During the Civil War, Rachel Hayne, a young widow, is among those "held by the enemy" when her old family home is within the lines occupied by the Northern troops.
Becky Warder constantly indulges in the telling of little white lies. In an innocent effort to ease the troubled marriage of her quarreling friends Eve and Fred Lindon, Becky meets secretly with Fred, thereby constructing a web of deceit that leads Eve to suspect Becky of trifling with her husband's affections.
When a circus troupe comes to a small, extremely conservative New England town, the residents go to their minister to have him protest the scandalous fact that the female tightrope walker wears a pair of pink tights.
Mrs. John Cleveland, victim of an overly-jealous husband, adopts a child but, fearing to bring it into her own household, furnishes another home for it, and places the little girl in charge of a nurse.