Charity is the adopted daughter of a mister Lawyer Royall living in a rural town that keeps her pretty bored most days. In Springfield, Charity sees people who are less conservative, people who are more academic, and she longs to belong in their community instead. She often fixates on a girl her age who lives there, Annabelle Balch. One day, she decides to leave, so she asks Lawyer to pull strings so she can get a job at a library. Secretly, she plans to save until she can escape her small town of North Dormer.
A hot shot from New York City arrives. He is Lucius Harney, a young architect who is visiting his family nearby. When Charity meets Lucius, she realizes that she is deeply in love with him. When she sends him the right signals, he realizes he likes her too, and he sleeps with her. She discovers that she has secretly bedded none other than the fiancé of Annabelle Balch. Lucius is amazed by Charity, it seems, and he gives her his word that he will break off his engagement to Annabelle and return for her to marry her.
By the time Charity realizes that she is pregnant with his child, she is beginning to suspect that he lied. She slowly begins to become paranoid and panicked, fighting to keep hope that he will return, but she realizes after long grueling weeks of frustration that deep down she already knows the truth. He left her. She goes back to her homeland, the Mountain, where she was adopted from. Her own adoptive father finds her and marries her himself in an attempt to secure her reputation.
