There was a momentary pause as each man, hesitating between a direct falsehood, the truth, and a plausible excuse, rather waited for the other to speak.

"Without going into affairs which do not concern you," said the Frenchman, answering for her, "I think you will recognize that the secret of the Charity League was quite sufficient excuse for me to request a few minutes alone with the princess.

The existence of proconsuls in the provinces, with great armies at their beck and call, brought about such results as might have been predicted, as soon as the growing anarchy at home furnished a valid excuse for armed interference.

But theologians hold that there is no grave obligation for such prior-to-Mass recital, and that any reasonable cause excuses from the obligation (Lehmkuhl II., 628).

"I am ashamed to say," he remarked in writing home, "that I can offer not the slightest excuse: my conduct on this occasion has been very bad.

"I would have begged off from this duty, if I could," he began, "but I knew from the moment I was asked that I had no decent excuse.

He has little excuse to offer for the mistakes he has made, or the various offences of which he has been guilty.

"I am offended at your incredulity," said Maud, making an effort to laugh away the scene, "and will not remain to hear lame excuses.

If these two men were going to use her as a mere excuse to settle a lifelong quarrel of many issues, it was probable that there would not be much left of her character by the time that they had finished.

The truth of the matter is, that they were only too eager for some pretext upon which to base the assertion that it was the English who began hostilities, and this flimsy excuse was the best they could invent.

In pre-war days the possibility of these islands being blockaded was frequently discussed; but during the dark days of the unrestricted submarine campaign there was ample excuse for those with imagination to picture the implication of events which were happening from week to week.

To have the better excuse to avoid his teasing, I am ready dressed to go to church this morning.

The path was too narrow to permit of three to walk abreast, and Joseph sent Isabel on in front; and on some trivial excuse or another contrived to lag some little distance behind her.

That is the secret of my talkativeness; my sole excuse for plaguing you with the dreams of a wretched hypochondriac.

"Be not deceived then, God is not mocked," by such false excuses for not doing justly and loving mercy.

I had no heart to speak;I faltered some miserable, perhaps petulant excuse, stole away, and the first battle of life was lost.

I most earnestly urge my countrymen not to hide behind thin official excuses, which the sister kingdoms and the subject races can easily see through.

For they have a legitimate excuse, that they have left their country in banishment, and that they have not been restored since.

She had no one respectable excuse to offer for her partiality to her former lover, and when her conscience told her the mortifying fact, was apt to think that others remembered it too.

"What do you want with your bicycle?" Riglett shuffled, stood first on his left foot, then on his right, blushed, and finally remarked, as if it were not so much a sound reason as a sort of feeble excuse for the low and blackguardly fact that he wanted his bicycle, that he had got leave for tea that afternoon.

Rosine urged Daniel to come in again for a few moments and talk to her a little; Daniel hesitated, did come back, but refused to sit down, and in a constrained way made a vague excuse for going away.

Nay, give me no excuses vain, For none of them I ask, Plead truth to her thou cozenest now They'll serve thee in the task.

But to this Lady Margaret had found some ingenious excuse, and one that seemed to herself and the world honorable to her natural feeling; but had the offer been made to George, these reasons would have vanished in the desire to advance his interests, or to gratify his propensities.

[180] Johnson, writing of 'the chapel of the alienated college,' says:'I was always by some civil excuse hindered from entering it.' Works, ix.

I made the suggestion quite innocently, and produced such a storm that only my foreign ignorance provided me with a satisfactory excuse.