Sheila Vane, daughter of Stanley, an English aristocrat, and Alice, a former maid of the Vane family, has displayed the traits of her aristocratic heritage since childhood. While living in Acoola, Montana, where the couple settled after Stanley's family shunned him for his marriage to a woman not of his class, Stanley persuades his daughter to return someday to England and reclaim her rightful place in the Vane home. Sheila takes a job as a riding instructor at a dude ranch in order to fulfill her father's wishes, and there meets Tommy Traill, a young and reckless Eastern playboy, who immediately falls in love with her charming combination of Western ruggedness and English good breeding. Sheila befriends Tommy, but when he proposes to her, she chides him for his tendency toward drink and tomfoolery. Sheila urges Tommy to go to South America, where his father, who owns fruit plantations, has promised him a chance to make a success of himself.