You cannot understand it as I do.

So long as I am without the right or the power to protect you, my first duty is to shield you from any or all gossip linking our names together." Mercy felt the justice of this; and yet to her there seemed also a sort of injustice involved in it.

She felt stung often, and wounded, in spite of all reasoning with herself that she had no cause to do so, that Stephen was but doing right.

So inevitable and inextricable are pains and dilemmas when once we enter on the paths of concealment.
Parson Dorrance was introduced to Mercy by Mrs.Hunter, a young married woman, who was fast becoming her most intimate friend.

Mrs.Hunter's father had been settled as the minister of a church in Penfield, in the same year that Parson Dorrance had taken his professorship in Danby, and the two men had been close friends from that day till the day of Mr.
Adams's death.