Set in Bangor, Maine in the first half of the 1800s. Jenny Hager is a beautiful girl from the wrong side of the tracks (as it were — there were no trains yet). When her drunken father dies, Jenny runs to the house of the richest man in town, merchant Isaiah Poster. Jenny knows Poster is attracted to her, as is his son Ephraim who is off at college. As Jenny planned, Isaiah marries her. When Ephraim comes home to visit, she flirts with him and gets him to stay. She plays the two men off against each other, and finally encourages Ephraim to kill his father, which he manages to do on a canoe trip.

But instead of taking up with Ephraim, she takes over Isaiah’s business herself and rejects him. She turns to John Evered for help. John was Isaiah’s foreman and the fiancé of Jenny’s best friend, Meg. She soon sets her sights on John and convinces him to dump Meg and marry her. Meanwhile, Ephraim becomes a drunk and tells John all about Jenny. John goes off to a lumber camp to think. Meg follows, but just because she’s concerned for him. She believes in the sanctity of marriage and encourages John to stay with Jenny. John agrees. But Jenny doesn’t know any of this. She rides up to the camp and tries to run down the pair. Her carriage crashes, and she dies, finally realizing that she actually loves John for real and that he loves her.

Interesting, if somewhat spotty. Hedy is lovely, as always. The story was not my style, but intriguing in that Jenny’s evil ways were tempered by genuine concern for the poor of the town.