FICTION: Lonliness

WINTERSMOON—Hugh Walpole—Doubleday, Doran ($2).

"The Duchess of Wrexe" was dead, but London's aristocracy remained, despite postwar cocktail sets and dole-fed Lower Classes. There were still the flower women at the fountain in Piccadilly Circus, still the lions and Nelson, still the fireplace sanctum under the stairs in St. James's Club, still Big Ben and Curzon Street, still the higgledy piggledy of Shepherds Market. There was still Mrs. Beddoes, charwoman these many years to that kind Miss Janet and her beautiful sister Miss Rosalind, poor and snobbish. And today, being the wedding, was a holiday, for Mrs. Beddoes was going inside, inside...