Read "The House of Adventure" by Warwick Deeping online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Brent had been at work in the château, putting one of the "wings" in repair against the winter, when that yellow English touring-car pulled up outside the Café de la Victoire. It was a big car, and it contained, besides the chauffeur, a manufacturer from the Midlands, his family, and its appendages.
They were all gathered on the footpath, a big red man in a grey flannel suit, three women rather elaborately dressed, a "flapper" with red hair, and a small boy with eyes like blue marbles. The women had white, puffy faces. They stared at everything, Manon, the house, the resurrected ruins, Paul Brent, the scattering of children, as though they were staring at things in a shop-window. There was a quite extraordinary lack of animation or intelligence about them. They looked overfed, replete, satiated.