British India Medical Corps Captain Clyde Mannering returns to England to marry Helen Rutherford, but the wedding is postponed when her father dies. When beautiful Valeska De Marsay confronts Mannering with her child and untruthfully says she was the dead man's wife, Mannering pays her a large sum of money to protect his fiancée and her mother from hurt and dishonor, but Helen's mother, witnessing the pay-off, assumes that Mannering was involved with the girl and refuses to let the wedding proceed. Mannering returns to India where he secludes himself, treating the native population. Helen, her mother, and Valeska, now Mrs. Rutherford's traveling companion, visit India to look after Helen's brother Dick, a customs officer in trouble for accepting bribes from renegade high-caste Hindu, Rajput Nath. When Valeska tries to seduce both Rajput and Dick, Rajput kills her and forces Dick to say it was suicide.