In Rutlandshire, England, an aristocratic country gentleman spends his days hunting and drinking, largely neglecting his three motherless daughters. Having lost their mother at an early age to consumption, all three young women carry the fatal hereditary ailment and live with the quiet foreboding of an early death. The narrator recounts their lingering, sorrowful ends. The youngest sister, seventeen-year-old Caroline, is lively and playful; as her disease advances, her vivacity and outward beauty paradoxically heighten until she is found dead one morning beside her parlor harp. Her older sister Emma is deeply thoughtful and intellectually gifted. Living in seclusion, Emma develops profound insights on art and literature, despising pretense and offering a perceptive critique of Shakespeare's portrayal of capricious romance in Romeo and Juliet. As her illness worsens, she turns to religious poetry dictated from her bed before peacefully passing away. Marie, the oldest and most sensitive sister, remains alone. Her father had previously forbidden her marriage to Henri, an Oxford student, solely over political differences. Although the father eventually repents and recalls the young suitor from Italy, Henri arrives only as Marie is taking her final breaths. Resigned to rest beside her sisters in the village churchyard, Marie is carried outdoors into the garden air, bids Henri a final farewell, and expires in his arms. Reflecting on their forgotten existence, the narrator mourns how their pure, tender lives were entirely consumed by prolonged suffering and destined to end under three quiet headstones.