When Adam Brandon, an artist, rents a studio in Danesmere, a large Elizabethan mayor house, it is with the idea that he may eventually buy the house from Mrs. Denby, widow who can no longer afford to run it. However, her daughter Philippa resents this stranger’s intrusion lnto the house she loves so much, finding him disconcerting - but very attractive. Philippa, comfortably engaged to solid, dependable Rupert whom she has known since childhood, is forced to ask - “What is love?”