"I shall not know how to let you go to-morrow, and I do not see, myself,
why you should go."

"You will--after I am gone."

"My dear, are you crying? I cannot see you. How cruel we have been, to sit
and let you turn your life out for our inspection!"

"It was a free exhibition! No one asked me, and I did not even come
prepared, more than seven years' study of my own case has prepared me.

"I was a child; but the fault was mine. I should have been allowed to
suffer for it in the natural way. No good ever comes of skulking. But they
hurried me off to Europe, and began a cowardly system of concealment. They
made me almost forget my own misconduct in shame for the things they did by
way of covering it up. My mother never took me in her arms and cried over
my disgrace. She would not speak of it, or allow me to speak. Not a word
nor an admission; the thing must be as though it had never been!

"They ruined Dick Malaby with their hush-money. They might better have
shot him, but that would have made talk. My father died with only servants
around him. Mama could not go to him. She was too busy covering my retreat.
Oh, she kept a gallant front! I admired her, I pitied her, but I loathed
her policy. Does not every girl know when she has been dedicated to the
great god Success, and what the end of success must be?

"I told mama at last that if she would bring men to propose to me I should
tell them the truth. Does Lord So-and-so wish to marry a girl who ran away
with her father's groom? That was the breach between us. She has thrown