William Williams (Henry Harmon) named his daughter (Wild Bennet) Conscience for a reason -- he's a Puritanical New Englander whose beliefs veer towards the rigid and dogmatic. So when Conscience falls for Stuart Emmett (Kenneth Harlan), an author who has written a book on free thought, Williams blows his stack. He insists that she marry Eben Tollman (George Cowl), an older man who has money. Tollman helps his suit along by stealing a letter the girl has written to Emmett, who leaves town. So Conscience marries Tollman, but when she finds out about the purloined missive, she sends for Emmett. He returns and gets into a fight with Tollman which results in the older man being tossed into the lake. While the film ends with the couple in a clinch, it never does explain what happened to the waterlogged husband. It was based on a best-selling novel, The Tyranny of Weakness, by Charles Neville Buck.