ellent manners, highly
educated, plenty of money, a gentleman in every sense of the word. And
poor little Eunice is so fond of him! Isn't it dreadful to be obliged to
check her dearly-loved Philip? The young gentleman's name is Philip.
Do you like the name? I say I am obliged to cheek her sweetheart in
the rudest manner, when all he wants to do is to ask me modestly for
my sweet Eunice's hand. Oh, what have I not suffered, without a word
of sympathy to comfort me, before I had courage enough to write to you!
Shall I make a dreadful confession? If my religious convictions had not
stood in my way, I believe I should have committed suicide. Put yourself
in my place. Try to see yourself shrinking from a necessary
explanation, when the happiness of a harmless girl--so dutiful, so
affectionate--depended on a word of kindness from your lips. And that
word you are afraid to speak! Don't take offense, sir; I mean myself,
not you. Why don't you say something?" he burst out fiercely, incapable
of perceiving that he had allowed me no opportunity of speaking to him.
"Good God! don't you understand me, after all?"

The signs of mental confusion in his talk had so distressed me, that I
had not been composed enough to feel sure of what he really meant,
until he described himself as "shrinking from a necessary explanation."
Hearing those words, my knowledge of the circumstances helped me; I
realized what his situation really was.

"Compose yourself," I said, "I understand you at last."

He had suddenly become distrustful. "Prove it," he muttered, with a
furtive look at me. "I want to be satisfied that you understand my
position."

"This is your position," I told him. "You are placed between two
deplorable alternatives. If you tell this young gentleman that Miss
Eunice's mother was a criminal hanged for murder, his family--even if he
himself doesn't recoil from it--will unquestionably forbid the marriage;
and your adopted daughter's happiness will be the sacrifice."

"True!" he said. "Frightfully true! Go on."

"If, on the other hand, you sanction the marriage, and conceal the
truth, you commit a deliberate act of deceit; and you leave the lives of
the young couple at the mercy of a possible discovery, which might
part husband and wife--cast a slur on their children--and break up the
household."

He shuddered while he listened to me. "Come to the end of it," he cried.

I had no more to say, and I was obliged to answer him to tha