"Tete-a-tete" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to Castel Casteggio, and asked him if he remembered coming up it with her to join the Newberry's ever so long ago. Whatever it was that Tom answered it is not recorded, but it is certain that it took so long in the saying that the Reverend Edward talked in tete-a-tete with Catherine for fifteen measured miles, and was unaware that it was more than five minutes. Among other things he said, and she agreed—or she said and he agreed—that for the new dances it was necessary to have always one and the same partner, and to keep that partner all the time. And ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... of Cally's Life, and the Tete-a-tete following, which vaguely depresses her; of the Little Work-Girl who brought the Note that Sunday, oddly remet at ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... nothing better. But even to her a tete-a-tete in a wood, with rain pattering and splashing on leaves and path and resonant mackintoshes, seemed to ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... 322, 323) as "a delightful companion, gay without being boisterous, witty without effort, comic without coarseness, and sentimental without being lachrymose. He reminds one of the fairy who, whenever she spoke, let diamonds fall from her lips. My 'tete-a-tete' suppers with Moore are among the most agreeable impressions I retain of the hours ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... request, and putting her hand into the one extended to help her, jumped lightly down. It was a welcome means of according an innocent tete-a-tete to her devoted lover, and both felt as if they were treading on air, they were so happy to find themselves alone together, as, arm in arm, they walked briskly forward, until they were out of sight of their companions. Then ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... was a mere man of the world, with no feeling of any kind: tolerable in company, but tiresome beyond description in a tete-a-tete. I did not choose that he should bestow all ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... that a clattering noise within the tabernacle, as of machinery put in motion, intimated to the travellers that Freya, who perhaps had some qualities in common with the classical Vesta, thought a personal interruption of this tete-a-tete ought to be deferred no longer. The curtains flew open, and the massive and awkward idol, who, we may suppose, resembled in form the giant created by Frankenstein, leapt lumbering from the carriage, and, rushing on the intrusive traveller, dealt him, with its wooden hands ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... This tete-a-tete did not amuse her. She rose and looked over one of the bridge tables for a minute. The Prince, who was dealing, looked up with ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... said quietly and with some show of spirit. "It is not necessary that you should have a further misconception of my motives or of my agility. I did not seek this—er—tete-a-tete. My servant engaged this carriage. I had not hoped to have the honor of accompanying you. Unfortunately, circumstances forced a change ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... softened a little toward Edith. Perhaps she was not wholly to blame. She remembered the night Edith had endeavoured to escape a tete-a-tete with Alden and she herself had practically forced her to stay. Regardless of the warning given by the crystal ball, in which Madame now had more faith than ever, she had not only given opportunity, but had even ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... vast amount of mutual biography two young persons of the opposite sexes can exchange in a brief tete-a-tete. By the time Milly and the young artist were strolling slowly northward in the sombre city twilight, they had become old friends, and Milly was hearing about the girl in Rome, the fascination of artist life in Munich, the stunning things in ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... used to mariners' laconic directness of speech. She looked at him, teasing him with her eyes. He was a bit relieved when the pale-faced secretary came dragging himself up the ladder and broke in on the tete-a-tete. ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... decency of jolting their paradise in a posting-chaise, of breaking up their mystery with clic-clacs, of taking for a nuptial bed the bed of an inn, and of leaving behind them, in a commonplace chamber, at such a night, the most sacred of the souvenirs of life mingled pell-mell with the tete-a-tete of the conductor of the diligence and the maid-servant of ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... sure of this, I would go to the d—-l to serve YOU.' This speech I saw pleased my patron very much; and, as I was very discreet and useful in a thousand delicate ways to him, he soon came to have a sincere attachment for me. One day, or rather night, when he was tete-a-tete with the lady of the Tabaks Rath von Dose for instance, I—But there is no use in telling ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... trainers. Thanks to Dick's carefully manipulated advertising campaign and personal efforts among his friends and business associates, they were not by any means the first arrivals. Half a dozen laughing groups were distributed about the round tables in the center space, while several tete-a-tete couples were confidentially ensconced in corners and at cozy tables for two, craftily sheltered by some of the most imposing of the marble ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... birds flock away From meadow to tree branch, now there and now here, So, from beach to Casino, each day at the Pier Flock the gay pleasure seekers. The balconies glow With beauty and color. The belle and the beau Promenade in the sunlight, or sit tete-a-tete, While the chaperons gossip together. Bands play, Glasses clink; and 'neath sheltering lace parasols There are plans made for meeting at ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... taken to Continental Hall in one of the White House automobiles. The President walked over, accompanied by his military aid, Col. Harte, and the secret-service men. Before he left the White House he had stood for several minutes leaning over the side of the automobile having a tete-a-tete with Mrs. Galt. ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... whisper of a tender declaration. Which among them has ever danced through a Mazourka, whose cheeks burned not more from the excitement of emotion than from mere physical fatigue? What unexpected and endearing ties have been formed in the long tete-a-tete, in the very midst of crowds, with the sounds of music, which generally recalled the name of some hero or some proud historical remembrance attached to the words, floating around, while thus the associations of love and heroism became forever attached to the words and melodies! What ardent vows ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... the little, red-coloured, piratical-looking pennon of audacity she had allowed to float a minute in the air, was furled, and the broad, sober-hued flag of dissimulation again hung low over the citadel. I did not like her thus, so I cut short the TETE-A-TETE and departed. ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... saw in Elviry only an unwelcome presence interfering with another tete-a-tete, and the hostile hardening of his eyes angered her so that the girl tossed her head, and wheeling haughtily she swept into the house. A minute later he saw her still flushed and wrathful stalking indignantly ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... course of an hour's tete-a-tete, on a corner sofa, under the eyes of the world, the Duchess brought young d'Esgrignon as far as Scipio's Generosity, the Devotion of Amadis, and Chivalrous Self-abnegation (for the Middle Ages were just coming into fashion, with their ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... and dine here," she begged. "I warn you, no one is coming, but I think you had better meet Henry, and, to proceed to the more selfish part of it all, I rather dread a tete-a-tete dinner this evening. Will you be very ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the following year, "Christopher North" made the following statement in Blackwood's Magazine in "An Hour's Tete-a-tete with the Public": ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... the highest rank too, says Brantome. Indeed, historians concur in stating that to a brilliant understanding, he joined the most captivating person. We accordingly find that the Dutchess of Burgundy and several others were by no means cruel to him; and he had been supping tete-a-tete with Queen Isabeau de Baviere, when, in returning home, he was assassinated on the twenty-third of November 1407. His amorous intrigues at last proved fatal to the English, as you will learn from the following story, related by the ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... lost a hand; we lost a sailor. Bear a hand; make haste. Hand to fist; opposite: the same as tete-a-tete, ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... second, nor third, Captain.—The truth is, I want a tete-a-tete with Mr. Mowbray of St. Ronan's," replied the Earl; "and, besides, I have to beg the very particular favour of you to go again to that fellow Martigny. It is time that he should produce his papers, if he has any—of which, for one, I do not believe a word. He has had ample time to hear ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... I recall with any definiteness was a tete-a-tete conversation which I held with my lover on a certain yellow divan at the end of ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... whirled on this roundabout for a bit, and then had the fortune to fall off into a tete-a-tete with a lady whom my aunt introduced as Mrs. Mumble—but then she introduced everybody to me as Mumble that afternoon, either by ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... straight to the library. He knew the resources of his own mansion in the matter of nooks for a tete-a-tete interview; now he was particularly assisted by remembrance of Stewart's habits in the old days. He found his daughter and the mayor of Marion cozily ensconced among the cushions of a ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... other in the great, high-ceilinged dining-room. They were, for a marvel, alone, and unlike the ordinary quiet jog-trot couple who welcome any casual stranger to break the monotony of five years of table tete-a-tete, they delighted in this happy chance that recalled their honeymoon meals together. They were so much sought after, and Lestrange's position required so much and such varied entertaining, that they could not remember when, before, the attentive ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... nursed by his wife,—a painful task, a duty without reward. The sick man tormented the poor creature, who was now doomed to learn what venomous and spiteful teasing a half-imbecile man, whom poverty had rendered craftily savage, could be capable of in the weary tete-a-tete of each endless day. Delighted to turn a sharpened arrow in the sensitive heart of the mother, he had, in a measure, studied the fears that Oscar's behavior and defects inspired in the poor woman. When a mother receives from her child a shock like ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... captain, the commander of our division, went to our tent to sleep; the other gentlemen also separated, and Guskof and I were left alone. I was not mistaken, it was really very uncomfortable for me to have a tete-a-tete with him; I arose involuntarily, and began to promenade up and down on the battery. Guskof walked in silence by my side, hastily and awkwardly wheeling around so as not to ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various
... postponement. Justice demands the admission that her reappearance in a glamour of lilac was reward for the delay; nothing more ravishing was ever seen, she was warrantably informed by the quicker of the two guests, in a moment's whispered tete-a-tete across the banisters as she descended. Another wait followed while she prettily arranged upon the table some dozens of asters from a small garden-bed, tilled, planted, and tended by Laura. Meanwhile, Mrs. Madison constantly turned the other cheek to ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... stealing the soft music of a waltz, while from another corner came the sound of a whispered tete-a-tete. Very still was the girl as she sat in the big arm-chair, with the man pleading passionately at her side. Once she caught her breath quickly when he recalled the time gone by—the time before her mother's political ambitions ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... Trenor's unusual excitability, with its too evident explanation, and the thought of being alone with him, with her friend out of reach upstairs, at the other end of the great empty house, did not conduce to a desire to prolong their TETE-A-TETE. ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... dearly. Happily, he had done nothing of the kind, but had re-entered the house unobserved, while Diana and Gustave were conversing close to the window, having preferred to leave his fly at the end of the street, rather than to incur the hazard of interrupting a critical tete-a-tete. The interval that had elapsed since his return had been spent by the Captain in his own bedchamber, and in the immediate neighbourhood of the folding-doors between that apartment and the parlour. What he had heard had been by no means satisfactory to him; and if a look could ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... de Melito, I. 184. (Conversation with Bonaparte, November 18, 1797, at Turin.) "I remained an hour with the general tete-a-tete. I shall relate the conversation exactly as it occurred, according to my ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... studying her play of expression, seeking, according to his habit, to make his guarded estimate of a new factor in his household. From Virginia's face his eyes went swiftly now and then to his daughter's, animated in her tete-a-tete with the sheriff. Once, when Virginia turned unexpectedly, she caught the hint of a troubled frown ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... pleaded, "forgive me if for a moment I forgot how altered things are. Indeed, it was not a matter of choice with me. Of course, it will give me the greatest pleasure to dine tete-a-tete ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... had particular reasons for wishing that Clara should first see Colonel Le Noir with other company, to have an opportunity of observing him well and possibly forming an estimate of his character (as a young girl of her fine instincts might well do) before she should be exposed in a tete-a-tete to those deceptive blandishments he knew so well how to ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... so easy to impart a similar confidence into the breast of Colonel Dickinson, with whom Sir Richard dined that night tete-a-tete. Dickinson was inclined to think that ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... angel go with you! Play your game cautiously, and let us hear the chink of Herr Eskeles Flies' gold near the rustling of our fragile bank-notes. And now go. Return in half an hour, that I may receive you in presence of our fastidious guests. They might not approve of this tete-a-tete, for you are said to ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... the royal mandate; and soon seated at the beauty's feet, in the glow of the warm wood fire and in the glory of her heavenly presence, he would lose himself in a delicious dream of love and music. No one ever interrupted their tete-a-tete. And Ishmael grew to feel that he belonged to his liege lady; that they were forever inseparate and inseparable. And thus his days passed in one delusive dream of bliss until the time came when he ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... the young ladies and their favored attendants strolled about the room in quiet tete-a-tete, and then ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... his bride's maid; after the dance he sat beside her, and got eloquent in praise of her beauty; and it is said, too, that he whispered to her, and chucked her chin with considerable gallantry. The tete-a-tete continued for some time without exciting particular attention, with one exception; but that exception was worth a whole chapter of general rules. Mrs. Malone rose up, then sat down again, and took off a glass of the native; she got up a second time—all ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... house than Littleton's, Lansdowne House excepted,—and perhaps Lord Milton's, which is also in Grosvenor Place. He gave me a dinner of dinners. I talked with Denison, and with nobody else. I have found out that the real use of conversational powers is to put them forth in tete-a-tete. A man is flattered by your talking your best to him alone. Ten to one he is piqued by your overpowering him before a company. Denison was agreeable enough. I heard only one word from Lord Plunket, who was remarkably silent. He spoke of Doctor Thorpe, and said that, having heard the Doctor in Dublin, ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... between Mary Standish and John Graham's agent, Alan thought. There were not half a dozen people left at the tables, and the scheme was that Rossland should be served tete-a-tete with Miss Standish, of course. That, apparently, was why she had greeted him with such cool civility. Her anxiety for him to leave the table before Rossland appeared upon the scene was evident, now that he ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... a tete-a-tete, in the family room, whither I had led Lucy, feeling that this little ceremony was due to my wife. Everything around us recalled former scenes, and tears were in the eyes of my bride as she gently ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... here together, dining tete-a-tete, on a night when it must have needed more than ordinary courage for either of them to have been seen in public at all," Wilmore ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... So it was a tete-a-tete meal, but Bee made it very pleasant. After breakfast Ishmael left Bee to her domestic duties and went up into the office to look after the letters and papers that had been left for him by ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... M. Despreaux, "not very voluptuous." He did not belong to that chevalier and musketeer species, who take young girls by assault. In the matter of love, as in all other affairs, he willingly assented to temporizing and adjusting terms; and a good supper, and an amiable tete-a-tete appeared to him, especially when he was hungry, an excellent interlude between the prologue and the catastrophe of a ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... he talked over with the authoress in a promenade on the platform while Dolores was left in the waiting-room; but afterwards he indulged his niece with a tete-a-tete, asking her father's address, and mourning over the length of time it would take to obtain an answer from Fiji. Mr. Mohun had promised to help him, solemnly and kindly promised, for the sake of her ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... settled by cold lawyers or colder friends, who cannot enter into my feelings in regard to this place, or your own liberal and kindly feelings either. Let us settle it some day between ourselves," she added, with a light laugh, "in a tete-a-tete like this. I do not suppose you are afraid of being overreached by me in a bargain. But now let us turn our steps back towards the house, for I expect Mrs. Warmington early, and I must not ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... the American Beauties and the beribboned bonbon box was taking her coffee as usual in bed. This luxurious habit had never been hers until she came to Bel-Air; but it was her mother's custom, and rather than undergo a tete-a-tete breakfast with her host, she had ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... president's praise of the dry altitudes as a sure cure for consumption, but now he had his face in his plate. Ford devoted himself for the moment to the deaf Miss Van Bruce, and when he turned back to Alicia he was telegraphing with his eyes for discretion. She understood, and the low-toned tete-a-tete was not resumed. Later, when they had a moment together in the dispersion from the breakfast-table, he tried to apologize for what he was pleased to call his "playing of the baby act." But she reassured him in a ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... open windows, he saw Querida and Alice absorbed in a tete-a-tete, ensconced in a corner of the big living room; saw Gordon playing with Heinz, the dog—named Heinz because of the celebrated "57 varieties" of dog in his pedigree—saw Miss Aulne at solitaire, exchanging lively civilities with Sandy Cameron at the piano ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... the rush hour was an undertaking almost as hazardous as jumping a mining claim, but Calvin Gray succeeded and eventually he and "Bob" found themselves facing each other over a discolored tablecloth, reading a soiled menu card to a perspiring waiter. It was in some ways an ideal retreat for a tete-a-tete, for the bellowed orders, the rattle of crockery, the voice of the hungry food battlers, and the clash of their steel made intimate conversation easy. Gray noted with approval the ease with which his dainty companion ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... might say would be inane, tawdry, inconsequent; so she waited, patiently happy, taking no count of time, nor the sunshine, nor the lilt of the birds, nor even the dissolution of conventionality in the unsupervised tete-a-tete. ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... lingered obstinately in Maud Matchin's mind. She gave herself no rest from dwelling on them. Her imagination was full, day after day, of glowing pictures of herself and Farnham in tete-a-tete; she would seek in a thousand ways to tell her love—but she could never quite arrange her avowal in a satisfactory manner. Long before she came to the decisive words which were to kindle his heart to flame in the imaginary dialogue, he would ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... the books about, and make each other innumerable presents of daintily bound volumes, until the clerks grew to know them so well that they never went through the form of asking where the books were to be sent? And those tete-a-tete luncheons at her house when her mother was upstairs with a headache or a dressmaker, and the long rides and walks in the Park in the afternoon, and the rush down town to dress, only to return to dine with them, ten minutes late always, and always with some new ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... Amidon led the shy Elizabeth had been a clearing-house of confused ideas during their long tete-a-tete. Madame le Claire had explained the mystery of dual personality as well as it can be explained, with some comment on the fact that such things happen to people occasionally, no one knows why. Alvord and Judge Blodgett agreed that the candidate ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... taking advantage of a momentary tete-a-tete Colia handed Aglaya a letter, remarking that he "had orders to deliver it to her privately." She stared at him in amazement, but he did not wait to hear what she had to say, and went out. Aglaya broke the seal, and ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... never forget the first sight I had of Paris," he said, years later, when speaking of his boyhood to Madame Junot, with whom he was enjoying a tete-a-tete in the palace at Versailles. "I wondered if I hadn't died of sea-sickness on the way over, as I had several times wished I might, and got to heaven. I didn't know how like the other place it was at that time, you see. It was ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... she found George de Courcy Vavasour bending over her in an attitude that betokened the utmost admiration for both parties to the tete-a-tete. Under ordinary conditions,—that is to say, if Vavasour's existence depended on his own exertions,—Helen's eyes would have dwelt on a gawky youth endowed with a certain pertness that might in time have brought him from behind the counter of ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... with her, notwithstanding his connection with Kitty, went everywhere that he was likely to meet her, and her joy at meeting him easily betrayed itself in her eyes and her smile. And he did not refrain from actually making love to Anna on the occasions when they were able to engage in tete-a-tete conversations. Nor was he positively repelled. Soon the acquaintance became more and more intimate. Meantime, Aleksei as usual would come home and, instead of seeking his wife's society, would bury himself in ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... red lips and bare throats, sat alone at tables or tete-a-tete with men too old or too young, and ate; but drank ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... high glass arcades till I reached the central octagon, where I sat down on one of a group of chairs placed there. Becoming accustomed to the stream of promenaders, I soon observed, seated on the chairs opposite, Caroline and Charles. This was the first occasion on which I had seen them en tete-a-tete since my conversation with him. She soon caught sight of me; averted her eyes; then, apparently abandoning herself to an impulse, she jumped up from her seat and came across to me. We had not spoken to each other ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... shade, he was interrogating himself, with his eyes fixed upon the lighted window, as to the object of this lady and gentleman's tete-a-tete at the "Brave Chevalier," our worthy Gascon, forgetting Ernanton in the mysterious house, observed the door of the hostelry open, and in the stream of light which escaped through the opening, he perceived something resembling the dark outline of ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... have to-day what Garrick used to call a gander feast—will you dine with me tete-a-tete, and I'll write an excuse, alias a lie, to Lady Singleton, in the form of a charming note—I pique myself sur l'eloquence du billet—then we shall have the evening to ourselves. I have much to say, as people usually have when they begin ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... side of the hall was Mrs Gaskoin's boudoir, where she and her husband were sitting over the fire, awaiting the result of the tete-a-tete ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various
... to address her whom he had been lately so anxious to meet with, and embarrassed by a TETE-A-TETE to which his own timid inexperience, gave some awkwardness, the party had proceeded more than a hundred yards before Darsie assumed courage to accost, or even to look at, his companion. Sensible, however, of the impropriety of his silence, he ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... made all her preparations for dining in her own room tete-a-tete with one of her favorite books. And then, as your highness has six other young ladies who would be delighted to accompany you, I did not make my proposal to La Valliere." Madame did not say a word ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... numerous outriders, and the general and Henry in the latter's curricle. But at the first stage the general proposed that Catherine should take his place in the curricle that she might "see as much of the country as possible;" and, for the rest of the journey she was tete-a-tete with Henry, who amused himself by rallying her upon the sliding panels, ghastly tapestry, funereal beds, vaulted chambers, and kindred uncanny apparatus which, judging from her favourite kind of fiction, she must be expecting to find at ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... of a feminine palate, ordered Vero Capri. It was, Ann Veronica felt, as a sip or so of that remarkable blend warmed her blood, just the sort of thing that her aunt would not approve, to be lunching thus, tete-a-tete with a man; and yet at the same time it was a perfectly innocent as well as ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... the cunning eye of the master of ceremonies. "I must withdraw," thought he; "I will grant them a first tete-a-tete. I will observe them from a distance, and be able to decide if my plan will succeed." Excusing himself upon the plea of duty, Pollnitz withdrew; he glided into a window and concealed himself behind the curtains, in order to watch the countenances of his ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... type of young men pay few, if any, party calls, because they work and they exercise, and whatever time is left over, if any, is spent in their club or at the house of a young woman, not tete-a-tete, but invariably playing bridge. The Sunday afternoon visits that the youth of another generation used always to pay, are unknown in this, because every man who can, spends the week-end in ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... Forty-second Street offices that commanded a view of two rivers and a vast battledoor and shuttlecock of the city, it was the first time in all those years that stretched from the night at the Waldorf that they had sat thus tete-a-tete. The day of the move she had ridden up from the old Union Square offices with him, a stack of files in her lap. Once, too, on a Saturday, the day of Zoe's invariable luncheon downtown and subsequent opera matinee, he had strolled by what seemed mischievous chance into the tea room where they were ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... some traveler might come to the inn, with whom he could chat in the evening. On the days when his work was done early, he had, for want of something else to do, to come punctually, and endure from soup to cheese a tete-a-tete with Binet. It was therefore with delight that he accepted the landlady's suggestion that he should dine in company with the newcomers, and they passed into the large parlour where Madame Lefrancois, for the purpose of showing off, had had the ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... have really talked myself out of breath; but that is always the way, with me, as you know, of old." And the two girls, hand-in-hand, ran lightly up stairs, where Elinor, making an excuse of Mrs. Taylor's note, left them to a confidential tete-a-tete. ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... possessed it in the past and had just made such a sacrifice to please her. She consented to accept his declaration and permitted him to believe that she was not unmoved by his passion. The arrival of the Duchess, her mother-in-law, put an end to this tete-a-tete, and prevented the Duc from demonstrating ...
— The Princess of Montpensier • Madame de La Fayette
... How portentous! Really, I almost feel as if I were interrupting a tete-a-tete between yourself and some old flame. I haven't heard anything so old-fashioned and conservative as that sigh since I have been in California. I thought you never had any ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... weary at each day's end. And nobody worries them at all. There has not been the faintest suspicion of an insult or an advance from any one of the thousands of men and boys of all classes whom they have ridden with upon their 'lifts,' sometimes in dense crowds, sometimes in an involuntary tete-a-tete. ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
... on the Tower when Anne Boleyn's head fell, and galloped off to marry Jane Seymour) to Richmond Terrace, which is ravishingly beautiful even at this season. . . . The next day the gentleman all went to town, and Madam Van de Weyer and I passed the day TETE-A-TETE, very pleasantly, as her experience in diplomatic life is very useful to me. . . . Her manners are very pleasing and entirely unaffected. She has great tact and quickness of perception, great intelligence and amiability and is altogether extremely well-fitted for the ROLE she plays ...
— Letters from England 1846-1849 • Elizabeth Davis Bancroft (Mrs. George Bancroft)
... Bendigo, bowing and quitting the room, and leaving Mrs. Walker to the pleasure of a tete-a-tete with her husband. ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in which he spent one whole evening with M—-y As—n. That, indeed," said he, "was not happiness, it was rapture; but the thoughts of it sweetened the whole year." I must add that the evening alluded to was not passed tete-a-tete, but in a select company, of which the present Lord Killmorey was one. "Molly," says Dr. Johnson, "was a beauty and a scholar, and a wit and a Whig; and she talked all in praise of liberty: and so I made this epigram upon her. She was the ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... the well-known voice of the commandant. "I had no idea I was interrupting a tete-a-tete. In fact, I did not associate you ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... earnestness than she had ever shown before. "You do know, that even if I care very much for you, I must remember that I have a difficult position to maintain. The vicar would not like me, as his schoolmistress, to indulge in a tete-a-tete anywhere ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... white-and-gold restaurant at the Ritz on the following evening, Prince Shan and Immelan dined tete-a-tete, Immelan in the best of spirits, talking of the pleasant trifles of the world, drinking champagne and pointing out notabilities; Prince Shan, his features and expression unchanging, and his face as white as the perfectly ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Their tete-a-tete was broken by Mrs. Shiffney's departure to a reception at the Ritz. She must surely have been disappointed in the musician; but, if so, she was too clever to show it. And she was by way of being a good-natured woman and seldom seemed to ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... treated them as fables. He now felt the value of the seal-ring, which had, in a manner, been given to him by St. Cyprian. Still, though armed by so potent a talisman, it was an awful thing to find himself tete-a-tete in such a place with an enchanted soldier, who, according to the laws of nature, ought to have been quietly in his grave for nearly ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... champagne. There's something about champagne that inspires confidence. When a man gives you the gold bottle you know that he is really serious, or as serious as he can be, which isn't saying much for most men. And not half a bottle; I've had half-bottles heaps of times at tete-a-tete dinners. It always means indecision, which is a beastly thing in anyone, and especially in a man. It's insulting, for one thing.... Oh, Peter, do look at that girl over there. Do you suppose she has anything on underneath? I suppose I couldn't ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... ask that question as we sat tete-a-tete after dinner, Dora having gone to carry Harold some fruit, and being sure to stay with him as ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the quarrel and separated will be the first to fall ill and even die, perhaps, if the separation comes off. I know for a positive fact that several times Stepan Trofimovitch has jumped up from the sofa and beaten the wall with his fists after the most 'intimate and emotional tete-a-tete with Varvara Petrovna. ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... then left tete-a-tete. He had on his face no appearance of disquietude or menace; decidedly he ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... party—oh, it was absurd! She looked them over. Dull-eyed, blase, frayed by the social whirl, worn out, pulseless, all of them. They talked automobile, bridge, women, and self in particular; in the seclusion of a tete-a-tete they talked love with an ardor that lost most of its danger because it was from force of habit. One of the men was even now admitting in her ear that he had not spent an evening alone with his ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... himself in position so as to oppose to each of his vices the proof positive of the contrary virtues. Thus, if accused of usury, he could prove that he had lent, without interest, considerable sums of money. Cowardly and base in a tete-a-tete, he was bold and redoubtable in public; those who had made him tremble in secret were then compelled to acknowledge him a man of courage. Even his more than suspected probity was defended by such as believed themselves his depositaries, whereas ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... day the skipper spent hard at work with the cargo, bustling about with feverish energy as the afternoon wore on and left him to imagine his rival tete-a-tete with Annis. After tea a reaction set in, and, bit by bit the mate, by means of timely sympathy, learnt all that there was to know. Henry, without a display of anything, except, perhaps, silence, ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... putting on the hat he had just volunteered to eat.—"No? Then I'm off. Good-night, Frank! Mind you go to that tutor to-morrow,"—he said, handing me the address he had hastily scribbled down; and, he went out on some errand of mercy, leaving Miss Pimpernell and myself to resume our tete-a-tete conversation, which he had ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... breakfast she was disappointed to find that Bud was not there, and she was obliged to suffer a breakfast tete-a-tete with West. By dint, however, of asking him questions instead of allowing him to take the initiative, she hurried through her breakfast quite successfully, acquiring a superficial knowledge of her fellow-boarder quite distant and satisfactory. She knew where he spent his college ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... temporary efficacy of my influence in this respect. There is, however, of course much individual difference even with reference to this, and some take much more kindly and readily to cleanliness, no doubt to godliness too, than some others. I met Abraham, and thought that, in a quiet tete-a-tete, and with the pathetic consideration of my near departure to assist me, I could get him to confess the truth about the disappearance of the mutton; but he persisted in the legend of its departure through the locked door; and as I was only heaping sins on his soul with ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... promise never to ask you when I want to go ballooning; Arthur and I will go by ourselves. It would be a grand opportunity for a tete-a-tete. And now go and see about getting the things ready—there's a dear; and, Arthur, do you send John down ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... train, in the first of their tete-a-tete, she sounded him cautiously, trying to discover if his feelings toward Linton were inspired wholly by political differences. She seemed to suspect there was something more behind it, even at the risk of flattering herself. But she had detected certain suggestive symptoms in the demeanor ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... to him almost immediately, making some remark about the ship in English. The stranger answered in the same language, but with a strong foreign accent. He seemed quite willing to talk. He apologized for interrupting their tete-a-tete, but said he had no choice, as the saloon was completely full. They declared they were quite ready for company, Nigel with his usual sympathetic geniality, Mrs. Armine with a sort of graceful formality beneath which—or so her husband fancied—there was just a suspicion of reluctance. ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... Ardworth was not there, seldom interrupted the lovers in their little paradise of the garden; but he took occasion to ripen and cement his intimacy with Percival. Sometimes he walked or (if St. John had his cabriolet) drove home and dined with him, tete-a-tete, in Curzon Street; and as he made Helen his chief subject of conversation, Percival could not but esteem him amongst the most agreeable of men. With Helen, when Percival was not there, Varney held some secret conferences,—secret even from Percival. Two or three times, ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a confidential physician, who attended him almost to the period when he ascended the scaffold, and who was very often obliged, 'malgre-lui', to dine tete-a-tete with this monopolizer of human flesh and blood. One day he happened to be with him, after a very extraordinary number had been executed, and amongst the rest, some of the ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 7 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... him in her room in Woodhouse—for she had given up tramping the country, and had hired a music-room in a quiet street, where she gave her lessons. And the young man had hung round, and had never wanted to go away. They would prolong their tete-a-tete and their singing on till ten o'clock at night, and Miss Frost would return to Manchester House flushed and handsome and a little shy, while the young man, who was common, took on a new boldness in the streets. He had auburn hair, high colouring, and a rather ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... mon General," said Geraldine in French, "I hope we can have a nice tete-a-tete to-night," and she fawned upon her prey in a manner that would have ...
— A Parody Outline of History • Donald Ogden Stewart
... conjugation; dispermy^, doublets, dyad, span. V. pair [unite in pairs], couple, bracket, yoke; conduplicate^; mate, span [U.S.]. Adj. two, twin; dual, dualistic, double; binary, binomial; twin, biparous^; dyadic [Math.]; conduplicate^; duplex &c 90; biduous^, binate^, diphyletic^, dispermic^, unijugate^; tete-a-tete. coupled &c v.; conjugate. both, both the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... laurels of his fine victory, he is side by side with the lovely Alcmene enjoying the delights of a charming tete-a-tete. They are tasting the pleasures of being reconciled, now their love-tiff has blown over. Take care how you disturb their sweet privacy, unless you wish him to punish you for ...
— Amphitryon • Moliere
... to do what he wanted and fulfilled her promise conscientiously. She began by having a tete-a-tete with Kollomietzev. What she said to him remains a secret, but he came to the table with the air of a man who had made up his mind to be discreet and submissive at all costs. This "resignation" ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... nervousness, seldom leaving her mother's or father's side, and never venturing into the hallways without a previous peep to see that they were empty. As the weeks wore on without any attempt on the commissary's part to surprise her into a tete-a-tete, to recur to the words he had forced her to utter, or to be anything but a polite, entertaining, and thoughtful host, the girl gained courage, and little by little took life more equably. She would have been been less easy, though better able to understand ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... faithful hound Breaks rudely on our tete-a-tete; Too well I understand that sound! A mendicant ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... Majesty will make him come here, will interrogate him yourself, TETE-A-TETE, without witnesses, and that I shall see your Majesty as soon as you have seen ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the ball has gone off well?" she asked incredulously. "It seems to me to have been an elaborate failure." She was thinking of those two whom she had surprised tete-a-tete in the balcony, and wondering what George Fairfax could have been saying to produce Clarissa's confusion. Clarissa was her protegee, and she was responsible to her sister Geraldine for any mischief ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... her own character, and sure, with her father to second her assurance, that boarding-school was the proper place to form it. Eddy was also at school, and Mrs. Upton, with the alternative of flight or an unbroken tete-a-tete with her husband before her, chose the former. There was no breach, no crash; any such disturbances had taken place long before; she simply slid away, and her prolonged absences seemed symbols of fundamental ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... the impossibility, and afterwards see who is the man who says he is the author of the distich, for there are extraordinary people in the world. My brother, in short, ought to have composed the distich, because he says so, and because he confided it to me tete-a-tete. I had, it is true, difficulty in believing him; but what is one to do? Either one must believe, or suppose him capable of telling a lie which could only be told by a fool; and that is impossible, for all Europe knows that my brother ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... afternoon and Mary sat on the veranda steps with him, while Helen made hay with Wally on a tete-a-tete above. ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... In a tete-a-tete one should talk about persons, and in general Society about things. The state of the weather is always an excusable exordium, but it is convenient to have a paradox or heresy on the subject always ready ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... seek revenge. Yet he had no reason to believe that Susy's nature was jealous, or that she was likely to have any cause; but the fact remained that Miss Faulkner's innocent intrusion upon their tete-a-tete affected him more strongly than anything else in his interview with Susy. Once out of the atmosphere of that house, it struck him, too, that Miss Faulkner was almost as much of an alien in it as himself. He wondered what she had been doing there. Could ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... nobleman, who I believed was really uneasy if his company would not drink hard. JOHNSON. 'That is from having had people about him whom he has been accustomed to command.' BOSWELL. 'Supposing I should be tete-a-tete with him at table.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, there is no more reason for your drinking with HIM, than his being sober with YOU.' BOSWELL. 'Why, that is true; for it would do him less hurt to be sober, than it would do me to get drunk.' JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir; ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... wins upon me hourly; his heart is uncommonly pure, his affections delicate, and his benevolence enlivened, but not sicklied, by sensibility. He is assuredly a man of great genius; but it must be in a "tete-a-tete" with one whom he loves and esteems that his colloquial powers open:—and this arises not from reserve or want of simplicity, but from having been placed in situations, where for years together ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... that once, when they had met at Newquay in Cornwall over a tete-a-tete lunch, he had said, in reply to her banter, that Louise was a darling! That he was awfully fond of her, that she had the most wonderful eyes, and that she was always alert and full of a keen sense ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... the one they had quitted, but in its shelves, cupboards, and closely fitting boarding bearing out the general nautical suggestion of the house—and seated themselves before a small table on which their frugal meal was spread. In this tete-a-tete position Jim suddenly laid down his knife and fork and stared at ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... as I was leaving town. I had not time to ask him any particulars about you, and indeed he is not exactly the man from whom I would ask news about my friends. I dined tete-a-tete with him some time ago, and he served up his friends as he served up his fish, with a squeeze of lemon over each. It was very piquant, but it rather set my ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... an evening, when they were enjoying a tete-a-tete by the fireside, she would place on the tea table the leather box containing the "trash," as M. Lantin called it. She would examine the false gems with a passionate attention as though they were in some ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... the dimness of the upper stories, and before they descended several objectionable persons had joined Laurie, evidently expecting to be taken to upper floors themselves. This meant a delay in his tete-a-tete with the boy, and Laurie turned upon the person nearest him, an inoffensive spinster, a look of such intense resentment that it haunted that lady ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... Their tete-a-tete was uninterrupted for an hour; and although nothing that would be called decided, by an experienced matron, was said by the gentleman, he uttered a thousand things that delighted his companion, who retired to her rest with a ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... at the bottom of his heart, entertained a considerable degree of regard and affection for M. de Beaufort, made himself a great treat of this tete-a-tete supper. His chief foible was gluttony, and for this grand occasion the confectioner had promised to outdo himself. The pasty was to be of pheasants, the wine of the best vintage of Chambertin. By adding to the agreeable images which this promise ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... She had been half sorry to leave her dear old school, half glad to go on to something new. She was evidently not so comfortable, while Miss Heath's lowest teacher, as she had been while she was the asylum's senior pupil. Yet when on Sunday evening the Doctor was summoned and the ladies were left tete-a-tete, she laughed rather than complained. But still she owned, with her black head on Mrs. Brownlow's lap, that she had always craved for something-something, and she had ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... prologue to its elucidation, conducted the Baroness into the summer-house that his grandfather, good Duke Augustus, erected in the Gardens of Breschau, close to the Fountain of the Naiads, and had en tete-a-tete explained his notion. There were post-horses in Noumaria; there was also an unobstructed road that led you to Vienna, and thence to the world outside; and he proposed, in short, to quiet the grumbling of the discontented Noumarians ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... his devotion was caused more by a wish to while away his idle hours than from any other motive; and it was also quite evident that the young lady herself took the same view. She gave a light and humorous aspect to everything she said, and permitted him scarcely an opportunity for a solitary "tete-a-tete." In vain he placed his bays and buggy at ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... where it is served; knowing so well their ideas in this respect, I can recommend them with confidence to Messieurs Verdier and Dauzier, convinced that all their different fancies will be gratified. If they wish to be exclusive, to enjoy their meal tete-a-tete with their friend, they will find an elegant little apartment suited to their wishes; if they be three or four or more persons, they will still find they can be accommodated in such a manner that ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... Ansard at a briefless table, tete-a-tete with his wig on a block. A. casts a disconsolate look upon his companion, ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... Kennedy, with well-simulated excitement, was racing me in the car up to the Greenes' again. We literally burst unannounced into the tete-a-tete on the porch. ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... said, apparently not caring about a tete-a-tete with Clara. Evidently the old lady liked her ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... all costs, no matter whether they saw the Sphinx in back view or noseless profile. But Mrs. East's principal occupation in life was not to get me engaged to the Gilded Rose. And either she lost her presence of mind, or else she was not so much enjoying her moonlight tete-a-tete with Fenton, that it was worth while to hide from us behind a ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... one thing I ought to have mentioned to you the other night, Mr. Sutherland; and I daresay I should have mentioned it, had not Mr. Arnold interrupted our tete-a-tete. I feel now as if I had been guilty of claiming far more than I have a right to, on the score of musical insight. I have Scotch blood in me, and was indeed born in Scotland, though I left it before I ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... little gentleman, who had been the third at the ordinary, and would take no part either in the conversation or in Pogson's champagne, now took up his hat, and, grunting, left the room, when the happy bagman had the delight of a tete-a-tete. The Baroness did not appear inclined to move: it was cold; a fire was comfortable, and she had ordered none in her apartment. Might Pogson give her one more glass of champagne, or would her ladyship prefer "something hot." Her ladyship ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... guests left us soon, and the major and myself were once more tete-a-tete beside a cheerful fire; a well-chosen array of bottles guaranteeing that for some time at least no necessity of leave-taking should arise ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... know. I suppose you thought I was bringing you up here for a Romeo and Juliet tete-a-tete with the beautiful Miss Cameron,—and for nothing else. Well, in a way, you are right. But, first of all, my business is to recover the crown jewels and parchments. I am going into that house and take them away from the man you know as Loeb,—if ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon |
