There was an undercurrent of fear at Meredith Hall, which, not so long ago, was a finishing school for wealthy girls. There was a strange hush on young voices, and an abnormal discipline for teachers and pupils alike. Evangeline Meredith, the headmistress, and her sister, Helena, were well enough respected by the townspeople of Seacliffe, but sill there were whisperings about the Meredith family and a curious reticence concerning the death of the former art teacher, beautiful Eleanor Vaughn. To Meredith Hall, with its boding gray walls and its fog-enshrouded turrets, silhouetted starkly against a stretch of New England coastline, came Nancy Hunter to be the new art teacher. Gradually all the hidden evil at the Hall began to take monstrous form and converge around her. But because Nancy had fallen in love with Philip, one of the Meredith heirs, and because she so desperately needed a job, she stayed on to defy smashing disaster.