She felt that a little child who would call her "mother," clinging to her hand, or nestling in her bosom, could redeem her to her better self; and how could she help thinking of the true men who, with their hearts in their fresh, manly hands, had prayed for her love in the dawn of her young beauty, and been spurned from her presence--men now in the honorable walks of life with their little ones around them?
Her relatives had forsaken her.

There was absolutely no one to whom she could turn for the sympathy which in that hour she craved.
In these reflections, there was one person of her own blood recalled to whom she had been a curse, and of whom, for a single moment, she could not bear to think.

She had driven him from her presence--the one who, through all her childhood, had been her companion, her admirer, her loyal follower.

He had dared to love and marry one whom she did not approve, and she had angrily banished him from her side.

If she only had him to love, she felt that she should be better and happier, but she had no hope that he would ever return to her.
She felt now, with inexpressible loathing, the unworthiness of the charms with which she fascinated the base men around her.