Dross

Dross opens amid the glittering spectacle of Paris in 1869, where public pageantry, private desperation, and social performance collide. Howard, an Englishman with a compromised past, moves through the city with ironic detachment until a chance glimpse of Mademoiselle de Clericy awakens a more dangerous interest: the possibility of love, redemption, and a new life. When he secures a position in the Clericy household, he enters a world of faded aristocratic grace, quiet intelligence, and hidden strain, where Madame de Clericy's authority and Lucille's composure mask deeper anxieties, and the mysterious former secretary, Monsieur Miste, shadows the family's affairs. As Howard becomes entangled with the household, the novel shifts from drawing-room wit to mounting crisis. The Vicomte's disappearance, the grim search at Passy, and the formal identification of his body expose the fragility beneath privilege and the emotional costs of loss. Against this private mourning, Paris erupts into the hysteria of war with Prussia, and the city's patriotic fervor, financial panic, and self-deception mirror the family's own ruin. Henry Seton Merriman's novel blends romance, intrigue, and historical drama into a fast-moving tale of debt, duty, exile, and the perilous chance of return. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.