When Арлину convict for encroaching upon life of magician is visited by a stranger and suggests to become the secretary, she consents. A choice is obvious: instead of death on a scaffold is possibility to begin life again. And then, that a sudden benefactor is an executioner, not terrible. What difference, for whom to brew tea and take apart papers? But all not so simply. Mortal chances follow by an executioner at heels. And he, alike, has a not alone skeleton in to the closet. Who he actually? How related to that takes place in the capital? Will prompt the echo of the past and heart. But girlish hearts wrong often, and an echo distorts reality.