The Radlett girls (with cousin Fanny and friend Polly) begin to take their first steps into Society and in pursuit of Love. Of them all, only Lady Polly seems to have no interest in the latter.

Engagements to be married come about for good and bad reasons - and some are more approved of than others.

We are reminded that it is not only the younger generation which has amorous ambitions. Lady Polly finally chooses her mate, to the astonishment of the fashionable world and the horrified disbelief of her mother.

Lord Montdore's heir, Cedric Hampton, who is a distant cousin in Canada, is feared to be an obscure redneck. But truth can be stranger than fiction.

Lord Alconleigh's fondest memories of youth are of slaughtering Germans with an entrenching tool in the course of hand-to-hand warfare, and he has no greater fondness for foreigners of other nations. Thus it is that he lacks enthusiasm for welcoming the non-English into the heart of his own family...