I said again, all I could find words to say:-- "It is impossible." He urged no more, but I soon felt painfully certain that some involuntary distrust lurked in the good man's mind, and though he continued the same to me in all our business relations, a cloud came over our private intercourse, which was never removed. About this time another incident occurred; You know I have a little friend here, the governor's motherless daughter, a bonnie wee child whom I meet in the garden sometimes, where we water her flowers, and have long chats about birds, beasts, and the wonders of foreign parts. I even have given a present or two to this, my child-sweetheart. Are you jealous? She has your eyes! Well, one day when I called Lucy, she came to me slowly, with a shy, sad countenance; and I found out after some pains, that her nurse had desired her not to play with Doctor Urquhart again, because he was "naughty." Doctor Urquhart smilingly inquired what he had done? The child hesitated. "Nurse does not exactly know, but she says it is something very wicked--as wicked as anything done by the bad people in here. But it isn't true--tell Lucy it isn't true?" It was hard to put aside the little loving face, but I saw the nurse coming. Not an ill-meaning body, but one whom I knew for as arrant a gossip as any about this place. Her comments on myself troubled me little; I concluded it was but the result of that newspaper tattle, against which I was gradually growing hardened; nevertheless, I thought it best just to say that I had heard with much surprise what she had been telling Miss Lucy. "Children and fools speak truth," said the woman saucily. "Then you ought to be the more careful that children always hear the truth." And I insisted upon her repeating all the ridiculous tales she had been circulating about me. When, with difficulty, I got the facts out of her, they were not what I expected, but these: Somebody in the gaol had told somebody else how Dr. Urquhart had been in former days such an abandoned character, that still his evil conscience always drove him among criminals; made him haunt gaols, prisons, reformatories, and take an interest in every form of vice. Nay, people had heard me say--and truly they might!--_apropos_ to a late hanging at Kirkdale--that I had sympathy even for a murderer. I listened--you will imagine how--to all this. For an instant I was overwhelmed; I felt as if God had forsaken me; as if His mercy were a delusion; His punishments never-ending; His justice never satisfied. Despite my promise to your father, I might, in some fatal way, have betrayed myself, even on the spot, had I not heard the little girl saying, with a sob, almost--poor pet!-- "For shame, nurse! Doctor Urquhart isn't a wicked man; Lucy loves him." And I remembered you. "My child," I said, in a whisper, "we are all wicked; but we may all be forgiven; I trust God has forgiven me;" and I walked away without another word.