“So I think, sissy. I thought it must be Dan—the mean thing. I’m real sorry for Susie; but what a goose she must be to care so for _him_.” And so another friend was won over to Susie. Linnie grew immensely important in her own eyes after this confidence of Clara, who told her, among other pretty compliments, that she was “right womanly” in her sentiments. On one of those weary days, when Susie felt like destroying her life despite the kindness and sympathy of Clara and her father, she received a note from Dan. It was written in a cold, heartless style that she could scarcely believe him capable of after all she knew of him, and ended: “I don’t want you to be disgraced through me, and I am willing to marry you. Name the time and place, and I will be on hand. It is no use to palaver and swear I shall be supremely happy, and all that; but you are ‘ruined,’ of course, if I don’t, and I’m willing to do it, and ought to for the prospective brat’s sake, at least.” The letter enclosed a cheque for fifty dollars. Susie regarded the money greedily. She had never had half as much in her whole life, and this would buy so many things she needed, and then she read Dan’s heartless letter again, crying bitterly. Not one word of tenderness; nothing of the old love was left, only pity and an offer to sacrifice himself to save her. Disgust with her weakness, self-reproach, indignation, possessed her by turns, and the result was sending back the letter and the cheque, with only these words: “I can beg in the streets for myself or for your child much easier than I can accept charity from you. O my God! that I should come to this—to have money thrown at me like a bone to a dog, from one, too, whom I have so loved and trusted. Believe me, the only favor I ask, is that you may forget that I ever cared for you, for— ‘I am shamed through all my being To have loved so weak a thing.’” When Dan received this, he was surprised, to say the least, and chewed his moustache viciously. Beyond all his pique at the way his offer was received, there was a dawning respect for the girl he had ruined, as he thought; but Susie was not quite ruined yet, thanks to the generous sympathy of Dr. Forest and his daughter; and losing her respect for Dan, through finding out how soulless and unworthy he was, her heart-aches on account of his faithlessness gradually began to subside. Pretty soon another letter came, containing one hundred dollars in greenbacks. This time he confessed admiration for her “pluck,” as he called it, but swore that if she sent back this money he would burn it, leaving enough of the notes to show her he had kept his word. This was why he had sent greenbacks, which, if destroyed, could not be made good like a bank cheque.