Throw away concealment, make a clean breast of it! you may not be rejected when they find her heart is so deeply interested.
If you marry her with this secret hanging over you, it will embitter your life, make you reserved, suspicious, and consequently ill-tempered, and destroy all your domestic happiness.

Let me persuade you, tell them ere it be too late.

Suppose it reached them through some other source, what would they then think of you ?" "Who else would tell them?
Who else knows it?
You, you," said he suspiciously--"_you_ would not betray me! I thought you loved me, Aunt Ada." "Clarence, my dear boy," she rejoined, apparently hurt by his hasty and accusing tone, "you _will_ mistake me--I have no such intention.

If they are never to learn it except through _me_, your secret is perfectly safe.
Yet I must tell you that I feel and think that the true way to promote her happiness and your own, is for you to disclose to them your real position, and throw yourself upon their generosity for the result." Clarence pondered for a long time over Miss Bell's advice, which she again and again repeated, placing it each time before him in a stronger light, until, at last, she extracted from him a promise that he would do it.

"I know you are right, Aunt Ada," said he; "I am convinced of that--it is a question of courage with me.