Desperate Remedies

In Desperate Remedies a young woman Cytherea Graye is forced by poverty to accept a post as lady's maid to the eccentric Miss Aldclyffe the woman whom her father had loved but had been unable to marry. Cytherea loves a young architect Edward Springrove but Miss Adclyffe's machinations the discovery that Edward is already engaged to a woman whom he does not love and the urgent need to support a sick brother drive Cytherea to accept the hand of Aeneas Manston Miss Aldclyffe’s illegitimate son whose first wife is believed to have perished in a fire; however their pmarriage is almost immediately nullified when it emerges that his first wife had left the inn before it caught fire. Manston's wife apparently returns to live with him but Cytherea her brother the local rector and Edward come to suspect that the woman claiming to be Mrs. Manston is an impostor.