When his wife refuses to go to India with him, soldier Archie Winterton has an affair with a woman he meets there, who then becomes pregnant. Archie shoots himself, and his baby daughter, Ferelith, is sent to Scotland. Ferelith, born out of wedlock and brought up in an orphanage, decides on a career in law - a bold choice for a woman in 1930s Edinburgh. While at university, she falls in love with someone disastrously close to her. But her marriage to fellow student ends in disaster with a revelation about her origins and she buries herself in her studies. But love hasn't finished with her.