A young, inexperienced governess accepts an unusual post: the sole charge of two orphaned children at a remote country estate, on the strict condition that she never trouble their absent guardian with any difficulty, whatever may arise. At first the children seem angelic and the house serene. But before long she begins to glimpse mysterious figures about the grounds, a man and a woman who appear and vanish, and she becomes convinced that something menacing is reaching toward the children in her care, something the children themselves may know more about than they admit. James's chilling 1898 ghost story tightens, turn by turn, into dread.