Character guide

Frau Frohmann

major

Also known as IV, The Frau Frohmann, the Frau, The Frau

Frau Frohmann presides over her inn and her people with a will that brooks no contradiction, proud of the old ways and suspicious of newfangled notions. Her stubbornness is both her strength and her trap: she cannot easily bend, even when bending might serve her better. Watching her defend her position against neighbours, guests, and her own conscience is the quiet drama that gives the story its spine.

Alice Dugdale

major

Also known as Alice

Alice is the capable, unglamorous centre of her household, giving out soap and sugar and minding other people's children while quietly loving Major Rossiter. The tension is cruel and simple: he loves her but is ashamed of the fitness of things, and his mother keeps steering him toward the polished Miss Wanless. Alice's patient dignity makes the reader ache for her and dread the choice he will make.

Fred Pickering

major

Also known as Fred, young Pickering, Pickering, poor Fred

Fred Pickering arrives in distress but carries himself without supplication, his keen intellect and dry humour intact despite a wife and children depending on him. He throws himself into scholarly work with real discipline, yet a terrible skeleton refuses to stay in the cupboard: his wife's demands and behaviour threaten everything he builds. His struggle between respectability and ruin gives the story its anxious, sympathetic pull.

Bessy Pryor

major

Also known as Bessy, Pryor, X How Bessy Pryor

Bessy holds her place among the county girls only by Mrs. Miles's favour, and she knows it. When she falls in love with the heir of Launay, she is ordered to surrender him and instead answers with quiet, absolute refusal: 'When one loves, one cannot give it up.' Her stubborn loyalty to both her lover and the old woman who raised her is the moral knot the story tightens around.

Mrs. Miles

supporting

Also known as poor Mrs. Miles, Mrs. Miles Madam, Dear Mrs. Miles, Bessy Mrs. Miles

Mrs. Miles rules Launay and everyone in it, and the neighbourhood knows better than to cross her. She has raised Bessy as her own child and genuinely loves her, yet cannot tolerate a marriage that fails to combine the properties. Her sickroom ultimatums and her refusal to see Bessy before the banishment reveal a woman whose affection and pride are fatally entangled.

Mr. Greenmantle

major

Also known as these Mr. Greenmantle, III Mr. Greenmantle, Greenmantle, Here Mr. Greenmantle

Mr. Greenmantle watches his daughters navigate lodgings, late hours, and the arrival of Abraham Hall, a solid, smutty, well-spoken engineer who seems a pillar of strength. The trouble is that both girls take an interest, and Sophy's finery and forwardness clash with Lucy's proud rule that a girl should be sought, not seeking. His bewilderment as a parent anchors the comedy of manners and the quiet contest of character at the story's heart.

Jack Hollycombe

supporting

Also known as Jack, Mr. Peppercorn, Peppercorn, IV Jack Hollycombe Mr. Peppercorn, One Mr. Peppercorn

Jack Hollycombe is a young man caught between the modest prospects of Plumplington and his own impatient ambition, repeatedly asking what good any man can do in such a place. His courtship of Polly Peppercorn gives the romance plot its forward motion, but his vanity and restlessness keep him from being simply a romantic hero. He matters because his choices test whether affection can survive the pull of self-interest and the pressure of local opinion.

Mally Trenglos

major

Also known as Mally, Trenglos, Poor Mally

Mally Trenglos stands apart in her Cornish community, a young woman whose loyalties and desires run against the grain of respectable expectation. Her determination to choose for herself creates the central tension of the story, pitting personal feeling against the judgments of family and neighbors. She matters because her struggle gives the early and middle arc its moral weight, asking what love is worth when it costs a woman her place in the world.

Lucy Graham

major

Also known as Lucy, poor Lucy

Lucy Graham works at the telegraph office and carries the double burden of her own poverty and her sister Sophy's failing health, giving up her room, her dinners, and her mended boots to send money home. Her quiet self-denial is tested by Abraham Hall's probing concern, which wounds her pride even as it hints at deeper feeling. She matters because her sacrifices and her unspoken longings anchor the story's meditation on duty, love, and the cost of both.

Emily Greenmantle

supporting

Also known as Miss Greenmantle, Emily, Poor Emmy, the Miss Greenmantle, poor Emily Greenmantle, Miss Emily, Miss Emily Greenmantle

Emily Greenmantle belongs to the household at the center of the Plumplington romance, where a father's plans for his daughters collide with the girls' own inclinations. Her position exposes the tension between filial obedience and the pull of a suitor who may not meet with approval. She matters because her choices help drive the courtship plot and reveal how much of a young woman's fate in this world is decided by others.

Aaron Dunn

major

Also known as Aaron, Dunn, Byron

Aaron Dunn lives and works among a household of women on a remote island, taking his meals with them and retiring each evening to his plans and drawings with demure correctness. The careful propriety of these arrangements barely conceals the rivalries and desires stirring beneath them, particularly among the women who attend him. He matters because his presence sets the stage for the story's dramatic violence, and because his self-containment makes him both a figure of order and a catalyst for chaos.

Polly Peppercorn

supporting

Also known as Polly, Peppercorn, Mary, old Peppercorn

Polly Peppercorn is the object of Jack Hollycombe's suit in the Plumplington romance, and she gives as good as she gets, demanding to know where his heart truly lies. Her jealousy over Anastasia Fitzapplejohn and her refusal to be placated with easy assurances reveal a proud, passionate nature. She matters because her insistence on being chosen without reservation raises the stakes of the courtship and gives the story its sharpest emotional exchanges.

Miss Susan

major

Also known as Susan, Poor Susan

Susan is the younger daughter of the widowed Mrs. Bell, who has raised her girls in a modest cottage at Saratoga Springs, taking in a few steady boarders each summer to make ends meet. Unlike the wealthy girls who flood the resort with trunks of muslin and waiting carriages, Susan and her sister Hetta watch the season's gaieties from the margins, their mother anxious lest anyone think she is scheming for husbands. Susan's story turns on the delicate question of whether affection can be trusted when circumstances offer so little room for it.

Mr. Brown

supporting

Also known as Brown, Dear Mr. Brown, Nevertheless Mr. Brown, Mrs. Brown, Mr. and Mrs. Brown, Here Mr. Brown

Mr. Brown has spent nearly eight years of marriage avoiding Christmas in England, preferring the mild air of Pau to the clamorous festivities of his wife's Thompson relations. When a summons from the family's newly elected MP makes the visit unavoidable, he drags his feet through every town from Bordeaux to Paris, complaining of bronchitis while eating hearty dinners and scolding waiters in a voice too clear to be believed. His wife, who sees through the performance, presses on toward Thompson Hall, setting up the marital tug-of-war that drives the story.

The Major

supporting

Also known as the Major, him—would, The Major, him—and

The Major moves through the social circles of the Alice Dugdale story with the ease of a man accustomed to command, yet his arrival stirs complications that no rank can settle. He is connected to the web of family expectations and romantic possibilities that surround Alice, and his intentions—whether honorable or self-serving—remain a matter of anxious speculation among those who watch him. His presence forces the characters around him to reckon with questions of duty, suitability, and the difference between a soldier's confidence and a suitor's sincerity.

Maurice Archer

major

Also known as Maurice, Archer

Maurice Archer has taken up residence with the Lownd family as a visitor to the parson, and Mrs. Lownd already imagines a comfortable marriage between him and her daughter Isabel. But Maurice is a man of vacillating conviction: some days he is certain he loves Isabel and will make her his wife, other days he mocks himself for the notion, and still other days he wonders whether she would accept him at all. His careless remark that Christmas is a bore—reduced to roast beef and plum pudding—wounds Isabel's earnest faith in the festival, and the small rift exposes the deeper question of whether his indifferent manner can ever meet her serious heart.

Isa Heine

supporting

Also known as Isa, mamma Heine, dear Isa, Miss Isa

Isa was only seventeen when her cousin Herbert came to board with the Heines, and she treated him at first as one more member of the household—mending his linen, visiting his room, noting his preferences at table without any flutter of imagination. But Herbert, blushing as he accepted the arrangement, had already seen her beauty and felt its pull, and the two years that follow transform what was simple domestic intimacy into something far more charged. Isa's slow awakening to the difference between family kindness and romantic love lies at the center of the story's emotional arc.

Julius Mackenzie

supporting

Also known as Mr. Julius Mackenzie, Mr. Mackenzie, Mackenzie, poor Mackenzie

Mackenzie writes to a man he has never met, confessing his impecuniosity, his infidel opinions, and his association with the Spotted Dog in Liquorpond Street, yet his letter carries such keen intelligence that his correspondent cannot dismiss it. With the help of a generous doctor, he secures scholarly work at the British Museum and begins to prosper—but his wife, who has been behaving worse than ever, keeps appearing at the Spotted Dog demanding money, and the hostess Mrs. Grimes fears the arrangement will collapse. Mackenzie's struggle between intellectual ambition and domestic chaos makes him one of Trollope's most painfully sympathetic portraits of a man undone by circumstance.

Marie Clavert

major

Also known as Marie, poor Marie, Marie Campan, no Marie

Marie lives under Madame Bauche's green-spectacled charity, valued as a useful drudge and never once considered as a woman. The valley has already seen what Madame Bauche has not: that Adolphe Bauche, heir to everything, is contemplating marriage to poor Marie. Her beauty and daily usefulness collide with the old lady's blindness to her, making her the quiet center of a household about to be thrown into upheaval.

Maurice Cumming

supporting

Also known as Maurice, Poor Maurice, poor Maurice, subjects Maurice Cumming, young Cumming, Dear Maurice

Maurice Archer has said nothing to Isabel that could not be proclaimed from the church tower, yet he thinks of her constantly and wavers between certainty and self-mockery. Mrs. Lownd watches him nervously, sure he is honorable but unsure of her daughter's heart. His offhand remark that Christmas is a bore wounds Isabel deeply, and his halting courtship becomes the quiet engine of the household's emotional weather.

Isabel Lownd

major

Also known as Isabel, poor Isabel, Bell, Miss Isabel

Isabel moves through the Christmas festivities with a composure that costs her dearly, retreating to her room when the day's excitement nearly overcomes her. When Maurice calls her into the study, she goes silently, and emerges the happiest girl in Craven, her arm around his waist. Her fierce seriousness about Christmas and her quick indignation at Maurice's flippancy reveal a girl whose feelings run far deeper than her manner admits.

Nora Field

supporting

Also known as Nora

Nora is to become Mrs. Frederic F. Frew in January, and has already half-turned American in spirit, defending the Union against her future husband's jibes. With only a hundred pounds from a grandaunt for her trousseau, she jokes about casting in her wedding veil to feed the starving, and pressures her aunt and uncle into lending their boiler for the poor. Her warm, restless charity and her divided loyalties give the story its tender, unsettled heart.

Mrs. Thompson

supporting

Also known as Thompson

Mrs. Thompson, comfortably provided for but friendless in England, has settled at the Hôtel des Ambassadeurs where her customs and economies suit her better than Torquay or Leamington. Day by day she stays, ostensibly to oversee her daughter's schooling, while M. Lacordaire, grizzled, soft-voiced, and wearing the Legion of Honour, sits beside her at every meal. Her slow, unacknowledged drift toward this courteous stranger gives the story its delicate suspense.

Captain Broughton

supporting

Also known as Captain John Broughton, John, John Broughton, Broughton

Captain John Broughton arrives at his Aunt Penelope's Devonshire property as the polished son of Eaton Square, his family quietly hoping the inheritance will follow. Patience Woolsworthy predicts he will find Dartmoor dull, and Miss Le Smyrger cheerfully suggests he may fall in love with her instead. His fashionable ease against the plain Devonshire setting sets up the story's central friction of class, expectation, and courtship.

Bessy Garrow

major

Also known as Bessy, Now Bessy Garrow, poor Bessy, Miss Bessy

Elizabeth Garrow is the quiet, fair-haired center of a Cornish love story, admired for her industry, self-denial, and religious purpose. Her flaw is a reverence for martyrdom: she guards herself so fiercely against loving too weakly that she wounds the man she loves and is told the fault is hers. Her hidden suffering and outward composure drive the early and middle arc, making her a heroine whose goodness is both her strength and her danger.

Tom Reckenthorpe

supporting

Also known as Tom, General Reckenthorpe, General Tom, General Tom Reckenthorpe

General Reckenthorpe belongs to the world of family councils, marriage prospects, and the careful weighing of sons-in-law. He is a man of rank and opinion, implicated in the romantic and social maneuvering of those around him, and his judgments carry weight in the drawing rooms and country houses where matches are made. His presence anchors the early arc by tying private feeling to the expectations of name, money, and military propriety.

Mrs. Brumby

supporting

Mrs. Brumby moves through the world of magazines and literary offices, a woman of peculiar and well-developed talents who negotiates her position with shrewd self-regard. She rejects two offered letters of praise and dictates the epithets of the third, refusing to abandon the Literary Curricle on any lesser terms. Her arrival unsettles the narrator's editorial composure and sets in motion the social comedy of literary ambition and self-promotion.

Lotta Schmidt

major

Also known as Lo, Lotta, regarded Lotta Schmidt

Lotta Schmidt lives in a Vienna of music, courtship, and social calculation, where a man's rise may depend on the wife he chooses. She is caught between the claims of genuine affection and the worldly counsel of those who urge a more advantageous match, and her story turns on the question of whether the heart can hold its own against ambition. Her choices shape the early and middle arc as suitors and mothers alike weigh her against the prizes of rank and connection.

Churchill Smith

minor

Also known as Mr. Smith, Churchill, Mr. Churchill Smith, Smith, Even Churchill Smith

A man whose name and identity cause confusion and humor.

Marian Leslie

supporting

Also known as Marian, Leslie

Marian Leslie belongs to the world of summer resorts and drawing-room courtships, where mothers fear flirtation and daughters must guard their reputations. She is admired and pursued, yet the very attention that defines her position also exposes her to the charge of scheming for a husband. Her romantic entanglements and the delicacy of her situation drive the early and middle arc, as suitors press their claims and she must decide where her heart truly lies.

Herbert Onslow

minor

Also known as Herbert, young Onslow, Onslow

A young man involved in a romantic subplot.

Miss Ophelia Gledd

major

Also known as Miss Ophelia, Ophelia Gledd, Miss Gledd, Ophelia

Ophelia Gledd is an only child who once opened her campaign as a rich merchant's daughter and now moves through Boston society with the same exigeant manner though her father's fortune has failed. She goes alone to balls, lectures, and political debates, holding authority in her mother's house and refusing to let poverty alter her bearing. Her proud composure and enquiring spirit make her a striking American original, and her travels and opinions drive the story's transatlantic encounters.

Anastasia Bergen

supporting

Also known as Anastasia

Anastasia Bergen keeps her father's household on Crump Island, managing the servants and the small daily economies of a life conducted mostly by water. She came late to beauty and to love: the young men of St. George once passed her by, but Caleb Morton, the minister, has been engaged to her for two years—an attachment her father resents. Her quiet competence and deepening loyalty place her at the center of the story's mounting crisis.

M. Lacordaire

minor

Also known as Lacordaire

A Frenchman involved in a story of love and intrigue.

John Rossiter

supporting

Also known as John, Major Rossiter, Rossiter, Our Major, Major John Rossiter, The Major, the Major

John Rossiter moves between his mother's worldly ambitions and his own stubborn belief that a man should rise by merit, not by a well-placed marriage. His mother presses Georgiana Wanless on him; his heart keeps returning to Alice Dugdale, whose needle-marked fingers and nursery duties he notices more than he admits. That unresolved pull between honest affection and social calculation drives the story's central choice.

Adolphe Bauche

major

Also known as Adolphe Bauche—and, Adolphe, Adolphe Bauche—was

Adolphe Bauche is heir to his mother's riches and reputation, the young man every valley household measures its daughters against. Madame Bauche, seeing only a useful drudge in Marie Clavert, never imagined her son could want the girl—yet the whole valley saw it coming before she did. His choice sets mother against son and exposes how much the family's pride depends on keeping Marie in her place.

Sophy Wilson

supporting

Also known as Sophy, Wilson, For Sophy, poor Sophy, Sophia, Sophie

Sophy Wilson is the absent center of a quarrel about money and love: Mr. Hall's sovereign, sent through Lucy Graham, becomes a question of what a woman may accept from a man who has not quite declared himself. Where Lucy refuses on principle, Sophy would have taken it without scruple—and says so. Her pragmatism and Lucy's severity throw each other into relief, shaping the story's meditation on friendship, pride, and need.

Sir Walter Wanless

supporting

Also known as Sir Walter, Lady Wanless, Lady Wanless Sir Walter Wanless, Wanless, Walter

Sir Walter Wanless stands at the edge of the story as the prize of connection: great influence, a county contested five times, and a daughter, Georgiana, whose manners and complexion are beyond reproach. His family has little money, which only makes the alliance more purely a matter of position. He never appears in the argument directly, yet his name is the standard against which Alice Dugdale's homely virtues are weighed.

Miss Dawkins

minor

Also known as Miss Dawkins—Sabrina Dawkins, income Miss Dawkins, Whereupon Miss Dawkins, Dawkins

A woman whose financial independence is a plot point.

Miss Sarah Jack

major

Also known as Miss Sarah, Miss Jack, aunt Sarah

Miss Sarah Jack lives in a ghostlike house at Spanish Town, rich, ungainly, and never silent about the perfidy of England or the apathy of Jamaica's best men. She needles Maurice Cumming for hiding at his estate instead of taking his father's seat in the Assembly, and her eloquence finally moves him to stand. Disliked but respected, she embodies the colonial conscience that will shape Maurice's public life and, indirectly, his private one.

Herr Crippel

minor

Also known as Crippel

A German character in the Frau Frohmann story.

Patrick Regan

supporting

Also known as Pat Regan, Pat, poor Pat, Regan

Regan arrives with a letter and a story, and though he has a wife and family dependent on him, he offers to surrender a third of his income just to change the nature of his work. What strikes the men who interview him is his keen intellect and his refusal to play the abject supplicant — there is humour in his voice, not meanness. His presence raises the question of what a man owes his pride when his family's survival is at stake.

Caleb Morton

supporting

Also known as Caleb, Morton

Caleb moves through a world where marriage is treated as a family duty rather than a personal choice, and where a young woman's refusal of a suitable suitor sets off a chain of anxious calculation among those who control the purse and the household. He is entangled in the emotional crosscurrents of people who love each other but are prepared to sacrifice one another for the family name. His presence sharpens the central question of whether affection can survive the machinery of duty.

Aaron Trow

major

Also known as Trow, Aaron Trow—for, Byron

Trow is a man whose freedom has been stripped away and who now moves through the world with the dangerous unpredictability of someone who has nothing left to lose. His presence forces those around him — particularly women left vulnerable in isolated places — to confront fear in its rawest form. He matters because he transforms the quiet routines of island life into a landscape of threat, where every ordinary decision carries the weight of survival.

Philip Hughes

supporting

Also known as Mr. Philip, Philip, Mr. Philip Hughes, young Hughes, Mr. Hughes, Hughes, poor young Philip Hughes

Philip appears suddenly at Avranches and in a single glance reassures Bessy that she has not been abandoned, his presence carrying news he cannot yet speak aloud. He moves with the easy confidence of someone who is loved, but his position is precarious — he is caught between his feelings for Bessy and the formidable will of Mrs. Miles, who controls the family fortune. His arrival sets the story's central question in motion: whether love can be brought into the open before duty smothers it.

Mary Crofts

major

Also known as Mary, Molly, Mary Tomkins John Thomas, Mary Tomkins, John Thomas, John

Mary — called Molly by those close to her — grows up in a Saratoga Springs cottage where her widowed mother takes in boarders and frets constantly about the appearance of husband-hunting. The household is loving but anxious, and Mary's prospects are shaped by her mother's fear of flirtation and social embarrassment. She matters because her story tests whether a young woman of modest means can follow her own heart without bringing shame on the family that raised her.

Walter Watt

minor

Also known as young Watt, Walter, Watt, poor Watt

A young man involved in a romantic subplot.

Barty Gunliffe

supporting

Also known as Barty, Bartholomew Gunliffe, Gunliffe, old Gunliffe

Barty Gunliffe belongs to a world where love and land are tangled together, and where a farmer's choices about both carry consequences for everyone around him. He is a man of the soil, practical and rooted, but the story places him in circumstances where the heart's demands and the farm's demands pull in different directions. His dilemma gives the narrative its emotional weight, asking what a man will sacrifice when the two things he values most cannot coexist.

Madame Bauche

supporting

Also known as Madame

Madame Bauche is the wealthy matriarch of the valley, benevolent patron to the orphan Marie Clavert, and mistress of all she surveys. Her blind spot is her own charity: she has looked at Marie so long as a dependent that she cannot conceive of her as a rival in love, and her fondness curdles into alarm the moment Adolphe's intentions become plain. That collision between maternal pride and a protégée's quiet claim drives the story's central conflict.

Frederic Frew

supporting

Also known as Frederic F. Frew, young Frew, Mr. Frederic F. Frew, Frew, Mr. Frew, Frederic, dear Fred, Fred

Frederic F. Frew is a well-travelled, well-read Pennsylvanian living on a modest inheritance, engaged to Nora Field after months in Liverpool on family business. He is kindly and generous but hard and narrow in his aspirations, contemptuous of England and of all things small, and his politics are as fierce as his affection is steady. His marriage to Nora carries her across the Atlantic into new loyalties, and his running quarrel with her uncle over the war gives the courtship its comic friction.

Mr. Barnaby Jones

minor

Also known as Mr. Jones, Barnaby, Jones, Barnaby Jones

A man involved in a story of mistaken identity and humor.

John Smith

minor

Also known as Mr. Smith, Smith, Mr. John Smith, “ Smith, Master John, John

A common name used for a character in a humorous tale.

Jack O'Conor

supporting

Also known as Poor Jack, Jack, Presently Jack, Jack Hallam, Hallam

Jack O'Conor is the eldest of the O'Conor brood, a foxhunter who rides close to the hounds and presses invitations with the same cheerful insistence as his father. His warmth and his family's open-handedness pull the narrator into a world of dances, sisters, and Irish miles, and his casual aside about selling a horse to his brother hints at the financial troubles that will later scatter the family. He is the story's welcoming face and its quiet foreshadowing of loss.

Philip Launay

major

Also known as Launay, Mrs. Launay, Philip, Mrs. Philip Launay, Mrs. Philip

Philip Launay is the young master of Launay, brought down from London with a physician when his mother falls gravely ill, and thrown into constant company with his cousin Bessy. He is fondly serious, certain that his mother has no right to arrange his marriage, and impatient of subterfuge; his love for Bessy is declared plainly and held against the family's expectations. His insistence that affection must override maternal design sets the terms of the story's central struggle.

Mr. Grimes

minor

Also known as Mrs. Grimes, Grimes, Mr. and Mrs. Grimes

A couple involved in a story of social climbing.

Miss Viner

minor

A young woman whose romantic fate is explored.

Nina Pepé

supporting

Also known as April Nina Pepé, Nina, April, Nina Pepé, Anne

Nina Pepé moves through a world of Italian households and family expectations, her heart caught between the claims of tradition and the urgings of her own feeling. She is spirited and affectionate, and the tension between what is arranged for her and what she chooses for herself shapes her course. Her story gives the collection its Continental counterpoint to the English and Irish courtships around it.

Dr. Freeborn

supporting

Also known as old Dr. Freeborn, V Dr. Freeborn, Dr.

Dr. Freeborn is the trusted doctor of Plumplington, a man whose long practice has made him intimate with every family's secrets and whose counsel carries weight in the parish. He is patient, shrewd, and quietly benevolent, and his willingness to extend both time and money to those in need marks him as the story's moral anchor. His interventions, gentle rather than commanding, steer the young people of the town toward their proper matches.

Greene

minor

Also known as Mr. Greene, old Greene, the Greene

A character involved in a story of family and romance.

Mrs. St. Quinten

minor

Also known as Mrs. St. Quinten Lydia, Lydia, the unfortunate Lydia, Once Mrs. St. Quinten

A woman whose unfortunate story is told.

Fritz Planken

minor

Also known as Fritz, Planken

A German character in the Frau Frohmann story.

Hannibal Hoskins

minor

Also known as young Mr. Hannibal H. Hoskins, Hannibal Hoskins, young Hoskins, Hoskins, Mr. Hoskins, Hannibal H. Hoskins, Hannibal

A young man involved in a humorous romantic subplot.

Mrs. Greene

minor

Also known as Greene, mamma Greene

A mother figure in a rural romance.

Jefferson Ingram

supporting

Also known as Mr. Jefferson Ingram, Mr. Ingram, Ingram, Jefferson

An American traveler whose courtship unsettles the social calculations of everyone around him, forcing a quiet telegraph girl to weigh propriety against possibility.

Mr. Damer

minor

Also known as Damer fille, Damer

A father involved in his daughter's romantic story.

Frank Reckenthorpe

supporting

Also known as Frank

A young man caught between the pressures of war and the quieter siege of courtship, learning how much of love is strategy conducted by other hands.

Miss Wanless

supporting

Also known as Miss Georgiana Wanless, Georgiana Wanless, Georgiana, the second Miss Wanless, the Wanless pale, the Wanless

The acknowledged beauty of Brook Park, whose perfect equestrian grace and retiring modesty are themselves instruments in her mother's careful matrimonial campaign.

Patience Woolsworthy

major

Also known as Patience, Patience German

A parson's hot-tempered daughter on the edge of Dartmoor, too vivid for her small world and too proud to leave it, whose love story turns on the cost of dominion.

Mr. Forrest

minor

Also known as Forrest, unmarried Mr. Forrest

An unmarried man whose romantic prospects are explored.

Mabel

minor

Also known as Mab, Miss Mab

A young woman in a romantic subplot.

Mary Gresley

major

Also known as Miss Marian, Marian, Mary, poor Mary, Miss Mary Gresley, Miss Gresley, Gresley, Miss Mary

A serious, self-denying young woman who has resolved to be more than vapid and lover-seeking, only to find her own high principles turned against her heart.

Malchen

minor

Also known as This Malchen

A young woman in the Frau Frohmann story.

Fanny Damer

minor

Also known as Fanny, Fanny O'Conor, poor Fanny Damer

A young woman whose romantic story is told.

Charles Burnaby Jones

minor

Also known as Mr. Jones, Jones, Charley, Charles, Mr. Burnaby, Burnaby, Mr. Charles Burnaby Jones, Mr. Burnaby Jones

A man involved in a humorous story of mistaken identity.

Fritz Schlessen

minor

Also known as Fritz, Schlessen, young Fritz Schlessen, Here Schlessen

A German character in the Frau Frohmann story.

Ada Forster

minor

Also known as Ada

A young woman in a story of love and loss.

Carlo Pepé

minor

Also known as Carlo, young Pepé, Pepé

A young Italian man in a love story.

Mrs. Mackinnon

minor

Also known as Mackinnon, Mr. Mackinnon, poor Mrs. Mackinnon, Mr. and Mrs. Mackinnon

A couple involved in a story of travel and romance.

Mrs. Arkwright

minor

Also known as Arkwright, Poor Mrs. Arkwright

A woman involved in a story of family and loss.

Miss Le Smyrger

minor

A woman involved in a story of inheritance and romance.

Hetta

minor

Also known as Miss Hetta

A young woman in a story of love and family.

Larry Kirwan

minor

Also known as Larry

An Irish character in a story of love and conflict.