Summary
Beneath the champagne shimmer of Gilded-Age drawing rooms, sprightly heiress Molly Allison pirouettes through ballrooms like a firefly trapped in crystal, her laughter a defiant Morse code tapped against the marble of social expectation. Because ancestral protocol insists that elder sister Julia must first surrender to matrimony before Molly can be “presented,” the younger girl treats the edict as mere background music, racing roadsters down moonlit lanes, betting on trotters, and flirting with danger in the rakish grin of Billy Wilcox. Into this gilded menace glides Count Renaud—slender, immaculate, his monocle a silver interrogation lamp that promises continental sophistication while concealing ledger columns of larceny. Convinced the Allison coffers overflow with negotiable securities, Renaud woos Molly with velvet compliments; she counters with a brazen masquerade, claiming to be an “Indian squaw” adopted by the Allisons, a fabrication intended to chill the predator’s ardor. The ruse merely reroutes his hunt toward the dutiful Julia, whose trusting heart becomes the next unguarded vault. What unfolds is a screwball carousel: mistaken bloodlines, forged marriage contracts, midnight elopements thwarted by runaway horses, and a final act that detonates in a county-courthouse climax where every mask—ethnic, economic, erotic—slips or shatters, leaving both sisters to discover whether love can survive once the last counterfeit identity has been stripped away.
Young and wealthy Molly Allison can't be "presented" into society until her older sister Julia is married, but that doesn't stop Molly from pursuing her usual wild ways. She finds herself in turn pursued by Count Renaud, unaware that he is a criminal interested in swindling her out of her money. To discourage the Renaud's attentions--and because she already has a boyfriend, Billy Wilcox--she tells Renaud that she is actually an Indian squaw who is just living in the Allison household. That doesn't stop the Count, however, and he turns his attentions to Molly's sister Julia.
