ause
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.

It was the last word he ever spoke on the subject until Mr. Estabrook
came into our life. Then I saw from the first how things were going.
When I ca