The romance of two children brought together in the same universe by a shared fate. Paul is the natural son of Marguerite, the daughter of Breton peasants, abused by a gentleman and forced to hide her sin "in the colonies." Virginie is the daughter of Madame de La Tour, whom her husband, "who died of pestilential fevers," leaves a widow and soon-to-be mother on the shores of a remote island in the Indian Ocean.