When Tillie left her country home for the seminary, she was just a plain Gawk, but when she returned a year later, she was a Glorious Butterfly.

A blind violinist's sight is restored by an operation paid for by a young woman who loves him, but the fickleness of fate strikes them further tragic blows.

Gladys Norton, a sweet little country girl, receives a letter from her sweetheart, saying that after four years of study in the city, he is coming back. Gladys is overjoyed. Theresa, Gladys' cousin, desiring to spend a few quiet weeks in the country, pays the Nortons a surprise visit and arrives on the same train with Irwin.

Bess abhors the sinfulness of her brothers, who are crooks of the worst kind, so one day, while they are planning some villainy, she takes some money which one of the brothers had placed on the table, leaves the house and disappears as if the earth had engulfed her. Bess goes to a distant part of the city, and rents a furnished room from a kindly-faced old lady, resolved to start life anew in a different environment. She secures employment in a large shirt factory and by diligent attention to work, becomes forelady and assistant to Williams, the owner of the factory. Jack, the weakling, completely worn out by the life he has led, is in the last stages of tuberculosis, when he accidentally meets Bess, and through helping him, her other brother, Frank, finds out where she is employed, and going to Williams, her employer, plays the "worried brother" part and tells him how Bess took the money and ran away from home.

A lawyer defends a woman accused of murdering her husband without knowing that the murdered man was his own brother.