Nancy Laforgue, the orphaned daughter of a French journalist, is only seventeen when she becomes the wife of Toby Leland, a young man who claims to belong to an aristocratic family and who prefers living off rich acquaintances to having a regular job. When, through Toby’s friend Guy Murray, this pair of young “lone wolves” meet an American couple named Rode, and Toby is employed to trace Mr Rode’s English ancestors, Toby is delighted, believing that future comfort and luxury are now assured. It is Nancy who tells the story of their pursuit of easy living, of the odd and amusing people they meet during the ancestor-hunt, and of Guy’s violent love for herself – which ends in tragedy. She has to keep Guy at arm’s length, while struggling with her increasing uneasiness about her husband’s way of living and the suspicion that he is not what he claims to be. She finds herself involved in neighbourliness with the “oldies”, who live in the block where she and Toby have been lent a flat by a mysterious friend of Guy’s.Finally, the “sledge” which Nancy and Toby have been so steadily pursuing turns out to contain passengers who are not all that they were supposed to be. But Nancy’s gay and philosophic French temperament survives all shocks, and there are signs, when all the cards are on the table – or have been thrown off the sledge – that the young Lelands will reform.This is a first edition copy from 1964. It is an ex-library copy, and contains all associated stamps and stickers as pictured. The dust jacket is present but as a small tear and some staining. Slight foxing throughout, the worst of this being between pages 14-21.