Amazon.com description: Product Description: Excerpt: ...When I was twenty-he wanted to marry me, but we'd never met since. He came up to me-and oh!-I was glad to see him! We walked along the shore, and I told him everything. Well-he was sorry for me!-and father died-and I hadn't a penny. For what father left only just paid his debts. And I had no prospects in the world, and no one to help me or my boy. So, then, Mr. Betts offered to marry me. He knew all about my divorce-he had seen it in the newspapers years ago. I didn't deceive him-not one little bit. But he knew what Lord William would think. Only it didn't seem to matter, really, to any one but him and me. I was free-and I wasn't going to bring any more disgrace on anybody." She paused forlornly. In the strong June light, all the lost youth in the small face, its premature withering and coarsening, the traces of rouge and powder, the naturally straight hair tormented into ugly waves, came cruelly into sight. So, too, did the holes in the dirty white gloves, and some rents in the draggled but elaborate dress. Marcia could not help noticing and wondering. The wife of John Betts could not be so very poor! Suddenly her unwelcome visitor looked up. "Miss Coryston!-if they take John's farm away, everything that he cares for, everything that he's built up all these years, because of me, I'll kill myself! You tell Mr. Newbury that!" The little shabby creature had in a moment dropped her shabbiness. Her slight frame stiffened as she sat; the passion in the blue eyes which sought Marcia's was sincere and threatening. Marcia, startled, could only say again in a vaguely troubled voice: "I am sure nobody wants to harm Mr. Betts, and indeed, indeed, you oughtn't to talk to me like this, Mrs. Betts. I am very sorry for you, but I can't do anything. I would be most improper if I tried to interfere." "Why?" cried Mrs. Betts, indignantly. "Aren't women in this world to help each other? I know that Lord Coryston has spoken to you and that he means...