After showing Christiana and Mercy the man who spent his life looking downward with a muck-rake instead of upward toward a heavenly crown, the Interpreter led them into another room. At first glance, it seemed empty. Then their eyes found something that made them recoil. High upon the wall clung a large spider. The Interpreter quietly asked, "Is there but one spider in the room?"

The world Charles Ryder once knew — Oxford afternoons, summer at Brideshead, the careless beauty of youth — has vanished. Years have passed, and the country itself now lives under the shadow of conflict. Charles is no longer the young man who first entered Brideshead in wonder and delight. He is an army officer now, older, more sober, carrying memories that seem to belong to another lifetime. And then, unexpectedly, he finds himself returning.