More than twenty years after Lady Mason won the original dispute over a codicil to her late husband’s will and secured Orley Farm for her young son Lucius, she lives quietly with him while Joseph Mason, the elder son who believes that the estate was wrongly taken from him, continues to harbor deep resentment, and when the ambitious local attorney Samuel Dockwrath quarrels with Lucius over leases and begins investigating inconsistencies surrounding the old codicil he discovers grounds for reopening the affair, forcing Lady Mason to seek support from her longtime friends Sir Peregrine Orme and Mr. Furnival while those closest to her continue to believe in her innocence even as Dockwrath carries his suspicions to London and sets in motion a renewed legal attack that threatens to expose the truth behind the famous Orley Farm case.
