Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1905 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER III MRS. MONTROSE DANIEL had no intention of sending the telegram, and he went straight to the station, arriving just in time for the train to Monte Carlo. Carried to the upper level he inquired at once for the H6tel de Versailles, which, as he had supposed, was situated obscurely at the back of all that makes for splendour and beauty in that metropolis of rich men's pleasures. It was a tall, narrow house at the corner of a new street. The plastered facade was shabby while still new, the sunblinds were dirty, the geraniums on the doorstep were white with dust, and rancid odours of vulgar food exuded from the basement. He knew enough of Mrs. Montrose to have been able to forecast the kind of hotel in which she would be found. She was a well-known figure in the Rooms. He had seen her often, and had exchanged speech with her in the trifling courtesies of the gaming-table; and had heard all that there was to be told about her from grey-haired punters who had known her when life was still summer. She was a woman who had been pre-eminently beautiful, and who had nourished for a butterfly's brief existence as a famous beauty, never in society, but an object of interest for society. She was a well-known spendthrift's daughter, flung on the world early by her father's ruin and death, taken up by busybody friends, who suggested the stage as a natural career for so much beauty and so little talent. The manager to whom she was introduced appreciated her beauty, and could do without talent. He was about to produce The Winter's Tale, at a large, popular West End theatre, with unprecedented splendour, and he engaged Mary Horton for Perdita, hoping she would make as great a hit as Mrs. Robinson, the historical Perdita. "You can have no idea what...