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