A Catholic woman's struggle after marrying the wrong man.

Mary O'Neill is brought up in Ellan, loved and cared for by her invalid mother within a house dominated by hostile and cruel relations. Mary is sent to a convent school in Rome at the age of seven and over the subsequent ten years her mother passes away and she grows in religious devotion until she decides to enter a convent. However, her father instead decrees that she should be married. Before returning to Ellan, Mary again meets her childhood friend, Martin Conrad, who is aghast to hear that she is to marry Lord Raa, a known 'profligate and reprobate.' But they are both powerless to oppose Mary's father's wishes.