He drew the inference--in all probability a true inference,
considering the characters of the parents--that the child had
never been baptized; and he performed the ceremony privately,
abstaining, for obvious reasons, from adding her Christian name
to the imperfect register of her birth. "I am not aware,"
he wrote, "whether I have, or have not, committed an offense
against the Law. In any case, I may hope to have made atonement
by obedience to the Gospel."

Six weeks passed, and I heard from my reverend friend once more.

His second letter presented a marked contrast to the first. It
was written in sorrow and anxiety, to inform me of an alarming
change for the worse in his wife's health. I showed the letter
to my medical colleague. After reading it he predicted the event
that might be expected, in two words:--Sudden death.

On the next occasion when I heard from the Minister, the Doctor's
grim reply proved to be a prophecy fulfilled.

When we address expressions of condolence to bereaved friends,
the principles of popular hypocrisy sanction indiscriminate lying
as a duty which we owe to the dead--no matter what their lives
may have been--because they are dead. Within my own little
sphere, I have always been silent, when I could not offer to
afflicted persons expressions of sympathy which I honestly felt.
To have condoled with the Minister on the loss that he had
sustained by the death of a woman, self-betrayed to me as
shamelessly deceitful, and pitilessly determined to reach her own
cruel ends, would have been to degrade myself by telling