Mother and daughter live together in a seemingly endless succession of hotels in various regions of the United States, and Linda receives little formal education.

While Stella Condon frequently goes out with men of dubious reputation, her daughter, who is always loyal to her shallow and superficial mother, spends her early adolescent days alone in her hotel room or with other guests in the artificial and phony atmosphere of the lobby.

Stella Condon does have a suitor, a self-made millionaire and widower of Jewish descent called Moses Feldt, but she explains to Linda that she is not going to repeat past mistakes by getting married again.

At a party she meets Dodge Pleydon, a sculptor many years her senior who is fascinated by the young girl despite, or maybe because of, her frozen charm and subdued behaviour.

Naturally curious to learn more about the paternal branch of her family, Linda accepts her aunt's invitation to visit her and her sister in Philadelphia and to stay in the house where her father, now dead, was raised.

In Philadelphia, Linda is introduced to her aunts' 45-year-old nephew Arnaud Hallet, a lawyer and confirmed bachelor who immediately falls for the girl just like Pleydon before him.

Caught between the two men, who both propose to her, Linda eventually decides to marry Hallet, with the fact that he has "a hundred thousand dollars a year" certainly adding to his attraction.