The heroine of this story is Lilian North, nearly out of her teens, whose home is a cottage wreathed with ivy and honeysuckle in the outskirts of Newport. Her father, who “says the service in the chapel” across the road, is “in orders,” not indeed Anglican orders, he being a fanatical Baptist who holds that “one is surer of going to hell with the Archbishop of Canterbury than with the Pope of Rome himself.” Her mother is dead. She has a married sister not far off at Plymouth--in which, for once, the author makes a slip, as he evidently means Portsmouth. Poor Lilian sees almost no society, except Jedediah, “papa’s disciple,” a sort of apprentice minister who “is to read the service when papa dies.” This young colleague and successor loves Lilian, with her father’s approval; but she loves him not, as how should she when he has red eyes, hair of no particular colour, and can talk about nothing but going to heaven! Jedediah looks like turning out the hypocritical villain of the piece. Lilian likes him less than ever when the hero appears in the person of Harry Gordon, a young city clerk who has come courting Miss Arabella Jones, elder daughter of the Baptist minister at Newport. Mr Jones has the advantage of his colleague in being a rich man who “preaches only for his amusement”; and his daughters lead a rackety life that must have scandalised the connection, especially in the Ryde yachting season, when they are always at some party of pleasure, “sometimes in a boat, sometimes on horseback, sometimes in _char-à-bancs_, never knowing in the morning where they shall lunch in the afternoon, nor where and with whom they shall dance in the evening”; and when they visit Newport it is with a train of ever fresh cavaliers. At a picnic in the ruins of Carisbrooke, Lilian makes the acquaintance of Harry Gordon, whom her friend Arabella Jones professes to disdain as a shy awkward boy. But Lilian takes to him, and Harry begins to pay more attention to her than to the proud Miss Jones. At a game of blindman’s buff among the ruins, the blindfolded hero is more deliberate than need be in pawing over Lilian’s face and figure before giving her name. Cupid catches them both. Another day there was a party to Freshwater, where the sea is always _méchant_, even in fine weather. The ladies having ventured out in a boat, found themselves in such danger that they were glad to get on shore. Then Arabella put her backward swain to the test with the question--“if we had gone down, which of us would you have saved first?” Harry did not answer, but his looks were on Lilian, to the spiteful displeasure of Miss Jones. So, in talking of a ball about to be given by the wealthy Baptist pastor of Ryde, she scornfully bid Lilian come to it only if properly dressed--“none of your shabby dyed frocks and halfpenny flowers!”