Marie, the daughter of Emile De Severac, a novelist, is home from the convent. She is betrothed to George Renoir, an artist friend of her father, who is devotedly in love with her. Marie has suddenly developed flirtatious symptoms and to warn and guard her against the trouble she is likely to create for herself and others, unless she ceases her folly, De Severac tells her the plot of his unpublished story, "Black Orchids." Zoraida is a sorceress whose only aim in life seems to be the entanglement of men in her meshes. Sebastian De Maupin is envious of his son Ivan, who is temporarily in Zoraida's favor, and to get rid of the youthful lover the father uses his influence to have his boy sent to the front line of battle in the war then raging. Sebastian De Maupin, thinking himself now in sole possession of Zoraida's affections, introduces her to Marquis De Chantal, a rich and handsome nobleman, upon whom Zoraida turns her attentions. Enraged because Zoraida seems to have abandoned him, De Maupin arranged a dinner at which he plans to poison De Chantal and be thus rid of his rival. Zoraida changes the cups and De Maupin drinks the poisoned brew, dying instantly. Ivan now comes home from war, wounded in body, but still fired in his heart with love for Zoraida. The wretch quickly turns her affections again toward Ivan, creating jealousy in De Chantal's heart, and a duel results. Ivan inflicts what is believed to be a fatal wound upon De Maupin and goes with Zoraida to an estate De Chantal has bequeathed to her in a will he made when the count was basking in the woman's favor. De Chantal is indeed fatally wounded, but lives long enough to avenge himself upon the fickle Zoraida and her youthful lover. In the castle De Chantal he has willed to Zoraida is an air-tight vault and there the count causes the woman and her lover to be entrapped, where they must die of suffocation, while De Chantal at last expires of his wound, upon the doorsill of the living tomb of Zoraida and Ivan. When Emile De Severac has finished the narrative, his daughter, Marie, is penitent and remorseful, because she has given her sweetheart pain, and the once fickle and flirtatious girl lives now with her eyes open to the danger of her folly.