"I ran again, but I knew I could not escape him... The years of convalescence had left me too weakened for sudden flight in the dark... I rounded a corner and before me an open space of grass led down to the lake--the lake where Jeffrey had drowned! I had trapped myself-and even as I slowed my steps my pursuer gave a shout of triumph and grabbed for me..." When Liza Durant is saved from drowning by Jeffrey Forrest, she little realizes how much this chance meeting will change her life. For Jeffrey is the heir both to a large business, and to the great estate that lies near it, dominated by the old manor house called La Deuxième--"The Second." Within days he proposes to the beautiful young woman; she neither accepts nor declines, but says that she'll visit him at his country home. But Jeffrey's father is killed, Jeffrey's so-called accidental death soon follows, and Liza finds herself enmeshed in a web of intrigue over the inheritance of the great house. Can she escape the clutches of a vicious killer? Or will the curse of The Second House claim yet another victim? Great psychological suspense from a master storyteller!