Summary
Nethercote’s ancestral manors are mortgaged to the hilt; only a dowry older than the family crest can stave off ruin, so ward-of-court Fanchon Browne—half flapper, half Delphic sybil—barters her porcelain youth to septuagenarian plutocrat Peter Armitage, a man whose veins run with ledgers rather than blood. Before signatures dry, however, she stumbles through a sun-dappled copse upon Peter’s polar opposite: his meteoric nephew, a Byronic daredevil who gambles on futures the way poets gamble on hearts. Strategy crystallizes—Lilah, Fanchon’s mannequin-beautiful confidante, will bewitch the elder, leaving the nephew unshackled for our scheming heroine. Fate, ever the ironist, swaps name-tags: Lilah sashays into the wrong dinner jacket, and the man she vampishly ensnares is none other than the woodland stranger now besotted with Fanchon. Meanwhile Fanchon’s widowed aunt—her hair still smelling of 1890s rosewater—discovers that geriatric romance can be as giddy as gin fizz; across the ballroom prizefighter Tony, fists like Christmas hams, shadowboxes anyone who doubts Lilah’s radiance. When Fanchon raids the patriarch’s safe to bankroll the nephew’s market speculation, constabulary sirens scream “burglary”; the blame ricochets until the butler—silver-polished dignity and all—absorbs the scandal like a human blotter. Reputations reassemble: lovers pair off in the correct constellation, ledgers balance, and the final chord of a Charleston strikes up under confetti of moral forgiveness.
Synopsis
Fanchon Browne promises to marry elderly Peter Armitage to extricate Nethercote, her guardian, from financial difficulties. Before meeting him, however, she meets an attractive young man in the woods and persuades her friend Lilah to vamp the old man. Lilah, however, vamps the wrong Armitage, who turns out not only to be the nephew of the elder Armitage but also the young man with whom Fanchon is involved. Meanwhile, Fanchon's aunt falls in love with the elder Armitage, and Tony, a prizefighter, who adores Lilah, presses his suit. Fanchon borrows money from old Peter's safe to aid young Peter in speculation; when the safe is reported robbed, young Armitage is accused, but guilt is fixed on the butler. Thus, Fanchon is free to marry Armitage, Jr., and her aunt accepts Armitage, Sr.
