Florence Warden

At a friend's house party, Gerard Buckland, barrister, is introduced to a beautiful, enigmatic young woman. Rachel Davison is living in reduced circumstances since the death of her father. She longs to provide for her mother and sister but, declares that, regretfully, she has only one, unemployable, talent -- sleight of hand, which she demonstrates by producing his silver pencil-case. Gerard is instantly smitten, but Rachel disappears -- from the party, and from society, before he is able to further their acquaintance. When he runs into her again, some months later, in London, she is beautifully and expensively garbed, living with a duchess friend, sister in boarding school and mother comfortably ensconced in pleasant quarters down in Brighton. Whence the transformation? Buckland learns that Rachel is now employed as an artist -- a designer -- at the astonishing salary of £800 per annum. The curious thing is -- no one has ever seen her with a pencil in her hand, she permits no visitors to her off-site studio, and when Gerard is strolling past a theater one evening, he could swear he sees her, disguised as a working woman, flit through the crowd and hand off an object suspiciously sparkly to a tall, broad-shouldered man. Gerard knows he can't trust her, but finds he can't live without her, and so he determines to get to the bottom of the mystery that is the dazzling Miss Davison.