Jennifer Winfield goes to work as a residential secretary at the Manor House where the elderly Lady Barclay is researching a book of the family history.

Jenny had intended the job should be merely a means of filling in time until her fiance, Peter, returns from an appointment abroad. But although life is initially uneventful in the secluded Manor, it does not remain so for long. For the arrival of Simon Barclay, to whom Jenny becomes greatly attracted, and her meeting with the young American, Allan Howe, plunges her into an emotional upheaval not lessened by her subsequent broken engagement to Peter.

In the strangest way the past of the Barclay ancestors then begins to merge with the present in an intriguing, disturbing and romantic manner, but with sinister undertones that threaten tragedy.