"It is true, I used deceit,--true that I did not frankly reveal the truth; but See how much was stake! I knew in what odium such trespasses were held in the serenity of your little towns; I knew, that, if you, with Spartan courage, should propose acceptance of the office, your family would reject it. I knew that your love of truth would be incapable of the concealments or subterfuges which might be needed to protect the poor child from the tongue of scandal. In short, I was not willing to take the risk of a repulse. 'Such deceit as there may be,' I said, 'is my own. My friend Johns can never impute it as a sin to Adele.' I am sure you will not now. Again, I felt that I was using deceit (if you will allow me to say it) in a good cause, and that you yourself, when once the shock of discovery should be past, could never reprimand yourself for your faithful teachings to an erring child, but must count her, in your secret heart, only another of the wandering lambs which it was your duty and pleasure to lead into the true fold. Had she come to you avowedly as the child of sin, with all the father's and mother's guilt reeking upon her innocent head, could you have secured to her, my dear Johns, that care and consideration and devotion which have at last ripened her Christian character, and made her proof against slander?" Here the Doctor threw down the letter again, and paced up and down the room. "The child of sin! the child of sin! Who could have thought it? Yet does not Maverick reason true? Does not Beelzebub at time reason true? Adaly! my poor, poor Adaly!" "It seemed to me," the letter continued, "that there might possibly be no need that either you or my poor child should ever know the whole truth in this matter; and I pray (with your leave) that it maybe kept from her even now. You will understand, perhaps, from what I have said, why my visits have been more rare than a fatherly feeling would seem to demand: to tell truth, I have feared the familiar questionings of her prattling girlhood. Mature years shrink from perilous inquiry, I think, with an instinct which does not belong to the freshness of youth.