In Vermont, college student Ives Towner refuses to marry his longtime girlfriend, Julie Weir, until he has a career. Soon after, Julie meets and grows infatuated with handsome writer Michael Shaw, and they marry and move to Paris. Years later, after Michael's accidental death, Julie and her daughter move back to Vermont to live with her aunt and Julie finds Ives, now a professor, disinterested in resuming their romantic relationship.

Colonel Ferris, a wealthy farmer in northern California, is strongly opposed to hydraulic mining, a new method developed during the gold rush of the 1870's, which is flooding the area's prosperous farmlands. Despite Ferris' political stance, Jared Whitney, a mining engineer from the East, becomes friends with the colonel's son Lance and falls in love with his daughter Serena. Family tensions deepen when the colonel's brother Ralph gives up farming to go to San Francisco to work for his wife Rosanna's father, Harrison McCooey, a leader in the mining venture. When Lance follows Ralph, the colonel, focusing his anger on Jared, forbids him to see Serena.

Two Texas Rangers have their worlds rocked by a wrongfully accused female bandit.

A wealthy man hires a poor girl to play his mistress in order to get more attention from his neglectful family.

Career gambler Dan Milner agrees to a $50,000 deal to leave the USA for Mexico, only to find himself entangled with fellow guests at a luxurious resort and suspecting that the man who hired him may be the deported crime boss Nick Ferraro aiming to re-enter to the USA.