This morality play of the starts off with Grace Vaughn running off with married man Dudley Kent (Wyndham Standing). While sailing to England, they meet Mr. and Mrs. Hargrove. Mrs. Hargrove tries to talk Grace out of ruining her life, but the girl won't listen. After a few months, Kent leaves Grace and she gets mixed up with a woman who runs a house of ill repute.

Sonia Smirnov, a Paris opera singer known as "The Black Butterfly", starts an affair with young Alan Hall. Hall, however, is still pining over his previous lover, a young peasant girl.

News is received by Sir Jeoffrey, a dissolute roué, whose contempt for the other sex extends even to his own daughters, of the arrival of another female child in the family. The mother dies shortly after, and the child, Clorinda, is brought up among the servants without a guiding hand. True to his vow to ignore his offspring, Sir Jeoffrey does not come in contact with Clo, until her sixth year, when he finds her playing with his powder horn in the great hall of his castle, Wildair, and sternly upbraids her.

Nine rooms of a house are shown, with action occurring in each room simultaneously