If she had known that at the very moment when he uttered these words he had one long letter from Mercy and another to her lying in his pocket, the shock might well-nigh have killed her; for never once in Mrs.White's most jealous and ill-natured hours had the thought crossed her mind that her son would tell her a deliberate lie.

He told it, however, unflinchingly, in as gentle and even a tone and with as unruffled a brow as he would have bade her good-morning.

He had thought the whole matter over, and deliberately resolved to do it.

He did it to save her from pain; and he had no more compunction about it than he would have had about closing a blind, to shut out a sunlight too strong for her eyes.
What a terrible thing is the power which human beings have of deceiving each other! Woe to any soul which trusts itself to any thing less than an organic integrity of nature, to which a lie is impossible! Mercy's letters disappointed Stephen.

They were loving; but they were concise, sensible, sometimes merry, and always cheerful.