It was painful enough for me--a lonely old maid--with nothing but memories of a wasted girlhood and no one to help me see the right of things. Many is the night I have wet my pillow with tears, being afraid that I had always played the wrong part and would finally be the cause of the ruin of those I had grown to love. Of all those bad moments, none was more bitter than that when the Judge told me that the day would come when Julianna must know the truth. To this day I remember the study as it was then. Workmen had been redecorating the walls, and all the furniture was moved into the centre of the room, strips of paper were gathered into a tangled pile on the floor, and in the middle of the confusion, the Judge was sitting in his easy-chair, with his eyes looking a thousand miles away, and his lips moving just enough to keep his old pipe alight. He looked up as I drew the curtains. "Don't light the lamp yet," he said. "You are a woman and I want to talk to you." "It's about Julianna," said I. "Yes," said he, "about her. She is eighteen. Her birthday is scarcely a week away. I suppose she will fall in love sometime?" "Of course," I answered. "Women are not cast in her mould to be old maids." "Isn't it funny?" he said. "I just began to think of it yesterday. I never realized. I thought we had at least ten years more before there would be any chance. They are women before one can turn around! It is surprising." "It's terrible," I added. "Yes," said he, "it's terrible! Because if any man won her, then I would have to tell--" He stopped there and shut his two fists. "Tell the truth!" I exclaimed. "Yes," said he. "I'd have to tell him. Could I let him be cheated?" "Cheated!" I cried. "No man is good enough for her, that's what I think!" "I said cheated!" he answered roughly, as if he was trying to harden his own feelings. "He would be putting dependence upon her inherited characteristics, wouldn't he? And then, if anything ever cropped out in her, if he didn't know, how could he understand her or forgive her or help her?" "Judge," said I, "you spoke of my being a woman. Well, sir, I am an ignorant woman, but I know well enough that there are some things that you and I had best leave alone--some things that God will take care of by Himself." At that his face screwed up in pain. "Honor is honor!" he said, jumping up. "Truth is truth! And heredity is heredity!" He seized his hat and went into the hall and down the front steps and off along the pavement with his long strides, like a man followed by a fiend.