I am so fearful, that at some
social gathering, a thoughtless girl will hand him a glass of wine, and
that the first glass will be like adding fuel to a smouldering fire."

"Oh Belle do stop, what a train of horrors you can conjure out of an
innocent glass of wine."

"Anything can be innocent that sparkles to betray, that charms at first,
but later will bite like an adder and sting like a serpent."

"Really! Belle, if you keep on at this rate you will be a monomaniac on
the temperance question. However I do not think Mr. Romaine will feel
highly complimented to know that you refused him because you dreaded he
might become a drunkard. You surely did not tell him so."

"Yes I did, and I do not think that I would have been a true friend to
him, had I not done so."

"Oh! Belle, I never could have had the courage to have told him so."

"Why not?"

"I would have dreaded hurting his feelings. Were you not afraid of
offending him?"

"I certainly shrank from the pain which I knew I must inflict, but
because I valued his welfare more than my own feelings, I was
constrained to be faithful to him. I told him that he was drifting where
he ought steer, that instead of holding the helm and rudder of his
young life, he was floating down the stream, and unless he stood firmly
on the side of temperance, that I never would clasp hands will him for
life."

"But Belle, perhaps you have done him more harm than good; may be you
could have effected his reformation by consenting to marrying him."

"Jeanette, were I the wife of a drunken man I do not think there is any
depth of degradation that I would not fathom with my love and pity in
trying to save him. I believe I would cling to him, if even his own
mother shrank from him. But I never would consent to [marry any man?],
whom I knew to be un[?]steady in his principles and a moderate drinker.
If his love for me and respect for himself were not strong enough to
reform him before marriage, I should despair of effecting it afterwards,
and with me in such a case discretion would be the better part of
valor."

"And so you have given Mr. Romaine a release?"

"Yes, he is free."

"And I think you have thrown away a splendid opportunity."

"I don't think so, the risk was too perilous. Oh Jeanette, I know by
mournful and bitter experience what it means to dwell beneath the shadow
of a home cursed by intemperance. I know what it is to see that shadow
deepen into the darkness of a drunka