She Was a Lady

Sheila Vane, daughter of Stanley, an English aristocrat, and Alice, a former maid of the Vane family, has displayed the traits of her aristocratic heritage since childhood. While living in Acoola, Montana, where the couple settled after Stanley's family shunned him for his marriage to a woman not of his class, Stanley persuades his daughter to return someday to England and reclaim her rightful place in the Vane home. Sheila takes a job as a riding instructor at a dude ranch in order to fulfill her father's wishes, and there meets Tommy Traill, a young and reckless Eastern playboy, who immediately falls in love with her charming combination of Western ruggedness and English good breeding. Sheila befriends Tommy, but when he proposes to her, she chides him for his tendency toward drink and tomfoolery. Sheila urges Tommy to go to South America, where his father, who owns fruit plantations, has promised him a chance to make a success of himself. Stanley, meanwhile, is killed while trying to save a horse during a barn fire, leaving Alice penniless. Sheila gives her mother the $600 her father had saved for her trip to England, then leaves home. Sheila takes a job as a trick rider at a circus, where she meets Jerry Couzins, a confidence man who is working as the circus publicist. Before she finally embarks for England, Shelia meets Tommy in New York and promises to come back to him. In England, Shelia arrives at Vane Manor and is received coldly by her Aunt Diana and Uncle George. As their daughter will be presented at court soon, they feel that news that Shelia's maternal grandfather is still the family butler and her mother their former maid must not resurface. Sheila leaves despondent, and back in New York, Tommy takes her to the Traill house to meet his father. Mr. Traill rejects Sheila as a potential marriage partner for his son because of her class. In a passionate speech, Sheila reveals her background and states her own ideas about class, that honesty and decency are more important than station. Sheila then refuses to marry Tommy until Mr. Traill asks her, as not to suffer the same fate as her parents. The couple breaks up, and two weeks later, Sheila meets Jerry at her hotel and accepts his offer of a job inducing rich men to gamble at the nightclub he runs. Two months later, Tommy enters the club drunk and accuses Sheila of seeing Jerry throughout their own romance. Angered by Tommy's appearance, Sheila lies that she intends to marry Jerry, but after Jerry and Tommy fight, Sheila brings an unconscious Tommy home to his father, who finally asks her to marry his son. She refuses at first, telling the elder Traill what she has now become, but he informs her that it doesn't matter anymore. The reunited couple embraces and decides to marry the next day.