Summary
A dew-kissed convent girl, Barbara Martin, trades cloistered hymns for the sulfuric promise of the city, only to be ensnared by Barton Sedgewick—her guardian’s lupine half-brother whose matrimonial résumé already lists a secret wife and infant. Their elopement detonates like a paper sun; within weeks Barton absconds, leaving Barbara shackled by bigamy and social stench. She pivots toward George Sedgewick, her staunch guardian, who proffers divorce like a surgeon’s scalpel. Yet Barbara hesitates, frozen, until John Brent—a lawyer whose gaze carries the hush of parchment and rain—awakens a second, fiercer heartbeat. When she finally begs George for annulment, the cosmic jest reveals: Brent is the very advocate who must dissect her marital carrion. Panic coils. Salvation slinks in through a keyhole: Barbara discovers Barton dallying in his partner Rhodes’ shadowed apartment, and from his careless heap of papers she extricates the matrimonial trump card—proof that Barton’s first vows were iron, hers mere tinsel. Document in hand, the nullity decree glimmers; the noose evaporates. She strides into the dawn, legally unshackled, to clasp Brent’s waiting hand.
Synopsis
After Barbara Martin, a naïve young convent girl, elopes with her guardian's degenerate brother, Barton Sedgewick, she discovers that Barton already has a wife and child. Barton then deserts both wives, leaving Barbara to turn to her guardian George Sedgewick for advice. George advises an immediate divorce, but Barbara takes no action until she meets John Brent and falls in love. Upon requesting that George arrange her divorce from Barton, Barbara discovers that Brent is her guardian's lawyer. Panicked for fear of Brent discovering her marriage, Barbara's quandary is resolved when she discovers Barton in his partner Rhodes' apartment. Through Barton's carelessness, Barbara is able to obtain documents which prove that his first marriage was valid, thereby nullifying their marriage and freeing her to marry Brent.
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