above sordid cares; she was still handsome, still a woman to be
admired. While she held her place in the world as high as ever,
what was the prospect before Sydney Westerfield? The miserable
sinner would end as she had deserved to end. Absolutely dependent
on a man who was at that moment perhaps lamenting the wife whom
he had deserted and lost, how long would it be before she found
herself an outcast, without a friend to help her--with a
reputation hopelessly lost--face to face with the temptation to
drown herself or poison herself, as other women had drowned
themselves or poisoned themselves, when the brightest future
before them was rest in death?

If she had been a few years older, Herbert Linley might never
again have seen her a living creature. But she was too young to
follow any train of repellent thought persistently to its end.
The man she had guiltily (and yet how naturally) loved was lord
and master in her heart, doubt him as she might. Even in his
absence he pleaded with her to have some faith in him still.

She reviewed his language and his conduct toward her, when she
had returned that morning from her walk. He had been kind and
considerate; he had listened to her little story of the relics of
her father, found in the garret, as if her interests were his
interests. There had been nothing to disappoint her, nothing to
complain of, until she had rashly attempted to discover whether
he was free to make her his wife. She had only herself to blame
if he was cold and distant when she had alluded to that delicate
subject, on the day when he first knew that the Divorce had been
granted and his child had been taken from him. And yet, he might
have found a kinder way of reproving a sensitive woman than