A peasant girl sent to make a claim on her family's ancestral home in England's Wessex is seduced and left with child by its current owner.

Years after Barry Thornton disappears from Panama while under suspicion of stealing American defense plans for the canal, his daughter Eleanor, now the ward of Barry's twin brother Dana, is still obsessed with the mystery. Senator Carew informs her that he has solved it, but he is murdered before he can give her the details.