Basil, son of a father who values the family pedigree and who would not let him marry below his station, falls in love at first sight with a girl he sees on a bus.

Basil attacks Mannion in the street and tries to murder him, but succeeds only in mutilating his face by pushing it into the fresh tarmacadam in the road.

Basil's brother Ralph undertakes to buy Sherwin off, but meanwhile Margaret flees to Mannion, thereby acknowledging her guilt.

In her introduction (Oxford World's Classics Edition), Dorothy Goldman applies psychoanalytic theories to argue that Basil and Mannion, Margaret and Clara, are each like opposite halves of the same person.

Mrs Sherwin, Margaret's mother, is apparently feeble-minded and as such is the precursor of Sarah Leeson (The Dead Secret), Mrs Wragge (No Name) and other of Collins' deranged woman characters - though she is astute enough to suspect Margaret and Mannion's guilty secret.