Why is there no one waiting to meet Jenny when the coach in which she is traveling stops on the deserted road to let her off? Before her mother died, did she not write Jenny's grandfather telling him of her coming to live with him? Why, after the grim journey from far-off China, does she have to stumble in the darkness through a tunnel of menacing trees to her new home? Surely a grandfather longing to greet his granddaughter, newly orphaned, would never allow such a thing to happen. But the real reason for Jenny's predicament is far worse than anything she could have imagined. For not only has the letter never been received -- no one believes a granddaughter exists at all! Only an appeal by the housekeeper earns for her the terrible choice of being sent back to China, or to the cellar to live as a servant girl. Is Jenny really who she has been told she is? And who in that great, gloomy house cares? Fearful Madame Dupray? Hateful Violet? Odd Lilly? The treacherous Crimpits? The chilling Winston Graymark and his toady, Jingle? The frightening ancestral ghosts whose portraits haunt the upstairs gallery? In this Victorian tale of deception, treachery, and betrayal, a young girl must alone find the answer to her question in the shadows cast by dim oil lanterns, and in the pounding of angry waves against the cliff below her cellar room.