To cheer her, Ellen sends her to Atlanta to stay with Melanie and Miss Pittypat. Meanwhile, Scarlett gives birth to Charles’s son, Wade Hampton, and becomes depressed: she has to pretend she’s mourning a husband she didn’t love, and she misses Ashley. Both men leave for the war and Charles dies from pneumonia two months later. Two weeks later, Scarlett marries Charles and Ashley marries Melanie. Meanwhile, news arrives that the Civil War has started. He asks her to marry him and she says yes, wanting to spite everyone. Scarlett wants to run away but encounters Charles Hamilton, Honey Wilke’s beau. After he leaves, Scarlett is humiliated to discover that Rhett Butler-a strange man who’d been staring at her all day and who’d said the North would beat the South if there was a war-overheard her and Ashley’s conversation. Ashley admits that he loves her too but says that he and Scarlett are too different to be happy together.

Ignoring her father’s advice, Scarlett flirts with everyone at the barbecue to make Ashley jealous, then corners him and confesses she loves him.

After the twins leave, Scarlett goes to meet her father, Gerald O’Hara, who tells her she shouldn’t love Ashley because he is too different from her. The twins also share that Ashley Wilkes and Melanie Hamilton will be announcing their engagement at the Wilkes’ barbecue the next day. Scarlett maintains that the war won’t happen, and that the subject bores her. One day in northern Georgia, 1861, Scarlett O’Hara is sitting at her family’s plantation, Tara, with twins Brent and Stuart Tarleton, talking about the prospect of the Civil War.

Gone with the wind novel