ss, reading the papers in the
morning, which was a thing she had so lately calculated a boy at school
was unlikely to do; and what so likely as that his eye would be caught
by his own name in the report of the trial, which would be an exciting
trial and fully reported--a trial which interested society. The boy
would see his own name: she could almost hear him cry out, looking up
from his breakfast, "Hallo, mother! here's something about a Philip
Compton!" And all the questions that would follow--"Is he the same
Comptons that we are? What Comptons do we belong to? You never told
me anything about my family. Is this man any relation, I wonder?
Both surname and Christian name the same. It's strange if there is no
connection!" She could almost hear the words he would say--all that
and more--and what should she reply?

"I have only one thing to say, Elinor," said John, to whom in her
desperation she turned again, as she always did, disturbing him, poor
man, in his chambers as he was collecting his notes and his thoughts
in the afternoon after his work was over: "it is the same as I have
always said; even now make a clean breast of it to the boy. Tell him
everything; better that he should hear it from your own lips than that
it should burst upon him as a discovery. He has but to meet Lady
Mariamne in the park, the most likely thing in the world----"

"No, John," cried Elinor, "no; the Marshalls are here, our Rector from
Lakeside, and he is taking his boy to see all the sights. I have got
Pippo to go with them. They are going to Woolwich to-day, and afterwards
to quite a long list of things--oh, entirely out of everybody's way."

Her little look of uneasy triumph and satisfaction made John smile. She
was not half so sure as she tried to look; but, all the same, had a little
pride, a little pleasure in her own management, and in the happy chance
of the Marshalls being in London, which was a thing that could not have
been planned, an intervention of Providence. He could not refuse to
smile--partly with her, partly at her simplicity--but, all the same, he
shook his head.

"The only way in which there is any safety--the only chance of preserving
him from a shock, a painful shock, Elinor, that may upset him for
life----"

"How do you mean, upset him for life?"

"By showing him that his mother, whom he believes in like heaven, has
deceived him since ever he was born."

She covered her face with her hands, and burst into a so