Sylvester

The novel's protagonist is Sylvester Rayne, duke of Salford; 28 years old, wealthy and endowed with beauty and charm, as well as a solid fortune, he decides that it would be in keeping with his position and age to take a wife. He thus draws up a list of maidens whom for beauty, grace and lineage he considers papable to become the future duchess of Salford. He submits that list first to his mother, to whom he is very close, and then to his own godmother, Lady Ingham. The elderly noblewoman suggests to him, before proceeding with his "plan," that he get to know her niece: Phoebe Marlow. She is a maiden from a good family, brought up with her father and his second wife, who has no particular affection for her stepdaughter because Phoebe is not particularly beautiful or graceful, and who has a bad habit of always unbecomingly saying what is on her mind. The stepmother lets slip to the girl that the duke is coming to meet her to propose marriage, and the girl panics because she met the duke some time ago during a Season in London and had found him arrogant and haughty. So she decides to flee to London and seek refuge with her grandmother of all people; in doing so she enlists the help of Thomas Orde, son of the local Squire and her childhood friend to whom she is bound, reciprocated, by a sincere brotherly affection. The families of the two boys, learning of the elopement, think they have run away to marry secretly, and Sylvester takes the incident as a pretext for taking leave of the Marlows. On the way back he learns that the boys have had a carriage accident due to a snowstorm and stops at the inn in which they are staying. He thus discovers that Tom and Phoebe did not run away together, but that young Orde was helping her friend escape a marriage proposal she abhorred.