Yellowing on book jacket and pages due to age Doubleday & Company, 1970 book Club Edition, 374 pages Victoria Holt, the acknowledged master in her field, is at her spell-binding best in this new novel of romance, adventure and suspense. Her heroine is Anna Brett, a young woman who had been raised by her strong-willed maiden aunt in an historic mansion in a prosperous English seaport. Anna seemed destined to follow her aunt's footsteps into a secure but unrewarding spinsterhood when a series of reversals led her to take a position as governess in the home of the town's richest and most powerful family. There she not only became fascinated by the mysterious shadows that lay across the family's past but also, almost against her will, fell in love with a handsome, dashing man she could not hope to marry-the illegitimate son of the family's patriarch.