One of Our Girls

Summary

Across a velvet-dark Atlantic, Kate Shipley—Gilded-Age heiress, porcelain nerves sheathed in steel—glides from Fifth-Age opulence toward the Foublanques’ moss-choked Loire château, cousin Julie’s wedding her declared errand, destiny her undeclared host. What unfurls is no mere marriage fête but a danse macabre: Julie, dewy and tremulous, shackled to Comte de Crébillon, a man whose smile arrives a half-second before his cruelty; Kate, luminous outsider, witnesses her kinswoman’s bloom wither into bruised resignation. A spectral woman—veiled in scandal, perfumed in yesterday’s passion—materializes in candle-struck corridors, then plummets, silenced, down the estate’s ancient well; the verdict, suicide, smells of rot and cover-up. Enter Captain John Gregory, scarlet-uniformed Briton with sea-salt poise, whose gaze finds Kate’s and refuses to look away; their betrothal should seal the tale in moonlight, yet scandal’s ink is indelible. When Julie pens a desperate elopement note, Kate’s loyalty eclipses propriety: she slips into cousin Henri’s chamber to thwart disaster, only to be discovered amid conspiratorial shadows by both her fiancé and the predatory Comte. Honor demands she wear the guise of fallen woman, sacrificing reputation on the altar of cousinly love. From that crucible of whispers and candle-wax, the narrative arcs toward a courtroom-thunder climax: the Comte’s past murders exhumed, Kate’s name rinsed in public vindication, Julie emancipated to marry Henri, while Kate—still luminous, now battle-scarred—claims her soldier’s hand beneath an English sky crackling with victory-guns and bridal optimism.

Synopsis

American heiress Kate Shipley crosses the Atlantic to attend the wedding of her little cousin Julie in France, little knowing what Fate holds in store when she leaves her Fifth Avenue home for the Foublanques' chateau. Julie marries the profligate Comte de Crebillon, though she loves her cousin Henri, and Kate grieves to see her little cousin grow sadder and paler every day through the realization of her grave mistake. A great happiness, however, comes to the American girl, for she is loved by Capt. John Gregory, a dashing British officer, no less noble than he is brave and handsome, to whom she is soon betrothed. The Comte de Crebillon conceals a secret in his past, a broken and beautiful woman, who suddenly appears one night at the chateau and confronts him, after which she is never seen alive again. Old Dr. Girodet, the family physician, dislikes the Comte. Hearing a woman's scream on the fatal night, and being told of a mysterious, haggard face that had peered through the window of the chateau, he notices the Comte's nervousness and fear, and begins investigations which end in the finding of the woman's body in the old wishing-well in the garden of the estate. Suicide is the verdict given in the woman's death, and the Comte breathes freely for a time. He is harsh, suspicious and cruel to his girl-wife, and poor little Julie, driven desperate by his treatment and her love for Henri, decides to leave France with her sweetheart cousin. Julie writes Kate she is eloping, and the impulsive and generous American girl goes to Henri's room to save Julie from her folly. There she is discovered by the Comte and her own betrothed, Capt. Gregory. To shield her cousin from the Comte's fury, Kate conceals Julie's presence in Henri's room, and takes the awful situation upon her own shoulders, at the risk of her good name and her fiancé's faith and love. The development of the play thrillingly portrays a series of dramatic situations that culminate in the triumph of Kate over the insulting Comte, and the revelation of his mysterious and sinful past, which sets Julie free to marry Henri. Kate is made doubly happy by her gallant captain's faith through all her trying experiences, and "one of our girls'' at last weds one of England's bravest officers.