Would not all be forgiven for the sake of that? But then came in the question, had they believed him? Had they not believed him? Had there been some channel of which he knew nothing by which they had procured information in respect to the child? This was the one doubtful matter which would be enough to crush all his most careful schemes. But he could not see how it was possible they could have obtained any information. That Margaret Bland should have written did not occur to him. Persons of her class did not write letters daily then as they do now; and he thought he had secured her devotion wholly to himself, and made it quite clear to her that for his wife’s sake this was the only thing that could be done. Margaret had understood him completely. She was a person of superior intelligence. She was an admirable nurse and devoted to the baby. But she was quite unaware at first that the arrangement made with her was unknown to Lily, nor had she known that in writing to Robina she had transgressed her contract with the child’s father. It was her duty to be silent now, she was informed, in order to avoid all danger of a correspondence that might be discovered; but nothing even now had been said to Margaret which could have made her feel herself in the wrong, or led her to confess what she had done. Thus the one thing which would have made him see how fatally he had risked all his possibilities was concealed from Lumsden. He could still honestly, or almost honestly, persuade himself that, though what he had done might be cruel for the moment, it was, in reality, the best thing for Lily. Nothing else would have satisfied her, nothing less. She would never have had a moment’s peace had she understood that her child might be found. She would have thought nothing of any sacrifice involved. Her inheritance would have been of no value to her in comparison with the possession of her baby. She was capable of making every thing known to her uncle at any moment if by this means she could have secured the child. He had not ceased to love her, nor to entertain for her the admiration, mingled with indulgence, which makes a young woman’s faults almost more attractive than her virtues to her lover. It would be like Lily to do all that; it was like Lily to give him all that trouble about the house which he never intended to get for her, but which it cost him so many fictions, so much exercise of ingenuity, to satisfy her about. There were very pardonable points in that foolishness. The desire to be with him, to identify her life altogether with his, was sweet: he loved her the better for it, though, as the wiser of the two, he knew that it was impracticable, and that it must be firmly, but gently, denied to her. And to desire to have her baby was very natural and very sweet, too. What prettier thing could there be than a young mother with her child? But there were more serious things in the world than those