Walter Hartrigth is supposed to teach Sir Frederic Fairlie's nieces drawing at an old country castle. He soon falls in love with Laura, the younger of the two students. Marian, her sister, tells him that Laura is already engaged to Sir Percival Glyde. Sir Percival insists on the wedding. But he has an enemy: "The Woman in White," who looks exactly like Laura. In an anonymous letter, she reveals that Sir Percival and his friends, the Countess and Count Fosco, are only after Laura's money.

Max Taurus, a sort of amateur detective, pursues the traces of general omni-present crime back to a partially demolished house. There, the remaining tenants try to gain pleasure and power from progressive abandonment in order to tear down their own conventionalities.