New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1936. dj. Hardcover first edition - Bowen's fifth novel, set in post-World War I France, and one of her most accomplished and psychologically acute novels - "a timeless masterpiece of nuance and atmosphere. When eleven-year-old Henrietta arrives at the Fishers house in Paris, she is prepared to spend her day between trains looked after by an old friend of her grandmothers. Henrietta longs to see a few sights in the foreign city; little does she know what fascinating secrets the Fisher house itself contains. For Henrietta finds that her visit coincides with that of Leopold, an intense child who has come to Paris to be introduced to the mother he has never known. In the course of a single day, the relations between Leopold, Henriettas agitated hostess Naomi Fisher, Leopold s mysterious mother, his dead father, and the dying matriarch in bed upstairs, come to light slowly and tantalizingly. And when Henrietta leaves the house that evening, it is in possession of the kind of grave knowledge usually reserved only for adults."