"Vacantly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... glance nervously at the horses. At last he jumped up in great excitement. "See that horse! There—that fellow just walking over the hill! By Jove; he's off. It's your big horse, Shaw; no it isn't, it's Jack's! Jack! Jack! hallo, Jack!" Jack thus invoked, jumped up and stared vacantly ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... whisky-flask, another supported the body, and a third the feet, of the half-hanged man, while the judge poured a few drops of spirits into his mouth. The cravat, which had not been taken off, had hindered the breaking of the neck. Bob at last opened his eyes, and gazed vacantly around him. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... the Gorgon's head before Polydectes's guests and turning them to stone wrought hardly more of a miracle than this calm announcement of Themistocles. Men stared at him vacantly, stunned by the tidings, then Adeimantus's ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... the danger of the straggling plunderer, when we shook hands and parted. As he left me, I turned to look after him. He still sat in that attitude that betokens deep dejection, his shoulders bent forward over the neck of his mule, while he gazed vacantly on the path. My heart sank at the spectacle, and, sad and dispirited, I rode at a lagging pace towards ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... had closed upon the slender, dimly seen figure. Then he went to his own rooms, and began briskly enough to move about between the mirrors and dressing room, windows and bed. But two or three times he stopped short, and found himself staring vacantly into space, all movement arrested, even thought arrested for whole long minutes at ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... stick, in quest of rusty nails; a merchant or two, at the door of the post office, together with an editor, and a miscellaneous politician, awaiting a dilatory mail; a few visages of retired sea captains at the window of an insurance office, looking out vacantly at the vacant street, blaspheming at the weather, and fretting at the dearth as well of public news as local gossip. What a treasure trove to these venerable quidnuncs, could they have guessed the secret which Hepzibah and Clifford were carrying ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... the Emperor Leopold rose from his arm-chair. The president and vice-president followed his example, and the other members of the council bowed and retired. The Margrave of Baden and Count von Starhemberg remained standing by the green table, while the emperor, who had crossed the room, now stood vacantly staring out of a window, drumming with his fingers on ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... the parapet of the balcony, Agnes looked vacantly into the black void beneath. Her thoughts reverted to the miserable man who had broken his pledged faith to her, and who had died in that house. Some change seemed to have come over her since her arrival in Venice; some new influence appeared to ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... and snappy as the day was, still there was something oppressive in the air that hung about the house of death. I looked at the lifeless windows. Staring vacantly, utterly expressionless of the swift-moving tragic drama that had been enacted behind them, failing to foreshadow what was yet to transpire here, they all at once brought forcibly to my mind Alexander Burke. Thus did his eyes hide, instead ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... no summons came. Anthony rose and went to the window again, for, in spite of himself, this waiting told upon him. The dog had gone back to his kennel and was lying with his nose just outside the opening. Anthony wondered vacantly to himself what door it was that he was guarding, and who lived in the rooms that looked out beside it. Then suddenly the door from the gallery opened and a ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... was behind it. His creative imagination presented him a vivid picture. The planks no longer seemed an obstacle to his vision and he saw the livid corpse of the dead woman, standing in grave-clothes, and staring vacantly at him, with lidless, shrunken eyes. The lower jaw was fallen, the upper lip drawn away from the uncovered teeth. He could make out a mottled pattern on the hollow cheeks—the maculations of decay. By some mysterious process his mind reverted for the ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... around and looked into the depths of his desk, staring vacantly. His rounded shoulders suggested grief. Orne settled his wallet more firmly, pressing on the outside of the buffalo coat. His face again sagged with sympathy. "Mr. Britt, it's only like what most of us do in this life—take smiles without testing 'em with ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... paused before the store and emitted her call, which flavoured of friendliness and the North, Greeley was vacantly looking into space, hugging his bony knees, and listening to an indignant fly buzzing on the dirty glass of the back window, protesting against any exit being barred ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... faltered; then, like some somnambulist suddenly interfered with, vacantly stared at his visitor, and ended by looking down on the deck. He maintained this posture so long, that Captain Delano, almost equally disconcerted, and involuntarily almost as rude, turned suddenly from him, walking forward to accost one of the Spanish seamen for the desired ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... exceedingly shabby blue suit with the collar turned up, with a muffler round his neck and large, bulging boots on his feet, comes and sits beside him. I perceive an earnest young lady, probably a typist in search of extra culture, look at him long and vacantly from over her copy of Emerson, and can almost see her mind gradually collecting conclusions about him. The attendant, too, as he asks for his paper, eyes him shrewdly and suspiciously, and waits till the three ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... he knew not why, and passed his hand over his high forehead. "Yes, I go there very often," he replied vacantly. "But you, mademoiselle—you—I have ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... "Nothing," replied Godolphin, vacantly; the words of Lucilla were weighing at his heart, like a prophecy working towards its fulfilment: "Come what may, you will never find the happiness you ask: ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... had been vacantly gray for over three thousand hours, was now a vertiginous swirl of color, the indescribable color of a collapsing hyperspatial field. No two observers ever saw it alike, and no imagination could vision the actuality. Trask found ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... with a bell, which he rang most energetically at the door, shortly after summoned the company, the auction being about to commence. On a table inside, a negress, of a little over middle age, was standing, vacantly gazing with grief-worn countenance on the crowd that now thronged to the table. On the floor stood two children, of about the ages of ten and thirteen respectively. The auctioneer, with the customary volubility of such men in America, ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... pair took a hansom to the Westminster coffee-house where Talboys had written to his wife to forward letters. There was no letter, and the young man showed very bitter disappointment. By and by George mechanically picked up a "Times" newspaper of a day or two before, and stared vacantly at the first page. He turned a sickly colour, and pointed to a line which ran: "On the 24th inst., at Ventnor-Isle of Wight, Helen Talboys, aged 22." He knew no more until he opened his eyes in a room in his friend's ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... himself cross-legged, with an ounce of shag tobacco and a box of matches laid out in front of him. In the dim light of the lamp I saw him sitting there, an old briar pipe between his lips, his eyes fixed vacantly upon the corner of the ceiling, the blue smoke curling up from him, silent, motionless, with the light shining upon his strong-set aquiline features. So he sat as I dropped off to sleep, and so he sat when a sudden ejaculation caused ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... vacantly. "I added up figures in the old warehouse," he said, in a high, thin voice. "I added up figures in the old warehouse, and when I went home at night I used to read plays. I added up figures in the old warehouse—Don't you remember Hotspur? I always ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... do now? Wander over the town, and gaze vacantly at one little object and another about the house fronts. One thing he will not look at; and that is the bright summer sea, all golden in the sun rays, flecked with gay white sails. From all which is bright and calm, and cheerful, his soul shrinks ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... Indians believe that by drinking the tonga they are brought into communication with the spirits of their forefathers. I once had an opportunity of observing an Indian under the influence of this drink. Shortly after having swallowed the beverage he fell into a heavy stupor: he sat with his eyes vacantly fixed on the ground, his mouth convulsively closed, and his nostrils dilated. In the course of about a quarter of an hour his eyes began to roll, foam issued from his half-opened lips, and his whole body was agitated by frightful convulsions. These violent symptoms ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... Grant, who watched them until the last glimpse of their light dresses was lost in the crowd, stood beside the second emigrant train vacantly glancing at the aliens who thronged about it. His bronzed face was a trifle weary, and his lips were set, but at last he straightened his shoulders with a little resolute ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... half-sisters and some others with whom he was not acquainted. He was certain that the one he wished to ascertain about was among them, but from the darkness of the advancing evening he was unable to distinguish her. He adopted a device for doing so. He hummed, as he looked vacantly around, the "Ishi-kawa,"[79] but instead of the original line, "My belt being taken," artfully, and in an arch tone, substituted the ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... certainly a serious one, and the young oarsman was decidedly sober in mind as he sat there, staring vacantly at the hurrying throng. ...
— The Young Oarsmen of Lakeview • Ralph Bonehill
... on the face of Mr. Garie—the brow was still knit, the eyes staring vacantly, and the marble whiteness of the face unbroken, save by a few gouts of blood near a small blue spot over the eye ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... length Frau Stein rose, and, with an urgent request that Randall should call on her and see her husband, bade him a cordial adieu. He stood there watching her out of sight with an unconscious smile of the most refined and subtle cynicism. Then he sat down and stared vacantly at the close-cropped grass on the opposite side of the path. By what handle should he lay hold of ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... swab the deck. It was only with difficulty that he could limp along, and every move caused him violent pain. He grew listless and dejected, and sat all day on the vessel's side, eagerly straining his eyes to catch any sight of land, or gazing vacantly into the weary sameness of ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... got within half a mile he broke into the "double," and never pulled up until he reached the round white circle upon the cliff. Poor old Tom! when I came up, his mood had changed, and he was standing with his hands in his pockets, gazing vacantly before him with ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... be seen to stare vacantly at the distance while they strained their ears to listen. As for Hugh himself he found it hard to believe his senses, for the absolute quiet and dead calm brooding all day long over that retired spot in the wilderness had been ...
— The Boy Scouts with the Motion Picture Players • Robert Shaler
... I cannot remember, nor how I got out of it; I only know that I suddenly found myself free, and walking away with my hand in Rosa's. I remember vacantly feeling the rough edge of the stitches on her flat kid fingers, and wondering what would ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... gone the room was intensely quiet. Mr. Prentiss sat by the fire, looking vacantly at his withered old hands on his knees, and his wife did not stir from the window. Her heavy, wide figure was immovable, but a veritable whirlwind of despair raged within her. She had supposed she knew all along how bad it was going to be, but it had been a foolish child's play, ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... vacantly repeating "In welfare and in woe," Like a dream from the heart of fever From her arms she ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... and dizzy, had recovered consciousness, and sat gazing vacantly around him, till the cries and yells without, the agonized face within, thrilled every nerve into feeling. Starting up, he rushed to the window, but recoiled at the awful sight. Here, he saw, there was no human power within reach or call that could interfere. ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... position. He looked at her gravely as though she had said, "What will you take for your hotel?" He looked past her into the vast stretches of the lobby and found there much for philosophic speculation. Thus absorbed, he asked vacantly, "Any luggage?" ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... was some time before she recovered her consciousness; she then slowly opened her eyes and fixed them wonderingly on me, but with no look of recognition in them. A long shiver passed over her, and she sighed heavily once or twice as she looked vacantly at the letter on the floor. I was terrified, and seized the letter, to gain, if possible, some explanation of the miserable state ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... had caught at seemed, as it fell upon the air, to impregnate it with some benumbing quality. The husband and wife looked dumbly, almost vacantly at one another, for what appeared a ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... actresses, and would always postpone a battle for a ball or a horse-race. About five years ago we were lying off Lisbon in a steamer in our way from Spain. The morning was fine, and we were upon deck staring vacantly about us, as is our custom, with our hands in our pockets, when a large barge with an awning, and manned by many rowers, came dashing through the water and touched the vessel's side. Some people came on board, of whom, however, we took but little notice, continuing with ...
— A Supplementary Chapter to the Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... bones of the fireside loiterer. Fred was father enough to turn with anxiety to the child. But his trembling nervous fingers and bemused eyes could make nothing of the "case" thus so suddenly brought before him. He turned fiercely and vacantly upon his wife and demanded why everything was suffered to go to ruin when Nettie was away. Mrs Fred, screaming and terrified, began to recriminate. The pallid figure of the child on the table gave a certain air of ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... shook his head, as he looked at Clifford. The latter gazed vacantly into space, as though reflecting, and finally said: "I ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Treasures of the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... bureau, a looking-glass, a few mantle-piece ornaments, and an occasional picture of the king or some member of the royal family. I have walked up and down these dismal chambers for hours at a time, staring at the daubs on the walls, and picking up little odds and ends of ornaments, and gazing vacantly at them, till I felt a numbness steal all over me, accompanied by a vague presentiment that I was imprisoned for life. The progress of time is a matter of no importance in Norway. To an American, ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... would have heard nothing more. She gazed vacantly at the opposite wall, a knee between her hands, and swaying slightly to and fro. Her face, bloated with drink, had become almost pale, and was the picture of long-settled grief. It was as if she were in fresh ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... sufficiently to assent, and hardly knew why he stood vacantly watching the doctor make his way down the steep road to the shore and the fisher's cottage. Then he threw off thoughts he had not examined, or even consciously entertained, and walked slowly and rather heavily ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... the Indian cake, a solitary householder at his solitary table, around which there would never be any faces but those of his dead dreams. Afterwards he pulled a chair up to an open window, and sat there, resting his elbows on the sill, staring out vacantly. The sun set, and the dusk deepened; the air was loud with birds; there were shouts of children in the distance; gradually these died away, and the stars came out. The wind was damp and sweet; over in the field pale shapes of mist wavered and changed like phantoms. ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... rows of dwarfish unhappy-looking shrubs, parched by the sea breezes, and are little frequented. We found here a solitary gentleman, who was sauntering up and down with his hands in his pockets, and a look at once stupid and disconsolate. Sometimes he paused, looked vacantly over the waters, whistled, yawned, and turned away to resume his solemn walk. On a trifling remark addressed to him by one of our party, he entered into conversation, with all the eagerness of a man, whose tongue had long been ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... lady, with an expressionless face, knitting a grey woollen sock. Why they should be spending their first morning—and a crisp, sunny morning, too—in Paris in the murky staleness of this awful little salon, Aristide could not imagine. As he entered, Mr. Ducksmith regarded him vacantly over the ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... musical critic, I suppose, inquired as to the origin of the meagre pheasant. Fox replied that it had been preserved in the back-yard. The dramatic critic mumbled unheard that some piece or other was off the bills of the Adelphi. I grinned vacantly. Afterward, under his breath, Fox put me up to a thing or two regarding the inner meaning of the new daily. Put by him, without any glamour of a moral purpose, the case seemed rather mean. The dingy smoking-room depressed ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... for the cooks, a docile and cheerful servant, with nothing in his look to recall the proud gentleman of the Tidewater. Donaldson sat on a log, contentedly smoking his pipe, while Ringan, whistling a strathspey, attended to the horses. Only Shalah stood aloof, his eyes fixed vacantly on the western sky, and his ear intent on the multitudinous voices ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... sat on the side of the bed, her chin resting on her clasped hands, her gaze fixed vacantly on the floor,—"Poor baby! Dead,—thank God!" was ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... shrunken frame wearily on his crutches, and leaned against a neighboring wall. He made no sound—simply gazed vacantly, with the timidity of some animal, at the door of the small kitchen aglow with the light from the grill. He made no effort to approach the door; only leaned against the gray wall and ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... with 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, ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... if he had a son to provide for," Captain Hagberd went on a little vacantly. "Girls, of course, don't require so much—h'm-h'm. They don't run away ...
— To-morrow • Joseph Conrad
... hands of these photographers, you may see stately pictures of papa and mamma, Johnny and Bub and Sis or a couple of country cousins, all smiling vacantly, and all disposed in studied and uncomfortable attitudes in their carriage, and all looming up in their awe-inspiring imbecility before the snubbed and diminished presentment of that majestic presence whose ministering spirits are the rainbows, whose voice is the thunder, whose awful front ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the vacant woods, 195 Spread round him where he stood. Whither have fled The hues of heaven that canopied his bower Of yesternight? The sounds that soothed his sleep, The mystery and the majesty of Earth, The joy, the exultation? His wan eyes 200 Gaze on the empty scene as vacantly As ocean's moon looks on the moon in heaven. The spirit of sweet human love has sent A vision to the sleep of him who spurned Her choicest gifts. He eagerly pursues 205 Beyond the realms of dream that fleeting shade; He overleaps the bounds. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... farmhouse in Western Michigan. The building was not old, measured by years, but it had never been painted or repaired, and its wooden face, prematurely lined with weather stains, looked as if it had borne the wear and tear of centuries. The windows, like lidless eyes, stared vacantly at the flat stubble fields and the few spindling trees, a dreary apology for an orchard. There were plenty of shingles off the roof to allow the inquisitive rain-drops to follow one another through the rafters, and thence to the floor of the room below, where the darkness was creeping out of the ...
— The Making of Mary • Jean Forsyth
... and physical made him think that all things were revolting and abominable. He groped his way to a seat, and sat there, staring vacantly at the garden, seeing only broad black patches amid the general gloom. Sad, dismal thoughts ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... End staring vacantly into shop windows, but her thoughts were far away. It was only when, towards one o'clock, she began to feel hungry the sudden idea came to her that ...
— The Beggar Man • Ruby Mildred Ayres
... court-room, "His Honor," with a startled glance at Judge Hardin, who is gazing vacantly at the two figures before him, says, "Which of these young ladies is ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... were wantonly murdered in their houses by English soldiers, their brains dashed out, and their bodies hacked and stabbed. Women in childbirth were not exempt from the brutal fury of the flower of the British army; and an idiot boy was deliberately shot as he sat on a fence, vacantly staring at the passing rout. All, or most of the towns in the neighborhood of Boston contributed their able-bodied men to the American force during the day; but there was never more than a few hundred together at one time, fresh relays ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... agitate our limbs over the landscape. But the drowsiness of autumn is a lethargy in the true sense of that word—a forgetfulness. A forgetfulness of past discontents and future joys; a forgetfulness of toil that is gone and leisure to come; a mere breathing existence in which one stands vacantly eyeing the human scene, living in a gentle simmer of the faculties like a boiling kettle when ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... the birds advance and retire and pursue each other, and after this exhibition they were put back into their baskets and covered with hay. So you are the Heeler? Joseph asked. The man grinned vacantly, and the woman answered for him. There is none like him in this country for fixing a pair of spurs, for cutting the tail and wings and shortening the hackle and the rump feathers. You see, young Master, the comb is cut close ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... and I went ben the house. In another two minutes we were a group of four in the kitchen, staring vacantly. Death could not have startled us more, tapping thrice that quiet ...
— A Window in Thrums • J. M. Barrie
... uncouthly and grasped the beech leaves with his hands, and then lay still. Ab stood there weaponless, a creature wandering of mind. His yellow ax had parted from his hand, sunk deeply into the skull of Oak, and he looked upon it curiously and vacantly. He was not sane. He stepped forward and pulled the ax away and lifted it to a level with his eyes and went to where the sunlight shone. The ax was not yellow any more. Meanwhile a girl was flitting toward her home and the shadows of the ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... But the line of Austria ends with the utmost limit of caricature in the face of Charles the Bewitched! Carreno has given us an admirable portrait of this unfortunate,—the forehead caved in like the hat of a drunkard, the red-lidded eyes staring vacantly, a long, thin nose absurd as a Carnival disguise, an enormous mouth which he could not shut, the under-jaw projected so prodigiously,—a face incapable of any emotion but fear. And yet in gazing at this idiotic mask you are reminded of another face you have somewhere seen, and are ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... his departure with a few benign and well-chosen words of farewell, accompanied by the assurance that he would "make it his special purpose to commend," and so on. His nephew, Herbert Cressey, the lily-clad messenger, stopped at the station to shake hands and grin rather vacantly, and adjure Banneker, whom he addressed as "old chap," to be sure and look him up in the East; he'd be glad to see him any time. Banneker believed that he meant it. He promised to do so, though without particular interest. With the others departed Miss Camilla Van Arsdale's two emergency guests, ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... beholding Dilly Danforth bending over a wash-tub filled to the brim with smoking linen, just out of a boiling suds. Darting one fiery glance toward her forceless husband, sitting humped up over the stove, his head supported on his hands, she exclaimed, "What does this mean?" Mr. Pimble looked up vacantly; Peggy turned round from her occupation of washing the dinner dishes, and Dilly kept to her wash-tub. No one seemed to understand to whom the stately mistress addressed her brief interrogatory. "Have you all lost your tongues?" at length exclaimed Mrs. Pimble, in a louder tone; and, ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... or we crossed o a shaky bridge some of its arms or inlets. After a while we began to pass dilapidated houses by the roadside. One little frame house I remembered particularly; the door was off the hinges and leaned against the jams, the windows had but a few panes left, which glared vacantly. The yard and little garden spot were overrun with a heavy growth of timothy, and the fences had all long since gone to decay. At the head of the lake a large stone building projected from the steep bank and extended over the road. A little beyond, the valley ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... little while she was silent—vacantly contemplating the bare floor. There had been no revelation. She was not taken unaware. She had watched his purpose form. Long before, she had perceived the issue approaching, and had bravely met it. But it was all now definite and near. ...
— The Mother • Norman Duncan
... the table, and at the stove, and at the upturned frying pans. She watched two great horseflies buzzing against a window-pane, and when she could endure that no longer, she went into the front room and stared vacantly around at the bare walls. When she saw her picture again, nailed fast beside the kitchen door, her face lost a little of its frozen blankness—enough so that her lips quivered until she bit them ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... said Angela to Mr. Fraser. "God give me strength to bear it," she went on, beneath her breath. She was still standing staring vacantly towards the door, pale, and her bosom heaving. The intensity of her anxiety had to some extent communicated itself to Mr. Fraser, for there are few things so catching as anxiety, except enthusiasm; he, too, had risen, and was standing in an attitude ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... and the saloon was too utterly dark and dismal at that hour to tempt the bravest of them. Second thoughts reminded me of that certainty, and I looked again. The figure raised its head from its drooping posture, and gazed vacantly, out of a pair of dim blue eyes, at me. The eyes were the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... After pointing to almost every object, one after the other, even to the buttons on our coats, and saying their favourite word in as many intonations as possible, they would then use it in a neuter sense, and vacantly repeat "yammerschooner." After yammerschoonering for any article very eagerly, they would by a simple artifice point to their young women or little children, as much as to say, "If you will not give it me, surely you will to ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... pigtails. It seemed to me then that they were all smiling, and—for they had been there some weeks—that most of them looked round and healthy. But I soon found that some were still too languid to play. One lying in a long chair on the terrace at the back of the house and gazing vacantly out at the beautiful woods was tubercular, the victim of months in a damp cellar. Another, although so excessively cheerful that I suspect she was not "all there" was also confined to a long chair, with a hip affection of some sort, but she was much petted, and surrounded by all the little ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... smoking and olent Rio, puddings of Indian, cakes composed of one third butter, one third flour, one third saleratus, and the crisping bean, surmounted by crimped pork, showed that a Providence Yankee might well find an appropriate entertainment. But again the eyes of Roseton looked vacantly on, and again, amid strains of music, the walls of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the centre light of her little domain, fitted with a charming shade of Japanese silk, and removing her coat (purchased locally at a price which she had considered preposterous) she stood gazing vacantly into the little square mirror above the mantelpiece behind the china clock. It reflected the figure of a slim girl wearing a blue serge skirt, a blue jersey coat and a grey velour hat—a very pretty girl indeed, her colour heightened by ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... passed by the postern around the base of the castle, and was descending the mountain-side, across the sloping meadows, with rapid steps, and probably for the first time since their acquaintance her eye followed his manly figure vacantly and ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... bow. Then a bewildered, struggling look came into his face, then a helpless look, and he stood staring vacantly, like a somnambulist, at the waiting audience. The moments of painful suspense went by, and he still stood as if struck down. I saw how it was; he had ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... before him upon the desk, open. The paper was smooth and white, and the newly-mended pens lay carefully by the inkstand. But the merchant did not write. He had not written that day. His white, bony hand rested upon the port-folio, and the long fingers drummed upon it at intervals, while his eyes half-vacantly wandered out into the store and saw the long shrouds drawn over the goods. Occasionally a slight sigh of weariness escaped him. But he did not seem to care to distract his mind from its gloomy intentness; for the morning paper lay beside him ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... face that struck the young company with a frank dismay. His whole bearing was transformed and betrayed him smitten with emotions for which he found no speech. Had it made him ill, they asked, going down by that dreadful rope? No, he was not ill at all. But when they vacantly proposed to resume the signing he exclaimed almost with vehemence that he had names enough, and left them, to return the ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... the gold-sack mystery again, with strong interest. Soon the conversation began to suffer breaks—interruptions caused by absorbed thinkings. The breaks grew more and more frequent. At last Richards lost himself wholly in thought. He sat long, gazing vacantly at the floor, and by-and-by he began to punctuate his thoughts with little nervous movements of his hands that seemed to indicate vexation. Meantime his wife too had relapsed into a thoughtful silence, and her movements were beginning to show a troubled discomfort. Finally ...
— The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg • Mark Twain
... came off from the transport with a picket to collect deserters—he had to go. She sobbed and wailed, imploring the sergeant in vain; and she clung to her poor senseless husband as though she would never leave him. He hardly knew her; he laughed vacantly in her face when with streaming eyes she begged him to speak her name; then they took him away from her. As the tug steamed out I heard ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... her own berth. Jack busied himself in a locker near this berth, until an opportunity occurred to touch Rose, unseen by her aunt or Biddy. The poor heart-stricken girl raised her face, from which all the colour had departed, and looked almost vacantly at Jack, as if to ask an explanation. Hope is truly, by a most benevolent provision of Providence, one of the very last blessings to abandon us. It is probable that we are thus gifted, in order to encourage us ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... chiefly furnished, as far as I can see, with scrubbing brushes. And when the human race has progressed to the stage where seventeen thousand chairs are manufactured on every day except Sunday—" he paused. Rose and Key regarded him vacantly. "Will you tell me," went on Peter, "why you choose to rest yourselves on articles, intended for the transportation of water from one place ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... two persons' footsteps coming up the stairs. She fixed her eyes on the door... the steps drew nearer. The door opened and Nejdanov, supported under the arm by Pavel, appeared in the doorway. He was deadly pale, without a cap, his dishevelled hair hung in wet tufts over his forehead, he stared vacantly straight in front of him. Pavel helped him across the room (Nejdanov's legs were weak and shaky) and made him sit down ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... She feared that she was in another world. But as she raised her hand to her head, as if to clear away the mist of uncertainty, a sparkle from the diamond caught her eye. For a long time she stared vacantly at it, with the weak, vague feeling that in some sense it might be a clew. Its faint lustre was like the glimmer of a star through a rift in the clouds to a lost traveller. Its familiar light and position remind him of home, and by its ray he guesses in what direction to move; so ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... did not heed his ironical remarks; she sat gazing vacantly into space, but the look on her face was not ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... answer, but let his eyes rove vacantly over the room, and since his head was turned the other way, Haw-Haw Langley allowed a sneer to twist at his lips ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... at last, and said not another word, but sat rigid and mute while the woman lay on the floor at his feet. The horror which that word had caused for some time overmastered him, and he sat staring vacantly. But the horror was not against the woman who had called it up, and who lay prostrate before him. She could not have been personally abhorrent, for in a few minutes, with a start, he noticed her once more, and his face was overspread by an anguish of pity and sympathy. ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... Paul gazed vacantly from the zenith to the nadir, and from west to east, when suddenly his eyes fell on the Abbot of Antinoe. His face grew pale with a holy terror, and his eyeballs ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... Franks resident here is too small to call for a place of general recreation, and the Turk never feels a want of this kind. The most he does is to saunter slowly from the bath to the coffee-house, and there to kill his time with the help of a pipe and a cup of coffee, staring vacantly on the ground before him. Although the coffee- houses are more frequented than any other buildings in the East, they are often miserable sheds, being all small, and generally ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... shooting-jacket and a big fur cap, that he generally only wore on his own grounds, and he was so pale that his red moustaches (which, as a rule, hardly showed against his ruddy face) looked the color of flame. His eyes were haggard and stared vacantly or ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... Duncan Lisle, still gazing vacantly into the varying flames, performed anew the journey, not from Kennons to Troy on the Hudson, but from the latter city, via New York, back to his Virginian plantation. His sister and Ellice Linwood were his companions, for it had been arranged that, though Ellice's ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... of bed and began to dress, her nervous hands fumbling at the buttons on her clothes. Her eyes, deeper and shadowed in dark rings, stared vacantly at the white canvas before her. Lawrence was talking again, and she listened. Presently he started across the room and bumped into a chair. The incident was one which had become long familiar to her, and ordinarily she would have thought nothing of it, but this morning she flushed with sudden ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... had laid the cold hand of the corpse back on its breast—and she stood gazing vacantly ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... old man calculated that even with the utmost economy Bruce must have been two days without food. He looked pinched and shrivelled as he stared vacantly at the mouth of the canyon into which Bruce ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... belonging to a very different class, formed a part of the scene, though appearing only on its outskirts. A canal ran along at the rear of the Dust-heap, and on the banks of its opposite side slowly wandered by—with hands clasped and hanging down in front of him, and eyes bent vacantly upon his hands—the forlorn figure of a man, in a very shabby great-coat, which had evidently once belonged to one in the position of a gentleman. And to a gentleman it still belonged—but in what a position! A scholar, ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various
... was deeply pained; and impatient, and angry with himself, he also rose and paced the room with hurried steps. At length he stopped, and putting one hand upon the shoulder of his brother, who stood gazing vacantly from the window, pointed with the other towards that part of the apartment in which both their parents had breathed ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... to have lost her mind from terror. She looked vacantly at the new arrivals, as if they had been there all their lives. At last she seemed to realize what ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... cool night air, and professed himself revived thereby. Then with the seaman's instinct his eyes wandered to the darkling vault of heaven, spangled already with a myriad golden points of light. Awhile he scanned it idly, vacantly; then, his attention became sharply fixed. He looked round and up at Captain Blood, who ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... second flask stood there where Garry had left it, upon a table, and while he was loosening the latter's clothing Steve shook it, experimentally, and found it empty. He swung it aloft and drove it through a window. The crash of shivered glass made the other stir. He opened his eyes and stared vacantly up ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... was out of the way, Charles repeated: "I'm going this afternoon." His listless eyes were gazing vacantly at the carved rosewood ceiling. His hands—the hands of a corpse—looked horribly like sheathed, crumpled claws in the gold silk cuffs of his dark-blue dressing gown. His nose, protruding from his sunken cheeks, seemed not like a huge ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... that two weeks of Radville had driven Duncan to desperation; on the morning of the fifteenth day he wakened in his room at Miss Carpenter's and lay for a time abed staring vacantly at the gaudily papered ceiling, not through laziness remaining on his back, but through sheer inertia. The prospect of rising to ramble through another purposeless, empty day appalled his imagination; it had ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... the young man were alone, there was a silence of some moments, during which he stood at the fire, looking rather vacantly at the dying embers, whilst her ladyship busied herself with the ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... hand holding the staff, the other groping out vacantly in front of him, as though to touch the prisoners. Behind him, the dull blue light cast its vague glow. Stern, seeing his bald and shaking head, lean, corded hand, and trembling body wrapped in its mantle of coarse brown stuff, could not finish ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... air,—"Begin your incantations at once! Send me hence, no matter where, so long as I am for a while escaped from this den of a world, this dungeon with one small window through which, with the death rattle in our throats, we stare vacantly at the blank unmeaning honor of the Universe! Prove to me that the Soul exists —ye gods! Prove it! and if mine can find its way straight to the mainspring of this revolving Creation, it shall cling to the accused wheels and stop them, that they ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... from its pillow on the breast of the beloved corpse and stared vacantly at the royal speaker. His haggard face, tangled hair, and wild eyes gave him the appearance of one who had long wandered in a labyrinth of frightful visions from which there was ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... they reached the main street, where a great number of people had collected, when they were suddenly joined by Bousquier, who exhibited a strange demeanor, now laughing, now shaking his head, now gazing vacantly before him. Colard cast a shy, sidelong glance at him, and the shopkeeper, who thought of nothing but the murder and saw in all this the manifestations of a bad conscience, observed the man keenly. Those around them, too, became watchful, and it at once struck everybody that ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... appear in the light of his room with her calm restored, with nothing but some disorder of her hair and dress to betoken her troubles. Even the child in her arms, worn out with weeping perhaps, had fallen asleep. He stared at the pair of them vacantly. His lamp, his music, all the apparatus of his gentle and decorous existence were as he had left them; their familiar and prosaic quality made his adventure appear ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... Mavis's attention. The girl kept her lips open as she ate, displaying bloodless gums in which were stuck irregular decayed teeth; she exhibited the varying processes of mastication, the while her boiled eyes stared vacantly before her. She compelled Mavis's attention, with the result that the latter had no further use for the food on her plate. She even refused rice pudding, which, although burned, might ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... showing a pale countenance bedewed with tears, and totally devoid of any expression which he could connect with a consciousness of his presence. For a moment she stared vacantly at him, while he, with almost equal vacancy, regarded her. Then a thrill of surprise shook him. A sudden light of knowledge leaped up in ...
— The Mission Of Mr. Eustace Greyne - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... the observant whenever it appears, Mrs. Agar indicated the writing-table with open blotter and inkstand. Instantly, but too late, she regretted having done so, for a volume playfully called "Every Man his own Lawyer" lay confessed beside the writing-case, and its home on the bookshelf stared vacantly at them. ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... the window gazing vacantly at the scene below. All the morning I had sat there with that empty feeling in my soul. From time to time my mother spoke to me, but I answered without turning my head. Since my illness I seemed to have lost all interest in life, and this, although ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... at a clock which said a quarter past ten. The winter sunshine slanted now on roof and pane, flooding the western side of the shabby boulevard, dappling the snow with yellow patches. He had stopped in the chilly shadow of a gateway and was looking vacantly about. He saw the sunshine across the street and shivered where he was, and yet he did not leave the shadow. He stood and watched the sparrows taking bold little baths in the puddles of melted snow water. They seemed to enjoy the sunshine, but it was cold in the shade, cold and damp ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... entirely dropped; each person gazes vacantly through the window in front of him, and everybody thinks that his opposite neighbour is staring at him. If one man gets out at Shoe-lane, and another at the corner of Farringdon-street, the little old gentleman grumbles, and suggests to the latter, that if he had got out at Shoe-lane ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... smoking a pipe. He wore a tattered old brown felt hat and overalls, and his long gray hair and beard were tangled and unkempt. I passed the time of day and he answered me civilly enough, although vacantly; and I saw that his eye had the red film of the drunkard. When I asked him for Quirk, the schoolmaster, who used to live thereabout he gave a ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... one by one, they had become a part of my imagination, they held me by a hundred threads of far-reaching association. And suddenly I had expected to create this kind of intense personal tie between myself and a roomful of new cold alien presences—things staring at me vacantly from the depths of unknown pasts! Can you fancy a more preposterous hope? Why, my other things, my own things, had wooed me as passionately as I wooed them: there was a certain little bronze, a little Venus ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... blankets under their shelter-tent; poor little Grigg lay asleep at the table, his tired, ugly head resting among the unwashed tin plates; Speed sprawled in his chair, smoking a short pipe; Byram sat all hunched up, his head sunk, eyes vacantly following the movements of two men who were washing dishes in ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... Miss Wren, "you have a sort of an idea in your noddle sometimes!" Then, resting one arm upon the elbow of her chair, resting her chin upon that hand, and looking vacantly before her, she said in a changed tone: "Talking of ideas, my Lizzie, I wonder how it happens that when I am working here all alone in the summer-time, I smell flowers. This is not a flowery neighborhood. It's anything but that. And yet as I sit at ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... of the men stooped over her a moaning sound drew their attention to the stair, and there, bent and tottering slowly down, was old Huang Chow, his eyes peering through the owl-like glasses vacantly across the room to where his ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... rested vacantly on the treasure that the other valued so highly, but his hand seized eagerly the open letter which was laid on the table for his perusal. The reader will at once understand that it was in the handwriting ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... been heard by Pao-y, he gazed vacantly for some time, feeling the while very unhappy; but raising himself impetuously: "Well!" he exclaimed, "if you don't notice me, all right, I too will go to sleep," and as he spoke he got up, and, descending from the couch, he betook himself to his own bed and went to ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... step, and covered his face with his hands. For a full minute there was absolute silence. Rathbawne had returned to the table, and, with his fore-arms across the back of a chair, and one foot on the lower cross-bar, was staring vacantly at his autographs, his hands moulding and remoulding each other into an infinity of forms. Natalie was at the window, her face in the crevice between the curtains. The same impulse had prompted both father ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... gossip. But she had far less confidence in Jacques Monnier's wisdom, and thought it not inexpedient to go downstairs, after the doctor's departure, and give her customer a word of exhortation. He was seated at the table as before, twirling the glass in his fingers, and gazing vacantly out ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... refugees have told me that she has always administered the vast estate with liberal kindness to all. And now you will tell me of her?" The tremulous hand of Wieniawski raised a brimming glass of brandy to his lips. He stared about vacantly when Hawke said: ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... home when she came into their little apartment. The parrot greeted her, flapping his brilliant wings and shrieking from his perch; the goldfish goggled his eyes and swam 'round and 'round. She stood still in the centre of her room looking vacantly about her. An immense, overwhelming sense of loneliness came over her; she turned as the rush of tears blinded her and flung herself full length among the pillows of ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... lieutenant's dying friend behind him; and there before him, right against the wall, lay the sailor Ralling, that fine chap from Maryland who was one of the men who had won the gig-race at Newport News; now he stared vacantly into space, his mouth covered with blood and foam. "Shot in the lung!" thought Meade, hurrying on and trying, oh so hard, not ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... ride out to sea on—the hair blown back (so she envisaged it, and the breeze stirred slightly among the orange trees) and she herself was emerging from silver spray—when she saw Jacob. He was standing in the Square with a book under his arm looking vacantly about him. That he was heavily built and might become stout in time was ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... it were, coming novel or extraordinary things. But he encountered a surprise today. With the words 'Off with your hats, gentlemen! a genius,' Eusebius laid down a piece of music. We were not allowed to see the title-page. I turned over the music vacantly; the veiled enjoyment of music which one does not hear has something magical in it. And besides this, it seems that every composer has something different in the note forms. Beethoven looks differently from Mozart on paper; the difference ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... officer vacantly, trying hard to reply, but, as he afterwards said to Roberts, if it had been to save his life he could ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... clutched the window-sill. One dry, agonized sob racked her; and then she sat on the floor, to stare vacantly at the dingy ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... round my neck, and gave me just such a kiss as she might have given to her own boy. I had barely time to get down again before the coach started, and I could hardly see the family for the handkerchiefs they waved. It was gone in a minute. The Orfling and I stood looking vacantly at each other in the middle of the road, and then shook hands and said good-bye; she going back, I suppose, to St. Luke's workhouse, as I went to begin my weary day at Murdstone ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... the centre, to form an aqueduct, like the streets of old Sychar. The inhabitants are in happy ignorance of the outside world. They pass the day without a thought of work, standing on the Plaza, or in front of some public office, staring vacantly into space, or gossiping. A cockfight will soonest rouse them from their lethargy. They seem to have no purpose in life but to keep warm under their ponchos and to eat when they are hungry. Guaranda is a healthy locality, lying in a deep valley on the west bank ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... up at her vacantly. It was some time before he answered. Then his answer showed vagueness; for what with the howl of the wind and the eternal presence in the closet of his soul of the skeleton of despair, his mind had become a little ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... to whom such scenes were not new, followed his advice; but Ivan walked up and down before the tent. A huge fire had been made, which was amply fed by the wood of the river bank, and it blazed on high, showing in bold relief the features of the scene. Ivan gazed vacantly at everything; but he saw not the dark and glancing river—he saw not the bleak plain of snow—his eyes looked not on the romantic picture of the tent and its bivouac-fire: his thoughts were on one thing ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... heavy lids, and surveyed the room vacantly. Her glance passed over the medical man as if he were not within the range of her vision. She gazed at Lafe only, with but a faint glimmer of recognition, then on to Peg wavered the ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... Mattie's step so that Roger did not hear her enter the room. Preoccupied and absorbed, he was staring vacantly out of the window, when a strong, capable hand swooped down beside him, gathering up the book and ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... was bonny and good to look upon, this king of Yonder Kingdom,—tall and straight, thin-lipped and white and tawny. So, again, this last day, she strove to burn life into his singularly sodden clay,—to put his icy soul aflame wherewith to warm her own, to set his senses singing. Vacantly he heard her winged words, staring and curling his long mustaches with ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... corruption was working within him in parallel lines, like two channels that will spread sooner or later in flood time and make one. That corruption was eating into Lucien's soul, as he leaned back in his corner, staring vacantly at the curtain, one arm resting on the crimson velvet cushion, and his hand drooping over the edge. He felt the fascination of the life that was offered to him, of the gleams of light among its clouds; and this so much the more keenly because it shone out like a blaze of fireworks against ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... shadow on the floor. But the glow was all that was cheerful. To-morrow, when the hard daylight should jeer away the screening shadows, it would unbare a desolate, shabby home. She knew; struck with the white leprosy of poverty; the blank walls, the faded hangings, the old stone house itself, looking vacantly out on the fields with a pitiful significance of loss. Upon the mantel-shelf there was a small marble figure, one of the Dancing Graces: the other two were gone, gone in pledge. This one was left, twirling her foot, and stretching ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... for luck; do yer 'ear?" Before Charles could stop her she had seized the whisky that had just been served. "That's my whisky," exclaimed Journeyman. He made a rapid movement, but was too late. Sarah had drained the glass and stood vacantly looking into space. Journeyman seemed so disconcerted at the loss of his whisky that every ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... judicially, but she seemed to take in only what Mr. Peck had thought of the dance and supper; at the end she said, rather vacantly, "What nonsense!" ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... them fall slowly and looked vacantly with her brows drawn—as if waiting for the return of some sharp pain—in the direction of Shorne Mills. The lights had gone out; so also had died the light ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... animal is somewhat dull and somewhat mad. He will at times miss his signals and stare vacantly when he might well act, while at other times he will run off into convulsions and raise a dust in his own brain to no purpose. These imperfections are so human that we should hardly recognise ourselves if we could shake them off altogether. Not to retain ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... was to accompany it to its destination. Thompson said no more, but stood there in the doorway with McNab's rum under his arm. He did not stir, nor did he seem to notice the "good-bye" that came down the winding trail through the pines, but remained there stolid and immovable, gazing vacantly at the writing-paper on the rough table. Suddenly he straightened himself up to his full height, and taking the bottle from under his arm, held it out at arm's length and apostrophized it in terms which Mr. McNab would have regarded as a personal insult, and which the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... find a shelter, and, in the aimless way of the night traveller, pushed on and on in the quest of it. The truth is his mind was on Lemnos, and a dark-eyed, white-armed dame spinning in the evening by the threshold. His eyes roamed among the oaktrees, but vacantly and idly, and many a mossy corner was passed unheeded. He forgot his ill temper, and hummed cheerfully the song his reapers sang in the barley-fields below his orchard. It was a song of seamen turned husbandmen, for the gods it called on were the ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... staring vacantly at the half-empty shelves, and all but shivering in the damp room. There was no heater in the store at any season, and the one in the office, if used, emitted spurts of smoke through every aperture except the chimney. It had not been cleaned since sometime during winter, and ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... the girl, looking vacantly into the fire, and then passed her hand over her eyes and ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... his news- paper, might have passed them, if his horse had not shied and snorted. He pulled the cart crossways, and held down his whip. "Hallo! Where are YOU going to?"—Pigling Bland stared at him vacantly. ...
— A Collection of Beatrix Potter Stories • Beatrix Potter
... began aloud, when he was quite gone, her eyes staring vacantly down the scintillating rails to where they seemed to meet in one glittering point far away in the desert. "Item—" But whatever the item was, she jotted it down silently in that mental memorandum book which was one of her ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... memorable day in July on which I must touch for a moment. It was evening. I was returning with Tom to Lizard Town from Dead Man's Rock, where we had been basking all the sunny afternoon, Tom reading, and I simply staring vacantly into the heavens and wondering when the time would come that should set me free to unravel the mystery of this ill-omened spot. Finally, after taking our fill of idleness, we bathed as the sun was setting; and I remember wondering, as I dived off the black ledge, ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... a minute or two, she slowly opened her eyes, stared about her vacantly for a little, and finally said: "Ah, yes, I remember! I was to tell you something, Senor. Have you learned what ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... instinctive idea was to strike fiercely at the savage-looking intruder, but fortunately he held his hand and bent over his companion wonderingly, and hardly able to believe what he saw; for as the dog nuzzled about Nic's face, the young man, partly aroused by the shaking, opened his eyes, looked vacantly at the brute for some moments, and then, as if his intellectual powers were returning, he smiled, the animal stopping short and staring ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... Courant made a movement as if to follow her, then stopped, his face rived with lines and red with rage. He was shaken by what to her was entirely inexplicable anger, and in her amazement she stared vacantly at him. ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... again, and Pentuere comes out staggering. He looks vacantly round, and tries to walk away; but his legs refuse to carry him, and, after a stumble or two, he falls in a heap and lies in the road, a pitiful sight. The passers-by jeer and laugh at him as he lies ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Ancient Egypt • James Baikie
... with relief. Her hands went up to remove her hat, which she placed on a chair in a corner of the hellish laboratory. She removed her light coat and arranged her hair with skilled fingers. But even as she moved around the room of the long table her eyes stared vacantly into space. She was as much a puppet of Caleb Barter as were Stanley, Morton and Cleve. But, mercifully, she did ...
— The Mind Master • Arthur J. Burks |
