plighted, in order to marry a rich lord. All England shall despise you.
For your child's sake, I counsel you to avoid an exposure."

She read those terrible words over and over again. Suddenly the whole
plot grew clear to her. It was for this they had schemed and plotted.
Not for love of her, but to make money out of her, to trade upon her
weakness and folly, stain her character, her fair name, her happiness,
the love of her husband and child, the esteem of her friends. All lay in
their hands. They could, if they would, make her name, that noble name
which her husband bore so proudly, a subject of jest all over the world.

She could fancy the papers, their paragraphs, their remarks, their
comments. She could almost see the heading:

"Action for Breach of Promise against Lady Atherton." How the Radicals,
who hated her husband for his politics, would rejoice! Even in the years
to come, when her child grew to man's estate, it would be as a black
mark against him that his mother had been the subject of such vulgar
jest. Her husband would never bear it. He would leave her, she was sure.
Ah! better pay a thousand pounds over and over again than go through all
this.

Yet it seemed a large sum; not that she cared for it, but how could she
get it without her husband's knowledge? By her own wish, all money
affairs had been left in his hands; he would wonder when he looked at
her check book why she had drawn so large a sum; better write out checks
of a hundred pounds each.

She did so, and sent them. Just as she was folding the paper that
enclosed them a grand inspiration came to her--an impulse to go to her