And the answer was yes; that if trouble came he would see him through it.

A marriage which could not be proved was no marriage, and as for anything else, Lucie's happiness must not be sacrificed to a boy's peccadillos.

What were a few wild oats sown by a man of his promise?
And was this the end?
Did Ermentrude accept her doom without a struggle?
Let us see.
* * * * * One afternoon in June, there entered the parlor of the old-fashioned mansion of the Roberts family a lady who had asked to see Mrs.Roberts on business of an important nature.

Though plainly clad, her appearance possessed an elegance which insured respect; but when alone and seated in the darkest corner of the great drawing room she put up a trembling hand to thrust back her veil, the countenance thus revealed betrayed an emotion hardly in keeping with the quiet bearing with which she had advanced under the servant's eye.
His home! and these the surroundings amid which he had grown to manhood! Why should the sight of all this rouse emotions she believed eliminated by a treachery most cruel in face of promises most sacred?
Why, as she looked about, and noted object after object which must have been there previous to his birth, did she see him as a child and boy and not as the man who had first won and then deserted her?
She would not have had it so at this hour when strength was needed rather than tenderness.

But she could not help her nature, or still the wild surging of her rebellious heart, as his portrait seen upon the wall challenged her constancy and whispered of the hour when his "forever" echoed her "forever" and the compact for eternity was sealed.
He had broken this compact--broken it soon--broken it before the honeymoon had passed.