The Touchstone

New York lawyer Stephen Glennard, in an effort to raise money to pay for his upcoming wedding to his sweetheart, sells love letters written to him by deceased author Margaret Aubyn. Unsurprisingly, this action comes back to haunt him and his marriage, and exposes a betrayal that becomes the talk of New York society. In Wharton's signature style, the ideas of love and loyalty are explored in this brief novella--Wharton's first to be published in 1900--that has lessons on privacy and morality for the twenty-first century as well.