Summary
In the velvet hush of a mahogany-paneled dining room, Jeanette Browning—luminous as a Pre-Raphaelite dagger—overhears Silas Stone, that sepulchral Wall Street basilisk, barter her flesh for her father’s solvency. She accepts the covenant with the poise of a high-stakes croupier, then quietly rewrites the rules: she will weaponize fatigue, chlorophyll, and the fiction of hereditary madness until the old predator voids his own contract. Over eight vertiginous mountain days she choreographs foxtrots under star-blitzed skies, midnight picnics buzzing with cicadas, gallops that rattle vertebrae, and moonlit swims that wring the breath from his calcified lungs. The coup de grâce arrives in the guise of “brother” Larry—a sun-bright vagabond lover recruited to impersonate a familial lunatic. Stone, confronted by the specter of cracked bloodlines, bolts like a spooked stag, only to be cornered by the laughing “madman.” Jeanette collapses into operatic grief, brandishing the threat of breach-of-promise litigation; the tycoon hemorrhages a six-figure balm, after which the conspirators reveal the exquisite con. Father, daughter, and counterfeit sibling saunter into an alpine sunrise, pockets fat with plutocratic penance, while the mountain air still rings with the echo of a game won by wit alone.
Synopsis
Jeanette Browning overhears Silas Stone, an aged Wall Street wolf, demanding her as his wife in payment for saving her father from financial ruin. Upon her acceptance of Stone's proposal, her father receives a check to cover his shortage. She then conceives of a plan to make Stone break their engagement so that she can sue him for breach of promise. Stone is invited to the mountains to visit the Brownings, and Jeanette pairs her youthful strength against the old man's advanced age. After tiring him out with dances, midnight suppers, swims and horseback riding, Jeanette plays her trump card when she introduces Stone to her brother Larry, the shame of the family because of his insanity which she claims to have inherited as well. Horrified, Stone attempts to steal away but is caught by Larry. Jeanette feigns despair at the loss of his love and threatens to sue for breach of promise. After Stone patches her broken heart with a check for $100,000, Jeanette confesses to her father that "brother Larry" is actually her sweetheart whom she pressed into service to frustrate the crafty old man.
