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The story was already known to me, but I can't remember whether I've read it before or whether it's something I've absorbed from some other source. So there have been no surprises for me.
I'm not seeing Helen as saintly (I haven't actually finished part 2 yet). She took on Arthur when she was warned away. (It is interesting to see that "I can change him" was still an expectation in young women all the way back then - and just as effective then as now, we see.) And some of her dealings with Arthur have seemed rather less than saintly to me (bordering on antagonistic, certainly judgemental even before the extremes arrived). I am not saying she deserved to be mistreated, but I see the portrayal of Helen in this second part as rather more realistic than I expected after reading the first part: Helen, too, is flawed.
The chess game struck me as rather awkward, as if this was the only way that Anne thought she could contrive to show Hargrave's advances as undesirable. Helen doesn't seem to think it, but if I'd been her I'd have been worried it was a set up by Arthur, to entrap his wife and so relieve his own sense of guilt.
I am still struggling with some of the long winded passages, but I am also still sort of intrigued by the evolution of the characters - that much I do think Anne Brontė has done well.
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