Flower of May Part III

Andre follows his family to Europe and flirts with Fanny. She is drawn to him but she's not sure if he is really a serious prospect, and she is not aware of her sister's affair with him, which has happened only a short while after her wedding. Then during the holiday, news comes to Fanny that her mother is seriously ill and she goes home in a hurry. When she gets to the family estate, she finds that Julia is close to dying. The nun who is looking after her tells her that her mother is worrying in her weakened state about her elder daughter.. Fanny stays with her mother until her death which causes terrible pain to her father and to Julia's elderly father. As they begin to recover, Eleanor, Julia's sister, talks to her niece about the future. She had wanted to be a nun but gave up the idea because her father needed someone to take care of him and run their small estate. Now she suggests that she makes over the estate to Fanny, and that will provide her with a small income so that she and Lucille can go to University and study for a career. Fanny is happy to accept this offer, as she knows that she could not marry Andre when he treated her sister so callously, seducing her almost on her honeymoon and she is intelligent and does not want to bury herself in marriage and house keeping. Lucille too is pleased as she feels there is no point in quarrelling with her family over a career when she has no training to do anything better than work in a shop or be a governess.. Eleanor tells Fanny that when her father dies, she will give up her job of looking after the estate and leave it to a manager, and Fanny will get the proceeds... and Eleanor can go to Brussels and while its a bit late for her to be a nun, she can live in the convent and lead a religious life, which is what she always wanted. Fanny and Lucille plan their future, getting into university and studying and preparing for a more challenging career than housekeeping or the like.. and Andre returns to the Continent. Louise and her husband try to get their marriage on track... and Fanny's father tries to recover from his wife's death.