Give Me My Son (1921)

Bertha Brenner had been married before and her father, angered by her secret marriage, had hidden her infant son from her. She received word of her husband's death and years later she is shown as the wife of Richard Brenner, a wealthy shipowner. There is a daughter, Alice, by the second marriage. During all the years Bertha never gives up the search for her son although she doesn't confide her secret to Richard. Suddenly a sailor appears and since he carries a book bearing the name of her lost son, Bertha, believing him to be her own child, arranges to have him live near her without telling him the reason. The youth mistakes her love for that of an older woman's infatuation for a young man. Also the husband begins to misunderstand. Finally Bertha sees her secret giving way when the boy and her daughter fall in love. It develops that the boy is not her son but knew him before he was killed from a fall on the ship.