Enter Bridget

A missed dinner brings Bridget Rosser into the Faversham family's conversation before she appears in person. Mark Driver, a young doctor returning to London, has spent the evening with her instead of keeping his dinner engagement. Carrissima Faversham, who has hurried home hoping to see Mark, tries to conceal her disappointment. Her brother Lawrence promptly judges Bridget's motives, while Mark speaks warmly of the novelist's daughter now living in lodgings.

Published in 1912, Thomas Cobb's novel follows the small exchanges through which attraction, jealousy and social suspicion become visible. Later, Carrissima and Phoebe visit Mark's new consulting rooms, where criticism of a worn carpet turns into plans for a shopping expedition. Tea, clothes, furniture and family remarks carry emotional weight. Readers interested in British social fiction can watch how these ordinary occasions expose private hopes and competing interpretations of another person's intentions.