Rich Man, Poor Man

A quiet clerk's Christmas Eve brings an unexpected newspaper notice into a New York boarding house. Mr. Mapleson, a shy resident of Mrs. Tilney's establishment, carries an advertisement seeking a man known by several names. Nearby, a report announces that the financier Beeston is critically ill. Maximilian Foster opens his novel with small domestic observations and guarded conversations, giving an ordinary evening the tension of a family secret.

The scene later shifts to Beeston's grand household, where his granddaughter Barbara, called Bab, prepares for her first dance. Flowers, an orchestra and a temperamental grandfather give this occasion both splendor and unease. Inheritance, courtship and competing attachments shape a story concerned with money and personal choices. Readers interested in early twentieth-century New York society can compare the anxious clerk's modest surroundings with the elaborate arrangements for Bab's evening.