Summary
A honeymoon’s last champagne bubble has scarcely burst when Knox Randall, Wall Street’s brisk golden boy, trades the perfumed hush of his marital bed for the iron clang of ticker-tape ambition, leaving Ailsa—his porcelain-boned, quicksilver bride—adrift in a satin-lined void. Into this vacuum sweeps Clarissa, Knox’s serpentine sister-in-law, draped in sables and conspiratorial whispers, prescribing jealousy as an aphrodisiac. Ailsa, half-bored, half-desperate, flutters toward Porter Maddox, a louche financier whose smile uncorks like forbidden Burgundy; what begins as a jeu d’esprit mutates into high-stakes treason when Maddox siphons Clarissa’s pillow-talk for market-moving secrets. Clarissa, now deliriously lovesick, plots moonlit elopement; Ailsa, eavesdropping from behind a velvet portière, races to derail the tryst before reputations combust. Gossip, that voracious metropolis-dweller, gorges itself: Ailsa branded adulteress, Knox summoned by George Mott-Smith, Clarissa’s cuckolded spouse, the two men thundering through midnight arteries of chrome and rain-slick asphalt to intercept the illicit triad. At a shuttered Long Island boathouse, lanterns swinging like hysterical pendulums, Ailsa unspools the truth—her voice a trembling loom weaving confession, betrayal, and rescue into one shimmering tapestry. Knox, confronted by the spectral cost of his neglect, beholds his wife anew: not accessory, but axis.
Synopsis
When his honeymoon is over, Knox Randall shifts his attention from his wife Ailsa to his business. Feeling neglected, Ailsa accepts her sister-in-law Clarissa's advice that a little jealousy might re-ignite her husband's interest. Undertaking a harmless flirtation with playboy Porter Maddox, Ailsa discovers that Clarissa has fallen madly in love with Maddox, who is using her to accumulate confidential information regarding Wall Street secrets. When Ailsa overhears Clarissa making plans to elope with Maddox, she hurries to save her sister-in-law. Rumor spreads that Ailsa is a faithless wife and, upon hearing the gossip, George Mott-Smith, Clarissa's husband, notifies Knox and the two set out to intercept the guilty pair. Once they overtake the threesome, Ailsa tells all and Knox finally realizes the value of his wife.
