Marrying Money

Summary

A threadbare attorney, Ted Vandeveer, inherits nothing but humiliation when his uncle’s testament unfurls like a paper tiger; reduced to pocket-change, he and his partner James Sweeney drift into a gilded resort where a hotelier’s blunder catapults Ted into a mirage of affluence. Cloaked in borrowed opulence, he magnetizes a coterie of fortune-hunters, none more luminous than Mildred Niles, broker’s daughter and heiress-in-waiting. Their courtship pirouettes on deception: each believes the other commands limitless wealth. When both family empires collapse overnight, the lovers sprint toward a penniless elopement, honeymooning in penury until a post-nuptial codicil surfaces—Ted was the secret millionaire all along, the fortune withheld precisely to immunize him against mercenary vows.

Synopsis

Ted Vandeveer, a lawyer without clients, receives notice that he has been included in his rich uncle's will, he and his partner, James Sweeney, are excited, then they find that Ted's cousin Archie inherited nearly everything. With the $700 left after paying their creditors, Ted and James go to a fashionable resort, where the hotel clerk mistakenly puts them in the exclusive suite reserved for Archie. Passing for a wealthy man, Ted attracts many eligible girls, among them Mildred Niles, the daughter of a wealthy broker. After Mildred and Ted become engaged, James encourages him to elope before the money runs out. When Mildred's father announces that he lost his fortune in the market, Mildred's mother persuades Mildred to elope before the news is known. Three days into their honeymoon, Mildred and Ted mutually confess their poverty and unable to pay their hotel bill, until Ted learns of a codicil to the will stating that he really inherited a million dollars. It was intentionally kept secret until he married so that no woman would marry him for money.