Faros Daughter Part II

Deborah then meets Max Ravenscar, Adrian's cousin who is many years his senior and who feels he has to look out for the younger man. He goes to the gaming house and abuses Deb, rousing her temper. The book has a complicated plot, where Deb and Max quarrel and fight, and she tries to find a way of saving her aunt from bankruptcy without making a marriage that she feels would be wrong. Max has a younger half sister, Arabella, who is just out in society and very flirtatious and he tries to stop her from doing something foolish like eloping with a penniless adventurer. Deb meets a young girl called Phoebe Laxton who is the daughter of an impoverished peer. Phoebe is being bullied by her mother into marriage with a horrible old rake, Sir James Filey, and Deb who has a good heart, rescues her and hides her out in the house. Filey is furious to learn that his young bride has vanished. Adrian visits the house at times privately and meets Phoebe who is close to him in age and comes from the same rank of society. The 2 of them fall in love and he decides to rescue her by eloping and marrying her. Adrian matures and tells Deb that he may help out the younger Laxton girls but he wont allow the family to leech off him financially. Eventually Deb and Max make up their quarrel as he realises that she is not a vulgar and grasping woman as he had first believed and they admit their love for each other.