Romantic melodrama starring Robert Mitchum and Ava Gardner. Barbara Beaurevel (Gardner) is a decadent belle living with her great aunt and her cousin in 1800s New Orleans. In love with Mark Lucas (Mitchum), a handsome young research doctor at Tulane University, her plans to marry him are thwarted by a dark secret buried in the debauched past of her wealthy family. When she inherits a vast fortune from her grandmother, who left New Orleans years earlier under a cloud, Barbara plots to use the money to tempt Mark back - despite his subsequent engagement to another woman.