Despised and Rejected

At Amberhurst Private Hotel, the reserved Hester Cawthorn watches a holiday world of chatter, amateur theatricals, and carefully managed social performances with cool, searching intelligence. Around her, the Blackwood family and their guests reveal themselves through comic rehearsals, awkward dinner talk, and small collisions of pride, vanity, and affection: Mr. Blackwood's impatience, Mrs. Blackwood's tactful warmth, Reggie's mischief, Clive's engagement, and above all Dennis, the artistic, inward son who seems both cherished and misunderstood. Into this lively but tense circle comes Antoinette de Courcy, admired, observed, and increasingly central to the emotional current beneath the hotel's light entertainment. As the play, the music, and the family gathering grow more chaotic, the novel exposes the gap between social ritual and inner feeling. Dennis's sensitivity and outsiderhood deepen when his father mocks his profession, while his taciturn friend Crispin Burgess only sharpens the sense of artistic awkwardness and restraint. Antoinette's fascination with Dennis turns toward romance, but his proposal brings not passion fulfilled, only uncertainty. His ecstatic certainty clashes with her emotional hesitation, and their secret courtship becomes a tense study of self-deception, desire, and the fear of choosing a future before the heart is sure. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.