Marcella, the wife of Jim Gregory, a Pennsylvania coal miner, elopes with Giovanni, her Lover. She leaves their baby daughter with her husband, Gregory, feeling powerless to give proper care to the little one, abandons her on a doorstep, tying around her neck a note and her mother's discarded wedding ring. Tom and Sara Wentworth are the child's foster parents, and Tom calls her Dorothea, meaning "the gift of God." She grows up in sympathy with him, but wholly misunderstood by her foster-mother, who is much displeased at her propensity for caring for all the stray dogs and cats she can find and turning the Wentworth home into a haven for animals. In later years Dr. Grant Hunter falls in love with Dot and she persuades him to give up his work in vivisection. "Dot" loves Grant, but his suit is frowned upon by Sarah Wentworth.