North and South

Because of theological doubts, the Rev. Mr. Hale gives up his living as a Church of England priest. He, his wife, and their daughter, Margaret, leave the idyllic village of Helstone, in Hampshire in the South, and move to Milton, an industrial town in the North. For most of her youth Margaret, now eighteen or nineteen, has been brought up in London by her wealthy Aunt Shaw; she has rejoined her parents only after the marriage of her vivacious but shallow cousin Edith to Captain Lennox. The captain's brother, Henry, a rising barrister, had asked for Margaret's hand but, regarding him as just a friend, she declined his offer.