Marion Leonard Film Company

When an casual comment about a straying friend leads to despair a woman finds grief returning to her door in kind.

A young girl is a talented violinist, and wins a scholarship in a school of music. In the village is a banker who is a deacon of a church of whom everybody is afraid. He convinces the father of the girl that music is leading her astray, and declares that the only way to save her is to make her his wife. The father falls dead at the wedding. A year later a child is born. The young wife leads a life of sorrow and abuse. The husband takes her violin away from her and refuses her girl friends permission to come and see her. When she rebels, he drives her out of the house. She goes to the city and makes a name for herself as a musician. Her husband, chagrined at her success, tries to worry her. He sends a box of crepe intimating that their baby is dead.

Beatrice, an artist in the city, goes to a fishing village to find inspiration for her paintings. She meets a young fisherman and, to ensure he continues posing for her, leads him to believe she is falling in love with him. He becomes devoted to her, leaving his heartbroken sweetheart in the village. As the painting nears completion, Beatrice invites the fisherman to accompany her to the city. In the city, the fisherman realizes she has a fiancé and that she was merely using him for her art.

The husband of the young woman is shot by a rejected suitor and she is left with an infant boy, who is to be spared until he reaches man's estate. Standing over the dead body of her husband she vows vengeance.

The story opens with Miss Leonard, now a woman past the prime of life, relating the sad, romantic story of her life to her dearest niece, who is engaged to be married. As in a vision, the story shifts back forty years and discloses the interior of an orphan asylum. Three babies are there, two boy babies and one baby girl, awaiting adoption into a good home. Years pass and the orphaned children have grown up in three different homes. Miss Leonard's dearest treasures are a pair of tiny baby shoes and a faded plaid shawl given to her foster parents by the asylum nurse.

Sarah Leeson, a servant who hides a confession on her deathbed at Porthgenna Tower regarding the true, illegitimate parentage of her child, Rosamond. Rosamond is raised as the legitimate daughter of Mrs. Treverton but is the daughter of Sarah Leeson and a local miner. Years later, a grown-up Rosamond marries the blind owner of the tower, Leonard Frankland. Sarah, having previously served as a nurse, warns Rosamond to avoid the room containing the hidden confession. Rosamond discovers the paper, revealing her true parentage and illegitimacy to herself and her husband, who decides to reject the inheritance.

The story opens in a New York tenement where Miss Leonard is living in hopes of finding the means to support herself and little baby. A month before her husband had been killed in a mine accident and Miss Leonard sought the city, leaving her child m the care of a neighbor. She is aroused by a knock on the door. A youth of the underworld, struck with her beauty, has followed her home. He tells her where she can secure work. When he offers her money to pay for a new dress, she understands, and drives him from the room. Another knock. It is her landlord. She must pay her rent in the morning. Her eye falls on the card left by the "cadet." and makes a desperate decision that will change her life.