"Slyness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... far more considerate form. The effect of calm, retrospective avowal is to create a kind of feeling which is essentially unlike our feeling at what is actually avowed. Still it is clear that his unlucky career as apprentice brought out in Rousseau slyness, greediness, slovenliness, untruthfulness, and the whole ragged regiment of the squalider vices. The evil of his temperament now and always was of the dull smouldering kind, seldom breaking out into active flame. There is a certain sordidness in the scene. You may complain that the ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... though, it's a parting-of-the-ways. I shouldn't be surprised if the Doctor meant something sly by putting these two books in my hand. Somehow, the old gentleman has an amazing sly look—a sort of wild slyness—about him, seems to me. His wisdom seems a sort of sly, too. But all in honor, though. I rather think he's one of those old gentlemen who say a vast deal of sense, but hint a world more. ^Depend upon it, he's ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... lines from the plow handles preparatory to making another round. He suddenly remembered to be discreet, and winked one eye with indescribable slyness. ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... here, too, that his slyness, his natural circuitiveness, operated to save him. When the inevitable protest came he was able to prove that he had said nothing and had indignantly refused a photograph. He completely cleared himself. But the hint of an interesting personality had been betrayed to the public, the name ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... when, as fortune would have it, he encountered the face of the wicked little cousin, who, half afraid for her brother, and half laughing at Nathaniel Pipkin, presented as bewitching an expression of countenance, with a touch of slyness in it, too, as any man, old or young, need look upon. She drew her arm coaxingly through the old man's, and whispered something in his ear; and do what he would, old Lobbs couldn't help breaking out ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... with ironical people, when he talks nothing in his face smiles but his eyes and eyebrows. At such times there is no trace of hatred or spite in his eyes, but a great deal of humour, and that peculiar fox-like slyness which is only to be noticed in very observant people. Since I am speaking about his eyes, I notice another peculiarity in them. When he takes a glass from Katya, or listens to her speaking, or looks after her as she ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... appearance Remonencq was short and thin; his little eyes were set in his head in porcine fashion; a Jew's slyness and concentrated greed looked out of those dull blue circles, though in his case the false humility that masks the Hebrew's unfathomed contempt ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... she has lost it and is afraid to own up for fear she'll be punished. It's a dreadful thing to think she tells falsehoods. It's a far worse thing than her fit of temper. It's a fearful responsibility to have a child in your house you can't trust. Slyness and untruthfulness—that's what she has displayed. I declare I feel worse about that than about the brooch. If she'd only have told the truth about it I wouldn't ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... is generally very much elongated, with aquiline nose of abnormal length and very broad at the nostrils. The brow is heavy, screening deeply-sunken eyes revealing a mixed expression of sadness and slyness, tempered somewhat by probable abuse of animal qualities. Of a quiet and rather sulky nature—corroded by ever-unsatisfied avidity—assumedly courteous, but morose by nature,—with a mighty level head in the matter of business; such is the Jew of ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... than any of these, and yet which have a slightly uncomplimentary sense, are knowing and artful. It is surely good to "know" things, and to be full of art; but both words have already an idea of slyness, and may in time come to have quite as unpleasant a meaning as these three which ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... but the magistrate found himself summon'd By his own followers, who had need of his presence and counsel. But the pastor forthwith the druggist accompanied, till they Came to a gap in the hedge, when the latter pointed with slyness, "See you," exclaim'd he, "the maiden? The child's clothes she has been changing. And I recognise well the old calico—also the cushion— Cover of blue, which Hermann took in the bundle and gave her. ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... artfully tempted me." He explains himself to Fricka, when she asks why he continues to trust the crafty Loge, who has often already brought them into straits: "Where frank courage is sufficient, I ask counsel of no one. But slyness and cunning are needed to turn to advantage the ill-will of adversaries, and that ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... burned to put many questions to the rest of the company. If, through my foolish and outreaching slyness with the girl behind the counter, the door of my comprehension had been shut, Juno had now opened it sufficiently wide for a number of facts to come crowding in, so to speak, abreast. Indeed, their simultaneous arrival ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... jauntily. It was a good time now to see what the viscount was really like. He appeared to be about sixty-five, and the dignified aspect which he wore to a gazer at a distance became depreciated to jocund slyness upon nearer view, when the small type could be read between the leading lines. Then it could be seen that his upper lip dropped to a point in the middle, as if impressing silence upon his too demonstrative lower one. His right and left profiles were different, one corner of his ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... address, the manner is no more or otherwise rememberable than the light motions, steps, and gestures of youth and health. But this is almost every thing:—no wonder, therefore, if that which can be put down by rule in the memory should appear to us as mere poring, maudlin, cunning,—slyness blinking through the watery eye of superannuation. So in this admirable scene, Polonius, who is throughout the skeleton of his own former skill and statecraft, hunts the trail of policy at a dead scent, supplied by the weak fever-smell in ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... subject, was not the equal of her great-niece in beauty, her portraits being rendered uncomely by a portentously long nose, longer even than Mrs. Siddons's, and by a very curious expression of the eyes, going near to slyness. But the face is one which can be imagined as much more beautiful than it seems in the not very attractive portraiture of the time, and her actual attractions are attested by her contemporaries with something more than ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... brown-faced, broad-girthed Spanish onions, shining in the fatness of their growth like Spanish friars, and winking, from their shelves, in wanton slyness at the girls as they went by, and glanced demurely at the hung-up mistletoe. There were pears and apples, clustering high in blooming pyramids; there were bunches of grapes, made, in the shop-keeper's benevolence, to dangle from conspicuous ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... him with straws. One fine blue-eyed girl of about thirteen, with her flaxen hair all in beautiful confusion, her frolic face in a glow, her frock half torn off her shoulders, a complete picture of a romp, was the chief tormentor; and, from the slyness with which Master Simon avoided the smaller game and hemmed this wild little nymph in corners, and obliged her to jump shrieking over chairs, I suspected the rogue of being not a whit more blinded ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... they looked at one another, Kovrin with amazement, and the monk with friendliness, and, just as before, a little slyness, as though he were thinking ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... them better. And even when we have learned the kind and degree of a man's foolishness, we have not learned his way of expressing it, and that discovery requires much wisdom. Moreover, an incredible amount of effort, persistence, and slyness is often made use of for the purpose of committing an immense act of foolishness. Every one of us knows of a number of criminal cases that remained unexplained for a long time simply because some one related event could be explained by a stupidity so great as to be unbelievable. Yet the knowledge ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... he said, with some slyness in his smile. "They are heavy, as ye say, and that's the very reason—I say that's the very reason why I staid away, ye see, eh? I say that's the very reason ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... again. And the temptation had a personal source. There are beings who desire to draw men away from God. The serpent, by its poison and its loathly form, is the natural symbol of such an enemy of man. The insinuating slyness of the suggestions of evil is like the sinuous gliding of the snake, and truly represents the process by which temptation found its way into the hearts of the first pair, and of all their descendants. For it begins with casting a doubt on the reality of the prohibition. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... its Name from the Cat, that of a sharp piercing Nature from the Hawk, those of an amorous roguish Look derive their Title even from the Sheep, and we say such a[n] one has a Sheep's Eye, not so much to denote the Innocence as the simple Slyness of the Cast: Nor is this metaphorical Inoculation a modern Invention, for we find Homer taking the Freedom to place the Eye of an Ox, Bull, or Cow in one of his principal Goddesses, by that ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... one with me, so that I might at least have a musket and some cartridges in case of an attack. We agreed that I should send the man back with Ney's corps; and I went off, with the soldier accompanying me. He was a slow-speaking Norman, with plenty of slyness under an appearance of good nature. The Normans are for the most part brave, as I learnt when I commanded the 23rd Chasseurs, where I had five or six hundred of them. Still, in order to know how far I could rely on my follower, I chatted ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... at least be a satisfaction to make her confess to that charge. But even this satisfaction she denied him, and his only revenge was in making, two or three times afterward, a softly ironical allusion to her slyness. He told her that she was what is called in French a sournoise. "Very good," she answered, almost indifferently, "and now please tell me again—I have forgotten it—what you said ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... in their apoplectic opulence." Nothing about the ruddy, brown-faced, broad-girthed Spanish onions, shining in the fatness of their growth like Spanish friars, and "winking from their shelves in wanton slyness at the girls as they went by, and glanced demurely at the hung-up mistletoe." Nothing about the canisters of tea and coffee "rattled up and down like juggling tricks," or about the candied fruits, "so caked and spotted with molten sugar as to make ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... forth to the world a man of fashion and consequence, with an unencumbered property of fifteen thousand per annum, besides expectancies. "Here's a game of chess for you, Transit," said Echo; "why, every move upon the board is a character, and not one but what is worth booking. Observe the arch slyness of the jockey yonder, ear-wigging his patron, a young blood of the fancy, into a good thing; particularising all the capabilities and qualities of the different horses named, and making the event (in his own estimation) as sure as the Bank of England:—how finely contrasted ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... the narrow, menacing eyes, for he knew that Howells challenged him to a duel of slyness with the whole truth at stake. The detective's manner increased the hatred which had blazed in Bobby's mind when he had stood in the bedroom over his grandfather's body. For a moment he wished with all his heart that he might ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... impossible to keep from daddy's eyes the things that went wrong. Now it was different. Mrs. Watkins was very sly in making everything appear all right before Broxton Day. On the other hand Janice showed an equal amount of slyness (of which she had been previously accused!) in helping hide the numerous things that would ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... not an amiable-looking man. Above his gigantic body was a lowering face that showed a capacity for slyness or viciousness, whichever better served his turn. As Kark talked to him, his brow grew blacker and he plucked savagely at his knife-hilt. It dawned upon Alwin then that he must be Kark's father, the steward Thorhall of whom Valbrand ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... as he was required, and the henpecked one played his part of the comedy with elaborate slyness. "I don't like that strange chap," he ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... lady's talents great injustice. Not that I have any personal knowledge of the matter, however: and if I were to repeat the current reports, Miss Elliott would call them gossip and repudiate them, and me too, perhaps. She has the reputation of having the 'wisdom of the serpent;' the slyness ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... about his cheeks, which were of a uniform pale rhubarb tint; his grey beard streamed out in three thin strands, and his long, narrow eyes, opal in hue, and set rather wide apart and at a slight angle, had a curious expression, part slyness and ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... round her finger (she used to call it knocking their heads together), while they never dreamed of offering resistance and eagerly submitted to her. About her whole being, so full of life and beauty, there was a peculiarly bewitching mixture of slyness and carelessness, of artificiality and simplicity, of composure and frolicsomeness; about everything she did or said, about every action of hers, there clung a delicate, fine charm, in which an individual power was manifest ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... passion on the miner's part; continued presents of dust from him to the lady; on her part continued trips to Folsom, a lessened caution, and a brag of manner based upon her very just popularity at the Gap; next, Drylyn's first sickening dawn of doubt, jealousy equipping him with a new and alien slyness; the final accident of his seeing the shot-gun messenger on his very first visit to the Gap come out of the Gazelle's tent so early in the morning; the instant blaze of truth and fury that turned Drylyn to a clever, calculating wild beast. So now her throat was cut, and she was good and dead. ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... now, as there were in our Lord's time; men who go about with the name of God on their lips, and the Bible in their hands, in sheep's clothing outwardly; but inwardly ravening wolves. In sheep's clothing, truly, smooth and sanctimonious, meek, and sleek. But wolves at heart; wolves in cunning and slyness, as you will find, if you have to deal with them; wolves in fierceness and cruelty, as you will find if you have to differ from them; wolves in greediness and covetousness, and care of their own interest and their own pockets. And wolves, too, ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... Governor. "Senor," said he, "you are right. I have seen Mexico. I have been a scholar, as well as a soldier. I knew Von Resanoff's Russian slyness. My father was at the Presidio in 1807, when he obtained rights for a few fur hunters. Poor fellow! he never lived to claim his bride, but ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... slyness on his part, Ippegoo fell into another hearty though inaudible laugh, after which he went off to communicate his news to Okiok and Angut, but these worthies having gone out to visit some snares and traps, no one knew whither, he ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... down in immense herds, and if they found a dead young one they immediately helped each other, like good scavengers, to carry away the carcase. When men were employed out of doors they had to drive the foxes away with sticks, and they became, in consequence of the slyness and cunning with which they knew how to carry out their thefts and the skill which they showed in combining to gain an end which they could not compass as single animals, actually dangerous to the shipwrecked men, by whom they were therefore heartily hated, ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... frightens me. When he looked at me in church last Sunday night, I shuddered. It seemed as though a venomous snake had put its folds around my neck. Zibe Turner, called the monster dwarf, seems to me to be almost less than human. He combines the ferocity of the tiger, the slyness of the fox, and the shape of a monkey. I am doubly alarmed ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... about by the subordinate agency of such causes as Variation and Natural Selection." In the first edition the words (as I fully expect it will," do not occur.) about bats on islands, and then with infinite slyness have quoted your amended sentence, with your parenthesis ("as I fully believe") (My father here quotes Lyell incorrectly; see the previous foot-note.); I do not think you can be annoyed at my doing this, and you see, that I am determined as far as I can, that the public shall see how far you go. ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... dozen of the citizens had seen him hastening toward the woods and noted his skulking air, but as he had grinned in his old good-natured way they had, at the time, thought nothing of it. Now, however, the diabolical reason of his slyness was apparent. He had been shrewd enough to disarm suspicion, and by now was far away. Even Mrs. Daly, who was visiting with a neighbour, had seen him stepping out by a back way, and had said with a laugh, ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... murder made by the women, because he was quite fearless in regard to that, and scoffed at the possibility of being killed by women. He also carefully fastened the window-shutters. He appeared to be somewhat excited, and went about his operations with an air at once of slyness and of mystery. ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... hateful appearance of an intrigue, like a court adventure. It was the Italian servant, Howat decided; and immediately he recognized why he disliked the other—it was because he expressed an aspect of slyness that lay over Ludowika and himself. He put that from him, too; but it was like brushing away cobwebs. His hunger for Ludowika increased all the while; it became more burningly material, insatiable ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... of her skirt. Dorinda had been undressed and rocked to sleep at sunset. Preciosa had gone upstairs at the same time. I saw her lying upon the foot of our bed after supper, her eyes narrowed to slender slits with sleep or slyness. I had a shrewd impression that if I were to go upstairs now I should not find her in the same place. Instead of verifying the surmise in this way I stole noiselessly out of the family group, sauntering along carelessly until I turned the corner of the house, ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... with so iron a sway, and arranging everything so entirely according to his own fancy, that he is a complete sovereign in his own small way—the tyrant of Tampico. He has in his weather-beaten face such a mixture of bluffness and slyness, with his gigantic person, and abrupt, half-savage manners, that, altogether, I conceive him to be a character who might have been worthy the attention of Walter Scott, had he chanced to encounter him. Old and repulsive ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... was, and where he came from; when we remember that but for his nephew he was a lonely man; when we see that he was both criminal and artist; when we observe his own wheedling propensity, his false and fulsome protestations of affection, his slyness, his subtlety, his heartlessness, his tenacity; and when, above all, we know that the opium vice is HEREDITARY, and that a YOUNG man would not be addicted to it unless born with the craving; {5} then, it is not too ...
— The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot • Andrew Lang
... me to perceive that he was concealing something under his arm as he stoked the coffee-machine, and upon my asking what it was, he glanced round the courtyard with histrionic slyness, placed the object on the table beside my cap, and stepped back to watch the impression, his manner that of one who declaims: "At last the missing papers ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... much so to us. One looked in vain among the smooth chins, shaved heads, and almond eyes of the crowd for signs of intelligence and manliness. There are no tokens of humor or cheerfulness to be seen, but in its place there is plenty of cunning, slyness, and deceit, if there is any truth in physiognomy. The men look like women and the women like children, except that their features are so hard and forbidding. The better classes wear a supercilious expression of features that makes the toes of one's ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... fox-hunter, the half intoxicated chuckle with which he holds the bottle, the grief of his daughter and wife, and the little shoeless boy with his hoop, are finely contrasted with the rich humour and extravagant burlesque of all around them. The slyness of the Head Constable, in the left hand corner, half smothered in his mock robes, is expressively told; and the painter is a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 336 Saturday, October 18, 1828 • Various
... ear; all was silent without, but within and close by he seemed to catch a faint sighing, a faint sobbing rustle, a little stealthy creak—as though many persons were at his side, holding themselves quite still, and governing even their respiration with the extreme of slyness. The idea went to his vitals with a shock, and he faced about suddenly as if to defend his life. Then, for the first time, he became aware of a light about the level of his eyes and at some distance in the interior of the house—a vertical ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... Vermifuge was mentioned, Addison winked to me; and I think we were pretty well aware that something funny had started, unbeknown to Gram. Theodora, however, knew nothing of it. Whether this reprehensible slyness would have continued among the rest of us, until we had taken up the whole of the elderberry wine, I cannot say; but about a month later, a dismal expose was precipitated one Friday night by the arrival of Elder ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... Walter had made his calculations without taking into consideration the slyness and respectability of the Hallemans. They lay in wait for him the next day as he came from school. Walter, who had painted to himself how they would be panting under the weight of the great sack; Walter, ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... with a certain slyness, "Have you heard anything about her already? At the club? From that fool woman ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... popularly known as "the Little Giant." His large, round head surmounted a massive neck, and his features were symmetrical, although his small nose deprived them of dignity. His dark eyes, peering from beneath projecting brows, gleamed with energy, mixed with an expression of slyness and sagacity, and his full lips were generally stained at the corners of his mouth with tobacco juice. His voice was neither musical nor soft, and his gestures were not graceful. But he would speak for hours in clear, well-enunciated tones, and the sharp Illinois ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... Red Star agreed; on the next, Pravda reviewed the "threatening situation." Two days later Izvestia devoted a column to "Blackmail, Peter the Great, Suvarov and Imperialist Slyness." Twentyfour hours after, the Ministerial Council of the Union of Soviet Republics declared a state of war existed—through no action of its own—between the United ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... background of things, of which he knew and would not tell me? And—this, I think, was what was chiefly in my thoughts—was Crone playing some game of his own and designing to use me as a puppet in it? For there was a general atmosphere of subtlety and slyness about the man that forced itself upon me, young as I was; and the way he kept eyeing me as we talked made me feel that I had to do with one that would be hard to circumvent if it came to a matter of craftiness. And at last, after ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... properly rolled himself into a ball. The Fox's nose was as long as his own, and he rolled my poor son over and over with it, till he rolled him into the stream. The young urchins swim like fishes, but just as he was scrambling to shore, the Fox caught him by the waistcoat and killed him. I do hate slyness! ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... stared at her for a moment. Then a sudden veil fell across the clearness of her eyes, which had the preternatural size and brilliance of disease. Her expression changed. It became the slyness of the watching animal, that feels the enemy. She ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... concealment; hiding &c v.; occultation, mystification. seal of secrecy; screen &c 530; disguise &c 530; masquerade; masked battery; hiding place &c 530; cryptography, steganography^; freemasonry. stealth, stealthiness, sneakiness; obreption^; slyness &c (cunning) 702. latitancy^, latitation^; seclusion &c 893; privacy, secrecy, secretness^; incognita. reticence; reserve; mental reserve, reservation; arriere pensee [Fr.], suppression, evasion, white lie, misprision; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... or less familiar with alcoholic types. In the genuinely dissipated face there was always a suggestion of slyness in ambush, peeping out of the wrinkles around the eyes and the lips. Upon this young fellow's face there were no wrinkles, only shadows, in the hollows of the cheeks and under the eyes. He was more like a man who had left his bed in ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... stuff of my jacket, smoothing my hands, looking at my boots, and generally, in the intervals of his speech, showing a childish pleasure in the presence of a fellow-creature. But at my last words he perked up into a kind of startled slyness. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... him, a giddy young thing, of his own age and sex; and they had worked themselves into that stage of jocularity when consequences are too often disregarded. Nei Takauti mentioned her own name. Instantly Nan Tok' held up two fingers, his friend did likewise, both in an ecstasy of slyness. It was plain the lady had two names; and from the nature of their merriment, and the wrath that gathered on her brow, there must be something ticklish in the second. The husband pronounced it; a well-directed cocoa-nut from the hand of his wife caught ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... about eighty years of age, and looked it; not that his face was much lined, but all the blood and colour seemed to have faded from his body, and even his eyes, which last he kept usually closed, as though the light distressed him. There was an unspeakable degree of slyness in his expression, which kept me ill at ease; he seemed to lie there with his arms folded, like a spider waiting for prey. His speech was very deliberate and courteous, but scarce louder than ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... vulpine slyness of Dame Nature, that, till now, Tess had been hoodwinked by her love for Clare into forgetting it might result in vitalizations that would inflict upon others what she had bewailed ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... touch of slyness in the question. Berrington smiled to himself. He wondered what Sartoris would say if he only knew how much ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... of this right come under the general head of stealing. People call it theft, when it is effected with secrecy and slyness; robbery, when there is a suggestion of force or violence. The swindler is he who appropriates another's goods by methods of gross deception or false pretenses while the embezzler transfers to himself the funds entrusted to his care. Petty thieving is called ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... watered Geronimo with a pitchfork, and in terror then, for his slyness and cunning were on a par with his other pleasant peculiarities. One of the poor devils he killed entered the stable all unsuspecting. Geronimo had broken his chains, and stood close against the wall of his stall in the darkness, ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... detective stealing hosiery and a bracelet. She perceived she was being shadowed and walked up to the counter and ordered some children's garments, having them charged and sent to a fictitious name and address. The detective thought this a masterpiece of slyness, this endeavor to throw them off the track. Since the family, who really kept an account at this store, appealed to the manager to have Edna let off as it was an ordinary trick of a growing girl, the charge was withdrawn. Detectives ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... hardly believe the girl to be all she seemed, but soon she won me to thinking her perfection—a lily, grown by some miracle of Nature in a soil where weeds had flourished hitherto. I would have given my right hand rather than have to admit a flaw in her—that is, the one fatal flaw: slyness hidden under apparent frankness, which means ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... came anigh unto the Maid, where she did lie so quiet, I saw that something moved in the wood, and was running. And truly it did be an Humpt Man, and came forward very silent and with a quick slyness, as that he did track the Maid secretly; for he lookt alway to the earth. And I perceived that he was that one of the Humpt Men which the Maid had cut with the knife; for the blood did show upon the shoulder and the breast; and this bleeding mayhap to have slowed the Man; ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... eyes shadowed it forth. The brow, the rather thin lips, the hands, and occasionally their movements, suggested it. His face was not what is often called "an open face." Although quite free from slyness, or anything unpleasantly furtive, it had a shut, reserved look when his eyes were cast down. There was something austere, combined with something eager and passionate, in his expression and manner. Charmian guessed him ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... 13.—It is evening. I have just returned from St. Germain. Everything is settled—with more slyness on my part. I begin to think I am a born Jesuit; there must have been some detestable sympathy between ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... be dragged. Perhaps it was through oversensitiveness that Brigit and I dwelt suspiciously upon Bedr's motives, and asked each other who it was he had expected at the House of the Crocodile. Even Anthony did not accuse the Armenian of anything worse than slyness and cowardice, according to him the two worst vices of a man; but he volunteered to find out what mysterious night-disturbance in the street had caused the sudden closing of the doors. It was Biddy's thought that the person Bedr ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... odious mixture of mauvaise honte and impudence, a clumsiness, a slyness, and a consciousness in his bearing and countenance, not distinctly boorish, but low, which turned his good looks into an ugliness more intolerable than that of feature; and a corresponding vulgarity pervading ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... were interested spectators of the scene. Through the padded swinging doors entered, as in a play, character after character. Each actor as he entered stopped for a moment and stared about him, and in this act revealed his character-his conceit, his slyness, his bravado, his self-importance. There was great variety, but practically one prevailing type, and that the New York politician. Most of them were from the city, though the country politician apes the city ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... lot there! We fight like cats and dogs." A look of slyness and boldness came over her face. "Mrs. Shellberg hates me as hard as I do her. She used to go around telling: 'It's very peculiar, you know'"—she imitated her rival's voice—"'but no matter which end of the dining-room I sit, all the men look ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... the last interrogation, the small servant, with a look of infinite cunning mingled with fear, screwed up her mouth very tight and round, and nodded violently. Whether there was anything in the peculiar slyness of her action which fascinated Mr Quilp, or anything in the expression of her features at the moment which attracted his attention for some other reason; or whether it merely occurred to him as a pleasant whim to stare the small servant out of countenance; certain it is, that he planted his elbows ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... t' attack your highness, And then, with wonted wile and slyness, They left me in the lurch: Unhappy wretch! for now, I ween, I've nothing left to vent my spleen ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... as pallid of face as Newman, himself, and their faces gave one the impression of both slyness and force. A grim looking pair; I should not have cared to run afoul of them on the Barbary Coast after midnight. I already knew the names they called each other—the only names I ever knew them by—"Boston," for the blond fellow with the bridge ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... without a doubt; and, indeed,—in perfect innocency, I hope, but perhaps with a touch of slyness too,—I proposed at the end of the summer holidays that I should stay at home. 'What is the use of my going to school? Let me be with you when we rise to meet the Lord in the air!' To this my Father sharply ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... with the irresistible slyness of the final chorus of the Aminta already quoted compare the sententious lines with ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... "Eh—a State prisoner. Yes, yes. She has that kind of look." Then she turned to John, with mingled slyness and humour, "On va ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... choirs" are covered with the glad light-green of spring. His genius combined the excellencies of many masters. His "Golden Targe" and "The Thistle and the Rose" are allegorical poems, full of colour, fancy, and music. His "Two Married Women and the Widow" has a good deal of Chaucer's slyness and humour. "The Dance of the Deadly Sins," with its fiery bursts of imaginative energy, its pictures finished at a stroke, is a prophecy of Spenser and Collins, and as fine as anything they have accomplished; while his "Flytings" are torrents of the ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... the shed, he saw a boy at the bars. It was Nate Griggs! No; only for a moment he thought this was Nate. But this fellow's eyes were not so close together; his hair was less sandy; there were no facial indications of extreme slyness. It was only Nathan's humble ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... lead Tsiganok to the execution he began to bustle about and seemed to have recovered his spirits. Again he had that sweet taste in his mouth, and his saliva collected abundantly, but his cheeks turned rosy and in his eyes began to glisten his former somewhat savage slyness. Dressing ...
— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev
... answer. She had already said enough to cause her to bite her lip as she disappeared down the basement stair. Decidedly the boys were right. An uneasy feeling followed any conversation with this girl. Yet, while there was slyness in her manner, there was a certain frank honesty visible in it too, which caused me to think that if she could ever be made to speak, her evidence could ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... the wire from the cork, discharged the missile at the ceiling. The shoemaker took the glass from him and looked round with offensive slyness. ...
— Light Freights • W. W. Jacobs
... but soon after I came in she turned towards me, and I beheld a ravishing profile which somehow seemed familiar; but I attributed that to the idea of perfect beauty that was graven on my soul. The more I looked at her the surer I felt that I had never seen her before, though a smile of inexpressible slyness had begun to play about her lips. One of her gloves fell, and I hastened to restore it to her, whereupon she thanked me in a few ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... The slyness of the rascal tickled the boy so much that he pushed back his hat, clapped his hands, and burst out laughing as he had not done before for weeks. Every one looked around surprised, and Sancho regarded him with ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 5, March, 1878 • Various
... and crusted; When traitors came to steal his son reputed, My own small boy I deftly substituted! The villains fell into the trap completely— I hid the Prince away—still sleeping sweetly: I called him "son" with pardonable slyness— His name, Luiz! Behold his ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... She is the pretty, good-natured, well-principled, and rather well-educated menial, whose prudence comes to the aid of her principles, whose pride does not interfere with either, and who has a certain—it is hardly unfair to call it—slyness which is of the sex rather than of the individual. But, as such, she is quite admirably worked out—a heroine of Racine in more detail and different circumstances, a triumph of art, and at the same time with so much nature that it is impossible to dismiss her as merely artificial. The nearest ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... sailed off to Buckhorn to do some telegraphing he should have done Saturday night. My suspicions about his slyness, by the way, were quite unfounded. It was the guileless-eyed Terry who led those railway officials out to the spot where he'd already secretly tested for water and found signs of it. And Terry can't even understand why Dinky-Dunk is so toweringly ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... slyness. Look at him now." For the crocodile, thinking itself unobserved, was crawling slowly toward the bank of the river. When it reached the end of its tether and could go no farther, it lay down and, lifting ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... in sympathy, apt in characterisation, he has much that is interesting and informing to say of each. Perhaps the chapter on WHISTLER is the most attractive, since in some respects his individuality was the most pronounced. In a couple of brief sentences, pleasing in the slyness of their gentle malice, Mr. CARR hits off a striking quality in the character of the WHISTLER we most of us knew. "At times," he writes, "Whistler was even greedy of applause, and, provided it was full and emphatic ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 28, 1914 • Various
... man glanced up at him with innocent slyness. "I prefer always to discuss these things in an ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... she replied, looking at him with the coquettish slyness of a woman who is not quite ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... were to find out!" she would say apprehensively, and then perhaps giggle at the slyness of it all. Tommy had to make merry with her, as if it was one of his boyish plays. If he was overcome with the pain of it, she sobbed at once and ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... however, maintaining her reserved behaviour, and frigidly declining to understand the Major whenever he called (which he often did) on any little fishing excursion connected with this project, the Major, in spite of his constitutional toughness and slyness, was fain to leave the accomplishment of his desire in some measure to chance, 'which,' as he was used to observe with chuckles at his club, 'has been fifty to one in favour of Joey B., Sir, ever since his elder brother died of Yellow Jack in ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... messenger had done no more for us than this, I think he would have earned his money. But the harmless young man is a regular Jesuit at a private inquiry, with this great advantage over all the Popish priests I have ever seen, that he has not got his slyness written in his face. ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... from calamities similar to those which, too often, depopulate it in May. Let the Gnat come now, if she dare, to steal the Halictus' loaves! Let her lie in wait as long as she will! Neither her audacity nor her slyness will make her escape the lynx eyes of the sentinel, who will put her to flight with a threatening gesture or, if she persist, crush her with her nippers. She will not come; and we know the reason: until spring returns, she is underground ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... guilty of a most reprehensible act of slyness. She turned full upon him the batteries of her lustrous dark eyes, and smiled ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... no humor for occult things, so he cut in with: "Now listen here, Amos—what do you think of me asking Mrs. Herdicker to sit at one end of the table, eh? Of course I know what the girls will think—but then," he winked with immense slyness, "that's all right. I was talking to her about it, and she's going to have a brand new dress—somepin swell—eh? By the jumping ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... his Innocents Abroad, published in 1869, a semi- burlesque account of the adventures of a party of American tourists in Europe and the East. Roughing It, and other works of his published subsequently, have been equally successful. The qualities of his style are peculiar, slyness and cleverness in jesting being ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... ain't just up to some o' your arts,' said Christopher, with a contented face, in which his blue eye twinkled with a little slyness; 'but I'll tell you what, she can cook a dish o' pot-pie that you can't beat, nor nobody else; and her rye ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... my lot from very childhood! All have read upon my countenance the marks of bad qualities, which were not existent; but they were assumed to exist—and they were born. I was modest—I was accused of slyness: I grew secretive. I profoundly felt both good and evil—no one caressed me, all insulted me: I grew vindictive. I was gloomy—other children merry and talkative; I felt myself higher than they—I was rated lower: I grew envious. ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... coy slyness: "Isn't it too bad you two have me in the way!" and: "Don't mind poor me. Auntie will turn her back any time you want ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... hearty laugh, and Gaspare's eyes gleamed with pleasure while Hermione and Maurice drank. Then Sebastiano drew from the inner pocket of his old jacket a little flute, smiling with an air of intense and comic slyness which ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... done his day's work in the mine, and after his pipe was going to work in his garden, where his vegetables were coming forward very well. Nothing could have been better than his manners—quiet, manly, civil, without the rather aggravating slyness of the ordinary French peasant, and with absolutely nothing of the infantine swagger of the small French bourgeois. These miners here wear a picturesque and practical costume, something between the garb of a sailor and the garb of a fireman, and as their ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... never read a book through in her life. The guest did not know, even now, that Caroline had been a mental problem for years, that Caroline's family had consulted great psycho-analysts about her, and had watched the girl's self-centredness, her odd slyness, her hysteric emotions, with deep concern. She did not know, even now, that the Cragies were anxious to encourage this first reaching out, in Caroline, toward a member of her own sex, and that her ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... 30th of June—or rather, as I suppose, it had run out already, and the month of grace would expire upon that day, after which any American citizen might post a notice of his own, and make Silverado his. This, with a sort of quiet slyness, Rufe told me at an early period of our acquaintance. There was no silver, of course; the mine "wasn't worth nothing, Mr. Stevens," but there was a deal of old iron and wood around, and to gain possession of this old wood and iron, and get ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... quickly, and with a slyness of expression which escaped the direct and unsuspecting mind of the preacher, "but if you are denied the blessings which are theirs, you have your part in the great family of the world. If you have neither wife ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... through London, Dinah pretended not to be the right person, lest the gentleman should not be the right; so that it was lucky they did lose his help altogether. Miss Foote was disagreeably impressed by their account of their great slyness, and not less by the suspicious temper—natural, perhaps, to Dinah, but not at all so to Harry—in which they began their new mode of life. Dinah was no servant of hers; so she had nothing to do ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... began the most pitiful business. She was pleading with him in a whining, wheedling, silly voice, which would have broken down an Englishman. Grifone himself was pricked. It was like a child, frightened into slyness, coaxing ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... with the purpose of being transferred to the patronage of the Duchess—I mean of the Lady Marjory of Douglas. Now, this beetle headed provost, who is after all but a piece of blundering valiancy, has, like most such, a retainer of some slyness and cunning, whom he uses in all his dealings, and whose suggestions he generally considers as his own ideas. Whenever I would possess myself of a landward baron, I address myself to such a confidant, who, in the present ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... he characterised as one who loved to say little oddities, was affecting one day, at a Bishop's table, a sort of slyness and freedom not in character, and repeated, as if part of The Old Man's Wish, a song by Dr. Walter Pope, a verse bordering on licentiousness. Johnson rebuked him in the finest manner, by first shewing ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... remarks. It made them unfit to work and to serve honest men like himself, who had never had anything to do with that evil thing—book-learning. When I gently asked why the sight of me had made him think about it, he explained, with a look of infinite slyness, that he saw I was reading a book. Then came an amusing disclosure. At fourteen I was a very much overgrown lad, almost as tall as I am now, and weighing almost as much and he had mistaken me for one of the ordination pupils of a Roman Catholic ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... courage to stand and do battle. Strength indicates a boundless nature—like the Maker. Strength is a God to you—Purity a toy. A pretty one, and you seem to be fond of playing with it," he added, with unaccustomed slyness. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... duller kin' o' cratur a'thegither, and cared for naething he could na see or hanle. He never thoucht muckle aboot God at a'. Jacob was anither sort—a poet kin' o' a man, but a sneck drawin' cratur for a' that. It was easier, hooever, to get the slyness oot o' Jacob, than the dulness oot o' Esau. Punishment tellt upo' Jacob like upon a thin skinned horse, whauras Esau was mair like the minister's powny, that can hardly be made to unnerstan' that ye want him to ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... mellowest midsummer, and watched the muskrats at their frays and feeding? Have you hunted the common wildcat, short-bodied demon, whose tracks upon the snow are discernible each winter morning, but who is so crafty, so gifted with some great art of slyness, that you may grow to manhood with him all about you, yet never see him in the sinewy flesh unless with dog and gun, and food and determination, you seek his trail, and follow it unreasoningly until you terminate the stolid quest with a discovery of the ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... give such ludicrous explanation of my naughty act, that justice was overcome by laughter and threw me, as often as not, a handful of raisins instead of a knotted strap. If by such successes I was encouraged to cultivate my natural slyness and duplicity, I throw the blame on my unwise preceptors, and am glad to be rid ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... they parted at night, she would have felt almost secure of success if he had not been to leave Hertfordshire so very soon. But here she did injustice to the fire and independence of his character, for it led him to escape out of Longbourn House the next morning with admirable slyness, and hasten to Lucas Lodge to throw himself at her feet. He was anxious to avoid the notice of his cousins, from a conviction that if they saw him depart, they could not fail to conjecture his design, and he was not willing to have the attempt known till its success might be known likewise; for ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... murmured. "Von der Doppelbauch Pasha," he added with dignity, "you are permitted to withdraw. Commend me to your Imperial Master, my brother. Tell him that, when I am gone, he may have Constantinople, provided only"—and a certain slyness appeared in the Sultan's eye—"that he can get ...
— Further Foolishness • Stephen Leacock
... candidacy for the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, and hoped for the support of the party of the Ducs. That was why he received influential hypocrites, provincial Tartufes, and priests every week. He doubtless had to drive himself to do this, because in spite of his slinking slyness he was jovial and enjoyed a joke. On the other hand, he aspired to figure in the literature that counts at Paris, and he expended a good deal of ingenuity inveigling men of letters to his house on another evening every week, to make them his aides, or at least keep ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... and half hidden behind one of the great marble lions in the shade of the loggia he discerned a grotesque little creature, with the figure of a child and a woman's face, old in its expression of slyness and malignity. ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... than that. Slyness, you may say, belongs to the whole sex, and I've known men say as they found it agreeable, ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... most determined aspirant for fame was none other than Mignon La Salle. With her usual slyness, she kept her own counsel. Nevertheless, she believed she stood a fair chance of winning the prize of which she dreamed. For Mignon could sing. From childhood her father had spared no expense in the matter of her ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... M'sieur des Lupeaulx, hunts Mademoiselle Gaubertin, who has a fine white 'dot' on her back. Come now, my good gentleman, if I may make so bold, plunge into the middle of the Avonne and get to that stone down there. If we head the otter off, it will come down stream; for just see their slyness, the beggars! they always go above their burrow to feed, for, once full of fish, they know they can easily drift down, the sly things! Ha! if I'd been trained in their school I should be living now ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... loose brown coat, stood by, leaning against the stand of one of the vases of plants, whose rich wreaths of brightly coloured blossoms hung down, making a setting for the group; and while Violet by her blandishments invited the peacock to approach, he now and then, with smiling slyness, made thrusts at it with her parasol, or excited ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... could be taken required no stretch of policy to plan, nor spirit of enterprize to effect. It was like marching behind a man to knock him down: and the dastardly slyness of such an attack would have stained the fame of the United States. Where there is no danger cowards are bold, and Captain Bobadils are to be found in the Senate as well as on the stage. Even Gouverneur, on such a march, ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... what you mean, but you can't wonder that my husband should feel it hard that there should have been some kind of flirtation. He is fond of Maura, you know, and he does feel that there must have been some slyness in some one to cause this affair to have been so ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... when we say that we must overcome evil with good, but practically no process is more involved, or more tedious, than to find actual means to accomplish this end. It is much easier to say what one shall not do than what one must do to change self-will into strength of character, slyness into prudence, the desire to please into amiability, restlessness into personal initiative. It can only be brought about by recognising that evil, in so far as it is not atavistic or perverse, is as natural and indispensable ...
— The Education of the Child • Ellen Key
... laughed serenely. "We're serving the public," said he. Then he remembered the new man of business in him, and added, with a slyness obvious from across the street, "Oh, and ourselves too, ourselves ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... flashed into Violet's mind; but she put it resolutely from her; she would not believe Gracie capable of slyness and deceit. ...
— Elsie's New Relations • Martha Finley
... destined to score success with his lance, the dwarf at least had won a victory through his comical situation and ready wit. Fair ladies forgot his ugliness; the pages his ill-humor; the courtiers his vindictive slyness; the monarch the disappointment of his failure to worst the duke's fool, and all applauded the ludicrous figure, shouting, waving his arms, struggling with inexorable destiny. Finally, in despair, his hands fell to ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... "he's lying—about something. But what?" He noted a change in Russell's face, a suggestion of craftiness, the merest shadow of slyness over his general attitude of anxiety. And yet, this part of his ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... this little creature— How modest seems his feature! He nestles so demurely, You'd think him safer surely; And yet for all his shyness, There's danger in his slyness! The cunning rogue! Young loves to sell! My pretty loves ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... means to gain his ends. Unnatural son, cruel father, terrible husband, detestable master, pernicious neighbour; without friendship, without friends—incapable of having any jealous, suspicious, ever restless, full of slyness and artifices to discover and to scrutinise all, (in which he was unceasingly occupied, aided by an extreme vivacity and a surprising penetration,) choleric and headstrong to excess even for trifles, difficult of access, never in accord with himself, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... the mourning woman. Great delight. The queen of hearts is in the same row:—well met. But the queen of jealousy[68] and the murderer[68] stand between them and separate them. The dog[68] means faithfulness, the cat[68] slyness. The queen of melancholy stands beside the dog.—Take care of yourself, for some woman, who is angered, ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... on very fairly well with Sergeant Cuff so far. But the slyness with which he slipped in that last question put me on my guard. In plain English, I didn't at all relish the notion of helping his inquiries, when those inquiries took him (in the capacity of snake in the ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... for—handsomely." His tone was sly—so sly that I answered nothing, for to answer a sly man is to assist him, and my business was to let him betray the cause of this slyness. Followed a spell of silence. Then, "Do you know," said he, "that several of her relatives are thinking ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... over the head found its rest behind the wing, and profound sleep followed. Sometimes my friends would make a spring upon the sofa by my side, I fear with a view to forthcoming worms, of which they well knew I was the purveyor; and nothing could exceed the slyness of their eyes as they looked up at me and mutely suggested an expedition to that heap ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... power to the Holy father. During his ten years' dictatorship, he has neither gained the esteem of one foreigner nor the confidence of one Roman. All he has gained is time. His pretended capacity is but slyness. To the trickery of the present he adds the cunning of the red Indian; but he has not that largeness of view without which it is impossible to establish firmly the slavery of the people. No one possesses in a greater degree than he the art of dragging on an affair, and manoeuvring ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... be better," said the boy. Then he added, with a curious sort of naive slyness, "But I haven't said I didn't ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... is a very epitome of cunning, and his name is a by-word for slyness. Farmers know well that no fox, nestling close to their houses, ever meddles with their poultry. Reynard rambles a good way from home before he begins to plunder. How admirable is Professor Wilson's description of fox-hunting, quoted here from the "Noctes." Sir Walter ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... was, and often as she frowned on Maria's outbreaks, she never could detect their provocative. Over-restraint and want of sympathy were direct instruction in unscrupulous slyness of amusement. A sentence of displeasure on Maria's ill-mannered folly was in the act of again filling her eyes with tears, when there was a knock at the door, and all the faces beamed ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the older word of the two, and while the loss of the atonic first syllable is normal in English (p. 61), it would be hard to find a case in which a meaningless prefix has been added. Nor does the meaning of demure approximate very closely to that of ripe. It now has a suggestion of slyness, but in Milton's time ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... Mr. John Knightley presently, with some slyness, "he seems to have a great deal of good-will ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... judgments of others. The system was never intended to give a dog a bad name. To be perpetually supervised, questioned and shadowed is to be doubted, and doubt destroys confidence and creates fear, slyness and discontent in the other individual. Every man is entitled to a fresh hold on security with his new superior. Any wise and experienced senior commander will tell you this, and will cite examples of men who came to him with a spotty ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... pantry-sprawling; But wot's the use? Trot myself hout for 'Ebrews, or some tuppenny kernel? No, not for JEAMES, if he is quite aweer of it! It's just infernal, The Vulgar Mix that calls itself Society. All shoddy slyness, And moneybags; a "blend" as might kontamernate a Ryal 'Igness, Or infry-dig a Hemperor. It won't nick JEAMES though, not percisely; Better to flop in solitude than to demean one's self unwisely. Won't ketch me selling myself off. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 25, 1891 • Various
... man of about forty years of age. His face was pale, with an almost unhealthy pallor, from which his small dark eyes glittered restlessly; his thin lips, tightly closed, were set in an almost straight line. Clean-shaven, sleek of hair, he wore an expression of cautious slyness that implied a mental attitude ever on guard against some sudden exposure of his real feelings. Such ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... be feared that Mr. Torrance is now taking advantage of his superior slyness. 'Still, ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... like a creature of heaven, and as I stood back of her chair, looking down upon those beautiful shoulders and white arms and head of soft and shining hair, it was hard to believe she was in some conspiracy of which she had kept her husband in ignorance with the slyness of a snake. I felt sorry for him. So at the moment of my first doubt of her, I found that pity—begging your pardon!—had at last made me ready to forget that I had never liked him or his cold ways, and ready to forgive the once he laid violent hands on me. My mistress had not chosen to tell me ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... slyness, and gave me a dunt with his elbow on the side, a bit of the faun, a bit of the father, a ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... like a cat in slyness or cunning, watching stealthily for prey and springing upon it ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.
... wistful blue eyes, and soft, light, wavy hair, and perhaps Gooch was jealous of his attracting more notice than Griffith, and thought he posed for admiration, for she used to tell people that no one could guess what a child he was for slyness; so that he could not bear going out with her, and sometimes bemoaned himself ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... waste my breath, which I never do. I prefer coming at once to my last charge against the horse, which is the most serious of all, because it affects his moral character. I accuse him boldly, in his capacity of servant to man, of slyness and treachery. I brand him publicly, no matter how mild he may look about the eyes, or how sleek he may be about the coat, as a systematic betrayer, whenever he can get the chance, of the confidence reposed in him. What do you mean by laughing and ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... sly folk. It behooved me to counter with equal slyness. I wondered whether she had known all along of Boyce's mishap, or had been informed of it by his mother. Knowledge might explain her unwonted outburst. I looked at ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... than that of Lupo Vulp, it would be difficult to discover. A sardonic smile hovered perpetually about his mouth, which was garnished with ranges of the keenest and whitest teeth. His features were sharp; his eyes small, set wide apart, of a light gray colour, and with all the slyness of a fox lurking within their furtive glances. Indeed, his general resemblance to that astute animal must have struck a physiognomist. His head was shaped like that of a fox, and his hair and beard were of ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth |
