Ernest Maltravers

Alice Darvil's world is shattered when her brutal father tears her from love and forces her back into his criminal, degrading control. Dragged through rain, hidden in peasant clothes, and passed among smugglers and thieves, she is treated less as a daughter than as cargo, her beauty and identity stripped away in a landscape of exile and menace. Yet even in flight, Alice discovers a deeper strength: when she escapes on the Irish coast, the knowledge that she carries Maltravers's child transforms her suffering into a solemn purpose, awakening faith, endurance, and maternal resolve. Years later, after childbirth, illness, hunger, and wandering with her infant, Alice reaches the home she once knew only to find it transformed and her hopes shattered. Her desperate search leads her from suspicion and gossip to the compassionate shelter of Mrs. Leslie, who is moved by Alice's innocence and dignity despite her shame. As Mrs. Leslie weighs secrecy against honesty, she also seeks counsel from a celebrated banker whose public piety masks vanity and ambition. Through Alice's ordeal, the novel explores class brutality, abandoned love, moral judgment, and the hard-won possibility of independence. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.