REST CURE

Excerpt from The Rest Cure: A NovelThere were stolid middle-aged women, tittering girls, and tightly laced matrons in rich garments and plumed hats; there were old men with slow movements and shaky legs; and there were young men who looked feeble, vacuous, worm like, as they brushed through the petticoats and dodged round the elbows, carrying tea-cups or cake plates in their polite hands. The party was all right as to quantity, but deficient in quality. Old and young seemed weary and weak - no animation, no chorus of chatter. Outside, in Victoria Street, it was cold and foggy; and one might almost have supposed that these people had come indoors merely for shelter and warmth. This ugly idea, passing through the mind of the hostess, chased the smile from her lips. She liked to think that she had a salon - open every Friday where you always met distinguished and celebrated persons.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.