A dying man marries the woman he loves so that she can inherit his wealth; she tries to do good with it.
For McCarthy, see Novels 059, 163, and 220.
It “has in its characters and its descriptions as much freshness and as much humour as we have observed in the author's former novels, combined with more than hints of a strength which he has not before exhibited”; it is “the best novel that we have read for a considerable time.” Saturday Review, December 13, 1879
“Mr. Justin McCarthy’s novels rank among the select few which deserve to be as popular a hundred years hence as they are now. Contemporaries welcome them chiefly for the sake of plots which, though slight, are always interesting, and heroes and heroines in whose fortunes even the most hardened novel reader cannot fail to sympathise. Posterity will turn to them for the social aspect of our time, illustrated by subordinate characters each of whom typifies some current whim or folly. And, notwithstanding Mr. McCarthy’s keen sense of humour, these types are portraits, not caricatures, their outlines being sharpened and their tints deepened only to such an extent as the true artist permits himself.” Academy, December 27, 1879
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