"I said to her, Lucy, you can never recall the past, but you can try to redeem the future. Try to be a faithful mother. Men may build over the wreck and ruin of their young lives a better and brighter future, why should not a woman? Let the dead past bury its dead and live in the future for the sake of your child. She seemed so grateful for what I had said. Others had treated her with scorn. Her brother Thomas had refused to speak to her; her betrayer had forsaken her; all the joyousness had faded from her life and, poor girl, I was glad that I was able to say a helpful and hopeful word to her. Mother, of course, would not let us associate with her, but she always treated her kindly when she came and did what she could to lighten the burden which was pressing her down to the grave. But, poor child, she was never again the same light-hearted girl. She grew pale and thin and in the hectic flush and faltering tread I read the death sign of early decay, and I felt that my misguided young friend was slowly dying of a broken heart. Then there came a day when we were summoned to her dying bed. Her brothers and sisters were present; all their resentment against her had vanished in the presence of death. She was their dear sister about to leave them and they bent in tearful sorrow around her couch. As one of her brothers, who was a good singer, entered the room, she asked him to sing 'Vital spark of heavenly flame.' He attempted to sing, but there were tremors in his voice and he faltered in the midst of the hymn. 'Won't you sing for your dying sister.'" "Again he essayed to sing, but [his?] voice became choked with emotion, and he ceased, and burst into tears. Her brother Thomas who had been so hard and cold, and had refused to speak to her, now wept and sobbed like a child, but Lucy smiled as she bade them good bye, and exclaimed, 'Welcome death, the end of fear. I am prepared to die.' A sweet peace settled down on her face, and Lucy had exchanged, I hope, the sorrow and pain of life for the peace and rest of heaven, and left Annette too young to know her loss. Do you wonder then my child that I feel such an interest in Annette and that knowing as I do her antenatal history that I am ever ready to pity where others condemn, and that I want to do what I can to help round out in beauty and usefulness the character of that sinned against and disinherited child, whose restlessness and sensitiveness I trace back to causes over which she had no control." "What became of Frank Miller? You say that when he returned to A.P. that society opened its doors to him while they were closed to Annette's mother. I don't understand it. Was he not as guilty as she was?" "Guiltier, I think. If poor Lucy failed as a woman, she tried to be faithful as a mother, while he, faithless as a man, left her to bear her burden alone. She was frail as a woman, but he was base, mean, and selfish as a man." "How was it that society received him so readily?"