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The Queen of Hearts

English BooksWhale Edition by Wilkie Collins

A frame narrative in which three travellers exchange tales of crime, coincidence, romance, and deception during a country-house stay.

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The Queen of Hearts

Collins turns a holiday gathering into a laboratory for suspense. The stories vary in tone, but together they explore mistaken identity, buried evidence, social vulnerability, and the pleasure of telling a dangerous tale to an attentive audience.

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Why this edition can be shared

Published in 1859; Wilkie Collins died in 1889. The original English text is public domain under the United States term and life-plus-70 rules.

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The Queen of Hearts

Wilkie Collins

Preview chapterLETTER OF DEDICATION.Preview

LETTER OF DEDICATION.

Preview chapterTO EMILE FORGUES.Preview

At a time when French readers were altogether unaware of the existence of any books of my writing, a critical examination of my novels appeared under your signature in the Revue des Deux Mondes. I read that article, at the time of its appearance, with sincere pleasure and sincere gratitude to the writer, and I have honestly done my best to profit by it ever since.

At a later period, when arrangements were made for the publication of my novels in Paris, you kindly undertook, at some sacrifice of your own convenience, to give the first of the series—“The Dead Secret”—the great advantage of being rendered into French by your pen. Your excellent translation of “The Lighthouse” had already taught me how to appreciate the value of your assistance; and when “The Dead Secret” appeared in its French form, although I was sensibly gratified, I was by no means surprised to find my fortunate work of fiction, not translated, in the mechanical sense of the word, but transformed from a novel that I had written in my language to a novel that you might have written in yours.

I am now about to ask you to confer one more literary obligation on me by accepting the dedication of this book, as the earliest acknowledgment which it has been in my power to make of the debt I owe to my critic, to my translator, and to my friend.

The stories which form the principal contents of the following pages are all, more or less, exercises in that art which I have now studied anxiously for some years, and which I still hope to cultivate, to better and better purpose, for many more. Allow me, by inscribing the collection to you, to secure one reader for it at the outset of its progress through the world of letters whose capacity for seeing all a writer’s defects may be matched by many other critics, but whose rarer faculty of seeing all a writer’s merits is equaled by very few.

Table of contents

Inside this edition

  1. 01Full text
  2. 02LETTER OF DEDICATION.
  3. 03TO EMILE FORGUES.
  4. 04WILKIE COLLINS.
  5. 05THE QUEEN OF HEARTS.
  6. 06CHAPTER I. OURSELVES.
  7. 07CHAPTER II. OUR DILEMMA.
  8. 08CHAPTER III. OUR QUEEN OF HEARTS.
  9. 09CHAPTER IV. OUR GRAND PROJECT.
  10. 10I quailed inwardly as that dangerously close guess at the truth passed her lips.
  11. 11THE TEN DAYS.
  12. 12THE FIRST DAY.
  13. 13BROTHER OWEN’S STORY OF THE SIEGE OF THE BLACK COTTAGE.
  14. 14THE SECOND DAY.
  15. 15CHAPTER I.
  16. 16I asked if there was any more dreadful news from home besides the news of Caroline’s death.
  17. 17CHAPTER II.
  18. 18I shrunk out of the room the moment he had kissed me, and went and hid myself in the garden.
  19. 19I may pass over the events of the next few years of my life briefly enough.
  20. 20CHAPTER III.
  21. 21I tried hard to control myself, but I could not repress a shudder at those words.
  22. 22THE THIRD DAY.
  23. 23CHAPTER I.
  24. 24CHAPTER II.
  25. 25CHAPTER III.
  26. 26CHAPTER IV.
  27. 27THE FOURTH DAY.
  28. 28CHAPTER I.
  29. 29CHAPTER II.
  30. 30I promised to be punctual, and he left me directly.
  31. 31CHAPTER III.
  32. 32I had hitherto been seated in the shade of his reading-lamp, the only light in the room.
  33. 33I begged him not to speak of these things, but to go on.
  34. 34CHAPTER IV.
  35. 35I left him, promising to return early the next day.
  36. 36CHAPTER V.
  37. 37I waited a minute and untied my cravat.
  38. 38CHAPTER VI.
  39. 39I had observed it, and told him so.
  40. 40THE FIFTH DAY.
  41. 41THE TWO ROBINS.
  42. 42THE SIXTH DAY
  43. 43FRANCIS THEAKSTONE. FROM MR. MATTHEW SHARPIN TO CHIEF INSPECTOR THEAKSTONE.
  44. 44MATTHEW SHARPIN. FROM CHIEF INSPECTOR THEAKSTONE TO MR. MATTHEW SHARPIN.
  45. 45FRANCIS THEAKSTONE. FROM MR. MATTHEW SHARPIN TO CHIEF INSPECTOR THEAKSTONE.
  46. 46MATTHEW SHARPIN. FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME.
  47. 47I sat down on the side of my bed, actually quivering with excitement.
  48. 48I did look out. Their cab had stopped.
  49. 49I answer, without the slightest hesitation, the first lines of the Marriage Service.
  50. 50MATTHEW SHARPIN. FROM CHIEF INSPECTOR THEAKSTONE TO SERGEANT BULMER.
  51. 51FROM SERGEANT BULMER TO CHIEF INSPECTOR THEAKSTONE.
  52. 52I remain, accordingly, yours to command,
  53. 53THOMAS BULMER.
  54. 54FROM CHIEF INSPECTOR THEAKSTONE TO MR. MATTHEW SHARPIN.
  55. 55FRANCIS THEAKSTONE. NOTE ON THE PRECEDING CORRESPONDENCE, ADDED BY MR. THEAKSTONE.
  56. 56THE SEVENTH DAY.
  57. 57CHAPTER I.
  58. 58CHAPTER II.
  59. 59THE EIGHTH DAY.
  60. 60CHAPTER I.
  61. 61CHAPTER II.
  62. 62I bowed to him and said I knew of the circumstances so far.
  63. 63“YOUR UNKNOWN FRIEND.”
  64. 64I got him the ale before I announced him. He winked at me as he put it to his lips.
  65. 65I announced him at once, and was told to show him into the library.
  66. 66CHAPTER III.
  67. 67CHAPTER IV.
  68. 68I overtook Mr. Meeke in the hall, and opened the door for him.
  69. 69CHAPTER V.
  70. 70I was cautioned in the usual manner and asked if I had anything to say.
  71. 71I told him of the quarrel, and of how Josephine had looked and talked when she showed me her cheek.
  72. 72I looked at him in astonishment.
  73. 73CHAPTER VI.
  74. 74I could hardly realize it when I found myself walking back to Darrock a free man again.
  75. 75I told Mr. Dark that he had anticipated the very question I was about to ask him.
  76. 76THE NINTH DAY.
  77. 77CHAPTER I.
  78. 78CHAPTER II.
  79. 79I stared at him in speechless amazement. The words, for an instant, absolutely petrified me.
  80. 80I looked at the clock. The minute-hand was on the quarter.
  81. 81I broke free from him in the astonishment of hearing those words.
  82. 82THE TENTH DAY.
  83. 83[TAKEN FROM HER DIARY.]
  84. 84I picked the thing up, and smoothed it out, and saw that it was an end of a man’s cravat.
  85. 85I thanked him, and we parted. Just as he was closing the door he looked in again.
  86. 86I can write no more. My tears drop so fast on the paper that I can see nothing.
  87. 87I was too weary and heart-sick to answer; I only tried to get by him to my own door.
  88. 88I nodded my head. At that moment I could not have spoken for worlds.
  89. 89I nodded my head again. It was all I could do to keep myself standing upright.
  90. 90I gathered from this that the crook-backed man had been a cab-driver.
  91. 91I saw that he was taking several bank-notes out of the pocket-book, and stopped him.
  92. 92THE NIGHT.
  93. 93THE MORNING.

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