The Countess of Lowndes Square, and Other Stories - E. F. Benson

A collection of fourteen short stories, grouped under the headings of "Blackmailing Stories", "Spook Stories", "Cat Stories", "Crank Stories", and "General Stories". From the preface: "[S]uch readers as are in search merely of the lighter...aspects of life, will be able to avoid like poison so innocent-looking a title as "The Countess of Lowndes Square," for surely they would not find therein the fashionable descriptions of high life which they might reasonably anticipate, but would merely cast the book from them in disgust, when they discovered that one who had been the wife of an Earl, and ought therefore to have known ever so much better, belonged to the most contemptible of the criminal classes." - Summary by Devorah Allen