Richard Farrington is the hell-raising son of an English nobleman and his American wife, and his parents send him for a visit to his aunt and uncle in Long Island, New York. On the ocean voyage from England, Richard meets Betty Winthrop, the pretty ward of the wealthy Van Allen family, after saving her cat, but in introducing himself he mistakenly gives her the card of John Smithers, a con-man who cheated him at cards in London. He follows Betty to the Van Allen estate, where he hears her declare that she would rather marry an American criminal than a weakling English aristocrat. Determined to win her over, he pretends to be Smithers, but things don't turn out exactly the way he planned.