The story
One sister was useful; she was a hard working doctor in a little country town. The other sister was ornamental; she was young, pretty, stylish and thoroughly selfish. The doctor worked hard to keep her sister in luxury. When their parents died, they had left the little girl as a sacred legacy to their elder child, and she never forgot it. The doctor had a sweetheart, a young lawyer, who was far from being the manly chap she thought him. He met the little sister when she returned on summer vacation from her fashionable boarding school, and promptly forgot the vows of love he had made the elder girl. The doctor awoke one morning to find that her sister and her sweetheart had eloped, leaving only an indifferent message behind them. It took from her life all she had to love and from that time on she tried by hard work to forget her sorrows.
Five years later, the schoolgirl was a haggard, worn woman, city gaiety had wrecked her constitution, and her husband, who had wedded her only for her beauty, began to regret his bargain, when he saw he had an invalid on his hands. He cruelly deserted her, as cruelly as he and the woman had gone away five years before. Fortunately for the neglected wife, she still had one friend, the sister she had wronged. The doctor worried about the girl, and something, perhaps it was intuition, led her to search for her sister just when the younger woman needed her most. She found her broken in heart and spirits, but the doctor, through her medical skill, was able to restore her physically, though it was a long time before her mental calm came back to her, and she never forgot that everything she was or had she owed to the big sister who had repaid deceit with love.
Summary from The Moving Picture World · 22 February 1913
