Southern states of America in the middle of the last century. In the society of respectable whites, the daughter of a wealthy plantation owner, Meredith Seaton, is considered a cutesy dummy, and she tries hard to maintain this reputation because it helps her cope more successfully with the secret and dangerous work she has taken on. But a meeting with the charming and cynical Quinn Devreaux, the owner of a steamboat plying the Mississippi, changes her life dramatically. She realizes that she has fallen in love with a person worthy of hatred.