Repenting his folly, he resolves to leave Harriet and run away with Alice, but is persuaded by the latter to fulfill his marriage vows and henceforth conduct himself honorably.

Her sister Gertrude, engaged to the priggish clergyman John Prescott, also suffers, her intended suddenly developing cold feet at the news of Alice's indiscretion.

In time her enduring patience effects her moral recovery in the eyes of the town, and her example succeeds in inspiring Tom to complete his own personal regeneration.

The New York Times "found some difficulty in getting at the [author's] purpose, ethical or artistic," concluding that it was "as a study of the human conscience, its powers and its limitations," that the novel was to be regarded.

"[1] A harsher opinion was expressed in The Critic, which declared the book "one of the most unconvincing novels that the present reviewer has ever read … psychologically false from beginning to end in respect of the main situations."

It allowed "one good chapter, in which Alice imagines her marriage day and restrains her impulse to drown herself, knowing that she is to become a mother; but as a whole, the book is exasperating in the extreme, because it does not ring true.

"[5] The Lamp, after briefly praising the "place for herself among the novelists whose work demands serious consideration" the author had made with Aliens, declared that "'The Test' strengthens her position, fulfills much promise, [and] justifies more expectation.

The story is simple enough and it is told simply, clearly, forcibly, with a certain fine reserve and freedom from hysteria [painting] the life of a little town, the souls and deeds of its people with keen insight, wide human sympathy, relentless logic."

Her folk do not live altogether in italics … and a vein of cheerful sanity runs through even her grayest chapters, insuring them against the morbidness that is the most dangerous pitfall in the path of the novelist who deals familiarly with souls.