Wharton creates a portrait of a stunning beauty who, though raised and educated to marry well both socially and economically, is reaching her 29th year, an age when her youthful blush is drawing to a close and her marital prospects are becoming ever more limited. The House of Mirth traces Lily's slow two-year social descent from privilege to a tragically lonely existence on the margins of society.

A crown prince doesn't want to marry a foreign princess, so he asks an actor to take his place.

Suffering from aphasia after being conked on the head, a man is coerced into robbing his fiancée's home.