A landowner Gáthy and his wife adopt an orphaned infant at the birth of their own son, only to realize too late that they can’t tell which baby is which. They raise both boys as their own until, on the brink of the sons’ marriages, questions of lineage brought up by prospective mothers and meddling mothers-in-law threaten to unravel their family.

A Hungarian soldier returning from fighting in the Second World War marries the woman he believes to be the widow of a former comrade who he thinks died in the POW camp in which they were held.