Stephen Glennard, the novella's protagonist, is suddenly impoverished and unable to marry the woman he loves.

Glennard was once pursued by Margaret Aubyn, a famous and recently deceased author, and he still has her passionate love letters to him.

Glennard removes his name from the letters and sells them, making him a fortune and establishing a marriage based on the betrayal of another.

The Touchstone is often dismissed as Wharton's early attempt at a sentimentalist work, which she would discard by the publication of The House of Mirth in 1905.

Scholar Robin Peel, however, argues against this and notes that the book may be a satire of the genre due to its use of irony.