The story centers around a poor 13-year-old orphan girl, Lalita, who lives with the family of her uncle Gurucharan.
The two neighbouring families share a very cordial relationship, although Nabin Roy covets Gurucharan's mortgaged plot.
Roy's younger son Shekharnath (Shekhar), a 25-year-old, recently minted attorney, has a joking, bantering relationship with Lalita, his mother's protégée.
But a newly married Lalita had to conceal herself in the veil of her spinsterhood, as her uncle Gurucharan quits his fight with the law and orders of Hindu society and embraces Brahmoism, inspired from the angelic words of Girin.
His jeopardies in introducing his wife amidst the society because of the differences in wealth, religion and, more importantly, due to a precluded marriage of marrying an under-aged woman made him harsh and arrogant towards Lalita who, drowned in agony, decides to accompany her family to Munger as a means of healing her psychologically tormented uncle anguished by the sense of isolation.