The story is about Molly Gibson, the only daughter of a widowed doctor living in a provincial English town in the 1830s.

We meet Molly and her father when she's an innocent 12 year old girl, about to spend the day visiting the estate of the local gentry, Lord and Lady Cumnor, so excited she can hardly sleep the night before.

This visit won't turn out the way young Molly expected. These childhood scenes set the stage and introduce us to many of the characters who will play significant roles later on in the story.

When Molly is a teenager one of her father's medical students, who boards with the Gibsons, falls in love with her. Mr. Gibson intercepts the young man's letter confessing his love and promptly ships Molly off to visit another local family and sends the young man away.

But doing that isn't enough to allay Mr. Gibson's concerns, so he turns around and promptly proposes marriage to an attractive local widow (who has a daughter Molly's age), thinking a new mum for Molly is the ticket. It might have been a good idea to get to know her better before proposing.

Molly's new stepmother will prove a trial in her life (and in Molly's father's life as well, for that matter, although he's better able to deal with the disappointment, mostly by immersing himself further in his medical practice). Molly's new stepsister is much easier to get along with, but she'll also--eventually--end up bringing some serious complications to Molly's life.

NOTE: Elizabeth Gaskell suddenly died just before finishing this novel, which was being published on a serial basis in a British magazine. There's an afterword by her publisher, explaining what was going to happen in the story, and anyway it's pretty clear where the main relationship is headed.

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