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Anna Bartlett Warner was an American writer, the author of several books, and of poems set to music as hymns and religious songs for children.

Wych Hazel Chapter 1 MR. FALKIRK.

"We may shut our eyes, but we cannot help knowing

That skies are clear and grass is growing."

When one has in charge a treasure which one values greatly, and which, if once made known one is pretty sure to lose, I suppose the impulse of most men would be towards a hiding- place. So, at any rate, felt one of the men in this history. Schools had done their secluding work for a time; tutors and governors had come and gone under an almost Carthusian vow of silence, except as to their lessons; and now with seventeen years of inexperience on his hands, Mr. Falkirk's sensations were those of the man out West, who wanted to move off whenever another man came within twenty miles of him.

Thus, in the forlorn hope of a retreat which yet he knew must prove useless, Mr. Falkirk let the first March winds blow him out of town; and at this present time was snugly hid away in a remote village which nobody ever heard of, and where nobody ever came.

So far so good: Mr. Falkirk rested and took breath. Nevertheless the spring came, even there; and following close in her train, the irrepressible conflict. Whoever succeeded in running away from his duties-or his difficulties? There was a flutter of young life within doors as without, and Mr. Falkirk knew it: there were a hundred rills of music, a thousand nameless flowers to which he could not close his senses. There was a soft, indefinable stir and sweetness, that told of the breaking of Winter bonds and the coming of Summer glories; and he could not stay the progress of things in the one case more than in the other.

Mr. Falkirk had always taken care of this girl-the few years before his guardianship were too dim to look back to much. From the day when she, a suddenly orphaned child, stood frightened and alone among strangers, and he came in and took her on his knee, and bade her "be a woman, and be brave." That was his ideal of womanhood,-to that combination of strength and weakness he had tried to bring Wych Hazel.

Yet though she had grown up in Mr. Falkirk's company, she never thoroughly understood him: nature and circumstances had made him a reserved man,-and her eyes were young. Of a piece with his reserve was the peculiar fence of separation which he built up between all his own concerns and those of his ward. He was poor-she had a more than ample fortune; yet no persuading would make him live with her. Had he been rich, perhaps she might have lived with him; but as it was, unless when lodgings were the rule, they lived in separate houses; only his was always close at hand. Even when his ward was a little child, living at Chickaree with her nurses and housekeeper, Mr. Falkirk never spent a night in the house. He formally bought and paid for a tiny cottage on the premises, and there he lived: nothing done without his knowledge, nothing undone without his notice. Not a creature came or went unperceived by Mr. Falkirk. And yet this supervision was generally pleasant. As he wrought, nothing had the air of espionage-merely of care; and so I think, Wych Hazel liked it, and felt all the more free for all sorts of undertakings, secured against consequences. Sometimes, indeed, his quick insight was so astonishing to the young mischief-maker, that she was ready to cry out treachery!-and the suspected person in this case was always Gotham. Yet when she charged upon Gotham some untimely frost which had nipped her budding plans, Gotham always replied-

'No, Miss 'Azel. I trust my 'onor is sufficient in his respect.'

She and Gotham had a singular sort of league,-defensive of Mr. Falkirk, offensive towards each other. She teased him, and Gotham bore it mastiff-wise; shaking his head, and wincing, and when he could bear it no longer going off. Wych Hazel?- yes, she was that.

And how did she win her name? Well, in the first place, "the nut-browne mayd" and she were near of kin. But whether her parents, as they looked into the baby's clear dark eyes, saw there anything weird or elfish,-or whether the name 'grew,'-of that there remains no record. She had been a pretty quiet witch hitherto; but now-

"Once git a scent o' musk into a drawer,

And it clings hold, like precerdents in law!"

-not Mr. Falkirk could get it out.

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The Billionaire's Cold And Bitter Betrayal

The Billionaire's Cold And Bitter Betrayal

Clara Bennett
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I had just survived a private jet crash, my body a map of violet bruises and my lungs still burning from the smoke. I woke up in a sterile hospital room, gasping for my husband's name, only to realize I was completely alone. While I was bleeding in a ditch, my husband, Adam, was on the news smiling at a ribbon-cutting ceremony. When I tracked him down at the hospital's VIP wing, I didn't find a grieving husband. I found him tenderly cradling his ex-girlfriend, Casie, in his arms, his face lit with a protective warmth he had never shown me as he carried her into the maternity ward. The betrayal went deeper than I could have imagined. Adam admitted the affair started on our third anniversary-the night he claimed he was stuck in London for a merger. Back at the manor, his mother had already filled our planned nursery with pink boutique bags for Casie's "little princess." When I demanded a divorce, Adam didn't flinch. He sneered that I was "gutter trash" from a foster home and that I'd be begging on the streets within a week. To trap me, he froze my bank accounts, cancelled my flight, and even called the police to report me for "theft" of company property. I realized then that I wasn't his partner; I was a charity case he had plucked from obscurity to manage his life. To the Hortons, I was just a servant who happened to sleep in the master bedroom, a "resilient" woman meant to endure his abuse in silence while the whole world laughed at the joke that was my marriage. Adam thought stripping me of his money would make me crawl back to him. He was wrong. I walked into his executive suite during his biggest deal of the year and poured a mug of sludge over his original ten-million-dollar contracts. Then, right in front of his board and his mistress, I stripped off every designer thread he had ever paid for until I was standing in nothing but my own silk camisole. "You can keep the clothes, Adam. They're as hollow as you are." I grabbed my passport, turned my back on his billions, and walked out of that glass tower barefoot, bleeding, and finally free.

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Wych Hazel Wych Hazel Anna Bartlett Warner Literature
“Anna Bartlett Warner was an American writer, the author of several books, and of poems set to music as hymns and religious songs for children.”
1

Chapter 1 MR. FALKIRK.

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Chapter 2 BEGINNING A FAIRY TALE.

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Chapter 3 CORNER OF A STAGE COACH

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Chapter 4 FELLOW TRAVELLERS.

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Chapter 5 IN THE FOG.

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Chapter 6 THE RED SQUIRREL

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Chapter 7 SMOKE.

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Chapter 8 THE MILL FLOOR.

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Chapter 9 CATS.

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Chapter 10 CHICKAREE.

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Chapter 11 VIXEN.

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Chapter 12 AT DR. MARYLAND'S.

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Chapter 13 THE GREY COB.

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Chapter 14 HOLDING COURT.

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Chapter 15 TO MOSCHELOO.

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Chapter 16 FISHING.

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Chapter 17 ENCHANTED GROUND.

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Chapter 18 COURT IN THE WOODS.

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Chapter 19 SELF-CONTROL.

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Chapter 20 BOUQUETS.

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Chapter 21 MOONSHINE.

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Chapter 22 A REPORT.

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Chapter 23 KITTY FISHER.

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Chapter 24 THE LOSS OF ALL THINGS.

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Chapter 25 IN THE GERMAN.

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Chapter 26 IN THE ROCKAWAY.

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Chapter 27 THE GERMAN AT OAK HILL.

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Chapter 28 BREAKFAST FOR THREE.

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Chapter 29 JEANNIE DEANS.

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Chapter 30 THE WILL.

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Chapter 31 WHOSE WILL

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Chapter 32 CAPTAIN LANCASTER'S TEAM.

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Chapter 33 HITS AT CROQUET.

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Chapter 34 FRIENDLY TONGUES.

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Chapter 35 FIGURES AND FAVOURS.

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Chapter 36 THE RUNAWAY.

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Chapter 37 IN A FOG.

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Chapter 38 DODGING.

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Chapter 39 A COTTON MILL.

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Chapter 40 SOMETHING NEW.

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