Wilkie Collins

“ Did I ever tell you that I baptized her myself? and by a good Scripture name too—Eunice. Ah, sir, that little helpless baby is a grown-up girl now; of an age to inspire love, and to feel love. I blush to acknowledge it; I have behaved with a want of self-control, with a cowardly weakness—. No! I am, indeed, wandering this time. I ought to have told you first that I have been brought face to face with the possibility of Eunice’s marriage. And, to make it worse still, I can’t help liking the young man. ”

“ If you tell this young gentleman that Miss Eunice’s mother was a criminal hanged for murder, his family—even if he himself doesn’t recoil from it—will unquestionably forbid the marriage; and your adopted daughter’s happiness will be the sacrifice.”
“True!” he said. “Frightfully true! Go on.”
“If, on the other hand, you sanction the marriage, and conceal the truth, you commit a deliberate act of deceit; and you leave the lives of the young couple at the mercy of a possible discovery, which might part husband and wife—cast a slur on their children—and break up the household.” ”

“ I really could not reconcile it to my conscience to baptize a child of mine by the name of a Popish saint. My wife’s brother set things right between us. A worthy good man; he died not very long ago—I forget the date. Not to detain you any longer, the rector of Long Lanes baptized our daughter. That is how she comes by her un-English name; and so it happens that her birth is registered in a village which her father has never inhabited. I hope, sir, you think a little better of my memory now? ”