Young Janet Scott loves books and learning, and is happy living at the schoolhouse where her grandfather is the dominie. Her world is shattered when he dies and the new schoolmaster's petty cruelty becomes intolerable. Sent to work for farmer Wull Foster, Janet becomes the target of his dangerous lechery, and escapes. Taken in by the kind philanthropist Josiah Saunders, an old friend of her grandfather's, she is pitched into a dilemma when he offers her the security of an amiable but passionless marriage. For her heart belongs to another: her childhood friend, the penniless lawyer's clerk Fingal McLauchlan...
