"She had always thought of love as something confused and furtive, and he made it as bright and open as the summer air."- Summer, Edith Wharton
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In Wharton's Summer, Charity Royall has grown up under the guardianship of Mr. Royall, a lawyer in the town of North Dormer. When she was a young child, Mr. Royall brought her down from the mountain, away from a life of poverty and hardship at her father's request. Charity knows little about her background but is not ashamed of where she comes from. She's grown restless with the uneventful sameness of her life until a young man named Lucius Harney shows up in the dusty library she works in but cares little about (I did hold this against her momentarily).

I had a brief flashback to The Age of Innocence as Wharton draws attention to social class and the role of women. I'm strongly considering reading the other novella in my editon, Bunner Sisters.