"Mirthless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... humiliating, Gunga Dass, indeed, when he had banked the embers of his fire with sand, was at some pains to throw half a cupful of fetid water over my head, an attention for which I could have fallen on my knees and thanked him, but he was laughing all the while in the same mirthless, wheezy key that greeted me on my first attempt to force the shoals. And so, in a semi-comatose condition, I lay till noon. Then, being only a man after all, I felt hungry, and intimated as much to Gunga Dass, whom I had begun to regard as my natural protector. Following the impulse ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... and nerve returned, and he stood. He turned even, and made as if he would re-ascend the staircase. But he had no sooner thrust his head into it, and paused an instant to listen ere he ventured, than a faint echo of the same mirthless laughter reached him, and he turned shuddering, and fled—fled out of the room, out of the house, out of the light, to the same spot under the trees whence he had started with so bold a ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... the new parks in Richmond Borough, and this enormous commission down here among the snakes and jungles. Well—God bless you. You're twenty-five and busy. I'm forty-five and"—he looked drearily into the younger man's eyes—"burnt out," he said with his mirthless laugh—"and still drenching the embers with the same stuff that set 'em ablaze.... Good-bye, Garry. Your boat's alongside. ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... laughed—that same peculiar mirthless little laugh—when he drove past her and splashed her with mud on the road. "It never seems to occur to you that I may have some little wants of my own, Dan," she said; "you are ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... yelled hoarse approval; the children, not understanding, laughed in mirthless glee; the men, with loud curses, showed their appreciation of ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... good mind," said Plummer, "to do it myself!" He uttered a short, mirthless laugh. "Well, anyway," he said recklessly, "I'll jolly well go downstairs and have ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... angered him for the moment only. He was suddenly tired, and his foot did ache outrageously. He gave way to the pain of it, and limped heavily. As he neared the house, however, his face did relax into a mirthless smile. There were tracks under the kitchen window. She had hoped to get in that way and had found the window fastened. And all the time there was the door, ready for a confident hand. But the ill chance of it amused him for ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... my breast, For mirthless laughter, and I laughed; In mine the phantom's cold hand pressed A cup, and in self's spite I quaffed. It clung like slime; 'twas black like ink: Death is less ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... she'd send me over to know if you'd accept a jar of her fresh pickle-lily, and mebbe I could find out about your clothes. The pickle-lily's on the kitchen table. I left it when I came through. It's good, but there ain't any love in it." And Miranda laughed a hard mirthless laugh, and then settled ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... usual dry, mirthless laugh, he greeted Dan with forced effusiveness, urging him to take a chair, declaring that he hardly knew him, that he thought he was at Gordon's Mills fishing. Then he entered at once into a glowing description of the splendid prayer meeting they had held ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... face in the clock could only speak as well as goggle its eyes!" he said, with a mirthless smile. "We should learn something then. What's the idea of it all—the rolling eyes, the moon, the stars, and a verse as lugubrious as a Presbyterian sermon on infant damnation. The whole ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... its mirthless accents rallied him. "Have you no welcome for me?—you, who have been permitted to live the quarter of a century without making my acquaintance? Surely, now, it's high time we were learning something of one another, ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... slow music," began Gertie. "It's pathetic. I came to Chicago from Beloit, Wisconsin, because I thought that little town was a lonesome hole for a vivacious creature like me. Lonesome! Listen while I laugh a low mirthless laugh. I didn't know anything about the three-ply, double-barreled, extra heavy brand of lonesomeness that a big town like this can deal out. Talk about your desert wastes! They're sociable and ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... had talked with her at Bellegarde, telling of Perion's captivity.... Melicent," the Jew said, "I make no songs, no protestations, no phrases. My deeds must speak for me. Concede that I have laboured tirelessly." He paused, his gaze lifted, and his lips smiled. His eyes stayed mirthless. "This mad Callistion's hate of you, and of the Demetrios who had abandoned her, was my first stepping-stone. By my advice a tiny wire was fastened very tightly around the fetlock of a certain horse, between the foot and the heel, and the hair was smoothed over this wire. Demetrios rode that ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... Stane laughed again his cold, mirthless laugh. "There is no need to mince matters, Ainley. All the world knows I went there, and you need not go to any trouble to spare my feelings. When a man has been through hell ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... usual closeness, to give him something of a Mephistopheles aspect. His evening clothes hung with more than ordinary precision about his long slim body, his black tie and black pearl stud supplied the touch of sombreness so aptly in keeping with the mirthless, bitter smile which still parted ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... it as a great testimony to his prowess at amour to yield up his liberty, his property and his soul to the first woman who, in despair of finding better game, turns her appraising eye upon him. But if you want to hear a mirthless laugh, just present this masculine theory to a bridesmaid at a wedding, particularly after alcohol and crocodile tears have done their disarming work upon her. That is to say, just hint to her that the bride harboured no notion ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... I say, Tom. I'm only a plain man, and my tongue will say what comes uppermost! But it ain't from the soul, Tom, it ain't from the soul," said Peter, punning feebly, and letting a mirthless smile play over his sallow features. "You know Mr. Cantercot, ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... then Lans laughed a mirthless, cold laugh, "I wonder if either you or I ever really seriously thought we could—hold Cynthia? There is no law that could keep her here. She is of the hills. She came into our lives just long enough to purify our air and—clear my vision. She'll go ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... the fixed, breathless gaze of those wonderful eyes from the other side of the table, and he, too, broke off in the middle of his sentence. He breathed heavily, as though he had been running. His large, coarse lips drew wider apart. Slowly a mirthless and very unpleasant ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... All laughed. Mirthless high malicious laughter. Armstrong looked round at his classmates, silly glee in profile. In a moment they will laugh more loudly, aware of my lack of rule and of the fees ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... hapless Tapster aback, and frightened him a little. He had felt so sure that once he had made up his own mind she would eagerly say "Yes!" Often, during the last few days, he had told himself, with a kind of mirthless chuckle, that he was not going to be "caught"; but when, at last, he had made up his mind that Bubbles would make him, if not an ideal, then a very suitable, wife, it seemed strange indeed that she was not eager to "nail him." That she was not exactly eager to do ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... sharp spasm of laughter, mirthless, but consciously expressive of all the familiar processes of self-effacement ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... down the aisle, saw her jump up the little ladder onto the stage, watched her vanish into the swirl of the dance. He reached for a cigarette, opened his case, and found it empty. He uttered a mirthless, Byronic laugh. The thing seemed ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... place and at the providential meeting. He had cause to wonder how Venning had borne the horrors of the underground as well as he had, for towards the morning it seemed as if those ghouls of darkness vied with each other in producing the most appalling shrieks, howls, and bursts of mirthless laughter. They played ventriloquial tricks in the passages and caverns, making the sounds come from different points after varying intervals of silence; and all the time, as could be gathered from occasional words in the incoherent gabble, uttering ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... you choose?" she asked, revealing her teeth in one of those rapid smiles which were mirthless as the eternal smile ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... course, but perhaps the son is well out of it. Don't look so amazed, Jonathan. Most fellows seem to make awful muddles of their lives. You won't, of course. I see you on pinnacles, but I——" He broke off with a mirthless laugh. ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... laughed again, the same unpleasant, mirthless laugh, and thrusting his hand into his trouser pocket drew it out again full of silver coins, amongst which one or two ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... mysterious air-shaft kept a parrot. It woke Kedzie early in the morning with hysterical laughter that pierced the ears like steel saws. There was something uncannily real but hideously mirthless in its Ha-ha-ha! It would gurgle with thick-tongued idiocy: "Polly? Polly? ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... Hain't got 'nough o' fightin' yit, I reckon," and the speaker strode forward, with a rough, mirthless laugh. "Wal, damn 'em, they will yere 'fore I 'm done. We 're a goin' ter rush thet thar house 'fore long, an' hang 'bout a dozen Yanks, an' these yere lads will come in right handy ter go in first. If you uns like fightin' so durn well ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... the Ghats or terraces at the river side, where many thousands were congregated, the air was thick with the vermilion dust. From the water's edge up the steps to the palaces and temples and houses at the top, the terraces swarmed with thousands of people, and the talk and mirthless laughter rose and fell like the continuous clamour from ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... with a mirthless grin. "I am to accept the brief custody of this gem as a recognition of my personal integrity. I see, I see. Well, I would appreciate the courtesy more if I could indorse its incaution. However," he added abruptly, "why did you end that extraordinary tale so inconclusively? ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... a characteristic laugh it was, quite cold, quite mirthless, apparently quite meaningless. Carraby turned back to the letter, tore open the envelope and spread it out before them. He read it out aloud in a ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... action. There is something peculiar about a blow on the nose, a good blow. The Anglo-Saxon peoples alone possess the counterattack—a rush. To other peoples concentration of thought is impossible after the impact. Instinctively Quasimodo's hands flew to his face. He heard a laugh, mirthless and terrible. Before he could drop his hands from his face-blows, short and boring, from this side and from that, over and under. The squat man was brave enough; simply he did not know how to fight in this manner. He was accustomed to the use ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... view of the chance visitor he had exclaimed, "Not Burkhardt after all!" With which he burst into a wild laugh, the shrill mirthless laugh of a man suddenly freed of a terrible fear. However, as he returned the gun-belt to its place, his hand shook so that he pawed all around the nail on which it ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... back in her seat and laughed aloud, a mirthless, half-hysterical laugh. "That popgun!" she exclaimed. "What earthly good would it do other than to infuriate any beast of prey you might happen to hit ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... fairy children, their schoolmaster, and his wench. Some of the obscenity of this part may be elaborated from passages in the Maid's Metamorphosis. The piece has a prologue for representation at court, but it is most unlikely that it ever had that honour. It is from beginning to end a graceless and mirthless composition. ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... chorus went on, strident and mirthless under the grey-white sky. But the thrushes, hunting amongst the fresh-turned earth ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... nonchalantly. "Fact is, on my way out of the country, I thought I'd pay a farewell call on my good friend, Wade. I'm real sorry he ain't here—and then again I'm not. I'll—I'll leave my visiting card for him, anyhow." He chuckled, a nasty, throaty, mirthless chuckle that sent chills up and down the girl's spine. "Say, what's the matter with giving me that kiss now? There's nobody around ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... the hollow, mirthless laugh dodge on me," I said, "because it won't do. You're a blackguard, ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... he leveled the revolver, grinning with the mirthless lust of battle, and fired over the top of the table. The guns dropped from the hands of huge Diaz. He caught at his throat and staggered back the full length of the room, crashing against the wall. When he pitched forward on his face ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... back in his chair and burst into a paroxysm of loud and mirthless laughter, while Julian, holding his champagne-glass between his fingers, and twisting it stealthily round and round, regarded him with a blank stare of utter confusion and perplexity. Valentine continued to laugh ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... way she meant it, I suppose, yet as I looked at her, where she sat beyond the bowl of jonquils, in one of her old Paris gowns, which she had told me she was wearing out, I broke into a short, mirthless laugh. She held her head high, with its wreath of plaits that made a charming frame for her arched black eyebrows and her full red mouth. On her bare throat, round and white as a marble column, there was an old-fashioned necklace of wrought gold, which ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... of her recoil had drawn him to his side. His cruel, mirthless grin seemed to her to carry inexpressible menace. Very slowly, while his eyes taunted her, he pulled her ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... what he says and then we kill him," Gebk said with a mirthless grin. The remark wasn't meant to be humorous, but was made in all seriousness. Brion recognized this and knew that there was no danger for the present moment. He slid the gun away, and for the first time ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... to be said, Baltimore," says she, after a slight pause. "This must never occur again. I like you, you know that. I——" she breaks off abruptly, and suddenly gives way to a sort of mirthless laughter. "It is a farce!" she says. "Consider my feeling anything. And so virtuous a thing, too, as remorse! Well, as one lives, one learns. If I had seen the light for the first time in the middle of the dark ages, I should probably have ended my days as ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... at him with something that was not a smile, rather the faint, mirthless echo of a smile, in the ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... a strangely mirthless fashion, and, afraid to trust himself, went up on deck and brooded savagely apart. Nor did he come down to breakfast until the skipper and cook ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... unskilful, he was plucky and energetic. He lofted the bird out of the dish on to the tablecloth twice in the first minute. Stifling a mad inclination to call out 'Fore!' or something to that effect, he laughed a hollow, mirthless laugh, and replaced the errant fowl. When a third attack ended in the same way, Miss Beezley asked permission to try what she could do. She tried, and in two minutes the chicken was neatly dismembered. The Babe re-seated himself in an ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... boomed from him in a slogan of triumph and as if in echoing mockery there came from the open door the chuckling, mirthless laugh of Obadiah Price. ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... back in a ghastly, mirthless grin, and the tusks were revealed from point to insertion, Langley questioned Ghamba, but he would not speak. After several attempts to force him to answer had ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... went on, after a moment's thought, "I'm glad, mighty glad, I came here when I did." He gave a short mirthless laugh. "I doubt if my satisfaction is inspired by any moral scruple," he added hastily, as the other nodded. "Say, can you understand how I feel when I say I believe all moral scruple has somehow decayed, rotted, died in me? I don't mean that I don't want ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... flushed at the disagreeable ring of it. The sound was not loud but flat and mirthless, the syllables distinct and evenly spaced. His white even teeth remained tight-closed and showed in flashing contrast to his swarthy face and black mustache. Morrow's face wore none of the active malignancy that stamps the ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... He looked calmly at the three dead bodies, but said not a word. Langley held him, while Whitson again tied his feet together with the belt, and then they placed him with his back against a rock, facing the fire, which was still blazing brightly. His lips were drawn back in a ghastly, mirthless, grin, and the tusks were revealed from point ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... a dull concussion shook the boat from stem to stern. Von Sperrgebiet showed his dog-tooth in that terrible mirthless smile of his. "A hit, my little ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... new phase and Lynda bent across the dog at her knee and put her hand on the arm of the chair. She was frightened, aroused. Truedale saw this and laughed a dry, mirthless laugh. ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... looked doubtful, and spoke of the rigours of the winter; but John laughed, and Charles smiled his strange, mirthless smile, and all declared themselves fearless and ready to face whatever might be in store. Come what might, they would go to the help of the settlers, be the Assembly ever so dilatory in ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... I have sent for you?" he said at length, with a mirthless laugh. "I think it must be that I may convince Bickley, the sceptic, that there are powers which he does not understand, but that I have the strength to move. Also, perhaps, that your lives may be spared for my own purposes in that which ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... was cut by a roar of laughter from Boulte's lips. Kurrell was silent for an instant, and then he, too, laughed laughed long and loudly, rocking in his saddle. It was an unpleasant sound the mirthless mirth of these men on the long white line of the Narkarra Road. There were no strangers in Kashima, or they might have thought that captivity within the Dosehri hills had driven half the European population mad. The laughter ended ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... my train, the midnight," he began. "I really tried to catch it. But, when I found it was gone, I couldn't sleep. I was worried and frightened. This bank business was on my mind. I wanted to think." He forced a mirthless smile at that. "I couldn't think very straight, but I tried to. I couldn't do anything but see myself in jail, in the penitentiary, because ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... just after sunset, Jurgen returned to the Hamadryad: he walked now with the aid of the ashen staff which Thersites had given Jurgen, and Jurgen was mirthless and rather humble. ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... Peters gave a gurgling, mirthless chuckle; and loose-jointed, shifted his weight from one leg to the other. "Well, nobody ain't never accused me ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read
... other day," said Dunlavey after he had become seated. He smiled with his lips, his eyes glittering again. "I'll say that we got acquainted then. There ain't no need for us to shake hands now." He showed his teeth in a mirthless grin. "I didn't know you then, but I know you ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... was weighing these possibilities, Conscience broke the silence. She even smiled in a mirthless fashion—and the man began ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... voice brought her to life. She threw back her head with a laugh. It had a wretched, mirthless sound; but a laugh is a laugh. They were glad to be ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... even a completed episode in one. It so happened that they saw no one in tears or in liquor; on the contrary, they saw many who laughed, many children playing games with and tricks upon one another. Yet in its mirth the region was mirthless; its energy was not physical, but nervous. It had an air of living intensely in the present, for fear of remembering, for fear of looking ahead. And it needed but a misunderstanding or a catchword to turn in a moment ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... benefit—to intimidate me. If I moved, if I coughed, almost if I breathed, the whole passage was filled with hoarse reverberating echoes, that, in my affrighted ears, appeared to terminate in a series of mirthless, malevolent chuckles. Once, when fascinated beyond control, I stole on tiptoe along the passage, momentarily expecting a door to fly open and something grim and horrible to pounce out on me, I was brought to a standstill by a loud, clanging noise, as if a pail or some such utensil were set down very ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... queried, and laughed the brief, mirthless laugh of the man who knows. "And he says he's from Belfast! Man, I could cut that Kerry brogue ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... now, where formerly he had seen a blank wall, he saw an open door! Passing this, he discovered himself in the cave of the golden dragon. Ho-Pin, dressed in a perfectly fitting morning coat and its usual accompaniments, received him with a mirthless smile. ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... alone, she remained standing for some time as motionless as though she were a marble statue and not a living woman. Suddenly she seemed to take some desperate resolve: she threw back her head with a bitter, mirthless laugh, and going to the bell she rang it. ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... Irene forced a harsh, mirthless laugh. "And for goodness' sake, what do they think of your set? You force me to say this, Dick. There is not a person in this city who has not heard of you ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... stout, elderly man said in slow, measured tones, as if he were reading his own funeral service. "It must be the devil! The devil! Ha!" and burying his face in his hands, he indulged in a loud fit of mirthless laughter. ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... him, "that you had no tendency to walk in your sleep last night. I trust the improvement will continue. Good-night." She could not determine whether or not there lay any hidden meaning back of his words. His mirthless smile somehow ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks
... and Aynesworth bent closer over his work, with a gathering frown upon his forehead. A mirthless laugh is ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... hollow, mirthless laugh. "No," he said; "she hasn't." Then he laughed once more—in a way ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... of mirthless laughter escaped from his lips and, bending down as before, he struck Stephen lightly across the calf of the leg with his cane, ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... laugh was as mirthless as the cackle of a guinea hen. "But I 'm going to die hard, believe me! And if I go down, if they think they can throw me on that, I 'm going to take a few of my ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... a smile—mirthless enough, God knows—but he looked at me menacingly. "That's my business," he said. An air of indomitable resolution came and went upon his face like a vain and passing shadow. Next moment he looked a dear ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... her, his hand falling from her arm as if it had grown nerveless, and for a moment there was absolute silence. Then the Beggar Man laughed, such a mirthless, heart-broken laugh that Faith cried out. She dropped the little suitcase she ...
— The Beggar Man • Ruby Mildred Ayres
... mirthless laugh—and pushed his hair from his brow. It was a strange thing that he should dream of confiding his story to this bit of a girl, yet never before had he known such an impulse ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... shocking statement Sir Norman looked helplessly round, as if for relief; and Miranda, after a moment's silence, broke into another mirthless laugh. ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... fingers of the hand that had been supporting his head slowly clenched, he raised himself slightly, his body rigid, his chin thrusting, his face pale, his eyes burning with a sudden fierce fire. Once he opened his lips to speak, but instantly closed them again, and a smile wreathed them—a mirthless smile that had in it a certain cold caution and cunning. After a silence that lasted long his voice came again, drawling, well-controlled, revealing nothing of the emotion ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... picked himself up and came back, savagely confident in his humiliation. She tried to guide his first toddling ski-steps, but he was mad all through and would have his own way. With a set and mirthless smile, again and again he gave himself to the slope and the mercy of his insurgent legs, and at length, bearing heavily on his trail-pole, managed to reach the level below ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... a short, mirthless laugh. "The Muley Cow's not young. She's the oldest cow on the farm. If the truth must be told, she's so old that Farmer Green wouldn't keep her if it weren't that Johnnie Green thinks she belongs to him. And he'd raise a terrible row if ...
— The Tale of Snowball Lamb • Arthur Bailey
... widow next me bit her lip and clenched her fist, but she gave no other sign of emotion. Another film was thrown on the screen, humorous, I believe. Suddenly the woman began to laugh. She did not stop laughing. It was a long, mirthless, dry, uncanny sort of cackle. People stared. She laughed still louder. An usher came down the aisle, and stood there, uncertain what to do. Hysterics had given way to weeping: the tears were now streaming down the woman's face. She tried to control ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... of this last word—the same little mirthless laugh that she had uttered before—Jacqueline went away, followed by the admiring glances of the other girls, who from behind the bars of their cage noted the brilliant plumage of this bird who was at liberty. She crossed the courtyard, and, followed by Modeste, entered the chapel, where ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... abruptly and gripped his hand, as one drowning grips anything offered—gripped till he winced. She laughed a loud mirthless laugh, that came pouring like a sob from her ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... know I am not an aspirant myself?" he said. He had a mirthless sense of enjoyment in his own brazenness. Only he himself knew how ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... brief, mirthless laugh, the assent of his egoism. But his satisfaction had nothing personal in it. He was pleased because justice, abstract justice, had been done. But she suspected his sincerity. He did things for you, not because he liked you, but ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... Out through the still terror of it all Jan's voice went in wild, echoing shouts. Now and then he fired his rifle, and always he listened long and intently. The echoes came back to him, laughing, taunting, and then each time fell the mirthless silence of ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... staggered him. Her meek acceptance of her lot sickened him. Why didn't she fly—she and her man—away to green fields and fresh air, away from this plague-ridden, dismal city? The suggestion brought from her a peal of mirthless laughter. Later he arrived at the truth. These people suffered from the greatest disease of all—The Fear of Living. Their hearts were rotten. They lived and died, rooted to some few acres of mud and muck because they feared ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... Tee-ka-mee opened from the other side. For fully a minute after the door had closed, Fitzpatrick continued to lean forward, the snarl on his lips, the evil light in his eyes. Then he fell back heavily, with a harsh, mirthless cackle. ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... gazing steadily at her without feeling or resentment and speaking slowly, "yes, I'm an 'ign'rant, savage, stupid brute,'" deliberately accenting each word as he repeated the stinging phrase, "—but—what's the use?" he finished with a mirthless laugh. "Anyhow," he added, glancing again at the cat and Skinny's futile efforts to catch it, "I ain't interferin' this time, at least, with ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... her. She might do worse.... Yet he was not Harleston; there never was but one equal to Harleston, and that one was lost to her. She shut her lips tightly and a far-away look came into her eyes. And now Harleston, too, was lost to her; and—she lifted her hands resignedly, and laughed a mirthless laugh. As she came back to reality, she met Marston's curiously courteous glance with ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... and his attempt to laugh at his nervousness sounded hollow and mirthless. Something inside or outside the bubble had driven two men insane with its threat and now that he was irrevocably exiled in the bubble, himself, he could no longer dismiss their fear as products of their imagination. Both of them had been rational, ...
— The Nothing Equation • Tom Godwin
... face, a white cameo against a grey velvet pall, grinned like a mask of mirthless death, as slowly he raised one clenched fist and shook it weakly until it fell back with a dull thud, useless, ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... sit I, As Philomela (on a thorn, Turned out of nature's livery), Mirthless, alone, and all forlorn: Only she sings not, while my sorrows can Breathe forth such notes as ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... Lanyard with a mirthless snarl. "You've slept like the dead man I took you for at first, my friend—a solid fourteen hours, my word for ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... have been listening, have you?" said the Frank, with a mirthless laugh. "Just as if you hadn't done enough already in the way of meddling with my affairs. Go! and may I never see your face again. You will make haste and begone if you're wise. My uncle will be ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... at all well," said the doctor, facing Rainey, his face away from the girl. As he spoke he left his mouth open for a moment, his tongue showing between his white teeth, in a grin that was as mocking as that of a wolf, mirthless, ruthless, triumphant. And for a fleeting second his ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... sallow face, and then for an instant I thought that he would resist. But the stern countenances of La Trape and Boisrose, who had ridden up to his rein and stood awaiting his answer with their swords drawn, determined him. With a forced and mirthless laugh he took the cloak. "It is new, I hope," he said, as he threw it ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... lurking under the soft gaiety. Was it consciousness of this being the second time during the evening that she had employed the too common vaunt of the woman of that particular world? Did some ironic echo reach her of that same boast (often as mirthless and as pitiful as the painted smile on the cruder face), the 'I'm afraid I'm rather frivolous' of the well-to-do woman, whose frivolity—invaluable ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... appearance of water with that of its fac-simile, would become as confused and hazy as any clergyman taxed to differentiate his creed from that of the mollah running the opposition. And Nature, in taking this mirthless rise out of the spectator, never repeats herself in the particulars of distance, area or configuration of her simulacre; it may be a mere stripe across the road—the brown, sinuous track disappearing beneath its surface, to re-appear on the ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... detriment; we can be as efficient and as courteous as the Japanese. Another thing is gone. Ireland of yesterday, even in its poverty, was a merry country; to-day, even in its prosperity, it is full of bitter, mirthless rancour and hate. It will be a great thing if we can help to preserve for Ireland the exquisite benediction which a beggar woman in Skibbereen laid upon Martin Ross: "Sure, ye're always laughing! That ye may laugh in the sight of the glory ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... sat up, and emitted a short, mirthless laugh. He frowned thoughtfully: and then, after a little search, he examined the pamphlet which Mirabelle had given him, and skimmed through the pages until he came to the paragraph he had in mind. Enforcement ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... small mirthless laugh. "Oh, Colonel Rand would be no more interested than I would be in his pistols," he objected, then turned to Rand. "It is a series of experiments having to do with the chemical nature of life," he said. Another perfunctory ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper |
