Publisher's Synopsis
These were neither more nor less than the things with which she had had time to learn from Mrs.Gereth that Poynton overflowed. Poynton, in the south of England, was this lady's established, orrather her disestablished home, having recently passed into the possession of her son. The father ofthe boy, an only child, had died two years before, and in London, with his mother, Owen wasoccupying for May and June a house good-naturedly lent them by Colonel Gereth, their uncle andbrother-in-law. His mother had laid her hand so engagingly on Fleda Vetch that in a very few daysthe girl knew it was possible they should suffer together in Cadogan Place almost as much as theyhad suffered together at Waterbath. The kind colonel's house was also an ordeal, but the twowomen, for the ensuing month, had at least the relief of their confessions. The great drawback ofMrs. Gereth's situation was that, thanks to the rare perfection of Poynton, she was condemned towince wherever she turned. She had lived for a quarter of a century in such warm closeness with thebeautiful that, as she frankly admitted, life had become for her a kind of fool's paradise. She couldn'tleave her own house without peril of exposure. She didn't say it in so many words, but Fleda couldsee she held that there was nothing in England really to compare to Poynton. There were placesmuch grander and richer, but there was no such complete work of art, nothing that would appeal soto those who were really informed. In putting such elements into her hand fortune had given her aninestimable chance; she knew how rarely well things had gone with her and that she had tasted ahappiness altogether rare.
