Marion Fay relates two contrasting love affairs, each involving an aristocrat and a commoner! Marion Fay, a Quaker and daughter of a City clerk is being passionately pursued by the seditious Lord Hampstead, while the other romance involves the young and beautiful Clara... Trollope brightly evokes the grey working lives, plain homes, blank streets, and limited horizons of the dwellers in Paradise Row, all hoping for a better tomorrow...