Nicola's Virtue

In 1867 Nicola Douglas attends a London lecture given by Miss Maria Rye, the founder of the Female Middle Class Emigration Society, which inspires her to change her life.

With no family, but a good education, she boards a ship to Australia with high hopes of a fresh start in a new country as a governess. But Sydney is full of young women with similar hopes and equally poor prospects. When Nicola is at her lowest ebb, a benefactor appears, Mr Belfroy, whose past has made him sympathetic to wo...