The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Price of Love, by Arnold Bennett

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Title: The Price of Love

Author: Arnold Bennett

Release Date: July 14, 2004 [eBook #12912]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PRICE OF LOVE***

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THE PRICE OF LOVE

A Tale

by

ARNOLD BENNETT

1914

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. MONEY IN THE HOUSE

II. LOUIS' DISCOVERY

III. THE FEAST

IV. IN THE NIGHT

V. NEWS OF THE NIGHT

VI. THEORIES OF THE THEFT

VII. THE CINEMA

VIII. END AND BEGINNING

IX. THE MARRIED WOMAN

X. THE CHASM

XI. JULIAN'S DOCUMENT

XII. RUNAWAY HORSES

XIII. DEAD-LOCK

XIV. THE MARKET

XV. THE CHANGED MAN

XVI. THE LETTER

XVII. IN THE MONASTERY

XVIII. MRS. TAMS'S STRANGE BEHAVIOUR

XIX. RACHEL AND MR. HORROCLEAVE

CHAPTER I

MONEY IN THE HOUSE

I

In the evening dimness of old Mrs. Maldon's sitting-room stood the
youthful virgin, Rachel Louisa Fleckring. The prominent fact about
her appearance was that she wore an apron. Not one of those
white, waist-tied aprons, with or without bibs, worn proudly,
uncompromisingly, by a previous generation of unaspiring housewives
and housegirls! But an immense blue pinafore-apron, covering the whole
front of the figure except the head, hands, and toes. Its virtues were
that it fully protected the most fragile frock against all the perils
of the kitchen; and that it could be slipped on or off in one
second, without any manipulation of tapes, pins, or buttons and
buttonholes--for it had no fastenings of any sort and merely yawned
behind. In one second the drudge could be transformed into the elegant
infanta of boudoirs, and _vice versa_. To suit the coquetry of
the age the pinafore was enriched with certain flouncings, which,
however, only intensified its unshapen ugliness.

On a plain, middle-aged woman such a pinafore would have been
intolerable to the sensitive eye. But on Rachel it simply had
a piquant and perverse air, becau