She had ever seen with regret his sternness to his children, she saw also that he was pained, deeply pained, as their characters became more matured; and, spite of the difficulties of the task, her benevolent mind determined to leave no means untried to make one child at least his comfort.

It relaxed his sternness, and, after a moment's hesitation, he came around the table and sat down beside her.

Still, there is every reason to believe that their piety, as a body, was sincere; and while we condemn the sternness and severity into which they were too frequently betrayed, we must yield our heartfelt approbation to the self-denying resolution and unflinching faith that were their governing principle and their ever- actuating motive.

[E] Thou didst soften down This over-sternness; but for thee, dear Friend!

He delighted most in the Old Testament heroes and prophets, and caught their sternness and invective.

The dangers and miseries of war develop sternness, hardness, and indifference to suffering.

On this morning Sir Philip had dropped his sternness towards her, and finding a moment when his son-in-law was absent, he said, "Child, I know that this is wellnigh, nay, quite as hard for you as for me.

" He was silent, enjoying her sternness, glad to have roused her, no matter what the consequences; knowing that each second heightened the climax.

Chapter Twenty-eight Hope Deferred Time in six months brought the year to the early spring, that time when even the mountain desert forgets its sternness for a month or two.

His eyes are upon me, and, at every second's delay, they gather additional sternness.

The captain spoke earnestly, and there was a flush about his fine countenance, that gave it sternness and authority.

As Adrienne looked at his white face and heard the sternness in his voice, the laughter faded from her eyes.

I would not impart sternness to the beautiful countenance of English literature.

A crimson flush mounted to Ellen's temples as she spoke, a flush that, combined with the hesitating tone in which she answered, "to read and work," might well justify the sternness of tone and manner with which her uncle replied.

You know the sternness, reservedness, and distance of his manners.

The torrid sun and the hot breath of summer will have burnt up the fair garment of spring, and laid bare the arid sternness of the South again.

This had lent to his aspect a sternness never observable in it before; but no man, even the captious Mr. Moffat, had seriously questioned his rulings; and, whatever the cost to himself, he had, up to this time, held the scales of justice so evenly that it would have taken an audacious mind to have ventured on an interpretation of his real attitude or mental leaning in this case.

I did not mind the sternness; there was love behind it.

Mrs. Daniel had seen Mrs. Bolton, and had herself been witness to the fact that Mrs. Bolton had mitigated the sternness of her denial when asked to receive her son-in-law at Puritan Grange.

No, it was not that: it was less the tenderness of the past that made Venetia mourn her mother's sternness to Cadurcis, than the feelings of the future.

But it was noticeable that as he spoke he did not look at Esther nor could her anxious glance read the impassive sternness of his face.

She was impelled to look at her husband, and she saw the sternness with which he watched her.

In earlier years he was a very grave man, with something of the old Puritan sternness in his looks and ways, and he bore still the aspect of a homo gravis; but his gentleness, his tender devotion to the gay young companions who surrounded him, and the almost boyish delight with which he shared in their pleasures, took away all its sternness and lighted up his strongly-marked countenance with singular grace and beauty.

"Well, who are you, anyway?" demanded Max, throwing as much sternness into his voice as he could.

In feverish agitation on the part of Caroline, in cold, unbending sternness on that of the Duchess, their journey passed.