“Enough!” she cried, sternly, without waiting for him to reply; and she arose and stood before him, confronting him like an avenging angel. “George Sumner, you are a heartless wretch, selfish to the core, and bent upon your own sensual enjoyment alone. You stand there and seek to cast the blame of my misery all upon me. You say ‘you’ could not help it. I ‘gave myself away to you so readily,’ and ‘adopted your proposals too eagerly.’ Who was it that begged and pleaded for my love, who could not live without me, who would be willing to share a crust, so that he might but be blessed with my presence? Who was it that swore life-long devotion to me, and tempted me with blissful pictures of ‘love in a cottage,’ and whose heart would break if separated from me for but a day? It does not sound so well repeated under existing circumstances, does it, my aspiring knight?” she continued, even more bitterly: “the heart of the sentiment is gone, and it becomes but an empty, mocking sound. But do you realize how young I was, George Sumner?” she said, speaking sternly now—“_sixteen!_ with no mother to guide me, no dear, wise friend in whom to confide, or of whom to seek counsel. You were twenty-two, and had flirted with a dozen before me. Did you ruin them all, traitor, coward that you are? Did you lure them all into secret marriages, and then cast them off in their misery, as you are to-night casting me? Or were they wiser than I—not so eager to give themselves away, or to adopt your proposals? “You need not speak,” she cried, bitterly, as he opened his lips as if to defend himself. “I never wish to hear your voice again, and if I could paralyze your tongue so that you could never cheat a trusting woman again, I would do it; but it is not for me to avenge—your punishment is coming; it is nearer even than you dream. You are ambitious, but that very ambition has overreached itself, as you will find before you are a great deal older. You are a cheat, a liar, and a coward; and now let me tell you that I would not marry _you if my doing so would save both your life and mine_. I will bear my shame alone, and some day your eyes will be opened, and you will curse yourself with bitterest curses that you have dared to do the thing that you have done. I was a young and inexperienced girl; you won my fresh, pure love, and ruined me, to pass away a dull hour and have a ‘jolly good time.’ A day, an hour will come when you will turn sick with remorse, and be willing to give the best years of your life to undo the foul wrong which you have so heartlessly wrought; but you will never see Marion Vance, the girl with neither ‘name,’ nor ‘wealth,’ nor ‘position,’ again.” She turned and walked, with a quick, firm tread, from the room, before he could recover his almost stupefied senses.