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Guileless   /gˈaɪlləs/   Listen
Guileless

adjective
1.
Free of deceit.  Synonym: transparent.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Guileless" Quotes from Famous Books



... captured they were so surprised, so humiliated, so innocent, meek and subdued, that it would never occur to an honest man that they could know how to handle a bolo or a gun. But experience taught that the most guileless in looks were the worst desperadoes of all. My first sight of a squad of these captives is a thing not to be forgotten. They were a scrubby lot of hardly human things, stunted, gnarled pigmies, with no hats or shoes, and scarcely ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger

... before the war in Virginia as attained perfection, and the present as falling short of that perfection only inasmuch as it had occurred since the surrender. As life in a small place, among a simple and guileless class of gentlefolk, all passionately cherishing the same opinions, had never shaken these illusions, it was but natural that they should have done their best to hand them down as sacred heirlooms to their only child. ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow

... fat man, with beady and guileless eyes sunk in under an immense forehead, imagined that Udal's visit was a pretext for overhearing the words of rage and discomfiture that in that Papist centre might be let drop about the new Queen. For Udal, because ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford

... the good woman talked, giving to Drusus her own pure faith and hope and courage; and when the intellectual philosopher within him revolted at some of her simple premises and guileless sophistries, against his will he was persuaded by them, and was fain to own to himself that the heart of a good woman is past finding out; that its impulses are more genuine, its intuitions truer, its promptings ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis

... is the fate of artless maid, Sweet floweret of the rural shade! By love's simplicity betrayed, And guileless trust, Till she, like thee, all soiled, is laid Low ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester

... this afternoon, as guileless as a child. Weedon Moore told her they were going to ask you to stand and she ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown

... Bateman, in fear of Freeborn; "we'll have none of your Popery. It will be a simple, guileless chapel, in which the Church Service ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman

... appeared thoroughly conservative: not a cloud so large as a man's hand any longer darkened the horizon. At two o'clock next day Mr. Carstairs's Cypriani rode gayly at her old anchorage. At the rail stood Varney and Maginnis, hosts of pleasant and guileless mien, their eyes upon the trim gig which came dancing over the water toward them. In the gig sat J. Pinkney Hare and his sister, Mrs. Marne, blithely coming to lunch aboard ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... down a hill From some high spring a slender rill; Ah, piteous it was on the brae to behold How the guileless youth ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell

... dining-room seemed to have assumed an aspect of chilling severity. Florent divined a reproach, a sort of condemnation in the bright oak, the polished lamp, and the new matting. He scarcely dared to eat for fear of letting crumbs fall on the floor or soiling his plate. There was a guileless simplicity about him which prevented him from seeing how the land really lay. He still praised Lisa's affectionate kindliness on all sides; and outwardly, indeed, she did continue to treat him ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... goodness she wasn't so transparently candid and guileless,' thought Harry to himself. 'I never CAN teach her duly to respect the prejudices of Pi. Not that it matters twopence to Le Breton, of course: but if she talks that way to any of the other men here, they'll be laughing in every common-room in Oxford over my Christmas raisins and pounds ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen

... their heads grow gray, Look from too far behind the eyes, Too long-experienced to be wise In guileless youth's diviner way; Life sings not now, but prophesies; Time's shadows they no more behold, 180 But, under them, the riddle old That mocks, bewilders, and defies: In childhood's face the seed of shame, In the green tree an ambushed flame, In Phosphor a vaunt-guard of Night, They, though against ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... leads the stronger to care instinctively for the weaker, and the weaker to recognize that it is nobler to give than to receive. At last, in the unexpected entrance of the innocent Tom Simson and the guileless Piney Woods, the outcasts find a common challenge to the native goodness that had long lain dormant within them. Innocence and guilelessness may be laughed at, as they are here, but their appeal is ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith

... we remember that it is only since 1811 that they have emerged from numerical insignificance, we find their contribution to the planting of the church in the new settlements to be a highly honorable one. By a suicidal compact the guileless Evangelical party agreed, in 1835, to take direction of the foreign missions of the church, and leave the home field under the direction of the aggressive High-church party. It surrendered its part in the future of the church, ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... large than in his small pictures, are those of a want of human knowledge, power, and freedom. His wicked—even his more earthly-souled characters, are weak and faulty in action. What should the reverent and guileless dreamer know, unless indeed by inspiration of the rude conflicts, the fire and fury of human passions intensified in the malice and anguish of devils? But Fra Angelico's singular successes far transcend his failures. In addition to the sublime serenity and positive radiance of expression ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler

... my eyes with such a guileless expression that, for an instant, I thought she might be tired of her old, heartless life, and long to be better. I stood looking with some perplexity into the fire, scarce knowing what to say; but, turning my eyes suddenly, I saw a mocking gleam ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter

... trusting person (HARRY laughs—CLAIRE gives him a surprised look, continues simply). Such a guileless soul that I thought flying would do something to a man. But it didn't take us out. We just ...
— Plays • Susan Glaspell

... should be made acquainted with the episode, dependent upon the future conduct of both young people. It had not been satisfactory from Forsythe's point of view; that is, he had not been so easily able to disabuse the father's mind of suspicion, nor to establish his own guileless character as he had hoped; and some of the remarks Rogers made led Forsythe to think that the father understood just how unpleasant it might become for him if his brother-in-law found out about ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill

... some measure been banished from the remembrance of the gentleman; but the recollections of Sarah were more vivid. There is a period in the life of every woman when she may be said to be predisposed to love; it is at the happy age when infancy is lost in opening maturity—when the guileless heart beats with those anticipations of life which the truth can never realize—and when the imagination forms images of perfection that are copied after its own unsullied visions. At this happy age Sarah left the city, and she ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper

... you could but have known that what time he laughed and talked with your guests and feasted at your board, with its tasty viands and its cake with lighted candles, and bent his furtive glance upon the beauty of your guileless Virginia—if you could but have known that in his black heart the canker jealousy was gnawing and that, behind the smile he wore as a mask, the brainy man was ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard

... settled over the camp. Rex and Nero acrobatically locked forepaws and rolled over and over in a clownish excess of congeniality. Johnny trotted busily about feeding the horses. Diane made the coffee, arousing the frank and guileless ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple

... he permitted himself an occasional playful fling at the regular church-going of Mr. and Mrs. Summers, at the innocuous character of the literature in their library, and at their guileless appreciations in art. He even ventured to banter Mrs. Summers on her refusal to receive the irrepressible Kitty Mayne who, after a rapid passage with George Darrow, was now involved in ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton

... the woman written in her face, the tart, thinking, handsome creature that Ibsen prefers. Nigel Debrullier looks the buttoned-up Pastor Manders, even to caricature. But the crawling, bootlicking carpenter, Jacob Engstrand, is changed into a respectable, guileless man with an income. And his wife and daughter are helpless, conventional, upper-class rabbits. They do not remind one of ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay

... break away from him, and on her lip there broke that beautiful smile of hers; withal a little tremulous just then. It is rare on a grown woman's lip, a smile so very guileless and free; mostly it belongs to children. Yet not this ...
— Diana • Susan Warner

... ambitious dreams with a vision of happiness, he called up the guileless face of Mademoiselle Angelique Bontems, the companion of his childhood. Until he came to boyhood his father and mother had made no objection to his intimacy with their neighbor's pretty little daughter; ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac

... the inhabitants of this land. Throughout the whole being of the Greek there reigned supreme a quick susceptibility, out of which sprang a gladsome serenity of temper, and a keen enjoyment of life; acute sense, and nimbleness of apprehension; a guileless and child-like feeling, full of trust and faith, combined with prudence and forecast. These peculiarities lay so deeply imbedded in the inmost nature of the Greeks that no revolutions of time and circumstances have yet been ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... most innocent!" interrupted La Tour, impetuously; "yours was a heart too guileless to deceive, too firm in virtuous principle to be sullied, even by a union with the vicious and depraved. No, Adele, I have never cherished one feeling of resentment towards you; you, like myself, was the victim of that baseness, ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney

... white waist, and her sleeves were rolled up. The sun glinted on her uncovered hair, blazed in the bright tin basin into which she was dropping scarlet peppers. She appeared younger than he had remembered her; her arms were youthful and softly dimpled; her brow seemed again the calm, guileless brow of a girl; her eyes, as she raised them in greeting, ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... the archimandrite asked for any one in so great a company, that one may be asked who is the second in each, how group Alpha is, or how the group Beta; again let him salute the group Rho; the name of the letters following its own proper sign. And upon the simpler and more guileless place the name Iota; and upon those who are more ill-tempered and less righteous the letter Xi. And thus in harmony with the principles and the life and manners of them arrange the names of the letters, only the spiritual understanding ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.

... reciprocal, and that before he left home he placed the engagement ring on her finger, naming no very distant period when he hoped to replace it by the wedding ring. Belinda Merril was worthy in every way of his affection, and loved him with all the sincerity of a pure and guileless heart. I almost wonder that the shadows which were even then gathering in what to them had ever been a summer sky, did not cast a chill over her heart. In due time Arthur went to the city. I could not help my fears, lest his pleasing manners and love of company should attract ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell

... a day; His body 'tis that journeys o'er the wave, But not his heart, for that is now thy slave, And from thy side can never wrested be, Nor of its own accord return to me. Ah! could I with me o'er the treach'rous brine Take aught of that pure, guileless heart of thine, No doubt should I then feel of victory, Whereof the glory would belong to thee. But now, whatever fortune may befall, I've cast the die; and having told thee all, Abide thereby, and vow my constancy— Emblem of which, herein, a diamond see, By whose great firmness and whose ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. II. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre

... was time to start, they escorted my short-haired damsel, with plump shapely arms, her gold bangles and her guileless, radiant face, into the boat. I could divine that she was returning from her father's to her husband's home. They all stood there, following the boat with their gaze as it cast off, one or two ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore

... the old invalid never failed to be seen turning over the leaves whenever our friend happened to enter the room. As to him, he was quite proud of its success, and would say to me each time: 'It appears I have made him a famous present.' And thus the two guileless natures were content. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various

... seen her turn pale at a word, a gesture, on her part. I have seen her embrace Maud Gorka, and play tennis with that same friend so gayly, so innocently. I have seen that she could not bear the presence of Maitland in a room, and yet she asked the American to take her portrait.... Is she guileless?... Is she a hypocrite? Or is she tormented by doubt-divining, not divining-believing, not believing in-her mother? Is she underhand in any case, with her eyes the color of the sea? Has she the ambiguous ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget

... him eat! Whoso would slumber, let him to bed. But he who would bicker, it must needs be with me. Here is a man of the Dale, who hath sought the wood in peace, and hath found us. His hand is ready and his heart is guileless: if ye fear him, run away to the wood, and come back when he is gone; but none shall mock him while I sit by: now, lads, be merry ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris

... spirits, which prevented him from entirely sinking the man in the politician. He had some enemies in the little court, whose Duke and Duchess were personally so attached to him. A prosperous life such as his could not fail to attract envy, and his frank, guileless character gave plenty of occasion for suspicion. But the only answer which he vouchsafed to his ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... "Surely so lovely and guileless a flower can know no sorrow, since sorrow often goes hand in hand with sin; this Crown Imperial must surely be as faultless as ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer

... beauteous nest of snow-white doves, What wealth could price for me your guileless loves? My earthly cherubim, my precious pearls, My pretty flock of loving little girls, My stores of happiness with least alloy, My treasuries of hope and trembling joy! Yon toothless darling, nestled soft and warm On a young yearning mother's cradling arm; ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... the march step during the afternoons. When he was arrested and dragged into court McGregor acted as his lawyer and he was discharged. "I want to get these men out into the open," Mosby declared, looking very innocent and guileless. "You can see for yourself that waiters and bartenders get pale and stoop-shouldered at their work and as for these young roughs isn't it better for society to have them out there marching about than idling in bar rooms and planning ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson

... minutes, until she should see him again. Never concealing from any of us how dearly she loved him. She was truly as guileless as ...
— Edna's Sacrifice and Other Stories - Edna's Sacrifice; Who Was the Thief?; The Ghost; The Two Brothers; and What He Left • Frances Henshaw Baden

... oh, yes, Her hideous secret well. We together were cast, I knew not her past; For how was I to tell? I married her, guileless lamb I was; I'd have died for her sweet sake. How could I have known that my Angeline Had been a Human Snake? Ah, we had been wed but a week or two When I found her quite a wreck: Her limbs were tied in a double bow-knot At the ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... "Mark that look on her face! I never see it save for that same youngster. The children are simple and guileless thus far, it may be. I dare be sworn that she is, but they wot not where they will ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... Lindley, coming to sit by the fire in her son's smoking-room, where Richard sat glooming, narrated her legend of the Devil of Lisieux. It must have been her legend: the people of Lisieux know nothing of it; but this Richard the Guileless took it for tradition, as she alleged it, and had no suspicion that she had spent ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington

... look as unconscious and guileless as a lamb;" and with that we passed down the companion and ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... formed part of our little company in the gig. First-rate fellows they were, all three of them, knowing their vocation to its smallest detail, and thoroughly at home aboard a ship in blue water, though ashore they were as guileless and helpless as babes, ready to fall an easy prey to the first land shark that got scent of them. If I could be sure of arranging at Punta Arenas for their conveyance to England, either as shipwrecked seamen or otherwise, and thus discharging ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood

... save for the unmistakeable though indefinable something in his eye that exacted rather than invited the homage of his fellow man. His laugh was a free and merry one, his spirits as effervescent as wine, his manner blithe and boyish; yet beneath all this fair and guileless exposition of carelessness lay the sober integrity of caste. It looked out through the steady, unswerving eyes, even when they twinkled with mirth; it met the gaze of the world with a serene imperiousness that gave way before no mortal ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... answered; and, as he said it, the thought stung through him that this was the very stone which was to have worn the pleasant blandness of pretty Susan's guileless countenance. How the new features had effaced ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... had these poor victims done to deserve such fearful punishment? What heinous crime had they committed to be sentenced to death and destruction by such a painful, torturing process? Whose sin was visited on the guileless heads of little infants and innocent children who had perished in those flames? Could not they have been spared? or that loving and beautiful young couple, just on the brink of life and happiness, and now sent to eternity together by such a fearful road, into the mouth of hell when ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai

... mind was synonymous with "things as they ought not to be." He frankly asserts: "Caleb Williams was the offspring of that temper of mind in which the composition of my Political Justice left me"[75]—a guileless confession that may well have deterred many readers who recoil shuddering from political treatises decked out in the guise of fiction. But alarm is needless; for, although Caleb Williams attempts to reveal the oppressions that a poor man may endure under existing conditions, and the perversion ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead

... shows up at my Physical Culture Studio again, the day after Lawyer Judson has explained for us the fine points of that batty will of Pyramid's, I'm about as friendly and guileless as a dyspeptic customs inspector preparin' to go through the trunks of a Fifth avenue dressmaker. He comes in smilin' and chirky, though, slaps me chummy on the shoulder, ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford

... mistrustin' of it, somehow—and he went and told her, and it brought her, hearin' you was dangerous, and she calculated she might be o' use to ye now, for some, they be sich friends!" said Grandma, making this observation with the most guileless enthusiasm. "And Becky, she wa'n't much brought up, and used to be as wild and harum-scarum as any of 'em; but I allus said that there was a good deal to Becky, after all. Wall, George Olver, he recognized ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene

... constantly confident that he can, and are therefore his constant and ready tools for this or that party or interest. They sell themselves to monarchy or democracy, to capital or labour, with the same guileless innocence of what is happening to them, with the same simple-minded incapacity to learn anything from the lessons of the past. There are no short cuts to spiritual ends, and those ends can never be accomplished by secular means. ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry

... me that the inferior race that can skin Levi Long to his pelt in a gamble is providin' no fit associates for guileless an' confidin' children o' the Occident, like ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson

... do ye think the foe Gone, or that guileless are their gifts? O blind With madness! Thus Ulysses do ye know? Or Grecians in these timbers lurk confined, Or 'tis some engine of assault, designed To breach the walls, and lay our houses bare, And storm the town. Some mischief lies behind. Trust not the horse, ye Teucrians. Whatso'er This means, ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil

... the most terrible tiger roars and ended with the nightmare screams of a child. I have never been so frightened in my life. And there was a snake song, a soft, wavy, piano, pianissimo effect, all malignant stealth and horror, and running through it were the guileless and insistently hungry twitterings of baby birds in the nest. But there were comical pieces, too, in which ludicrous adventures befell unsophisticated monkeys; and there was a whole series of spring-fever ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris

... a stranger to Walgett town, To Walgett town when the sun was low, And he carried a thirst that was worth a crown, Yet how to quench it he did not know; But he thought he might take those yokels down, The guileless yokels ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson

... with melancholy misgivings at this lean man with hair and whiskers of a lifeless black. Beck suggested a starved black spider, especially when you were looking into his cold, amused, malignant black eyes. He made short work of the guileless brewer, who was dazed and frightened by the meshes in which he was enveloped. Staring at the horrid specter of publicity which these men of craft kept before him, he could not vigorously protest against ...
— The Fortune Hunter • David Graham Phillips

... story; she wanted a richer sympathy than Doctor Mary's common-sense afforded; out of this need the revelation came to Gertie in innocent confidence, and, with the narrator's tacit approval, ran through the family and its intimate friends. If Cynthia had been as calculating as she was guileless, she could not have done better for herself. Mrs. Naylor's motherliness, old Naylor's courtliness, Gertie's breathless concern and avid appetite for the fullest detail, everybody's desire to console and cheer, all these were at her service, ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony

... From heaven above, from earth below— The mighty lords who rule the skies, The market's lesser deities, To each and all the altars glow, Piled for the sacrifice! And here and there, anear, afar, Streams skyward many a beacon-star, Conjur'd and charm'd and kindled well By pure oil's soft and guileless spell, Hid now no more Within the ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus

... the sunny days, Joy and gladness sending; Life becomes a song of praise When true hearts are blending. Guileless truth Won the Youth, Kept him there, A prisoner; While dear Love From above Poured down enduring dreams, In calm ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster

... obliged to dance five times with Captain Quin?' said I; and oh! strange delicious charm of coquetry, I do believe Miss Nora Brady at twenty-three years of age felt a pang of delight in thinking that she had so much power over a guileless lad of fifteen. Of course she replied that she did not care a fig for Captain Quin: that he danced prettily, to be sure, and was a pleasant rattle of a man; that he looked well in his regimentals too; and if he chose to ask her to dance, how ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray

... before the gateway with a little of the demureness of young people who know they are overlooked by authority, and had bumped against each other with affected gravity. Somewhat ashamed of his useless deception, and the guileless simplicity of the good Lady Superior, Key hesitated and began: "I am afraid that I am really giving you too much ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte

... gane by, an' the rose began to blaw, An' the harebell an' the violet adorn'd ilk bonnie shaw; 'Twas then my love cam courtin' me, and wan my youthfu' heart, An' mony a tear it cost my love ere he could frae me part; But though he 's in a foreign land far, far across the sea, I ken my Jamie's guileless ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... had done nothing more, he had, by his detestable arts, broken up one of the happiest homes in America, and ruined his guileless victim. ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... unknown, "I love to hear thy innocent story and look on thy guileless face. There is, alas! so much of the contrary in this world, so much terror and crime and blood, that we who mingle with it are only too glad to forget it. Would that we could shake off our cares as men, and be ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... and worthy one Who, turning from the world, as thou, Before life's pathway had begun To leave its spring-time flower and sun, Had sealed her early vow; Giving to God her beauty and her youth, Her pure affections and her guileless truth. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... experience has thrown, even that, far into the back ground. It was my initiatory lesson upon subjects which ought never to enter the imagination of girlhood: my introduction into a region which should never be approached by the guileless and the pure." (page 61) One or two individuals (Roman Catholic) soon formed a close intimacy with me, and discoursed with a freedom and plainness I had never, before encountered. My acquaintances, however, had been brought up in convents, or familiar with them for years, and I could ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy

... their eyes, and had sold themselves for a shilling to the landlords of their country. In one of the Socialist papers that Jimmie read, there appeared every week a series of comic pictures in which the working man was figured as a guileless fool by the name of "Henry Dubb". Poor Henry always believed what he was told, and at the end of each adventure he got a thump on the top of his nut which caused stars to sprout over the page. And of the many adventures of ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair

... watch him with great eyes. What meant this change? the guileless philosopher would ask himself, and wonder if he had judged his brother too harshly all through life; or if it was his plain speaking in their last quarrel which had put things in their true light to him, and awakened some innate generosity ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... father, this would, doubtless, have been true enough. But though he had known him for so many years, and was privy to much of his history, he did not yet understand Philip Caresfoot. His own open and guileless nature did not easily suspect evil in another, more especially when that other was the father of her whom he looked upon as the earthly incarnation of all ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard

... man! For the first time in his guileless life Septimus met it face to face. To read of human depravity in the police reports is one thing, to see it fall like a black shadow across one's life is another. It horrified him. Mordaunt Prince had committed the unforgivable sin. He had stolen a girl's love, and basely, meanly, he had slunk ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke

... for all his hideousness and unseemly mien, is not the vampire; the blood-sucking bat has won a mantle of deceit from the hands of Nature—a garb that gives him a modest and not unpleasing appearance, and makes it a difficult matter to distinguish him from his guileless ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe

... pierce complacent humbugs, that lurked behind these Oriental situations. He made the most of his chance for a quaint parable, applicable to the courts, the church and science of Europe. As the story runs on, midst many and sudden adventures, the Babylonian reads causes from events in guileless fashion, enthusiastic as Sherlock Holmes, and no less efficient—and all the while, behind this innocent mask, Voltaire is insinuating a comparison between the practical results of Zadig's common sense and the futile mental cobwebs ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne

... Two days later he wrote to the Department, "I had presumed that the enemy would confide in the strength of his position and venture an action, by which an opportunity would be afforded to cut off his retreat."[52] This guileless expectation, that the net may be spread not in vain before the eyes of any bird, provoked beyond control such measure of equanimity as Armstrong possessed. Probably suspecting already that his correct design upon Kingston had been thwarted by ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

... them. Alas! feelings which gave her poignant misery still clung to her. She despised herself for her weakness; but she loved Leon. The sentiment was too deeply implanted in her bosom to be eradicated; too strong to be resisted. It was the first love of a young and guileless heart, and had ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various

... world of every day—the world in which the vast majority of men have to spend fifty-two weeks of every year. Very delightful, too, is the type of man thus produced—charmingly learned, sweetly innocent, guileless, impracticable; walking the path of life with head in air, with eyes unseeing and ears unhearing the things that fill the thoughts of common men. Holding fellowship with the immortals, eating the bread of philosophy, doctrinaire, drinking the wine of poetry—how ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson

... friendly mirth and wondrous naturalness of expression, the people of whom his dear books told him the stories,—his Shakspeare, his Cervantes, his Moliere, his Le Sage. There was his last work on the easel—a beautiful fresh smiling shape of Titania, such as his sweet guileless fancy imagined the Midsummer Night's queen to be. Gracious, and pure, and bright, the sweet smiling image glimmers on the canvas. Fairy elves, no doubt, were to have been grouped around their mistress in laughing ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Panama did not allay these feelings. Soon the royalists seized this instrument as a means of discrediting the Republic, asserting that it had been organized through the influence of German-Jewish immigrants who were enriching themselves at the expense of the thrifty but guileless French. It was also asserted that Jews in the army were betraying its secrets to their German kindred. As the army was universally popular, this was an effective blow at the Jews. The denouement was the arrest of Captain Dreyfus, his degradation, ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... said, aloud, as the detective approached him, "we are wrong; he is in the bow of the 'Brown Bess,' and he sails in the 'Prairie Flower;'" and as he uttered the first lie that he had ever told in his guileless young life Maurice looked full in the detective's face and led him ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... of any constitutional timidity, for Rose was much the reverse from timid, but it was the fruit of a newly-awakened and painful, though still vague, suspicion. Happy, thrice happy was it for one of her naturally confiding and guileless nature, that distrust was thus opportunely awakened, for she was without a guardian competent to advise and guide her ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper

... was confident that Thurston was a born intriguer, and he instinctively watched for signs of understanding between Mr. Strathmore and the other. He could detect nothing of the sort. The Rev. Rutherford Strathmore bore a countenance as beneficent, as kindly, as guileless as ever; responding to the challenge of his colleague's eyes by no evidence of understanding or connivance. It was not until the talkers ceased and there fell a silence which indicated that the first force of admiration ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates

... expected him to be either Adam or Eve." This crumb of comfort lasted but a very little while; he glanced around and discovered Jimmy standing in an imposing attitude in a corner, with a dark and deadly frown on his face. What that meant was very plain—HE WAS IMPERSONATING THE DEITY! Think of the guileless sublimity ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... blue eyes. They had been tinted with ugly green a moment before, but now they were clear, deep, dark, guileless blue. He could not resist. The very nearness of the woman was like a gentle, cool hand caressing his forehead and rubbing ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand

... child-cherub of Rubens, tempting pale men with splitting heads to throw boots at him in the bitterness of their envy as he entered their rooms on the morning after a heavy drink, his eyes so clear and guileless that you would never guess how sharp they could be at times when a dangerous horse was coming up on his quarter. A strange compound his character was of cool calculation and sentimental simplicity. The most astute of trainers ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence

... dismissed briefly. "Alice du Clos" has good lines, but is unimportant as a whole. The very favourite poem "Love" is a modern story enclosing a mediaeval one. In the moonshine by the ruined tower the guileless Genevieve leans against the statue of an armed man, while her lover sings her a tale of a wandering knight who bore a burning brand upon his shield and went mad for the love of "The Lady of ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... Paul. All the adults present except Amzi were plainly distressed. Mrs. Hastings, being childless and therefore entitled to her opinions as to the rearing of children, resolved that at last she must speak to Fanny about Susie. And all this embarrassment and irritation by the guileless Susie had not disturbed Amzi one whit. Amzi had no intention of rewriting his will to punish ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson

... Given up his berth on the bonny ship, and his chance of a voyage after his own heart—given it up, too, for Isaac Dent, a fellow whom he was quite sure was more or less a bit of a scoundrel. Will was honest, unsuspicious, and guileless; but even he could not quite think the best of a man with ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade

... grew feebler, as it usually did when his prudence was at variance with his desires. Sally's words were in this case wholly guileless, as he recognised, and they stirred him. He said nothing, however, and she ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss

... said Langshaw simply. There was a slight huskiness in his voice; the round face and guileless blue eyes of his little boy, who had tried "awful hard to be good," seemed to have acquired a new dignity. The father saw in him the grown-up son who could be depended upon to look after his mother if need were. Langshaw held out his hand as ...
— The Blossoming Rod • Mary Stewart Cutting

... that she would part with one gentleman before the other was secured. It is all over with Frederick indeed! He is a deceased man—defunct in understanding. Prepare for your sister-in-law, Eleanor, and such a sister-in-law as you must delight in! Open, candid, artless, guileless, with affections strong but simple, forming no ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... reached the station the Rabbi was already half way to Kilbogie, trudging along wet and weary and very sad, because, although he had obeyed his conscience at a cost, it seemed to him as if he had simply alienated the boy whom God had given him as a son in his old age, for even the guileless Rabbi suspected that the ecclesiastics considered his action foolishness and of no service to the Church of God. Barbara's language on his arrival was vituperative to a degree, she gave him food grudgingly, and when, in the early morning, he fell asleep over an ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren

... recalled it, and thought with a strange comfort that then, at least, there was nothing to conceal; nothing but sincerity in the sweet, honest face—not pretty, but so perfectly candid and true—with the sun shining on the lint-white hair, and the bright blue eyes meeting his, guileless as a child's. Ay, and however they were dimmed with care and washed with tears—oceans of bitterness—that innocent, childlike look never, even when she was an old woman, quite ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... by the commonplaces of condolence, yet I must write a few lines to assure you of my heartfelt sympathy in your grief. There is one thing, however, that should soften the sharpness of a mother's agony under such a bereavement. It is the reflection that "little children" are pure and guileless, and that of such is the kingdom of heaven. "It is well with the child." Much sin and woe has it escaped. It is treasure laid up in a better world, and the gate through which it has passed to peace and joy unspeakable is left open so that you, in due time, may follow. Let ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke

... house with no caution to conceal her movements, and went to the barn. Alvino was hobbling about among the horses with his lantern. He gave her an open and guileless good-morning, and she told ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden

... changes our Psyche, that is our intellectual faculty with its airy wings of imagination, its yearnings for truth, into an ugly, submissive, crawling worm, is heartless selfishness. Not without reason is poor guileless Margaret horrified at Mephistopheles. She shudders, hides herself on the bosom of Faust, like a dove under the wings of an eagle, and complains ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies

... criminal had shown a humility as deep as it was unusual; he had sat on a pile of wood alone, not even romping with Dick and Harry till he felt the Hour of Judgment had passed. And then, deciding that there was no punishment forthcoming, he had leaped and frisked, and seemed so guileless that Baldy's contempt for his own kind ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling

... Lamour's Disease. About five she retired to her severely simple apartments in the big brownstone office building devoted to physicians, corner of Fifty-eighth Street and Madison Avenue. Here she took tea, read a little, dined all alone, and retired about nine. This was the guileless but determined existence of Rosalind Hollis, M.D., according to McConnell, the detective ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers

... was gently loosened. The calm gaze of those radiant eyes grew fixed, unchangeable—a faint flutter, and the heart's quick pulsations forever ceased—wings had been given that balmy eve to a pure and guileless spirit. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various

... "Thou speakest as a guileless nature prompts. It is the frailty of man, my daughter, to separate his public acts from the fearful responsibility of his private deeds; as if God, in endowing his being with reason and the glorious hopes of Christianity, ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper

... being like Mona, who told us, and we saw no reason to disbelieve her, that she had never known what it was to do wrong? She seemed as incapable of evil as the birds of the air, or, to make the comparison still stronger, as a beautiful rose. She was guileless by nature, and goodness and truth were as much a part of her as her beauty was. She was made to be a joy and comfort to every creature brought within the circle of her influence, and she could no more help loving than the ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan

... she agreed, being guileless, and the lawyer rode away after the other. All that day and all the next Suzanne scarcely spoke to me, but I saw that she was expecting something to happen, and that she glanced continually towards the path by which the Englishmen had journeyed, ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard

... rather a more difficult one than Diana had, from Norbert's account, anticipated, as she had thought that she would have been received by the Duchess like some ministering angel sent down to earth to console an unhappy captive. She had expected to find a simple, guileless woman, who, upon her first visit, would throw her arms round her visitor's neck and yield herself entirely to her influence. Far, however, from being dismayed, Diana was rather pleased at this unexpected difficulty, and so fully exerted all her powers of fascination, ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau

... oxalic, malic, and citric acids; thus possessing virtues for easing pain, and inducing sleep. The cultivated Lettuce which comes to our tables retains these same properties, but in a very modified degree, since the formidable principles have become as completely toned down and guileless in the garden product as were the child-like manners and the pensive smile of ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... satisfied. The whole is conducted with the strictest integrity, for neither will one touch the gold till they have left an adequate value in merchandize, nor will the other remove the goods, till the Carthaginians have taken away the gold." This story, unhappily for the guileless simplicity of our merchants here, is too good to be true, like most artless stories of this sort. I made inquiries of merchants who had lived nearly all their lifetimes in Timbuctoo, and not far from the gold country, but they had never heard of this pretty primitive ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... account for their taking the net," said he thoughtfully, "but what on earth would the guileless Tonto maiden do with a watch or with greenbacks? They wouldn't dare show with them at the agency! How far did ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King

... this side of his connection with the founder and principles of Positivism, that we dwell on the memory of Mr. Mill with admiration and sympathy. We reverence that unfaltering fearlessness of spirit, that warmth of generous emotion, that guileless simplicity of nature, which made his life heroic. Neither insult, failure, nor abandonment could shake his sense of duty, or touch his gentle and serene fortitude. For us his high example, his noble philosophic calm, ...
— John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works • Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison and Other

... an ugly woman ridiculous, or an injured husband the sport and victim of wicked lover and heartless wife. No sense of the fitness of things constrained her ladyship from communicating these Court scandals to her guileless sister. Did they not comprise the only news worth anybody's attention, and relate to the only class of people who had any tangible existence for Lady Fareham? There were millions of human beings, no doubt, living and acting and suffering on the surface ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... road, And the glad steed neighed beneath him as they fared from the King's abode. And out past the dewy closes; but the shouts went up to the sky, Though some for very sorrow forbore the farewell cry, Nor was any man but heavy that the godlike guest should go; And they craved for that glad heart guileless, and that face ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung • William Morris

... embraces,' says F. H. Bradley (Appearance and Reality, 204). He means that these slain men make the universe richer, and that is Philosophy. But while Professors Royce and Bradley and a whole host of guileless thoroughfed thinkers are unveiling Reality and the Absolute and explaining away evil and pain, this is the condition of the only beings known to us anywhere in the universe with a developed consciousness of what the universe is. What these people experience IS Reality. It ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James

... able to refute idiocy, but she found herself continuing to read because she was interested in a way she had not expected. She began to see things. Once she made a remark which was prophetic. She made it in answer to a guileless observation concerning the gold mines with which Boston ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... into silence. Until that troublous hour, they had loved one another with the affection of brother and sister. In their ignorance they still mistook their feelings for tender friendship, although beneath their guileless love their ardent blood surged more wildly day by day. Given age and experience, a violent passion of southern intensity would at last spring from this idyll. Every girl who hangs on a youth's neck is already a woman, a woman unconsciously, whom a caress may awaken to conscious womanhood. ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola

... his perpetual nervous nod of acquiescence, his air of agreeing with people before he knew what they were saying; Jack Stepney, with his confident smile and anxious eyes, half way between the sheriff and an heiress; Gwen Van Osburgh, with all the guileless confidence of a young girl who has always been told that there is no one ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton

... or man. The being was nearly six feet high, and powerfully built, like a strong man of twenty-five. His face was childish even to the degree of silliness. The mouth opened like a flytrap; the eyes were small and intensely guileless. Only a few wrinkles, and a few hairs, which grew wide apart on his cheeks and chin, indicated his manhood. But the oddest feature was the falling away of his forehead, at an angle which a dirty greased cap, pulled over ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... I known anyone who combined so many qualities, far asunder as the poles, in one single disposition. He was placid and turbulent, yet always majestic. He was inexplicable and entirely lovable—a stupid old dear, and as wise as Solomon! He seemed guileless, and yet had moments of suspicion and craftiness worthy of the wisdom of the serpent. One moment he would call me "dearest child"; the next, ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry

... wise and guileless sway Win every recreant today, And sorrow's vast and holy wave Blend all our hearts around his grave! Let the faithful bondmen's tears, Let the traitor's craven fears, And the people's grief and pride, Plead against the parricide! ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various

... Ernest Wilton. "What you have already told me, besides his own innocent, guileless look, has interested me strangely in him; and, in addition to that, I'm sure I know something about him or somebody extremely like him, which I cannot at ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson

... of the world—too much for my happiness—or I would not have come to this quiet spot to end my days. But for a young and guileless boy, whose life is but beginning, the world has its charms. Do you care ...
— Robert Coverdale's Struggle - Or, On The Wave Of Success • Horatio, Jr. Alger

... surrounded him. He was a man of society, and never stopped to think that the glowing, enthusiastic creature, whose eyes gazed up so confidingly to him, as he conversed of literature and poesy, or whose lips overflowed with earnest, eloquent words, was an innocent, guileless child, into whose Undine nature he had summoned the soul. He had been many years engaged, heart and hand, to another; and circumstances alone had delayed the fulfillment of that engagement. This Agnes knew nothing ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various

... from destruction. And so the Wolfshot has deserted us;— Others will follow his example soon. This foreign witchery, sweeping o'er our hills, Tears with its potent spell our youth away: O luckless hour, when men and manners strange Into these calm and happy valleys came, To warp our primitive and guileless ways. The new is pressing on with might. The old, The good, the simple, fleeteth fast away. New times come on. A race is springing up, That think not as their fathers thought before! What do I here? All, all are in the grave With whom ere while I ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... asked, coolly. "I tell you, girls, it is impossible to know whether the man who dresses well, and calls on you at stated intervals, looking and talking like a gentleman, is not a very Satan, who will lead away the pretty guileless, unsuspecting young girl who is worth his trouble; and the leading often and often commences with a dance; and the young girl may never have been allowed to dance with him at all had not stately and entirely unexceptionable leaders of society, like ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden

... ingenious strangers who benevolently offered to invest his money in enterprises with certified futures. When he was not engaged in declining a gold mine in Colorado, worth five million dollars, marked down to four hundred and fifty, he was avoiding a guileless inventor who offered to sacrifice the secrets of a marvelous device for three hundred dollars, or denying the report that he had been tendered the presidency of ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon

... no foeman in the land Whose deeds or tongue would gall; Of guileless heart, of liberal hand, He smiled on ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various

... brought out from his impurity and wickedness into a new and Divine life of holiness, awakened to a conscious experience of purity, truth, and love, the great prime elements in the reign of God. He must be guileless and lowly. "Whosoever will not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... cold country, yet he finds small encouragement." Anything more pathetic than this last endeavor of Dundee, except it be his death, cannot be imagined. The clans were not devoured with devotion to King James, and were not the victims of guileless enthusiasm; they were not the heroes of romance depicted by Jacobite poets and story-tellers: they were half-starved, entirely ignorant, fond of fighting, but largely intent on stealing. If there was any chance of a foray in which they could gather ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren

... piqued by these changes, and being a born flirt tried all her powers on David, veiled under guileless girlishness. She was very pretty, very charming, and at times most lovable and sweet when all that was best in her shallow little heart was touched. But it was evident to all that her early acquaintance with the hard and sordid side of life had brushed the bloom from her nature, ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott

... down on a bedstead except when suffering from illness or other affliction, and should be guileless and straightforward in their ...
— The Siksha-Patri of the Swami-Narayana Sect • Professor Monier Williams (Trans.)

... the poor little dreamy, guileless Commandant in his conspicuous car, and I smile at her in secret, thanking Heaven that it's Ursula Dearmer and not Mrs. Torrence who is ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair

... regard for you, so as not to terminate this inchoate comedy. At the same time I am here to help out Alcmena, poor innocent, denounced as disloyal by her lord, Amphitryon. For it would be sinful of me, if the storm I have brewed should descend on the head of guileless Alcmena. ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius

... the Mephistopheles of the office, debauching his editor's guileless mind with all the wily ways of the old journalistic hand; he was of real use in protecting Raphael against the thousand and one pitfalls that make the editorial chair as perilous to the occupant as Sweeney Todd's; against the people who tried to get libels ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... love of things literary as it might or should have done. But he realised that these strange black-letter and manuscript volumes were of unique value, and that their contents, so difficult to decipher, were responsible for the formation of Innocent's guileless and romantic spirit, colouring her outlook on life with a glamour of rainbow brilliancy which, though beautiful, was unreal. One quaint little book he opened had for its title— "Ye Whole Art of Love, Setting Forth ye Noble Manner of Noble Knights who woulde serve their Ladies Faithfullie ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli

... may be down here to meet their own friends," remarked Leila with a mischievous glance toward Marjorie. "You guileless infant! Don't you know what has happened? The Sans are going to do just what some of us said the other night they wouldn't take the trouble to do. They have gone into ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester

... "My guileless savages were evidently impressed, but not yet inclined to move," continued the little paymaster, without noticing the interruption, "so I concluded to arouse them by another and more startling exhibition of my powers. Having hinted that the little fire devils of the forest, which I fancy every savage ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore

... which they certainly enjoyed, by the way. There was little Captain C——, the Susceptible and Simple, who so innocently says "I seen" and "I done it," without the faintest suspicion of the peculiarity, and looks so sweet, and guileless, and amiable, and soft, that I can't help wondering if he would be sticky if I touch him. Indeed, I think his hands stick, at least; for when he told me good-bye, it was with the greatest difficulty that I extracted mine from his grasp (he having forgotten to return it during a ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson

... this moment it seemed that about the roost unhealthful thing he could do would be to be seen in the air. Wherefore did this innocent and guileless old bird affect not to see the stoats, but made out that he was feeding his way along, quite and absolutely intent upon that yellow devil of a weed whose other name is charlock. He did not even hurry, and each deliberate step was taken with almost a proud daintiness. The only thing was, he never ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars

... to be thus overthrown without a great jar. The Elder felt Draxy's simplicity and child-like truthfulness more and more with each word she spoke; but her quiet dignity of manner was something to which he was unused; to his inexperience she seemed almost a fine lady, in spite of her sweet and guileless speech. Draxy, on the other hand, was a little repelled by the Elder's whole appearance. He was a rougher man than she had known; his pronunciation grated on her ear; and he looked so strong and dark she felt a sort ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson

... a little. And then Henry's going into the war, and all that is happening, makes me feel so very, very old and sad at times;" and so she continued in low tones to tell about herself and Henry and her father, of their hopes of final victory, and all that made up her life. This she did with a guileless frankness, and yet with a refined reserve that was indescribable in its simple pathos and beauty. In spite of himself Graham was charmed and soothed, while he wondered at the exquisite blending of girlhood and womanhood in his guide. She also questioned him about the North and the ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe

... his will. She sealed her note and put it upon his desk hesitatingly; then, as Kitty turned away, she dropped her handkerchief beside it. It was a time-worn strategy, such as only the innocent and guileless think of in their hour of adversity. When she ran back to recover it Lucy drew a dainty book from her bosom—Mrs. Browning's "Sonnets from the Portuguese"—and placed it across her note as if to save it from the wind, and between two leaves she slipped the forget-me-nots ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge

... new-comer Mr. Oakhurst recognized Tom Simson, otherwise known as "The Innocent" of Sandy Bar. He had met him some months before over a "little game," and had, with perfect equanimity, won the entire fortune—amounting to some forty dollars—of that guileless youth. After the game was finished, Mr. Oakhurst drew the youthful speculator behind the door and thus addressed him: "Tommy, you're a good little man, but you can't gamble worth a cent. Don't try it over again." He then handed him his money back, pushed him gently from the ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)



Words linked to "Guileless" :   straight, square



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