The Project Gutenberg EBook of A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar;
Mrs. Temperly, by Henry James

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly

Author: Henry James

Release Date: May 17, 2008 [EBook #25500]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A LONDON LIFE ET AL. ***

Produced by David Edwards, Martin Pettit and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)

A LONDON LIFE

AND OTHER TALES

[Illustration: Publisher's logo]

A LONDON LIFE

THE PATAGONIA

THE LIAR

MRS. TEMPERLY

BY

HENRY JAMES

London
MACMILLAN AND CO.
AND NEW YORK
1889

COPYRIGHT 1889

_BY_

HENRY JAMES

CONTENTS

PAGE

A LONDON LIFE 1

THE PATAGONIA 159

THE LIAR 241

MRS. TEMPERLY 317

NOTE

The last of the following four Tales originally appeared under a
different name.

A LONDON LIFE

I

It was raining, apparently, but she didn't mind--she would put on stout
shoes and walk over to Plash. She was restless and so fidgety that it
was a pain; there were strange voices that frightened her--they threw
out the ugliest intimations--in the empty rooms at home. She would see
old Mrs. Berrington, whom she liked because she was so simple, and old
Lady Davenant, who was staying with her and who was interesting for
reasons with which simplicity had nothing to do. Then she would come
back to the children's tea--she liked even better the last half-hour in
the schoolroom, with the bread and butter, the candles and the red fire,
the little spasms of confidence of Miss Steet the nursery-governess, and
the society of Scratch and Parson (their nicknames would have made you
think they were dogs) her small, magnificent nephews, whose flesh was so
firm yet so soft and their eyes so charming when they listened to
stories. Plash was the dower-house and about a mile and a half, through
the park, from Mellows. It was not raining after all, though it had
been; there was only a grayness i