Summary
In the gas-lit labyrinth of Edwardian London, where promissory notes carry more weight than promises of the heart, Michael Dudley—a usurer masquerading behind the silkier surname Waltburn—trades solvency for social oxygen, bribing the imperious Duchess of Remington to haul his tremulous daughter Olive up the greased rungs of the ton. Into this transaction of titles and IOUs strides Captain Hector Grant, a scarlet-uniformed fortune hunter whose pulse beats faster for Lady Brenda Carylon’s pedigree than for Olive’s dowry, yet who plays ardent swain long enough to harvest the cash crop of the Waltburn coffers. Ennobled by the sudden death of a distant cousin, Grant sheds his betrothal like a snake its skin, pinning his own infamy on the guileless Earl of Ingestre and convincing Brenda that the earl has debauched and abandoned the now-pregnant Olive. Spurned, the girl bolts to a crumbling Ligurian convent just as the Apennines shrug off their tectonic slumber; a quartet of remorseful accusers—aristocrat, usurer, soldier, and wronged fiancée—race through falling stucco and candle-scented panic to reach her bedside. In the rubble, Grant meets the burial he once forged for another’s honor; Olive, bloodied but lucid, absolves Ingestre with a whisper that echoes louder than the aftershocks, while Brenda’s forgiveness rewrites the arithmetic of blame. Father and daughter return across the alabaster Alps, worldly goods shaken to dust, filial love the only negotiable currency left intact.
Synopsis
Michael Dudley, an English moneylender known as Michael Waltburn, is anxious that his daughter Olive be received in society and so arranges with one of his clients, the Duchess of Remington, to sponsor the girl in return for canceling her debt. Olive meets Captain Hector Grant, who is in love with Lady Brenda Carylon but nevertheless courts the moneylender's daughter for her money. Upon inheriting his baronetcy, Grant jilts Olive and then convinces Lady Brenda that her fiancé, the Earl of Ingestre, is Olive's betrayer. Olive, now pregnant, runs away to Italy, sending a letter to her father begging for his forgiveness. Lady Brenda, the earl, Waltburn and Grant rush to Olive in order to clarify the situation, arriving in the midst of an earthquake in which Grant is killed. After Olive absolves the earl of guilt, Lady Brenda forgives him, and Olive returns home with her father.
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