When Hannah Fox's younger brother Sam is ridden down in the street by Thomas Truswell, the spoilt son of the most powerful industrialists in Sheffield, she sets off to the Truswell's estate to complain. Lady Truswell is taken with the hot-tempered young girl who has come to demand an apology of her son. Promising to deal with Thomas, Lady Truswell offers Hannah a position as housemaid on the estate.

But Hannah's father forbids her to have anything to do with the Truswells. In his anger he reveals that his grandfather was once in partnership with a Truswell, who stole his silver designs and made a fortune that should have rightly been shared with the Foxes. Dismissing this as history, Hannah resolves to defy her father - only to find that the Truswells' taste for treachery is not all in the past.