After a shocking murder throws the country into turmoil, Henry Pelham returns to London shaken by the possibility that his friend Reginald Glanville is guilty and that the woman he loves, Ellen, is his sister. Ill, embittered, and torn between loyalty, ambition, and conscience, he watches Glanville continue to move through society untouched, a contradiction that deepens his reflections on crime, reputation, and the danger of half-truths. In London's glittering world, Henry encounters Lady Roseville, Lord Vincent, the cynical Mr. Wormwood, the satirical Mr. Clarendon, and the epicurean Lord Guloseton, whose dinner-table philosophy opposes politics with digestion, comfort, and pleasure. As Henry presses his patron Lord Dawton for the rewards he believes he has earned, he also moves through salons and drawing rooms where wit, vanity, and imitation rule. Conversations on society, exclusiveness, and Shelley's poetry reveal the intelligence and self-consciousness of the elite, while Henry's stolen moments with Ellen intensify his concealed passion and suffering. Around him, genius, ambition, indulgence, and secrecy collide in a world of elegant surfaces and moral unease. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.
