The novel Watermeads (1916), particularly welcome to me because the friend who wore a grotesque mask in Upsidonia showed his healthy, agreeable, English face again, opens characteristically with the entire family gathered around the tea-table in a sunlit room in an old manor house. This story is mainly concerned with the waxing and waning of a marriage-engagement; the rich fiancée seems well enough among her own people and in her own environment; her lack of breeding appears with steadily increasing emphasis when she is brought into the circle of the squire's household. The restraint shown by Mr. Marshall in contrasting her with the people among whom she is expected to live is worthy of the highest praise. There is nothing exaggerated, not a trace of burlesque; little touches, shades of speech and conduct, the expression at the corners of the girl's mouth when she is displeased or unsatisfied, all combine to lower the temperature in her lover's heart. Nor is there anything snobbish in this increasing coldness.[41] No matter how important may be a difference in manners or social breeding, love could make a happy fusion; it is, however, not in one act of villainy, but in many trifles light as air that the young woman is finally, even to the myopic eyes of passion, revealed as wholly selfish.  
Two accidents—youth and cash—give to this girl an assurance that finally makes her odious; but women who have neither can be equally offensive. Her prospective mother-in-law, the squire's wife, parades the decline in the family's finances so obtrusively that she becomes as tiresome as a flapping curtain. When Lord Kirby is shown by her through the ancestral home, he escapes with a sense of enormous relief, saying to his wife, "That's an awful woman. You hear about people being purse-proud, but she seems to be empty-purse-proud, and I don't know that that isn't worse. If people are as hard up as that they ought to hide it."
 
In Abington Abbey (1917) and The Graftons (1918) we have really one book, and the last page of the sequel makes me hope that the history of this charming family may be continued—I don't care through how many volumes. Mr. Grafton is a gentleman, and the way in[42] which he settles the various problems of family discipline and the affairs of the estate springs from his unerring good sense. His daughters adore their widower-father, but each in her own manner. And though they are all attractive, I know which one I like the best.
 
Mr. Marshall published with The Graftons an exceedingly interesting Introduction, containing a defense of his methods which is not needed by intelligent readers, but which may enlighten those who do not understand what he is about. In a personal letter, however, he expressed himself in words that I like better than his printed apologia. "The Grafton family isn't so rich in varied interest as the Clinton family, but I hope they............