Joanna and her engagingly irresponsible brother Richard go to Dannock for the wedding of elderly Lunt Wilmot and his young bride Isobel. While they are there Joanna meets and is curiously excited by Peter Munro, a neighboring farmer. During a candle-lit scene in Isobel's bedroom on the eve of the wedding, Joanna realises with a shock that Isobel is not the Madonna-like creature she appears, and later, in the shadows of the darkening skating pond, she sees how deeply Richard is involved with Isobel. How Joanna finds happiness with Peter only for it to be rudely shattered by a memory from the past, and how, stirred by a heartbreaking discovery, she determines to fight for the man she loves?