Summary
A gilded patriarch, Warren Schuyler, presides over a postcard-pretty hamlet like a colossus of probity—until the oil shares he peddles evaporate into worthless paper and the town’s trust curdles into vitriol. His death leaves daughter Ellen clutching the splintered remains of privilege; her urbane fiancé Roy Phelps flees the stench of scandal faster than a silk glove can slap flesh. Enter John Barrett, the quiet wheelwright of civic conscience, who offers not rescue but respectful partnership. Gratitude calcifies into marriage; domesticity sours beneath a mother-in-law’s glacial glare. Three winters later, Roy re-emerges, sleek as a fox in a vicar’s garden, whispering metropolitan allure. Ellen elopes, child in tow, only to discover that Roy’s promises are gilt atop base metal. A feverish collapse in a rented room—ceiling cracking like conscience—becomes her chrysalis. She crawls back to John, who greets her with the unspoken grace of one who has already forgiven the future.
Synopsis
Warren Schuyler, a wealthy widower in a small Eastern town, is highly-respected until the citizens are financially ruined by devaluation of the oil stock he sold them. His daughter Ellen's New York socialite fiance' Roy Phelps deserts her after her father dies, but fellow townsman John Barrett comes to her aid, and she marries him out of gratitude. After three years of irritation from her mother-in-law, she again meets Roy and is persuaded to leave her husband and child, but on perceiving Roy's fraudulence, and following a serious illness, she reunites with John.
Director
Cast
