A Broken Blossom, Vol. 3 of 3

A Broken Blossom, Vol. 3 of 3

Hilda Marsh, narrating her own story from St. Pucelle, walks with her old suitor Charlie Sandilands and firmly redirects his affections into friendship, while confiding her financial worries over the tea-share trust her guardian, the Reverend Mr. Lovett, controls. She writes to her late mother's solicitor, Mr. Warrington, asking to manage her own income, having discovered Lovett's household is riddled with unpaid debts to tradespeople and servants, including the vindictive housekeeper Madame Marmoret. Hilda also renews acquaintance with Cave Charteris, a former suitor who once jilted her, and rebuffs his attempts to revive old sentiment, unimpressed by his evasiveness about his private life and irritated by the transparent, comic pursuit of him by the spinster Sophy Markham. Hilda grows close to Armand, Baron de Nesselrode, a ruined French nobleman living nearby under an allowance from his creditors after being financially destroyed by a false friend, Duplat. She champions a match between him and Lovett's elder daughter, Tessie, though the Baron shows more interest in Hilda herself, eventually confessing his history and asking her to help him find purpose, which prompts him to seek honest employment rather than continued idleness. Meanwhile Lovett's younger daughter, the gentle and pious "petite" Ange, grows secretive, sickly, and increasingly devoted to charitable visits and long stays at a convent. Hilda, overhearing a nighttime tryst in the courtyard, realizes Ange has been drawn into a clandestine love affair with Cave Charteris, who calls her "darling" and speaks of future meetings. Suspecting Charteris means to repeat his betrayal of Hilda, Hilda warns Lovett, but he coldly refuses to intervene, more concerned with keeping Charteris as a paying boarder than protecting his daughter, and forbids Hilda from speaking to Ange about it. Charteris's young cousin, Fred Stephenson, arrives unannounced and is hastily sent away by Charteris, who behaves with uncharacteristic agitation—raising suspicions later confirmed when Sophy Markham learns from Fred that Charteris is already married, with a wife and children at home in Devonshire, from whom he has been avoiding return under pretense of a scarlet fever outbreak. Financial crisis breaks openly when Lovett's creditors—the cobbler, the bereaved widow Mère Fromard, Madame Marmoret, and others—corner him in the courtyard, screaming for payment and nearly turning violent. Hilda intervenes, shames the mob, and pledges to pay their debts herself, prompting Lovett to depart for Rille ostensibly to consult his man of business. In his absence, Ange, who has secretly overheard both the courtyard scene and Sophy Markham's careless revelation of Charteris's marriage, collapses into a raging, delirious fever. Her ravings reveal she had been secretly embroidering vestments at the convent to earn money to repay Charteris's loan to her father, and that he had promised, falsely, to confess their engagement once a letter arrived from England. With no doctor near and her father absent, Ange's fever worsens through the night. She escapes from her sickbed in delirium and stumbles to the Hôtel d'Étoile's billiard room, seeking Charteris, only to overhear him casually confirm to friends that he is married and unavailable to any "pretty daughters." Hilda finds and embraces her, and Charteris comes to her aid, but Ange, murmuring forgiveness to him, dies in his arms that night, her heart broken by her father's hypocrisy and her lover's deceit as much as by the fever itself. Lovett returns too late, alongside Mr. Warrington, who has come to settle Hilda's financial affairs and discovers much of her inheritance has been squandered by her guardian. Hilda refuses to prosecute him for Tessie's sake. Lovett lives on for years, preaching virtue while continuing his petty frauds, dying still owed and owing. Cave Charteris disappears from Hilda's life entirely, and she wants no further sight of him. In time, Armand completes his term of exile, serving in a minor post in Algiers with Hilda as his wife, and they build a happy life together with their son, Godefroi. Tessie eventually comes to live with them in Paris after her father's death, freed at last from her sorrowful girlhood, before marrying the ever-faithful Charlie Sandilands. The novel closes with Hilda, now Baronne de Nesselrode, reflecting on their hard-won happiness and on the memory of Ange—wondering whether her gentle spirit watches over the family's contentment, still tied in love to the father who failed her and the man who destroyed her, and affirming a quiet faith that death alone resolves what life's injustices could not.

By Florence Marryat · First published 1879 · Genre: Domestic Fiction, Romance, Melodrama · 10 chapters · 50,384 words

First lines

St. Pucelle never looked more beautiful than it did on the day that I took that walk with Charlie Sandilands. The summer glories, yet unfaded, had been overtaken by those of autumn, and the rich clusters of purple grapes that hung upon the walls of my guardian's house made a brilliant contrast to the scarlet and white and rose-coloured geraniums that still bloomed luxuriantly on the window-sills. The purple heather reigned alone upon the hill-side, but ferns of various sorts were arching their graceful fronds above it, and the merry brown hares were leaping amongst the brushwood and filling the place with life. As I led Charlie up the hill (for I would not let Tessie's silly remark deter me from showing him the glorious expanse of scenery to be gained from the summit) I pointed out the beauties of the country to him with so much interest as to excite the remark that I appeared entirely to have forgotten poor old Norwood in my new love for St. Pucelle.

What this Textopian page supports

A Broken Blossom, Vol. 3 of 3 is listed on Textopian as a novel by Florence Marryat, dated 1879 CE.

This source record anchors work identity, reading entry points, and catalog context for checking claims about the work.

Good citation fit

Genres

Tags

Victorian fiction · English literature · romance · domestic drama · social commentary · family relationships · marriage · class differences · women's lives · society novel · love and duty · emotional conflict

Contents

More by Florence Marryat