Feodor Turov, chief of the Russian Czar's secret police, orders his Cossacks to attack a village he believes to be infested with rebels. The Cossacks attack the village and massacre almost everyone, and the young Katerina is whipped to death. Before escaping to England, her sister Darya swears to avenge her sister's death. Years later--now one of the world's most famous prima ballerinas--she returns to Russia. Turov falls in love with her and manages to secure a meeting. She coyly asks him to take her to see a prison first. As it turns out, what he has planned for her is nothing compared to what she has planned for him.

Nellie Wayne, a retired Broadway actress, has a small dog named "Chum", who is part of a vaudeville act and is the sole support of the family.

Eileen O'Hara lives as a member of a cult in a remote retreat in the Adirondacks with her father, an embittered man since his wife's infidelity years earlier. Because his wife was untrue, O'Hara is determined that his daughter, Eileen, shall never marry. Peyster Sproul was the man who had the affair Mrs. O'Hara's infidelity, and when he shows up as president of the Sagamore Club and attempts to buy O'Hara's land, the two men come to blows.

Giovanni Pallazzi, a former member of the Black Hand, an Italian criminal organization, comes to America with his blind daughter Lucia and prospers. Hearing of his success, his former associates demand that he aid in their support

Ruth Hoagland grows up on the Florida Keys with no companion other than her father, a half-witted fisherman who spends most of his time hunting for buried treasure. Vacationing yachtsman Bob Winthrop and Ruth fall in love, but Winthrop returns to New York, and after a year, has forgotten Ruth. After finding two chests in a cave, Ruth locates her father unconscious from a fall. She goes to the mainland for help, but returns with the Reverend Josiah Arbuthnot and Dr. William Strong, to find her father dead. Strong, out of kindness, offers to marry her, but Ruth declines, sure that Winthrop will return.

Lumberjack Gaston Olaf is newly arrived in the lumber camp of Havens Falls, but it isn't long before he finds himself coming to the rescue of the lovely Rose Havens, who is being pursued by the nasty Lefty Red.

June, a young orphan, is befriended by Perry Bascom when he shares his lunch with her on the road to Rising Sun. They soon fall in love and marry, only to find out that a woman in Perry's past has come to town to make trouble. Teaming up with the local political bully, the schemers set out to make Perry's life miserable, but June sticks by her husband to the end.

When Edith Graham returns from school to live with her father, Lieutenant Graham, at a Northwest Mounted Police post in Hudson's Bay, she finds herself courted by two suitors, Corporal John Emerson and Reginald Annesley, the latter of whom is a wealthy purchasing agent for the post. Annesley however is also involved with the half-breed Marie. When Marie tells him she is carrying his child Annesley kills her and attempts to frame Emerson. However, Edith is suspicious and sets out to find the truth.

France is being swamped by counterfeit bills that are being made by a ring in the US. A beautiful female member of the French gang circulating the bills negotiates a deal with the counterfeiters' ringleader in the US, and in so doing falls in love with a returning US soldier who has his own reasons for trying to destroy the gang.

Small-town girl Mary Barry wins a beauty contest and goes to New York to meet D. V. Cortelyou, the magazine's publisher. Greatly taken by young girl, Cortelyou arranges for her to live with Dolly Griffith, a woman of questionable reputation who often aids him in his wicked schemes of blackmail and seduction. During a party seemingly in Mary's honor, Cortelyou obtains some apparently compromising evidence with which to blackmail Mrs. Young, the wife of a wealthy broker; Cortelyou then makes rough advances toward Mary, and one of his assistants, Jack McGuire, gives him a good beating.