[1] Anna is a charming child who sees the good in everything and everyone: her cousin Sergei, her younger brother Petya, and all of her multiple governesses.

Forced to depend on the charity of her governess, Pinny, Anna takes a position as a housemaid at Mersham, home of Rupert Frayne, Earl of Westerholme.

Having made a promise to his late older brother, Rupert is bringing home a rich fiancee to help fulfill Mersham's many debts.

Soon afterward, Mersham's inhabitants and neighbours see Muriel is a selfish, rude, vain, and nasty young woman, despite her flawless appearance.

She is unfriendly to the staff, the dowager, the dog, and even to good family friends the Minna, and Viscount Byrne, bluntly insulting their daughter, the Honorable Olive, and her disability.

Upset, Cyril Proom, the butler, acquires a large sum of money and uses it to convince Melvyn and Myrtle Herring, first cousins of Rupert, to carry out a favour.

The distasteful Herrings and their estranged teenaged sons show themselves to be insane genetic mutations to Dr. Lightbody, a good friend of Muriel who studies Eugenics.

Eighteen-year-old Anna is a charming, graceful young woman who grows up in Russia but is forced to flee her country during World War I.

By the end of his time there they are engaged, though Rupert later realises that he does not remember actually asking Muriel and assumed this was due to painkillers and sickness causing memory loss.

He once saved Susie Rabinovitch's life, and so her father Leo lends him money to have Muriel fooled and frightened away from Rupert.

The housekeeper contracts appendicitis and while in the hospital, Muriel sees her chance to take control of Mersham and to make her own changes to the employee line-ups and actions.

Sebastien is said to have had an attraction to maidservants in uniforms since his youth, and gropes them and touches them when they bring him his meals but he leaves Anna alone, treating her instead like a daughter.

Minna Byrne is Mary's best friend and beloved stepmother to 8-year-old Ollie and three lusty, red-headed sons—Tom, Geoffrey and Hugh.

Ollie contracted tuberculosis of the hip at a very young age and has one leg shortened and on calipers—though she was born prematurely and has spent 3 or 4 years of her life in hospitals.

Anyone speaking ill of her within 50 miles of Heslop (her home) or Mersham would be found lying face down in a ditch with a bloody nose.

Her oldest brother Tom is Rupert's best man, a handsome heir to the viscount title, and in love with Susie Rabinovitch who finally agrees to marry him after possibly his 17th or 18th proposal.

Viscount Byrne is reserved and enjoys hunting or camping, has little interest and running the household, and married Minna out of need for a lady to keep house—within a year of his wife's death.

His sons instinctively dislike her and he does not love her at first, though unexpectedly all four grow completely devoted to her as she modestly runs the house, seeing its needs and disreputing wicked stepmothers from the beginning of time.

Mrs. Park, the cook, is like a mother figure to the other employees who meet in the kitchens with her optimism, friendliness and culinary skills, though she feels she lacks in the latter.

She is especially important to Win, a kitchen help who is stated to have an unspecified disability, though it is mentioned that part of it is the inability to speak.

When Anna finds him after she flees Muriel's ball, Rupert sees her crying on Sergei's shoulder and assumes that they plan to marry.