What should a young woman who has been disgraced and destroyed herself do? A lonely, unmarried mother with a child in her arms? Penelope Barnes is not discouraged, she firmly decided to forget her seducer, the frivolous earl's son Harry Graham, make a fortune in such an “unfeminine” occupation as brewing, and accept the marriage proposal of an honest village priest, ready to become a father to her daughter. But one day a ghost of the past appears on her doorstep - Harry, who returned to England from the fields of the Napoleonic Wars and with his very appearance threatens to destroy both her plans and hopes of throwing him out of her memory and heart forever...