"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 The old spontaneous laugh was superseded by a gentle smile, sympathetic perhaps, but never joyous.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
... Their tete-a-tete was broken by Mrs. Shiffney's departure to a reception at the Ritz. She must surely have been disappointed in the musician; but, if so, she was too clever to show it. And she was by way of being a good-natured woman and seldom seemed to think ill of anybody. "I have so many sins on my ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... 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 |
