The Reflections of Ambrosine

Cold bedrooms and careful economies sit uneasily beside Ambrosine's aristocratic upbringing. At nineteen, she lives with her formidable grandmother in a furnished cottage near Ledstone Park, after her father's financial losses ended their comfortable life in Paris. Her grandmother teaches her posture, manners and French literature with the same care she gives to preserving the family's dignity. Ambrosine tells her own story, observing the gap between an inherited sense of rank and the daily work of mending lace and stitching fine linen.

Elinor Glyn's novel brings questions of money, marriage and personal feeling into this closely watched world. Ambrosine wonders about having friends and a lover, while a conversation with Antony turns from her reading habits to a family portrait and their shared interest in her ancestry. Readers find a romance shaped by family expectations, with a narrator whose comments on books, furnishings and social manners give the story its particular voice.