"Telltale" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... first, and she was reaping a bitter harvest from her summer's sowing. She sat and thought till her cheeks burned and her temples throbbed; but she dared not ease her pain with tears. The gong sounded like a Judgment-Day trump of doom, and she trembled at the idea of confronting many eyes with such a telltale face; but she could not stay behind, for Aunt Pen must know the cause. She tried to play her hard part well; but wherever she looked, some fresh anxiety appeared, as if every fault and folly of those months had blossomed suddenly within the hour. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... responsibility' if she should give us away!" remarked Rose Tuttle, a buxom girl of eighteen, with a roguish face and an independent air. "That's a novel way of looking at it—isn't it, girls?—and escaping the fate of a 'telltale,'" and the ringing laugh which completed these remarks was echoed by ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... 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 good memory—I delight in a good forgettory of the past, with its telltale milestones of birthdays and anniversaries of marriages, ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... in itself, an unimportant Kingdom with Mediterranean sea-front, called Galavia," said Blanco. Benton's start was slight, and his features if they gave a telltale wince at the word became instantly casual again in expression. But his interest was no longer forced by courtesy. It hung from that moment fixed ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... shrugged his shoulders. "Why, I'll keep on this trail till my legs is wore off above my boots!" and he turned to guide his pony up a little branch trail at the top of which stood a tent with the telltale ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... there was no mistaking it. Wherefore I deduce that the spirit of the inhabitants must pierce through and emanate from the senseless walls like an effluvium. Who knows but that every house has its telltale aura, plain to a vision of sufficient spiritual keenness? Perhaps some one will some day write a book On the Physio-Psychological Aspect of Houses: and there will be an advance sale of at least one copy ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... have taken the long chance and broken for the mountains above him, trying through many a long day ahead to cure the wounds and in some manner sustain his life. But the drain continued. It was hardly more than drop by drop, but all the time a telltale weakness was growing in his legs. In spite of the agony he was sleepy, and he would have liked to drop on the first mat of ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... the telltale flush, and slowly shaking his head, remarked, "I don't know, Leslie, about the advisability of leaving you here; you were always inclined to be very philanthropic, and it would be like you to adopt some young man out here, thinking you had money enough for yourself ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... little finger; but all beasts that roam the wilds are free game to Indian hunters. The cattle begin to disappear, the Indians to lurk armed along the paths to the water springs. The woods are full of danger. Any bush may conceal painted foe. Men as well as cattle lie dead with telltale arrow sticking from a wound. The Norsemen begin to hate these shadowy, lonely, mournful forests. They long for wild winds and trackless seas and open world. Fur-clad, what do they care for the cold? Greenland with its rolling drifts is safer ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... The telltale color rushed up into her cheeks as Mrs. Lancaster's eyes rested on her, and as it mounted, those blue eyes grew a little ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... any lights behind them. Only the one door that he had come through showed the telltale glow from the other ...
— Viewpoint • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the blockade; and he had been in action with a steamer from the other side of the ocean; and he knew that this black smoke of the soft coal, exclusively used by English steamers, was a telltale in regard to such vessels. It had been an idea of his own to take in a supply of this kind of fuel, for while its smoke betrayed the character of vessels intending to run the blockade, the absence of it betrayed the loyalty of the national steamers to the blockade runners. It was a poor rule that ...
— On The Blockade - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray Afloat • Oliver Optic
... be used for the struggle for existence itself if we are to have a world of balanced individuals. There is an arrogance involved in assuming ourselves more humane than human that reacts insidiously on our health and morals. Peter, looking into the twitching hectic face before him with the telltale glint of mania in the eyes, felt himself becoming helpless with pity for a mind gone so far askew. He felt ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... want you to go!" The moment she had said it, she caught herself with a nervous little laugh, and added a postscript of whimsical nonsense to disarm her utterance of its telltale feeling. "Why, I'm just getting you civilized, yourself. It took years to ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... hardly needful for Katy to answer with her lips a question to which her telltale cheeks had made instant reply. Evidently she would greatly mind; and the tears, too, sprang into her large brown eyes as ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... far-off, bodiless something which the other man could not see. And throughout the whole morning Steve was conscious of it whenever they met after skirting a swamp, or slipped noiselessly over a hardwood knoll, to rejoin each other. The day was half gone before Steve realized that it was the telltale sign of a brain no longer sober, even though Garry's body continued to maintain an ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... commander to reach the height of his antagonist were defeated. His lone enemy kept above him. The battle varied from an altitude of 6,000 to 10,000 feet. Three other bombs struck the airship, and each time there was the telltale wisp ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... Revelry He Should Have Overslept The Dancing Man The Collision How Albert Sat In The Treasure in the Strong Box The Old-Fashioned Prosecutor The Unruffled Wife and the Gallus Husband Books Made to Balance The Two Unfettered Birds The Telltale Tintype ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... Bush confined himself to affable conversation, to sundry gifts of hothouse flowers, and only allowed his feelings outlet in certain telltale glances when he thought she could not see. Hazel felt disinclined to fly from what ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... the slip back onto the table and fell to moulding her biscuit vigorously, biting her lips to hide a telltale smile. ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... and took seats near the window. Celeste opened the package with trembling fingers. As she did so that little telltale piece of cloth, bearing the name "Linda Fernborough," once more fell upon the floor. Quincy picked it up, and held it during the reading of the letter, for a letter ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... the "Thou," who is endearingly and importantly capitalized in the verses of the ancient singer made famous by Irish-English Fitzgerald. Her disguise was sufficient, only that her hair was so richly assertive. There was not any like it in the cattle country; very little like it anywhere. It was a telltale, precious possession, and Major King never could have made good a plea of hidden identity against ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... The telltale newspaper item, reproduced above, outlines the story behind this volume. What is not made clear is the fact that the entire expedition was painstakingly planned many months ago, the publishers themselves making it ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... the old man with composure, and as he spoke his foot erased the telltale print. "I 'low there won't anybody go to the pen for he'pin himself to Mr. Morse's gold dust. I don't give a ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... wide, old boards of the floor gave a telltale snap. It was behind him, and so loud that it shattered his vision of Big Tom and the pudding bowl. Some one was in the room! Father Pat? ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... where in that summer noon I basked, And strove, with logic frailer than the flowers, To justify a life of sensuous rest, A question dear as home or heaven was asked, And without language answered. I was blest! Blest with those nameless boons too sweet to trust Unto the telltale confidence of song. Love to his own glad self is sometimes coy, And even thus much doth seem to do him wrong; While in the fears which chasten mortal joy, Is one that shuts the lips, lest speech too free, With the cold touch of hard reality, Should ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... "There's an old gentleman come to live next door," Prudence continued, taking up her sewing again, "who watches us through a telescope sometimes, and when he sees us in the green- almond trees he writes to Papa. He says it is for our good, old telltale. Once, though, he took us into his library and showed us some beautiful fossils. He said they were as old as Moses, and one of them might be a million years old. It was a fan-shell, quite whole and pretty. Fancy a million years! I wonder what the world will be like ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... and let it fall, then with stiff, clumsy fingers he undid the top buttons of his vest and, to Pierce's amazement, produced a large- calibered revolver, which he mechanically cocked and uncocked several times, the while his eyes remained hypnotically fixed upon the telltale streamer of smoke. Not only did his action appear to be totally uncalled for, but he himself had undergone a startling transformation and ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... all pursuit, she endowed the convent most liberally, cut her hair, and became the Sister Umilia, who was described as a "young woman, tall and pale, dressed in a nun's habit, with a crown upon her head." For thirteen years little was heard of her, and then a telltale rope ladder hanging from the convent wall led to disclosures of a most revolting nature. It was discovered that the supposedly pious nuns were profligates, the convent was a veritable den of iniquity, and Sister Umilia was found to ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... is that he should destroy these telltale documents. Then he wonders what may be in these envelopes. There flashes over him a new feeling—a sharp, lightning-like stroke passes across his ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern
... on it, that tiny, telltale initial, his face went white under its tan and his mouth compressed till all the humor and kindliness of it were lost in a line of stark grimness. And then he swung on his heel and packed up his painting kit in a fury of haste, and with one last, upturned ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... flush spread over the young officer's telltale face. He opened and read: "If you care to aid a woman who is in trouble, come to me at room 19 when ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... did their best to wring such an admission from him or to entrap him into the use of some technical phrase, some slip of the tongue which would verify their suspicions. They even examined his hands with minutest care, as if to find some telltale callous or chemical discoloration which would convict him. Then finally, to give him the lie absolute, the aggressive colonel seized a nickel- plated atomizer from the table and brandished it triumphantly ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... parapet nor to receive the support of his arm. Her chatter had dwindled to sighs and exclamations. He felt the need of a competing sound as the chug of the spearhead in the ditch should announce the discomfiture of the West Germans. But before committing the telltale runes to this ditch, Hauptmann scanned it carefully over Linda's curly head, and considered thoughtfully its worthiness to receive so important a deposit. The survey could not have been more reassuring. Like so many of the main irrigating ditches that carry the water of Father Po and his ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... This word of Scandinavian origin seems to unite the senses of 'grinning,' 'flattering' (see Love's Labour's Lost, V, ii, 109, and Ben Jonson's "fawn and fleer" in Volpone, III, i, 20), and 'sneering,' and so is just the right epithet for a telltale, who flatters you into saying that of another which you ought not to say, and then mocks you by going to that other and telling what you have said.—/Hold, my hand:/ stay! here is my hand. As men clasp hands in sealing a bargain. ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... The telltale smoke rose from the heart of a woodland bluff, and near by a large herd of cattle was grazing, watched over by three mounted men whose horses were moving slowly over the bright ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... two minutes before I knew what had alarmed him, and then it was sound, not sight that gave me the first clue. There came a purring from the lake; and when I had searched for a minute for the source of it I saw the glow we had watched from the dhow in the storm the first night out—the telltale crimson stain on the dark that rides above a steamer's funnel, and at intervals a stream of sparks to prove they were burning wood and driving ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... Unc' Billy hadn't moved. Of course, he couldn't understand what Farmer Brown's boy was saying. Nor could he see what Farmer Brown's boy was doing. So he held his breath and hoped and hoped that he hadn't been discovered. And perhaps he wouldn't have been but for that telltale nest-egg on the floor. That was the cause of all his troubles. First it had angered Jimmy Skunk because as you remember, it had fallen on Jimmy's head. Then it had led Farmer Brown's boy to look in all the nests. ...
— The Adventures of Jimmy Skunk • Thornton W. Burgess
... leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, murmuring lover's confidences behind the shield of his tilted hat, which hid from all but Evadna his smiling lips and his telltale, glowing eyes. He looked up at that last sentence, though it is doubtful if he had heard much of what she ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... there was to carry back to the anxious Katy, who on the afternoon of Morris' return from New York was over at Linwood waiting to pour his tea and make his toast, she pretended, though the real reason was shining all over her telltale face, which grew so bright and ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... my curiosity altogether," said Clara, smiling, "but have given it a little hope to feed on for the present, I think, woman though I am, I can promise all you wish. Seriously, Basil," she continued, "that telltale locket of yours has so pleasantly brightened some very gloomy thoughts of mine about you, that I can now live happily on expectation, without once mentioning your secret again, till you give me ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... you feeling now, Bumpus?" asked Thad, some time later, as he once more stopped to allow all the stragglers pull up; for some of the boys were beginning to look rather fagged, though they tried to hide the telltale signs, being too proud to own up to any weakness ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... with a big frame, a striking head and countenance, and a pair of keen gray eyes, he looked like a man who was intended by nature to dominate. White threads appeared in his thick brown hair, which he wore parted in the middle. But his face, which was clean-shaven, had not many telltale lines. And he did not look more than ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... Hadley on Friday; Saturday I went to New York; Sunday and Monday I spent at the Yale Club, writing; Tuesday, this telltale letter fell under the prescient eye of my brother. On that day he at once got in touch with me by telephone. We briefly discussed the situation. He did not intimate that he believed me to be in elation. He simply urged me not to attempt to interest ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... Is't dishonor to her purity To urge thy smoky flame to brightness worthy Of her? 'Tis what she wishes most; witness Her confusion and her telltale blushes. Do me justice, man; my thoughts are pure And dwell on lawful marriage only. Thou, thou Alone, couldst see impurity in that. I spoke of thee, man, of thee; and who Beside thyself would ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith
... baby foxes all licked smooth now, and by them were two of our hens fresh killed. The newly heaved earth was printed all over with telltale signs—signs that told me that here by the side of her dead she had watched like Rizpah. Here she had brought their usual meal, the spoil of her nightly hunt. Here she had stretched herself beside them and vainly offered them their natural drink and ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... leggings. She had never looked more beautiful to him. Her night's rest had restored the colour to her soft cheeks and curved lips; and in her eyes, when she looked at him again, there was a strange, glowing light that thrilled him. During the next half-hour he almost forgot his telltale disfigurements. At breakfast Paul and Peggy Blackton were beautifully oblivious of them. Once or twice he saw in Joanne's clear eyes a look which made him suspect that she had guessed very ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... without looking back, and there rose a picture in his thoughts to take her place, a picture of dark, defiant eyes, of telltale hair falling in betrayal of her disguise, as if discovering her secret to him who had a ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... terrible," said Betty, trying hard to keep the telltale tremulousness from her voice—trying desperately to sound brave and resigned. "But we must remember that thousands of women and girls all over the United States are going through the same thing. And for the boys' sake, we ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Army Service - Doing Their Bit for the Soldier Boys • Laura Lee Hope
... and about Baxter, sir. I am not a telltale, but certain things have happened which I think Captain Putnam should know for his own sake and for the reputation of ...
— The Rover Boys at School • Arthur M. Winfield
... capture of the horse, the finding of the body, its position, and the nature of the wound,—medical opinion in addition that death had been instantaneous, and probably received before the breaking of the storm. If there had been any telltale track or mark in the soil of the river road, the continued and beating rain had made the way impossible to read. Witnesses from Malplaquet told of Ludwell Cary's setting forth that morning, and Forrest, the blacksmith, vouched ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... if the record in my pocket burned—spontaneously—so intense was my feeling. There in the glass was that fatal, telltale white precipitate. ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... readers, the wayward and prejudiced, but often very acute French critic already mentioned, Barbey d'Aurevilly, though he admits Horace's esprit pronounces it un fruit brillant, amer, et glace. There are undoubtedly many things to be said against him as a man—if you take the "Letters-a-telltale-of-character" view, especially so. He was certainly spiteful, and he had the particularly awkward—though from one point of view not wholly unamiable—peculiarity of being what may be called spiteful at ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... though there was some telltale color in his face. "All the writing I have done to-day would not fill up twenty minutes. And if I am a dull companion, is not Norman Ogilvie coming to ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... so thoroughly and always her guide that it was not likely she thought of the white-feathers being the telltale. But now she realized that a man, one she knew of old as a treacherous character, one whose scent had always meant mischief to her, that had been associated with all her own troubles and the cause of nearly all her desperate danger, was close to her darlings; was tracking them down, in a ...
— Johnny Bear - And Other Stories From Lives of the Hunted • E. T. Seton
... occasion that he found, on taking the stone in his hand to replace it in the safe he had had built for it in one of his cabinets, that it did not strike his eye with its usual force and brilliancy, and, on examining it closely, he discovered the absence of the telltale flaw. Struck with dismay, he submitted it to a still more rigid inspection, when he found that what he held was not even a diamond, but a worthless bit of glass, which had been substituted by some cunning knave for his ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... night a long, long letter, the nearest to a love letter she had ever written him. She brought Ross in quite casually; yet—What is the mystery of the telltale penumbra round the written word? Why was it that Dory, in far-away Vienna, with the memory of her strong and of the Villa d'Orsay dim, reading the letter for the first time, thought it the best he had ever got from her; and the next morning, reading ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... unspeakably magnificent in a naval uniform induced Osh Popham to cry spontaneously: "Three cheers for the Admiral! I don't know what he ever done, but he looks as if he could, all right!" at which everybody cheered and roared, and the Admiral to his great surprise made a speech, during which the telltale tears appeared so often in his eyes and in his voice, that Osh Popham concluded privately that if the naval hero ever did meet an opposing battleship he would be likelier to drown the ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... to the ground, and clasped her left wrist with her right hand. But in this latter movement she again exposed her brother by the very means she took to protect him; for quick-seeing Madge, observing the action, gently but firmly unclasped the younger sister's hand, and so disclosed the telltale marks of Ned's fingers upon the delicate wrist, by squeezing or wrenching which that tyrant ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... the best advantage, all joined the laborers who were digging. Twenty minutes later, however, and before the trench was more than three parts finished, there came a tremendous change. Turning hastily to the river, Bartlett uttered a shout of alarm and called for light. He had approached the telltale stake, and suddenly, before he reached it, found his feet in the water. The river was rising with fierce rapidity at last, and five minutes later began to lick at the edge of the hay-rick, and churn along with a strange hidden force and devil in it. The pace increased with the volume, ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... gone back to the blaze beyond the tool-house and conscientiously had scattered and stamped on its last visible remnants. The Master, too, coming home from his evening walk, had glanced toward the back garden and had seen no telltale spark to hint at life ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... from the bondage of her loving arms, Louis hastened to Miss Blanche, and she grasped his hand as he approached. No loving expressions passed between them, but what they might have said that could be classed under this head was seen on their telltale faces. ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... wonder at the sudden brightness. He had passed along the shore within twenty yards of me, through dense underbrush,—as I found out from his tracks next morning,—yet so silently did he push his great bulk through the trees, halting, listening, trying the ground at every step for telltale twigs ere he put his weight down, that I had heard no sound, though I was listening intently in the dead hush that ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... loath to run, but we urged them to it. When we had covered half this open road, we took to the sod at the roadside to avoid raising a telltale cloud of dust. After a hard gallop we reached a forest where the road again left the river. Here we halted to breathe our horses and to watch the road on the right bank. After ten minutes we became uneasy and began to fear that the duke's cavalcade had passed us, but Max ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... in an eternal struggle with sordid everyday cares. He had worn himself out over all the exigencies of a petty bourgeois existence, like a poor man ashamed of his poverty, making pathetic efforts to conceal a tear in his clothes and always seeing the telltale hole staring out from under the covering. For thirty-nine years he had never swerved from disciplining himself to abstemiousness, and there was much gold on his uniform, but very little in his pocket. As a matter of fact, he had been quite ready for some time to quit. He was thoroughly tired ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... moments seemed like hours. Gradually, however, the leader of the silent ships drew nearer. There was no mistaking the telltale reports in the wireless room. Basing his calculations on the chief electrician's reports, McClure figured the leader of the oncoming squadron to be now not more than half a mile away and moving steadily forward toward the desired range—-a dead ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... tides of people go Heedless; the trees upon the Common show No hint of green; but to my listening heart The still earth doth impart Assurance of her jubilant emprise, And it is clear to my long-searching eyes That love at last has might upon the skies. The ice is runneled on the little pond; A telltale patter drips from off the trees; The air is touched with southland spiceries, As if but yesterday it tossed the frond Of pendent mosses where the live-oaks grow Beyond Virginia and the Carolines, Or had its will among the fruits and vines Of aromatic isles asleep beyond ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... disclosure; retection^; unveiling &c v.; deterration^, revealment, revelation; exposition, exposure; expose; whole truth; telltale &c (news) 532. acknowledgment, avowal; confession, confessional; shrift. bursting of a bubble; denouement. [person who discloses a secret] tattletale, snitch, fink, stool pigeon, canary. V. disclose, discover, dismask^; draw the veil, draw ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... playground, beaten bare like that of the Washington Street School, was filled with laughing, shouting children, ranging from shoe-black through coffee-color to those occasional tragic ones with white skin and blue eyes, but with the telltale kink in the fair hair and the bluish half-moon at the base ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... suspension-bridge. Patsy could see the station not an eighth of a mile down the track, and she made for it as being the nearest possible point where water might be procured. The station-master gave her a tin can and filled it for her; and ten minutes later she set about scrubbing the tinker free of all the telltale make-up of melodrama. It was accomplished—after a fashion, and with persistent rebelling on the tinker's part and scolding on Patsy's. And, finally, to prove his own supreme indifference to physical disablement, he tore the can from her administering ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... walked over here and robbed the store," suggested Silas Tripp, with withering sarcasm, as he held up the telltale ...
— Chester Rand - or The New Path to Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr
... opened Phillip Harrison's cell. "You go wake up Fred Macklin and tell him to come here. Then get the Macklin girl—Alice, it says here—and the pair of you wake up others and start sending 'em up stairs. I'll call you on the telltale as ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... moment's pause she answered, while a sudden smile dimpled around her mouth and the big glove went up to hide her telltale cheeks: "Uncle, if I must have lovers, I do wish they'd be more interesting. How can I like or respect men who go on as some of them do and then imagine women can feel honored by the offer of their hands? Hearts are out of fashion, so they don't ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... rose, Genevieve appeared with the news that Yvonne was somewhat better, adding that she had come to take leave of me. Her composure surprised me gladly, for albeit in her eyes there was also a telltale light, the lids, demurely downcast as was her wont, amply screened it ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... location of the flocks goes without saying, for had they not had spies on the lookout, the telltale pillar of dust that ever floated above the marching thousands would have ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... made no farther objections, and having rolled himself in his blankets was almost immediately asleep and breathing heavily. The moment Dan heard his companion draw breath with a telltale regularity, he sat up again in his blankets. Bart was instantly at his side. He patted the shaggy head lightly, and pointed towards ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... and of the pathetic wreck her life had fallen into. The girl was so patently fit for better things! Her splendid beauty was not a cheap beauty. She was no coarse-blown, gorgeous flower, imperfect at telltale points. It was good blood that had modelled her dark perfection, good blood that had shaped her long ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... the snow is on the ground, indeed, that we take our four-foot census of the woods. How often we learn with surprise from the telltale white that a fox was around our hen house last night, a mink is living even now under the wood pile, and a deer—yes! there is no mistaking its sharp-pointed un-sheep-like footprint—has wandered into our ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... jumped and Deston turned to his wife. "Stay here at the port, Bobby. Wrap one leg around that lever, to anchor you. What does your telltale read? That gauge there—your radiation meter. It reads twenty, same as mine. Just pink, so we've got a minute or so. I'll roust out some passengers and toss 'em to you—you toss 'em along in there. ...
— Subspace Survivors • E. E. Smith
... the transom was hung with heavy black canvas; a curtain of the same was so arranged as to permit its being drawn over the telltale cracks of the door. Dennis and Stover, sent to reconnoiter from the hall, waited while the Tennessee Shad passed a lighted candle back and forth over the sealed entrance. One traitor crack ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... panels. It is all a piece of elaborate cabinet-work; and one does not altogether see why it should be given to the gales, and the salt-sea atmosphere, to be tossed upon the waves, and occupied by a rude shipmaster in his dreadnaught clothes, when the fairest lady in the land has no such boudoir. A telltale compass hung beneath the skylight, and a clock was fastened near it, and ticked loudly. A stewardess, with the aspect of a woman at home, went in and out of the cabin, about her domestic calls. Through ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... once among the devious turns which led to Sunset Rock, and arrived there just as the party, quite satisfied with the inspection of a view they had seen a score of times before, were ready to depart, his appearance upon the scene with the telltale pocket being greatly to the discomfiture of everybody concerned except Miss Stevens, who found herself unaccountably pleased that Sam's delay had been due to an accident, and able to believe his briefly told explanation at once. Miss Westlake was in despair. She had really hoped, ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... over to the phone, dialed a number, and sat down comfortably in his fat blue overstuffed chair. It buzzed for half a minute, then the telltale lit up, but ...
— Dead Giveaway • Gordon Randall Garrett
... puzzled scout that he had learned so well at Camp Brady to observe carefully. He mounted his wheel and rode a few hundred yards further. Then he examined the road again. He found the tracks he was searching for. He rode on and dismounting, found in two places the telltale marks. But the third time he examined the highway there were no marks ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... invisible labels by all who know us. I sometimes think it would be a great advantage if one could read these ratings of his associates. We cannot long deceive the world, for that other self, who ever stands in the shadow of ourselves holding the scales of justice, that telltale in the soul, rushes to the eye or into the manner ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... ran his fingers over it, his eyes following them. What was that? A finger-print? Upon the left side half way up a tiny smudge was visible. Barney examined it more carefully. A round, white figure of the conventional design that was burned into the tile bore the telltale smudge. ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... jumped up, ran into the house and to her room. But if the canary was suffering from thirst, it remained neglected. Ramona's telltale face was buried in a pillow. She was not quite ready yet to look into her own eyes and read the ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... eyes suddenly to hide the telltale gleam that had leaped into them. She knew that Dick Cronk was fighting ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... firmly between its jaws was the frozen leg of a marten. The keen eyes of 'Merican Joe saw at a glance that the animal had neither gnawed nor twisted its own way out of the trap but had been torn from it by violence. The Indian scowled darkly at certain telltale tracks in the snow, and an exclamation of anger ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... enough to be embarrassed by his presence, for there is nothing that wild young men dislike more than the constraint put on them by the presence of an innocent youth; and when they found out that this 'milk-sop' of a brother was a spy and a telltale, their wrath blazed up. So Joseph had early experience of the shock which meets all young men who have been brought up in godly households when they come into contact with sin in fellow-clerks, servants, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... home habits of the male biped she gleaned from the telltale hints of the inanimate garments that passed through her nimble hands. She could even tell character and personality from deductions gathered at heel and toe. She knew, for example, that F.C. (in black ink) ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... perusing the latest popular romance, while, forsooth, in yonder hammock his dignified spouse swings slowly to and fro, conning the pages and the colored plates of the current fashion journal. Surely in the telltale word "rusticantur" you and I and the rest of human nature find a worthy precedent and much encouragement for our practice of loading up with plenty of good reading before we start for the scene of ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... of smut, on the edge of one of the chambers, is the telltale, sirs. A bullet passing out always leaves smut behind. The man who fired this, remembering the fact, cleaned the barrel, but forgot the cylinder." And stepping ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... this, George Denham was in bed and fast asleep. He had been met at the door by Kitty Kendrick, in whose telltale face the blushes of that heartiest of all welcomes had chased away the pallor of dread and anxiety. Mrs. Kendrick was less sympathetic in word than in deed. She had known George Denham since he was a little boy in short clothes; and ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... bravado and bluster, was even more defiant in this supreme moment. He rode with a plug of tobacco in hand, biting off huge pieces frequently, more frequently squirting brown juices between lips white as the telltale ring around his mouth—a ring as expressive as the hollows beneath his glittering eyes. And Jim, ever worried, ever conscious of himself, sat in his saddle easily, now that he was about to reap the harvest of his ill-sown seeds, ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... through the streets loaded with armed men. There were crowds looking for a telltale face in their own midst. Guards, deputies, coppers were surrounding houses and peering into alleys, raiding saloons, ringing doorbells. The whole city was on his heels. The city was like a pack of dogs sniffing wildly for his trail. And when they found it they would come whooping toward him for ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... inventor did not answer at once. He was hurrying along, his eyes on the telltale marks. He had proceeded some distance from the place where the log was when he uttered a cry. At the same moment he hurried from the road toward a thick clump of bushes that were in the ditch alongside of the highway. Reaching them, he parted the leaves ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-boat - or, The Rivals of Lake Carlopa • Victor Appleton
... saw some one coming, she felt the necessity of bringing her telltale face to order and getting ready to answer whoever she was to meet. As she drew nearer she became suddenly aware that it was Rosa Rogers coming with her arms full of bundles and more piled up in front of her on her pony. Margaret knew at once that Rosa must have seen Forsythe go ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... be some chance for discovering telltale imprints near by. Max was unusually clever with regard to such things; and always thought of them first when there was a mystery of ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... yourself to do that again," says Monica very sweetly, but with a telltale flash in her blue eyes; "I am sure it must fatigue you dreadfully. Remember what a warm day it is. Another thing: don't for the future, please, say rude things about Ireland, because I don't like ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... ran, but the fairies and their Queen put their fingers in their ears and ran away, so they could not hear. The telltale Goblin, however, was bound to tell, and he ran until he was near enough to shout: "She has married a River God and she left her wand in the dell; they gave me this silver cap not ...
— Sandman's Goodnight Stories • Abbie Phillips Walker
... of respect came into the little girl's wisely regarding blue eyes. She, with the swiftness of her sex, recognized in forlorn little Johnny the making of a man. "Oh, well," said she, loftily, "I never was a telltale, and, anyway, we are not grown up, and there will be my trousseau to get, and a lot of other things to do first. I shall go to Europe before I am married, too, and I might meet a boy much nicer ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... of Cook; but a deadly bud. If, however, Sir M. should come to hear that I had flown for succour to the enemy's camp, I fear it would be all over with the bargain for which Anthony and I are selling our souls. T. Slaney says he never shall know. He guarantees that Cook labels and other telltale marks shall be removed from everything, though time is short and there is much to do. He will be the power behind the tents, and I will be in them, absorbing all ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... looking at him; there was a telltale quivering in her face. She divided the cake carefully, and gave her husband half. David had lain back on a piny bank; and as he ate, his eyes followed the treetops, swaying a little now in a rhythmic wind. But Letty ate her ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... interval to render possible. After leaving her at the hotel that last Sunday he had gone forth in his reaggravated trouble and walked straight before him, in the teeth of the west wind, close to the iron rails of the stretched Marina and with his telltale face turned from persons occasionally met, and toward the surging sea. At the Land's End, even in the confirmed darkness and the perhaps imminent big blow, his immemorial nook, small shelter as it yielded, had again received him; and it was in the course ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... haste to remove the telltale writing which might have compromised Clelia, and to tear out a number of leaves from the prayer-book, with which he made several alphabets; each letter was neatly formed with powdered charcoal moistened with wine. The alphabets were quite dry when at a quarter to ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... delicacies. Their beds are not so handsome or so well appointed as ours, but their sleep is sounder and their rest less broken. They have no ladies pranked out and painted like those whom we idolise, but they take their pleasure oftener than we, without fear of telltale tongues, save those of the beasts and birds that see them. What we have they lack, and what we ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. III. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... massive shoulders and chest to give him the appearance of a man who labored with his hands—until one looked at them. His hands were in strange contrast to the rest of him. Long, slim, mobile hands they were, with tapering nervous fingers—the hands of a thinker or of a musician. Telltale splotches of acid told of hours spent in a laboratory, a tale that was confirmed by the almost imperceptible stoop of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... similar spot. This he marked, and dodging and circling, like a hound on a scent, the Snipe ran his trail from his first tiny spot to the trees near the creek where the horses had been left. Doubling, he patiently tracked the telltale spots up the path that led to the cabin. Then he ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... beam of light, searching for some telltale discoloration in wiring, or a gleaming icy patch which would indicate a fuel leak. "Might be the firing plugs," ...
— Tight Squeeze • Dean Charles Ing
... working out?" said Snorky at eleven P.M., producing the crackers and cheese, after having blinded the windows and hung a blanket over the telltale cracks of ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... continued to stand there and listen to the telltale sounds with sinking hearts. Perk in particular seemed to be dreadfully put out by this fresh upset and was grinding his strong teeth as though desirous of letting out an explosive but restrained by the fact of Jack being so ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... you my question, or shall I not?" he went on, gripping her hand hard, and half raising himself in his chair as he looked intently at her telltale face. "For it means more than you can realise. It is an audacious, impudent question, Lucy,—one that no man of my age ought to ask any woman,—one that is likely to ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... from the corpse, and gazes for a moment after the retreating form of his friend; then he picks up the handkerchief; it is of softest linen, and across one corner he reads the embroidered name of Clifford Heath. For a moment he stands with the telltale thing held loosely in his hand, and then he bends down, spreads it once more over the dead face, and turns to ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... ravine, hid them from the valley as they ascended. Its bottom was covered with rock and shale. The wounds Thor had received in the fight, unlike bullet wounds, had stopped bleeding after the first few minutes, and he left no telltale red spots behind. The ravine took them to the first chaotic upheaval of rock halfway up the mountain, and here they were still more ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... to her, thus rendering correspondence between us almost superfluous except for verification to our outward senses. My own mother was aware of my presence almost daily; and it was a curious fact that my telltale spirit would go to her and reveal the very things I wished to keep from her,—any little surprises or presents, or the time of my arrival home on a visit. However late the hour, I always found her ready ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... from the crisp and living lines of his pictures to his dead, young flesh, to his fingers, locked together and straining, to keep them from their telltale plucking. "Look here," she said, "why shouldn't we ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... before you, but five hundred pounds is not a fortune for Major Alan Hawke! Listen! I watched you carefully yesterday, in your vigil upon Rousseau's Island. Your telltale face betrayed you. You were left stranded here in Geneva. An accident has brought us together. You cannot divine my motives. I can fathom yours easily. Tell me now, of yourself, of your past in India—of your present standing there. If you are frank, ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage |
