father, though God knows I
have watched for it with horror as the years have passed. After she was
born I smuggled her away by night, and gave out word that the child had
died at the same time with the mother. There was a private funeral, and
the casket was closed. I had hard work to carry it through successfully,
for I was young in those days, and broken-hearted at losing my sister,
but carry it through I did, and no one knew except a nurse. I trusted
her, I was obliged to do so, and I fear that she has betrayed me. I
established a practice in another town in another State, and there I met
Clara. She has told me that she informed you of the fact that she was my
wife, but not of our reasons for concealing it. Just before we were
married I became practically certain that Clemency's father had gained
in some way information that led him to suspect, if not to be absolutely
certain, that his child had not died with his wife. I had a widowed
sister, Mrs. Ewing, who lived in Iowa with her only daughter just about
Clemency's age. Just before our marriage she decided to remove to
England to live with some relatives of her deceased husband. They had
considerable property, and she had very little. I begged her to go
secretly, or rather to hint that she was going East to live with me,
which she did. Nobody in the little Iowa village, so far as I knew, was
aware of the fact that my sister and daughter had gone to England, and
not East to live with me. Clara and I were married privately in an
obscure little Western hamlet, and came East at once. We have lived in
various localities, being driven from one to another by the danger of
Clemency's father ascertaining the truth; and my wife has always been
known as Mrs. Ewing, and Clemency as her daughter. It has been a life of
constant watchfulness and deception, and I have been bound hand and
foot. Even had Clemency's father not been so exceedingly careful that it
would have been difficult to reach him by legal methods, there was the
poor child to be considered, and the ignominy which would come upon her
at the exposure of her father. I have done what I could. I am naturally
a man who hates deception, and wishes above all things to lead a life
with its windows open and shades up, but I have been forced into the
very reverse. My life has been as closely shuttered and curtained as my
house. I have been obliged to force my own wife to live after the same
fashion. Now the cause for this secrec