This picture shows the criminality of parents' attempts to use their children as pawns in the furtherance of their own desires. The fathers of Rose Mason and Joe Fletcher, sweethearts, are bitter political enemies, and when Mason senior learns that his daughter has eloped with young Fletcher he secures a warrant for the boy's arrest on the charge of abduction, since the girl is under age. The trial discloses a "skeleton in the closet" in that Rose's father finds that his wife is not the mother of Rose, having adopted the little one while he was away on business, years ago. The mother makes this startling confession in order to prove Rose to be of age, and dies as the result of her emotional stress. Rose, believing her happiness to be shattered, leaves the court-room, and goes down to the water's edge, where she is later found by the grief-stricken Tom, his bride in death only.