Young Clare Gilmour, the second daughter of an upper middle class London family, is freshly "out" but can't find a place for herself. She meets Roderick Vaughan who sees her naive vulnerability and convinces her to run away with him. Vaughan knows that the family horror of public scandal will lead to a wedding, and so it does, despite the fact that he is vulgar and ill-bred. After the wedding, she discovers she is married to a bully and can't escape him. She meets Basil Everett and finds a person who wants to love her as she is. Ultimately, she is bound by England's divorce laws, unless she and Basil can find a way to escape them.