A girl of a wild upbringing is sent to an English boarding school with her twin sisters, a secret and a packet she will not open. L. T. Meade wrote more than two hundred books and knew exactly how a school punishes what it cannot understand. Betty's offence is committed in the first chapters and the rest of the book is about who will forgive it and on what terms. Twenty-nine plates, among them harbour lights by John Atkinson Grimshaw and Thames reflections by David Payne, carry the mood of a story whose troubles gather around a packet kept shut.