ery much. As you say
yourself, I have seen a great deal of you, because I have enjoyed your
society, and your views and talk were good and young and fresh, and
did me good. You have served to keep me in touch with the outside
world, a world of which I used to know at one time a great deal. I
know your people and I know you, I think, and many people have spoken
to me of you. I see why now. They, no doubt, understood what was
coming better than myself, and were meaning to reassure me concerning
you. And they said nothing but what was good of you. But there are
certain things of which no one can know but yourself, and concerning
which no other person, save myself, has a right to question you. You
have promised very fairly for my daughter's future; you have suggested
more than you have said, but I understood. You can give her many
pleasures which I have not been able to afford; she can get from you
the means of seeing more of this world in which she lives, of meeting
more people, and of indulging in her charities, or in her
extravagances, for that matter, as she wishes. I have no fear of her
bodily comfort; her life, as far as that is concerned, will be easier
and broader, and with more power for good. Her future, as I say, as
you say also, is assured; but I want to ask you this," the bishop
leaned forward and watched the young man anxiously, "you can protect
her in the future, but can you assure me that you can protect her from
the past?"

Young Latimer raised his eyes calmly and said, "I don't think I quite
understand."

"I have perfect confidence, I say," returned the bishop, "in you as
far as your treatment of Ellen is concerned in the future. You love
her and you would do everything to make the life of the woman you love
a happy one; but this is it. Can you assure me that there is nothing
in the past that may reach forward later and touch my daughter through
you--no ugly story, no oats that have been sowed, and no boomerang
that you have thrown wantonly and that has not returned--but which may
return?"

"I think I understand you now, sir," said the young man, quietly. "I
have lived," he began, "as other men of my sort have lived. You know
what that is, for you must have seen it about you at college, and
after that before you entered the Church. I judge so from your
friends, who were your friends then, I understand. You know how they
lived. I never went in for dissipation, if you mean that, because it
never attract