Shirley Reynolds returns home from boarding school to find that her mother, weary of her husband's philandering, has filed for divorce. Hoping to effect a reconciliation, Shirley visits her father's apartment, where she interrupts a riotous party held in honor of his new mistress, Lola Wayne. Shirley prevents Lola's outraged father from killing her own father, but later, Wayne decides to wreak his revenge through Shirley and hires the lecherous Trask to lure her to ruin. On a particular evening, Wayne persuades Shirley to visit Trask's disreputable roadhouse, where Lola has arranged to meet with Reynolds. Suspicious, Shirley's sweetheart, Richard Ormsby, follows her to the inn. Reynolds hears Shirley struggling with Trask behind a locked door but is unable to assist her until Richard arrives. Trask, in his struggle to escape the two men, leaps from a window to his death, after which Wayne takes Lola home. Shirley then convinces her mother to forgive her remorseful husband.
—AFI