In an effort to establish herself as the new mistress of Manderley, Mrs De Winter revives the mansion's famous fancy dress ball. She is encouraged by Mrs Danvers to copy a dress from a painting of a family ancestor, but her husband is furious. Danvers's taunting reaches a climax as she declares Rebecca is still ruler at the house, just as an ominous discovery is made.

Maxim De Winter marries a woman half his age only a year after his first wife, the beautiful and accomplished Rebecca, dies. She finds herself in an aristocratic social world her middle class upbringing did not prepare her for.