A beautiful romance of a girl from the Golden West. Confidence is the flower grown from the seed of true friendship, watered by the tears of adversity, and often assailed by the blight of calumny. For as Shakespeare says', "be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny." So it was with little Nellie Burton, the orphan girl of the rancho, who budding into womanhood, realizes her position and appreciates the low brutal character of the habitués of the Dive, even discerning the true nature of her fancied sweetheart, Jim Colt, who was to say the least an unconscionable villain. Tiring of her present environments she decides to leave the place seek a nobler and higher life. To this end she makes her way eastward and applies for a position as nurse at a New York hospital, and we next find her engaged in that work of mercy "ministering to the sick." Her mild manners and pure nature impress the head surgeon, a man of eminence in his profession, to such an extent that he finds himself deeply in love with this poor self-sacrificing girl. He proposes marriage, which she at first mildly declines, but he at length persuades her, and they are married. However, there must come a cloud, and this is in the shape of her girlhood sweetheart, Colt, who has migrated East, and living on his wits. He runs across Nellie in the company with her husband as she enters her own home. The low conniving nature at once asserts itself and he plans a scheme of blackmail, using as capital her pure innocent love letters. Waiting a favorable opportunity, Jim Colt "visits'' her and with a threat of showing these letters to her husband he extorts money from her. This gone he comes for more, and as she has no ready cash he takes her jewels. The money raised on these goes the same way, so he calls to make another demand. This the poor helpless girl finds unable to meet, and during their argument the surgeon enters. Colt then hands the missives over to the husband who, taking the packet throws them into the tire and has Colt forcibly ejected from the place, with the positive injunction never to return.