Page:The Millbank Case - 1905 - Eldridge.djvu/40

 is a woman of brilliant mind and shrewd resources, which have carried her far socially.

"'Fortunately I did not lack money, and so was able to provide comfortably for the woman and her child. As a matter of justice, I offered marriage, but she made it a condition that her child should be placed in some institution, urging that it would otherwise always be a stigma upon us. To this I would not consent, and her election to forego the vindication of marriage put me on my guard, for I could not believe that a woman of her temperament would deliberately elect to go through life encumbered with an unfathered child. The event proved me right, for within three months she had placed the infant in an institution for orphans, and returned to Bangor with a plausible tale accounting for her absence.

"'She, of course, counted safely on my silence, but I did not hesitate to make it a condition that I should take possession of the child for whom I provided, rearing him in such a way that he has taken a place in the world equal to that of his parents, and as untrammelled by his unsuspected birth as it is possible for one to be. My marriage has never been