Beautiful young Clara de Saumarez, strong-willed and impulsive, runs away from her aristocratic family to London to become an actress after her father punishes her with a dog whip. In London, she becomes an acclaimed actress, but disregards societal conventions by living with her theatre manager, Vasty Vaughan. Clara's beauty inspires the love of three men: the lecherous Vaughan, the handsome but rigidly Calvinistic curate Edward Mantell, and the...