Let down by her former fiance, Kate Mitchell resolutely sets out to find herself a job and answers an advertisement for a part-time secretary at Tor-Fret, a great lonely house above a village in the Northumberland fells Her new employer is the writer Maurice Rossiter Life has embittered Maurice since he fell victim to polio, and in his self-pity he tries to wreck the happiness of his elder brother Logan, who he lives with, and on whose charity he depends