"Steely" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... which seemed burning by the flushed face; he chafed his cold, bloodless hands, and shuffled his feet to bring back circulation. For a long time he attempted to hide these alarming symptoms from me, but I had detected them from the beginning; his eyes had a far-reaching look and unusual steely brilliancy; the expression of his countenance was hard-set, rigid, almost defiant, as if ready to overthrow any obstacle in his way; and indeed it was the case, for unable to control himself any longer, he got up and told me hoarsely ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... all over the world for years; for years he had despaired of seeing her live to womanhood. But she was gradually growing better; indeed, if she had not walked so far to-day nothing would have happened. All the time that Rawlins was talking his eyes were resting tenderly on his daughter. The hard, steely look seemed to have gone ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... of the contest also contributed to heighten the interest. It was not long after the invention of gunpowder, when firearms and artillery mingled the flash and smoke and thunder of modern warfare with the steely splendor of ancient chivalry, and gave an awful magnificence and terrible sublimity to battle, and when the old Moorish towers and castles, that for ages had frowned defiance to the battering-rams and catapults of classic tactics, were ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... weather clears a little, and from the high ground we are able to see Meaux to the west, lying beside its great river, than which our children's children will greet no more famous name. The Marne winds, steely grey, through the white landscape, and we run down to it quickly. Soon we are making our way on foot through the dripping streets of Meaux to the old bridge, which the British broke down—one of three—on their retreat—so soon to end! Then, a few minutes ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... trick of speech frequently acquired by those who visit public men. Miss Kirkman's whole manner indicated bustle and hurry. Even her attire showed it. She was a plump woman, aged, one would say about thirty. Her hair was brown and her eyes a steely grey—not a bad face, but one too shrewd and aggressive perhaps for a woman. One might have looked at her for a long time and never suspected the truth, that she was allied to the colored race. Neither features, hair nor complexion showed it, but then "colored" is such an elastic word, and Miss ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... he said with steely affection, "listen once more. Reflect! Ponder! Does it not seep into your consciousness that we are, as it were, subtly connected in this house in the minds of certain bad persons? Are we not imagined ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... thrashed you once and I don't care to soil my hands with you again. But I've been aching for months to get my fingers on the man that made me out a liar and a contract-breaker. I have him now," he added, with a steely ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... loss of extract in several ways. To begin with, the sparging process is at best a somewhat inefficient method for washing out the last portions of the wort, and again, when the malt is at all hard or "steely," starch conversion is by no means complete. These disadvantages are overcome by the filter press process, which was first introduced into Great Britain by the Belgian engineer P. Meura. The malt, in this method of brewing, is ground quite fine, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... again the two people, and they were both older and both in their prime. And the two did not speak to each other, but were silent with their thoughts. And when I looked up the sky was grey, and the two walked up the white castle-stairway, and she was full of indifference, yes full of hate in her steely eyes, and when I looked for the third time I saw also anger and hate in his glance, and his hair was ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... he rejoined Mary in the veranda that she sprang up with an involuntary cry and would have had him lie down, where she had been sitting. But the fine steely ring in his ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... by her mother's cry, appeared on the stairway. For a moment her eyes refused to grasp the scene before them; Conward cowering, terror-stricken; Dave fierce, steely, implacable, with his revolver lined on Conward's brain. Through some strange whim of her mind her thought in that instant flew back to the bottles on the posts of the Elden ranch, and Dave breaking five out of ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... him a look that I shall never forget, and the large steely-blue eyes flashed fire, but she ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... youthful Angelfyr, His steely helmet shone: "O King, give up thy daughter to me, And straight from the ...
— The Fountain of Maribo - and other ballads • Anonymous
... air,—ah, then Lovell's Harbor became a different place altogether. The stems of the willows fringing the small fresh-water ponds mellowed to bronze before one's very eyes; the dull reaches of salt grass turned emerald; the steely tint of the sea softened to azure and glinted golden in the sun. How shrill sounded the cries of the redwings in the marsh! How jolly the frogs' ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... maze of flailing arms and legs. Like ten-pins the pirates scattered, and the giant pulled off the mate. Gore could not see, but as he writhed he knew he was in the grip of the pirate captain. Captain Strom's harsh, ascetic face was dangerous, and his steely gray eyes compelling. The men ...
— In the Orbit of Saturn • Roman Frederick Starzl
... been wash'd and damag'd by Rains, requires less time than the dryer Grain that was inned well and grew on Gravels or Chalks; the smooth plump Corn imbibing the water more kindly, when the lean and steely Barley will not so naturally; but to know when it is enough, is to take a Corn end-ways between the Fingers and gently crush it, and if it is in all parts mellow, and the husk opens or starts a little from the body of the Corn, then it is enough: The nicety of this is ...
— The London and Country Brewer • Anonymous
... all save the few Mantineans who vainly clung to their champion, and the Laconians themselves, had begun to pin their hopes on the beautiful son of Conon. There was a steely glint in the Spartan athlete's eye that made the president of the games ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... they eyed one another. In his heart each hated the other, but in David the hate had come suddenly, the hysteric growth of a night's anguish. The mountain man's was tempered by a process of slow-firing to a steely inflexibility. He hated David that he had ever been his rival, that he had ever thought to lay claim to the woman who was his, that he had ever aspired to her, touched her, desired her. He hated him when he saw that, all ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... held Truedale by the cold, steely gleam of his eyes which was driving lucidity home to the dulled brain. By a power as unyielding as death Jim was destroying the screen Truedale had managed to raise against the homely codes of life and was leaving his ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... to throw up my hands," directed he. I did so; his palms flew into the air; and with a steely snap the mechanism ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... on a straight neck. She wore a gray skirt and a waist of white, with a severely starched collar about her throat, and a black bow tie. Her straw hat was narrow of brim, banded with a black ribbon. Her steely eyes flashed from beneath the hat. Once before the twins had encountered her and her voice, and the results were blasting, though the occasion was happier. Indeed, the intention of Juliana had been wholly amiable, for it was at the picnic of the ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... world were fit, He'd no small cunning, and had some small wit; Had that calm look which seem'd to all assent, And that complacent speech which nothing meant: He'd but one care, and that he strove to hide - How best for Richard Monday to provide. Steel, through opposing plates, the magnet draws, And steely atoms culls from dust and straws; And thus our hero, to his interest true, Gold through all bars and from each trifle drew; But still more surely round the world to go, This fortune's child had neither friend nor foe. Long ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe
... fail to leave its mark on a man. The mouth, the chin, the forehead; some feature usually shows traces of it. And when Mart Cooley turned and Whitey saw his eyes, he got his thrill. They were a hard, light, steely gray, and they looked out from lowered lids, oh, so steadily. Months of brooding in the prison had helped to harden Mart's eyes, that had needed no help in that way; brooding over imaginary wrongs, ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... smile, but such a smile! Kindly it broke over the stern face, giving a glimpse of a heart still warm beneath that steely cold. Behind it, too, there ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... and placed her hands upon his broad shoulders. Her childish eyes were steely with an intensity of purpose hitherto ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... onwards, and the crowd scattered helter skelter, terrified and desperate. None seemed to have a thought for the miserable man smitten down before their very eyes. All took care to avoid approaching him in their hasty flight. He lay with his face upturned to the steely, pitiless summer sky. A woman coming furtively along with a market basket upon her arm suddenly set up a dolorous cry at sight of him, and setting down her basket ran towards him, the tears streaming ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... his chair. His eyes were fixed upon the face of the woman whose antagonism to himself was so apparent. She stood in the path of a long gleam of morning sunlight. The wrinkles in her face, her hard mouth, her cold, steely ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... anything my last look at the gloomy building from the fields which lie between it and the town. The flying afterguard of the late storm was hurrying across the sky, the fields were sodden, and rainpools lay here and there reflecting the dull steely hue of the heavens. A single light burned red and baleful in one window, and right over the black bulk of the gaol one star beamed. It seemed to me like a promise of mercy beyond, and I went back to my hotel filled with thoughts which will ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... he observed for the hundredth time he had taken this journey. A rotisserie, before whose upright fender of scarlet coals whole ducks were happily roasting to a shiny brown. In a furrier's window were Siberian foxes' skins (Siberia! huts of "awful brave convicks"; the steely Northern Sea; guards in blouses, just as he'd seen them at an Academy of Music play) and a polar bear (meaning, to him, the Northern Lights, the long hike, and the igloo at night). And the florists! There were orchids that (though he only half knew it, and that all inarticulately) ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... litter, painted black. The coffin was clumsily covered with too short a pall, and at the lower end of it the fresh deal of which it was made could be seen, with the heads of the nails sparkling with a steely glitter. Upon the pall lay flowers: handfuls of white roses, hyacinths, and tuberoses, taken from the ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... a countenance sadly dejected that Crispin returned to his chamber and sate himself wearily upon the bed. With elbows on his knees and chin in his palms he stared straight before him, the usual steely brightness of his grey eyes dulled by the despondency that sat upon his face and drew deep ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... see the application.... So the French critics have set him down as another popular figure, only a nobody born to entertain the boulevards, just as the American critics regard the performances of Irving Berlin with a steely supercilious impervious eye. The Viennese scorned Mozart because he entertained them. "A gay population," wrote the late John F. Runciman, "always a heartless master, holds none in such contempt as the servants who ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... world, as he draws nigh the threshold of the waiting night. There was a great lump of orange color half melted up in the watery clouds of the west, but all was dreary and scarce consolable, up to the clear spaces above, stung with the steely stars that began to peep out of the blue hope of heaven. Thither Hester kept casting up her eyes as they walked, or rather somehow her eyes kept travelling thitherward of themselves, as if indeed they had to do with things up there. And the child that cries for the moon is wiser ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... in the presence of the illustrious Delobelle at a cafe concert, as he spent all his evenings away from home; and yet the old cashier felt vaguely disturbed, especially when he discovered in the same row a blue cape and a pair of steely eyes. It was Madame Dobson, the sentimental singing-teacher. The conjunction of those two faces amid the pipe-smoke and the confusion of the crowd, produced upon Sigismond the effect of two ghosts ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... The steely sound of the command moved something in the souls of the soldiers, and took the enjoyment of their sleep ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... of the room the eyes of the two men met. Selwyn's were blazing like hot coals; Van Derwater's were cold and steely. ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... uncomfortable dawns that have no beauty either of warmth or serenity—at least it seemed so here in Turner Road. Above the torn and dingy strip of lace that shrouded the lower part of the window towered the black fronts of the high houses against the steely western sky. It was extraordinarily quiet. Now and then a footstep echoed and died suddenly as some passer-by crossed the end of the street; but there was no murmur of voices yet, or groups at the doors, as, no doubt, there would be when ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... and who seemed to look at the whole business as a joke. They might have been going to a picnic, so merry were they. And yet, as Bob looked more closely, it was easy to see by the compressed lips, and the steely looks in their eyes, that they ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... way," she repeated. "They have left me but one weapon, and it's for my life;" and the lips set themselves in hard lines, and the dark eyes looked steely and resolute. What wild purpose was taking shape in the tortured brain of Sybil Burrill? planted there by the ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... every one of the electric lights in the ship flashed out at their fullest brightness, brilliantly illuminating the deck, and turning night into day for fully a mile round, and, under the clear steely radiance thus unexpectedly furnished him, the king slowly made his way to the ground, mounted his horse in silence, and galloped away at the head of his followers. The illumination of the ship was maintained until the cavalcade was well clear of the ruins, when the side-ladder ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... Drew talked too straight in the paper, and in spite of his proprietors—about pub spieling and such things—and was too sarcastic in his progress committee, town council, and toady reception reports. The Doctor had a hawk's nose, pointed grizzled beard and moustache, and steely-grey eyes with a haunted look in them sometimes (especially when he glanced at you sideways), as if he loathed his fellow men, and couldn't always hide it; or as if you were the spirit of morphia or opium, or a dead girl he'd ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... around and unhappily told Father that they were letting him go because the department was overstocked with younger, liver men. "I'm mighty sorry, and I wish you good luck," he said, with flash of the real man under the smooth, steely exterior. ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... Ida's steely eyes glittered. "He will not be such a fool as to come back, weak and wicked though he ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... hands are too too weak, To penetrate the bulwark of my breast; My fingers, used to tune the amorous lute, Are not of force to hold this steely glaive. So I am left to wail my parents' death, Not able for to work my proper death. Ah, Locrine, honored for thy nobleness! Ah, Estrild, famous for thy constancy! Ill may they fare that wrought ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... smother the ugly floating memories ef a renegade who had served those English guns under the fierce Sikkim hill tribes against his one-time fellow soldiers. "I must have that money, with or without the girl! There must be a way to it! I will cut through the barriers to get it!" There was a steely glitter in his blue eyes as he murmured: "Now for the fox's hide! She shall have her way—for a time! My play comes on later, when the deal is ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... to Scott's eyes; they shone with an almost steely gleam. "You needn't be afraid of that," he said quietly. "Now tell me, Dinah, for I want to know; how long have you known that you didn't want to ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... exactly the measure of length, each larger area in the ascending scale represents 144 times that below it. Thus the styly being a little more than a foot, the steely is about 13 feet, or one-twelfth of the staly; but the steelta (or square steely) is 1/144th part of the stalta. The stolta, again, is about 600 yards square, or 360,000 square yards, 144 times the stalta. The highest note, so to speak, in circulation represents this last area; but all calculations are made in staltau, or twelfths thereof. ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... Dartle's little waves that day! A steely silver, underlined with blue, And flashing where the round clouds, blown away, Let drop the yellow sunshine to gleam through And tip the edges of the waves with shifts And spots of whitest fire, hard like gems Cut from the midnight moon they were, and sharp As wind through leafless stems. ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... a little apathy and observed that there was no widow's cap on Mrs. Arles's hair, that it had refined away through various shades of lace till at last even the delicate cobweb on the back of the head was gone and the glossy locks lay bare, that the sables had become simply black gauze over a steely shine of silk, that the little Andalusian foot lay relieved on a white embroidered cushion, that its owner was glancing up and smiling at a gentleman who bent above her, and that that gentleman was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... is, indeed, a magnificent specimen of man, No, rather, he is a man whose like I have never yet seen among the living. He is in the Belvedere, graven in marble, with the same slender, yet steely musculature, with the same face and the same waving curls. What makes him particularly beautiful is that he is beardless. If his hips were less narrow, one might take him for a woman in disguise. The curious expression about the mouth, the lion's lip which ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... night, with the moon silvering the sky, and the steely frost eating into the sentient life of this northern world. Inside the house, with the bearskin blind dropped at the window again, and the fire blazing high, Loisette sat with the Governor's reprieve in her hand. Looking ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... at the bell, repeated several times, roused him at last to go to the door. His caller was Robert Cramier. And at sight of him, all Lennan's lethargy gave place to a steely feeling. What had brought him here? Had he been spying on his wife? The old longing for physical combat came over him. Cramier was perhaps fifteen years his senior, but taller, heavier, thicker. Chances, then, were ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... a sword: steely, flat, cold, and sharp. "My lord the King spoke in haste. He has reason to be bitter against Philip of France, as do we all. Philip has deserted the field. He has returned to France in haste, leaving the rest of us to fight the Saracen for the Holy Land leaving ...
— ...After a Few Words... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... smile curled the firm lips and half closed the steely eyes of the speaker, and, noting the smile and the steely gleam in the grey-brown eyes, Cameron hastily decided that ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... His steely eyes seemed to search the cover of Mr. Britling's garden for the missing Manning, and then he decided to give him up. "I must be going," he said. ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... descried the jeweled crest of Edward amidst the cloud of battle there, and rushing forward, hand to hand engaged the king. Edward knew his adversary, not so much by his snow white plume as by the prowess of his arm. Twice did the heavy claymore of Wallace strike fire from the steely helmet of the monarch; but at the third stroke the glittering diadem fell in shivers to the ground; and the royal blood of Edward followed the blow. He reeled; and another stroke would have settled the freedom of Scotland ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... to Father Le Bel and asked him for a packet which she had given him for safe-keeping some little time before. He gave it to her, and she opened it. In it were letters and other documents, which, with a steely glance, she displayed to Monaldeschi. He was confused by the sight of them and by the incisive words in which Christina showed how he had both insulted her and had tried to shift the ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... Lady Theobald could make no reply. Singularly enough, she had discovered early in their acquaintance that her wonted weapons were likely to dull their edges upon the steely coldness of Mr. Francis Barold's impassibility. In the presence of this fortunate young man, before whom his world had bowed the knee from his tenderest infancy, she lost the majesty of her demeanor. He refused ...
— A Fair Barbarian • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Snap Naab had them. The little brown flecks danced in clear pale yellow. Evidently Snap had not located the perplexing dust-clouds, for his glance drifted. Suddenly the remarkable vibration of his pupils ceased, and his glance grew fixed, steely, certain. ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... CODLINGSBY. "The sight makes me feel quite Dizzy. A CODLINGSBY to the rescue!" and to fling open the window, amidst a shower of malodorous missiles, to vault over the balcony, and slide down one of the pillars to the ground, baring his steely biceps in the process, and shying the "castor" from his curly looks with all the virile grace of the Great Earl, was the work of exactly five-sixths of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 30, 1891 • Various
... same way that he called on his stenographer. But of true courtesy or consideration Mr. Murch's makeup was singularly and flawlessly free. On the contrary he could, on occasion, summon to his face a congealment and to his eye a steely gleam which nobody admired but which all respected. Ordinarily this was either for his inferiors, or for those unfortunates who had come to cross purposes with him, or for those who had made blunders costly to him that his most glacial manner was reserved; but every ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... on GALLIA'S plains Inglorious slept, unconscious of his chains; Round his large limbs were wound a thousand strings 380 By the weak hands of Confessors and Kings; O'er his closed eyes a triple veil was bound, And steely rivets lock'd him to the ground; While stern Bastile with iron cage inthralls His folded limbs, and hems in marble walls. 385 —Touch'd by the patriot-flame, he rent amazed The flimsy bonds, and round and round him ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... . it was immense! Immense!" he cried aloud, flinging his arms open. The sudden movement startled me as though I had seen him bare the secrets of his breast to the sunshine, to the brooding forests, to the steely sea. Below us the town reposed in easy curves upon the banks of a stream whose current seemed to sleep. "Immense!" he repeated for a third time, speaking in a ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... almost a snapping point, Henry moved on behind the fourth man. He was horribly afraid, he wanted to break from the line and run, it didn't matter where, any place to get away from that steady, steely light in front of him. He had seen three men step into it, glow for a second, and then disappear. A fourth man had placed ...
— Hellhounds of the Cosmos • Clifford Donald Simak
... Beside him stood a globe, whose figures traced A future empire in each present waste; All former works of men behind him shone Graved by his hand in ever-during stone; On his calm brow a various crown displays The hero's laurel and the scholar's bays; His graceful limbs in steely mail were drest, The bright star burning on his lofty breast; His sword, high waving, flash'd the solar ray. Illumed the shrouds and rainbow'd far the spray; The smiling crew rose resolute and brave, And the glad sails hung bounding o'er ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... steely hardness behind his laugh. He knew that Bucky Smith was a scoundrel whose good fortune was that he had never been found out in some of his evil work. In a flash his mind traveled back to that day at Norway House when Rousseau, the half Frenchman, had come to ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... duke yet never changed cheer, But grieved to see his friends lamenting stand; The leech prepared his cloths and cleansing gear, And with a belt his gown about him band, Now with his herbs the steely head to tear Out of the flesh he proved, now with his hand, Now with his hand, now with his instrument He shaked and plucked it, ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... cruelty had gone from his face, the sharp, steely look from his eyes. He was grasping the desk with both hands, leaning forward, staring as ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... ghastly. I saw his face change, his finger tremble where it hovered above the fatal button; saw—though only in imagination as yet—the steely edge of that deadly plate of steel advancing beyond the lintel, and was about to dare all in a sudden grapple with this man, when a sound from another direction caught my ear, and looking around in terror of the only intrusion we could fear, beheld Eva advancing from the room ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... anatase crystals may be distinguished. The commoner occurs as simple acute double pyramids {111} (fig. 1) with an indigo-blue to black colour and steely lustre. Crystals of this kind are abundant at Le Bourg d'Oisans in Dauphine, where they are associated with rock-crystal, felspar and axinite in crevices in granite and mica-schist. Similar crystals, but of microscopic size, are widely ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... doubt; it may be, in more or less of horrified alarm. Certain it is, that an arquebuss was called for from below. And some add, that its report, followed by a fierce whiz, as of the sudden snapping of a main-spring, with a steely din, as if a stack of sword-blades should be dashed upon a pavement, these blended sounds came ringing to the plain, attracting every eye far upward to the belfry, whence, through the lattice-work, thin wreaths of smoke ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... shrug, not because she wanted to yield but because she must. Her face was turned away from him, so that he did not see the steely look in her eyes and the hard set of the mouth. She was thinking of Jack Kilmeny. What would he say or do when he was told? Surely he would protect her. He would not give her away. If he were a gentleman, he couldn't betray a woman. But how far would the code ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... for another two weeks, on into the best time of the year. For now came the nights of the first snapping frosts when the dome of the heavens was steely blue, and clear sparkling mornings, the woods aflame with scarlet and gold. And across the small field below the house, at sunset Roger would go down to the copse of birches there and find it filled with glints of light that took his glance far in among the slender, creamy stems of the ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... think I shall odah fo' her, ve'y elegant, lined with blue to match her eyes.... No—that would be too light. Her eyes are beautiful, Cyclona. Don't think fo' a moment that they are not, but can you undahstan', I wondah, how eyes can be ve'y beautiful and yet of a cold and steely blue that sometimes freezes the blood in youah veins? A little too light, perhaps, and that gives them the look of cleah ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... traversing the level meadow lands between the Brezon and the Mole. With each mile, now, the landscape took on new beauty and wildness. The superb mountains—some with cloudy white turrets, some thrusting out huge snow-powdered prongs, and others tapering to steely dagger-points—hemmed them in on ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... the thermometer stands at 2 deg.. The sky is clear, but it clouds rapidly with films of cirrus and of stratus in the south and west. Soon it is covered over with grey vapour in a level sheet, all the hill-tops standing hard against the steely heavens. The cold wind from the west freezes the moustache to one's pipe-stem. By noon the air is thick with a coagulated mist; the temperature meanwhile has risen, and a little snow falls at intervals. The valleys are filled with a curious opaque blue, from which the peaks ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... attempt directly ahead his repugnance achieved a new power. The black entrance with its scarcely dared memories reminded him that what he was about to do was directed against more than human law, was an outrage against the dead man. He had to remind himself of the steely purpose with which Howells had marked him as the murderer; and the man's power persisted after death. In such a ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... me with his green-tinted eyes, as if he would read my innermost thoughts. Evidently his impression of me was not favourable, for a cynical smile curled his lips, and his eyes gleamed with a steely glitter. "One has to choose times, occasions, and proper circumstances, in order to tell such facts," he said. "I never speak of a sacred ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... have noticed this object until it was within a mile of the ship—unless his gaze had happened to have been attracted by an occasional momentary flashing gleam of silvery light—because its colour so artfully matched the delicate steely blue grey of the gently-rippled sea that it was absolutely invisible beyond that distance. Even at the distance of half a mile a cursory careless glance ahead might have easily missed it. But ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... spinels are infrequently seen in commerce. They never equal the fine sapphire in their color, being more steely. They, of course, lack dichroism and are softer than sapphire ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade
... cloistral lifetime at the Treasury, recognised her type immediately. She was of the type that wheedles, but never permits itself to be wheedled. And she was so pretty, and so simpering, and her blue eyes were so steely. And Mr. Prohack, in his original sinfulness, was pleased that she was thus. He felt that "it would serve Softly Bishop out." Not that Mr. Softly Bishop had done him any harm! Indeed the contrary. But he had an antipathy to Mr. Softly Bishop, and the spectacle of Mr. ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... wind played with the tattered flags of the palms, leaving openings here and there that exposed the steely-white glare of the sky, and showed, far away to the northward, the denuded red dome of ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... drifted in through the open casement. Miss Thorne was very fond of flowers. That was a queer trait in a person who seemed to care so little for persons. There always seemed something frozen about this gray-haired, immobile-faced woman with her stern manner and steely eyes. Sometimes Berta thought of her as like a dying fire ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... while the couple on the cliff became more and more indistinct, and the old grey tower seemed to melt away in the steely sky, and as it did so my feelings softened, for I felt I was bidding good-bye to it for ever. My love for Ruth began to exert its power, and although I felt bitter, the thought of going back to wreck her ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... softly through the solemn hush as, through gradations of fading glories along the lofty snows, night closed in. He would watch the black bear grubbing hog-fashion among the tall wild cabbage, while the little butter duck, paddling before its brood, set divergent lines creeping across the steely lake until the shadows of the whitened driftwood broke ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... awakened to his to find suite seven wrapped again in its favorite polar atmosphere. Filling the door leading to the outer room, he beheld the cause of his awakening—the mayor of Reuton. Mr. Cargan regarded him with the cold steely eye of a Disraeli in action, but when he spoke he opened the jaws of ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... Loupins alluded to by the name of Rose was seated in one of these dreary dens on this bitter winter's day. Rose was an exquisitely beautiful girl about eighteen years of age. She was very fair; her long lashes partially concealed a pair of steely blue eyes, and to a certain extent relieved their hard expression. Her ripe, red lips, which seemed formed for love and kisses, permitted a glimpse of a row of pearly teeth. Her bright waving hair grew low down upon her forehead, and such of it as had escaped from the bondage of a cheap ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... And thou fair tree which shad'st "Of one the miserable corse; and two "Soon with thy boughs wilt cover,—bear the mark "Of the sad deed eternal;—ting'd thy fruit "With mournful coloring: monumental type "Of double slaughter. Speaking thus, she plac'd "The steely point, while yet with blood it smok'd, "Beneath her swelling breast; and forward fell. "Her final prayer reach'd heaven; her parents reach'd: "Purple the berries blush, when ripen'd full; "And in one urn ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... sign of impatience. It is not true, and Brisbille annoys me with the hatred which he hurls at random, hit or miss; and all the more because he is himself visibly impressed by the approach of this man who is richer than the rest. The rebel opens his steely eye and relapses into silence, like the rest of us, as ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... however even to be allowed to let it lie there, for the next instant there fell on her startled ear quite echoing through the house another ring at the doorbell and two steely raps on the smart brass knocker. It was merely because she did not know what else to do, having just lost her wits entirely that she got up and trailed down ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... turned yet again, and gazed another moment on the tower. Towards the sky it towered, and led his gaze upward. There still soared, yet rested, the same quiet night with its delicate heaps of transparent blue, its cool-glowing moon, its steely stars, and its something he did not understand. He went home a little quieter of heart, as if he had heard from afar something sweet ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... we all heard a tremendous crackling, like that of nearby lightning, while enormous clouds of dust arose from the two concealed ends, which were now become connections. And at the same time a loud, steely click, just one and no more, ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... Sergeant Gellatly; the other was Little Hammer. The horses they rode travelled so close that the leg of the Indian crowded the leg of the white man; and the wilder the storm grew, the closer still they rode. A 'poudre' day, with its steely air and fatal frost, was an ill thing in the world; but these entangling blasts, these wild curtains of snow, were desolating even unto death. The sun above was smothered; the earth beneath was trackless; the compass ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... him—ahead but a few yards only—he heard the slack tide run faintly on the shingle. From the dark beach came no sound. Overhead quivered the expectant stars. He lifted his sword-arm, and from point to hilt ran a swift steely glitter. ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... away the train went, at no breakneck speed, down the wide valley of the Ouse, which, even on this cold December morning, looked pleasant and cheerful enough. For here and there the river caught a steely-blue light from the sky overhead; and the sunshine shone along the round chalk hills; and there were little patches of villages far away among the dusk of the leafless trees, where the church spire rising into the blue seemed to attract the wheeling of pigeons. To Nan it ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... interrupted conversation regathered and flowed again. Barney Ryan said nothing. He never spoke while eating, and rarely talked when women were present. Genevieve too was quiet, responding with a gently absent smile, when her cavalier, turning upon her his cold and expressionless steely-blue eyes, addressed to her some short regulation remark on the weather, or the boredom of his journey across the plains. The phlegmatic calm of his demeanor remained intact even under the coquettish ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... his assent; the piquant callousness of the affair had made him shiver, and furtively he eyed the steely Benjy, whose suavity had never wavered, and who appeared to take a greater interest in some approaching race than in his coming marriage. But Shelton knew from his own sensations that this could not really ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... pretending she hadn't hurt him. He would always take hurts like that, with that deadly, steely lightness. By its deadliness, its steeliness, she knew that it was all true (and much more besides) that she had heard ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... Hugh Ritson entered, followed by the lawyer, Mr. Bonnithorne. There was a steely glimmer in his eyes as he stood just inside the threshold ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... lists against thee? Would to heaven I could disarm thy vengeance by my deprecations! When I think of all the resources with which nature and education have supplied thee; that thy form is a combination of steely fibres and organs of exquisite ductility and boundless compass, actuated by an intelligence gifted with infinite endowments, and comprehending all knowledge, I perceive that my doom is fixed. What obstacle will be able to divert thy zeal or repel thy efforts? That being ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... instant they felt an immense relief, as they crowded around Wilson, the fullback, and clapped him on the shoulder. But their momentary exultation was replaced by chagrin, as they filed past the coach on the way to the shower baths, and their eyes fell before the steely ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... occasion for the services of a lady in this mood; a lady at once attractive, and steely-hearted; resolute to revenge, on the whole of the opposite sex, the baseness of a Fellow of his College. Such is the frenzy of an injured love—illogical indeed (for we are not responsible for the errors of isolated members of our sex), but primitive, ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... been one night overtaken and had played the buffoon in his cups, sternly, though not without tact, suppressed all reference to his escapade. It was a treat to see him manage this: the various jesters withered under his gaze, and you were forced to recognise in him a certain steely force, and a gift of command which might have ruled ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... so pantheistical, (in the right sense,) as I did in making one of that queer company. The great lout of a giant, with not soul enough in him to fill out his circumference; the sad little dwarf, with not room enough for hers; the poor, patient, necromanted savage of a bear; the smart, steely, grog-loving, praise-loving keeper; the curious, bookish, indolent traveler. Expressions, all of the grand, never-weary Life-Intention, how widely variant! yet all children, and equally beloved, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... moments Handsome made no answer. The thoughtful expression on his pale, care-worn face showed that he was thinking hard. What was passing in his mind no one knew, but whatever it was it caused the lines about his strong mouth to tighten and the steely blue eyes to flash. A million dollars? God! What will a man not do for a million dollars? Turning to the valet, ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... terrible Gorgons! They lay fast asleep, soothed by the thunder of the sea; for it required a tumult that would have deafened everybody else to lull such fierce creatures into slumber. The moonlight glistened on their steely scales, and on their golden wings, which drooped idly over the sand. Their brazen claws, horrible to look at, were thrust out, and clutched the wave-beaten fragments of rock, while the sleeping Gorgons dreamed of tearing some poor mortal all to pieces. The snakes, that served ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... night gave way to a gray and gloomy dawn. The tempest had not abated, and the sea thundered as furiously as ever. The wet and shivering women had gone back to their houses and their little ones; and as the cold, steely light of the coming day began to whiten in the east, Hagar made her way back to her kitchen, where she kindled a fire to warm her numb limbs. Never more, she thought,—rocking to and fro before the pleasant blaze,—could the old house be bright or cheerful. ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... smile disturbed Major Colquhoun's calm countenance for a moment, and then he stood, twisting the ends of his fair moustache slowly with his left hand, and gazing into the fire, which shone reflected in his steely blue eyes, making them glitter like pale sapphires, coldly, ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... and two or three hundred Crees swathed in furs bringing up a ragged rear. The bright uniforms of the soldiers were patches of red among the snowy everglades. Bivouac was made on beds of pine boughs,—feet to the camp-fire, the night frost snapping like a whiplash, the stars flashing with a steely clearness known only in northern climes. The march was at a swift pace, for three weeks by canoe is short enough time to traverse the Minnesota and Manitoba Borderlands northwest to Lake Winnipeg; and in seventeen days M. de la Verendrye was at ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... clean-living, single man in Fiji, and that if he ever did marry his wife would be "some bony Scotch person of about forty, with her hair screwed up into a Turk's knot at the back of her long head, and with a cold, steely eye like a gimlet. Nine out of ten of good fellows like Jack Brabant do get ...
— The Trader's Wife - 1901 • Louis Becke
... possibly the chauffeur wanted some sandwiches, left the cash register and crossed the pavement eagerly. Every eye in the restaurant was turned upon the glittering limousine, whose panels of dove-throat gray shone with a steely lustre. In a moment the proprietor returned with a large basket and a small folded paper, looking puzzled. He glanced about the room, ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... been all fun, As you found in that huge awful tract of forest, And you must have felt some doubt of your chance of winning out Of all perils when your need was at the sorest. Mortal sickness now and then, and the pranks of lesser men, Must have tried your iron health and steely temper. But, like SCIPIO of old, you 're as patient as you're bold, And you turn up ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, May 3, 1890. • Various
... hand, and a swift change came over Stampede's face. A steely glitter shot into the blue of his eyes, and his chin hardened. Nature no longer disguised the Stampede Smith of other days, and Alan felt a new thrill and a new regard for the man whose hand he held. ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood |
