When Julia Maynard's step-grandfather dies, he leaves Julia nothing even though she has lived with him all her life and tended him in his last illness and loved him--and even though he appeared to adore her. But he does leave his precious unentailed home, Primrose Park, to whichever of his five nephews can win her hand within a month of the reading of the will. Four of them proceed to court Julia. The fifth--the new Earl of Beaconswood--does not. But then, he is the last man she would marry anyway.