Spoilt and willful Arabella Farraday hopes the fortune she inherits upon her father's death will help her find her mother who disappeared when she was just a child. But she has not counted upon the trustees her father appointed: Miss Finch, her puritanical governess, and Sir Henry Warder-Mull, her father's lawyer, who hopes to marry Arabella. But nothing can stop Arabella from going after what she wants. Every action she takes plunges her deeper into trouble and leads inexorably to the terrible truth about her mother's fall from grace.