising campaign and personal efforts among his friends and business associates, they were not by any means the first arrivals. Half a dozen laughing groups were distributed about the round tables in the center space, while several tete-a-tete couples were confidentially ensconced in corners and at cozy tables for two, craftily sheltered by some of the most imposing of the ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... roundabout for a bit, and then had the fortune to fall off into a tete-a-tete with a lady whom my aunt introduced as Mrs. Mumble—but then she introduced everybody to me as Mumble that afternoon, either by way of ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... of having a tete-a-tete with her, but as it fell out he did. They were all in the rectory garden together, Gerald and the rector a little behind Miss Gaylord and himself, as they strolled down a long walk with high hedges bordering it. On the ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... my dears, certainly, and talk—a little. Tete-a-tete, I do not say. I should think there he would be—a stick! All you English are. But what sort of a bow has he got, I ask you? How does he enter a room? And, then his smile! his laugh! He laughs like a horse—absolutely! There's no music in his smile. Oh! you should ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... remarkable number of hours alone with him in her room in Woodhouse—for she had given up tramping the country, and had hired a music-room in a quiet street, where she gave her lessons. And the young man had hung round, and had never wanted to go away. They would prolong their tete-a-tete and their singing on till ten o'clock at night, and Miss Frost would return to Manchester House flushed and handsome and a little shy, while the young man, who was common, took on a new boldness in the streets. He had auburn hair, high colouring, ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... interesting," said Mrs. Bazalgette, ironically. She thought David might employ a tete-a-tete with a flirt better than this. "What a ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... was, of course, well aware that dowager lady Chia had given her over to Pao-yue, so that her present behaviour was likewise no transgression. And subsequently she secretly attempted with Pao-yue a violent flirtation, and lucky enough no one broke in upon them during their tete-a-tete. From this date, Pao-yue treated Hsi Jen with special regard, far more than he showed to the other girls, while Hsi Jen herself was still more demonstrative in her attentions to Pao-yue. But for a time we will make ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... the evening was at an end she was very happy. In an hour's tete-a-tete with Mr. Casaubon she talked to him with more freedom than she had ever felt before, even pouring out her joy at the thought of devoting herself to him, and of learning how she might best share and further all his great ends. Mr. Casaubon was touched with an unknown delight (what man would not ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... sounding fainter and fainter, until they gradually died away,—and the late scene of noise and frolic was all silent and deserted. Ichabod only lingered behind, according to the custom of country lovers, to have a tete-a-tete with the heiress; fully convinced that he was now on the high road to success. What passed at this interview I will not pretend to say, for in fact I do not know. Something, however, I fear me, must have ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving
... an hour and a half, the cynosure of all eyes. There is a great deal of sociability there. Three hundred men all talking diagonally at each other at the same time, reminds me of a tete-a-tete I once had with a warm personal friend, who was a boiler-maker. He invited me to come around to the shop and visit him. He said we could crawl down through the manhole into the boiler and have a nice visit ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... of affability, she pointed to an armchair of purple silk embroidered with gold, sitting down herself upon a tete-a-tete of ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... in the doctor's and my dining tete-a-tete on a hastily improvised dinner,—it was then close upon eight, and our normal dinner hour is 6:30,—but it was such an improvised dinner as I am sure Mrs. McGurk never served him. Sallie, wishing to impress me with her invaluableness, did her absolutely ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... execute whatever design she might have contrived against his equanimity. A roll, after he had found her a seat, was easily procured. As he presented it, he remarked that, frankly speaking, he was at loss to understand why she should have selected for the honor of a tete-a-tete an individual for whom she had ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... only an unwelcome presence interfering with another tete-a-tete, and the hostile hardening of his eyes angered her so that the girl tossed her head, and wheeling haughtily she swept into the house. A minute later he saw her still flushed and wrathful stalking indignantly along the road toward Jake Crabbott's ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... little, red-coloured, piratical-looking pennon of audacity she had allowed to float a minute in the air, was furled, and the broad, sober-hued flag of dissimulation again hung low over the citadel. I did not like her thus, so I cut short the TETE-A-TETE and departed. ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... and it was no news to the cure that the younger brother was not living at Cap Martin. Angelo referred to this change of plan, saying laughingly that no doubt the foolish boy feared to interrupt a tete-a-tete. Nonsense this, of course; for the honeymoon had extended itself over months, and the Princess was anxious to see as much as possible of her new brother-in-law. Angelo, too, particularly wished Vanno to love Marie as a sister, ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... malice, power, and folly could inflict. Nay, so ridiculous, so unreasonable was my tyrant in his spleen, that he declared he would even be jealous of Heydigger, if there was no other man to incur his suspicion: he expected that I should spend my whole time with him tete-a-tete; when I sacrificed my enjoyment to these comfortable parties, he never failed to lay hold on some innocent expression of mine, which he made the foundation of a quarrel; and, when I strove to avoid these disagreeable misinterpretations ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... side of the hall was Mrs Gaskoin's boudoir, where she and her husband were sitting over the fire, awaiting the result of the tete-a-tete in the drawing-room. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various
... secret as the cat when she has licked all the cream. I suppose I shall end by knowing what it is all about. Meanwhile I think I shall enjoy the tranquillity of the island—although I have actually to tear myself away from the prospect of a tete-a-tete evening ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... character. Even the woman of the world looks with approbation upon the doings of a congener, when they do not come into collision with her own; even the everyday married lady bends her head confidentially towards her double, as they sit side by side, and rises from the tete-a-tete charmed and edified: the managing partner alone is solitary and unsocial. This is demanded by the lofty nature of her duties. Every business, great and small, should have a single head to direct; and she feels ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various
... of the evening Prince Victor happened to look up from an interesting tete-a-tete in the brilliant drawing-room with his handsome and liberal-minded hostess opportunely to espy Nogam staring at him from the remote ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... third, Captain.—The truth is, I want a tete-a-tete with Mr. Mowbray of St. Ronan's," replied the Earl; "and, besides, I have to beg the very particular favour of you to go again to that fellow Martigny. It is time that he should produce his papers, if he has any—of which, for one, I do not believe a word. ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... admission that her reappearance in a glamour of lilac was reward for the delay; nothing more ravishing was ever seen, she was warrantably informed by the quicker of the two guests, in a moment's whispered tete-a-tete across the banisters as she descended. Another wait followed while she prettily arranged upon the table some dozens of asters from a small garden-bed, tilled, planted, and tended by Laura. Meanwhile, Mrs. Madison constantly turned the other cheek to the cook. Laura assisted ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... the one they had quitted, but in its shelves, cupboards, and closely fitting boarding bearing out the general nautical suggestion of the house—and seated themselves before a small table on which their frugal meal was spread. In this tete-a-tete position Jim suddenly laid down his knife and fork and stared at ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... determined to form her own character, and sure, with her father to second her assurance, that boarding-school was the proper place to form it. Eddy was also at school, and Mrs. Upton, with the alternative of flight or an unbroken tete-a-tete with her husband before her, chose the former. There was no breach, no crash; any such disturbances had taken place long before; she simply slid away, and her prolonged absences seemed symbols of fundamental and long recognized divisions. She came home for the children's holidays; ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... he came to his senses in the gallery the night before. Had she awakened and become conscious of the situation? It was not a pleasant reminiscense for a girl to have, and he felt honestly sorry for her. Then he groaned in spirit at the prospect of an hour's tete-a-tete with Sir Iltyd. He liked Sir Iltyd very much, and thought him possessed of several qualifications valuable in a father-in-law, among them his devotion to his library; but in his present frame of mind he felt that history and politics ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... cheeks and make his own eyes burn with embarrassment. And since it was obvious that henceforward the combat must be waged in the open, she did not await the unlikely opportunity of some distant tete-a-tete to emphasize her intention. Before she mounted she managed to allow the glowingly embarrassed man to hold her two hands; and she ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... gayly, tete-a-tete, while care fled before the girl's exuberant spirits. Contentment had deepened in the companionable enjoyment of a play, and later a little supper-party, at which Big George and Alton Clyde were present, had completed Boyd's ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... bed the large and flourishing city of Ludhiana once stood on its bank. Ludhiana and its dak bungalow, provides refreshments and a three hours' siesta beneath the cooling and seductive punkah, besides an interesting and instructive tete-a-tete with a Eurasian civil officer spending the day here. Among other startling confidences, this olive-tinted gentleman declares that to him the punkah is unbearable, its pendulous, swinging ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... first time in her days, Was much embarrassed, never having met In all her life with aught save prayers and praise; And as she also risked her life to get Him whom she meant to tutor in love's ways Into a comfortable tete-a-tete, To lose the hour would make her quite a martyr, And they had ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... repeated haughtily, without looking at me. "Oh, no! Of a possibility eet is Mees Essmith who is angry that I have interroopt her tete-a-tete with you, and have send here my brother to make the same ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... the evening the baroness and her brother might have been seen engaged in a tete-a-tete, seated in two comfortable armchairs, and anyone who was near enough might ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... day the skipper spent hard at work with the cargo, bustling about with feverish energy as the afternoon wore on and left him to imagine his rival tete-a-tete with Annis. After tea a reaction set in, and, bit by bit the mate, by means of timely sympathy, learnt all that there was to know. Henry, without a display of anything, except, perhaps, ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... a touch of eagerness and followed her, wondering if her intriguing sentence before breakfast had been nothing more than a clever piece of chicane, planned to entice me into a tete-a-tete. ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... not had time to tell yet," she said. "I will see how you behave at lunch, which we shall have in half an hour TETE-A-TETE. You have been often here before, I believe? Do you see ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... affairs of state." He led her to the gymnasium, and sure enough, tall palms and flowering plants had been arranged to form little nooks and bowers, which were evidently intended for tete-a-tete conversations. ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... Calvin Gray succeeded and eventually he and "Bob" found themselves facing each other over a discolored tablecloth, reading a soiled menu card to a perspiring waiter. It was in some ways an ideal retreat for a tete-a-tete, for the bellowed orders, the rattle of crockery, the voice of the hungry food battlers, and the clash of their steel made intimate conversation easy. Gray noted with approval the ease with which his dainty companion adapted herself to the surroundings ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... being" are mistaken. In the first place, the whole fabric of society is a great mystery, with which we ought not to take liberties, and which should be spoken of only in a whisper when we compare our experiences, whether in a walk or tete-a-tete, or "over the back hair" with a faithful, reserved confidante. And there is also a great deal that is painful in the absence of freedom in the division of ranks, and the rising or falling from one place in it to another. I am convinced that it is a thing not to be spoken ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... hourly; his heart is uncommonly pure, his affections delicate, and his benevolence enlivened, but not sicklied, by sensibility. He is assuredly a man of great genius; but it must be in a "tete-a-tete" with one whom he loves and esteems that his colloquial powers open:—and this arises not from reserve or want of simplicity, but from having been placed in situations, where for years together he met with no congenial minds, and where the contrariety ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... Kemp turned bright scarlet and glared before him at the uniformed official, who was regarding their tete-a-tete with the indulgent eye of one who has been through this sort of thing himself. "I say, look ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... assures me that no one but a book reviewer ever reads prefaces, so I seize upon the opportunity to have a tete-a-tete with my critics. Gentlemen, my cards are face up on the table. I have declared to the publisher that nearly every American who knows how to read longs to find his way into print, and should appreciate some of the dearly bought hints herein contained upon practical journalism. And, as I kept ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing
... off. Good-night, Frank! Mind you go to that tutor to-morrow,"—he said, handing me the address he had hastily scribbled down; and, he went out on some errand of mercy, leaving Miss Pimpernell and myself to resume our tete-a-tete conversation, which he had so ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... all her preparations for dining in her own room tete-a-tete with one of her favorite books. And then, as your highness has six other young ladies who would be delighted to accompany you, I did not make my proposal to La Valliere." Madame did not ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... near Golden Square, dined with us twice, I think, in London. In Trinity Chapel is the monument of Eau de Cologne, just as it is now exhibiting at the Diarrhoea in the Regent's Park. It was late when we got to Dover. We walked about while our dinner was preparing, looking forward to our snug tete-a-tete of three. We went to look at the sea—so called, perhaps, from the uninterrupted view one has when upon it. It was very curious to see the locks to keep the water here, and the keys which are on each side of them, all ready, I suppose, to open them ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... he is positively FASCINATING," she said to herself in the solitude of her room after the tete-a-tete over the Welsh rarebit that evening. "I don't know when I have felt such a pleasure in a man's presence. Not since—" But the Baroness did not allow herself to go back so far. "If there is any fruit I DETEST, ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... portentous! Really, I almost feel as if I were interrupting a tete-a-tete between yourself and some old flame. I haven't heard anything so old-fashioned and conservative as that sigh since I have been in California. I thought you never had ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... this request, and putting her hand into the one extended to help her, jumped lightly down. It was a welcome means of according an innocent tete-a-tete to her devoted lover, and both felt as if they were treading on air, they were so happy to find themselves alone together, as, arm in arm, they walked briskly forward, until they were out of sight of their companions. Then they paused to look ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... manner to address her whom he had been lately so anxious to meet with, and embarrassed by a TETE-A-TETE to which his own timid inexperience, gave some awkwardness, the party had proceeded more than a hundred yards before Darsie assumed courage to accost, or even to look at, his companion. Sensible, however, of the impropriety of his silence, he turned to speak to ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... costs, no matter whether they saw the Sphinx in back view or noseless profile. But Mrs. East's principal occupation in life was not to get me engaged to the Gilded Rose. And either she lost her presence of mind, or else she was not so much enjoying her moonlight tete-a-tete with Fenton, that it was worth while to hide from us behind ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... had paused in her labor, and was looking down as if lost in mute attention. I felt a glow of self-satisfaction, but I recollected, at the same time, with a kind of pique, the advantage she had enjoyed over me in our tete-a-tete. I determined to push my triumph, and accordingly kept on with redoubled ardor, until I had fairly exhausted my ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... line. But to compare any one of the men in Lady Bazelhurst's house party—oh, it was absurd! She looked them over. Dull-eyed, blase, frayed by the social whirl, worn out, pulseless, all of them. They talked automobile, bridge, women, and self in particular; in the seclusion of a tete-a-tete they talked love with an ardor that lost most of its danger because it was from force of habit. One of the men was even now admitting in her ear that he had not spent an evening alone with his wife ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... Scotch and soda. Stillman sat in thoughtful silence, while Mrs. Condor talked to very trivial purpose. She seemed suddenly to have grown tired of the subject of Claire Robson. The arrival of the expected dressmaker broke in upon the rather one-sided tete-a-tete. ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... of dropping to the back yard and shinning over the fences to safety, I took the fire escape up to the top flat—something a copper would never think of—and went through to the hall. Why? Why, to interrupt the tender tete-a-tete Maitland had planned. Why again? Because, for one thing, I've never yet been beaten at my own game; and I'm too old a dog to learn new tricks. Moreover, no man yet has ever laid hands on me in anger and not regretted it." The criminal's voice fell a note or two, shaking with somber ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... as I am concerned," she insisted, with a shade of restlessness in her manner, "that finishes the subject. You must please devote yourself to telling me at least some of the things I want to know. What is the use of having one of the world's successful men tete-a-tete, a prisoner to my hospitality, unless I can make ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... miss the absentees, until the figure of the earl appeared at the reopened door, beckoning, with a face of rapture, to Lady Moseley and Mrs. Wilson. Sir Edward next disappeared, then Jane, then Grace—then Marian; until John began to think a tete-a-tete with Mr. Benfield was ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... a more nervous temperament than her friend, practised with less success the art of disguising impatience. What these ladies were waiting for would not have been apparent and was perhaps not very definite to their own minds. Madame Merle waited for Osmond to release their young friend from her tete-a-tete, and the Countess waited because Madame Merle did. The Countess, moreover, by waiting, found the time ripe for one of her pretty perversities. She might have desired for some minutes to place it. Her brother wandered ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... inspires confidence. When a man gives you the gold bottle you know that he is really serious, or as serious as he can be, which isn't saying much for most men. And not half a bottle; I've had half-bottles heaps of times at tete-a-tete dinners. It always means indecision, which is a beastly thing in anyone, and especially in a man. It's insulting, for one thing.... Oh, Peter, do look at that girl over there. Do you suppose she has anything on underneath? I suppose I couldn't ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... up at me pleadingly. "It was here in London," she went on; "—when I was last with auntie. Medhurst was stopping in the house at the time; and I took him twice, tete-a-tete with Aunt Isabel!" ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... did he absorb information, imitate fashions, and get rid of provincial manners and prejudices. His friends never knew where he learned anything. When a Frenchman of title was basking in New York drawing-rooms it was found that Millard was equal to a tete-a-tete with the monolingual foreigner, though his accent was better than his vocabulary was copious. His various accomplishments of course represented many hours of toil, but it was toil of which his associates never heard. He treated himself as a work of art, of which the ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... condition of life, nor condition of mind, to mingle as a friend with those of whose affairs I am about to treat so familiarly, being far too crotchety a fellow not to prefer a saunter with my fishing-tackle on my back, or an evening tete-a-tete with my library of quaint old books, to all the good men's feasts ever eaten at the cost of a formal country visit. Nevertheless, I am not so cold of heart as to be utterly devoid of interest in the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... you, Julia," said the Colonel, "you are perfectly right; my friend the counsellor is a dangerous person; the last time I had the pleasure of seeing him, he was closeted with a fair lady, who, had granted him a tete-a-tete at ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... and now the Hungarian band was sending forth over the cool night air those beautiful and weird waves of melody which entrance the most unwilling ear. About the broad and spacious grounds festooned lights hung from tree to tree; here and there little rose-scented bowers for tete-a-tete talks were set; from within, streaming through the windows in regal beauty, came the lights of the vast ballroom, the reception-rooms, and the beautifully designed dining-hall—lately added by young Morris Black, the architect, to ...
— A Rebellious Heroine • John Kendrick Bangs
... thunder-storms he took refuge in a rather modest and retired restaurant just off Fifth Avenue; and it being the luncheon hour he made a convenience of necessity and looked about for a table, and discovered Rosalie Dysart and Delancy Grandcourt en tete-a-tete over their ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... obstinately in Maud Matchin's mind. She gave herself no rest from dwelling on them. Her imagination was full, day after day, of glowing pictures of herself and Farnham in tete-a-tete; she would seek in a thousand ways to tell her love—but she could never quite arrange her avowal in a satisfactory manner. Long before she came to the decisive words which were to kindle his heart to flame in the imaginary dialogue, ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... little time longer the young ladies and their favored attendants strolled about the room in quiet tete-a-tete, and then the gentlemen ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... never for an instant imagined she was meekly accepting defeat at his hands instead of biding her time to resume the attack from a new quarter. So he wasn't at all surprised when, one evening, quite early after dinner, she contrived another tete-a-tete, and with good conversational generalship led their talk presently into a ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... captivating in the demure governess. He evidently thought so still, and played his part with spirit; for, while apparently enjoying a conversation which contained no allusion to the past, the memory of it gave piquancy to that long tete-a-tete. ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... Ulrich were alone now. She trembled, and, wishing to avoid this tete-a-tete, glided softly to the door; but Ulrich hastened after ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... truly, that Lady Phyllis wanted to hinder a tete-a-tete between her and Hubert Delrio. In fact, Lord Rotherwood, who was much more of a sympathetic, confidence-inviting personage than his stiffer, much older seeming son, had said to his daughter, "Don't let that poor lad and the girl get together alone, Fly; the boy thinks he is bound ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... joy, would fly to obey the royal mandate; and soon seated at the beauty's feet, in the glow of the warm wood fire and in the glory of her heavenly presence, he would lose himself in a delicious dream of love and music. No one ever interrupted their tete-a-tete. And Ishmael grew to feel that he belonged to his liege lady; that they were forever inseparate and inseparable. And thus his days passed in one delusive dream of bliss until the time came when ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... other particulars which he talked over with the authoress in a promenade on the platform while Dolores was left in the waiting-room; but afterwards he indulged his niece with a tete-a-tete, asking her father's address, and mourning over the length of time it would take to obtain an answer from Fiji. Mr. Mohun had promised to help him, solemnly and kindly promised, for the sake of her ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... really for her to make life enjoyable? Aside from walks in the woods nearby there was nothing to do for her the live-long day, so that she felt it a positive blessing to have, as often as circumstances would permit, a cosy tete-a-tete with Kolberg. Her husband, too, was not the kind of man a woman could be happy with. Hard drinking and interminable hours spent at the Casino were all he cared for. The estrangement between him and his wife had been almost complete even before Pommer, and now, since his going, Kolberg ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... do, I do; but I always have to meet my shyness of strangers, and it makes my heart beat to think of your going off and leaving me here. Being tete-a-tete with your father is appalling, ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... a strange story that the Duc d'Orleans told me one day in a tete-a-tete at Marly, he having just run down from Paris before he started for Italy; and it may be observed that all the events predicted came to pass, though none of them could have been foreseen at the time. His interest in every kind of art and science was very great, ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... but ask that question as we sat tete-a-tete after dinner, Dora having gone to carry Harold some fruit, and being sure to stay with him as ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... pair [unite in pairs], couple, bracket, yoke; conduplicate^; mate, span [U.S.]. Adj. two, twin; dual, dualistic, double; binary, binomial; twin, biparous^; dyadic [Math.]; conduplicate^; duplex &c 90; biduous^, binate^, diphyletic^, dispermic^, unijugate^; tete-a-tete. coupled &c v.; conjugate. both, both the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... While the officers were engaged in making their bow to the others, Constance casually reapproached the donkeys. Tony feigned immersion in the business of strapping hampers; he had no wish to be drawn into any Italian tete-a-tete. But to his relief she addressed ...
— Jerry Junior • Jean Webster
... a smile of ineffable voluptuousness played around her lips; and her magnificent hair was as dark as ebony and long enough to serve her as a mantle. Chopin and Maria saw each other every evening at the house of her uncle, the Palatine Wodzinski. The latter concluded from their frequent tete-a-tete at the piano and in corners that some love-making was going on between them. When he found that his monitory coughs and looks produced no effect on his niece, he warned his sister-in-law. She, however, took the matter lightly, saying that it was an amitie d'enfance, that ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... But the tete-a-tete was not disagreeable to either. Bridget was taken aback, to begin with, by some very liberal proposals of Sarratt's on the subject of her and Nelly's joint expenses during his absence. She was to be Nelly's guest—they both wished ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... He was a mere man of the world, with no feeling of any kind: tolerable in company, but tiresome beyond description in a tete-a-tete. I did not choose that he should bestow ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... mountain stream; but how is it that the face of the chevalier does not appear? is he too much occupied with his chicken to have heard the carriage? Let us see. As to you, monseigneur," continued Dubois, "be assured; I will not disturb your tete-a-tete. Enjoy at your pleasure this commencement of ingenuity, which promises such happy results. Ah! monseigneur, it is ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... please," he said quietly and with some show of spirit. "It is not necessary that you should have a further misconception of my motives or of my agility. I did not seek this—er—tete-a-tete. My servant engaged this carriage. I had not hoped to have the honor of accompanying you. Unfortunately, circumstances forced ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... whole evening with Molly Aston. That, indeed," said he, "was not happiness, it was rapture; but the thoughts of it sweetened the whole year." I must add that the evening alluded to was not passed tete-a-tete, but in a select company of which the present Lord Kilmorey was one. "Molly," says Dr. Johnson, "was a beauty and a scholar, and a wit and a whig; and she talked all in praise of liberty; and so I made this epigram upon her—She was the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... cunning eye of the master of ceremonies. "I must withdraw," thought he; "I will grant them a first tete-a-tete. I will observe them from a distance, and be able to decide if my plan will succeed." Excusing himself upon the plea of duty, Pollnitz withdrew; he glided into a window and concealed himself behind the curtains, in order to watch the countenances of his two victims. ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... then Kitty had blundered in her strategy and hurt Charley's cause; for after the two came Gazza, as obviously "sent" as any emissary ever looked: Kitty took care of the singing, while Gazza intercepted any tete-a-tete. I rose and made a fourth with them, and even as I was drawing near, the devilment in Hortense's face ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... House excepted,—and perhaps Lord Milton's, which is also in Grosvenor Place. He gave me a dinner of dinners. I talked with Denison, and with nobody else. I have found out that the real use of conversational powers is to put them forth in tete-a-tete. A man is flattered by your talking your best to him alone. Ten to one he is piqued by your overpowering him before a company. Denison was agreeable enough. I heard only one word from Lord Plunket, who was remarkably silent. He spoke of Doctor Thorpe, ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... said. "But I fear we keep our young friend from his bed. Doubtless, you have no secrets from him, but you will agree, Herr Doktor, that our conversation should best be tete-a-tete." ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... so long as he dares not reveal his thoughts to her because of whom he can find no repose; and yet he has plenty of time and opportunity to speak, if he were not afraid of being repelled; for now he can see her every day, and sit beside her "tete-a-tete" without opposition or hindrance, for no one sees ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... expressions, their immoderate laughter," is heard some distance off and they find it a convenient place: two steps aside, on the flank of the row, are "half open doors and dark alleys" which invite tete-a-tete; many of these women who have brought their mattresses "sleep there and commit untold abominations." What an example for the wives and daughters of steady workmen, for honest servants who hear and see! Men stop at each row and choose their dulcinea, while others, less shameless, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Betty looked quite stately and she carried her blond head high. She sparkled away through dinner and proved her happy faculty of fitting in, perfectly. It was a very merry meal, and later, by the library fire, Conning found himself tete-a-tete with his future ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... parted the golden velvet hangings which shrouded the entrance to the dimly lighted conservatory, he espied a half-dozen couples disposed on as many small benches under the drooping fronds in varied attitudes of tete-a-tete. ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... require it just now, for I have broken up a charming tete-a-tete," said the king, bowing to ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... the house last evening. Apparently it was to have been a tete-a-tete dinner, but my arrival changed it to a partie carree." She talked on about Wilsey and the conversation of the evening, but it made little difference what she said, for her full idea had reached Adelaide from the start, and had gathered to itself in an instant a hundred confirmatory memories. ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... closed and Francesca Bassington sat alone in her well- beloved drawing-room. The visitor who had been enjoying the hospitality of her afternoon-tea table had just taken his departure. The tete-a-tete had not been a pleasant one, at any rate as far as Francesca was concerned, but at least it had brought her the information for which she had been seeking. Her role of looker-on from a tactful distance had necessarily left her much in the dark concerning ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... address her whom he had been lately so anxious to meet with, and embarrassed by a TETE-A-TETE to which his own timid inexperience, gave some awkwardness, the party had proceeded more than a hundred yards before Darsie assumed courage to accost, or even to look at, his companion. Sensible, however, of the impropriety of his silence, he turned to speak to her; and observing that, although ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... conversation she passed on, leaving such an impression of friendly cordiality that Joyce said, impulsively, "She's just dear! She makes you feel as if you'd known her always. Now toe-to-toe, for instance. That's lots more intimate and sociable than tete-a-tete." ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... a folding green table with cards on it. The captain, the commander of our division, went to our tent to sleep; the other gentlemen also separated, and Guskof and I were left alone. I was not mistaken, it was really very uncomfortable for me to have a tete-a-tete with him; I arose involuntarily, and began to promenade up and down on the battery. Guskof walked in silence by my side, hastily and awkwardly wheeling around so as not to delay ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various
... presence of the old man. In vain, at first, Abner Nott strove with profound levity to indicate his arch comprehension of the situation, and in vain, later, becoming alarmed, he endeavored, with cheerful gravity, to indicate his utter obliviousness of any but a business significance in their tete-a-tete. ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... the countess was so tired that she gave orders to admit no more, but the porter was told to be sure to invite to dinner all who came "to congratulate." The countess wished to have a tete-a-tete talk with the friend of her childhood, Princess Anna Mikhaylovna, whom she had not seen properly since she returned from Petersburg. Anna Mikhaylovna, with her tear-worn but pleasant face, drew her chair nearer to that of ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... counter and pull the books about, and make each other innumerable presents of daintily bound volumes, until the clerks grew to know them so well that they never went through the form of asking where the books were to be sent? And those tete-a-tete luncheons at her house when her mother was upstairs with a headache or a dressmaker, and the long rides and walks in the Park in the afternoon, and the rush down town to dress, only to return to dine with them, ten minutes ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... over to Pao-yue, so that her present behaviour was likewise no transgression. And subsequently she secretly attempted with Pao-yue a violent flirtation, and lucky enough no one broke in upon them during their tete-a-tete. From this date, Pao-yue treated Hsi Jen with special regard, far more than he showed to the other girls, while Hsi Jen herself was still more demonstrative in her attentions to Pao-yue. But for a time we will make no further ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... no means satisfied with or interested in the proposed tete-a-tete. "Hev ye looked in the bresh" (i. e., brush or underwood) "for ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... went. Mr. Luke Smith was just at dinner, but the vicar was, nevertheless, shown into the bachelor's little dining-room. But what was his disgust and disappointment at finding his late pupil tete-a-tete over a comfortable fish-dinner, opposite a burly, vulgar, cunning-eyed man, with a narrow rim of muslin turned down over his stiff cravat, of whose profession ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... jolly dinner. . . . To the Athenaeum; and having dined pleasantly with Merivale, Kinglake, and Stirling, I hurried off to the House." In later years, when his voice grew low and his hearing difficult, he preferred that the diners should resolve themselves into little groups, assigning to himself a tete-a-tete, with whom at his ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... with friends to whose moods and emotions we are attuned, there takes place a singular degree of thought-transference, quite apart from speech. I had once a great friend with whom I was accustomed to spend much time tete-a-tete. We used to travel together and spend long periods, day after day, in close conjunction, often indeed sharing the same bedroom. It became a matter at first of amusement and interest, but afterwards an accepted fact, that we could often realise, even after a long silence, in ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Antonia remained leaning over the balcony, side by side, touching elbows, with their heads overhanging the darkness of the street, and the brilliantly lighted sala at their backs. This was a tete-a-tete of extreme impropriety; something of which in the whole extent of the Republic only the extraordinary Antonia could be capable—the poor, motherless girl, never accompanied, with a careless father, who had thought only of making her learned. Even Decoud himself ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... enjoyed their tete-a-tete dinner; as they had enjoyed many a one in Hartledon's bachelor days. Thomas Carr—one of the quiet, good men in a fast world—was an admirable companion, full of intelligence and conversation. Hedges left them alone after the cloth was ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... her manuscript, and set a brisk pace, at which she insured the passing of the other guests along the road, making visible her triumph over circumstance and at the same time obviating untimely intrusion of a tete-a-tete conversation. ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... nearer, talking with him, knowing him better, his influence over her would vanish. Doubtless he would return, and so she watched for him, ready to go down as soon as she saw him approaching. She waited with feverish shudderings, anxiously believing that this first tete-a-tete in her husband's absence would be decisive. Time passed; it was more than two hours since he had gone out with Sauvresy, and he had not reappeared. ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... be easy to cite a great number of other remarkable passages where Jerome shows himself the most determined and implacable opponent of those secret "tete-a-tete" between a priest and a female, which, under the plausible pretext of mutual advice and spiritual consolation, are generally nothing but bottomless pits of infamy and perdition for ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... glance melted into his; again she flashed sufficient message to redden Longstreet's cheeks and make his own eyes burn with embarrassment. And since it was obvious that henceforward the combat must be waged in the open, she did not await the unlikely opportunity of some distant tete-a-tete to emphasize her intention. Before she mounted she managed to allow the glowingly embarrassed man to hold her two hands; ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... average one would have stayed with us till all was blue, ourselves included; not more surely does our slice of bread and butter, when it escapes from our hand, revolve it ever so often, alight face downward on the carpet. But this was a bit of a fop, Adonis, dragoon, —so Venus remained in tete-a-tete with him. You have seen a dog meet an unknown female of his species; how handsome, how empresse, how expressive he becomes: such was Dolignan after Swindon, and, to do the dog justice, he got handsome and handsomer. And you have ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... Do not enter into tete-a-tete conversation in the presence of others, or refer to any topic of conversation which is not of common interest and commonly known. Mysterious allusions or assumed understandings with one or two members of a group are insults to ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway
... would, during the afternoon, he could not bring about another tete-a-tete with Diana. Finally as dusk drew near, he threw himself down, under the cedar tree, his eyes sadly watching the evening mists rise over the river. His dark figure merged with the shadow of the cedar and Na-che and Jonas, establishing themselves on the gunwale of the Ida ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... Dolly's way. As Miss Phaeton says, she means no harm, and it is admirably conducive to the pleasure of a tete-a-tete. ...
— Dolly Dialogues • Anthony Hope
... then as a young girl, very determined to form her own character, and sure, with her father to second her assurance, that boarding-school was the proper place to form it. Eddy was also at school, and Mrs. Upton, with the alternative of flight or an unbroken tete-a-tete with her husband before her, chose the former. There was no breach, no crash; any such disturbances had taken place long before; she simply slid away, and her prolonged absences seemed symbols of fundamental and long recognized divisions. She came home for the children's holidays; built, ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... Denham. "We are leaving Soeur Angelique and Miss Vernor to have a regular tete-a-tete of it, are we not? But you evade my question in a very unbecoming way, Miss Phebe. Tell me, what were you ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... had crowded round to hear the extraordinary song, and when the song was at last finished several of them remained, so that Ste. Marie saw he was to be allowed an uninterrupted tete-a-tete with Olga Nilssen no longer. He therefore drifted away, after a few moments, and went with Duval and one of the other men across the room to look at some small jade objects—snuff-bottles, bracelets, buckles, and the like—which were displayed ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... the laurels of his fine victory, he is side by side with the lovely Alcmene enjoying the delights of a charming tete-a-tete. They are tasting the pleasures of being reconciled, now their love-tiff has blown over. Take care how you disturb their sweet privacy, unless you wish him to punish ...
— Amphitryon • Moliere
... Brussels copied the fashions of her bigger sister across the border in more ways than one, he could not be expected to know that de Cartier loved not his wife and did love the pretty Louise. Nor could his pride have been convinced that the young woman at his side was enjoying the tete-a-tete chiefly because de Cartier was fiercely cursing the misfortune which had thrown this new element into conflict. It may be unnecessary to say that Mrs. Garrison was delighted with the unmistakable signs of admiration manifested by the ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... Hungarian band was sending forth over the cool night air those beautiful and weird waves of melody which entrance the most unwilling ear. About the broad and spacious grounds festooned lights hung from tree to tree; here and there little rose-scented bowers for tete-a-tete talks were set; from within, streaming through the windows in regal beauty, came the lights of the vast ballroom, the reception-rooms, and the beautifully designed dining-hall—lately added by young Morris Black, the architect, to ...
— A Rebellious Heroine • John Kendrick Bangs
... noble, that anything she might say would be inane, tawdry, inconsequent; so she waited, patiently happy, taking no count of time, nor the sunshine, nor the lilt of the birds, nor even the dissolution of conventionality in the unsupervised tete-a-tete. ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... carried no umbrella. Wearied out completely by the monotony and dulness of the street, I next sank into a doze, which destroyed one hour further towards dinner, and the remnant of time I managed to dispose of by writing a large portion of a long letter to my mother. My dinner was a tete-a-tete one with John Sainsbury—his father having been called away to Margate on affairs connected with the residents there. Finding myself labouring under a cold, I avoided wine, and while my companion discussed his Chateau Margaut, I kept up a languid conversation with him, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... that mean?" I wondered. I had supposed the two men had come in alone, but there must have been a third person. Who could it be? Had Lord Mountstuart been arranging a tete-a-tete between ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... Captain.—The truth is, I want a tete-a-tete with Mr. Mowbray of St. Ronan's," replied the Earl; "and, besides, I have to beg the very particular favour of you to go again to that fellow Martigny. It is time that he should produce his papers, if he has any—of which, for one, I do not believe ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... into which Amidon led the shy Elizabeth had been a clearing-house of confused ideas during their long tete-a-tete. Madame le Claire had explained the mystery of dual personality as well as it can be explained, with some comment on the fact that such things happen to people occasionally, no one knows why. Alvord and Judge Blodgett agreed that the candidate ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... some slight acquaintance with the young beauty and her chaperon, found himself victimized by half a regiment at a time. Patsy soon had partners in plenty, and the Prince Eitel, who had looked forward to a pleasant tete-a-tete, retired to a corner from which he gloomed more and more murkily. He folded his arms and regarded ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... falsely, and others affectedly; and as for the letter r, she could say it if she made a hearty effort, but was generally too lazy to throw her leg over it.) "Society! I'm dwenched to death with it. If I could only catch fiah like other women, and love somebody, I would much rather have a tete-a-tete with him than go teawing about all day and all night, from one unintwisting cwowd to another. To be sure," said she, puzzling the matter out, "you are a beauty, and would ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... that her reappearance in a glamour of lilac was reward for the delay; nothing more ravishing was ever seen, she was warrantably informed by the quicker of the two guests, in a moment's whispered tete-a-tete across the banisters as she descended. Another wait followed while she prettily arranged upon the table some dozens of asters from a small garden-bed, tilled, planted, and tended by Laura. Meanwhile, ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... perverse and evil and silly woman! I contented myself with assuring her that she was mistaken and had very much misunderstood me—took pains to repeat what I had really said, and then cut short an interview that had been painful and humbling to me on many grounds. I left the happy pair tete-a-tete, in their princely parlor together, little fancying that there was another argument which had been prepared to overthrow my feeble virtue. But all this had been arranged by the small cunning of this really witless couple. I was left to find my way down stairs as I might; and just when ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... said Jimmy, delighted to be able to prolong his tete-a-tete with this gracefully angular young woman with blue eyes and red hair, who spoke with the "tongue of angels" and had the same yearnings he did for corn-bread and fried ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... fulfilled even before it was concluded. A group of loudly chattering girls and their escorts of the moment bore down upon Julia, and shattered the tete-a-tete. Dislodged from Julia's side by a large and eager girl, whom he had hated ever since she was six years old and he five, Noble found himself staggering in a kind of suburb; for the large girl's disregard ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... of invigorating him would be to send him for a month to the sea-side, while the house could be thoroughly purified before Gertrude's return. Dr. Spencer and Mary would take care of Dr. May; and Ethel had begun to look forward to a tete-a-tete with Aubrey by the sea, which they had neither of them ever seen, when her anticipations were somewhat dashed by her father's exclaiming, that it would be the best thing for Leonard Ward to go with them. She said ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... impulsiveness which might compromise him—or of a possible jealousy that might seek revenge. Yet he had no reason to believe that Susy's nature was jealous, or that she was likely to have any cause; but the fact remained that Miss Faulkner's innocent intrusion upon their tete-a-tete affected him more strongly than anything else in his interview with Susy. Once out of the atmosphere of that house, it struck him, too, that Miss Faulkner was almost as much of an alien in it as himself. He wondered what she ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... was leading her to like better to have Marie or Aunt Hannah in the room when he called. She discovered, too, that she welcomed William, and even Bertram, with peculiar enthusiasm—if they happened to interrupt a tete-a-tete with Cyril. ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter
... I said. "But I fear we keep our young friend from his bed. Doubtless, you have no secrets from him, but you will agree, Herr Doktor, that our conversation should best be tete-a-tete." ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... stood looking gingerly down from a shaky platform at water that seemed a thousand miles away and as flat and hard as a blue steel plate. There wasn't any guide in any Manual of Etiquette he had ever heard of on What to Say When Interrupting a Tete-a-Tete between Your Best Friend and a Dangerous And Beautiful Woman. He wondered idly if Ted would ever speak to him again—Mrs. Severance certainly wouldn't—and he rather imagined that even if Ted and Elinor did get married he would ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... Ansard at a briefless table, tete-a-tete with his wig on a block. A. casts a disconsolate look upon ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... engrossing tete-a-tete, for the call to supper had sounded twice before they heard and hurried into the house. The march had formed with Louise radiantly leading on the arm of papa. Claralie tripped by with Leon. Of course, nothing remained ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... him into my company tete-a-tete, and into my closet, as often as I would wish to write to you, I only dictate to his pen—my mother all the time supposing that I was going to be heartily in love with him—to make him master of my sentiments, and of my ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... next afternoon and Mary sat on the veranda steps with him, while Helen made hay with Wally on a tete-a-tete above. ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... she could have wished. While the officers were engaged in making their bow to the others, Constance casually reapproached the donkeys. Tony feigned immersion in the business of strapping hampers; he had no wish to be drawn into any Italian tete-a-tete. But to his relief she addressed him this ...
— Jerry Junior • Jean Webster
... with her, notwithstanding his connection with Kitty, went everywhere that he was likely to meet her, and her joy at meeting him easily betrayed itself in her eyes and her smile. And he did not refrain from actually making love to Anna on the occasions when they were able to engage in tete-a-tete conversations. Nor was he positively repelled. Soon the acquaintance became more and more intimate. Meantime, Aleksei as usual would come home and, instead of seeking his wife's society, would bury himself in his library amongst his books. But suddenly the idea ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... her place on the divan, but Vaudrey had already forgiven her tete-a-tete with Rosas—and in truth, what had he to forgive?—This burning glance had effaced everything. He bore it away like a bright ray and still shuddered at the ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... she had believed impossible without her, was safely carried on by Cherry, and all were sent off in sound condition. No catastrophe occurred; and the continual occupation and responsibility drove away all the low spirits that so often had tried the home-keeping girl. She did enjoy those tete-a-tete evenings, when Felix opened to her more than he had ever done before; and yet it was an immense relief to have the day fixed for Wilmet's return, and how much more to have her walking into the room ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the well-known voice of the commandant. "I had no idea I was interrupting a tete-a-tete. In fact, I did not associate you with ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... probable. He was well accustomed to being appropriated by elder ladies, with the evident understanding that he preferred them. He would simply have to make the best of it and show his collection as gracefully as possible and leave out the rose-garden and the delicious little tete-a-tete with this young rose of a girl and think of something else. For Karl von Rosen in these days was accustoming himself to a strange visage in his own mental looking-glass. He had not altered his attitude toward women but toward one woman, and that one was now ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... ought to know. I suppose you thought I was bringing you up here for a Romeo and Juliet tete-a-tete with the beautiful Miss Cameron,—and for nothing else. Well, in a way, you are right. But, first of all, my business is to recover the crown jewels and parchments. I am going into that house and take them away from the man you know as Loeb,—if he has them. If he hasn't them, ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... jealousy cannot creep in; and they amuse them by their bluntness and novelty, and refresh the poor things with a touch of nature—a rarity in courts. So Philip the Good reined in his horse and gave Martin almost a tete-a-tete, and Martin reminded him of a certain battlefield where he had received an arrow intended for his sovereign. The duke remembered the incident perfectly, and was graciously pleased to take a cheerful view of it. He could afford to, not having been the one hit. ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... St. Pelagie with my distinguished and unfortunate friend Madame Roland (in two volumes which I bought for two francs each, at the book-stall in the Place de la Concorde, Paris, at the corner of the Rue Royale). Deciding to pass the evening tete-a-tete with Madame Roland, I derived, as I always do, great pleasure from that spiritual woman's society, and the charms of her brave soul and engaging conversation. I must confess that if she had only some more faults, only a few more passionate failings of any kind, I might love ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... Cleer Trevennack sat watching out the weary night, and longing for the dawn to make the way back possible. At least, Cleer did, for as to Eustace, in spite of rain and fog and cold and darkness, he was by no means insensible to the unwonted pleasure of so long a tete-a-tete, in such romantic circumstances, with the beautiful Cornish girl. To be sure the waves roared, and the drizzle dripped, and the seabirds flapped all round them. But many waters will not quench love. Cleer was ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... the Ringdove, and Griffin became first of the Proserpine. This, of course, made Yelverton second, and left one vacancy. Thus far the orders had been made out, when Cuffe dined with the admiral, by invitation, tete-a-tete. ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... closed; the young girl began to pour out the tea, but Jack remained in his seat by the window. It was a singular sensation which he did not care to disturb. It was no new thing for Mr. Hamlin to find himself at a tete-a-tete repast with the admiring and complaisant fair; there was a 'cabinet particulier' in a certain San Francisco restaurant which had listened to their various vanities and professions of undying faith; he might have recalled certain festal rendezvous with ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... dearly. Happily, he had done nothing of the kind, but had re-entered the house unobserved, while Diana and Gustave were conversing close to the window, having preferred to leave his fly at the end of the street, rather than to incur the hazard of interrupting a critical tete-a-tete. The interval that had elapsed since his return had been spent by the Captain in his own bedchamber, and in the immediate neighbourhood of the folding-doors between that apartment and the parlour. What he had heard had been by no means satisfactory ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... himself on a callow kind of equality with everybody, even the stars and aristocrats, at one moment, and a backstairs outsider the next. It was all just as the moment demanded. There was a certain excitement in slithering up and down the social scale, one minute chatting in a personal tete-a-tete with the most famous, or notorious, of the society beauties: and the next walking in the rain, with his flute in a bag, to his grubby lodging in Bloomsbury. Only the excitement roused all the savage sarcasm that lay at the bottom of ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... struck with what he heard. Dominie Sampson was doubtless a very good scholar, and an excellent man, and the classics were unquestionably very well worth reading; yet that a young man of twenty should ride seven miles and back again each day in the week, to hold this sort of TETE-A-TETE of three hours, was a zeal for literature to which he was not prepared to give entire credit. Little art was necessary to sift the Dominie, for the honest man's head never admitted any but the most direct and simple ideas. 'Does Miss ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... he returned. When he did, it was to find Hazen and the lawyer awaiting him in ill-concealed impatience. These two were much too incongruous in tastes and interests to be very happy in a forced and prolonged tete-a-tete. ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... time in her days, Was much embarrass'd, never having met In all her life with aught save prayers and praise; And as she also risk'd her life to get Him whom she meant to tutor in love's ways Into a comfortable tete-a-tete, To lose the hour would make her quite a martyr, And they had wasted ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... after this scene, which Europe related far more amusingly than it can be written, because she told it with much mimicry, Carlos and Lucien were breakfasting tete-a-tete. ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... thoughts to her because of whom he can find no repose; and yet he has plenty of time and opportunity to speak, if he were not afraid of being repelled; for now he can see her every day, and sit beside her "tete-a-tete" without opposition or hindrance, for no one sees ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... think she'll enjoy it!" Winterbourne declared. And he desired more and more to make it a certainty that he was to have the privilege of a tete-a-tete with the young lady, who was still strolling along in front of them, softly vocalizing. "You are not disposed, madam," he ...
— Daisy Miller • Henry James
... enchanting; she loved, and she was idolized. Her family, knowing that her pride would sufficiently protect her, gave her enough freedom to enjoy the little childish delights which give to first love its charm and its violence. More than once the young man and Mademoiselle de Fontaine walked, tete-a-tete, in the avenues of the garden, where nature was dressed like a woman going to a ball. More than once they had those conversations, aimless and meaningless, in which the emptiest phrases are those which cover the deepest feelings. They often ...
— The Ball at Sceaux • Honore de Balzac
... form, is it not?' said Attwater. 'Well, well, we are left tete-a-tete. A glass of wine ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... gentleman, who had been the third at the ordinary, and would take no part either in the conversation or in Pogson's champagne, now took up his hat, and, grunting, left the room, when the happy bagman had the delight of a tete-a-tete. The Baroness did not appear inclined to move: it was cold; a fire was comfortable, and she had ordered none in her apartment. Might Pogson give her one more glass of champagne, or would her ladyship prefer "something hot." Her ladyship ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... men pay few, if any, party calls, because they work and they exercise, and whatever time is left over, if any, is spent in their club or at the house of a young woman, not tete-a-tete, but invariably playing bridge. The Sunday afternoon visits that the youth of another generation used always to pay, are unknown in this, because every man who can, spends the week-end ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... dress himself as fine for her as he had for the widow Vandersloosh. The lovely widow admired his uniform, and gave him many gentle hints upon which he might speak: but this did not take place until a tete-a-tete after dinner, when he was sitting on a sofa with her (not on such a fubsy sofa as that of Frau Vandersloosh, but one worked in tapestry); much in the same position as we once introduced him to the reader, to wit, with the lady's hand in his. Vanslyperken ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... against the darkening trees. It was on one of the shadowy paths that Beatrice at last captured Amory, after Mr. Blaine had, as usual, retired for the evening to his private library. After reproving him for avoiding her, she took him for a long tete-a-tete in the moonlight. He could not reconcile himself to her beauty, that was mother to his own, the exquisite neck and shoulders, the grace of ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... said quietly and with some show of spirit. "It is not necessary that you should have a further misconception of my motives or of my agility. I did not seek this—er—tete-a-tete. My servant engaged this carriage. I had not hoped to have the honor of accompanying you. Unfortunately, circumstances forced a ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... court my faithful hound Breaks rudely on our tete-a-tete; Too well I understand that sound! A ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... up at her. To his surprise, her mind, too, was on other things bent than on the pictures. Her eyes were glancing away to distant people, she was apparently considering the effect she was producing upon them by this cosy tete-a-tete with Pierston, and upon one in particular, a man of thirty, of military appearance, whom Pierston did not know. Quite convinced now that no phantom belonging to him was contained in the outlines of the present young lady, he could coolly survey her as he responded. They were both doing ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... stood on a fearful rock above. I have been to strange lands and great cities; I have talked with people I have never beheld. Charlotte Bronte has spent a week with me—in my dreams—and together we have talked of her sad life. Shakespeare and I have discussed his works, seated tete-a-tete over a small table. He pointed out the character of each of his heroines, explaining what I could not understand when awake; and closed the lecture with "You have the tenderest heart I have ever read, ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... unanswered. But, as on the threshold he again turned to bow his farewell, his eyes met hers, and though their lips were dumb, they had perhaps told one another more in this single second than during the whole time of their long tete-a-tete. ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... birds flock away From meadow to tree branch, now there and now here, So, from beach to Casino, each day at the Pier Flock the gay pleasure seekers. The balconies glow With beauty and color. The belle and the beau Promenade in the sunlight, or sit tete-a-tete, While the chaperons gossip together. Bands play, Glasses clink; and 'neath sheltering lace parasols There are plans made for meeting at drives ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... leave them to be settled by cold lawyers or colder friends, who cannot enter into my feelings in regard to this place, or your own liberal and kindly feelings either. Let us settle it some day between ourselves," she added, with a light laugh, "in a tete-a-tete like this. I do not suppose you are afraid of being overreached by me in a bargain. But now let us turn our steps back towards the house, for I expect Mrs. Warmington early, and I must not be absent when ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... the Abbe Constantin was tete-a-tete with old Pauline, they were making up their accounts. The financial situation was admirable; more than 2,000 francs in hand! And the wishes of Susie and Bettina were accomplished, there were no more poor in the neighborhood. His ...
— L'Abbe Constantin, Complete • Ludovic Halevy
... and personal efforts among his friends and business associates, they were not by any means the first arrivals. Half a dozen laughing groups were distributed about the round tables in the center space, while several tete-a-tete couples were confidentially ensconced in corners and at cozy tables for two, craftily sheltered by some of the most imposing of the marble figures ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... too late for a train, and before the next one arrived, Raeburn and Erica were seen slowly coming down the steps, and in another minute had joined them on the platform. Charles Osmond and Raeburn fell into an amicable discussion, and Brian, to his great satisfaction, was left to an uninterrupted tete-a-tete with Erica. There had been no further demonstration by the crowd, and Erica, now that the anxiety was over, was ready to make fun of Mr. Randolph and his band, checking herself every now and then for fear of hurting her companion, but breaking forth ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... speak like that," she said, with more earnestness than she had ever shown before. "You do know, that even if I care very much for you, I must remember that I have a difficult position to maintain. The vicar would not like me, as his schoolmistress, to indulge in a tete-a-tete ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... what a monopolizer you are of the attention of young gentlemen. First, you led Mr. Henry Huntington in a wild goose chase all around the island, and next, we find you holding a very confidential 'tete-a-tete' with young Mr. Arthur. Such proceedings are really too bad, and, as your watchful 'duenna,' I must enter my serious ...
— Blackbeard - Or, The Pirate of Roanoke. • B. Barker
... with other company, to have an opportunity of observing him well and possibly forming an estimate of his character (as a young girl of her fine instincts might well do) before she should be exposed in a tete-a-tete to those deceptive blandishments he knew so well how to bring ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... are walking one on each side of Miss Pratt, and Johnnie Watson has to walk behind with May Parcher. Joe and Johnnie are there about as much as Willie is, and, of course, it's often his turn to be nice to May Parcher. He hasn't many chances to be tete-a-tete with Miss Pratt." ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... up the platform and Tristram frowned, but the financier knew it might not be safe to leave them to a tete-a-tete drive to the house! Zara's temper might not brook it, and he had rushed back from the city, though he hated rushing, in order to be on the ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... excepted,—and perhaps Lord Milton's, which is also in Grosvenor Place. He gave me a dinner of dinners. I talked with Denison, and with nobody else. I have found out that the real use of conversational powers is to put them forth in tete-a-tete. A man is flattered by your talking your best to him alone. Ten to one he is piqued by your overpowering him before a company. Denison was agreeable enough. I heard only one word from Lord Plunket, who was remarkably silent. He spoke of Doctor Thorpe, and said that, having ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... the art of disguising impatience. What these ladies were waiting for would not have been apparent and was perhaps not very definite to their own minds. Madame Merle waited for Osmond to release their young friend from her tete-a-tete, and the Countess waited because Madame Merle did. The Countess, moreover, by waiting, found the time ripe for one of her pretty perversities. She might have desired for some minutes to place it. Her brother wandered with Isabel to the end of the garden, to ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... He even ventured, every now and then, upon a smile. He talked for an instant, sometimes, upon the passing events of the day; and, once or twice, asked him to dine, when he and his son would otherwise have been tete-a-tete. All this was pleasant to Wilton; for Lord Sherbrooke managed it so well, by merely marking a particular preference for his society, that there was no restraint or force in the matter, and the change worked itself gradually without any words or ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... laughed, sarcastically, feeling that now he was leader in the race for love against this Mississippi representative, who was, he knew, a subservient tool and a taker of bribes. "You surely do intrude, Norton. Wouldn't any man who had interrupted a tete-a-tete another man was having with Miss ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise
... said or did nothing in that tete-a-tete luncheon his wife might not have heard or seen, but the fact that he talked entirely about you and art, and other universal subjects, and seemingly avoided any reference to his ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... pleasure; providing he looked kindly at her, she was happy all day." Mme. de Caylus wrote: "That poor princess had such a dread of the king and such great natural timidity that she dared neither to speak to him nor to run the risk of a tete-a-tete with him. One day, I heard Mme. de Maintenon say that the king having sent for the queen, the latter requested her to go with her so that she might not appear alone in his presence: but that she (Mme. de Maintenon) conducted her only to the door of the room and there ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... yoke; conduplicate^; mate, span [U.S.]. Adj. two, twin; dual, dualistic, double; binary, binomial; twin, biparous^; dyadic [Math.]; conduplicate^; duplex &c 90; biduous^, binate^, diphyletic^, dispermic^, unijugate^; tete-a-tete. coupled &c v.; conjugate. both, both the one ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... cruelty, is subjected to every species of insult; and he sends her to her own apartment, with the hellish intention of prostituting her innocence, and contaminating, as he pithily expresses it, "both body and soul." The second act introduces us to a tete-a-tete between Bernardo (another of Cenci's sons) and Lucretia; when their conference is suddenly broken off, by the abrupt entrance of Beatrice, who has escaped from the pursuit of the Count. She recapitulates the injuries she has received from her father, the ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... such a point that a clattering noise within the tabernacle, as of machinery put in motion, intimated to the travellers that Freya, who perhaps had some qualities in common with the classical Vesta, thought a personal interruption of this tete-a-tete ought to be deferred no longer. The curtains flew open, and the massive and awkward idol, who, we may suppose, resembled in form the giant created by Frankenstein, leapt lumbering from the carriage, and, rushing on the intrusive ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... late for that. The young man, at first almost as much startled as his companion at the uncanny apparition, naturally experienced a revulsion of indignation at such an extraordinary interruption to his tete-a-tete, and stepped up to Mr. Morgan as if about to inflict summary chastisement. But perceiving that he had to do with an elderly man, he contented himself with demanding in a decidedly aggressive tone what the devil he ...
— A Summer Evening's Dream - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... business. You are young, amiable, unconventional; you suit me and will save me from the tediousness of a tete-a-tete." ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... prosody. We must examine the possibility and the impossibility, and afterwards see who is the man who says he is the author of the distich, for there are extraordinary people in the world. My brother, in short, ought to have composed the distich, because he says so, and because he confided it to me tete-a-tete. I had, it is true, difficulty in believing him; but what is one to do? Either one must believe, or suppose him capable of telling a lie which could only be told by a fool; and that is impossible, for all Europe knows that my brother is ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
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