In her role as a blind matriarch, Ma Siu-ying shares the limelight with Pak Yin as her begrudged second daughter-in-law who bears the posthumous child of her son. Her elder sister-in-law (Lam Mui-mui), also a widow, plots with the butler (Lau Hark-suen) to usurp the family fortunes by getting rid of the baby. By a twist of fate, the boy is adopted by the matriarch as the heir and entrusted to the care of the sisterin- law, who raises him to become a philandering spendthrift. All the while, the mother has suppressed the knowledge of the child as her flesh and blood out of fear, until she is acquitted of the framed murder of the matriarch, leading to the happy reunion of the mother and son. Ma gave an extraordinarily measured, nuanced performance as a superstitious blind woman, particularly in the scene in which spirits are summoned in the hopes of curing her son.