Explore "The Storm Breaks" by Arthur Gask on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The proprietress of the Institute of Perfect Health, Madame Bertha de Roche, was a tall woman of commanding presence. As a girl she had been decidedly pretty and, now, approaching her forty-third year, was considered by no means ill-favoured by those who were admirers of her type of coarse and rather masculine beauty. She had big blue eyes which seared you through and through, a well-developed nose, a big mouth which a physiognomist would have described as being both ruthless and cruel, and a strong, determined chin. Altogether she was not a woman whom a timid person would care to cross.
To her patients -- she would never call them clients -- she made out she was of Swiss nationality and came from Zurich, but in truth she was of German-Jewish birth, born in Stuttgart and baptised Griselda Haffman.