Anita Brookner has called Rosamond Lehmann "a novelist in the grand tradition", and while to many people that may sound like overdone praise, it does seem as if some kind of revival of her work is afoot. Stylistically and emotionally she has a good deal in common with Elizabeth Bowen, including a rather mannered prose style and a tendency to paint in half tones. This novel, published in 1953, goes backwards - and forwards in time; two sisters are mourning a male character who was the husband of one and the lover of the other, A slightly claustrophobic story, but with that indefinable quality of "atmosphere" inseparable from the Neo Romantic mood of the time.