Read "The Heel of Achilles" by E.M. Delafield online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
When Lydia was fifteen, expectant of Honours in her examinations, highly placed in the school, and with a secret hope that the following term might see her Head of the School -- and that, moreover, at an unprecedently early age -- unexpected disaster overtook her.
The three placid years at Regency Terrace had been so little marked by any changes that she had forgotten that old sense of the insecurity and impermanence of life, bred of early days with her mother, and it came as a shock to her that anything should interfere seriously with her schemes.