Rector's Daughter

this is the story of Mary Jocelyn, a clergyman's daughter who lives in a dull fading little village called Deadmayne. Her mother is dead, her older sister, who had mental difficulties, dies young and her older brothers all fall out with their father and go to live abroad, so she is very lonely. She has one or 2 friends of her own class but she is very painfully shy, and her father who is elderly and a very clever man, puts her down all the time. Her best friends are the village people and the servants at the vicarage who are very fond of her. Mary loves to read and does some writing, but her father criticises her work and only wants her to do the traditional work of the Vicar's wife or daughter, teaching Sunday school etc. When she is in her 30s, a clergyman, WIlliam Herbert comes to work in the parish and as his father was a friend of her father's, she grows friendly with him. He seems to like her and she begins to believe that she has found a man who might love her.