Suddenly the whole plot grew clear to her.

It was for this they had schemed and plotted.
Not for love of her, but to make money out of her, to trade upon her weakness and folly, stain her character, her fair name, her happiness, the love of her husband and child, the esteem of her friends.

All lay in their hands.

They could, if they would, make her name, that noble name which her husband bore so proudly, a subject of jest all over the world.
She could fancy the papers, their paragraphs, their remarks, their comments.

She could almost see the heading: "Action for Breach of Promise against Lady Atherton." How the Radicals, who hated her husband for his politics, would rejoice! Even in the years to come, when her child grew to man's estate, it would be as a black mark against him that his mother had been the subject of such vulgar jest.