Paste

Good dialogue, terrible descriptions. Whenever he tried to set up a scene it took so damn long for him to say what he was getting at that it was hard to stay focused. It wasn't "aesthetically" pleasing either. The first sentence of descriptiontake up three lines.

"The pair of mourners, sufficiently stricken, were in the garden of the vicarage together, before luncheon, waiting to be summoned to that meal, and Arthur Prime had still in his face the intention, she was moved to call it rather than the expression, of feeling something or other.
Some such appearance was in itself of course natural within a week of his stepmother's death, within three of his father's; but what was most present to the girl, herself sensitive and shrewd, was that he seemed somehow to brood without sorrow, to suffer without what she in her own case would have called pain."

"Of feeling or some other" is so vague, and it doesn't say anything. "She would have called pain," come on! What does that even mean? Also, using words Latin words like "vicarage" makes it all the more a bore. There's simply too many pauses. His style is beyond suspense, it's downright torture.

But, as mentioned before his dialogue is a nice break of the distractingly tortuous parts where he narrates, I got the most out of the story when the characters spoke. But even they they did speak he would butt his fat pen in to add verbs or other info. This probably would have read better as a play. The overall story was alright I guess. The whole hinting that this old actress was a prostitute or had lovers I'm sure for the time was probably really entertaining. At the same time, I couldn't help but think the whole situation seemed a little too far fetched. And I'm not sure what he was getting at when Mrs. Guy would talk about the pearls as if they were alive.