Stella Fregelius: A Tale of Three Destinies is a 1904 novel by British writer H. Rider Haggard about a young inventor who falls in love with a mysterious stranger while he is engaged to another woman. As a novelist, Haggard is known primarily for his adventure novels.Summary: As the title suggests, Stella Fregelius: a Tale of Three Destinies is a story of the overlapping fates of 3 people in a northern coastal region of England. The story follows Morris Monk, an aspiring inventor, as he gets engaged to his first cousin, Mary Porson, and soon complicates things by falling in love with the daughter of the new church rector, Stella Fregelius. As Morris has prior engagements in this lifetime, he and Stella dedicate their afterlives to one another in a spiritual marriage. Shortly after, Stella dies and Morris spends the next few years trying to contact her spirit before dying of exhaustion.At the beginning of the story, Morris is toiling with his biggest invention: the aerophone. In a form that resembles the earliest phones, Morris designed the aerophone in an attempt to revolutionise the world of communication by allowing two people to speak to each other from miles apart. Morris spent 6 years on it before getting it to work. After its initial success, however, he couldn't repeat the results, so he spends the next two years trying to make the finishing touches. Meanwhile, Morris' father, Colonel Monk, is struggling with the mortgage on the Monksland Estate. As a retired soldier who lost his wife years ago, Colonel Monk hardly even manages to pay the interest on his mortgages. To stabilise the situation, Mr. Porson, Morris' uncle and the Colonel's wealthy brother-in-law, takes over the debt as a creditor. The main conflict of the book arises when the Colonel suggests that Morris should marry a wealthy woman to help ease the financial burden. Morris shows no interest in females, being described as "afraid of women." His interest is piqued, however, when his father suggests marrying Mary Porson, Morris' first cousin. While Morris still isn't very enthusiastic about the idea of getting married, he realises how well he and his cousin get along. Seeing as she is very attractive, quite intelligent and extremely supportive of Morris' endeavours as an inventor, Morris agrees to marry her if the Colonel can prove that she is interested.The next day, Uncle Porson gives the Colonel's plan his full support. It is quickly revealed that Mary has been in love with Morris ever since she was young, and the union appears to be a perfect match. Morris proposes to Mary one night after a dinner party, and the two become engaged. At the dinner party beforehand, however, Mary hears tell of the new church rector's mysteriously beautiful daughter, Stella Fregelius. Immediately before agreeing to her marriage, Mary teases Morris by saying she hopes he doesn't end up being "taken possession of by some strange Stella coming out of nowhere." Uncle Porson soon runs into health problems and has a minor stroke. The doctors suggest that Uncle Porson should go stay at his house in France to get away from England's cold and dreary climate, and the Monk and Porson duos leave immediately. Morris finds being away from his experiments in France to be a miserable experience, so Mary tells him to go home early and work on his aerophone until she and the others return for the wedding. Shortly after Morris returns to Monksland, a ship crashes into an infamously dangerous patch of rocks just outside town. The sailors from the ship bring Morris an unconscious man from the wreck, and as Morris treats him he soon finds out that the sailors deserted this man's daughter on the sinking ship. For reasons unknown even to Morris (perhaps the draw of Fate, as the book so frequently suggests), Morris sails out to the wreckage to save the girl.