A. M. Williamson

“ She had come last into the dining-room, but she was the first to leave it, sweeping from the room, with her head very high; and, when a waiter had closed the door behind her, contemptuously amused glances were exchanged. She was a vulgar little horror, that was clear. Pretty, oh, yes, in a meretricious way, but quite too terrible; covered with jewels like an idol; altogether distinctly a creature, and to be frowned relentlessly down. ”

“ That evening at dinner her appetite, which had failed somewhat of late, was observed by the waiter assigned to her table to have improved.
The following morning she drove in her landau to the distant railway station, and Lord Strathallin (who saw her on his way to the links) wondered if she were going away, vanquished—luggage and maid to follow.
But she had not turned her back on Métretat; she had merely met a train. From it stepped a big man, with crisply curling grey hair, a smooth-shaven red face, well-featured and shrewd, with the chin of Napoleon and the eye of a financier. ”

“ If one were even civil in a weak moment, she was evidently the kind to take advantage; and if she were not to remain a flamboyant weed in this pleasant garden, she must be firmly discouraged from the first. Indeed, it was monstrous that Dupont should have taken her in; he was well aware that this was not to be considered an ordinary hotel, and if he knew what was for his own good in the end he would not begin to fill up any chance vacancy with rank outsiders, who would simply ruin everything and make Métretat impossible to the very people who had annexed it. ”

“ He looked at the girl, whose accent had proclaimed her "Amurrican" before her words confessed it. He looked at the diamond butterfly perched on high above yellow-brown masses of hair; at the necklace of large, glistening pearls twined round her firm young throat, and falling in a second strand to her slim waist; at the three or four quaintly-fashioned ornaments (one of which was a tiny American flag in diamonds, rubies, and sapphires) scintillating among the laces on her girlish bosom; at the low-cut bodice of her peach-blossom satin dress ”

“ The cotillon was a huge success, and Jenny reigned among her guests like a young queen. People said that Everest's game had been clear from the first. He would eventually propose to the girl because her father was a millionaire, and she would accept him because he was an earl. As to the facts, everybody was right; but as to the motives, they were wrong. When Lord Everest proposed to Jenny Calmour, after four weeks of the queerest visit ever made, it was because he was very much in love with her, and thought her the dearest as well as the prettiest little girl he had ever seen. ”

“ Because I'm an Amurrican, for one thing, and because they all know each other and call each other 'Mouse,' and 'Bat,' and every kind of queer nickname, even the quite old ones; and they're just wild at having a strange girl among them. They love the Angleterre and think it belongs to them. They've been trying to freeze me out, poppa, as hard as they could, but I wouldn't give in, though all the time inside I've felt as sick as sick, and sometimes it was all I could do not to burst out crying and jump up from the table and run away. ”

“ The woman in black trained a slow, very slow, gaze upon the speaker, permitting it to dwell upon the pink and white face for a moment, or rather to pass through it, as if it were an obstruction which hid a more attractive object beyond. ”

“ One of the leaders of a certain set which had a hereditary right to look down upon persons merely "smart" had "discovered" Métretat some years before, and had discreetly confided its charms to a few of the brightest and best; consequently a colony of exactly the right people had practically annexed Métretat and the one hotel of the place. Rooms were engaged during one season for another, so that, if intrusive strangers dared try to break the charmed circle, the landlord was able to thwart the attempt by announcing that the house was full. ”

“ Judging from the reception he met with, he must have known almost everybody in the hotel and have been liked by all. Mrs. Llynn-Gryffyth and many others called him Bill; Dicky Wickham and a few others addressed him as Lord Everest; he looked a good deal at Jenny Calmour, pronounced the dinner excellent, the champagne a perfect marvel for an "hotel treat," and talked much with his intimates at the table of a cotillon which apparently he had come over from England to help make a success. ”

“ It is now my private house, and you have been entertained at dinner as my guests. The meal will not be charged in your bills, which, by the way, up to the hour I mentioned, are payable to Mounseer Dupont, your late landlord. I dare say he won't forget to send them in. As regards the future, I must explain that an Amurrican is something like an Arab. Who eats his salt is sacred, no matter how badly they may have behaved before the salt went around. ”

“ Is it true you are going to give a cotillon next week, Miss Calmour? I do hope it is. I heard so, and brought some rather pretty favours with me from Paris in the hope that you'd accept them from me. You will, won't you? And—it's rather selfish, I'm afraid, to try and cut in before any other chap; but you're sure to be asked by a dozen men at least, and I shall lose my chance. May I lead the cotillon with you?"
"I should love it," said Jenny, laughing and dimpling. "Can I, poppa?" ”

“ The boycott of Jenny was extended to her father, and the two, in intervals between their own private murmurs, had plenty of time to listen to the conversation, which concerned favours for the coming cotillon; the people who had been invited from the Métretat villas, and one or two other neighbouring watering-places where, it seemed, there really were a "few human beings who would do, at a pinch, for a cotillon." ”

“ The benighted man had further—when heated by controversy—gone so far as to hint that, as most of his guests stipulated for reduced terms on account of long tenancy, his season was not really so profitable as if the hotel were filled with people who came and went. As for the young person in question (Dupont had referred to her as a lady) , she had arrived that afternoon with her maid, and had demanded a suite with two bedrooms and a private sitting-room, for the remaining weeks of August. Such a suite Dupont had on his hands, owing to the detention in England of Sir Thomas and Lady Vance. ”

“ Those who don't will no doubt think it delicate to move on somewhere else as soon as they can. While they remain in in this house, I must remind them, they eat my bread, and I and my daughter are their host and hostess. ”

“ Tell the old man, and if there's anything he can do you can just count on him every time. Why, that's what he's for, ain't it? I guess you're the only thing he's got on this blessed earth, and he's bound to look after you. ”

“ IT was at dinner that the Horror first burst upon the guests of the Hôtel d'Angleterre at Métretat, in Brittany.
The season of Métretat had only just begun, but already all the usual people were there; for Métretat was different from other watering-places, and the Angleterre was different from other hotels. Both were exclusive, in the most esoteric sense of that abused term ”