The Serious Wooing by John Oliver Hobbes (1901)

I divide this author's works, to this point, into three groups. Her first four novels were brilliantly aphoristic slices of wit, very tart and concise. Her next two had still some overhang of this wit, but their plots had developed into tragedy and romance. The next two were serious novels about a trans-European political world and its social framework. This, her next, is a return to the second mode. It begins with delightful and sharp wit and then develops into the story of a fated love affair played out in late Victorian high society. Caroline, Rosabel and Susie Ragot are sisters. Carrie, not enormously original, has married conservatively. Her husband is the tremendously wealthy Odo Ceppel and she is happily ensconced in dripping comfort. Rosabel, much more imaginative and unpredictable, was forced to marry an unstable aristocrat at the age of sixteen. He is now in an asylum. Susie, very young and impressionable, is just about to become engaged to another member of the gentry. The 'problem' centres around Rosabel, who has fallen for an august but wild Socialist by the name of Jocelyn Luttrel. Their love is a true meeting of minds and hearts, the real thing, though Jocelyn is seen in their society as quite off colour. When Rosabel and Jocelyn decide that they can no longer remain apart, she goes to live at his house, calling herself Mrs Luttrel. Carrie is not thrilled at the fool Rosabel is making of herself (as she sees it), but, much more importantly, realises horrifiedly that Rosabel could well be dashing Susie's chance of a good marriage to Lord Beauleigh, whose family are capable of shying at such a jump. Awkwardly, just as this happens, news is received that Rosabel's husband has died in the asylum, so she was free after all. Jocelyn has given away almost all of his wealth to the Socialist cause, and he and Rosabel are quite happy to live in much reduced circumstances. He goes off to the south of France to aid in the cause as they planned, Rosabel irritated to be left alone in London. At this point, all the intrigue begins. By stopping letters, messages and telegrams between them, Carrie and her cohort manage to so influence the progress of events, with circumstances lending them a big hand, that both Rosabel and Jocelyn believe that the other has let them down, abandoning them. When Jocelyn finally reaches London, having been injured in a Marseilles street riot and out of action for a few months, he demands an audience with Rosabel, who, despondently, has married Lord Wroxall, an old admirer. It is only with this message to meet, slipped into her hand at a fashionable restaurant by a mutual friend, that contact between them is genuinely re-established. Jocelyn has a gun ready, thinking miserably that he will kill Rosabel and then himself. She is very ready, sunk in grimness, to give him a piece of her mind. But, of course, after a few spicy exchanges, the grand deception soon becomes clear; their ill-starred course can find its right path again, having almost been tossed to destruction. The thing that I most admire about Hobbes is her intelligent assurance. She had absolute confidence in her story, and knew, it seems instinctively, how to draw out streams of comment from it, both serious and satiric. It's great to witness such a strong performance.