Angelet and Bersaba Landor were born identical twins. But as they grew to adulthood, they found their likeness was purely physical. For while Angelet was outgoing with a sunny disposition, the passions that burned fiercely within Bersaba were of a different nature. Before she was seventeen Bersaba was convinced she was hopelessly in love with her handsome cousin, Bastian Casvellyn, and had undertaken to test that love. It was the unexpected intrusion of the lovely Senara at the Casvallyn's ancestrial Castle Paling, where once Senara's mother had arrived flung on the forbidding shores by a stormy sea, that brought an end to teh Landor twins' pleasant, if bucolic, life. In short order Senara had usurped Bastian's devotion, discarded him and swept off to London to wed the dashing Sir Gervaise Pondersby, leaving chaos in her wake.