Idolatry

by Alice Perrin

"Granny never discussed her affairs with me, or with any one else, as far as I know. But I think I understand how it happened. She couldn't bring herself to live any differently, so she just spent her capital and put all question of the future out of her thoughts. She had a wonderful capacity for ignoring disagreeables, big or little - she just shook her mind free of them."

There was no hint of censure in Anne's voice only regretful, indulgent remembrance. "Think how she entertained, how she kept up appearances! She loved comfort and luxury, too, and I don't blame her. We lived like other people of our own set as a matter of course. She gave me all I wanted, and had everything herself that she had always been accustomed to."

432 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1909

About the author

Alice Perrin was born in India in 1867, the daughter of Major General John Innes Robinson, of the Bengal Cavalry, and Bertha Beidermann Robinson. After her education in England, Perrin married Charles Perrin (d. 1931), an engineer in the India Public Works Department, in 1886, and the couple returned to India for the next sixteen years. Perrin’s career as a popular Anglo-Indian novelist and short story writer began with the two-volume novel Into Temptation, published in 1894. Her first collection of short stories, East of Suez, appeared in 1901. She continued publishing novels every two to three years until her last novel, Other Sheep, was published in 1932, two years before her death in Vevey, Switzerland, in 1934. In total, she published seventeen novels, many of which focus on the British colonial experience in India, such as The Spell of the Jungle (1902), The Anglo-Indians (1912), The Happy Hunting Ground (1914), Star of India (1919), and Government House (1925).