Dishonored by playboy John Radon, simple country girl Stella Dean flees to the city to hide her shame. Leading a disreputable life she eventually obtains great wealth as a courtesan known as the Black Nightingale. One day she meets Milton Taylor, an artist from her hometown who knew her when she was an innocent, and he asks her to pose as his model of the Madonna. Stella agrees and feels cleansed by the experience, however when Milton discovers Stella's reputation he begins to drink and leaves her, his illusions shattered. Repentant, Stella converts her mansion into a refuge for foundlings and returns to her hometown of Pleasantville reconciling with Milton.
Queen of the serials Pearl White gets herself into plenty of trouble up Klondike way as a young maiden named Tiger's Cub.
A Parisian doctor, infatuated with the wife of his benefactor, drugs and kidnaps her, and tries to convince the husband that she is dead. This film is lost.
Conchita Cordova sings in the cathedral choir in her village of San Miguelito near the Rio Grande. Millionaire oil man John Rannie, whose oil fields have displaced the peasants, desires Conchita, and when he learns that her fiance, Juan Mendoza, has been employed by Adolf Wylie, a German spy, Rannie threatens to expose Juan unless Conchita gives herself to him.
Wealthy New York contractor Wilton Demarest falls victim to the wiles of beautiful adventuress Mazora. Soon, he becomes addicted to drugs, neglects his wife and child, and his business is on the verge of ruin. By chance he meets his double, western mining engineer Martin Stanley. Demarest, half mad due to his drug addiction, conceives the fantastic idea of having Stanley take his place in the world enabling him to indulge in his degraded desires. Stanely, penniless and alone in the world accepts the proposition despite his reservations. Demarest drops into oblivion and Stanley picks up the scattered threads of his life, both in business and at home. The "at home" part is what causes complications.
Seth Cartwright abandons his mistress Bernice Archer and their child, Lorna returning to his wife and son. Bernice, in a daze, leaves Lorna, who is adopted by Cartwrght's wife, who knows full well who the child's father is. Unfortunately, she and her husband are killed in a shipwreck, but it turns out Lorna and her real mother are reunited because of the wreck, and settle in a small seaside town. Matters get complicated when Seth Jr. arrives in the town for a vacation and falls in love with Lorna-not knowing that she is his half-sister.
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.
Rich wastrel Baron Chevrial fritters his days and nights away pursuing a series of young lovelies and playing with their affections. He is smitten with the charms of Rosa, dancer of the Opera Comique, but marries the prominent Therese Beauchamp while still remaining involved with Rosa. Eventually a new woman enters his life and for a time he is oblivious to everything else until Rosa reenters his sphere.
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 Bob Stratton returns from war in France, he soon discovers his ranch in the hands of a pretty girl, Mary Thorne, who explains that upon her father's death she became the sole owner. Thorne had been the executor of Stratton's will, and thinking that Bob had been killed, he had appropriated the place for himself.