A public tragedy tarnishes the reputation of the richest family in the United States, while, in another city, a hypocritical minister blackmails a powerful attorney. How are these situations connected? And what have they to do with the domestic squabbles and romantic entanglements of three young friends? These disparate players, and others, are set on paths that will intersect in ways that will change all of them in the first part of a present-day homage to the serialized melodramas of the Victorian era.