Trollope's most "subversive" novel, this is a wide-ranging condemnation of group morals, collective prejudice and the devastating power that conventional values have upon well intentioned individuals. Mr Peacocke, a Classical scholar, has come to Broughtonshire with his beautiful American wife to live as a schoolmaster. But when the blackmailing brother of her American first husband appears at the school gates, their dreadful secret is revealed, and the county is scandalized.