Characters in the film attend a movie titled 'Life’s Mirror', where they see parallel, cautionary versions of their own lives. Only the first two of the original seven reels survive.

Fenella, a poor Italian girl, falls in love with a Spanish nobleman, but their affair triggers a revolution and national catastrophe.

Walton, the District Attorney, yearns to have children. Soon after defending an author on trial for publishing indecent literature, Walton discovers a secret his wife and her socialite friends have been hiding from him.