"Intentness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his argument and rhetoric rather than in the feeling of his soul. Without a sweet disposition no man could have had such a smile. Without some grandeur of design no man ever displayed such a countenance and port, handsome and sublime. In his intentness and earnestness, he did not suspect the liability of his expressions to the charge of a vindictiveness he was unconscious of in his own breast. It was like a philippic of Demosthenes; it was a Ciceronian oration against some Catiline, real ...
— Senatorial Character - A Sermon in West Church, Boston, Sunday, 15th of March, - After the Decease of Charles Sumner. • C. A. Bartol
... with so intrepid an air, and was so cheerful and complaisant to me, that he did credit to his kind choice, instead of shewing as if he was ashamed of it: And as I was resolved to busy my mind entirely with the duties of the day, my intentness on that occasion, and my thankfulness to God, for his unspeakable mercies to me, so took up my thoughts, that I was much less concerned, than I should otherwise have been, at the gazings and whisperings of the ladies and gentlemen, as well as of the rest of the congregation, whose eyes were ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... immaculately dressed and twirling his tawny mustache with a proper Harvard affectation of poise, entered a few moments later and found McLaughlin with his feet on the desk, staring ahead with humorous intentness. ...
— Skinner's Dress Suit • Henry Irving Dodge
... The scratching continued for a few moments, and the door swung open. A tall, thin figure of a man entered, the door closed behind him, and with some further scratching he locked it. Then the man turned and stared at Ned. Ned stared with equal intentness at him. ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... some four weeks later, Ella Barnwell, needle-work in hand, was seated near the open door leading from the apartment first described to the reader. Her head was bent forward, and her eyes were apparently fixed upon her occupation with great intentness—though a close observer might have detected furtive glances occasionally thrown upon a young man, with a pale and somewhat agitated countenance, who was pacing to and fro on the ground without. With the exception of these two, no person was within sight—though ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... possessed in an extraordinary degree. He united vast strength with perfect flexibility. His momentum was that of a river, which combines weight and directness with the ability to yield to the flexures of its bed. The intentness of his vision in any direction did not apparently diminish his power of perception in other directions; and when he attacked a subject, expecting results, he had the faculty of keeping his mind alert, so that results different from those ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... came back the second time, she appeared unwontedly subdued, perplexed; and her usually merry eyes were gravely fixed with curious intentness upon the ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... solitude. But he was fast succumbing to a despair of reaching across the barrier of this critical silence and he was about to rise and leave when he happened to look about and see Sophie Carr standing within arm's length, gazing at him with a peculiar intentness, a mild look of surprise upon her vivid young face, ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... nightcap. She had a pan of corn in her hand, and was attended by a retinue that would have rejoiced an epicure's heart. Chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys, and Guinea fowls thronged around and after her with an intentness on the grain and a disregard of one another's rights and feelings that reminded one unpleasantly of political aspirants just after a Presidential election. Johnny made a dive for an old gobbler, and the great red-wattled bird dropped his wings and seemed inclined ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... lovely face was clouded, and two little lines above the curving arch of her eyebrows were deeply set in thought. Ormsby's continued presence filled her with uneasy dread. For the past two weeks, he had watched her with an intentness that was embarrassing. She knew that he meant to propose to her, if he succeeded in finding her alone; and she was undecided as to whether she should give, or deny, him the opportunity of hearing the worst. Perhaps, it would be better to let him speak; he could not possibly remain ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... Mr. Le Mesurier watched Drake until he disappeared through the doorway, with what seemed to Mallinson a singular intentness. The father's manner waked him to a suspicion that he might possibly have mistaken the daughter's motive in seeking Drake's acquaintance. Was it merely a whim, a fancy, strengthened to the point of activity by the sight of ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... slow work of that, fumbling while watching Ekstrom with unremitting intentness, hoping against hope that his enemy might make one false move, one only, by some infatuate endeavour to turn ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... who he is?" asked Miss Allonby; and Flora Schuyler noticed a sudden intentness in ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... stood silent, considering, while Yussuf looked up with glistening-eyed intentness like an eager dog ready for the ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... strange intentness. His playfulness was extinguished, and his face looked all at ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... into the spirit of the thing, began to deliver the rounded periods sonorously. General Waymouth leaned slightly over the table, propping himself on the knuckles of his one hand. The light flowed down upon his silvery hair, his features were set in the intentness of listening. ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... up in the sunlit air, a vague memorial of the world of men below. From that too the colour vanished, and those other lights began to shine which to some are the only lights of day. The skies dropped close upon the mountains and the silver seas, like a vast face brooding with intentness; there was enchantment, mystery, and a living motion in its depths, the presence of all-pervading Zeus enfolding his starry children with the dark ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... merry we all were; how we drank tea in the queer bed-room at the top of the house; and how afterwards Muriel went to sleep in the twilight, with baby Maud in her arms. Mrs. Halifax sat beside the little bed, a sudden blazing up of the fire showing the intentness of her watch over these two, her eldest and youngest, fast asleep; their breathing so soft, one hardly knew which was frailest, the life slowly fading or the life but just begun. Their breaths seemed to mix and mingle, and the two faces, ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... large bodies of bird-shooting sportsmen I have steadily—and also painfully—been impressed by their intentness on. killing, and by the fact that they seek to preserve game only to kill it! Who ever saw a bird-shooter rise in a convention and advocate the preservation of any species of game bird on account of its beauty or its esthetic ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... all eyes to focus upon the Montgomerys with a new intentness. Before her escapade they had been accepted as a matter of course; now that she had demonstrated that the Montgomerys were subject to the temptations that beset all mankind, every one became curious as to the further definition of the family weaknesses. The community may be said to have awaited ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... bright facts of being captain of the track team, and holding the interstate record for the high jump, in the all-suffusing brightness of being twenty-one. Yet sometimes, in the pauses of his work, the young man frowned and looked at the ground with an intentness which suggested that even twenty-one might have ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... understand and interpret to others my inner and outer being, as this one, of such nobleness in her way of thinking, such great intellectual capacity, and so free from the theological perplexities that enveloped me?" Let any one peruse, with all intentness, the lineaments of this portrait, and he will be impressed with the fact, that it is possible for woman to fulfil her mission, and become a true helpmeet. This woman was not a copy. She was not a cipher. She was an original; and ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... were rescued by the interposition of the gentleman opposite, whose small twinkling eyes had been taking me in with intentness. ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... him with merriment dancing in her eyes. The diplomat had his elbow resting on the balustrade, his head leaning on his hand, and, quite oblivious to everything else, was gazing at her with such absorbed intentness that the girl blushed and cast down her eyes. The intense admiration in his look was undisguised. "Still," she rattled on somewhat breathlessly, "one gets many hints from others, and the creation of to-day is merely the old clothes of to-morrow. Invention has no vacation so far as ladies' ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... His guard, standing behind him with grounded arms, watched him from below with a sort of religion. He pondered; he examined the slopes, noted the declivities, scrutinized the clumps of trees, the square of rye, the path; he seemed to be counting each bush. He gazed with some intentness at the English barricades of the two highways,—two large abatis of trees, that on the road to Genappe above La Haie-Sainte, armed with two cannon, the only ones out of all the English artillery which commanded the extremity of the field ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... of the team and Dave's lariat the car was soon righted, and was found to be none the worse for its deflection from the beaten track. Irene presided at the steering wheel, watching the road with great intentness, and turning the wheel too far on each occasion, which gave to her course a somewhat wavy or undulating order, such as is found in bread knives, or perhaps a better figure would be to compare it to that rolling motion affected by fancy skaters. However, the mean ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... a direct challenge, and it was made with deliberate intention. Accustomed as she was to the semi-imaginary mental crises of struggling, strenuous youth, she yet shrank from the intentness ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... went to meet the ghost at the appointed place. . . . . . Morning was close at hand. . . . . . the leaves fell into abrupt commotion, and he was standing in the road, beside her. He did not speak, but watched her with an eager, questioning intentness, as she placed the contents of the pail upon the moss at the roadside. "I'm a-comin' agin ter-morrer," she said, gently. . . . Then she slowly walked along her misty way in the dim light of the coming dawn. There was a footstep in the road behind her; she thought it was the ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... saw, across the room, a sandy-haired young man regarding him with dour intentness, and the spectacle, instead of feeding his joy, sent conjecturing chills down his spine. His bubble was pricked. Suppose, ran the horrid thought, suppose she was simply paying off the Englishman? Girls, even blue-eyed, angel-haired girls of cherubic aspect, have not been unknown to perform such ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... assembled and the visitors had arrived, including Fyodor Pavlovitch, who was to stand god-father, he suddenly announced that the baby "ought not to be christened at all." He announced this quietly, briefly, forcing out his words, and gazing with dull intentness at ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... spoken brusquely, was accompanied by frank, insolent looks which beneath their seeming openness concealed an intentness of purpose and a shrewd penetration. Only the first abrupt change in the fool's look, a slight one though it was, betrayed the jester to his caller. In that swiftly passing gleam, as the free baron spoke of Austria, and not of Spain, the other read full confirmation ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... heavily, but with the desperate intentness of a man who knows no excuses will be received if his ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... his languid way, got a little table which he placed beside his chair, spread out his pipes upon it, and began to clean them with crows' quills, the Boy watching the operation the while with cheerful intentness. ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... newspapers hinted at something of the sort, I believe." He was suddenly possessed by the curious notion that he was being "pumped" by his fair companion. Indeed, a certain insistent note had crept into her voice and her eyes were searching his with an intentness that had not appeared in ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... beyond her; the blue eyes had narrowed, a strange expression of intentness showed in her face. "I have always tried not to," she said, "and yet I have always hated the Germans. I wish I was a man." She turned abruptly. "But come upstairs, child, your aunt had her couch moved close to the window this morning, she has lain watching the drive all day. You will find ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... is needed," he remarked, his eyes flashing from his mother's face to mine with equal force and intentness. "My mother"—his words were low, but it was impossible not to hear them—"has not been well since my father died, two months ago. It needed but the slightest shock to produce the result you unhappily see before you. That shock this very ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... the last survivors of her connection who bore the name of Stark, no word that she heard in the Dunbarton houses pleased her so much as when a certain great-aunt would take her by the hand, and, after looking with fond intentness at her, pronounce: "My dear, you're getting more like the General's wife every year ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... pill placards and sauce puffs which blossom in our English meadows along every main line of railway are quite as offensive. Far be it from me to deny that advertising is carried to deplorable excesses in America; but in picking this out as a differentia, Mr. Steevens shows that his intentness of observation in New York has for the moment dimmed his mental vision of London. It is a case, I fancy, in which the expectation was father to ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... last I went, slow and wrapped up. I found Mr. Fairly alone in the parlour, reading letters with such intentness that he did not raise his head, and with an air of the deepest dejection. I remained wholly unnoticed a considerable time; but at last he looked up, and with some surprise, but a ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... neutrality. Him they listened to, muttering uneasily, feeling him not one of them. Never have I seen men trying so hard to understand, to decide. They never moved, stood staring with a sort of terrible intentness at the speaker, their brows wrinkled with the effort of thought, sweat standing out on their foreheads; great giants of men with the innocent clear eyes of children and the faces ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... was amiss, that some danger more serious than ordinary threatened. He felt no surprise therefore when, a little later, she arrested her sobbing, raised her head, and with suspended breath and tear-stained face listened with that scared intentness ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... said, "that there must be some mistake. It was, indeed, impossible that it should be true; but as I heard it from two quarters at once—and it was said to be something in the nature of a trust—— But," he added, looking with a nervous intentness at the unresponsive face which he could with difficulty see, "it must be, since your ladyship does not recognise my name, a—mistake. I felt it was so from the beginning. A lady of whom I know nothing!—to bestow what is really a fortune—upon a man ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... small head so expressive of gentle blood,—with the locks parted in front in that simple fashion which modern times have so happily revived. But the expression of the half-averted face, the abstracted intentness of the gaze, and the profound stillness of the attitude, were so sad and mournful, that Montreal's purposed greeting of gallantry and gladness died upon his lips. He approached in silence, and laid his hand ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... at Roland with a mournful aspect of compassion, until the intentness of her gaze occasioned his colour to rise, and he was about to move out of its influence, when he was stopped by his grand-mother with one hand, while with the other she divided the hair upon his forehead, which was now crimson with bashfulness, while she added, with a ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... been witnessed in all their tragic details. The prevailing spirit of the assembly was that of contrition and reverence. While thus congregated they heard a sound as of a Voice from above; but both a first and a second utterance were to them unintelligible. As they listened with rapt intentness, the Voice was heard a third time, and it said unto them: "Behold my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased, in whom I have glorified my ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... only time I saw his composure disturbed was when my surgeon brought another to examine John, who scrutinized their faces with an anxious look, asking of the elder,—"Do you think I shall pull through, sir?" "I hope so, my man." And, as the two passed on, John's eye still followed them, with an intentness which would have won a clearer answer from them, had they seen it. A momentary shadow flitted over his face; then came the usual serenity, as if, in that brief eclipse, he had acknowledged the existence of some hard possibility, ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... ceremony. Nor is it in such cases only as we have here given for instances, but through his whole course of life, that the pious man, without any regard to the baser materials of the body, spends himself wholly in a fixed intentness upon ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... by the weight of her jacket, he would like her even better, feel her nearer, dearer, more desirable, than in all the splendours she might put on for him. In the light of this discovery she studied her face with a new intentness, seeing its defects as she had never seen them, yet seeing them through a kind of radiance, as though love were a luminous medium into which she had ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... credit to the soul and the creature (as to the earthly lovers), that in separation and farness they should seek no other, but continue to dwell with great intentness upon the absent love. This ...
— The Golden Fountain - or, The Soul's Love for God. Being some Thoughts and - Confessions of One of His Lovers • Lilian Staveley
... but both aliens brushed by him and pattered back down the corridor, the discoverer pouring forth a volume of words to which the officer listened with great intentness. And the Terran pilot had to hurry to keep up ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... held his ear against the tiny opening through which the latchkey had been drawn earlier in the evening, when the heavy bar was put in place. The Texan was listening with all the intentness possible. ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis
... impelled by curiosity to find out the cause of his stillness, she looked up at him at length, and saw his gaze fixed on the two who were near the piano. Osborne was saying something eagerly to Cynthia, whose grave eyes were upturned to him with soft intentness of expression, and her pretty mouth half-open, with a sort of impatience for him to cease speaking, that ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... at him wildly, her adorable little chin quivering, the tears brimming in her narrow blue eyes. Then her glance took on a certain intentness, and she peered curiously into his face, saying almost ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... sight, and somehow with a different look; the mystery began to drop away from them. A bird piped suddenly, and was still; and a light breeze sprang up and set the reeds and bulrushes rustling. Rat, who was in the stern of the boat, while Mole sculled, sat up suddenly and listened with a passionate intentness. Mole, who with gentle strokes was just keeping the boat moving while he scanned the banks with care, ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... be good for Justin, too, and was glad that he had been persuaded to go; yet she caught him looking at her with such strange intentness a couple of times during the dinner that it discomposed her oddly. It made her a little silent; she pondered over it after she had gone up, as usual, to the baby. Was there something wrong with her appearance? She looked anxiously in the glass, and was annoyed to find that ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... cashier?" demanded Parker. At the question Barbara set down her goblet of water without care for its perishable quality and looked with quick intentness at the banker. ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... Braden, searching the man's face with an intentness that betrayed his own fear that the prophecy would come true. Something had already told him that his grandfather would depend upon him for complete relief,—and it was that something that had gripped his heart when he entered the ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... Pendick, their own headman, with its small, alert dark eyes reflected the intentness of his mind. His capacity had been tried over and over again in his long years of service. Then Lal Hobhouse, the best-hated man on the countryside for his ruthless genius in obtaining work from those under him, and the driving force of Jeff's side of the ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... perversion on perversion; and that deluded crowd plainly swallowing it all as gospel truth——! To Roy the whole exhibition was purely disgustful; as if the man had emptied a dust-bin under his aristocratic nose. Once or twice he glanced covertly at Dyan, standing beside him; at the strained intentness of his face, the nervous clenched hand. Was this the same Dyan who had ridden and argued and read 'Greats' with him only four years ago—this hypnotised being who seemed to ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... on all around him... I long to talk with thee of the time when in my heart too that light burned bright with blessing... Listen... and I will fancy thee sitting before me, gazing up at me with those eyes—so fond yet stern almost in their intentness. O eyes, never to be forgotten! On whom are they fastened now? Who folds in his heart thy glance—that glance that seems to flow from depths unknown even as mysterious springs—like ye, both clear and dark—that gush out into some narrow, deep ravine ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... window, and held the pointed end of the case up to the light, while screwing the lower end; he was very fastidious in these mechanical details of his vocation. Hilda watched him from behind, with an intentness that ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... fitting a salad-green bodice on her elder daughter. That young woman's efforts to see her own spine, where her mother was distributing pins with solemn intentness, had dyed her face a somewhat unnatural red, but the hands that lay upon her downy arms were much whiter than those that hovered about her back. A dining-table, bearing the more permanent part of its outfit, ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... that personality which is the power of story-telling, is to have a power of life gained through the experience of having lived; to have a power of emotion acquired through the exercise of daily affairs; a power of imagination won from having dwelt upon the things of life with intentness, a power of sympathy obtained from seeing the things of others as you meet them day by day; and a first-hand knowledge of the sights and sounds and beauties of Nature, a knowledge of bird and flower, tree ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... full of a watchful intentness now; for when other things sank blooding to sleep the heath appeared slowly to awake and listen. Every night its Titanic form seemed to await something; but it had waited thus, unmoved, during so many centuries, through the crises of so many ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... asked himself. "What do they matter—these boots and shirts and books?" He caught a few pictures from the wall and stuffed them into his pockets, and was about to plunge out into the dusk when Fan entered the room and stood looking at him with ominous intentness. ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... quitting the kitchen after this delicious repast (which as usual mitigated somewhat the effects of the swill that was our official nutriment) we entered the cour. And we noticed at once a well-made figure standing conspicuously by itself, and poring with extraordinary intentness over the pages of a London Daily Mail which it was holding upside-down. The reader was culling choice bits of news of a highly sensational nature, and exclaiming from time to time: "You don't say! Look, the King of England is sick. Some news!... What? The queen too? Good ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... and curious, hardly breathed in her intentness, watching his face and waiting for ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... behind Francisco, as he was drawing with much intentness, and tapping him upon the shoulder, he said to him: "Put up your pencils and follow me, I can depend upon your integrity; I have pledged myself for it. Bring your note-book with you, and follow me; I will this day show you something ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... in," a smooth voice replied from the speaker. Alexander X. M. Alexander, President of Outsold Enterprises—a lean, dark, wolfish man in his early sixties—eyed Kennon with a flat predatory intentness that was oddly disquieting. His stare combined the analytical inspection of the pathologist, the probing curiosity of the psychiatrist, and the weighing appraisal of the butcher. Kennon's thoughts about Alexander's youth vanished that instant. Those eyes ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... friend of yours, is he not?" she asked carelessly. Her voice was very full and rich, but she spoke slowly, as though she were accustomed to weigh each word. It struck Malcolm that she listened with some intentness ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... with the utmost intentness to the statement of the unhappy schoolmaster. His drawn brows and the deep furrow between them showed that he needed no exhortation to concentrate all his attention upon a problem which, apart from the tremendous interests involved must appeal so directly ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... came to her definite guidance amid the dark perplexities of her life, been always untrue? has the light that seemed through him to dawn on her been therefore misleading and perverting? In almost agonised intentness she listens for some word, watches for some sign, which shall tell her it has not been so. She outrages all her womanly sensibilities by being present at the death-scene, in hope that something there, ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... as the hours crept slowly by. Now and then he lifted his head and listened with painful intentness. He felt stiff in every muscle, and yet he had a dread of making an effort to change his constrained position. He might lose control of his rigid limbs, and fall into ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... face and a red nose, a patch over one eye, and the other half drowned in moisture. He leans in a slightly stooping posture on a stick, forlorn and silent, addressing nobody but fixing his one moist eye on you with a certain intentness. He is a man who has been in decent circumstances at some former period of his life, but, falling into decay, he now haunts about the place, as a ghost haunts the spot where he was murdered. The word ragamuffin," he adds, with characteristic determination to be exact, "does not accurately express ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... do us part," the young nobleman acquiesced; and total defeat befell them. During the play of the balls, Mrs. Lovell threw a jealous intentness of observation upon all the strokes made by Algernon; saying nothing, but just looking at him when he did a successful thing. She winked at some quiet stately betting that went on between him and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was who apprehended in some measure the ordeal through which the mountaineer was passing—happily, a kindly observer. An elderly man, across the aisle from Zeke, regarded his fellow passenger with particular intentness. It seemed to him that, in some vague way, the clean-cut face was familiar. His curiosity thus aroused, he perceived the tenseness of expression and attitude, and shrewdly suspected the truth. It was with benevolent ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... eye fixed upon her with cold intentness, a strange feeling of superstitious dread suddenly crept over her from head to foot. Like a bird fascinated by a snake she came a little nearer, down the steps, towards him, her eyes, too, riveted on his face, that curious face of his, surrounded by the heavy perruque hiding ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... larger box. Clearly the usually neglected smaller box had become associated with the satisfaction of obtaining the banana. The same method was carried out on April 20. As I placed the boxes in position beneath the banana, Julius watched with unusual intentness, and when it came his turn to try to obtain the food by the use of the boxes, he began at once to work with the smaller box, but as on April 19, he soon abandoned it and turned to the other. While I was making note of this particular feature of his behavior, he suddenly seized ...
— The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes - A Study of Ideational Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... he put his hand down and gripped her arm. Her eloquence dried up before the intentness of his face, and she just ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the tea-tray. Dyce lay back in his chair, gazing vacantly, until his hostess offered him a cup of tea. As he bent forward to take it, his eyes for a moment dwelt with unusual intentness on the face and figure of Iris Woolstan. Then, as he sipped, he again grew absent-minded. Iris, too, was ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... lover entered Williamsburg, his hands hanging down, his eyes dreamy and fixed with hostile intentness on vacancy, his shoulders drooping and swaying from side to side like those of a drunken man,—he saw pass before him, rattling and joyous, a brilliant equipage, which, like a sleigh covered with bells, seemed to leave in its wake a long jocund ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... a while with angry intentness. The fact that she was the subject of his extraordinary discourse quickened at the first all her apprehensions. Had the matter been less important she would have been glad to look at herself in this strange position, and to savor, with as much detachment ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... altitudes. The gongs of the cable cars clanged more and more imperiously as the crowds surged in great numbers round grip and trailer. The night life of the town began to bestir itself, and little Rosy, from her conspicuous place, beamed with a bright intentness upon its motley spectacle, careless of where her smiles might fall. For her the immodest theatrical poster drooped in the windows of saloons, or caught a transient hold upon the hoardings of uncompleted buildings; brazen blare and gaudy ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... their tender souls. The whole scene is overhung with a close and enervating gloom; one apprehends somehow that the air swims with a heavy fragrance; and though one feels that the artist's hand failed to represent his thought, he was painting with a desperate intentness, and the dark quality of the conception contrives to struggle out. The art of it is great rather than good; it is the art of a man who realises the scene with a terrible insight, and in spite of a clumsy and smudgy handling, ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... world-wide fame in after years when her name was included with those of the other prominent astronomers of the world. At half past ten of the evening of October First, 1847, she made the discovery which first brought her name before the public. She was gazing through her glass with her usual quiet intentness when she was suddenly startled to perceive "an unknown comet, nearly vertical above Polaris, about five degrees." At first she could not believe her eyes; then hoping and doubting, scarcely daring to think that she had really made a discovery, she obtained its right ascension and declination. ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... curlews fluting among the stones of the Morte Bank, which must then have been almost awash; but I did not look that way, for the nearing view of the big seas breaking ahead of us fixed my mind with the first intentness of anxiety. Though near the top of the flood, the fairway could not be made out. What from the distance had appeared orderly ranks of surf had become a convulsive wilderness of foam, piled and dazzling, ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... I am sure he would have struck me. Struck me! And I have been nearer to M. S. for the past ten years than any man in London. And as I retreated from his temper, he reached forward to seize my arm. I could not help but feel impressed at his grim intentness. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... still clasped over her father's eyes, and McNally took the opportunity this afforded him to accompany his words with a meaning look that was insolent in its intentness. In spite of herself Katherine felt the blood mounting into her cheeks and forehead, and McNally, seeing the blush, made no effort to conceal his smile. Katherine did not flinch from his gaze, but returned it ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... its own echo; she had no need to emphasise it even by a smile. But she watched him as it sunk into his consciousness with an intentness it took all his strength to sustain. Suddenly her bearing and expression changed. The few remains of sweetness in her face vanished, and even the allurement which often lasts when the sweetness is gone, ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... were at table, that is, she was at the bar, seated indeed as a concession to her weakness, about to be tried for her life before those august judges, Geoff and old Soames, both of whom had their attention fixed on her with an intentness which the whole bench could scarcely equal. She held her head very high, but she did not dare to lift ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... us stay here," she said, and passing her arm through his she stared for a few moments with a singular intentness into the ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... intelligence,—of great human depth and richness, but special nevertheless. Of a particular order of truths you are an incomparable champion; but always you are the champion and on the field, always your genius has its visor down, and glares through a loop-hole with straitened intentness of vision. A particular sort of errors and falsities you can track with the scent of a blood-hound, and with a speed and bottom not surpassed, if equalled; but the Destinies have put the nose of your genius to the ground, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... goaded into it by the lash of Mrs. Walraven's waspish tongue. But he is not the man who married you, whoever that man may be. At least," cooling down suddenly, as he saw the full blue eyes fixed upon him with piercing intentness, ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... sentiment than an occupation; she existed in it, it made her heart beat, she felt emotions hitherto completely unknown to her; the slightest sound or movement kept her on the qui vive; she watched Pierrette with gloomy intentness. ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... her presence, observant of all she said and did, glad that her eyes should rest upon his familiar setting; and when they sat afterwards in his study and smoked, he saw that her eyes travelled with a curious intentness over everything—his books, his papers, his furniture. He had no private talk with her; but he was glad just to meet her glance and hear her low replies—glad too to find that, as the evening wore on, she seemed ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... nourished, badly housed—working under conditions little favourable to play of the fancy or intentness of the mind—then was the time, Gissing found, to take down Forster and ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... slightly; then threw it down again, and glanced at me out of the corners of her eyes; then hummed again, and finally became silent, and sat bending forward a little, her dark lustrous eyes gazing with strange intentness through the slight screen of foliage into the vacant space beyond. What to see? The poet has omitted to tell us to what the maiden's fancy lightly turns in spring. Doubtless it turns to thoughts ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... the matter, for she recalled the curious intentness of Weston's face as he sat in the firelight listening to Kinnaird's description of the house in question. Still, she was not prepared to display ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... spite of his very obvious exertions to the contrary, steal over his open, generous countenance; but the recruiting officer maintained an air of immovable coolness and composure. Twenty times did he detect the piercing looks of Katherine fastened on him, with an intentness that a less deliberative man might have had the vanity to misinterpret; but even this flattering testimonial of his power to attract failed to disturb his self-possession. It was in vain that Katherine endeavored to read his countenance, ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... likely it was to quiet his patient's restlessness, he placed the bright instrument beside him, and with it the piece of cloth with which he scoured it, and the leather for a polisher, and then sat thoughtfully down to watch the satisfied look of intentness in the boy's countenance as he held the copper horn so close to his face that he could breathe upon it without moving his head, and then go on polish, polish, slowly, till by degrees the movement of his hand became more slow, his eyes gradually closed, his head ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... when her expression was at its fiercest in intentness and concentration, she saw her daughter enter the room behind her, and for an instant a spasmodic frown darkened her already ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... century and a half after Marco's death a Genoese sea captain sat poring over one of the new printed books, which men were beginning to buy and to hand about among themselves. The book which he was reading was the Latin version of Marco Polo's travels. He was reading it with intentness and indeed with passion. As he read he made notes in the margin; on over seventy pages he made his notes.[40] From time to time he frowned and turned back and read again the tale of those great ports of Cathay and the gold-roofed palaces of Cipangu; and always he wondered ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... Adam listened with baffling intentness while his strange guest practiced strangely the telling of truth. He refuted nothing. He accepted everything that Kenny said with a corroborative, birdlike nod of politeness. With the megaphone upon the floor by Kenny's chair, he made no further pretense of deafness. He said ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... her, looking down into her face with a curious intentness. "You really believe that?" he said. "You can't conceive such a thing as this—utterly and inexcusably wrong as I admit it to be—you can't conceive it to have been done ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... table, and his keen old eyes snapped with the intentness of his thought. The hands he clasped on the table were those of age, and it was pathetically evident that he folded them to hide their ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... increased eagerness and intentness to the one resource she had—her Bible. The cry for happiness is so natural to the human heart, that it takes long oppression to stifle it. The cry was strong in Esther's young nature—strong and imperative; and ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... with great intentness for several moments. Then he rose and came forward. "Sit down, Judge," he said. "It's all right. ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... moved forward, she was suddenly conscious of the man who had been talking to Madame Selarne. He had drawn a little on one side and he was watching the young soldier with a curious intentness. She turned back to her nephew and touched him ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... at him (not at his work, for the child had made him promise not to do so) and began to marvel at his absorption, his intentness, the evident facility with which he worked: the little figure leaning over the great dish on the bare board of the table, with the oval opening of the window and the blue sky beyond it, began to grow sacred to ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee |
