When Ellen Sedgewick sails halfway around the world to Honolulu in the waning days of the old Hawaiian Kingdom, she believes it is only to prove that her fiancee was not a suicide. But darker secrets await her in the brooding Waikiki mansion where she is to be governess to the blind little daughter of the aristocratic Talmadge family.

Stern, handsome Ambrose Talmadge, head of the family, keeps his dead wife's music room locked. Strange flute music plays by night, and the spirit of a wicked native prince is said to roam the grounds. Ellen's predecessor has mysteriously disappeared, and it soon becomes evident that someone near at hand is planning an even grimmer fate for Ellen.

When the Kingdom of Hawaii erupts into revolution in a night of flames and riot, Ellen comes face to face with her true enemy.