Miss Bagnold's special talent has ever been the telling of stories set in the milieu which she seems to know best; and this milieu has several faces. One is that of the world dedicated to high life, the haut monde still to be found in the mondaine places, be they Manhattan, Morocco, or a villa upon some conveniently remote island. This world has a painstakingly assembled face.

Another of the Bagnold faces is the weathered and seamed one of outdoor folk: sportsmen, racing people, county gentry. And, naturally, she knows her servants, the people up in the garrets, down in basements, behind counters. She even knows those anonymous persons in streets, undergrounds, on omnibuses—those who make the big city roar.

That Miss Bagnold's men and women of fashion [in "The Loved and Envied"] continue, despite their new recherché lives, to hold the reader's attention is a measure...