The Story of a Lie — Robert Louis Stevenson

A chance encounter in a Parisian café leads to a series of unfortunate misunderstandings that threaten to bring to a premature and irreconcilable end the envisioned marriage between a pair of young lovers. When eligible bachelor Dick Naseby meets the lovely young Esther Van Tromp -- a woman estranged from her cherished father, a talented artist whose success takes him around the world -- he is too well-bred and smitten with her to confess the truth: he knows her father well. He wrongly believes that to reveal the truth would cause great harm, and the consequences of his deceit soon become tangible.