I am truly rejoiced, my Lucy, to know that the manuscript is safe in your hands, having had on my spirits a dread of its miscarrying. You know not the comfort you administered to poor Lady Maclairn by your letter of Saturday’s post. She suspected, by my lenity, that I was but a poor casuist in matters of conscience; and that I was more solicitous to banish her sorrows, than to probe the cause from which they spring; but since you agree with me in asserting, that it is your decided opinion, there can be no criminality in a concealment which secures to the innocent peace and security; I find she listens to me with more confidence; and I hope in time to convince her, that to disclose a secret which cannot produce, either directly or indirectly, any beneficial effect to those who must, on the contrary, suffer from such a disclosure, would partake more of folly than wisdom. In this conclusion I am guided by the best light my understanding offers me: moreover, I cannot help placing in the balance, the whole train of events which have led astray from the paths of rectitude, a mind constituted like Lady Maclairn’s; and I am disposed to believe, that she will be exculpated by an unerring Judge, for those deviations to which she has been betrayed, by the treachery and oppression of others, more culpable than herself. Although falsehood is never to be excused, yet the caution of wisdom may surely suggest, without a crime, the reasonableness and utility of suppressing that “_truth_ which ought not to be spoken at all times;” the produce which regulates our zeal, and imposes silence, is no violation of truth. These are my arguments with poor Lady Maclairn; I even go farther, Lucy; for I insist, that she has _for years_ been practising the most heroic virtues by suffering in silence, to preserve the peace and tranquillity of her husband and son.