A multi-episode domestic novel traces a New England household as shifting tastes, marriage, and social ambition unsettle established routines. The narrative follows a young woman who returns home, marries, and experiences early conjugal happiness, travel, and the demands of city society, then confronts bereavement, illness, legal complications tied to a prior marriage, and moral crises that test family loyalties. Episodes, diary excerpts, and intimate scenes explore endurance through suffering, the tension between traditional rural values and fashionable urban life, and the gradual moral and emotional purification that restores bonds and leads to reconciliation and a final wedding.