Minor Characters
Dolores Barbour
Dolores is a young Spanish girl, and a Roman Catholic, with whom Frederick falls in love. Frederick goes into business with her father, and he and Dolores marry. Mr. Hale and Margaret meet her only through letters.
Mrs. Boucher
Mrs. Boucher is John Boucher’s sickly widow and outlives him for only a short time, leaving her many children in Nicholas and Mary Higgins’s care.
Mary Higgins
Nicholas Higgins’s daughter and Bessy’s younger sister. At age 17 she is an untidy and blundering girl, but capable with housework. She briefly assists Dixon in the Hale household and takes charge of Boucher’s children after they are orphaned.
Dr. Donaldson
Donaldson is a Milton doctor recommended by the Thorntons to care for Mrs. Hale in her fatal illness. He is a compassionate man, quickly won over by Margaret’s strength and forthrightness.
Captain Lennox
An Army captain, Lennox marries Edith Shaw at the beginning of the novel. He is kind and brotherly to Margaret.
Aunt Shaw
A gentle, anxious widow whose marriage had been unhappy, Margaret’s aunt lives in London. She is Edith’s mother and Maria Hale’s sister. She is very concerned about upper-class proprieties and finds Milton, as well as Margaret’s accustomed freedoms there, “horrid.”
Sholto Lennox
Captain Lennox and Edith Shaw’s baby son.
Martha
One of the Hales’ household maids in Milton.
Watson
Watson is a wealthy industrialist who marries the much younger Fanny Thornton. He engages in risky speculations and succeeds spectacularly, and everyone praises his foresight and wisdom.
Mr. Colthurst
A member of parliament who visits the Lennox household at the end of the novel and talks with Thornton.