Cirrus@Austlit

English clerical family tragedy. A canon turned his daughter out of home when she ran away to marry the man the canon considered unsuitable. She returned several months later, pregnant, to ask his assistance for them both but he refused if she would not leave her husband. She cursed him, hoping that he too would one day be refused assistance by one he loved. Some months later, next Christmas, he is called to her deathbed - and finds her husband too has died of starvation. He adopts and raises her newborn daughter, but one Christmas when she is 25 and he is ill with bronchitis she goes mad and he dies gasping for breath and her help ... Father-daughter-granddaughter theme; elopement; estrangment; rejection; remorse; retribution; death; madness; and Christmas. (PB)