When maidmoiselle is engaged as a governess and chaperone for Christianne it does not take her long to see that under the gaiety and glitter of her sophisticated life the girl is harbouring real trouble: the result of a casual encounter at the seaside; an encounter which now in retrospect disgusts and horrifies her. Christianne is entirely unfitted by her upbringing to meet the blows and buffets of the world, and rather than confess to her parents what they must inevitable find out all too soon has determined to end her life. Mademoiselle is a hard, severe spinster, precluded from matrimony by her looks and her lack of dowry, but always cherishing her one consuming passion - to posses a child; and in Christinane's trouble she sees the means to gratify her desire, Through no love of the girl, she bribes, at a considerable expense to herself, her brother Georges to play the doctor and give a false diagnosis of Christianne's condition so that she can get her away to the country: later she has to give up the remainder of her life's savings to silence a blackmailing butler. Then for a while, on Christianne's return, it looks as though the girl will find the courage to tell her parents the truth; but too soon she is swamped by the extravagance of the welcme prepared for her and, as Mademoiselle as so accurately reckoned, she finds herself unable and unwilling to surrender the prospects before her for the sake of an unwanted child.