Wealthy touring classical pianist Ellen Ewing is standing at the altar with fiancé David McLean when an intruder stops the marriage ceremony and accuses her of already having wed a few months prior. The stranger claims that this can be verified by the registrar at the small seaside village of Fairview (where Ellen's family has a home, and she indeed had spent time overlapping the date of the alleged nuptial). A call is placed by the Ewing family's longtime lawyer, Gregory Kent, accompanied by the district attorney, Eric Lowell, a recent former suitor still smarting sharply from his jilting. A record of the vows is found.