Behind the Mask

Summary

A marble-paneled counting house becomes a modern Golgotha when Midas-touched Mark Harrold coolly orchestrates the fiscal crucifixion of his rival; the ruined man’s blood inks the ledgers, and his orphaned daughter Margaret, forged in that crucible of grief, slips behind enemy lines as a demure secretary in the Harrold salon. There she discovers Helen, the financier’s porcelain heir, poised to ascend the aristocratic firmament on the arm of Lord Strathmore, a penniless title haloed in ancestral glamor. Margaret’s vendetta is surgical: she steals the bridegroom with mirage-love, weds him beneath a cathedral vault of deception, then vanishes, leaving only a note that flays his pride. Pregnancy, blindness, and penury follow—until Strathmore, incognito, becomes her unseen Samaritan. A scalpel’s kiss restores her sight, and in that revelatory instant the mask of hatred slips: she beholds her benefactor-husband, and the acid of vengeance transmutes to molten longing.

Synopsis

Financier Mark Harrold is responsible for the financial ruin and subsequent suicide of Stanton. Following his death, Stanton's daughter Margaret, seeking revenge, goes to work for Harrold's beloved daughter Helen. The latter plans to marry the dashing Lord Strathmore and thus attain her social ambitions, but Margaret, to avenge her father's death, wins Strathmore away from her by deception. After their marriage, Margaret leaves Strathmore, claiming that she never loved him. With the birth of their child, Margaret becomes ill and blind, but Strathmore finds her and gives her money under an assumed identity. Following an operation that restores her sight, Margaret recognizes her husband as her benefactor and realizes that she loves him.