Mary Roberts Rinehart

“ Here was poor Olive Nettleton, in the heaviest kind of crêpe, rushing all over Europe after exhausting America, looking for a husband who had absolutely dropped out of existence, without leaving a trace. You know, what Olive is, very much like Caroline Summers”—she dropped her voice a little—”very. Well-poised and self-reliant, so you can only guess what she feels. There must have been lots of rows when Olive’s emotional temperament tried to climb the fence of her hereditary conscience. ”

“ His eyes sought the girl persistently. Mrs. Baxter, a languid shadow of some brilliant and devastating yesterday, had been “sitting-out” the rubber. She picked up her heavy jeweled purse and trailed toward the man in the shadows.
“It is profanation to gamble or to gambol—in a room like this,” she said, looking down the length of the music room to where a sudden buzz of conversation showed the end of the rubber. “A music room without music is a body without a soul. I feel as though I am being facetious in the presence of a corpse.” ”

“ Just as Olive drew up at the Grand Hotel in her muddy car with her face perfectly covered with dust and her hat on one side, of course, a carriage dashed up and Greg Nettleton jumped out. What did they do? My dears it was the most disappointing thing I ever heard of. She didn’t even faint. I think she had felt all along that some time she would meet him face to face, just as she did. In that instant she lost the queer, questioning look she had had for so long, and when she found Greg had little Helen in the carriage, she was illuminated! So Adelaide and I missed it after all. ”