Lost in a woodland daydream, cherubic eighteen-year-old Anita Lavenham is awoken from a reverie inspired by a sermon about the Devil by the sonorous voice of a handsome gentleman asking her to open the gate she’s leaning on – a gentleman whose imperious, yet raffish air leads her to think that he is Lucifer personified!
Anita and her two sisters are impoverished after the loss of their father and their Mama’s illness – and soon she is obliged