copyright 1944; Coward-McCann publishers, New York; hardbound in red boards; inside pages are quite good with no markings; no dust jacket.
Plot -
In the 1840s, on an island in the English Channel, two sisters, Marguerite and Marianne Patourel, daughters of the wealthy Octavius Patourel, fall in love with the same man, William Ozanne.
Having settled in New Zealand, William writes a letter to the family proposing marriage to one of the sisters. The father cannot read the letter, so the mother does. The letter asks for Marianne's hand in marriage. Marianne decides to set off for New Zealand to be with him. William, expecting Marguerite, realizes later when he sees Marianne come off the boat that he wrote the wrong name in the letter. When the mother is on her deathbed, she tells Marguerite a story about love and marriage and tells her to apply it to her own life, as a hint that William was not the man for her.