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MONEY IN THE HOUSE - The Price of Love
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The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Price of Love, by Arnold Bennett
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THE PRICE OF LOVE
A Tale
by
ARNOLD BENNETT
1914
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. MONEY IN THE HOUSE
II. LOUIS' DISCOVERY
III. THE FEAST
IV. IN THE NIGHT
V. NEWS OF THE NIGHT
VI. THEORIES OF THE THEFT
VII. THE CINEMA
VIII. END AND BEGINNING
IX. THE MARRIED WOMAN
X. THE CHASM
XI. JULIAN'S DOCUMENT
XII. RUNAWAY HORSES
XIII. DEAD-LOCK
XIV. THE MARKET
XV. THE CHANGED MAN
XVI. THE LETTER
XVII. IN THE MONASTERY
XVIII. MRS. TAMS'S STRANGE BEHAVIOUR
XIX. RACHEL AND MR. HORROCLEAVE
CHAPTER I
I
In the evening dimness of old Mrs. Maldon's sitting-room stood the youthful virgin, Rachel Louisa Fleckring. The prominent fact about her appearance was that she wore an apron. Not one of those white, waist-tied aprons, with or without bibs, worn proudly, uncompromisingly, by a previous generation of unaspiring housewives and housegirls! But an immense blue pinafore-apron, covering the whole front of the figure except the head, hands, and toes. Its virtues were that it fully protected the most fragile frock against all the perils of the kitchen; and that it could be slipped on or off in one second, without any manipulation of tapes, pins, or buttons and buttonholes--for it had no fastenings of any sort and merely yawned behind. In one second the drudge could be transformed into the elegant infanta of boudoirs, and _vice versa_. To suit the coquetry of the age the pinafore was enriched with certain flouncings, which, however, only intensified its unshapen ugliness.
On a plain, middle-aged woman such a pinafore would have been intolerable to the sensitive eye. But on Rachel it simply had a piquant and perverse air, because she was young, with the incomparable, the unique charm of comely adolescence; it simply excited the imagination to conceive the exquisite treasures of contour and tint and texture which it veiled. Do not infer that Rachel was a coquette. Although comely, she was homely--a "downright" girl, scorning and hating all manner of pretentiousness. She had a fine best dress, and when she put it on everybody knew that it was her best; a stranger would have known. Whereas of a coquette none but her intimate companions can say whether she is wearing best or second-best on a given high occasion. Rachel used the pinafore-apron only with her best dress, and her reason for doing so was the sound, sensible reason that it was the usual and proper thing to do. 
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