Too Well Beloved — Hebe Elsna

This, though a story in its own right, continues the history of the old country house featured in the author's previous novel A House Called Pleasance. But now the house had fallen into the possession of a distant, half-French member of the Grenton family, and we follow its fortunes through the reigns of Charles II, Queen Anne and George I.

Patience, the young Puritan girl who becomes the second wife of the current owner of Pleasance, is the leading character, and an unusual one, capable, for all her gentleness and loyalty, of a black hatred which none suspects. Patience is the ideal wife and stepmother, and only on her deathbed as an old woman is her secret revealed.

Was there something about Pleasance that induced ruthlessness, something evil and corrupt? More than one person thought so; more than one perceived the truth that Pleasance was the possessor, not the possessed.