La piedra de toque

Plagued by serious financial problems, which even jeopardize his intention to marry his fiancée, Stephen Glennard, the protagonist of this short novel by Edith Wharton published in 1900, he decides to sell through an acquaintance, and taking good care that no one know that they were addressed to him, all the letters that a famous writer who died, Margaret Aubyn, with whom he had a stormy relationship in the past, wrote him. Thanks to the money from the sale of the cards, Glennard manages to lay the foundations of a new existence in which everything smiles at him: his business is going well, he enjoys a happy marriage with Alexa Trent, he has an intense social life... The book that collects Margaret Aubyn's letters becomes, shortly after being published, a bestseller that is continually present in the conversations of the protagonist's circle of friends. Because of this, it is soon other concerns, very different from economic ones, that begin to cast a shadow over Glennard's placid life.