This is the story of a wealthy bourgeois who marries his only child, a daughter, to a penniless nobleman because he hopes to use his son-in-law to get a title.
All 12 jury members who sent an innocent man to the gallows are gathered together for a demonstration of how convictions can be made on circumstantial evidence.
Self-made businessman Sir Grant Rayburn is obsessed with making money to the exclusion of all else. He shows little interest in his daughter Jill and is irritated when she falls in love with, and wishes to marry, a young man named Tom.
To win the heart of a rather simple minded young man who doesn't seem to care much for women, a young foreign lady takes a job as the chambermaid to the man's sister in law.