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Bewilderment   Listen
noun
Bewilderment  n.  
1.
The state of being bewildered.
2.
A bewildering tangle or confusion. "He... soon lost all traces of it amid bewilderment of tree trunks and underbrush."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Bewilderment" Quotes from Famous Books



... wonder began to settle on the faces of the guests, and exclamations of surprise and bewilderment were apparent. It was apparent that nearly all were converts to his beliefs, if beliefs they might be called. After a number of articles were shown and described, Kaffar was ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking

... interlacing on a panel. At the height of his distress, Rudolph caught a whirling glimpse of the woman above him, safe on firm earth, easy in her saddle, and laughing. Quicksand, then, was a joke,—but he could not pause for this added bewilderment. ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout

... as I go my round in the obvious world, a bit of Chaos and old Night seems to linger on inside me; a dark bewilderment of mind, a nebulous sea of speculation, a looming of shadowy universes out of nothing, and their collapse, ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith

... stroke of midnight, the arquebusier who had admitted the tall stranger to the dungeon, and who had momentarily expected his coming forth, opened the door to see what was going forward. Great was his astonishment to find the cell empty! After looking around in bewilderment, he rushed to the chamber above, to tell ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth

... of the determination of a selfish purpose. I could not answer him composedly, and entreated him to leave me. He misinterpreted my dismay, and went at once to my father. When I came in, that evening, having somewhat regained my composure, though with a sick feeling of dread and bewilderment in my heart, my father met me with unusual kindness, kissed me as he had not done for years, and led me towards Frank, who was standing near my mother. She had been crying, I saw, and her face wore a strange expression of anxiety and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... once more to shine. A fearless officer of the law had struck a blow for justice that marked the beginning of a new era of national life. And yet apparently the only men to profit by it were the giants who rode the storm it had created. The people were left in mental bewilderment. To their short-ranged vision the young District Attorney who lay prostrate on a bed of illness was a man who had been tried and found wanting. He had either wilfully and corruptly played into the hands of a powerful group of millionaires or had blunderingly done ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon

... Bunyan has thus, in this blissful passage from the river to the gate, done what no other devout writer, or dreamer, or speculator, that we are aware of, has ever done; he has filled what perhaps in most minds is a mere blank, a vacancy, or at most a bewilderment and mist of glory, with definite and beatific images, with natural thoughts, and with the sympathizing communion of gentle spirits, who form, as it were, an outer porch and perspective of glory, through which ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... as he rarely could ascertain whether or no she was earnest in what she was saying. So he trotted off, muttering some excuse as he went, and Miss Dunstable chuckled with an inward chuckle at his too evident bewilderment. Miss Dunstable was by nature kind, generous, and open-hearted; but she was living now very much with people on whom kindness, generosity, and open-heartedness were thrown away. She was clever also, and could be sarcastic; and she found that those qualities told better in the world around ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope

... house, it was considered a joy and a blessing. Children and women adored him. The children, indeed, were like a young guard about him, for the inauguration of his innocent kingship, and gave him little ovations. It was childhood, in fact, in its divine spontaneity, in its simple bewilderment of joy, that took possession of ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various

... early in May, my glorified friend came up to town, where, it may be veraciously recorded he was the king of the beasts of the year. No advancement was ever more rapid, no exaltation more complete, no bewilderment more teachable. His book sold but moderately, though the article in The Empire had done unwonted wonders for it; but he circulated in person to a measure that the libraries might well have envied. His formula had been found—he was a "revelation." His momentary terror had been real, ...
— The Death of the Lion • Henry James

... over her wrists in his anxiety not to hurt her unduly while he severed a stout rope, and he could not see the expression of sheer bewilderment which again mastered the usually impassive features of Abdullah. The Arab had yielded to unwonted surprise when he saw Royson use a man as flail, but the removal of the gag, and the consequent revelation of ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy

... dangled out of the milk wagon; in fact all the trials and tribulations of life were as fleeting dreams. Happiness lingered within his whole being. The sights and wonders, the clowns were all flitting before him. The evening was one of bewilderment and ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field

... recountal, has the elements of romance. The closing scene describes the perplexity of a practical Kentish policeman "who in the small hours before dawn came upon the wrap the Sea Lady had been wearing, just as the tide overtook it," He stands there on the foreshore with a foolish bewilderment, wondering chiefly "what people are up to." He is the "simple citizen of a plain and obvious world." And Mr Wells concludes: "I picture the interrogation of his lantern going out for a little way, a stain of faint pink curiosity upon the mysterious vast ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford

... intrust myself to the Parisians." It was decided to send immediately for the duke. A messenger soon reached him, and he set out on horseback, accompanied by M. Montesquiou, for Paris. Still his irresolution, timidity, and bewilderment were so great that, before reaching the city, his heart misgave him, and, turning his horse, he galloped with the utmost speed back to Rancy. Alison, in depicting these scenes, says, with a severity which our readers will probably think that ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

... influence as theirs, and, correspondingly, to give ear to their propositions. Two days after the safe lodgment of Eagle Wing behind the bars, the telegrams were coming by dozens, and one week after that deserved incarceration Fort Frayne heard with mild bewilderment the major's order for Moreau's transfer to the hospital. By that time letters, too, were beginning to come, and, two nights after this removal to the little room but lately occupied by Lieutenant Field—this very Thanksgiving night, in fact,—the single sentry ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King

... muttered, his bewilderment increasing, and the next moment he understood and had some difficulty in preventing himself from bursting out laughing as there reached him the unmistakable sound of a kiss lightly blown through ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon

... Flora and Dora recovered from the bewilderment occasioned by the confusion of the post office, they found themselves in one of the many leathern mail bags rumbling Eastward. As it was perfectly dark they could not see their companions, so listened to the whispering and rustling that went on ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott

... ears, seem to make signs to us with their long arms and long fingers: "No noise! Look, there are mummies here!" The wonderful preservation of all this, the vivid colours, the clearness of the outlines, begin to cause a kind of stupor and bewilderment. Verily you would think that the painter of these figures of the shades had only just quitted the hypogeum. All this past seems to draw you to itself like an abyss to which you have approached too closely. It surrounds you, and little by little masters you. It is so ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti

... it was, indeed, he whom the gigantic masked brigand had halted, was staggered for an instant by this unlooked for interruption of his journey in pursuit of the beautiful flower-girl. He gazed at the huge ruffian in front of him first in bewilderment and then in anger. The robber calmly continued to cover him with his pistol; as Giovanni made a movement with his hand towards a stiletto he wore at the belt of his peasant's dress, the man's quick eye detected his intention and he exclaimed, ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg

... Calcutta at fabulous prices; not fighting over again the battle of Lakhairi, but rather discussing the relative merits of the slopes of the Alps and the cliffs of the Atlantic; admitting sorrowfully the merits of the intermediate vineyards, or trilling to the bewilderment of their country-born comrades, light little French songs of love ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene

... scheme, or dream, of Tariff Reform, Mr. Balfour's authority steadily declined. Endless ingenuity in dialectic, nimble exchanges of posture, candid disquisition for the benefit of the well-informed, impressive phrase-making for the bewilderment of the ignorant—these and a dozen other arts were tried in vain. People began to laugh at the Tory leader, and likened him to Issachar crouching down between two burdens, or to that moralist who said that he always sought "the narrow path which lies between right ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell

... dropped the dog and lifted his handsome head with a look of blank bewilderment. Seventy thalers for a bit of wood like that, when his own strong arms could not earn as much in months! He stared at the little image in wondering perplexity, as though striving to see by what mysterious process it had arrived ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various

... distinguish himself by a solid reign of well-doing, or by any continuing reign at all,—sometimes as many as four kings simultaneously fighting;—and in Norway, from sire to son, nothing but sanguinary anarchy, disaster and bewilderment; a Country sinking steadily as if towards absolute ruin. Of all which frightful misery and discord Irish Gylle, styled afterwards King Harald Gylle, was, by ill destiny and otherwise, the visible origin: an illegitimate ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle

... you saying?... What are you saying?... What are you saying?" cried M. Dudouis, in a sort of sing-song voice and a tone of bewilderment that ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc

... in the kitchen with Phineas. The news of Doggie's safety had been given out by Willoughby, without any details. Mo Shendish had leaped about her like a fox-terrier, and she had laughed, with difficulty restraining her tears. But to Phineas alone she told her whole story. He listened in bewilderment. And the greater the bewilderment, the worse his crude translations of English into French. She wound up a ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke

... the same afternoon, taking with me Tamb' Itam and the other Malay, in whose seagoing craft they had escaped in the bewilderment, fear, and gloom of the disaster. The shock of it seemed to have changed their natures. It had turned her passion into stone, and it made the surly taciturn Tamb' Itam almost loquacious. His surliness, too, was subdued into puzzled humility, ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... in bewilderment. "Oh, come now, Mr. Holmes," said he at last, "I'm sure you don't really ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... any sort of exultation over the manner in which he had at once compassed his own escape and brought down catastrophe upon his self-appointed murderers; his mood was quick with wonder and foreboding and bewilderment. The more closely he examined the affair, the more strange and inexplicable it bulked in his understanding. He had not thought to defy the Pack and get off lightly; but he had looked for no such overt effort at disciplining him so long as he kept out ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance

... now, and I looked at my hostess in a little bewilderment. She murmured, "I suppose the joke is that he had befriended one man at the expense ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells

... looked a hundred years old, and had themselves fallen into decay; a quantity of washed linen, spread to dry in the sun; a number of houses at odds with one another and grotesquely out of the perpendicular, like rotten pre-Adamite cheeses cut into fantastic shapes and full of mites; and a feverish bewilderment of windows, with their lattice-blinds all hanging askew, and something draggled and dirty dangling out of ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... his eyes and starting up, gazed about him in sheer surprise; for an instant, in that state of bewilderment that comes with sudden awakening, he almost believed himself in a Western ranch bunkhouse, and that some happy cowboy outside roared a grotesque ballad. He gazed at the interior of a rough shack built of ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice

... almost avenged already, and defying him, standing close to him, and face to face, she said: "I want my child, and you have no right to keep him, because he is not yours ... do you understand?... he is not yours ... he is Limousin's." And Parent cried out in bewilderment: "You lie ... you ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... this as Ambrose knew or understood he told to Stephen, who listened in a good deal of bewilderment, understanding very little, but with a strong instinct that his brother's love of learning was leading him into dangerous company. And what were they doing on this fine May holiday, when every one ought ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... knowledge was at once so sweet, and so disturbing, that she sat with face averted, unable to turn the precious minutes to account. They arrived at the flat without having done more than agree that the streets were dark, and the moon bright. She got out with a sense of bewilderment, and said rather desperately: ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... in bewilderment and panic, sent a piercing scream to ring through the house, and then the voice of Giovanni, fierce yet exultant, ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini

... seeing Tournefort was gazing down on him, with awe and bewilderment expressed in his ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy

... visit to Walter Scott in Castle Street—his first visit, mind you. He is shown into the drawing-room and finds Mrs. Scott, disposed, a la Madame Recamier, on a sofa. His acuteness comes to the aid of his bewilderment, and he is quick to extend himself in similar fashion upon the opposite sofa. In the dining-room he was much more at his ease. Before the end of the meal he had his host as "Wattie" and his hostess as "Charlotte." ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett

... after her in utter fury and bewilderment. Her last words rang in his ears and seemed true to him. He felt as if he did not know his own daughter. This awakening and lashing into action, by the terrible pressure of circumstances, of strange ancestral traits which he had himself transmitted was beyond his simple ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... perish not so soon! Perished with bitter cold, I chanced upon a fire—forthwith it disappeared. Wandering amid the wilds of grief and pain, deceived, confused, I lost my way—suddenly a wise and prudent guide encountered me, but hardly saved from my bewilderment, he once more vanished. Like some poor man treading through endless mud, weary and parched with thirst, longs for the water, suddenly he lights upon a cool refreshing lake, he hastens to it—lo! it dries before him. The deep blue, ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various

... again—never," said Miss Vanbrugh, looking at Olive with a vague bewilderment. "He will leave this pretty ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)

... but she was not aware of having written anything. Yet the scrawl, partly on one sheet and partly on another, was writing, very bad and broken, but still with a resemblance to her own handwriting. She pored over it; then looked Ian in the eyes, her own eyes large with a bewilderment touched with fear. ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods

... rulers. The former remembered with a sudden flash of enlightenment the meaning of the entry when the Cross and the Resurrection had taught them it. The rulers marked the popular feeling running high with bewilderment, and were, as Jesus meant them to be, made more determined to take vigorous measures to stop ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... bitterness, earnestness, and scorn—scorn, as it seemed, almost of herself and of her tribe, yet a scorn so proudly worn that it scarce seemed other than a mark of distinction to the wearer. Cuthbert listened in amaze and bewilderment. It was all so different from what he had looked for. He had hoped to consult an oracle, to learn hidden secrets of which the gipsies had cognizance through their mysterious gifts; and, behold, he was almost told that these same gifts were little more ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green

... that it was hers. She determined to return and send one of the boatmen up to awaken him, but at that moment Trenton suddenly opened his eyes, as a person often does when some one looks at him in his sleep. He sprang quickly to his feet, and put up his hand in bewilderment to remove his hat, but found it wasn't there. Then he laughed uncomfortably, stooping to ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr

... American Judge Haliburton, the author of 'Sam Slick,' and other embodiments of smart Yankeyism. No direct question on the point was put to me, and I let the affair take its run, though a good deal to the bewilderment of some people, who I saw really knew me.[21] Good cold weather: seeing one by one the remnants of my generation of school and college friends.—Love to all, ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton

... clerk expected his superior to echo his own bewilderment, he was disappointed. Mr. MacGentle unclosed his eyes, looked up, and ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne

... In his bewilderment the one whom Tom had named Sambo glared around him. His eyes gleamed with a phosphorescence like that which one sees on the water on a lowering night. What Reade did not know was that this black man possessed eyes that were a little keener in the ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock

... betrayed no trace of the bewilderment and satisfaction at this news of which he had been the unconscious bearer, nor of resentment at the ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte

... is a bewilderment of alternatives, each of the first rank in interest and heavily endorsed. Luchon is as easily the belle of the spas in location as in beauty; and one might strongly suspect that the charms of its climbs cure quite as many ills as its springs. Good as the waters may be, one ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix

... stretched on a form in the Hall vestibule, being kindly cared for by the Master of a College, who was an eminent surgeon and a professor. Again I remember that we entered the room together when dining with a hospitable Master, and were introduced to a guest, to his bewilderment, as "Mr. Benson" and "Father Benson." "I must explain," said our host, "that Father Benson is not Mr. Benson's father!" "I should have imagined that he might be his ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson

... him a divorce. The request placed Clement in a very embarrassing position; for if he refused to grant it, he would offend Henry; and if he granted it, he would offend Charles V., who was Catherine's relative. So Clement in his bewilderment was led to temporize, to make promises to Henry and then evade them. At last, after a year's delay, he appointed Cardinal Wolsey and an Italian cardinal named Campeggio as commissioners to hold a sort of court in England to determine the validity of Henry's marriage to Catherine. A year or more ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... found her feet yet, nor got clear of her bewilderment. And so, before she more than half knew what she was about she had taken the book and was reading—absolutely reading aloud to those two!—the ninety-first Psalm. Aloud, it was; but only because the voice was so wonderfully clear and sweet-toned could they have ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner

... agony of her constant consciousness that she was insinuating her presence upon him, and resolutely, so that her fear for him should always subordinate her fear of him, she bit down her sensitiveness in proportion to the rising tide of his growing, but still politely held in check, bewilderment. ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst

... things! It has been to them apparently a rather weary and oppressive pleasure, too strange for the most part to be thoroughly enjoyed; but it will live in their memories for many a day, and as time goes on, will clear itself from the bewilderment, till it become one of the precious days that make gems on the thread ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... I exclaimed, clasping my hands in bewilderment, 'thou art a mystery, an abyss, and he who thinks to know thee is ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... relieved of patrol duty and assigned to this important case, proceeded toward the door, a broad smile illumining the wide area of his dull face. He shut the door softly behind him, but reopened it almost immediately, a look of bewilderment in his eyes. ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin

... it." He beamed. The smile that came into her eyes escaped him. If he could have seen it, his bewilderment; would ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... Oscar understood thoroughly the bewilderment of his visitor, and enjoyed it. He knew the weakness of Fitz, and he could imagine how his feelings would change when be ascertained the ...
— Risen from the Ranks - Harry Walton's Success • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... Missouri restriction as a God-send to their cause, had summoned the manhood of the country to their help, a powerful impulse would have been given in the right direction. But in the general confusion and bewilderment of the times many of them lost their way, and were found mustering with the mongrel hordes of Know-Nothingism, and under captains who were utterly unworthy to lead them. Instead of inflexibly maintaining their ground and beckoning the people ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian

... presents with each other, putting away some for the dear ones at home, and I often noticed that in the midst of the bewilderment which those simple souls must have experienced at being surrounded by people and things so totally new to them, they never seemed to forget for a moment the beloved persons they had left ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti

... Shann's momentary bewilderment vanished. He knew enough of Survey procedure to guess the reason for such a move on ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton

... its expression of bewilderment, suddenly lighted with realization. But his voice was harsh ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak

... fell into a kind of swoon of utter misery, bewilderment, and exhaustion, and when he awoke he found himself in his own room—alone and quiet—with the dawn just breaking, and the long rim of yellow light in the ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik

... an empty stare of bewilderment on his face. It rose in his mind that the right thing to feel was rage, righteous indignation, fury; but for the life of him, he could not muster any manly anger. The character of ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic

... the room uncertainly. It was characteristic of him. Nature had given him an expression that suggested bewilderment, and, somehow, this expression ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum

... about anything but things!' She began to tremble and look white, and stopped with a desperate effort to control herself, though she burst out at the sight of Mrs. Mortimer's face of despairing bewilderment. 'Oh, don't tell me you don't see at all what I mean. I can't say it! But you must understand. Can't we somehow all stop—now! And start over again! You get muslin curtains and not mend your lace ones, and Mother stop fussing about whom to ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James

... To Peter's bewilderment he discovered that every fairy he met fled from him. A band of workmen, who were sawing down a toadstool, rushed away, leaving their tools behind them. A milkmaid turned her pail upside down and hid in it. Soon the Gardens were in an uproar. Crowds of ...
— Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie

... they hurried on, a confused mass of monks and populace, with their hapless prisoners in the centre, who, hauled, cuffed, questioned, and cursed by twenty self-elected inquisitors at once, thought fit, either from Jewish obstinacy or sheer bewilderment, to give no ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley

... up in bewilderment, but there was not a movement anywhere, and presently they wandered around examining the trees near. The beast had vanished as completely as if it had been ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville

... I—why—I—haven't any trunk to unpack!" exclaimed Grace in bewilderment. Then catching sight of Anne's mirthful face, she sprang forward, caught Anne by the shoulders and shook her playfully. "Anne Pierson, you bad child, you heard me make all my plans for unpacking, yet you wouldn't remind me that my trunk was still at ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower

... was quite as hot, by sympathy; and in excessive bewilderment, he patted Florence's head, pressed her to eat, pressed her to drink, rubbed the soles of her feet with his pocket-handkerchief, heated at the fire, followed his locomotive nephew with his eyes and ears, and had no clear perception ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... of his eye as she passed through the swing door with a flutter of her snowy apron. He replied feebly to the Governor's bantering salutation and nervously played with his fork. The Governor was soaring and Archie's bewilderment was ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson

... others in a state of almost bewilderment. For sixteen years nothing had occurred to break the monotony of her existence. At first occasional angry messages reached her from her father, with orders to join an application to the pope for a divorce; but when it had been found impossible to overcome her steady refusals ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty

... Zhukovo towards evening. In his memories of childhood he had pictured his home as bright, snug, comfortable. Now, going into the hut, he was positively frightened; it was so dark, so crowded, so unclean. His wife Olga and his daughter Sasha, who had come with him, kept looking in bewilderment at the big untidy stove, which filled up almost half the hut and was black with soot and flies. What lots of flies! The stove was on one side, the beams lay slanting on the walls, and it looked as though the hut were just going to ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... his mind to something. Lone was impressed somehow with Swan's perfect control of his speech, his thoughts, his actions. But he was puzzled rather than anything else, and when Swan turned, facing him, Lone's bewilderment did ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower

... Todd's Corner. It was my firm determination that Laura should not enter her uncle's house till she appeared there publicly recognised as his niece. I left Marian to settle the question of accommodation with Mrs. Todd, as soon as the good woman had recovered from the bewilderment of hearing what our errand was in Cumberland, and I arranged with her husband that John Owen was to be committed to the ready hospitality of the farm-servants. These preliminaries completed, Mr. Kyrle and I set forth together for ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins

... an odd light burning in Denny Bolton's eyes as he stood and watched the crazy conveyance disappear from view. The half hungry, half sullen bewilderment seemed to have given place to a new confusion, as though all the questions which had always been baffling him had become, all in one breath, an astounding enigma which clamored for instant solution. Not until ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans

... "To the bewilderment of Dr Hake, I introduced the subject of Ambrose Gwinett in the same manner as I might have introduced the story of 'Achilles' wrath,' and appealed to Dr Hake (who, of course, had never heard of the book or the man) as to whether ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins

... neither the one nor the other; and I am sorry for it—since you have had reason to esteem them. There is really nothing about me worthy of your interest. I have spent all my life poring over books, and I have never traveled: you might have known that from my bewilderment, which excited your compassion. I am a member of ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France

... him in bewilderment. She had taught Thresk that night unimagined truths about herself. She was now to learn something of the inner secret man which the outward trappings of success concealed. He led her to a sofa and placed her at ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason

... My own bewilderment was at first hardly less than the town's. Had Miss Caroline suddenly changed her manner toward Clem, showing regret, however belated, for her previous abuse of him, I should have understood. That would have been a simple case of awakened sensibility. But she continued ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson

... him on now. Full three hundred yards he ran before he would consent to halt. Then I sprang from the saddle and ran to his head. His eyes met mine. Soft and brown, and larger than ever, they gazed imploringly. Pain and bewilderment, strange, wistful pleading, but all the old love and trust, were there as I threw my arms about his neck and bowed his head upon my breast. I could not bear to meet his eyes. I could not look into them and read ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King

... on my way to Sligo, "I had seen 'Dante's Dream' in the gallery there—a picture painted when Rossetti had lost his dramatic power, and to-day not very pleasing to me—and its colour, its people, its romantic architecture had blotted all other pictures away." It was a perpetual bewilderment that my father, who had begun life as a Pre-Raphaelite painter, now painted portraits of the first comer, children selling newspapers, or a consumptive girl with a basket offish upon her head, and that when, moved perhaps by memory of his youth, he chose ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats

... drew a long breath, and stood looking at the doorway in utter bewilderment. The whole incident had been most perplexing. There was first her stealthy entry, and the suddenness with which she had appeared before him; then those mystic surroundings of her strange, weird figure which had excited his superstitious ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille

... She stared in bewilderment, flitting silent at his side. But in the cattle-market she shrank from the press of men, all men, all in heavy, filthy boots, and leathern leggins. And the road underfoot was all nasty with cow-muck. And it frightened her to see the cattle in the square pens, so many horns, ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

... "A layman," the Court added, "is usually no match for the skilled prosecutor whom he confronts in the court room. He needs the aid of counsel lest he be the victim of overzealous prosecutors, of the law's complexity, or of his own ignorance or bewilderment."[831] ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin

... his hand to Orion, who, however, again took it doubtfully, and instead of looking the prelate in the face, cast down his eyes in gloomy bewilderment. The patriarch appeared not to observe the young man's repulsion and clasped his hand warmly. Then he changed the subject, speaking of the grieving widow, of the decadence of Memphis, of Orion's plans for the future, and finally of the gems dedicated to the Church ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... distance, on the long yellow stretch of sand, he would tingle to the roots of his hair. When he was near her he would become silent, unable to speak or even to think, with a kind of throbbing at his heart, and a buzzing in his ears, and a bewilderment in his mind. Was ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... services which in his opinion are entirely superfluous, and, finally, at the terrible loss of time incurred in the conclusion of any transaction by the waiting for the drafting and redrafting and amending and engrossing and recording of interminable documents which are a bewilderment and an annoyance ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson

... repeated Elizabeth in bewilderment. "What can you mean, Mr. Arthur? What is wrong with Mr. Anderson? You saw that everybody at Winnipeg seemed to know him and respect him; people like the Chief Justice, and the Senator—what was his name?—and Monsieur ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... only living thing near me, I turned to the raven, which stood a little way off, regarding me with an expression at once respectful and quizzical. Then the absurdity of seeking counsel from such a one struck me, and I turned again, overwhelmed with bewilderment, not unmingled with fear. Had I wandered into a region where both the material and psychical relations of our world had ceased to hold? Might a man at any moment step beyond the realm of order, and become the sport ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald

... Joyce's bewilderment increased. What did it all mean? Was he play-acting? Why did they both treat her so? The stranger's punctilious politeness had flattered her at first, but, since the mocking tone stole into his voice she felt that she hated him, and looked round hoping to escape. Sir Everard ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin

... her with strange bewilderment as though she were awaking from a dream. Kenric brought the boat inshore and took it through the long rock tunnel that he had seen many months before from the deck of his galley. The water was calm now and ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton

... and certainly any separation would only draw me more powerfully to you. I bethink me how at our last embrace, you vehemently resisting, I burst into simultaneous tears and laughter. I tried to calm myself, and in a sort of bewilderment I would not believe that I was separated from you until the surrounding objects convinced me of it against my will. But then my longing grew again irresistible, until on its wings I sank back into your arms. Suppose words or a human being to create a misunderstanding between us! The poignant ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... ears being almost invariably perfect. Their colour was equal to that of the finest Italian paintings; being of the clearest olive, and yet ruddy with a glow of perfect health. Their expression was divine; and as they glanced at me timidly but with parted lips in great bewilderment, I forgot all thoughts of their conversion in feelings that were far more earthly. I was dazzled as I saw one after the other, of whom I could only feel that each was the loveliest I had ever seen. Even in middle age they were still comely, and the old grey-haired ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler

... unusually contemptuous manner, and wished to know "What the drunken old Jew wanted there," for they thought he must have been drinking or he would never have spoken in the way he did. The old man looked at everything in the house with surprise and bewilderment, but the little children about the floor took his attention more than anything else. His looks betrayed sorrow and deep disappointment. He related his whole history, that, yesterday he had gone out to hunt, and that he had now returned. The mistress told him that she had heard a story about ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen

... or Third Avenue, and began to do timid battle with their incessant cross-currents of humanity. After a glance or two into the great show-windows she usually allowed herself to be swept back into the shelter of a side-street, and finally regained her own roof in a state of breathless bewilderment and fatigue; but gradually, as her nerves were soothed by the familiar quiet of the little shop, and the click of Evelina's pinking-machine, certain sights and sounds would detach themselves from the torrent along which she had been swept, and she would devote the rest of the day to a ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton

... moment with a look of helpless bewilderment. The vast area of the second story of the great monolithic pile was crowded with rows of sick, wounded, and dying men—a strange, solemn, and curious sight. Against the walls were ponderous glass cases, filled with models of every kind of invention the genius of man had dreamed. ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon

... to see them, but can only feel them gall her? Had not the inner spirit of him been speaking through all this interview to the inner spirit of her, and was she not willing now to let it cry out and say to him, "I am here "? Esther was willing to cry out. In the bewilderment of it, he did not know whether it was superb of her, though he would have felt it in another woman to be shameless. The lustrous lights of her eyes dwelt upon him, unwavering. Then her lips ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown

... of the rapids grew faint. No longer the form of Vermilion appeared couchant, tense; and, among the scowmen, one laughed. Chloe drew a deep breath, and a slight shudder shook her frame. She glanced about her in bewilderment, and, reaching swiftly down, raised the inert form of Harriet Penny and rested it ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx

... according to which God is all, and the universe nothing. This extraordinary thesis is met with in India. A Greek, Parmenides, has vigorously sustained it. We have in it a kind of sublime infatuation. In presence of the one and eternal Being thought collapses in bewilderment; and thenceforward it experiences for all that is manifold and transitory a disdain which passes into negation. In the domain of experience, all is limited, temporary, imperfect; and reason seeks the ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville

... to his junior's attack unresentingly but with increasing bewilderment. Then he slipped from his seat and walked hurriedly across to the looking-glass, which he took down from its nail. He gazed at himself long and steadily and from every possible angle. It is probable that for the first time in ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... from the queen's apartment this morning I was addressed by a gentleman who inquired how I did, by my name; but my bewilderment made him obliged to tell his own before I could recollect him. It ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay

... possession to his contemporaries. For, I say, it is by no means as a vanquished doubter that he figures in the memory of those who knew him; but rather as a victorious believer, and under great difficulties a victorious doer. An example to us all, not of lamed misery, helpless spiritual bewilderment and sprawling despair, or any kind of drownage in the foul welter of our so-called religious or other controversies and confusions; but of a swift and valiant vanquisher of all these; a noble asserter of himself, as worker and speaker, ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle

... the duty of preserving and administering the government as then existing, in its simple form and symmetrical structure, to proposals to destroy and change it to a complex machine, fantastic in proportion and impracticable in its workings. They afford us evidence of the bewilderment which beset Congress as well as the outside public, and not so much the absence of reasonable political principles as the absence of a simple and direct political will, which would resolutely insist ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay

... alone. She realised her loneliness in a great flash of bewilderment and cold terror as though the ground had suddenly broken away from her and she was on the edge of a vast pit. There was no one in the house to help her. Her father was dead. The cook and the maid were sunk in heavy slumber ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole

... boy, do they grow many like you in France?" was the answer that the great Gouverneur Faulkner made to me as he looked down into the adoration of my eyes raised to his, with a question that was of deep bewilderment. ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess

... the utter bewilderment of the moment we noted nothing distinctly of its appearance), shot perpendicularly from the sea twenty feet into the air, and fell with a tremendous concussion, directly upon the whale's back. It must have been several tons in ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer

... most superficial deduction till he came to the writing-desk. Here a heap of bills were transfixed by a long skewer, and at his first glance at the uppermost his face assumed an expression of almost ludicrous bewilderment. He actually rubbed his eyes before he ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston

... had been transformed into a she-fiend and in the same second he had been mobbed by coyotes. No doubt he believed with Collins that strange things had come to pass of late in the ranks of the coyote tribe. Flatear headed back for the hills out of which he had come, and as he ran his bewilderment crystallized into a consuming hatred for the strange yellow wolf, the hybrid beast who had upset the established order of things. He did not know that Breed himself had been so nearly paralyzed with sheer astonishment that he ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts

... looked up at him in such utter bewilderment and surprise that he felt somewhat afraid of what she might say; he therefore ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)

... bearing many signs of the recent fray, and ruefully feeling of a lump on his forehead that was rapidly increasing in size, and of Smiler whose head was bloody, and who was still worrying the last fragment of clothing that the tramp's rags had yielded him, they stood for a moment in silent bewilderment. ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe

... the money in her hand, she looked at it in bewilderment, never having touched so much at one time in all her life; then she turned her tear-stained eyes upon him, and drawing him into her motherly arms kissed him ...
— Darry the Life Saver - The Heroes of the Coast • Frank V. Webster

... Dale's fingers, in the right-hand pocket of his tattered coat, closed over the stock of his automatic. Still no sound! Was he too late to forestall the Rat; or, by no means an unlikely possibility, was the Rat there now; or was—a low, muttered exclamation, that mingled surprise and bewilderment, came suddenly from Jimmie Dale's lips. He had reached the landing, and here, from the head of the stairs, he could see a dull yellow glow thrown out into the corridor through the glass panel of the ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... French I ever heard, backed by the purest Parisian accent," replied Barbican, highly amused; "Don't you think so, Captain?" he added, turning to M'Nicholl, whose countenance still showed the most comical traces of bewilderment. ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne

... returned home in a state of bewilderment. He sent for some of his friends to consult with, most of whom were as much surprised as he had been, when they learned the nature of the business which had produced the summons. Only one of them, who happened to be a friend of the missing doctor, seemed to ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various

... his little body until it was black and blue, were among his most ordinary experiences. Such mishaps never drew tears, however, from his large blue eyes. After struggling violently to get over the rail of his crib, and falling heavily on the floor, he was wont to rise with a gasp, and gaze in bewilderment straight before him, as if he were rediscovering the law of gravitation. No phrenologist ever conceived half the number of bumps that were ...
— Sunk at Sea • R.M. Ballantyne

... struggled with bewilderment. "I saw it. But I never saw anything like it before," ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt

... the most inexplicable feature of the whole—"no shelter even; no near relations I ever heard of—and nobody to take care of Lucy if—" Here he stopped short and went to the window, and stood looking out in a state of great bewilderment. The late Rector was so buried in his own thoughts, whatever they might be, that he did not pay any attention to the further conversation which went on behind him—of which, however, there was very little—and only came to himself when he saw Mr ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... carefully locked the door. A heavy ink-well stood on the desk. He twisted up a piece of paper and dipped it in. Then, approaching the murdered man, he smeared the fingers of his right hand with the blackened paper and pressed them lightly on a piece of blotting paper. The secretary, in utter bewilderment, watched him compare the prints with a piece of paper he took from ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest

... having passed his earlier years without even knowing that flesh food was ever eaten by human beings. When six years old, he saw on the table for the first time, a roasted chicken, at which he gazed for some moments in great bewilderment, when he seemed to make a discovery, and in his astonishment burst out with the remark, "I'll bet that's a ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg



Words linked to "Bewilderment" :   mystification, bewilder, muddiness, puzzlement, obfuscation, confusion, befuddlement



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