Two sisters, Grace and Marion, live happily in an English village with their two servants, Clemency Newcome and Ben Britain, and their good-natured widower father Dr Jeddler.
Dr Jeddler is a man whose philosophy is to treat life as a farce.
Marion, the younger sister, is betrothed to Alfred Heathfield, Jeddler's ward who is leaving the village to complete his studies.
He entrusts Marion to Grace's care and makes a promise to return to win Marion's hand.
Michael Warden, a libertine who is about to leave the country, is thought by the barristers Snitchey and Craggs to be about to seduce the younger sister into an elopement.
Clemency spies Marion one night in her clandestine rendezvous with Warden.
On the day that Alfred is to return, however, it is discovered that Marion has run off.
Her supposed elopement causes much grief to both her father and her sister.
Six years pass.
Clemency is now married to Britain and the two have set up a tavern in the village.
After nursing heartbreak, Alfred marries Grace instead of Marion and she bears him a daughter, also called Marion.
On the birthday of Marion, Grace confides to Alfred that Marion has made a promise to explain her so-called elopement in person.
Marion indeed appears that evening by sunset and explains her disappearance to the parties involved.
It turns out that Marion has not eloped but has instead been living at her aunt Martha's place so as to allow Alfred to fall in love with Grace.
Tears are shed and happiness and forgiveness reign as the missing sister is reunited with the rest.
Warden also returns, and, forgiven by Dr Jeddler, marries Marion.
Redlaw is a teacher of chemistry who often broods over wrongs done him and grief from his past.
He is haunted by a spirit, who is not so much a ghost as Redlaw's phantom twin and is an awful likeness of himself.
with his features, and his bright eyes, and his grizzled hair, and dressed in the gloomy shadow of his dress.
This spectre appears and proposes to Redlaw that.
Throne Classics The battle of life: a love story, the haunted man & a child's history of england, hardcover/charles dickens
