Album Leaf

In Album Leaf by Marjorie Bowen, a young orphaned Englishwoman accepts an offer to become a paid companion to two reclusive aristocratic women in France. There she encounters the daughter of the house, badly scarred following her suicide attempt after she had been unable to marry a cad now serving in French Algeria and her prospective husband. Excerpt: «She flicked the foul flies from the seat, cushions, and dirty window; this action mingled with Lavinia's blurred recollection of her uneasy dream; she felt sick, and wished that she could have a glass of sherry, like that she had tasted, for the first time, on the steam packet.»