Blind Ambrose North is tormented by the suspicion that his wife Constance committed suicide when their crippled daughter Barbara was only two, because she did not love him. Before her death, Constance wrote Barbara a letter to be opened on the girl's twenty-first birthday, but when Barbara opens it and learns that her mother killed herself to escape a doomed love affair with Lawrence Austin, she invents a different story for Ambrose, knowing that the truth would hurt him too deeply. When a surgeon restores Ambrose's sight, Barbara's aunt Miriam, who was loved by Ambrose before he met Constance, decides to gain her revenge by giving the letter to him, but in his eagerness to read it, he removes his bandages too soon. Barbara, who also has been cured by the doctor, tries on her mother's wedding gown, and Ambrose, in his delirium, believes that she is the spirit of Constance returning to assure him of her love. He dies happily, and later, Barbara marries Lawrence's son Roger.