Summary
A marble-hearted magnate, Stanley, shattered by his wife’s adulterous betrayal, exiles his cooing infant—Nan—into the limbo of another woman’s house, paying blood-money that never reaches her lips. Years ossify into servitude: the child becomes chattel to Mrs. Hopkins, her fingers raw, her stomach hollow, her name whispered only by the wind. Hal, a newspaperman inked in idealism, stumbles upon this bruised Cinderella; their glances spark a fragile sunrise. To sever the bond, the matriarch brands Nan with a counterfeit curse—‘mulatto blood’—a lie sharp enough to sever veins of self-worth. The girl flees into a metropolis that chews innocence, lands inside a gilded bureau peddling ‘matrimony’ yet trafficking flesh. Under crystal chandeliers she is exhibited, catalogued, bid upon by tuxedoed vultures. One paddle rises highest: her own father, ignorant of the merchandise. In the auction’s asphyxiating hush Hal storms in, brandishing truth like a torch, unmasking the buyer and the bought, forcing Stanley to confront the daughter he once sold in absentia.
Synopsis
To remove forever anything that will remind him of his dream of happiness that was shattered by his wife's infidelity, Stanley sends his infant daughter Nan to be cared for by a woman named Hopkins. He sends money regularly for her support but never visits her. Nan is treated as a slave and never receives any of the money intended for her. Her first real happiness comes in the sincere love of young reporter Hal. Fearing to lose her to him, Mrs. Hopkins tells her she has mulatto blood in her veins. Crushed by the lie, Nan flees from the only home she has ever known. Ignorant of the world, she is carried unknowingly by the tide of events into what is termed a matrimonial agency but is actually something far worse. Nan ends up placed at auction and her own father bids for her against other millionaires. As he outbids them all, Hal, who has traced her, enters, just in time to reveal to the father that Nan is his own daughter.
