Hitherto I had been guilty of concealment with regard to my friend.

I had entered into no formal compact, but had been conscious to a kind of tacit obligation to hide no important transaction of my life from him.

This consciousness was the source of continual anxiety.

I had exerted, on numerous occasions, my bivocal faculty, but, in my intercourse with Ludloe, had suffered not the slightest intimation to escape me with regard to it.
This reserve was not easily explained.

It was, in a great degree, the product of habit; but I likewise considered that the efficacy of this instrument depended upon its existence being unknown.