A poor girl and a man far above her station, kept apart for three volumes by a will, a rival and a misunderstanding neither will explain. Garvice sold in the millions to readers the reviewers never counted, at sevenpence a copy in the railway bookstalls; Arnold Bennett called him the most successful novelist in England and meant it as a fact, not a compliment. Fifty-seven plates after painters including Arthur Hughes and Myles Birket Foster carry the story's quieter themes of devotion, rest and the pull of home.
