In all the years that she had lived under his roof, he had never conquered his morbid dread that Madonna might be one day traced and discovered by her father, or by relatives, who might have a legal claim to her.

Under this apprehension he had written to Doctor Joyce and Mrs.Peckover a day or two after the child's first entry under his roof, pledging both the persons whom he addressed to the strictest secrecy in all that related to Madonna and to the circumstances which had made her his adopted child.

As for the hair bracelet, if his conscience had allowed him, he would have destroyed it immediately; but feeling that this would be an inexcusable breach of trust, he was fain to be content with locking it up, as well as the pocket-handkerchief, in an old bureau in his painting-room, the key of which he always kept attached to his own watch chain.
Not one of his London friends ever knew how he first met with Madonna.
He boldly baffled all forms of inquiry by requesting that they would consider her history before she came into his house as a perfect blank, and by simply presenting her to them as his adopted child.

This method of silencing troublesome curiosity succeeded certainly to admiration; but at the expense of Mr.Blyth's own moral character.

Persons who knew little or nothing of his real disposition and his early life, all shook their heads, and laughed in secret; asserting that the mystery was plain enough to the most ordinary capacity, and that the young lady could be nothing more nor less than a natural child of his own.
Mrs.Blyth was far more indignant at this report than her husband, when in due time it reached the painter's house.