When Estelle Wolfe, a society scion in her early sixties, receives a letter from a man claiming to be an old friend of her husband's - who has been dead for some twelve years - a wonderful dance of love and suspicion is set in motion. Estelle invites this man, Dr. Count Francesco von Cockleburg, to dinner at her Fifth Avenue apartment. He claims to have won renown - but made no money - as a poet, tympanist, and martial artist.

Taken not just by his flatteries and bravado, but also by his allusions to some mysterious past suffering, Estelle asks him, and his beloved lapdog, to spend the summer with her at her house in Westchester.

In an all-too-elegant but hardly tranquil setting, where affection and affectation, love and loyalty, get hopelessly confused, Estelle and her two daughters witness the count's most incredible performances. As they alternately draw and torture the truth out of him, they learn more and more, much more than they bargained for - about themselves.