The Rescue

Summary

A luminous divorcée, Anne Wetherall, steps from footlight glow into a moral labyrinth when a desperate telegram beckons her to Wheaton: her former husband, Kent, the man whose name she has tried to excise from memory, is poised to marry Betty Jerrold—barely out of adolescence and the daughter of Anne’s lifelong confidante, Nell. What begins as a chivalrous rescue mission mutates into a psychological duel of mirrors and masks, for Betty’s infatuation is as fierce as Anne’s seasoned erotic arsenal is incalculable. Across parlors veiled in lace and moonlit verandas humming with cicadas, Anne deploys every weapon of mature allure—husky laughter, half-remembered private jokes, the slow unfurling of a gloved arm—to re-ensnare the man she once fled. Betty counters with the raw magnetism of untested youth, her cheeks flushed by the thrill of transgression. Between them, Kent oscillates, a man split between nostalgia’s narcotic pull and the promise of reinvention. When Anne finally reclaims him at the altar, victory tastes of iron: the girl is saved, yet the victor realizes the performance of reclamation has rekindled an authentic ache she can no longer dismiss as strategy.

Synopsis

After divorcing her husband Kent, actress Anne Wetherall returns to the stage. Upon receiving a plea for help from childhood chum Nell Jerrold begging Anne to save Nell's daughter Betty from marrying Kent, the ex-Mrs. Wetherall decides to journey to the Jerrold's home in the town of Wheaton to investigate. Finding Betty defiantly determined to marry Kent, Anne decides that the only way to save the girl is to enslave her ex-husband with her charms and therefore win him back. The two women then enter into competition for Kent, Betty matching her freshness and beauty against Anne's mature accomplishments of grace and artfulness. Kent finally falls under Anne's spell, expressing repentance for previous shortcomings and proposing marriage. Anne accepts to save Betty, only to discover that she is still in love with her husband.