It is a melancholy thought that men who at first will not allow the verdict of perfection they pronounce upon their sweethearts or wives to be disturbed by God's own testimony to the contrary, will, once suspecting their purity, morally hang them upon evidence they would be ashamed to admit in judging a dog.
Thomas Hardy, A Pair of Blue Eyes
The pair of blue eyes belong to Elfride Swancourt, who gets caught in a difficult love triangle. But she isn't the only one who makes bad choices. The same is true of the two young men, Stephen Smith and Henry Knight. (Actually there are also two other men who love Elfride, but they play relatively minor roles.)
Elfride meets Stephen first and falls desperately in love with him. They even run off secretly to be married, but she changes her mind at the last minute and returns home, but now with a compromising overnight stay with a man with whom she is not married. Then Stephen sails away to India for several months, a terribly unwise move as it turns out, for Elfride then falls in love with Knight, a casual friend of Stephen's.
Stephen returns to find the woman he thought he was engaged to now engaged to another man. He remains silent, as does Elfride, and Knight believes he will be marrying a totally innocent woman, one who has never even been kissed. Gradually the truth leaks out, and he feels betrayed and abandons Elfride.
Months pass, the two men meet and discuss the situation, then each independently races back to Elfride in hopes of a second chance.
All this might make a delightful romantic comedy, but this is Thomas Hardy, in whose books bad choices almost always lead to tragedy. Some critics have rated A Pair of Blue Eyes among Hardy's best. I wouldn't go that far, but it is a fine, if wordy, novel that offers a revealing glimpse into an earlier time so different from our own.
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