Singer Rosa Roma signs a contract with backer Ogden Ward, forbidding love, public appearances, and using her real name. She breaks the contract by falling for composer Griffith Ames, starring in his opera, leading to conflict, a stolen ruby necklace, false accusations against Ames, and ultimately, their reunion after the real thief confesses.
Tom Devon, alias Reginald Briand, is the mastermind behind an organization of gentlemen thieves, including Jimmy Stevens and Rudolph Gambier. Jimmy falls in love with Tom's innocent daughter, Gloria, after he rescues her from an embarrassing scene in a restaurant. Tom disapproves of the romance and decides to dissolve the partnership. When an embittered Rudolph kills Tom he frames Jimmy, but Gloria is determined to clear him. Posing as a thief, she seeks the truth.
Wealthy businessman Frank Powell falls in love late in life with Olive Meade, the sister of Governor Carroll Carson's wife Irene. One day Frank sees Olive embracing his younger brother Bert. As he leaves dejectedly, Frank discovers Irene, whose busy elderly husband neglects her, with society idler Rodney Foster.
When her drunken father dies from falling downstairs on the night of her engagement announcement, Helen Winthrop finds a note from him warning that drinking has ruined the family's past four generations. She breaks her engagement to lawyer Robert Craig so that she can test herself as she fears that her children might inherit the habit. After sacrificing her reputation to save that of her adulterous married friend Stella Scarr, Helen goes to a resort hotel where she wins a tennis tournament and flirts with Percy Farwell, the son of social climber Mrs. Honorah Farwell. In order to break up her son's romance with a supposedly disgraced woman, Mrs. Farwell hires Robert Craig.
Mary Turner is a young shopgirl who is unjustly convicted of a crime and sentenced to prison. Upon her release, she does everything possible to make the man who wronged her to suffer, always taking care to stray no further than the extremes of the law allow.
A man is drugged and appears to be a leper, until he is cured. He returns a wealthy man, but unrecognizable to his wife, who has married another man. He ruins their lives by swindling them out of their money, and then convincing the husband that his wife is unfaithful.
An exiled Prince living in Paris, begins a dalliance with an opera singer before returning to his wife.
Regular guest Francis Marchmont visiting the seaside Hotel Continental, now mostly deserted due to a diphtheria epidemic, meets and befriends a mysterious woman, "Mrs. Lucie Fairbanks," only to discover she and another woman are rivals, both common-law claimants to the fortune of his hated enemy, the late copper magnate Thomas Cadwallader Bennet, leading to a night of intrigue and mistaken identities in the empty hotel.
Retired sea captain Jonah Grundell is in charge of his niece Polly's fortune until she comes of age, or marries with his consent; if she marries without his consent before she is 21, the fortune goes to Jonah. He has handled the money so long he hates to give it up, so when Polly reaches 21, he manages to keep her in ignorance of the fact, and enters into an agreement with family lawyer Daniel White that he shall marry her and divide the money with him. White is a solemn old hypocrite, much admired by Jonah's spinster sister Myra; his one weakness is his love of the bottle. Fresh book agent Benjamin Bunter arrives in town with a flourish, meets and falls in love with Polly, and she falls in love with him. Bunter puts White out of the running, then digs up a birth certificate that proves that Polly is over 21. He forces Jonah to consent to their marriage, while White is left to the consolation of Myra.
Noble born but dissolute M. Jean de Segni receives word from his lawyers that his profligate ways, including keeping mercenary actress Dorothea Jardeau, have led to his ruin which he accepts with a shrug of the shoulders. As word spreads Jean’s father-the Duke, who has managed to keep the boy’s mother in the dark about her son’s true nature, realizes she will soon know. Terminally ill and fearing Jean reducing them to penury, the father decides to take his beloved wife with him and kills her. Jean is at first suspected but the Duke saves him by confessing his guilt. Nevertheless, everyone, including his Dorothea, believes the Duke lied to save his son, and after his father's death Jean finds himself a social outcast. An argument leads to a duel where Jean realizes his folly has killed his parents, and he fires in the air, receiving a mortal wound from his adversary.
Wealthy young broker Tom Raine is set upon in a lonely wood by a tramp, knocked out, and stripped of his clothes. Dressed in the tramp's rags, he reaches a hut in time to save veritable wood-nymph June from a beating at the hands of her cruel foster parents. They drive him from the place, but June saves him from being torn to pieces by their huge watchdog, and Tom falls deeply in love with June. They're seen talking by her foster parents, and the father goes after Tom with a club. A fearful fight results, but the timely arrival of Tom's family, who saw the affair from their auto, stops a tragedy. Tom explains matters, his family taking a liking to June, she returns home with them, and Tom and June marry.
Retired businessman F.G. Lawrence favors Philip Preston for a son-in-law; Mrs. Lawrence prefers Reggie, the Dainty Dude. There's trouble, right there. Mrs. L. becomes suspicious of a stout stranger prowling about the place and tells Mary, the husky cook, to point him out to Serena Slim, the slender sleuth. The mysterious fat man happens to be Mary's beau, so she sics Serena onto John Bouncer, Philip's fat uncle. Serena is some "shadow" and the police must be called in to stop the comedy of errors which follows. After explanations all around, Lucy nestles her pretty head on Philip's shoulder while her parents soothe Bouncer's ruffled feelings.
Shakespeare's tragedy of two young people who fall desperately in love despite the ancient feud between their two families. A lost film.
An optimistic girl survives city life as a shoe shine till she ends up in children's court. Just as she helps her geranium, Sally, to grow, a kindly judge sees her potential and takes her to his mother's country home to flourish.
Philip de Mornay, a courtier in the French royal court of the 18th century, falls in love with Daphne La Tour, the daughter of a nobleman. Knowing that her family would never approve of their marriage, he takes her and hides her in a brothel, but is soon captured by pirates. Soldiers looking for women to bring with them to a settlement across the ocean in Louisiana raid the brothel and take the girls, including Daphne. Later on the trip to the new world their ship is attacked by pirates--and she discovers that her lover Philip is on board the pirate ship.
Successful middle-aged manufacturer Frank Parry takes a business trip to New York, where he becomes infatuated with Eva Boutelle, manager of the Swansea Cotton Mills. For a time, their affair develops, but Eva remains true to her husband ...
A widow and her daughters join the Women's Service Training Bureau and become a nurse, a journalist and a landscape gardener.
Young marrieds Guy & Bee are ostracized by their supposed friends in town when Bee discovers she is expecting but the legitimacy of their union is called into question. Eventually the squire who performed their ceremony becomes aware of the scandal and produces the necessary certificate.
Carrying on with the antique business of her deceased father, Jacqueline Nevers is asked to catalog James Desboro's collection. When they fall in love, it induces the jealousy of Elena Clydesdale, a married woman who is also in love with James.
Henry Sanford, contracted to build a lighthouse at Keyport, is attracted to Kate, the wife of wealthy Morgan Leroy, who becomes jealous of Henry.