Summary
A penniless French marquis, Charles de la Fontaine, sails across the Atlantic as though chased by the ghost of his father’s squandered legacy, only to find that the New World’s glitter is merely gilt on a cage. Inside the gilded estate of American titan Lathrop, marble corridors echo with the rustle of dollar bills rather than ancestral whispers. Charles, hired as a kind of decorative aristocrat for the nouveau riche, locks eyes with Marian—Lathrop’s luminous, skeptical daughter—whose gaze is a blade of suspicion sharpened by every fortune-hunter before him. Rejection arrives wrapped in silk: Marian betroths the oleaginous Rudolph Miller, a man whose fidelity expires faster than yesterday’s stock ticker. Fate, capricious dramatist, traps Charles and Marian in a crumbling riverfront tower where moonlight drips like molten coin through cracked stone. There he swears an oath as reckless as it is noble: he will claim her only when both can stand on equal ground, gold for gold, soul for soul. Escape is cinematic alchemy—Charles swings from a frayed tapestry onto a passing barge, cloak snapping like a torn banner of defiance. In secret he bankrolls Marian’s feckless brother Frank in a speculative whirlwind that turns railroad shares into an avalanche of bullion. Rudolph’s clandestine philandering surfaces, shredding Marian’s last illusion. The lovers meet once more under the copper autumn light; the invisible rampart of wealth—‘the golden wall’—evaporates, and their kiss tastes of salt, rust, and newborn freedom.
Synopsis
After his father's death, Charles de la Fontaine, the Marquis d'Aubeterre, learns that the family is penniless and journeys to America to earn a living for himself and his sister Helen. The Countess d'Este secures him a position in the home of Lathrop, a millionaire, and the young nobleman instantly falls in love with Lathrop's pretty daughter Marian. Supposing that Charles is after her fortune, Marian avoids him and becomes engaged to the wealthy Rudolph Miller. Charles changes her opinion of him, however, when he and Marian are locked in an old tower, and, after swearing that he will only marry her when the two are equally wealthy, he makes a daring escape. Unknown to the Lathrops, Charles backs Marian's brother Frank in a financial venture, as a result of which the two young men become rich. Marian discovers that Rudolph is unfaithful, and with the "golden wall" of wealth that had separated them now obliterated, she and Charles wed.
