
When a hurried telegram summons him to a dying woman’s bedside, Greville Fane finds himself torn between professional duty and personal sentiment. Arriving too late to comfort the ailing Mrs. Stormer, he is drawn into the somber household of her family, where cold politeness masks a tangled web of grief, ambition, and literary intrigue.
Inside the cramped study, he discovers the scattered remnants of Mrs. Stormer’s unpublished work—pages stained, notes half‑finished, a legacy teetering between brilliance and obscurity. The family, especially her stern sister and brooding brother, press him to “do her justice,” hinting at the value hidden in those battered manuscripts. As Greville weighs his own reservations against the promise of preserving a voice now silenced, the novel explores the uneasy balance between compassion and the commodification of art.
Language
en
Duration
~41 minutes (39K characters)
Publisher of text edition
Project Gutenberg
Release date
2001-07-01
Rights
Public domain in the USA.
Subjects

1843–1916
Best known for novels and ghost stories that turn social scenes into psychological drama, this master stylist explored the tensions between Americans and Europeans, innocence and experience. His work helped bridge 19th-century realism and literary modernism.
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