Howards End (1910) tells the story of two sisters, Margaret and Helen Schlegel, and their involvement with two other families: the wealthy and much-propertied Wilcoxes (the businessman Henry, his wife Ruth, their two sons Charles and Paul and daughter Evie) and the Basts (the hardworking lower-middleclass clerk Leonard and his wife Jacky). Visiting the Wilcoxes at Howards End, in Hertfordshire, Helen supposes herself in love with the younger son, Paul. This romance rapidly evaporates, however, and the connection between the Schlegels and the Wilcoxes then develops through a rapport between the older sister Margaret and Ruth. Unbeknownst to Margaret or indeed anyone else (including the reader), Ruth Wilcox is dying. The legal owner of Howards End, Mrs Wilcox scribbles a note in pencil specifying that the house be left to Margaret, but the Wilcoxes resolve to destroy this note and conceal the fact of its existence. Meanwhile the Schlegels (and especially Helen) take an interest in lowly Leonard Bast; we are introduced to his rather pitiful home-life with the largely unsympathetic, domineering Jacky. Prompted by a tip from Henry Wilcox, who is evidently privy to crucial knowledge ‘behind the scenes’ (140) of the London stock-market, the sisters advise Bast to change job: he accordingly shifts from the Porphyrion Fire Insurance Company and takes a position with Dempster 's Bank in Camden Town, on a reduced salary. Henry's connection with the sisters develops on account of the fact that they have to move from their rented house in Wickham Place: Wilcox offers the tenancy of his house in Ducie Street, then proposes marriage to Margaret. She accepts and they become engaged. Through no fault of his own, Leonard Bast loses his job at Dempster 's and is taken to the brink of ‘the abyss’ (225) of poverty. Margaret's and Helen's attempts to elicit Henry Wilcox's sympathies prove not only futile but catastrophic in an unexpected way. Late in the day and out of the blue, at Evie's wedding celebrations at Oniton (another Wilcox house, this one in Shropshire), Helen shows up ‘in her oldest clothes’ (222), with the Basts.