Reason as she would on the supremacy of love over law, yet the bold,
unpleasant fact remained that she was the child of an unwedded
mother. She shrank in sensitive pain from having this story follow
her, and the very consciousness that her mother's experience had been
an exceptional one, caused her the greater dread of having it known
and talked of as a common vulgar liaison.
There are two things regarding which the world at large never asks
any questions--namely, How a rich man made his money, and how an
erring woman came to fall. It is enough for the world to know that
he is rich--that fact alone opens all doors to him, as the fact that
the woman has erred closes them to her.
There was a common vulgar creature in Beryngford, whose many amours
and bold defiance of law and order rendered her name a synonym for
indecency. This woman had begun her career in early girlhood as a
mercenary intriguer; and yet Joy Irving knew that the majority of
people would make small distinctions between the conduct of this
creature and that of her mother, were the facts of Berene's life and
her own birth to be made public.
The fear that the story would follow her wherever she went became an
absolute dread with her, and caused her to live alone and without
companions, in the midst of people who would gladly have become her
warm friends, had she permitted.
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