I will defend her memory by no false reasoning--I will only speak the truth.
It is the truth that she snatched him from mad excesses which must have ended in his early death.

It is the truth that she restored him to that happy home existence which you remember so tenderly--which _he_ remembered so gratefully that, on the day when he was free, he made her his wife.

Let strict morality claim its right, and condemn her early fault.

I have read my New Testament to little purpose, indeed, if Christian mercy may not soften the hard sentence against her--if Christian charity may not find a plea for her memory in the love and fidelity, the suffering and the sacrifice, of her whole life.
"A few words more will bring us to a later time, and to events which have happened within your own experience.
"I need not remind you that the position in which Mr.Vanstone was now placed could lead in the end to but one result--to a disclosure, more or less inevitable, of the truth.

Attempts were made to keep the hopeless misfortune of his life a secret from Miss Blake's family; and, as a matter of course, those attempts failed before the relentless scrutiny of her father and her friends.