An Unsocial Socialist

At a quiet English country-house school, Miss Wilson catches three girls after a reckless slide down the banisters, and the incident quickly becomes a comic trial of character. Jane Carpenter is tearful and eager to please, Gertrude Lindsay is proud and censorious, and Agatha Wylie is mischievous, irreverent, and impossible to cow. Their punishment centers on conscience rather than force, and the black-bound "Recording Angel" confession book turns schoolroom discipline into a sharp satire of vanity, hypocrisy, and class pretension. Agatha's wit exposes the others' self-importance even as the girls read and rewrite one another's faults. The novel's domestic comedy darkens when Henrietta Jansenius bursts home in tears, convinced her husband Sidney Trefusis has abandoned her. His extraordinary letter, declaring marriage intolerable and urging him toward solitude and political work, sets romantic feeling against blunt realism. As the household reels, Mr. Jansenius discovers that Agatha has been expelled as well, linking rebellion in school and marriage. The story moves toward tragedy with a death, bitter confrontations, and Trefusis's grim, unsentimental response, ending in Henrietta's burial amid ostentatious mourning that lays bare the novel's mordant view of love, grief, and social performance. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.