After the Hon. George Vane-Basingwell loses his valet, Marmaduke Ruggles, to U.S. Senator Floud and his wife Effie in a Paris poker game, the impeccably groomed and well-mannered valet finds himself en route to Red Gap, Arizona. Hoping to improve her gruff cousin Egbert's uncouth manners and appearance, Mrs. Effie places Ruggles in Egbert's care, and the Westerner, quite taken with the valet, introduces him to the townspeople as "Col. Ruggles of England." Mistaking him for an aristocrat, Red Gap gives Ruggles a royal welcome, and later, he opens the town's most elegant restaurant. On a visit to Arizona, the Hon. George falls in love with "Klondike" Kate Kenner, which so disturbs Ruggles that he wires George's brother, the Earl of Brinstead, to come to Red Gap immediately. The earl, however, falls for Kate even harder and finally marries her, while Ruggles, having filed for American citizenship, proposes to the charming widow Judson.
