"Lie still, my love, and when you are able I will let you go. But do not
blame me for what has occurred, it was by your own consent. You know I
am going to marry you, and all will be well."

"No," she sobs, "all will not be well; nothing will ever be well with
me again," and she returns to the room which she has left a few hours
before as a bright and happy girl, now broken hearted and on the verge
of despair, with a blot upon her young life which nothing on earth can
efface. To be sure, he who has brought all this upon her has promised to
right the wrong by marriage, but poor consolation it seems to her to
have to marry a man whom she feels to be worse than a murderer; even
this poor consolation is denied her, however, for the wretch, when he
gave the promise, had no thought of fulfilling it. Such trifles as this
_he_ thinks nothing of. It is the way of most high society men, and when
he comes to her again it is not to marry her, but to seek to drag her
lower down. She repels him and he is seen by her no more. He has no
further use for her.

Days grow to months, and now added sorrow fills her cup of grief to
overflowing. She is to become a mother, and the poor girl cries out in
bitter anguish: "My God, what shall I do, must I commit murder. Oh, that
I had never entered a ball-room."

All her old companions shun her, every one shuns her, even he who led
her to her ruin shuns her. She goes to him, hoping he will have
compassion upon her, but he meets her with a sneer, calls her a fool,
and tells her to commit a yet greater crime than the first, which in her
despair she does and "seals the band of death."