Elsa Carlyle is impulsive and a gambler. Though loved by her husband Jeff, she's spoiled and selfish, concerned with social standing. Meanwhile, Jeff wants to stop spending while he completes business deals that could make them rich. One night, on a hunch, she bets and loses big at a casino, then she doubles her problems with more impulsive decisions. Hardy Livingston, a wealthy Casanova just back from the Orient, makes a play for her. Elsa dallies with Hardy, but soon, his insistence and her dire financial affairs seem destined to lead to adultery. Who's the cheat?

After his father's death, Roland Stone learns that his will stipulates that he must go to the South American country of Bunkonia and sell life insurance.

Harry Caton, a popular New York musical-comedy star, loses his voice on stage and then journeys to a small town on the New England coast to recuperate. Here Harry meets the beautiful Nancy Potter when he defends her against the drunken advances of Silas Jones, her father's friend. Although his daughter believes that he is a fisherman, Cail Potter is actually a thief, robbing houses along the coast with Silas as his accomplice. When Cail robs the wealthy Col. Brett's home, he finds an old miniature of a woman who exactly resembles Nancy, whom Cail rescued from a wrecked boat when she was just a year old. Soon after the robbery, Harry learns that the police are about to raid Cail's house, but Silas knocks him unconscious when he attempts to warn Nancy.

Acting on her love of nature and loathing of titled fortune hunters, heiress Mary Hamilton leaves home with her secretary, Peggy Ingledew, to join a band of roving gypsies. One of Mary's suitors, Sir Kenneth Graham, follows the two young women into the woods, dressed in gypsy garb, but when Jack Hutton decides to rid his forested land of gypsies, Sir Kenneth is thrown into jail.

Based on an international scandal that hit prewar France, when the editor of the Paris daily LE FIGARO, Gaston Calmette was shot to death by Madame Caillaux, wife of the Minister of Finance for his exposè of her husband's traitorous activities on behalf of Germany.

Theda Bara plays a Javanese priestess who elopes with an English military officer (Hugh Thompson). Bara's Bavahari becomes a celebrated dancer but is murdered onstage by a vengeful Buddhist priest (Victor Kennard).