Daughters of the Rich by Edgar Saltus

Name: Daughters of the Rich
Author: Edgar Saltus

Edgar Saltus's Daughters of the Rich centers on Gerard Welden, an American sportsman, and Maud Barhyte, a New York girl to whom he is devoted. Welden and Maud fall passionately in love but delay marriage while pursuing an affair, first in New York and then in Paris, even as Welden becomes engaged to Maud and, separately, is pursued by Sally Malakoff, born Sally Kandy, who had been coerced by her mother, Mrs. Kandy, into an unhappy marriage to the mercenary Duc de Malakoff. At a Deauville house party, a violent storm coincides with catastrophe: Welden, delayed returning from Paris, bursts into the room he believes is Maud's and glimpses a woman with her hair through the darkness in Malakoff's arms, then hears the door bolted against him. Sally restrains him from breaking it down, telling him the woman would not be there unless she wished it. Sally, discovering that Malakoff is with a mistress, seizes the moment: she urges Welden to challenge Malakoff to a duel but swears him to silence about the cause, while she herself uses the scandal to obtain a divorce, naming Maud (falsely) as corespondent when questioned by Welden. Welden fights and nearly kills Malakoff in a sword duel arranged through his second, Louis Le Hillel, and Baron Louradour. Immediately after, in a hurdle race at Chantilly he had promised to ride, a lightning flash startles his horse and he falls, suffering fractures including a skull injury, and is nursed back to health at the Comte de Dol's house — with Sally, now divorced, at his bedside. Believing Maud has betrayed him with Malakoff, and worn down by illness and Sally's attentions, Welden agrees to marry her. They travel to India and Hong Kong, marry, and settle at White Peacocks, a rented estate at Miramar near Santa Barbara, California, arranged through the real-estate agent Wicks. There Sally is found murdered, her throat cut, her valuable rings missing. Wicks summons Welden, who is questioned by the local police chief and coroner; suspicion falls briefly on a lame Irish ostler, who is cleared by an alibi. Welden offers a large reward for the killer's capture and for the rings' recovery, which stirs speculation and inflames Wicks's hopes of profiting from the case. An inquest returns a verdict against persons unknown, though later, on manufactured evidence, the maid's husband-adjacent servant Perkins (of the devoted couple Harris and Perkins) is indicted; Welden hurries back east and then returns when he learns the prosecution has collapsed and Perkins has been released. Only gradually is revealed, through Welden's private reconstruction to Maud, that Sally had intercepted and hidden a letter Maud wrote from Deauville — a letter revealing that Maud, not Sally, had gone to be with her injured father, and that the woman Welden actually saw with Malakoff that night was his mistress, Mme. Oppensheim, who resembled Maud in coloring. Sally's concealment of the letter caused Welden's fatal misunderstanding, drove the duel, and paved the way for her own marriage to him. Welden, having found the letter among Sally's things before her death, had staged evidence of the "stolen" rings (actually placed in her coffin) to protect an innocent party from wrongful conviction if suspicion should ever fall that far, while privately regarding Sally's murder as a deserved judgment rather than a loss. Reconciled with Maud in New York, despite her father General Barhyte's furious objections to the renewed engagement, Welden and Maud declare themselves bound to each other permanently, accepting the general's threat of disownment as the price of their reunion.

By Edgar Saltus · First published 1909 · Genre: Mystery/Crime Fiction, Literary Realism/Naturalism, Social Satire · 43,871 words

First lines

The People in It / Gerard Welden, M. F. H., An American sportsman / Maud Barhyte, a New York girl of the fashionable set / Sally Malakoff, afterward Mrs. Welden / The Duc de Malakoff, Sally's first husband / Mrs. Kandy, Sally's mother, a rich widow / General Barhyte, Maud's father, a rich widower / The Comte de Dol, a French sportsman / The Marquis Aquaviva, an Italian sportsman / Prince Kara, a Russian sportsman / Lord Ferrers, an English sportsman / Mull Cantire, undersecretary, British Embassy, Paris / Mme. Oppensheim, a mondaine / Mme. de Cérisy, another mondaine / The Princesse de Solférino, a third mondaine / Louis Le Hillel, a swordsman / Baron Louradour, another swordsman / Dr. Binet-Valmer, one of the lights of French science / Society people, maîtres d'hôtel, footmen, chauffeurs, trainers, stable lads, surgeons, lawyers, a coroner, a chief of police

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Daughters of the Rich is listed on Textopian as a novel by Edgar Saltus, dated 1909 CE.

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Work type: Novel
Author: Edgar Saltus
Date: 1909 CE
Language: English
Genres: Mystery/Crime Fiction, Literary Realism/Naturalism, Social Satire, Domestic Drama, Romance
Length: 43,871 words
Structure: 1 section, 1,168 paragraphs
Reading fit: Fairly Easy (7th Grade)

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Genres

Mystery/Crime Fiction — The narrative's central plot revolves around the murder of Mrs. Welden and the subsequent investigation, including the arrest of a suspect, an inquest, and the offer of substantial rewards for information leading to conviction.
Literary Realism/Naturalism — The novel employs detailed psychological analysis of characters, naturalistic description of settings and social environments, and a detached narrative perspective characteristic of Saltus's realist approach to depicting wealth and social behavior.
Social Satire — The work contains sustained, sharp critique of wealthy society's conventions, including satirical depictions of marriage as mercenary transaction, the moral bankruptcy of aristocracy, and the hypocrisy of the fashionable set across New York and Paris.
Domestic Drama — Multiple marriage and family conflicts drive the narrative: Malakoff's abandonment of Sally after marriage, Welden's separation from his wife, and the complex relationships between Maud, her father, and Welden form central emotional conflicts.