Her Ladyship

• 1914
• Other, Drama

"Her Ladyship" has for this theme the marriage of a lady of noble birth to a self-made merchant, the strenuous efforts of a selfish, jealous, though surfaceably pious sister-in-law of the husband, to disrupt the union. Richard Dixon, the plain-spoken, but not over-diplomatic husband, is made to believe that gentle Lady Cecil married him for his money alone, while her ladyship, through the same insidious channels of information, most convinced, through the apparent consistency of events, that her husband wished selfishly to elevate himself socially through an alliance with her. Lady Cecil has a startling reversion to the wild ways of her girlhood, and dropping her dignity, seeks forgetfulness and excitement in the wildest sort of gaiety. Her husband is spurred to deeper dejection by the colorful insinuations developed by the new sensational conditions noted by the jealous Janet Marsh, his sister-in-law. He is worked up to such a frame of mind that he is to readily believe that one of his guests, Lord Sibley, who has been thrown considerably with his wife of late, was a former fiancé of hers, and, furthermore, that Lady Cecil has acquired the chloral habit. As a climax, through a cleverly planned scheme, Janet makes it appear that Lady Cecil about to further disgrace Richard by an elopement. The crafty Janet's scheme for preparing an unusually strong sleeping potion for Lady Cecil is by little Elsie, the nine-year-old daughter of Dixon, who tells of her aunt entering the room while Lady Cecil is absent at a ball, while Walter Dixon, Richard's nephew, corroborates the testimony of seeing her there, examining the drug vials at one o-clock in the morning. Through this testimony, and events following, the husband is brought clearly to see the great conspiracy in his family. He is happily reunited to his wife; she has a better understanding of him, and the mischievous and malignant Janet is driven from the scene.