The Cloven Foot

Jasper Treverton, a wealthy landowner, is dying. He summons his nephew and only living relative, John Treverton, who he has never met, to Hazlehurst Manor, his estate in Devon, where he lives with his adopted daughter, Laura Malcolm, the orphan of his late friend Stephen. After Jasper dies, his will reveals an unusual bequest: he leaves his entire estate to his nephew John, on the condition that John and Laura be married before the end of one calendar year; if this is not fulfilled, the estate will be donated to found a hospital, leaving John with nothing and Laura with a small trust.

John travels back and forth between London and Hazlehurst, wooing Laura (despite alluding repeatedly to a dark and awful past) and eventually marrying her on New Year's Eve, just in time to fulfill the conditions of the will. Despite gaining a vast estate and lovely wife, he is morose, and disappears shortly after the wedding "on business," after secretly creating a legal settlement that grants the entire Hazlehurst estate to Laura.

Meanwhile, in London, the beautiful French dancer La Chicot, recently moved from Paris, has become the latest sensation. She is married to an Englishman named Jack, who is so subordinate to his wife that he takes her name and is known as Jack Chicot. The couple is unhappy; La Chicot drinks too much and flies into rages, while Jack has fallen out of love with his wife and has failed as a painter, making a poor living selling caricatures to comic journals.