She rates him at his true value--now, when her reputation is at his mercy.

Ask her the question: What was there to love in a man who can speak to you as that man has spoken, who can treat you as that man is treating you now?
you so clever, so cultivated, so refined--what, in Heaven's name, could _you_ see in him?
Ask her that, and she will have no answer to give.

She will not even remind you that he was once your model of manly beauty, too--that you waved your handkerchief till you could wave it no longer, when he took his seat, with the others, in the boat--that your heart was like to jump out of your bosom, on that later occasion when he leaped the last hurdle at the foot-race, and won it by a head.

In the bitterness of her remorse, she will not even seek for _that_ excuse for herself.

Is there no atoning suffering to be seen here?
Do your sympathies shrink from such a character as this?
Follow her, good friends of virtue, on the pilgrimage that leads, by steep and thorny ways, to the purer atmosphere and the nobler life.