he
sheet, appeared the customary announcements of Births. A mark with a
blue pencil, against one of the advertisements, attracted my attention.
I read these lines:

"On the 10th inst., the wife of the Rev. Abel Gracedieu, of a daughter."

The second newspaper bore a later date, and contained nothing that
interested me. I naturally assumed that the advertisement in the _Times_
had been inserted at the desire of Mrs. Gracedieu; and, after all that
I had heard, there was little difficulty in attributing the curious
omission of the place in which the child had been born to the caution of
her husband. If Mrs. Tenbruggen (then Miss Chance) had happened to see
the advertisement in the great London newspaper, Mr. Gracedieu might
yet have good reason to congratulate himself on his prudent method of
providing against mischievous curiosity.

I turned toward the bed and looked at him. His eyes were closed. Was he
sleeping? Or was he trying to remember what he had desired to say to me,
when the demands which I made on his memory had obliged him to wait for
a later opportunity?

Either way, there was something that quickened my sympathies, in the
spectacle of his helpless repose. It suggested to me personal reasons
for his anxieties, which he had not mentioned, and which I had not
thought of, up to this time. If the discovery that he dreaded took
place, his household would be broken up, and his position as pastor
would suffer in the estimation of the flock. His own daughter would
refuse to live under the same roof with the daughter of an infamous
woman. Popular opinion, among his congregation, judging a man who had
passed off the child of other parents as his own, would find that man
guilty of an act of deliberate deceit.

Still oppressed by reflections which pointed to the future in this
discouraging way, I was startled by a voice outside the door--a sweet,
sad voice--saying, "May I come in?"

The Minister's eyes opened instantly: he raised himself in his bed.

"Eunice, at last!" he cried. "Let her in."

CHAPTER XXXIX. THE ADOPTED CHILD

I opened the door.

Eunice passed me with the suddenness almost of a flash of light. When I
turned toward the bed, her arms were round her father's neck. "Oh, poor
papa, how ill you look!" Commonplace expressions of fondness, and no
more; but the tone gave them a charm that subdued me. Never had I felt
so indulgent toward Mr. Gracedieu's unreasonable fears as when I saw him
in the e