Adeline Whiteoak is at the height of her sway as a vigorous and domineering matriarch of eighty. We see her daughter, August, and her sons Nicholas and Ernest as middleaged people and meet for the first time her third son, handsome and indolent Philip, father of Renny and Meg. Meg is a young girl with her unhappy love affair and Renny is in his fiery youth and first passion