She had entered into it half in jest, half in irritation, yet some sportsmanlike instinct prompted her to play the game to the end.

She would prove to Rose Stribling that those twelve years of knowledge and suffering had taught her not to surrender, but to conquer.
The Berkeleys were what was still known in their small social world as "quiet people." They entertained little, and always with a definite object which they were not afraid to disclose.

Their house, an incongruous example of Mid-Victorian architecture, was still suffused for them with the sentimental glamour of their wedding day.

The walls, untouched for years, were covered with embossed paper and panelled in yellow oak.

The furniture, protected for five months of the year by covers of striped linen, was stiffly upholstered in pea-green brocade; and the pictures, hanging very high, were large but inferior oil paintings in heavily gilded frames that represented preposterous sheaves of wheat or garlands of roses.