After the death of elder statesman Lord Slane--a former prime minister of Great Britain and viceroy of India--everyone assumes that his eighty-eight-year-old widow will slowly fade away in her grief, remaining as proper, decorative, and dutiful as she has been her entire married life. But the deceptively gentle Lady Slane has other ideas. First she defies the patronizing meddling of her children and escapes to a rented house in Hampstead. There, to...

"The slightly overripe Ermyntrude Carter had risen from the front row of the chorus to a comfortable estate in the country by courtesy of her first husband. Her single as yet unrealized ambition was to introduce her daughter, Vicky, into the best county society. She was not greatly helped in this aim by her second husband, Wally, who had a taste for low company, but Ermy's money managed to smooth most paths, and she hoped the visit of Prince Varasashvili...

While visiting her dying father in a nursing home, a middle aged daughter discovers a man and a world she never knew.