Sham

Summary

A Gilded-Age Icarus in silk slippers, Katherine Van Riper pirouettes across Manhattan’s marble lobbies while her father auctions ancestral moonlight in the form of saltwater pearls; when the last chandelier bulb pops she is marooned amid florist bills, monogrammed gloves, and a single garnet pin. Her aunts—two sphinxes upholstered in sables—offer rescue contingent on matrimony with the oleaginous Monte Buck, heir to a gusher that bleeds black gold into every ballroom. Love, however, has already whispered its name through the lips of Tom Jaffrey, a lawyer whose pockets jingle only with ideals. In a midnight reckoning Katherine unwraps the velvet box meant to save her and confronts paste for priceless orbs: her patrimony was swapped for roulette chips long ago. Honor, like a cracked Sevres vase, is glued back together by an auntian check—inked faster than a gossip columnist can blink—yet the price remains her betrothal to Tom, now a transaction sanctified by silence rather than splendor.

Synopsis

Katherine Van Riper, a society girl with extravagant tastes, is left with only a few dollars by her spendthrift father and is unable to pay her creditors. She is refused help by her wealthy aunts, who insist that she marry Monte Buck, son of an oil king. When her situation becomes desperate, Katherine decides to sell the Van Riper pearls. She discovers, however, that her father substituted imitations and sold the real jewels, and in despair she refuses to marry Tom Jaffrey, whom she loves. To keep the family honor intact, the aunts cover her loss with a check, and Katherine then promises to marry Tom.