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More "Impassive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hypochondriac is a contradiction in terms; for "phlegmatic" means "impassive, self-restrained," while "hypochondriac" means "morbidly anxious" (about one's health). Defoe's lack of scholarship was a common jest among his more learned adversaries, ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... to his pony, patted him on the neck and mounted. Wheeling, he swung out into a wide circle across the level bench and with gradually increasing speed into a measured gallop. Molded into one flesh with his mount, Laramie, impassive in the saddle as a statue, watched and nursed to his liking the pony's gait. When the rhythm suited, he urged the horse to a longer stride and circling back into the course, drew his gun, held it high in the air and, ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... around us quietly, the little yellow man leading, with his curious, lithe gait, and the other, an impassive Chinaman, following. The curtain was raised, and I heard footsteps ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... impenetrable to argument, perhaps would try wit:—but, "On the impassive ice the lightnings play." His eloquence or his kindness will avail less; when in yielding to you after a long harangue, he expects to please you, you will answer undoubtedly with the utmost propriety, "That you should be very sorry he yielded his judgment to you; that he is very good; that you are ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... that in argument he would accomplish nothing against this impassive, resolute young man. The menace ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... indifference. The girl's personality seemed as ashen as her hair, as colourless as her face. Her dull eyes seemed to see nothing, to care for nothing. Within the last few months he had begun to wonder whether her cold and impassive exterior might not be the shield with which she protected an abnormal sensitiveness. Now and then he had longed to awaken the woman who dwelt securely within the forbidding fortress—to strike from the flint some stray gleams ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... the Dutchman's ears from behind the thick curtains, but he knew too much to let any expression betray him, and he smiled grimly to himself at the thought of the change that an indiscreet question would bring to the stern face of his grave and impassive host. He was an elderly man with a tender heart, and he wondered speculatively what the girl in the next room would have to pay for her own indiscretion in allowing her voice to be heard. He left the next morning early without seeing the Sheik ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... without moving, his heavy face impassive. And so he remained for a long time. Well, Laura was gone—no mistake about that—and this time she was gone for good. She was going to live in Rome. Try to stop her? No. What good would it do? Wings of the ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... formed upon the brow of the elder, who handled the cards. The younger, standing behind his brother, talked unceasingly, with the air of giving infallible counsel. When the silent brother won, the loquacious brother's eyes gleamed; but at a loss, he raised despairing eyes heavenward. The Abbate, impassive for the most part, occasionally enunciated some scrap of proverbial wisdom. For instance: "Luck and women cannot be constrained." Or, "The earth is round, and heaven is far away." At times he looked at Casanova with an air of sly encouragement, his eyes ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... yellow-haired, and deliberate; in civil life probably a drayman. JIM—Small, lean, sallow, grey-eyed, with a kind of quiet restlessness; in civil life probably a mechanic with leanings towards Socialism. POZZIE—A thick-set, low-browed, impassive, silent country youth, with a face the colour of the soil. JINKS—An old soldier, red, lean, wrinkled, with very blue eyes. His face is rough-hewn, almost grotesque like a gargoyle. In his eyes there is a perpetual glint of humour, and in the poise of ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey
... perhaps five minutes, and the men watched each other, one white in the face and quivering a little, his adversary impassive as a statue, but quietly observant. Then there was a patter of hasty footsteps, and the fraeulein stood in the lantern light with a flushed, plump face and somewhat scanty dress. She apparently recognized the man, and her colour deepened, but that was the only sign of confusion she showed; ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... we steered for the island, guided by the light of the camp-fire. We were welcomed with loud shouts by the generally impassive Indians, who were delighted with the supply of flesh which we had brought. No time was lost in cutting the meat into small pieces, each person fastening a dozen or more on long skewers. These were stuck in the ground, and slanted over the flames to roast. The meat tasted somewhat ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... plainclothesmen stationed near the entrance, gave him only a quick onceover as he passed. Inside the gates, the impassive Russian guards didn't bother to flicker ...
— Status Quo • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... daughter Ermengarde in marriage, I will make you my heir, I will give you half my kingdom—" His voice rose, quavering; and it died now, for he foreread the damnation of Theodoret's soul while he fawned before this impassive Perion. ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... heart and a scheming brain were keeping up their deadly work a few paces off under the impassive aspect and active movements of the caterer's newly-hired waiter. Abner Fairbrother, whose real character no one had ever been able to sound, unless it was the man who had known him in his days of struggle, was one of those dangerous men who can conceal under a still brow and a noiseless ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... chronometer to the tenth of a second by that of the engineer Murchison, who was entrusted with setting fire to the powder by means of the electric spark; the travellers shut up in the projectile could thus watch the impassive needle which was going to mark the precise instant of ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... Duncan found her an hour afterward, basting the fowls with a skewer, while the iron ladle lay at her feet, and with a stony, impassive expression on her face which always meant ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... in a low tone and almost as if in soliloquy, and her face seemed to grow colder and more impassive ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... sweeping with their fire the terrain in front of them broke the force of the attack while its leaders were still several hundred yards away. Between the Hospital and the corner bastion the men of the 67th and 92d awaited with impassive discipline the word of permission to begin firing. From out the mist at length emerged dense masses of men, some of whom were brandishing swords and knives, while others loaded and fired while ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... mother's impassive face, it had a hunted look in the eyes. 'Poor mother,' he thought, and touched her arm with his own. The voice behind ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... lavished attentions on her, express in this public manner a preference for her sister. A woman has great aptness in concealing a mortal hurt, and, from what I had seen of this one, I thought it highly improbable that all was quiet in her passionate breast because she had turned an impassive ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... that John Schuyler came from a long line of clean-bodied, clean-souled, clear-eyed, clear-headed ancestors; and from these he had inherited cleanness of body and of soul, clearness of eye and of head. They had given him all that lay in their power to give, had these honest, impassive Dutchmen and—women—these broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped English; they had amalgamated for him their virtues, and they had eradicated for him their vices; they had cultivated for him those things of theirs that it were well to cultivate; and they had plucked ruthlessly ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... complaints of your poor people." Charles VII. had shown scarcely more confidence to his son than to his people. Louis yielded neither to words, nor to sorrows of which proofs were reaching him nearly every day. He remained impassive at the Duke of Burgundy's, where he seemed to be waiting with scandalous indifference for the news of his father's death. Charles sank into a state of profound melancholy and general distrust. He had his doctor, Adam Fumee, put in prison; persuaded ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... on his hands, which grasped his legs just above the knee. He peered to look at the wound. She drew away from the thrust of his face with its great moustache, averting her own face as much as possible. As he looked at her, who was cold and impassive as stone, with mouth shut tight, he sickened with feebleness and hopelessness of spirit. He was turning drearily away, when he saw a drop of blood fall from the averted wound into the baby's fragile, glistening hair. Fascinated, he watched the heavy ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... exquisite peace of this garden at the edge of the Nile a storm was surging up within her. And Baroudi sat there at her feet, impassive, immobile, with his still, luminous ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... clear enough now, and he saw that though the rest of this journey would be nearly intolerable, it must go on. He looked at the impassive cow-puncher getting ready to go and tying a rope on Pedro's neck to lead him, then he looked at the mountains where the runaways had vanished, and it did not seem credible to him that he had come into such straits. He was helped stiffly on the ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... of the artillery opposite. In a few minutes all the force were rolling on the ground—the captain and many soldiers dead, officers wounded and almost all the gunners. There only remained as chief, Laurier, the Impassive (as his comrades nicknamed him), and aided by the few artillerymen still on their feet, he continued firing under a rain of iron and fire, so as to cover ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... her, bringing his sallow, impassive countenance close to hers, repulsively close, to her over-acute sensibilities. "And how is that to be prevented? Who is to give him that priceless remedy—the only medicine that can save him? Can I?" He lifted ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... stir. Impassive, remorseless, sinister, it was content to wait, well aware that all suspense was in its favour. Then I said to myself that I would cross the room and so attain my object. I made a step and drew back, frightened by the sound of a creaking board. Absurd! but it was quite a minute before I dared ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... obeyed. Manuel at the writing-table watched him intently. But in opening the window the clerk had of necessity stood with his back toward Count Manuel, and when Ruric turned, the dark young face of Ruric was impassive. ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... and as she looked up in his dark impassive face, and saw the deep-seated melancholy in his eyes, a sort ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... then. Sometimes half a dozen years will go by without a solitary wanderer of this sort crossing the ocean paths, and then in a single season perhaps several of them will turn up: vacant waifs, impassive and mysterious—a quarter-column of tidings tucked away on the second page ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... itself, as one watches it, and nothing else, into enormous cliffs, long slopes of moor, and spurs of mountain-range. Oh, those smooth white walls and ceilings! If there had but been a print—a stain of dirt—a cobweb, to fleck their unbroken ghastliness! They stared at me, like grim, impassive, featureless formless fiends; all the more dreadful for their sleek, hypocritic cleanliness—purity as of a saint-inquisitor watching with spotless conscience the victim on the rack. They choked me—I gasped for breath, stretched out my arms, rolled shrieking on the floor—the narrow chequered ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... reports; it remains at zero to mark a colorless medium totally destitute of vitality. The shoulder would violate its law if it were to rise under such circumstances. It is, therefore, perfectly in character here; it should be, a priori, impassive ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... The eminent advocate however, only succeeded in assuring those who were already assured of Darzac's innocence. At the adjournment Rouletabille had not yet arrived. Every time a door opened, all eyes there turned towards it and back to the manager of the "Epoque," who sat impassive in his place. When he once was feeling in his pocket a loud murmur of expectation followed. ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... of a turbaned head, at sight of which she started, with faint, half-suppressed cry of fright; then, as though ashamed, broke into a nervous little laugh. Harris was in an instant on his feet, and whirling, confronted 'Tonio, tall, gaunt, silent, impassive. ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... dear lady," commented Kirkwood—to his inner consciousness. Outwardly he maintained consistently a pose of impassive gullibility. ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... agent, was at the train to meet his important client on his return to Dorfield. The first to alight from the coach was the Colonel, who greeted his lawyer with a cordial handclasp. Mary Louise kissed Peter Conant upon his impassive cheek and presented him to a pretty young girl who clung to her arm smiling, yet half bewildered by her arrival in a strange town. There seemed no one else with the party and Mr. Conant glanced over the crowd of passengers ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... a magnificent modern building in a prominent location. They passed in at a door which was opened by a man in uniform, ostentatious in its soberness; at the end of a room, rich in rugs and paintings, they encountered another man, stout and impassive. ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... stupidity. He gazed with reddish-brown eyes at his visitors, chewed thoughtfully at the tangible memories of an earlier meal, swallowed and regurgitated, chewed again. His tail lashed savagely from side to side; it seemed to have nothing to do with his impassive bulk. Between his short horns was a triangle of ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... the fresh young voice ringing out clearly above the murmur of voices, the howls of execration; she saw the beautiful young face, clear, calm, impassive. ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... turned again to his study of the crowds which swarmed among the pavilions before his window. Outside his door he heard knockings and cries, and impatient footfalls, but neither he nor the impassive Swiss paid to these the least attention. It was to them an ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... handwriting was unmistakably that of a woman, and just as unmistakably strange to him. He frowned a little as he stared at it wonderingly, then idly turned the card over. There was no name on the reverse side—only a crest. Evidently the count recognized this, for his impassive face reflected surprise for an instant, and this was followed by a keen, bewildered interest. Finally he arose, made his apologies, and left the room. His automobile ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle
... madam, you know not of what you speak. My night was terrible, and no such aurora as yourself was in my troubled dream at dawn." Sydney looked over at the Duchess, fancying this speech was rather nicely turned; but her Grace was quite impassive, and evidently maintaining a sort ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... first rush of spring. The very doctors of the winter resort shake hands with one another, the sermons of the chaplain lose their frost-bitten savour and die down into something like charity, scandal and tittle-tattle go to sleep in the sunshine. The stolid, impassive English nature blooms into a life strangely unlike its own. Papas forget their Times. Mammas forget their propriety. The stout British merchant finds himself astride of a donkey, and exchanging good-humoured badinage with the labourers in the olive-terraces. ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... were made perhaps even more comfortable on mattresses on the dining-room floor. We were all sleepy enough to drop on them at once, but another diplomatic dinner had been planned, it appeared, and Turkish politeness can no more be hurried nor overcome than can that curious impassive resistance which a Turk can maintain against something he does not wish done. It was nine o'clock before we sat down with the mutessarif, his secretary, and the voluble journalist to a whole roast kid, a rather terrifying but exceedingly palatable ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... looked impassive. An Embassy servant came in and offered an indoor communicator. The ambassador put it to his ear. After a moment ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... at the slow processional: three steps and a halt for the trumpets to blow a tucket; three more and another tucket; the great yellow horse stepping high and casting up his head, from which flew many flakes of white foam. With its slow, regularly interrupted gait, dominated by the impassive yellow face of Norfolk, the whole band had an air of performing a solemn dance, and Udal shivered for a long time, till amidst the train of mules bearing leathern sacks, cupboards, chests and commodes, he saw come riding a familiar figure in a scholar's gown—the young pedagogue and companion ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... door was closed, and so were the lower windows, but in one of the upper casements a movement was perceptible, and in another instant there came into view a woman and man, supporting between them the impassive form of Agatha's husband. Holding him up in plain sight of the almost breathless throng below, the woman pointed to where his darling lay and appeared ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... them; when the Professors came to give the children their lessons, they found that they had to give them also to a little lady in a white silk frock with rows and rows of little frills, who stared at them solemnly with her large, impassive blue eyes, and never answered a word to any of their questions. Princess Pansy no longer wished to be ten years old; she no longer wished for anything: she had everything she wanted in the unchangeable Lady Emmelina. For the Lady Emmelina never varied; the Princess might have as many moods ...
— All the Way to Fairyland - Fairy Stories • Evelyn Sharp
... and laying her bony hands upon the place where she had been kissed, as if it hurt her, while a dull red stole up from her neck over her cheeks and high forehead to the roots of her hay-colored hair. All at once she turned her back upon her visitor and the tears of the years streamed down her impassive face. ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... curtly, as the Master, with Lad beside him, stepped forward to greet the scarlet-bearded guest. "I tried to get over here, last night. But I guess it's soon enough, today. Has he showed any signs, yet?" He nodded inquiringly at the impassive Lad, as he spoke. ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... him into silence; and, in spite of Sallie's angry glances, really saved her dinner from proving a dismal failure. Indeed, the cases were too real, and too much genuine misery was concealed behind impassive faces, not to prove a dangerous situation, the tension of which was relieved by Brian's extravagant nonsense. Percival and Norris Whitehouse were sincerely amused by the wit in which Brian clothed his droll remarks. But the greatest misfortune ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... they had felt some contact with the past; but here, Stern's eye looked out over a world as virgin as on the primal morn. And a vast loneliness assailed him, a yearning almost insupportable. that made him clench his fists and raise them to the impassive, empty sky that mocked him with its deep and ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... who had remained silent throughout came forward a step and spoke. He was a magnificent man with the physique of a Hercules. He had remained on his feet, impassive but observant, from the moment of his entrance. His voice had that soft quality peculiar ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... incessant commerce of banks, laboratories, chancellories, and houses of business, are the strokes which oar the world forward, they say. And they are dealt by men as smoothly sculptured as the impassive policeman at Ludgate Circus. But you will observe that far from being padded to rotundity his face is stiff from force of will, and lean from the efforts of keeping it so. When his right arm rises, all the force in his veins flows straight from shoulder to finger-tips; not an ounce is diverted ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... of the corners of his eyes at the young man, but the young man was impassive as stone, and pale as if made ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... But behind this impassive exterior much was happening. It was not so great a change as it was an expansion of something which had always existed. Covington had made his mark before Gorham discovered him. The older man's attention had been ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... Bernheimer, and a light crept into his ordinarily impassive eye. At the same time, West's ordinarily buoyant face ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... "Who is this impassive man?" had been asked a hundred times. "Has he suffered? Has he sinned? There are no traces of either. Then wherefore ...
— The Christmas Banquet (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... fascinating yet dangerous employment. She used to sit there in her impassive grace, as they talked, weighing every word, testing every sentiment, watching the expressions that flitted over Jack Darcy's countenance, until it went everywhere with her, the blue-gray eyes piercing the ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... has not been of a mind to contribute institutions or resources to the public. Toward war hostile, toward the state always impassive, sometimes actively disloyal in times of war, Quaker Hill ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... which the Bundela said, 'That is sufficient, I only wished to tell you that you should rise to receive me.' When the Bundelas are collected at a feast they sit with their hands folded across their stomachs and their eyes turned up, and remain impassive while food is being put on their plates, and never say, 'Enough,' because they think that they would show themselves to be feeble men if they refused to eat as much as was put before them. Much of the food is thus ultimately wasted, and given to the sweepers, ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... enow, Willing for hire to bear one-half the curse, And leave the monarch's presence undefil'd. Enrapt in gloomy clouds he forges death, Flaming destruction then his ministers Hurl down upon his wretched victim's head, While he abideth high above the storm, Calm and untroubled, an impassive god. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... and played a little uneasily with an ormolu terrier-pot, upsetting half the tobacco in it; he was trained to his brother's nonchalant, impenetrable school, and used to his brother's set; a cool, listless, reckless, thoroughbred, and impassive set, whose first canon was that you must lose your last thousand in the world without giving a sign that you winced, and must win half a million without showing that you were gratified; but he had something of girlish weakness in his nature, and a reserve in his temperament that was ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... loud. 'I plead for mercy!' she said and at that moment the Queen entered, accompanied by Sir Henry and Good, and took her seat with an impassive face. As for poor Good, he ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... been notable throughout the war. His most intimate friends and daily associates, his most prominent and trusted generals, patriotic but hot-headed complainants, turbulent malcontents,—all alike found him courteous and considerate, yet hedged about with an impassive dignity that no one ever dared to violate. A superb horseman, a powerful and active swordsman, an unfailing marksman with rifle or pistol, he never made a display of these qualities; but there are many anecdotes of such prowess in sudden emergencies as caused him to be idolized ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... then." He called sharply; "Lucius!" The man appeared, impassive, noiseless, unhurried. The Captain issued his orders: "Thrun me garbage into a thrunk, and call some one to help the missus; we're goin' to hit the sunset trail to-night. 'Phone me old dad besides, and have him come ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... himself of their services. Mr. Baring-Gould, in his Tragedy of the Caesars, arranges, examines, and interprets these portraits of Augustus; I shall give you the gist of his conclusions, which are illuminating.—First we see a boy with delicate and exceedingly beautiful features, impassive and unawakend: Octavius when he came to Rome. A cloud gathers on his face, deepening into a look of intense anguish; and with the anguish grows firmness and the clenched expression of an iron will: this is Octavian in the dark days of the thirties.—the anguish passes, ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... a huge wooden table down the middle, where just now numbers of complacent Chinamen are sitting down to a midday meal of rice with cooked fish. As we pass along we see that each man keeps his little treasures beside his bunk, for, though so impassive, the Chinaman is a home-loving creature; there are little images of carved ivory and other small treasures. Do you see that white rat with pink eyes restlessly doing ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... impassive as Orientals always are, had come up with the recaptured horses; and as Kitty sprang into her saddle I caught hold of the bridle, entreating her to hear me out and forgive. My answer was the cut of her riding-whip across my face from mouth to eye, and a word or two of farewell ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... the farmer, to his wife, to Sally and, when he chanced to be at home, to her brother, but he ventured nothing further. There he would sit from half past seven until nine o'clock, stolid, heavy, impassive, his dull eyes following now one of the family and now another, but always coming back again to Sally. It sometimes happened that she had other company—some of the young men of the neighborhood. The presence of such seemed to make no difference to Hiram; he bore ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... and bearing an apology from the hostess for her sudden indisposition. "Nothing at all serious," he added lightly. "It is possible that she may join us later." But it was noticeable that as he spoke he did not look at Esther nor could her anxious glance read the impassive sternness ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... the discordant jangling of a chime of bells, which hung in a little log tower at the door, Dodd and I made our way out of the church, and returned to the house to drink tea. I had just finished my last cup and lighted a cigarette, when the door suddenly opened, and half a dozen men, with grave, impassive countenances, marched in in single file, stopped a few paces from the holy pictures in the corner, crossed themselves devoutly in unison, and began to sing a simple but sweet Russian melody, beginning with the words, "Christ is ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... instead of the game. Brown, however, was not open to criticism. He walked calmly down the yard, and after entombing the dogs by the grape-arbor, he put four fingers of buckshot in his gun, rearranged his suspenders, shouldered arms and struck out for the front gate with a countenance as impassive as that of ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... given. As a sign that he had loosed his hounds of war, the King was dressed in his military coat, shining with countless amulets of gold. In the wild flaming sky burned the remnants of the storm which had just driven him back from Douabougou. So squatted King Dacha, and with royal impassive face, showing no mark of the boiling curiosity within, stared at those unknown animals, the swine. Hard on their heels shuffled Isaaco, himself also on all fours in a deep obeisance. Behind him the bearers of the inevitable ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... cushioned seat next to an oldish man with iron-gray hair through which the speed of their flight whipped and pulled. Hilary was bursting for real human conversation again; he grinned to himself at the excited astonishment of this impassive stranger if he should announce himself. How should he do it? Should he remark casually without any preamble: "Pardon me for addressing you, sir, but I'm Hilary Grendon, you know." Just like that, and lean back for the inevitable gasp: ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner
... crutches was helped out by the cafe starter, who himself limped slightly and wore two medals on his breast. First one troop and then another defiled across the Place l'Opera: a company of infantry with bayonets mounted, a picturesque regiment of Moroccans, turbaned, of magnificently impassive bearing, sitting their horses like images of bronze. Men of the Flying Corps, in dark blue with wings on their sleeves, strolled past me; and once, roused by exclamations and pointing fingers, I looked up to see a monoplane, light and graceful ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... to Berkeley Square. Fairfield felt his heart thumping quickly although his face was impassive as the door was opened in response to Foyle's ring. She might be out; she might refuse to see them. Neither of the two alternatives happened. Within three minutes Eileen had descended to them ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... coming in. From all along the outer fringes of the flats came a hoarse, desolate roar; and in the steady light the edges of the ice-field began to turn and flash, the strange motion creeping gradually inland toward that impassive bulwark of the dyke. Had it been daylight, the chaotic ice-field would have shown small beauty, every wave-beaten floe being soiled and streaked with rust-coloured Tantramar mud. But under the transfiguring touch of the moon the unsightly levels changed to plains ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... cases to mystify them. Electro-plating is indeed almost a magical sort of craft. How it is that dirty looking metal spoons can be put into a dirty looking bath and come out white and silvered must amaze and bewilder many strange eyes. Impassive as Asiatics can be, I should much like for once just to watch the eyes of an eastern conjuror and magician when he saw the electro bath trick, and especially when done in the way and on the scale that may be witnessed at the ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... stirred not, but kept our places. Whereupon, he sent some of his soldiers among us, with command to drag or drive us out, which they did roughly enough." Think of it: grave men and women, and modest maidens, sitting there with calm, impassive countenances, motionless as death, the pikes of the soldiery closing about them in a circle of bristling steel! Brave and true ones! Not in vain did ye thus oppose God's silence to the Devil's uproar; Christian endurance and calm persistence in the exercise ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... many separate lines of inquiry. Having thus conscientiously and methodically completed the routine of his duties, he returned to his carriage and ordered the coachman to drive him to The Lindens. His face as he drove was cold and impassive, but he drew his fingers from time to time down his prominent chin ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... at her with the impassive curiosity of a man just coming back from The Unknown. Then ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... the man before her—this Arab with the impassive face, the camels at his feet, her life in his hands if she went ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... sign. He knew that if he as much as lifted his hand the men would kill him. To him they were the law, searching for a fugitive. The welt across his face burned like the sear of fire—the cowardly brand of hatred on the impassive face of primitive fortitude! This because he had fed a hungry ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... door, and calling Dame Capoulade, he bade her set two fresh covers; in which he was expeditiously obeyed. La Boulaye stood by the fire, his pale face impassive now and almost indifferent. Charlot returned to the window to learn from Guyot that the citoyennes thanked the Citizen-captain, but that they were tired and sought to be excused, asking nothing better than to be allowed to remain at ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... the excitement of numbers. If the movement is sincerely joyous, as in the mirth of a village holiday, such a nature shares insensibly in the joy; but if the movement is a false and spurious gayety, as in a state ball, where the impassive face and languid step are out of harmony with the evident object of the scene, then the nature we speak of feels chilled and dejected. Hence it really is that the more delicate and ideal order of minds soon grow inexpressibly weary of the hack routine of what are called fashionable ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to Ferragut's jovial comments on his mate's tranquil life and philosophic sagacity, Toni again ejaculated mentally, without the captain's suspecting anything from his impassive countenance: "Now he has quarreled with the woman. He has tired of ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the worst. But he is not bad, he is just foolish. His heart is set on this general strike, and he can't set his heart on anything without losing his head." As the old man turned his face back to the sunset, the strong bold lines of his profile reminded Stephen of the impassive features of an Egyptian carving. Was this the vague resemblance that had baffled him ever since he had entered ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... Captain Turnbull. "I don't take no observations. Ye see," he added, looking hard at Leslie's impassive face to discover whether the latter had noticed anything peculiar in such an extraordinary admission, "my sight's a little bit peculiar; I can see ordinary things plain enough, but when it comes to squintin' through a sextant ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... still more to seem impassive, he bowed to Orrin, and with great suavity remarked: "If she had chosen me to that honor, as I had every reason to believe she had, it would not have been many more weeks before I should have welcomed her into a home befitting her beauty and her ambition. May I ask ...
— The Old Stone House and Other Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... stalked solemnly within, circled about us without sign of greeting, and seated themselves cross-legged upon the bare ground. The uplifted door-skin permitted the red flames from without to play freely over their stern, impassive faces, and shone back upon us from their glittering eyes. It was an impressive scene, their stoical demeanor breathing the deep solemnity of the vast woods and plains amid which their savage lives were passed; nor could one fail to feel the deep gravity ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... been—and Bessie dimly hinted that they were severe to agony at times—they were resolutely shut within her chamber door; and when she came out in the early morning, her cold brown hair drawn smoothly over those impassive cheeks, she looked like a lady abbess—as cold, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... clambered in and paired off along the seats he was seeing Miss Wilbur shaking hands with the people who paused to say good-by. His heart ached for a glance of her brown eyes and a word, but he held the reins in his great hands and his face showed only his usual impassive reticence. He was only Councill's ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... enquiry, half impatient, half interrogative, faded slowly from her face. She stood quite still; her impassive features seemed like a plaster cast, from which all life and feeling were drawn out. Her eyes began slowly to dilate, and she shivered as though with cold. Then the man who was watching her and wondering, knew that this ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... hair curled in close rings over his head. It was never necessary for Thomson Tuttle to do any swearing, for the colors that dwelt in his face kept up a constant profanity. There was a strain of German blood in him—his mother had come from Germany in her childhood—which showed in his impassive countenance and in the open, serious directness of his ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... coming stealthily down from the top of the stable and haled him into the office. He was very calm—quite impassive. Apparently he had never seen the woman before; as she raged he smiled cheerfully ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... did an unusual thing. He took the lamp from Brother Dino's hand and threw the light suddenly upon the young man's impassive countenance. Dino raised his great, serious eyes to the Prior's face, and then dropped them to the ground. Otherwise not a muscle of his face moved. He was the living image ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... his service prevents truth. He may be ever so unwell in mind or body, and he must go through his service—hand the shining plate, replenish the spotless glass, lay the glittering fork—never laugh when you yourself or your guests joke—be profoundly attentive, and yet look utterly impassive—exchange a few hurried curses at the door with that unseen slavey who ministers without, and with you be perfectly calm and polite. If you are ill, he will come twenty times in an hour to your bell; or leave the girl of his heart—his mother, who is going to America—his dearest friend, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... curtain'd litter, a sick man inside borne to the hospital, The meeting of enemies, the sudden oath, the blows and fall, The excited crowd, the policeman with his star quickly working his passage to the centre of the crowd, The impassive stones that receive and return so many echoes, What groans of over-fed or half-starv'd who fall sunstruck or in fits, What exclamations of women taken suddenly who hurry home and give birth to babes, What living and buried speech is ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... of annoyance, contempt, and fear, clouded it with an inharmonious expression, which made him look much like a discomfited commoner. In a moment he had overcome the unworthy sensation, and was again impassive and seemingly cool. The major did not choose to see him at first, but was presented to Miss Vavasor by their hostess as her cousin. He appeared a little awed by the fine woman, and comported himself with the dignity which awe gives, behaving ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... colored, and then was impassive again, all in an instant and so prettily, that John gave her his heartiest admiration even while chafed with new doubts ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... was only to return accompanied by a friend possessing as little respect as himself for the property of others. The associate perched on a branch a few steps away, while the first crow renewed his attempts by flying around the bone and the dog; but the latter remained impassive. Then the second personage, whose part had hitherto been to remain contemplative, flew off his branch, threw himself on the dog and gave him a formidable blow on the spine. Seized with indignation, the dog turned round to punish the author of this unjustifiable aggression; but the bird ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... eyes from the coals and gazed at the impassive face of the hunter. Once the question trembled on his lips, but he was sure the Great Bear would evade the answer, and the lad thought too much of the man who had long stood to him in the place of father to cause him annoyance. Beyond a doubt Willet had his interests ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... wind died in the most distant pine woods with a long hoot as of mockery Father Brown, with an utterly impassive face, ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... young man at the alcove table, and he and his companion studied him intently for some time in silence. But the young man, for the moment, was comparatively quiet, gazing moodily through the open window over the waters of the North Sea, an untasted sole in front of him, and an impassive waiter pouring out his coffee as though the spectacle of a young man sticking a knife into the table-cloth was a commonplace occurrence at the Grand Hotel, and all in the day's doings. When the waiter had finished pouring out the coffee and noiselessly departed, the young man ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... own reasons for being in a hurry. She had discovered something of the strange impassive nature of her child; not from any confession of Clare's, but from signs a mother can read when, her eyes are not resolutely shut. She saw with alarm and anguish that Clare had fallen into the pit she had been digging for her so laboriously. In vain she entreated the baronet to break ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... halt, and they found themselves surrounded by a dozen troopers. Prescott recognized the faded blue uniform and knew at once that he was in the midst of Yankee horsemen. The girl beside him gave one start at the sudden apparition and then became calm and impassive. ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... debut before the Neapolitans in "Inez di Castro," which had been specially arranged for her by Francesco Bianchi. The fervid Naples audience received her with passionate acclamations, to which she had never been accustomed from the more impassive English. Hitherto her reputation had been mostly identified with English opera; thenceforward she was to be known chiefly as a brilliant exponent of ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... his arms was caught for just a moment under the slight weight of his body. There was a short, snapping sound, but Oliver Symmes took no notice. His face remained impassive. Even pain ...
— Life Sentence • James McConnell
... wound of my breast! Sinks my heart to the dust, And the rain-drops of sorrow are watering the ground; So impassive to hear, never pierces my ear, Or briskly or slowly, the music of sound. For, what tidings can charm, while emotion is warm With the thought of my Prince on his travel unknown; The royal in blood, by misfortune subdued, While the base-born[148] by hosts is secured on the throne? Of the hound is ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... the pleasure of other minds: they never inquired what, on any occasion, they should have said or done; but wrote rather as beholders than partakers of human nature; as Beings looking upon good and evil, impassive and at leisure; as Epicurean deities making remarks on the actions of men and the vicissitudes of life without interest and without emotion. Their courtship was void of fondness, and their lamentation of sorrow. Their wish was only ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... civil to him. Kitty was as bright and good-natured as ever, ready to enjoy all the little pleasures that came in her way, though now and then I fancied that I detected a stealthy, wistful look at the Jook's impassive face. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... Once more his fine eyes were impassive. With ready grace he admired the delicately-thonged tunic and the beaded sash, the bright turban with the beaten band of silver and the darkly lovely ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... effect is produced, whether sitting, standing, kneeling, or the like; and this face has an expression of fear. The arms or legs may be raised, but if left to themselves will not drop, as in lethargy. The eyes are wide open, but the look is fixed and impassive. The fixed position lasts only a few minutes, however, when the subject returns to a position of relaxation, or drops ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... notably handsome man, tall and broad, with regular, impassive features and blue eyes exactly the colour of Arthur's. Save that his back was slightly rounded and that his closely-cropped hair was iron-gray, he showed little mark of his sixty years. He seemed to me the very type of an English yeoman, ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... packed the horses, and shortly after eight Bill led the way deeper into the forest. The snow-swept trees, the white glades between, the long line of pack horses following in the wake of the impassive form of Bill made a picture that Virginia could never forget. And ever the snow sifted down upon them, ever heavier on the branches, ever deeper on ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... at length upon the girl's good points, becoming more nervously demonstrative in his praise as he found that Allison's face reflected none of his enthusiasm, but remained unexpectedly impassive and non-committal. ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... no expression of pain upon the features. They wore the calm, impassive look of marble. The eyes and mouth were wide open—efforts to close them had been in vain—but, there was no speculation in the former, and the soul played no more around the latter. The long brown hair, from which the water dripped, hung in disorder over the forehead and down the neck. Armstrong ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... pressed her to him she seemed to grow less impassive and he felt her resign herself like a tired child. He held his breath, not daring ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... neck and nervous, jerky limbs, a man of incorruptible fidelity where the finances of the order were concerned, and with no notion of justice or honesty to anyone beyond. The treasurer, Carter, was a middle-aged man, with an impassive, rather sulky expression, and a yellow parchment skin. He was a capable organizer, and the actual details of nearly every outrage had sprung from his plotting brain. The two Willabys were men of action, tall, lithe young fellows with determined faces, while their companion, Tiger Cormac, a heavy, ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... pointed outward. Brinnaria, to be sure, was holding out her right arm, thumb flat, and doing her best to attract the secutor's attention. She failed. He glanced, indeed, at the Vestals, but as three of them sat impassive he missed Brinnaria's imperious gesture. He prepared to put his foe to death. First, however, he looked further along the front rows to make sure that he had the permission of the general audience, since the occupants of the ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... are firmly persuaded that various particular persons are what they term betuah (sacred, impassive, invulnerable, not liable to accident), and this quality they sometimes extend to things inanimate, as ships and boats. Such an opinion, which we should suppose every man might have an opportunity of bringing to the test of truth, affords a humiliating ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... this tirade, Mr. Bainrothe was slowly unwinding a string from around the roll of papers he had laid on the table, and which he now proceeded to spread somewhat ostentatiously before me, still mute and impassive to all his advances as ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... Abel," she answered kindly, and when he had made his manners to the impassive Squire and mounted his claybank and thumped the horse into motion with his naked heels, she came out into the porch and said to her husband, "I don't know as I liked your hinting him out of ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... resented the question, but perhaps she divined the distraught and almost maniacal condition of mind that the Prophet masked beneath his impassive demeanour. At any ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... room was filled. The red-brown figures, naked save for the loincloth and the headdress, the impassive faces dashed with black, the ruthless eyes—I knew now why Master Edward Sharpless had gone to the forest, and what service had been bought with that silver cup. The Paspaheghs and I were old enemies; doubtless they would find their ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... sea. In truth, from out of the sea he has leaped upon the back of the sea, and he is riding the sea that roars and bellows and cannot shake him from its back. But no frantic outreaching and balancing is his. He is impassive, motionless as a statue carved suddenly by some miracle out of the sea's depth from which he rose. And straight on toward shore he flies on his winged heels and the white crest of the breaker. There is a wild ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... and a face impassive as a mask she met the footman's look. By her side her aunt was smiling recognition, but Anthony never saw that. Gazing upon the beauty of that face which he had once transfigured, he found it frozen. ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... the night darkened from pale to deep and starless shadows, she strolled mechanically from the Strand to the Embankment, and after walking some little distance she sat down in a corner close to Cleopatra's Needle—that mocking obelisk that has looked upon the decay of empires, itself impassive, and that still appears to say, "Pass on, ye puny generations! I, a mere carven block of stone, shall outlive you all!" For the first time in all her experience the child in her arms seemed a heavy burden. She put aside her shawl and surveyed it tenderly; it was fast asleep, a small, ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... was hardly a wrinkle about his eyes, hardly a tell-tale crease in his high forehead. Wherever he had been, whatever he had done, his serenity was still unshaken. It still lay over him, placid and impenetrable. And when he spoke, his voice was cool and impassive and cast ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... was driving at. Was there, indeed, no test? Had the murderer used the safest of poisons—one that left no clue? I looked covertly at Sato's face. It was impassive. Doctor Bernardo was visibly uneasy as Kennedy proceeded. Cool enough up to the time of the mention of the treasure, I fancied, now, that he was ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... stoutish, stolid, affable man, with a Maupassantian taste for low life, its humours and laxities. He was familiar with it everywhere, from the sordid purlieus of Whitechapel to the bazaars of Tunis and Algiers, and related Haroun Al-Raschid-like adventures with imperturbably, impassive face, and in the language that a business man uses when recounting the common transactions of a day. This unconcernedness never failed to provoke laughter, even from those who administered rebukes to him. Of art and literature ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... to be told, Doe left his desk, and came and stood by me. It was a theatrical action, such as only he would have done, and our master concealed his surprise, if he felt any, by an impassive face. ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... southern soil. He was able to set Tartarin before us so sympathetically and to make Numa Roumestan so convincing because he recognized in himself the possibility of a like exuberance. He could never take the rigorously impassive attitude which Flaubert taught Maupassant to assume. Daudet not only feels for his characters, but he is quite willing that we should ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... I have come to talk to you about," continued Emery after a few seconds' pause, during which he had once more thrown a quick, half-suspicious glance on the impassive, though obviously interested face of the Englishman, "always supposing that Monsieur here is on ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... it in to the cashier, who had been noting the details of her appearance with unqualified interest. Her eyes had an increased brilliancy and there was a faint flush on her cheeks, but otherwise there was nothing in her impassive face to show how fast her heart was beating as she waited in the silence to learn if the blow she meant to strike had been ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... the scene at the river-side, applying it in various ways to her particular aspirations, and the result, which was hardly to her mind, had taken the colour out of her cheeks. Mr. Archer, too, was somewhat absent, his thoughts were of a mingled strain; and even upon his usually impassive countenance there were betrayed successive depths of depression and starts of exultation, which the girl translated in terms of her own hopes and fears. But Jonathan was the most altered: he was strangely silent, hardly passing a word, and watched Mr. Archer with an eager and furtive eye. It seemed ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... guess he didn't come to-night." Nan noticed the impassive manner of his speaking and the low, even tones. "I was kind of ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... those calm, impassive men, who shows little upon the surface, and whose feelings you have always thought cold. But now there is a tremulousness in his tones that you never remember observing before. He seems conscious of it himself, ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... insisted tactlessly, with her sweetest smile. But when Roy chose to be impassive pin-pricks were thrown away ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... passing of armed men, the change of guards, and the rousing choruses around the fires. There was, besides, an atmosphere of recklessness and gayety, engendered by excitement, by danger, by the very desperation of their cause, that could not long be resisted by even the most impassive recruit. Jack alone, of his whole party, remained indifferent and unmoved; but his wife, all of the savage in her rising to the surface, grew intoxicated almost to ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... lay in a seemingly deathly stupor, and from this the impassive Oriental had great difficulty in arousing him. Said, having shaken some symptoms of life into the limp form of M. Max, filled the little cup with fragrant China tea, and, supporting the dazed man, held the beverage to his lips. With his eyes but slightly opened, and with ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... and Old Grannis entered the sitting-room; the minister stood behind the little table in the bay window, holding a book, one finger marking the place; he was rigid, erect, impassive. On either side of him, in a semi-circle, stood the invited guests. A little pock-marked gentleman in glasses, no doubt the famous Uncle Oelbermann; Miss Baker, in her black grenadine, false curls, and coral brooch; Marcus ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... worth eighty thousand pounds at the bottom of these mysteries and murders. But he discharged his own duties, and watched Yada intently—and failed to see one single sign of anything beyond ordinary interest in his impassive face. ...
— The Orange-Yellow Diamond • J. S. Fletcher
... the crisis is hazardous, and our first thought, on such an occasion, is too often for ourselves,—at least mine was. Seeing me silent, he repeated his question. "To whom," said I, "are you to be married?" "That," he replied, "I cannot tell you." He was a moment silent, then continued, with an impassive look of cold self-possession, that affected me with strange sadness: "The name of the person you will hear, of course, at the time, but more I cannot tell you. I need, however, the presence, not only of legal, but of respectable ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... hate you. Oh!" she said, recoiling, as a gleam from the lamp revealed to her the wild expression in his eyes, the tension of his white lips and nostrils, the strange transformation in those usually impassive features which revealed the brutal nature below the polished surface of the ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... modest baggage to the post-house, and having deposited it at the side of the road just where the coach stopped, she took her leave, apparently more than satisfied with the small sum of money I gave her, and civilly wishing us a pleasant journey. But though less gruff, she was quite as impassive as the landlord. She never asked where we were going, if we were likely ever to return again, and like her master, as I said, had we been staying there still, I do not believe she would ever have made an inquiry or ...
— Four Ghost Stories • Mrs. Molesworth
... prosecute his search rightly, and finally he found the missing ticket in a pocket which he had already searched half-a-dozen times. Now contrast the condition of this highly-civilized man, thrown into a painful flurry and confusion at the demand of a railway ticket, with the impassive coolness of a savage, who would not move a muscle if you hacked him ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... folded the despatch, and sat down without altering a line of his impassive face. Not so the majority of the officers round the table: they were excited, and ready to spring up in their indignation. The King's name restrained them all but Rigaud de Vaudreuil, who impetuously burst out with an oath, exclaiming,—"They ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... limbs and grim, impassive countenance, crouched the black-bearded beggar whose importunity had lured Ralph from her side the previous evening. His red-rimmed, sunken eyes gazed like the eyes of a dead man straight into the ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... There was a throng in the room, expectant, hungry for the possibility of a scene. In the recess of a tall window, the Prince, superb in his self-possession, a figure in a world of players that was past, with his pale, severe face impassive under his white hair, made the crowd of them seem vulgar and raucous by contrast with him. Dupontel, watching him, had a moment of consternation; the Prince seemed a thing too supremely complete, too perfect as a product of his world, to risk upon ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... so stolid and impassive in their general demeanour, are easily moved to laughter, having a quick perception of fun and drollery, and sometimes show themselves capable of much humour, ...
— In The Forest • Catharine Parr Traill
... to gratify it, I will show you what it was I had in reserve," and the Sepoy produced the small shagreen case with which Raikes had been on such questionable terms of familiarity, and pressing back the lid revealed the splendid diamond to the still impassive Gratz. ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... has been already mentioned, an ordinary feature of trance is the entire suspension of common feeling. As long as the trance is maintained, the patient is impassive to all common impressions on the touch; the smartest electric shock, a feather introduced into the nose, burning, or cutting with a knife, excite no sensation. So that surgical operations may be performed without suffering during trance just as in the stupor ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... pale: but there was a firm set look about his lips which attracted Valencia's attention. Once he looked up in Valencia's face, and saw that she was looking at him. A flush came over his cheeks for a moment, and then he seemed as impassive as ever. What could he want there! How very gauche and rude of him; so unlike him, too! And she said, civilly enough, to him, "I fear, Mr. Headley, we must ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... Frederica Fish had nothing to do but to stand as she was put, and Mrs. Sandford had seen to it that she stood right; another person might have done more in the picture, but that was all that could be got from Frederica. Her face was coldly impassive; she could come no nearer to the expression of the indignant queen. But Preston's old woman, and Theresa's pretty young French girl; one looking as he had said, with eyes of coarse fury, the other all melting with tenderness and reverent sympathy; they were ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... The promptings of his various mood; Beside the fire in silence smoked The taciturn, impassive Jew, Lost in a pleasant revery; While, by his gravity provoked, His portrait the Sicilian drew, And wrote beneath it "Edrehi, At the Red ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... this conversation occurred before his merits or the depth of his purse had been rewarded by a baronetcy, looked at his partner in the impassive fashion for which he ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... in the box opposite to ours, and when we were not looking at him we gazed at the impassive faces of the audience. They never smiled. They never laughed. The subtlest points in the play went unnoticed, yet it is one which has had a record run and bids fair to keep the boards for the rest of ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... thus answering spake. 450 Deliverer from new Lords, leader to free Enjoyment of our right as Gods; yet hard For Gods, and too unequal work we find Against unequal armes to fight in paine, Against unpaind, impassive; from which evil Ruin must needs ensue; for what availes Valour or strength, though matchless, quelld with pain Which all subdues, and makes remiss the hands Of Mightiest. Sense of pleasure we may well Spare ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... absence, but she lost it when she went back into the high, white, view-invaded dining-room at Yaverland's End. For Marion stood by the hearth looking down into the fire, and as Richard and Ellen came in she turned an impassive face towards them, and asked indifferently, "Have you had a nice walk?" and fell to polishing her nails with the palm of her hand with that trivial, fribbling gesture that was somehow more desperate than any other being's outflung arms. She was all that Ellen ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... blue eye, and regular features of a clear, healthy paleness, he—the man—would draw a second glance to himself wherever he might be met. His face was not inordinately handsome; nothing of the sort; but it wore an air of candour, of noble truth. A somewhat impassive face in repose, somewhat cold; but, in speaking, it grew expressive to animation, and the frank smile that would light it up made its greatest charm. The smile stole over it now, as he checked his horse and ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... scraping of chair legs and a shuffling of uneasy feet followed this exhortation; still no word from the huge, impassive figure in the central chair. The oily-faced young man behind the bar improved the opportunity by washing a dozen or so glasses, setting them down showily on a tin tray in ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... the sufficient loveliness, the unconscious charm. Is it not for this cause that many dependent natures find classic perfection cold, superb scenery unsympathetic, and the spectacle of careless happiness embittering? Others, of imaginative temperament, prefer that their idols should remain impassive, and, granted the inspiration arising from a fair appearance, ask no more, but find their delight in bestowing, from the riches of their own gratitude, adorable attributes and endless worship. Orange, as many other men of idealising tendencies, took his human solace for ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... eyes returned the other's gaze unflinchingly. But Strangwise was obviously taken aback, though only for the moment. The flush that mounted to his cheek quickly died down, leaving him as cool and impassive ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... had brought them to Berkeley Square. Fairfield felt his heart thumping quickly although his face was impassive as the door was opened in response to Foyle's ring. She might be out; she might refuse to see them. Neither of the two alternatives happened. Within three minutes Eileen had descended to them ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... led ignominiously out of the house, in a pulpy, watery state, while the butler handled his swing doors with a stony, impassive countenance, intended for the deception of the very elect, though it did not deceive me. I knew well enough that next time he was off duty, and strolled around our way, we should meet in our kitchen ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... rather scornful gravity, kept silence, as though he did not understand and as though waiting for the explanation to which he felt himself entitled. And, in spite of everything, this impassive attitude worried Arsene Lupin. Nevertheless, his conviction was so profound and, besides, he had staked so much on ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... motionless, impassive. Meynell's voice had beautiful inflections, and he spoke with strong feeling. Few persons whom he so addressed could have remained unmoved. But Mrs. Bateson only retreated farther into the dreary little parlour, with its wool mats and antimacassars, and a tray of ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... his contempt for him was profound. But he gave no sign. His cordiality was apparently perfect. The five thousand dollars were nothing to him, and he felt that the giving of that cheque might save those at Loon Dyke Farm from a world of anxiety and trouble. Somehow behind that impassive face he may have had some thoughts of the coming of a future time when he would be able to deal with this man's mode of life with that firmness which only relationship could entitle him to—when he could personally relieve Hephzibah of the responsibility and wearing anxiety of her worthless ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... His last great work was the "Pieta" in the Academy, which, though unfinished, is nobly designed and very impressive. He places the Virgin supporting the Body in a great dome-shaped niche, which gives elevation. It is flanked by two calm, antique, stone figures, whose impassive air contrasts with the wild pain and grief below. The Magdalen steps out towards the spectator with the wailing cry of a Greek tragedy. It perhaps hardly moves us like the concentrated feeling of Bellini's Madonna, or the hurried, ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... the point at last. He looked hard at Marcy to see what effect the words would have upon him, and Marcy returned his gaze with an impassive countenance, although he felt ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... people (for at that time hardly anybody affected to be incredulous in matters allied to the supernatural), was this mysterious being liable to touch? Was he not of some impassive nature, inaudible, invisible, impalpable? Many of his escapes, if truly reported, seemed to argue as much. If, then, connected with the spiritual world, was it with the good or the evil in that inscrutable region? But, then, the bloodshed, the torn dresses, the marks ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... maintaining their prices in a decided manner with an impassive face or perhaps deciding to accept the smaller price offered, suddenly calling out to the customer who was starting ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... them cogent. (Why is it that in dreams we feel no remorse for our sins, but only a terror lest we be found out? I cannot tell; but the best men and women of my acquaintance agree that it is so.) Mr. Fossell preserved an impassive, inscrutable face; but every time the Commandant ventured a new argument Mr. Fossell's high, bald head twinkled and suddenly changed colour like a chameleon. It was green, it was violet, it was bathed in a soft roseate glow like an Alpine peak at sunset; and still while ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... Henry Warden, apt and armed for controversy, "but it should be borne in the heart, not scored with the fingers in the air. That very impassive air, through which your hand passes, shall as soon bear the imprint of your action, as the external action shall avail the fond bigot who substitutes vain motions of the body, idle genuflections, and signs of the cross, for the living and heart-born ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... their brightest glances at me. A torrent of red roses fell on me; one bloom lodged in my horse's mane, and I took it and stuck it in my coat. The Marshal smiled grimly. I had stolen some glances at his face, but he was too impassive to show me whether his sympathies ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... finger of his dead wife. She noticed in the strong light from the window how the smooth black hair had grown grey about the ears, how lines which had not been there before had graved themselves in the handsome, impassive face. Was he very unhappy too, Deleah wondered, in the midst of her own trouble? Did he still mourn, as they said he had done, so heavily, ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... attire, satin corsets, low-cut evening gowns, etc., donned on gala nights to display his gleaming shoulders and dimpled, plump, white arms. Thus arrayed, he bantered, he would bewitch even me, now so impassive, until I should throw myself, in tears of happiness, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... playfully called attention to his wife's endeavors to frown him into silence; and, in spite of Sallie's angry glances, really saved her dinner from proving a dismal failure. Indeed, the cases were too real, and too much genuine misery was concealed behind impassive faces, not to prove a dangerous situation, the tension of which was relieved by Brian's extravagant nonsense. Percival and Norris Whitehouse were sincerely amused by the wit in which Brian clothed his droll remarks. But the greatest misfortune of the dinner-giver ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... paused and then straightened to face his friend. His eyes were blood-shot but resolute, his face impassive. "No. I'll wait till after to-morrow. Big order on for to-morrow morning. Appointment ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... Dr. Harpe's impassive face gave no indication of the activity of her mind. Now that the opportunity to "square herself," to use her own words, had arrived, she had no notion ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... man was arguing with the impassive individual on the top step outside, and I saw him get out his pocketbook and offer a crisp bundle of bills. But the man from the board of health only smiled and tacked at his offensive sign. After a while Mr. Harbison ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Reggie, as he gloated over a chaste design of fishes in mother-of-pearl, a pseudo-Korin. "Poor old Geoffrey! He's only a barbarian; but perhaps she will be interested. Here, T[o]!" he called out to an impassive Japanese man-servant, "have the flowers come yet, ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... Fawkes, pronounced by Winter with an intonation which would have puzzled any one not familiar with certain matters known only to a few in England, Catesby, Wright and Digsby cast searching glances at the new comer, as though seeking to read in the impassive features of the soldier of fortune some riddle which heretofore had puzzled them. As to Fawkes, not deigning to notice the evident curiosity with which the three gentlemen greeted him, he allowed his ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... sunset, thither wends the fashionable world of Calcutta. The impassive European, with all the proud consciousness of a conquering race; the half-Europeanized baboo; the deposed rajah,—all may be seen driving to and fro in splendid equipages, drawn by handsome steeds, and followed by servants in gay Oriental attire. The rajahs and "nabobs" are usually dressed in ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... R. Schmidt's impassive estimate of the first cabin parade, or he might have had something to repeat that would not have pleased those who took ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... The Prince's numerous family became so downright sick and tired of Tape, that when they should have helped the Prince out of the difficulties into which that evil creature led him, they fell into a dangerous habit of moodily keeping away from him in an impassive and indifferent manner, as though they had quite forgotten that no harm could happen to the Prince their father, without ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... Cairnforth, was quite a different thing. It was a touching contrast to see the two together; the active, elegant young man—for, now he was well-dressed, Captain Bruce looked remarkably elegant and gentlemanly, and the little motionless figure, as impassive and helpless almost as an image carved in stone, but yet who was undoubtedly the Earl of Cairnforth, and ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... and outwardly impassive, the wine trickling from his long face, which, if pale, was no paler than its habit, a vestige of the smile with which he had proposed the toast still lingering on his thin lips, though departed from his eyes. An elegant gentleman was Mr. Wilding, tall, and seeming even ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... Impassive as he was, and accustomed to show his feelings but little, Frederick was deeply affected at the loss of his trusted general, and of the splendid soldiers who had been so long and carefully trained; and even had Prague fallen, the victory would have been a disastrous one for him; ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... tingling ears. When I looked again, Jerry was sitting up as before; his garment, somewhat crumpled, was restored to its original position; but his pallid countenance was set hard. Knowing as I did, only too well, what a volcano of passion and shame must be seething under that impassive exterior, for the moment I ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... inspectors at Ventimiglia is a small, wizened Frenchman, with a face as cold and impassive as the sand-blown Sphinx. He possesses among other accomplishments a nose, peculiar less for its shape than for its smell. He can "smell out" tobacco as a witch doctor in Zululand smells out a "devil." Fate directed this individual toward the Americans. Hillard knew him of old; and he never ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... her! That afternoon all the crowded court-room saw the beadle make way for two persons of importance. One was a tall, grave, distinguished-looking man, impassive, calm, a man whose face was known to all—the new Governor of Louisiana, viceroy of the country that Burr had lost. Upon his arm, pale, clad all in black, walked the daughter of the prisoner ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... in the intensifying light of the crackling fire; still no shot came back in answer. The steady, relentless pursuit drew near, and the fugitives began to whimper and howl in panic. They broke and drove blindly for the river, to meet the colossal bulk of Houten, silent, impassive, standing out like a mountain to bar their flight; and the Barang's men, lined beside him, joined the first of a line of cool, steady naval seamen whose end numbers were ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... a blowtorch," said one of the guards in the rear of the room. His face was wholly impassive. Most of these goons must be moronic, thought Dalgetty. Most of the guards in the twentieth-century extermination camps had been. No inconvenient empathy with the human flesh they ...
— The Sensitive Man • Poul William Anderson
... his cheek flushed a little as I spoke, with more of earnestness or passion than any incident, however exciting, is wont to provoke among his impassive race. ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... to strike the bell upon the table, while Evander Cloud, still impassive, paid a salutation to his unwilling hostess and made a motion to depart. But on the instant both were chilled into immobility by an amazing interruption. Brilliana's hand never touched the bell; Evander's hand never found the handle of the ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... Mercury—a brown Mercury. His heels are winged, and in them is the swiftness of the sea. In truth, from out of the sea he has leaped upon the back of the sea, and he is riding the sea that roars and bellows and cannot shake him from its back. But no frantic outreaching and balancing is his. He is impassive, motionless as a statue carved suddenly by some miracle out of the sea's depth from which he rose. And straight on toward shore he flies on his winged heels and the white crest of the breaker. There is a wild ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... smart—has poor Nelly borne? Her grief has been so sore that she has torn her hair out by the roots in frenzy and stamped upon it; but Tom, surly and impassive Tom, is her lord as well as her most exacting master, and in their own way they are ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... finally he found the missing ticket in a pocket which he had already searched half-a-dozen times. Now contrast the condition of this highly-civilized man, thrown into a painful flurry and confusion at the demand of a railway ticket, with the impassive coolness of a savage, who would not move a muscle if you hacked ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... out of Gregory's," supplemented MacNab, who, with impassive face, was lolling in a long chair, a silent ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... through a curtained door at the rear of the store, and Rick turned. He was sensitive to impressions, and he was again conscious of the tension. As he turned he saw that all the clerks were watching him, their faces impassive. His eyes went to the front of the store. Scotty was with Hassan in the doorway, discussing some object in ...
— The Egyptian Cat Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... uniforms of the officers mere servile livery. Their painted, immobile faces and plumed heads towered with grave dignity above the meaner crowd; their inscrutable eyes returned no response to the timid glances directed towards them. They stood by themselves, alone and impassive,—yet their presence filled the room with the sense of kings. The unostentatious, simple republican court suddenly seemed to have become royal. Even the interpreter who stood between their remote ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... his remarks there was a long silence. The general sat impassive, looking into the man's face, but apparently not attentive to what had been said. It was as if his eyes had mounted guard over the prisoner while his mind concerned itself with other matters. Presently ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... crushing phrase which you have been manufacturing all the time; when you have thus floored him, you will coldly show him the door. You will be very polite, but as relentless as the executioner's axe, and as impassive as the law. This freezing contempt will already probably have produced a revolution in the mind of your wife. There must be no shouts, no gesticulations, no excitement. "Men of high social rank," says a young English author, "never behave like their inferiors, who cannot lose a fork ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... her to him she seemed to grow less impassive and he felt her resign herself like a tired child. He held his breath, not daring ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... the determining grounds of volition in ideas, but in the feelings. After curtailing the rights of the reason in the theoretical field in favor of custom and instinct, he dispossesses her also in the sphere of practice. Impassive reason, judging only of truth and falsehood, is an inactive faculty, which of itself can never inspire us with inclination and desire toward an object, can never itself become a motive. It is only capable of influencing the will indirectly, ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... the Lenape, certain tribes, offshoots, and clans remained impassive either to Iroquois threats or proffered friendship. They, like certain lithe, proud forest animals to whom restriction means death, were untamable. Their necks could endure no yoke, political or purely ornamental. And so they perished far from the Onondaga firelight, far from ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... pangs of Marsyas; and she wondered whether a courageous Roman captive who was shorn of his eyelids, and set under the blistering sun of Africa, suffered any more keenly; but motionless, apparently impassive as a stone mask, on whose features pitiless storms beat in vain, she bore without wincing the agony of her humiliation. Very white and still, she sat hour by hour with downcast eyes, and folded hands; and those who watched most closely could detect only one change of position; ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... devoted to Madame Claes and her daughters, felt the blow in their own affections. Martha's dreadful announcement,—"Madame is dying; monsieur must have killed her; get ready a mustard-bath,"—forced certain exclamations from Josette, which she launched at Lemulquinier. He, cold and impassive, went on eating at the corner of a table before one of the windows of the kitchen, where all was kept as clean as the boudoir of ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... saloon she found small wars in progress. About a hundred and fifty people were trying to sit down in a hundred seats. The stewards looked harassed as they explained that there was another meal-time half an hour after the first. Knollys was trying, with impassive dignity, to prove mathematically to an old lady that by waiting until six o'clock for her tea to-day and automatically shifting all her meal-times on half an hour she was losing nothing; and, after all, it would all ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... can converse much in the world, but, at what he meets with, he must either be insensible, or grieve, or be angry, or smile. Some passion (if we are not impassive) must be moved; for the general conduct of mankind is by no means a thing indifferent to a reasonable and virtuous man. Now to smile at it, and turn it into ridicule, I think most eligible; as it hurts ourselves least, and gives vice and folly the greatest offence: and that for this reason; because ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... manner. Except that the copy was a little too apparent, Mr. Aldridge's acting was really very fine. The Russians were enthusiastic in their applause, though very few of them, probably, understood the language of the part. The Oriental auditors were perfectly impassive, and it was impossible to guess how they ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... request, and not a demand; it was the dull statement of a need. Yet the need appeared so relentless, uttered in the set fixity of his impassive voice, that she could not gainsay it. She felt that this was not merely her son making a demand; it was a compulsion on him greater ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... force of Vanno's will, a man got up from a chair directly in front. It was Captain Hannaford, who looked less impassive than usual. His somewhat secretive face was flushed, and he was frowning. Without appearing to see the Prince, or Dick Carleton, who was on the point of speaking, he walked quickly away from the table as if anxious to escape. Almost savagely, Vanno grasped the back of the chair and flung ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the old man admiringly and in silence. What a strong, sturdy spirit, as hard and cold and clear as ice! That veteran had doubtless had his passions like other men. At moments, through his calm impassive exterior, a romantic vehemence would seem to burn, a poetic ardor, that politics had smothered, but which smouldered on as volcanic fires lie dormant rumbling from time to time under the mantle of snow ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... turned their backs upon the visitors, the nearest groups and individuals moving away from them with the impassive dignity of their race. There is more scorn in an Indian squaw's back, turned to an impertinent stranger, than in the faces of six matrons of society's finest-sifted ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... sorry search-party, after all, that presently rattled out of town in the old wagon. On the back seat sat the impassive and good-natured Chinese boy, and a Swedish cook discovered at the last moment in the railroad camp and pressed into service. On the front seat Mary Bell was wedged in between the driver and Grandpa Barry, a thin, sinewy old man, stupid from sleep. Mary Bell never forgot the silent drive. ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... religious, a great church-goer, one that used to reprove me if I stayed away; I found afterwards that she privately worshipped a shark. The chief himself was somewhat of a freethinker; at the least, a latitudinarian: he was a man, besides, filled with European knowledge and accomplishments; of an impassive, ironical habit; and I should as soon have expected superstition in Mr. Herbert Spencer. Hear the sequel. I had discovered by unmistakable signs that they buried too shallow in the village graveyard, and I took my friend, as the responsible authority, to task. ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and went his way. If there was a thoughtfulness in the generosity of this action, the mode in which it was performed—the measured coldness of the words—the look of impassive examination that accompanied them, and the abstention from anything that savoured of apology for a liberty—were all deeply ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... telegraph, being out of order, no longer tells her of the shaking of the web. The captured prey is too far off for her to see it; she is all unwitting. A good hour passes, with the Locust still kicking, the Spider impassive, myself watching. Nevertheless, in the end, the Epeira wakes up: no longer feeling the signalling-thread, broken by my scissors, as taut as usual under her legs, she comes to look into the state of things. The web is reached, without the least difficulty, by one of the lines ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... blocked by drays and sheep, reaching at least a mile; men cursing and swearing in Irish and English; sheep baaing, and so terrified, that the shepherds were in transports of fear brandishing their crooks at our postillions, and the postillions in turn brandishing their whips on the impassive backs of the sheep. The cocked gold-edged hat of an officer appeared on horseback in the midst, and there was silence from all but the baaing sheep. He bowed to us ladies, or to our carriage and four, and assured us that he would see ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... a smack! A good one this; it brought a light to the thin, impassive faces. There was an answer to the trick of the other day! This Pelle was a deuce of a fellow! Three cheers for "Lightning ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... medals on his breast. First one troop and then another defiled across the Place l'Opera: a company of infantry with bayonets mounted, a picturesque regiment of Moroccans, turbaned, of magnificently impassive bearing, sitting their horses like images of bronze. Men of the Flying Corps, in dark blue with wings on their sleeves, strolled past me; and once, roused by exclamations and pointing fingers, I looked up to see a monoplane, light and graceful as a darting bird, ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... oblong, grey envelope," she said, the impassive, unwrinkled face unmoved to either curiosity ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... off along the seats he was seeing Miss Wilbur shaking hands with the people who paused to say good-by. His heart ached for a glance of her brown eyes and a word, but he held the reins in his great hands and his face showed only his usual impassive reticence. He was only Councill's ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... perched beside him and looking wonderingly into his grave, impassive face, the white man would sit for long hours staring moodily out upon the tumbling breakers as they reared and fell upon the black, grim ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... which was impressed on their optic nerve eluded the more stubborn evidence of the touch; and they enjoyed the spiritual, not the corporeal, presence of the Son of God. The rage of the Jews was idly wasted against an impassive phantom; and the mystic scenes of the passion and death, the resurrection and ascension, of Christ were represented on the theatre of Jerusalem for the benefit of mankind. If it were urged, that such ideal mimicry, such incessant deception, was unworthy of the God of truth, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... Every allusion to war was greeted with rapturous applause. The Marseillaise was demanded and encored till the orchestra rebelled from sheer exhaustion. Joan's patience was sorely tested. She had to listen with impassive face to coarse jests and brutal gibes directed against England and everything English; to sit unmoved while the vast audience rocked with laughter at senseless caricatures of supposed English soldiers ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... same moment Mrs. Simcoe was closing her window high over Hope's head. Her face was turned toward the sunset with the usual calm impassive look, and as she gazed at the darkening landscape she was ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... a moment, motionless as stone, his dark face immutable and impassive. Then he stretched wide his right arm in the direction of No Name Mountains, now losing their last faint traces of the afterglow, and he shook his head. He made the same impressive gesture toward the Sonoyta Oasis with the ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... Colonel Hathaway's lawyer and confidential agent, was at the train to meet his important client on his return to Dorfield. The first to alight from the coach was the Colonel, who greeted his lawyer with a cordial handclasp. Mary Louise kissed Peter Conant upon his impassive cheek and presented him to a pretty young girl who clung to her arm smiling, yet half bewildered by her arrival in a strange town. There seemed no one else with the party and Mr. Conant glanced over the ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... scaffolding all was a tumult of uproar and confusion, shouting and gesticulation; only the King sat calm, sullen, impassive. The Earl wheeled his horse and sat for a moment or two as though to make quite sure that he knew the King's mind. The blow that had been given was foul, unknightly, but the King gave no sign either of acquiescence or rebuke; he had willed that ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... was erect in that impassive attitude that comes sometimes to the furious man when he is obliged to leave the battle to others. Frequently, however, the tempest in his breast came to his ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... mornings of the Dumble family in their roomy spring wagon. The old man—he was not more than fifty-five—had two pretty daughters and a handsome son. Mrs. Dumble, a comely woman, always wore grey clothes and grey thread gloves. She had a pale, too impassive face, and her dark hair, tightly drawn back from her brows, had curious white streaks in it. Ajax said a thousand times that he should not sleep soundly until he had determined whether or not Mrs. Dumble was a party to her husband's ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... that?" and he looked round at the mummy-case. Her long-dead Majesty was still reclining in it, silent and impassive. ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... time, the calmness of the Egyptian forsook him: though his countenance remained impassive, ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... caught for just a moment under the slight weight of his body. There was a short, snapping sound, but Oliver Symmes took no notice. His face remained impassive. Even pain had lost ...
— Life Sentence • James McConnell
... dost not wish to tell us what thou hast seen yonder?" repeated the man. But now his voice was impassive and dull, and deadly gray weariness showed in Lazarus' eyes. And deadly gray weariness covered like dust all the faces, and with dull amazement the guests stared at each other and did not understand wherefore they had gathered here and sat at the rich table. The talk ceased. They thought ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... The syces, impassive as Orientals always are, had come up with the recaptured horses; and as Kitty sprang into her saddle I caught hold of the bridle, entreating her to hear me out and forgive. My answer was the cut of her riding-whip across my face from mouth to eye, and a ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... the stairs and made a peremptory signal to the butler. As he disappeared she walked forward more slowly and paused within a few feet of her agitated guest. Her eyebrows were slightly raised, her face impassive. Not even those sharp old eyes staring at her guessed that she had been completely taken by surprise and was ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... delegates wondered why Sinclair remained silent in such an important debate. They had succeeded in raising a question which at any other time would have brought him to his feet; but he sat impassive and silent, and above all the clash and glamor, above the applause and the interruptions, above all the witty sallies which brought unexpected laughter, he saw only the thin, white lonely figure—the dejected and outcast, the poor plaything ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... beside him, Chamilly at one end of the skiff intent upon his sport. The old man's flat punt was littered with perch. How early he must have risen! He was small of figure, weathered of face, simple and impassive of manner. ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... unfortunately, simultaneously at the end of his investigations. He did not yet know the position or the contents of the arsenal, the defensibility of the walls, the water supply, or the number of men under arms in that silent, impassive red city on the hill. The reports of the peasantry had been contradictory, and this ordinary means of ascertaining these things had failed him, while he very particularly required to know them, his force being small. The Government had assured Colonel Starr that the ...
— The Story of Sonny Sahib • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... by his protege's clear head and command of languages, while Gilda's satisfaction at the change was at least equal to her father's. And so, whether Harold was softened by his own prosperity, and whether other hopes or distractions came between him and his former passion for revenge, he remained impassive throughout all the preparations for a marriage which he could have prevented had he chosen. At Triberg the thought that Mark (who had, as he considered, been the chief means of ruining his hopes of Mabel) ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... enables us to conceive and to excite the pains and the pleasure of other minds: they never inquired what, on any occasion, they should have said or done; but wrote rather as beholders, than partakers of human nature; as beings looking upon good and evil, impassive and at leisure; as epicurean deities, making remarks on the actions of men, and the vicissitudes of life, without interest and without emotion. Their courtship was void of fondness, and their lamentation of sorrow. Their ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... of this garden at the edge of the Nile a storm was surging up within her. And Baroudi sat there at her feet, impassive, immobile, with his still, luminous eyes ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... snare their fringes on the topmost branches of the forest. Close under the protecting river-bank sped our light canoes, cutting their way through the gray waters. The dark-skinned crews bent to the paddle silently, with corded muscles tightening in their lean brown arms, and still, impassive faces fixed upon the seething current or the ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... was useless to resist the tide of fresh vitality in her veins, and when her thoughts turned to their main attraction, she was rejoicing at the great strength she felt coming to her gradually. Her face was smooth and impassive: this new joy of strength came on her like the flowing of a sea to a, land-locked water. "Poor souls!" she sighed for her friends, while irrepressible exultation filled ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of the young Apache became impassive. He turned about and spoke softly to Slade. The trader, half dead from his wounds, raised his big ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... moment came for the king to bless the bridal pair, and there was no Lohengrin to bless, even the impassive Sir Cyril seemed likely to be disturbed, and you could hear murmurs of apprehension from all parts of the house. The conductor, however, went doggedly on, evidently ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... spoke to no one, saluted no one, and kept his eyes steadily fixed on infinite space. He dined at the high table, but uttered no word. He never played the part of host, nor did he ever seem to be a guest. He read the service in chapel when his turn came: his voice had a creaking and impassive tone, and his pace was too deliberate to please young men with a morning appetite. As he says here, he was a complete stranger in the college. We looked upon him with the awe proper to one who was supposed to combine ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 5: On Pattison's Memoirs • John Morley
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