Sisters Helen and Ruth Fiske work in a department store and live in an East Side tenement. While Ruth is satisfied with her "regular fellow," a mechanic, Helen yearns for fine clothes, wealth, and attention.
John Keefe, a gambler, shoots and kills Robert Barrington in an argument over a card game. Keefe steals Barrington's papers and forges a bill of sale to himself for Barrington's stable of race horses back east.
Emphasizing themes of female independence and the esteem due to the men serving in the armed forces, the plot involves a strong-willed young woman (Agnes Vernon) who defies her father in order to marry a soldier (Hobart Henly) instead of the well-to-do suitor preferred by her father.
The story of Silvio Pellico who was arrested on the charge of carbonarism and conveyed to the Santa Margherita prison, then moved to the Piombi at Venice The sentence of death pronounced on him in February 1822 was finally commuted to fifteen years of jail in harsh condition, and he was placed in the Spielberg, at Brünn (today's Brno).
Richard Duvall is a young American detective in the employ of the French Secret Police. While in Paris he meets Grace Ellicot, also an American, with whom he falls in love.