Pride before a fall... Lovely Margaret Stewart was a proud and spirited young lady―too proud to accept the unwilling hospitality of her only living relative. But in strait-laced New Orleans early in the 19th century, there were few means for a respectable young woman to make her own way in the world―and that was why Margaret came, as governess to the forbidding Villars mansion. In her charge was a child who seem possessed by satanic evil. Invading her dreams was the darkly handsome, fierce-tempered man who employed her. And closing in on her were hate and fear and mystery, as the dark abyss of the sinister past opened to receive her....