Should She Have Left Him? — page 241: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

CHAPTER VII. DOROTHY’S SACRAMENTS. WHILE Trescotte was submitting the Waldemar entanglement to the old banker, Dorothy was sitting beside the cradle of her firstborn. Two subjects possessed her mind. Crooning a lullaby, soft and low, as she gently swung the cradle of her new joy and hope, she was lost in deep meditation. Hilda’s hopeless position, her unhappiness, her narrow escape from shame and disgrace was one of her subjects. Could Mrs. Deekman and Mrs. Bees- tonmy have read the thoughts of Dorothy at this time, I greatly fear they would have been confirmed in the justice of the crusade they had organized against this young mother. Her thoughts were bit- ter against society,—the society she knew—its ideals, its motives, its morals, and its educational influences. So dead had she become to the code upheld by such superexcellent women as the two who had led in the ostracism of herself, that she actually pro- nounced that society as false, wicked, even without common sense, which is much worse, as we all know, than being false or wicked. When she sur- veyed the field and saw that Waldemar was no bet- ter nor no worse than others of his rank, in the life 235 Comicbookks