Eventually the day comes when Ellen must say goodbye to her mother and travel in the company of strangers to her aunt's home.

After talking with the man, Ellen becomes determined to become a true Christian, which gives her strength for the rest of the journey to her aunt's place in Thirwall.

Ellen hates living with Fortune and comes to find comfort in the society of Mr. Van Brunt and other neighbors as she becomes more familiar with her new surroundings.

One day, discovering that her aunt withheld a letter from Mrs. Montgomery, Ellen runs crying into the woods.

The girls become fast friends and Alice adopts Ellen as a sister, offering to educate her and guide her spiritually, teaching her to forgive others and trust in the Lord.

Alice and her brother John, who is away at school much of the time, treat Ellen like family, even inviting her to spend Christmas in the nearby town of Ventnor with them and their friends, the Marshmans.

By the time a Humphreys relative dies in England and John must travel overseas to handle the family's business, Ellen (though sad to see him go) is a stronger person.

One day Nancy visits Ellen, bringing letters she has found while cleaning Fortune's house.

As a work of sentimentalist literature, the conflict created by the story is dealt with almost entirely through the emotional response that Ellen has to the conditions in which she is put in the novel.

Ellen's mother leaving for France due to her sickness is the conflict which sets the entire narrative in motion, which occurs at the very start of the story.

The first few chapters deal with how Ellen prepares to cope with the separation while simultaneously ensuring that, on the advice of the doctor, she refrains from causing any extra stress or fatigue on her mother.

It is readily apparent from the first page that this novel's style is archaic with lines such as "Driven thus to her own resources, Ellen betook herself to the window and sought amusement there.

And one can see that Warner's style was aimed at promoting Christian morals because one of the main themes of this novel is about finding strength in religious devotion.

Tears dropped into the water as she stooped her head to the basin,” [1] are found in a four-page stretch within which Ellen cries on five separate occasions, displaying how sentimental Warner's style was.

The novel paints an excellent picture of the Victorian era of the United States, and so the readers of the time appreciated its relevancy to their own lives.