When the Duke's affair is discovered and he is challenged to a dual by the angry husband, he escapes to Scotland in search of a wife. The Duke's mother invites three society girls to a ball she has organised in their magnificent castle, one of which, she tells the Duke, he must choose as a bride. However the father of one of the girls refuses to send his only daughter, and hatches a plot to disgrace the Duke by sending instead his niece Yseulta, to whom he is bitterly unkind as her father had disgraced the family name.

Dressed in a threadbare old black dress, Yseulta is distressed and frightened but happy to be far away from her abusive step-father, and soon falls in love with the beauty of the highlands, the home of her ancestors. But the beauty is tarnished as she discovers a starving family and then, as events turn against her, in desperation she tries to throw herself into the sea. In this beautifully told story, reminiscent of a fairy tale, we discover how love and kindness can truly conquer all.