William Adamson is a naturalist who has spent years of research on insect life in South America. Returning to England in 1858, William is taken under the wing of Reverend Harold Alabaster, an amateur insect collector of great wealth who, like many educated men of his era, finds nature and naturalists all the rage. At the Alabaster country estate, William is instantly smitten with Eugenia, a pampered beauty whom he shyly starts to court and who, much to his suprise, accepts his proposal of marriage. While Eugenia flutters in and out of William's life, like a Queen Bee, he develops a friendship with Matty Crompton, a poor but highly sympathetic relation of the Alabasters' with whom he embarks on an elaborate scientific study that provides all the comfort and encouragement that marriage to Eugenia does not. Entangled in a web of conflicting relationships, William discovers that while he is learned in the ways of the animal kingdom, he still has much to learn about the secrets of the human heart.