Bought

Horace Frambers, an unsuccessful, would-be writer, lives in a boardinghouse where he shares his meager amount of food with a starving neighbor. After Mrs. Talbot, the wife of a wealthy financier, gives Horace an assignment, she learns that her daughter Helen is pregnant and that Helen's fiancé has died on the Titanic . Horace leaves the boardinghouse mistress' daughter who loves him and accepts Mrs. Talbot's offer of $10,000 and employment in the Talbot business to become Helen's husband "in name only." After the baby dies, Horace falls in love with Helen and becomes almost indispensable to the business, while Helen despises her "bought" husband and begins a series of flirtations. When a suitor enters Helen's bedroom against her wishes, Horace finds them together and leaves after repaying the $10,000, but when Talbot becomes ill from strain trying to save his business, Horace returns and breaks up the syndicate working against Talbot's company. Thinking that he will die from overwork, Horace goes to the boardinghouse, where he recovers and finds Helen, who now loves him, waiting.