"But from your ears, in view of the rumors that have come to my hearing, I could not keep the knowledge longer. I cannot, dear Johns, read your heart, and say whether or not you will revolt at the idea of any possible family tie between your son and my poor Adele. But whatever aspect such possibility may present to your mind, I can regard it only with horror. If I have deceived you, the deceit shall reach no such harm as this. Whatever your Christian forgiveness or your love for Adele (and I know she is capable of winning your love) may suggest, I can never consent that any stain should be carried upon your family record by any instrumentality of mine. I must beg, therefore, that, if the rumor be true, you use all practicable means, even to the use of your parental authority, in discountenancing and forbidding such intimacy. If necessary to this end, and Reuben be still resident at the parsonage, I pray you to place Adele with Mrs. Brindlock, or other proper person, until such time as I am able to come and take her once more under my own protection. "If you were a more worldly man, my dear Johns, I should hope to win your heartier cooperation in my views by telling you that recent business misfortunes have placed my whole estate in peril, so that it is extremely doubtful if Adele will have any ultimate moneyed dependence beyond the pittance which I have placed in trust for her in your hands. Should it be necessary, in furtherance of the objects I have named, to make communication of the disclosures in this letter to your son or to Miss Johns, you have my full liberty to do so. Farther than this, I trust you may not find it necessary to make known the facts so harmful to the prospects and peace of my innocent child. "I have thus made a clean breast to you, my dear Johns, and await your scorching condemnation. But let not any portion of it, I pray, be visited upon poor Adele. I know with what wrathful eyes you, from your New England standpoint, are accustomed to look upon such wickedness; and I know, too, that you are sometimes disposed to 'visit the sins of the fathers upon the children'; but I beg that your anathemas may all rest where they belong, upon my head, and that you will spare the motherless girl you have taught to love you." Up and down the study the Doctor paced, with a feverish, restless step, which in all the history of the parsonage had never been heard in it before. "Such untruth!" is his exclamation. "Yet no, there has been no positive untruth; the deception he admits." But the great fact comes back upon his thought, that the child of sin and shame is with him. All his old distrust and hatred of the French are revived on the instant; the stain of their iniquities is thrust upon his serene and quiet household. And yet what a sweet face, what a confiding nature God has given to this creature conceived in sin! In his simplicity, the good Doctor would have fancied that some mark of Cain should be fixed on the poor child.