The story
“Irene was not so simple as she looked. She was early convinced that the only way to get ahead in the world was to use everybody—and in the small town where she lived she practiced her theory. She never for a moment intended marrying either Bert or Jim, but she kept them both guessing, and meanwhile learned from the bookkeeping and stenography which she turned to good account in getting a position in New York. The unscrupulous Wall Street operator, whose confidential secretary she eventually became, got into trouble with the government. Fearing the testimony of his stenographer, he gave Irene a large sum of money and told her to go to Canada on a vacation. The simple little country girl, however, protested that her conscience would not permit her to run away—and when he had pleaded in vain, she played her trump card. ‘Of course a wife may never testify against her husband,’ she said—he saw it was a case of marrying the girl or going to jail, and he chose the former alternative. Irene was pretty, and she made a very presentable wife—but without love as a ballast, she plunged into all sorts of extravagances, and in the end was the ruin of her husband, and of her own happiness.”
Summary from Reel Life · 31 January 1914
