Summary
Petals drift like perfumed snow across sun-drenched verandas where Anabel Lee, fresh from finishing-school lacquer, steps into a world that still smells of wet paint and old money. Warner Richmond—social magnet, heir presumptive, human maypole—obeys a summons to his grandfather’s deathwatch only to be shackled by a deathbed caveat: shun the fair sex or forfeit the dynasty. The injunction collapses the instant he glimpses Anabel, book in lap, innocence incandescent against the camellia glare. A clandestine vowswap follows: candle, veil, a ring slipped on while crickets keep the beat. Warner buries the certificate, pockets the key, and waits for the old man’s last exhale. Fortune drops like a ripened fig; so does the mask. He bigamously weds Lya Saringo, velvet-voiced diva whose high notes hollow wallets faster than pickpockets. Paperwork burns, conscience smolders, cash evaporates. Abandoned, Anabel—believing herself widowed—rekindles a childhood flame now wearing a stethoscope. Domestic idyll blooms until a half-corpse Warner staggers home, delirious, brandishing a confession like a broken bottle. In the final reel, kerosene, flame, and fate conspire to raze every ledger of sin, leaving only love to conduct its own forensic archaeology amid the embers.
Synopsis
In the blossom time in spring, in the sunny southland, Anabel Lee returned home from the young ladies' finishing academy. Warner Richmond, the favorite of society and beloved by all the maids for miles around, received notice to come to his grandfather's home to stay with him during his last days. Warner did so and on his arrival was warned by his grandfather to forego the society of the fair sex, but Warner one day passed by where Anabel sat reading and to her he was her prince charming. Forced to marry Anabel, Warner insisted on keeping the marriage a secret on account of his grandfather's wishes. Just after the grandfather died, leaving Warner a large fortune, he became enamored with an opera singer of fame. Destroying all records of his marriage to Anabel, he then married the opera singer, but love in this case lasted until she secured all his money. Soon believing her husband dead. Anabel married the sweetheart of her childhood days. No cloud darkened the sky of their happiness until Warner came wandering in his drunken travels to the old countryside again. Attended in his delirium by Anabel's doctor husband, he gives out the story of his life. The doctor returns to find Anabel gone with her child. He follows. Warner in his delirium overturns a lamp and the house burns to the ground with all evidence to clear Anabel's name. But love finds the way.
