Stella Le Vere, an ambitious but struggling actress, is abandoned by her husband and is forced to leave her baby girl, Grace, in the care of an orphan asylum. Later, the child is adopted by a well-to-do and kindly family named Thornton, who bring Grace up in ignorance of her identity.

Aurora Floyd elopes from boarding school with John Conyers, but hardly a week has elapsed before she discovers that she has married a worthless libertine. She appeals to her father for aid and advice and he finally pays Conyers to leave the country for a year, so that she can secure a divorce on the ground of desertion.

Rosie Lee, the shabby, wan-faced daughter of "Daddy" Lee, a humble laboring man, becomes engaged to Jerry Brooks. Shortly afterwards, "Daddy" meets with a serious accident, and Rosie is forced to seek work as a ribbon clerk in a large department store in an effort to keep the wolf from the door and provide food and medicine for her aged father