Marie Belloc Lowndes

“ And then her mind traveled far, to a picture with which she had been familiar for a long time, for it hung in the drawing-room of one of her friends at Dallington. It was called “The Gambler's Wife.” She had always thought it a very pretty and pathetic picture, but she no longer thought it so; in fact, it now appeared to her to be a ridiculous travesty of life. Gamblers were just like other people, neither better nor worse—and often infinitely more lovable than were some other people.
Mabel Blackett got up, and slowly made her way out of the wood. ”

“ Blackett always enjoyed talking to Madame Wachner. The elder woman amused her by clever if sometimes rather coarse talk, and above all she flattered her. Mabel Blackett always left the Châlet des Muguets thoroughly pleased both with herself and with the world about her. There was very little concerning the pretty American widow's simple, uneventful life with which Madame Wachner was not by now acquainted. ”

“ She told herself that it would be more comfortable to wait in the drawing-room than in this bare, ugly dining room, and so she walked through into the tiny “salon.”
This room also was singularly bare; there was not a flower, not even a book or a paper, to relieve the monotony. The only ornaments were a gilt clock on the mantelpiece, flanked with two sham Empire candelabra. In spite of, or perhaps because the shutters were so closely shut to, the room seemed very hot and airless. ”