In Episode 2, Lizzie Hexam, daughter of the corpse robber who found young Harmon's alleged body, is being courted by two desperate characters: Eugene Wrayburn, a dissolute barrister, and Bradley Headstone, a mentally-deranged schoolmaster. As their rivalry gets out of hand, Lizzie flees. Meanwhile, the once-kindley Mr. Boffin has become a tyrant to Rokesmith, who evokes the sympathy of the formerly haughty Bella.
In Episode 3, two low-life characters sifting through the dust mountain have found an alternate will from old Harmon, which they plan to use to blackmail Mr. Boffin. Rokesmith and Bella have secretly married, without Bella realizing her husband is actually John Harmon, her original fiance, about to claim his dust fortune from the Boffins, who for their part have been playing villains to test Bella's true character. Meanwhile, Eugene has a brush with death via Headstone and decides to do the honorable thing with Lizzie.
Adaptation of Charles Dickens' novel about murder and obsession that centers around the courtship of two women. A body identified as John Harmon, heir to a dust-contracting fortune, is pulled from the Thames. Bella Wilfer, his wife-to-be by terms of old Harmon's will, goes into mourning though she has never met her fiance. Bella is adopted by Mr. and Mrs. Boffin, inheritors of the dust business in default of young Harmon. The Boffins also hire the a very capable but mysterious young man as secretary, John Rokesmith, whose keen interest in Bella holds the secret to his true identity.
