My Synopsis:

"Checkmate," said the Rector. This phrase begins and ends the book.

The chess game in Chapter 1 is between the Rector and the doctor.  Each man is father (both mothers are dead) to an only child.  The Rector's son, Hugh, and the doctor's daughter, Nellie, appear happily fated to marry although there is no official engagement.  The story opens on the evening of the day that Hugh has left for his post in India.  He returns unexpectedly in the dead of night with a very young woman whom he has known slightly as the child of a disreputable gambler who calls his daughter "My Honey."  The author takes great pains to preserve Hugh's reputation of innocence in the acquaintance—he's there mostly to keep his friends out of trouble.  He cannot abandon a sweet innocent child to dishonor and so he rescues her—not realizing until afterward that the child has grown into tall young woman, although still very young. 

Hugh brings Hetty to his father and asks him to care for her until his return from India in five years.  The assumption is that Hugh will marry Hetty upon his return.  Thus, all plans for the future and the dreams of the two families are upset. 

Worse, Hetty proves a difficult case, a huge contrast to the ideal Nellie.  Hetty "is ignorant, undisciplined, with no idea of manners or self-control."  She is unloving, and unlovable—or so it appears.  This is the story of two hearts (the Rector's and Hetty's) melting toward each other and learning love's lesson.  Hetty's adoption of a mongrel dog is the first step.      An encounter with an old friend of Hetty's father almost brings disaster but the Rector's strict sense of right and honor protects the child.  He calls her "My Honey." 

There is Evelyn Whitaker's usual fascination with the sickroom—but the Rector recovers and Hetty grows into a beautiful young woman, accomplished and loved by all who know her. 

"But I am not quite sure it is good for true love to have no  obstacles... and I'm afraid, such is the perversity of human nature, that Nellie never again appeared in the tender grace of that first evening, and Hugh hated himself for little criticisms that crept into his mind about her:  that she was almost too sweet and compliant; that she agreed too readily with other people's opinions, though of all things he  hated an argumentative woman; that she was a little too anxious to be  appreciative, and to rejoice with them that rejoice and weep with them that weep; that some of her ways were a trifle stereotyped, and the dainty neatness of her dress a shade prim, and her views of life  conventional and narrow, though he reasoned with himself that a girl could not be too far removed from that horror of horrors—the new emancipated woman..."