The Luck of the Vails. E. F. Benson

PART I

       Table of Contents

I.	The shadows dance
II.	The coming of the Luck
III.	The spell begins to work
IV.	The story of Mr. Francis
V.	A Point in Casuistry
VI.	The point solved—the meeting
VII.	The point in casuistry solves itself
VIII.	The second return to Vail
IX.	Cardiac
X.	Mr. Francis is better
XI.	Mr. Francis sees his doctor
XII.	The meeting in the wood
XIII.	Harry asks a question
XIV.	Lady Oxted's idea

PART II

       Table of Contents

XV.	Frost
XVI.	Fire
XVII.	A Bird of night
XVIII.	Rain
XIX.	Geoffrey leaves Vail
XX.	Dr. Armytage arrives
XXI.	Geoffrey meets the doctor
XXII.	Lady Oxted has a bad night
XXIII.	The meeting in Grosvenor Square
XXIV.	Jim goes to bed
XXV.	Mr. Francis sleeps
	Epilogue

THE LUCK OF THE VAILS

       Table of Contents

PART I

       Table of Contents

CHAPTER I

       Table of Contents

THE SHADOWS DANCE

       Table of Contents

      The short winter's day was drawing to its close, and twilight, the steel and silver twilight of a windless frost, falling in throbs of clear dusk over an ice-bound land. The sun, brilliant but cold as an electric lamp, had not in all the hours of its shining been of strength sufficient to melt the rime congealed during the night before, and each blade of grass on the lawns, each spray and sprig on the bare hedgerows, had remained a spear of crystals minute and innumerable. The roofs of house and cottage sparkled and glimmered as with a soft internal lustre in the light of the moon, which had risen an hour before sunset, and the stillness of great cold, a thing more palpably motionless than even the stricken noonday of the south, gripped all in its vice.