Red Pottage by Mary Cholmondeley Fiction Classics Literary

<p><strong>Red Pottage follows a period in the lives of two friends Rachel West and Hester Gresley. </strong>Rachel is a wealthy heiress who falls in love with the weak-willed Hugh Scarlett after he has broken off an affair with Lady Newhaven (which he does not originally realize has been discovered by her husband). Hester a novelist lives with her judgmental brother the pompous vicar of the fictional village of Warpington. Hester's brother disapproves of her writing and eventually burns the manuscript of a novel she has been writing. I will break it off says Hugh Scarlett to himself. Thank Heaven not a soul has ever guessed it. He thinks of the day he first met her when he looked upon her as merely a pretty woman. He recalls their other days together and the gradual building up between them of a fairy palace. He added a stone here she a stone there -- until suddenly it became a prison. Had he been tempter or tempted? He cannot say. He wants only to be out of it. His infatuation has run its course. His judgment has been whirled -- he tells himself it had been whirled but had it really only been tweaked? -- from its center. It performed its giddy orbit and now the check-string has brought it back to the point from whence it had set out -- namely that she is merely a pretty woman. Yet nothing in life is simple. Lord Newhaven suspects -- or more than suspects: for he introduces the modern equivalent of the duel! And Hugh has had a vision of hope for the future in a sympathetic soul -- in the eyes of Rachel West.</p>