A devastatingly attractive young woman of the Edwardian era Zuleika Dobson, a true femme fatale, something of a small-time celebrity, manages to gain entrance to the privileged, all-male domain of Oxford University because her grandfather is the Warden of Judas College. There, she falls in love for the first time in her life with the Duke of Dorset, a snobbish, emotionally detached student who—frustrated with the lack of control over his feelings when he sees her—is forced to admit that she too is his first love, impulsively proposing to her.