Former miner Daniel Slade becomes a wealthy investor and runs for political office, ultimately becoming the governor of his state. Daniel's wife, Mary, is unable to adjust to a life in high society, often embarrassing him in the presence of his colleagues. Temptation arrives in the form of Katherine Strickland, the daughter of a prominent senator, who takes Daniel away from his old-fashioned wife. However, Daniel eventually realizes how much he loves Mary, and he returns to her.
Fearing that his daughter Patsy is becoming a tomboy, John Primmel sends her to a friend back East for education and refinement. Arriving in New York, Patsy discovers that her father's friend has died and his apartment is now inhabited by his son, Dick Hewitt. Dick allows Patsy to stay, and they hire a maid, a housekeeper, and a butler.
Sibling rivalry reaches dangerous heights when Ernesto suspects his wife Teodora of infidelity and his brother Severo, always resentful, fans his flames of jealousy. A series of events escalate to a duel and tragedy for all involved.
John Merrick and Vilma Walden, who fall in love at an embassy fundraiser in Vienna before World War I. Vilma's brother, Carl, who is a war veteran, poses as a rival for Vilma's affections. When war erupts, John requests a transfer to the Italian front, where he confronts Carl, who had borrowed his aircraft for a mission. John is devastated to learn the pilot he downed was actually Carl, leading him to announce he will no longer kill.
Unscrupulous stockbroker George Howard convinces Robert Sterling that he is having an affair with Robert’s wife Helen aided by Robert’s former flame, Rita Lawson who wants him for herself. Though Robert believes the lie, divorcing Helen and gaining custody of their child, Helen still wants nothing to do with George. Mad with desire he kidnaps her daughter and demands Helen sleep with him for the girl’s safe return. Forced into a corner, Helen agrees but once her daughter is rescued a struggle ensues with George and he is shot dead. Helen, cleared of wrongdoing reunites with Robert who has realized his folly.
U. S. Senator Frank Deering has spent his life trying to alleviate the misery of child labor. Judge Vernon, his closest friend, aids him in this struggle. Unexpected circumstances force Judge Vernon to borrow money from Henry McCarthy, one of the factory owners most responsible for the harsh and inhumane working conditions. Judge Vernon is unable to pay off the loan, and is reduced to accepting a bride from McCarthy. Later, the Judge is stricken with a heart-condition but, on his dying bed, he confesses the shameful act he committed to Deering. To keep his friend's name unsullied, Deering makes a deal with McCarthy and votes against the child-labor-act he sponsored. His colleagues and the world, unaware of his sacrifice, mock and jeer him.
Serama, the consort of Lucifer, is driven from Paradise by the Archangel Michael, who commands Conscience to enter human souls to judge and punish them. In the main story, society girl Ruth Somers, a reincarnation of Serama, prepares to marry Cecil Brooke, the wealthiest man of her set. Her guardian, Dr. Norton, an incarnation of Lucifer, constantly accompanies her. Ruth is summoned to the Court of Conscience, where the witnesses, Lust, Avarice, Hate, Revenge and Vanity, testify about Ruth's history of seducing and abandoning men. This behavior resulted in the suicide of Madge, the lover of Ned Langley, whom Ruth enthralled and promised to marry, and also the deaths of two rivals for her love. Ruth is ordered back to earth to learn her sentence. When Ned interrupts the wedding, Ruth scorns him and he shoots himself. After Brooke leaves her, the Court dooms Ruth to live with the torment of remembrance. Ruth sends Norton away, and then kneels and repents.
Warren Schuyler, a wealthy widower in a small Eastern town, is highly-respected until the citizens are financially ruined by devaluation of the oil stock he sold them. His daughter Ellen's New York socialite fiance' Roy Phelps deserts her after her father dies, but fellow townsman John Barrett comes to her aid, and she marries him out of gratitude. After three years of irritation from her mother-in-law, she again meets Roy and is persuaded to leave her husband and child, but on perceiving Roy's fraudulence, and following a serious illness, she reunites with John.
After losing his factory job, virtuoso violinist Tommy Breen is inspired by June Norton, who lives in the same boardinghouse to write his song, "When You Smile with Your Eyes in Mine." Song publisher Simon Berg signs Tommy and the song becomes an enormous success. Success goes to Tommy’s head, he forgets June, surrounds himself with Broadway lowlife, spends extravagantly, and becomes infatuated with Mona Merwin, a musical comedy performer. He hits a rough patch, and June asks Berg to help her save Tommy from himself, so he decreases Tommy's royalty checks. Tommy's Broadway friends desert him when the checks stop coming. Now that Tommy has seen the error of his ways Berg sends him to a country cottage he purchased in Flatbush, where Tommy finds June waiting to marry him.
Orphaned sisters Kate and Irene are separated as children, but each keeps half of their mother's wedding ring. Years later Irene marries John West, the head of a munitions camp. Kate, as fate would have it, happens to run the saloon in the camp and she and Irene become friends, but neither has any idea that the other is her long-lost sister. Matters take a turn for the worse, however, when Kate starts a romance with Cliff, Irene's adopted brother--a relationship that Irene strongly disapproves of. Complications ensue.
Hiram Danforth (William Farnum) is on a quest to find his birth mother, a search complicated by his upbringing and the social context of the time. The movie explores the themes of his murky, repressed past, and the journey he undertakes to uncover it.
Loutish Teddy Brant feeling trapped by his marriage and family commitments to the sweet Rose and their infant daughter Helen fakes his suicide and embarks on a dissolute life. Thinking herself free Rose remarries, and time passes contently. Years later, Teddy, now a hopeless derelict, wanders the country straying one night into the waiting room of a train station. He sees a young girl being accosted by an elderly gentleman who tries to entice her home. Teddy thinks nothing of the incident until he finds a purse lying on the seat and learns that the girl is his daughter Helen. Teddy hastens after them and in the ensuing fight, strangles Helen's assailant and then flees. Helen is arrested for the murder but is acquitted when Teddy staggers into the police station and confesses to the crime.
When a train crash kills Horace Barney, the heir to a fortune that his doctors and guardians were planning to extort the unscrupulous trio quickly substitute his double Jack Trevor who by chance was on the same locomotive but knocked unconscious. Once awakened, Jack realizes the duplicity but plays along to try and foil the plot and save the estate for Barney’s cousin Helen who is the true heir and with whom he has fallen in love.
Don Sebastian, Portuguese Premier, sets a price on the head of royalist Ricardo Madons. Madons is in love with actress Lola Montez, whom Sebastian also adores. Madons abducts Lola and compels her to wed him, but then does not hold her to the compact. Lola, who is really in love with him, repents having sent for assistance when she was taken. When Sebastian's soldiers arrive, Lola is nearly slain when she stops a bullet meant for Madons. She escapes with Madons. The couple find happiness across the border.
After being disinherited by their wealthy father for their wild and irresponsible ways, two brothers embark on vastly different paths. One turns to crime and the other follows the straight and narrow falling in love along the way. When their paths cross again both find their lives in danger and only one will emerge safely.
When jockey Jimmie Driscoll, responsible for making Jim Richardson's horses winners, is fired for being too heavy, he goes to the home of the late Judge Bell, the father of local horse racing. Jimmy is in love with the Judge's daughter Joy, who was left nearly penniless when her father died. Joy's brother Harry writes to her pleading that because he desperately needs money, she should enter the aging Vagabond, the last of the Bell racehorses, in the upcoming annual event. Convinced by crooked bookmaker Spike Bradley that Vagabond will win at twenty-to-one odds, Harry mortgages his half of the house for gambling money. Jimmie discovers that although Vagabond runs horribly on normal turf, she is a "mudder," meaning that she goes into a wild dash on wet ground. After Jimmie and Joy pray for rain, Bradley, learning of Vagabond's condition, threatens the jockey, but Jimmie, riding Vagabond himself in in the rain, wins the race and afterward, Joy's love.
Nekhludoff, a Russian nobleman serving on a jury, discovers that the young girl on trial, Katusha, is someone he once seduced and abandoned and that he himself bears responsibility for reducing her to crime. He sets out to redeem her and himself in the process.
Faced with the tragic responsibility of choosing between the happiness of her 16-year-old daughter Pamela or saving the life of an innocent man, Marie Baudin's first impulse is to sacrifice all for her own. But she has second thoughts that bring complications to all.
When jealousy and envy lead Mary Vantyne to make a foolish decision and commit an impulsive act she sets off a series of events that nearly bring heartbreak to all those in her circle.
Daniel Strathmore, has wealth and influence. He forms an infatuation for a beautiful adventuress and when a friend interferes he fights him and the friend is accidentally killed. Strathmore takes care of the friend's daughter, who later falls in love with him. She forgives the past and they marry. A lost film.