Markrute, who holds the mortgage on the estate of Lord Tancred, insists that his niece, Velma, marry Tancred in order to improve his own social standing. Velma refuses and cuts all financial ties with her uncle. She later meets Tancred and, not knowing who he is, falls madly in love with him. Velma's brother is charged with embezzlement, and her uncle offers to make good the boy's accounts if she marries Tancred. She finds out then that her lover and her prospective husband are one and the same man and, feeling bitter and tricked, marries him. The marriage remains one in name only until Tancred, frustrated and disappointed, threatens to get a divorce. Velma then realizes the depth of her love for Tancred, a love that increases when she learns that he had paid off the mortgage before they were married, attesting that he married her for love alone.