Summary
A gilded cage of moonlit pines enfolds Marion Phillips—heiress incognito—when storm-crack twigs hurl her into the rough-hewn sanctuary of Richard Flint’s Adirondack lodge. Their first glance is a spark struck on flint: two strangers silhouetted by firelight, breathing the same resinous hush. Marriage follows before dawn’s disclosure of Marion’s dynastic millions, and the idyll curdles under crystal chandeliers that refract her friends’ mockery of Richard’s calloused palms. Pride flays him; he flees to a subterranean world where pickaxes ring like verdicts. Marion, abandoned amid ore-dust and echo, allows urbane predator James Cardwell to ferry her back to velvet soirées. Beneath the earth Richard’s pick strikes pay-dirt; above it, he metamorphoses into a Wall Street juggernaut, shorting the very securities that gild his wife’s name. Fortunes implode along with Cardwell’s smirk, and in the smoky aftermath the couple confronts the exquisite ruin they have authored—two hearts stripped to the quick, reconciling in the hush of a bankrupt dawn.
Synopsis
While lost in the woods, Marion Phillips finds refuge in Richard Flint's hunting lodge, and the two instantly fall in love. Richard proposes without realizing that his beloved is a wealthy heiress, a complication that jeopardizes their marriage when Marion insists upon living in lavish style. Embittered by the cutting remarks made by his wife's snobbish friends, Richard leaves Marion to seek his fortune in the mines. Marion follows but, growing bored, is soon persuaded by James Cardwell to go back to her glamorous friends in the city. Meanwhile, Richard strikes ore and determines to have his revenge upon Cardwell. Returning to New York, he crushes his opponent on Wall Street, obliterating his wife's wealth in the process. The barrier that existed between them thus resolved, the lovers are reconciled.
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