The Reef

George Darrow, an American diplomat in London, is on his way to France to join Anna Leath, the widow he loved in his youth and now hopes to marry, when a telegram tells him to wait. Hurt, he spends a few days in Paris with Sophy Viner, a poor and lively young woman he meets on the journey. Months later, at Anna's château at Givré, he finds Sophy there as the governess, engaged to Anna's stepson, and the past rises between them all.

Edith Wharton published the novel in 1912, and Henry James praised its intense, almost classical concentration, comparing it to the tragedy of Racine. Read Wharton's The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence.