That was Mary Trembath’s secret way of making smooth water wherever she went. She was not a deliberate liar, even for a good purpose; but she managed somehow to create impressions that served to bring quarrels to an end, to make people once indifferent to each other become fast friends, and to dispel pretty nearly every cloud that hung over a parish in which she peddled.
And now you will see how it is that, as I said, she provided me with a problem only a casuist can solve. Of course, it is never right to speak an untruth even for a good end. Mary was too conscientious to say straight out what was false, but she had a clever, subtle manner of bewildering people through her hints and suggestions, till she induced them to deceive themselves, and that always with a good object in view.
She was a peacemaker, eminently a peacemaker, but was she justified in the method she employed to make peace?