n-law of the murderess. He had married her sister.

His wife, he informed me, had died in childbirth, leaving him but one
consolation--a boy, who already recalled all that was brightest and best
in his lost mother. The father was naturally anxious that the son should
never become acquainted with the disgrace that had befallen the family.

The letter then proceeded in these terms:

"I heard yesterday, for the first time, by means of an old
newspaper-cutting sent to me by a friend, that the miserable woman who
suffered the ignominy of public execution has left an infant child. Can
you tell me what has become of the orphan? If this little girl is, as I
fear, not well provided for, I only do what my wife would have done if
she had lived, by offering to make the child's welfare my especial care.
I am willing to place her in an establishment well known to me, in which
she will be kindly treated, well educated, and fitted to earn her own
living honorably in later life.

"If you feel some surprise at finding that my good intentions toward
this ill-fated niece of mine do not go to the length of receiving her as
a member of my own family, I beg to submit some considerations which may
perhaps weigh with you as they have weighed with me.

"In the first place, there is at least a possibility--however carefully
I might try to conceal it--that the child's parentage would sooner
or later be discovered. In the second place (and assuming that the
parentage had been successfully concealed), if this girl and my boy
grew up together, there is another possibility to be reckoned with:
they might become attached to each other. Does the father live who would
allow his son ignorantly to marry the daughter of a convicted murderess?
I should have no alternative but to part them cruelly by revealing the
truth." The letter ended with some complimentary expressions addressed
to myself. And the question was: how ought I to answer it?

My correspondent had strongly impressed me in his favor; I could not
doubt that he was an honorable man. But the interest of the Minister
in keeping his own benevolent action secure from the risk of
discovery--increased as that interest was by the filial relations of the
two children toward him, now publicly established--had, as I could not
doubt, the paramount claim on me. The absolutely safe course to take
was to admit no one, friend or stranger, to our confidence. I replied,
expressing sincere admiration of Mr. D