Hertha, who has lost her mother in childhood, is, at the age of seven-and-twenty, becoming more and more embittered by her inactive bondage to a narrow-minded, avaricious father, who demands obedience to the pettiest exactions. Her elder sister, Alma, is slowly dying in consequence of the same tyranny, which has prevented her from marrying the man she loves. We meet our heroine, with her gloomy and bitter expression of face, first of all, at the rehearsal of a fancy ball, which is to take place in a few days in the good town of Kungsköping; and after being introduced to the various dramatis personæ – among the rest, to a young man named Yngve Nordin, who interests Hertha by his agreement in her opinions about women, we accompany her to her cheerless home, where she is roughly chid by her father, the rigid old Director, for being later than the regulation-hour of eight; and where, by the bedside of her sister Alma, she pours out all the bitterness of her soul, all her hatred and smothered rebellion towards her father for his injustice towards them. She and Alma have inherited a share in their mother’s fortune, but according to the Swedish law they are still minors, and unable to claim their property. This very night, however, a fire breaks out, and lays waste a large district of the town. The Director’s house is consumed, and he himself is only saved by the heroic exertions of Hertha, who rushes to his room, and carries his meagre, feeble body through the flames. This act of piety, and the death of Alma, who, in her last moments, extracts from her father a promise to give Hertha independence, win some ungracious concessions from the crabbed Director towards his daughter. He still withholds her property and a declaration of her majority; but she has power in the household, and greater freedom of action out of doors. A Ladies’ Society has been organized for relieving the sufferers from the fire, and Hertha is one of those whose department is the care of the sick and wounded. The patient who falls to her share is no other than Yngve Nordin, who has been severely hurt in his benevolent efforts on the fatal night, and is now lodged in the house of the good pastor, who is at the head of the Society. Here is an excellent opportunity for discovering that Yngve is just the friend she needs to soothe and invigorate her mind, by his sympathy and riper experience; and the feeling which is at first called friendship, is at last confessed to be love. After certain jealousies and suspicions, which are satisfactorily cleared up, Yngve asks the Director for Hertha’s hand, but is only accepted prospectively, on condition of his attaining an assured position. Yngve goes abroad, and for seven years Hertha submits to the procrastination of her marriage, rather than rebel against her father in his last years. It is only when Yngve is hopelessly ill that she sacrifices her scruples and marries him. In the mean time she has made her seven years of separation rich in active usefulness, by founding and superintending two schools – one in which girls are instructed in the ordinary elements of education, forming a sort of nursery-garden for the other, in which voluntary pupils are to be led to a higher order of thought and purpose by Hertha’s readings, conversation, and personal influence. Her schools are successful; but after Yngve’s death she begins to sink under her long trial, and follows him rapidly to the grave.