“The announcement aroused me from my trance-like condition and I raised my eyes and looked squarely in the face of Edmund’s father. The other men I did not know. Edmund’s father stared, started and then with a gasp cried, ‘My God, girl! Child, what are you doing here?’ “‘I am here to make a living,’ I said frankly. “Without excuse or apology to his friends he drew me to a seat. I almost fainted at the thought of meeting him and being chosen by him in such a place; my very soul revolted.” “But where was Edmund?” “Ah, there you are. You see when I heard the voice I knew it was that of his father. I, grasping at a forlorn hope, naturally supposed that Edmund had come back, gained his father’s consent to marry me, and they had started out to find me. It was very natural to think they would be successful for a girl in that position is always expecting the worst to happen, or rather to be exposed to some one whom they do not wish to see.” “And Edmund was not in the party at all?” “No. His father was a man of slightly sporty inclinations, and he with his party of friends were simply out for a night and happened to come to the place where I was. But the turn of affairs seemed to change his mind a bit, for he questioned me so closely as to my whereabouts in the past, and as to how long I had been in that house, that I became suspicious, but I told him all, everything truthfully that had happened to me since I had left his home; but one thing I sought to keep secret and that was the name of the man with whom I had lived. But it seemed impossible for one so unused to intrigue to keep a secret. I had a chain (this chain) around my neck, and on the chain this locket, and as I leaned my head forward it dangled in the air and unknown to me he took the locket and opened it and this picture, Edmund’s picture, was in it. “At first he raved and swore, ‘to think that I, a common woman of the town, should dare to wear his son’s picture in such a place as that!’ I don’t know how I held myself together, but I did, and gently reminded him that he should not object to his son’s picture being worn in a place which he himself frequented.