She is forced to take up residence with the local vicar, whose wife is astonished that none of the Stanleys' aristocratic friends have offered a refuge to her.
Eventually, however, the Davenant family returns from abroad and invite Helen to their daughter's new home, Clarendon Park.
The dénouement comes when Lady Davenant, also dangerously ill, returns to London at the same time as the General finally discovers his wife's deception and vows to separate from Cecilia for life.
[1] "It was in 1830–when already past sixty years of age–that Miss Edgeworth set to work upon the last, and what, at the time it was written, was possibly the most successful of all her novels–namely, Helen.
In reading it we are aware that the eighteenth century has at last dropped out of sight, and that we are well out upon the nineteenth, not indeed as yet 'Victorian', but in a sort of midway region, on the road to that superior epoch."