British India Medical Corps Captain Clyde Mannering returns to England to marry Helen Rutherford, but the wedding is postponed when her father dies. When beautiful Valeska De Marsay confronts Mannering with her child and untruthfully says she was the dead man's wife, Mannering pays her a large sum of money to protect his fiancée and her mother from hurt and dishonor, but Helen's mother, witnessing the pay-off, assumes that Mannering was involved with the girl and refuses to let the wedding proceed.