"Pique" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... scant interest in the stranger, whose gaze seldom left her as he sat beside the fire. He was a handsome man, his face and figure illumined by the firelight, and it might have been that he felt a certain pique, an unaccustomed slight, in that his presence was so indifferent an element in the estimation of any young and comely specimen of the feminine sex. Certainly he had rarely encountered such absolute preoccupation as her smiling far-away look betokened as she went back and forth with ...
— The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... a sense of pique which I did not trouble to conceal, and walked to the other end of the raft. I turned my back upon the girl and stood looking out upon the leaden waters of the Caribbean Sea. The ocean was now calm. There was ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... more and more. Thence alone to Broade Street to Sir G. Carteret by his desire to confer with him, who is I find in great pain about the business of the office, and not a little, I believe, in fear of falling there, Sir W. Coventry having so great a pique against him, and herein I first learn an eminent instance how great a man this day, that nobody would think could be shaken, is the next overthrown, dashed out of countenance, and every small thing of irregularity in his business taken notice of, where ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... alas!" the dame continued, tossing her head with mingled pique and triumph. "'Tis a sad day for thee and thine, then! This Sir Guy of thine is as good as dead, girl! Thy popinjay is a traitor, and his ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... novel of still greater interest than 'Pique.' The plot is well conceived, the characters skilfully developed, and the attention is fascinated even to the end. The moral is unexceptionable, the style fresh and pure. We must however enter an earnest protest ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... no time in informing the Embassy of the loss of the letter. He would have realized that, next to the letter itself, the news of its seizure was the best thing he could deliver—also, it was his duty to advise the Embassy at the quickest possible moment. You see, dear lady, personal pride and pique play no part in this game. They are not even considered; it's the execution of the mission that's the one important thing; all else is made to ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... the neighbourhood was curious in one way—it was so very mixed, In the adverse part of the mixture, however, a good deal of personal pique was apparent, and one thing was always obvious: people liked her as much as she would let them. She even might have been popular had she chosen, but popularity comes of condescending to the level of the average, and Evadne was exclusive. She was une ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... was only a bit of pique on her part, and I hoped to be able to talk the lady round. I know what ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... cautious in inculcating such a precept if all men were good; but as the generality of mankind are wicked, and ever ready to break their words, a prince should not pique himself in keeping his more scrupulously, especially as it is always easy to justify a breach of faith on his part. I could give numerous proofs of this, and show numberless engagements and treaties which have been violated ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... Lieutenant of Ireland, the Earl of Carlisle, was making some sort of progress through Ireland, he proposed stopping at the hotel at Maam, a hotel under the thumb of the late Lord Leitrim, who had some pique at the Lord Lieutenant, which determined him to order under pain of the usual penalty that there be no admittance to the Viceroy of Ireland at this hotel. His Lordship for once felt the power of a text of Scripture, and sent orders that from the highways and hedges they should be compelled ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... silliness brought you to this. I should never have written that letter—a three years' child would have known better. But I had not seen M. de Mar for five weeks—I did not know, what I readily guess now, that he had taken sides against us. M. de Lorraine played on my pique." ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... Reginald's neglect, all his defalcations, the cruelty of his conduct to her, the evidence of his never intending to marry her, the selfishness which makes him indifferent to her troubles, and unwilling to help her. Work on pride, on pique, on jealousy, on the love of comfort and luxury, and the horror of poverty and privation, which are always powerful in the minds of women like Madame Durski. Don't talk much to her at first about Douglas Dale, especially until he has ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... have pass'd, since, in thy prime, Plunging from off the shatter'd Blanche, o'erboard Amid the moonlight waves, twas thine to climb La Pique's torn side, and take ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... liked to enter into the humours of a Court; to devote his brilliant imagination and affluence of invention either to devising a pageant which should throw all others into the shade, or a compromise which should get great persons out of some difficulty of temper or pique. ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... soul-sides, one to face the world with, one to show his manuscripts when he's writing. You hint a fault, and hesitate dislike. That, indeed, is only natural, on the part of an old friend. But you pique my interest. What is the trouble with him? Is—is ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... It is a year ago now since that wretched affair, and Wallace seems almost his old self again, she says, so I hope he will soon have forgotten all about me. I feel hot and cold whenever I think about it. It is wicked to play at being in love! Suppose I had accepted Wallace out of pique, as I thought of doing for a few mad moments; suppose I had been going to marry him to-morrow—how awful, how perfectly awful I should feel now! How different from Vere, whose face looks so sweet and satisfied that it does one ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... complained grievously that they, who composed the greater part of the Lacedaemonium force, should every year be led hither and thither, and exposed to great risks and dangers, merely to satisfy one man's personal pique. Hereupon we are told that Agesilaus, desiring to prove that this argument about their composing so large a part of the army was not founded on fact, made use of the following device:—He ordered all the allies to sit down in one body, and made the Lacedaemonians sit down separately. Next he gave ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... looked earnestly into his face, and was about to speak, but her thoughts were too weak for the task, and after putting her hand to her forehead, as if to assist her recollection, she let it fall passively beside her, and hung-her head in a mood, partaking at once of childish pique and deep dejection. ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... stiff and starched as a Norman cap. Dr. Veron believes himself the key-stone of the Elysean arch, and that the weight of the government is on his shoulders. Look at him as he enters the Cafe de Paris to eat his puree a la Conde, and his supreme de volaille, and his filet de chevreuil pique aux truffes, and you would say that he is not only the prime, but the favorite minister of Louis Napoleon, par la grace de Dieu et Monsieur le Docteur President de la Republique. "Apres tout c'est un mauvais drole, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... not know that his hero was lying, and that in his pique and hurt vanity he was inventing grievances which had no foundation, and offences which had never been committed. He only knew that, because of the hate which lay in Thornton Lyne's heart, justifiable hate from Sam's view, the death of this great ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... with Michael when he left her. There was perhaps more hurt pride and pique in her anger than she would have cared to own. He had failed to succumb to her charms, he had not seemed to notice her as other men did; he had even lost the look of admiration he used to wear when they were boy and girl. He had ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... country. An oracle on subjects of mere business, in the great questions of policy he is comparatively a failure. He never embraces any party heartily; he never espouses any question as if wholly in earnest. The moderation on which he is said to pique himself often exhibits itself in fastidious crotchets and an attempt at philosophical originality of candor which has long obtained him, with his enemies, the reputation of a trimmer. Such a man circumstances ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... now!" said Josephine, with the least bit in the world of pique in her voice. "Well, that is the fault of your eyes, and not of his. I tell you those eyes are my destiny—I feel it and know it. I have not seen a pair before in a long while, that looked as if they could laugh and make love ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... fatiguing a drive he in fact needed some refreshment, and the agonising consciousness that all her own physical pleasure at the moment was destroyed by the mental sufferings she endured at having quarrelled with her son, and that he was depriving himself of what was so agreeable only to pique her, quite overwhelmed the ill-regulated mind of this fond mother. Between each sip and each mouthful, she appealed to him to follow her example, now with cajolery, now with menace, till at length, worked up by the united stimulus of the Mountain and ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... attitude seemed to change. I could see her lovely shape brace itself up, as it were, beneath her robes and felt in some way that her mind had also changed; that it had rid itself of mockery and woman's pique and like a shifting searchlight, was directed upon some ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... and that wounded pride had caused her to do as she had done; but her husband's remark suggested other thoughts. It was possible that reports were in circulation calculated to injure her social standing, and that Mrs. Todd's conduct toward her was not the result of any private pique. ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... are not a man whom a woman can forget, though pique or ambition may lead her to try. I tell you, frankly, I believe that Providence sent your Royal Highness here at this moment, and my best hopes are now pinned on you. You—and no one as well as you—can save the Emperor for a nobler fate. Even when I supposed ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... badly burned in consequence of its clothes having taken fire. As well as she could learn, the girl in whose charge she had left the children, and who, in the reduced circumstances of the family, was constituted doer of all work, had, from some pique, gone away in her absence. Thus left free to go where, and do what they pleased, the children had amused themselves in playing with the fire. When the clothes of the youngest caught in the blaze of a lighted ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... blemishes, that at once betrayed the counterfeit. Had Hawkeye been aware of the low estimation in which the skillful Uncas held his representations, he would probably have prolonged the entertainment a little in pique. But the scornful expression of the young man's eye admitted of so many constructions, that the worthy scout was spared the mortification of such a discovery. As soon, therefore, as David gave the preconcerted signal, a low hissing sound was heard in the lodge in place of the ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... a whip-lash across the front of my machine. There was a loud hiss as it lay for a moment across the hot engine, and it whisked itself into the air again, while the huge, flat body drew itself together as if in sudden pain. I dipped to a vol-pique, but again a tentacle fell over the monoplane and was shorn off by the propeller as easily as it might have cut through a smoke wreath. A long, gliding, sticky, serpent-like coil came from behind and caught me round the waist, dragging me out of the fuselage. I tore at it, my fingers sinking ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... No sound penetrates to it. Even the very fire, in a fit of pique, has degenerated into a ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... her want of vivid religious conviction the excuse for not proposing to her, but it is not easy to put aside the conviction that it was her want of a fortune which actuated him most strongly. Finally, he tries to pique her by telling her that he "knows of parties" in the city of Hanover "who might bring him much honour and comfort" were he "not afraid of losing (Catharine Trotter's) friendship." They write to one another with extreme formality, but that proves nothing. A young woman, passionately ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... standard of musical revolution; his title of the "Grand Valse" he finds too unassuming. "Surely a waltz with some angelic creature must have inspired you, Moscheles, with this composition, and that the title ought to express. Titles, in fact, should pique the curiosity of the public." "A view uncongenial to me," adds Moscheles; "however, I did not discuss it.... A dinner at Rossini's is calculated for the enjoyment of a 'gourmet,' and he himself proved to be the one, for he went ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... off her hat, rolled up her sleeves, and began on vigorous ablutions. She had laughed, yes, and heartily, but in her complicated many-roomed heart a lively pique rubbed shoulders with her mirth, and her merriment was tinctured with a liberal amount of the traditional feminine horrified disgust at having been uncomely, at having unconsciously been subjected to an indignity. She was determined ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... why they should not coalesce with Canning and Peel. What induced him to alter his opinion so decidedly and to become so bitter an enemy to the present arrangements does not appear, unless it is to be attributed to a feeling of pique and resentment at not having been more consulted, or that overtures were not made to himself. The pretext he took for declaring himself was the appointment of Copley to be Chancellor, when he said that it was impossible to support a Government which ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... and taking Megistonus prisoner. But whereas he used to be chosen general every other year, when his turn came and he was called to take upon him that charge, he declined it, and Timoxenus was chosen in his stead. The true cause of which was not the pique he was alleged to have taken at the people, but the ill circumstances of the Achaean affairs. For Cleomenes did not now invade them gently and tenderly as hitherto, as one controlled by the civil authorities, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... of staying away from the house for nearly half a week, and then, when he did pay a visit, he was almost as cold as the formal piece of diplomacy in the bag-wig and ruffles whom he called his uncle; and a great deal stiffer than the beautiful piece of pique, in silk gown and white satin corset, whom he called his cousin. Christina was dismayed at the sudden change—Adolphus never spoke to her, seldom looked at her, and evidently left the coast clear—so she thought—for ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... we would offer, has for its object to abate the pique and vexation under which the ablest volunteer advisers of the Minister are apt to suffer, on his disregard of their counsels, and sometimes to revenge themselves by bitter and indiscriminate censure of his general policy. They should remember, that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... unexpectedly aware of a dash of cruelty in it. The phrase "I hate" does not suit you at all; and a public confession "I am a sinner, a sinner, a sinner," is such pride that it made me feel uncomfortable. When the pope took the title "holiness," the head of the Eastern church, in pique, called himself "The servant of God's servants." So you publicly expatiate on your sinfulness from pique of Solovyov, who has the impudence to call himself orthodox. But does a word like orthodoxy, Judaism, or Catholicism contain ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... their pretext the public freedom. But that faction, composed of some of the discontented French princes and the mob, was entirely organized by Cardinal de Retz, who held them in hand, to check or to spur them as the occasion required, from a mere personal pique against Mazarin, who had not treated that vivacious genius with all the deference he exacted. This appears ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... told, 'the Earl stretched his own purse, and gave L6000 for the library.' Peter Le Neve spent his life in gathering important papers about coat-armour and pedigrees. He had intended them for the use of his fellow Kings-at-Arms; but it was said that he had some pique against the Heralds' College, and so 'cut them off with a volume.' The rest went to the auction-room: 'The Earl of Oxford,' said Oldys, 'will have a sweep at it'; and we know that the cast was successful. ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... "Well then, stay as you are; you shall have neither the house nor my hand, I will offer both to Fraulein Athalie"—and if he were to marry Athalie! As if cases had not been heard of in which an honest lover was refused by some stuck-up girl, and then out of pique offered his hand to the governess, or proposed to the housemaid on the spot! This hope of Frau Sophie's, however, was ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... on him the guilt of the small preludes, archeries, anglings, veilings, evasions, all done with the eyelids and the mute of the lips, or a skirmisher word or a fan's flourish, and which, intended to pique the husband rather than incite the lover, had led Mrs. Lawrence Finchley to murmur at her ear, in close assembly, without a distinct designation of Mr. Morsfield, "Dangerous man to play little games with!" It had ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... that engaged his attention. I scarcely saw him eat a hearty meal during his whole stay. Both at Parker's hotel in Boston, and at the Westminster in New York, everything was arranged by the proprietors for his comfort, and tempting dishes to pique his invalid appetite were sent up at different hours of the day; but the influenza had seized him with masterful power, and held the strong man down ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... time, was she invariably styled,) after all due preliminaries, had taken quiet possession of the little vine-clad cot; and although she was not as "neighborly" as she might have been, and never communicative as to her previous history, still might the feeling of pique with which they at first received such a rebuff to their curiosity, have been a very evanescent one in the minds of the villagers, had it not chanced that Aberdeen was blessed (?) with two prim sister-spinsters, (was it they or Aunt Nora, who formed the exception to the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... came with the Cauldstaneslap party; then she lived at Cauldstaneslap. Here was Archie's secret, here was the woman, and more than that - though I have need here of every manageable attenuation of language - with the first look, he had already entered himself as rival. It was a good deal in pique, it was a little in revenge, it was much in genuine admiration: the devil may decide the proportions! I cannot, and it is very likely ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... her grey eyes flashing, and her whole dear little self roused into a fiery, impulsive little Min—she looked glorious in her pique!—"then, Mr Lorton, I will not seek to detain you further—let me pass, sir!" she added passionately, as, relenting of my behaviour, I tried to stop her and explain my conduct—"Let me pass, sir! I do not wish to ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... been so immensely lauded and decried as this great statesman and warrior; as, indeed, no man ever deserved better the very greatest praise and the strongest censure. If the present writer joins with the latter faction, very likely a private pique of his own may be the cause of ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... Nan, do wait a little. Don't, in a fit of angry pique over Maryon Rooke, go and bind yourself irrevocably ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... jealousy. And yet, I would I had not wagered; it implies Doubt. If I doubted? Pshaw! I'll walk awhile And let the cool air fan me. 'Twas not wise. 'Tis only Folly with its cap and bells Can jest with sad things. She seemed earnest, too. What if, to pique me, she should overstep The pale of modesty, and give bold eyes (I could not bear that, nay, not even that!) To Marc or Claudian? Why, such things have been And no sin dreamed of. I will watch her close. There, now, ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... "To set off the banquet [that or which] he gives notice of."—Philological Museum, i, 454. Sometimes the objective word is put first because it is emphatical; as, "This the great understand, this they pique themselves upon."—Art of Thinking, p. 66. Prepositions of more than one syllable, are sometimes put immediately after their objects, especially in poetry; as, "Known all the world over."—Walker's Particles p. 291. "The thing is known all ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... each other; we kept the great pace Neck by neck, stride for stride, never changing our place; I turned in my saddle and made its girths tight, Then shortened each stirrup, and set the pique right, Rebuckled the cheek-strap, chained slacker the bit,— Nor galloped less ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... his men were stung with sudden pique And worked as never a worker worked before; They decorated madly for a week And then the last one tottered from the door, And I was left, still working day and night, For I have found a way of keeping warm, And putting paint ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 14, 1919 • Various
... operas, the "Pique Dame" (Queen of Spades), Op. 68, and "King Rene's Daughter" are not considered in any way distinctive, although the former was performed in New York, at the Metropolitan. The Third Piano Concerto, Op. 75, occupied the master during his last days at Frovolo; it was left ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... will presently be seen, they were not even permitted to suffer any considerable pecuniary loss by reason of their breach of the law. Finding that their conduct led to their being made the subjects of a sort of hero-worship, it is not surprising that they soon came to pique themselves upon what they had done, and, so far from feeling any consciousness of shame or regret, to openly court publicity for their proceedings. Jarvis was especially culpable in this respect, and was not ashamed to write letters to the papers on the subject, ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... just died in the West Indies, and doughty Sir Roger Williams had left the world in which he had bustled so effectively, bequeathing to posterity a classic memorial of near a half century of hard fighting, written, one might almost imagine, in his demi-pique saddle. But that most genial, valiant, impracticable, reckless, fascinating hero of romance, the Earl of Essex—still a youth although a veteran in service—was in the spring-tide of favour and glory, and was to command the land-forces now assembled ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... played with, as she herself confessed he had been, Claude Bainrothe bore himself very proudly and calmly in Evelyn Erle's presence, I thought. At first, there was a shade of coolness, of pique even in my own manner toward him as the memory of Evelyn's insinuations rose between us; but after the lapse of a few weeks all thought of this kind was put away, and he was received with a pleasure as undisguised, as it was innocent ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... Pique and disappointment smouldered also in the bosom of her fair daughter, who, if she had been less fair, might have been called sullen, since these emotions evidenced themselves in a scornful silence, ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... Rome—that a single verse of Frederick II.[369] of Prussia on the Abbe de Bernis, and a jest on Madame de Pompadour, led to the battle of Rosbach—that the elopement of Dearbhorgil[370] with Mac Murchad conducted the English to the slavery of Ireland that a personal pique between Maria Antoinette and the Duke of Orleans precipitated the first expulsion of the Bourbons—and, not to multiply instances of the teterrima causa, that Commodus, Domitian, and Caligula fell victims not to their public tyranny, but to private vengeance—and that an order ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... as they bowed to the commander.) "As I was saying to Barker, as matters stand in this regiment, some half a dozen at least of the men referred to as its 'representative officers' are apparently resentful of my arrest of Lieutenant Lanier, and attribute my course to pique, because he saw fit to show himself at the hop I declined to permit him as officer-of-the-guard to attend. You think, possibly, that because men like Captain Snaffle, Lieutenant Crane, and one or two of that set have been in consultation with me, the matters at issue are beneath your notice." (Here ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... and to have totally ruined her reputation in London, had she not been, upon the present, as well as upon a former occasion, supported by the duchess: her royal highness pretended to treat the whole story as romantic and visionary, or as solely arising from private pique: she chid Miss Temple, for her impertinent credulity: turned away the governess and her niece, for the lies with which she pretended they supported the imposture; and did many improper things in order to re-establish Miss Hobart's honour, which, ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... him, her arms crossed and her head slightly thrown back, the weight of her body supported on one leg, and a mischievous, daring look on her face which lent additional grace to her slightly masculine dress. She was wearing a high collar of pique with a cravat of black ribbon, and the revers of her white front turned back over her jacket bodice of cloth. There were pockets on the ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... hatred for Alaska that he abruptly changed his plans. He had no heart, perversity had killed his courage. It exasperated him beyond all measure to recall what little things his luck had hinged upon, what straws had turned his feet. A moment of pique with Lois, a broken piece of steel, a match, a momentary whim when Guth offered him payment. It was well that he did not know what part had been played by his quarrel with Harkness, that wet muk-luk, that vicious lead dog, ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... No ruler should put troops into the field merely to gratify his own spleen; no general should fight a battle simply out of pique. 19. If it is to your advantage, make a forward move; if ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... troubled me suddenly resolved itself, and I became convinced that the change in the manner of my secretary was due to increased pressure of the rules of the House of Martha. I would not, I could not, believe that a fit of pique, occasioned by my apparent want of interest in her, could make her thus cold and even rude. She was not the kind of girl to do this thing of her own volition. It was those wretched rules; and if they were to be enforced in this way, the head of the ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... her face. Peter could not altogether read it. It was not merely anger, or pique, or disappointment; it certainly was not merely grief. There was all that in it, but there was more. And she said—he only just caught the sentence of any of their words, but there was the world of bitter meaning ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... self-betrayed despair. Little she helped him, at his direst need, Roving her eyes o'er hill, and wood, and sky, Peering intently at the meanest weed; Ay, doing aught but look in Lancelot's eye. Then, with the small pique of her velvet shoe, Uprooted she each herb that blossomed nigh; Or strange wild figures in the dust she drew; Until she felt Sir Lancelot's arm around Her waist, upon her cheek his breath like dew. While through his fingers timidly he wound Her shining locks; and, haply, when he brushed ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... property is all mine,—anything that’s loose on the place. Perhaps my grandfather planted old plate and government bonds just to pique the curiosity of his heirs, successors and assigns. It would be ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... every subject, however unequally, is divided into parties; and even in the case of Herbert (Lord Byron) and his writings, those who admired his genius and the generosity of his soul were not content with advocating, principally out of pique to his adversaries, his extreme opinions on every subject—moral, political, and religious. Besides, it must be confessed, there was another circumstance almost as fatal to Herbert's character in England as his loose ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... had not been for a peculiar sort of pique, with which lovers are much conversant, a preposterous kind of resentment which endeavors to wreak itself on the beloved object, and on one's own heart, in requital of mishaps for which neither are ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... with fear and rage—"to account for Adrian's decided and almost lover-like attentions to her in the room we visited, that you had had a lovers' quarrel with him some time before, earlier in the day; that, in his fit of pique, he had sought to be revenged upon you, and soothe his slighted feelings by feigning a sudden interest in her. ...
— The Haunted Chamber - A Novel • "The Duchess"
... holding her the while with a grasp so tight that it gave her pain. When she wrung herself from him, she shook her little hand with a rage that quivered through every nerve, and had more of hate than of romping folly or momentary pique in ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... spread of cholera, and the Allies are thinking that the Greeks want to be endangered by cholera any more than the Italians?... The history of the Balkan politics of the Allies is the record of one crass mistake after another, and now, through pique over the failure of their every Balkan calculation, they try to unload on Greece the results of their own stupidity. We warned them that the Gallipoli expedition would be fruitless and that the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... glow of delight and admiration, and how easily any one looking on might have fallen into the egregious error of construing his attitude into one distinctly loverlike. All this while she continued to pique his curiosity by a sustained reserve as ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... wilt, barbarian," said the Princess, rallying herself, with a certain degree of pique, arising perhaps from her not thinking more dramatis personae were appropriate to the scene, than the two who were already upon the stage. Then, as if for the first time, appearing to recollect the message with which ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... of the national hero, he thought that he detected in Mistress Polly's eyes an enthusiasm which he could not very well ascribe to his own individuality, he added with some pique: ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... to reveal the immediate object of this mighty and chivalrous preparation, which had, in fact, the gratification of a royal pique at bottom. The severe lesson which Ferdinand had received from the veteran Ali Atar before the walls of Loxa, though it had been of great service in rendering him wary in his attacks upon fortified places, yet rankled ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... year a gradual change to lighter mourning may be made by discarding the widow's cap and shortening the veil. Dull silks are used in place of crape, according to taste. In warm weather lighter materials can be worn—as, pique, nun's veiling, or ...
— The Book of Good Manners • W. C. Green
... between the lines and made out the hidden words, which were not flattering to herself. And to her it was manifest that Edgar's attentions, offered with such excited publicity, were not so much to gratify her or to express himself, as to pique Leam Dundas and work off ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... dissatisfied. It would repudiate, as an act of the basest treachery, such conduct towards a Government which had been permitted to carry a great measure, and which was displaced solely on grounds of personal pique. ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)
... more cautious in condemning, and usually milder in punishing, than laymen. The Home Secretary wavered. He sent for the judge who had presided at the trial, and Sir Daniel Buller, who had had time to recover from his little pique against the prisoner's counsel, infused his own doubt into the ...
— The Queen Against Owen • Allen Upward
... each other; we kept the great pace,— Neck by neck, stride by stride, never changing our place; I turned in my saddle and made its girths tight, Then shortened each stirrup and set the pique right, Rebuckled the check-strap, chained slacker the bit, Nor galloped less steadily Roland ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... folks and children, making prisoners of adults, and slaughtering cattle and horses for food. It happened, fortunately, that Takaiye, younger brother of Fujiwara Korechika, was in command at the Dazai-fu, whither he had repaired partly out of pique, partly to undergo treatment for eye disease at the hands of a Chinese doctor. He met the crisis with the utmost coolness, and made such skilful dispositions for defence that, after three days' fighting, in which the Japanese lost ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... to action by pique, or by what is called the "instinct of self-preservation," an instinct which, as Ibsen shows, is the very ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Sangster on with his coat and saw him to the door; he was dying to ask what had become of Mrs. Jimmy, but he did not like to. He was sure that Jimmy had merely got married out of pique, and that he had repented as quickly as one generally does repent in ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... such a sphinx as he looks!" Her tone betrayed a slight pique—"Now, your character would be much harder to read. That's one ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... of my different sufferings, imagined all of a sudden that Liza wanted to punish me for my haughty coldness at the beginning of my visit, that she was angry with me and only flirting with the prince from pique.... I seized my opportunity and with a meek but gracious smile, I went up to her, and muttered—'Enough, forgive me, not that I'm afraid ...' and suddenly, without awaiting her reply, I gave my features an extraordinarily cheerful and free-and-easy expression, with a set grin, passed my hand above ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... she, in that tone which surely denotes the raising of the drawbridge of pique; "you must rest until this evening. Who is the old gentleman who has been waiting two or three ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... "I pique myself on this, that whether Bohemian or not, I will go nowhere that I am not wanted. Though,—for the matter of that, I suppose I'm not wanted here." Then Phineas gave him the message from his father. "He wishes to see me to-morrow morning?" continued Lord Chiltern. "Let him send me word ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... fifty-four," said one, "and I could do my twenty-five miles in marching kit far better than half those boys of nineteen." Another was thirty-eight. "I must hold the business together," he said; "but why anyhow shouldn't I learn to shoot and use a bayonet?" The personal pique of the rejected lent force to their criticisms of the recruiting and general organisation. "The War Office has one incurable system," said a big mine-owner. "During peace time it runs all its home administration with ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... the sweet insolence of youth, health, colour, beauty; of the bud just burst into full flower. The other wore the stamp of care, of the much knowledge wherein is much sorrow, and in her eyes dwelled the ghosts of dead years. She herself looked like a ghost-dressed in white pique, which of itself drew the colour from her white face and pale lips and mass of faint straw-coloured hair, the pallor of all which was accentuated by the red spots on her cheeks and her ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... specifics of the healing art, shrewdness, independence, nice observation; they have a woman's kindness and a man's sturdiness. They honor human nature not the less because the writer knows how to manage it, to raise a smile at its absurdities, to rally, pique, and guide it into health and good-humor. He is very clever with the edge-tools in his surgeon's-case; he whips you out an excrescence before you are quite aware that he meditated an operation, and you find that he had chloroformed you with a shrewd writer's best anaesthetic, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... he continued, "you suffered what the new psychologists call a 'psychic trauma'—a soul-wound. You were engaged, but your censored consciousness rejected the manner of life of your fiance. In pique you married Price Maitland. But you never lost your ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... at about 5 P.M. yesterday, Russian at anchor, and went towards her, but were afterwards obliged to remove to some distance, as we had not water enough where she is. While we were going to our berth, the 'Pique' came in sight. So here we are—'Pique' 'Furious' and 'Slaney' (gunboat), in an open sea, land not even risible. Captain Osborn started off this morning, in the gunboat, to sound and find out what chance we have of getting over the bar at the mouth of the Peiho. Putiatine ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... got over his little pique, he made the first advances by writing a note to Upton, which he slipped under his study door, and which ran ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... when the papers of Cook failed to provide him with further facts, he was obliged to rely on would-be philosophical dissertations which it is to be hoped were not obtained from his father's notebooks. Young Forster says that the appointment was first of all given to his father in a spirit of pique on the part of Lord Sandwich, and then the order forbidding him to write was made because the father had refused to give Miss Ray, Lord Sandwich's mistress, who had admired them when on board the ship, some ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... you suppose Ralph is going to give you?" speculated Sister, carefully folding up the napkin Louise had dropped, and slipping it into the white pique ring embroidered with an ...
— Brother and Sister • Josephine Lawrence
... present occasion there were only a few stray locks to be pinned in order, and then the glass reflected a charming picture of happy girlhood. The pique skirt was fresh and neat; the pink shirt belted in by a natty white band, and the dark hair curled softly round the fresh bright face. Nan stared at herself solemnly, contorting her face into the curious, strained ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... proud assent as he stuck a biscuit in his mouth and looked at the lights with the greatest pleasure. I took off his new cap with its two blue bows over the ears, unbuttoned his little pique coat, which I had almost entirely built myself, and which was of excellent cut, and settled down to ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... at this. If it had been Marcia to whom he had spoken she would have judged he did it out of pique, but a pretty stranger coming upon the scene at this critical moment was trying. And then, too, David's manner was so indifferent, so utterly natural. He did not seem in the least troubled by ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... of those men who abhor priests, and do not particularly admire ladies. The latter, in revenge, denounced his manners as brutal, though they always sent for him, and were always trying, though vainly, to pique him into sympathy. He rarely spoke, but he listened to every one with entire patience. He sometimes asked a question, but he ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... the sort of distance she has put on; all superficial, my dear sir. I read it in your favor. I know the sex; they can't elude me. Pique, sir—nothing on earth but female pique. She is bitter against us for shilly-shallying. These girls hate shilly-shally in a man. They are monopolists—severe monopolists; shilly-shally is one of their monopolies. Throw yourself at her feet, and press her with ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... you have been hardly used, more than you'll say. I know my sister's passionate temper too well, to believe she could be over-civil to you, especially as it happened so unluckily that I was out. If, added he, she had no pique to you, my dear, yet what has passed between her and me, has so exasperated her, that I know she would have quarrelled with my horse, if she had thought I valued it, and nobody else was in her way. Dear sir, said I, don't say ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... replied the earl, "had not the earnestness with which my wife pleads his cause convinced me she knows more of his mind than she chooses to intrust me with, and therefore I suppose his conduct to Douglas arose from personal pique." ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... Fortune Gobert, nick-named Pique-Vinaigre (Sharp Vinegar, to prevent mistakes), formerly a juggler, and a prisoner for the crime of passing counterfeit money, was accused of breaking the terms of ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... kind—the passing admiration of Mr. Elliot had at least roused him, and the scene on the Cobb, and at Captain Harville's, had fixed her superiority. In his preceding attempts to attach himself to Louisa Musgrove (the attempts of anger and pique), he protested that he had continually felt the impossibility of really caring for Louisa, though till that day, till the leisure for reflection which followed it, he had not understood the perfect excellence of the mind ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... went home excited and wrought up to the resolve that nothing should interfere with the completion of his task. But it was the old story again—whims and postponements on Rachel's part, possibly temper and pique on his—until six months afterward, at the end of an angry conversation, he silently replaced the ring on her hand, and she did not resist. Four years later the compact was renewed, and although by this time De Musset had to all intents and purposes ceased to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... were the signal for the cry of malediction, raised against me with unexampled fury in every part of Europe. All the gazettes, journals and pamphlets, rang the alarm-bell. The French especially, that mild, generous, and polished people, who so much pique themselves upon their attention and proper condescension to the unfortunate, instantly forgetting their favorite virtues, signalized themselves by the number and violence of the outrages with which, while each seemed to strive who should afflict me most, they overwhelmed me. I was impious, an atheist, ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... Harte's stories lies in their originality of conception, their well-defined local color, and the chaste richness of their literary style. The power to pique one's interest to the last page belongs to Mr. Harte above all other writers of stories of American life. His latest book has all the good qualities of its predecessors. It tells a perfectly natural story of life in California. The hero is a newspaper man; the other characters are ...
— The Writer, Volume VI, April 1892. - A Monthly Magazine to Interest and Help All Literary Workers • Various
... first in connection with the Holladay case, when he had deserted the force temporarily to accept a place as star reporter on the yellowest of the dailies; but he had resigned that position in a moment of pique, and the department had promptly gobbled him ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... Campbell[1040]. Johnson had supped the night before at Mrs. Abington's, with some fashionable people whom he named; and he seemed much pleased with having made one in so elegant a circle. Nor did he omit to pique his mistress[1041] a little with jealousy of her housewifery; for he said, (with a smile,) 'Mrs. Abington's jelly, my dear Lady, was ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... replied Ug, with some pique, "my proposal was brief, but it was a model of what that sort of proposal should be. Here it is. Read it ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 7, 1914 • Various
... the apartment deserted. His shout of welcome wasn't answered: his whistle, in the private code which everybody uses, met with dead silence. Henry hung up his hat with considerable pique, and lounged into the living-room. What excuse had Anna to be missing at the sacred hour of his return? Didn't she know that the happiest moment of his whole day was when she came flying into his arms as soon as he crossed the threshold? Didn't ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... perfectly well that the aunt of whom I spoke WAS Lady Tepping; so I felt sure that she had played this card of malice prepense, to pique ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... on vigorously for a few moments, in a way I felt might pique his curiosity, if it did not gain my ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... that I Am far too low or far too high. Although I try with all my might, I never seem to strike it right. Now I admit it seems to me They show great inconsistency. But they imply I am to blame; Of course that makes my anger flame, And in a fiery fit of pique I stay at ninety for a week. Or sometimes in a dull despair, I give them just a frigid stare; And as upon their taunts I think My spirits down to zero sink. Mine is indeed a hopeless case; To strive to ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... acquaintance with Hamersley; of the duel, and in what a knightly manner the Kentuckian had carried himself; adding his own commentaries in a very flattering fashion. This, of itself, had been enough to pique curiosity in a young girl, just escaped from her convent school; but added to the outward semblance of the stranger, by the sun made lustrous—so lustrous inwardly—Adela Miranda was moved by something more than curiosity. As she ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... of a double-breasted frock coat of soft cheviot, vicuna, or diagonal worsted with either waistcoat to match—single-breasted or double-breasted—of fancy cloth, Marseilles duck or pique; trousers of different material, usually cashmere, quiet in tone, with a striped pattern on a dark gray, drab, or blue background; boots of patent leather, buttoned, not tied; a white or colored shirt with straight standing white ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain
... must have attained the dignity and ability of that position before being able to produce those marvels of skill which were woven between 1475 and 1575 in Flanders, France and Italy. Their aids, the apprentices, pique the fancy, as Puck harnessed to labour might do. They were probably as mischievous, as shirking, as exasperating as boys have ever known how to be, but those little unwilling slaves of art in the Middle Ages make an appeal to the imagination more vivid than that of ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... know, I had much attention. People thought me cold and heartless. How could I have a heart, having failed to win yours, and mine being broken? Having lost the only man I loved, I knew no one else could replace him, and I was not the kind to marry for pique. People thought me handsome, but I felt myself aged when you ceased to call. Perhaps when you and she who holds all your love come to sheol, she may spare you to me a little, for as a spirit my every thought is known; or perhaps after the resurrection, when I, too, can leave this ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... photographic; and is plainly inaccurate in saying that if they are compared with those in "Lavengro" "the illusion in Borrow's narrative is disturbed by the uncolloquial vocabulary of the speakers." For Borrow's dialogues do produce an effect of some kind of life; those of Hindes Groome instruct us or pique our curiosity, but unless we know Gypsies, they produce ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... Her partner, who had been hovering near, now claimed and bore her unwillingly away, for next to being friends with Bertie was the pleasure of "riling" him by smiling icyness. It was the only weapon she permitted herself, as she would not condescend to any visible sign of jealousy or pique. ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... 'I pique myself on my keen relish for all creature comforts, and also on my power of doing without them, if need be. My lord's woods are ample, and I indulge myself with a fire in my bedroom for nine months in the year; yet I could travel in Iceland without ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Catherine's tresses. She dragged her arm away in such a hurry that she scratched her hand on a pin that Agnes had stupidly left in my belt. "Voyez! vous avez fait saigner ma main," she said almost crying with fury. All I said was, "Qui s'y-frotte s'y pique," and as we had got to the door of my room, I went off in fits of laughter—she looked so like a cross monkey ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... mother does not think so," Murat replied, with pique. "I have just brought Madame Mere a present of eight fine carriage-horses. She declined them with thanks, and would not see me when I called on her in Rome. As for my loving brother-in-law, your ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... matched his boy's wit against hers. His mind had not sought out the hidden motive that lay behind what she had said; he had followed where she led and, finding her logic impregnable, had yielded like a child, in a pique. Yes, yielded out of spite without ever once thinking that she worked, day by day, ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... Miss Daisy liked Mr. Stokes, but he could not give her a title. The duke could—if he would. But would he? She was rich, but there were others richer. People said that he was wary. Yet he admired Miss Daisy, it was true, and if by her flirtation with Mr. Stokes she could pique him into a proposal, ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... to being appropriated so calmly, and with a deliberate intent to pique Farnsworth, she ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... so apt to go home after every battle, had actually cleared militant Covenanters out of Scotland. But the end had come. He would not permit the sack of Glasgow. Three thousand clansmen left him; Colkitto went away to harry Kintyre. Aboyne and the Gordons rode home on some private pique; and Montrose relied on men whom he had already proved to be broken reeds, the Homes and Kers (Roxburgh) of the Border, and the futile and timid Traquair. When he came among them they forsook him and fled; on September 10, at Kelso, Sir Robert Spottiswoode ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... up and down panting. She hardly understood her own rage, and she was quite conscious that, for her own interests, she had acted during the whole afternoon like a fool. First, stung by the pique excited in her by the talk of the luncheon-table, she had let herself be exploited and explored by Alicia Drake. She had not meant to tell her secret, but somehow she had told it, simply to give herself importance with this smart lady, and to feel her power over Diana. Then, it ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... lot with the Chartists in that spirit of pique which makes a man marry the wrong woman because the right one will have none of him. At the Chester-le-Street meeting he had declared himself an upholder of moral persuasion, while in his heart he pandered to those who knew only of physical force and placed their reliance thereon. ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... Brouague noticed the pique of the Chevalier at the mention of Philibert, but in that spirit of petty torment with which her sex avenges small slights she continued to irritate the vanity of the Chevalier, whom in ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... married experience. Fancy there being any need for anything else between us! they said. Their editor then supplied explanatory text: "Of course there may have been a soupcon of personal feeling in the case—bias, pique, whatever one likes to call it. You know, dear Mrs. Fenwick?" But Mrs. Fenwick waited for further illumination. "Well, you know ... I suppose it's rather a breach of confidence, only I know I shall be safe ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... speaking in favour of a thing which he has much at heart. He told her that he wondered that, as she always had a lofty mind for great things, it should be wanting to her on this occasion. He endeavoured to pique her jealousy as a monarch, by suggesting that the enterprise might fall into the hands of other princes. Then he said something in behalf of Columbus himself, and the queen was not unlikely to know well the bearing of a great man. He intimated ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... coat, and followed that with his collar and tie, he thought of his steamer trunk with its Tuxedo and dress-coat, its pique shirts and poke collars, its suede gloves and kid-topped patent leathers, and he felt the tips of his ears beginning to burn. He was sorry now that he had given the Missioner ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... ocean of champagne at fifty dollars a quart; who, with the bottom of his gold-sack in sight, had cornered the egg-market, at twenty-four dollars per dozen, to the tune of one hundred and ten dozen, in order to pique the lady-love who had jilted him; and he it was, paying like a prince for speed, who had chartered special trains and broken all records between San Francisco and New York. And here he was once more, the "luck-pup of ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... were laughing at him. Was his jealousy then so apparent? And was it jealousy? Evidently, since she had discovered it. And that vexed him, because he had supposed that he was hiding his pique under a great self control. Angrily he stepped toward her, but the saucy eyes only grew merrier. Then his mood changed. He resolved grimly on open fighting. He meant to have either decisive honors or a decisive repulse. ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... remained unconvinced, and for years she nourished a pique against Professor Gale, not so much owing to his having bracketed her son as because the letter P has alphabetical ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... deepened in Rose-Marie's cheeks. Mrs. Momeby clutched the genuine Erik closer to her side, as though she feared that her uncanny neighbour might out of sheer pique turn him into ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... disastrously. She had spent wakeful hours as a result of that meeting; but the cloud of apprehension had passed, leaving her sky serene again. And now Harboro had put aside the incident of the Mesquite Club ball as if it did not involve anything more than a question of pique. ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... is short-lived and uncertain. Eliaures fell under the influence of a wicked woman, who, to satisfy her pique against Caradoc, persuaded the enchanter to fasten on his arm a serpent, which remained there sucking at his flesh and blood, no human skill sufficing either to remove the reptile or alleviate the torments which ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... berated by pro-Southerners as weakly continuing an outworn policy and as having "made himself the laughing-stock of Europe and of America[799];" on the other he was regarded, for the moment, as insisting, through pique, on a line of action highly dangerous to the preservation of peace with the North. October 23 Palmerston wrote his approval of the Cabinet postponement, but declared Lewis' doctrine of "no recognition of Southern independence until the North had ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... her spite against you, Henry. You told her to decline Richard Raby, and so she declined him. Spite, indeed! The gentle pique of a lovely, good girl, who knows her value, though she is too modest to show it openly. Well, Henry, you have lost her a husband, and she has given you one more proof of affection. Don't build the mountain of ingratitude any higher: do pray take the cure that offers, ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... government that had spent millions in war preparation but to declare war. The affair had that surface appearance, which was noisily proclaimed by Germany to the world. Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg's sneer concerning the "voice of the piazza having prevailed" revealed not merely pique, but also a complete misunderstanding, a Teutonic misapprehension of the underlying motives that led to an inevitable step. No one who witnessed, as I did at close range, the swift unfolding of the drama which ended on May 23 in a ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... ideals; and all through her unworthiness. Then, as Madeline was still unrelenting, he began to humble himself. He confessed his levity; he had not considered the risk he ran of losing her respect; all he had done was in pique at her treatment of him. And in the end he implored her forgiveness, besought her to restore him to life by accepting his unqualified submission. To part from her on such terms as these meant despair; the consequences would be tragic. And when he could go no ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... Christendom, becoming enraged, insisted that he should put her away, which he did for a time, putting a nephew—one Camillo Astalli—in her place, in which, however, he did not continue long for the Pope, conceiving a pique against him, banished him from his sight, and recalled Donna Olympia, who took care of his food, and plundered Christendom until Pope ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... I have been long accustomed to defend you, To heal and pacify distempered spirits. No; no one railed at you. They wrapped them up, O Heaven! in such oppressive, solemn silence! Here is no every-day misunderstanding, No transient pique, no cloud that passes over; Something most luckless, most unhealable, Has taken place. The Queen of Hungary Used formerly to call me her dear aunt, And ever at departure ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... severally taken occasion by his neglect of me to renew their advances; and if I were like Annabella and some others I should take advantage of their perseverance to endeavour to pique him into a revival of affection; but, justice and honesty apart, I could not bear to do it. I am annoyed enough by their present persecutions without encouraging them further; and even if I did it would have precious little effect upon him. He sees me suffering ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... Lovely, isn't it? Solitaire. Nearly made Maud Hinton turn Green with envy and despair. Her's ain't half so nice, you see. Did I write you, Belle, about How she tried for Charley, till I sailed in and cut her out? Now, she's taken Jack McBride, I believe it's all from pique— Threw him over once, you know— Hates me so she'll scarcely speak. Oh, yes! Grace Church, Brown, and that— Pa won't mind expense at last I'll be off his hands for good; Cost a fortune two years past. My trousseau shall outdo Maud's, ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... an 'Elegy on Captain Cook,' a 'Monody on Major Andre,' whom she had known from her early youth; and there is a poem, 'Louisa,' of which she herself speaks very highly. But even more than her poetry did she pique herself upon her epistolary correspondence. It must have been well worth while writing letters when they were not only prized by the writer and the recipients, but commented on by their friends in after years. 'Court ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... being a little sharpened now, I could see that not by my young companions alone, but by every one of the four teachers, I was looked upon as a harmless little girl whose mother knew nothing about the fashionable world. I do not think that anything in my manner showed either my pique or my disdain; I believe I went out of doors just as usual; but these things were often in my thoughts, and taking by ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... felt better in spite of the fact that she had, with characteristic and fatal folly, her good sense warned her, cut herself off from all the income in sight or in prospect. She had debated sending back the check, but had decided that if she did she might give the impression of pique or anger. No, she would give him every chance to withdraw from a bargain with which he was not content; and he would get the idea that it was she who was ending the arrangement, would therefore feel no sense of responsibility for her. She would save her pride; she would spare his feelings. ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... music whatever, and no more of dancing than is here common to the meanest peasants, who, by the way, dance with great zeal and spirit. So that I am instructor in my turn, and she takes with great gratitude lessons from me upon the harpsichord, and I have even taught her some of La Pique's steps, and you know he ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... quite unguessed by father or sister. But when the wedding oration had been preached over those twelve bridal pairs, and the wedding benediction had been granted, it was not Gabriele, the boyish betrothed of Toinetta, who brought the blushing bride, partly in triumph and partly in pique, to her father's side, but Piero Salin, the handsomest gondolier on the lagoons, the most daring and dreaded foe of all the established traghetti. It had been impossible for the spectators from the body of the church to ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... festivities in her honour at Kenilworth. Although twenty years have passed, memory still loves to linger about those days when she visited her favourite, the fascinating Earl of Leicester, on her royal progress, before state policy and private pique had combined to ...
— Shakespeare's Christmas Gift to Queen Bess • Anna Benneson McMahan
... charming heads bent toward one another as Rose replied in a whisper, "If I knew, I shouldn't be inquisitive. There was a rumor that she married the old general in a fit of pique, and now repents. I asked Mamma once, but she said such matters were not for young girls to hear, and not a word more would she say. N'importe, I have wits of my own, and I can satisfy myself. The gentlemen are coming! Am I all right, dear?" And the three ...
— The Abbot's Ghost, Or Maurice Treherne's Temptation • A. M. Barnard
... her debt for the opportunity she had given me of meeting these literary friends, but that gave her no license to misrepresent me, in a light which in my present humor was the most distasteful she could have selected. Under the spur of pique I redoubled my graciousness toward Mr. Spence and Mr. Fleisch, and likewise watched my opportunity to court the artist with a smile, whereupon he sighed again and reached out his hand for the crystal pitcher; ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... time of its first appearance Collier's attacks, of which anon, had already disgusted the public with the obscenity and immorality of this writer, I do not know: but, whatever the cause, the consequence was that Mr. William Congreve, in a fit of pique, made up his mind never to write another piece for the stage—a wise resolution, perhaps—and to turn fine gentleman instead. With the exception of composing a masque called the 'Judgment of Paris,' and an opera 'Gemele,' which was ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... were forgotten, clean wiped from her mind. The whole scene is a libel upon Cleopatra and upon womanhood. When betrayed, women are faithless out of anger, pique, desire of revenge; they are faithless out of fear, out of ambition, for fancy's sake—for fifty motives, but not without motive. It would have been easy to justify this scene. All the dramatist had to ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... of the different portions of a movement—Mozart's lines of demarcation being perfectly clear but not so rigid as in Haydn; the much greater richness of the whole musical fabric, due to Mozart's marvellous skill in polyphony. The time had not yet come when the composer could pique the fancy of the hearer by unexpected structural devices or even lead him off on a false trail as was so often done by Beethoven. Both Haydn and Mozart are homophonic composers, i.e., the outpouring of individual melodies is the chief factor in their works; but whereas in ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... his part so innocently and so simply that it was hard to suspect him of any intention to pique her and annoy Richard, but I am sure he did it with just those two intentions. He was as thorough a flirt as any woman, and withal very fond of change, and I think my pink grenadine quite dazzled him as I stood on the ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris |
