Summary
A rain-soaked slumber on a tar-black tar roof hurls five-and-dime drudge Sally Manvers through a skylight of silk-stocking larceny: she interrupts Walter Arden Savage—languid blue-blood, part-time cracksman—rifling his own sister’s safe for the insurance sparkle. One whack of a cosh later, Sally has traded silence for a gilt-edged ticket to Newport’s gilded cages, where three predatory swains—Savage the ennui-oozing dandy, Donald Lyttleton the velvet-gloved rake, Trego the Stetson-sporting ore king—circle like jewelled hawks. Stenography for a dragon-aunt, cotillions dripping with champagne ennui, and a kidnapping mix-up (the dowager dons Sally’s domino mask and is bagged instead) climax in a moonlit masquerade where schemers are unmasked by their own reflections. Disgust propels Sally back to Manhattan’s foggy El tracks, but Trego, pockets heavy with Western ore and a heart suddenly heavier still, chases the elevated train—and secures a promise of life on Riverside Drive, where river mist rather than Newport’s marble chill will witness their prosaic, improbably happy ever-after.
Synopsis
After complaining about her dull life, shop girl Sally Manvers falls asleep on the roof of her apartment. Drenched from a downpour, Sally awakens and finds the roof entrance locked. She enters the apartment of society woman Mrs. Standish and encounters Mrs. Standish's brother, Walter Arden Savage, opening the safe. Sally protects Savage from a burglar, and after learning that he and his sister plan to steal their jewels to collect insurance money, she agrees to keep quiet if they take her with them to Newport. Although Savage, Donald Lyttleton, and Trego, a Western millionaire, woo her, Sally, who becomes a secretary to Savage's wealthy aunt Mrs. Gosnold, tires of society life. After a detective arrives, Savage plots to have Sally, whom he thinks will squeal, kidnapped, but Mrs. Gosnold changes clothes with her and is abducted instead. Savage recovers her, and at a masquerade ball the thieves are revealed. Sally returns to New York disgusted, but Trego, who earlier rescued her from Lyttleton, follows. Sally accepts his proposal and suggests that they live on Riverside Drive rather than Fifth Avenue or in Newport.
