The Murray girls like to go to church twice on Sunday, mostly so Rosalie can be admired and so they can walk home with various friends and suitors. Agnes finds these walks awkward because no one addresses her during the conversation, so she walks behind and pretends she is absorbed in her own reflections. As she walks in the sunshine, Agnes feels melancholy and longs for a different future.

Looking for familiar sights that remind her of home, Agnes spots three primroses growing on a bank above her reach. Mr. Weston approaches, picks the flowers, and gives them to her. He walks alongside her and asks questions about her favorite flowers—these include primroses and bluebells—and he says, in response to her homesickness, it must be a great comfort to have a home. He admits he sometimes feels jealous when he visits a cottage and sees a family gathered around their hearth, but he finds happiness in being useful. Agnes had heard that he lost his mother, and her heart aches with sympathy. She begins to think that it would be delightful to have a partner like him in life but cuts the thought off before she completes it, telling the reader in a direct address that some thoughts do not need to be shared.

Rosalie teases Agnes for flirting with Mr. Weston, which irritates Agnes. When they arrive home, Agnes goes to her room and prays for Mr. Weston; “the principal object of [her] heart’s desire” (87), she claims, is his well-being. She keeps two of the primroses in a vase until they wither and presses the third among the pages of her Bible, writing, “I have them still, and mean to keep them always” (87).

While Matilda is out with her dogs and Rosalie is outside reading a novel, Agnes works on finishing one of Rosalie’s watercolors. Beside her is Snap, a little terrier whose care she has taken over from Matilda, who grew bored with the puppy. Mrs. Murray chides Agnes for not supervising the girls. She thinks if Agnes were more amusing, Matilda wouldn’t want to be around animals all the time, and she instructs Agnes to gently remind Rosalie that it is not proper for a young lady to be wandering about where just anyone can address her.

Agnes finds Rosalie walking with Mr. Hatfield and plots how she might interrupt without seeming impolite. Mr. Hatfield hits Snap with his cane and demands Rosalie give him the sprig of myrtle she has been carrying, as a token. After he leaves, Rosalie assures Agnes that she is only amusing herself by encouraging Mr. Hatfield’s attention: “To think that I could be such a fool as to fall in love! […] It is quite beneath the dignity of a woman to do such a thing” (91). She wishes Sir Thomas were not such a scamp, or ugly, or a rake, but he is the only suitor of whom her mother approves. Agnes thinks it is vain for Rosalie to want to be admired when she does not return a man’s regard.

Agnes keeps a closer watch on Rosalie, but one day when they are walking, Rosalie sends Agnes off to check on a sick cottager when she sees Mr. Hatfield approaching. Agnes encounters Mr. Weston, who is visiting the same cottager. They exchange a few words, which Agnes says will not interest the reader, but she has never forgotten them.

Agnes rejoins Rosalie to learn that Mr. Hatfield asked her to marry him, and Rosalie refused. She recounts the exchange to Agnes, taking great pride in stressing her cool, even contemptuous demeanor. Rosalie is delighted to have mortified and humbled the vicar, and she can’t wait to tell her family she scorned a suitor, even though Mr. Hatfield begged her not to speak of it to anyone. Agnes feels sorry for Rosalie and is amazed at her “heartless vanity.” She speculates on the subject of female beauty, wondering “why so much beauty should be given to those who made so bad a use of it, and denied to some who would make it a benefit to both themselves and others” (98).

Rosalie regrets that Mr. Hatfield declared himself so soon, for now, she does not have his pursuit to amuse her. Agnes thinks Rosalie is behaving like a greedy child. As they walk to the village, Rosalie eagerly looks around for attention, while Agnes quietly wonders if she might catch a glimpse of Mr. Weston.

Rosalie encounters friends, and again Agnes walks behind them. Mr. Weston joins her, and he asks why she is not friends with the other girls. Agnes laments that her position does not allow her to make friends and tells him she does like to read. They discuss books, and Mr. Weston asks several questions about her interests. Agnes wonders why he might be interested “in all [her] moral and intellectual capacities” and says her “heart throbbed in answer to the question” (102), signaling to the reader that Agnes has fallen in love.

After her friends depart, Rosalie entertains herself by monopolizing Mr. Weston in conversation. As they walk home, Rosalie announces to Agnes that she has attracted Mr. Weston: “I have shot him through the heart!” (103), she claims. Agnes is stricken. She thinks of the parable of the poor man and his one lamb and the rich man with his thousand flocks, but she cannot go to her room and cry over her “blighted hopes” because she must join her pupils for dinner.

Agnes accompanies Rosalie to church on a rainy day and is happy that she might look upon and listen to Mr. Weston, though she worries that it is impious to adore him instead of God during church. After service, Rosaline stands on the church porch, waiting for the carriage. When Mr. Weston comes out, she asks him to visit an ill tenant the next day and settles upon a time.

A footman with an umbrella helps Rosalie to the carriage, and Mr. Weston offers his umbrella to Agnes. Out of reflex she refuses, for, she says, “I always lacked common sense when taken by surprise” (105). He nevertheless escorts Agnes to the carriage and gives her a look that “kindled in [her] heart a brighter flamer of hope than had ever yet arisen” (105).

Rosalie expects Sir Thomas will ask her to marry him soon, but before that happens, she wants one more man to lay his heart at her feet. She has decided Mr. Weston shall feel her power. As Agnes expects, Rosalie contrives to be out walking nearby the next day when Mr. Weston visits the ill tenant. She reports his great delight at the meeting to Agnes.

Agnes confesses to the reader that she has begun to pay more attention to her appearance. She reflects that women are praised for their beauty or accused of being plain, though beauty is a gift from God and not earned. She laments that though a plain woman might be good and long to give and receive love, she might be overlooked and left to die alone if she is not beautiful. The narrator says she might go on, but she does not wish to provoke the reader’s ridicule.

Rosalie reports to Agnes that Sir Thomas proposed. She cares mostly that she will be the mistress of Ashby Park. Agnes thinks Sir Thomas will not make a good husband, and she is amazed that Mrs. Murray encouraged the match. She expresses her reservations, but her opinion is not valued.

The wedding is set for six weeks hence, and Rosalie continues her quest to fascinate Mr. Weston. She prevents Agnes from seeing him at church or in the village but reports where she has seen him and what he has said. Agnes is aghast at Rosalie’s hard-heartedness and thinks excessive vanity is much like drunkenness. She prides herself on not showing how much she is hurt, calmly smiling even when her heart is bitter. “My prayers, my tears, my wishes, fears, and lamentations,” she says, “were witnessed by myself and Heaven alone” (113). Agnes turns to poetry to express her suffering and shares a short poem she wrote with the reader. She takes consolation in loving Mr. Weston from afar, though thinking about him continues to stir her emotions.

Two more concerns arise: Her dog Snap is given to the village rat-catcher, and a letter comes from home saying her father is unwell. Agnes imagines she can “see the black clouds gathering round my native hills, and […] hear the angry muttering of a storm that was about to burst, and desolate our hearth” (115).