The mysteries of character are at the heart of these six previously
unpublished pieces. In the title story, a teacher at a private girls" school
ruminates on a long career, wondering if he was right to encourage his
students to find a life less constrained than the conventional one prescribed
to them, or if he cruelly raised unrealistic expectations. In "The
Country Cousin" — a delightful one-act play — a wealthy woman"s
dependent niece unwittingly serves as the vehicle that reveals her rich
relatives" self-involvement. From a boyhood friendship tested by the
fabrications of the McCarthy era to an Episcopalian priest tormented
by an autocratic headmaster, Auchincloss"s fiction illuminates the
complications that ensue when our perceptions of other people"s
character — as well as our own — are upended.