Melissa is the treasured only child of well-to-do widower Clive Rochester. Her mother's grief-stricken family, the Sylvesters, are scandalized when Clive makes impoverished milliner Augusta Hawkesworth his second wife. For Augusta is not only lower class, she has an illegitimate daughter, Georgina. Defying the conventions of the Edwardian age, Clive brings up both girls as his daughters, though the outraged Sylvesters resolutely differentiate between them. Despite the tensions, Melissa and Georgina grow up close and affectionate. Only when ambitious fine-art dealer John Derrick enters their world does their relationship falter.