"Stepmother" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lady had perhaps no less reason than her brother to be dissatisfied with the humour of their stepmother; and it was only the tender affection she had for him which made her feign a contentment at the treatment both of them received, in order to keep him within ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... stubborn daughters, intimating they will come under the hands of a stepmother, who, it is likely, will not deal too tenderly ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... "she'll set me to hem the towels, or trim the bonnet, or make a pudding for dinner. It's wash day, and I know what that means in our house. I won't go—it's better out in the rain; the towels and the drab bonnet may go au diable, and my blessed stepmother with them, if it comes ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... out her golden mane and went demurely downstairs—more demurely than was her wont. The dawning of possible trouble filled her sweet eyes. A new wife—a possible stepmother! Oh, no, by no possibility could such a horror be coming; nevertheless, her full cup of happiness was vaguely troubled by ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... pictures forth Each circumstance of that atrocious deed,— Her own oppress'd and miserable life, The prosperous traitor's insolent demeanour, The perils threat'ning Agamemnon's race From her who had become their stepmother; Then in his hand the ancient dagger thrusts, Which often in the house of Tantalus With savage fury rag'd,—and by her son ...
— Iphigenia in Tauris • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... that all others gave to the four children of Lir grew, the hatred of Eva, their stepmother, kept pace with it, until at length the poison in her heart ate into her body as well as her soul, and she grew worn and ill out of her very wickedness. For nearly a year she lay sick in bed, while ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... over than the stepmother began to display her bad temper. She could not endure the excellent qualities of this young girl, for they made her own daughters appear more hateful than ever. She thrust upon her all the meanest tasks about the house. It was she who had to clean the plates and the stairs, and ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... ballad of love and sorrow that once had served to stir a national hatred of France for England. Beaumarchais, in a later day, had given it back its true poetry by adapting it for the French theatre and putting it into the mouth of a page, who pours out his heart to his stepmother. Just now it was simply the air that rose and fell. There were no words; the plaintive voice of the singer touched ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... she bent her face as if the wind that sighed among the grass stalks could carry her words to ears long dulled in death,—"My POOR child! I will be a mother to your son!"—Jan's heart turned back with a gush of gratitude to his good stepmother. ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... (the badge of gentry) or want of exercise, the bane of body and mind, the nurse of naughtiness, stepmother of discipline, the chief author of all mischief, one of the seven deadly sins, and a sole cause of this and many other maladies, the devil's cushion, as [1540]Gualter calls it, his pillow and chief reposal. "For the mind can never rest, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... with your stepmother. There are certain situations in life that can be faced in one way only. Mrs. Bundercombe will no doubt have a few words to say to her husband on his return. Let her ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... scarcely over, when the stepmother's bad temper began to show itself. She could not bear the goodness of this young girl, because it made her own daughters appear the more odious. The stepmother gave her the meanest work in the house to do; she had to scour the dishes, tables, etc., and to scrub the floors and clean ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... he roused himself and emerged from his self-absorption into a frank crossness which wore away but slowly. A motherless childhood when he was alternately teased and spoiled by his older sisters and brother had helped on the trouble, and not even the wisdom of his father and the devotion of his stepmother could cure the complaint. At his best, Allyn was the brightest and most winning of his family; at his worst, it was advisable to let him severely alone. In the whole wide world, only two persons ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... husband's son by a former marriage, in order to make her own child heir to the property. The unfortunate boy broke his neck in a fall from a window, and there was every reason to believe that he was precipitated from the window by his stepmother." The artist then told his host the circumstances of his thrice-repeated experience, or dream, and sent for his sketch, which, so far as the features were concerned, was identical with the portrait in Mr. Izzard's gallery. The sketch has since been photographed, but from its hideous expression ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... Sir Thomas Seymour when the King interfered, and she became his wife instead; though one can well credit the story that she tremblingly told him, "It were better to be his mistress." She was a good woman, a generous stepmother, and a good wife. But there is plenty of probability for the assertion that her own death had been debated with the King when her wit delayed it, and his death set her free to marry at last the man from whom the ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... read a word, you know, and I am afraid her stepmother would not spare her to go to school. But suppose you were to get her to come to you for half an hour a day. I think her mother might be induced to let her do that. And a short reading-lesson every day would soon ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... to be. That's whom I am now—or just as soon as I change clothes with some unfortunate. It's in a book. 'Ben Blunt, the Newsboy; or, From Rags to Riches.' He run off because his cruel stepmother beat him black and blue, and he become a mere street urchin, though his father, Mr. Blunt, was a gentleman in good circumstances; and while he was a mere street urchin he sold papers and blacked boots, and he was an honest, manly lad and become adopted by a kind, rich old gentleman named ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... that care for the children's future is the guiding motive of her whole conduct. There was first the danger of their being left fatherless, a dire calamity in the heroic age. She could meet that danger by dying herself. Then followed the danger of a stepmother. She meets that by making Admetus swear never to marry. In the long run, I fancy, the effect of gracious loveliness which Alcestis certainly makes is not so much due to any words of her own as ...
— Alcestis • Euripides
... seen the matter so wholly from Sher Singh's point of view as to consider him justified in killing not only poor Charteris, but Gerrard as well, for the offence of abducting his stepmother." ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... at breakfast, perhaps in anticipation of a sort of Roman holiday in which his usually late and apologetic stepmother would furnish the amusement. They were both surprised to find her there before them, looking uncommonly fresh in crisp, sheer white, with deep-toned violets in ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... her third year she made herself thoroughly ill through overwork, so ill that she had to give up Newnham altogether and go abroad with her stepmother. She made herself ill, as so many girls do in those university colleges, through the badness of her home and school training. She thought study must needs be a hard straining of the mind. She worried her work, she gave herself no leisure to see it as a whole, ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... His stepmother said of him: "He read everything he could lay his hands on, and when he came across a passage that struck him, he would write it down on boards, if he had no paper, and keep it before him until he could get paper. Then he would ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... his father before him. The girl, young Althea, rather resembling her mother,—her own mother,—was beginning to think less of large hair-bows and more of longer dresses. Her father was quite wrapped up in her and her stepmother seemed to take ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... Gospeler. But her tongue was harder than her heart. Father and mother alike thought the wide world of their boy, though the child was brought up under an iron rod. Joan, too, loved her half-brother, Tom, very dearly, and took a pride only second to her stepmother's in the lad's progress and achievements. More than once, though only Joan and he knew it, she had saved his skin from punishment, and she worshiped him with a frank admiration which was bound to win Mrs. Tregenza's regard. Joan quite understood the ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... truer, and finer; but not so far away were other and very different hearts growing and budding, each in its own way. There was little Miss Dearborn, the pretty school teacher, drifting into a foolish alliance because she did not agree with her stepmother at home; there was Herbert Dunn, valedictorian of his class, dazzled by Huldah Meserve, who like a glowworm "shone afar off bright, but looked at near, had neither heat ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... literary temperament, desire for society, etc. After Lord Edgermond's death the discord of the two becomes intolerable, and the elder Miss Edgermond, coming of age and into an independent fortune, breaks loose and returns to Italy, her stepmother stipulating that she shall drop her family name altogether and allow herself to be given out as dead. She consents (unwisely, but perhaps not unnaturally), appears in Italy under the name of "Corinne," and establishes herself without difficulty in the best Roman society as a lady of means, great ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... been the cruel stepmother rather than the mother of many animals, and in some cases not the stepmother, ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... wished to make everyone about him happy. It was fortunate that her Aunt Laura was fond of Philip. If she should decide to marry the colonel, she would have her Aunt Laura come and make her home with them: she could give Philip the attention with which his stepmother's social duties might interfere. It was hardly likely that her aunt entertained any hope of marriage; indeed, Miss Laura had long since professed herself ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... stepmother, France, did not know it, at least the waiters in the cafes, shopkeepers, and other people in the Latin Quarter were aware that Field and I were among the extremely small and select number of gentlemen who had operated at the barricades for the health of Freedom, ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... every excess by the tongue of his stepmother, too active- minded not to indulge in freakish sports and experiments in life very astounding to commonplace minds, sometimes when in dire distress even helping himself to his unpaid allowance from ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... convocation of the witan was held to settle the dispute[79]. Here the claim of Edward was fully admitted, and he was crowned and anointed by Dunstan, at Kingston, accordingly, in the year 975—to be sacrificed to the ambition of his cruel stepmother, in less than ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip
... of age. He had refused to go to college and had never even finished high school. His father had died when he was a child, leaving him to the care of a stepmother who had little affection for him. At the age of twenty-one the boy came into control of his immense fortune. So it was not remarkable that Charlie Meyers, who had almost no education, no home influence and a vast sum of money at his disposal, ...
— The Automobile Girls At Washington • Laura Dent Crane
... "Your stepmother is very ill, my dear—very ill indeed. I stopped with her to write a letter which she wants me to post. Yes, she is very ill, but she is awake now; you may go upstairs; you ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade
... chieftain's estates were very poor—indeed, suffering absolute starvation, and there was no one to help them, for their lord had enough to do to fight his enemies, without feeding his humble friends; and his wife, Bridget's stepmother, was a hard, cruel woman. Poor little Bridget gave all her pocket-money, and sold all her little keepsakes, for their relief, and still they were starving. At last, she went to the armory and took down her father's ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... have to say first, and make your protestations afterwards. You needn't be alarmed; you won't find me quite as bad as the stepmother one reads about in the story-books, who puts her stepdaughter into a pie, and all that kind of thing. I suppose stepfathers have been a very estimable class, by the way, as it is the stepmother ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... times in which he lived. His father was master of a vessel, and took him to sea when he was eleven. His mother was a pious Dissenter, who was at great pains to store his mind with religious thoughts and pieces. She died when he was young, and his stepmother was not pious. He began to drag his religious anchor, and at length, having read Shaftesbury, left his theological moorings altogether, and drifted into a wide sea of ungodliness, blasphemy, and recklessness ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... which had first set him thinking—namely, that Steel's Corner owned a laboratory—two, for the matter of that; that old Dr. Corfield was a clever toxicologist; that Leam had stayed there during her father's honeymoon; and that her stepmother had died on the night of her arrival. "And your average Englishman calls himself a creature with brains and inductive powers!" was his unspoken commentary on the finding of the coroner's jury and the verdict of the coroner. "Bull is a fool," the old heathen ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... wit, the friction of mind with mind,—these are looked for, but hardly found; and the young scholar groans in spirit, and perhaps does as Milton did—quarrels with his tutor. But if he is wise he will, as Milton also did, make it up again, and get the most that he can from his stony-hearted stepmother before the time comes for him to bid her his Vale ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... the maiden. The girl's hair and clothing were turned to gold from the splendor of the rainbow colors. She kissed the old Dew's hand and begged that she might go. She went away, and taking her sheep-brother with her started for home. The stepmother was not there, and the maiden secretly dug a hole, buried her golden dress, and sat down and put ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous
... the designs of his stepmother, embarked in a ship, with his sister Helle, and sailed for Colchis, where he met with a kind reception from his kinsman AEetes. The young princess, however, either becoming sea-sick, and leaning over the bulwarks of the vessel, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... very wealthy guy. She was 'is only child and 'er mother was dead. The old man, whose name was Portman,—Albert Portman, the banker,—was considering a second venture into matrimony at the time. Mary was eighteen and she didn't want a stepmother. She raised such a row that he sent 'er off to school so as he could do 'is courting in peace and plenty. She was a wayward gal,—leastwise she says so 'erself—and very impetuous-like. One day a circus comes to the town ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... we lived in a sumptuous house in the upper part of the city. This was when I was about ten years old. My father was twice married; I was the child of the first wife, who died when I was very young; my stepmother came five years later. She was the elder of two sisters, both beautiful women. The sister often came to visit us. I remember I liked her better than I liked my stepmother; in fact, I regarded her with ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... big dining-room, where his "stepmother-in-law," a diminutive woman, sat at the foot of the oblong table dressed in faded black, even to the poke sunbonnet which, worn indoors and out, completely hid her wrinkled face. Mrs. Henley, as he seated himself on the side of the board opposite Wrinkle, came from the adjoining kitchen ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... marries again it won't be for Pansy's sake," Madame Merle replied. "She'll soon be sixteen, and after that she'll begin to need a husband rather than a stepmother." ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... the afternoon of the eighth. On the morning of the ninth, I wrote, as in duty bound, to her stepmother at Hammersmith. There was no answer. I wrote again; my letter was returned to me this morning unopened. For all that woman cares, Mary might be buried with a pauper's funeral; but this shall never be, if I pawn everything about me, down to the very gown that ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... father, I cannot promise you that I am very happy to see her become my stepmother; but as to receiving her properly, and as to giving her a kind welcome, I promise to obey you in that to the ...
— The Miser (L'Avare) • Moliere
... love with the peerless Casildea de Vandalia. I call her peerless because she has no peer, whether it be in bodily stature or in the supremacy of rank and beauty. This same Casildea, then, that I speak of, requited my honourable passion and gentle aspirations by compelling me, as his stepmother did Hercules, to engage in many perils of various sorts, at the end of each promising me that, with the end of the next, the object of my hopes should be attained; but my labours have gone on increasing link by link until they are past counting, nor do I know what ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... sans reproche. There was Lord Mildmay, an English peer and a French colonel. Methinks such an incident might have been a better reason for a late measure than an Irishman being returned a member of our Imperial Parliament. There was our friend Lord St. Jerome; of course his stepmother, yet young, and some sisters, pretty as nuns. There were some cousins from the farthest north, Northumbria's bleakest bound, who came down upon Yorkshire like the Goths upon Italy, and were revelling in what ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... marry his wife's mother or his father's wife, because to him they are in the position of a mother, though in this case too our statement applies only after the relationship has finally terminated; otherwise, if a woman is still your stepmother, that is, is married to your father, the common rule of law prevents her from marrying you, because a woman cannot have two husbands at the same time: and if she is still your wife's mother, that is, if her daughter is still married to you, you cannot marry her because you ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian
... "My stepmother wanted I should give you this. She said to thank you for the grape-juice." As he spoke he looked at me gravely out of deep-set blue eyes, and when he had delivered his message ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... their favour, and no practised belle of thirty could have held her own better than the inexperienced girl of nineteen, whose native wit and downright honesty of purpose were more than equal to all the diplomacy of thrust and parry to be gained by living in society. Her stepmother, who was apparently as good-natured as she seemed brainless, was prepared to be gushing, but that was nipped in the bud by the way Dawn extended her pretty, firm hand with the dimpling wrist and knuckles ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... family on the mother's side, she was the daughter of the late Lord Glendarroch, and step-daughter to Lady Hilton, who had become Lady Hilton within a year after Lord Glendarroch's death. Lady Alice, then quite a child, had accompanied her stepmother, to whom she was moderately attached, and who had been allowed to retain undisputed possession of her. She had no near relatives, else the fortune I afterwards found to be at her disposal would have aroused contending claims ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... her," said Joan, "from the Lady Julian my grandmother. She was a Leybourne born, and she wedded my grandfather, Sir John de Hastings, whose stepmother was the Lady Isabel La Despenser, your father's sister. I think, from what she told me, your mother ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... born in a Thuringian village, April Twenty-first, Seventeen Hundred Eighty-two. His father was pastor of the Lutheran Church. When scarcely a year old his mother died. Erelong a stepmother came to fill her place—but didn't. This stepmother was the kind we read about in ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... was so short, Honora Edgeworth seems to have made the deepest impression on all those she came across. Over little Maria she had the greatest influence. There is a pretty description of the child standing lost in wondering admiration of her stepmother's beauty, as she watched her soon after her marriage dressing at her toilet-table. Little Maria's feeling for her stepmother was very deep and real, and the influence of those few years lasted for a lifetime. ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... time, but not to sleep. What she had heard only increased her vain, insensate longing. A stepmother at East Lynne, and one of her children gliding on to death! Oh! To be with them! To see them once again! To purchase that boon, she would willingly forfeit all the rest of ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... protean forms of misery that meet us in the bosom of that "stony-hearted stepmother, London," there is none that appeals so directly to our sympathies as the spectacle of a destitute child. In the case of the grown man or woman, sorrow and suffering are often traceable to the faults, or at best to the misfortunes of the sufferers themselves; but in the ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... a decline, and died while the three children were still babies. Poor things, I believe they had a sad time till their father married a Miss Condamine, who has been an excellent stepmother to them. I have been to see them, but Mark was not then at home, so he has come to me at Monks Horton. When will he find you at home? Or may I bring him in at once. He was to ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... children, however, had not gone to sleep for very hunger, and so they overheard what the stepmother said to their father. Grethel wept bitterly, and said to Hansel, "What will become of us?" "Be quiet, Grethel," said he; "do not cry—I will soon help you." And as soon as their parents had fallen asleep, he got ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... mist rested over the eye of the sea, like that which one beholds on the eyes of the blind, a greater sorrow came to them, for a stepmother crossed the threshold. She looked at Jon and Loa, and made complaint to their father that they were still very small and not likely to be of much use. After that they had to rise earlier than ever, and to work ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... about with protections for her "feelings." It filled young Benham with inexpressible indignations that his sweet own mother, so gay, so brightly cheerful that even her tears were stars, was never to be mentioned in his stepmother's presence, and it was not until he had fully come to years of reflection that he began to realize with what honesty, kindness and patience this naturally not very happy lady had nursed, protected, mended ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... Wulken was a singer of merit, a player on the harp, and a person of education. She certainly had no seraglio notions of wanting to be petted and pampered and taken care of, or she would not have assumed the office of stepmother to that big family and married a poor man. Bach never had time to make money. Very soon after their marriage Bach began to dictate music to his wife. A great many pieces can be seen in Leipzig and Berlin copied out in her fine, painstaking hand, with an occasional interlining ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... "don't you want to hear about the Paragon that lay down on the cold, cold ice to warm a hole in it with his body so he could catch some fish for his cruel stepmother to eat?" ...
— THE JAPANESE TWINS • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... never so stricken, roves and ranges!—I remember pausing before a wide doorstep and wondering if perchance it was on this very one that the young De Quincey lay ill and faint while poor Ann flew as fast as her feet would carry her to Oxford Street, the 'stony-hearted stepmother' of them both, and came back bearing that 'glass of port wine and spices' but for which he might, so he thought, actually have died. Was this the very doorstep that the old De Quincey used to revisit in ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... wonder why I didn't find a mother nearer by, but I haven't any living of my own, except a stepmother, who wouldn't understand, and all the other mothers I know wouldn't qualify for the job any better. I've been looking at your picture and I ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... in the hut; they, too, chatted and gossiped very contentedly, and moreover ate and smoked. I was obliged to have the wife, children, and relations of the deceased pointed out to me, for I was unable to recognise them by their demeanour. In a little time, the stepmother and wife rose, and throwing themselves on the coffin, howled for half an hour; but it was easy to see that their grief did not come from the heart. Their moaning was always pitched in the same monotonous key. Both then returned with smiling faces and dry eyes to their seats, ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... Ridge's new novel, an animated story of London life, concerns a girl sent out to service by her stepmother. Taking the management of her career into her own hands, and holding the reins, goes first to a house on the north side of Regent's Park, afterwards to the neighbourhood of Berkeley Square; and her adventures in both situations, her acquaintances, and the ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... trouble himself even to inquire for his stepmother, but went out to the stable and lounged about until bedtime. He seemed very much ...
— Making His Way - Frank Courtney's Struggle Upward • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... so large a capacity for enjoyment, that the degree of self- denial involved in labor seems exorbitant, and one feels that these children, so loved of Nature, and so gifted by her, are harshly dealt with by their stepmother Circumstance. No doubt there ought to be truth in the silly old picture, if there is none, and I would willingly make-believe to credit it, if I could. I am glad that they at least work in old-world, awkward, picturesque ways, and not in commonplace, handy, modern ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... graze, but the girl sat down and began to weep. And the heifer said to her, "Tell me, dear little maiden, wherefore dost thou weep?"—"Alas! why should I not weep? My stepmother has given me this flax and bidden me unravel it, and reel it, and bleach it, and bring it back as cloth in the evening."—"Grieve not, maiden!" said the heifer, "it will all turn out well. Lie down to sleep!"—So ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous
... visible churches of Christ, and most convenient for mutual edification. Gathering churches out of churches, hath no footsteps in Scripture; is contrary to apostolical practice; is the scattering of churches, the daughter of schism, the mother of confusion, but the stepmother to edification. ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... and complained that the Queen was a murderess. The King, however, would not believe it, and suffered no one to do any injury to his wife, who sat composedly sewing at her shirts and paying attention to nothing else. When a second child was born, the false stepmother used the same deceit, but the King again would not listen to her words, saying, "She is too pious and good to act so; could she but speak and defend herself, her innocence would come to light." But when again, ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... little brother who took his Sister by the hand, and said, "Since our own dear mother's death we have not had one happy hour; our stepmother beats us every day, and, when we come near her, kicks us away with her foot. Come, let us wander forth into the wide world." So all day long they travelled over meadows, fields, and stony roads. By the evening they came into a large forest, and laid themselves down in a hollow ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... of her mother, even to Mary, though she had vague memories of a time when he had not been so reticent. That was before the stepmother came, the stepmother whom, honestly, Walter Gray had married because his child was neglected. He had not anticipated, perhaps, the long string of children which was to result from the marriage, whose presence in the world was to make Mary's lot a more strenuous one than would ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... frightened the horses so that they ran away and dashed the chariot to pieces. Hippolytus was killed, but by Diana's assistance Aesculapius restored him to life. Diana removed Hippolytus from the power of his deluded father and false stepmother, and placed him in Italy under the protection of the ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... Fanshawe failings were exaggerated to a monstrous and almost laughable degree. Whatever may be said against me, it cannot be denied I was a pattern daughter; but it was in vain that, with the most touching patience, I submitted to my stepmother's demands; and from the hour she entered my father's house, I may say that I met with nothing ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... confidence in the happiness of Your Majesty and of our daughter. But it is from me that Your Imperial Majesty must receive the assurance of the many qualities of mind and heart that distinguish the latter. What might seem the exaggerated affection of a father cannot be suspected from the pen of a stepmother. Be sure, my brother, that my happiest days will be those that come to you in consequence of the alliance that is about to unite us. Accept the friendship and high esteem with which I am Your Imperial Majesty's affectionate ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... I slept, I did not rest. My fever, or my lassitude, or probably some presentiment of the troubled career into which I was to be plunged, made "tired nature's sweet restorer" a stepmother to me. I can never endure hearing the dreams of others, and thus I cannot suffer myself to inflict them on my hearers; but on that night, Queen Mab, like Jehu, drove her horses furiously. Every possible kind of disappointment, vexation, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... not till long after the slaves had lighted the three-branched silver lamps that Demetrius appeared. His stepmother received him kindly and began to talk on indifferent subjects; but he replied with ill-disguised impatience, for he had not come to chatter and gossip. She fully understood this; but it pleased her to check and provoke him and she did it in a way ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... asthmatic, and used to blow like a porpoise by the time he reached the top of the stairs. The only time he had ever been out of Panama was whilst he made a short visit to Lima, the wonders of which he used to chant unceasingly. But the continual cause of my annoyance—I fear I must write disgust—was the stepmother of mine host, a large fat dirty old woman. She had a pouch under her chin like a pelican, while her complexion, from the quantity of oil and foul feeding in which she delighted, was a greasy mahogany. She despised the unnatural luxuries of knives and forks, constantly devouring ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... sentimentalization of abasement for dramatic effect, it is always power and grandeur that count in the end. The whole point of the story of Cinderella, the most widely and constantly charming of all stories, is that the Fairy Prince lifts Cinderella above her cruel sisters and stepmother, and so enables her to lord it over them. The same idea underlies practically all other folk-stories: the essence of each of them is to be found in the ultimate triumph and exaltation of its protagonist. And of the real men and women of history, ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... kingdoms to ruin. In England it appears, despite of Christianity and monastic discipline, in its most atrocious form after the death of Edgar. His eldest son, for some years his successor, was treacherously murdered by his stepmother (who wished to advance her own son to the throne), at a visit which he paid her as he returned from hunting. It was that Edward whose innocence and leaning towards the Church have gained him the name of Martyr. The ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... against it, for so it ought to be: and the "stock" company that plays its parts plays them well. The father is perhaps rather excessively foolish and unnatural, but then he almost had to be. The wicked and ugly stepmother tops, but does not overtop, her part, and her punishment is not commonplace. Gracieuse herself deserves her name, not only "by her comely face and by her fair bodie," but by her good but not oppressive wits, and her amiable but not faultless disposition. ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... in the world! How can I object to a stepmother who is playing Blind Man's Buff at the present moment with the Norwegian nobility? I am not so overstrained as all that. But really I cannot allow my old friend HIALMAR, with his great, confiding, childlike mind, to remain in contented ignorance of GINA's past. No, I see my ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 23, 1891 • Various
... bank of the Salviati lived a rich Venetian nobleman, head of the house of the Capelli. He had one son and one daughter, but not by his wife then living, who, in consequence, was stepmother to his children. With the son, our narrative is not concerned; the daughter, Bianca Capello, was a charming girl of the age of fifteen or sixteen, of a pale complexion, on which the blood, at every emotion, would appear, and pass like a roseate cloud; her hair, of that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... her, which she mounted as though it had been a steed to carry her onward, and sat a moment looking at the beauty of the morning, her eyes taking on that far-away look that annoyed her stepmother when she wanted her to hurry with the dishes, or finish a long seam before it was time to ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... of old story. Emily's guardian, Montoni, in The Mysteries of Udolpho, like the unscrupulous uncle in Godwin's Cloudesley, may well have been descended from the wicked uncle of the folk tale. The cruel stepmother is disguised as a haughty, scheming marchioness in The Sicilian Romance. The ogre drops his club, assumes a veneer of polite refinement and relies on the more gentlemanlike method of the dagger and stiletto for gaining his ends. The banditti and robbers who infest the countryside in Gothic ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... there were few kinsmen of her husband besides his younger brother Galeazzo, for the dynasty was not fruitful and was dying out. Even Camilla d'Aragona, Giovanni's stepmother, was not there, for she had left Pesaro for good in 1489, taking up her residence in ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... and my father with them. I was a kind of outlaw. The advancement of the family was thought to depend very much on the stand I would take, as after my father's death I would be the head of the family. At least my stepmother made that a handle for her schemes; and she drove them so successfully that at last my father declared he would disinherit me if I refused ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... it a few weeks—after his mother's death, the father married again. The stepmother was no improvement on the mother. She had lofty ideas of discipline and being "minded." No doubt that little Stephen, crooked in eyes, crooked in body, short and swart, with brown, bare legs, was stubborn and wilful. He looked the part all right. His brown, bare legs were ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... beyond bearing with my late wicked follies, into which, since the death of my mother, I had fallen. And now I was bringing him no college prize, but a blood- feud, which he was like to find an ill heritage enough, even without an evil and thankless son. My stepmother, too, who loved me little, would inflame his anger against me. Many daughters he had, and of gear and goods no more than enough. Robin, my elder brother, he had let pass to France, where he served among the men of John Kirkmichael, Bishop of Orleans—he that smote the Duke of ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... the words of his lordship's stepmother, "Lord Lyttelton in bed, though not ill; and on his rallying him for it, Lord Lyttelton said: 'Well, cousin, if you will wait in the next room a little while, I will get up and go out with you.' He did so, and the two young men walked out into the streets. ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... could entirely settle. The circumstance was this. I had been cutting up some caper or other —I think it was trying to crawl up the chimney, as i had seen a little sweep do a few days previous; and my stepmother who, somehow or other, was all the time whipping me, or sending me to bed supperless, —my mother dragged me by the legs out of the chimney and packed me off to bed, though it was only two o'clock ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... than Madeira, and you latterly appeared so ravenous for it, that I must conceive you wish to have a stock."[141] Gibbon's devotion to Madeira bore its penalty. At the age of forty-eight he sent this account to his stepmother: "I was in hopes that my old Enemy the Gout had given over the attack, but the Villain, with his ally the winter, convinced me of my error, and about the latter end of March I found myself a prisoner in my library and my great chair. I attempted twice to rise, he ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... "The daughter thought her stepmother had gone out to visit a neighbor, as she had said something about doing so earlier in the morning. Mr. Langmore had gone to the bank in town at nine o'clock and Margaret saw him come home ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele
... Musalman faith, who still lives at Sardhana,[5] but she had become insane, and has ever since remained so. By this first wife he had a son, who got from the Emperor the title of Zafar Yab Khan, at the request of the Begam, his stepmother; but he was a man of weak intellect, and so little thought of that he was not recognized even as the nominal chief on the death ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... decapitation or dismemberment exposure separation of the first parents. IV, B: The dismembered [man or woman] the rejuvenated the reborn [m. or w.]. VI, A: Potiphar motive separation of first parents Onan motive. VII, A: The wicked stepmother Potiphar's wife man eater. VII, B: Flight from the "man eater" flight from Potiphar's wife flight from the wicked stepmother separation of the first parents magic flight. IX, A: The first parents magic flight. IX, A: The killed ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... his elastic spirits had allowed him to give way to misery. His father was a good-natured, weak-minded man, who on the death of his first wife married a second, who, as one hen will peck at another's chicks, would not, as a stepmother, leave the little Paul in peace. She was continually putting her own children forward, and ill-treating the late 'anointed' son. The father gave in too readily, and young Paul was glad enough to be set free from his unhappy ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... the second son of an English nobleman. A German lady was his first wife, and my mother. Left a widower, he married for the second time; the new wife being of American birth. She took a stepmother's dislike to me—which, in some degree at least, I must own that ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... murmured, holding Gabriel's hand in his firm, warm clasp. 'Nature is indeed a harsh stepmother to you. With your nerves, the pin-prickles of life are so many dagger-thrusts. Do you feel better now?' he asked, as Gabriel opened his eyes with a languid sigh. 'Much better and more composed,' replied the wan curate, sitting up. 'You have ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... His stepmother was a lady of fine mental culture, of elegant breeding and high character, but she was an invalid, and withal thoroughly imbued with the gloomy sternness of her husband's faith. One day little Henry, who was barely able to manage the steady-going old family horse, was driving her in the ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... a Stepmother of the Stoniest sort—was this Sir Basil Hopwood, Knight and Alderman of London, that contracted with the Government to take us Transports abroad. Sure there never was a man, on this side the land of Horseleeches, that was so Hungry after money. Yet was his avarice ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... mimicry; and there was in it a very attractive blending of tenderness and humour. Mike was also one of those whom life at the beginning had impressed with the delight of one kind of work and no other. When a mere imp of a boy, the heartless tormentor of a large and sententious stepmother, the despair of schoolmasters, the most ingenious of truants, a humorous ragamuffin invulnerable to punishment, it was already revealed to him that his mission in life was to be the observation and reproduction of human character, particularly ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... decided to introduce no more; with all the confidence that whisky inspires and all the easy complacency it gives to its servant, he then launched himself lovingly into his work: he married the coachman to the society-young-lady for the sake of the scandal; married the Duke to the blonde's stepmother, for the sake of the sensation; stopped the desperado's salary; created a misunderstanding between the devil and the Roscicrucian; threw the Duke's property into the wicked lawyer's hands; made the lawyer's ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... with joy, and she asked her consort, "Wherefore hast thou concealed thy children from me?" The king said, "I will do so no longer." And he sent messengers for his son, and he was brought to the Court. His stepmother said unto him, "It were well for thee to have a wife, and I have a daughter who is sought of every man of renown in the world." "I am not yet of an age to wed," answered the youth. Then said she ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 2 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... come back alive!"—so she says to Himself.) Among the letters there is a budget of loose leaves from Salemina's diary, Salemina, who is now Mrs. Gerald La Touche, wife of Professor La Touche, of Trinity College, Dublin, and stepmother to Jackeen ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... that quiet life the advance of one's years was not likely to be noticed. I am sure Miss Edgeworth looked no older to me when I left her than when I first saw her. But she was obliged to go into England to nurse her sick stepmother, and after her departure the place had no attractions for me, ...
— The Vizier of the Two-Horned Alexander • Frank R. Stockton
... done no good. Me a Countess! Can you imagine it? I being your stepmother, Countess...! Then we could not have been chatting nicely as ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... My stepmother immediately became a great ally of mine. She was never a tower of strength to me, but at least she was always a lodge in my garden of cucumbers. She was a very well-meaning pious lady, but she was not a fanatic, and her mind did not naturally revel ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... commit yourself, I see. Well, you are quite right. She is a harmless little person, I believe, and may turn out very well if withdrawn from the influence of her stepmother." ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... in ten, probably not one in a hundred, has any direct rights or interest in his native soil; and the Motherland has too often (at any rate in the past) turned out a stepmother who disowned him later ...
— NEVER AGAIN • Edward Carpenter
... we were at supper, I said: "If only Frau v. R. was not so ugly. Father, don't you think she's perfectly hideous? And Father laughed so lovingly and said: You need not be anxious, little witch, I'm not going to inflict a stepmother on you." I was so glad, and so was Dora and we kissed Father such a lot, and Dora said: "I felt sure that you would never break your oath to Mother," and she burst out crying. And Father said: "No, girls, I did not ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl
... Fairy. "I was about to say that Prince Chrysopras was greatly delighted by his Royal Stepmother's gift, and at once leapt on the ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... wish you would remonstrate with your papa, Frank," said his stepmother, who was not a great deal older than the Curate. "After his attack he ought to be more careful. But he never takes the least trouble about himself, no more than if he were five-and-twenty. After getting such a knock on the forehead ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... height of the neck, and such like, may perhaps possibly be found, but certainly not very easily, however much Lavater should continue to rave about it through ten quarto volumes. He who would reduce to order the capricious play of nature, and classify the forms which she has punished like a stepmother, or endowed as a mother, would venture more than Linnaeus, and should be very careful lest he become one with the original presented to him, through ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... is very captivating at first sight. But as a stepmother to your child! You seem mighty anxious, Albert, to get ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... ALLWORTH (Lady), stepmother to Tom Allworth. Sir Giles Overreach thought she would marry his nephew Wellborn, but she ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... not less than 'les dragonnades'; and to have the tax collected by the troops we have there. For my part, I never saw a froward child mended by whipping; and I would not have the mother country become a stepmother. Our trade to America brings in, 'communibus annis', two millions a year; and the Stamp-duty is estimated at but one hundred thousand pounds a year; which I would by no means bring into the stock of the Exchequer, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... in the village—father and mother died very young, and I was left a poor orphan—well, bless us! if Thomas haven't kissed her!—to the care of Mrs. Score, my aunt, who has been a mother to me—a stepmother, you know;—and I've been to Stratford fair, and to Warwick many a time; and there's two people who have offered to marry me, and ever so many who want to, and I won't have none—only a gentleman, as I've always said; not a poor clodpole, like Tom there with the ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... for cruelty with the infamous Pedro. Burke has said that if Pedro was not absolutely the most cruel of men, he was undoubtedly the greatest blackguard who ever sat upon a throne, and King Juan was far from meriting similar condemnation. Sibyl de Foix, his stepmother, had exercised so strange and wonderful a power over his father, that when Juan came to the throne he was more than eager to turn upon this enchantress and make her render up the wide estates which the late king had been prevailed upon to leave to her. It is actually asserted ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... was running high; its immediate result had been the emigration of several thousand professors and students of German nationality to Leipzig, where a new university arose which was inclined to consider its Alma Mater, Prague, a stepmother. ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... befell me; whether it was a reality or a dream, I never could entirely settle. The circumstance was this. I had been cutting up some caper or other—I think it was trying to crawl up the chimney, as I had seen a little sweep do a few days previous; and my stepmother who, somehow or other, was all the time whipping me, or sending me to bed supperless,—my mother dragged me by the legs out of the chimney and packed me off to bed, though it was only two o'clock in the afternoon ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... too much for poor Mary's feelings. She declares that she is ready to do as they wish, but before she signs the contract, Hans steps forth in full view of his parents, who at last recognize in him their long lost eldest son. Though his stepmother Agnes is in a rage about his trick, he claims his rights as son and heir, and the bride of course is not loth to choose {367} between the two brothers. Kezul the matchmaker retires shamefaced, and when Wenzel ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... always seemed old to her, as indeed he was, for she was the child of his second marriage, and her young mother had died when she was born. Her stepsisters, devoted to the little girl, and perhaps not altogether sorry to be rid of a stepmother younger than themselves, had tried to make up for that loss, but they were much occupied with the social activities of Radstowe and they belonged to an otherwise inactive generation, so that if Rose had a grievance it was that they never played games with her, never ran, ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... have brought you where none may hear what I wish to say to you. I am Mave, the daughter of the king of Erin. By the magic arts of my cruel stepmother I was changed into a trout, and cast into this lake a year and a day before the evening when you restored me to the waters the second time. If you had not done so the first night the otter brought me to you I should ...
— The Golden Spears - And Other Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... intelligence and culture, but for a natural taste and skill in domestic handicraft. Her place was awhile filled by an aunt remarkable for her habits of neatness and order, and especially for her economy. She was, in the course of time, replaced by a stepmother, who had been accustomed to a superior style of housekeeping, and was an expert in all departments ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... nor believe. And though, for this very reason many do say—though we say not so—that this aiding of our enemies against us, seems neither the act of a father nor of a mother towards us, but rather of a stepmother; yet this notwithstanding, we constantly avow that we are" [remember, it is still the King of England speaking], "and shall continue to be, to your Holiness and to your seat, a devout and humble son, and not ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... for her was deep and sincere; and it was one of the tricks of destiny that she was not spared to witness more of his rising fame, being cut off in 1754, when she was only forty-six. Matthias Haydn promptly married again, and had a second family of five children, all of whom died in infancy. The stepmother survived her husband—who died, as the result of an accident, in 1763—and then she too entered a second time into the wedded state. Haydn can never have been very intimate with her, and he appears to have lost sight of her entirely in her later years. ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... native hills of Connecticut, to sell clocks, first in the South and then in the lumber camps of Michigan. There, the business of Yankee pedlar having failed, he found himself stranded. His father was a prosperous farmer; but a stepmother ruled the household. So young Palmer hired out to a Michigan farmer, for he was one of those hardy New Englanders who ask no favors of fortune. Imagining a pretty frontier girl to be a sylvan goddess, with a Puritan's ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... his scorn to the infirmities of his rival. Francis had once reigned paramount in the vicarage as universal pet. But he had been dethroned by Samuel, who now reigned in his stead. Samuel felt no triumph at that revolution; Francis no anger. But the nurse suffered the pangs of a baffled stepmother, and looked with novercal eyes of hatred and disgust upon little Sam that had stolen away the hearts of men and women from one that in her eyes was a thousand times his superior. In that last point nurse was not so entirely wrong, but that nine-tenths of ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... Esther she is. Folks say that Esther's more of a mother to Jane than her own ma. But I dunno. Alviry says it's a shame the way Esther's put upon; all the cares of the house when she had ought to be playing with her dolls. Stepmother with 'bout as much sense as a fly. Old Aunt Amy, nice sort of soul but—" he touched his head significantly and heaved the heaviest ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... am always in trouble," she answered, sobbing outright behind her sunbonnet. "Between pa and my stepmother, there isn't a spot on ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... Cenarotti all that he had been; these ladies also were very kind and reasonable, but they too were women, and incapable of accepting a less perfect devotion. Indeed, was not his proposed marriage too much like taking her only son from the signora and giving the Paronsina a stepmother? It was worse, and so the ladies of the notary's family viewed it, cherishing a resentment that grew with Tonelli's delay to deal frankly with them; while Carlotta, on her part, was wounded that these old friends should ignore his future ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... brought the grandfather's second family, for the first time, into close as well as friendly contact with the first. Mr. Browning had always remained on outwardly friendly terms with his stepmother; and both he and his children were rewarded for this forbearance by the cordial relations which grew up between themselves and two of her sons. But in the earlier days they lived too far apart for frequent meeting. The old Mrs. Browning was now a widow, and, in order to be near her relations, ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... father was acting quite rightly by him; but a few weeks after, he wrote to beg her to intercede that his "two valets," Gilbert de Clare and Perot de Gaveston, "might be restored to him, as they would alleviate much of his anguish." He addressed a letter with the like petition to his stepmother, Queen Margaret, and continued to evince his submission by refusing his sister Mary's invitations to visit her at her convent at Ambresbuiy. At the meeting of parliament, Edward met his father again, and received ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Rand entered the parlor, her hand extended. The two other women in the big parlor remained motionless. They would be the sisters, Geraldine Varcek and Nelda Dunmore. Rand didn't wonder that they resented Gladys so bitterly; economic considerations aside, girls seldom enthuse over a stepmother so near their own age who is so ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... Martyr. 957.] The succession of this prince, who was only fifteen years of age at his father's death, did not take place without much difficulty and opposition. Elfrida, his stepmother, had a son, Ethelred, seven years old, whom she attempted to raise to the throne: she affirmed that Edgar's marriage with the mother of Edward was exposed to insuperable objections; and as she had possessed great credit with her husband, she had found means to ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... that Helen Markson's mother, who was very beautiful and lovable, had died years before, and that her stepmother had been Mrs. Markson only two or three years; that the second Mrs. Markson had married for money, and that her husband was afraid of her, and would run away from her if it wasn't for Helen; that Mrs. Markson sometimes got angry, and then she raved like mad, and that it was wearing Mr. Markson's ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... ear—"So you see," he said, "when that youngster was born, Lady F. was Mrs. M.—wasn't she? and for the matter of that, Lady F. is Mrs. M. to this very hour. That's the real chat; ain't it, Sir Thomas? My stepmother, you know. The governor could take her away with him to-morrow if he chose, according to the law of the land—couldn't ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... Gertrude The position of stepmother is always open to suspicion; and for some time it has been rumored in Louviers that I am the person who throws obstacles in ...
— The Stepmother, A Drama in Five Acts • Honore De Balzac
... infancy found many powerful opponents, who, not understanding the nature of the newly-born babe, strove to strangle it. But the infant grew into a healthy child in spite of its cruel stepmother, and cried so loudly and talked so strangely that the world was forced to listen to its utterances. These were regarded with distrust and aversion by the theologians of the day, for they were supposed to be in opposition to ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... effect upon his nerves that a cat's purring has upon some people's. He began to think that he should be fortunate if he could win her, for his own sake. Yesterday he had looked upon her more as a possible stepmother for Molly; to-day he thought more of her as a wife for himself. The remembrance of Lord Cumnor's letter gave her a very becoming consciousness; she wished to attract, and hoped that she was succeeding. Still they only talked of the countess's state ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... become of me, if my good-natured royal godmother, who never forgot anybody, had not packed me into a carriage with some of the ladies who were accompanying Mademoiselle. That lady had a suit of her own, and went about quite independently of her father and her stepmother, who, though a Princess of Lorraine, was greatly contemned and slighted by ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... mother, as well as a girl, but only a stepmother, and apparently a detail; for the girl has the money and the strength of will. The two are stopping in a pension near Madame de Blanchemain's house. The girl is a Miss McNamarra, with freckles and no figure, but engaged to an officer, and consequently sympathetic. ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... during the first cigarette that Mr. Pellew said to Aunt Constance:—"Where is it they have gone to-day, do you know?" That first one heard, if it listened, all about the lady's home in Dorsetshire and her obnoxious stepmother. It may have wondered, if it was an observant cigarette, at the unreserve with which the narrator took its smoker into the bosom of her confidence, and the lively interest her story provoked. If it had—which ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... hearthrug, a lamp in a corner of the room, covered by a rose-coloured shade, shed its light on a pretty pink and white chintz couch underneath it, and upon this couch, leaning back amongst pink cushions, was Bobby's stepmother. True was already sitting upon a footstool, and her head was in her lap, her mother was stroking back her hair gently and tenderly. Mrs. Allonby looked to most people a mere laughing high-spirited girl, with wonderful black hair and mischievous face and eyes, but that ...
— 'Me and Nobbles' • Amy Le Feuvre |
