"Claudine, a young French girl, orphaned by her mother, is abandoned at the age of ten by her father in an authoritarian convent boarding school in Brittany. Without any explanation given to her, her parent ceases all contact with her. Nine years later, while still living in that boarding school, two lawyers visit her and announce the sudden death of her father, Jean Jacques De Reshe, and the wishes of his will. She is the sole heir to his vast fortune, but until she turns twenty-one, she must be placed under the guardianship of an unknown man, who, as she is informed, was a good and trusted friend of her progenitor. He is a British aristocrat who asks her to settle in his mansion in Northern England. The girl complies and travels there, only to soon discover that this strange and dark man holds the only key to uncovering deeply buried secrets related to her family's past. A terrible past that she herself was completely unaware of until now."