Believing that over-civilization was destroying the race, Eli Tapper, an eccentric millionaire, took two unrelated orphan children, a boy and a girl, and placed them in a wilderness, there in the care of an old tutor, David Winters, to grow up as a new Adam and Eve, and become path-breakers of a better race. In delightful simplicity and educated as much as they could be without contact with the world, the children attain the age of nineteen years. Mrs. Tupper-Bellamy, society leader, lives in costly splendor against the day when she hopes to inherit her brother millions. She plans to marry her daughter, Clarice, to Seymour Purchwell, society idler of standing and also an attorney. Purchwell makes it plain that the marriage can occur if Eli Tupper's fortune goes to the girl and her mother. When Tupper dies the sister and her set learn for the first time of his odd experiment.