Hilda Lessways is impoverished but exotic young woman who marries Edwin Clayhanger, a wealthy successor of family business. The novel parallels Edwin Clayhanger's story from the point of view of his eventual wife, Hilda, by telling the story of her coming of age, her working experiences as a shorthand clerk and as a keeper of lodging houses in London and Brighton, her relationship with George Cannon, which ends in her disastrous bigamous marriage and pregnancy, and her reconciliation with Edwin Clayhanger.