When Beale and Ida Farange are divorced, the court decrees that their only child, the very young Maisie, will shuttle back and forth between them, spending six months of the year with each. The parents are immoral and frivolous, and they use Maisie to intensify their hatred of each other. Beale marries Miss Overmore, Maisie's pretty governess, while Ida marries the likeable but weak Sir Claude, but both are unfaithful to their new spouses. In this mess Maisie must decide what to do about her own future.