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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Sword of Damocles, by Anna Katharine Green
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Sword of Damocles
+       A Story of New York Life
+
+Author: Anna Katharine Green
+
+Release Date: July 31, 2010 [EBook #33301]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SWORD OF DAMOCLES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                        THE SWORD OF DAMOCLES
+
+                      A STORY OF NEW YORK LIFE.
+
+                       BY ANNA KATHARINE GREEN
+
+    AUTHOR OF "THE LEAVENWORTH CASE," "A STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE," ETC.
+
+
+NEW YORK
+G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
+27 & 29 West 23D Street
+
+1881
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1881, BY G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS.
+
+
+                      TO
+                   MY FATHER
+              I DEDICATE THIS BOOK
+    AS EXPRESSING SOME OF THE PRINCIPLES OF
+            JUSTICE AND MERCY WHICH,
+         BY PRECEPT AND EXAMPLE, HE HAS
+              INSTILLED INTO MY
+                    BREAST
+             FROM EARLY CHILDHOOD.
+
+    NEW YORK, _April, 1881._
+
+
+
+     "When all else fails love saves"
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+BOOK I. TWO MEN.
+
+I.--A WANDERER
+
+II.--A DISCUSSION
+
+III.--A MYSTERIOUS SUMMONS
+
+IV.--SEARCHINGS
+
+V.--THE RUBICON
+
+VI.--A HAND CLASP
+
+VII.--MRS. SYLVESTER
+
+VIII.--SHADOWS OF THE PAST
+
+IX.--PAULA
+
+X.--THE BARRED DOOR
+
+XI.--MISS STUYVESANT
+
+XII.--MISS BELINDA MAKES CONDITIONS
+
+XIII.--THE END OF MY LADY'S PICTURE
+
+
+BOOK II. LIFE AND DEATH.
+
+XIV.--MISS BELINDA HAS A QUESTION TO DECIDE
+
+XV.--AN ADVENTURE--OR SOMETHING MORE
+
+XVI.--THE SWORD OF DAMOCLES
+
+XVII.--GRAVE AND GAY
+
+XVIII.--IN THE NIGHT WATCHES
+
+XIX.--A DAY AT THE BANK
+
+XX.--THE DREGS IN THE CUP
+
+XXI.--DEPARTURE
+
+XXII.--HOPGOOD
+
+
+BOOK III. THE JAPHA MYSTERY.
+
+XXIII.--THE POEM
+
+XXIV.--THE JAPHA MANSION
+
+XXV.--JACQUELINE
+
+XXVI.--A MAN'S JUSTICE AND A WOMAN'S MERCY
+
+XXVII.--THE LONE WATCHER
+
+XXVIII.--SUNSHINE ON THE HILLS
+
+XXIX.--MIST IN THE VALLEY
+
+
+BOOK IV. FROM A. TO Z.
+
+XXX.--MISS BELINDA PRESENTS MR. SYLVESTER WITH A CHRISTMAS GIFT
+
+XXXI.--A QUESTION
+
+XXXII.--FULL TIDE
+
+XXXIII.--TWO LETTERS
+
+XXXIV.--PAULA MAKES HER CHOICE
+
+XXXV.--THE FALLING OF THE SWORD
+
+XXXVI.--MORNING
+
+XXXVII.--THE OPINION OF A CERTAIN NOTED DETECTIVE
+
+XXXVIII.--BLUEBEARD'S CHAMBER
+
+XXXIX.--FROM A. TO Z
+
+XL.--HALF-PAST SEVEN
+
+
+BOOK V. WOMAN'S LOVE.
+
+XLI.--THE WORK OF AN HOUR
+
+XLII.--PAULA RELATES A STORY SHE HAS HEARD
+
+XLIII.--DETERMINATION
+
+XLIV.--IN MR. STUYVESANT'S PARLORS
+
+XLV.--"THE HOUR OF SIX IS SACRED!"
+
+XLVI.--THE MAN CUMMINS
+
+
+
+
+     Damocles, one of the courtiers of Dionysius, was perpetually
+     extolling with rapture that tyrant's treasures, grandeur, the
+     number of his troops, the extent of his dominions, the
+     magnificence of his palaces, and the universal abundance of all
+     good things and enjoyments in his possession; always repeating,
+     that never man was happier than Dionysius. "Since you are of
+     that opinion," said the tyrant to him one day, "will you taste
+     and make proof of my felicity in person?" The offer was
+     accepted with joy; Damocles was placed upon a golden couch,
+     covered with carpets richly embroidered. The side-boards were
+     loaded with vessels of gold and silver. The most beautiful
+     slaves in the most splendid habits stood around, ready to serve
+     him at the slightest signal. The most exquisite essences and
+     perfumes had not been spared. The table was spread with
+     proportionate magnificence. Damocles was all joy, and looked
+     upon himself as the happiest man in the world; when
+     unfortunately casting up his eyes, he beheld over his head the
+     point of a sword, which hung from the roof only by a single
+     horse-hair.
+
+     ROLLIN.
+
+
+
+
+     THE SWORD OF DAMOCLES.
+
+
+
+
+     BOOK I.
+
+     TWO MEN.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+A WANDERER.
+
+     "There's no such word."--BULWER.
+
+
+A wind was blowing through the city. Not a gentle and balmy zephyr,
+stirring the locks on gentle ladies' foreheads and rustling the curtains
+in elegant boudoirs, but a chill and bitter gale that rushed with a
+swoop through narrow alleys and forsaken courtyards, biting the cheeks
+of the few solitary wanderers that still lingered abroad in the darkened
+streets.
+
+In front of a cathedral that reared its lofty steeple in the midst of
+the squalid houses and worse than squalid saloons of one of the
+dreariest portions of the East Side, stood the form of a woman. She had
+paused in her rush down the narrow street to listen to the music,
+perhaps, or to catch a glimpse of the light that now and then burst from
+the widely swinging doors as they opened and shut upon some tardy
+worshipper.
+
+She was tall and fearful looking; her face, when the light struck it,
+was seared and desperate; gloom and desolation were written on all the
+lines of her rigid but wasted form, and when she shuddered under the
+gale, it was with that force and abandon to which passion lends its aid,
+and in which the soul proclaims its doom.
+
+Suddenly the doors before her swung wide and the preacher's voice was
+heard: "Love God and you will love your fellow-men. Love your fellow-men
+and you best show your love to God."
+
+She heard, started, and the charm was broken. "Love!" she echoed with a
+horrible laugh; "there is no love in heaven or on earth!"
+
+And she swept by, and the winds followed and the darkness swallowed her
+up like a gulf.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+A DISCUSSION.
+
+     "Young men think old men fools, and old men know young men to
+     be so." RAY'S PROVERBS.
+
+
+"And you are actually in earnest?"
+
+"I am."
+
+The first speaker, a fine-looking gentleman of some forty years of age,
+drummed with his fingers on the table before him and eyed the face of
+the young man who had repeated this assent so emphatically, with a
+certain close scrutiny indicative of surprise.
+
+"It is an unlooked-for move for you to make," he remarked at length.
+"Your success as a pianist has been so decided, I confess I do not
+understand why you should desire to abandon a profession that in five
+years' time has procured you both competence and a very enviable
+reputation--for the doubtful prospects of Wall Street, too!" he added
+with a deep and thoughtful frown that gave still further impressiveness
+to his strongly marked features.
+
+The young man with a sweep of his eye over the luxurious apartment in
+which they sat, shrugged his shoulders with that fine and nonchalant
+grace which was one of his chief characteristics.
+
+"With such a pilot as yourself, I ought to be able to steer clear of the
+shoals," said he, a frank smile illumining a face that was rather
+interesting than handsome.
+
+The elder gentleman did not return the smile. Instead of that he
+remained gazing at the ample coal-fire that burned in the grate before
+him with a look that to the young musician was simply inexplicable. "You
+see the ship in haven," he murmured at last; "but do not consider what
+storms it has weathered or what perils escaped. It is a voyage I would
+encourage no son of mine to undertake."
+
+"Yet you are not the man to shrink from danger or to hesitate in a
+course you had marked out for yourself, because of the struggle it
+involved or the difficulties it presented!" the young man exclaimed
+almost involuntarily as his glance lingered with a certain sort of
+fascination on the powerful brow and steady if somewhat melancholy eye
+of his companion.
+
+"No; but danger and difficulty should not be sought, only subdued when
+encountered. If you were driven into this path, I should say, 'God pity
+you!' and hold you out my hand to steady you along its precipices and
+above its sudden quicksands. But you are not driven to it. Your
+profession offers you the means of an ample livelihood while your good
+heart and fair talents insure you ultimate and honorable success, both
+in the social and artistic world. For a man of twenty-five such
+prospects are not common and he must be difficult to please not to be
+satisfied with them."
+
+"Yes," said the other rising with a fitful movement but instantly
+sitting again; "I have nothing to complain of as the world goes,
+only--Sir," he exclaimed with a sudden determination that lent a force
+to his features they had hitherto lacked, "you speak of being driven
+into a certain course; what do you mean by that?"
+
+"I mean," returned the other; "forced by circumstances to enter a line
+of business to which many others, if not all others are preferable."
+
+"You speak strongly, speculation evidently has none of your sympathy,
+notwithstanding the favorable results which have accrued to you from it.
+But excuse me, by circumstances you mean poverty, I suppose, and the
+lack of every other opening to wealth and position. You would not
+consider the desire to make a large fortune in a short space of time a
+circumstance of a sufficiently determining nature to reconcile you to my
+entering Wall Street speculation?"
+
+The elder gentleman rose, not as the other had done with a restless
+impulse quickly subsiding at the first excuse, but forcibly and with a
+feverish impatience that to appearance was somewhat out of proportion to
+the occasion. "A large fortune in a short space of time!" he reiterated,
+pausing where he had risen with an eagle glance at his companion and a
+ringing tone in his voice that bespoke a deep but hitherto suppressed
+agitation. "It is the alluring inscription above the pitfall into which
+many a noble youth has fallen; the battle-cry to a struggle that has led
+many a strong man the way of ruin; the guide-post to a life whose
+feverish days and sleepless nights offer but poor compensation for the
+sudden splendors and as sudden reverses attached to it. I had rather you
+had accounted for this sudden freak of yours by the strongest aspiration
+after power than by this cry of the merely mercenary man who in his
+desire to enjoy wealth, prefers to win it by a stroke of luck rather
+than conquer it by a life of endeavor." He stopped. "I am aware that
+this tirade against the ladder by which I myself have risen so rapidly,
+must strike you as in ill-taste. But Bertram, I am interested in your
+welfare and am willing to incur some slight charge of inconsistency in
+order to insure it," and here he turned upon his companion with that
+expression of extreme gentleness which lent such a peculiar charm to his
+countenance and explained perhaps the almost unlimited power he held
+over the hearts and minds of those who came within the circle of his
+influence.
+
+"You are very good, sir," murmured his young friend, who to explain
+matters at once was in reality the nephew of this Wall Street magnate,
+though from the fact of his having taken another name on entering the
+musical profession, was not generally known as such. "No one, not even
+my father himself, could have been more considerate and kind; but I do
+not think you understand me, or rather I should say I do not think I
+have made myself perfectly intelligible to you. It is not for the sake
+of wealth itself or the eclat attending its possession that I desire an
+immediate fortune, but that by means of it I may attain another object
+dearer than wealth, and more precious than my career."
+
+The elder gentleman turned quickly, evidently much surprised, and cast a
+sudden inquiring glance at his nephew, who blushed with a modest
+ingenuousness pleasing to see in one so well accustomed to the critical
+gaze of his fellow-men.
+
+"Yes," said he, as if in answer to that look, "I am in love."
+
+A deep silence for a moment pervaded the apartment, a sombre silence
+almost startling to young Mandeville, who had expected some audible
+expression to follow this announcement if only the good-natured "Pooh!
+pooh!" of the matured man of the world in the presence of ardent
+youthful enthusiasm. What could it mean? Looking up he encountered his
+uncle's eye fixed upon him with the last expression he could have
+anticipated seeing there, namely that of actual and unmistakable alarm.
+
+"You are displeased," Mandeville exclaimed. "You have thought me proof
+against such a passion, or perhaps you do not believe in the passion
+itself!" Then with a sudden remembrance of the notable if somewhat
+indolent loveliness of his uncle's wife, blushed again at his unusual
+want of tact, while his eye with an involuntary impulse sought the large
+panel at their right where, in the full bloom of her first youth, the
+lady of the house smiled upon all beholders.
+
+"I do not believe in that passion influencing a man's career," his uncle
+replied with no apparent attention to the other's embarrassment. "A
+woman needs be possessed of uncommon excellences to justify a man in
+leaving a path where success is certain, for one where it is not only
+doubtful but if attained must bring many a regret and heart-ache in its
+train. Beauty is not sufficient," he went on with sterner and sterner
+significance, "though it were of an angelic order. There must be worth."
+And here his mind's eye if not that of his bodily sense, certainly
+followed the glance of his companion.
+
+"I believe there is worth," the young man replied; "certainly, it is not
+her beauty that charms me. I do not even know if she _is_ beautiful," he
+continued.
+
+
+"And you believe you love!" the elder exclaimed after another short
+pause.
+
+There was so much of bitterness in the tone in which this was uttered,
+that Mandeville forgot its incredulity. "I think I must," returned he
+with a certain masculine naïveté not out of keeping with his general
+style of face and manner, "else I should not be here. Three weeks ago I
+was satisfied with my profession, if not enthusiastic over it; to-day I
+ask nothing but to be allowed to enter upon some business that in three
+years' time at least will place me where I can be the fit mate of any
+woman in this land, that is not worth her millions."
+
+"The woman for whom you have conceived this violent attachment is, then,
+above you in social position?"
+
+"Yes, sir, or so considered, which amounts to the same thing, as far as
+I am concerned."
+
+"Bertram, I have lived longer than you and have seen much of both social
+and domestic life, and I tell you no woman is worth such a sacrifice on
+the part of a man as you propose. No woman of to-day, I should say; our
+mothers were different. The very fact that this young lady of whom you
+speak, obliges you to change your whole course of life in order to
+obtain her, ought to be sufficient to prove to you--" He stopped
+suddenly, arrested by the young man's lifted hand. "She does not oblige
+you, then?"
+
+"Not on her own account, sir. This lily," lifting a vase of blossoms at
+his elbow, "could not be more innocent of the necessities that govern
+the social circle it adorns, than the pure, single-minded girl to whom I
+have dedicated what is best and noblest in my manhood. It is her
+father--"
+
+"Ah, her father!"
+
+"Yes, sir," the young man pursued, more and more astonished at the
+other's tone. "He is a man who has a right to expect both wealth and
+position in a son-in-law. But I see I shall have to tell you my story,
+sir. It is an uncommon one and I never meant that it should pass my
+lips, but if by its relation I can win your sympathy for a pure and
+noble passion, I shall consider the sacred seal of secrecy broken in a
+good cause. But," said he, seeing his uncle cast a short and uneasy
+glance at the door, "perhaps I am interrupting you. You expect some
+one!"
+
+
+"No," said his uncle, "my wife is at church; I am ready to listen."
+
+The young man gave a hurried sigh, cast one look at his companion's
+immovable face, as if to assure himself that the narrative was
+necessary, then leaned back and in a steady business-like tone that
+softened, however, as he proceeded, began to relate as follows:
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+A MYSTERIOUS SUMMONS.
+
+    "Without unspotted, innocent within,
+    She feared no danger, for she knew no sin."--DRYDEN.
+
+
+It was after a matinée performance at ---- Hall some two weeks ago that
+I stopped to light a cigar in the small corridor leading to the back
+entrance. I was in a dissatisfied frame of mind. Something in the music
+I had been playing or the manner in which it had been received had
+touched unwonted chords in my own nature. I felt alone. I remember
+asking myself as I stood there, what it all amounted to? Who of all the
+applauding crowd would watch at my bedside through a long and harassing
+sickness, or lend their sympathy as they now yielded their praise, if
+instead of carrying off the honors of the day I had failed to do justice
+to my reputation. I was just smiling over the only exception I could
+make to this sweeping assertion, that of the pale-eyed youth you have
+sometimes observed dogging my steps, when Briggs came up to me.
+
+"There is a woman here, sir, who insists on seeing you; she has been
+waiting through half the last piece. Shall I tell her you are coming
+out?"
+
+"A woman!" exclaimed I, somewhat surprised, for my visitors are not apt
+to be of the gentler sex.
+
+"Yes sir, an old one. She seems very anxious to speak to you. I could
+not get rid of her no how."
+
+I hurried forward to the muffled figure which he pointed out cowering
+against the wall by the door. "Well, my good woman, what do you want?" I
+asked, bending towards her in the hopes of catching a glimpse of the
+face she held partly concealed from me.
+
+"Are you Mr. Mandeville?" she inquired in a tone shaken as much by
+agitation as age.
+
+I bowed.
+
+"The one who plays upon the piano?"
+
+"The very same," I declared.
+
+"You are not deceiving me," she went on, looking up with a marked
+anxiety plainly visible through her veil. "I haven't seen you play and
+couldn't contradict you, but--"
+
+"Here!" said I calling to Briggs with a kindly look at the old woman,
+"help me on with my coat, will you?"
+
+The "Certainly, Mr. Mandeville," with which he complied seemed to
+reassure her, and as soon as the coat was on and he was gone, she
+grasped me by the arm and drew my ear down to her mouth.
+
+"If you are Mr. Mandeville, I have a message for you. This letter,"
+slipping one into my hand, "is from a young lady, sir. She bade me give
+it to you myself. She is young and pretty," she pursued as she saw me
+make a movement of distaste, "and a lady. We depend upon your honor,
+sir."
+
+I acknowledge that my first impulse was to fling her back the note and
+leave the building; I was in no mood for trifling, my next to burst into
+a laugh and politely hand her to the door, my last and best, to open the
+poor little note and see for myself whether the writer was a lady or
+not. Proceeding to the door, for it was already twilight in the dim
+passage way, I tore open the envelope which was dainty enough and took
+out a sheet of closely written paper. A certain qualm of conscience
+assailed me as I saw the delicate chirography it disclosed and I was
+tempted to thrust it back and return it unread to the old woman now
+trembling in the corner. But curiosity overcame my scruples, and hastily
+unfolding the sheet I read these lines:
+
+     "I do not know if what I do is right; I am sure aunty would not
+     say it was; but aunty never thinks anything is right but going
+     to church and reading the papers to papa. I am just a little
+     girl who has heard you play, and who would think the world was
+     too beautiful, if she could hear you say to her just once, some
+     of the kind things you must speak every day to the persons who
+     know you. I do not expect very much--you must have a great many
+     friends, and you would not care for me--but the least little
+     look, if it were all my own, would make me so happy and so
+     proud I should not envy anybody in the world, unless it was
+     some of those dear friends who see you always.
+
+     "I do not come and hear you play often, for aunty thinks music
+     frivolous, but I am always hearing you no matter where I am,
+     and it makes me feel as if I were far away from everybody, in a
+     beautiful land all sunshine and flowers. But nurse says I must
+     not write so much or you will not read it, so I will stop here.
+     But if you _would_ come it would make some one happier than
+     even your beautiful music could do."
+
+That was all; there was neither name nor date. A child's epistle,
+written with a woman's circumspection. With mingled sensations of doubt
+and curiosity I turned back to the old woman who stood awaiting me with
+eager anxiety.
+
+"Was this written by a child or woman?" I asked, meeting her eye with as
+much sternness as I could assume.
+
+"Don't ask me--don't ask me anything. I have promised to bring you if I
+could, but I cannot answer any questions."
+
+I stepped back with an incredulous laugh. Here was evidently an
+adventure. "You will at least tell me where the young miss lives," said
+I, "before I undertake to fulfil her request."
+
+She shook her head. "I have a carriage at the door, sir," said she. "All
+you have got to do is to get into it with me and we shall soon be at the
+house."
+
+I looked from her face to the letter in my hand, and knew not what to
+think. The spirit of simplicity and ingenuousness that marked the latter
+was scarcely in keeping with this air of mystery. The woman observing my
+hesitation moved towards the door.
+
+"Will you come, sir?" she inquired. "You will not regret it. Just a
+moment's talk with a pretty young girl--surely--"
+
+"Hush," said I, hearing a hasty step behind me. And sure enough just
+then my intimate friend Selby came along and grasping me by the arm
+began dragging me towards the door. "You are my property," said he.
+"I've promised, on my word of honor as a gentleman and a musician, to
+bring you to the Handel Club this afternoon. I was afraid you had
+escaped me, but--" Here he caught sight of the small black figure
+halting in the door-way, and paused.
+
+"Who's this?" said he.
+
+I hesitated. For one instant the scale of my whole future destiny hung
+trembling in the balance, then the demon of curiosity got the better of
+my judgment, and with the rather unworthy consideration that I might as
+well enjoy my youth while I could, I released myself from my friend's
+detaining hand and replied, "Some one with whom I have very particular
+business. I cannot go to the Handel Club to-day," and darting out
+without further delay, I rejoined the old woman on the sidewalk.
+
+Without a word she drew me towards a carriage I now observed standing by
+the curbstone a few feet to the left. As I got in I remember pausing a
+moment to glance at the man on the box, but it was too dark for me to
+perceive anything but the fact that he was dressed in livery. More and
+more astonished I leaned back in my seat and endeavored to open
+conversation with my mysterious companion. But it did not work. Without
+being actually rude, she parried my questions in such a way that by the
+end of five minutes I found myself as far from any knowledge of the real
+situation of the case as when I started. I therefore desisted from any
+further attempts and turned to look out, when I made a discovery that
+for the first time awoke some vague feelings of alarm within my breast.
+This was, that the window was not covered by a curtain as I supposed,
+but by closed blinds which when I tried to raise them resisted all my
+efforts to do so.
+
+"It is very close here," I muttered, in some sort of excuse for this
+display of uneasiness. "Cannot you give us a little air?" But my
+companion remained silent, and I felt ashamed to press the matter though
+I took advantage of the darkness to remove to a safer place a roll of
+money which I had about me.
+
+Yet I was far from being really anxious, and did not once meditate
+backing out of an adventure that was at once so piquant and romantic.
+For by this time I became conscious from the sounds about me that we had
+left the side street for one of the avenues and were then proceeding
+rapidly up town. Listening, I heard the roll of omnibuses and the jingle
+of car-bells, which informed me that we were in Broadway, no other
+avenue in the city being traversed by both these methods of conveyance.
+But after awhile the jingle ceased and presently the livelier sounds of
+constant commotion inseparable from a business thoroughfare, and we
+entered what I took to be Madison Avenue at Twenty-third Street.
+
+Instantly I made up mind to notice every turn of the carriage, that I
+might fix to some degree the locality towards which we were tending. But
+it turned but once and that after a distance of steady travelling that
+quite overthrew any calculation I was able to make at that time of the
+probable number of streets we had passed since entering the avenue.
+Having turned, it went but about half a block to the left when it
+stopped. "I shall see where I am when I get out," thought I; but in this
+I was mistaken.
+
+First we had stopped in the middle of a block of houses built, as far as
+I could judge, all after one model. Next the fact of the front door
+being open, though I saw no one in the hall, somewhat disconcerted me,
+and I hurried across the sidewalk and up the stoop in a species of maze
+hardly to be expected from one of my naturally careless disposition. The
+next moment the door closed behind me and I found myself in a
+well-lighted hall whose quiet richness betokened it as belonging to a
+private dwelling of no mean pretensions to elegance.
+
+This was the first surprise I received.
+
+"Follow me," said the old woman, hurrying me down the hall and into a
+small room at the end. "The young lady will be here in a moment," and
+without lifting her veil or affording me the least glimpse of her
+features, she retired, leaving me to face the situation before me as
+best I might.
+
+It was anything but a pleasant one as it appeared to me at that moment,
+and for an instant I seriously thought of retracing my steps and leaving
+a domicile into which I had been introduced in such a mysterious manner.
+Then the quiet aspect of the room, which though sparsely furnished with
+a piano and chairs was still of an order rarely seen out of gentlemen's
+houses, struck my imagination and reawakened my curiosity, and nerving
+myself to meet whatever interview might be accorded me, I waited. It was
+only five minutes by the small clock ticking on the mantel-piece, but it
+seemed an hour before I heard a timid step at the door, and saw it swing
+slowly open, disclosing--well, I did not stop to inquire whether it was
+a child or a woman. I merely saw the shrinking modest form, the eager
+blushing face, and bowed almost to the ground in a sudden reverence for
+the sublime innocence revealed to me. Yes, it did not take a second look
+to read that tender countenance to its last guileless page. Had she been
+a woman of twenty-five I could not have mistaken her expression of pure
+delight and timid interest, but she was only sixteen, as I afterwards
+learned, and younger in experience than in age.
+
+Closing the door behind her, she stood for a moment without speaking,
+then with a deepening of the blush which was only a child's
+embarrassment in the presence of a stranger, looked up and murmured my
+name with a word or so of grateful acknowledgment that would have called
+forth a smile on my lips if I had not been startled by the sudden change
+that passed over her features when she met my eyes. Was it that I showed
+my surprise too plainly, or did my admiration manifest itself in my
+gaze? an admiration great as it was humble, and which was already of a
+nature such as I had never before given to girl or woman. Whatever it
+was, she no sooner met my look than she paused, trembled, and started
+back with a confused murmur, through which I plainly heard her whisper
+in a low distressed tone, "Oh, what have I done!"
+
+"Called a good friend to your side," said I in the frank, brotherly way
+I thought most likely to reassure her. "Do not be alarmed, I am only too
+happy to meet one who evidently enjoys music so well."
+
+But the hidden chord of womanhood had been struck in the child's soul,
+and she could not recover herself. For an instant I thought she would
+turn and flee, and struck as I was with remorse at my reckless invasion
+of this uncontaminated temple, I could not but admire the spirited
+picture she presented as, with form half turned and face bent back, she
+stood hesitating on the point of flight.
+
+I did not try to stop her. "She shall follow her own impulse," said I to
+myself, but I felt a vague relief that was deeper than I imagined, when
+she suddenly relinquished her strained attitude, and advancing a step or
+so began to murmur:
+
+"I did not know--I did not realize I was doing what was so very wrong.
+Young ladies do not ask gentlemen to come and see them, no matter how
+much they desire to make their acquaintance. I see it now; I did not
+before. Will you--can you forgive me?"
+
+I smiled; I could not help it. I could have taken her to my heart and
+soothed her as I would a child, but the pallor of womanhood, which had
+replaced the blush of the child, awed me and made my own words come
+hesitatingly.
+
+"Forgive you? You must forgive me! It was as wrong for me," I went on
+with a wild idea of not mincing matters with this pure soul, "to obey
+your innocent request, as it was for you to make it. I am a man of the
+world and know its _convenances_; you are very young."
+
+"I am sixteen," she murmured.
+
+The abrupt little confession, implying as it did her determination not
+to accept any palliation of her conduct which it did not deserve,
+touched me strangely. "But very young for that," I exclaimed.
+
+"So aunty says, but no one can ever say it any more," she answered. Then
+with a sudden gush, "We shall never see each other again, and you must
+forget the motherless girl who has met you in a way for which she must
+blush through life. It is no excuse," she pursued hurriedly, "that nurse
+thought it was all right. She always approves of everything I do or want
+to do, especially if it is anything aunt would be likely to forbid. I
+have been spoiled by nurse."
+
+"Was nurse the woman who came for me?" I asked.
+
+She nodded her head with a quick little motion inexpressibly charming.
+"Yes, that was nurse. She said she would do it all, I need only write
+the note. She meant to give me a pleasure, but she did wrong."
+
+"Yes," thought I, "how wrong you little know or realize." But I only
+said, "You must be guided by some one with more knowledge of the world
+after this. Not," I made haste to add, struck by the misery in her child
+eyes, "that any harm has been done. You could not have appealed to the
+friendship of any one who would hold you in greater respect than I.
+Whether we meet again or not, my memory of you shall be sweet and
+sacred, I promise you that."
+
+But she threw out her hand with a quick gesture. "No, do not remember
+me. My only happiness will lie in the thought you have forgotten." And
+the last remnants of the child soul vanished in that hurried utterance.
+"You must go now," she continued more calmly. "The carriage that brought
+you is at the door; I must ask you to take it back to your home."
+
+"But," I exclaimed with a wild and unbearable sense of sudden loss as
+she laid her hand on the knob of the door, "are we to part like this?
+Will you not at least trust me with your name before I go?"
+
+Her hand dropped from the knob as if it had been hot steel, and she
+turned towards me with a slow yearning motion that whatever it betokened
+set my heart beating violently. "You do not know it, then?" she
+inquired.
+
+"I know nothing but what this little note contains," I replied, drawing
+her letter from my pocket.
+
+"Oh, that letter! I must have it," she murmured; then, as I stepped
+towards her, drew back and pointing to the table said, "Lay it there,
+please."
+
+I did so, whereupon something like a smile crossed her lips and I
+thought she was going to reward me with her name, but she only said, "I
+thank you; now you know nothing;" and almost before I realized it she
+had opened the door and stepped into the hall.
+
+As I made haste to follow her, the sound of a low, "He is a gentleman,
+he will ask no questions," struck my ear, and looking up, I saw her just
+leaving the side of the old nurse who stood evidently awaiting me half
+down the hall. Bowing with formal ceremony, I passed her by and
+proceeded to the front door. As I did so I caught one glimpse of her
+face. It had escaped from all restraint and the expression of the eyes
+was overpowering. I subdued a wild impulse to leap back to her side, and
+stepped at once over the threshold. The nurse joined me, and together we
+went down the stoop to the street.
+
+"May I inquire where you wish to be taken?" she asked.
+
+I told her, and she gave the order to the coachman, together with a few
+words I did not hear; then stepping back she waited for me to get in.
+There was no help for it. I gave one quick look behind me, saw the front
+door close, realized how impossible it would ever be for me to recognize
+the house again, and placed my foot on the carriage step. Suddenly a
+bright idea struck me, and hastily dropping my cane I stepped back to
+pick it up. As I did so I pulled out a bit of crayon I chanced to have
+in my pocket, and as I stooped, chalked a small cross on the curbstone
+directly in front of the house, after which I recovered my cane, uttered
+some murmured word of apology, jumped into the carriage and was about to
+shut the door, when the old nurse stepped in after me and quietly closed
+it herself. By the pang that shot through my breast as the carriage
+wheels left the house, I knew that for the first time in my life, I
+_loved_.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+SEARCHINGS.
+
+     "Patience, and shuffle the cards."--CERVANTES.
+
+
+If I had expected anything from the presence in the carriage of the
+woman who had arranged this interview, I was doomed to disappointment.
+Reticent before, she was absolutely silent now, sitting at my side like
+a grim statue or a frozen image of watchfulness, ready to awake and stop
+me if I offered to open the door or make any other move indicative of a
+determination to know where I was, or in what direction I was going.
+That her young mistress in the momentary conversation they had held
+before our departure had succeeded in giving her some idea of the shame
+with which she had felt herself overwhelmed and her present natural
+desire for secrecy, I do not doubt, but I think now, as I thought then,
+that the unusual precautions taken both at that time and before, to keep
+me in ignorance of the young lady's identity, were due to the elderly
+woman's own consciousness of the peril she had invoked in yielding to
+the wishes of her young and thoughtless mistress; a theory which, if
+true, argues more for the mind than the conscience of this mysterious
+woman. However, it is with facts we have to deal, and you will be more
+interested in learning what I did, than what I thought during that short
+ride in perfect darkness.
+
+The mark which I had left on the curbstone behind me sufficiently showed
+the nature of my resolve, and when we made the first turn at the end of
+the block I leaned back in my seat and laying my finger on my wrist,
+began to count the pulsations of my blood. It was the only device that
+suggested itself, by which I might afterward gather some approximate
+notion of the distance we travelled in a straight course down town. I
+had just arrived at the number seven hundred and sixty-two, and was
+inwardly congratulating myself upon this new method of reckoning
+distance, when the wheels gave a lurch and we passed over a car track.
+Instantly all my fine calculations fell to the ground. We were not in
+Madison Avenue, as I supposed; could not be, since no track crosses that
+avenue below Fifty-ninth Street, and we were proceeding on as we could
+not have done had we gained the terminus of the avenue at Twenty-third
+Street. Could it be that the carriage had not been turned around while I
+was in the house, and that we had come back by way of Fifth Avenue? I
+could not remember--in fact, the more I tried to think which way the
+horses' heads were directed when we went into the house, the more I was
+confused. But presently I considered that wherever we were, we certainly
+had not passed over the narrow strip of smooth pavement in front of the
+Worth monument, and therefore could not have reached Twenty-third Street
+by way of Fifth Avenue. We must be up town, and that track we crossed
+must have been at Fifty-ninth Street. And soon, as if to assure me of
+this, we took a turn, quickly followed at a block's length by another,
+after which I had no difficulty in recognizing the smooth pavement of
+the entrance to the Park or the roll down Fifth Avenue afterwards. "They
+have thought to confuse me by an extra mile or so of travel," thought I,
+with some complacency, "but the streets of New York are too simply laid
+out to lend themselves to any such easy mode of mystification." Yet I
+have thought since then how, with a smarter man on the box, the affair
+might have been conducted so as to have baffled the oldest citizen in
+any attempt at calculation.
+
+When we stopped in front of the Albemarle I quietly thanked the woman
+who had conducted me, and stepped to the ground. Instantly the door shut
+behind me, the carriage drove off, and I was left standing there like a
+man suddenly awakened from a dream.
+
+Entering my hotel, I ordered supper, thinking that the very practical
+occupation of eating would serve to divert my mind into its ordinary
+channels. But the dream, if dream it was, had made too vivid an
+impression to be shaken off so easily. It followed me to the hall in the
+evening and mingled with every chord I struck.
+
+I could scarcely sleep that night for thinking of the sweet child's face
+that had blossomed into a woman's before my eyes, and what a woman! With
+the first hint of daylight I rose, and as soon as it was in any degree
+suitable to be out, hired a cab and proceeded to the corner of
+Fifty-ninth Street and Madison Avenue, where, according to my
+calculations of the evening before, we had crossed the car track which
+had first interrupted me in that very original method of computing
+distance of which I have already spoken, a method by the way, which you
+must acknowledge is an improvement on the boy's plan of finding his way
+back from the woods by means of the bread-crumbs he had scattered behind
+him, forgetting that the birds would eat up his crumbs and leave him
+without a clew. Bidding the driver proceed at the ordinary jog trot down
+the avenue, I laid my finger on my wrist, and counted each throb of my
+pulse till I had reached the magical number seven hundred and sixty-two.
+Then putting my head out of the window, I bade him stop. We were in the
+middle of a block, but that did not disconcert me. I had not expected to
+gain more than an approximate idea of the spot where we had first turned
+into the avenue, it being impossible to regulate the horses' pace so as
+to tally with that taken by the span of the night before, even if the
+pulsations in my wrist were to be absolutely relied upon. Noting the
+streets between which we had paused, I bade the driver to turn down one
+and come back by the other, occupying myself in the meanwhile, in
+searching the curbstone for the small mark I had left in front of her
+door the night before. But though we drove slowly and I searched
+carefully, not a trace did I perceive of that tell-tale sign, and
+forsaking those two streets, I ordered my obedient Jehu to try the two
+outlying ones below and above. He did so, and I again consulted the
+curbstone, but with no better success. No mark or remnants of a mark was
+to be found anywhere. Nor, though we travelled through three or four
+other streets in the same way, did we come upon any clew liable to
+assist me in my search. Clean discouraged and somewhat out of temper
+with myself for my pusillanimity of the evening before in not having
+braved the anger of my companion by opening the carriage door at the
+first corner and leaping out, I commanded to be taken back to the hotel,
+where for a whole miserable day I racked my brain with devices for
+acquiring the knowledge I so much desired. The result was futile, as you
+may imagine; nor will I stop to recount the various expedients to which
+I afterwards resorted in my vain attempt to solve the mystery of this
+young girl's identity.
+
+Enough that they all failed, even the very promising one of searching
+the various photographic establishments of the city, for the valuable
+clew which her picture would give me. And so a week passed.
+
+"It is time this mad infatuation was at an end," said I to myself one
+morning as I sat down to write a letter. "There is no hope of my ever
+seeing her again, and I am but frittering away the best emotions of my
+life in thus indulging in a dream that is not the prelude to a reality."
+But in spite of the wise determination thus made, I soon found my
+thoughts recurring to their old channel, and seized with sudden
+impatience at my evident weakness, took up the letter I had been writing
+and was about to read it, when to my great amazement I perceived that
+instead of inditing the usual words of a business communication, I had
+been engaged in scribbling a certain number up and down the page and
+even across the bottom where my signature should have been.
+
+"Am I a fool?" I exclaimed, and was about to tear the sheet in two, when
+glancing again at the number, which was a simple thirty-six, I asked
+myself where I had got those especial figures. Instantly there arose
+before my mind's eye the vision of a brown-stone front with its
+vestibule and door. It was, then, the number of a house; but what house?
+a _chateau en Espagne_ or a _bona fide_ New York dwelling, which for
+some reason had unconsciously impressed itself upon my memory? I could
+not answer. There on the page was the number thirty-six, and equally
+plain in my mind was the look of the brown-stone front to which that
+number belonged--and that was all.
+
+But it was enough to awaken within me the spirit of inquiry. The few
+houses thus numbered in that quarter of the city where I had lately
+been, were not so hard to find but that a morning given to the business
+ought to satisfy me whether the vision in my mind had its basis in
+reality. Taking a cab, I rode up town and into that region of streets I
+had traversed so carefully a week before. For I was assured that if the
+impression had been made by an actual dwelling it had been done at that
+time. Following the same course I then took, I consulted the appearance
+of the various houses to which that number was assigned. The first was
+built of brick; that was not it. The next one had pillars to the
+vestibule; and that was not it. The third, to use an Irish bull, was no
+house at all, but a stable, while the fourth was an elegant structure of
+much more pretension than the plain and simple front I had in my mind or
+memory. I was about to utter a curse upon my folly and go home, when I
+remembered there was yet a street or two taken in my zig-zag course of
+the week before, which I had not yet tested. "Might as well be
+thorough," I muttered, and bade my driver proceed down ---- Street.
+
+What was there in its aspect that dimly excited me at the first glance?
+A dim remembrance, a certain ghostly assurance that we had reached the
+right spot? As we neared the number I sought, I could not suppress an
+exclamation of surprise. For there before me to its last detail, stood
+the house which involuntarily presented itself to my mind, when my eye
+first fell upon that mysterious number scribbled at the foot of the page
+I was writing.
+
+It was, then, no chimera of an overwrought brain, this vision of a
+house-front which had been haunting me, but a distinct remembrance of an
+actual dwelling seen by me in my former journey through this street. But
+why this house-front above all others; what was there in it to make such
+an impression? Looking at it I could not determine, but after we had
+passed, something, I cannot tell what, brought back another remembrance,
+trivial in itself, but yet a link in the chain that was destined sooner
+or later to lead me out of the maze into which I had stumbled. It was
+merely this; that as I rode along the streets on that memorable morning,
+searching for that mark on the curbstone from which I hoped so much, I
+had come upon a spot where the pavement had been freshly washed. With
+that unconscious action of the brain with which we are familiar, I
+looked at the sidewalk a moment, running even then with the water that
+had been cast upon it, and then gave a quick glance at the house. That
+glance, account for it as you will, took in the picture before it as the
+camera catches the impression of a likeness, and though in another
+instant I had forgotten the whole occurrence, it needed but a certain
+train of thought or perhaps a certain state of emotion to revive it
+again.
+
+A noble cause for such an act of unconscious cerebration you will say, a
+freshly washed pavement: _Le jeu ne faut pas la chandelle._ And so I
+thought too, or would have thought if I had not been so interested in
+the pursuit in which I was engaged, and if the idea had not suggested
+itself that water and a broom might obliterate chalk-marks from
+curbstones, and that the imps that preside over our mental forces would
+not indulge in such a trick at my expense unless the play _was_ worth
+the candle. At all events, from the moment I made this discovery, I
+fixed my faith on that house as the one which held the object of my
+search, and though I contented myself with merely noting the number of
+the street as we left it, I none the less determined to pursue my
+investigations, till I had learned beyond the possibility of a doubt
+whether my conjectures were not true.
+
+A perseverance worthy of a better cause you will say, but you are no
+longer twenty-five and under the influence of your first passion. I own
+I was astonished at myself and frequently paused in the pursuit I had
+undertaken, to ask if I were the same person who but a fortnight before
+laughed at the story of a man who had gone mad over the body of an
+unknown woman he had saved from a wreck only to find her dead in his
+arms.
+
+The first thing I did was to ascertain the name of the gentleman
+occupying the house I have specified. It was that of one of our
+wealthiest and most respectable bankers, a name as well known in the
+city--as your own for instance. This was somewhat disconcerting, but
+with a dogged resolution somewhat foreign to my natural disposition, I
+persevered in my investigations, and learning in the next breath that
+the gentleman alluded to was a widower with an only child, a young
+daughter of about sixteen or so, recovered my assurance, though not my
+equanimity. Seeking out my friend Farrar, who as you know is a walking
+gazette of New York society, I broached the subject of Mr.--excuse me
+if I do not mention his name; allow me to say, Preston's domestic
+affairs, and learned that Miss Preston, "A naive little piece for so
+great an heiress," I remember Farrar called her, had left town within a
+day or two for a visit to some friends in Baltimore. "I happen to know,"
+said he with that careless sweep of his hand at which you have so often
+laughed, "because my friend Miss Forsyth met her at the depot. She was
+intending to be gone--two weeks, I think she said. Do you know her?"
+
+That last question sprung upon me unawares, and I am afraid I blushed.
+"No," I returned, "I have not that honor but an acquaintance of mine
+has--well--has met her and--"
+
+"I see, I see," broke in Farrar with his most disagreeable smile. Then
+with a short laugh, meant to act as a warning, I suppose, added as he
+walked off, "I hope your friend is in fair circumstances and not
+connected with the fine arts. Music is Mr. Preston's detestation, while
+Miss Preston though too young to be much sought after yet, will in two
+years' time have the pick of the city at her command."
+
+"So!" thought I to myself; "my little innocent charmer is an embryo
+aristocrat, eh? Well then, I was a greater fool than I imagined." And I
+walked out of the hotel where I had met Farrar, with the very sensible
+conclusion to drop a subject that promised nothing but disappointment.
+
+But the fates were against me, or the good angels perhaps, and at the
+next comer I met an old acquaintance, the very opposite of Farrar in
+character, who with a long love story of his own fired, my imagination
+to such an extent that in spite of myself I turned down ---- Street, and
+was proceeding to pass her house, when suddenly the thought struck me,
+"How do I know that this unapproachable daughter of one of our most
+prominent citizens is one and the same person with my dainty little
+charmer? Widowers with young daughters are not so rare in this great
+city that I need consider the question as decided, because by a half
+superstitious freak of my own I have settled upon this house as the one
+I was in the other night. My inamorata may be the offspring of a
+musician for all I know." And inflamed at the thought of this
+possibility--I remembered the piano, you see--I gave to the winds all my
+fine resolutions and only asked how I could determine for once and all,
+whether I had ever crossed the threshold of the house before me. Some
+men would have run up the stoop, rung the bell and asked to see Mr.
+Preston on some pretended business he could easily conjure up to suit
+the occasion, but my face is too well known for me to risk any such
+attempt, besides I was too anxious to win the confidence of the young
+girl to shock her awakened sense of propriety by seeming to seek her
+where she did not wish to be found. And yet I must enter that house and
+see for myself if it was the one that held her on that memorable
+evening.
+
+Pondering the question, I looked back at the door so obstinately closed
+against my curiosity, when to my satisfaction and delight it suddenly
+opened and a man stepped out, whom I instantly recognized as a business
+agent for one of the largest piano-forte manufactories in the city. "The
+heavens smile upon my enterprise," thought I, and waited for the man to
+come up with me. He was not only a friend of mine but largely indebted
+to me in various ways, so that I knew I had only to urge a request for
+it to be immediately granted, and that, too, without any questions or
+gossip.
+
+You will not be interested in anything but the result, which was
+somewhat out of the usual course, and may therefore shock you. But you
+must remember that I am telling you of matters which young men usually
+keep to themselves, and that whatever I did, was accomplished in a
+spirit of respect only a shade less constraining in its power than the
+love that was at once my impelling force, and my constant embarrassment.
+
+To come, then, to the point, a piano was to be set up in that house on
+that very day, Mr. Preston having yielded to the solicitations of his
+daughter for a new instrument. My friend was to be engaged in the
+transfer, and at my solicitation for leave to assist in the operation,
+gave his consent in perfect confidence as to my possessing good and
+sufficient reasons for such a remarkable request, and appointed the hour
+at which I was to meet him at the ware-rooms.
+
+Behold me, then, at half-past two that afternoon, assisting with my own
+hands in carrying a piano up the stoop of that house which, four hours
+before, I had regarded as unapproachable. Dressed in a workman's blouse
+and with my hair well roughened under a rude cap that effectually
+disguised me, I advanced with but little fear of detection. And yet no
+sooner had I entered the house and seen at a glance that the aspect of
+the hall coincided with my rather vague remembrance of that through
+which I had been ushered a week before, than I was struck by a sudden
+sense of my situation, and experiencing that uncomfortable consciousness
+of self-betrayal, which a blush always gives a man, stumbled forward
+under my heavy burden, feeling as if a thousand eyes were fixed upon me
+and my cherished secret, instead of the two sharp but totally
+unsuspicious orbs of the elderly matron that surveyed us from the top of
+the banisters. "Be careful there, you'll knock a hole through that glass
+door!" though a natural cry under the circumstances, struck on my ears
+with the force and mysterious power of a secret warning, and when after
+a moment of blind advance I suddenly lifted my eyes and found myself in
+the little room, which like a silhouette on a white ground, stood out in
+my memory in distinct detail as the spot where I had first heard my own
+heart beat, I own that I felt my hands slipping from my burden, and in
+another moment had disgraced my character of a workman if I had not
+caught the sudden ring of a well known voice in the hall, as nurse
+answered from above some question propounded by the elderly lady with
+the piercing eyes. As it was, I recovered myself and went through my
+duties as promptly and deftly as if my heart did not throb with memories
+that each passing hour and event only served to hallow to my
+imagination.
+
+At length the piano was duly set up and we turned to leave. Will you
+think I am too trivial in my details if I tell you that I lingered
+behind the rest and for an instant let my hand with all its
+possibilities for calling out a soul from that dead instrument, lie a
+moment on the keys over which her dainty fingers were so soon to
+traverse?
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+THE RUBICON.
+
+     "I'll stake my life upon her faith."--OTHELLO.
+
+
+Once convinced of the identity of my sweet young friend with the Miss
+Preston at whose feet a two year hence, the wealth and aristocracy of
+New York would be kneeling, I drew back from further effort as having
+received a damper to my presumptuous hopes that would soon effectually
+stifle them. Everything I heard about the family--and it seemed as if
+suddenly each chance acquaintance that I met had something to say about
+Mr. Preston either as a banker or a man, only served to confirm me in
+this view. "He is a money worshipper," said one. "The bluest of blue
+Presbyterians," declared another. "The enemy of presumption and anything
+that looks like an overweening confidence in one's own worth or
+capabilities," remarked a third. "A man who would beggar himself to save
+the honor of a corporation with which he was concerned," observed a
+fourth "but who would not invite to his table the most influential man
+connected with it if that man was unable to trace his family back to the
+old Dutch settlers to which Mr. Preston's own ancestors belonged."
+
+This latter statement I have no doubt was exaggerated for I myself have
+seen him at dinners where half the gentlemen who lifted the wine glass
+were self-made in every sense of the term. But it showed the bent of his
+mind and it was a bent that left me entirely out of the sweep of his
+acquaintanceship much less that of his exquisite daughter, the pride of
+his soul if not the jewel of his heart.
+
+But when will a man who has seen or who flatters himself that he has
+seen in the eyes of the woman he admires, the least spark of that fire
+which is consuming his own soul, pause at an obstacle which after all
+has its basis simply in circumstances of position or will. By the time
+the two weeks of her expected absence had expired, I had settled it in
+my own mind that I would see her again and if I found the passing
+caprice of a child was likely to blossom into the steady regard of a
+woman, risk all in the attempt to win by honorable endeavor and
+persistence this bud of loveliness for my future wife.
+
+How I finally succeeded by means of my friend Farrar in being one
+evening invited to the same house as Miss Preston it is not necessary to
+state. You will believe me it was done with the utmost regard for her
+feelings and in a way that deceived Farrar himself, who if he is the
+most prying is certainly the most volatile of men. In a crowded parlor,
+then, in the midst of the flash of diamonds and the flutter of fans Miss
+Preston and I again met. When I first saw her she was engaged in
+conversation with some young companion, and I had the pleasure of
+watching for a few minutes, unobserved, the play of her ingenuous
+countenance, as she talked with her friend, or sat silently watching the
+brilliant array before her. I found her like and yet unlike the vision
+of my dreams. More blithesome in her appearance, as was not strange
+considering her party attire and the lustre of the chandelier under
+which she sat, there was still that indescribable something in her
+expression which more than the flash of her eye or the curve of her lip,
+though both were lovely to me, made her face the one woman's face in the
+world for me; a charm which circumstances might alter, or suffering
+impair, but of which nothing save death could ever completely divest her
+and not death either, for it was the seal of her individuality, and that
+she would take with her into the skies.
+
+"If I might but advance and sit down by her side without a word of
+explanation or the interference of conventionalities how happy I should
+be," thought I. But I knew that would not do, so I contented myself with
+my secret watch over her movements, longing for and yet dreading the
+advance of my hostess, with its inevitable introduction. Suddenly the
+piano was touched in a distant room and not till I saw the quick change
+in her face, a change hard to explain, did I recognize the selection as
+one I was in the habit of playing. _She_ had not forgotten at least, and
+thrilled by the thought and the remembrance of that surge of color which
+had swept like a flood over her cheek, I turned away, feeling as if I
+were looking on what it was for no man's eyes to see, least of all mine.
+
+My hostess' voice arrested me and next moment I was bowing to the ground
+before Miss Preston.
+
+I am not a boy; nor have I been without my experiences: life with its
+vicissitudes has taught me many a lesson, subjected me to many a trial,
+yet in all my career have I never known a harder moment than when I
+raised my eyes to meet hers after that lowly obeisance. That she would
+be indignant I knew, that she might even misinterpret my motives and
+probably withdraw without giving me an opportunity to speak, I felt to
+be only too probable, but that she would betray an agitation so painful
+I had not anticipated, and for an instant I felt that I had hazarded my
+life's happiness on a cast that was going against me. But the necessity
+of saving her from remark speedily restored me to myself, and following
+the line of conduct I had previously laid out, I addressed her with the
+reserve of a stranger, and neither by word, look or manner conveyed to
+her a suggestion that we had ever met or spoken to each other before.
+She seemed to appreciate my consideration and though she was as yet too
+much unused to the ways of the world to completely hide her
+perturbation, she gradually regained a semblance of self-possession, and
+ere long was enabled to return short answers to my remarks, though her
+eyes remained studiously turned aside and never so much as ventured to
+raise themselves to the passing throng much less to my face, half turned
+away also.
+
+Presently however a change passed over her. Pressing her two little
+hands together, she drew back a step or two, speaking my name with a
+certain tone of command. Struck with apprehension, I knew not why, I
+followed her. Instantly like one repeating a lesson she spoke.
+
+"It is very good in you to talk to me as though we were the strangers
+that people believe us. I appreciate it and thank you very much. But it
+is not being just true; that is I feel as if I were not being just true,
+and as we can never be friends, would it not be better for us not to
+meet in this way any more?"
+
+"And why," I gently asked, with a sense of struggling for my life, "can
+we never be friends?"
+
+Her answer was a deep blush; not that timid conscious appeal of the
+blood that is beating too warmly for reply, but the quick flush of
+indignant generosity forced to do despite to its own instincts.
+
+"That is a question I would rather not answer," she murmured at length.
+"Only it is so; or I should not speak in this way."
+
+"But," I ventured, resolved to know on just what foundations my
+happiness was tottering, "you will at least tell me if this harsh decree
+is owing to any offence I myself may have inadvertently given. The honor
+of your acquaintance," I went on, determined she should know just what a
+hope she was slaying, "is much too earnestly desired, for me to wilfully
+hazard its loss by saying or doing aught that could be in any way
+displeasing to you."
+
+"You have done nothing but what was generous," said she with increasing
+womanliness of manner, "unless it was taking advantage of my being here,
+to learn my name and gain an introduction to me after I had desired you
+to forget my very existence."
+
+I recoiled at that, the chord of my self-respect was touched. "It was
+not here I learned your name, Miss Preston. It has been known to me for
+two weeks. At the risk of losing by your displeasure what is already
+hazarded by your prudence, I am bound to acknowledge that from the hour
+I left your father's house that night, I have spared no effort
+compatible with my deep respect for your feelings, to ascertain who the
+young lady was that had done me such an honor, and won from me such a
+deep regard. I had not intended to tell you this," I added, "but your
+truth has awakened mine, and whatever the result may be, you must see me
+as I am."
+
+"You are very kind," she replied governing with growing skill the
+trembling of her voice. "The acquaintance of a girl of sixteen is not
+worth so much trouble on the part of a man like yourself." And blushing
+with the vague apprehension of her sex in the presence of a devotion she
+rather feels than understands, she waved her trembling little hand and
+paused irresolute, seemingly anxious to terminate the interview but as
+yet too inexperienced to know how to manage a dismissal requiring so
+much tact and judgment.
+
+I saw, comprehended her position and hesitated. She was so young, uncle,
+her prospects in life were so bright; if I left her then, in a couple of
+weeks she would forget me. What was I that I should throw the shadow of
+manhood's deepest emotion across the paradise of her young untrammelled
+being. But the old Adam of selfishness has his say in my soul as well as
+in that of my fellow-men, and forgetting myself enough to glance at her
+half averted face, I could not remember myself sufficiently afterwards
+to forego without a struggle, all hope of some day beholding that soft
+cheek turn in confidence at my approach.
+
+"Miss Preston," said I, "the promise of the bud atones for its folded
+leaves." Then with a fervor I did not seek to disguise, "You say we
+cannot be friends; would your decision be the same if this were our
+first meeting?"
+
+Again that flush of outraged feeling. "I don't know--yes I think--I fear
+it would."
+
+I strove to help her. "There is too great a difference between Bertram
+Mandeville the pianist, and the daughter of Thaddeus Preston."
+
+She turned and looked me gently in the eye, she did not need to speak.
+Regret, shame, longing flashed in her steady glance.
+
+"Do not answer," said I, "I understand; I am glad it is circumstances
+that stand in the way, and not any misconception on your part as to my
+motives and deep consideration for yourself. Circumstances can be
+changed." And satisfied with having thus dropped into the fruitful soil
+of that tender breast, the seed of a future hope, I bowed with all the
+deference at my command and softly withdrew.
+
+But not to rest. With all the earnestness with which a man sets himself
+to decide upon the momentous question of life or death, I gave myself up
+to a night of reflection, and seated in my solitary bachelor apartment,
+debated with myself as to the resolution at which I had dimly hinted in
+my parting words to Miss Preston.
+
+That I am a musician by nature, my success with the the public seems to
+indicate. That by following out the line upon which I had entered I
+would attain a certain eminence in my art, I do not doubt. But uncle,
+there are two kinds of artists in this world; those that work because
+the spirit is in them and they cannot be silent if they would, and those
+that speak from a conscientious desire to make apparent to others the
+beauty that has awakened their own admiration. The first could not give
+up his art for any cause, without the sacrifice of his soul's life; the
+latter--well the latter could and still be a man with his whole inner
+being intact. Or to speak plainer, the first has no choice, while the
+latter has, if he has a will to exert it. Now you will say, and the
+world at large, that I belong to the former class. I have risen in ten
+years from a choir boy in Trinity Church to a position in the world of
+music that insures me a full audience wherever and whenever I have a
+mind to exert my skill as a pianist. Not a man of my years has a more
+promising outlook in my profession, if you will pardon the seeming
+egotism of the remark, and yet by the ease with which I felt I could
+give it up at the first touch of a master passion, I know that I am not
+a prophet in my art but merely an interpreter, one who can speak well
+but who has never felt the descent of the burning tongue and hence not a
+sinner against my own soul if I turn aside from the way I am walking.
+The question was, then, should I make a choice? Love, as you say, seems
+at first blush too insecure a joy, if not often too trivial a one, to
+unsettle a man in his career and change the bent of his whole after
+life; especially a love born of surprise and fed by the romance of
+distance and mystery. Had I met her in ordinary intercourse, surrounded
+by her friends and without the charm cast over her by unwonted
+circumstances, and then had felt as I did now that of all women I had
+seen, she alone would ever move the deep springs of my being, it would
+be different. But with this atmosphere of romance surrounding and
+hallowing her girl's form till it seemed almost as ethereal and
+unearthly as that of an angel's, was I safe in risking fame or fortune
+in an attempt to acquire what in the possession might prove as bare and
+common-place as a sweep of mountain heather stripped of its sunshine.
+Curbing every erratic beat of my heart, I summoned up her image as it
+bloomed in my fancy, and surveying it with cruel eyes, asked what was
+real and what the fruit of my own imagination. The gentle eye, the
+trembling lip, the girlish form eloquent with the promise of coming
+womanhood,--were these so rare, that beside them no other woman should
+seem to glance or smile or move? And her words! what had she said, that
+any simple-minded, modest yet loving girl might not have uttered under
+the circumstances. Surely my belief in her being the one, the best and
+the dearest was a delusion, and to no delusion was I willing to
+sacrifice my art. But straight upon that conclusion came sweeping down a
+flood of counter-reasons. If not the wonder she seemed, she was at least
+a wonder to me. If I had seen her under romantic circumstances, and
+unconsciously been influenced by them, the influence had remained and
+nothing would ever rob her form of the halo thus acquired. Whether I
+ever won her to my fireside or not, she must always remain the fairy
+figure of my dreams, and being so, the gentle eye and tender lip
+acquired a value that made them what they seemed, the exponent of love
+and happiness. And lastly if love well or illy founded was an uncertain
+joy, and the passion for a woman a poor substitute for the natural
+incentive of talent or ambition, _this_ love had within it the beginning
+of something deeper than joy, and in the passion thus cheaply
+characterized, dwelt a force and living fire that notwithstanding all I
+have hitherto achieved, has ever been lacking from my dreams of
+endeavor.
+
+As you will see, the most natural question of all did not disturb me in
+these cogitations: And that was, whether in making the sacrifice I
+proposed, I should meet with the reward I had promised myself. The
+fancies of a young girl of sixteen are not usually of a stable enough
+character to warrant a man in building upon them his whole future
+happiness, especially a young girl situated like Miss Preston in the
+midst of friends who would soon be admirers, and adulators who would
+soon be her humble slaves. But the doubt which a serious contemplation
+of this risk must have presented, was of so unnerving a character, I
+dared not admit it. _If_ I made the sacrifice, I must meet with my
+reward. I would listen to no other conclusion. Besides, something in the
+young girl herself, I cannot tell what, assured me then as it assures me
+now, that whatever virtues or graces she might lack, that of fidelity to
+a noble idea was not among them; that once convinced of the purity and
+value of the flame that had been lit in her innocent breast, nothing
+short of the unworthiness of the object that had awakened it, would ever
+serve to eliminate or extinguish it. That I was not worthy but would
+make it the business of my life to become so, was certain; that she
+would mark my endeavors and bestow upon me the sympathy they deserved, I
+was equally sure. No one would ever make such a sacrifice to her love as
+I was willing to do, and consequently in no one would I find a rival.
+
+The morning light surprised me in the midst of the struggle, nor did I
+decide the question that day. Mr. Preston might not be as determined in
+his prejudices against musicians as my friends or even his daughter had
+imagined. I resolved to see him. Taking advantage of his connection with
+the ---- Club, I procured an introducer in the shape of a highly
+respected person of his own class, and went one evening to the
+Club-rooms with the full intention of making his acquaintance if
+possible. He was already there and in conversation with some business
+associates. Procuring a seat as near him as possible, I anxiously
+surveyed his countenance. It was not a reassuring one, and studied in
+this way, had the effect of dampening any hopes I may have cherished in
+the outset. He soften to the sounds of sweet strains or the voice of
+youthful passion! As soon as the granite rock to the surge of the
+useless billow. His very necktie spoke volumes. It was an old fashioned
+stock, full of the traditions of other days, while his coat, shabbier
+than any I would presume to wear, betrayed in every well-worn seam the
+pride of the aristocrat and millionaire who in his native city and
+before the eyes of his fellow magnates does not need to carry the
+evidences of his respectability upon his back.
+
+"It would be worse than folly for me to approach him on such a subject,"
+I mentally ejaculated. "If he did not stare the musician out of
+countenance he would the newly risen man." And I came very near giving
+up the whole thing.
+
+But the genius that watches over the affairs of true love was with me
+notwithstanding the unpropitious state of my surroundings. In a few
+minutes I received my expected introduction to Mr. Preston, and I found
+that underneath the repelling austerity of his expression, was a kindly
+spark for youth, and a decided sympathy for all instances of manly
+endeavor if only it was in a direction he approved; further that my own
+personality was agreeable to him and that he was disposed to regard me
+with favor until by some chance and very natural allusion to my
+profession by the friend standing between us, he learned that I was a
+musician, when a decided change came over his countenance and he
+exclaimed in that blunt, decisive way of his that admits of no reply:
+
+"A jingler on the piano, eh? Pretty poor use for a man to put his brains
+to, I say, or even his fingers. Sorry to hear we cannot be friends." And
+without waiting for a reply, took my introducer by the arm and drew him
+a step or so to one side. "Why didn't you say at once he was Mandeville
+the musician," I overheard him ask in somewhat querulous tones. "Don't
+you know I consider the whole race of them an abomination. I would have
+more respect for my bank clerk than I would for the greatest man of them
+all, were it Rubenstein himself." Then in a lower tone but distinctly
+and almost as if he meant me to hear, "My daughter has a leaning towards
+this same fol-de-rol and has lately requested my permission to make the
+acquaintance of some musical characters, but I soon convinced her that
+manhood under the disguise of a harlequin's jacket could have no
+interest for her; that when a human being, man or woman has sunk to be a
+mere rattler of sweet sounds, he has reached a stage of infantile
+development that has little in common with the nervous energy and
+business force of her Dutch ancestry. And my daughter stoops to make no
+acquaintances she cannot bid sit at her father's table."
+
+"Your daughter is a child yet, I thought," was ventured by his
+companion.
+
+"Miss Preston is sixteen, just the age at which my mother gave her hand
+to my respected father sixty-seven years ago." And with this drop of
+burning lead let fall into my already agitated bosom they passed on.
+
+He would have more respect for his bank clerk! Would his bank clerk or
+what was better, a young man with means at his command, working in a
+business capacity more in consonance with the tastes he had evinced,
+have a chance of winning his daughter? I began to think he might. "The
+way grows clearer!" I exclaimed.
+
+But it was not till after another interview with him ten minutes later
+in the lobby that I finally made up my mind. He was standing quite alone
+in an obscure corner, fumbling in an awkward way with his muffler that
+had caught on the button of his coat. Seeing it, I hastened forward to
+his assistance and was rewarded by a kind enough nod to embolden me to
+say,
+
+"I have been introduced to you as a musician; would my acquaintance be
+more acceptable to you if I told you that the pursuit of art bids fair
+in my case to yield to the exigencies of business? That I purpose
+leaving the concert-room for the banker's office and that henceforth my
+only ambition promises to be that of Wall Street?"
+
+"It most certainly would," exclaimed he, holding out his hand with an
+unmistakable gesture of satisfaction. "You have too good a countenance
+to waste before a piano-top strumming to the smirks of women and the
+plaudits of weak-headed men. Let us see you at the desk, my lad. We are
+in want of trustworthy young men to take the place of us older ones."
+Then politely, "Do you expect to make the change soon?"
+
+"I do," said I.
+
+And the Rubicon was passed.
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+A HAND CLASP.
+
+    "_Fer._--Here's my hand.
+
+    _Mir._--And mine with my heart in it."
+
+    --TEMPEST.
+
+
+Once arrived at a settled conclusion, I put every thought of wavering
+out of my mind. Deciding that with such a friend in business circles as
+yourself, I needed no other introducer to my new life, I set apart this
+evening for a confab with you on the subject. Meanwhile it is pretty
+generally known that I make no more engagements to appear through the
+country.
+
+I have but one more incident to relate. Last Sunday in walking down
+Fifth Avenue I met her. I did not do this inadvertently. I knew her
+custom of attending Bible class and for once put myself in her way. I
+did not give her time to remonstrate.
+
+"Do not express your displeasure," said I, "this shall never be
+repeated. I merely wish to say that I have concluded to leave a
+profession so little appreciated by those whose esteem I most desire to
+possess; that I am about entering a banker's office where it shall be my
+ambition to rise if possible, to wealth and consequence. If I
+succeed--you shall then know what my incentive has been. But till I
+succeed or at least give such tokens of success as shall insure respect,
+silence must be my portion and patience my sole support. Only of one
+thing rest assured, that until I inform you with my own lips that the
+hope which now illumines me is gone, it will continue to burn on in my
+breast, shedding light upon a way that can never seem dark while that
+glow rests upon it." And bowing with the ceremonious politeness our
+positions demanded, I held out my hand. "One clasp to encourage me," I
+entreated.
+
+It seemed as if she did not comprehend. "You are going to give up music,
+and for--for--"
+
+"You?" said I. "Yes, don't forbid me," I implored; "it is too late."
+
+Like a lovely image of blushing girlhood turned by a lightning flash
+into marble, she paused, pallid and breathless where she was, gazing
+upon me with eyes that burned deeper and deeper as the full
+comprehension of all that this implied gradually forced itself upon her
+mind.
+
+"You make a chaos of my little world," she murmured at length.
+
+"No," said I, "_your_ world is untouched. If it should never be my good
+fortune to enter it, you are not to grieve. You are free, Miss Preston,
+free as this sunshiny air we breathe; I alone am bound, and that because
+I must be whether I will or no."
+
+Then I saw the woman I had worshipped in this young fair girl shine
+fully and fairly upon me. Drawing herself up, she looked me in the face
+and calmly laid her hand in mine. "I am young," said she, "and do not
+know what may be right to say to one so generous and so kind. But this
+much I can promise, that whether or not I am ever able to duly reward
+you for what you undertake, I will at least make it the study of my life
+never to prove unworthy of so much trust and devotion."
+
+And with the last lingering look natural to a parting for years, we
+separated then and there, and the crowd came between us, and the Sunday
+bells rang on, and what was so vividly real to us at the moment, became
+in remembrance more like the mist and shadow of a dream.
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+MRS. SYLVESTER.
+
+     Love is more pleasant than marriage, for the same reason that
+     romances are more amusing than history.
+
+     --CHAMFORT.
+
+     "He draweth out the thread of his verbosity, finer than the
+     staple of his argument."
+
+     --LOVES LABOR LOST.
+
+
+Young Mandeville having finished his story, looked at his uncle. He
+found him sitting in an attitude of extreme absorption, his right arm
+stretched before him on the table, his face bent thoughtfully downwards
+and clouded with that deep melancholy that seemed its most natural
+expression, "He has not heard me," was the young man's first mortifying
+reflection. But catching his uncle's eye which at that moment raised
+itself, he perceived he was mistaken and that he had rather been
+listened to only too well.
+
+"You must forgive me if I have seemed to rhapsodize," the young man
+stammered. "You were so quiet I half forgot I had a listener and went on
+much as I would if I had been thinking aloud."
+
+His uncle smiled and throwing off the weight of his reflections whatever
+they might be, arose and began pacing the floor. "I see you are past
+surgery," quoth he, "any wisdom of mine would be only thrown away."
+
+Young Mandeville was hurt. He had expected some token of approval on his
+uncle's part, or at least some betrayal of sympathy. His looks expressed
+his disappointment.
+
+"You expected to convert me by this story," continued the elder, pausing
+with a certain regret before his nephew; "nothing could convert me
+but--"
+
+"What?" inquired Mandeville after waiting in vain for the other to
+finish.
+
+"Something which we will never find in the whirl of New York fashionable
+life. A woman with faith to reward and soul to understand such
+unqualified trust as yours."
+
+"But I believe Miss Preston is such a girl and will be such a woman. Her
+looks, her last words prove it."
+
+"Nothing proves it but time and as for your belief, I have believed
+too." Then as if fearing he had said too much, assumed his most
+business-like tone and observed, "But we will drop all that; you have
+resolved to quit music and enter Wall Street, your object money and the
+social consideration which money secures. Now, why Wall Street?"
+
+"Because I can think of no other means for attaining what I desire, in
+the space of time I would consent to keep a young lady of Miss Preston's
+position waiting."
+
+"Humph! and you have money, I suppose, which you propose to risk on the
+hazard?"
+
+"Some! enough to start with; a small amount to you, but sufficient if I
+am fortunate."
+
+"And if you are not?"
+
+
+The young man opened his arms with an expressive gesture, "I am done
+for, that is all."
+
+"Bertram," his uncle exclaimed with a change of tone, "has it ever
+struck you that Mr. Preston might have as strong a prejudice against
+speculation as against the musical profession?"
+
+"No, that is, pardon me but I have sometimes thought that even in the
+event of success I should have to struggle against his inherited
+instincts of caste and his natural dislike of all things new, even
+wealth, but I never thought of the possibility of my arousing his
+distrust by speculating in stocks and engaging in enterprises so nearly
+in accord with his own business operations."
+
+"Yet if I guess aright you would run greater risk of losing the support
+of his countenance by following the hazardous course you propose, than
+if you continued in the line of art that now engages you."
+
+"Do you know--"
+
+"I know nothing, but I fear the chances, Bertram."
+
+"Then I am already defeated and must give up my hopes of happiness."
+
+
+A smile thin and indefinable crossed the other's face. "No," said he,
+"not necessarily." And sitting down by his nephew's side, he asked if he
+had any objections to enter a bank. "In a good capacity," he exclaimed.
+
+"No indeed; it would be an opportunity surpassing my hopes. Do you know
+of an opening?"
+
+"Well," said he, "under the circumstances I will let you into the secret
+of my own affairs. I have always had one ambition, and that was to be at
+the head of a bank. I have not said much about it, but for the last five
+years I have been working to this end, and to-day you see me the
+possessor of at least three-fourths of the stock of the Madison Bank. It
+has been deteriorating for some time, consequently I was enabled to buy
+it low, but now that I have got it I intend to build up the concern. I
+am able to throw business of an important nature in its way, and I dare
+prophesy that before the year is out you will see it re-established upon
+a solid and influential footing."
+
+"I have no doubt of it, sir; you have the knack of success, any thing
+that you touch is sure to go straight."
+
+"Unhappily yes, as far as business operations go. But no matter about
+that;--" as if the other had introduced some topic incongruous to the
+one they were considering--"the point is this. In two weeks time I shall
+be elected President of the Bank; if you will accept the position of
+assistant cashier,--the best I can offer in consideration of your total
+ignorance of all details of the business,--it is open to you--"
+
+
+"Uncle! how generous! I--"
+
+"Hush! your duties will be nominal, the present cashier is fully
+competent; but the leisure thus afforded will offer you abundant
+opportunity to make yourself acquainted with all matters connected with
+the banking system as well as with such capitalists as it would be well
+for you to know. So that when the occasion comes, I can raise you to the
+cashier's place or make such other disposal of your talents as will best
+insure your rapid advance."
+
+The young man's eyes sparkled; with a sudden impetuous movement he
+jumped to his feet and grasped his uncle's hand. "I can never thank you
+enough; you have made me your debtor for life. Now let any one ask me
+who is my father, and I will say--"
+
+"He was Edward Sylvester's brother. But come, come, this extreme
+gratitude is unnecessary. You have always been a favorite with me,
+Bertram, and now that I have no child, you seem doubly near; it is my
+pleasure to do what I can for you. But--" and here he surveyed him with
+a wistful look, "I wish you were entering into this new line from love
+of the business rather than love of a woman. I fear for you my boy. It
+is an awful thing to stake one's future upon a single chance and that
+chance a woman's faith. If she should fail you after you had compassed
+your fortune, should die--well you could bear that perhaps; but if she
+turned false, and married some one else, or even married you and then--"
+
+"What?" came in silvery accents from the door, and a woman richly clad,
+her trailing velvets filling the air at once with an oppressive perfume,
+entered the room and paused before them in an attitude meant to be arch,
+but which from the massiveness of her figure and the scornful carriage
+of her head, succeeded in being simply imperious.
+
+Mr. Sylvester rose abruptly as if unpleasantly surprised. "Ona!" he
+exclaimed, hastening, however, to cover his embarassment by a courteous
+acknowledgement of her presence and a careless remark concerning the
+shortness of the services that had allowed her to return from church so
+early. "I did not hear you come in," he observed.
+
+"No, I judge not," she returned with a side glance at Mandeville. "But
+the services were not short, on the contrary I thought I should never
+hear the last amen. Mr. Turner's voice is very agreeable," she went on,
+in a rambling manner all her own, "it never interferes with your
+thoughts; not that I am considered as having any," she interjected with
+another glance at their silent guest, "a woman in society with a
+reputation for taste in all matters connected with fashionable living,
+has no thoughts of course; business men with only one idea in their
+heads, that of making money, have more no doubt. Do you know, Edward,"
+she went on with sudden inconsequence, which was another trait of this
+amiable lady's conversation, "that I have quite come to a conclusion in
+regard to the girl Philip Longtree is going to marry; she may be pretty,
+but she does not know how to dress. I wish you could have seen her
+to-night; she had on mauve with old gold trimmings. Now with one of her
+complexion--But I forget you haven't seen her. Bertram, I think I shall
+give a German next month, will you come? Oh, Edward!" as if the thought
+had suddenly struck her, "Princess Louise _is_ the sixth child of Queen
+Victoria; I asked Mr. Turner to-night. By the way, I wonder if it will
+be pleasant enough to take the horses out to-morrow? Bird has been
+obliging enough to get sick just in the height of the season, Mr.
+Mandeville. There are a thousand things I have got to do and I hate
+hired horses." And with a petulant sigh she laid her prayer-book on the
+table and with a glance in the mirror near by, began pulling off her
+gloves in the slow and graceful fashion eminently in keeping with her
+every movement.
+
+It was as if an atmosphere of worldliness had settled down upon this
+room sanctified a moment before by the utterances of a pure and noble
+love. Mr. Sylvester looked uneasy, while Bertram searched in vain for
+something to say.
+
+"I seem to have brought a blight," she suddenly murmured in an easy tone
+somewhat at variance with the glance of half veiled suspicion which she
+darted from under her heavy lids, at first one and then the other of the
+two gentlemen before her. "No, I will not sit," she added as her husband
+offered her a chair. "I am tired almost to death and would retire
+immediately, but I interrupted you I believe in the utterance of some
+wise saying about matrimony. It is an interesting subject and I have a
+notion to hear what one so well qualified to speak in regard to it--"
+and here she made a slow, half lazy courtesy to her husband with a look
+that might mean anything from coquetry to defiance--"has to say to a
+young man like Mr. Mandeville."
+
+Edward Sylvester who was regarded as an autocrat among men, and who
+certainly was an acknowledged leader in any company he chose to enter,
+bowed his head before this anomalous glance with a gesture of something
+like submission.
+
+"One is not called upon to repeat every inadvertent phrase he may
+utter," said he. "Bertram was consulting me upon certain topics and--"
+
+"You answered him in your own brilliant style," she concluded. "What did
+you say?" she asked in another moment in a low unmoved tone which the
+final act of smoothing out her gloves on the table with hands delicate
+as white rose leaves but firm as marble, did not either hasten or
+retard.
+
+"Oh if you insist," he returned lightly, "and are willing to bear the
+reflection my unfortunate remark seems to cast upon the sex, I was
+merely observing to my nephew, that the man who centered all his hopes
+upon a woman's faith, was liable to disappointment. Even if he succeeded
+in marrying her there were still possibilities of his repenting any
+great sacrifice made in her behalf."
+
+"Indeed!" and for once the delicate cheek flushed deeper than its rouge.
+"And why do you say this?" she inquired, dropping her coquettish manner
+and flashing upon them both, the haughty and implacable woman Bertram
+had always believed her to be, notwithstanding her vagaries and fashion.
+
+"Because I have seen much of life outside my own house," her husband
+replied with undiminished courtesy; "and feel bound to warn any young
+man of his probable fate, who thinks to find nothing but roses and
+felicity beyond the gates of fashionable marriage."
+
+"Ah then, it was on general principles you were speaking," she remarked
+with a soft laugh that undulated through an atmosphere suddenly grown
+too heavy for easy breathing. "I did not know; wives are so little apt
+to be appreciated in this world, Mr. Mandeville, I was afraid he might
+be giving you some homely advice founded upon personal experience." And
+she moved towards their guest with that strange smile of hers which some
+called dangerous but which he had always regarded as oppressive.
+
+She saw him drop his eyes, and smiled again, but in a different way.
+This woman, whom no one accused of anything worse than levity, hailed
+every tribute to her power, as a miser greets the glint of gold. With a
+turn of her large but elegant figure that in its slow swaying reminded
+you of some heavy tropical flower, hanging inert, intoxicated with its
+own fragrance, she dismissed at once the topic that had engaged them,
+and launched into one of her choicest streams of inconsequent talk. But
+Mandeville was in no mood to listen to trivialities, and being of a
+somewhat impatient nature, presently rose and excusing himself, took a
+hurried leave. Not so hurried however that he did not have time to
+murmur to his uncle as they walked towards the door:
+
+"You would make comparison between the girl I worship and other women in
+fashionable life. Do not I pray; she is no more like them than a star
+that shines is like a rose that blooms. My fate will not be like that of
+most men that we know, but better and higher."
+
+And his uncle standing there in the grand hall-way, with the fresh
+splendors of unlimited wealth gleaming upon him from every side, looked
+after the young man with a sigh and repeated, "Better and higher? God in
+his merciful goodness grant it."
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+SHADOWS OF THE PAST.
+
+     "Memory, the warder of the brain."
+
+     MACBETH.
+
+
+It was long past midnight. The fire in the grate burned dimly, shedding
+its lingering glow on the face of the master of the house as with bowed
+head and folded hands he sat alone and brooding before its dying embers.
+
+It was a lonesome sight. The very magnificence of the spacious apartment
+with its lofty walls and glittering works of art, seemed to give an air
+of remoteness to that solitary form, bending beneath the weight of its
+reflections. From the exquisitely decorated ceiling to the turkish rugs
+scattered over the polished floor, all was elegant and luxurious, and
+what had splendors like these to do with thoughts that bent the brows
+and overshadowed the lips of man? The very lights burned deprecatingly,
+illuminating beauties upon which no eye gazed and for which no heart
+beat. The master himself seemed to feel this, for he presently rose and
+put them out, after which he seated himself as before, only if possible
+with more abandon, as if with the extinguishing of the light some eye
+had been shut whose gaze he had hitherto feared. And in truth my lady's
+image shone fainter from its heavy panel, and the smile which had met
+with unrelenting sweetness the glare of the surrounding splendor,
+softened in the mellow glimmer of the fire-light to an etherial halo
+that left you at rest.
+
+_One, two_, THREE, the small clock sounded from the mantel and yet no
+stir took place in the sombre figure keeping watch beneath. What were
+the thoughts which could thus detain from his comfortable bed a man
+already tired with manifold cares? It would be hard to tell. The waters
+that gush at the touch of the diviner's rod are tumultuous in their flow
+and rush hither and thither with little heed to the restraining force of
+rule and reason. But of the pictures that rose before his eyes in those
+dying embers, there were two which stood out in startling distinctness.
+Let us see if we can convey the impression of them to other eyes and
+hearts.
+
+First, the form of his mother. Ah grey-bearded men weighted with the
+cares of life and absorbed in the monotonous round of duties that to you
+are the be all and end all of existence, to whom morning means a
+jostling ride to the bank, the store or the office, and with whom night
+is but the name for a worse unrest because of its unfulfilled promises
+of slumber, what soul amongst you all is so callous to the holy memories
+of childhood, as not to thrill with something of the old time feeling of
+love and longing as the memory of that tender face with its watchful eye
+and ready smiles, comes back to you from the midst of weary years! Your
+mother!
+
+But Edward Sylvester with that black line across his life cutting past
+from present, what makes him think of his mother to-night; and the
+cottage door upon the hillside where she used to stand with eager eyes
+looking up and down the road as he came trudging home from school,
+swinging his satchel and shouting at every squirrel that started across
+the road or peeped from the branches of the grand old maples overhead!
+And the garret-chamber under the roof, the scene of many a romp with
+Elsie and Sonsie and Jack, neighbors' children to whom the man of to-day
+would be an awe and a mystery! And the little room where he slept with
+Tom his own blue-eyed brother so soon to die of a wasting disease, but
+full of warm blood then and all alive with boyish pranks. He could
+almost hear the wild clear laugh with which the mischievous fellow
+started upon its travels, the rooster whose legs he had tied a short
+space apart with one of Sonsie's faded ribbons, a laugh that became
+unrestrained when the poor creature in attempting to run down hill,
+rolled over and over, cutting such a figure before his late admirers,
+the hens, that even Elsie smiled in the midst of her gentle entreaties.
+And Jocko the crow, whom taming had made one of the boys! poor Jocko! is
+it nearly thirty years since you used to stalk in majesty through the
+village streets, with your neat raven coat closely buttoned across your
+breast and your genteel caw, caw, and condescending nod for old
+acquaintances? The day seems but as yesterday when you marred the stolen
+picnic up in the woods by flying off with a flock of your fellow
+black-coats, nor is it easy to realize that the circle of tow-headed
+fellows who hailed with shouts your ignominious return after a day or
+so's experience of the vaunted pleasures of freedom, are now sharp
+featured men without a smile for youth or a thought beyond the hard cold
+dollar buried deep in their pockets.
+
+And the church up over the hills! and the long Sunday walk at mother's
+side with the sunshine glowing on the dusty road and beating on the
+river flowing far beyond! The same road, the same river of Monday and
+Tuesday but how different it looked to the boy; almost like another
+scene, as if Sunday clothes were on the world as well as upon his
+restless little limbs. How he longed for it to be Monday though he did
+not say so; and what a different day Saturday would have been if only
+there was no long, sleepy Sunday to follow it.
+
+But the mother! She did not dread that day. Her eyes used to brighten
+when the bell began to ring from the old church steeple. Her eyes! how
+they mingled with every picture! They seemed to fill the night. What a
+sparkle they had, yet how they used to soften at his few hurried
+caresses. He was always too busy for kisses; there were the snares in
+the north woods to be looked after; the nest in the apple-tree to be
+inquired into; the skates to be ground before the river froze over; the
+nuts to be gathered and stored in that same old garret chamber under the
+eaves. But now how vividly her least look comes back to the tired man,
+from the glance of wistful sympathy with which she met his childish
+disappointments to the flash of joy that hailed his equally childish
+delights.
+
+And another scene there is in the embers to-night; a remembrance of
+later days when the mother with her love and yearning was laid low in
+the grave, and manhood had learned its first lessons of passion and
+ambition from the glance of younger eyes and the smile of riper lips.
+Not the picture of a woman, however; that was already present beside
+him, shining from its panel with an insistence that not even the putting
+out of the lights could quite quench or subdue, but of a child young,
+pure and beautiful, sitting by the river in the glow of a June sunshine,
+gazing at the hills of his boyhood's home with a look on her face such
+as he had never before seen on that of child or woman. A simple picture
+with a simple villager's daughter for its centre, but as he mused upon
+it to-night, the success and triumph of the last ten years faded from
+his sight like the ashes that fell at his feet, and he found himself
+questioning in vain as to what better thing he had met in all the walks
+of his busy life than that young child's innocence and faith as they
+shone upon him that day from her soft uplifted eyes.
+
+He had been sitting the whole warm noontide at the side of her whose
+half gracious, half scornful, wholly indolent acceptance of his homage,
+he called love, and enervated by an atmosphere he was as yet too
+inexperienced to recognize as of the world, worldly, had strolled forth
+to cool his fevered brow in the fresh autumn breeze that blew up from
+the river. He was a gay-hearted youth in those days, heedless of
+everything but the passing moment; nature meant little to him; and when
+in the course of his ramble he came upon the form of a child sitting on
+the edge of the river, he remembers wondering what she saw in a sweep of
+empty water to interest her so deeply. Indeed he was about to inquire
+when she turned and he caught a glimpse of her eyes and knew at once
+without asking. Yet in those days he was anything but quick to recognize
+the presence of feeling. A face was beautiful or plain to him, not
+eloquent or expressive. But this child's countenance was exceptional. It
+made you forget the cotton frock she wore, it made you forget yourself.
+As he gazed on it, he felt the stir of something in his breast he had
+never known before, and half dreaded to hear her speak lest the charm
+should fail or the influence be lost. Yet how could he pass on and not
+speak. Laying his hand on her head, he asked her what she was thinking
+of as she sat there all alone looking off on the river; and the wee
+thing drew in her breath and surveyed him with all her soul in her great
+black eyes before she replied, "I do not know, I never know." Then
+looking back she dreamily added, "It makes me want to go away, miles
+away,"--and she held out her tiny arms towards the river with a longing
+gesture; "and it makes me want to cry."
+
+And he understood or thought he did and for the first time in his life
+looked upon the river that had met his gaze from childhood, with eyes
+that saw its exceeding beauty. Ah it was an exquisite scene, a rare
+scene, mountain melting into mountain and meadow vanishing into meadow,
+till the flow of silver waters was lost in a horizon of azure mist. No
+wonder that a child without snares to set or nuts to gather, should
+pause a moment to gaze upon it, as even he in the days gone by would
+sometimes stop on Sabbath eves to snatch a kiss from his mother's lips.
+
+"It is like a fairy land, is it not?" quoth the child looking up into
+his face with a wistful glance. "Do you know what it is that makes me
+feel so?"
+
+He smiled and sat down by her side. Somehow he felt as if a talk with
+this innocent one would restore him more than a walk on the hills. "It
+is the spirit of beauty, my child, you are moved by the loveliness of
+the scene; is it a new one to you?"
+
+"No, oh no, but I always feel the same. As if something here was hungry,
+don't you know?" and she laid her little hand on her breast.
+
+He did not know, but he smiled upon her notwithstanding, and made her
+talk and talk till the gush of the sweet child spirit with its hidden
+longings and but half understood aspirations, bathed his whole being in
+a reviving shower, and he felt as if he had wandered into a new world
+where the languors of the tropics were unknown, and passion, if there
+was such, had the wings of an eagle instead of the siren's voice and
+fascination.
+
+Her name was Paula, she said, and before leaving he found that she was a
+relative of the woman he loved. This was a slight shock to him. The lily
+and the cactus abloom on one stalk! How could that be? and for a moment
+he felt as if the splendors of the glorious woman paled before the
+lustre of the innocent child. But the feeling, if it was strong enough
+to be called such, soon passed. As the days swept by bringing evenings
+with light and music and whispered words beneath the vine-leaves, the
+remembrance of the pure, sweet hour beside the river, gradually faded
+till only a vague memory of that gentle uplifted face sweet with its
+childish dimples, remained to hallow now and then a passing reverie or a
+fevered dream.
+
+
+But to-night its every lineament filled his soul, vying with the
+memories of his mother in its vividness and power. O why had he not
+learned the lesson it taught. Why had he turned his back upon the high
+things of life to yield himself to a current that swept him on and on
+until the power of resistance left him and--O dwell not here wild
+thoughts! Pause not on the threshold of the one dark memory that blasts
+the soul and sears the heart in the secret hours of night. Let the dead
+past bury its dead and if one must think, let it be of the hope, which
+the remembrance of that short glimpse into a pure if infantile soul has
+given to his long darkened spirit.
+
+One, two, three, FOUR; and the fire is dead and the night has grown
+chill, but he heeds it not. He has asked himself if his life's book is
+quite closed to the higher joys of existence? whether money getting and
+money holding is to absorb him body and soul forever; and with the
+question a great yearning seizes him to look upon that sweet child
+again, if haply in the gleam of her pure spirit, something of the noble
+and the pure that lay beneath the crust of life might be again revealed
+to his longing sight.
+
+"She must be a great girl now," murmured he to himself, "as old as if
+not older than she whom Bertram adores so passionately, but she will
+always be a child to me, a sweet pure child whose innocence is my
+teacher and whose ignorance is my better wisdom. If anything will save
+me--"
+
+But here the shadow settled again; when it lifted, the morning ray lay
+cool and ghostly over the hearthstone.
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+PAULA.
+
+    "The stars of midnight shall be dear
+    To her; and she shall lean her ear
+    In many a secret place
+    Where rivulets dance their wayward round,
+    And beauty born of murmuring sound
+            Shall pass into her face."
+
+    --WORDSWORTH.
+
+
+A wintry scene. Snow-piled hills stretching beyond a frozen river. On
+the bank a solitary figure tall, dark and commanding, standing with eyes
+bent sadly on a long narrow mound at his feet. It is Edward Sylvester
+and the mound is the grave of his mother.
+
+It is ten years since he stood upon that spot. In all that time no
+memories of his childhood's home, no recollection of that lonely grave
+among the pines, had been sufficient to allure him from the city and its
+busy round of daily cares. Indeed he had always shrunk at the very name
+of the place and never of his own will alluded to it, but the reveries
+of a night had awakened a longing that was not to be appeased, and in
+the face of his wife's cold look of astonishment and a secret dread in
+his own heart, had left his comfortable fireside, for the scenes of his
+early life and marriage, and was now standing, in the bleak December
+air, gazing down upon the stone that marked his mother's grave.
+
+But tender as were the chords that reverberated at this sight, it was
+not to revisit this tomb he had returned to Grotewell. No, that other
+vision, the vision of young sweet appreciative life has drawn him more
+strongly than the memory of the dead. It was to search out and gaze
+again upon the innocent girl, whose eloquent eyes and lofty spirit had
+so deeply moved him in the past, that he had braved the chill of the
+Connecticut hills and incurred the displeasure of his wife.
+
+Yet when he turned away from that simple headstone and set his face
+towards the village streets it was with a sinking of the heart that
+first revealed to him the severity of the ordeal to which he had thus
+wantonly subjected himself. Not that the wintry trees and snow covered
+roofs appealed to him as strongly as the same trees and homes would have
+done in their summer aspect. The land was bright with verdure when that
+shadow fell whose gloom resting upon all the landscape, made a walk down
+this quiet road even at this remote day, a matter of such pain to him.
+But scenes that have caught the reflection of a life's joy or a heart's
+sorrow, lose not their power of appeal, with the leaves they shake from
+their trees, and nothing that had met the eyes of this man from the hour
+he left this spot, no, not the glance of his wife as his child fell back
+dead in his arms, had shot such a pang to his soul as the sight of that
+long street with its array of quiet homes, stretching out before him
+into the dim grey distance.
+
+But for all that he was determined to traverse it, ay to the very end,
+though his steps must pass the house whose ghostly portals were fraught
+with memories dismal as death to him. On then he proceeded, walking with
+his usual steady pace that only faltered or broke, as he met the shy
+eyes of some hurrying village maiden, speeding upon some errand down the
+snowy street, or encountered some old friend of his youth who despite
+his altered mien and commanding carriage, recognized in him the slim
+young bank cashier who had left them now ten long years ago to make a
+name and fortune in the great city.
+
+It was noon by the time he gained the heart of the village, and school
+was out and the children came rushing by with just the same shout and
+scamper with which he used to hail that hour of joyous release. How it
+carried him back to the days when those four red walls towered upon him
+with awful significance, as with books on his back and a half eaten
+apple in his pocket he crept up the walk, conscious that the bell had
+rung its last shrill note a good half hour before. He felt half tempted
+to stop and make his way through the crowd of shouting boys and dancing
+girls to that same old door again, and see for himself if the huge LATE
+which in a fit of childish revenge he had cut on its awkward panels, was
+still there to meet the eyes of tardy boys and loitering girls. But the
+wondering looks of the children unused to behold a figure so stately in
+their simple streets deterred him and he passed thoughtfully on. So
+engrossed was he by the reminiscences of Tom and Elsie which the school
+house had awakened, that he passed the ominous mansion which had been
+his dread, and the bank where he had worked, and the arbor by the side
+of the road where he had sat out the first hours of his fatal courtship,
+almost without realizing their presence, and was at the end of the
+street and in full view of the humble cottage which the little Paula had
+pointed out as her home on that day of their first acquaintance.
+
+"Good heaven! and I do not even know if she is alive," he suddenly
+ejaculated, stopping where he was and eying the lowly walls before him
+with a quick realization of the possibilities of a great disappointment.
+"Ten years have strown many a grave on the hillside and Ona would not
+mention it if she lost every relative she had in this town. What a fool
+I have been," thought he.
+
+But with the stern resolution which had carried him through many a
+difficulty, he prepared to advance, when he was again arrested by seeing
+the door of the house he was contemplating, suddenly open and a girlish
+figure issue forth. Could it be Paula? With eager, almost feverish
+interest he watched her approach. She was a slight young thing and came
+towards him with a rapid movement almost jaunty in its freedom. If it
+were Paula, he would know her by her eyes, but for some reason he hoped
+it was not she, not the child of his dreams.
+
+
+At a yard or two in front of him she paused astonished. This grave, tall
+figure with the melancholy brow, deep eyes and firmly compressed lips
+was an unaccustomed sight in this primitive town. Scarcely realizing
+what she did she gave a little courtesy and was proceeding on when he
+stopped her with a hurried gesture.
+
+"Is Mrs. Fairchild still living?" he asked, indicating the house she had
+just left.
+
+"Mrs. Fairchild? O no," she returned, surveying him out of the corner of
+a very roguish pair of brown eyes, with a certain sly wonder at the
+suspense in his voice. "She has been dead as long as I can remember. Old
+Miss Abby and her sister live there now."
+
+"And who are they?" he hurriedly asked; he could not bring himself to
+mention Paula's name.
+
+"Why, Miss Abby and Miss Belinda," she returned with a puzzled air.
+"Miss Abby sews and Miss Belinda teaches the school. I don't know
+anything more about them, sir."
+
+The courteous gentleman bowed. "And they live there quite alone?"
+
+"O no sir, Paula lives with them."
+
+"Ah, she does;" and the young girl looking at him could not detect the
+slightest change in his haughty countenance. "Paula is Mrs. Fairchild's
+daughter."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Thank you," said he, and allowed the pretty brown-eyed miss to pass on,
+which she did with lingering footsteps and many a backward glance of the
+eye.
+
+Halting at the door of that small cottage, Edward Sylvester reasoned
+with himself.
+
+"She may be just such another fresh-looking, round-faced,
+mischievous-eyed school-girl. Spiritual children do not always make
+earnest-souled women. Let me beware what hopes I build on a foundation
+so unsubstantial." Yet when in a moment later the door opened and a
+weazen-faced dapper, little woman appeared, all smiles and welcome, he
+owned to a sensation of dismay that sufficiently convinced him what a
+hold this hope of meeting with something exceptionally sweet and high,
+had taken upon his hitherto careless and worldly spirit.
+
+"Mr. Sylvester I am sure! I thought Ona would remember us after a while.
+Come in sir, do, my sister will be home in a few moments." And with a
+deprecatory flutter comical enough in a woman at least seventy odd years
+old, she led her distinguished guest into a large unused room where in
+spite of his remonstrances she at once proceeded to build a fire.
+
+"It is a pleasure sir," she said to every utterance of regret on his
+part at the trouble he was causing. And though her vocabulary was thus
+made to appear somewhat small, her sincerity was undoubted. "We have
+counted the days, Belinda and I, since we sent the last letter. It may
+seem foolish to you, sir; but Paula is growing so fast and Belinda says
+is so uncommon smart for her age that we did think that it was time Ona
+knew just what a straight we were in. Do you want to see Paula?"
+
+"Very much," he returned, shocked and embarrassed at the position in
+which he found himself put by the reticence of his wife on the subject
+of her relations. "They think I have come in reply to a letter," he
+mused, "and I did not even know my wife had received one."
+
+"You will be surprised," she exclaimed with a complacent nod as the fire
+blazed up brightly; "every one is surprised who sees her for the first
+time. Is my niece well?" And thus it was he learned the relation between
+his wife of ten years and these simple inhabitants of the little cottage
+in Grotewell.
+
+He replied as in duty bound, and presently by the use of a few dexterous
+questions succeeded in eliciting from this simple-minded old lady, the
+few facts necessary to a proper understanding of the situation. Miss
+Abby and Miss Belinda were two maiden ladies, sisters of Mrs. Fairchild
+and Ona's mother, who on the death of the former took up their abode in
+the little cottage for the purpose of bringing up the orphan Paula. They
+had succeeded in this by dint of the utmost industry, but Paula was not
+a common child, and Belinda, who was evidently the autocrat of the
+house, had decided that she ought to have other advantages. She had
+therefore written to Mrs. Sylvester concerning the child, in the hopes
+that that lady would take enough interest in her pretty little cousin to
+send her to boarding-school; but they had received no reply till now,
+all of which was perfectly right of course, Mrs. Sylvester being
+undoubtedly occupied and Mr. Sylvester himself being better than any
+letter.
+
+"And does Paula herself know what efforts you have been making in her
+behalf," asked Mr. Sylvester upon the receipt of this information.
+
+The little lady shook her head with vivacity. "Belinda advised me to say
+nothing," she remarked. "The child is contented with her home and we did
+not like to raise her expectations. You will never regret anything you
+may do for her," she went on in a hurried way with a peep now and then
+towards the door as if while enjoying a momentary freedom of speech, she
+feared an intrusion that would cut that pleasure short. "Paula is a
+grateful child and never has given us a moment of concern from the time
+she began to put pieces of patchwork together. But there is Belinda,"
+she suddenly exclaimed, rising with the little dip and jerk of her left
+shoulder that was habitual to her whenever she was amused or excited.
+"Belinda," she cried, going to the door and speaking with great
+impressiveness, "Mr. Sylvester is in the parlor." And almost instantly a
+tall middle aged lady entered, whose plain but powerful countenance and
+dignified demeanor, stamped her at once as belonging to a very different
+type of woman from her sister.
+
+"I am very glad to see you sir," she exclaimed in a slow determined
+voice as dissimilar as possible from the piping tones of Miss Abby. "Is
+not Mrs. Sylvester with you?"
+
+"No," returned he, "I have come alone; my wife is not fond of travelling
+in winter."
+
+The slightest gleam shot from her bright keen eye. "Is she not well?"
+
+"Yes quite well, but not over strong," he rejoined quietly.
+
+She gave him another quick look, settled some matter with herself and
+taking off her bonnet, sat down by the fire. At once her sister ceased
+in her hovering about the room and sitting also, became to all
+appearance her silent shadow.
+
+"Paula has gone up stairs to take off her bonnet," the younger woman
+said in a straightforward manner just short of being brusque. "She is a
+very remarkable girl, Mr. Sylvester, a genius I suppose some would call
+her, a child of nature I prefer to say. Whatever there is to be learned
+in this town she has learned. And in a place where nature speaks and
+good books abound that is not inconsiderable. I have taken pride in her
+talents I acknowledge, and have endeavored to do what I could to
+cultivate them to the best advantage. There is no girl in my school who
+can write so original a composition, nor is there one with a truer heart
+or more tractable disposition."
+
+"You have then been her teacher as well as her friend, she owes you a
+double debt of gratitude."
+
+A look hard to understand flashed over her homely face. "I have never
+thought of debt or gratitude in connection with Paula. The only effort
+which I have ever made in her behalf which cost me anything, is this one
+which threatens me with her loss." Then as if fearing she had said too
+much, set her firm lips still firmer and ignoring the subject of the
+child, astonished him by certain questions on the leading issues of the
+day that at once betrayed a truly virile mind.
+
+"She is a study," thought he to himself, but meeting her on the ground
+she had taken, replied at once and to her evident satisfaction in the
+direct and simple manner that appeals the most forcibly to a strong if
+somewhat unpolished understanding, while the meek little Miss Abby
+glanced from one to the other with a humble awe more indicative of her
+appreciation for their superiority than of her comprehension of the
+subject.
+
+
+But what with Miss Belinda's secret anxiety and Mr. Sylvester's
+unconscious listening for a step upon the stair, the conversation, brisk
+as it had opened, gradually languished, and ere long with a sort of
+clairvoyant understanding of her sister's wishes, Miss Abby arose and
+with her customary jerk left the room for Paula.
+
+"The child is not timid but has an unaccountable aversion to entering
+the presence of strangers alone," Miss Belinda explained; but Mr.
+Sylvester did not hear her, for at that moment the door re-opened and
+Miss Abby stepped in with the young girl thus heralded.
+
+Edward Sylvester never forgot that moment, and indeed few men could have
+beheld the picture of extraordinary loveliness thus revealed, without a
+shock of surprise equal to the delight it inspired. She was not pretty;
+the very word was a misnomer, she was simply one of nature's most
+exquisite and undeniable beauties. From the crown of her ebon locks to
+the sole of her dainty foot, she was perfect as the most delicate
+coloring and the utmost harmony of contour could make her. And not in
+the conventional type either. There was an individuality in her style
+that was as fresh as it was uncommon. She was at once unique and
+faultless, something that can be said of few women however beautiful or
+alluring.
+
+Mr. Sylvester had not expected this, as indeed how could he, and for a
+moment he could only gaze with a certain swelling of the heart at the
+blooming loveliness that in one instant had transformed the odd little
+parlor into a bower fit for the habitation of princes. But soon his
+natural self-possession returned, and rising with his most courteous
+bow, he greeted the blushing girl with words of simple welcome.
+
+Instantly her eyes which had been hitherto kept bent upon the floor
+flashed upward to his face and a smile full of the wonder of an unlooked
+for, almost unhoped for delight, swept radiantly over her lips, and he
+saw with deep and sudden satisfaction that the hour which had made such
+an impression upon him, had not been forgotten by her; that his voice
+had recalled what his face failed to do, and that he was recognized.
+
+"It is Mr. Sylvester, your cousin Ona's husband," Miss Belinda
+interposed in a matter-of-fact way, evidently attributing the emotion of
+the child to her astonishment at the imposing appearance of their guest.
+
+"And it was _you_ who married Ona!" she involuntarily murmured, blushing
+the next moment at this simple utterance of her thoughts.
+
+"Yes, dear child," Mr. Sylvester hastened to say. "And so you remember
+me?" he presently added, smiling down upon her with a sense of new life
+that for the moment made every care and anxiety shrink into the
+background.
+
+"Yes," she simply returned, taking the chair beside him with the
+unconscious grace of perfect self-forgetfulness. "It was the first time
+I had found any one to listen to my childish enthusiasms; it is natural
+such kindness should make its impression."
+
+"Little Paula and I met long ago," quoth Mr. Sylvester turning to the
+somewhat astonished Miss Belinda. "It was before my marriage and she was
+then--"
+
+"Just ten years old," finished Paula, seeing him cast her an inquiring
+glance.
+
+"Very young for such a thoughtful little miss," he exclaimed. "And have
+those childish enthusiasms quite departed?" he continued, smiling upon
+her with gentle encouragement. "Do you no longer find a fairy-land in
+the view up the river?"
+
+She flushed, casting a timid glance at her aunt, but meeting his eyes
+again seemed to forget everything and everybody in the inspiration which
+his presence afforded.
+
+"I fear I must acknowledge that it is more a fairy-land to me than
+ever," she softly replied. "Knowledge does not always bring disillusion,
+and though I have learned one by one the names of the towns scattered
+along those misty banks, and though I know they are no less prosaic in
+their character than our own humdrum village, yet I cannot rid myself of
+the notion that those verdant slopes with their archway of clouds, hide
+the portals of Paradise, and that I have only to follow the birds in
+their flight up the river to find myself on the verge of a mystery, the
+banks at my feet can never disclose."
+
+"May the gates of God's Paradise never recede as those would do, my
+child, if like the birds you attempted to pierce them."
+
+"Paula is a dreamer," quoth Miss Belinda in a matter-of-fact tone, "but
+she is a good girl notwithstanding and can solve a geometrical problem
+with the best."
+
+"And sew on the machine and make a very good pie," timidly put in Miss
+Abby.
+
+"That is well," laughed Mr. Sylvester, observing that the poor child's
+head had fallen forward in maidenly shame at her aunts' elogiums as well
+as at the length of the speech into which she had been betrayed. "It
+shows that her eyes can see what is at hand as well as what is beyond
+our reach." Then with a touch of his usual formal manner intended to
+restore her to herself, "Do you like study, Paula?"
+
+In an instant her eyes flashed. "I more than like it; it feeds me.
+Knowledge has its vistas too," she added with an arch look, the first he
+had seen on her hitherto serious countenance. "I can never outgrow my
+recognition of the portals it discloses or the fairy-land it opens up to
+every inquiring eye."
+
+"Even geometry," he ventured, more anxious to probe this fresh young
+mind than he had ever been to sound the opinions of the most notable men
+of the day.
+
+"Even geometry," she smiled. "To be sure its portals are somewhat
+methodical in shape, allowing no scope to the fancy, but from its
+triangles and circles have been born the grandeurs of architecture, and
+upright on the threshold of its exact laws and undeviating calculations,
+I see an angel with a golden rod in his hand, measuring the heavens."
+
+"Even a stone speaks to a poet," said Mr. Sylvester with a glance at
+Miss Belinda.
+
+"But Paula is no poet," returned that lady with strict and impartial
+honesty. "She has never put a line on paper to my knowledge. Have you
+child?"
+
+"No aunt, I would as soon imprison a falling sunbeam or try to catch the
+breeze that lifts my hair or kisses my cheek."
+
+"You see," continued Mr. Sylvester still looking at Miss Belinda.
+
+She answered with a doubtful shake of the head and an earnest glance at
+the girl as if she perceived something in that bright young soul, that
+even she had never observed before.
+
+"Have you ever been away from home?" he now asked.
+
+"Never, I know as little of the great world as a callow nestling. No, I
+should not say that, for the young bird has no Aunt Belinda to tell of
+the great cathedrals and the wonderful music she has heard and the
+glorious pictures she has seen in her visits to the city. It is almost
+as good as travelling one's self to hear Aunt Belinda talk."
+
+It was now the turn of the mature plain woman to blush, which she did
+under Mr. Sylvester's searching eye.
+
+"You have then been in the habit of visiting New York?"
+
+"I have been there twice," she returned evasively.
+
+"Since my marriage?"
+
+"Yes sir;" with a firm closing of her lips.
+
+"I did not know you were there or I should have insisted upon your
+remaining at my house."
+
+"Thank you," said she with a quick triumphant glance at her demure
+little shadow, who looked back in amaze and was about to speak when Miss
+Belinda proceeded. "My visits usually have been on business; I should
+not think of troubling Mrs. Sylvester." And then he knew that his wife
+had been aware of those visits if he had not.
+
+But he refrained from testifying to his discovery. "You speak of music,"
+said he, turning gently back to Paula. "Have you a taste for it? Would
+it make you happy to hear such music as your aunt tells about?"
+
+"O yes, I can conceive nothing grander than to sit in a church whose
+every line is beauty and listen while the great organ utters its song of
+triumph or echoes in the wonderful way it does, the emotions you have
+tried to express and could not. I would give a whole week of my life on
+the hills, dear as it is, for one such hour, I think."
+
+Mr. Sylvester smiled. "It is a rare kind of coin to offer for such a
+simple pleasure, but it may meet with its acceptance, nevertheless;" and
+in his look and in his voice there was an appearance of affectionate
+interest that completed the subjugation of the watchful Miss Belinda,
+who now became doubly assured that whatever neglect had been shown her
+by her niece was not due to that niece's husband.
+
+Mr. Sylvester recognized the effect he had produced and hastened to
+complete it, feeling that the good opinion of Miss Belinda would be
+valuable to any man. "I have been a boy on these hills," said he, "and
+know what it is to long for what is beyond while enjoying what is
+present. You shall hear the organ my child." And stopped, wondering to
+himself over the new sweet interest he seemed to take in the prospect of
+pleasures which he had supposed himself to have long ago exhausted.
+
+"Hear the organ, I? why that means--O what does it mean?" she inquired,
+turning with a look of beaming hope towards her aunt.
+
+
+"You must ask Mr. Sylvester," that uncompromising lady replied, with a
+straightforward look at the fire.
+
+And he with a smile told the blushing girl that according to his
+reading, mortals went blindfold into fairy-land; and she understood what
+he meant and was silent, whereupon he turned the conversation upon more
+common-place subjects.
+
+For how could he tell her then of the intention that had awakened in his
+breast at the first glimpse of her grand young beauty. To make her his
+child, to bequeath to her the place of the babe that had perished in his
+arms three long years before--That meant to give Ona a care if not a
+rival in his affections, and Ona shrank from care, and was not a subject
+for rivalry. And the _if_ which this implied weighed heavily on his
+heart as moment after moment flew by, and he felt again the reviving
+power of an unsullied mind and an aspiring nature.
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+THE BARRED DOOR.
+
+     "A school boy's tale; the wonder of an hour."
+
+     BYRON.
+
+
+"Did you know that your niece was gifted with rare beauty as well as
+talents?" asked Mr. Sylvester of Miss Belinda as a couple of hours or so
+later, they sat alone by the parlor fire, preparatory to his departure.
+
+"No, that is," she hastily corrected herself, "I knew she was very
+pretty of course, prettier by far than any of her mates, but I did not
+suppose she was what you call a beauty, or at least would be so
+considered by a person accustomed to New York society."
+
+"I do not know of a woman in New York who can boast of any such claims
+to transcendent loveliness. Such faces are rare outside of art, Miss
+Belinda; was Mrs. Fairchild a handsome woman?"
+
+"She was my sister and if I may say so, my favorite sister, but she was
+no more agreeable to the eye than some others of her family," grimly
+returned the heavy browed spinster with a compression of her lips. "What
+beauty Paula has inherited came from her father. Her chief charm in my
+eyes, however, springs from her pure nature and the unselfish impulses
+of her heart."
+
+"And in mine," rejoined he quietly. Then with a sudden change of tone as
+he realized the necessity of saying something definite to this woman in
+regard to his intentions toward the child, he remarked, "Her great and
+unusual talents and manifest disposition to learn, demand as you say,
+superior advantages to any she can have in a small country town like
+this, fruitful as it has already been to her under your wise and
+fostering care and such shall she have; but just when and how I cannot
+say till I have seen my wife and learned what her wishes are likely to
+be in regard to the subject."
+
+"You are very kind, sir," returned Miss Belinda. "I have no doubt as to
+the good-will of your intentions, and the child shall be prepared at
+once for a change."
+
+"And will _the child_," he exclaimed with a smile as Paula re-entered
+the room, "be so kind as to give me her company in the walk I must now
+take to the cars?"
+
+"Of course," replied her aunt before the young girl could speak, "we owe
+you that much attention I am sure."
+
+And so it was that when he came to retrace his way through the village
+with its heavy memories, he had a guardian spirit at his side that
+robbed them of their power to sadden and oppress.
+
+"What shall I say for you to the grim, city streets when I get back?"
+inquired he as they hastened on over the snow covered road.
+
+"Say to them from me? O you may give them my greeting," she responded
+half shyly, half confidingly. Evidently for her he was one of those rare
+persons whose presence is perfect freedom and with whom she could not
+only think her best but speak it also. "I should like to make their
+acquaintance, but indeed they would have to do well to vie in attraction
+with these white roads girded by their silver-limbed trees. The very
+rush of life must seem oppressive. So many hopes, so many fears, so many
+interests jostling you at every step! Yet the thought is exhilarating
+too; don't you find it so?"
+
+It was the first question she had asked him and he knew not how to
+reply. Her eyes were so confiding, he could not bear to shake her faith
+in his imagined superiority. Yet what thoughts had he ever cherished in
+walking the busy streets, save those connected with his own selfish
+hopes and fears, plans and operations? "I have no doubt," said he after
+a moment's pause, "that I have felt this exhilaration of which you
+speak. Certainly the hurrying masses in Broadway awaken a far different
+sensation in a man, than this solitary stretch of country road."
+
+"Yet the road has its companionships," she murmured. "In the city one
+thinks most of men, but in the country, of God. Its very solitude
+compels you."
+
+"Compels _you_," he involuntarily answered. And shuddered as he said it,
+remembering days when he trod these very roads with anything but
+reverence in his heart for the Creator of the landscape before him. "Not
+every one has the inner vision, my child, to see the love and wisdom
+back of the works, or rather most men have a vision so short it does not
+reach so far. Yet I think I can understand what you mean and might even
+experience your emotions if my eyes had leisure to explore this space
+and my thoughts to rise out of their usual depressing atmosphere of care
+and anxiety. You did not think I was a busy man, he continued,"
+observing her gaze of wonder. "You thought riches brought ease; if you
+ever come to think, 'most of men' you will learn that the wealthy man is
+the greatest worker, for his rest comes not night or day."
+
+She shook her head with a sudden doubt. "It is a problem," she said,
+"which my knowledge of geometry does not help me to solve."
+
+"No," assented he; "and one in which even your fanciful soul would fail
+to find any poetry. But stop, Paula; isn't this the place where I found
+you that day, and you showed me the view up the river?"
+
+"Yes, and it was on that stone I sat; it has a milk-white cushion now;
+and there is where you stood, looking so tall and grand to my childish
+eyes! The gates are of pearl now," she said, pointing to the
+snow-covered slopes in the west. "I wish the sky had been clear to-night
+and you could have seen the effect of a rosy sunset falling over those
+domes of ice and snow."
+
+"It would leave me less to expect when I come again," he responded
+almost gayly. "The next time we will have the sunset, Paula."
+
+She smiled and they hastened on, presently finding themselves in the
+village streets. Suddenly she paused. "Small towns have their mysteries
+as well as great cities," said she; "we are not without ours, look."
+
+He turned, followed with a glance the direction of her pointing finger
+and started in his sudden surprise. She had indicated to him the house
+whose ghostly and frowning front bore written across its grim gray
+boards, such an inscription of painful remembrance. "It is a solitary
+looking place, isn't it?" she went on, innocent of the pain she was
+inflicting. "No one lives there or ever will, I imagine. Do you see that
+board nailed across the front door?"
+
+He forced himself to look. He did more, he fixed his eyes upon the
+desolate structure before him until the aspect of its huge unpainted
+walls with their long rows of sealed-up windows and high smokeless
+chimneys was impressed indelibly upon his mind. The large front door
+with its weird and solemn barrier was the last thing upon which his eye
+rested.
+
+"Yes," said he, and involuntarily asked what it meant.
+
+"We do not know exactly," she responded. "It was nailed across there by
+the men who followed Colonel Japha to the grave. Colonel Japha was the
+owner of the house," she proceeded, too interested to observe the shadow
+which the utterance of that name had invoked upon his brow. "He was a
+peculiar man I judge, and had suffered great wrongs they say; at all
+events his life was very solitary and sad, and on his deathbed he made
+his neighbors promise him that they would carry out his body through
+that door and then seal it up against any further ingress or egress
+forever. His wishes were respected, and from that day to this no one has
+ever entered that door."
+
+"But the house!" stammered Mr. Sylvester in anything but his usual tone,
+"surely it has not been deserted all these years!"
+
+
+"Ah," said she, "now we come to the greatest mystery of all." And laying
+her hand timidly on his arm, she drew his attention to the form of a
+decrepit old lady just then advancing towards them down the street "Do
+you see that aged figure?" she asked. "Every evening at this hour,
+winter and summer, stormy weather or clear, she is seen to leave her
+home up the street and come down to this forsaken dwelling, open the
+worm-eaten gate before you, cross the otherwise untrodden garden and
+enter the house by a side door which she opens with a huge key she
+carries in her pocket. For just one hour by the clock she remains there,
+and then she is seen to issue in the falling dusk, with a countenance
+whose heavy dejection is in striking contrast to the expression of hope
+with which she invariably enters. Why she makes this pilgrimage and for
+what purpose she secludes herself for a stated time each day in this
+otherwise deserted mansion, no man knows nor is it possible to
+determine, for though she is a worthy woman and approachable enough on
+all other topics, on this she is absolutely mute."
+
+Mr. Sylvester started and surveyed the woman as she passed with an
+anxious gaze. "I know her," he muttered; "she was a connection of--of
+the family, who inhabited this house." He could not speak the name.
+
+"Yes, so they say, and the owner of this house, though she does not live
+here. Did you notice how she looked at me? She often does that, just as
+if she wanted to speak. But she always goes by and opens the gate as you
+see her now and takes out the big key and--"
+
+"Come away," cried Mr. Sylvester with sudden impulse, seizing Paula by
+the hand and hurrying her down the street. "She is a walking goblin; you
+must have nothing to do with such uncanny folk." And endeavoring to turn
+off this irresistible display of feeling by a show of pleasantry he
+laughed aloud, but in a strained and unnatural way that made her eyes
+lift in unconscious amazement.
+
+"You are infected by the atmosphere of unreality that pervades the
+spot," said she, "I do not wonder." And with the gentle perversity that
+sometimes affects the most thoughtful amongst us, she went on talking
+upon the unwelcome subject. "I know of some folks who invariably cross
+to the other side of the street at night, rather than go through the
+shadows of the two gaunt poplars which guard that house. Yet there has
+been no murder committed there or any great crime that I know of, unless
+the disobedience of a daughter who ran away with a man her father
+detested, could be denominated by so fearful a word."
+
+The set gaze with which Mr. Sylvester surveyed the landscape before him
+quavered a trifle and then grew hard and cold. "And so," said he in a
+tone meant more for himself than her, "even your innocent ears have been
+assailed by the gossip about Miss Japha."
+
+"Gossip! I have never thought of it as gossip," returned she, struck for
+the first time by the change in his appearance. "It all happened so long
+ago it seems more like some quaint and ancient tale than a story of one
+of our neighbors. Besides, the fact that a wilful girl ran away from the
+house of her father, with the man of her choice, is not such a dreadful
+one is it, though she never returned to its walls with her husband, and
+her father was so overwhelmed by the shock, he was never seen to smile
+again."
+
+"No," said he, giving her a hurried glance of relief, "I only wondered
+at the tenacity of old stories to engage the popular ear. I had supposed
+even the remembrance of Jacqueline Japha would have been lost in the
+long silence that has followed that one disobedient act."
+
+"And so it might, were it not for that closely shut house with the
+sinister bar across its chief entrance, inviting curiosity while it
+effectually precludes all investigation. With that token ever before our
+eyes of a dead man's implacable animosity, who can wonder that we
+sometimes ponder over the fate of her who was its object."
+
+"And no intimations of that fate have been ever received in Grotewell.
+For all that is known to the contrary, Jacqueline Japha may have
+preceded her father to the tomb."
+
+Paula bowed her head, amazed at the gloomy tone in which this emphatic
+assertion was made by one whose supposed ignorance she had been
+endeavoring to enlighten. "You knew her history before, then," observed
+she, "I beg your pardon."
+
+"And it is granted," said he with a sudden throwing off of the shadow
+that had enveloped him. "You must not mind my sudden lapses into gloom.
+I was never a cheerful man, that is, not since I--since my early youth I
+should say. And the shadows which are short at your time of life grow
+long and chilly at mine. One thing can illumine them though, and that is
+a child's happy smile. You are a child to me; do not deny me a smile,
+then, before I go."
+
+"Not one nor a dozen," cried she, giving him her hands in good-bye for
+they had arrived at the depot by this time and the sound of the
+approaching train was heard in the distance.
+
+"God bless you!" said he, clasping those hands with a father's heartfelt
+tenderness. "God bless my little Paula and make her pillow soft till we
+meet again!" Then as the train came sweeping up the track, put on his
+brightest look and added, "If the fairy-godmother chances to visit you
+during my departure, don't hesitate to obey her commands, if you want to
+hear the famous organ peal."
+
+"No, no," she cried. And with a final look and smile he stepped upon the
+train and in another moment was whirled away from that place of many
+memories and a solitary hope.
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+MISS STUYVESANT.
+
+    "She smiled; but he could see arise
+    Her soul from far adown her eyes."
+
+    --MRS. BROWNING.
+
+
+"She is a beauty; it is only right I should forewarn you of that."
+
+"Dark or light?"
+
+"Dark; that is her hair and eyes are almost oriental in their blackness,
+but her skin is fair, almost as dazzling as yours, Ona."
+
+Mrs. Sylvester threw a careless glance in the long mirror before which
+she was slowly completing her toilet, and languidly smiled. But whether
+at this covert compliment to her greatest charm or at some passing fancy
+of her own, it would be difficult to decide. "The dark hair and eyes
+come from her father," remarked she in an abstracted way while she tried
+the effect of a bunch of snow-white roses at her waist with a backward
+toss of her proud blonde head. "His mother was a Greek. 'Tell it not in
+Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askelon,'" she exclaimed in a
+voice as nearly gay as her indolent nature would allow. For this lady of
+fashion was in one of her happiest moods. Her dress, a new one, fitted
+her to perfection and the vision mirrored in the glass before her was
+not lacking, so far as she could see in one charm that could captivate.
+"Do you think she could fasten a ribbon, or arrange a bow?" she further
+inquired. "I should like to have some one about me with a knack for
+helping a body in an emergency, if possible. Sarah is absolutely the
+destruction of any bit of ribbon she undertakes to handle. Look at that
+knot of black velvet over there for instance, wouldn't you think a raw
+Irish girl just from the other side would have known better than to tie
+it with half the wrong side showing?"
+
+With the habit long ago acquired of glancing wherever her ivory finger
+chanced to point, the grave man of the world slowly turned his head full
+of the weightiest cares and oppressed by the burden of innumerable
+responsibilities, and surveyed the cluster of velvet bows thus
+indicated, with a mechanical knitting of the brows.
+
+"I pay Sarah twenty-five dollars a month and that is the result," his
+wife proceeded. "Now if Paula--"
+
+"Paula is not to come here as a waiting maid," her husband quickly
+interposed, a suspicion of color just showing itself for a moment on his
+cheek.
+
+"If Paula," his wife went on, unheeding the interruption save by casting
+him a hurried glance over the shoulder of her own reflection in the
+glass, "had the taste in such matters of some other members of our
+family and could manage to lend me a helping hand now and then, why I
+could almost imagine I had my younger sister back with me again, who
+with her skill in making one look fit for the eyes of the world, was
+such a blessing to us in our old home."
+
+"I have no doubt Paula could be taught to be equally efficient," her
+husband responded, carefully restraining any further show of impatience.
+"She is bright, I am certain, and ribbon-tying is not such a very
+difficult art, is it?"
+
+"I don't know about that; by the way Sarah succeeds I should say it was
+about on a par with the science of algebra or--what is that horrid study
+they used to threaten to inflict me with at the academy whenever I
+complained of a headache? Oh I remember--conic sections."
+
+"Well, well," laughed her husband, "she ought soon to to be an expert in
+it then; Paula is a famous little mathematician."
+
+A silence followed this response; Mrs. Sylvester was fitting in her
+ear-rings. "I suppose," said she when the operation was completed, "that
+the snow will prevent half the people from coming to-night." It was a
+reception evening at the Sylvester mansion. "But so long as Mrs.
+Fitzgerald does not disappoint me, I do not care. What do you think of
+the setting of these diamonds?" she inquired, leaning forward to look at
+herself more closely, and slowly shaking her head till the rich gems
+sparkled like fire.
+
+"It is good," came in short, quick tones from the lips of her husband.
+
+"Well, I don't know, there might be a shade more of enamel on the edge
+of that ring. I shall speak to the jeweller about it to-morrow. But what
+were we talking about?" she dreamily asked, still turning her head from
+side to side before the mirror.
+
+"We were talking about adopting your cousin in the place of our child
+who is dead," replied her husband with some severity, pausing in the
+middle of the floor which he was pacing, to honor her with a steady
+glance.
+
+"O yes! Dear me! what an awkward clasp that man has given to these rings
+after all. You will have to fasten them for me." Then as he stepped
+forward with studied courtesy, yawned just a trifle and remarked, "No
+one could ever take the place of one's own child of course. If Geraldine
+had lived she would have been a blonde, her eyes were blue as
+sapphires."
+
+
+He looked in his wife's face and his hands dropped. He thought of the
+day when those eyes, blue as sapphires indeed, flashed burning with
+death's own fever, from the little crib in the nursery, while with this
+same cool and self-satisfied countenance, the wife and mother before him
+had swept down the broad stairs to her carriage, murmuring
+apologetically as she gathered up her train, "O you needn't trouble
+yourself to look after her, she will do very well with Sarah."
+
+She may have thought of it too, for the least little bit of real crimson
+found its way through the rouge on her cheek as she encountered the
+stern look of his eye, but she only turned a trifle more towards the
+glass, saying, "I forgot you do not admire the rôle of waiting maid. I
+will try and manage them myself, seeing that you have banished Sarah."
+
+He exerted his self-control and again for the thousandth time buried
+that ghastly memory out of sight, actually forcing himself to smile as
+he gently took her hand from her ear and began deftly to fasten the
+rebellious ornaments.
+
+"You mistake," said he, "love can ask any favor without hesitation. I do
+not object to waiting upon my own wife."
+
+She gave him a little look which he obligingly took as a guerdon for
+this speech, and languidly held out her bracelets. As he stood clasping
+them on her arms, she quietly eyed him over from head to foot. "I don't
+know of a man who has your figure," said she with a certain tone of
+pride in her voice; "it is well you married a wife who does not look
+altogether inferior beside you." Then as he bowed with mock appreciation
+of the intended compliment, added with her usual inconsequence, "I dare
+say it would give me something to interest myself in. I don't suppose
+she has a decent thing to wear, and the fact of her being a dark beauty
+would lend quite a new impulse to my inventive faculty. Mrs. Walker has
+a daughter with black eyes, but dear me, what a guy she does make of
+her!"
+
+With a sigh Mr. Sylvester turned to the window where he stood looking
+out at the heavy flakes of snow falling with slow and fluctuating
+movement between him and the row of brown stone houses in front. Paula
+considered as a milliner's block upon which to try the effect of
+clothes!
+
+"Even Mrs. Fitzgerald with all her taste don't know how to dress her
+child," proceeded his wife, with a hurried, "Be still, Cherry!" to the
+importunate bird in the cage. "Now I should take as much pride in
+dressing any one under my charge as I would myself, provided the subject
+was likely to do credit to my efforts." And finding the bird
+incorrigible in his shrill singing, she moved over to the cage, where
+she stood balancing her white finger for the bird to peck at, with a
+pretty caressing motion of her lip, the little Geraldine of the wistful
+blue eyes, had never seen.
+
+"You are welcome to do what you please in such matters," was her
+husband's reply. He was thinking again of that same little Geraldine; a
+fall of snow like the present always made him think of her and her
+innocent query as to whether God threw down such big flakes to amuse
+little children. "I give you _carte blanche_," said he with sudden
+emphasis.
+
+Mrs. Sylvester paused in her attentions to the bird to give him a sharp
+little look which might have aroused his surprise if he had been
+fortunate enough to see it. But his back was towards her, and there was
+nothing in the languidly careless tone with which she responded, to
+cause him to turn his head. "I see that you would really like to have me
+entertain the child; but--"
+
+She paused, pursing up her lips to meet the chattering bird's caress,
+while her husband in his impatience drummed with his fingers on the
+pane.
+
+--"I must see her before I decide upon the length of her visit,"
+continued she, as weary with the sport she drew back to give herself a
+final look in the glass. "Will you please to hand me that shawl,
+Edward."
+
+He turned with alacrity. In his relief he could have kissed the snowy
+neck held so erectly before him, as he drew around it the shawl he had
+hastily lifted from the chair at his side. But that would not have
+suited this calm and languid beauty who disliked any too overt tribute
+to her charms and saved her caresses for her bird. Besides it would look
+like gratitude, and gratitude would be misplaced towards a wife who had
+just indicated her acceptance of his offer to receive a relative of her
+own into his house.
+
+"She might as well come at once," was her final remark, as satisfied at
+last with the lay of every ribbon she swept in finished elegance from
+the room. "Mrs. Kittredge's reception comes off a week from Thursday,
+and I should like to see how a dark beauty with a fair skin would look
+in that new shade of heliotrope."
+
+And so the battle was over and the victory won; for Mrs. Sylvester for
+all her seeming indifference was never known to change a decision she
+had once made. As he realized the fact, as he meditated that ere long
+this very room which had been the scene of so much frivolity and the
+witness to so many secret heart-burnings, would reëcho to the tread of
+the pure and innocent child, whose mind had flights unknown to the
+slaves of fashion, and in whose heart lay impulses of goodness that
+would satisfy the long smothered cravings of his awakened nature, he
+experienced a feeling of relenting towards the wife who had not chosen
+to thwart him in this the strongest wish of his childless manhood, and
+crossing to her dressing table, he dropped among its treasures a costly
+ring which he had been induced to purchase that day from an old friend
+who had fallen into want. "She will wear it," murmured he to himself,
+"for its hue will make her hand look still whiter, and when I see it
+sparkle I will remember this hour and be patient." Had he known that she
+had yielded to this wish out of a certain vague feeling of compunction
+for the disappointments she had frequently occasioned him and would
+occasion him again, he might have added a tender thought to the rich and
+costly gift with which he had just endowed her.
+
+"I expect a young cousin of mine to spend the winter with me and pursue
+her studies," were the first words that greeted his ears as an hour or
+so later he entered the parlor where his wife was entertaining what few
+guests had been anxious enough for a sight of Mrs. Sylvester's newly
+furnished drawing-room, to brave the now rapidly falling snow. "I hope
+that you and she will be friends."
+
+Curious to see what sort of a companion his wife was thus somewhat
+prematurely providing for Paula, he hastily advanced towards the little
+group from which her voice had proceeded, and found himself face to face
+with a brown-haired girl whose appealing glance and somewhat infantile
+mouth were in striking contrast to the dignity with which she carried
+her small head and managed her whole somewhat petite person.
+
+"Miss Stuyvesant! my husband!" came in musical tones from his wife, and
+somewhat surprised to hear a name that but a moment before had been the
+uppermost in his mind, he bowed with courtesy and then asked if he was
+so happy as to speak to a daughter of Thaddeus Stuyvesant.
+
+"If it will give you especial pleasure I will say yes," responded the
+little miss with a smile that irradiated her whole face. "Do you know my
+father?"
+
+
+"There are but few bankers in the city who have not that pleasure,"
+replied he with an answering look of regard. "I am especially happy to
+meet his daughter in my house to-night."
+
+There was something in his manner of saying this and in the short
+inquiring glance which at every opportunity he cast upon her bright
+young face with its nameless charm of mingled appeal and reserve, that
+astonished his wife.
+
+"Miss Stuyvesant was in the carriage with Mrs. Fitzgerald," said that
+lady with a certain dignity she knew well how to assume. "I am afraid if
+it had not been for that circumstance we should not have enjoyed the
+pleasure of her presence." And with the rare tact of which she was
+certainly a mistress, as far as all social matters were concerned, she
+left the aspiring magnate of Wall Street to converse with the daughter
+of the man whom all New York bankers were expected to know, and hastened
+to join a group of ladies discussing ceramics before a huge placque of
+rarest _cloissone_.
+
+Mr. Sylvester followed her with his eyes; he had never seen her look
+more vivacious; had the hope of seeing a young face at their board
+touched some secret chord in her nature as well as his? Was she more of
+a woman than he imagined, and would she be, though in the most
+superficial of ways, a mother to Paula? Flushed with the thought, he
+turned back to the little lady at his side. She was gazing in an intent
+and thoughtful way at an engraving of Dubufe's "Prodigal Son" that
+adorned the wall above her head. There was something in her face that
+made him ask:
+
+"Is that a favorite picture of yours?"
+
+She smiled and nodded her small and delicate head.
+
+"Yes sir, it is indeed, but I was not looking at the picture so much as
+at the face of that dark-haired girl that sits in the centre, with that
+far-away expression in her eyes. Do you see what I mean? She is like
+none of the rest. Her form is before us, but her heart and her interest
+are in some distant clime or forsaken home to which the music murmured
+at her side recalls her. She has a soul above her surroundings, that
+girl; and her face is indescribably pathetic to me. In the recesses of
+her being she carries a memory or a regret that separates her from the
+world and makes certain moments of her life almost holy."
+
+"You look deep," said Mr. Sylvester, gazing down upon the little lady's
+face with strongly awakened interest. "You see more perhaps than the
+painter intended."
+
+"No, no; possibly more than the engraving expresses, but not more than
+the artist intended. I saw the original once, when as you remember it
+was on exhibition here. I was a wee thing, but I never forgot that
+girl's face. It spoke more than all the rest to me; perhaps because I so
+much honor reserve in one who holds in his breast a great pain or a
+great hope."
+
+The eye that was resting upon her, softened indescribably. "You believe
+in great hopes," said he.
+
+The little figure seemed to grow tall; and her face looked almost
+beautiful. "What would life be without them?" she answered.
+
+"True," returned Mr. Sylvester; and entering into the conversation with
+unusual spirit, was astonished to find how young she was and yet how
+thoroughly bright and self-possessed.
+
+"Lovely girls are cropping up around me in all directions," thought he;
+"I shall have to correct my judgment concerning our young ladies of
+fashion if I encounter many more as sensible and earnest-hearted as
+this." And for some reason his brow grew so light and his tone so
+cheerful that the ladies were attracted from all parts of the room to
+hear what the demure Miss Stuyvesant could have to say to the grave
+master of the house, to call forth such smiles of enjoyment upon his
+usually melancholy countenance.
+
+Take it all together, the occasion though small was one of the
+pleasantest of the season, and so Mrs. Sylvester announced when the last
+carriage had driven away, and she and her husband stood in the
+brilliantly lighted library, surveying a new cabinet of rare and antique
+workmanship which had been that day installed in the place of honor
+beneath my lady's picture.
+
+"I thought you seemed to enjoy it, Ona," her husband remarked.
+
+"O, it was an occasion of triumph to me," she murmured. "It is the first
+time a Stuyvesant has crossed our threshold, _mon cher_."
+
+"Ha," he exclaimed, turning upon her a brisk displeased look. He was
+proud and considered no man his superior in a social sense. "Do you
+acknowledge yourself a parvenue that you rejoice at the entrance of any
+one special person into your doors?"
+
+"I thought," she replied somewhat mortified, "that you betrayed unusual
+pleasure yourself at her introduction."
+
+"That may be; I was glad to see her here, for her father is one of the
+most influential directors in the bank of which I shortly expect to be
+made president."
+
+The nature of this disclosure was calculated to be especially gratifying
+to her, and effectually blotted out any remembrance of the break by
+which it had been introduced. After a few hasty inquiries, followed by a
+scene of quite honest mutual congratulation, the gratified wife left her
+husband to put out the lights himself or call Samuel as he might choose,
+and glided up stairs to delight the curious Sarah with the broken
+soliloquies and inconsequent self-communings which formed another of her
+peculiar habits.
+
+As for her husband, he stood a few minutes where she left him,
+abstractedly eying the gorgeous vista that spread out before him down to
+the further mirror of the elaborate drawing-room, thinking perhaps with
+a certain degree of pride, of the swiftness with which he had risen to
+opulence and the certainty with which he had conquered position in the
+business as well as in the social world when he could speak of such a
+connection with Thaddeus Stuyvesant as a project already matured. Then
+with a hasty movement and a quick sigh which nothing in his prospects
+actual or apparent would seem to warrant, he proceeded to put out the
+lights, my lady's picture shining with less and less importunity as the
+flickering jets disappeared, till all was dark save for the faint
+glimmer that came in from the hall, a glimmer just sufficient to show
+the outlines of the various articles of furniture scattered about--and
+could it be the tall figure of the master himself standing in the centre
+of the room with his palms pressed against his forehead in an attitude
+of sorrow or despair? Yes, or whose that wild murmur, "Is it never given
+to man to forget!" Yet no, or who is this that calm and dignified, steps
+at this moment from the threshold? It must have been a dream, a
+phantasy. _This_ is the master of the house who with sedate and regular
+step goes up flight after flight of the spiral staircase, and neither
+pauses or looks back till he reaches the top of the house where he takes
+out a key from his pocket, and opening a certain door, goes in and locks
+it behind him. It is his secret study or retreat, a room which no one is
+allowed to enter, the mystery of the house to the servants and something
+more than that to its inquisitive mistress. What he does there no man
+knows, but to-night if any one had been curious enough to listen, they
+would have heard nothing more ominous than the monotonous scratch of a
+pen. He was writing to Miss Belinda and the burden of his letter was
+that on a certain day he named, he was coming to take away Paula.
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+MISS BELINDA MAKES CONDITIONS.
+
+    "For of the soul the body form doth take,
+    For soul is form, and doth the body make."
+
+    SPENSER.
+
+
+Miss Belinda was somewhat taken aback at the proposal of Mr. Sylvester
+to receive Paula into his own house. She had not anticipated any such
+result to her efforts; the utmost she had expected was a couple of years
+or so of instruction in some state Academy. Nor did she know whether she
+was altogether pleased at the turn affairs were taking. From all she had
+heard, her niece Ona was, to say the least, a frivolous woman, and Paula
+had a mind too noble to be subjected to the deteriorating influence of a
+shallow and puerile companionship. Then the child had great beauty; Mr.
+Sylvester who ought to be a judge in such matters had declared it so,
+and what might not the adulation of the thoughtless and the envy of the
+jealous, do towards belittling a nature as yet uncontaminated.
+
+"We ought to think twice," she said to Miss Abby with some bitterness,
+who on the contrary never having thought once was full of the most
+childish hopes concerning a result which she considered with a certain
+secret complacency she would not have acknowledged for the world, had
+been very much furthered by her own wise recommendations to Mr.
+Sylvester in the beginning of his visit. Yet notwithstanding her doubts
+Miss Belinda allowed such preparations to be made as she considered
+necessary, and even lent her hand which was deft enough in its way, to
+the task of enlarging the child's small wardrobe. As for Paula, the
+thought of visiting the great city with the dear friend whose image had
+stood in her mind from early childhood as the impersonation of all that
+was noble, generous and protecting, was more than joyful; it was an
+inspiration. Not that she did not cling to the affectionate if somewhat
+quaint couple who had befriended her childhood and sacrificed their
+comfort to her culture and happiness. But the chord that lies deeper
+than gratitude had been struck, and fond as were her memories of the
+dear old home, the charm of that deep "My child," with its hint of
+fatherly affection, was more than her heart could stand; and no spot, no
+not the realms of fairy-land itself, looked so attractive to her fancy
+as that far fireside in an unknown home where she might sit with cousin
+Ona and alternately with her exert her wit to beguile the smile to his
+melancholy lips.
+
+When therefore upon the stated day, Mr. Sylvester made his second
+appearance at the little cottage in Grotewell, it was to find Paula
+radiant, Miss Abby tearfully exultant and Miss Belinda--O anomaly of
+human nature--silent and severe. Attributing this however to her very
+natural regret at parting with Paula, he entered into all the
+arrangements for their departure on the following morning without a
+suspicion of the real state of her mind, nor was he undeceived until the
+day was nearly over and they sat down to have a few minutes of social
+conversation before the early tea.
+
+They had been speaking on some local topic involving a question of right
+and wrong, and Mr. Sylvester's ears were yet thrilling to the deep
+ringing tones with which Paula uttered the words, "I do not see how any
+man can hesitate an instant when the voice of his conscience says no. I
+should think the very sunlight would daunt him at the first step of his
+foot across the forbidden line," when Miss Belinda suddenly spoke up and
+sending Paula out of the room on some trivial pretext, addressed Mr.
+Sylvester without reserve.
+
+"I have something to say to you, sir, before you take from my home the
+child of my care and affection."
+
+Could he have guessed what that something was that he should turn with
+such a flush of sudden anxiety to meet her determined gaze.
+
+"The rules of our life here have been simple," continued she in a tone
+of voice which those who knew her well recognized as belonging to her
+uncompromising moods. "To do our duty, love God and serve our neighbor.
+Paula has been brought up to reverence those rules in simplicity and
+honor; what will your gay city life with its hollow devices for pleasure
+and its loose hold on the firm principles of life, do for this innocent
+soul, Mr. Sylvester?"
+
+"The city," he said firmly but with a troubled undertone in his voice
+that was not unnoted by the watchful woman, "is a vast caldron of
+mingled good and evil. She will hear of more wrong doing, and be within
+the reach of more self-denying virtue, than if she had remained in this
+village alone with the nature that she so much loves. The tree of
+knowledge bears two kinds of fruit, Miss Belinda; would you therefore
+hinder the child from approaching its branches?"
+
+"No, sir; I am not so weak as to keep a child in swaddling-clothes after
+the period of infancy is past, neither am I so reckless as to set her
+adrift on an unknown sea without a pilot to guide her. Your wife--" she
+paused and fixed an intent look upon the flames leaping before her. "Ona
+is my niece," she resumed in a lower tone of voice, "and I feel entitled
+to speak with freedom concerning her. Is she such a guide as I would
+choose for a young girl just entering a new sphere in life? From all I
+have heard, I should judge she was somewhat over-devoted to this world
+and its fashions."
+
+Mr. Sylvester flushed painfully, but seeing that any softening of the
+truth would be wholly ineffectual with this woman, replied in a candid
+tone, "Ona is the same now as she was in the days of her girlhood. If
+she loves the world too well she is not without her excuse; from her
+birth it has strewn nothing but roses in her path."
+
+"Humph!" came from the lips of the energetic spinster. Then with a
+second stern glance at the fire, continued, "Another question, Mr.
+Sylvester. Does your wife consent to receive my niece into her house,
+for the indefinite length of time which you mention, from interest in
+the girl herself or indeed from any motive I should judge worthy of
+Paula? It is a leading question I know, but this is no time for niceties
+of speech."
+
+"Miss Belinda," replied he, and his voice was firm though his fingers
+slightly trembled where they rested upon the arms of his chair, "I will
+try and forget for a moment that Ona is my wife, and frankly confide to
+you that any such motive on her part, as would meet with your entire
+approval, must not be expected from a woman who has never fully
+recognized the solemn responsibilities of life. That she will be kind to
+Paula I have no doubt, that she may even learn to take an interest in
+her for her own sake, is also very possible, but that she will ever take
+your place towards her as guide or instructor, I neither anticipate nor
+would feel myself justified in leading you to."
+
+The look which Miss Belinda cast him was anything but reassuring. "And
+yet," said she, "you will take away my darling and give her up to an
+influence that can not be for good, or your glance would not be so
+troubled or your lip so uncertain. You would set her young feet in a
+path where the very flowers are so thick they conceal its tendency and
+obscure its dangers. Mr. Sylvester you are a man who has seen life with
+naked eyes, and must recognize its responsibilities; dare you take this
+Paula, whom you have seen, out of the atmosphere of truth and purity in
+which she has been raised, and give her over to the enervating
+influences of folly and fashion? Will you assume the risk and brave the
+consequences?"
+
+As though an electric shock had touched the nerve of his nature, Mr.
+Sylvester hastily rose and moved in a restless manner to the window. It
+was his favorite refuge in any time of sudden perplexity or doubt, and
+this was surely an occasion for both.
+
+"Miss Belinda," he began and then paused, looking out on the hills of
+his boyhood, every one of which spoke to him at that moment with a force
+that almost sickened his heart and benumbed the faculties of his mind;
+"I recognize the love which leads you to speak in this way, and I bow
+before it, but--" here his tongue faltered again, that ready tongue
+whose quick and persuasive eloquence on public occasions had won for him
+the name of Silver-speech among his friends and admirers--"but there are
+others who love your Paula also, love her with a yearning that only the
+childless can feel or the disappointed appreciate. I had hoped--" here
+he left the window and approached her side, "to do more for Paula than
+to give her the temporal benefit of a luxurious home and such
+instruction as her extraordinary talents demand. If Ona upon seeing and
+knowing the child had found she could love her, I had intended to ask
+you to yield her to us unreservedly and forever, in short to make her my
+child in place of the daughter I have lost. But now--" with a quick
+gesture he began pacing the floor and left the sentence unfinished.
+
+Miss Belinda's eyes which were of a light grey, wholly without beauty
+but with strange flashes of expression in them, left the fire and fell
+upon his face, and a tear of real feeling gathered beneath her lids.
+
+"I had no idea," said he, "that you cherished any such intention as
+that. If I had I might have worded my apprehensions differently. The
+yearning feeling of which you speak, I can easily understand, also the
+strength of the determination it must take on the part of a man like
+yourself, to give up a hope of this nature. Yet--" Seeing him pause in
+his hurried pacing and open his lips as if to speak, she deferentially
+stopped.
+
+
+"Miss Belinda," said he, in the firm and steadfast way more in keeping
+with his features than his agitated manner of a moment before, "I cannot
+give it up. The injury it would do me is greater than the harm, which
+one of Paula's lofty nature would be apt to acquire in any atmosphere
+into which she might chance to be introduced. She is not a child, Miss
+Belinda, though we allude to her as such. The texture of those
+principles which you have instilled into her breast, is of no such weak
+material as to give way to the first petty breeze that blows. Paula's
+house will stand, while mine--"
+
+He paused and gave way to a momentary struggle, but that over, he set
+his lips firmly together and the last vestige of irresolution vanished.
+Sitting down by her side, he turned his face upon her, and for the first
+time she realized the power which with one exception he had always
+exerted over the minds of others. "Miss Belinda," said he, "I am going
+to give you an evidence of my trust; I am going to leave with you the
+responsibility of Paula's future. She shall go with me, and learn, if
+she can, to love me and mine, but she shall also be under obligations to
+open her heart to you on all matters that concern her life and happiness
+in my house, and the day you see any falling off in her pure and upright
+spirit, you shall demand her return, and though it tears the heart from
+my breast, I will yield her up without question or parley as I am a
+gentleman and a Christian. Does that content you?"
+
+"It certainly ought to, sir. No one could ask more, I am sure," returned
+the other in a voice somewhat unsteady for her.
+
+"It is opening my house to the gaze of a stranger," said he, "for I
+desire you to command Paula to withhold nothing that seriously affects
+her; but my confidence in you is unbounded and I am sure that whatever
+you may learn in this way, will be held as sacred by you as though it
+were buried in a tomb."
+
+"It certainly will, sir."
+
+"As for the dearer hope which I have mentioned, time and the condition
+of things must decide for us. Meanwhile I shall strive to win a father's
+place in her heart, if only to build myself a refuge for the days that
+are to come. You see I speak frankly, Miss Belinda; will you give me
+some token that you are not altogether dissatisfied with the result of
+this conversation?"
+
+With the straightforward if somewhat blunt action that characterized all
+her movements, she stretched out her hand, which he took with something
+more than his usual high-bred courtesy. "With you at the wheel," said
+she, "I think I may trust my darling, even to the whirl and follies of
+such a society as I know Ona loves. A man who can so command himself,
+ought to be a safe guide to pioneer others."
+
+And the considerate gentleman bowed; but the frank smile that hailed her
+genial clasp had somehow vanished, and from the sudden cloud that at
+that moment swept over the roseate heavens, fell a shadow that left its
+impress on his lip long after the cloud itself had departed.
+
+An hour or so had passed. The fire was burning brightly on the
+hearthstone, illumining with a steady glow the array of stuffed birds,
+worsted samplers and old-fashioned portraits with which the walls were
+adorned, but reserving its richest glow and fullest irradiation for the
+bended head of Paula, who seated on a little stool in the corner of the
+hearth, was watching the rise and fall of the flickering flames.
+
+She had packed her little trunk, had said good-bye to all her
+neighboring friends and was now sitting on the old hearthstone, musing
+upon the new life that was about to open before her. It was a happy
+musing, as the smile that vaguely dimpled her cheeks and brightened her
+eyes beneath their long lashes, amply testified. As Mr. Sylvester
+watched her from the opposite side of the hearth where he was sitting
+alone with his thoughts, he felt his heart sink with apprehension at the
+fervor of anticipation with which she evidently looked forward to the
+life in the new home. "The young wings think to gain freedom," thought
+he, "when they are only destined to the confinement of a gilded cage."
+
+He was so silent and looked so sad, Paula with a certain sort of
+sensitiveness to any change in the emotional atmosphere surrounding her,
+which was one of her chief characteristics, hastily looked up and
+meeting his eye fixed on her with that foreboding glance, softly arose
+and came and sat down by his side. "You look tired," murmured she; "the
+long ride after a day of business care has been too much for you."
+
+It was the first word of sympathy with his often over-wearied mind and
+body, that had greeted his ears for years. It made his eyes moisten.
+
+"I have been a little overworked," said he, "for the last two months,
+but I shall soon be myself again. What were you thinking of, Paula?"
+
+"What was I thinking of?" repeated she, drawing her chair nearer to his
+in her loving confidence. "I was thinking what wonders of beauty and art
+lay in that great kernel which you call the city. I shall see lovely
+faces and noble forms. I shall wander through halls of music, the echo
+of whose songs may have come to me in the sob of the river or the sigh
+of the pines, but whose notes in all their beauty and power have never
+been heard by me even in my dreams. I shall look on great men and touch
+the garments of thoughtful women. I shall see life in its fullness as I
+have felt nature in its mightiness, and my heart will be satisfied at
+last."
+
+Mr. Sylvester drew a deep breath and his eyes burned strangely in the
+glow of the fire-light. "You expect high things," said he; "did you ever
+consider that the life in a great city, with its ceaseless rush and
+constant rivalries, must be often strangely petty in despite of its
+artistic and social advantages?"
+
+"All life has its petty side," said she, with a sweet arch look. "The
+eagle that cleaves the thunder-cloud, must sometimes stop to plume its
+wings. I should be sorry to lose the small things out of existence. Even
+we in the face of that great sunset appealing to us from the west, have
+to pile up the firewood on the hearth and set the table for supper."
+
+"But fashion, Paula," he pursued, concealing his wonder at the maturity
+of mind evinced by this simple child of nature, "that inexorable power
+that rules the very souls of women who once step within the magic circle
+of her realm! have you never thought of her and the demands that she
+makes on the time and attention even of the worshippers of the good and
+the true?"
+
+"Yes, sometimes," she returned with a repetition of her arch little
+smile, "when I put on a certain bonnet I have, which Aunt Abby modeled
+over from one of my grandmother's. Fashion is a sort of obstinate
+step-dame I imagine, whom it is less trouble to obey than to oppose. I
+don't believe I shall quarrel with Fashion if she will only promise to
+keep her hands off my soul."
+
+"But if--" with a pause, "she asks your all, what then?"
+
+"I shall consider that I am in a country of democratic principles," she
+laughed, "and beg to be excused from acceding to the tyrannical demands
+of any autocrat male or female."
+
+"You have been listening to Miss Belinda," said he; "she is also opposed
+to all and any tyrannical measures." Then with a grave look from which
+all levity had fled, he leaned toward the young girl and gently asked,
+"Do you know that you are a very beautiful girl, Paula?"
+
+She flushed, looked at him in some surprise and slowly drooped her head.
+"I have been told I looked like my father," said she, "and I know that
+means something very kind."
+
+"My child," said he, with gentle insistence, "God has given you a great
+and wonderful gift, a treasure-casket of whose worth you scarcely
+realize the value. I tell you this myself, first because I prize your
+beauty as something quite sacred and pure, and secondly because you are
+going where you will hear words of adulation, whose folly and bluntness
+will often offend your ears, unless you carry in your soul some talisman
+to counteract their effect."
+
+"I understand," said she, "I know what you mean. I will remember that
+the most engaging beauty is nothing without a pure mind and a good
+heart."
+
+"And you will remember too," continued he, "that I blessed your innocent
+head to-night, not because it is circled by the roses of a youthful and
+fresh loveliness, but because of the pure mind and good heart I see
+shining in your eyes." And with a fond but solemn aspect he reached out
+his hand and laid it on her ebon locks.
+
+She bowed her head upon her breast. "I will never forget," said she, and
+the fire-light fell with a softening glow on the tears that trembled
+from her eye-lashes.
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+THE END OF MY LADY'S PICTURE.
+
+     "Heaven from all creatures tides the book of Fate."--POPE.
+
+
+Mrs. Sylvester was spending an evening at home. This was something so
+unusual for this august lady of fashion to indulge in, that she found it
+difficult not to fall asleep in the huge crimson-backed chair in which
+she had chosen to ensconce herself. Not that she had desisted from
+making every effort known to mortal woman to keep herself awake and if
+possible amused till the expected travellers should arrive. She had
+played with her bird till the spoiled pet had himself protested, ducking
+his head under his wing and proceeding without ceremony to make up his
+little feather bed, as cunning Geraldine used to call the round, fluffy
+ball into which he rolled himself at night. More than that, she had
+looked over her ornaments and taken out such articles as she thought
+could be spared for Paula, to say nothing of playing a bar or so from
+the last operatic sensation, and laboriously cutting open the leaves of
+the new magazine. But it was all of no use, and the heavy white lids
+were slowly falling, when the bell rang and Mr. Bertram Mandeville was
+announced, or rather Bertram Sylvester as he now chose to be called.
+
+It was a godsend to her as she politely informed him upon his entrance;
+and though in his secret heart he felt anything but God sent--he was not
+of a make to appreciate his uncle's wife at her very evident value--he
+consented to remain and assist her in disposing of the evening till Mr.
+Sylvester should return.
+
+"He is going to bring a pretty girl with him," remarked she, in a tone
+of some interest, "a cousin of mine from Grotewell. I should like to
+have you see her."
+
+"Thank you," replied he, his mind roaming off at the suggestion, into
+the region of a certain plain little music-room where the clock on the
+mantel ticked to the beating of his own heart. And for ten minutes Mrs.
+Sylvester had the pleasure of filling the room with a stream of easy
+talk, in which Grotewell, dark beauties, the coming Seventh Regiment
+reception, the last bit of gossip from London, and the exact situation
+of the Madison Bank formed the principal topics.
+
+To the one last mentioned, it having taken the form of a question, he
+was forced to reply; but the simple locality having been learned, she
+rambled easily on, this time indulging him with a criticism upon the
+personal appearance of certain business gentlemen who visited the house,
+ending with the somewhat startling declaration:
+
+"If Edward were not the fine appearing gentleman that he undoubtedly is,
+I should feel utterly out of place in these handsome parlors. Anything
+but to see an elegant and modern home, decorated with the costliest
+works of art, and filled with _bijouterie_ of the most exquisite
+delicacy, presided over by a plain and common-place woman or a
+bald-headed and inferior-looking man. The contrast is too vivid; works
+of the highest art do not need such a startling comparison to bring out
+their beauty. Now if Edward stood in the throne-room of a palace, he
+would somehow make it seem to others as a handsome set off to his own
+face and figure."
+
+This was all very wife-like if somewhat unnecessary, and Bertram could
+have listened to it with pleasure, if she had not cast the frequent and
+side-long glances at the mirror, which sufficiently betrayed the fact
+that she included herself in this complacent conclusion; as indeed she
+may have considered herself justified in doing, husband and wife being
+undoubtedly of one flesh. As it was, he maintained an immovable
+countenance, though he admired his uncle as much as she did, and the
+conversation gradually languished till the white somnolent lids of the
+lady again began to show certain premonitory signs of drooping, when
+suddenly they were both aroused by the well known click of a latch-key
+in the door, and in another moment Mr. Sylvester's voice was heard in
+the hall, saying, in tones whose cheery accents made his wife's eyes
+open in surprise--
+
+"Welcome home, my dear."
+
+"They have come," murmured Mrs. Sylvester rising with a look of
+undeniable expectation. Had Paula not been a beauty she would have
+remained seated.
+
+"Yes, we have come," was heard in hearty tones from the door-way, and
+Mr. Sylvester with a proud look which Bertram long remembered, ushered
+into their presence a young girl whose simple cloak and bonnet in no
+wise prevented Mrs. Sylvester from recognizing the somewhat uncommon
+beauty she had been led to expect.
+
+"Paula, this is your cousin Ona, and--Ah, Bertram, glad to see you--this
+is my only nephew, Mr. Sylvester."
+
+The young girl, lost in the sudden glamour of numerous lights, shining
+upon splendors such as she may have dreamed of over the pages of
+Irving's Alhambra, but certainly had never before seen, blushed with
+very natural embarrassment, but yet managed to bestow a pretty enough
+greeting upon the elegant woman and handsome youth, while Ona after the
+first moment of almost involuntary hesitation, took in hers the two
+trembling hands of her youthful cousin and actually kissed her cheek.
+
+"I am not given to caresses as you know," she afterwards explained in a
+somewhat apologetic tone to her husband; "and anything like an appeal
+for one on the part of a child or an inferior, I detest; but her simple
+way of holding out her hand disarmed me, and then such a face demands a
+certain amount of homage, does it not?" And her husband in his surprise,
+was forced to acknowledge to himself, that as closely as he had studied
+his wife's nature for ten years, there were certain crooks and turns in
+it which even he had never penetrated.
+
+"You look dazzled," that lady exclaimed, gazing not unkindly into the
+young girl's face; "the sudden glare of so much gas-light has bewildered
+you."
+
+"I do not think it is that," returned Paula with a frank and admiring
+look at the gorgeous room and the circle of pleasant faces about her.
+"Sudden lights I can bear, but I have come from a little cottage on the
+hillside and the magnificence of nature does not prepare you for the
+first sudden view of the splendors of art."
+
+Mrs. Sylvester smiled and cast a side glance of amusement at Bertram.
+"You admire our new hangings I see," remarked she with an indulgence of
+the other's _näiveté_ that greatly relieved her husband.
+
+But in that instant a change had come across Paula; the simple country
+maid had assimilated herself with the surroundings, and with a sudden
+grace and dignity that were unstudied as they were charming, dropped her
+eyes from her cousin's portrait--that for some reason seemed to shine
+with more than its usual insistence--and calmly replied, "I admire all
+beautiful color; it is my birthright as a Walton, to do so, I suppose."
+
+Mrs. Sylvester was a Walton also and therefore smiled; but her husband,
+who had marked with inward distrust, the sudden transformation in Paula,
+now stepped forward with a word or two of remark concerning his
+appetite, a prosaic allusion that led to the rapid disappearance of the
+ladies upstairs and a short but hurried conversation between the two
+gentlemen.
+
+"I have brought you a sealed envelope from the office," said Bertram,
+who, in accordance with his uncle's advice, had already initiated
+himself into business by assuming the position of clerk in the office of
+the wealthy speculator.
+
+"Ah," returned his uncle hastily opening it. "As I expected, a meeting
+has been held this day by the board of Directors of the Madison Bank, a
+vote was cast, my proxy did his duty and I am duly elected President.
+Bertram, we know what that means," smiled he, holding out his hand with
+an affectionate warmth greatly in advance of the emotion displayed by
+him on a former occasion.
+
+"I hope so indeed," young Bertram responded. "An increase of fortune and
+honor for you, though you seem to have both in the fullest measure
+already, and a start in the new life for me to whom fortune and honor
+mean happiness."
+
+A smile younger and more full of hope than any he had seen on his
+uncle's face for years, responded to this burst. "Bertram," said he,
+"since our conversation of a couple of weeks ago something has occurred
+which somewhat alters the opinions I then expressed. If you have
+patience equal to your energy, and a self-control that will not put to
+shame your unbounded trust in women, I think I can say God-speed to your
+serious undertaking, with something like a good heart. Women are not all
+frivolous and foolish-minded; there are some jewels of simple goodness
+and faith yet left in the world."
+
+"Thank God for your conversion," returned his nephew smiling, "and if
+this lovely girl whom you have just introduced to me, is the cause of
+it, then thank God for her also."
+
+His uncle bowed with a gravity almost solemn, but the ladies returning
+at this moment, he refrained from further reply. After supper, to which
+unusual meal Mr. Sylvester insisted upon his nephew remaining, the two
+gentlemen again drew apart.
+
+"If you have decided upon buying the shares I have mentioned," said the
+former, "you had better get your money in a position to handle at once.
+I shall wish to present you to Mr. Stuyvesant to-morrow, and I should
+like to be able to mention you as a future stockholder in the bank."
+
+"Mr. Stuyvesant!" exclaimed Bertram, ignoring the rest of the sentence.
+
+
+"Yes," returned his uncle with a smile, "Thaddeus Stuyvesant is the next
+largest stockholder to myself in the Madison Bank, and his patronage is
+not an undesirable one."
+
+"Indeed--I was not aware--excuse me, I should be happy," stammered the
+young man. "As for the money, it is all in Governments and is at your
+command whenever you please."
+
+"That is good, I'll notify you when I'm ready for the transfer. And now
+come," said he, with a change from his deep business tone to the lighter
+one of ordinary social converse, "forget for a half hour that you have
+discarded the name of Mandeville, and give us an aria or a sonata from
+Mendelssohn before those hands have quite lost their cunning."
+
+"But the ladies," inquired the youth glancing towards the drawing-room
+where Mrs. Sylvester was giving Paula her first lesson in ceramics.
+
+"Ah, it is to see how the charm will act upon my shy country lassie,
+that I request such a favor."
+
+"Has she never heard Mendelssohn?"
+
+"Not with your interpretation."
+
+Without further hesitation the young musician proceeded to the piano,
+which occupied a position opposite to my lady's picture in this
+anomalous room denominated by courtesy the library. In another instant,
+a chord delicate and ringing, disturbed the silence of the long vista,
+and one of Mendelssohn's most exquisite songs trembled in all its
+delicious harmony through these apartments of sensuous luxury.
+
+Mr. Sylvester had seated himself where he could see the distant figure
+of Paula, and leaning back in his chair, watched for the first startled
+response on her part. He was not disappointed. At the first note, he
+beheld her spirited head turn in a certain wondering surprise, followed
+presently by her whole quivering form, till he could perceive her face,
+upon which were the dawnings of a great delight, flush and pale by
+turns, until the climax of the melody being reached, she came slowly
+down the room, stretching out her hands like a child, and breathing
+heavily as if her ecstacy of joy in its impotence to adequately express
+itself, had caught an expression from pain.
+
+"O Mr. Sylvester!" was all she said as she reached that gentleman's
+side; but Bertram Mandeville recognized the accents of an unfathomable
+appreciation in that simple exclamation, and struck into a grand old
+battle-song that had always made his own heart beat with something of
+the fire of ancient chivalry under its breastplate of modern broadcloth.
+
+"It is the voice of the thunder clouds when they marshal for battle!"
+exclaimed she at the conclusion. "I can hear the cry of a righteous
+struggle all through the sublime harmony."
+
+"You are right; it is a war-song ancient as the time of battle-axes and
+spears," quoth Bertram from his seat at the piano.
+
+"I thought I detected the flashing of steel," returned she. "O what a
+world lies in those simple bits of ivory!"
+
+"Say rather in the fingers that sweep them," uttered Mr. Sylvester. "You
+will not hear such music often."
+
+"I am glad of that," she cried simply, then in a quick conscious tone
+explained, "I mean that the hearing of such music makes an era in our
+life, a starting-point for thoughts that reach away into eternity; we
+could not bear such experiences often, it would confuse the spirit if
+not deaden its enjoyment. Or so it seems to me," she added naively,
+glancing at her cousin who now came sweeping in from the further room,
+where she had been trying the effect of a change in the arrangement of
+two little pet monstrosities of Japanese ware.
+
+"What seems to you?" that lady inquired. "O, Mr. Mandeville's playing? I
+beg pardon, Sylvester is the name by which you now wish to be addressed
+I suppose. Fine, isn't it?" she rambled on all in the same tone while
+she cautiously hid an unfortunate gape of her rosy mouth behind the
+folds of her airy handkerchief. "Mr. Turner says the hiatus you have
+made in the musical world by leaving the concert room for the desk, can
+never be repaired," she went on, supposedly to her nephew though she did
+not look his way, being at that instant engaged in sinking into her
+favorite chair.
+
+"I am glad," Bertram politely returned with a frank smile, "to have
+enjoyed the approval of so cultivated a critic as Mr. Turner. I own it
+occasions me a pang now and then," he remarked to his uncle over his
+shoulder, "to think I shall never again call up those looks of
+self-forgetful delight, which I have sometimes detected on the faces of
+certain ones in my audience."
+
+And he relapsed without pause into a solemn anthem, the very reverse of
+the stirring tones which he had previously accorded them.
+
+"Now we are in a temple!" whispered Paula, subduing the sudden interest
+and curiosity which this young man's last words had awakened. And the
+awe which crept over her countenance was the fittest interpretation to
+those noble sounds, which the one weary-hearted man in that room could
+have found.
+
+"I have something to tell you, Ona," remarked Mr. Sylvester shortly
+after this, as the music being over, they all sat down for a final chat
+about the fireside. "I have received notice that the directors of the
+Madison Bank have this day elected me their president. I thought you
+might like to know it to-night."
+
+"It is a very gratifying piece of news certainly. President of the
+Madison Bank sounds very well, does it not, Paula?"
+
+The young girl with her soul yet ringing with the grand and solemn
+harmonies of Mendelssohn and Chopin, turned at this with her brightest
+smile. "It certainly does and a little awe-inspiring too;" she added
+with her arch glance.
+
+"Your congratulations are also requested for our new assistant cashier.
+Arise, Bertram, and greet the ladies."
+
+With a blush his young nephew arose to his feet.
+
+"What! are you going into the banking business?" queried Mrs. Sylvester.
+"Mr. Turner will be more shocked than ever: he chooses to say that
+bankers, merchants and such are the solid rock of his church, while the
+lighter fry such as artists, musicians, and let us hope he includes us
+ladies, are its minarets, and steeples. Now to make a foundation out of
+a steeple will quite overturn his methodical mind I fear."
+
+Mr. Sylvester looked genially at his wife; she was not accustomed to
+attempt the facetious; but Paula seemed to have the power of bringing
+out unexpected lights and shadows from all with whom she came in
+contact.
+
+"A clergyman who rears his church on the basis of wealth must expect
+some overturning now and then," laughed he.
+
+"If by means of it he turns a fresh side to the sun, it will do him no
+harm," chimed in Paula.
+
+Seldom had there been so much simple gaiety round that fireside; the
+very atmosphere grew lighter, and the brilliance of my lady's picture
+became less oppressive.
+
+"We ought to have a happy winter of it," spoke up Mr. Sylvester with a
+glance around him. "Life never looked more cheerful for us all, I think;
+what do you say, Bertram my boy."
+
+"It certainly looks promising for me."
+
+"And for me," murmured Paula.
+
+The complacent way with which Mrs. Sylvester smoothed out the feathers
+of her fan with her jewelled right hand,--she always carried a fan
+winter and summer, some said for the purpose of displaying those same
+jewelled fingers--was sufficient answer for her.
+
+At that moment there was a hush, when suddenly the small clock on the
+mantel-piece struck eleven, and instantly as if awaiting the signal,
+there came a rush and a heavy crash which drew every one to their feet,
+and the brilliant portrait of my lady fell from the wall, and toppling
+over the cabinet beneath, slid with the various articles of bronze and
+china thereon, almost to the very chair in which its handsome prototype
+had been sitting.
+
+It was a startling interruption and for an instant no one spoke, then
+Paula with a look towards her cousin breathed to herself rather than
+said, "Pray God it be not an omen!" And the pale countenances of the two
+gentlemen standing face to face on either side of that fallen picture,
+showed that the shadow of the same superstition had insensibly crossed
+their own minds.
+
+Mrs. Sylvester was the only one who remained unmoved. "Lift if up,"
+cried she, "and let us see if it has sustained any injury."
+
+Instantly Bertram and her husband sprang forward, and in a moment its
+glowing surface was turned upward. Who could read the meaning of the
+look that crossed her husband's face as he perceived that the sharp
+spear of the bronze horseman, which had been overturned in the fall, had
+penetrated the rosy countenance of the portrait and destroyed that
+importunate smile forever.
+
+"I suppose it is a judgment upon me for putting all the money you had
+allowed me for charitable purposes, into that exquisite bit of bronze,"
+observed Mrs. Sylvester, stooping above the overturned horseman with an
+expression of regret she had not chosen to bestow on her own ruined
+picture. "Ah he is less of a champion than I imagined; he has lost his
+spear in the struggle."
+
+Paula glanced at her cousin in surprise. Was this pleasantry only a veil
+assumed by this courtly lady to hide her very natural regret over the
+more serious accident? Even her husband turned toward her with a certain
+puzzled inquiry in his troubled countenance. But her expression of
+unconcern was too natural; evidently the destruction of the picture had
+awakened but small regret in her volatile mind.
+
+"She is less vain than I thought," was the inward comment of Paula.
+
+Ah simple child of the woods and streams, it is the extent of her vanity
+not the lack of it, that has produced this effect. She has begun to
+realize that ten years have elapsed since this picture was painted, and
+that people are beginning to say as they examine it, "Mrs. Sylvester has
+not yet lost her complexion, I see."
+
+A break necessarily followed this disturbance, and before long Bertram
+took his leave, not without a cordial pressure from his uncle's hand and
+a look of kindly interest from the stranger lassie, upon whose
+sympathetic and imaginative mind the hints let fall as to his former
+profession, had produced a deep impression. With his departure Mrs.
+Sylvester's weariness returned, and ere long she led the way to her
+apartments up stairs. As Paula was hastening to follow Mr. Sylvester
+stopped her.
+
+"You will not allow this unfortunate occurrence," he said, with a slight
+gesture towards the picture now standing with its face against the wall,
+"to mar your first sleep under my roof, will you Paula, my child?"
+
+"No, not if you say that you think Cousin Ona will not be likely to
+connect it with my appearance here."
+
+"I do not think she will; she is not superstitious and besides does not
+seem to greatly regret the misfortune."
+
+"Then I will forget it all and only remember the music."
+
+"It was all you anticipated?"
+
+"It was more."
+
+"Sometime I will tell you about the player and the sweet young girl he
+loves."
+
+"Does he--" she paused, blushing; love was a subject upon which she had
+never yet spoken to any one.
+
+"Yes he does," Mr. Sylvester returned smiling.
+
+"I thought there was a meaning in the music I did not quite understand.
+Good night, uncle,"--he had requested her to address him thus though he
+was in truth her cousin, "and many, many thanks."
+
+But he stopped her again. "You think you will be happy in these rooms,"
+said he; "you love splendor."
+
+She was not yet sufficiently acquainted with his voice to detect the
+regret underlying its kindly tone, and answered without suspicion. "I
+did not know it before, but I fear that I do. It dazzled at first, but
+now it seems as if I had reached a home towards which I had always been
+journeying. I shall dream away hours of joy before each little ornament
+that adorns your parlors. The very tiles that surround the fireplace
+will demand a week of attention at least."
+
+She ended with a smile, but unlike formerly he did not seem to catch the
+infection. "I had rather you had cared less," said he, but instantly
+regretted the seeming reproach, for her eyes filled with tears and the
+tones of her voice trembled as she replied,
+
+"Do you think the beauty I have seen has made me forget the kindness
+that has brought me here? I love fine and noble objects, glory of color
+and harmony of shape, but more than all these do I love a generous soul
+without a blot on its purity, or a flaw in its integrity."
+
+She had meant to utter something that would show her appreciation of his
+goodness and the universal esteem in which he was held, but was quite
+unprepared for the start that he gave and the unmistakable deepening of
+the shadow on his sombre face. But before she could express her regret
+at the offence, whatever it was, he had recovered himself, and it was
+with a fatherly tenderness that he laid his hand upon hers while he
+said, "Such a soul may yours ever continue, my child," and then stood
+watching her as she glided up the stairs, her charming face showing
+every now and then as she leaned on her winding way to the top, to
+bestow upon him the tender little smile she had already learned was his
+solace and delight.
+
+It was the beginning of happier days for him.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK II.
+
+LIFE AND DEATH.
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+MISS BELINDA HAS A QUESTION TO DECIDE.
+
+               "I pray you in your letters,
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate,
+    Nor set down aught in malice."             --OTHELLO.
+
+
+Miss Belinda sitting before her bedroom fire on a certain windy night in
+January, presented a picture of the most profound thought. A year had
+elapsed since, with heavy heart and moistened eye, she had bidden
+good-bye to the child of her care, and beheld her drift away with her
+new friend into a strange and untried life. And now a letter had come
+from that friend, in which with the truest appreciation for the feelings
+of herself and sister, he requested their final permission to adopt
+Paula as his own child and the future occupant of his house and heart.
+
+Yes, after a year of increased comfort, Mrs. Sylvester, who would never
+have consented to receive as her own any child demanding care or
+attention, had decided it was quite a different matter to give place and
+position to a lovely girl already grown, whose beauty was sufficiently
+pronounced to do credit to the family while at the same time it was of a
+character to heighten by contrast her own very manifest attractions. So
+the letter, destined to create such a disturbance in the stern and
+powerful mind of Miss Belinda, had been written and dispatched.
+
+And indeed it was matter for the gravest reflection. To accede to this
+important request was to yield up all control over the dear young girl
+whose affection had constituted the brightness of this somewhat
+disappointed life, while to refuse an offer made with such evident love
+and anxiety, was to bring a pang of regret to a heart she hesitated to
+wound. The question of advantage which might have swayed others in their
+decision, did not in the least affect Miss Belinda. Now that Paula had
+seen the world and gained an insight into certain studies beyond the
+reach of her own attainments, any wishes in which she might have
+indulged on that score were satisfied, and mere wealth with its
+concomitant of luxuriant living, she regarded with distrust, and rather
+in the light of a stumbling-block to the great and grand end of all
+existence.
+
+Suddenly with that energy which characterized all her movements, she
+rose from her seat, and first casting a look of somewhat cautious
+inquiry at the recumbent figure of her sister, asleep in the heavy old
+fashioned bed that occupied one corner of the room, she proceeded to a
+bureau drawer and took out a small box which she unlocked on the table.
+It was full of letters; those same honest epistles, which, as empowered
+by Mr. Sylvester, she had requested Paula to send her from week to week.
+Some of them were a year old, but she read them all carefully through,
+while the clock ticked on the shelf and the wind soughed in the chimney.
+Certain passages she marked, and when she had finished the pile, she
+took up the letters again and re-read those passages. They were
+necessarily desultory in their character, but they all had, in her mind
+at least, a bearing upon the question on hand, and as such, I give them
+to my readers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"O aunty, I have made a friend, a sweet girl friend who I have reason to
+hope will henceforth be to me as my other eye and hand. Her name is
+Stuyvesant--a name by the way that always calls up a certain complacent
+smile on Cousin Ona's countenance--and she is the daughter of one of the
+directors of Mr. Sylvester's bank. I met her in a rather curious way.
+For some reason Ona had expressed a wish for me to ride horseback. She
+is rather too large for the exercise herself, but thought it looked
+well, she said, to see a lady and groom ride from the front of the
+house; moreover it would keep me in color by establishing my health. So
+Mr. Sylvester who denies her nothing, promised us horses and the groom,
+and as a preparation for acquitting myself with credit, has sent me to
+one of the finest riding academies in the city. It was here I met Miss
+Stuyvesant. She is a small interesting-looking girl whose chief beauty
+lies in her expression which is certainly very charming. I was conscious
+of a calm and satisfied feeling the moment I saw her. Her eyes which are
+raised with a certain appeal to your face, are blue, while her lips that
+break into smiles only at rare moments, are rosy and delicately curved.
+In her riding-habit she looks like a child, but when dressed for the
+street she surprises you with the reserved and womanly air with which
+she carries her proud head. Altogether she is a sweet study to me,
+alluring me with her glance yet awing me by her dainty ladyhood, a
+ladyhood too unconscious to be affected and yet so completely a part of
+her whole delicate being, that you could as soon dissociate the bloom
+from the rose, as the air of highborn reserve, from this sweet scion of
+one of New York's oldest families.
+
+"I was mounting my horse when our eyes first met, and I never shall
+forget her look of delighted surprise. Did she recognize in me the
+friend I now hope to become? Later we were introduced by Mr. Sylvester
+who had been so kind as to accompany me that day. The way in which he
+said to her, 'This is Paula,' proved that I was no new topic of
+conversation between them, and indeed she afterwards explained to me
+that she had been forewarned of my arrival during an afternoon call at
+his house. There was in this first interview none of the unnecessary
+gush which you have so often reprobated as childish; indeed Miss
+Stuyvesant is not a person with whom one would presume to be familiar,
+nor was it till we had met several times that any acknowledgement was
+made of the mutual interest with which we found ourselves inspired.
+Cousin Ona to whom I had naturally spoken of the little lady, wished me
+to cultivate her acquaintance more assiduously, but I knew that if I had
+excited in her the same interest she had awakened in me, this would not
+be necessary; our friendship would grow of itself and blossom without
+any hot-house forcing. And so it did. One day she came to the
+riding-school with her eyes like stars and her cheeks like the oleanders
+in your sitting-room. Her brightness was so contagious, I stepped up to
+her. But she greeted me with almost formal reserve, and mounting her
+horse, proceeded to engage in her usual exercise. I was not hurt; I
+recognized the presence of some thought or feeling which made a barrier
+around her sensitive nature, and duly respected it. Mounting my own
+horse, I rode around the ring which is the somewhat limited field of my
+present equestrian efforts, and waited. For I knew from the looks which
+she cast me every now and then, that the flower of our friendship was
+outgrowing its sheath and would soon burst into the bud of perfect
+understanding. At the end of the lesson we approached each other. I do
+not know how it was done, but we walked home together, or rather I
+accompanied her to the stoop of her house, and before we parted we had
+exchanged those words which give emphasis to a sentiment long cherished
+but now for the first time avowed. Miss Stuyvesant and I are friends,
+and I feel as though a new stream of enjoyment had opened in my breast.
+
+"The fact that I still call her by this formal title instead of her very
+pretty name of Cicely, proves the nature of the respect she inspires
+even in the breasts of her girlish associates."
+
+"Why is it that I frequently hesitate as I go up the stairs and look
+about me with a vague feeling of apprehension? The bronze figure of
+Luxury that adorns the landing, wears no semblance of terror to the
+wildest imagination, and yet I often find myself seized by an
+inexplicable shudder as I hurry past it; and once I actually looked
+behind me with the same sensation as if some one had plucked me by the
+sleeve.
+
+"It is a folly; for recording which, I make my excuses."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Cousin Ona has decided that I must never wear colors. 'Soft grays, my
+dear, dead blacks and opaque whites are all that you need to bring out
+the fine contrast of your hair and complexion; the least hint of blue or
+pink would destroy it.' So she says and so I must believe, for who else
+has made such a study of the all important subject of dress. Behold me,
+then, arrayed for my first reception in a colorless robe of rich silk to
+which Ona after long consideration allowed me to add some ornaments of
+plain gold with which Mr. Sylvester has kindly presented me. But I think
+more of the people I am going to meet than of anything else, though I
+enjoy the home-feeling which a pretty dress gives me, as well as a
+violet does its bright blue coat."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I have heard a great preacher! What shall I say? At first it seems as
+if nothing could express my joy and satisfaction. The sapling that is
+shaken to its root by the winds of heaven, keeps silence I imagine. But
+O Aunty, if my smallness makes me quake, it also makes me feel. What
+gates of thought have been opened to me! What shining tracks of inquiry
+pointed out! I feel as if I had been shown a path where angels walked.
+Can it be that such words have been uttered every week of my life and I
+in ignorance of them? It is like the revelation of the ocean to
+unaccustomed eyes. Henceforth small things must seem like pebble stones
+above which stretch innumerable heavenly vistas. It is not so much that
+new things have been revealed to me as that old things have been made
+strangely eloquent. The voice of a daisy on the hill side, the breath of
+thunder in the mountain gorges, the blossoming of a child's smile under
+its mother's eye, the fact that golden portals are opened in every life
+for the coming and going of the messengers of God, all have been made
+real to me, real as the voice of the Saviour to his disciples as they
+walked in the fields or started back awe-stricken from the stupendous
+vision of the cross. It is a solemn thing to see one's humble thoughts
+caught by the imagination of a great mind and carried on and up into
+regions you never realized existed.
+
+"I was so burdened with joy that I could not forbear asking Mr.
+Sylvester if he did not feel as if the whole face of the world had
+changed since we entered those holy doors. He did not respond with the
+glad 'Yes' for which I hoped, and though his smile was very kind, I
+could not help wondering what it was that sometimes fell between us like
+a veil."
+
+"O Aunty, how my heart does yearn towards Mr. Sylvester at times! As I
+see him sitting with clouded brow in the midst of so much that ought to
+charm and enliven him, I ask myself if the advantages of wealth
+compensate for all this care and anxiety. But I notice he is much more
+cheerful now than when I first came. Ona says he is in danger of losing
+the air of melancholy reserve which made him look so distinguished, but
+I think we can spare a little of such doubtful distinguishment for the
+sake of the smiles with which he now and then indulges us."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I feel as if a hand had gripped my throat. Cousin Ona spoke to Mr.
+Sylvester this morning in a way that made my very heart stand still. And
+yet it was only a simple, 'Follow your own judgment, Mr. Sylvester.' But
+how she said it! Do these languid women carry venom in their tongues? I
+had always thought she was of too easy a disposition to feel anger or
+display it; but the spring of a serpent is all the deadlier for his long
+silent basking in the sun. O pardon me for making such a frightful
+allusion. But if you had seen her and heard Mr. Sylvester's sigh as he
+turned and left the room!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Mr. Bertram Sylvester has awakened my deepest interest. His uncle has
+told me his story, which alone of all the things I have heard in this
+house, I do not feel at liberty to repeat, and it has aroused in me
+strange thoughts and very peculiar emotions. He is devoted to some one
+we do not know, and the idea surrounds him in my eyes with a sort of
+halo that you would perhaps call fanciful, but which I am nevertheless
+bound to reverence. He does not know that I am acquainted with his
+story. I wish he did and would let me speak the words that rise to my
+lips whenever I see him or hear him play."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"There are moments when I long to flee back to Grotewell. It is when
+Cousin Ona comes in from shopping with a dozen packages to be opened and
+commented upon, or when Mrs. Fitzgerald has been here or some other of
+her ultra-fashionable acquaintances. The atmosphere of the house for
+hours after either of the above occurrences is too heavy for breathing.
+I have to go away and clear my brain by a brisk walk or a look into
+Knoedler's or Schaus'."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"The panel where Cousin Ona's picture used to hang, has been filled by
+one of Meissonier's most interesting studies; and though I never thought
+Mr. Sylvester particularly fond of the French style of art, he seems
+very well satisfied with the result. I cannot understand how Cousin Ona
+can regard the misfortune to her portrait so calmly. I think it would
+break my heart to see a husband look with complacency on any picture, no
+matter how exquisite, that took the place of my own, especially if like
+her's, it was painted in my bridal days. I sometimes wonder if those
+days are as sacred to the memory of husband and wife as I have always
+imagined them to be."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Why does Cousin Ona never speak of Grotewell, and why, if by chance I
+mention the name, does she drop her eyes and a shadow cross the
+countenance of Mr. Sylvester?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"There is a word Mr. Sylvester uses in the most curious way; it is
+_fuss_. He calls everything a fuss that while insignificant in size or
+character has power either to irritate or please. A fly is a fuss; so is
+a dimple in a girl's cheek or a figure that goes wrong in accounts. I
+have even heard him call a child, 'That dear little fuss.' Bertram
+unconsciously imitates his uncle in this peculiar mannerism and is often
+heard alluding to this or that as a _fuss of fusses_. Indeed they say
+this use of the word is a peculiarity of the Sylvester family."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I think from the way Mr. Sylvester spoke yesterday, that he must have
+experienced some dreadful trouble in his life. We were walking in the
+wards of a hospital--that is, Miss Stuyvesant, Mr. Sylvester and
+myself--when some one near us gave utterance to the trite expression, 'O
+it will heal, but the scar will always remain.' 'That is a common
+saying,' remarked Mr. Sylvester, 'but how true a one no one realizes but
+he who carries the scar.'"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"It may be imagination or simply the effect of increased appreciation on
+my part, but it does seem as if Miss Stuyvesant grew lovelier and more
+companionable each time that I meet her. She makes me think of a temple
+in which a holy lamp is burning. Her very silences are eloquent, and yet
+she is never _distraite_ but always cheerful and frequently the
+brightest of the company. But it is a brightness without glitter, a
+gentle lustre that delights you but never astonishes. I meet many sweet
+girls in the so-called heartless circles of society, but none like her.
+She is my white lily on which a moonbeam rests."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"This house contains a mystery, as Ona is pleased to designate the room
+at the top of the house to which Mr. Sylvester withdraws when he desires
+to be alone. And indeed it is a sort of Bluebeard's chamber, in that he
+keeps it rigidly under lock and key, allowing no one to enter it, not
+even his wife. The servants declare that no one but himself has ever
+crossed its threshold, but I can scarcely believe that. Ona has not, but
+there must surely be some trusty person to whom he allots the care of
+its furniture. Am I only proving myself to be a true member of my sex
+when I allow that I cannot hinder my own curiosity from hovering about a
+spot so religiously guarded? Yet what should we see if its doors were
+thrown open? A study surrounded with books it displeases him to see
+misplaced, or a luxurious apartment fitted with every appointment
+necessary to rest and comfort him when he comes home tired from
+business."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I never saw Mr. Sylvester angry till to-day. By some inadvertence he
+went down town without locking the door of his private room, and though
+he returned immediately upon missing the key from his pocket, he was
+barely in time to prevent Cousin Ona from invading the spot he has
+always kept so sacred from intrusion. I was not present and of course
+did not hear what was said, but I caught a glimpse of his face as he
+left the house, and found it quite sufficient to assure me of his
+dissatisfaction. As for Ona, she declares he pulled her back as if she
+had been daring the plague. 'I do not expect to find five beautiful
+wives hanging up there by their necks,' concluded she with a forced
+laugh, 'but I shall yet see the interior of that room, if only to
+establish my prerogative as the mistress of this house.'
+
+"I do not now feel as if I wished to see it."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"There is one thing that strikes me as peculiar in Miss Stuyvesant, and
+that is, that as much pleasure as she seems to take in my society when
+we meet, she never comes to see me in Mr. Sylvester's house. For a long
+time I wondered over this but said nothing, but one day upon receiving a
+second invitation to visit her, I mentioned the fact as delicately as I
+could, and was quite distressed to observe how seriously she took the
+rebuke, if rebuke it could be called. 'I cannot explain myself,' she
+murmured in some embarrassment; 'but Mr. Sylvester's house is closed
+against me. You must not ask me to seek you there or expect me to do
+myself the pleasure of attending Mrs. Sylvester's receptions. I cannot.
+Is that enough for me to say to my dearest friend?' I hardly knew what
+to reply, but finally ventured to inquire if she was restrained by any
+fact that would make it undignified in me to seek her society and enjoy
+the pleasures she is continually offering me. And she answered with such
+a cheerful negative I was quite reassured. And so the matter is settled.
+Our friendship is to be emancipated from the bonds of etiquette and I am
+to enjoy her company whenever I can. To-morrow we are going to take our
+first ride in the park. The horses have been bought, and much to Cousin
+Ona's satisfaction, the groom has been hired."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I was told something the other day, of a nature so unpleasant that I
+should not think of repeating it, if you had not expressly commanded me
+to confide to you everything that for any reason produced an effect upon
+me in my new home. My informant was Sarah, the somewhat gossiping woman
+whom Ona has about her as seamstress and maid. She said--and she had
+spoken before I could prevent her--that the way Mrs. Sylvester took on
+about her mourning at the time of little Geraldine's death was enough to
+wear out the patience of Job. She even went so far as to tell the
+dressmaker that if she could not have her dress made to suit her she
+would not put on mourning at all! Aunty, can you wonder that Mr.
+Sylvester looks so bitterly sombre whenever mention is made of his
+child? He loved it, and its own mother could worry over the fit of a
+dress while his bereaved heart was breaking! I confess I can never feel
+the same indulgence towards what I considered the idiosyncrasies of a
+fashionable beauty again. Her smooth white skin makes me tremble; it has
+never flushed with delight over the innocent smiles of her firstborn."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Mr. Sylvester is very polite to Cousin Ona and seems to yield to her
+wishes in everything. But if I were she I think my heart would break
+over that very politeness. But then she is one who demands formality
+even from the persons of her household. I have never seen him stoop for
+a kiss or beheld her even so much as lay her hand on his shoulder. But I
+have observed him wait on her at moments when he was pale from weariness
+and she flushed with long twilight reclinings before her sleepy boudoir
+fire."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"There are times when I would not exchange my present opportunities for
+any others which might be afforded me. General ---- dined here to-day,
+and what a vision of a great struggle was raised up before me by his few
+simple words in regard to Gettysburg. I did not know which to admire
+most, the military bearing and vivid conversation of the great soldier,
+or the ease and dignity with which Mr. Sylvester met his remarks and
+answered each glowing sentence. General ---- spoke a few words to me.
+How gentle these lion-like men can be when they stoop their tall heads
+to address little children or young women!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"What a noble-hearted man Mr. Sylvester is! Mr. Turner in speaking of
+him the other night, declared there is no one in his congregation who in
+a quiet way does so much for the poor. 'He is especially interested in
+young men,' said he, 'and will leave his own affairs at any time to aid
+or advise them.' I knew Mr. Sylvester was kind, but Mr. Turner's
+enthusiasm was uncommon. He evidently admires Mr. Sylvester as much as
+every one else loves him. And he is not alone in this. Almost every day
+I hear some remark made of a nature complimentary to my benefactor's
+character or ability. Even Mr. Stuyvesant who so seldom appears to
+notice us girls, once interrupted a conversation between Cicely and
+myself to inquire if Mr. Sylvester was quite well. 'I thought he looked
+pale to-day,' remarked he, in his dry but not unkindly way, and then
+added, 'He must not get sick; he is too valuable to us.' This was a
+great deal for Mr. Stuyvesant to say, and it caused a visible
+gratification to Mr. Sylvester when I related it to him in the evening.
+'I had rather satisfy that man than any other I know,' declared he. 'He
+is of the stern old-fashioned sort, and it is an honor to any one to
+merit his approval. I did not tell him that I had also heard Mr.
+Stuyvesant observe in a conversation with some business friend of his,
+that Edward Sylvester was the only speculator he knew in whom he felt
+implicit confidence. Somehow it always gives me an uncomfortable feeling
+to hear Mr. Sylvester alluded to as a speculator. Besides since he has
+entered the Bank, he has I am told, entirely restricted himself to what
+are called legitimate operations."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Mr. Sylvester came home with a dreadful look on his face to-day. We
+were standing in the hall at the time the door opened, and he went by us
+without a nod, almost as if he did not see us. Even Ona was startled and
+stood gazing after him with an anxiety such as I had never observed in
+her before, while I was conscious of that sick feeling I have sometimes
+experienced when he came upon me suddenly from his small room above, or
+paused in the midst of the gayest talk, to ask me some question that was
+wholly irrelevant and most frequently sad.
+
+"'He has met with some heavy loss,' murmured his wife, glancing down the
+handsome parlors with a look such as a mother might bestow upon the face
+of a sick child. But I was sure she had not sounded his trouble, and in
+my impetuosity was about to fly to his side when we saw him pause before
+the image of Luxury that stands on the stair, look at it for a moment
+with a strange intentness, then suddenly and with a gesture of
+irrepressible passion, lift his arm as if he would fell it from its
+place. The action was so startling, Ona clutched my sleeve in terror,
+but he passed on and in another moment we heard him shut the door of his
+room.
+
+"Would he be down to dinner? that was the next question. Ona thought
+not; I did not dare to think. Nevertheless it was a great relief to me
+when I saw him enter the dining-room with that set immovable look he
+sometimes wears when Ona begins one of her long and rambling streams of
+fashionable gossip. 'It is nothing,' flashed from his wife's eyes to
+mine, and she lapsed at once into her most graceful self, but she
+nevertheless hastened her meal and I was quite prepared to observe her
+follow him, as with the polite excuse of weariness, he left the table
+before desert. I could not hear what she asked him, but his answer came
+distinctly to my ears from the midst of the library to which they had
+withdrawn. 'It is nothing in which you have an interest, Ona. Thank
+heaven you do not always know the price with which the splendors you so
+love are bought.' And she did not cry out, 'O never pay such a price for
+any joy of mine! Sooner than cost you so dear I would live on crusts and
+dwell in a garret.' No, she kept silence, and when in a few minutes
+later I joined her in the library, it was to find on her usually placid
+lips, a thin cool smile that struck like ice to my heart, and made it
+impossible for me to speak.
+
+"But the hardest trial of the day was to hear Mr. Sylvester come in at
+eleven o'clock--he went out again immediately after dinner--and go up
+stairs without giving me my usual good-night. It was such a grief to me
+I could not keep still, but hurried to the foot of the stairs in the
+hopes he would yet remember me and come back. But instead of that, he no
+sooner saw me than he threw out his hand almost as if he would push me
+back, and hastened on up the whole winding flight till he reached the
+refuge of that mysterious room of his at the top of the house.
+
+"I could not go back to Ona after that--she had been to make a call
+somewhere with a young gentleman friend of hers;--yes on this very night
+had been to make a call--but I took advantage of the late hour to retire
+to my own room where for a long time I lay awake listening for his
+descending step and seeing, as in a vision, the startling picture of his
+lifted arm raised against the unconscious piece of bronze on the stair.
+Henceforth that statue will possess for me a still more dreadful
+significance."
+
+"It is the twenty-fifth of February. Why should I feel as if I must be
+sure of the exact date before I slept?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next extract followed close on this and was the last which Miss
+Belinda read.
+
+"Mr. Sylvester seems to have recovered from his late anxiety. He does
+not shrink from me any more with that half bitter, half sad expression
+that has so long troubled and bewildered me, but draws me to his side
+and sits listening to my talk until I feel as if I were really of some
+comfort to this great and able man. Ona does not notice the change; she
+is all absorbed in preparing for the visit to Washington, which Mr.
+Sylvester has promised her."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+Miss Belinda calmly folded up the letters and locked them again in the
+little mahogany box, after which she covered up the embers and quietly
+went to bed. But next morning a letter was despatched to Mr. Sylvester
+which ran thus:
+
+     "DEAR MR. SYLVESTER:
+
+     "For the present at least you may keep Paula with you. But I am
+     not ready to say that I think it would be for her best good to
+     be received and acknowledged as your daughter--yet. Hoping you
+     will appreciate the motives that actuate this decision,
+
+     "I remain, respectfully yours,
+
+     "BELINDA ANN WALTON."
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+AN ADVENTURE--OR SOMETHING MORE.
+
+    "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
+     But to be young was very heaven."--WORDSWORTH.
+
+
+
+     _Oph._--What means this, my lord?
+
+     _Ham._--Marry, this is the miching mallecho; it means
+     mischief."
+
+     --HAMLET.
+
+
+A ride in the Central Park is an every-day matter to most people. It
+signifies an indolent bowling over a smooth road all alive with the
+glitter of passing equipages, waving ribbons and fluttering plumes, and
+brightened now and then by the sight of a well known face amid the
+general rush of old and young, plain and handsome, sad and gay
+countenances that flash by you in one long and brilliant procession.
+
+But to Paula and her friend Miss Stuyvesant starting out in the early
+freshness of a fair April morning, it meant new life, reawakening joy,
+the sparkle of young leaves just loosed from the bonds of winter, the
+sweetness and promise of spring airs, and all the budding glory of a new
+year with its summer of countless roses and its autumn of incalculable
+glories. Not the twitter of a bird was lost to them, not the smile of an
+opening flower, not the welcome of a waving branch. Youth, joy, and
+innocence lived in their hearts and showed them nothing in the mirror of
+nature that was not equally young, joyous and innocent. Then they were
+alone, or sufficiently so. The stray wanderers whom they met sitting
+under the flowering trees, were equally with themselves lovers of nature
+or they would not be seated in converse with it at this early hour;
+while the laugh of little children startled from their play by the
+prance of their high-stepping horses, was only another expression of the
+sweet but unexpressed delight that breathed in all the radiant
+atmosphere.
+
+"We are two birds who have escaped thralldom and are taking our first
+flight into our natural ether," cried Miss Stuyvesant gaily.
+
+"We are two pioneers lit by the spirit of adventure, who have left the
+cosy hearth of wintry-fires to explore the domains of the frost king,
+and lo, we have come upon a Paradise of bloom and color!" responded the
+ringing voice of Paula.
+
+"I feel as if I could mount that little white cloud we see over there,"
+continued Cicely with a quick lively wave of her whip. "I wonder how
+Dandy would enjoy an empyrean journey?"
+
+"From the haughty bend of his neck I should say he was quite satisfied
+with his present condition. But perhaps his chief pride is due to the
+mistress he carries."
+
+"Are you attempting to vie with Mr. Williams, Paula?"
+
+Mr. Williams was the meek-eyed, fair complexioned gentleman, whose
+predilection for compliment was just then a subject of talk in
+fashionable circles.
+
+"Only so far as my admiration goes of the most charming lady I see this
+morning. But who is this?"
+
+Miss Stuyvesant looked up. "Ah, that is some one with whom there is very
+little danger of your falling in love."
+
+Paula blushed. The gentleman approaching them upon horseback was
+conspicuous for long side whiskers of a decidedly auburn tinge.
+
+"His name is--" But she had not time to finish, for the gentleman with a
+glance of astonished delight at Paula, bowed to the speaker with a
+liveliness and grace that demanded some recognition.
+
+Instantly he drew rein. "Do I behold Miss Stuyvesant among the nymphs!"
+cried he, in those ringing pleasant tones that at once predispose you
+towards their possessor.
+
+"If you allude to my friend Miss Fairchild, you certainly do, Mr.
+Ensign," the wicked little lady rejoined with a waiving of her usual
+ceremony that astonished Paula.
+
+Mr. Ensign bestowed upon them his most courtly bow, but the flush that
+mounted to his brow--making his face one red, as certain of his friends
+were malicious enough to observe on similar occasions--indicated that he
+had been taken a little more at his word than perhaps suited even one of
+his easy and proverbially careless temperament. "Miss Fairchild will
+understand that I am not a Harvey Williams--at least before an
+introduction," said he with something like seriousness.
+
+But at this allusion to the gentleman whose name had been upon their
+lips but a moment before, both ladies laughed outright.
+
+"I have just been accused of attempting the rôle of that gentleman
+myself," exclaimed Paula. "If the fresh morning air will persist in
+painting such roses on ladies' cheeks," continued she, with a loving
+look at her pretty companion "what can one be expected to do?"
+
+"Admire," quoth the red bannered cavalier with a glance, however, at the
+beautiful speaker instead of the demure little Cicely at her side.
+
+Miss Stuyvesant perceived this look and a curious smile disturbed the
+corners of her rosy lips. "What a fortunate man to be able to do the
+right thing at the right time," laughed she, gaily touching up her horse
+that was beginning to show symptoms of restlessness.
+
+"If Miss Stuyvesant will put that in the future tense and then assure us
+she has been among the prophets, I should be singularly obliged," said
+he with a touch of his hat and a smiling look at Paula that was at once
+manly and gentle, careless and yet respectful.
+
+"Ah, life is too bright for prophesies this morning. The moment is
+enough."
+
+"Is it Miss Fairchild?" queried Mr. Ensign looking back over his
+shoulder.
+
+She turned just a bit of her cheek towards him. "What Miss Stuyvesant
+declares to be true, that am I bound to believe," said she, and with the
+least little ripple of a laugh, rode on.
+
+"It is a pity you have such a dislike for whiskers," Cicely presently
+remarked with an air of great gravity.
+
+Paula gave a start and cast a glance of reproach at her companion. "I
+did not notice his whiskers after the first word or two," said she,
+fixing her eyes on a turn of the road before them. "Such cheerfulness is
+infectious. I was merry before, but now I feel as if I had been bathed
+in sunshine."
+
+Cicely's eyes flashed wide with surprise and her face grew serious in
+earnest. "Mr. Ensign is a delightful companion," observed she; "a room
+is always brighter for his entrance; and with all that, he is the only
+young man I know, who having come into a large fortune, feels any of the
+responsibilities of his position. The sunshine is the result of a good
+heart and pure living, and that is what makes it infectious, I suppose."
+
+"Let us canter," said Paula. And so the glad young things swept on, life
+breaking in bubbles around them and rippling away into unfathomable
+wells of feeling in one of their pure hearts at least. Suddenly a hand
+seemed to swoop from heaven and dash them both back in dismay. They had
+reached one of those places where the foot path crosses the equestrian
+and they had run over and thrown down a little child.
+
+"O heaven!" cried Paula leaping from her horse, "I had rather been
+killed myself." The groom rode up and she bent anxiously over the child.
+
+It was a boy of some seven or eight years, whose misfortune--he was
+lame, as the little crutch fallen at his side sufficiently denoted--made
+appear much younger. He had been struck on his arm and was moaning with
+pain, but did not seem to be otherwise hurt. "Are you alone?" cried
+Paula, lifting his head on her arm and glancing hurriedly about.
+
+The little fellow raised his heavy lids and for a moment stared into her
+face with eyes so deeply blue and beautiful they almost startled her,
+then with an effort pointed down the path, saying,
+
+"Dad's over there in the long tunnel talking to some one. Tell him I got
+hurt. I want Dad."
+
+She gently lifted him to his feet and led him out of the road into the
+apparently deserted path where she made him sit down. "I am going to
+find his father," said Paula to Cicely, "I will be back in a moment."
+
+"But wait; you shall not go alone," authoritatively exclaimed that
+little damsel, leaping in her turn to the ground. "Where does he say his
+father is?"
+
+"In the tunnel, by which I suppose he means that long passage under the
+bridge over there."
+
+Holding up the skirts of their riding-habits in their trembling right
+hands, they hurried forward. Suddenly they both paused. A woman had
+crossed their path; a woman whom to look at but once was to remember
+with ghastly shrinking for a lifetime. She was wrapped in a long and
+ragged cloak, and her eyes, startling in their blackness, were fixed
+upon the pain-drawn countenance of the poor little hurt boy behind them,
+with a gleam whose feverish hatred and deep malignant enjoyment of his
+very evident sufferings, was like a revelation from the lowest pit to
+the two innocent-minded girls hastening forward on their errand of
+mercy.
+
+"Is he much hurt?" gasped the woman in an ineffectual effort to conceal
+the evil nature of her interest. "Do you think he will die?" with a
+shrill lingering emphasis on the last word as if she longed to roll it
+like a sweet morsel under her tongue.
+
+"Who are you?" asked Cicely, shrinking to one side with dilated eyes
+fixed on the woman's hardened countenance and the white, too white hand
+with which she had pointed as she spoke of the child.
+
+"Are you his mother?" queried Paula, paling at the thought but keeping
+her ground with an air of unconscious authority.
+
+"His mother!" shrieked the woman, hugging herself in her long cloak and
+laughing with fiendish sarcasm: "I look like his mother, don't I? His
+eyes--did you notice his eyes? they are just like mine, aren't they? and
+his body, poor weazen little thing, looks as if it had drawn sustenance
+from mine, don't it? His mother! O heaven!"
+
+Nothing like the suppressed force of this invocation seething as it was
+with the worst passions of a depraved human nature, had ever startled
+those ears before. Clasping Cicely by the hand, she called out to the
+groom behind them, "Guard that child as you would your life!" and then
+flashing upon the wretched creature before her with all the force of her
+aroused nature, she exclaimed, "If you are not his mother, move aside
+and let us pass, we are in search of assistance."
+
+For an instant the woman stood awe-struck before this vision of maidenly
+beauty and indignation, then she laughed and cried out with shrill
+emphasis:
+
+"When next you look like that, go to your mirror, and when you see the
+image it reflects, say to yourself, 'So once looked the woman who defied
+me in the Park!'"
+
+With a quick shudder and a feeling as if the noisome cloak of this
+degraded being had somehow been dropped upon her own fair and spotless
+shoulders, Paula clasped the hand of Cicely more tightly in her own, and
+rushed with her down the steps that led into the underground passage
+towards which they had been directed.
+
+There were but two persons in it when they entered. A short thickset man
+and another man of a slighter and more gentlemanly build. They were
+engaged in talking, and the latter was bringing down his right hand upon
+the palm of his left with a gesture almost foreign in its expressive
+energy.
+
+"I tell you," declared he, with a voice that while low, reverberated
+through the hollow vault above him with strange intensity, "I tell you
+I've got my grip on a certain rich man in this city, and if you will
+only wait, you shall see strange things. I don't know his name and I
+don't know his face, but I do know what he has done, and a thousand
+dollars down couldn't buy the knowledge of me."
+
+"But if you don't know his name and don't know his face, how in the name
+of all that's mischievous are you going to know your man?"
+
+"Leave that to me! If I once meet him and hear him talk, one more rich
+man goes down and one more poor devil goes up, or I've not the wit that
+starvation usually teaches."
+
+The nature of these sentences together with the various manifestations
+of interest with which they were received, had for a moment deterred the
+two girls in their hurried advance, but now they put away every thought
+save that of the poor little creature awaiting his Dad, and lifting up
+her voice, Paula said,
+
+"Are either of you the father of a little lame lad--"
+
+Instantly and before she could conclude, the taller of the two, who had
+also been the chief speaker in the above conversation, turned, and she
+saw his hand begrimed though it was with dirt and dark with many a
+disgraceful trick, go to his heart in a gesture too natural to be
+anything but involuntary.
+
+"Is he hurt?" gasped he, but in how different a tone from that of the
+woman who had used the same words a few minutes before. Then seeing that
+the persons who addressed him were ladies and one of them at least a
+very beautiful one, took off his hat with an easy action, that together
+with what they had heard, proved him to be one of that most dangerous
+class among us, a gentleman who has gone thoroughly and irretrievably to
+the bad.
+
+"I am afraid he is, sir," said Paula. "He was attempting to cross the
+road, and a horse advancing hurriedly, struck him." She had not courage
+to say her horse in face of the white and trembling dismay that seized
+him at these words.
+
+"Where is he?" cried he. "Where's my poor boy?" And he bounded up the
+steps, his hat still in his hand, his long unkempt locks flying, and his
+whole form expressive of the utmost alarm.
+
+"Down by the carriage road," called out Paula, finding it impossible for
+them to keep up with such haste.
+
+"But is he much injured?" cried a smooth voice at their side.
+
+They turned; it was the short thickset man who had been the other's
+companion in the conversation above recorded.
+
+"We trust not," answered Cicely; "his arm received the blow, and he
+suffers very much, but we hope it is not serious;" and they hurried on.
+
+They found the father seated on the grass holding the little fellow in
+his arms. The look on his once handsome but now thoroughly corrupt and
+dissipated face, made their hearts melt within them. However wicked he
+might be--and that sly treacherous eye, that false impudent lip, that
+settling of the whole face into the mould which Vice applies to all her
+votaries, left no doubt of his complete depravity--he dearly loved his
+child, and love, no matter how it is expressed, or in what garb it
+appears, is a sacred and beautiful thing, and ennobles for the time
+being any creature who displays it.
+
+"'Twas a hard knock up, Dad," came from the white lips of the child as
+he felt his father's trembling hand feel up and down his arm, "but I
+guess the 'little fellar' can stand it." "Little feller" was evidently
+the name by which his father was accustomed to address him.
+
+"There are no bones broken," said the father. "To be lame and maimed too
+would be--"
+
+He did not finish, for a delicately gloved hand was here laid on his
+sleeve, and a gentle voice whispered, "Money cannot pay for an injury
+like that, but please accept this;" and Paula thrust a purse into his
+hand.
+
+He clutched it eagerly, but at her next request that he should tell her
+where he lived that they might inquire after the boy, he shook his head
+with a return of his old emphasis.
+
+
+"The haunts of bats and jackals are not for ladies." Then as he caught
+sight of her pitiful face bending in farewell over the little urchin,
+some remembrance perhaps of the days when he had a right to stoop to the
+ear of beautiful women and walk unrebuked at their side, returned to him
+from the past, and respectfully lowering his voice, he asked her name.
+
+She gave it and he seemed to lay it away in his mind; then as the ladies
+turned to remount their horses, rose and began carrying the little
+fellow off. As he vanished in the turn of the path that led towards the
+main entrance, they perceived a tall dark figure arise from a seat in
+the distance and stand looking after him, with a leer on its face and a
+malicious hugging of itself in a long black cloak, that proclaimed her
+to be the same ominous being who had before so grievously startled them.
+
+
+
+
+XVI.
+
+THE SWORD OF DAMOCLES.
+
+    "And my imaginations are as foul
+    As Vulcan's smithy."
+
+    --HAMLET.
+
+    "Why, all the souls that were, were forfeit once;
+    And He that might the vantage best have took
+    Found out the remedy."
+
+    --MEASURE FOR MEASURE.
+
+
+Mrs. Sylvester reclining on the palest of blue couches, in the slanting
+sunlight of an April afternoon, is a study for a painter. Not that such
+inspiring loveliness breathed from her person, conspicuous as it was for
+its rich and indolent grace, but because in every attitude of her large
+and well formed limbs, in every raise of the thick white lids from eyes
+whose natural brightness was obscured by the mist of aimless fancies,
+she presented such an embodiment of luxurious ease, one might almost
+imagine they were gazing upon the favorite Sultana of some eastern
+court, or, to be for once poetical as the subject demands, a full blown
+Egyptian lotos floating in hushed enjoyment on the placid waters of its
+native stream. Indeed for all the blonde character of her beauty, there
+was certainly something oriental about the physique of this favored
+child of fortune. Had the tint of her skin been richened to a magnolia
+bloom instead of reminding you of that description accorded to the
+complexion of one of Napoleon's sisters, that it looked like white satin
+seen through pink glass, she would have passed in any Eastern market,
+for a rare specimen of Circassian beauty.
+
+But Mr. Sylvester coming home fatigued and harassed, cared little for
+Circassian beauties or Oriental odalisques. It was a welcome that he
+desired, and such refreshment as a quick eye and ready hand can bestow
+when guided by a tender and loving heart; or so thought the watchful
+Paula as she glided from her room at the sound of his step in the hall,
+and met him coming weary and disheartened from the side of Ona's couch.
+The sight of her revived him at once.
+
+"Well, little one, what have you been doing to-day?"
+
+Instantly a shade fell over her countenance. "I hardly know how to tell
+you. It has been a day of great experiences to me. I am literally shaken
+with them. I have been wanting to talk to Ona about what I have seen and
+heard, but thought I had best wait till you came home, for I could not
+repeat the story twice."
+
+"What! you look pale. Nothing has happened to frighten you I hope,"
+exclaimed he, leading her back to Ona's side, who stirred a little, and
+presently deigned to take an upright position.
+
+"I do not know if it is fear or horror," cried Paula, shuddering; "I
+have seen a fearful woman--But first I ought to tell you that I took a
+ride with Miss Stuyvesant in the Park this morning--"
+
+"Yes, and persisted in going for that lady on horseback instead of
+sending the groom after her, and all starting from the front of our
+house," murmured Mrs. Sylvester with lazy chagrin.
+
+Paula smiled, but otherwise took no notice of this standing topic of
+disagreement.
+
+"It was a beautiful day," she proceeded, "and we enjoyed it very much,
+but we were so unfortunate as to run over a little boy, at that place
+where the equestrian road crosses the foot path; a lame child, Mr.
+Sylvester, who could not get out of our way; poor too, with a ragged
+jacket on which seemed to make it all the worse."
+
+Ona gave a shrug with her white shoulders, that seemed to question this.
+"Did you injure him very much?" queried she, with a show of interest;
+not sufficient however to impair her curiosity as to the cut of one of
+her nails.
+
+"I cannot say; his little arm was struck, and when I went to pick him
+up, he lay back in my lap and moaned till I thought my heart would
+break. But that was not the worst that happened. As we went hurrying up
+the walk to find the child's father, we were met by a woman wrapped in a
+black cloak whose long and greasy folds seemed like the symbol of her
+own untold depravity. Her glance as she encountered the child writhing
+in pain at my feet, made my heart stand still. It was more than
+malignant, it was actually fiendish. 'Is he hurt?' she asked, and it
+seemed as if she gloated over the question; she evidently longed to hear
+that he was, longed to be told that he would die; and when I inquired if
+she was his mother, she broke into a string of laughter, that seemed to
+darken the daylight. 'His mother! O yes, we look alike, don't we!' she
+exclaimed, pointing with a mocking gesture frightful to see, first at
+his eyes which were very blue and beautiful, and then at her own which
+were dark as evil thoughts could make them. I never saw anything so
+dreadful. Malignancy! and towards a little lame child! what could be
+more horrible!"
+
+Mr. Sylvester and his wife exchanged looks, then the former asked, "Did
+she follow you, Paula?"
+
+"No; after telling me that I--But I cannot repeat what she said,"
+exclaimed the young girl with a quick shudder. "Since I came home," she
+musingly continued, "I have looked and looked at my face in the glass,
+but I cannot believe that what she declared is true. There is no
+similarity between us, could never have been any: I will not have it
+that she ever saw in all the days of her life such a picture as that in
+her glass." And with a sudden gesture Paula started up and pointed to
+herself as she stood reflected in one of the tall mirrors with which
+Ona's boudoir abounded.
+
+"And did she dare to make any comparison between you and her own
+degraded self?" exclaimed Mr. Sylvester, with a glance at the exquisite
+vision of pure girlhood thus doubly presented to his notice.
+
+"Yes, what I am, she was once, or so she said. And it may be true. I
+have never suffered sorrow or experienced wrong, and cannot measure
+their power to carve the human face with such lines as I beheld on that
+woman's countenance to-day. But do not let us talk of her any more. She
+left us at last, and we found the child's father. Mr. Sylvester," she
+suddenly asked, "are there to be found in this city, men occupying
+honorable positions and as such highly esteemed, who like Damocles of
+old, may be said to sit under the constant terror of a falling sword in
+the shape of some possible disclosure, that if made, would ruin their
+position before the world forever?"
+
+Mr. Sylvester started as if he had been shot. "Paula!" cried he, and
+instantly was silent again. He did not look at his wife, but if he had,
+he would have perceived that even her fair skin was capable of blanching
+to a yet more startling whiteness, and that her sleepy eyes could flash
+open with something like expression in their lazy depths.
+
+"I mean," dreamily continued Paula, absorbed in her own remembrance,
+"that if what we overheard said by the father of that child to-day is
+true, some one of our prominent men, whose life is not all it appears,
+is standing on the verge of possible exposure and shame; that a hound is
+on his track in the form of a starving man; and that sooner or later he
+will have to pay the price of an unprincipled creature's silence, or
+fall into public discredit like some others of whom we have lately
+read." Then as silence filled the room, she added, "It makes me tremble
+to think that a man of means and seeming honor should be placed in such
+a position, but worse still that we may know such a one and be ignorant
+of his misery and his shame."
+
+"It is getting time for me to dress," murmured Ona, sinking back on her
+pillow and speaking in her most languid tone of voice. "Could you not
+hasten your story a little Paula?"
+
+But Mr. Sylvester with a hurried glance at the closing eyes of his wife,
+requested on the contrary that she would explain herself more
+definitely. "Ona will pardon the delay," said he, with a set, strained
+politeness that called up the least little quiver of suppressed sarcasm
+about the rosy infantile lips that he evidently did not consider it
+worth his while to notice.
+
+"But that is all," said Paula. However she repeated as nearly as she
+could just what the boy's father had said. At the conclusion Mr.
+Sylvester rose.
+
+"What kind of a looking man was he?" said that gentleman as he crossed
+to the window.
+
+"Well, as nearly as I can describe, he was tall, dark and seedy, with a
+shock of black hair and a pair of black whiskers that floated on the
+wind as he walked. He was evidently of the order of decayed gentleman,
+and his manner of talking, especially in the profuse use he made of his
+arms and hands, was decidedly foreign. Yet his speech was pure and
+without accent."
+
+Mr. Sylvester's face as he asked the next question was comparatively
+cheerful. "Was the other man with whom he was talking, as dark and
+foreign as himself?"
+
+"O no, he was round and jovial, a little too insinuating perhaps, in his
+way of speaking to ladies, but otherwise a a well enough appearing man."
+
+Mr. Sylvester bowed and looked at his watch. (Why do gentlemen always
+consult their watches even in the face of the clock?) "Ona, you are
+right," said he, "it is time you were dressing for dinner." And
+concluding with a word or two of sympathy as to the peculiar nature of
+Paula's adventures as he called them, he hastened from the room and
+proceeded to his little refuge above.
+
+"He has not asked me what became of the child," thought Paula, with a
+certain pang of surprise. "I expected him to say, 'Shall we not try and
+see the little fellow, Paula?' if only to allow me to explain that the
+child's father would not tell me where they lived. But the later affair
+has evidently put the child out of his head. And indeed it is only
+natural that a business man should be more interested in such a fact as
+I have related, than in the sprained arm of a wretched creature's
+'little feller.'" And she turned to assist Ona, who had arisen from her
+couch and was now absorbed in the intricacies of an uncommonly elaborate
+toilet.
+
+"Those men did not mention any names?" suddenly queried that lady,
+looking with an expression of careful anxiety, at the twist of her back
+hair, in the small hand-mirror she held over her shoulder.
+
+"No," said Paula, dropping a red rose into the blonde locks she was so
+carefully arranging. "He expressly said he did not know the name of the
+person to whom he alluded. It was a strange conversation for me to
+overhear, was it not?" she remarked, happy to have interested her cousin
+in anything out of the domains of fashion.
+
+"I don't know--certainly--of course--" returned Mrs. Sylvester with some
+incoherence. "Do you think red looks as well with this black as the
+lavender would do?" she rambled on in her lightest tone, pulling out a
+box of feathers.
+
+Paula gave her a little wistful glance of disappointment and decided in
+favor of the lavender.
+
+"I am bound to look well to-night if I never do so again," said Ona.
+They were all going to a public reception at which a foreign lord was
+expected to be present. "How fortunate I am to have a perfect little
+hairdresser in my own family, without being obliged to send for some
+gossipy, fussy old Madame with her stories of how such and such a one
+looked when dressed for the Grand Duke's ball, or how Mrs. So and So
+always gave her more than her price because she rolled up puffs so
+exquisitely." And stopping to aid the deft girl in substituting the
+lavender feather for the red rose in her hair--she forgot to ask any
+more questions.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Ona," remarked her husband, coming into the room on his way down to
+dinner--Mrs. Sylvester never dined when she was going to any grand
+entertainment; it made her look flushed she said--"I am not in the habit
+of troubling you about your family matters, but have you heard from your
+father of late?"
+
+Mrs. Sylvester turned from her jewel-casket and calmly surveyed his
+face. It was fixed and formal, the face he turned to his servants and
+sometimes--to his wife. "No," said she, with a light little gesture as
+though she were speaking of the most trivial matter. "In one respect at
+least, papa is like an angel, his visits are few and far between."
+
+Mr. Sylvester's eye-brows drew heavily together. For a man with a smile
+of strange sweetness, he could sometimes look very forbidding. "_When_
+was he here last?" he inquired in a tone more commanding than he knew.
+
+She did not appear to resent it. "Let me see," mused she. "When was it I
+lost my diamond ear-ring? O I remember, it was on the eve of New Year's
+day a year ago; I recollect because I had to wear pearls with my garnet
+brocade," she pettishly sighed. "And papa came the next week, after you
+had given me the money for a new pair. I have reason to remember _that_,
+for not a dollar did he leave me."
+
+"Ona!" exclaimed her husband, shrinking back in uncontrollable surprise,
+while his eyes flashed inquiringly to her ears in which two noble
+diamonds were brilliantly shining.
+
+"O," she cried, just raising one snowy hand to those sparkling
+ornaments, while a faint blush, the existence of which he had sometimes
+doubted, swept over her careless face. "I was enabled to procure them in
+time; but for a whole two months I had to go without diamonds." She did
+not say that she had bartered her wedding jewels to make up the sum she
+needed, but he may have understood that without being told.
+
+"And that is the last time you have seen him?" He held her eyes with
+his, she could not look away.
+
+"The very last, sir; strange to say."
+
+His glance shifted from her face and he turned with a bow towards the
+door.
+
+"May I ask," she slowly inquired as he moved across the floor, "what is
+the reason of this sudden interest in poor papa?"
+
+"Certainly," said he, pausing and looking back, not without some emotion
+of pity in his glance. "I am sometimes struck with a sense of the duty I
+owe you, in helping you to bear the burden of certain secret
+responsibilities which I fear may sometimes prove too heavy for you."
+
+She gave a little rippling laugh that only sounded hollow to the image
+listening in the glass. "You choose strange times in which to be
+struck," said she, holding up two dresses for his inspection, with a
+lift of her brows evidently meant as an inquiry as to which he thought
+the most becoming.
+
+"Conscience is the chooser, not I," declared he, for once allowing
+himself to ignore the weighty question of dress thus propounded.
+
+His wife gave a little toss of her head and he left the room.
+
+"I should like Edward very much," murmured she in a burst of confidence
+to her own reflection in the glass, "if only he would not bother himself
+so much about that same disagreeable conscience."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"You look unhappy," said Mr. Sylvester to Paula as they came from the
+dining-room. "Have the adventures of the day made such an impression
+upon you that you will not be able to enjoy the evening's festivities?"
+
+She lifted her face and the quick smile came.
+
+"I do not like to see your brow so clouded," continued he, smoothing his
+own to meet her searching eye. "Smiles should sit on the lips of youth,
+or else why are they so rosy."
+
+"Would you have me smile in face of my first glimpse of wickedness,"
+asked she, but in a gentle tone that robbed her words of half their
+reproach. "You must remember that I have had but little experience with
+the world. I have lived all my life in a town of wholesome virtues, and
+while here I have been kept from contact with anything low or base. I
+have never known vice, and now all in a moment I feel as if I have been
+bathed in it."
+
+He took her by the hand and drew her gently towards him. "Does your
+whole being recoil so from evil, my Paula? What will you do in this
+wicked world? What will you say to the sinner when you meet him--as you
+must?"
+
+"I don't know; it's a problem I have never been brought to consider. I
+feel as if launched on a dismal sea for which I have neither chart nor
+compass. Life was so joyous to me this morning--" a flush swept over her
+cheek but he did not notice it--"I held, or seemed to hold, a cup of
+white wine in my hand, but suddenly as I looked at it, it turned black
+and--"
+
+Ah, the outreach, the dismal breaking away of thought into the
+unfathomable, that lies in the pause of an _and_!
+
+"And do you refuse to drink a cup across which has fallen a shadow,"
+murmured Mr. Sylvester, his eyes fixed on her face, "the inevitable
+shadow of that great mass of human frailty and woe which has been
+accumulating from the foundation of the world?"
+
+"No, no, I cannot, and retain my humanity. If there is such evil in the
+world, its pressure must drive it across the path of innocence."
+
+"And you accept the cup?"
+
+"I must; but oh, my vanished beliefs! This morning the wine of my life
+was pure and white, now it is black and befouled. What will make it
+clean again?"
+
+With a sigh Mr. Sylvester dropped her hand and turned towards the
+mantle-piece. It was April as I have said, and there was no fire in the
+grate, but he posed his foot on the fender and looked sadly down at the
+empty hearthstone.
+
+"Paula," said he after a space of pregnant silence, "it had to come. The
+veil of the temple must be rent in every life. Evil is too near us all
+for us to tread long upon the flowers without starting up the adders
+that hide beneath them. You had to have your first look into the cells
+of darkness, and perhaps it is best you had it here and now. The deeps
+are for men's eyes as well as the starry heavens."
+
+"Yes, yes."
+
+"There are some persons," he went on slowly, "you know them, who tread
+the ways of life with their eyelids closed to everything but the strip
+of velvet lawn on which they choose to walk. Earth's sighs and
+deep-drawn groans are nothing to them. The world may swing on in its way
+to perdition; so long as their pathway feels soft, they neither heed nor
+care. But you do not desire to be one of these, Paula! With your great
+soul and your strong heart, you would not ask to sit in a flowery maze,
+while the rest of the world went sliding on and down into wells of
+destruction, you might have made pools of healing by the touch of your
+womanly sympathy."
+
+"No, no."
+
+"I cannot tell you, I dare not tell you," he went on in a strange
+pleading voice that tore at the very roots of her heart, and rung in her
+memory forever, "what evil underlies the whole strata of life! At home
+and abroad, on our hearthstones and within our offices, the mocking
+devil sits. You can scarcely walk a block, my little one, without
+encountering a man or brushing against the dress of a woman across whose
+soul the black shadow lies heavier than any words of his or hers could
+tell. What the man you saw to-day, said of one unhappy being in this
+city, is true, God help us all, of many. Dark spots are easier acquired
+than blotted out, my Paula. In business as in society, one needs to
+carry the white shield of a noble purpose or a self-forgetting love, to
+escape the dripping of the deadly upas tree that branches above all
+humanity. I have walked its ways, my darling, and I know of what I
+speak. Your white robe is spotless but--"
+
+"O there is where the pain comes in," she cried; "there, just there, is
+where the dagger strikes. She says she was once like me. O, could any
+temptation, any suffering, any wrong or misfortune that might befall me,
+ever bring me to where she is! If it could--"
+
+"Paula!" This time his voice came authoritatively. "You are making too
+much of a frenzied woman's impulsive exclamation. To her darkened and
+despairing eyes any young woman of a similar style of beauty would have
+called forth the same remark. It was a sign that she was not entirely
+given up to evil, that she could remember her youth. Instead of feeling
+contaminated by her words, you ought to feel, that unconsciously to
+yourself, your fresh young countenance with its innocent eyes did an
+angel's work to-day. They made her recall what she was in the days of
+her own innocence; and who can tell what may follow such a
+recollection."
+
+"O Mr. Sylvester," said she, "you fill me with shame. If I could think
+that--"
+
+"You can, nothing appeals to the heart of crime like the glance of
+perfect innocence. If evil walks the world, God's ministers walk it
+also, and none can tell in what glance of the eye or what touch of the
+hand, that ministry will speak."
+
+It was her turn now to take his hand in hers. "O how good, how
+thoughtful you are; you have comforted me and you have taught me. I
+thank you very much."
+
+With a look she did not perceive, he drew his hand away. "I am glad I
+have helped you, Paula; there is but one thing more to say, and this I
+would emphasize with every saddened look you have ever met in all your
+life. Great sins make great sufferers. Side by side came the two
+dreadful powers of vice and retribution into the world, and side by side
+will they keep till they sink at last into the awful deeps of the
+bottomless pit. When you turn your back on a man who has committed a
+crime, one more door shuts in his darkened spirit."
+
+The tears were falling from Paula's eyes now. He looked at them with
+strange wistfulness and involuntarily his hand rose to her head,
+smoothing her locks with fatherly touches. "Do not think," said he,
+"that I would lessen by a hair's breadth your hatred of evil. I can more
+easily bear to see the shadow upon your cup of joy than upon the banner
+of truth you carry. These eyes must lose none of their inner light in
+glancing compassionately on your fellow-men. Only remember that divinity
+itself has stooped to rescue, and let the thought make your contact with
+weary, wicked-hearted humanity a little less trying and a little more
+hopeful to you. And now, my dear, that is enough of serious talk for
+to-day. We are bound for a reception, you know, and it is time we were
+dressing. Do you want me to tell you a secret?" asked he in a light
+mysterious tone, as he saw her eyes still filling.
+
+She glanced up with sudden interest.
+
+"I know it is treason," resumed he, "I am fully aware of the grave
+nature of my offence; but Paula I hate all public receptions, and shall
+only be able to enjoy myself to-night just so much as I see that you are
+doing so. Life has its dark portals and its bright ones. This is one
+that you must enter with your most brilliant smiles."
+
+"And they shall not be lacking," said she. "When a treasure-box of
+thought is given us, we do not open it and scatter its contents abroad,
+but lay it away where the heart keeps its secrets, to be opened in the
+hush of night when we are alone with our own souls and God."
+
+He smiled and she moved towards the door. "None the less do we carry
+with us wherever we go, the remembrance of our hidden treasure," she
+smilingly added, looking back upon him from the stair.
+
+And again as upon the first night of her entrance into the house, did he
+stand below and watch her as she softly went up, her lovely face
+flashing one moment against the dark background of the luxurious bronze,
+towering from the platform behind, then glowing with faint and fainter
+lustre, as the distance widened between them and she vanished in the
+regions above.
+
+She did not see the toss of his arm with which he threw off the burden
+that rested upon his soul.
+
+
+
+
+XVII.
+
+
+GRAVE AND GAY.
+
+     "No scandal about Queen Elizabeth I hope."
+
+     --SHERIDAN.
+
+     "Stands Scotland where it did?"
+
+     --MACBETH.
+
+
+"Who is that talking with Miss Stuyvesant?" asked Mr. Sylvester,
+approaching his wife during one of the lulls that will fall at times
+upon vast assemblies.
+
+Mrs. Sylvester followed the direction of his glance and immediately
+responded, "O that is Mr. Ensign, one of the best _partis_ of the
+season. He evidently knows where to pay his court."
+
+"I inquired because he has just requested me to honor him with a formal
+introduction to Paula."
+
+"Indeed! then oblige him by all means; it would be a great match for
+her. To say nothing of his wealth, he is _haut ton_, and his red
+whiskers will not look badly beside Paula's dark hair."
+
+Mr. Sylvester frowned, then sighed, but in a few minutes Paula observed
+him approaching with Mr. Ensign. At once her hitherto pale cheek
+flushed, but the young gentleman did not seem to object to that, and
+after the formal introduction which he had sought was over, he exclaimed
+in his own bright ringing tones,
+
+"The fates have surely forgotten their usual rôle of unpropitiousness. I
+did not dare hope to meet you here to-night, Miss Fairchild. Was the
+ride all that your fancy painted?"
+
+"O," said she, speaking very low and glancing around, "do not allude to
+it here. We had an adventure shortly after you parted from us."
+
+"An adventure! and no cavalier at your side! If I could but have known!
+Was it so serious?" he inquired in a moment, seeing her look grave.
+
+"Ask Miss Stuyvesant;" said she. "I cannot talk about it any more
+to-night. Besides the music carries off one's thoughts. It is like a
+joyous breeze that whirls away the thistle-down whether it will or no."
+
+
+He gave her a short quick look grave enough in its way, but responded
+with his usual graceful humor, "The thistle-down is too vicious a sprite
+to be beguiled away so easily. If I were to give my opinion on the
+subject, I should say there was method in its madness. If you have been
+brought up in the country, as I suspect from your remark, you must know
+that the white floating ball is not as harmless as it would lead you to
+imagine. It is a meddlesome nobody, that's what it is, and like some
+country gossips I know, launches forth from a pure love of mischief to
+establish his prickers in his neighbor's field."
+
+"_His!_ I thought it must be feminine at least to fulfill the conditions
+you mention. A male gossip, O fie! I shall never have patience with a
+thistle-ball after this."
+
+"Well," laughed he, "I did start with the intention of making it
+feminine, but I caught a glimpse of your eyes and lost my courage. I did
+what I could," added he with a mirthful glance.
+
+"So do the thistles," cried she. Then while both voices joined in a
+merry laugh, she continued, "But where have we strayed? For a moment it
+seemed as if we were on the hills at Grotewell; I could almost see the
+blue sky."
+
+"And I," said he, with his eyes on her face.
+
+"I am sure the brooks bubbled."
+
+"I distinctly heard a bird singing."
+
+"It was a whippowill."
+
+"But my name is Clarence?"
+
+And here both being young and without a care in the world, they laughed
+again. And the crowded perfumed room seemed to freshen as with a whiff
+of mountain air.
+
+"You love the country, Miss Fairchild?"
+
+"Yes;" and her smile was the reflection of the summer-lands that arose
+before her at the word. "With the right side of my heart do I love the
+spot where nature speaks and man is dumb."
+
+"And with the left?"
+
+"I love the place where great men congregate to face their destiny and
+control it."
+
+"The latter is the deeper love," said he.
+
+She nodded her head and then said, "I need both to make me happy.
+Sometimes as I walk these city streets, I feel as if my very longing to
+escape to the heart of the hills, would carry me there. I remember when
+I was a child, I was one day running through a meadow, when suddenly a
+whole flock of birds flew up from the grass and surrounded my head. I
+was not sure but what I should be caught up and carried away by the
+force of their flight; and when they rose to mid heaven, something in my
+breast seemed to follow them. So it is often with me here, only that it
+is the rush of my thoughts that threatens such a Hegira. Yet if I were
+to be transported to my native hills, I know I should long to be back
+again."
+
+"The mountain lassie has wandered into the courts of the king. The
+perfume of palaces is not easily forgotten."
+
+Her eye turned towards Mr. Sylvester standing near them upright and
+firm, talking to a group of attentive gentlemen every one of whom
+boasted a name of more than local celebrity. "Without a royal heart to
+govern, there would be no palace;" said she, and blushed under a sudden
+sense of the possible interpretation he might give to her words, till
+the rose in her hand looked pallid.
+
+But he had followed her glance and understood her better than she
+thought. "And Mr. Sylvester has such a heart, so a hundred good fellows
+have told me. You are fortunate to see the city from the loop-hole of
+such a home as his."
+
+"It is more than a loop-hole," said she.
+
+"Of that I shall never be satisfied till I see it?"
+
+And being content with the look he received, he took her on his arm and
+led her into the midst of the dancers.
+
+Meanwhile in a certain corner not far off, two gentlemen were talking.
+
+"Sylvester shows off well to-night."
+
+"He always does. With such a figure as that, a man needs but to enter a
+room to make himself felt. But then he's a good talker too. Ever heard
+him speak?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Fine voice, true snap, right ring. Great favorite at elections. The
+fact is, Sylvester is a remarkable man."
+
+"Hum, ha, so I should judge."
+
+"And so fortunate! He has never been known to run foul in a great
+operation. Put your money in his hand and whew!--your fortune is as good
+as made."
+
+The other, a rich man, connected heavily with the mining business in
+Colorado, smiled with that bland overflow of the whole countenance which
+is sometimes seen in large men of great self-importance.
+
+"It's a pity he's gone out of Wall Street," continued his companion.
+"The younger fry feel now something like a flock of sheep that has lost
+its bell-wether."
+
+"They straggle--eh?" returned his portly friend with an increase of his
+smile that was not altogether pleasant. "So Sylvester has left Wall
+Street?"
+
+"He closed his last enterprise two weeks before accepting the Presidency
+of the Madison Bank. Stuyvesant is down on speculation, and well--It
+looks better you know; the Madison Bank is an old institution, and
+Sylvester is ambitious. There'll be no reckless handling of funds
+_there_."
+
+"No!" What was there in that _no_ that made the other look up? "I'm not
+acquainted with Sylvester myself. Has he much family?"
+
+"A wife--there she is, that handsome woman talking with Ditman,--and a
+daughter, niece or somebody who just now is setting all our young
+scapegraces by the ears. You can see her if you just crane your neck a
+little."
+
+"Humph, ha, very pretty, very pretty. How much do you suppose Mrs.
+Sylvester is worth as she stands, diamonds you know, and all that?"
+
+"Well I should say some where near ten thousand; that sprig in her hair
+cost a clean five."
+
+"So, so. They live in a handsome house I suppose?"
+
+"A regular palace, corner of Fifth Avenue and ----"
+
+"All his?"
+
+"Nobody's else I reckon."
+
+"Sports horses and carriage I suppose?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+"Yacht, opera box?"
+
+"No reason why he shouldn't."
+
+"What is his salary?"
+
+"A nominal sum, five or ten thousand perhaps."
+
+"Owns good share of the bank's stock I presume?"
+
+"Enough to control it."
+
+"Below par though?"
+
+"A trifle, going up, however."
+
+"And _don't_ speculate?"
+
+The way this man drawled his words was excessively disagreeable.
+
+"Not that any one knows of. He's made his fortune and now asks only to
+enjoy it."
+
+The man from the West strutted back and looked at his companion
+knowingly. "What do you think of my judgment, Stadler?"
+
+"None better this side of the Pacific."
+
+"Pretty good at spying out cracks, eh?"
+
+"I wouldn't like to undertake the puttying up that would deceive you."
+
+"Humph! Well then, mark this. In two months from to-day you will see Mr.
+Sylvester rent his house and go south for his health, or the pretty one
+over there will marry one of the scapegraces you mention, who will lend
+the man _who don't engage in any further ventures_, more than one or two
+hundred thousand dollars."
+
+"Ha, you know something."
+
+"I own mines in Colorado and I have my points."
+
+"And Mr. Sylvester?"
+
+"Will find them too sharp for him."
+
+And having made his joke, he yielded to the other's apparent
+restlessness, and they sauntered off.
+
+They did not observe a pale, demure, little lady that sat near them
+abstractedly nodding her dainty head to the remarks of a pale-whiskered
+youth at her side, nor notice the emotion with which she suddenly rose
+at their departure and dismissed her chattering companion on some
+impromptu errand. It was only one of the ordinary group of dancers, a
+pretty, plainly dressed girl, but her name was Stuyvesant.
+
+Rising with a decision that gave a very attractive color to her cheeks,
+she hastily looked around. A trio of young gentlemen started towards her
+but she gave them no encouragement; her eye had detected Mr. Sylvester's
+tall figure a few feet off and it was to him she desired to speak. But
+at her first movement in his direction, her glance encountered another
+face, and like a stream that melts into a rushing torrent, her purpose
+seemed to vanish, leaving her quivering with a new emotion of so vivid a
+character she involuntarily looked about her for a refuge.
+
+But in another instant her eyes had again sought the countenance that
+had so moved her, and finding it bent upon her own, faltered a little
+and unconsciously allowed the lilies she was carrying to drop from her
+hand. Before she realized her loss, the face before her had vanished,
+and with it something of her hesitation and alarm.
+
+With a hasty action she drew near Mr. Sylvester. "Will you lend me your
+arm for a minute?" she asked, with her usual appealing look rendered
+doubly forcible by the experience of a moment before.
+
+"Miss Stuyvesant! I am happy to see you."
+
+Never had his face looked more cheerful she thought, never had his smile
+struck her more pleasantly.
+
+"A little talk with a little girl will not hinder you too much, will
+it?" she queried, glancing at the group of gentlemen that had shrunk
+back at her approach.
+
+"Do you call that hindrance which relieves one from listening to
+quotations of bank stock at an evening reception?"
+
+She shook her head with a confused movement, and led him up before a
+stand of flowering exotics.
+
+"I want to tell you something," she said eagerly but with a marked
+timidity also, the tall form beside her looked so imposing for all its
+encouraging bend. "I beg your pardon if I am doing wrong, but papa
+regards you with such esteem and--Mr. Sylvester do you know a man by the
+name of Stadler?"
+
+Astonished at such a question from lips so young and dainty, he turned
+and surveyed her for a moment with quick surprise. Something in her
+aspect struck him. He answered at once and without circumlocution. "Yes,
+if you refer to that spry keen-faced man, just entering the
+supper-room."
+
+"Do you know his companion?" she proceeded; "the portly, highly
+pompous-looking gentleman with the gold eye-glasses? Look quickly."
+
+"No." There was an uneasiness in his tone however that struck her
+painfully.
+
+"He is a stranger in town; has not the honor of your acquaintance he
+says, but from the questions he asked, I judge he has a great interest
+in your affairs. He spoke of being connected with mines in Colorado. I
+was sitting behind a curtain and overheard what was said."
+
+Mr. Sylvester turned pale and regarded her attentively. "Might I be so
+bold," he inquired after a moment, "as to ask you what that was?"
+
+"Yes, sir, certainly, but it is even harder for me to repeat than it was
+for me to hear. He inquired about your domestic concerns, your home and
+your income," she murmured blushing; "and then said, in what I thought
+was a somewhat exulting tone, that in two months or so we should see you
+go South for your health or--Is not that enough for me to tell you, Mr.
+Sylvester?"
+
+He gave her a short stare, opened his lips as if to speak, then turned
+abruptly aside and began picking mechanically at the blossoms before
+him.
+
+"I, of course, do not know what men mean when they talk of possessing
+points. But the leer and side glance which accompanies such talk, have a
+universal language we all understand, and I felt that I must warn you of
+that man's malice if only because papa regards you so highly."
+
+He shrank as if touched on a sore place, but bowed and answered the
+wistful appeal of her glance with a shadow of his usual smile, then he
+turned, and looking towards the door through which the two men had
+disappeared, made a movement as if he would follow. But remembering
+himself, escorted her to a seat, saying as he did so:
+
+"You are very kind, Miss Stuyvesant; please say nothing of this to
+Paula."
+
+She bowed and a flitting smile crossed her upturned countenance. "I am
+not much of a gossip, Mr. Sylvester, or I should have been tempted to
+have carried my information to my father instead of to you."
+
+He understood the implied promise in this remark and gave the hand on
+his arm a quick pressure, before relinquishing her to the care of the
+pale-complexioned youth who by this time had returned to her side.
+
+In another moment Paula came up on the arm of a black-whiskered
+gentleman all shirt front and eye-glasses. "O Cicely," she cried, (she
+called Miss Stuyvesant, Cicely now) "is it not a delightful evening?"
+
+"Are you enjoying yourself so much?" inquired that somewhat agitated
+little lady, with a glance at the countenance of her friend's attendant.
+
+"I fear it would scarcely seem consistent in me now to say no," returned
+the radiant girl, with a laughing glance towards the same gentleman.
+
+But when they were alone, the gentleman having departed on some of the
+innumerable errands with which ladies seem to delight in afflicting
+their attendant cavaliers at balls or receptions, she atoned for that
+glance by remarking,
+
+"I do not find the average partner that falls to one's lot in such
+receptions all that fancy paints." And then finding she had repeated a
+phrase of Mr. Ensign's, blushed, though no one stood near her but
+Cicely.
+
+"Fancy's brush would need to be dipped in but two colors to present to
+our eye the mass of them," was Cicely's laughing reply. "A streak of
+black for the coat, and a daub of white for the shirt front. _Voila
+tout._"
+
+"With perhaps a dash of red in some cases," murmured a voice over their
+shoulders.
+
+They turned with hurried blushes. "Ah, Mr. Ensign," quoth Cicely in
+unabashed gaiety, "we reserve red for the exceptions. We did not intend
+to include our acknowledged friends in our somewhat sweeping assertion."
+
+"Ah, I see, the black streak and the white daub are a symbol of,
+'Er--Miss Stuyvesant--very warm this evening! Have an ice, do. _I_
+always have an ice after dancing; so refreshing, you know.'"
+
+The manner in which he imitated the usual languid drawl of certain of
+the young scapegraces heretofore mentioned, was irresistible. Paula
+forgot her confusion in her mirth.
+
+"You are blessed with a capacity for playing both rôles, I perceive,"
+cried Cicely with unusual abandon. "Well, it is convenient, there is
+nothing like scope."
+
+"Unless it is hope," whispered Mr. Ensign so low that only Paula could
+hear.
+
+"But I warn you," continued Cicely, with a sweet soft laugh that seemed
+to carry her heart far out into the passing throng, "that we have no
+fondness for the model beau of the period. A dish of milk makes a very
+good supper but it looks decidedly pale on the dinner table."
+
+"Yes," said Paula, eying the various young men that filed up and down
+before them, some pale, some dark, some handsome, some plain, but all
+smiling and dapper, if not debonair, "some men could be endured if only
+they were not _men_."
+
+Mr. Ensign gave her a quick look, and while he laughed at the paradox,
+straightened himself like one who could be a man if the occasion called.
+She saw the action and blushed.
+
+But their conversation was soon interrupted. Mr. Sylvester was seen
+returning from the supper-room, looking decidedly anxious, and while
+Paula was ignorant of what had transpired to annoy him, her ready spirit
+caught the alarm, and she was about to rush up to him and address him,
+when one of the waiters approached, and murmuring a few words she did
+not hear, handed him a card upon which she descried nothing but a simple
+circle. Instantly a change crossed his already agitated countenance, and
+advancing to the ladies with a word or two that while seemingly
+cheerful, struck Paula as somewhat forced, excused himself with the
+information that a business friend had been so inconsiderate as to
+importune him for an interview in the hall. And with just a nod towards
+Mr. Ensign, who had drawn back at his advance, left them and disappeared
+in the crowd about the door.
+
+"I do not like these interruptions from business friends in a time of
+pleasure," cried Paula, looking after him with anxious eyes. "Did you
+notice how agitated he seemed, Cicely? And half an hour ago he was the
+picture of calm enjoyment."
+
+"Business is beyond our comprehension, Paula," returned her friend
+evasively. "It is something like a neuralgic twinge, it takes a man when
+he least expects it. Have you told Mr. Ensign of our adventure?"
+
+"No, but I informed Mr. Sylvester, and he said such good, true words to
+me, Cicely. I can never forget them."
+
+"And I told papa; but he only frowned and made some observation about
+the degeneracy of the times, and the number of scamps thrown to the top
+by the modern methods of acquiring instantaneous fortunes."
+
+"Your papa is sometimes hard, is he not, Cicely?"
+
+With a flush Miss Stuyvesant allowed her eye to rest for a moment on the
+crowd shifting before her. "He was dug from a quarry of granite, Paula.
+He is both hard and substantial; capable of being hewn but not of being
+moulded. Of such stuff are formed monuments of enduring beauty and
+solidity. You must do papa justice."
+
+"I do, but I sometimes have a feeling as if the granite column would
+fall and crush me, Cicely."
+
+"You, Paula?"
+
+Before she could again reply, Mr. Sylvester returned. His face was still
+pale, but it had acquired an expression of rigidity even more alarming
+to Paula than its previous aspect of forced merriment. Lifting her by
+the hand, he drew her apart.
+
+"I shall have to leave you somewhat abruptly," said he. "An important
+matter demands my instant attention. Bertram is somewhere here, and will
+see that you and Ona arrive home in safety. You won't allow your
+enjoyment to be clouded by my hasty departure, will you?"
+
+"Not if it will make you anxious. But I would rather go home with you
+now. I am sure Cousin Ona would be willing."
+
+"But I am not going home at present," said he; and she ventured upon no
+further remonstrance.
+
+But her enjoyment was clouded; the sight of suffering or anxiety on that
+face was more than she could bear; and ere long she said good-night to
+Cicely, and accepting the arm of Mr. Ensign, who was never very far from
+her side, proceeded to search for her cousin.
+
+She found her standing in the midst of an admiring throng to whom her
+diamonds, if not her smiles, were an object of undoubted interest. She
+was in the full tide of one of her longest and most widely rambling
+speeches, and to Paula, with that stir of anxiety at her breast, was an
+image of self-satisfied complacency from which she was fain to drop her
+eyes.
+
+"Mrs. Sylvester shares the honors with her husband," remarked Mr. Ensign
+as they drew near.
+
+"But not the trials, or the pain, or the care?" was Paula's inward
+comment.
+
+Mrs. Sylvester was not easily wooed away from a circle in which she
+found herself creating such an impression, but at length she yielded to
+Paula's importunities, and consented to accept young Mr. Sylvester's
+attendance to their home. The next thing was to find Bertram. Mr. Ensign
+engaged to do this. Leaving Paula with her cousin, who may or may not
+have been pleased at this sudden addition to her circle, he sought for
+the young man who as Mr. Mandeville was not unknown to any of the
+fashionable men and women of the day. It was no easy task, nor did he
+find him readily, but at last he came upon him leaning out of a window
+and gazing at a white lily which he held in his hand. Without preamble,
+Mr. Ensign made known his errand, and Bertram at once prepared to
+accompany him back to the ladies.
+
+"By Jove! I didn't know the fellow was so handsome!" thought the former,
+and frowned he hardly knew why. Bertram was not handsome, but then
+Clarence Ensign was plain, which Bertram certainly was not.
+
+It was to Mr. Ensign's face however that Paula's eyes turned as the two
+came up, and he with the ready vivacity of his natural temperament
+observed it, and took courage.
+
+"I shall soon wish to measure that loop-hole of which I have spoken,"
+said he.
+
+And the soft look in her large dark eye as she responded, "It is always
+open to friends," filled up the measure of his cup of happiness; a cup
+which unlike hers, had not been darkened that day by the falling of
+earth's most dismal shadows.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+IN THE NIGHT WATCHES.
+
+     "Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn?"
+
+
+     --HEN. IV.
+
+     "What doth gravity out of his bed at midnight?"
+
+     --HEN. IV.
+
+
+"It has been the most delightful evening I have ever passed," said Mrs.
+Sylvester, as she threw aside her rich white mantle in her ample
+boudoir. "Sarah, two loops on that dolman to-morrow; do you hear? I
+thought my arms would freeze. Such an elegant gentleman as the Count de
+Frassac is! He absolutely went wild over you, Paula, but not
+understanding a word of English--O there, if that horrid little wretch
+didn't drop his spoon on my dress after all! He swore it never touched a
+thread of it, but just look at that spot, right in the middle of a
+pleating too. Paula, your opinion in regard to the lavendar was correct.
+I heard Mrs. Forsyth Jones whisper behind my back that lavendar always
+made blondes look _fade_. Of course I needed no further evidence to
+convince me that I had entirely succeeded in eclipsing her pale-faced
+daughter. Her daughter!" and the lazy gurgle echoed softly through the
+room, "As if every white-haired girl in the city considered herself
+entitled to be called a blonde!" She stopped to listen, examining
+herself in the glass near by. "I thought I heard Edward. It was very
+provoking in him to leave us in the cavalier manner in which he did. I
+was just going to introduce him to the count, not that he would have
+esteemed it much of an honor, Edward I mean, but when one has a
+good-looking husband--Sarah, that curtain over there hangs crooked, pull
+it straight this instant. Did you try the oysters, Paula? They were
+perfection, I shall have to dismiss Lorenzo without ceremony and procure
+me a cook that can make an oyster fricassee. By the way did you
+notice--" and so on and on for five minutes additional. Presently she
+burst forth with--"I do believe I know what it is to be thoroughly
+satisfied at last. The consideration which one receives as the wife of
+the president of the Madison bank is certainly very gratifying. If I had
+known I would feel such a change in the social atmosphere, I would have
+advocated Edward's dropping speculation long ago. Beauty and wealth may
+help one up the social ladder, but only a settled position such as he
+has now obtained, can carry you safely over the top. I feel at last as
+if we had reached the pinnacle of my ambition and had seen the ladder by
+which we mounted thrown down behind us. If I get my costume from Worth
+in time, I shall give a German next month."
+
+Paula from her stand at the door--for some minutes she had been
+endeavoring to escape to her room--surveyed her cousin in wonder. She
+had never seen her look as she did at that moment. Any one who speaks
+from the heart, acquires a certain eloquence, and Ona for once was
+speaking from her heart. The unwonted emotion made her cheeks burn, and
+even her diamonds, ten thousand dollars worth as we have heard declared,
+were less brilliant than her eyes. Paula left her station on the
+door-sill and glided rapidly back to her side. "O Ona," said she, "if
+you would only look like that when--" she paused, what right had she to
+venture upon giving lessons to her benefactor.
+
+"When what?" inquired the other, subsiding at once into her naturally
+languid manner. Then with a total forgetfulness of the momentary
+curiosity that had prompted the question, held out her head to the
+attendant Sarah, with a command to be relieved of her ornaments. Paula
+sighed and hastened to her room. She could not bring herself to mention
+her anxiety in regard to the still absent master of the house, to this
+lazily-smiling thoroughly satisfied woman.
+
+But none the less did she herself sit up in the moonlight, listening
+with bended head for the sound of his step on the walk beneath. She
+could not sleep while he was absent; and yet the thoughts that disturbed
+her and kept her from her virgin pillow could not have been entirely for
+him, or why those wandering smiles that ever and anon passed flitting
+over her cheek, awakening the dimples that slumbered there, until she
+looked more like a dreamy picture of delight than a wakeful vision of
+apprehension. Not entirely for him--yet when somewhere towards three
+o'clock, she heard the long delayed step upon the stoop, she started up
+with eager eyes and a nervous gesture that sufficiently betrayed how
+intense was her interest in her benefactor's welfare and happiness. "If
+he goes to Ona's room it is all right," thought she; "but if he keeps on
+upstairs, I shall know that something is wrong and that he needs a
+comforter."
+
+He did not stop at Ona's room; and struck with alarm, Paula opened wide
+her door and was about to step out to meet him, when she caught a sight
+of his face, and started back. Here was no anxiety, that she could
+palliate! The very fact that he did not observe her slight form standing
+before him in the brilliant moonlight, proved that a woman's look or
+touch was not what he was in search of; and shrinking sensitively to one
+side, she sat down on the edge of her dainty bed, dropping her cheek
+into her hand with a weary troubled gesture from which all the delight
+had fled and only the apprehension remained. Suddenly she started
+alertly up; he was coming down again, this time with a gliding muffled
+tread. Sliding past her door, he descended to the floor below. She could
+hear the one weak stair in the heavy staircase creak, and--What! he has
+passed Ona's room, passed the bronze figure of Luxury on the platform
+beneath, is on his way to the front door, has opened it, shut it softly
+behind him and gone out again into the blank midnight streets. What did
+it mean? For a moment she thought she would run down and awaken Ona, but
+an involuntary remembrance of how those lazy eyes would open, stare
+peevishly and then shut again, stopped her on the threshold of her door;
+and sitting down again upon the side of her bed, she waited, this time
+with opened eyes eagerly staring before her, and quivering form that
+started at each and every sound that disturbed the silence of the great
+echoing house. At six o'clock she again rose; he had just re-entered and
+this time he stopped at Ona's room.
+
+
+
+
+XIX.
+
+A DAY AT THE BANK.
+
+    "There's a divinity that shapes our ends,
+    Rough-hew them how we will."
+
+    --HAMLET.
+
+
+There are days when the whole world seems to smile upon one without
+stint or reservation. Bertram Sylvester wending his way to the bank on
+the morning following the reception, was a cheerful sight to behold.
+Youth, health, hope spake in every lineament of his face and brightened
+every glance of his wide-awake eye. His new life was pleasant to him.
+Bach, Beethoven and Chopin were scarcely regretted now by the ambitious
+assistant cashier of the Madison Bank, with a friend in each of its
+directors and a something more than that in the popular president
+himself. Besides he had developed a talent for the business and was in
+the confidence of the cashier, a somewhat sickly man who more than once
+had found himself compelled to rely upon the rapidly maturing judgment
+of his young associate, in matters oftentimes of the utmost importance.
+The manner in which Bertram found himself able to respond to these
+various calls, convinced him that he had been correct in his opinion of
+his own nature, when he informed his uncle that music was his pleasure
+rather than his necessity.
+
+Entering the building by way of Pearl Street, he was about to open the
+door leading into the bank proper, when he heard a little piping voice
+at his side, and turning, confronted the janitor's baby daughter. She
+was a sweet and interesting child, and with his usual good nature
+Bertram at once stopped to give her a kiss.
+
+"I likes you," prattled she as he put her down again after lifting her
+up high over his head, "but I likes de oder one best."
+
+"I hope the other one duly appreciates your preference," laughed he, and
+was again on the point of entering the bank when he felt or thought he
+felt a hand laid on his arm. It was the janitor himself this time, a
+worthy man, greatly trusted in the bank, but possessed of such an
+extraordinary peculiarity in the way of a pair of protruding eyes, that
+his appearance was always attended by a shock.
+
+"Well, Hopgood, what is it?" cried Bertram, in his cheery tone.
+
+The janitor drew back and mercifully shifted his gaze from the young
+man's face. "Nothing sir; did I stop you? Beg pardon," he continued,
+half stammering, "I'm dreadful awkward sometimes." And with a nod he
+sidled off towards his little one whom he confusedly took up in his
+arms.
+
+Now Bertram was sure the man had touched him and that, too, with a very
+eager hand, but being late that morning and consequently in somewhat of
+a hurry, he did not stop to pursue the matter. Hastening into the Bank,
+he assisted the teller in opening the safe, that being his especial
+duty, and was taking out such papers as he himself required, when he was
+surprised to catch another sight of those same extraordinary organs of
+which I have just spoken, peering upon him from the door by which he had
+previously entered. They vanished as soon as he encountered them, but
+more than once during the morning he perceived them looking upon him
+from various quarters of the bank, till he felt himself growing
+seriously annoyed, and sending for the man, asked him what he meant by
+this unusual surveillance. The janitor seemed troubled, flushed
+painfully and fixed his eyes in manifest anxiety on the cashier who,
+engaged in some search of his own, was just handling over the tin boxes
+that lined the vault before them. Not till he had seen him shove them
+back into their place and leave the spot, did he venture upon his reply.
+"I'm sure, sir, I'm very sorry if I have annoyed you, but do you think
+Mr. Sylvester will be down at the usual hour?"
+
+"I know of no reason why he should not," returned Bertram.
+
+"I have something to say to him when he comes in," stammered the man,
+evidently taken aback by Bertram's look of surprise. "Will you be kind
+enough to ring the bell the first moment he seems to be at leisure? I
+don't know as it is a matter of any importance but--" He stopped,
+evidently putting a curb upon himself. "Can I rely on you, sir?"
+
+"Yes, certainly, I will tell my uncle when he comes in that you want to
+speak to him. He will doubtless send for you at once."
+
+The man looked embarrassed. "Excuse me, sir, but that's just what I'd
+rather you wouldn't do. Mr. Sylvester is always very busy and he might
+think I wished to annoy him about some matters of my own, sir, as indeed
+I have not been above doing at odd times. If you would ring when he
+comes in, that is all I ask."
+
+Bertram thought this a strange request, but seeing the man so anxious,
+gave the required promise, and the janitor hurried off. "Curious!"
+muttered Bertram. "Can anything be wrong?" And he glanced about him with
+some curiosity as he went to his desk. But every one was at his post as
+usual and the countenances of all were equally undisturbed.
+
+It was a busy morning and in the rush of various matters Bertram forgot
+the entire occurrence. But it was presently recalled to him by hearing
+some one remark, "Mr. Sylvester is late to-day," and looking up from
+some papers he was considering, he found it was a full hour after the
+time at which his uncle was in the habit of appearing. Just then he
+caught still another sight of the protruding eyes of Hopgood staring in
+upon him from the half-opened door at the end of the bank.
+
+"The fellow's getting impatient," thought he, and experienced a vague
+feeling of uneasiness.
+
+Another half hour passed. "What can have detained Mr. Sylvester?" cried
+Mr. Wheelock the cashier, hastily approaching Bertram.
+
+"There is to be an important meeting of the Directors to-day, and some
+of the gentlemen are already coming in. Mr. Sylvester is not accustomed
+to keep us waiting."
+
+"I don't know, I am sure," returned Bertram, remembering with an
+accession of uneasiness, the abruptness with which his uncle had left
+the entertainment the evening before.
+
+"Shall I telegraph to the house?"
+
+"No, that is not necessary. Besides Folger says he passed him on
+Broadway this morning."
+
+"Going down street with a valise in his hand," that gentlemen quietly
+put in. Folger was the teller. "He was looking very pale and didn't see
+me when I nodded."
+
+"What time was that?" asked Bertram.
+
+"About twelve; when I went out to lunch."
+
+A quick gasp sounded at their side, followed by a hurried cough.
+Turning, Bertram encountered for the fifth time the eyes of Hopgood. He
+had entered unperceived by the small door that separated the inner
+inclosure from the outer, and was now standing very close to them, eying
+with side-long looks the safe at their back, the faces of the gentleman
+speaking, yes, and even the countenances of the clerks, as they bent
+busily over their books.
+
+"Did you ring, sir?" asked he, catching Bertram's look of displeasure.
+
+"No."
+
+The man seemed to feel the rebuke implied in this short response, and
+ambled softly away. But in another moment he was stopped by Bertram.
+
+"What is the matter with you to-day, Hopgood? Can you have anything of
+real importance on your mind; anything connected with my uncle?"
+
+The janitor started, and looked almost frightened. "Be careful what you
+say," whispered he; then with a keen look at Mr. Wheelock just then on
+the point of entering the directors' room, he was turning to escape by
+the little door just mentioned, when it opened and Mr. Stuyvesant came
+in. With a look almost of terror the janitor recoiled, throwing himself
+as it were between the latter and the door of the safe; but recovering
+himself, surveyed the keen quiet visage of the veteran banker with a
+rolling of his great eyes absolutely painful to behold. Mr. Stuyvesant,
+who was somewhat absorbed in thought, did not appear to notice the
+agitation he had caused, and with just a hurried nod followed Mr.
+Wheelock into the Directors' room. Instantly the janitor drew himself up
+with an air of relief, and shortly glancing at the clock which lacked a
+few minutes yet of the time fixed for the meeting, slided hastily away
+from Bertram's detaining hand, and disappeared in the crowd without. In
+another moment Bertram saw him standing at the outer door, looking
+anxiously up and down the street.
+
+"Something _is_ wrong," murmured Bertram. "What?" And for a moment he
+felt half tempted to return Mr. Stuyvesant's friendly bow with a few
+words expressive of his uneasiness, but the emphasis with which Hopgood
+had murmured the words, "Be careful what you say," unconsciously
+deterred him, and concealing his nervousness as best he might, he
+entered the Directors' office.
+
+It was now time for the meeting to open, and the gentlemen were all
+seated around the low green baize table that occupied the centre of the
+room. Impatience was written on all their countenances. Mr. Stuyvesant
+especially was looking at the heavy gold watch in his hand, with a frown
+on his deeply wrinkled brow that did not add to its expression of
+benevolence. The empty seat at the head of the table stared upon Bertram
+uncompromisingly.
+
+"My wife gives a reception to-day," ventured one gentleman to his
+neighbor.
+
+"And I have an engagement at five that won't bear postponement."
+
+"Sylvester has always been on hand before."
+
+"We can't proceed without him," was the reply.
+
+Mr. Wheelock looked thoughtful.
+
+With a nod of his head towards such gentlemen as met his eye, Bertram
+hastened to a little cupboard devoted to the use of himself and uncle.
+Opening it, he looked within, took down a coat he saw hanging before
+him, and unconsciously uttered an exclamation. It was a dress-coat such
+as had been worn by Mr. Sylvester the evening before.
+
+"What does this mean! My uncle has been here!" were the words that
+sprang to his lips; but he subdued his impulse to speak, and hastily
+hanging up the coat, relocked the door. Proceeding at once to the outer
+room, he asked two or three of the clerks if they were sure Mr.
+Sylvester had not been in during the day. But they all returned an
+unequivocal "no," and that too with a certain stare of surprise that at
+once convinced him he was betraying his agitation too plainly.
+
+"I will telegraph whether Wheelock considers it necessary or not,"
+thought he, and was moving to summon a messenger boy when he caught
+sight of Hopgood slowly making his way in from the street. He was very
+pale and walked with his eyes fixed on the ground, ominously shaking his
+great head in a way that bespoke an inner struggle of no ordinary
+nature. Bertram at once sauntered out to meet him.
+
+"Hopgood," said he, "your evident anxiety is infectious. What has
+happened to make my uncle's detention a matter of such apparent import?
+If you do not wish to confide in me, his nephew almost his son, speak to
+Mr. Wheelock or to one of the directors, but don't keep anything to
+yourself which concerns his welfare or--What are you looking at?"
+
+The man was gazing as if fascinated at the keys in Bertram's hand.
+
+"Nothing sir, nothing. You must not detain me; I have nothing to say. I
+will wait ten minutes," he muttered to himself, glancing again at the
+clock. Suddenly he saw the various directors come filing out of the
+inner room, and darted for the second time from Bertram's detaining
+hand.
+
+"I hope nothing has happened to Mr. Sylvester," exclaimed one gentleman
+to another as they filed by.
+
+"If he were given to a loose ends' sort of business it would be another
+thing."
+
+"He looked exceedingly well at the reception last night," exclaimed
+another; "but in these days--"
+
+Suddenly there was a hush. A telegraph boy had just entered the door and
+was asking for Mr. Bertram Sylvester.
+
+"Here I am," said Bertram, hastily taking the envelope presented him.
+Slightly turning his back, he opened it. Instantly his face grew white
+as chalk.
+
+"Gentlemen," said he, "you will have to excuse my uncle to-day; a great
+misfortune has occurred to him." Then with a slow and horror-stricken
+movement, he looked about him and exclaimed, "_Mrs. Sylvester is dead_."
+
+A confused murmur at once arose, followed by a hurried rush; but of all
+the faces that flocked out of the bank, none wore such a look of blank
+and helpless astonishment as that of Hopgood the janitor, as with
+bulging eyes and nervously working hands, he slowly wended his way to
+the foot of the stairs and there sat down gazing into vacancy.
+
+
+
+
+XX.
+
+THE DREGS IN THE CUP.
+
+     "O eloquent, just and mightie death! whom none could advise,
+     thou hast persuaded; what none hath dared, thou hast done; and
+     whom all the world hath flattered, thou only hast cast out of
+     the world and despised: thou hast drawn together all the farre
+     stretched greatnesses; all the pride, crueltie and ambition of
+     man and covered it all over with these two narrow words, _Hic
+     jacet_."
+
+
+     --SIR WALTER RALEIGH.
+
+
+Bertram's hurried ring at his uncle's door was answered by Samuel the
+butler.
+
+"What is this I hear?" cried the young man, entering with considerable
+agitation, "Mrs. Sylvester dead?"
+
+"Yes sir," returned the old and trusty servant, with something like a
+sob in his voice. "She went out riding this morning behind a pair of
+borrowed horses--and being unused to Michael's way of driving, they ran
+away and she was thrown from the carriage and instantly killed."
+
+"And Miss Fairchild?"
+
+"She didn't go with her. Mrs. Sylvester was alone."
+
+"Horrible, horrible! Where is my uncle, can I see him?"
+
+"I don't know, sir," the man returned with a strange look of anxiety.
+"Mr. Sylvester is feeling very bad, sir. He has shut himself up in his
+room and none of his servants dare disturb him, sir."
+
+"I should, however, like him to know I am here. In what room shall I
+find him?"
+
+"In the little one, sir, at the top of the house. It has a curious lock
+on the door; you will know it by that."
+
+"Very well. Please be in the hall when I come down; I may want to give
+you some orders."
+
+The old servant bowed and Bertram hastened with hushed steps to ascend
+the stairs. At the first platform he paused. What is there in a house of
+death, of sudden death especially, that draws a veil of spectral
+unreality over each familiar object! Behind that door now inexorably
+closed before him, lay without doubt the shrouded form of her who but a
+few short hours before, had dazzled the eyes of men and made envious the
+hearts of women with her imposing beauty! No such quiet then reigned
+over the spot filled by her presence. As the vision of a dream returns,
+he saw her again in all her splendor. Never a brow in all the great hall
+shone more brightly beneath its sparkling diamonds; never a lip in the
+whole vast throng curled with more self-complacent pride, or melted into
+a more alluring smile, than that of her who now lay here, a marble image
+beneath the eye of day. It was as if a flowery field had split beneath
+the dancing foot of some laughing siren. One moment your gaze is upon
+the swaying voluptuous form, the half-shut beguiling eye, the white
+out-reaching arms upon whose satin surface a thousand loves seem
+perching; the next you stare horror-stricken upon the closing jaws of an
+awful pit, with the flash of something bright in your eyes, and the
+sense of a hideous noiseless rush in which earth and heaven appear to
+join, sink and be swallowed! Bertram felt his heart grow sick. Moving
+on, he passed the bronze image of Luxury lying half asleep on its bed of
+crumpled roses. Hideous mockery! What has luxury to do with death? She
+who was luxury itself has vanished from these halls. Shall the mute
+bronze go on smiling over its wine cup while she who was its prototype
+is carried by without a smile on the lips once so vermeil with pride and
+tropical languors!
+
+Arrived at the top of the house, Bertram knocked at the door with the
+strange lock, and uttering his own name, asked if there was anything he
+could do here or elsewhere to show his sympathy and desire to be of use
+in this great and sudden bereavement. There was no immediate reply and
+he began to fear he would be obliged to retire without seeing his uncle,
+when the door was slowly opened and Mr. Sylvester came out. Instantly
+Bertram understood the anxiety of the servant. Not only did Mr.
+Sylvester's countenance exhibit the usual traces of grief and horror
+incident to a sudden and awful calamity, but there were visible upon it
+the tokens of another and still more unfathomable emotion, a wild and
+paralyzed look that altered the very contour of his features, and made
+his face almost like that of a stranger.
+
+"Uncle, what is it?" sprang involuntarily to his lips. But Mr. Sylvester
+betraying by a sudden backward movement an instinctive desire to escape
+scrutiny, he bethought himself, and with hasty utterance offered some
+words of consolation that sounded strangely hollow and superficial in
+that dim and silent corridor. "Is there nothing I can do for you?" he
+finally asked.
+
+"Everything is being done," exclaimed his uncle in a strained and
+altered voice; "Robert is here." And a silence fell over the hall, that
+Bertram dared not break.
+
+"I have help for everything but--" He did not say what, it seemed as if
+something rose up in his throat that choked him.
+
+"Bertram," said he at last in a more natural tone, "come with me."
+
+He led him into an adjoining room and shut the door. It was a room from
+which the sunshine had not been excluded and it seemed as if they could
+both breathe more easily.
+
+"Sit down," said his uncle, pointing to a chair. The young man did so,
+but Mr. Sylvester remained standing. Then without preamble, "Have you
+seen her?"
+
+
+There was no grief in the question, only a quiet respect. Death clothes
+the most volatile with a garment of awe. Bertram slowly shook his head.
+"No," said he, "I came at once up stairs."
+
+"There is no mark on her white body, save the least little discolored
+dent here," continued his uncle, pointing calmly to his temple. "She had
+one moment of fear while the horses ran, and then--" He gave a quick
+shudder and advancing towards Bertram, laid his hand on his nephew's
+shoulder in such a way as to prevent him from turning his head.
+"Bertram," said he, "I have no son. If I were to call upon you to
+perform a son's work for me; to obey and ask no questions, would you
+comply?"
+
+"Can you ask?" sprang from the young man's lips; "you know that you have
+only to command for me to be proud to obey. Anything you can require
+will find me ready."
+
+The hand on his shoulder weighed heavier. "It seems a strange time to
+talk about business, Bertram, but necessity knows no law. There is a
+matter in which you can afford me great assistance if you will undertake
+to do immediately what I ask."
+
+"Can you doubt--"
+
+"Hush, it is this. On this paper you will find a name; below it a number
+of addresses. They are all of places down town and some of them not very
+reputable I fear. What I desire is for you to seek out the man whose
+name you here see, going to these very places after him, beginning with
+the first, and continuing down the list until you find him. When you
+come upon him, he will ask you for a card. Give him one on which you
+will scrawl before his eyes, a circle, so. It is a token which he should
+instantly understand. If he does, address him with freedom and tell him
+that your employer--you need make use of no names--re-demands the papers
+made over to him this morning. If he manifests surprise or is seen to
+hesitate, tell him your orders are imperative. If he declares ruin will
+follow, inform him that you are not to be frightened by words; that your
+employer is as fully aware of the position of affairs as he. Whatever he
+says, bring the papers."
+
+Bertram nodded his head and endeavored to rise, but his uncle's hand
+rested upon him too heavily.
+
+"He is a small man; you need have no dread of him physically. The sooner
+you find him and acquit yourself of your task, the better I shall be
+pleased." And then the hand lifted.
+
+On his way down stairs Bertram encountered Paula. She was standing in
+the hall and accosted him with a very trembling tone in her voice. All
+her questions were in regard to Mr. Sylvester.
+
+"Have you seen him?" she asked. "Does he speak--say anything? No one has
+heard him utter a word since he came in from down town and saw her lying
+there."
+
+"Yes, certainly; he spoke to me; he has been giving me some commissions
+to perform. I am on my way now to attend to them."
+
+She drew a deep breath. "O!" she cried, "would that he had a son, a
+daughter, a child, some one!"
+
+This exclamation following what had taken place above struck Bertram
+forcibly. "He has a son in me, Paula. Love as well as duty binds me to
+him. All that a child could do will I perform with pleasure. You can
+trust me for that."
+
+She threw him a glance of searching inquiry. "His need is greater than
+it seems," whispered she. "He was deeply troubled before this terrible
+accident occurred. I am afraid the arrow is poisoned that has made this
+dreadful wound. I cannot explain myself," she went on hurriedly, "but if
+you indeed regard him as a father, be ready with any comfort, any help,
+that affection can bestow, or his necessities require. Let me feel that
+he has near him some stay that will not yield to pressure."
+
+There was so much passion in this appeal that Bertram involuntarily
+bowed his head. "He has two friends," said he, "and here is my hand that
+I will never forsake him."
+
+"I do not need to offer mine," she returned, "He is great and good
+enough to do without my assistance." But nevertheless she gave her hand
+to Bertram and with a glow of her lip and eye that made her beauty,
+supreme at all times, something almost supernatural in its character.
+
+"I dared not tell him," she whispered to herself as the front door
+closed with the dull slow thud proper to a house of mourning. "I dare
+not tell any one, but--"
+
+What lay beyond that but?
+
+When Mr. Sylvester came in at six o'clock in the morning, Paula had
+risen from the bed on which she had been sitting, but not to make
+preparation for rest, for she could not rest. The vague shadow of some
+surrounding evil or threatened catastrophe was upon her, and though she
+forced herself to change her dress for a warmer and more suitable one,
+she did not otherwise break her vigil, though the necessity for it
+seemed to be at an end. It was a midwinter morning and the sun had not
+yet risen, so being chilly as well as restless, she began to pace the
+floor, stopping now and then to glance out of the window, in the hopes
+of detecting some signs of awakening day in the blank and solemn east.
+Suddenly as she was thus consulting the horizon, a light flashed up from
+below, and looking down upon the face of the extension that ran along at
+right angles to her window, she perceived that the shades were up in
+Mrs. Sylvester's boudoir. They had doubtless been left so the evening
+before, and Mr. Sylvester upon turning up the gas had failed to observe
+the fact. Instantly she felt her heart stand still, for the house being
+wide and the extension narrow, all that went on in that boudoir, or at
+least in that portion of it which Mr. Sylvester at present occupied, was
+easily observable from the window at which she stood; and that something
+was going on of a serious and important nature, was sufficiently evident
+from the expression of Mr. Sylvester's countenance. He was standing with
+his face bent towards some one seated out of sight, his wife
+undoubtedly, though what could have called her from her dreams--and was
+busily engaged in talking. The subject whatever it was, absorbed him
+completely. If Paula had allowed herself the thought, she would have
+described him as pleading and that with no ordinary vehemence. But
+suddenly while she gazed half fascinated and but little realizing what
+she was doing, he started back and a fierce change swept over his face,
+a certain incredulity, that presently gave way to a glance of horror and
+repugnance, which the quick action of his out-thrown palm sufficiently
+emphasized. He was pushing something from him, but what? A suggestion or
+a remembrance? It was impossible to determine.
+
+The countenance of Mrs. Sylvester who that moment appeared in sight
+sailing across the floor in her azure wrapper, offered but little
+assistance in the way of explanation. Immovable under most
+circumstances, it was simply at this juncture a trifle more calm and
+cold than usual, presenting to Paula's mind the thought of a white and
+icy barrier, against which the most glowing of arrows must fall chilled
+and powerless.
+
+"O for a woman's soul to inform that breast if but for a moment!" cried
+Paula, lost in the passion of this scene, while so little understanding
+its import. When as if in mockery to this invocation, the haughty form
+upon which she was gazing started rigidly erect, while the lip acquired
+a scorn and the eye a menace that betrayed the serpent ever in hiding
+under this white rose.
+
+Paula could look no longer. This last revelation had awakened her to the
+fact that she was gazing upon a scene sacred to the husband and wife
+engaged in it. With a sense of shame she rushed to the bed and threw
+herself upon it, but the vision of what she had beheld would not leave
+her so easily. Like letters of fire upon a black ground, the panorama of
+looks and gestures to which she had just been witness, floated before
+her mind's eye, awakening a train of thought so intense that she did not
+know which was worse, to be there in the awful dawn dreaming over this
+episode of the night, or to rise and face again the reality. The
+fascination which all forbidden sights insensibly exert over the minds
+of the best of us, finally prevailed, and she slowly crept to the window
+to catch a parting glimpse of Mr. Sylvester's tall form hurrying blindly
+from the boudoir followed by his wife's cold glance. The next minute the
+exposed condition of the room seemed to catch that lady's attention, and
+with an anxious look into the dull gray morn, Mrs. Sylvester drew down
+the shades, and the episode was over.
+
+Or so Paula thought; but when she was returning up stairs after her
+solitary breakfast--Mrs. Sylvester was too tired and Mr. Sylvester too
+much engaged to eat, as the attentive Samuel informed her--the door of
+Ona's room swung ajar, and she distinctly heard her give utterance to
+the following exclamation:
+
+"What! give up this elegant home, my horses and carriage, the friends I
+have had such difficulty in obtaining, and the position which I was born
+to adorn? I had rather die!" And Paula feeling as if she had received
+the key to the enigma of the last night's unaccountable manifestations,
+was about to rush away to her own apartment, when the door swayed open
+again and she heard his voice respond with hard and bitter emphasis,
+
+"And it might be better that you should. But since you will probably
+live, let it be according to your mind. I have not the courage--"
+
+There the door swung to.
+
+An hour from that Mr. Sylvester left the house with a small valise in
+his hand, and Mrs. Sylvester dressed in her showiest costume, entered
+her carriage for an early shopping excursion.
+
+And so when Paula whispered to herself, "I did not dare to tell him; I
+did not dare to tell any one, but--" she thought of those terrible
+words, "Die? It might be better, perhaps, that you should!" and then
+remembered the ghastly look of immeasurable horror with which a few
+hours later, he staggered away from that awful burden, whose rigid lines
+would never again melt into mocking curves, and to whom the morning's
+wide soaring hopes, high reaching ambitions and boundless luxuries were
+now no more than the shadows of a vanished world; life, love, longing,
+with all their demands, having dwindled to a noisome rest between four
+close planks, with darkness for its present portion and beyond--what?
+
+
+
+
+XXI.
+
+DEPARTURE.
+
+    "Forever and forever, farewell Cassius.
+    If we do meet again, why we shall smile;
+    If not, why then, this parting was well made."
+
+    --JULIUS CÆSAR.
+
+
+Samuel had received his orders to admit Mr. Bertram Sylvester to his
+uncle's room, at whatever hour of the day or night he chose to make his
+appearance. But evening wore away and finally the night, before his
+well-known face was seen at the door. Proceeding at once to the
+apartment occupied by Mr. Sylvester, he anxiously knocked. The door was
+opened immediately.
+
+"Ah, Bertram, I have been expecting you all night." And from the haggard
+appearance of both men, it was evident that neither of them had slept.
+
+"I have sat down but twice since I left you, and then only in
+conveyances. I have been obliged to go to Brooklyn, to--"
+
+"But you have found him?"
+
+"Yes, I found him."
+
+His uncle glanced inquiringly at his hands; they were empty.
+
+"I shall have to sit down," said Bertram; his brow was very gloomy, his
+words came hesitatingly. "I had rather have knocked my head against the
+wall, than have disappointed you," he murmured after a moment's pause.
+"But when I did find him, it was too late."
+
+"Too late!" The tone in which this simple phrase was uttered was
+indescribable. Bertram slowly nodded his head.
+
+"He had already disposed of all the papers, and favorably," he said.
+
+"But--"
+
+"And not only that," pursued Bertram. "He had issued orders by
+telegraph, that it was impossible to countermand. It was at the Forty
+Second Street depôt I found him at last. He was just on the point of
+starting for the west."
+
+"And has he gone?"
+
+"Yes sir."
+
+Mr. Sylvester walked slowly to the window. It was raining drearily
+without, but he did not notice the falling drops or raise his eyes to
+the leaden skies.
+
+"Did you meet any one?" he asked at length. "Any one that you know, I
+mean, or who knows you?"
+
+"No one but Mr. Stuyvesant."
+
+"Mr. Stuyvesant!"
+
+"Yes sir," returned Bertram, dropping his eyes before his uncle's
+astonished glance. "I was coming out of a house in Broad Street when he
+passed by and saw me, or at least I believed he saw me. There is no
+mistaking him, sir, for any one else; besides it is a custom of his I am
+told, to saunter through the down town streets after the warehouses are
+all closed for the night. He enjoys the quiet I suppose, finds food for
+reflection in the sleeping aspect of our great city." There was gloom in
+Bertram's tone; his uncle looked at him curiously.
+
+"What house was it from which you were coming when he passed you?"
+
+"A building where Tueller and Co. do business, shady operators in paper,
+as you know."
+
+"And you believed he recognized you?"
+
+"I cannot be sure, sir. It was dark, but I thought I saw him look at me
+and give a slight start."
+
+Ah, how desolate sounds the drip, drip of a ceaseless rain, when
+conversation languishes and the ear has time to listen!
+
+"I will explain to Mr. Stuyvesant when I see him, that you were in
+search of a man with whom I had pressing business," observed Mr.
+Sylvester at last.
+
+"No," murmured Bertram with effort, "it might emphasize the occurrence
+in his mind; let the matter drop where it is."
+
+There was another silence, during which the drip of the rain on the
+window-ledge struck on the young man's ears like the premonitory thud of
+falling earth upon a coffin-lid. At length his uncle turned and advanced
+rapidly towards him.
+
+"Bertram," said he, "you have done me a favor for which I thank you.
+What you have learned in the course of its accomplishment I cannot tell.
+Enough perhaps to make you understand why I warned you from the
+dangerous path of speculation, and set your feet in a way that if
+adhered to with steadfast purpose, ought to lead you at last to a safe
+and honorable prosperity. Now--No, Bertram," he bitterly interrupted
+himself as the other opened his lips, "I am in need of no especial
+commiseration, my affairs seem bound to prosper whether I will or
+not--now I have one more commission to give you. Miss Fairchild--" his
+voice quavered and he leaned heavily on the chair near which he was
+standing. "Have you seen her, Bertram? Is the poor child quite
+prostrated? Has this frightful occurrence made her ill, or does she bear
+up with fortitude under the shock of this sudden calamity?"
+
+"She is not ill, but her suffering is undoubted. If you could see her
+and say a few words to relieve her anxiety in regard to yourself, I
+think it would greatly comfort her. Her main thought seems to be for
+you, sir."
+
+Mr. Sylvester frowned, raised his hand with a repelling gesture, and
+hastily opened his lips. Bertram thought he was about to utter some
+passionate phrase. But instead of that he merely remarked, "I am sorry I
+cannot see her, but it is quite impossible. You must stand between me
+and this poor child, Bertram. Tell her I send her my love; tell her that
+I am quite well; anything to solace her and make these dark days less
+dreary. If she wants a friend with her, let a messenger be sent for
+whomever she desires. I place no restrictions upon anything you choose
+to do for her comfort or happiness, but let me be spared the sight of
+any other face than yours until this is all over. After the funeral--it
+nay sound ungracious, but I am far from feeling so--I shall wish to be
+left alone for awhile. If she can be made to understand this--"
+
+"I think her instincts, sir, have already led her to divine your wishes.
+If I am not mistaken, she is even now making preparations to return to
+her relatives."
+
+Mr. Sylvester gave a start. "What, so soon!" he murmured, and the
+sadness of his tone smote Bertram to the heart. But in another moment he
+recovered himself and shortly exclaimed, "Well! well! that is as it
+should be. You will watch over her Bertram, and see that she is kindly
+cared for. It would be a grief to me to have her go away with any more
+than the necessary regret at losing one who was always kind to _her_."
+
+"I will look after her as after a sister," returned Bertram. "She shall
+miss no attention which I can supply."
+
+With a look Mr. Sylvester expressed his thanks. Then while Bertram again
+attempted to speak, he gave him a cordial pressure of the hand, and
+withdrew once more to his favorite spot.
+
+And the rain beat, beat, and it sounded more and more like the droppings
+of earth upon a nailed down coffin-lid.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The funeral was a large one. The largest some said that had ever been
+seen in that quarter of the city. If Mrs. Sylvester's position had not
+been what it was, the sudden and awful nature of her death, would have
+been sufficient to draw together a large crowd. Among those who thus
+endeavored to show their respect was Miss Stuyvesant.
+
+"I could not join you here in your pleasures," she whispered to Paula in
+the short interview they had upstairs, preparatory to the services, "but
+I cannot keep away in the dark hours!" And from her look and the clasp
+of her hand, Paula gained fresh courage to endure the slow pressure of
+anxiety and grief with which she was secretly burdened.
+
+Moreover she had the pleasure of introducing her beloved friend to Mr.
+Bertram Sylvester, a pleasure which she had long promised herself
+whenever the opportunity should arrive, as Miss Stuyvesant was somewhat
+of an enthusiast as regards music. She did not notice particularly then,
+but she remembered afterwards, with what a blushing cheek and beautiful
+glance the dainty young girl received his bow, and responded to his few
+respectful words of pleasure at meeting the daughter of a man whom he
+had learned to regard with so much respect.
+
+Mr. Sylvester was in a room by himself. The few glimpses obtained of him
+by his friends, convinced them all, that this trouble touched him more
+deeply than those who knew his wife intimately could have supposed. Yet
+he was calm, and already wore that fixed look of rigidity which was
+henceforth to distinguish the expression of his fine and noble features.
+
+In the ride to Greenwood he spoke little. Paula who sat in the carriage
+with him did not receive a word, though now and then his eye wandered
+towards her with an expression that drove the blood to her heart, and
+made the whole day one awful memory of incomprehensible agony and dim
+but terrible forebodings. The ways of the human soul, in its crises of
+grief or remorse were so new to her. She had passed her life beside
+rippling streams and in peaceful meadows, and now all at once, with
+shadow on shadow, the dark pictures of life settled down before her, and
+she could not walk without stumbling upon jagged rocks, deep yawning
+chasms and caves of impenetrable gloom.
+
+The sight of the grave appalled her. To lay in such a bed as that, the
+fair and delicate head that had often found the downy pillows of its
+azure couch too hard for its languid pressure. To hide in such a dismal,
+deep, dark gap, a form so white and but a little while before, so
+imposing in its splendor and so commanding in its requirements. The
+thought of heaven brought no comfort. The beauty they had known lay
+here; soulless, inert, rigid and responseless, but here. It was gifted
+with no wings with which to rise. It owned no attachment to higher
+spheres. Death had scattered the leaves of this white rose, but from all
+the boundless mirror of the outspread heavens, no recovered semblance of
+its perfected beauty, looked forth to solace Paula or assuage the misery
+of her glance into this gloomy pit. Ah, Ona, the social ladder reaches
+high, but it does not scale the regions where your poor soul could find
+comfort now.
+
+Bertram saw the white look on Paula's face and silently offered his arm.
+But there are moments when no mortal help can aid us; instants when the
+soul stands as solitary in the universe, as the ship-wrecked mariner on
+a narrow strip of rock in a boundless sea. Life may touch, but eternity
+enfolds us; we are single before God and as such must stand or fall.
+
+Upon their return to the house, Mr. Sylvester withdrew with a few
+intimate friends to his room, and Paula, lonely beyond expression, went
+to her own empty apartment to finish packing her trunks and answer such
+notes as had arrived during her absence. For attention from outsiders
+was only too obtrusive. Many whom she had never met save in the most
+formal intercourse, flooded her now with expressions of condolence,
+which if they had not been all upon one pattern and that the most
+conventional, might have afforded her some relief. Two or three of the
+notes were precious to her and these she stowed safely away, one
+contained a deliberate offer of marriage from a wealthy old
+stock-broker; this she as deliberately burned after she had written a
+proper refusal. "He thinks I have no home," she murmured.
+
+And had she? As she paced through the silent halls and elaborately
+furnished rooms on her way to her solitary dinner, she asked herself if
+any place would ever seem like home after this. Not that she was
+infatuated by its elegance. The lofty walls might dwindle, the gorgeous
+furniture grow dim, the works of beauty disappear, the whole towering
+structure contract to the dimensions of a simple cottage or what was
+worse, a seedy down-town house, if only the something would remain, the
+something that made return to Grotewell seem like the bending back of a
+towering stalk to the ground from which it had taken its root. "If?" she
+cried--and stopped there, her heart swelling she knew not why. Then
+again, "I thought I had found a father!" Then after a longer pause, a
+wild uncontrollable; "Bless! bless! bless!" which seemed to re-echo in
+the room long after her lingering step had left it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Will he let me go without a word?"
+
+It was early morning and the time had come for Paula's departure. She
+was standing on the threshold of her room, her hands clasped, her eyes
+roving up and down the empty halls. "Will he let me go without a word?"
+
+"O Miss Paula, what do you think?" cried Sarah, creeping slowly towards
+her from the spectral recesses of a dim corner. "Jane says Mr. Sylvester
+was up all last night too. She heard him go down stairs about midnight
+and he went through all the rooms like a gliding spectre and into _her_
+room too!" she fearfully whispered; "and what he did there no one knows,
+but when he came out he locked the door, and this morning the cook heard
+him give orders to Samuel to have the trunks that were ready in Mrs.
+Sylvester's room taken away. O Miss, do you think he can be going to
+give all those beautiful things to you?"
+
+Paula recoiled in horror. "Sarah!" said she, and could say no more. The
+vision of that tall form gliding through the desolate house at midnight,
+bending over the soulless finery of his dead wife, perhaps stowing it
+away in boxes, came with too powerful a suggestion to her mind.
+
+"Shure, I thought you would be pleased," murmured the girl and
+disappeared again into one of the dim recesses.
+
+"Will he let me go without a word?"
+
+"Miss Paula, Mr. Bertram Sylvester is waiting at the door in a
+carriage," came in low respectful tones to her ears, and Samuel's face
+full of regret appeared at the top of the stairs.
+
+"I am coming," murmured the sad-hearted girl, and with a sob which she
+could not control, she took her last look of the pretty pink chamber in
+which she had dreamed so many dreams of youthful delight, and perhaps of
+youthful sorrow also, and slowly descended the stairs. Suddenly as she
+was passing a door on the second floor, she heard a low deep cry.
+
+"Paula!"
+
+She stopped and her hand went to her heart, the reaction was so sudden.
+"Yes," she murmured, standing still with great heart-beats of joy, or
+was it pain?
+
+The door slowly opened. "Did you think I could let you go without a
+blessing, my Paula, my little one!" came in those deep heart-tones which
+always made her tears start. And Mr. Sylvester stepped out of the
+shadows beyond and stood in the shadows at her side.
+
+"I did not know," she murmured. "I am so young, so feeble, such a mote
+in this great atmosphere of anguish. I longed to see you, to say
+good-bye, to thank you, but--" tears stopped her words; this was a
+parting that rent her leader heart.
+
+Mr. Sylvester watched her and his deep chest rose spasmodically.
+"Paula," said he, and there was a depth in his tone even she had never
+heard before, "are these tears for me?"
+
+With a strong effort she controlled herself, looked up and faintly
+smiled. "I am an orphan," she gently murmured; "you have been kind and
+tender to me beyond words; I have let myself love you as a father."
+
+A spasm crossed his features, the hand he had lifted to lay upon her
+head fell at his side, he surveyed her with eyes whose despairing
+fondness told her that her love had been more than met by this desolate
+childless man. But he did not reply as seemed natural, "Be to me then as
+a child. I can offer you no mother to guide or watch over you, but one
+parent is better than none. Henceforth you shall be known as my
+daughter." Instead of that he shook his head mournfully, yearningly but
+irrevocably, and said, "To be your father would have been a dear
+position to occupy. I have sometimes hoped that I might be so blessed as
+to call it mine, but that is all past now. Your father I can never be.
+But I can bless you," he murmured brokenly, "not as I did that day in
+your aunt's little cottage, but silently and from afar as God always
+meant you should be blessed by me. Good-bye, Paula."
+
+Then all the deeps in her great nature broke up. She did not weep, but
+she looked at him with her large dark eyes and the cry in them smote his
+heart. With a struggle that blanched his face, he kept his arms at his
+side, but his lips worked in agony, and he slowly murmured, "If after a
+time your heart loves me like this, and you are willing to bear shadow
+as well as sunshine with me, come back with your aunt and sit at my
+hearthstone, not as my child but as a dear and honored guest. I will try
+and be worthy--" He paused, "Will you come, Paula?"
+
+"Yes, yes."
+
+"Not soon, not now," he murmured, "God will show you when."
+
+And with nothing but a look, without having touched her or so much as
+brushed her garments with his, he retired again into his room.
+
+
+
+
+XXII.
+
+HOPGOOD.
+
+     "Give it an understanding but no tongue."
+
+     --HAMLET.
+
+
+Hopgood was a man who could keep a secret, but who made so much ado in
+the process that he reminded one of the placard found posted up
+somewhere out west which reads, "A treasure of gold concealed here;
+don't dig!" Or so his wife used to say, and she ought to know, for she
+had lived with him five years, three of which he had spent in the
+detective service.
+
+"If he would only trust the wife of his bosom with whatever he's got on
+his mind, instead of ambling around the building with his eyes rolling
+about like peas in a caldron of boiling water, one might manage to take
+some comfort in life, and not hurt anybody either. For two days now,
+ever since the wife of Mr. Sylvester died and Mr. Sylvester has been
+away from the bank, he's acted just like a lunatic. Not that that has
+anything to do with his gettin up of nights and roamin down five pair of
+stairs to see if the watchman is up to his duty, or with his askin a
+dozen times a day if I remembers how Mr. Sylvester found him and me,
+well nigh starvin in Broad Street, and gave him the good word which got
+him into this place? O no! O no, of course not! But _something_ has, and
+while he persists in shutting out from his breast the woman he swore to
+love, honor, and cherish, that woman is not bound to bear the trials of
+life with patience. Every time he jumps out of his chair at the sound of
+Mr. Sylvester's name, and some one is always mentionin' it, I plumps me
+down on mine with an expression of my views regarding a kitchen stove
+that does all its drawin' when the oven's empty."
+
+So spake Mrs. Hopgood to her special crony and constant visitor, Mrs.
+Kirkshaw of Water Street, pursing up a mouth that might have been
+good-natured if she had ever given it an opportunity. But Mrs. Kirkshaw
+who passed for a gossip with her neighbors, was a philosopher in the
+retirement of the domestic circle and did not believe in the blow for
+blow system.
+
+"La!" quoth she, with a smoothing out of her apron suggestive of her
+employment as laundress, "show a dog that you want his bone and you'll
+never get it. Husbands is like that very stove you've been a slanderin
+of. Rattle on coal when the fire's low and you put it out entirely; but
+be a bit patient and drop it on piece by piece, coaxing-like, and you'll
+have a hot stove afore you know it."
+
+Which suggestion struck Mrs. Hopgood like a revelation, and for a day
+and night she resorted to the coaxing system; the result of which was to
+send Mr. Hopgood out of the room to sit on the stairs in mortal terror,
+lest his good nature should get the better of his discretion. His little
+daughter, Constantia Maria--so named and so called from two
+grandmothers, equally exacting in their claims and equally impecunious
+as regards their resources--was his sole solace in this long vigil. Her
+pretty innocent prattle scarcely disturbed his meditation, while it
+soothed his nerves, and with no one by but this unsuspecting child, he
+could roll his great eyes to his heart's content without fear of her
+descrying anything in them, but the love with which her own little heart
+abounded.
+
+On the morning after the funeral, however, Constantia Maria was restored
+to his wife's arms on the plea that she did not seem quite well, and
+Hopgood went out and sat alone. In a few minutes, however, he returned,
+and ambling restlessly up and down the room, stopped before his
+persistently smiling wife and said somewhat tremulously:
+
+"If Mr. Sylvester takes a notion to come up and see Constantia Maria
+to-day, I hope you'll take the opportunity to finish your ironing or
+whatever else it is you may have to do. I've noticed he seems a little
+shy with the child when you are around."
+
+"Shy with the child when I am around! well I do declare!" exclaimed she,
+forgetting her late rôle in her somewhat natural indignation. "And what
+have I ever done to frighten Mr. Sylvester? Nothing but putting on of a
+clean apron, when he comes in and a dustin' of the best chair for his
+use. It's a trick of yours to get a chance of speakin' to him alone, and
+I'll not put up with it. As if it wasn't bad enough to have a kettle
+with the nozzle dangling, without living with a man who has a secret he
+won't share with his own wife and the mother of his innocent babe."
+
+With a start the worthy man stared at her till he grew red in the face,
+probably with the effort of keeping his eyes steady for so long a time.
+"Who told you I had a secret?" said he.
+
+"Who told me?" and then she laughed, though in a somewhat hysterical
+way, and sat down in the middle of the floor and shook and shook again.
+"Hear the man!" she cried. And she told him the story of the placard out
+west and then asked him, "if he thought she didn't remember how he used
+to act when he was a chasin' up of a thief in the days when he was on
+the police force."
+
+"But," he cried, quite as pale now as he had been florid the moment
+before, "I'm not in the police force now and you are acting quite silly
+and I've no patience with you." And he was making for the door,
+presumably to sit upon the stairs, when with a late repentance she
+seized him by the arm and said:
+
+"La now," an expression she had caught from Mrs. Kirkshaw, "I didn't
+mean nothin' by my talk. Come back, John; Constantia Maria is not well,
+and if Mr. Sylvester comes up to see her, I'll just slip out and leave
+you alone."
+
+And upon that he told her she was a good wife and that if he had any
+secret from her it was only because he was a poor man. "Honesty and
+prudence are all the treasures I possess to keep us three from starving.
+Shall I part with either of them just to satisfy your curiosity?" and
+being a good woman at heart, she said "no," though she secretly
+concluded that prudence in his case involved trust in one's wife first,
+and disbelief in the rest of the world afterward; and took her future
+resolutions accordingly.
+
+"Well, Hopgood, you look anxious; do you want to speak to me?"
+
+The janitor eyed the changed and melancholy face of his patron, with an
+expression in which real sympathy for his trouble, struggled with the
+respectful awe which Mr. Sylvester's presence was calculated to inspire.
+
+"If you please," said he, speaking very low, for more or less of the
+bank employees were moving busily to and fro, "Constantia Maria is not
+well and she has been asking all day for the _dear man_, as she insists
+upon calling you, sir, with many apologies for the freedom."
+
+Mr. Sylvester smiled with a faint far-away look in his dark eye that
+made Hopgood stare uneasily out of the window. "Sick! why then I must go
+up and see her," he returned in a matter-of-fact way that proved his
+visits in that direction were of no uncommon occurrence. "A moment more
+and I shall be at liberty."
+
+Hopgood bowed and renewed his stare out of the window, with an intensity
+happily spared from serious consequences to the passers-by, by the
+merciful celerity with which Mr. Sylvester procured his overcoat, put
+such papers in his pocket as he required, and joined him.
+
+"Constantia Maria, here is Mr. Sylvester come to see you."
+
+It was a pleasure to observe how the little thing brightened in her
+mother's arms, where but a moment before she had lain quite pale and
+still, and slipping to the ground rushed up to meet the embrace of this
+stern and melancholy-faced man. "I am so glad you have come," she cried
+over and over again; and her little arms went round his neck, and her
+soft cheek nestled against his, with a content that made the mother's
+eyes sparkle with pleasure, as obedient to her promise, she quietly left
+the room.
+
+And Mr. Sylvester? If any one had seen the abandon with which he yielded
+to her caresses and returned them, he would have understood why this
+child should have loved him with such extraordinary affection. He kissed
+her forehead, he kissed her cheek, and seemed never weary of smoothing
+down her bright and silky curls. She reminded him of Geraldine. She had
+the same blue eyes and caressing ways. From the day he had come upon his
+old friend Hopgood in a condition of necessity almost of want, this
+blue-eyed baby had held its small sceptre over his lonely heart, and
+unbeknown to the rest of the world, had solaced many a spare five
+minutes with her innocent prattle. The Hopgoods understood the cause of
+his predilection and were silent. It was the one thing Mrs. Hopgood
+never alluded to in her gossips with Mrs. Kirkshaw. But to-day the
+attentions of Mr. Sylvester to the little one seemed to make the janitor
+restless. He walked up and down the narrow room uneasily surveying the
+pair out of the corner of his great glassy eyes, till even Mr. Sylvester
+noticed his unusual manner and put the child down, observing with a
+sigh, "You think she is not well enough for any excitement?"
+
+"No sir, it is not that," returned the other uneasily, with a hasty look
+around him. "The fact is, I have something to say to you, sir, about--a
+discovery--I made the other day." His words came very slowly, and he
+looked down with great embarrassment.
+
+Mr. Sylvester frowned slightly, and drew himself up to the full height
+of his very imposing figure. "A discovery," repeated he, "when?"
+
+"The day you paid that early visit to the bank, sir, the day Mrs.
+Sylvester died."
+
+The frown on Mr. Sylvester's brow grew deeper. "The day--" he began, and
+stopped.
+
+"Excuse me, sir," exclaimed Hopgood with a burst. "I ought not to have
+mentioned it, but you asked me _when_, and I--"
+
+"What was this discovery?" inquired his superior, imperatively.
+
+"Nothing much," murmured the other now all in a cold sweat. "But I felt
+as if I ought to tell you. You have been my benefactor, sir, I can never
+forget what you have done for me and mine. If I saw death or bereavement
+between me and any favor I could do for you, sir, I would not hesitate
+to risk them. I am no talker, sir, but I am true and I am grateful." He
+stopped, choked, and his eyes rolled frightfully. Mr. Sylvester looked
+at him, grew a trifle pale, and put the little child away that was
+nestling up against his knee.
+
+"You have not told me what you have discovered," said he.
+
+"Well, sir, only this." And he took from his pocket a small roll of
+paper which he unfolded and held out in his hand. It contained a gold
+tooth-pick somewhat bent and distorted.
+
+A flush dark and ominous crept over Mr. Sylvester's cheek. He glanced
+sternly at the trembling janitor, and uttered a short, "Well?"
+
+"I found it on the floor of the bank just after you went out the other
+morning," the other pursued well-nigh inaudibly. "It was lying near the
+safe. As it was not there when you went in, I took it for granted it was
+yours. Am I right, sir?"
+
+The anxious tone in which this last question was uttered, the studied
+way in which the janitor kept his eyes upon the floor could not have
+been unnoticed by Mr. Sylvester, but he simply said,
+
+"I have lost mine, that may very possibly be it."
+
+The janitor held it towards him; his eyes did not leave the floor. "The
+responsibility of my position here is sometimes felt by me to be very
+heavy," muttered the man in a low, unmodulated tone. It was his duty in
+those days previous to the Manhattan Bank robbery, to open the vault in
+the morning, procure the books that were needed, and lay them about on
+the various desks in readiness for the clerks upon their arrival. He had
+also the charge of the boxes of the various customers of the bank who
+chose to entrust their valuables to its safe keeping; which boxes were
+kept, together with the books, in that portion of the vault to which he
+had access. "I should regret my comfortable situation here, but if it
+was necessary, I would go without a murmur, trusting that God would take
+care of my poor little lamb."
+
+"Hopgood, what do you mean?" asked Mr. Sylvester somewhat sternly. "Who
+talks about dismissing you?"
+
+"No one," responded the other, turning aside to attend to some trivial
+matter. "But if ever you think a younger or a fresher man would be
+preferable in my place, do not hesitate to make the change your own
+necessities or that of the Bank may seem to require."
+
+Mr. Sylvester's eye which was fixed upon the janitor's face, slowly
+darkened.
+
+"There is something underlying all this," said he, "what is it?"
+
+At once and as if he had taken his resolution, the janitor turned. "I
+beg your pardon," said he, "I ought to have told you in the first place.
+When I opened the vaults as usual on the morning of which I speak, I
+found the boxes displaced; that was nothing if you had been to them,
+sir; but what did alarm me and make me feel as if I had held my position
+too long was to find that one of them was unlocked."
+
+Mr. Sylvester fell back a step.
+
+"It was Mr. Stuyvesant's box, sir, and I remember distinctly seeing him
+lock it the previous afternoon before putting it back on the shelf."
+
+The arms which Mr. Sylvester had crossed upon his breast tightened
+spasmodically. "And it has been in that condition ever since?" asked he.
+
+The janitor shook his head. "No," said he, taking his little girl up in
+his arms, possibly to hide his countenance. "As you did not come down
+again on that day, I took the liberty of locking it with a key of my own
+when I went to put away the books and shut the vault for the night." And
+he quietly buried his face in his baby's floating curls, who feeling his
+cheek against her own put up her hand and stroked it lovingly, crying in
+her caressing infantile tones,
+
+"Poor papa! poor tired papa."
+
+Mr. Sylvester's stern brow contracted painfully. The look with which his
+eye sought the sky without, would have made Paula's young heart ache.
+Taking the child from her father's clasp, he laid her on the bed. When
+he again confronted the janitor his face was like a mask.
+
+"Hopgood," said he, "you are an honest man and a faithful one; I
+appreciate your worth and have had confidence in your judgment. Whom
+have you told of this occurrence beside myself?"
+
+"No one, sir."
+
+"Another question; if Mr. Stuyvesant had required his box that day and
+had found it in the condition you describe, what would you have replied
+to his inquiries?"
+
+The janitor colored to the roots of his hair in an agony of shame Mr.
+Sylvester may or may not have appreciated, but replied with the
+straightforward earnestness of a man driven to bay, "I should have been
+obliged to tell him the truth sir; that whereas I had no personal
+knowledge of any one but myself, having been to the vaults since the
+evening before, I was called upon early that morning to open the outside
+door to you, sir, and that you came into the bank," (he did not say
+looking very pale, agitated and unnatural, but he could not help
+remembering it) "and finding no one on duty but myself,--the watchman
+having gone up stairs to take his usual cup of coffee before going home
+for the day--you sent me out of the room on an errand, which delayed me
+some little time, and that when I came back I found you gone, and every
+thing as I had left it except that small pick lying on the floor."
+
+The last words were nearly inaudible but they must have been heard by
+Mr. Sylvester, for immediately upon their utterance, the hand which
+unconsciously had kept its hold upon the tooth-pick, opened and with an
+uncontrollable gesture flung the miserable tell-tale into the stove near
+by.
+
+"Hopgood," said the stately gentleman, coming nearer and holding him
+with his eyes till the poor man turned pale and cold as a stone, "has
+Mr. Stuyvesant had occasion to open his box since you locked it?"
+
+"Yes sir, he called for it yesterday afternoon."
+
+"And who gave it to him?"
+
+"I sir."
+
+"Did he appear to miss anything from it?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Do you believe, Hopgood, that there was anything missing from it?"
+
+The janitor shrank like a man subjected to the torture. He fixed his
+glance on Mr. Sylvester's face and his own gradually lightened.
+
+"No sir!" said he at last, with a gasp that made the little one lift her
+curly head from her pillow and shake it with a slow and wistful motion
+strange to see in a child of only two years.
+
+The proud man bowed, not with the severity however that might have been
+expected; indeed his manner was strangely shadowed, and though his lip
+betrayed no uneasiness and his eye neither faltered or fell, there was a
+vague expression of awe upon his countenance, which it would take more
+than the simple understanding of the worthy but not over subtle man
+before him, to detect much less to comprehend.
+
+"You may be sure that Mr. Stuyvesant will never complain of any one
+having tampered with his effects while you are the guardian of the
+vaults," exclaimed Mr. Sylvester in clear ringing tones. "As for his box
+being open, it is right that I should explain that it was the result of
+a mistake. I had occasion to go to a box of my own in a hurry that
+morning, and misled by the darkness and my own nervousness perhaps, took
+up his instead of my own. Not till I had opened it--with the tooth-pick,
+Hopgood, for I had been to a reception and did not have my keys with
+me--did I notice my mistake. I had intended to explain the matter to Mr.
+Stuyvesant, but you know what happened that day, and since then I have
+thought nothing of it."
+
+The janitor's face cleared to its natural expression. "You are very
+kind, sir, to explain yourself to me," said he; "it was not necessary."
+But his lightened face spoke volumes. "I have been on the police force
+and I know how to hold my tongue when it is my duty, but it is very hard
+work when the duty is on the other side. Have you any commands for me?"
+
+Mr. Sylvester shook his head, and his eye roamed over the humble
+furniture and scanty comforts of this poor man's domicile. Hopgood
+thought he might be going to offer him some gift or guerdon, and in a
+low distressed tone spoke up:
+
+"I shall not try to ask your pardon, sir, for anything I have said.
+Honesty that is afraid to show itself, is no honesty for me. I could not
+meet your eye, knowing that I was aware of any circumstance of which you
+supposed me ignorant. What I know, you must know, as long as I remain in
+the position you were once kind enough to procure for me. And now that
+is all I believe, sir."
+
+Mr. Sylvester dropped his eyes from the bare walls over which they had
+been restlessly wandering, and fixed them for a passing moment on the
+countenance of the man before him. Then with a grave action he lifted
+his hat from his head, and bowed with the deference he might have shown
+to one of his proudest colleagues, and without another look or word,
+quietly left the room.
+
+Hopgood in his surprise stared after him somewhat awe-struck. But when
+the door had quite closed, he caught up his child almost passionately in
+his arms, and crushing her against his breast, asked, while his eye
+roamed round the humble room that in its warmth and comfort was a palace
+to him, "Will he take the first opportunity to have me dismissed, or
+will his heart forgive the expression of my momentary doubts, for the
+sake of this poor wee one that he so tenderly fancies?"
+
+The question did not answer itself, and indeed it was one to which time
+alone could reply.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK III.
+
+THE JAPHA MYSTERY.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII.
+
+THE POEM.
+
+    "I've shot my arrow o'er the house
+    And hurt my brother."
+
+    --HAMLET.
+
+
+When Miss Belinda first saw Paula, she did not, like her sister, remark
+upon the elegance of her appearance, the growth of her beauty, or the
+evidences of increased refinement in the expression of her countenance
+and the carriage of her form, but with her usual penetration noted
+simply, the sadness in her eye and the tremulous motion of her lip.
+
+"You had then become fond of your cousin?" queried she with
+characteristic bluntness.
+
+Paula not understanding the motive of this remark, questioned her with a
+look.
+
+"Young faces do not grow pale or bright eyes become troubled without a
+cause. Grief for your cousin might explain it, but if you have suffered
+from no grief--"
+
+"My cousin was very kind to me," hurriedly interrupted Paula. "Her death
+was very sudden and very heart-rending."
+
+"So it was;" returned Miss Belinda, "and I expected to see you look worn
+and sad but not restless and feverish. You have a living grief, Paula,
+what is it?"
+
+The young girl started and looked down. For the first time in her life
+she wished to avoid that penetrating glance. "If I have, I cannot talk
+of it," she murmured. "I have experienced so much this past week; my
+coming away was so unexpected, that I hardly understand my own feelings,
+or realize just what it is that troubles me most. All that I know is,
+that I am very tired and so sad, it seems as if the sun would never
+shine again."
+
+"There is then something you have not written me?" inquired the
+inexorable Miss Belinda.
+
+"The experiences of this last week could never be written,--or told,"
+returned Paula with a droop of her head. "Upon some things our better
+wisdom places a stone which only the angels can roll away. The future
+lies all open before us; do not let us disturb the past."
+
+And Miss Belinda was forced to be content lest she should seem to be
+over anxious.
+
+Not so the various neighbors and friends to whom the lengthened sojourn
+of one of their number in an atmosphere of such wealth and splendor,
+possessed something of the charm of a forbidden romance. For months
+Paula was obliged to endure questions, that it required all her
+self-control to answer with calmness and propriety. But at length the
+most insatiable gossip amongst them was satisfied; Paula's figure was no
+longer a novelty in their streets; curiosity languished and the young
+girl was allowed to rest.
+
+And now could those who loved her, discern that with the lapse of time
+and the daily breathings of her native air, the sad white look had faded
+from her face, leaving it a marvel of freshness and positive, if
+somewhat spiritualized, beauty. The print of deeper thoughts and holier
+yearnings was there, but no sign of blighted hopes or uncomprehended
+passions. A passing wind had blown the froth from off the cup, but had
+not disturbed the sparkle of the wine. She had looked in the face of
+grief, but had not as yet been clasped in her relentless arms. Only two
+things could vitally disturb her; a letter from Cicely, or a sudden
+meeting in the village streets with that elderly lady who haunted the
+Japha mansion. The former because it recalled a life around which her
+fancies still played with dangerous persistency, and the latter because
+it aroused vain and inexplicable conjectures as to that person's strange
+and lingering look in her direction. Otherwise she was happy; finding in
+this simple village-life a meaning and a purpose which her short but
+passionate outlook on a broader field, had taught her, perhaps, both to
+detect and comprehend. She no longer walked solitary with nature. The
+woods, the mountains with all their varying panoply of exuberant
+verdure, had acquired a human significance. At her side went the
+memories of beloved faces, the thoughts of trusted friends. From the
+clouds looked forth a living eye, and in the sound of rustling leaf and
+singing streamlet, spake the voices of human longing and human joy.
+
+Her aunts had explained their position to Paula and she had responded by
+expressing her determination to be a teacher. But they would not hear of
+that at present, and while she waited their pleasure in the matter, she
+did what she could to assist them in their simple home-life and daily
+duties, lending her beauty to tasks that would have made the eyes of
+some of her quondam admirers open with surprise, if only they could have
+followed the action of her hands, after having once caught a glimpse of
+the face that brightened above them. And so the summer months went by
+and September came.
+
+There was to be an entertainment in the village and Paula was to assist.
+The idea had come from her aunt and was not to be rejected. In one of
+the strange incomprehensible moods which sometimes came upon her at this
+time, she had written a poem, and nothing would do but that she mast
+read it before the assembled company of neighbors and friends, that were
+to be gathered at the Squire's house on this gala evening. She did not
+wish to do it. The sacred sense of possession passes when we uncover our
+treasure to another's eyes, giving way to a lower feeling not to be
+courted by one of Paula's sensitive nature. Besides she would rather
+have poured this first outburst of secret enthusiasm into other ears
+than these; but she had given her word and the ordeal must be submitted
+to. There are many who remember how she looked on that night. She had
+arrayed herself for the occasion, in the prettiest of her dresses, and
+mindful of Ona's injunction, did not mar the effect of its soft and
+uniform gray with any hint of extraneous color. The result was that they
+saw only her beauty; and what beauty! A very old man, an early settler
+in the village, who had tottered out to enjoy a last glimpse of life
+before turning his aged face to the wall, said it made the thought of
+heaven a little more real. "I can go home and think how the angels
+look," said he in his simple, half-childish way. And no one contradicted
+him, for there was a still light on her face that was less of earth than
+heaven, though why it should rest there to-night she least of all could
+have told, for her poem had to do with earth and its deepest passions
+and its wildest unrest. It was a clarion blast, not a dreaming rhapsody,
+that lay coiled up in the paper she held in her hand.
+
+My readers must pardon me if I give them Paula's poem, for without it
+they would not understand its effect and consequent result. It was
+called, "The Defence of the Bride," and was of the old ballad order. As
+she rose to read, many of the younger ones in the audience began
+cautiously to move to one side, but at the first words, young as well as
+old paused and listened where they stood, for her voice was round and
+full, and the memory of clashing spears and whirling battle-axes that
+informed the war-song which she had heard Bertram play, was with her, to
+give color to her tones and fire to her glance.
+
+THE DEFENCE OF THE BRIDE.
+
+    He was coming from the altar when the tocsin rang alarm,
+    With his fair young wife beside him, lovely in her bridal charm;
+    But he was not one to palter with a duty, or to slight
+    The trumpet-call of honor for his vantage or delight.
+
+    Turning from the bride beside him to his stern and martial train,
+    From their midst he summoned to him the brothers of Germain;
+    At the word they stepped before him, nine strong warriors brave and
+         true,
+    From the youngest to the eldest, Enguerrand to mighty Hugh.
+
+    "Sons of Germain, to your keeping do I yield my bride to-day.
+    Guard her well as you do love me; guard her well and holily.
+    Dearer than mine own soul to me, you will hold her as your life,
+    'Gainst the guile of seeming friendship and the force of open strife."
+
+    "We will guard her," cried they firmly; and with just another glance
+    On the yearning and despairing in his young wife's countenance,
+    Gallant Beaufort strode before them down the aisle and through the
+         door,
+    And a shadow came and lingered where the sunlight stood before.
+
+    Eight long months the young wife waited, watching from her bridal room
+    For the coming of her husband up the valley forest's gloom.
+    Eight long months the sons of Germain paced the ramparts and the wall,
+    With their hands upon their halberds ready for the battle-call.
+
+    Then there came a sound of trumpets pealing up the vale below,
+    And a dozen floating banners lit the forest with their glow,
+    And the bride arose like morning when it feels the sunlight nigh,
+    And her smile was like a rainbow flashing from a misty sky.
+
+    But the eldest son of Germain lifting voice from off the wall,
+    Cried aloud, "It is a stranger's and not Sir Beaufort's call;
+    Have you ne'er a slighted lover or a kinsman with a heart
+    Base enough to seek his vengeance at the sharp end of the dart?"
+
+    "There is Sassard of the Mountains," answered she without guile,
+    "While I wedded at the chancel, he stood mocking in the aisle;
+    And my maidens say he swore there that for all my plighted vow,
+    They would see me in his castle yet upon Morency's brow."
+
+    "It is Sassard and no other then," her noble guardian cried;
+    "There is craft in yonder summons," and he rung his sword beside.
+    "To the walls, ye sons of Germain! and as each would hold his life
+    From the bitter shame of falsehood, let us hold our master's wife."
+
+    "Can you hold her, can you shield her from the breezes that await?"
+    Cried the stinging voice of Sassard from his stand beside the gate.
+    "If you have the power to shield her from the sunlight and the wind,
+    You may shield her from stern Sassard when his falchion is untwined."
+
+    "We can hold her, we can shield her," leaped like fire from off the
+         wall,
+    And young Enguerrand the valiant, sprang out before them all.
+    "And if breezes bring dishonor, we will guard her from their breath,
+    Though we yield her to the keeping of the sacred arms of Death."
+
+    And with force that never faltered, did they guard her all that day,
+    Though the strength of triple armies seemed to battle in the fray,
+    The old castle's rugged ramparts holding firm against the foe,
+    As a goodly dyke resisteth the whelming billow's flow.
+
+    But next morning as the sunlight rose in splendor over all,
+    Hugh the mighty, sank heart-wounded in his station on the wall,
+    At the noon the valiant Raoul of the merry eye and heart,
+    Gave his beauty and his jestings to the foeman's jealous dart.
+
+    Gallant Maurice next sank faltering with a death wound 'neath his hair,
+    But still fighting on till Sassard pressed across him up the stair.
+
+    Generous Clement followed after, crying as his spirit passed,
+    "Sons of Germain to the rescue, and be loyal to the last!"
+
+    Gentle Jaspar, lordly Clarence, Sessamine the doughty brand,
+    Even Henri who had yielded ne'er before to mortal hand;
+    One by one they fall and perish, while the vaunting foemen pour
+    Through the breach and up the courtway to the very turret's door.
+
+    Enguerrand and Stephen only now were left of all that nine,
+    To protect the single stairway from the traitor's fell design;
+    But with might as 'twere of thirty, did they wield the axe and brand,
+    Striving in their desperation the fierce onslaught to withstand.
+
+    But what man of power so godlike he can stay the billow's wrack,
+    Or with single-handed weapon hold an hundred foemen back!
+
+    As the sun turned sadly westward, with a wild despairing cry,
+    Stephen bowed his noble forehead and sank down on earth to die.
+
+    "Ah ha!" then cried cruel Sassard with his foot upon the stair,
+    "Have I come to thee, my boaster?" and he whirled his sword in air.
+    "Thou who pratest of thy power to protect her to the death,
+    What think'st thou now of Sassard and the wind's aspiring breath?"
+
+    "What I think let this same show you," answered fiery Enguerrand,
+    And he poised his lofty battle-ax with sure and steady hand;
+    "Now as Heaven loveth justice, may this deathly weapon fall
+    On the murderer of my brothers and th' undoer of us all."
+
+    With one mighty whirl he sent it; flashing from his hand it came,
+    Like the lightning from the heavens in a whirl of awful flame,
+    And betwixt the brows of Sassard and his two false eyeballs passed,
+    And the murderer sank before it, like a tree before the blast.
+
+    "Now ye minions of a traitor if you look for vengeance, come!"
+    And his voice was like a trumpet when it clangs a victor home.
+    But a cry from far below him rose like thunder upward, "Nay!
+    Let them turn and meet the _husband_ if they hunger for the fray."
+
+    O the yell that sprang to heaven as that voice swept up the stair,
+    And the slaughter dire that followed in another moment there!
+    From the least unto the greatest, from the henchman to the lord,
+    Not a man on all that stairway lived to sheath again his sword.
+
+    At the top that flame-bound forehead, at the base that blade of fire--
+    'Twas the meeting of two tempests in their potency and ire.
+    Ere the moon could falter inward with its pity and its woe,
+    Beaufort saw the path before him unencumbered of the foe.
+
+    Saw his pathway unencumbered and strode up and o'er the floor,
+    Even to the very threshold of his lovely lady's door,
+    And already in his fancy did he see the golden beam
+    Of her locks upon his shoulder and her sweet eyes' happy gleam:
+
+
+    When behold a form upstarting from the shadows at his side.
+    That with naked sword uplifted barred the passage to his bride;
+    It was Enguerrand the dauntless, but with staring eyes and hair
+    Blowing wild about a forehead pale as snow in moonlit glare.
+
+    "Ah my master, we have held her, we have guarded her," he said,
+    "Not a shadow of dishonor has so much as touched her head.
+    Twenty wretches lie below there with the brothers of Germain,
+    Twenty foemen of her honor that I, Enguerrand, have slain.
+
+    "But one other foe remaineth, one remaineth yet," he cried,
+    "Which it fits this hand to punish ere you cross unto your bride.
+    It is I, Enguerrand!" shrieked he; "and as I have slain the rest,
+    So I smite this foeman also!"--and his sword plunged through his
+         breast.
+
+    O the horror of that moment! "Art thou mad my Enguerrand?"
+    Cried his master, striving wildly to withdraw the fatal brand.
+    But the stern youth smiling sadly, started back from his embrace,
+    While a flash like summer lightning, flickered direful on his face.
+
+    "Yes, a traitor worse than Sassard;" and he pointed down the stair,
+    "For my heart has dared to love her whom my hand defended there.
+    While the others fought for honor, I by passion was made strong,
+    Set your heel upon my bosom for my soul has done you wrong.
+
+    "But," and here he swayed and faltered till his knee sank on the floor,
+    Yet in falling turned his forehead ever toward that silent door;
+    "But your warrior hand my master, may take mine without a stain,
+    For my hand has e'er been loyal, and your enemy is slain."
+
+A short silence followed the last word, then a burst of applause
+testified to the appreciation of her audience, and Paula crept away to
+hide her blushing cheeks in the comparative darkness of a little
+vine-covered balcony that jutted out from the ante-room. What were her
+thoughts as she leaned there! In the subsidence of any great
+emotion--and Paula had felt every word she uttered--there is more or
+less of shock and tumult. She did not think, she only felt. Suddenly a
+hand was laid on her arm and a low voice whispered in her ear,
+
+"Did you write that poem yourself?"
+
+Turning, she encountered the shadowy form of a woman leaning close at
+her side and appearing in the dim light that shone on her from the lamps
+beyond, an eager image of expectancy.
+
+"Yes," returned Paula, "why do you ask?"
+
+The woman, whoever she was, did not answer. "And you believe in such
+devotion as that!" she murmured. "You can understand a man, aye, or a
+woman either, risking happiness and fame, life and death, for the sake
+of a trust! Such things are not folly to you! You could see a heart
+spill itself drop by drop through a longer vigil than the eight months
+watching on the ramparts, and not sneer at a fidelity that could not
+falter because it had given its word? Speak; you write of faithfulness
+with a pen of fire, is your heart faithful too?"
+
+There was something in these words, spoken as they were in a tone of
+suppressed passion, that startled and aroused Paula. Leaning forward,
+she endeavored to see the face of the woman who thus forcibly addressed
+her, but the light was too dim. The outline of a brow covered by some
+close headgear was all she could detect.
+
+"You speak earnestly," said Paula, "but that is what I like. Fidelity to
+a cause, or fidelity to a trust, demands the sympathy and admiration of
+all honest and generous hearts. If I am ever called upon to maintain
+either, I hope that my enthusiasm will not have all been expended in
+words."
+
+"You please me," murmured the woman, "you please me; will you come and
+see me and let me tell you a story to mate the poem you have given us
+to-night?"
+
+The trembling eagerness of her tone it would be impossible to describe.
+Paula was thrilled by it. "If you will tell me who you are," said Paula,
+"I certainly will try and come. I should be glad to hear anything you
+have to relate to me."
+
+"I thought every one knew who I was," returned the woman; and drawing
+Paula back into the ante-room, she turned her face upon her. "Any one
+will tell you where Margery Hamlin lives," said she. "Do not disappoint
+me, and do not keep me waiting long." And with a nod and a deep strange
+smile that made her aged face almost youthful, she entered the crowd and
+disappeared from Paula's sight.
+
+It was the woman whose nightly visits to the deserted home of the Japhas
+had once been the talk and was still the unsolved mystery of the town.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV.
+
+THE JAPHA MANSION.
+
+    "Ah what a warning for a thoughtless man,
+    Could field or grove, could any spot on earth
+    Show to his eye an image of the pangs
+    Which it has witnessed; render back an echo
+    Of the sad steps by which it hath been trod.
+
+    --WORDSWORTH.
+
+
+Unexplained actions if long continued, lose after awhile their interest
+if not their mystery. The aged lady who now for many years had been seen
+at every night-fall to leave her home, traverse the village streets,
+enter the Japha mansion, remain there an hour and then re-issue with
+tremulous steps and bowed head, had become so common a sight to the
+village eye, that even the children forgot to ask what her errand was,
+or why she held her head so hopefully when she entered, or looked so
+despondent when she came forth.
+
+But to Paula, for reasons already mentioned, this secret and persistent
+vigil in a forsaken and mysterious dwelling, was fraught with a
+significance which had never lost its power either to excite her
+curiosity or to arouse her imagination. Many a time had she gone home
+from some late encounter with the aged lady, to brood by the hour upon
+the expression of that restless eye which in its wanderings never failed
+to turn upon her own youthful face and linger there in the manner I have
+already noted. She thought of it by night, she thought of it by day. She
+felt herself drawn to that woman's suffering heart as by invisible
+cords. To understand the feelings of this desolate being, she had even
+studied the face of that old house, until she knew it under its every
+aspect. Often in shutting her eyes at night, she would perceive as in a
+mirror a vision of its long gray front, barred door and sealed windows
+shining in the moon, save where the deep impenetrable shadows of its two
+guardian poplars lay black and dismal upon its ghostly surface. Again
+she would behold it as it reared itself dark and dripping in a blinding
+storm, its walls plastered with leaves from the immovable poplars, and
+its neglected garden lying sodden and forlorn under the flail of the
+ceaseless storm. Then its early morning face would strike her fancy. The
+slow looming of its chimney-tops against a brightening sky; the gradual
+coming out of its forsaken windows and solemn looking doors from the
+mystery of darkness into the no less mystery of day; the hint of
+roselight on its barren boards; the gleam of sunshine on its untrodden
+threshold; a sunshine as pure and sweet as if a bride stood there in her
+beauty, waiting for admission into the deserted halls beyond. All and
+everything that could tend to invest the house and its constant visitor
+with an atmosphere of awe and interest, had occurred to this young girl
+in her daily reveries and nightly dreams. It was therefore with a thrill
+deep as her expectation and vivid as her sympathy, that she recognized
+in her eager interlocutor and proposed confident, the woman about whose
+life and actions rested for her such a veil of impenetrable mystery. The
+thought moved her, excited her, and made the rest of the evening pass
+like a dream. She was anxious for the next day to come, that she might
+seek this Mrs. Hamlin in her home, and hear from her lips the tale of
+devotion that should mate her own simple but enthusiastic poem.
+
+When the next day did come, it rained, rained bitterly, persistent and
+with a steady drive from the north east, that made her going out
+impossible. The day following she was indisposed, and upon the
+succeeding afternoon, she was engaged in duties that precluded all
+thought of visiting. The next day was Sunday, and Monday had its own
+demands which she could not slight. It was therefore well nigh a week
+from the night of the entertainment, before the opportunity offered for
+which she was so anxious. Her curiosity and expectation had thus time to
+grow, and it was with a determination to allow nothing to stand in her
+way, that she set out from home in a flood of mild September sunshine,
+to visit Mrs. Hamlin. But alas, for resolutions made in a country
+village prior to the opening of a church fair! She had scarcely gone a
+dozen steps before she was accosted by one of the managers, a woman who
+neither observes your haste, nor pays any attention to your possible
+preoccupation. Do what she could, she found it impossible to escape from
+this persistent individual until she had satisfied her upon matters
+which it took a full half hour to discuss, and when at last she
+succeeded in doing so, it was only to fall into the hands of an aged
+deacon of the church, whose protecting friendship it were a sin to
+wound, while his garrulous tongue made it no ordinary trial of patience
+to stand and listen. In short the best part of the afternoon was gone
+before she found herself at the door of Mrs. Hamlin's house. But she was
+not to be deterred by further hesitation from the pursuit of her object.
+Rapping smartly on the door, she listened. No stir came from within.
+Again she rapped and again she listened. No response came to assure her
+that her summons had been heard. Surprised at this, for she had been
+told Mrs. Hamlin was always at home during the afternoon, she glanced up
+at the church clock in plain view from the doorstep, and blushed to
+observe that it was six o'clock, the hour at which this mysterious woman
+always left her house, to accomplish her vigil at the Japha mansion.
+
+"What have I done?" thought Paula, and felt a strange thrill as she
+realized that even at that moment, the woman with the eager but restless
+eyes, was shut within the precincts of that deserted dwelling, engaged
+in prayer, perhaps wet with tears, who knows? The secret of what she did
+in that long and quiet twilight hour had never been revealed. Leaving
+the little brown house behind, Paula found herself insensibly taking the
+road to the Japha mansion. If she could not enter it and share the watch
+of the devoted woman who had promised her her confidence, she could at
+least observe if the windows were open or the blinds raised. To be sure
+she ought to be at home, but Miss Belinda was indulgent and did not
+question her comings and goings too closely. An irresistible force drew
+her down the street, and she did not hesitate to follow the lead of her
+impulse. No one accosted her now, it was the tea hour in most of these
+houses and the streets were comparatively deserted. The only house whose
+chimneys lacked the rising smoke, was the one towards which her
+footsteps were tending. She could descry it from afar. Its gaunt walls
+from which the paint had long ago faded, stared uncompromisingly upon
+her in the autumn sunshine. There was no welcome in its close shutters
+with their broken slats from which hung tangled strips of old rags--the
+remnants of some boy's kite. The stiff and solemn poplars rose grim and
+forbidding at the gate once swung wide to the fashion and gallantry of
+proud ladies and stalwart gentlemen, but now pushed aside solely by the
+hand of a tremulous old woman, or the irreverent palm of some daring
+school-boy. From the tangled garden looked forth neither flower nor
+blossoming shrub. Beauty and grace could not thrive in this wilderness
+of decay. A dandelion would have felt itself out of place beneath the
+eye of that ghostly door, with the sinister plank nailed across it, like
+the separating line between light and darkness, right and wrong, life
+and death. What loneliness! what a monument of buried passions outliving
+death itself!
+
+Paula paused as she reached the gate; but remembering that Mrs. Hamlin
+was accustomed to enter the house by a side door, hurried around the
+corner and carefully surveyed the windows from that quarter. One of the
+shutters was open, allowing the flame of the setting sun to gild the
+panes like gold. She did not know then nor has she been able to explain
+since, what it was that came over her at the sight, but almost before
+she realized it, she had returned to the gate, opened it, threaded the
+overgrown garden, reached the door which she had so frequently beheld
+the aged woman enter and knocked.
+
+Instantly she was seized with a consciousness of what she had done, and
+frightened at her temerity, meditated an immediate escape. Drawing the
+folds of her mantle about her form and face, she prepared to fly, when
+she remembered the look of entreaty with which this woman had said on
+that night of their conversation, "Do not disappoint me! Do not keep me
+long in suspense!" and moved by a fresh impulse, turned and inflicted
+another resounding knock on the door.
+
+The result was unlooked-for and surprising. To the sound from within of
+a quick passionate cry, there came a hurried movement, followed by a
+deep silence, then another hasty stir succeeded by a longer silence,
+then a rush which seemed to bring all things with it, and the door
+opened and Mrs. Hamlin appeared before her with a countenance so pallid
+with expectancy, that Paula instinctively felt that in some unconscious
+way, she had loosened the bonds of an uncontrollable emotion, and was
+drawing back, when the woman with a quick look in her shrouded face,
+exultantly caught her hand in hers, and drawing her over the threshold,
+gasped out in a delirium of incomprehensible joy:
+
+"I knew you would come! I knew that God would not let you forget!
+Fifteen years have I waited, Jacqueline! fifteen long, tedious,
+suffering years! But they all seem like nothing now! You have come, you
+have come, and all that I ask, is that God will not let me die till I
+realize my joy!"
+
+The emotion with which she uttered these strange words was so
+overpowering, and her body seemed so weak to stand the strain, that
+Paula instinctively put forth her hand to sustain her. The action
+loosened her cloak. Instantly the eyes that had been fixed upon her with
+such delirious rapture grew blank with dismay, a frightful shudder ran
+through the woman's aged frame; she tore at the cloak that still
+enveloped the young girl's shoulders, and pulling it off, took one view
+of the fresh and beautiful countenance before her, and without uttering
+a word, fell back in a deep and deadly swoon upon the floor.
+
+"O what have I done?" cried Paula, flinging herself down beside that
+pale and rigid figure; but instantly remembering herself she leaped to
+her feet and looked about for some means to resuscitate the sufferer.
+There was a goblet of water on a table near by. Seizing it, she bathed
+the face and hands of the woman before her, moaning aloud in her grief
+and dismay, "Have I killed her! O what is this mystery that brings such
+a doom of anguish to this poor heart?"
+
+But from those pallid lips came no response, and feeling greatly
+alarmed, Paula was about to rush from the house for assistance, when she
+felt a tremulous pull upon her skirt, and turning, saw that the glassy
+eyes had opened at last and were now gazing upon her with mute but
+eloquent appeal.
+
+She instantly returned. "O I am so sorry," she murmured, sinking again
+upon her knees beside the suffering woman. "I did not know, could not
+realize that my presence here would affect you so deeply. Forgive me and
+tell me what I can do to make you forget my presumption."
+
+The woman shook her head, her lips moved and she struggled vainly to
+rise. Paula immediately lent her the aid of her strong young hand and in
+a few minutes, Mrs. Hamlin was on her feet. "O God!" were her first
+words as she sank into the chair which Paula hastily drew forward, "that
+I should taste the joy and she be still unsaved!"
+
+Seeing her so absorbed, Paula ventured to glance around her. She found
+herself in a large square room sparsely but comfortably furnished in a
+style that bespake it as the former sitting-room of the dead and buried
+Japhas. From the walls above hung a few ancient pictures. A large
+hair-cloth sofa of a heavy antique shape, confronted the eye from one
+side of the room, an equally ancient book-case from the other. The
+carpet was faded and so were the curtains, but they had once been of an
+attractive hue and pattern. Conspicuous in the midst stood a large table
+with a well-trimmed lamp upon it, and close against it an easy chair
+with an upright back. This last as well as everything else in the room,
+was in a condition of neatness that would have surprised Paula if she
+had not been acquainted with the love and devotion of this woman, who in
+her daily visits to this house, probably took every pains to keep things
+freshened and in order.
+
+Satisfied with her survey, she again directed her attention to Mrs.
+Hamlin, and started to find that person's eyes fixed upon her own with
+an expression of deep, demanding interest.
+
+"You are looking at the shadows of things that were," exclaimed the old
+lady in thrilling tones. "It is a fearful thought to be shut up with the
+ghost of a vanished past, is it not? That chair by your side has not
+been sat in since Colonel Japha rose from it twelve years ago to totter
+to the bed where he breathed his last. It is waiting, everything is
+waiting. I thought the end had come to-night, that the vigil was over,
+the watch finished, but God in his wisdom says, 'No,' and I must wait a
+little longer. Alas in a little while longer the end will be here
+indeed!"
+
+The despondency with which she uttered these last words showed where her
+thoughts were tending, and to comfort her, Paula drew up a chair and sat
+down by her side. "You were going to tell me the story of a great love
+and a great devotion. Cannot you do so now?"
+
+The woman started, glanced hastily around, and let her eyes travel to
+Paula's face where they rested with something of their old look of
+secret longing and doubt.
+
+
+"You are the one who wrote the poem," she murmured; "I remember." Then
+with a sudden feverish impulse, leaned forward, and stroking back the
+waving locks from Paula's brow, exclaimed hurriedly, "You look like her,
+you have the same dark hair and wonderful eyes, more beautiful perhaps,
+but like her, O so like her! That is why I made such a mistake." She
+shuddered, with a quick low sob, but instantly subdued her emotion and
+taking Paula's hand in hers continued, "You are young, my daughter;
+youth does not enjoy carrying burdens; can I, a stranger ask you to
+assist me with mine?"
+
+"You may," returned Paula. "If it will give you any relief I will help
+you bear it willingly."
+
+"You will! Has heaven then sent me the aid my failing spirits demand?
+Can I count on you, child? But I will ask for no promise till you have
+heard my story. To no one have I ever imparted the secret of my life,
+but from the first moment I saw your fair young face, I felt that
+through you would come my help, if help ever came to make my final
+moments easier and my last days less bitter." And rising up, she led
+Paula to a door which she solemnly opened. "I am glad that you are
+here," said she. "I could never have asked you to come, but since you
+have braved the dead and crossed this threshold, you must see and know
+the whole. You will understand my story better."
+
+Taking her through a dark passage, she threw wide another door, and the
+parlors of the vanished Japhas opened before them. It was a ghostly
+vision. A weird twilight scene of clustered shadows brooding above
+articles of musty grandeur. In spite of the self-command learned by her
+late experiences, Paula recoiled, saying,
+
+"It is too sad, too lonesome!" But the woman without heeding her,
+hurried her on over the worm-eaten carpet and between the time-worn
+chairs and heavy-browed cabinets, to the hall beyond.
+
+"I have not been here, myself, for a year," said Mrs. Hamlin, glancing
+fearfully up and down the dusky corridor. "It is not often I can brave
+the memories of this spot." And she pointed with one hand towards the
+darkened door at its end, whose spacious if not stately panels gave no
+hint to the eye of the dread bar that crossed it like a line of doom
+upon the outside, and then turning, let her eye fall with still heavier
+significance upon the broad and imposing staircase that rose from the
+centre of the hall to the duskier and more dismal regions above.
+
+"A brave, old fashioned flight of steps is it not! But the scene of a
+curse, my child." And unheeding Paula's shudder, she drew her up the
+stairs.
+
+"See," continued her panting guide as they reached a square platform
+near the top, from which some half dozen or more steps branched up on
+either side. "They do not build like this nowadays. But Colonel Japha
+believed in nothing new, and thought more of his grand old hall and
+staircase, than he did of all the rest of his house. He little dreamed
+of what a scene it would be the witness. But come, it is getting late
+and you must see her room."
+
+It was near the top of the staircase and was fully as musty, faded and
+dismal as the rest. Yet there was an air of expectancy about it, too,
+that touched Paula deeply. From between the dingy hangings of the bed,
+looked forth a pair of downy pillows, edged with yellowed lace, and
+beneath them a neatly spread counterpane carefully turned back over
+comfortable-looking blankets, as one sees in a bed that only awaits its
+occupant; while on the ancient hearth, a pile of logs stood heaped and
+ready for the kindling match.
+
+"It is all waiting you see," said the old lady in a trembling voice,
+"like everything else, just waiting."
+
+There was an embroidery frame in one corner of the room, from which
+looked a piece of faded and half completed work. The needle was hanging
+from it by a thread, and a skein of green worsted hung over the top,
+Paula glanced at it inquiringly.
+
+"It is just as she left it! He never entered the room after she went and
+I would never let it be touched. It is just the same with the piano
+below. The last piece she played is still standing open on the rack. I
+loved her so, and I thought then that a few months would bring her back!
+See, here is her bible. She never used to read it, but she prized it
+because it was her mother's. I have placed it on the pillow where she
+will see it when she comes to lay her poor tired head down to rest." And
+with a reverent hand the aged matron drew the curtains back from the
+open bed, and disclosed the little bible lying thick with dust in the
+centre of the nearest pillow.
+
+"O who was this you loved so well? And why did she leave you?" cried
+Paula with the tears in her eyes, at sight of this humble token.
+
+The aged lady seized her hand and hurried her back into the room below.
+"I will tell you where I have waited and watched so long. Only be
+patient till I light the lamp. It is getting late and any chance
+wanderer going by and seeing all dark, might think I had forgotten my
+promise and was not here."
+
+
+
+
+XXV.
+
+JACQUELINE.
+
+    "The cold in clime are cold in blood,
+    And love as scarce deserves the name,
+    But mine is like the lava flood
+    That burns in Etna's breast of flame."
+
+    --BYRON.
+
+
+
+"There are some men that have the appearance of being devoid of family
+affection, who in reality cherish it in the deepest and most passionate
+degree. Such a man was Colonel Japha. You have doubtless heard from your
+cradle what the neighbors thought of this stately, old fashioned
+gentleman. He was too handsome in his youth, too proudly reticent in his
+manhood, too self-contained and unrelenting in his age, not to be the
+talk of any town that numbered him among its inhabitants. But only from
+myself, a relative of the family and his housekeeper for years, can you
+learn with what undeviating faith and love he clung to the few upon whom
+he allowed his heart to fasten in affection. When he married Miss Carey,
+the world said, 'He has chosen a beauty, because fine manners and a
+pretty face look well behind the Japha coffee-urn!' But we, that is,
+this same young wife and myself, knew that in marrying her he had taken
+unto himself his other half, the one sweet woman for whom his proud
+heart could beat and before whom his stately head could bow. When she
+died, the world exclaimed, 'He will soon fill her place!' But I who
+watched the last look that passed between them in the valley of the
+shadow of that death, knew that the years would come and the years would
+go without seeing Colonel Japha marry again.
+
+"The little babe whom she left to his care, took all the love which he
+had left. From the moment it began to speak, he centered in its tiny
+life all the hope and all the pride of his solitary heart. And the Japha
+pride was nearly as great as the Japha heart. She was a pretty child;
+not a beauty like her mother or like you, my dear, who however so nearly
+resemble her. But for all that, pretty enough to satisfy the eyes of her
+secretly doting father, and her openly doting nurse and cousin. I say
+secretly doting father. I do not mean by that that he regarded her with
+an affection which he never displayed, but that it was his way to lavish
+his caresses at home and in the privacy of her little nursery. He never
+made a parade of anything but his pride. If he loved her, it was enough
+for her to know it. In the street and the houses of their friends, he
+was the strict, somewhat severe father, to whom her childish eyes lifted
+at first with awe, but afterwards with a quiet defiance, that when I
+first saw it, made my heart stand still with unreasoning alarm.
+
+"She was so reserved a child and yet so deeply passionate. From the
+beginning I felt that I did not understand her. I loved her; I have
+never loved any mortal as I did her--and do; but I could not follow her
+impulses or judge of her feelings by her looks.
+
+"When she grew older it was still worse. She never contradicted her
+father, or appeared in any open way to disobey his commands, or thwart
+him in his plans. Yet she always did what she pleased, and that so
+quietly, he frequently did not observe that matters had taken any other
+direction, than that which he had himself ordained. 'It is her mother's
+tact,' he used to say. Alas it was something more than that; it was her
+father's will united to the unscrupulousness of some forgotten ancestor.
+
+"But with the glamour of her eighteen years upon me, I did not recognize
+this then, any more than he. I saw her through the magic glasses of my
+own absorbing love, and tremble as I frequently would in the still scorn
+of her unfathomable passion, I never dreamed she could do anything that
+would seriously offend her father's affection or mortify his pride. The
+truth is, that Jacqueline did not love us. Say what you will of the
+claims of kindred, and the right of every father to his childrens'
+regard, Jacqueline Japha accepted the devotion that was lavished upon
+her, but she gave none in return. She could not, perhaps. Her father was
+too cold in public and too warm in his home-bursts of affection. I was
+plain and a widow; no mate for her in age, condition or estate. She
+could neither look up to me nor lean upon me. I had been her nurse in
+childhood and though a relative, was still a dependent; what was there
+in all that to love! If her mother had lived--But we will not dwell on
+possibilities. Jacqueline had no mother and no friend that was dear
+enough to her, to teach her unwilling soul the great lesson of
+self-control and sacrifice.
+
+
+"You will say that is strange. That situated as she was, she ought to
+have found friends both dear and congenial; but that would be to declare
+that Jacqueline was like others of her age and class, whereas she was
+single and alone; a dark-browed girl, who allured the gaze of both men
+and women, but who cared but little for any one till--But wait, child. I
+shall have to speak of matters that will cause your cheeks to blush. Lay
+your head down on my knee, for I cannot bear the sight of blushes upon a
+cheek more innocent than hers."
+
+With a gentle movement she urged Paula to sit upon a little stool at her
+feet, pressed the young girl's head down upon her lap, and burying the
+lovely brow beneath her aged hands, went hurriedly on.
+
+"You are young, dear, and may not know what it is to love a man.
+Jacqueline was young also, but from the moment she returned home to us
+from a visit she had been making in Boston, I perceived that something
+had entered her life that was destined to make a great change in her;
+and when a few weeks later, young Robert Holt from Boston, came to pay
+his respects to her in her father's house, I knew, or thought I did,
+what that something was. We were sitting in this room I remember, when
+the servant-girl came in, and announced that Mr. Holt was in the parlor.
+Jacqueline was lying on the sofa, and her father was in his usual chair
+by the table. At the name, Holt, the girl rose as if it had suddenly
+thundered, or the lightning had flashed. I see her now. She was dressed
+in white--though it was early fall she still clung to her summer
+dresses--her dark hair was piled high, and caught here and there with
+old-fashioned gold pins, a splendid red rose burned on her bosom, and
+another flashed crimson as blood from her folded hands.
+
+"'Holt?' repeated the Colonel without turning his head, 'I know no such
+man.'
+
+"'He said he wished to see Miss Jacqueline,' simpered the servant.
+
+"'Oh,' returned the Colonel indifferently. He never showed surprise
+before the servants--and went on with his book, still without turning
+his head.
+
+"I thought if he had turned it, he would scarcely sit there reading so
+quietly; for Jacqueline who had not stirred from her alert and upright
+position, was looking at him in a way no father, least of all a father
+who loved his child as he did her, could have beheld without agitation.
+It was the glance of a tigress waiting for the sight of an inconsiderate
+move, in order to spring. It was wild unconstrainable joy, eying a
+possible check and madly defying it. I shuddered as I looked at her eye,
+and sickened as I perceived a huge drop of blood ooze from her white
+fingers, where they unconsciously clutched a thorn, and drop dark and
+disfiguring upon her virgin garments. At the indifferent exclamation of
+her father, her features relaxed, and she turned haughtily towards the
+girl, with a veiling of her secret delight that already bespoke the
+woman of the world.
+
+"'Tell Mr. Holt that I will see him presently,' said she, and was about
+to follow the girl from the room when I caught her by the sleeve.
+
+"'You will have to change your dress,' said I, and I pointed to the
+ominous blot disfiguring its otherwise spotless white.
+
+"She started and gave me a quick glance.
+
+"'I have a skin like a spider's web," cried she. 'I should never meddle
+with roses.' But I noticed she did not toss the blossom away.
+
+"'Who is this Mr. Holt?' now asked the Colonel suddenly turning, the
+servant having left the room.
+
+"'He is a gentleman I met in Boston,' came from his daughter's lips, in
+her usual light and easy tones. 'He is probably passing through our town
+on his way to Providence, where I was told he did business. His call is
+no more than a formality, I presume.' And with an indifferent little
+smile and nod, she vanished from the room, that a moment before had been
+filled with the threat of her silent passion. The Colonel gave a short
+sigh but returned undisturbed to his book.
+
+"In the course of a few minutes Jacqueline came back. She had changed
+her dress for one as summerlike as the other, but still finer and more
+elaborate. She looked elegant, imperious, but the joy had died out from
+her eyes, and in its place was another expression incomprehensible to
+me, but fully as alarming as any that had gone before. 'Mr. Holt finds
+himself obliged to remain in town over night, and would like to pay his
+respects to you,' said she to her father.
+
+"The Colonel immediately rose, looking very grand as he turned and
+surveyed his daughter with his clear penetrating eye.'
+
+"'You have a lover, have you not?' he asked, laying his hand on her bare
+and beautifully polished shoulder.
+
+"An odd little smile crossed her lip. She looked at her hands on which
+never a ring shone, and coquettishly tossed her head. 'Let the gentleman
+speak for himself,' said she, 'I give no man his title until he has
+earned it.'
+
+"Her father laughed. A lover was not such a dreadful thing in his eyes
+provided he were worthy. And Jacqueline would not choose unworthily of
+course--a Japha and his daughter! 'Well then,' said he, 'let us see if
+he can make good his title; Holt is not a bad name and Boston is not a
+poor place to hail from.' And without more ado, they hurried from the
+room. But the light had all died out from her face! What did it mean?
+
+"At tea time I met the gentleman. He had evidently made his title good.
+I was not only favorably impressed with him but actually struck. Of all
+the high-bred, clear-eyed, polished and kindly gentlemen who had sat
+about the board since I first came into the family in Mrs. Japha's
+lifetime, here was surely the finest, the handsomest and the best; and
+surprised in more ways than one, I was giving full play to my relief and
+exhilaration, when I caught sight of Jacqueline's eye, and felt again
+the cold shudders of secret doubt and apprehension. Smile upon him as
+she would, coquet with him as she did, the flame and the glory that drew
+her like an inspiration to her feet when his name was announced, had
+fled, and left not a shadow behind. Had he failed in his expressions of
+devotion? Was he hard or cold or severe, under all that pleasant and
+charming manner? Had the hot soul of our motherless child rushed upon
+ice, and in the shock of the dreadful chill, fallen inert? No, his looks
+bespake no coldness; they dwelt upon Jacqueline's lovely but inscrutable
+face, with honest fervor and boundless regard. He evidently loved her
+most passionately, but she--if it had not been for that first moment of
+unconscious betrayal, I should have decided that she cared for him no
+more than she did for the few others who had adored her, in the short
+space of her incomprehensible life.
+
+"The mystery was not cleared up when she came to me that night with a
+short, 'How do you like my lover, Margery?' I was forty years her
+senior, but she always called me Margery.
+
+"'I think he is the finest, most agreeable man I ever met,' said I. 'Is
+he your lover, Jacqueline? Are you going to marry him?'
+
+"She turned about from the vase which she was denuding of its flowers,
+and gave me one of her sphinx-like looks. 'You must ask papa,' said she.
+'He holds the destinies of the Japhas in his hand, does he not?'
+
+"'Does he?' I involuntarily whispered to myself; following the steady
+poise of her head and the assured movements of her graceful form, with a
+glance of doubt, but loving her all the same, O loving her all and ever
+the same!
+
+"'Your father is not the man to cross you when the object of your
+affections is as worthy as this gentleman. He loved your mother too
+fondly.'
+
+"'He did?' She had turned quick as a flash and was looking me straight
+in the eyes.
+
+"'I never saw such union!' I exclaimed, vaguely remembering that her
+mother's name had always seemed to have power to move her. 'There was no
+parade of it before the world; but here at their own fireside, it was
+heart to heart and soul to soul. It was not love it was assimilation.'
+
+"The young girl rose upon me like a flame; her very eyes seemed to dart
+fire; her lips looked like living coals; she was almost appalling in her
+terrible beauty and superhuman passion. 'Not love!' she exclaimed, her
+every word falling like a burning spark, 'not love but assimilation! Yet
+do you suppose if I told my father that my soul had found its mate; my
+heart its other half; that this, _this_ nature,' here she struck her
+breast as she would a stone, 'had at last found its master; that the
+wayward spirit of which you have sometimes been afraid, was become a
+part of another's life, another's soul, another's hope, do you suppose
+he would listen? Hush!' she cried, seeing me about to speak. 'You talk
+of love, what do you know of it, what does he know of it, who saw his
+young wife die, yet himself consented to live? Is love a sitting by the
+fire with hand locked in hand while the winter winds rage and the
+droning kettle sings? Love is a going through the fire, a braving of the
+winter winds, a scattering of the soul in sparks that the night and the
+tempest lick up without putting out the germ of the eternal flame.
+Love!' she half laughed; 'O, it takes a soul that has never squandered
+its treasure upon every passing beggar, to know how to love! Do you see
+that star?' It was night as I have said and we were standing near an
+open window. 'It has lost its moorings and is falling; when it descries
+the ocean it will plunge into it; so with some natures, they soar high
+and keep their orbit well, till an invisible hand turns them from their
+course and they fall, to be swallowed up, aye swallowed up, lost and
+buried in the great sea that has awaited them so long.'
+
+
+"'And you love--like this--' I murmured, quailing before the power of
+her passion.
+
+"'Would it not be strange if I did not,' she asked in an altered voice.
+'You say he is everything noble, handsome and attractive.'
+
+"Yes, yes,' I murmured, 'but--'
+
+"She did not wait to hear what lay behind that but. Picking up her
+flowers, she hastily crossed the room. 'Did my young mother shriek from
+joy, when my father's horses ran away with them along that deadly
+precipice at the side of the Southmore road? To lie for a few maddening
+moments on the breast of the man you love, earth reeling beneath you,
+heaven swimming above you, and then with a cry of bliss to fall heart to
+heart, down the hideous gap of some awful gulf, and be dashed into
+eternity with the cry still on your lips, that is what I call love and
+that is what I--'
+
+"She paused, turned upon me the whole splendor of her face, seemed to
+realize to what an extent her impetuosity had lifted the veil with which
+she usually shrouded her bitterly suppressed nature, and calming herself
+with a sudden quick movement, gave me a short mocking courtesy and left
+the room.
+
+"Do you wonder that for half the night I sat up brooding and alive to
+the faintest sounds!
+
+"Next day Mr. Holt called again, and a couple of weeks after--long
+enough to enable Colonel Japha to make whatever inquiries he chose as to
+his claims as a gentleman of means and position--sent a formal entreaty
+for Jacqueline's hand. I had never seen Colonel Japha more moved. His
+admiration for the young man was hearty and sincere. From a worldly
+point of view, as well as from all higher standpoints, the match was one
+of which he could be proud; and yet to speak the word that would
+separate from him the only creature that he loved, was hard as the
+cutting off an arm or the plucking out of an eye. 'Do you think she
+loves him?' asked he of me with a rare condescension of which he was not
+often guilty. 'You are a woman and ought to understand her better than
+I. Do you think she loves him?'
+
+"After the words I had heard her speak, what could I reply but, 'Yes,
+sir; she is of a reserved nature and controls her feelings in his
+presence, but she loves him for all that, with the intensest fervor and
+passion.'
+
+"He repeated again, 'You are a woman and you ought to know.' And then
+called his daughter to him.
+
+"I cannot tell what passed between them, but the upshot of it was, that
+the Colonel despatched an answer to the effect that the father's consent
+would not be lacking, provided the daughter's could be obtained. I
+learned this from Jacqueline herself who brought me the letter to post.
+
+"'You see then, that your father understands,' said I.
+
+"Her rich red lip curled mockingly, but she did not reply.
+
+"Naturally Mr. Holt answered to this communication in person. Jacqueline
+received him with a fitful coquetry that evidently puzzled him, for all
+the distinguishing charm which it added to a beauty apt to be too
+reserved and statue-like. She however took his ring which blazed on her
+finger like a drop of ice on congealed snow. 'I am engaged,' she
+murmured as she passed by my door, 'and to a Holt!' The words rang long
+in my ears; why?
+
+"She desired no congratulations; she permitted nothing to be said about
+her engagement, among the neighbors. She had even taken off her ring
+which I found lying loose in one of her bureau drawers. And no one dared
+to remonstrate, not even her father, punctillious as he was in all
+matters of social etiquette. The fact is, Jacqueline was not the same
+girl she had been before she gave her promise to Mr. Holt. From the
+moment he bade her good-bye, with the remark that he was going away to
+get a golden cage for his bride, she began to reveal a change. The cold
+reserve gave way to feverish expectancy. She trod these rooms as if
+there were burning steels in the floors, she looked from the windows as
+if they were prison bars; night and day she gazed from them yet she
+never went out. The letters she received from him were barely read and
+tossed aside; it was his coming for which she hungered. Her father
+noticed her restless and eager gaze, and frequently sighed. I felt her
+strange removed manner and secretly wept. 'If he does not amply return
+this passion,' thought I, 'my darling will find her life a hell!'
+
+"But he did return it; of that I felt sure. It was my only comfort.
+
+"Suddenly one day the restlessness vanished. Her beauty burst like a
+flame from smoke; she trod like a spirit that hears invisible airs. I
+watched her with amazement till she said 'Mr. Holt comes to-night,' then
+I thought all was explained and went smiling about my work. She came
+down in the afternoon clad as I had never seen her before. She wore one
+of her Boston dresses and she looked superb in it. From the crown of her
+head to the sole of her foot, she dazzled like a moving picture; but she
+lacked one adornment; there was no ring on her finger. 'Jacqueline!'
+cried I, 'you have forgotten something.' And I pointed towards her hand.
+
+"She glanced at it, blushed a trifle as I thought, and pulled it out of
+her pocket. 'I have it,' said she, 'but it is too large,' and she thrust
+it carelessly back.
+
+"At three o'clock the train came in. Then I saw her eye flash and her
+lip burn. In a few minutes later two gentlemen appeared at the gate.
+
+"'Mr. Holt and his brother!' were the words I heard whispered through
+the house. But I did not need that announcement to understand Jacqueline
+at last."
+
+
+
+
+XXVI.
+
+A MAN'S JUSTICE AND A WOMAN'S MERCY.
+
+     "Fair is foul and foul is fair."
+
+     --MACBETH.
+
+
+"Have you ever seen a man whose instantaneous effect upon you was
+electrical; in whose expression, carriage, or manner, there was
+concealed a charm that attracted and interested you, apart from his
+actual worth and beauty? Such a one was Mr. Roger Holt, the gentleman I
+now discerned entering the gate with Jacqueline's lover. It was not that
+he was handsome. He could not for one moment bear any comparison with
+his brother in substantial attraction, and yet when they were both in
+the room, you looked at him in preference to the other, and was vexed
+with yourself for doing so. He seemed to be the younger as he was
+certainly the smaller; yet he took the lead, even in coming up the walk.
+Why had he not taken it in the deeper and more important matter? Was it
+because he did not love her?
+
+"I was not present when Jacqueline greeted her guests and presented Mr.
+Roger Holt to her father. But later in the day I spent a half hour with
+them and saw enough to be able to satisfy myself as to the falsity of my
+last supposition. Never had I seen on a human countenance the evidences
+of a wilder passion than that which informed his features, as he sat in
+the further window of the parlor, presumably engaged in admiring the
+autumn landscape, but really occupied in casting short side-long glances
+at Jacqueline, who sat listening with a superb nonchalence, but with a
+restless gleam in her wandering eye, to the genial talk between her
+acknowledged lover and the Colonel. I half feared he would rise from his
+seat, and flinging himself before her, demand then and there an
+explanation of her engagement.
+
+"But beyond the impatience of those short burning glances, he controlled
+himself well, and it was Jacqueline who moved at last.
+
+"I saw the purpose growing in her eyes long before she stirred. The face
+which had been a mystery to me from her cradle, was in the presence of
+this man, like an open page which all might read. Its letters were
+flame, but that did not make them any less clear. I felt her swaying
+towards him, before an eyelash trembled or a quiver shook her tall form.
+He may have understood her purpose also, for his eye wandered towards
+the open piano. She rose like a queen.
+
+"'Mr. Roger Holt is a singer,' said she in passing her father, 'I am
+going to ask him to give us one of the old ballads you profess to like
+so much.'
+
+"The conversation at once ceased. The Colonel who made no secret of his
+fondness for music, turned at once towards the stranger, with an
+expression of great courtesy. Instantly that gentleman rose, and meeting
+the request of his hostess with a profound bow, proceeded at once to the
+piano. 'He will not leave it till he has spoken to her,' thought I. Nor
+did he, for that very moment as they stood turning her music over, I
+perceived his lips move in a hurried question, to which she as briefly
+responded, whereupon he caught up a sheet of music from the pile, and
+flinging back his head with a victorious smile, began to sing.
+
+"Had I known what lay behind his words, I would have braved everything
+rather than have allowed him to utter a note in that room which had once
+rung with the carols of Jacqueline's mother. But what could I guess of
+the possible evil underlying the natural ebullition of unrestrained
+passion that from some cause of pride or pique, had met with a strange
+inexplicable check. So I sat still, shuddering perhaps, but quiet in my
+corner; while the haunting tones of his strange and thrilling voice,
+rose and fell in the most uncanny of Scottish love songs. Nor did I do
+more than wonder with all my agitated soul, when at the conclusion
+Jacqueline came back, and pausing beside the man to whom she had given
+her troth, looked down in his beaming face and smiled with that overflow
+of delight, which she dared not bestow upon his brother.
+
+"Another little incident of that hour remains engraven upon my memory.
+She had been showing to the gentlemen a rare plant that stood in the
+front parlor window, and was dilating upon its marvels, when Mr. Robert
+Holt, her accepted lover, took in his clasp the small white hand
+wandering so invitingly among the leaves of the huge palm, and glancing
+at the finger which should have worn his ring, looked inquiringly into
+her face.
+
+"'O,' said she, interrupting her little speech to draw away her hand,
+'you miss your diamond? I have it, sir. It lies very safe in my pocket;
+it is a beautiful gem, but _your ring does not fit me_.'
+
+"The way she said those words and the air with which she tossed back her
+head, must have made one heart in that room beat joyously, but it did
+not reassure me or subdue my secret apprehension.
+
+
+"'Not fit!' her lover responded; and begged her to allow him to try it
+on and see, but she shook her head with wilful coquetry, and turning to
+the piano, commenced singing a gay little song that was like silver
+bells, shaken by a sudden and mighty tempest.
+
+"Even the Colonel felt the change in his daughter, though he never
+guessed the cause, and came and went during the evening that followed,
+with certain odd sighs that made my heart ache with strange forebodings.
+Only her lover was unconscious, or if he felt the new and wayward force
+and fire in her manner, attributed it to his own presence and
+unspeakable devotion. Mr. Roger Holt, on the contrary, thoroughly
+understood it. Though he was strangely calm, as calm now as he had
+previously been alert and fiery, he never lost a gleam of her eye in his
+direction, or a turn of her form towards the chair where he sat. But the
+smile with which he contemplated her was not pleasant to me. It was
+informed with self-consciousness, and a certain hard triumph, that made
+it almost sinister. 'She has given her hand to the true man,' I mused,
+'wherever her heart may be. But had she given it?' I began to doubt as I
+began to muse. With that uncontrollable will of hers, she was capable of
+anything; did she intend to break with Robert, now that she had seen
+Roger? I detected no signs of it beyond the evident delight they took in
+each other's presence. They were guilty of no further conversation of a
+secret or intimate character, and when with the striking of the clock at
+ten, Mr. Robert Holt rose to leave, his brother followed without any
+demur, even preceding him in his departure and limiting his farewell to
+a short brotherly pressure of Jacqueline's fair hand.
+
+"But much may be conveyed in a pressure, or so I began to think as I
+heard the low laugh that rippled from Jacqueline's lips as she turned to
+go up to her room; and if I had been her mother--
+
+"But that is not what you want to hear. Enough that I did not follow
+her, that I did not even acquaint Colonel Japha with my fears, that
+indeed I did nothing but lie awake, praying and asking what I ought to
+do. There had been so little said; there had been so little done. A
+word, a sentence between them, the interchange of a couple of songs,
+and--What else that I could communicate to another?
+
+"A week, two weeks passed, and her look of wilful happiness did not fly.
+She was flooded with notes from her accepted lover, whose handwriting I
+had learned by this time to distinguish, but not one, so far as I could
+learn, from any other source; yet her feet tripped lightly through the
+house, and her form had a rich grace in its every movement, that bespoke
+a mind settled in some deep joy or quiet determination. I felt the
+impenetrability of a secretly cherished hope, whenever I looked at her.
+If I had not known to the contrary, I should have said that her
+prospective marriage had become to her a dream of unfathomable delight.
+Whence then came this rapture? Through what communication was born this
+secret hope? I could not guess, I could only watch and wait.
+
+"Meanwhile some random guesses at the truth had been made by the
+neighbors. Jacqueline had a lover. That lover was a gentleman; but the
+Colonel was critical; he had refused his consent and the young people
+had parted. Such was the talk, begotten perhaps by the persistency with
+which Jacqueline remained in the house, and the almost severe look with
+which Colonel Japha trod the streets of his native village, which he
+soon felt would lose all their charm in the departure of his only child.
+I scarcely ventured out more than Jacqueline; for I have but little
+control over my feelings and did not know what I would do, if any one
+should closely press me with questions.
+
+"The unexpected discovery that our pretty young servant girl was in the
+habit of stealing into Jacqueline's room late at night, was the first
+thing that startled me into asking whether or not my supposition was
+true, that Jacqueline received no messages from Mr. Robert Holt. And
+scarcely had I become certain that a clandestine correspondence was
+being carried on between them through the medium of this girl, then the
+climax came, and knowledge on my part and secrecy on hers availed no
+longer.
+
+"It was a day in October. The stoves had been put up in the house, and
+seeing Jacqueline roaming about the halls, in a renewed fit of that
+strange restlessness which had affected her the day before Mr. Roger
+Holt's visit, I went into her room to light a fire, and make everything
+look cheerful before dusk. I found the atmosphere warm, and going to the
+stove, discovered that a fire had been already kindled there, but had
+gone out for want of fuel. I at once commenced to rake away the ashes,
+in order to make preparations for a new one, when I came upon several
+scraps of half burned paper.
+
+"Jacqueline had been burning letters. Do you blame me for picking out
+those scraps and hastening with them to another room, when I tell you
+they were written in a marked and characteristic hand that bore little
+or no resemblance to that of her accepted lover, and that the words
+which flashed first upon my eye were those ominous ones of _my wife_!
+
+"They were three in number, and while more or less discolored and
+irregular, were still legible. Think child with what a thrill of horror
+and sharp motherly anguish, I read such words as 'Love you! I would
+press you in my arms if you were plague-stricken! The least turn of your
+head makes my blood cringe, as if a flame had touched me. I would follow
+you on my knees, if you led me round the world. Let me see Robert take
+your hand again and I will--'
+
+"'Forget you! Do we forget the dagger that has struck us? I am another
+man since--'
+
+"'I will have you if Robert goes mad and your father kills me. That I am
+burdened with a wife, is nothing. What is a wife that I do not--' 'You
+shall be my true wife, my--'
+
+"'To-night then, be ready; I will wait for you at the gate. A little
+resolution on your part, and then--'
+
+"I could read no further. The living, burning truth had forced itself
+upon me, that Jacqueline, our darling, our pride, the soul of our life,
+stood tottering upon the brink of a gulf horrible as the mouth of hell.
+For I never doubted for an instant what her answer would be to this
+entreaty. In all her past life, God pity us, there had been no tokens of
+that immovable hold on virtue, that would save her in such an extremity
+as this. Nevertheless, to make all sure, I flew back to her room, and
+tearing open bureau drawers and closet doors, discovered that her
+prettiest things had been sent away. She was going, then, and on that
+very night! and her father did not even know she was untrue to her
+betrothed lover. The horror of the situation was too much for me; I
+faltered as I left her room, her dainty, maidenly room, and actually
+crouched against the wall like a guilty thing, as I heard the sound of
+her voice singing some maddening strain in the parlors below. What
+should I do? Appeal to her, or warn her father of the frightful peril in
+which his honor and happiness stood? Alas, any appeal to her would be
+useless. In the glare of this awful revelation I had come to a full
+comprehension of her nature. But her father was a man; he could command
+as well as entreat, could even force obedience if all other methods
+failed. To him, then, must I go; but I had rather have gone to the rack.
+He was so proud a man! Had owned to such undeviating trust in his
+daughter's honor, as a Japha and his child! The blow would kill him; or
+daze him so, he might better have been killed. My knees shook under me,
+as I traversed the hall to his little study over the parlor, and when I
+came to the door, I rather fell against it than knocked, so great was my
+own anguish, and so deep my terror of his. He was a ready man and he
+came to the door at once, but upon seeing me, drew back as if his eye
+had fallen upon a phantom.
+
+"'Hush!' said I, scarcely knowing what I uttered; and going in, I closed
+the door and latched it firmly behind me. 'I have come,' said I in a
+voice that made him start, 'to ask you to save your daughter. She is in
+deadly peril; she--' a strain of her song came in at that moment from
+the staircase. She was ascending to her room. He looked at me in a doubt
+of my sanity.
+
+"'Not physical peril,' I stammered, 'but _moral_. She loves madly,
+unreasonably, and with a headlong passion that laughs at every obstacle,
+a man whom neither you nor heaven can look upon with aught but
+execration. She--'
+
+"'Mrs. Hamlin!'--How well I remember his cool, calm voice, so deliberate
+in his impressive moments, so deliberate now, when perhaps she was
+donning hat and shawl for her elopement--'You are laboring under a great
+mistake. Instead of execrating Mr. Holt, I admire him most profoundly.
+Since the time has come for me to give up my daughter, I know of no one
+to whom I would rather surrender her.'
+
+"'But Mr. Holt is not the man,' I cried, half wild in my fear and
+desperation. 'Do you remember the gentleman who came with him on his
+last visit? He called him his brother, and he is I believe, but--'
+
+"The way he turned his grand white forehead towards me at that, made
+every fibre in my being quiver. 'Jacqueline does not love _him_!'
+exclaimed he. How sharp his voice, how changed his eye! I shrank back,
+trembling as I bowed my head, thinking of the word yet to be said.
+
+"'But he won't compare--' he went on with a severe intonation. 'Besides
+her honor is engaged. You are dealing in fancies, Mrs. Hamlin.'
+
+"I tore out of my breast the scraps of paper which had enlightened me so
+horribly, and held them towards him; then bethought myself, and drew
+back. 'I have proof,' said I; 'but first I must tell you that Jacqueline
+is not as good a girl as you have thought her. She is not her mother's
+child in the qualities of love and honor. She is destined to bring a
+great woe upon your head. In her passion for this man, she has forgotten
+your trust in her, the incorruptibility of your name, the honor of your
+house. Be strong, sir, for God is about to smite you in your tenderest
+spot.
+
+"Ah, with what pride he towered upon me! this white-haired, stately
+gentleman before whom I had hitherto held my breath in admiring awe;
+towered upon me though his face was ghostly pale and his hand trembled
+like an aspen as he held it out!
+
+"'Give me the papers you hold there,' cried he. 'Either you are gone
+mad, or else--Who wrote these lines?' he demanded, glancing down upon
+the hard, firm scrawl that blackened the bits of paper I had given him.
+
+"'Mr. Roger Holt,' I returned unhesitatingly. 'I found those bits in
+Jacqueline's stove. Her clothes have been sent away, sir,' I continued
+as I saw his face grow fixed above the scraps he consulted. 'Twilight is
+coming on and--Mr. Roger Holt is a married man!'
+
+"'What!'
+
+"I never saw such a look flash from a human face as that which darted
+from his at that terrible moment. I thought he would have fallen, but he
+only dropped the papers out of his hand. 'Heaven forgive us!' murmured
+I, calmed by a sight of his misery, into some semblance of of
+self-control, 'but we have never understood Jacqueline. She is not to be
+led, sir, by principles or duty. She loves this man, and love with her
+is a stormy wind, capable of sweeping her into any abyss of contumely or
+suffering. If you would save her, kill her love; the death of her lover
+would only transform her into a demon.'
+
+"He looked at me as if I had told him the world had come to an end. 'My
+Jacqueline!' he murmured in a low, incredulous voice of the tenderest
+yearning. 'My Jacqueline!'
+
+"'Oh!' I shrieked, torn by my anguish for him and the terror of her
+escaping while we were yet talking, 'God knows I had rather have died
+than contaminate her by such words as I have uttered. She is dear to me
+as my soul; dearer to me than my life. I have a mother's feeling for
+her, sir. If to fling myself headlong from that window, would delay her
+feet from going down the stairs to meet her guilty lover, I would gladly
+do it. It is her danger makes me speak. O sir, realize that danger and
+hasten before she has taken the irrevocable step.'
+
+"He started like a man pricked by a sudden dart. 'She is going--you
+believe she is going to meet him?'
+
+"'I do,' said I.
+
+"He gave me a terrible look and started for the door. I hurriedly picked
+up the scraps that had fallen to the floor, and rushed around by an
+inner passage-way to my own little room, hiding my head and waiting as
+for the crash of a falling avalanche. Suddenly a cry rose in the hall.
+
+"There are some sounds that lift you unconsciously to your feet. Dashing
+out of my room, I detected the face of the servant-girl whom I have
+before mentioned, looking out of her door some distance down the
+corridor. Hastening towards her, I uttered some words about her being a
+busy-body, and thrusting her inside her room, locked the door upon her.
+Then I hastened with what speed I might to the front of the house, and
+coming out upon the grand staircase, met a sight that shook me to the
+very soul. You have been up the stairs; you know how they branch off to
+left and right from the platform near the top. The left branch led in
+those days to Colonel Japha's room, the right to the apartments occupied
+by Jacqueline and myself. Coming upon them, then, as I did from my side
+of the house, I found myself in full view of the opposite approach, and
+there on the topmost step I beheld Colonel Japha, standing in an
+attitude of awful denunciation, while half way down the staircase, I
+beheld the figure of Jacqueline, hindered in her gliding course towards
+the front door by the terrible, 'Stop!' whose echo had reached me in my
+room and caused me to rush quaking and horrified to this spot. I leaned
+back sick and horror-stricken against the wall. There was no mercy in
+his voice: he had awakened to a full realization of the situation and
+the pride of the Japhas had made him steel.
+
+"'You are my child!' he was saying. 'I have loved you and do still; but
+proceed one step farther towards the man that awaits you at the gate,
+and the door that opens upon you, _shuts_ never to open again!'
+
+"'Colonel!' I exclaimed, starting forward; but he heard me no more than
+he would a fly buzzing or a bird singing.
+
+"'I desire it to shut; I have no wish to come back!' issued from the set
+white lips of the girl beneath us. 'There is no such charm for me in
+this humdrum house, that I should wish to exchange life with the man I
+adore, for its droning, spiritless existence!' And she lifted her foot
+to proceed.
+
+"'Jacqueline!' I shrieked, leaning forward in my turn, and holding her
+by my anguish, as I never believed she could be held by anything,
+'Think, child, think what you do! It is not life you are going to but
+death. A man who can take a young girl from her father's house, from her
+lover's arms, from her mother's grave, from the shrine of all that is
+pure and holy, to dash her into a pit of all that is corrupt, loathsome
+and deadly, is not one with whom you can _live_. You say you adore him:
+can one adore falsehood, selfishness and depravity? Does hypocrisy win
+love? Can the embraces of a serpent bring peace? Jacqueline, Jacqueline,
+you are yet pure; come back to our love and our hearts, before we die
+here in our shame at the head of the stairs, where your mother was
+carried out to her grave!'
+
+"She trembled. I saw the hand that clutched the banister loosen its
+grip; she cast one quick look behind her, and her eyes flashed upon her
+father's face; it was set like a flint.
+
+"'If you come back,' cried he, leaning towards her, but not advancing a
+step from where he stood, 'you must come back of your own free will. I
+will hold no creature prisoner in my house. I must trust you implicitly,
+or not at all. Speak then, which shall it be?' And he raised his hand
+above his head, with a supreme and awful gesture, 'a father's blessing
+or a father's curse?'
+
+"'A father's curse, then! since you command me to choose,' rang out from
+her lips in a burst of uncontrollable passion. 'I want no blessing that
+separates me from _him_!' And she pointed towards the door with a look
+that, defiant as it was, spoke of a terrible love before which all our
+warnings and entreaties were but as empty air.
+
+"'Curses then upon your head, slayer of a family's honor, a father's
+love, and a mother's memory! Curses upon you, at home and abroad! in the
+joy of your first passion and in the agony of your last despair! May you
+live to look upon that door as the gateway to heaven, and find it shut!
+May your children, if you are cursed with them, turn in your face, as
+you are turning now in mine! May the lightning of heaven be your candle,
+and the blackness of death your daily food and your nightly drink!' And
+with a look in which all the terrors he invoked, seemed to crash
+downward from his reeling brain upon her shrinking terror-crouched head,
+he gave one mighty gasp and fell back stricken to the floor.
+
+"'God!' burst from her lips, and she rushed downwards to the door like a
+creature hunted to its quarry. I saw her white face gleam marble-like in
+the fading light that came in from the chinks about the door. I saw her
+trembling hand fumbling with the knob, and rousing from my stupor,
+called down to her with all the force of a breaking heart,
+
+"'Jacqueline, beware!'
+
+"She turned once more. There was something in my voice she could not
+withstand. 'I do not hope to keep you,' cried I, 'but before you go,
+hear this. In the days to come, when the face that now beams upon you
+with such longing, shall have learned to turn from you in weariness, if
+not distaste, when hunger, cold, contumely and disease shall have
+blasted that fair brow and seared those soft cheeks, know, that although
+a father can curse, a woman who loves like a mother can forgive. The
+father cries, 'Once go out of that door and it shuts upon you never to
+open!' 'Once come to _that_ door, say I,' pointing in the direction of
+the house's other entrance, 'and if I live and if I move, it shall open
+to you, were you as defiled and wretched and forsaken as Magdalen.
+Remember! Each day at this hour will I watch for you, kneeling upon its
+threshold. In sickness or in health, in joy or in sorrow, in cold or in
+heat. The hour of six is sacred. Some one of them shall see you falling
+weeping on my breast!'
+
+"She gave me a quick stare out of her wide black eyes, then a mocking
+smile curled her lips, and murmuring a short, 'You rave!' opened the
+door, and rushed out into the falling dusk. With a resounding clang like
+the noise of a stone rolled upon an open grave, the great door swung to,
+and I was left alone in that desolated house with my stricken master.
+
+
+
+
+XXVII.
+
+THE LONE WATCHER.
+
+    "Hark! to the hurried question of Despair,
+    Where is my child?--and Echo answers--Where?"
+
+    --BYRON.
+
+
+"Colonel Japha recovered from his shock, but was never the same man
+again. All that was genial, affectionate and confiding in his nature,
+had been turned as by a lightning's stroke, to all that was hard, bitter
+and suspicious. He would not allow the name of Jacqueline to be spoken
+in his presence; he would listen to no allusion made to those days when
+she was the care and perplexity, but also the light and pleasure of the
+house. Men are not like women, my child; when they turn, it is at an
+angle, the whole direction of their nature changes.
+
+"Perhaps the news that presently came to us from Boston may have had
+something to do with this. It was surely dreadful enough; Jacqueline's
+perfidy had slain her lover. Mr. Robert Holt, the cultured, noble,
+high-souled gentleman, had been found lying dead on the floor of his
+room, a few days after the events I have just related, with a lady's
+diamond ring in his hand and the remnants of a hastily burned letter in
+the grate before him. He had burst a blood-vessel, and had expired
+instantly.
+
+"This sudden and tragic ending of a man of energy and will, was also the
+reason, perhaps, why Grotewell never arrived at the truth of
+Jacqueline's history. Boston was a long way from here in those days, and
+the story of her lover's death was not generally known, while the fact
+of her elopement was. Consequently she was supposed to have fled with
+the man who had been seen to visit her most frequently; a report which
+neither the Colonel nor myself had the courage to deny.
+
+"My child, you have a brow like snow, and a cheek like roses; you know
+little of life's sorrows and little of life's sins. To you the skies are
+blue, the woods vernal, the air balmy; the sad looks upon men's and
+women's faces, tell but shallow tales of the ceaseless grinding of grief
+in their pent up souls. But you are gentle, and you have an imagination
+that goes beyond your experience; perhaps if you pause and think, you
+can understand what a tale could be told of the weeks and months and
+years that now followed, without hint or whisper of the fate of her who
+had gone out from amongst us with the brand of her father's curse upon
+her brow. At first we hoped, yes, _he_ hoped,--I could see it in his
+eyes when there came a sudden ring at the bell,--that some sign of her
+penitence, or some proof of her existence, would come to relieve the
+torture of our fears, if not the shame of our memories. But the door
+that closed upon her on that fatal eve, had shut without an echo. While
+we vainly waited, time had ample leisure to carve the furrows of age as
+well as of suffering on the Colonel's once smooth brow, and to change my
+daily vigil into a custom of despair, rather than of hope. Time had also
+leisure to rob us of much of our worldly goods and to make our continued
+living in this grand old house, an act that involved constant care and
+the closest economy. That we were enabled to preserve appearances to the
+day that beheld the Colonel laid low by the final stroke of his dread
+disease, was only due to the secret charity of a certain gentleman, who,
+declaring he was indebted to us, secretly supplied me with means of
+support.
+
+"But of all this you care little.
+
+"You had rather hear about the evening watch with its hopeful assurance,
+'Yet another day and she will be here,' to be followed so soon by the
+despairing acknowledgement, 'Yet another day and she has not come!' or
+of those dark hours when the Colonel lay blank and white upon his
+pillow, with his eyes fixed on the door which would never open to the
+beating of a daughter's heart, while the gray shadow of an awful
+resolution deepened upon his immovable face. What that resolution was I
+could not know, but I feared it, when I saw what a sternness it gave to
+his eye, what a fixedness to his set and implacable lip; and when in the
+waning light of a certain December afternoon, the circle of neighbors
+about his bed gave way to the stiff and forbidding form of Mr. Phelps, I
+felt a thrill of mortal apprehension and only waited to hear the short,
+'It shall be done,' of the lawyer to some slowly whispered command of
+the colonel, to rise from my far off corner and stand ready to accost
+Mr. Phelps as he came from the bedside of the dying man.
+
+"'What is it?' I asked, rushing up to him as he issued forth into the
+hall, and seizing him by the arm, with a woman's unreasoning
+impetuosity. 'I have nursed his daughter on my knee; tell me, then, what
+it is he has ordered you to do in this final moment?'
+
+"Mr. Phelps for all his ungainly bearing, is not a hard-hearted man, as
+you know, and he doubtless saw the depth of the misery that made me
+forget myself. Giving me a look that was not without its touch of
+sarcasm, he replied, 'The colonel has made me promise, to see that a
+plank is nailed across the front door of this house, after his body has
+been carried out to burial.'
+
+"A board across the front door! His anger then was implacable. The
+withering curse that had rung in my ears for ten years, was to outlive
+his death! With a horrified groan, I pressed my hands over my eyes and
+rushed back. My first glimpse of the Colonel's face showed me that the
+end was at hand, but that fact only made more imperative my consuming
+desire to see that curse removed, even though it were done with his
+final breath. Drawing near his bedside, I leaned down, and waiting till
+his eye wandered to my face, asked him if there was nothing he wished
+amended before his strength failed. He understood me. We had not sat for
+so long, face to face across the chasm of a hideous memory, without
+knowing something of the workings of each other's mind. Glancing up at
+his wife's portrait which ever faced him as he lay upon his pillow, his
+mouth grew severe and he essayed to shake his head. I at once pointed to
+the portrait.
+
+"'What will you say to her when she meets you on the borders of heaven?'
+I demanded with the courage of despair.' She will ask, 'Where is my
+child?' And what will you reply?'
+
+
+"The fingers that lay upon the coverlid moved spasmodically; he eyed me
+with a steady deepening stare, awful to meet, fearful to remember. I
+went on steadily; 'She has gone out of this house with your curse; tell
+me that if she comes back, she may be greeted with your forgiveness.'
+Still that awful stare which changed not. 'I have watched and waited for
+her every day since her departure,' I whispered, 'and shall watch and
+wait for her, every day until I die. Shall a stranger's love be greater
+than a father's?' This time his lips twitched and the grey shadow
+shifted, but it did not rise. 'I had sworn to do it,' I went on. 'When
+you lay there at the top of the stairs, smitten down by your first
+shock, I told her, come sickness, come health, I should keep a daily
+vigil at that door of the house which your severity had not closed upon
+her; and I have kept my word till now and shall keep it to the end. What
+will you do for this miserable child of whose being you are the author?'
+
+"With indescribable anxiety I paused and watched him, for his lips were
+moving. 'Do for her?' he repeated.
+
+"How awful is the voice of the dying! I shivered as I listened, but drew
+near and nearer, that I might lose no word that came from his stony
+lips.
+
+"'She will not come,' gasped he, with an effort that raised him up in
+bed, and deepened that horrible stare, 'but--'
+
+"Who shall say what he might have uttered if Death's hand had delayed a
+single instant, but the inexorable shadow fell, and he never finished
+the sentence.
+
+"My child, these are frightful things for you to hear. God knows I would
+not assail your pure ears with a tale like this, if it were not for the
+help and sympathy I hope to gain from you. Sin is a hideous thing; the
+gulf it opens is wide and deep; well may it be said to swallow those who
+trust themselves above its flower-hung brink. But we who are human, owe
+something to humanity. Love stops not because of the gulf; love follows
+the sinner with wilder and more heart-breaking longing, the deeper and
+deeper he sinks into the illimitable darkness. Ten years have passed
+since we laid the Colonel away in the burying-place of all the Japhas,
+and dutiful to his last request, nailed up the front door of his
+speedily to be forsaken mansion. In all that time my watch has remained
+unbroken in this house, which by will he had left to me, but which I
+secretly hold in trust for her. The hour of six has found me at my post,
+sometimes elate with hope, sometimes depressed with repeated
+disappointments, but whether hopeful or sad, always trustful that the
+great God who Himself so loved all sinners, that He gave the life of His
+Son to rescue them, would ultimately grant me the desire of my heart.
+But the decrepitude of age is coming upon me, and each morning I leave
+my bed, with growing fear lest my infirmities will increase until they
+finally overcome my resolution. Child, if this should happen, if lying
+in my bed I should some day hear that she had come back, and failing to
+find the lamp burning and the welcome ready, had gone away again--But
+the thought is madness. I cannot bear it. A sinner, lost, degraded,
+suffering, starving, perhaps, is wandering this way. She is hardened and
+old in guilt; she has drunk the cup of life's passions and found them
+corrupting poison; all that was lovely and pure and good has withdrawn
+from her; she stands alone, shut off by her sin, like a wild thing in a
+circle of flame. What shall touch this soul? The preacher's voice has no
+charm for her; good men's advice is but empty air. God's love must be
+mirrored in human love, to strike an eye so unused to looking up. Where
+shall she find such love? It is all that can rescue her; love as great
+as her sin, as boundless as her degradation, as persistent as her
+suffering. Child--"
+
+"I know what you are going to say," suddenly exclaimed Paula, rising up
+and confronting Mrs. Hamlin with a steady high look of determination.
+"In the day of your weakness or illness you want some one to unlock the
+door and light the lamp. You have found her!"
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII.
+
+SUNSHINE ON THE HILLS.
+
+    "If I speak to thee in Friendship's name,
+      Thou think'st I speak too coldly;
+    If I mention Love's devoted flame,
+      Thou say'st I speak too boldly."
+
+
+    --MOORE.
+
+
+The story told by Mrs. Hamlin had a great effect upon Paula, not only on
+account of its own interest and the promise it had elicited from her,
+but because of the remembrances it revived of Mr. Sylvester and her life
+in New York. Any vision of evil or suffering, any experience that roused
+the affections or awakened the sensibilities, could not fail to recall
+to her mind the forcible figure of Mr. Sylvester as he stood that day by
+his own hearthstone, talking of the temptations that assail humanity;
+and any reminiscence of him must necessarily bring with it much that
+charmed and aroused. For a week, then, she felt the effect of a great
+unsettlement. Her village home appeared a prison; she longed to run,
+soar--anything to escape; the horizon was full of beckoning hands. A
+brooding melancholy settled upon her reveries; the prospect of a life
+spent in the narrow circle to which she had endeavored to re-accustom
+herself, became unendurable.
+
+Thus it is with us. We slide in a groove and seem happy, when suddenly a
+book we read, a story we hear, an experience we encounter, shakes us out
+of our content, and makes continuance in the old course a violation of
+the most demanding instincts of our nature.
+
+In the full tide of this unrest, Paula went out for a solitary walk on
+the hills. Nature can soothe if she cannot satisfy. Then the day itself
+was one to make the soul glad and the heart rejoice. As the young girl
+trod the meadows, she wondered that she could be sad. Earth and air were
+so full of splendor. Nature seemed to be in league with the angels of
+light. September stood upon the earth like a goddess of might and glory.
+Every tint of green that variegated the mountain-side, wooed the eye
+with suggestions of unfathomable beauty. A bough of scarlet flame lit
+here and there amid the verdure, served to illuminate the woods as for
+the passage of a king; and not Solomon in all his glory ever wore an
+aspect more sumptuous than the flowers that flecked the meadow and
+fringed the hardy roadside with imperial purple. A wind was blowing, a
+keen but kindly breeze, laden with sweetness and alert to awaken Æolian
+airs from the boughs of whistling beech and alder. Even the low field
+grasses seemed to partake in the general cheer, and nodded to each other
+with a witching and irresistible abandon. Had a poet been at her side,
+or any one capable of divining the hidden things of nature, what a
+commentary to all their united thoughts she would have found in the
+delicious tremble of the laughing leaves, in the restless music of the
+runaway brooks, in the lowly crickets with their single song, in the
+cloud-haunting birds with their trailing melodies, and in all the roll
+and rumble of earth's commingled noises. Alluring as was the book of
+nature, she could not read it alone. She felt the lack of a loving hand
+to turn the page. "Is it that I am lonely!" she murmured.
+
+The thought deepened her trouble. Coming down from the hillside, she
+entered a skirting of woods that ran along by the river. Here she had
+always found peace and some of her richest treasures of thought. Through
+this opaline archway she had walked with her fancies, like Saint
+Catherine with her lily. It was sacred to all that was sweet and deep
+and pure within her. "Lonely!" she whispered; "I will not be lonely. To
+some God gives years of happy companionship; to others but a day. Shall
+one complain because it has fallen to his portion to have the lesser
+share? I will remember my one day and be glad."
+
+"My one day!" She caught herself at the utterance and literally started
+at the suggestion it offered. There was but one person whom she had seen
+but for a day. Could she have been thinking of him?
+
+With a flush deep as the autumn leaves she carried, she was hurrying on,
+when suddenly in the opening before her, a shadow fell, and a mellow
+voice exclaimed in her ear,
+
+"Do I meet Miss Fairchild in her native woods?"
+
+It was Clarence Ensign.
+
+The surprise was very great and it took her a moment to steady herself.
+She had felt so assured that she should never see him or any other of
+her New York friends again. Had not Cicely written that he had gone
+West, soon after her own departure from New York. With a deepening of
+his voice Mr. Ensign repeated the question.
+
+At once the day seemed to acquire all it had hitherto lacked. Looking
+up, she met his eye fixed admiringly upon her, and all that was merry,
+lightsome and gay within her, leaped at once to the surface. Ignoring
+his question with smiling abandon, she exclaimed,
+
+"What shall be done to the man who delights in surprises and startles
+timid maidens without a cause?"
+
+"He shall be held in captivity by the hand of his denouncer, until he
+has sued for pardon and obtained her generous forgiveness," returned he,
+holding out his palm.
+
+She barely touched it with her own. "I see that your repentance is
+sincere, so your pardon shall be speedy," laughed she.
+
+"Your discrimination is at fault, I never felt more impenitent in my
+life. I am a hardened wretch, Miss Fairchild, a hardened wretch! But you
+do not ask me from what corner of the earth I have come. You take me too
+much for granted; like the chirrup of a squirrel, let me say, or the
+whistle of a bullfinch. But perhaps you think I inhabit these woods?"
+
+"No; but a day like this is so full of miracles, why should we be
+astonished at one more! I suppose you came on the train, but should not
+be surprised to hear you started, like Pluto, from the earth. Anything
+seems possible in such a sunshine."
+
+"You are right, and I have sprung from the earth. I have been buried
+five mortal months in a law-suit out west, or else I should have been
+here before. I hope my delay has made me none the less welcome."
+
+He was holding back a branch as he spoke, and his eyes were on a level
+with hers. She felt caught as in a net, and struggled vainly to keep
+down her color. "No," said she, "welcome is a guest's due, whether he
+come early or late. I should be sorry to be lacking in the duties of a
+hostess, though my drawing-room is somewhat more spacious than cosy,"
+she continued, looking around on the fields into which they had emerged,
+"and my facilities for bespeaking you welcome greater than my power to
+make you comfortable."
+
+"Comfort is a satisfaction of the mind, rather than of the body. I am
+not _un_comfortable, Miss Fairchild." Then as he stooped to relieve her
+of half her burden of trailing leaves and flowers, he exclaimed in a
+matter-of-fact tone, "Your aunt is a notable woman, Miss Fairchild, I
+admire her greatly."
+
+"What!" said she, "you have been to the cottage? You have seen Aunt
+Belinda?"
+
+"Of course," laughed he, "or how should I be here? You have been sent
+for, Miss Fairchild, and I am the humble bearer of your aunt's commands.
+But I forget, the practical has nothing to do with such a day. I am
+supposed to have sprung from the ground, and to know by instinct, just
+in what nook you were hiding from the sunlight. Very well. I acknowledge
+that instinct is sometimes capable of going a great way."
+
+But this time her ready answer was lacking. She was wondering what her
+aunt would think of this sudden appearance of a stranger whose name she
+had never so much as mentioned.
+
+"It is a pleasant rest to stand and look at a view like that, after a
+summer of musty labor," said he, gazing up the river with a truly
+appreciative eye. "I do not wonder you carry the charm of the wild woods
+in your laugh and glance, if you have been brought up in the sight of
+such a view as that."
+
+"It has been my meat and drink from childhood," said she, and wondered
+why she wanted to say no more upon her favorite theme.
+
+"Yet you tell me you love the city?"
+
+"Too much to ever again be happy here."
+
+It was a slip for which her cheek burned and her lids fell, the moment
+after. She had been thinking of Mr. Sylvester, and unconsciously spake
+as she might have done, if he had been at her side, instead of this
+genial-hearted young man. With a woman's instinctive desire to retrieve
+herself, she hurriedly continued, "Life is so full and large and deep in
+a great town, if you are only happy enough to meet those who are its
+blood and brain and sinew. One misses the rush of the great wheel of
+time in a spot like this. The world moves, but we do not feel it; it is
+like the quiet sweep of the stars over our heads. But in the city, days,
+weeks and months make themselves felt. The universe jars under the feet
+of hurrying masses. The story of the world is being written on pavement,
+corridor, and dome, so that he who runs may read. One realizes he is
+alive; the unit is part of the multiple. To those who are tired, God
+gives the rest of the everlasting hills, but to those who are eager, he
+holds out the city with its innumerable opportunities and incentives.
+And I am eager," she said. "The flower blooms on the mountain, and its
+perfume is sweet, but the chariot sings as it rushes, and the noise of
+its wheels is music in my ears."
+
+She paused, turned her face to the breeze, and seemed to forget she was
+not alone. Clarence Ensign eyed her with astonishment; he had never
+heard her speak like this; the earnest side of her great nature had
+never been turned towards him before, and he felt himself shrink into
+insignificance in its presence. What was he that he should pluck a star
+from the heavens, to buckle on his breast! Wealth and position were a
+match for beauty great as hers, and a kind heart current coin all the
+world over, for a gentle disposition and a loving nature; but for
+this--He turned away and in his abstraction switched his foot with his
+cane.
+
+"Then it was in New York that I met Cicely," exclaimed Paula.
+
+He shook off his broodings, turned with a manful gesture, and met her
+sweet unfathomable eye, so brilliant with enthusiasm a moment ago, but
+at this instant so softly deep and tender.
+
+"And the friendship of Miss Stuyvesant is a precious thing to you?" said
+he.
+
+"Few things are more so," was her reply.
+
+He bit his lip and his brow grew lighter. After all, great souls
+frequently cling to those of lesser calibre, provided they are true and
+unflawed. He would not be discouraged. But his tone when he spoke had
+acquired a reverence that did not lessen its music. "You are, then, one
+of the few women who believe in friendship?"
+
+"As I believe in heaven."
+
+Looking at her, he took off his hat. Her eye stole to his serious
+countenance. "Miss Stuyvesant is to be envied," said he.
+
+"Are friends so rare?"
+
+"Such friends are," said he.
+
+She gave him a bright little look. "Had you been with Miss Stuyvesant,
+and she had expressed herself as I have done, you would have said, 'Miss
+Fairchild is to be envied,' and you would have been nearer the truth
+than now. Cicely's friendship is to mine what an unbroken mirror is to a
+little racing brook. It reflects but one image, while mine--" She could
+not go on. How could she explain to this stranger that Cicely's heart
+was undivided in its regard, while hers owned allegiance to more than
+her bosom friend.
+
+"If I were with Miss Stuyvesant now," he declared, too absorbed in his
+own ideas to notice the break in hers, "I should still say in face of
+this friendship, 'Miss Stuyvesant is to be envied.' I have no mind for
+more than one thought to-day," exclaimed he, with a look that made her
+tremble.
+
+There are some men who never know in what field to stay the current of
+their impetuosity: Clarence Ensign did. He said no more than this of all
+that was seething in his mind and heart. He felt that he must prove
+himself a man, before he exercised a man's privilege. Besides, his
+temperament was mercurial, and never remained long under the bondage of
+a severe thought, or an impressive tone of mind. He worshipped the
+lofty, but it was with tabor and cymbal and high-sounding lute. A climb
+over the stile at the foot of the hill was enough to restore him to
+himself. It was therefore with merry eyes and laughing lips that they
+approached the house and entered Miss Belinda's presence.
+
+There are some persons whose prerogative it is to carry sunshine with
+them wherever they go. Clarence Ensign was one of these. Without an
+effort, without any display of incongruous hilarity, he always succeeded
+by the mere joyousness of his own nature, in calling forth all that was
+bright and enjoyable in others. When therefore they stepped into the
+quaint old-fashioned parlor, all prepared to receive them, Paula was not
+surprised to perceive it brighten, and her aunts' faces grow cheerful
+and smiling. Who could meet Clarence Ensign's laughing eye and not
+smile? What did astonish her, however, was the sight of an elegant
+basket of hot-house lowers perched on a table in the centre of the room.
+It made her pause, and cast looks of inquiry at the demure countenance
+of Miss Abby, and the quietly satisfied expression of her more
+thoughtful aunt.
+
+"A remembrance from the city!" said Mr. Ensign gracefully. "I thought it
+might help to recall some happy hours to you."
+
+With a swelling of the heart which she could not understand, she leaned
+over the ample cluster of roses and heliotrope. She felt as though she
+could embrace them; they were more than flowers, they were the visible
+emblem of all she had missed, and for which she had longed these many
+months.
+
+"I seem to receive the whole in the part," said she.
+
+He may or may not have understood her, but he saw she was gratified, and
+that was sufficient. The afternoon flew by on wings of light. Miss
+Belinda, who was not accustomed to holidays, but who thoroughly
+appreciated them when they came, entered into the conversation with
+zest; while Miss Abby's unconscious expressions of pleasure were too
+_naïve_ not to add to, rather than detract from the general enjoyment.
+The twilight, with its good-bye, came all too soon.
+
+"I have a request to make before I go," said Mr. Ensign. He was standing
+alone with Paula in the embrasure of the window, a few moments before
+his departure. "When we see a flower nodding on a ledge above our heads,
+we long for it; I have heard you talk of friendship, and a great desire
+has seized me. Miss Fairchild will you be my friend?"
+
+She gave him a startled glance that, however, soon settled into a mellow
+radiant look of sympathy and pleasure.
+
+"That is asking for something which if I hesitate to accord, it is
+because the word, 'friend,' carries with it so much," said she, with a
+sweet seriousness that disarmed her words of any latent sting they might
+otherwise have contained.
+
+"I know it," he replied, "and I am very bold to ask it upon so slight an
+acquaintance; but life is short and real treasure is so scarce. You will
+not deny me, Miss Fairchild?" Then seeing her look down, hastily
+continued, "I have acquaintances by the score--friends who style
+themselves thus, by the dozen, but no _friend_. I want one; I want you
+for that one. Will you be it? I shall be jealous though, I warn you," he
+went on, with a cropping out of his mirthful nature; "I shall not be
+pleased to observe the circle widened indefinitely. I shall want my own
+place and no one else in my place."
+
+"No one else can fill the place once given to a friend. Each one has his
+own niche."
+
+"And I am to have mine?" His look was firm, his eye steadfast.
+
+"Yes," she breathed.
+
+With a proud stooping of his head, he took her hand and kissed it. The
+action became him; he was tall and well made, and gallantry induced by
+feeling, sat well upon him. In spite of herself, she thought of old-time
+stories of the Norse chivalry; he stood so radiant and bent so low.
+
+
+"I shall prize my friend at her queenly value," said he; and without
+more ado, uttered his farewell and took his departure.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Paula!"
+
+The young girl started from a reverie which had held her for a long time
+enchained at that fast darkening window, and hastily looking up,
+perceived her Aunt Belinda standing before her, with her eye fixed upon
+her face, with a kind but searching glance.
+
+"Yes, aunt."
+
+"You have not told me who this Mr. Ensign is. In all the letters you
+wrote me you did not mention his name, I think."
+
+"No, aunt. The fact is, I did not meet him until a few days before I
+left, and then only for an evening, you might say."
+
+"Indeed! that one evening seems to have made its impression. Tell me
+something about him, Paula."
+
+"His own countenance speaks for him better than I can, aunt. He is good
+and he is kind; an honest young man, who need fear the eye of no one. He
+is wealthy, I am informed, and the son of highly respected parents. He
+was first presented to me by Miss Stuyvesant, whose friend he is,
+afterwards by Mr. Sylvester. His coming here was a surprise to me."
+
+Miss Belinda's firm mouth, which had expanded at this dutiful response,
+twitched with a certain amused expression over this last announcement.
+Eying her niece with unrelenting inquiry, she pursued, "You have not
+been happy for the last few weeks, Paula. Our life seems narrow to you;
+you long to fly away to larger fields and more expansive skies."
+
+With a guilty droop of her head, Paula stole her hand into that of her
+aunt's.
+
+"I do not wonder," continued Miss Belinda, still watching the flushing
+cheek and slightly troubled mouth of the lovely girl before her. "I once
+breathed other air myself, and know well what charms lie beyond these
+mountains. In giving you up for awhile, I gave you up forever, I fear."
+
+"No, no," whispered the young girl, "I am always yours wherever I go.
+Not that I am going away," she hastily murmured.
+
+Her aunt smiled and gently stroked her niece's hand. "When the time
+comes, I shall bid you God speed, Paula. I am no ogress to tie my dove's
+wings to her nest. Love and the home it provides are the natural lot of
+women. None feel it more than those who have missed both."
+
+"Aunt!" Paula was shocked and perplexed. A breaking wave full of doubts
+and possibilities, seemed to dash over her at this suggestion.
+
+"Young men of judgment and principle do not come so many miles to see a
+youthful maiden, without a purpose," continued her aunt inexorably. "You
+know that, do you not, Paula?"
+
+"Yes; but the purpose may differ in different cases," returned the young
+girl hurriedly. "I would not like to believe that Mr. Ensign came here
+with the one you give him credit for--not yet. You trouble me, aunt,"
+pursued she, glancing tremulously about. "It is like opening a great
+door flooded with sunshine, upon eyes scarcely strong enough to bear the
+glimmer sifting through its cracks. I feel humiliated and--" She did not
+finish, perhaps her thought itself was incomplete.
+
+"If a light comes sifting through the cracks, I am satisfied," said her
+aunt in a lighter tone than common. And she kissed her niece, and went
+smiling out of the room, murmuring to herself,
+
+"I have been over-fearful; everything is coming right."
+
+There are moments when life's great mystery overpowers us; when the
+riddle of the soul flaunts itself before us unexplained, and we can do
+no more than stand and take the rush of the tide that comes sweeping
+down upon us. Paula was not the girl she was before she went to New
+York. Love was no longer a dreamy possibility, a hazy blending of the
+unknown and the fancied; its tale had been too often breathed in her
+ear, its reality made too often apparent to her eye. But love to which
+she could listen, was as new and fresh and strange, as a world into
+which her foot had never ventured. That her aunt should point to a
+certain masculine form, no matter how attractive or interesting, and
+say, "Love and home are the lot of women," made her blood rush back on
+her heart, like a stream from which a dam has been ruthlessly wrenched
+away. It was too wild, too sudden; a friend's name was so much easier to
+speak, or to contemplate. She did not know what to do with her own
+heart, made to speak thus before its time; its beatings choked her;
+everything choked her; this was a worse imprisonment than the other.
+Looking round, her eye fell upon the flowers. Ah, was not their language
+expressive enough, without this new suggestion? They seemed to lose
+something in this very gain. She liked them less she thought, and yet
+her feet drew near, and near, and nearer, to where they stood, exhaling
+their very souls out in delicious perfume. "I am too young!" came from
+Paula's lips. "I will not think of it!" quickly followed. Yet the smile
+with which she bent over the fragrant blossoms, had an ethereal beauty
+in it, which was not all unmixed with the
+
+    "Light that never was on land or sea,
+    The consecration and the poet's dream."
+
+"He has asked to be my friend," murmured she, as she slowly turned away.
+"It is enough; it must be enough." But the blossom she had stolen from
+the midst of the fragrant collection, seemed to whisper a merry nay, as
+it nodded against her hand, and afterwards gushed out its sweet life on
+her pure young breast.
+
+
+
+
+XXIX.
+
+MIST IN THE VALLEY.
+
+     "The true beginning of our end."
+
+     --MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM.
+
+
+Mr. Ensign was not slow in developing his ideas of friendship. Though he
+did not venture upon repeating his visit too soon, scarcely a week
+passed without bringing to Paula a letter or some other testimonial of
+his increasing devotion. The blindest eye could not fail to remark
+whither he was tending. Even Paula was forced to acknowledge to herself
+that she was on the verge of a flowery incline, that sooner or later
+would bring her up breathless against the dread alternative of a decided
+yes or no. Friendship is a wide portal, and sometimes admits love; had
+it served her traitorously in this?
+
+Her aunt who watched her with secret but lynx-eyed scrutiny, saw no
+reason to alter the first judgment of that mysterious, "It is all coming
+right," with which she viewed the first symptoms of Paula's girlish
+appreciation of her lover. If eyes and lips could speak, Paula was
+happy. The mournful shadows which of late had flitted with more or less
+persistency over her face, had vanished in a living smile, which if not
+deep, was cloudlessly radiant; and her voice when not used in speech,
+was rippling away in song, as glad as a finch's on the mountain side.
+
+Miss Belinda was therefore very much astonished when one day Paula burst
+into her presence, and flinging herself down on her knees, threw her
+arms about her waist, crying,
+
+"Take me away, dear aunt, I cannot, dare not stay here another day."
+
+"Paula, what do you mean?" exclaimed Miss Belinda, holding her back and
+endeavoring to look into her face. But the young girl gently resisted.
+
+"I have just had a letter from Cicely," she returned in a low and
+muffled voice. "She has seen Mr. Sylvester, and says he looks both wan
+and ill. He told her, too, that he was lonely, and I know what that
+means; he wants his child. The time has come for me to go back. He said
+it would, and that I would know when it came. Take me, aunt, take me to
+Mr. Sylvester."
+
+Miss Belinda, to whom self-control was one of the cardinal virtues,
+leaned back in her chair and contemplated the eager, tear-stained face
+that was now raised to hers, with silent scrutiny. "Paula," said she at
+last, "is that your only reason for desiring to return to New York?"
+
+A flush, delicate as it was fleeting, swept over the dew of Paula's
+cheek. She rose to her feet and met her aunt's eye, with a look of
+gentle dignity. "No," said she, "I wish to test myself. Birds that are
+prisoned will caress any hand that offers them freedom. I wish to see if
+the lure holds good when my wings are in mid-heaven."
+
+There was a dreamy cadence to her voice as she uttered that last phrase,
+that startled her aunt. "Paula," exclaimed she, "Paula, don't you know
+your own heart?"
+
+"Who does?" returned Paula; then in a sudden rush of emotion threw
+herself once more at her aunt's side, saying, "It is in order to know
+it, that I ask you to take me away."
+
+And Miss Belinda, as she smoothed back her darling's locks, was obliged
+to acknowledge to herself, that time has a way of opening, in the stream
+of life, unforeseen channels to whose current we perforce must yield, or
+else hopelessly strand upon the shoals.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK IV.
+
+FROM A. TO Z.
+
+
+
+
+XXX.
+
+MISS BELINDA PRESENTS MR. SYLVESTER WITH A CHRISTMAS GIFT.
+
+     "For, O; for, O the hobby horse is forgot."
+
+     --HAMLET.
+
+
+It was a clear winter evening. Mr. Sylvester sat in his library, musing
+before a bright coal fire, whose superabundant heat and blaze seemed to
+make the loneliness of the great empty room more apparent. He had just
+said to himself that it was Christmas eve, and that he, of all men in
+the world, had the least reason to realize it, when the door-bell rang.
+He was expecting Bertram, whose advancement to the position of cashier
+in place of Mr. Wheelock, now thoroughly broken down in health, had that
+day been fully determined upon in a late meeting of the Board of
+Directors. He therefore did not disturb himself. It was consequently a
+startling surprise, when a deep, pleasant voice uttered from the
+threshold of the door, "I have brought you a Christmas present;" and
+looking up, he saw Miss Belinda standing before him, with Paula at her
+side.
+
+"My child!" was his involuntary exclamation, and before the young girl
+knew it, she was folded against his breast with a passionate fervor that
+more than words, convinced her of the depth of the sacrifice which had
+held them separate for so long. "My darling! my little Paula!"
+
+She felt her heart stand still. Gently disengaging herself, she looked
+in his face. She found it thin and wan, but lit by such a pleasure she
+could not keep back her smile. "You are glad, then, of your little
+Christmas present?" said she.
+
+He smiled and shook his head; he had no words with which to express a
+joy like this.
+
+Miss Belinda meanwhile stood with a set expression on her face, that, to
+one who did not know her, would immediately have proclaimed her to be an
+ogress of the very worst type. Not a glance did she give to the unusual
+splendor about her, not a wavering of her eye betokened that she was in
+any way conscious that she had just stepped from the threshold of a very
+humble cottage, into a home little short of a palace in size and the
+splendor of its appointments. All her attention was concentrated on the
+two faces before her.
+
+"The ride on the cars has made Paula feverish," cried she, in sharp
+clear tones that rang with unexpected brusqueness through the curtained
+alcoves of that lordly apartment.
+
+They both started at this sudden introduction of the prosaic into the
+hush of their happy meeting, but remembering themselves, drew Miss
+Belinda forward to the fire and made her welcome in this house of many
+memories.
+
+It was a strange moment to Paula when she first turned to go up those
+stairs, down which she had come in such grief eight months or more ago.
+She found herself lingering on its well-remembered steps, and the first
+sight of the rich bronze image at the top, struck her with a sense of
+the old-time pleasure, that was not unlinked with the old-time dread.
+But the aspect of her little room calmed her. It was just as she had
+left it; not an article had been changed. "It is as if I had gone out
+one door and come in another," she whispered. All the months that had
+intervened seemed to float away. She felt this even more when upon again
+descending, she found Bertram in the library. His frank and interesting
+face had always been pleasant to her, but in the joy of her return it
+shone upon her with almost the attraction of a brother's. "I am at home
+again," she kept whispering to herself, "I am at home."
+
+Miss Belinda was engrossed in conversation with Bertram, so that Paula
+was left free to take her old place by Mr. Sylvester's side, where she
+sat with such an aspect of contentment, that her beauty was half
+forgotten in her happiness.
+
+"You remembered me, then, sometimes in the little cottage in Grotewell?"
+asked he, after a silent contemplation of her countenance. "I was not
+forgotten when you left the city streets?"
+
+She answered with a bright little shake of her head, but she was
+inwardly wondering as she looked at his strong and picturesque face,
+with its nobly carved features and melancholy smile, if he had been
+absent from her thoughts for so much as a moment, in all these dreary
+months of separation.
+
+"I did not believe you would forget," he gently pursued, "but I scarcely
+dared hope you would lighten my fireside with your face again. It is
+such a dismal one, and youth is so linked to brightness."
+
+The flush that crossed her cheek, startled him into sudden silence. She
+recovered herself and slowly shook her head. "It is not a dismal one to
+me. I always feel brighter and better when I sit beside it. I have
+missed your counsel," she said; "brightness is nothing without depth."
+
+His eyes which had been fixed on her face, turned slowly away. He seemed
+to hold an instant's communion with himself; suddenly he said, "And
+depth is worse than nothing, without it mirrors the skies. It is not
+from shadowed pools, such bright young lips should drink, but from the
+waves of an inexhaustible sea, smote upon by all the winds and sunshine
+of heaven."
+
+In another moment, however, he was all cheerfulness. "You have brought
+me a Christmas present," cried he, "and we must make it a Christmas
+holiday indeed. Here is the beginning:" and with one of his old grave
+smiles, he handed Bertram a little note which had been awaiting him on
+the library table. "But Paula and Miss Belinda must have their pleasure
+too. Paula, are you too tired for a ride down town? I will show you New
+York on a Christmas eve," continued he to Miss Walton, seeing that
+Paula's attention was absorbed by the expression of sudden and moving
+surprise which had visited Bertram's face, upon the perusal of his note.
+"It is a stirring sight. Nothing more cheering can be found the wide
+world over, for those who have a home and children to make happy."
+
+"I certainly should enjoy a glimpse of holiday cheer," assented Miss
+Belinda. And Paula recalled to herself by the sound of her aunt's voice,
+gayly re-echoed her assertion.
+
+So Samuel was despatched for a carriage, and in a few minutes they were
+all riding down Fifth Avenue, _en route_ for Tiffany's, Macy's, and any
+other store that might offer special attractions. It was a happy
+company. As they rolled along, Paula felt her heart grow lighter and
+lighter, Mr. Sylvester was almost gay, while even Aunt Belinda
+condescended to be merry. Bertram alone was silent, but as Paula caught
+short glimpses of his face, while speeding past some illuminated corner,
+she felt that it was that silence which is "the perfectest herald of
+joy."
+
+"I shall make you get out and mix with the crowd," said Mr. Sylvester.
+"I want you to feel the throb of the great heart of the city on such a
+night as this. It is as if all men were brothers--or fathers, I should
+say. People that ordinarily pass each other without a sign, nod and
+smile with pleasing recognition of the evening's cheer. Grave and
+reverend seigniors, are not ashamed to be seen carrying packages by the
+dozen. Indeed, he who is most laden is considered the best fellow, and
+he who is so unfortunate as to show nothing but empty arms, feels shy if
+not ashamed; a condition of mind into which I shall soon fall myself, if
+we do not presently reach our destination."
+
+Paula never forgot that night. As from the midst of our common-place
+memories, some one hour stands out distinct and strange, like a sweet
+foreigner in a crowd of village faces, so to Paula, this ride through
+the lighted streets, with the ensuing rush from store to store, piloted
+by Bertram and Miss Belinda, and protected by Mr. Sylvester, was her one
+weird glimpse into the Arabian Nights' country. Why, she could not have
+told; why, she did not stop to think. She had been to all these places
+before, but never with such a heart as this--never, never with such an
+overflowing heart as this.
+
+"I have washed away my reproach," cried Mr. Sylvester, coming out to the
+carriage with his arms full of bundles. "Aunt Belinda is to blame for
+this; she set the example, you see." And with a merry laugh, he tossed
+one thing after another into Paula's lap, reserving only one small
+package for himself. "I scarcely know what I have bought," said he. "I
+shall be as much surprised as any one, when you come to undo the
+bundles. 'A pretty thing,' was all I waited to hear from the shop
+girls."
+
+"There is a small printing press for one thing," cried Paula merrily. "I
+saw the man at Holton's eye you with a certain sort of shrewd humor, and
+hastily do it up. You paid for it; probably thinking it one of the
+'pretty things.' We shall have to make it over to Bertram, as being the
+only one amongst us who by any stretch of imagination can be said to be
+near enough the age of boyhood to enjoy it."
+
+"I do not know about that," cried Bertram, with a ringing infectious
+laugh, "my imagination has been luring me into believing that I am not
+the only boy in this crowd."
+
+And so they went on, toying with their new-found joy as with a
+plaything, and hard would it have been to tell in which of those voices
+rang the deeper contentment.
+
+The opening of the packages on the library-table afforded another season
+of merriment. Such treasures as came to light! A roll of black silk,
+which could only have been meant for Miss Belinda. A casket of fretted
+silver, just large enough to hold Paula's gloves; a scarf-ring, to which
+no one but Bertram could lay claim; a bundle of confections, a pair of
+diamond-studded bracelets, a scarf of delicate lace, articles for the
+desk, and knick-knacks for the toilet table, and last, but not least, in
+weight at least, the honest little printing-press.
+
+"Oh, I never dreamed of this," said Paula, "when we chose Christmas eve
+for our journey."
+
+"Nor would you have done right to stay away if you had," returned Mr.
+Sylvester gayly.
+
+But when the sport was all over, and Paula stood alone with Mr.
+Sylvester in the library, awaiting his last good-night, the deeper
+influences of this holy time made themselves felt, and it was with an
+air of gentle seriousness, he told her that it had been a happy
+Christmas eve to him.
+
+"And to me," returned Paula. "Bertram too, seemed very happy. Would it
+be too inquisitive in me to ask what good news the little note
+contained, to work such wonders?"
+
+A smile such as was seldom seen on Mr. Sylvester's face of late, flashed
+brightly over it. "It was only a card of invitation to dinner," said he,
+"but it came from Mr. Stuyvesant, and that to Bertram means a great
+deal."
+
+The surprise in Paula's eyes made him smile again. "Will it be a great
+shock to you, if I tell you that the name of the woman for whom Bertram
+made the sacrifice of his art, was Cicely Stuyvesant?"
+
+"Cicely? my Cicely?" Her astonishment was great, but it was also happy.
+"Oh, I never dreamed--ah, now I see," she went on naively. "That is the
+reason she refrained from coming to this house; she was afraid of
+meeting _him_. But to think I should never have guessed it, and she my
+dearest friend! Oh, I am very happy; I admire Bertram so much, and it is
+such a beautiful secret. And Mr. Stuyvesant has invited him to his
+house! I do not wonder you felt like making the evening a gala one. Mr.
+Stuyvesant would not do that if he were not learning to appreciate
+Bertram."
+
+"No; there is method in all that Mr. Stuyvesant does. More than that, if
+I am not mistaken, he has known this beautiful secret, as you call it,
+from the first, and would be the last to receive Bertram as a guest to
+his table, if he did not mean him the best and truest encouragement."
+
+"I believe you are right," said Paula. "I remember now that one day when
+I was spending the afternoon with Cicely, he came into the room where I
+was, and finding me for the moment alone, sat down, and in his quaint
+old-fashioned manner asked me in the most abrupt way what I thought of
+Bertram Sylvester. I was surprised, but told him I considered him one of
+the noblest young men I knew, adding that if a fine mind, a kind heart,
+and a pure life were open to regard, Bertram had the right to claim the
+esteem of all his friends and associates. The old gentleman looked at me
+somewhat curiously, but nodded his head as if pleased, and merely
+remarking, 'It is not necessary to mention we had this conversation, my
+dear,' got up and proceeded slowly from the room. I thought it was
+simply a not unnatural curiosity concerning a young man with whom he had
+more or less business connection; but now I perceive it had a deeper
+significance."
+
+"He could scarcely have found a more zealous little advocate for Bertram
+if he had hunted the city over. Bertram may be more obliged to you than
+he knows. He has been very patient, but the day of his happiness is
+approaching."
+
+"And Cicely's! I feel as if I could scarcely wait to see her with this
+new hope in her eyes. She has kept me without the door of her suspense,
+but she must let me across the threshold of her happiness."
+
+The look with which Mr. Sylvester eyed the fair girl's radiant face
+deepened. "Paula," said be, "can you leave these new thoughts for a
+moment to hear a request I have to make?"
+
+She at once turned to him with her most self-forgetful smile.
+
+"I have been making myself a little present," pursued he, slowly taking
+out of his pocket the single package he had reserved from the rest.
+"Open it, dear."
+
+With fingers that unconsciously trembled, she hastily undid the package.
+A little box rolled out. Taking off its cover, she took out a plain gold
+locket of the style usually worn by gentlemen on their watch-chains.
+"Fasten it on for me," said he.
+
+Wondering at his tone which was almost solemn, she quietly did his
+bidding. But when she essayed to lift her head upon the completion of
+her task, he gently laid his hand upon her brow and so stood for a
+moment without a word.
+
+"What is it?" she asked, with a sudden indrawing of her breath. "What
+moves you so, Mr. Sylvester?"
+
+"I have just taken a vow," said he.
+
+She started back agitated and trembling.
+
+"I had reason to," he murmured, "pray at nights when you go to bed, that
+I may be able to keep it."
+
+"What?" sprang to her lips; but she restrained herself and only allowed
+her glance to speak.
+
+"Will you do it, Paula?"
+
+"Yes, oh yes!" Her whole heart seemed to rush out in the phrase. She
+drew back as at the opening of a door in an unexpected spot. Her eye had
+something of fear in it and something of secret desperation too. He
+watched her with a gaze that strangely faltered.
+
+"A woman's prayers are a man's best safeguard," murmured he. "He must be
+a wretch who does not feel himself surrounded by a sacred halo, while he
+knows that pure lips are breathing his name in love and trust before the
+throne of the Most High."
+
+"I will pray for you as for myself," she whispered, and endeavored to
+meet his eyes. But her head drooped and she did not speak as she would
+have done a few months before; and when a few instants later they parted
+in their old fashion at the foot of the stairs, she did not turn to give
+him the accustomed smile and nod with which she used to mount the
+stairs, spiral by spiral, and disappear in her little room above. Yet he
+did not grieve at the change, but stood looking up the way she had gone,
+like a man before whom some vision of unexpected promise had opened.
+
+
+
+
+XXXI.
+
+A QUESTION.
+
+     "Think on thy sins."--OTHELLO.
+
+
+The next morning when Mr. Sylvester came down to breakfast, he found on
+the library-table an exquisite casket, similar to the one he had given
+Paula the night before, but larger, and filled with flowers of the most
+delicious odor.
+
+"For Miss Fairchild," explained Samuel, who was at that moment passing
+through the room.
+
+With a pang of jealous surprise, that, however, failed to betray itself
+in his steadily composed countenance, Mr. Sylvester advanced to the side
+of the table, and lifted up the card that hung attached to the beautiful
+present. The name he read there seemed to startle him; he moved away,
+and took up his paper with a dark flush on his brow, that had not
+disappeared when Miss Belinda entered the room.
+
+"Humph!" was her immediate exclamation, as her eye rested upon the
+conspicuous offering in the centre of the apartment. But instantly
+remembering herself, advanced with a cheerful good-morning, which
+however did not prevent her eyes from wandering with no small
+satisfaction towards this fresh evidence of Mr. Ensign's assiduous
+regard.
+
+"Paula is remembered by others than ourselves," remarked Mr. Sylvester,
+probably observing her glance.
+
+"Yes; she has a very attentive suitor in Mr. Ensign," returned Miss
+Belinda shortly. "A pleasant appearing young man," she ejaculated next
+moment; "worthy in many respects of success, I should say."
+
+"Has he--do you mean to say that he has visited you in Grotewell?" asked
+Mr. Sylvester, his eye upon the paper in his hand.
+
+"Certainly; a few more interviews will settle it."
+
+The paper rustled in Mr. Sylvester's grasp, but his voice was composed
+if not formal, as he observed, "She regards his attentions then with
+favor?"
+
+"She wears his flowers in her bosom, and brightens like a flower herself
+when he is seen to approach. If allowed to go her way unhindered, I have
+but little doubt as to how it will end. Mr. Ensign is not handsome, but
+I am told that he has every other qualification likely to make a gentle
+creature like Paula happy."
+
+"He is a good fellow," exclaimed Mr. Sylvester under his breath.
+
+"And goodness is the first essential in the character of the man who is
+to marry Paula," inexorably observed Miss Belinda. "An open, cheerful
+disposition, a clear conscience and a past with no dark pages in its
+history, must mark him who is to link unto his fate our pure and
+sensitive Paula. Is it not so, Mr. Sylvester?"
+
+The advertisements in that morning's _Tribune_ must have been unusually
+interesting, judging from the difficulty which Mr. Sylvester experienced
+in withdrawing his eyes from them. "The man whom Paula marries," said he
+at last, "can neither be too good, too kind, or too pure. Nor shall any
+other than a good, kind, and pure man possess her," he added in a tone
+that while low, effectually hushed even the slow-to-be-intimidated Miss
+Belinda. In another moment Paula entered.
+
+Oh, the morning freshness of some faces! Like the singing of birds in a
+prison, is the sound and sight of a lovely maiden coming into the grim,
+gray atmosphere of a winter breakfast room. Paula was exceptionally
+gifted with this auroral cheer which starts the day so brightly. At
+sight of her face Mr. Sylvester dropped his paper, and even Miss Belinda
+straightened herself more energetically. "Merry Christmas," cried her
+sweet young voice, and immediately the whole day seemed to grow glad
+with promise and gaysome with ringing sleigh-bells. "It's snowing, did
+you know it? A world of life is in the air; the flakes dance as they
+come down, like dervishes in a frenzy. It was all we lacked to make the
+day complete; now we have everything."
+
+"Yes," said Miss Belinda, with a significant glance at the table,
+"everything."
+
+Paula followed her glance, saw the silver box with its wealth of
+blossoms, and faltered back with a quick look at Mr. Sylvester's grave
+and watchful countenance.
+
+"Mr. Ensign seems to be possessed of clairvoyance," observed Miss
+Belinda easily. "How he could know that you were to be in town to-day, I
+cannot imagine."
+
+"I wrote him in my last letter that in all probability I should spend
+the holidays with Mr. Sylvester," explained Paula simply, but with a
+slow and deepening flush, that left the roses she contemplated nothing
+of which to boast. "I did so, because he proposed to visit Grotewell on
+Christmas."
+
+There was a short silence in the room, then Mr. Sylvester rose, and
+remarking with polite composure, "It is a very pretty remembrance," led
+the way into the dining-room. Paula with a slow drooping of her head
+quickly followed, while Miss Belinda brought up the rear, with the look
+of a successful diplomat.
+
+A meal in the Sylvester mansion was always a formal affair, but this was
+more than formal. A vague oppression seemed to fill the air; an
+oppression which Miss Belinda's stirring conversation found it
+impossible to dissipate. In compliance to Mr. Sylvester's request, she
+sat at the head of the table, and was the only one who seemed able to
+eat anything. For one thing she had never seen Ona in that post of
+honor, but Paula and Mr. Sylvester could not forget the graceful form
+that once occupied that seat. The first meal above a grave, no matter
+how long it has been dug, must ever seem weighted with more or less
+unreality.
+
+Besides, with Paula there was a vague unsettled feeling, as if some
+delicate inner balance had been too rudely shaken. She longed to fly
+away and think, and she was obliged to sit still and talk.
+
+The end of the meal was a relief to all parties. Miss Belinda went up
+stairs, thoughtfully shaking her firm head; Mr. Sylvester sat down again
+to his paper, and Paula advanced towards the dainty gift that awaited
+her inspection on the library table. But half way to it she paused. A
+strange shyness had seized her. With Mr. Sylvester sitting there, she
+dared not approach this delicate testimonial of another's affection. She
+did not know as she wished to. Her eyes stole in hesitation to the
+floor. Suddenly Mr. Sylvester spoke:
+
+"Why do you not look at your pretty present, Paula?"
+
+She started, gave him a quick glance, and advanced hurriedly towards the
+table; but scarcely had she reached it when she paused, turned and
+hastened over to his side. He was still reading, or appearing to read,
+but she saw his hand tremble where it grasped the sheet, though his face
+with its clear cut profile, shone calm and cold against the dark
+background of the wall beyond.
+
+"I do not care to look at it now," said she, with a hurried interlacing
+of her restless fingers.
+
+He turned towards her and a quick thrill passed over his countenance.
+"Sit down, Paula," said he, "I want to talk to you."
+
+She obeyed as might an automaton. Was it the tone of his voice that
+chilled her, or the studied aspect of his fixed and solemn countenance?
+He did not speak at once, but when he did, there was no faltering in his
+voice, that was lower than common, but deep, like still waters that have
+run into dark channels far from the light of day.
+
+"Paula, I want to ask you a question. What would you think of a man
+that, with deliberate selfishness, went into the king's garden, and
+plucking up by the roots the most beautiful flower he could find there,
+carried it into a dungeon to pant out its exquisite life amid chill and
+darkness?"
+
+"I should think," replied she, after the first startled moment of
+silence, "that the man did well, if by its one breath of sweetness, the
+flower could comfort the heart of him who sat in the dungeon."
+
+The glance with which Mr. Sylvester regarded her, suddenly faltered; he
+turned with quickness towards the fire. "A moment's joy is, then, excuse
+for a murder," exclaimed he. "God and the angels would not agree with
+you, Paula."
+
+There was a quivering in his tone, made all the more apparent by its
+studied self-possession of a moment before. She trembled where she sat,
+and opened her lips to speak, but closed them again, awed by his steady
+and abstracted gaze, now fixed before him in gloomy reverie. A moment
+passed. The clock ticking away on the mantel-piece seemed to echo the
+inevitable "Forever! never!" of Longfellow's old song. Neither of them
+moved. At length, in a low and trembling voice, Paula spoke:
+
+"Is it murder, when the flower loves the dark of the dungeon more than
+it does the light of day?"
+
+With a subdued but passionate cry he rose hastily to his feet. "Yes,"
+said he, and drew back as if he could not bear the sight of her face or
+the glance of her eye. "Sunshine is the breath of flowers; sweet wooing
+gales, their natural atmosphere. He who meddles with a treasure so
+choice does it at his peril." Then as she hurriedly rose in turn,
+softened his whole tone, and assuming his usual air of kindly
+fatherhood, asked her in the most natural way in the world, what he
+could do to make her happy that day.
+
+"Nothing," replied she, with a droop of her head; "I think I will go and
+see Cicely."
+
+A short sigh escaped him. "The carriage shall be ready for you," said
+he. "I hope your friend's happiness will overflow into your own gentle
+bosom, and make the day a very pleasant one. God bless your young sweet
+heart, my Paula!"
+
+Her breast heaved, her large, dark, mellow eyes flashed with one quick
+glance towards his face, then she drew back, and in another moment left
+his side and quietly glided from the room. His very life seemed to go
+with her, yet he did not stir; but he sighed deeply when, upon turning
+towards the library-table, he found that she had carried away with her
+the silent testimonial of another and more fortunate man's love and
+devotion.
+
+
+
+
+XXXII.
+
+FULL TIDE.
+
+     "A skirmish of wit between them."
+
+     --MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.
+
+
+Man thinks he is strong, and lays his foundations, raises his walls, and
+dreams of his completed turrets, without reckoning the force of the
+gales or the insidious inundating of the waters that may bring low the
+mounting structure before its time. When with a firm hand, Mr. Sylvester
+thrust back from his heart the one delight which of all the world could
+afford, seemed to him at that moment the dearest and the best, he
+thought the struggle was over and the victory won. It had not even
+commenced. He was made startlingly alive to this fact at the very next
+interview he had with Paula. She had just come from Miss Stuyvesant, and
+the reflection of her friend's scarcely comprehended joy was on her
+countenance, together with a look he could not comprehend, but which
+stirred and haunted him, until he felt forced to ask if she had seen any
+other of her old friends, in the short visit she had paid.
+
+"Yes," said she, with a distressed blush. "Mr. Ensign was unexpectedly
+there."
+
+It is comparatively easy to restrain your own hand from snatching at a
+treasure you greatly covet, but it is much more difficult to behold
+another and a lesser one grasp and carry it away before your eyes. He
+succeeded in hiding the shadow that oppressed him, but he was
+constrained to recognize the sharpness of the conflict that was about to
+be waged in the recesses of his own breast. A conflict, because he knew
+that a lift of his finger, or a glance of his eye would decide the
+matter then, while in a week, perhaps, the glamour of a young sunshiny
+love, would have worked its inevitable result, and the happiness that
+had so unexpectedly startled upon him in his monotonous and sombre path,
+would have wandered forever out of his reach. How did he meet its
+unexpected rush. Sternly at first, but with greater and greater wavering
+as the days went by, each one revealing fresh beauties of character and
+deeper springs of feeling in the enchanting girl thus brought in all her
+varied charm before his eyes. Why should he not be happy? If there were
+dark pages in his life, had they not long ago been closed and sealed,
+and was not the future bright with promise? A man of his years was not
+through with life. He felt at times as he gazed upon her face with its
+indescribable power of awakening far-reaching thoughts and feelings in
+callous breasts long unused to the holy influence of either, that he had
+just begun to live; that the golden country, with its enticing vistas,
+lay all before him, and that the youth, which he had missed, had somehow
+returned to his prime, fresh with more than its usual enthusiasm and
+bright with more than its wonted hopes and projects. With this glorious
+woman at his side, life would be new indeed, and if new why not pure and
+sweet and noble? What was there to hinder him from making the existence
+of this sweet soul a walking amongst gentle duties, satisfied dreams and
+holy aspirations? A past remorse? Why the gates could be closed on that!
+A strain of innate weakness for the world's good opinion and applause?
+Ah! with love in his life such a weakness must disappear; besides had he
+not taken a vow on her dear head, that ought to hedge him about as with
+angel's wings in the hour of temptation? Men with his experience do not
+invoke the protection of innocence to guard a degraded soul. Why, then,
+all this hesitation? A great boon was being offered to him after years
+of loneliness and immeasurable longing; was it not the will of heaven,
+that he should meet and enjoy this unexpected grace? He dared to stop
+and ask, and once daring to ask, the insidious waters found their way
+beneath the foundations of his resolution, and the lofty structure he
+had reared in such self-confidence, began to tremble where it stood,
+though as yet it betrayed no visible sign of weakness.
+
+Meanwhile, society with its innumerable demands, had drawn the beautiful
+young girl within its controlling grasp. She must go here, she must go
+there; she must lend her talents to this, her beauty to that. Before she
+had decided whether she ought to remain in the city a week, two had
+flown by, and in all this time Mr. Ensign had been ever at her side,
+brightening in her own despite, hours which might else have been sad,
+and surrounding her difficult path with proofs of his silent and wary
+devotion. A golden net seemed to be closing around her, and, though as
+yet, she had given no token of a special recognition of her position,
+Miss Belinda betrayed by the uniform complacence of her demeanor, that
+she for one regarded the matter as effectually settled.
+
+The success which Bertram had met in his first visit at Mr.
+Stuyvesant's, was not the least agitating factor in this fortnight's
+secret history. He was too much a part of the home life at Mr.
+Sylvester's, not to make the lightest thrill of his frank and sensitive
+nature felt by all who invaded its precincts. And he was in a state of
+repressed expectancy at this time, that unconsciously created an
+atmosphere about him of vague but restless excitement. The hearts of all
+who encountered his look of concentrated delight, must unconsciously
+beat with his. A strain sweeter than his old-time music was in his
+voice. When he played upon the piano, which was but seldom, it was as if
+he breathed out his soul before the holy images. When he walked, he
+seemed to tread on air. His every glance was a question as to whether
+this great joy, for which he had so long and patiently waited, was to be
+his? Love, living and apotheosized, appeared to blaze before them, and
+no one can look on love without feeling somewhere in his soul the stir
+of those deep waters, whose pulsing throb even in the darkness of
+midnight, proves that we are the children of God.
+
+Cicely was uncommunicative, but her face, when Paula beheld it, was like
+the glowing countenance of some sculptured saint, from which the veil is
+slowly being withdrawn.
+
+Suddenly there came an evening when the force of the spell that held all
+these various hearts enchained gave way. It was the night of a private
+entertainment of great elegance, to be held at the house of a friend of
+Miss Stuyvesant. Bertram had received formal permission from the father
+of Cicely, to act as his daughter's escort, and the fact had transformed
+him from a hopeful dreamer, into a man determined to speak and know his
+fate at once. Paula was engaged to take part in the entertainment, and
+the sight of her daintily-decked figure leaving the house with Mr.
+Ensign, was the last drop in the slowly gathering tide that was secretly
+swelling in Mr. Sylvester's breast; and it was with a sudden outrush of
+his whole determined nature that he stepped upstairs, dressed himself in
+evening attire, and deliberately followed them to the place where they
+were going. "The wealth of the Indies is slipping from my grasp," was
+his passionate exclamation, as he rode through the lighted streets. "I
+cannot see it go; if she can care more for me than for this sleek,
+merry-hearted young fellow, she shall. I know that my love is to his,
+what the mighty ocean is to a placid lake, and with such love one ought
+to be panoplied as with resisting steel."
+
+A stream of light and music met him, as he went up the stoop of the
+house that held his treasure. It seemed to intoxicate him. Glow, melody
+and perfume, were so many expressions of Paula. His friends, of whom
+there were many present, received him with tokens of respect, not
+unmingled with surprise. It was the first time he had been seen in
+public since his wife's death, and they could not but remark upon the
+cheerfulness of his bearing, and the almost exalted expression of his
+proud and restless eye. Had Paula accompanied him, they might have
+understood his emotion, but with the beautiful girl under the care of
+one of the most eligible gentlemen in town, what could have happened to
+Mr. Sylvester to make his once melancholy countenance blazon like a star
+amid this joyous and merrily-laughing throng. He did not enlighten them,
+but moved from group to group, searching for Paula. Suddenly the thought
+flashed upon him, "Is it only an hour or so since I smiled upon her in
+my own hall, and shook my head when she asked me with a quick, pleading
+look, to come with them to this very spot?" It seemed days, since that
+time. The rush of these new thoughts, the final making up of this
+slowly-maturing purpose, the sudden allowing of his heart to regard her
+as a woman to be won, had carried the past away as by the sweep of a
+mountain torrent. He could not believe he had ever known a moment of
+hesitancy, ever looked at her as a father, ever bid her go on her way
+and leave the prisoner to his fate. He must always have felt like this;
+such momentum could not have been gathered in an hour; she must know
+that he loved her wildly, deeply, sacredly, wholly, with the fibre of
+his mind, his body and his soul; that to call her his in life and in
+death, was the one demanding passion of his existence, making the past a
+dream, and the future--ah, he dared not question that! He must behold
+her face before he could even speculate upon the realities lying behind
+fate's down-drawn curtain.
+
+Meanwhile fair faces and lovely forms flitted before him, carrying his
+glance along in their train, but only because youth was a symbol of
+Paula. If these fresh young girls could smile and look back upon him,
+with that lingering glance which his presence ever invoked, why not she
+who was not only sweet, tender, and lovely, but gifted with a nature
+that responded to the deep things of life, and the stern passions of
+potent humanity. Could a merry laugh lure her while he stood by? Was the
+sunshine the natural atmosphere of this flower, that had bloomed under
+his eye so sweetly and shed out its innocent fragrance, at the approach
+of his solemn-pacing foot? He began to mirror before his mind's eye the
+startled look of happy wonder with which she would greet his impassioned
+glance, when released from whatever duties might be now pressing upon
+her; she wandered into these rooms, to find him awaiting her, when
+suddenly there was a stir in the throng, a pleased and excited rush, and
+the large curtain which he had vaguely noticed hanging at one end of the
+room, uplifted and--was it Paula? this coy, brilliant, saucy-eyed
+Florentine maiden, stepping out from a bower of greenery, with finger on
+her lip, and a backward glance of saucy defiance that seemed to people
+the verdant walks behind her with gallant cavaliers, eager to follow
+upon her footsteps? Yes; he could not be mistaken; there was but one
+face like that in the world. It was Paula, but Paula with youth's
+merriest glamour upon her, a glamour that had caught its radiant light
+from other thoughts than those in which he had been engaged. He bowed
+his head, and a shudder went through him like that which precedes the
+falling knife of the executioner. Even the applause that greeted the
+revelation of so much loveliness and alluring charm, passed over him
+like a dream. He was battling with his first recognition of the
+possibility of his being too late. Suddenly her voice was heard.
+
+She was speaking aloud to herself, this Florentine maiden who had
+outstripped her lover in the garden, but the tone was the same he had
+heard beside his own hearthstone, and the archness that accompanied it
+had frequently met and encouraged some cheerful expression of his own.
+These are the words she uttered. Listen with him to the _naïve_, half
+tender, half pettish voice, and mark with his eyes the alternate lights
+and shadows that flit across her cheek as she broodingly murmurs:
+
+     He is certainly a most notable gallant. His "Good day, lady!"
+     and his "Good even to you!" are flavored with the cream of
+     perfectest courtesy. But gallantry while it sits well upon a
+     man, does not make him one, any more than a feather makes the
+     cap it adorns. For a Tuscan he hath also a certain comeliness,
+     but then I have ever sworn, in good faith too, that I would not
+     marry a Tuscan, were he the best made man in Italy. Then there
+     is his glance, which proclaims to all men's understandings that
+     he loves me, which same seems overbold; but then his smile!
+
+     Well, for a smile it certainly does credit to his wit, but one
+     cannot live upon smiles; though if one could, one might consent
+     to make a trial of his--and starve belike for her pains. (_She
+     drops her cheek into her hand and stands musing._)
+
+Mr. Sylvester drew a deep breath and let his eyes fall, when suddenly a
+hum ran through the audience about him, and looking quickly up, he
+beheld Mr. Ensign dressed in full cavalier costume, standing behind the
+musing maiden with a half merry, half tender gleam upon his face, that
+made the thickly beating heart of his rival shrink as if clutched in an
+iron vise. What followed, he heard as we do the words of a sentence read
+to us from the judge's seat. The cavalier spoke first and a thousand
+dancing colors seemed to flash in the merry banter that followed.
+
+     _Martino._--She muses, and on no other than myself, as I am
+     ready to swear by that coy and tremulous glance. I will move
+     her to avow it. (_Advances._) Fair lady, greeting! A kiss for
+     your sweet thoughts.
+
+     _Nita._ (_With a start_).--A kiss, Signior Martino? You must
+     acknowledge that were but a sorry exchange for thoughts like
+     mine, so if it please you, I will keep my thoughts and you your
+     kiss; and lest it should seem ungracious in me to give nothing
+     upon your asking, I will bestow upon you my most choice good
+     day, and so leave you to your meditations. (_Curtseys and is
+     about to depart._)
+
+     _Martino._--You have the true generosity, lady; you give away
+     what it costs you the dearest to part from. Nay, rumple not
+     your lip; it is the truth for all your pretty poutings!
+     Convince me it is not.
+
+     _Nita._--Your pardon, but that would take words, and words
+     would take time, and time given to one of your persuasion would
+     refute all my arguments on the face of them. (_Still
+     retreating._)
+
+     _Martino._--Well, lady, since it is your pleasure to be
+     consistent, rather than happy, adieu. Had you stayed but as
+     long as the bee pauses on an oleander blossom, you would have
+     heard--
+
+     _Nita._--Buzzing, signior?
+
+     _Martino._--Yes, if by that word you would denominate vows of
+     constancy and devotion. For I do greatly love you, and would
+     tell you so.
+
+     _Nita._--And for that you expect me to linger! as though vows
+     were new to my ears, and words of love as strange to my
+     understanding as tropical birds to the eyes of a Norseman.
+
+     _Martino._--If you do love me, you will linger.
+
+     _Nita._--Yet if I do, (_Slowly advancing_) be assured it is
+     from some other motive than love.
+
+     _Martino._--So it be not from hate I am contented.
+
+
+     _Nita._--To be contented with little, proves you a man of much
+     virtue.
+
+     _Martino._--When I have you, I am contented with much.
+
+     _Nita._--That _when_ is a wise insertion, signior; it saves you
+     from shame and me from anger.--Hark! some one calls.
+
+     _Martino._--None other but the wind; it is a kindly breeze, and
+     grieves to hear how harsh a pretty maiden can be to the lover
+     who adores her.
+
+     _Nita._--Please your worship, I do not own a lover.
+
+     _Martino._--Then mend your poverty, and accept one.
+
+     _Nita._--I am no beggar to accept of alms.
+
+     _Martino._--In this case, he who offers is the beggar.
+
+     _Nita._--I am too young to wear a jewel of so much pretension.
+
+     _Martino._--Time is a cure for youth, and marriage a happy
+     speeder of time.
+
+     _Nita._--But youth needs no cure, and if marriage speedeth
+     time, I'll live a maid and die one. The days run swift enough
+     without goading, Signior Martino.
+
+     _Martino._--But lady--
+
+     _Nita._.--Nay, your tongue will outstrip time, if you put not a
+     curb upon it. In faith, signior, I would not seem rude, but if
+     in your courtesy you would consent to woo some other maiden
+     to-day, why I would strive and bear it.
+
+     _Martino._--When I stoop to woo any other lady than thee, the
+     moon shall hide its face from the earth, and shine upon it no
+     more.
+
+     _Nita._--Your thoughts are daring in their flight to-day.
+
+     _Martino._--They are in search of your love.
+
+     _Nita._--Alack, your wings will fail.
+
+     _Martino._--Ay, when they reach their goal.
+
+     _Nita._--Dost think to reach it?
+
+     _Martino._--Shall I not, lady?
+
+     _Nita._--'Tis hard to believe it possible, yet who can tell?
+     You are not so handsome, signior, that one would die for you.
+
+     _Martino._--No, lady; but what goes to make other men's faces
+     fair, goes to make my heart great. The virtue of my manhood
+     rests in the fact that I love you.
+
+     _Nita._--Faith! so in some others. 'Tis the common fault of the
+     gallants, I find. If that is all--
+
+     _Martino._--But I will always love you, even unto death.
+
+     _Nita._--I doubt it not, so death come soon enough.
+
+     _Martino._ (_Taps his poiniard with his hand._)--Would you
+     have it come now, and so prove me true to my word?
+
+     _Nita._ (_Demurely_).--I am no judge, to utter the doom that
+     your presumption merits.
+
+     _Martino._--Your looks speak doom, and your sweet lips hide a
+     sword keener than that of justice.
+
+     _Nita._--Have you tried them, signior, that you speak so
+     knowingly concerning them? (_Retreating._) Your words,
+     methinks, are somewhat like your kisses, all breath and no
+     substance.
+
+     _Martino._--Lady! sweet one! (_Follows her._)
+
+     _Nita._--Nay, I am gone. (_Exit._)
+
+     _Martino._--I were of the fools' fold, did I fail to follow at
+     a beck so gentle. (_Exit._)
+
+That was not all, but it was all that Mr. Sylvester heard. Hastily
+retreating, he went out into the corridor and ere long found himself in
+the conservatory. He felt shaken; felt that he could not face all this
+unmoved. He knew he had been gazing at a play; that because this
+Florentine maiden looked at her lover with coyness, gentleness,
+tenderness perhaps, it did not follow that she, his Paula, loved the
+real man behind this dashing cavalier. But the possibility was there,
+and in his present frame of mind could not be encountered without pain.
+He dared not stay where men's eyes could follow him, or women's delicate
+glances note the heaving of his chest. He had in the last three hours
+given himself over so completely to hope. He realized it now though he
+would not have believed it before. With man's usual egotism he had felt
+that it was only necessary for him to come to a decision, to behold all
+else fall out according to his mind. He had forgotten for the nonce the
+power of a youthful lover, eager to serve, ready to wait, careful to
+press his way at every advantage. He could have cursed himself for the
+folly of his delay, as he strode up and down among the flowering shrubs
+in the solitude which the attractions of the play created. "Fool! fool!"
+he muttered between his teeth, "to halt on the threshold of Paradise
+till the door closed in my face, when a step would have carried me
+where--" He grew dizzy as he contemplated. The goal looks never so fair
+as when just within reach of a rival's hand.
+
+A vigorous clapping, followed by a low gush of music, woke him at last
+to the realization that the little drama had terminated. With a hasty
+movement he was about to return to the parlors, when he heard the low
+murmur of voices, and on looking up, saw a youthful couple advancing
+into the conservatory, whom at first glance he recognized for Bertram
+and Miss Stuyvesant. They were absorbed in each other, and believing
+themselves alone, came on without fear, presenting such a picture of
+love and deep, unspeakable joy, that Mr. Sylvester paused and gazed upon
+them as upon the sudden embodiment of a cherished vision of his own
+imaginings. Bertram was speaking ordinary words no doubt, words suited
+to the occasion and the time, but his voice was attuned to the beatings
+of his long repressed heart, while the bend of his proud young head and
+the glance of his yearning eye were more eloquent than speech, of the
+leaning of his whole nature in love and protection towards the dainty,
+flushing creature at his side. It was a sight to make old hearts young
+and a less happy lover sick with envy. In spite of his gratification at
+his nephew's success, Mr. Sylvester's brow contracted, and it was with
+difficulty he could subdue himself into the appearance of calm
+benevolence necessary to pass them with propriety. Had it been Paula and
+Mr. Ensign!
+
+He did not know how it was that he managed to find her at last. But just
+as he was beginning to realize that wisdom demanded his departure from
+this scene, he suddenly came upon her sitting with her face turned
+toward the crowd and waiting--for whom? He had never seen her look so
+beautiful, possibly because he had never before allowed himself to gaze
+upon her with a lover's eyes. She had exchanged her piquant Roman
+costume for the pearl gray satin in which Ona had delighted to array
+her, and its rich substance and delicate neutral tint harmonized well
+with the amber brocade of the curtain against which she sat.
+
+Power, passion and purity breathed in her look, and lent enchantment to
+her form. She was poetry's unique jewel, and at this moment, thought
+rather than merriment sat upon her lips, and haunted her somewhat
+tremulous smiles. He approached her as a priest to his shrine, but once
+at her side, once in view of her first startled blush, stooped
+passionately, and forgetting everything but the suspense at his heart,
+asked with a look and tone such as he had never before bestowed upon
+her, if the play which he had seen that evening had been real, or only
+the baseless fabric of a dream.
+
+She understood him and drew back with a look almost of awe, shaking her
+head and replying in a startled way, "I do not know, I dare not say, I
+scarcely have taken time to think."
+
+"Then take it," he murmured in a voice that shook her body and soul,
+"for _I_ must know, if _he_ does not." And without venturing another
+word, or supplying by look or gesture any explanation of his unexpected
+appearance, or as equally unexpected departure, he bowed before her as
+if she had been a queen instead of the child he had been wont in other
+days to regard her, and speedily left her side.
+
+But he had not taken two steps before he paused. Mr. Ensign was
+approaching.
+
+"Mr. Sylvester! you are worse than the old woman of the tale, who
+declaring she would not, that nothing could ever induce her to--_did_."
+
+"You utter a deeper truth than you realize," returned that gentleman,
+with a grave emphasis meant rather for her ears than his. "It is the
+curse of mortals to overrate their strength in the face of great
+temptations. I am no exception to the rule." And with a second bow that
+included this apparently triumphant lover within its dignified sweep, he
+calmly proceeded upon his way, and in a few moments had left the house.
+
+Mr. Ensign, who for all his careless disposition, was quick to recognize
+depths in others, stared after his commanding figure until he had
+disappeared, then turned and looked at Paula. Why did his heart sink,
+and the lights and joy and promise of the evening seem to turn dark and
+shrivel to nothing before his eyes!
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII.
+
+TWO LETTERS.
+
+    "I have no other but a woman's reason,
+    I think him so, because I think him so."
+
+    --TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA.
+
+
+A woman who has submitted to the undivided attentions of a gentleman for
+any length of time, feels herself more or less bound to him, whether any
+special words of devotion have passed between them or not, particularly
+if from sensitiveness of nature, she has manifested any pleasure in his
+society. Paula therefore felt as if her wings had been caught in a
+snare, when Mr. Ensign upon leaving her that evening, put a small note
+in her hand, saying that he would do himself the pleasure of calling for
+his reply the next day. She did not need to open it. She knew
+intuitively the manly honest words with which he would be likely to
+offer his heart and life for her acceptance; yet she did open it almost
+as soon as she reached her room, sitting down in her outside wraps for
+the purpose. She was not disappointed. Every line was earnest, ardent,
+and respectful. A true love and a happy cheerful home awaited her
+if--the stupendous meaning latent in an _if_!
+
+With folded hands lying across the white page, with glance fixed on the
+fire always kept burning brightly in the grate, she sat querying her own
+soul and the awful future. He was such a charming companion; life had
+flashed and glimmered with a thousand lights and colors since she knew
+him; his very laugh made her want to sing. With him she would move in
+sunshiny paths, open to the regard of all the world, giving and
+receiving good. Life would need no veils and love no check. A placid
+stream would bear her on through fields of smiling verdure. Dread hopes,
+strange fears, uneasy doubts and vague unrests, would not disturb the
+heart that rested its faith upon his frank and manly bosom. A breeze
+blew through his life that would sweep all such evils from the path of
+her who walked in trust and love by his side. In trust and love; ah!
+that was it. She trusted him, but did she love him? At one time she had
+been convinced that she did, else these past few weeks would have owned
+a different history. He came upon her so brightly amid her gloom; filled
+her days with such genial thoughts, and drew the surface of her soul so
+unconsciously after him. It was like a zephyr sweeping over the sea;
+every billow that leaps to follow seems to own the power of that passing
+wind. But could she think so now, since she had found that the mere
+voice and look of another man had power to awaken depths such as she
+could not name and scarcely as yet had been able to recognize? that
+though the billows might flow under the genial smile of her young lover,
+the tide rose only at the call of a deeper voice and a more imposing
+presence?
+
+She was a thinking spirit and recoiled from yielding too readily to any
+passing impulse. Love was a sacrament in her eyes; something entirely
+too precious to be accepted in counterfeit. She must know the secret of
+her inclinations, must weigh the influence that swayed her, for once
+given over to earth's sublimest passion, she felt that it would have
+power to sweep her on to an eternity of bliss or suffering.
+
+She therefore forced herself to probe deep into the past, and pitilessly
+asked her conscience, what her emotions had been in reference to Mr.
+Sylvester before she positively knew that love for her as a woman had
+taken the place of his former fatherly regard. Her blushing cheek seemed
+to answer for her. Right or wrong, her life had never been complete away
+from his presence. She was lonesome and unsatisfied. When Mr. Ensign
+came she thought her previous unrest was explained, but the letter from
+Cicely describing Mr. Sylvester as sick and sorrowful, had withdrawn the
+veil from the delusion, and though it had settled again with Mr.
+Sylvester's studied refusal to accept her devotion, was by this
+evening's betrayal utterly wrenched away and trampled into oblivion. By
+every wild throb of her heart at the sound of his voice in her ear, by
+every out-reaching of her soul to enter into his every mood, by the deep
+sensation of rest she felt in his presence, and the uneasy longing that
+absorbed her in his absence, she knew that she loved Mr. Sylvester as
+she never could his younger, blither, and perhaps nobler rival. Each
+word spoken by him lay treasured in her heart of hearts. When she
+thought of manly beauty, his face and figure started upon her from the
+surrounding shadows, making all romance possible and poetry the truest
+expression of the human soul. While she lived, he must ever seem the man
+of men to charm the eye, affect the heart, and move the soul. Yet she
+hesitated. Why?
+
+There is nothing so hard to acknowledge to ourselves as the presence of
+a blemish in the character of those we love and long to revere. It was
+like giving herself to the rack to drag from its hiding-place and
+confront in all its hideous deformity, the doubt which, unconfessed
+perhaps, had of late mingled with her great reverence and admiring
+affection for this not easily to be comprehended man. But in this
+momentous hour she had power to do it. Conscience and self-respect
+demanded that the image before which she was ready to bow with such
+abandon, should be worthy her worship. She was not one who could carry
+offerings to a clouded shrine. She must see the glory shining from
+between the cherubim. "I must worship with my spirit as well as with my
+body, and how can I do that if there is a spot on his manhood, or a
+false note in his heart. If I did but know the secret of his past; why
+the prisoner sits in the dungeon! He is gentle, he is kindly, he loves
+goodness and strives to lead me in the paths of purity and wisdom, and
+yet something that is not good or pure clings to him, which he has never
+been able to shake loose. I perceive it in his melancholy glance; I
+catch its accents in his uneven tones; it rises upon me from his most
+thoughtful words, and makes his taking of a vow fearfully and warningly
+significant. Yet how much he is honored by his fellow-men, and with what
+reliance they look up to him for guidance and support. If I only knew
+the secrets of his heart!" thought she.
+
+It was a trembling scale that hung balancing in that young girl's hand
+that night. On one side, frankness, cheerfulness, manly worth, honest
+devotion, and a home with every adjunct of peace and prosperity; on the
+other, love, gratitude, longing, admiration, and a dark shadow
+enveloping all, called doubt. The scale would not adjust itself. It tore
+her heart to turn from Mr. Sylvester, it troubled her conscience to
+dismiss the thought of Mr. Ensign. The question was yet undecided when
+she rose and began putting away her ornaments for the night.
+
+What was there on her dressing-table that made her pause with such a
+start, and cast that look of half beseeching inquiry at her own image in
+the glass? Only another envelope with her name written upon it. But the
+way in which she took it in her hand, and the half guilty air with which
+she stole back with it to the fire, would have satisfied any looker-on I
+imagine, that conscience or no conscience, debate or no debate, the
+writer of these lines had gained a hold upon her heart, which no other
+could dispute.
+
+It was a compactly written note and ran thus:
+
+     "A man is not always responsible for what he does in moments of
+     great suspense or agitation. But if, upon reflection, he finds
+     that he has spoken harshly or acted unwisely, it is his duty to
+     remedy his fault; and therefore it is that I write you this
+     little note. Paula, I love you; not as I once did, with a
+     fatherly longing and a protective delight, but passionately,
+     yearningly, and entirely, with the whole force of my somewhat
+     disappointed life; as a man loves for whom the world has
+     dissolved leaving but one creature in it, and that a woman. I
+     showed you this too plainly to-night. I have no right to
+     startle or intimidate your sweet soul into any relation that
+     might hereafter curb or dissatisfy you; if you can love me
+     freely, with no back-lookings to any younger lover left behind,
+     know that naught you could bestow, can ever equal the world of
+     love and feeling which I long to lavish upon you from my heart
+     of hearts. But if another has already won upon your affections
+     too much for you to give an undivided response to my appeal,
+     then by all the purity and innocence of your nature, forget I
+     have ever marred the past or disturbed the present by any word
+     warmer than that of a father.
+
+     "I shall not meet you at breakfast and possibly not at dinner
+     to-morrow, but when evening comes I shall look for my soul's
+     dearer and better half, or my childless manhood's nearest and
+     most cherished friend, as God pleaseth and your own heart and
+     conscience shall decree.
+
+     "EDWARD SYLVESTER."
+
+Miss Belinda was very much surprised to be awakened early the next
+morning, by a pair of loving arms clasped yearningly about her neck.
+
+Looking up, she descried Paula kneeling beside her bed in the faint
+morning light, her cheeks burning, and her eyelids drooping; and
+guessing perhaps how it was, started up from her recumbent position with
+an energy strongly suggestive of the charger, that smells the battle
+afar off.
+
+"What has happened?" she asked. "You look as if you had not slept a
+wink."
+
+For reply Paula pulled aside the curtain at the head of her bed, and
+slipped into her hand Mr. Ensign's letter. Miss Belinda read it
+conscientiously through, with many grunts of approval, and having
+finished it, laid it down with a significant nod, after which she turned
+and surveyed Paula with keen but cautious scrutiny. "And you don't know
+what answer to give," she asked.
+
+"I should," said Paula, "if--Oh aunt, you know what stands in my way! I
+have seen it in your eyes for some time. There is some one else--"
+
+"But he has not spoken?" vigorously ejaculated her aunt.
+
+Without answering, Paula put into her hand, with a slow reluctance she
+had not manifested before, a second little note, and then hid her head
+amid the bedclothes, waiting with quickly beating heart for what her
+aunt might say.
+
+She did not seem in haste to speak, but when she did, her words came
+with a quick sigh that echoed very drearily in the young girl's anxious
+ears. "You have been placed by this in a somewhat painful position. I
+sympathize with you, my child. It is very hard to give denial to a
+benefactor."
+
+Paula's head drew nearer to her aunt's breast, her arms crept round her
+neck. "But must I?" she breathed.
+
+Miss Belinda knitted her brows with great force, and stared severely at
+the wall opposite. "I am sorry there is any question about it," she
+replied.
+
+Paula started up and looked at her with sudden determination. "Aunt,"
+said she, "what is your objection to Mr. Sylvester?"
+
+Miss Belinda shook her head, and pushing the girl gently away, hurriedly
+arose and began dressing with great rapidity. Not until she was entirely
+prepared for breakfast did she draw Paula to her, and prepare to answer
+her question.
+
+"My objection to him is, that I do not thoroughly understand him. I am
+afraid of the skeleton in the closet, Paula. I never feel at ease when I
+am with him, much as I admire his conversation and appreciate the
+undoubtedly noble instincts of his heart. His brow is not open enough to
+satisfy an eye which has accustomed itself to the study of human
+nature."
+
+
+"He has had many sorrows!" Paula faintly exclaimed, stricken by this
+echo of her own doubts.
+
+"Yes," returned her aunt, "and sorrow bows the head and darkens the eye,
+but it does not make the glance wavering or its expression mysterious."
+
+"Some sorrows might," urged Paula tremulously, arguing as much with her
+own doubts as with those of her aunt. "His have been of no ordinary
+nature. I have never told you, aunt, but there were circumstances
+attending Cousin Ona's death that made it especially harrowing. He had a
+stormy interview with her the very morning she was killed; words passed
+between them, and he left her with a look that was almost desperate.
+When he next saw her, she lay lifeless and inert before him. I sometimes
+think that the shadow that fell upon him at that hour will never pass
+away."
+
+"Do you know what was the subject of their disagreement?" asked Miss
+Belinda anxiously.
+
+"No, but I have reason to believe it had something to do with business
+affairs, as nothing else could ever arouse Cousin Ona into being at all
+disagreeable."
+
+"I don't like that phrase, _business affairs_; like charity, it covers
+entirely too much. Have you never had any doubts yourself about Mr.
+Sylvester?"
+
+"Ah, you touch me to the quick, aunt. I may have had my doubts, but when
+I look back on the past, I cannot see as they have any very substantial
+foundation. Supposing, aunt, that he has been merely unfortunate, and I
+should live to find that I had discarded one whose heart was darkened by
+nothing but sorrow? I should never forgive myself, nor could life yield
+me any recompense that would make amends for a sacrifice so
+unnecessary."
+
+"You love him, then, very dearly, Paula?"
+
+A sudden light fell on the young girl's face. "Hearts cannot tell their
+love," said she, "but since I received this letter from him, it has
+seemed as if my life hung balancing on the question, as to whether he is
+worthy of a woman's homage. If he is not, I would give my life to have
+him so. The world is only dear to me now as it holds him."
+
+Miss Belinda picked up Mr. Ensign's letter with trembling fingers. "I
+thought you were safe when the younger man came to woo," said she.
+"Girls, as a rule, prefer what is bright to what is sombre, and Mr.
+Ensign is truly a very agreeable as well as worthy young man."
+
+"Yes, aunt, and he came very near stealing my heart as he undoubtedly
+did my fancy, but a stronger hand snatched it away, and now I do not
+know what to do or how to act, so as to awaken in the future no remorse
+or vain regrets."
+
+Miss Belinda opened the letters again and consulted their contents in a
+matter-of-fact way. "Mr. Ensign proposes to come this afternoon for his
+answer, while Mr. Sylvester defers seeing you till evening. What if I
+seek Mr. Sylvester this morning and have a little conversation with him,
+which shall determine, for once and all, the question which so troubles
+us? Would you not find it easier to meet Mr. Ensign when he comes?"
+
+"You talk to Mr. Sylvester, and upon such a topic! Oh, I could not bear
+that. Pardon me, aunt, but I think I am more jealous of his feelings
+than of my own. If his secret can be learned in a half-hour's talk, it
+must be listened to by no one but myself. And I believe it can," she
+murmured reverently; "he is so tender of me he would never let me go
+blindfold into any path, concerning which I had once expressed anxiety.
+If I ask him whether there is any good reason before God or man why I
+should not give him my entire faith and homage, he will answer honestly,
+though it be the destruction of his hopes to do so?"
+
+"Have you such trust as that in his uprightness as a lover, and the
+guardian of your happiness?"
+
+"Have not you, aunt?"
+
+And Miss Belinda remembering his words on the occasion of his first
+proposal to adopt Paula, was forced to acknowledge that she had.
+
+So without further preliminaries, it was agreed upon that Paula should
+refrain from making a final decision until she had eased her heart by an
+interview with Mr. Sylvester.
+
+"Meantime, you can request Mr. Ensign to wait another day for his
+answer," said Miss Belinda.
+
+But Paula with a look of astonishment shook her head. "Is it you who
+would counsel me to such a piece of coquetry as that?" said she. "No,
+dear aunt, my heart is not with Mr. Ensign, as you know, and it is
+impossible for me to encourage him. If Mr. Sylvester should prove
+unworthy of my affection, I must bear, as best I may, the loss which
+must accrue; but till he does, let me not dishonor my womanhood by
+allowing hope to enter, even for a passing moment, the breast of his
+rival."
+
+Miss Belinda blushed, and drew her niece fondly towards her. "You are
+right," said she, "and my great desire for your happiness has led me
+into error. Honesty is the noblest adjunct of all true love, and must
+never be sacrificed to considerations of selfish expediency. The refusal
+which you contemplate bestowing upon Mr. Ensign, must be forwarded to
+him at once."
+
+And with a final embrace, in which Miss Belinda allowed herself to let
+fall some few natural tears of disappointment, she dismissed the young
+girl to her task.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV.
+
+PAULA MAKES HER CHOICE.
+
+                    "Good fortune then,
+    To make me bless't or cursed'st among men."
+
+    --MERCHANT OF VENICE.
+
+
+It was evening in the Sylvester mansion. Mr. Sylvester who, according to
+his understanding with Paula, had been absent from his home all day, had
+just come in and now stood in his library waiting for the coming
+footfall that should decide whether the future held for him any promise
+of joy.
+
+He had never looked more worthy of a woman's regard than he did that
+night. A matter that had been troubling him for some time had just been
+satisfactorily disposed of, and not a shadow, so far as he knew, lay
+upon his business outlook. This naturally brightened his cheek and lent
+a light to his eye. Then, hope is no mean beautifier, and this he
+possessed notwithstanding the disparity of years between himself and
+Paula. It was not, however, of sufficiently assured a nature to prevent
+him from starting at every sound from above, and flushing with quite a
+disagreeable sense of betrayal when the door opened and Bertram entered
+the room, instead of the gentle and exquisite being he had expected.
+
+"Uncle, I am so full of happiness, I had to stop and bestow a portion of
+it upon you. Do you think any one could mistake the nature of Miss
+Stuyvesant's feelings, who saw her last night?"
+
+"Hardly," was the smiling reply. "At all events I have not felt like
+wasting much but pleasant sympathy upon you. Your pathway to happiness
+looks secure, my boy."
+
+His nephew gave him a wistful glance, but hid his thought whatever it
+was. "I am going to see her to-night," remarked he. "I am afraid my love
+is something like a torrent that has once burst its barrier; it cannot
+rest until it has worked its channel and won its rightful repose."
+
+"That is something the way with all love," returned his uncle. "It may
+be dallied with while asleep, but once aroused, better meet a lion in
+his fury or a tempest in its rush. Are you going to test your hope,
+to-night?"
+
+The young man flushed. "I cannot say." But in another moment gayly
+added, "I only know that I am prepared for any emergency."
+
+"Well, my boy, I wish you God-speed. If ever a man has won a right to
+happiness, you are that man; and you shall enjoy it too, if any word or
+action of mine can serve to advance it."
+
+"Thank you!" replied Bertram, and with a bright look around the
+apartment, prepared to take his leave. "When I come back," he remarked,
+with a touch of that manly _naïveté_ to which I have before alluded, "I
+hope I shall not find you alone."
+
+Ignoring this wish which was re-echoed somewhat too deeply within his
+own breast for light expression, Mr. Sylvester accompanied his nephew to
+the front door.
+
+"Let us see what kind of a night it is," observed he, stepping out upon
+the stoop. "It is going to rain."
+
+"So it is," returned Bertram, with a quick glance overhead; "but I shall
+not let such a little fuss as that deter me from fulfilling my
+engagement." And bestowing a hasty nod upon his uncle, he bounded down
+the step.
+
+Instantly a man who was loitering along the walk in front of the house,
+stopped, as if struck by these simple words, turned, gave Bertram a
+quick look, and then with a sly glance back at the open door where Mr.
+Sylvester still stood gazing at the lowering heavens, set himself
+cautiously to follow him.
+
+Mr. Sylvester, who was too much pre-occupied to observe this suspicious
+action, remained for a moment contemplating the sky; then with an
+aimless glance down the avenue, during which his eye undoubtedly fell
+upon Bertram and the creeping shadow of a man behind him, closed the
+door and returned to the library.
+
+The sight of another's joy has the tendency to either unduly depress the
+spirits or greatly to elate them. When Paula came into the room a few
+minutes later, it was to find Mr. Sylvester awaiting her with an
+expression that was almost radiant. It made her duty seem doubly hard,
+and she came forward with the slow step of one who goes to meet or carry
+doom. He saw, and instantly the light died out of his face, leaving it
+one blank of despair. But controlling himself, he took her cold hand in
+his, and looking down upon her with a tender but veiled regard, asked in
+those low and tremulous tones that exerted such an influence upon her:
+
+"Do I see before me my affectionate and much to be cherished child, or
+that still dearer object of love and worship, which it shall be the
+delight of my life to render truly and deeply happy?"
+
+"You see," returned she, after a moment of silent emotion, "a girl
+without father or brother to advise her; who loves, or believes she
+does, a great and noble man, but who is smitten with fear also, she
+cannot tell why, and trembles to take a step to which no loving and
+devoted friend has set the seal of his approval."
+
+The clasp with which Mr. Sylvester held her hand in his, tightened for
+an instant with irrepressible emotion, then slowly unloosed. Drawing
+back, he surveyed her with eyes that slowly filled with a bitter
+comprehension of her meaning.
+
+"You are the only man," continued she, with a glance of humble entreaty,
+"that has ever stood to me for a moment in the light of a relation. You
+_have_ been a father to me in days gone by, and to you it therefore
+seems most natural for me to appeal when a question comes up that either
+puzzles or distresses me. Mr. Sylvester, you have offered me your love
+and the refuge of your home; if you say that in your judgment the
+counsel of all true friends would be for me to accept this love, then my
+hand is yours and with it my heart; a heart that only hesitates because
+it would fain be sure it has the smile of heaven upon its every
+prompting."
+
+"Paula!"
+
+The voice was so strange she looked up to see if it really was Mr.
+Sylvester who spoke. He had sunk back into a chair and had covered his
+face with his hands. With a cry she moved towards him, but he motioned
+her back.
+
+"Condemned to be my own executioner!" he muttered. "Placed on the rack
+and bid to turn the wheel that shall wrench my own sinews! My God, 'tis
+hard!"
+
+She did not hear the words, but she saw the action. Slowly the blood
+left her cheek, and her hand fell upon her swelling breast with a
+despairing gesture that would have smitten Miss Belinda to the heart,
+could she have seen it. "I have asked too much," she whispered.
+
+With a start Mr. Sylvester rose. "Paula," said he, in a stern and
+different tone, "is this fear of which you speak, the offspring of your
+own instincts, or has it been engendered in your breast by the words of
+another?"
+
+"My Aunt Belinda is in my confidence, if it is she to whom you allude,"
+rejoined she, meeting his glance fully and bravely. "But from no lips
+but yours could any words proceed capable of affecting my estimate of
+you as the one best qualified to make me happy."
+
+"Then it is my words alone that have awakened this doubt, this
+apprehension?"
+
+"I have not spoken of doubt," said she, but her eyelids fell.
+
+"No, thank God!" he passionately exclaimed. "And yet you feel it," he
+went on more composedly. "I have studied your face too long and closely
+not to understand it."
+
+She put out her hands in appeal, but for once it passed unheeded.
+
+"Paula," said he, "you must tell me just what that doubt is; I must know
+what is passing in your mind. You say you love me--" he paused, and a
+tremble shook him from head to foot, but he went inexorably on--"it is
+more than I had a right to expect, and God knows I am grateful for the
+precious and inestimable boon, far as it is above my deserts; but while
+loving me, you hesitate to give me your hand. Why? What is the name of
+the doubt that disturbs that pure breast and affects your choice? Tell
+me, I must know."
+
+"You ask me to dissect my own heart!" she cried, quivering under the
+torture of his glance; "how can I? What do I know of its secret springs
+or the terrors that disturb its even beatings? I cannot name my fear; it
+has no name, or if it has--Oh, sir!" she cried in a burst of passionate
+longing, "your life has been one of sorrow and disappointment; grief has
+touched you close, and you might well be the melancholy and sombre man
+that all behold. I do not shrink from grief; say that the only shadow
+that lies across your dungeon-door is that cast by the great and
+heart-rending sorrows of your life, and without question and without
+fear I enter that dungeon with you--"
+
+The hand he raised stopped her. "Paula," cried he, "do you believe in
+repentance?"
+
+The words struck her like a blow. Falling slowly back, she looked at him
+for an instant, then her head sank on her breast.
+
+"I know what your hatred of sin is," continued he. "I have seen your
+whole form tremble at the thought of evil. Is your belief in the
+redeeming power of God as great as your recoil from the wrong that makes
+that redemption necessary?"
+
+Quickly her head raised, a light fell on her brow, and her lips moved in
+a vain effort to utter what her eyes unconsciously expressed.
+
+"Paula, I would be unworthy the name of a man, if with the consciousness
+of possessing a dark and evil nature, I strove by use of any hypocrisy
+or specious pretense at goodness, to lure to my side one so
+exceptionally pure, beautiful and high-minded. The ravening wolf and the
+innocent lamb would be nothing to it. Neither would I for an instant be
+esteemed worthy of your regard, if in this hour of my wooing there
+remained in my life the shadow of any latent wrong that might hereafter
+rise up and overwhelm you. Whatever of wrong has ever been committed by
+me--and it is my punishment that I must acknowledge before your pure
+eyes that my soul is not spotless--was done in the past, and is known
+only to my own heart and the God who I reverently trust has long ago
+pardoned me. The shadow is that of remorse, not of fear, and the evil,
+one against my own soul, rather than against the life or fortunes of
+other men. Paula, such sins can be forgiven if one has a mind to
+comprehend the temptations that beset men in their early struggles. I
+have never forgiven myself, but--" He paused, looked at her for an
+instant, his hand clenched over his heart, his whole noble form shaken
+by struggle, then said--"forgiveness implies no promise, Paula; you
+shall never link yourself to a man who has been obliged to bow his head
+in shame before you, but by the mercy that informs that dear glance and
+trembling lip, do you think you can ever grow to forgive me?"
+
+"Oh," she cried, with a burst of sobs, violent as her grief and shame,
+"God be merciful to me, as I am merciful to those who repent of their
+sins and do good and not evil all the remaining days of their life."
+
+"I thought you would _forgive_ me," murmured he, looking down upon her,
+as the miser eyes the gold that has slipped from his paralyzed hand.
+"Him whom the hard-hearted sinner and the hypocrite despise, God's
+dearest lambs regard with mercy. I learned to revere God before I knew
+you, Paula, but I learned to love Him in the light of your gentleness
+and your trust. Rise up now and let me wipe away your tears--my
+daughter."
+
+She sprang up as if stung. "No, no," she cried, "not that; I cannot bear
+that yet. I must think, I must know what all this means," and she laid
+her hand upon her heart. "God surely does not give so much love for
+one's undoing; if I were not destined to comfort a life so saddened, He
+would have bequeathed me more pity and less--" The lifted head fell, the
+word she would have uttered, stirred her bosom, but not her lips.
+
+It was a trial to his strength, but his firm man's heart did not waver.
+"You do comfort me," said he; "from early morning to late night your
+presence is my healing and my help, and will always be so, whatever may
+befal. A daughter can do much, my Paula."
+
+She took a step back towards the door, her eyes, dark with unfathomable
+impulses, flashing on him through the tears that hung thickly on her
+lashes.
+
+"Is it for your own sake or for mine, that you make use of that word?"
+said she.
+
+He summoned up his courage, met that searching glance with all its wild,
+bewildering beauty, and responded, "Can you ask, Paula?"
+
+With a lift of her head that gave an almost queenly stateliness to her
+form, she advanced a step, and drawing a crumpled paper from her pocket,
+said, "When I went to my room last night, it was to read _two_ letters,
+one from yourself, and one from Mr. Ensign. This is his, and a manly and
+noble letter it is too; but hearts have right to hearts, and I was
+obliged to refuse his petition." And with a reverent but inexorable
+hand, she dropped the letter on the burning coals of the grate at their
+side, and softly turned to leave the room.
+
+"Paula!" With a bound the stern and hitherto forcibly repressed man,
+leaped to her side. "My darling! my life!" and with a wild,
+uncontrollable impulse, he caught her for one breathless moment to his
+heart; then as suddenly released her, and laying his hand in reverence
+on her brow, said softly, "Now go and pray, little one; and when you are
+quite calm, an hour hence or a week hence whichever it may be, come and
+tell me my fate as God and the angels reveal it to you." And he smiled,
+and she saw his smile, and went out of the room softly, as one who
+treadeth upon holy ground.
+
+Mr. Sylvester was considered by his friends and admirers as a proud man.
+If a vote had been cast among those who knew him best, as from what
+especial passion common to humanity he would soonest recoil, it would
+have been unanimously pronounced shame, and his own hand would have
+emphasized the judgment of his fellows. But shame which is open to the
+gaze of the whole world, differs from that which is sacred to the eyes
+of one human being, and that the one who lies nearest the heart.
+
+As Paula's retreating footsteps died away on the stairs, and he awoke to
+the full consciousness that his secret was shared by her whose love was
+his life, and whose good opinion had been his incentive and his pride,
+his first sensation was one of unmitigated anguish, but his next,
+strange to say, that of a restful relief. He had cast aside the cloak he
+had hugged so closely to his breast these many years, and displayed to
+her shrinking gaze the fox that was gnawing at his vitals; and Spartan
+though he was, the dew that had filled her loving eyes was balm to him.
+And not only that; he had won claim to the title of true man. Her
+regard, if regard it remained, was no longer an airy fabric built upon a
+plausible seeming, but a firm structure with knowledge for its
+foundation. "I shall not live to whisper, 'If she knew my whole life,
+would she love me so well?'"
+
+His first marriage had been so wholly uncongenial and devoid of
+sympathy, that his greatest longing in connection with a fresh contract,
+was to enjoy the full happiness of perfect union and mutual trust; and
+though he could never have summoned up courage to take her into his
+confidence, unsolicited, now that it had been done he would not have it
+undone, no, not if by the doing he had lost her confidence and
+affection.
+
+But something told him he had not lost it. That out of the darkness and
+the shock of this very discovery, a new and deeper love would spring,
+which having its birth in human frailty and human repentance, would gain
+in the actual what it lost in the ideal, bringing to his weary,
+suffering and yearning man's nature, the honest help of a strong and
+loving sympathy, growing trust, and sweetest because wisest
+encouragement.
+
+It was therefore, with a growing sense of deep unfathomable comfort, and
+a reverent thankfulness for the mercies of God, that he sat by the fire
+idly watching the rise and fall of the golden flames above the
+fluttering ashes of his rival's letter, and dreaming with a hallowing
+sense of his unworthiness, upon the possible bliss of coming days.
+Happiness in its truest and most serene sense was so new to him, it
+affected him like the presence of something strangely commanding. He was
+awe-struck before it, and unconsciously bowed his head at its
+contemplation. Only his eyes betrayed the peace that comes with all
+great joy, his eyes and perhaps the faint, almost unearthly smile that
+flitted across his mouth, disturbing its firm line and making his face
+for all its inevitable expression of melancholy, one that his mother
+would have loved to look upon. "Paula!" came now and then in a reverent,
+yearning accent from between his lips, and once a low, "Thank God!"
+which showed that he was praying.
+
+Suddenly he rose; a more human mood had set in, and he felt the
+necessity of assuring himself that it was really he upon whom the dreary
+past had closed, and a future of such possible brightness opened. He
+walked about the room, surveying the rich articles within it, as the
+possible belongings of the beautiful woman he adored; he stood and
+pictured her as coming into the door as his wife, and before he realized
+what he was doing, had planned certain changes he would make in his home
+to adapt it to the wants of her young and growing mind, when with a
+strange suddenness, the door upon which he was gazing flew back, and
+Bertram Sylvester entered just as he had come from the street. He looked
+so haggard, so wild, so little the picture of himself as he ventured
+forth a couple of hours before, that Mr. Sylvester started, and
+forgetting his happiness in his alarm, asked in a tone of dismay:
+
+"What has happened? Has Miss Stuyvesant--"
+
+Bertram's hand went up as if his uncle had touched him upon a festering
+wound. "Don't!" gasped he, and advancing to the table, sat down and
+buried his face for a moment in his arms, then rose, and summoning up a
+certain manly dignity that became him well, met Mr. Sylvester's eye with
+forced calmness, and inquired:
+
+"Did you know there was a thief in our bank, Uncle Edward?"
+
+
+
+
+XXXV.
+
+THE FALLING OF THE SWORD.
+
+                      "Foul deeds will rise,
+    Though all the world o'erwhelm them, to men's eyes."--HAMLET.
+
+
+
+Mr. Sylvester towered on his nephew with an expression such as few men
+had ever seen even on his powerful and commanding face.
+
+"What do you mean?" asked he, and his voice rang like a clarion through
+the room.
+
+Bertram trembled and for a moment stood aghast, the ready flush bathing
+his brow with burning crimson. "I mean," stammered he, with difficulty
+recovering himself, "that when Mr. Stuyvesant came to open his private
+box in the bank to-day, that he not only found its lock had been
+tampered with, but that money and valuables to the amount of some twelve
+hundred dollars were missing from among its contents."
+
+"What?"
+
+The expression which had made Mr. Sylvester's brow so terrible had
+vanished, but his wonder remained.
+
+"It is impossible," he declared. "Our vaults are too well watched for
+any such thing to occur. He has made some mistake; a robbery of that
+nature could not take place without detection."
+
+"It would seem not, and yet the fact remains. Mr. Stuyvesant himself
+informed me of it, to-night. He is not a careless man, nor reckless in
+his statements. Some one has robbed the bank and it remains with us to
+find out who."
+
+Mr. Sylvester, who had been standing all this while, sat down like a man
+dazed, the wild lost look on Bertram's face daunting him with a fearful
+premonition. "There are but four men who have access to the vault where
+the boxes are kept," said he: then quickly, "Why did Mr. Stuyvesant wait
+till to-night to speak to you? Why did he not notify us at once of a
+loss so important for us to know?"
+
+The flush on Bertram's brow slowly subsided, giving way to a steady
+pallor. "He waited to be sure," said he. "He had a memorandum at home
+which he desired to consult; he was not ready to make any rash
+statement: he is a thinking man and more considerate than many of his
+friends are apt to imagine. If the lock had not been found open he would
+have thought with you that he had made some mistake; if he had not
+missed from the box some of its contents, he would have considered the
+condition of the lock the result of some oversight on his own part or of
+some mistake on the part of another, but the two facts together were
+damning and could force upon him but one conclusion. Uncle," said he,
+with a straightforward look into Mr. Sylvester's countenance, "Mr.
+Stuyvesant knows as well as we do who are the men who have access to the
+vaults. As you say, the opening of a box during business hours and the
+abstracting from it of papers or valuables by any one who has not such
+access, would be impossible. Only Hopgood, you and myself, and possibly
+Folger, could find either time or opportunity for such a piece of work;
+while after business hours, the same four, minus Folger who contents
+himself with knowing the combination of the inner safe, could open the
+vaults even in case of an emergency. Now of the four named, two are
+above suspicion. I might almost say three, for Hopgood is not a man it
+is easy to mistrust. One alone, then, of all the men whom Mr. Stuyvesant
+is in the habit of meeting at the Bank, is open to a doubt. A young man,
+uncle, whose rising has been rapid, whose hopes have been lofty, whose
+life may or may not be known to himself as pure, but which in the eyes
+of a matured man of the world might easily be questioned, just because
+its hopes are so lofty and its means for attaining them so limited."
+
+"Bertram!" sprang from Mr. Sylvester's white lips.
+
+But the young man raised his hand with almost a commanding gesture.
+"Hush," said he, "no sympathy or surprise. Facts like these have to be
+met with silent endurance, as we walk up to the mouth of the cannon we
+cannot evade, or bare our breast to the thrust of the bayonet gleaming
+before our eyes.--I would not have you think," he somewhat hurriedly
+pursued, "that Mr. Stuyvesant insinuated anything of the kind, but his
+daughter was not present in the parlor, and--" A sigh, almost a gasp
+finished the sentence.
+
+"Bertram!" again exclaimed his uncle, this time with some authority in
+his voice. "The shock of this discovery has unnerved you. You act like a
+man capable of being suspected. That is simply preposterous. One half
+hour's conversation with Mr. Stuyvesant on my part will convince him, if
+he needs convincing, which I do not believe, that whoever is unworthy of
+trust in our bank, you are not the man."
+
+Bertram raised his head with a gleam of hope, but instantly dropped it
+again with a despairing gesture that made his uncle frown.
+
+"I did not know that you were inclined to be so pusillanimous," cried
+Mr. Sylvester; "and in presence of a foe so unsubstantial as this you
+have conjured up almost out of nothing. If the bank has been robbed, it
+cannot be difficult to find the thief. I will order in detectives
+to-morrow. We will hold a board of inquiry, and the culprit shall be
+unmasked; that is, if he is one of the employees of the bank, which it
+is very hard to believe."
+
+"Very, and which, if true, would make it unadvisable in us to give the
+alarm that any public measures taken could not fail to do."
+
+"The inquiry shall be private, and the detectives, men who can be
+trusted to keep their business secret."
+
+
+"How can any inquiry be private? Uncle, we are treading on delicate
+ground, and have a task before us requiring great tact and discretion.
+If the safe had only been assaulted, or there were any evidences of
+burglary to be seen! But we surely should have heard of it from some one
+of the men, if anything unusual had been observed. Hopgood would have
+spoken at least."
+
+"Yes, Hopgood would have spoken."
+
+The tone in which this was uttered made Bertram look up. "You agree with
+me, then, that Hopgood is absolutely to be relied upon?"
+
+"Absolutely." A faint flush on Mr. Sylvester's face lent force to this
+statement.
+
+"He could not be beguiled or forced by another man to reveal the
+combination, or to relax his watch over the vaults entrusted to his
+keeping?"
+
+"No."
+
+"He is alone with the vaults where the boxes are kept for an hour or two
+in the early morning!"
+
+"Yes, and has been for three years. Hopgood is honesty itself."
+
+"And so are Folger and Jessup and Watson," exclaimed Bertram
+emphatically.
+
+"Yes," his uncle admitted, with equal emphasis.
+
+"It is a mystery," Bertram declared; "and one I fear that will undo me."
+
+"Nonsense!" broke forth somewhat impatiently from Mr. Sylvester's lips;
+"there is no reason at this time for any such conclusion. If there is a
+thief in the bank he can be found; if the robbery was committed by an
+outsider, he may still be discovered. If he is not, if the mystery rests
+forever unexplained, you have your character, Bertram, a character as
+spotless as that of any of your fellows, whom we regard as above
+suspicion. A man is not going to be condemned by such a judge of human
+nature as Mr. Stuyvesant, just because a mysterious crime has been
+committed, to which the circumstances of his position alone render it
+possible for him to be party. You might as well say that Jessup and
+Folger and Watson--yes, or myself, would in that case lose his
+confidence. They are in the bank, and are constantly in the habit of
+going to the vaults."
+
+"None of those gentlemen want to marry his daughter," murmured Bertram.
+"It is not the director I fear, but the father. I have so little to
+bring her. Only my character and my devotion."
+
+"Well, well, pluck up courage, my boy. I have hopes yet that the whole
+matter can be referred to some mistake easily explainable when once it
+is discovered. Mistakes, even amongst the honest and the judicious, are
+not so uncommon as one is apt to imagine. I, myself, have known of one
+which if providence had not interfered, might have led to doubts
+seemingly as inconsistent as yours. To-morrow we will consider the
+question at length. To-night--Well, Bertram, what is it?"
+
+The young man started and dropped his eyes, which during the last words
+of his uncle had been fixed upon his face with strange and penetrating
+inquiry. "Nothing," said he, "that is, nothing more;" and rose as if to
+leave.
+
+But Mr. Sylvester put out his hand and stopped him. "There _is_
+something," said he. "I have seen it in your face ever since you entered
+this room. What is it?"
+
+The young man drew a deep breath and leaned back in his chair. Mr.
+Sylvester watched him with growing pallor. "You are right," murmured his
+nephew at last; "there is something more, and it is only justice that
+you should hear it. I have had two adventures to-night; one quite apart
+from my conversation with Mr. Stuyvesant. Heaven that watches above us,
+has seen fit to accumulate difficulties in my path, and this last,
+perhaps, is the least explainable and the hardest to encounter."
+
+"What do you allude to?" cried his uncle, imperatively; "I have had an
+evening of too much agitation to endure suspense with equanimity.
+Explain yourself."
+
+"It will not take long," said the other; "a few words will reveal to you
+the position in which I stand. Let me relate it in the form of a
+narrative. You know what a dark portion of the block that is in which
+Mr. Stuyvesant's house is situated. A man might hide in any of the areas
+along there, without being observed by you unless he made some sound to
+attract your attention. I was, therefore, more alarmed than surprised
+when, shortly after leaving Mr. Stuyvesant's dwelling, I felt a hand
+laid on my shoulder, and turning, beheld a dark figure at my side, of an
+appearance calculated to arouse any man's apprehension. He was tall,
+unkempt, with profuse beard, and eyes that glared even in the darkness
+of his surroundings, with a feverish intensity. 'You are Mr. Sylvester,'
+said he, with a look of a wild animal ready to pounce upon his prey.
+'Yes,' said I, involuntarily stepping back, 'I am Mr. Sylvester.' 'I
+want to speak to you,' exclaimed he, with a rush of words as though a
+stream had broken loose; 'now, at once, on business that concerns you.
+Will you listen?'
+
+"I thought of the only business that seemed to concern me then, and
+starting still farther back, surveyed him with surprise. 'I don't know
+you,' said I; 'what business can you have with me?' 'Will you step into
+some place where it is warm and find out?' he asked, shivering in his
+thin cloak, but not abating a jot of his eagerness. 'Go on before me,'
+said I, 'and we will see.' He complied at once, and in this way we
+reached Beale's Coffee-Room, where we went in. 'Now,' said I, 'out with
+what you have to say and be quick about it. I have no time to listen to
+nonsense and no heart to attend to it.' His eye brightened; he did not
+cast a glance at the smoking victuals about him, though I knew he was
+hungry as a dog. 'It is no nonsense,' said he, 'that I have to
+communicate to you.' And then I saw he had once been a gentleman. 'For
+two years and a half have I been searching for you,' he went on, 'in
+order that I might recall to your mind a little incident. You remember
+the afternoon of February, the twenty-fifth, two years ago?'
+
+"'No,' said I, in great surprise, for his whole countenance was flushed
+with expectancy. 'What was there about that day that I should remember
+it?' He smiled and bent his face nearer to mine. 'Don't you recollect a
+little conversation you had in a small eating-house in Dey Street, with
+a gentleman of a high-sounding voice to whom you were obliged
+continually to say 'hush!'" I stared at the man, as you may believe,
+with some notion of his being a wandering lunatic. 'I have never taken a
+meal in any eating-house in Dey Street,' I declared, motioning to a
+waiter to approach us. The man observing it, turned swiftly upon me. 'Do
+you think I care for any such petty _fuss_ as that?' asked he,
+indicating the rather slightly built man I had called to my rescue,
+while he covertly studied my face to observe the effect of his words.
+
+"I started. I could not help it; this use of an expression almost
+peculiar to myself, assured me that the man knew me better than I
+supposed. Involuntarily I waved the waiter back and turned upon the man
+with an inquiring look.
+
+"'I thought you might consider it worth your while to listen,' said he,
+smiling with the air of one who has or thinks he has a grip upon you.
+Then suddenly, 'You are a rich man, are you not? a proud man and an
+honored one. You hold a position of trust and are considered worthy of
+it; how would you like men to know that you once committed a mean and
+dirty trick; that those white hands that have the handling of such large
+funds at present, have in days gone by been known to dip into such funds
+a little too deeply; that, in short, you, Bertram Sylvester, cashier of
+the Madison Bank, and looking forward to no one knows what future honors
+and emoluments, have been in a position better suited to a felon's cell
+than the trusted agent of a great and wealthy corporation?'
+
+"I did not collar him; I was too dumb-stricken for any such display of
+indignation. I simply stared, feeling somewhat alarmed as I remembered
+my late interview with Mr. Stuyvesant, and considered the possibility of
+a plot being formed against me. He smiled again at the effect he had
+produced, and drew me into a corner of the room where we sat down. 'I am
+going to tell you a story,' said he, 'just to show you what a good
+memory I have. One day, a year and more ago, I sauntered into an
+eating-house on Dey Street. I have not always been what you see me now,
+though to tell you the truth, I was but little better off at the time of
+which I speak, except that I did have a dime or so in my pocket, and
+could buy a meal of victuals--if I wished.' And his eyes roamed for the
+first time to the tables stretching out before him down the room. 'The
+proprietor was an acquaintance of mine, and finding I was sleepy as well
+as hungry, let me go into a certain dark pantry, where I curled up amid
+all sorts of old rubbish and went to sleep. I was awakened by the sound
+of voices talking very earnestly. The closet in which I was hidden was a
+temporary affair built up of loose boards, and the talk of a couple of
+men seated against it was easy enough to be heard. Do you want to know
+what that conversation was?'
+
+"My curiosity was roused by this time and I said yes. If this was a plot
+to extort money from me, it was undeniably better for me to know upon
+just what foundations it rested. I thought the man looked surprised, but
+with an aplomb difficult to believe assumed, he went on to say, 'The
+voices gave me my only means of judging of the age, character, or
+position of the men conversing, but I have a quick ear, and my memory is
+never at fault. From the slow, broken, nervously anxious tone of one of
+the men, I made up my mind that he was elderly, hard up, and not over
+scrupulous; the other voice was that of a gentleman, musical and yet
+pronounced, and not easily forgotten, as you see, sir. The first words I
+heard aroused me and convinced me it was worth while to listen. They
+were uttered by the gentleman. 'You come to me with such a dirty piece
+of business! What right have you to suppose I would hearken to you for
+an instant!' 'The right,' returned the other, 'of knowing you have not
+been above doing dirty work in your life time.' The partition creaked at
+that, as though one of the two had started forward, but I didn't hear
+any reply made to this strange accusation. 'Do you think,' the same
+voice went on, 'that I do not know where the five thousand dollars came
+from which you gave me for that first speculation? I knew it when I took
+it, and if I hadn't been sure the operation would turn out fortunately,
+you would never have been the man you are to-day. It came out of funds
+entrusted to you, and was not the gift of a relative as you would have
+made me believe.' 'Good heaven!' exclaimed the other, after a silence
+that was very expressive just then and there, 'and you let me--' 'Oh we
+won't go into that,' interrupted the less cultivated voice. 'All you
+wanted was a start, to make you the successful man you have since
+become. I never worried much about morals, and I don't worry about them
+now, only when you say you won't do a thing likely to make my fortune,
+just because it is not entirely free from reproach, I say, remember what
+I know about you, and don't talk virtue to me.'
+
+"'I am rightly punished,' came from the other, in a tone that proved him
+to be a man more ready to do a wrong thing than to face the accusation
+of it. 'If I ever did what you suppose, the repentance that has
+embittered all my success, and the position in which you have this day
+placed me, is surely an ample atonement.' 'Will you do what I request?'
+inquired the other, giving little heed to this expression of misery, of
+which I on the contrary took special heed. 'No,' was the energetic
+reply; 'because I am not spotless it is no sign that I will wade into
+filth. I will give you money as I have done scores of times before, but
+I will lend my hand to no scheme which is likely to throw discredit on
+me or mine. Were you not connected to me in the way in which you are--'
+'You would pursue the scheme,' interrupted the other; 'it is because you
+know that I cannot talk, that you dare repudiate it. Well I will go to
+one--' 'You shall not,' came in short quick tones, just such tones as
+you used to me, sir, when we first entered this room. 'You shall leave
+the country before you do anything more, or say anything more, to
+compromise me or yourself. I may have done wrong in my day, but that is
+no reason why I should suffer for it at your hands, tempter of youth,
+and deceiver of your own flesh and blood! _You_ shall never bring back
+those days to me again; they are buried, and have been stamped out of
+sight by many an honest dealing since, and many as I trust before God,
+good and sterling action. I have long since begun a new life; a life of
+honor, and pure, if successful, dealing. Not only my own happiness, but
+that of one who should be considered by you, depends upon my maintaining
+that life to the end, unshadowed by unholy remembrances, and unharrassed
+by any such proffers as you have presumed to make to me here to-day. If
+you want a few thousand dollars to leave the country, say so, but never
+again presume to offend my ears, or those of any one else we may know,
+with any such words as you have made use of to-day.' And the spiritless
+creature subsided, sir, and said no more to that rich, honored, and
+successful man who was so sensitive to even the imputation of guilt.
+
+"But I am not spiritless and just where he dropped the affair, I took it
+up. 'Here is a chance for me to turn an honest penny,' thought I, and
+with a deliberation little to be expected of me, perhaps, set myself to
+spot that man and make the most out of the matter I could. Unfortunately
+I lost the opportunity of seeing his face. I was too anxious to catch
+every word they uttered, to quit my place of concealment till their
+conversation was concluded, and then I was too late to be sure which of
+the many men leaving the building before me was the one I was after. The
+waiters were too busy to talk, and the proprietor himself had taken no
+notice. Happily as I have before said, I never forget voices; moreover
+one of the two speakers had made use of a phrase peculiar enough to
+serve as a clue to his identity. It was in answer to some parting threat
+of the older man, and will remind you of an expression uttered by
+yourself an hour or so ago. 'Do you suppose I will let such a little
+fuss as that deter me?' It was the cue to his speech, by which I
+intended to hunt out my man from amongst the rich, the trusted and the
+influential persons of this city, and when found, to hold him.'
+
+"'And you think you have done this?' said I, too conscious of the
+possible net about my feet to be simply angry. 'I know it,' said he;
+'every word you have uttered since we have been here has made me more
+and more certain of the fact. I could swear to your voice, and as to
+your use of that tell-tale word, it was not till I thought to inquire of
+a certain wide-awake fellow down town, who amongst our business men were
+in the habit of using that expression, and was told Mr. Sylvester of the
+Madison Bank, that I was enabled to track you. I know I have got my hand
+on my man at last and--' He looked down at his thread-bare coat and
+around at the tables with their smoking dishes, and left me to draw my
+own conclusion.
+
+"Uncle, there are crises in life which no former experience teaches you
+how to meet. I had arrived at such a one. Perhaps you can understand me
+when I say I was well nigh appalled. Denial of what was imputed to me
+might be wisdom and might not. I felt the coil of a deadly serpent about
+me, and knew not whether it was best to struggle or to simply submit.
+The man noted the effect he had made and complacently folded his arms.
+He was of a nervous organization and possessed an eye like a hungry
+wolf, but he could wait. 'This is a pretty story,' said I at last, and I
+reject it altogether. 'I am an honest man and have always been so; you
+will have to give up your hopes of making anything out of me.' 'Then you
+are willing,' said he, 'that I should repeat this story to one of the
+directors of your bank, whom I know?'
+
+"I looked at him; he returned my gaze with a cold nonchalence more
+suggestive of a deep laid purpose, than even his previous glance of
+feverish determination. I immediately let my eye run over his scanty
+clothing and loose flowing hair and beard. 'Yes,' said I, with as much
+sarcasm as I knew how to assume, 'if you dare risk the consequences, I
+think I may.' He at once drew himself up. 'You think,' said he, 'that
+you have a common-place adventurer to deal with; that my appearance is
+going to testify in your favor; that you have but to deny any accusation
+which such a hungry-looking, tattered wretch as I, may make, and that I
+shall be ignominiously kicked out of the presence into which I have
+forced myself; that in short I have been building my castle in the air.
+Mr. Sylvester, I am a poor devil but I am no fool. When I left Dey
+Street on the twenty-fifth of February two years ago, it was with a
+sealed paper in my pocket, in which was inscribed all that I had heard
+on that day. This I took to a lawyer's office, and not being, as I have
+before said, quite as impecunious in those days as at present, succeeded
+in getting the lawyer, whom I took care should be a most respectable
+man, to draw up a paper to the effect that I had entrusted him with this
+statement--of whose contents he however knew nothing--on such a day and
+hour, to which paper a gentleman then present, consented at my
+respectful solicitation to affix his name as witness, which gentleman,
+strange to say, has since proved to be a director of the bank of which
+you are the present cashier, and consequently the very man of all others
+best adapted to open the paper whose seal you profess to be so willing
+to see broken.'
+
+"'His name!' It was all that I could say. 'Stuyvesant,' cried the man,
+fixing me with his eye in which I in vain sought for some signs of
+secret doubt or unconscious wavering. I rose; the position in which I
+found myself was too overwhelming for instant decision. I needed time
+for reflection, possibly advice--from you. A resolution to brave the
+devil must be founded on something more solid than impulse, to hold its
+own unmoved. I only stopped to utter one final word and ask one leading
+question. 'You are a smart man,' said I, 'and you are also a villain.
+Your smartness would give you food and drink, if you exercised it in a
+manner worthy of a man, but your villainy if persisted in, will
+eventually rob you of both, and bring you to the prison's cell or the
+hangman's gallows. As for myself, I persist in saying that I am now and
+always have been an honest man, whatever you may have overheard or find
+yourself capable of swearing to. Yet a lie is an inconvenient thing to
+have uttered against you at any time, and I may want to see you again;
+if I do, where shall I find you?' He thrust his hand into his pocket and
+drew out a small slip of folded paper, which he passed to me with a bow
+that Chesterfield would have admired. 'You will find it written within,'
+said he 'I shall look for you any time to-morrow, up to seven o'clock.
+At that hour the lawyer of whom I have spoken, sends the statement which
+he has in his possession to Mr. Stuyvesant.' I nodded my assent, and he
+moved slowly towards the door. As he did so, his eyes fell upon a roll
+of bread lying on a counter. I at once stepped forward and bought it.
+Vile as he was, and deadly as was the snare he contemplated drawing
+about me, I could not see that wolfish look of hunger, and not offer him
+something to ease it. He took the loaf from my hands and bit greedily
+into it but suddenly paused, and shook his head with a look like
+self-reproach, and thrusting the loaf under his arm, turned towards the
+door with the quick action of one escaping. Instantly, and before he was
+out of sight or hearing, I drew the attention of the proprietor to him.
+'Do you see that man?' I asked. 'He has been attempting a system of
+blackmail upon me.' And satisfied with thus having provided a witness
+able of identifying the man, in case of an emergency, I left the
+building.
+
+"And now you know it all," concluded he; and the silence that followed
+the utterance of those simple words, was a silence that could be felt.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Bertram?"
+
+The young man started from his fixed position, and his eyes slowly
+traversed toward his uncle.
+
+"Have you that slip of paper which the man gave you before departing?"
+
+"Yes," said he.
+
+"Let me have it, if you please."
+
+The young man with an agitated look, plunged his hand into his pocket,
+drew out the small note and laid it on the table between them. Mr.
+Sylvester let it lie, and again there was a silence.
+
+"If this had happened at any other time," Bertram pursued, "one could
+afford to let the man have his say; but now, just as this other mystery
+has come up--"
+
+"I don't believe in submitting to blackmail," came from his uncle in
+short, quick tones.
+
+Bertram gave a start. "You then advise me to leave him alone?" asked he,
+with unmistakable emotion.
+
+His uncle dropped the hand which till now he had held before his face,
+and hastily confronted his nephew. "You will have enough to do to attend
+to the other matter without bestowing any time or attention upon this.
+The man that robbed Mr. Stuyvesant's box, can be found and must. It is
+the one indispensable business to which I now delegate you. No amount of
+money and no amount of diligence is to be spared. I rely on you to carry
+the affair to a successful termination. Will you undertake the task?"
+
+"Can you ask?" murmured the young man, with a shocked look at his
+uncle's changed expression.
+
+"As to this other matter, we will let it rest for to-night. To-morrow's
+revelations may be more favorable than we expect. At all events let us
+try and get a little rest now; I am sure we are both in a condition to
+need it."
+
+Bertram rose. "I am at your command," said he, and moved to go. Suddenly
+he turned, and the two men stood face to face. "I have no wish," pursued
+he, "to be relieved of my burden at the expense of any one else. If it
+is to be borne by any one, let it be carried by him who is young and
+stalwart enough to sustain it." And his hand went out involuntarily
+towards his uncle.
+
+Mr. Sylvester took that hand and eyed his nephew long and earnestly.
+Bertram thought he was going to speak, and nerved himself to meet with
+fortitude whatever might be said. But the lips which Mr. Sylvester had
+opened, closed firmly, and contenting himself with a mere wring of his
+nephew's hand, he allowed him to go. The slip of paper remained upon the
+table unopened.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That night as Paula lay slumbering on her pillow, a sound passed through
+the house. It was like a quick irrepressible cry of desolation, and the
+poor child hearing it, started, thinking her name had been called. But
+when she listened, all was still, and believing she had dreamed, she
+turned her face upon her pillow, and softly murmuring the name that was
+dearest to her in all the world, fell again into a peaceful sleep.
+
+But he whose voice had uttered that cry in the dreary emptiness of the
+great parlors below, slept not.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVI.
+
+MORNING.
+
+    "Two maidens by one fountain's joyous brink,
+    And one was sad and one had cause for sadness."
+
+
+Cicely Stuyvesant waiting for her father at the foot of the stairs, on
+the morning after these occurrences, was a pretty and a touching
+spectacle. She had not slept very well the night before, and her brow
+showed signs of trouble and so did her trembling lips. She held in her
+hand a letter which she twirled about with very unsteady fingers. The
+morning was bright, but she did not seem to observe it; the air was
+fresh, but it did not seem to invigorate her. A rose-leaf of care lay on
+the tremulous waters of her soul, and her sensitive nature thrilled
+under it.
+
+"Why does he not come?" she whispered, looking again at the letter's
+inscription.
+
+It was in Mr. Sylvester's handwriting, and ought not to have occasioned
+her any uneasiness, but her father had intimated a wish the night
+before, that she should not come down into the parlor if Bertram called,
+and--Her thoughts paused there, but she was anxious about the letter and
+wished her father would hasten.
+
+Let us look at the little lady. She had been so bright and lovesome
+yesterday at this time. Never a maiden in all this great city of ours
+had shown a sweeter or more etherial smile. At once radiant and
+reserved, she flashed on the eye and trembled from the grasp like some
+dainty tropical creature as yet unused to our stranger clime. Her father
+had surveyed her with satisfaction, and her lover--oh, that we were all
+young again to experience that leap of the heart with which youth meets
+and recognizes the sweet perfections of the woman it adores! But a mist
+had obscured the radiance of her aspect, and she looks very sad as she
+stands in her father's hall this morning, leaning her cheek against the
+banister, and thinking of the night when three years ago, she lingered
+in that very spot, and watched the form of the young musician go by her
+and disappear in the darkness of the night, as she then thought forever.
+Joy had come to her by such slow steps and after such long waiting. Hope
+had burst upon her so brilliantly, and with such a speedy promise of
+culmination. She thrilled as she thought how short a time ago it was,
+since she leaned upon Bertram's arm and dropped her eyes before his
+gaze.
+
+The appearance of her father at length aroused her. Flushing slightly,
+she held the letter towards him.
+
+"A letter for you, papa. I thought you might like to read it before you
+went out."
+
+Mr. Stuyvesant, who for an hour or more had been frowning over his
+morning paper with a steady pertinacity that left more than the usual
+amount of wrinkles upon his brow, started at the wistful tone of this
+announcement from his daughter's lips, and taking the letter from her
+hand, stepped into the parlor to peruse it. It was, as the handwriting
+declared, from Mr. Sylvester, and ran thus:
+
+     "DEAR MR. STUYVESANT:
+
+     "I have heard of your loss and am astounded. Though the Bank is
+     not liable for any accident to trusts of this nature, both
+     Bertram and myself are determined to make every effort
+     possible, to detect and punish the man who either through our
+     negligence, or by means of the opportunities afforded him under
+     our present system of management, has been able to commit this
+     robbery upon your effects. We therefore request that you will
+     meet us at the bank this morning at as early an hour as
+     practicable, there to assist us in making such inquiries and
+     instituting such measures, as may be considered necessary to
+     the immediate attainment of the object desired.
+
+     "Respectfully yours,
+
+     "EDWARD SYLVESTER."
+
+"Is it anything serious?" asked his daughter, coming into the parlor and
+looking up into his face with a strange wistfulness he could not fail to
+remark.
+
+Mr. Stuyvesant gave her a quick glance, shook his head with some
+nervousness and hastily pocketed the epistle. "Business," mumbled he,
+"business." And ignoring the sigh that escaped her lips, began to make
+his preparations for going at once down town.
+
+He was always an awkward man at such matters, and it was her habit to
+afford him what assistance she could. This she now did, lending her hand
+to help him on with his overcoat, rising on tip-toe to tie his muffler,
+and bending her bright head to see that his galoshes were properly
+fastened; her charming face with its far-away look, shining strangely
+sweet in the dim hall, in contrast with his severe and antiquated
+countenance.
+
+He watched her carefully but with seeming indifference till all was done
+and he stood ready to depart, then in an awkward enough way--he was not
+accustomed to bestow endearments--drew her to him and kissed her on the
+forehead; after which he turned about and departed without a word to
+season or explain this unwonted manifestation of tenderness.
+
+A kiss was an unusual occurrence in that confiding but undemonstrative
+household, and the little maiden trembled. "Something is wrong," she
+murmured half to herself, half to the dim vista of the lonely parlor,
+where but a night or so ago had stood the beloved form of him, who, bury
+the thought as she would, had become, if indeed he had not always been,
+the beginning and the ending of all her maidenly dreams: "what? what?"
+And her young heart swelled painfully as she realized like many a woman
+before her, that whatever might be her doubts, fears, anguish or
+suspense, nothing remained for her but silence and a tedious waiting for
+others to recognize her misery and speak.
+
+Meanwhile how was it with her dearest friend and confident, Paula? The
+morning, as I have already declared, was bright and exceptionally
+beautiful. Sunshine filled the air and freshness invigorated the breeze.
+Cicely was blind to it all, but as Paula looked from her window
+preparatory to going below, a close observer might have perceived that
+the serenity of the cloudless sky was reflected in her beaming eyes,
+that peace brooded above her soul and ruled her tender spirit. She had
+held a long conversation with Miss Belinda, she had prayed, she had
+slept and she had risen with a confirmed love in her heart for the man
+who was at once the admiration of her eyes and the well-spring of her
+deepest thoughts and wildest longings. "I will show him so plainly what
+the angels have told me," whispered she, "that he will have no need to
+ask." And she wound her long locks into the coil that she knew he best
+liked and fixed a rose at her throat, and so with a smile on her lip
+went softly down stairs. O the timid eager step of maidenhood when
+drawing toward the shrine of all it adores! Could those halls and lofty
+corridors have whispered their secret, what a story they would have told
+of beating heart and tremulous glance, eager longings, and maidenly
+shrinkings, as the lovely form, swaying with a thousand hopes and fears,
+glided from landing to landing, carrying with it love and joy and peace.
+And trust! As she neared the bronze image that had always awakened such
+vague feelings of repugnance on her part, and found its terrors gone and
+its smile assuring, she realized that her breast held nothing but faith
+in him, who may have sinned in his youth, but who had repented in his
+manhood, and now stood clear and noble in her eyes. The assurance was
+too sweet, the flood of feeling too overwhelming. With a quick glance
+around her, she stopped and flung her arms about the hitherto repellant
+bronze, pressing her young breast against the cold metal with a fervor
+that ought to have hallowed its sensuous mould forever. Then she hurried
+down.
+
+Her first glance into the dining-room brought her a disappointment. Mr.
+Sylvester had already breakfasted and gone; only Aunt Belinda sat at the
+table. With a slightly troubled brow, Paula advanced to her own place at
+the board.
+
+"Mr. Sylvester has urgent business on hand to-day," quoth her aunt. "I
+met him going out just as I came down."
+
+Her look lingered on Paula as she said this, and if it had not been for
+the servants, she would doubtless have given utterance to some further
+expression on the matter, for she had been greatly struck by Mr.
+Sylvester's appearance and the sad, firm, almost lofty expression of his
+eye, as it met hers in their hurried conversation.
+
+"He is a very busy man," returned Paula simply, and was silent, struck
+by some secret dread she could not have explained. Suddenly she rose;
+she had found an envelope beneath her plate, addressed to herself. It
+was bulky and evidently contained a key. Hastening behind the curtains
+of the window, she opened it. The key was to that secret study of his at
+the top of the house, which no one but himself had ever been seen to
+enter, and the words that enwrapped it were these:
+
+     "If I send you no word to the contrary, and if I do not come
+     back by seven o'clock this evening, go to the room of which
+     this is the key, open my desk, and read what I have prepared
+     for your eyes.
+
+     "E. S."
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXVII.
+
+THE OPINION OF A CERTAIN NOTED DETECTIVE.
+
+                            "But still there clung
+    One hope, like a keen sword on starting threads uphung."
+
+    --REVOLT OF ISLAM.
+
+    "Facts are stubborn things."--ELLIOTT.
+
+
+Meanwhile Mr. Stuyvesant hasted on his way down town and ere long made
+his appearance at the bank. He found Mr. Sylvester and Bertram seated in
+the directors' room, with a portly smooth-faced man whose appearance was
+at once strange and vaguely familiar.
+
+"A detective, sir," explained Mr. Sylvester rising with forced
+composure; "a man upon whose judgment I have been told we may rely. Mr.
+Gryce, Mr. Stuyvesant."
+
+The latter gentleman nodded, cast a glance around the room, during which
+his eye rested for a moment on Bertram's somewhat pale countenance, and
+nervously took a seat.
+
+"A mysterious piece of business, this," came from the detective's lips
+in an easy tone, calculated to relieve the tension of embarrassment into
+which the entrance of Mr. Stuyvesant seemed to have thrown all parties.
+"What were the numbers of the bonds found missing, if you please?"
+
+Mr. Stuyvesant told him.
+
+"You are positively assured these bonds were all in the box when you
+last locked it?"
+
+"I am."
+
+"When was that, sir? On what day and at what hour of the day, if you
+please?"
+
+"Tuesday, at about three o'clock, I should say."
+
+"The box was locked by you? There is no doubt about that fact?"
+
+"None in the least."
+
+"Where were you standing at the time?"
+
+"In front of the vault door. I had taken out the box myself as I am in
+the habit of doing, and had stepped there to put it back."
+
+"Was any one near you then?"
+
+"Yes. The cashier was at his desk and the teller had occasion to go to
+the safe while I stood there. I do not remember seeing any one else in
+my immediate vicinity."
+
+"Do you remember ever going to the vaults and not finding some one near
+you at the time or at least in full view of your movements?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I have informed Mr. Gryce," interposed Mr. Sylvester, with a ring in
+his deep voice that made Mr. Stuyvesant start, "that our chief desire at
+present is to have his judgment upon the all important question, as to
+whether this theft was committed by a stranger, or one in the employ and
+consequently in the confidence of the bank."
+
+Mr. Stuyvesant bowed, every wrinkle in his face manifesting itself with
+startling distinctness as he slowly moved his eyes and fixed them on the
+inscrutable countenance of the detective.
+
+"You agree then with these gentlemen," continued the latter, who had a
+way of seeming more interested in everything and everybody present than
+the person he was addressing, "that it would be difficult if not
+impossible for any one unconnected with the bank, to approach the vaults
+during business hours and abstract anything from them without
+detection?"
+
+"And do these gentleman both assert that?" queried Mr. Stuyvesant, with
+a sharp look from uncle to nephew.
+
+"I believe they do," replied the detective, as both the gentlemen bowed,
+Bertram with an uncontrollable quiver of his lip, and Mr. Sylvester with
+a deepening of the lines about his mouth, which may or may not have been
+noticed by this man who appeared to observe nothing.
+
+"I should be loth to conclude that the robbery was committed by any one
+but a stranger," remarked Mr. Stuyvesant; "but if these gentlemen concur
+in the statement you have just made, I am bound to acknowledge that I do
+not myself see how the theft could have been perpetrated by an outsider.
+Had the box itself been missing, it would be different. I remember my
+old friend Mr. A--, the president of the police department, telling me
+of a case where a box containing securities to the amount of two hundred
+thousand dollars, was abstracted in full daylight from the vaults of one
+of our largest banks; an act requiring such daring, the directors for a
+long time refused to believe it possible, until a detective one day
+showed them another box of theirs which he had succeeded in abstracting
+in the same way.[1] But the vaults in that instance were in a less
+conspicuous portion of the bank than ours, besides to approach an open
+vault, snatch a box from it and escape, is a much simpler matter than to
+remain long enough to open a box and choose from its contents such
+papers as appeared most marketable. If a regular thief could do such a
+thing, it does not seem probable that he would. Nevertheless the most
+acute judgment is often at fault in these matters, and I do not pretend
+to have formed an opinion."
+
+[Footnote 1: A fact.]
+
+The detective who had listened to these words with marked attention,
+bowed his concurrence and asked if the bonds mentioned by Mr. Stuyvesant
+were all that had been found missing from the bank. If any of the other
+boxes had been opened, or if the contents of the safe itself had ever
+been tampered with.
+
+"The contents of the safe are all correct," came in deep tones from Mr.
+Sylvester. "Mr. Folger, my nephew and myself went through them this
+morning. As for the boxes I cannot say, many of them belong to persons
+travelling; some of them have been left here by trustees of estates,
+consequently often lie for weeks in the vaults untouched. If however any
+of them have been opened, we ought to be able to see it. Would you like
+an examination made of their condition?"
+
+The detective nodded.
+
+Mr. Sylvester at once turned to Mr. Stuyvesant. "May I ask you to
+mention what officer of the bank you would like to have go to the
+vaults?"
+
+That gentleman started, looked uneasily about, but meeting Bertram's
+eye, nervously dropped his own and muttered the name of Folger.
+
+Mr. Sylvester suppressed a sigh, sent for the paying-teller, and
+informed him of their wishes. He at once proceeded to the vaults. While
+he was gone, Mr. Gryce took the opportunity to make the following
+remark.
+
+"Gentlemen," said he, "let us understand ourselves. What you want of me,
+is to tell you whether this robbery has been committed by a stranger or
+by some one in your employ. Now to decide this question it is necessary
+for me to ask first, whether you have ever had reason to doubt the
+honesty of any person connected with the bank?"
+
+"No," came from Mr. Sylvester with sharp and shrill distinctness. "Since
+I have had the honor of conducting the affairs of this institution, I
+have made it my business to observe and note the bearing and character
+of each and every man employed under me, and I believe them all to be
+honest."
+
+The glance of the detective while it did not perceptibly move from the
+large screen drawn across the room at the back of Mr. Sylvester, seemed
+to request the opinions of the other two gentlemen on this point.
+
+Bertram observing it, subdued the rapid beatings of his heart and spoke
+with like distinctness. "I have been in the bank the same length of time
+as my uncle," said he, "and most heartily endorse his good opinion of
+the various persons in our employ."
+
+"And Mr. Stuyvesant?" the immovable glance seemed to say.
+
+"Men are honest in my opinion till they are proved otherwise," came in
+short stern accents from the director's lips.
+
+The detective drew back in his chair as if he considered that point
+decided, and yet Bertram's eye which had clouded at Mr. Stuyvesant's too
+abrupt assertion, did not clear again as might have been expected.
+
+"There is one more question I desire to settle," continued the
+detective, "and that is, whether this robbery could have been
+perpetrated after business hours, by some one in collusion with the
+person who is here left in charge?"
+
+"No;" again came from Mr. Sylvester, with impartial justice. "The
+watchman--who by the way has been in the bank for twelve years--could
+not help a man to find entrance to the vaults. His simple duty is to
+watch over the bank and give alarm in case of fire or burglary. It would
+necessitate a knowledge of the combination by which the vault doors are
+opened, to do what you suggest, and that is possessed by but three
+persons in the bank."
+
+"And those are?"
+
+"The cashier, the janitor, and myself."
+
+He endeavored to speak calmly and without any betrayal of the effort it
+caused him to utter those simple words, but a detective's ear is nice
+and it is doubtful if he perfectly succeeded.
+
+Mr. Gryce however limited himself to a muttered, humph! and a long and
+thoughtful look at a spot on the green baize of the table before which
+he sat.
+
+"The janitor lives in the building, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes, and is, as I am sure Mr. Stuyvesant will second me in asserting,
+honesty to the back-bone."
+
+"Janitors always are," observed the detective; then shortly, "How long
+has _he_ been with you?"
+
+"Three years."
+
+Another "humph!" and an increased interest in the ink spot.
+
+"That is not long, considering the responsibility of his position."
+
+"He was on the police force before he came to us," remarked Mr.
+Sylvester.
+
+Mr. Gryce looked as if that was not much of a recommendation.
+
+"As for the short time he has been with us," resumed the other, "he came
+into the bank the same winter as my nephew and myself, and has found the
+time sufficient to earn the respect of all who know him."
+
+The detective bowed, seemingly awed by the dignity with which the last
+statement had been uttered; but any one who knew him well, would have
+perceived that the film of uncertainty which had hitherto dimmed the
+brightness of his regard was gone, as if in the other's impressive
+manner, if not in the suggestion his words had unconsciously offered,
+the detective had received an answer to some question which had been
+puzzling him, or laid his hand upon some clue which had till now eluded
+his grasp. The inquiries which he made haste to pursue, betrayed,
+however, but little of the tendency of his thoughts.
+
+"The janitor, you say, knows the combination by which the vault doors
+are opened?"
+
+"The _vault doors_," emphasized Mr. Sylvester. "The safe is another
+matter; that stands inside the vault and is locked by a triple
+combination which as a whole is not known to any one man in this
+building, not even to myself."
+
+"But the boxes are not kept in the safe?"
+
+"No, they are piled up with the books in the vaults at the side of the
+safe, as you can see for yourself, if you choose to join Mr. Folger."
+
+"Not necessary. The janitor, then, is the only man besides yourselves,
+who under any circumstances or for any reason, could get at those boxes
+after business hours?"
+
+"He is."
+
+"One question more. Who is the man to attend to those boxes? I mean to
+ask, which of the men in your employ is expected to procure a box out of
+the vaults when it is called for, and put it back in its place when its
+owner is through with it?"
+
+"Hopgood usually does that business, the janitor of whom we have just
+been speaking. When he is upstairs or out of the way, any one else whom
+it may be convenient to call."
+
+"The janitor, then, has free access to the boxes at all times, night and
+day?"
+
+"In one sense, yes, in another, no. Should he unlock the vaults at
+night, the watchman would report upon his proceedings."
+
+"But there must be time between the closing and opening of the bank,
+when the janitor is alone with the vaults?"
+
+"There is a space of two hours after seven in the morning, when he is
+likely to be the sole one in charge. The watchman goes home, and Hopgood
+employs himself in sweeping out the bank and preparing it for the
+business of the day."
+
+"Are the watchman and the janitor on good terms with one another?"
+
+"Very, I believe."
+
+The detective looked thoughtful. "I should like to see this Hopgood,"
+said he.
+
+But just then the door opened and Mr. Folger came in, looking somewhat
+pale and disturbed. "We are in a difficulty," cried he, stepping up to
+the table where they sat. "I have found two of the boxes unlocked; that
+belonging to Hicks, Saltzer and Co., and another with the name of
+Harrington upon it. The former has been wrenched apart, the latter
+opened with some sort of instrument. Would you like to see them, sir?"
+This to Mr. Sylvester.
+
+With a start that gentleman rose, and as suddenly reseated himself.
+"Yes," returned he, carefully avoiding his nephew's eye; "bring them
+in."
+
+"Hicks, Saltzer and Co., is a foreign house," remarked Mr. Stuyvesant to
+the detective, "and do not send for their box once a fortnight, as I
+have heard Mr. Sylvester declare. Mr. Harrington is on an exploring
+expedition and is at present in South America." Then in lower tones,
+whose sternness was not unmixed with gloom, "The thief seems to have
+known what boxes to go to."
+
+Bertram flushed and made some passing rejoinder; Mr. Sylvester and the
+detective alone remained silent.
+
+The boxes being brought in, Mr. Gryce opened them without ceremony.
+Several papers met his eye in both, but as no one but the owners could
+know their rightful contents, it was of course impossible for him to
+determine whether anything had been stolen from them or not.
+
+
+"Send for the New York agent of Hicks, Saltzer and Co.," came from Mr.
+Sylvester, in short, business-like command.
+
+Bertram at once rose. "I will see to it," said he. His agitation was too
+great for suppression, the expression of Mr. Stuyvesant's eye, that in
+its restlessness wandered in every direction but his own, troubled him
+beyond endurance. With a hasty move he left the room. The cold eye of
+the detective followed him.
+
+"Looks bad," came in laconic tones from the paying teller.
+
+"I had hoped the affair begun and ended with my individual loss,"
+muttered Mr. Stuyvesant under his breath.
+
+The stately president and the inscrutable detective still maintained
+their silence.
+
+Suddenly the latter moved. Turning towards Mr. Sylvester, he requested
+him to step with him to the window. "I want to have a look at your
+several employees," whispered he, as they thus withdrew. "I want to see
+them without being seen by them. If you can manage to have them come in
+here one by one upon some pretext or other, I can so arrange that screen
+under the mantel-piece, that it shall not only hide me, but give me a
+very good view of their faces in the mirror overhead."
+
+"There will be no difficulty about summoning the men," said Mr.
+Sylvester.
+
+"And you consent to the scheme?"
+
+"Certainly, if you think anything is to be gained by it."
+
+"I am sure that nothing will be lost. And sir, let the cashier be
+present if you please; and sir," squeezing his watch chain with a
+complacent air, as the other dropped his eyes, "talk to them about
+anything that you please, only let it be of a nature that will
+necessitate a sentence or more in reply. I judge a man as much by his
+voice as his expression."
+
+Mr. Sylvester bowed, and without losing his self-command, though the
+short allusion to Bertram had greatly startled him, turned back to the
+table where Mr. Folger was still standing in conversation with the
+director.
+
+"I will not detain you longer," said he to the paying teller. "Your
+discretion will prevent you from speaking of this matter, I trust." Then
+as the other bowed, added carelessly, "I have something to say to
+Jessup; will you see that he steps here for a moment?"
+
+Mr. Folger again nodded and left the room. Instantly Mr. Gryce bustled
+forward, and pulling the screen into the position he thought best
+calculated to answer his requirements, slid rapidly behind it. Mr.
+Stuyvesant looked up in surprise.
+
+"I am going to interview the clerks for Mr. Gryce's benefit," exclaimed
+Mr. Sylvester. "Will you in the meantime look over the morning paper?"
+
+"Thank you," returned the other, edging nervously to one side, "my
+note-book will do just as well," and sitting down at the remote end of
+the table, he took out a book from his pocket, above which he bent with
+very well simulated preoccupation. Mr. Sylvester called in Bertram and
+then seated himself with a hopeless and unexpectant look, which he for
+the moment forgot would be reflected in the mirror before him, and so
+carried to the eye of the watchful detective. In another instant Jessup
+entered.
+
+What was said in the short interview that followed, is unimportant. Mr.
+Jessup, the third teller, was one of those clear eyed, straightforward
+appearing men whose countenance is its own guarantee. It was not
+necessary to detain him or make him speak. The next man to come in was
+Watson, and after he had gone, two or three of the clerks, and later the
+receiving teller and one of the runners. All stopped long enough to
+insure Mr. Gryce a good view of their faces, and from each and all did
+Mr. Sylvester succeed in eliciting more or less conversation in response
+to the questions he chose to put.
+
+With the disappearance of the last mentioned individual, Mr. Gryce
+peeped from behind the screen. "A set of as honest-looking men as I wish
+to see!" uttered he with a frank cordiality that was scarcely reflected
+in the anxious countenances about him. "No sly-boots among them; how
+about the janitor, Hopgood?"
+
+"He shall be summoned at once, if you desire it," said Mr. Sylvester, "I
+have only delayed calling him that I might have leisure to interrogate
+him with reference to his duties, and this very theft. That is if you
+judge it advisable in me to tamper with the subject unassisted?"
+
+"Your nephew can help you if necessary," replied the imperturbable
+detective. "I should like to hear what the man, Hopgood, has to say for
+himself," and he glided back into his old position.
+
+But Mr. Sylvester had scarcely reached out his hand to ring the bell by
+which he usually summoned the janitor, when the agent of Hicks, Saltzer
+& Co. came in. It was an interruption that demanded instant attention.
+Saluting the gentleman with his usual proud reserve, he drew his
+attention to the box lying upon the table.
+
+
+"This is yours, I believe, sir," said he. "It was found in our vaults
+this morning in the condition in which you now behold it, and we are
+anxious to know if its contents are all correct."
+
+"They have been handled," returned the agent, after a careful survey of
+the various papers that filled the box, "but nothing appears to be
+missing."
+
+Three persons at least in that room breathed more easily.
+
+"But the truth is," the gentleman continued, with a half smile towards
+the silent President of the bank, "there was nothing in this box that
+would have been of much use to any other parties than ourselves. If
+there had been a bond or so here, I doubt if we should have come off so
+fortunately, eh? The lock has evidently been wrenched open, and that is
+certainly a pretty sure sign that something is not right hereabouts."
+
+"Something is decidedly wrong," came from Mr. Sylvester sternly; "but
+through whose fault we do not as yet know." And with a few words
+expressive of his relief at finding the other had sustained no material
+loss, he allowed the agent to depart.
+
+He had no sooner left the room than Mr. Stuyvesant rose. "Are you going
+to question Hopgood now?" queried he, nervously pocketing his note-book.
+
+"Yes sir, if you have no objections."
+
+The director fidgeted with his chair and finally moved towards the door.
+"I think you will get along better with him alone," said he. "He is a
+man who very easily gets embarrassed, and has a way of acting as if he
+were afraid of me. I will just step outside while you talk to him."
+
+But Mr. Sylvester with a sudden dark flush on his brow, hastily stopped
+him. "I beg you will not," said he, with a quick realization of what
+Hopgood might be led to say in the forthcoming interview, if he were not
+restrained by the presence of the director. "Hopgood is not so afraid of
+you that he will not answer every question that is put to him with
+straightforward frankness." And he pushed up a chair, with a smile that
+Mr. Stuyvesant evidently found himself unable to resist. The screen
+trembled slightly, but none of them noticed it; Mr. Sylvester at once
+rang for Hopgood.
+
+He came in panting with his hurried descent from the fifth story, his
+face flushed and his eyes rolling, but without any of the secret
+perturbation Bertram had observed in them on a former occasion. "He
+cannot help us," was the thought that darkened the young man's brow as
+his eyes left the janitor, and faltering towards his uncle, fell upon
+the table before him.
+
+Everything was reflected in the mirror.
+
+"Well, Hopgood, I have a few questions to put to you this morning," said
+Mr. Sylvester in a restrained, but not unkindly tone.
+
+The worthy man bowed, bestowed a salutatory roll of his eyes on Mr.
+Stuyvesant, and stood deferentially waiting.
+
+"No, he cannot help us," was again Bertram's thought, and again his eyes
+faltered to his uncle's face, and again fell anxiously before him.
+
+"It has not been my habit to trouble you with inquiries about your
+management of matters under your charge," continued Mr. Sylvester,
+stopping till the janitor's wandering eyes settled upon his own. "Your
+conduct has always been exemplary, and your attention to duty
+satisfactory; but I would like to ask you to-day if you have observed
+anything amiss with the vaults of late? anything wrong about the boxes
+kept there? anything in short, that excited your suspicion or caused you
+to ask yourself if everything was as it should be?"
+
+The janitor's ruddy face grew pale, and his eye fell with startled
+inquiry on Mr. Harrington's box that still occupied the centre of the
+table. "No, sir," he emphatically replied, "has anything--"
+
+But Mr. Sylvester did not wait to be questioned. "You have attended to
+your duties as promptly and conscientiously as usual; you have allowed
+no one to go to the vaults day or night, who had no business there? You
+have not relaxed your accustomed vigilance, or left the bank alone at
+any time during the hours it is under your charge?"
+
+"No sir, not for a minute, sir; that is--" He stopped and his eye
+wandered towards Mr. Stuyvesant. "Never for a minute, sir," he went on,
+"without I knew some one was in the bank, who was capable of looking
+after it."
+
+"The watchman has been at his post every night up to the usual hour?"
+
+"Yes sir."
+
+"There has been no carelessness in closing the vault doors after the
+departure of the clerks?"
+
+"No sir."
+
+"And no trouble," he continued, with a shade more of dignity, possibly
+because Hopgood's tell-tale face was beginning to show signs of anxious
+confusion, "and no trouble in opening them at the proper time each
+morning?"
+
+"No sir."
+
+
+"One question more--"
+
+But here Bertram was called out, and in the momentary stir occasioned by
+his departure, Hopgood allowed himself to glance at the box before him
+more intently than he had hitherto presumed to do. He saw it was
+unlocked, and his hands began to tremble. Mr. Sylvester's voice recalled
+him to himself.
+
+"You are a faithful man," said that gentleman, continuing his speech of
+a minute before, "and as such we are ready to acknowledge you; but the
+most conscientious amongst us are sometimes led into indiscretions. Now
+have you ever through carelessness or by means of any inadvertence,
+revealed to any one in or out of the bank, the particular combination by
+which the lock of the vault-door is at present opened?"
+
+"No sir, indeed no; I am much too anxious, and feel my own
+responsibility entirely too much, not to preserve so important a secret
+with the utmost care and jealousy."
+
+Mr. Sylvester's voice, careful as he was to modulate it, showed a secret
+discouragement. "The vaults then as far as you know, are safe when once
+they are closed for the night?"
+
+"Yes sir." The janitor's face expressed a slight degree of wonder, but
+his voice was emphatic.
+
+Mr. Sylvester's eye travelled in the direction of the screen. "Very
+well," said he; and paused to reflect.
+
+In the interim the door opened for a second time. "A gentleman to see
+Mr. Stuyvesant," said a voice.
+
+
+With an air of relief the director hastily rose, and before Mr.
+Sylvester had realized his position, left the room and closed the door
+behind him. A knell seemed to ring its note in Mr. Sylvester's breast.
+The janitor, released as he supposed from all constraint, stepped
+hastily forward.
+
+"That box has been found unlocked," he cried with a wave of his hand
+towards the table; "some one has been to the vaults, and I--Oh, sir," he
+hurriedly exclaimed, disregarding in his agitation the stern and
+forbidding look which Mr. Sylvester in his secret despair had made haste
+to assume, "you did not want me to say anything about the time you came
+down so early in the morning, and I went out and left you alone in the
+bank, and you went to the vaults and opened Mr. Stuyvesant's box by
+mistake, with a tooth-pick as you remember?"
+
+The mirror that looked down upon that pair, showed one very white face
+at that moment, but the screen that had trembled a moment before, stood
+strangely still in the silence.
+
+"No," came at length from Mr. Sylvester, with a composure that
+astonished himself. "I was not questioning you about matters of a year
+agone. But you might have told that incident if you pleased; it was very
+easily explainable."
+
+"Yes sir, I know, and I beg pardon for alluding to it, but I was so
+taken aback, sir, by your questions; I wanted to tell the exact truth,
+and I did not want to say anything that would hurt you with Mr.
+Stuyvesant; that is if I could help it. I hope I did right, sir," he
+blundered on, conscious he was uttering words he might better have kept
+to himself, but too embarrassed to know how to emerge from the
+difficulty into which his mingled zeal and anxiety had betrayed him. "I
+was never a good hand at answering questions, and if any thing really
+serious has happened, I shall wish you had taken me at my word and
+dismissed me immediately after that affair. Constantia Maria would have
+been a little worse off perhaps, but I should not be on hand to answer
+questions, and--"
+
+"Hopgood!"
+
+The man started, eyed Mr. Sylvester's white but powerfully controlled
+countenance, seemed struck with something he saw there, and was silent.
+
+"You make too much now, as you made too much then of a matter that
+having its sole ground in a mistake, is, as I say, easily explainable.
+This affair which has come up now, is not so clear. Three of the boxes
+have been opened, and from one certain valuables have been taken. Can
+you give me any information that will assist us in our search after the
+culprit?"
+
+"No sir." The tone was quite humble, Hopgood drew back unconsciously
+towards the door.
+
+"As for the mistake of a year ago to which you have seen proper to
+allude, I shall myself take pains to inform Mr. Stuyvesant of it, since
+it has made such an impression upon you that it trammels your honesty
+and makes you consider it at all necessary to be anxious about it at
+this time."
+
+And Hopgood unused to sarcasm from those lips, drew himself together,
+and with one more agitated look at the box on the table, sidled
+awkwardly from the room. Mr. Sylvester at once advanced to the screen
+which he hastily pushed aside. "Well, sir," said he, meeting the
+detective's wavering eye and forcing him to return his look, "you have
+now seen the various employees of the bank and heard most of them
+converse. Is there anything more you would like to inquire into before
+giving us the opinion I requested?"
+
+"No sir," said the detective, coming forward, but very slowly and
+somewhat hesitatingly for him. "I think I am ready to say--"
+
+Here the door opened, and Mr. Stuyvesant returned. The detective drew a
+breath of relief and repeated his words with a business-like assurance.
+"I think I am ready to say, that from the nature of the theft and the
+mysterious manner in which it has been perpetrated, suspicion
+undoubtedly points to some one connected with the bank. That is all that
+you require of me to-day?" he added, with a bow of some formality in the
+direction of Mr. Sylvester.
+
+"Yes," was the short reply. But in an instant a change passed over the
+stately form of the speaker. Advancing to Mr. Gryce, he confronted him
+with a countenance almost majestic in its severity, and somewhat
+severely remarked, "This is a serious charge to bring against men whose
+countenances you yourself have denominated as honest. Are we to believe
+you have fully considered the question, and realize the importance of
+what you say?"
+
+"Mr. Sylvester," replied the detective, with great self-possession and
+some dignity, "a man who is brought every day of his life into positions
+where the least turning of a hair will sink a man or save him, learns to
+weigh his words, before he speaks even in such informal inquiries as
+these."
+
+Mr. Sylvester bowed and turned towards Mr. Stuyvesant. "Is there any
+further action you would like to have taken in regard to this matter
+to-day?" he asked, without a tremble in his voice.
+
+With a glance at the half open box of the absent Mr. Harrington, the
+agitated director slowly shook his head. "We must have time to think,"
+said he.
+
+Mr. Gryce at once took up his hat. "If the charge implied in my opinion
+strikes you, gentlemen, as serious, you must at least acknowledge that
+your own judgment does not greatly differ from mine, or why such
+unnecessary agitation in regard to a loss so petty, by a gentleman worth
+as we are told his millions." And with this passing shot, to which
+neither of his auditors responded, he made his final obeisance and
+calmly left the room.
+
+Mr. Sylvester and Mr. Stuyvesant slowly confronted one another.
+
+"The man speaks the truth," said the former. "You at least suspect some
+one in the bank, Mr. Stuyvesant?"
+
+"I have no wish to," hastily returned the other, "but facts--"
+
+"Would facts of this nature have any weight with you against the
+unspotted character of a man never known by you to meditate, much less
+commit a dishonest action?"
+
+"No; yet facts are facts, and if it is proved that some one in our
+employ has perpetrated a theft, the mind will unconsciously ask who, and
+remain uneasy till it is satisfied."
+
+"And if it never is?"
+
+"It will always ask who, I suppose."
+
+Mr. Sylvester drew back. "The matter shall be pushed," said he; "you
+shall be satisfied. Surveillance over each man employed in this
+institution ought sooner or later to elicit the truth. The police shall
+take it in charge."
+
+Mr. Stuyvesant looked uneasy. "I suppose it is only justice," murmured
+he, "but it is a scandal I would have been glad to avoid."
+
+"And I, but circumstances admit of no other course. The innocent must
+not suffer for the guilty, even so far as an unfounded suspicion would
+lead."
+
+"No, no, of course not." And the director bustled about after his
+overcoat and hat.
+
+Mr. Sylvester watched him with growing sadness. "Mr. Stuyvesant," said
+he, as the latter stood before him ready for the street, "we have always
+been on terms of friendship, and nothing but the most pleasant relations
+have ever existed between us. Will you pardon me if I ask you to give me
+your hand in good-day?"
+
+The director paused, looked a trifle astonished, but held out his hand
+not only with cordiality but very evident affection.
+
+"Good day," cried he, "good-day."
+
+Mr. Sylvester pressed that hand, and then with a dignified bow, allowed
+the director to depart. It was his last effort at composure. When the
+door closed, his head sank on his hands, and life with all its hopes and
+honors, love and happiness, seemed to die within him.
+
+He was interrupted at length by Bertram. "Well, uncle?" asked the young
+man with unrestrained emotion.
+
+"The theft has been committed by some one in this bank; so the detective
+gives out, and so we are called upon to believe. _Who_ the man is who
+has caused us all this misery, neither he, nor you, nor I, nor any one,
+is likely to very soon determine. Meantime--"
+
+"Well?" cried Bertram anxiously, after a moment of suspense.
+
+"Meantime, courage!" his uncle resumed with forced cheerfulness.
+
+But as he was leaving the bank he came up to Bertram, and laying his
+hand on his shoulder, quietly said:
+
+"I want you to go immediately to my house upon leaving here. I may not
+be back till midnight, and Miss Fairchild may need the comfort of your
+presence. Will you do it, Bertram?"
+
+"Uncle! I--"
+
+"Hush! you will comfort me best by doing what I ask. May I rely upon
+you?"
+
+"Always."
+
+"That is enough."
+
+And with just a final look, the two gentlemen parted, and the shadow
+which had rested all day upon the bank, deepened over Bertram's head
+like a pall.
+
+It was not lifted by the sight of Hopgood stealing a few minutes later
+towards the door by which his uncle had departed, his face pale, and his
+eyes fixed in a stare, that bespoke some deep and moving determination.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVIII.
+
+BLUE-BEARD'S CHAMBER.
+
+                   "Present fears
+    Are less than horrible imaginings."
+     --MACBETH.
+
+
+Clarence Ensign was not surprised at the refusal he received from Paula.
+He had realized from the first that the love of this beautiful woman
+would be difficult to obtain, even if no rival with more powerful
+inducements than his own, should chance to cross his path. She was one
+who could be won to give friendship, consideration, and sympathy without
+stint; but from the very fact that she could so easily be induced to
+grant these, he foresaw the improbability, or at least the difficulty of
+enticing her to yield more. A woman whose hand warms towards the other
+sex in ready friendship, is the last to succumb to the entreaties of
+love. The circle of her sympathies is so large, the man must do well,
+who of all his sex, pierces to the sacred centre. The appearance of Mr.
+Sylvester on the scene, settled his fate, or so he believed; but he was
+too much in earnest to yield his hopes without another effort; so upon
+the afternoon of this eventful day, he called upon Paula.
+
+The first glimpse he obtained of her countenance, convinced him that he
+was indeed too late. Not for him that anxious pallor, giving way to a
+rosy tinge at the least sound in the streets without. Not for him that
+wandering glance, burning with questions to which nothing seemed able to
+grant reply. The very smile with which she greeted him, was a blow; it
+was so forgetful of the motive that had brought him there.
+
+"Miss Fairchild," he stammered, with a generous impulse to save her
+unnecessary pain, "you have rejected my offer and settled my doom; but
+let me believe that I have not lost your regard, or that hold upon your
+friendship which it has hitherto been my pleasure to enjoy."
+
+She woke at once to a realization of his position. "Oh Mr. Ensign," she
+murmured, "can you doubt my regard or the truth of my friendship? It is
+for me to doubt; I have caused you such pain, and as you may think, so
+ruthlessly and with such lack of consideration. I have been peculiarly
+placed," she blushingly proceeded. "A woman does not always know her own
+heart, or if she does, sometimes hesitates to yield to its secret
+impulses. I have led you astray these last few weeks, but I first went
+astray myself. The real path in which I ought to tread, was only last
+night revealed to me. I can say no more, Mr. Ensign."
+
+"Nor is it necessary," replied he. "You have chosen the better path, and
+the better man. May life abound in joys for you, Miss Fairchild."
+
+She drew herself up and her hand went involuntarily to her heart. "It is
+not joy I seek," said she, "but--"
+
+"What?" He looked at her face lit with that heavenly gleam that visited
+it in rare moments of deepest emotion, and wondered.
+
+"Joy is in seeing the one you love happy," cried she; "earth holds none
+that is sweeter or higher."
+
+"Then may that be yours," he murmured, manfully subduing the jealous
+pang natural under the circumstances. And taking the hand she held out
+to him, he kissed it with greater reverence and truer affection than
+when, in the first joyous hours of their intercourse, he carried it so
+gallantly to his lips.
+
+And she--oh, difference of time and feeling--did not remember as of
+yore, the noble days of chivalry, though he was in this moment, so much
+more than ever the true knight and the reproachless cavalier.
+
+For Paula's heart was heavy. Fears too unsubstantial to be met and
+vanquished, had haunted her steps all day. The short note which Mr.
+Sylvester had written her, lay like lead upon her bosom. She longed for
+the hours to fly, yet dreaded to hear the clock tick out the moments
+that possibly were destined to bring her untold suffering and
+disappointment. A revelation awaiting her in Mr. Sylvester's desk up
+stairs? That meant separation and farewell; for words of promise and
+devotion can be spoken, and the heart that hopes, does not limit time to
+hours.
+
+With Bertram's entrance, her fears took absolute shape. Mr. Sylvester
+was not coming home to dinner. Thenceforward till seven o'clock, she sat
+with her hand on her heart, waiting. At the stroke of the clock, she
+rose, and procuring a candle from her room, went slowly up stairs.
+"Watch for me," she had said to Aunt Belinda, "for I fear I shall need
+your care when I come down."
+
+What is there about a mystery however trivial, that thrills the heart
+with vague expectancy at the least lift of the concealing curtain! As
+Paula paused before the door, which never to her knowledge had opened to
+the passage of any other form than that of Mr. Sylvester, she was
+conscious of an agitation wholly distinct from that which had hitherto
+afflicted her. All the past curiosity of Ona concerning this room,
+together with her devices for satisfying that curiosity, recurred to
+Paula with startling distinctness. It was as if the white hand of that
+dead wife had thrust itself forth from the shadows to pull her back. The
+candle trembled in her grasp, and she unconsciously recoiled. But the
+next moment the thought of Mr. Sylvester struck warmth and determination
+through her being, and hastily thrusting the key into the lock, she
+pushed open the door and stepped across the threshold.
+
+Her first movement was that of surprise. In all her dreams of the
+possible appearance of this room, she had never imagined it to be like
+this. Plain, rude and homely, its high walls unornamented, its floor
+uncovered, its furniture limited to a plain desk and two or three rather
+uncomfortable-looking chairs, it struck upon her fancy with the same
+sense of incongruity, as might the sight of a low-eaved cottage in the
+midst of stately palaces and lordly pleasure-grounds. Setting down her
+candle, she folded her hands to still their tremblings, and slowly
+looked around her. This was the spot, then, to which he was accustomed
+to flee when oppressed by any care or harassed by any difficulty; this
+cold, bare, uninviting apartment with its forbidding aspect unsoftened
+by the tokens of a woman's care or presence! To this room, humbler than
+any in her aunt's home in Grotewell, he had brought all his griefs, from
+the day his baby lay dead in the rooms below, to that awful hour which
+saw the wife and mother brought into his doors and laid a cold and
+pulseless form in the midst of his gorgeous parlors! Here he had met his
+own higher impulses face to face, and wrestled with them through the
+watches of the night! In this wilderness of seeming poverty, he had
+dreamed, perhaps, his first fond dream of her as a woman, and signed
+perhaps his final renunciation of her as the future companion of his
+life! What did it mean? Why a spot of so much desolation in the midst of
+so much that was lordly and luxurious? Her fears might give her a
+possible interpretation, but she would not listen to fears. Only his
+words should instruct her. Going to the desk, she opened it. A sealed
+envelope addressed to herself, immediately met her eyes. Taking it out
+with a slow and reverent touch, she began to read the long and closely
+written letter which it contained.
+
+And the little candle burned on, shedding its rays over her bended head
+and upon the dismal walls about her, with a persistency that seemed to
+bring out, as in letters of fire, the hidden history of long ago, with
+its vanished days and its forgotten midnights.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIX.
+
+FROM A. TO Z.
+
+     "A naked human heart."--YOUNG.
+
+
+"My Beloved Child:
+
+"So may I call you in this the final hour of our separation, but never
+again, dear one, never again. When I said to you, just twenty-four hours
+ago, that my sin was buried and my future was clear, I spake as men
+speak who forget the justice of God and dream only of his mercy. An
+hour's time convinced me that an evil deed once perpetrated by a man, is
+never buried so that its ghost will not rise. Do as we will, repent as
+we may, the shadowy phantom of a stained and unrighteous youth is never
+laid; nor is a man justified in believing it so, till death has closed
+his eyes, and fame written its epitaph upon his tomb.
+
+"Paula, I am at this hour wandering in search of the being who holds the
+secret of my life and who will to-morrow blazon it before all the world.
+It is with no hope I seek him. God has not brought me to this pass, to
+release me at last, from shame and disgrace. Suffering and the loss of
+all my sad heart cherished, wait at my gates. Only one boon remains, and
+that is, your sympathy and the consolation of your regard. These, though
+bestowed as friends bestow them, are very precious to me; I cannot see
+them go, and that they may not, I tell you the full story of my life.
+
+"My youth was happy--my early youth, I mean. Bertram's father was a dear
+brother to me, and my mother a watchful guardian and a tender friend. At
+fifteen, I entered a bank, the small bank in Grotewell, which you ought
+to remember. From the lowest position in it, I gradually worked my way
+up till I occupied the cashier's place; and was just congratulating
+myself upon my prospects, when Ona Delafield returned from
+boarding-school, a young lady.
+
+"Paula, there is a fascination, which some men who have known nothing
+deeper and higher, call love. I, who in those days had cherished but few
+thoughts beyond the ordinary reach of a narrow and somewhat selfish
+business mind, imagined that the well-spring of all romance had bubbled
+up within me, when my eyes first fell upon this regal blonde, with her
+sleepy, inscrutable eyes and bewildering smile. Ulysses within sound of
+the siren's voice, was nothing to it. He had been warned of his danger
+and had only his own curiosity to combat, while I was not even aware of
+my peril, and floated within reach of this woman's power, without making
+an effort to escape. She was so subtle in her influence, Paula; so
+careless in the very exercise of her sovereignty. She never seemed to
+command; yet men and women obeyed her. Peculiarities which mar the
+matron, are often graces in a young, unmarried girl, whose thoughts are
+a mystery, and whose emotions an untried field. I believed I had found
+the queen of all beauty and when in an unguarded hour she betrayed her
+first appreciation of my devotion, I seemed to burst into a Paradise of
+delights, where every step I took, only the more intoxicated and
+bewildered me. My first realization of the sensuous and earthly
+character of my happiness came with the glimpse of your child-face on
+that never-to-be-forgotten day when we met beside the river. Like a star
+seen above the glare of a conflagration, the pure spirit that informed
+your glance, flashed on my burning soul, and for a moment I knew that in
+you budded the kind of woman-nature which it befitted a man to seek;
+that in the hands of such a one as you would make, should he trust his
+honor and bequeath his happiness. But when did a lover ever break the
+bonds that imprisoned his fancy, at the inspiration of a passing voice.
+I went back to Ona and forgot the child by the river.
+
+"Paula, I have no time to utter regrets. This is a hard plain tale which
+I have to relate; but if you love me still--if, as I have sometimes
+imagined, you have always loved me--think what my life had been if I had
+heeded the warning which God vouchsafed me on that day, and contrast it
+with what it is, and what it must be.
+
+"I went back to Ona, then, and the hold which she had upon me from the
+first, took form and shape. As well as she could love any one, she loved
+me, and though she had offers from one or two more advantageous sources,
+she finally decided that she would risk the future and accept me, if her
+father consented to the alliance. You who are the niece of the man of
+whom I must now speak, may or may not know what that meant. I doubt if
+you do; he left Grotewell while you were a child, and any gossip
+concerning him must ever fall short of the real truth. Enough, then,
+that it meant, if Jacob Delafield could see in my future any promises of
+success sufficient to warrant him in accepting me as his son-in-law, no
+woman living ought to hesitate to trust me with her hand. He was the
+Squire of the town, and as such entitled to respect, but he was also
+something more, as you will presently discover. His answer to my plea
+was:
+
+"'Well, how much money have you to show?'
+
+"Now I had none. My salary as cashier of a small country bank was not
+large, and my brother's prolonged sickness and subsequent death,
+together with my own somewhat luxurious habits, had utterly exhausted
+it. I told him so, but added that I had, somewhere up among the hills,
+an old maiden aunt who had promised me five thousand dollars at her
+death; and that as she was very ill at that time--hopelessly so, her
+neighbors thought--in a few weeks I should doubtless be able to satisfy
+him with the sight of a sum sufficient to start us in housekeeping, if
+no more.
+
+"He nodded at this, but gave me no distinct reply. 'Let us wait,' said
+he.
+
+"But youth is not inclined to wait. I considered my cause as good as
+won, and began to make all my preparations accordingly. With a feverish
+impatience which is no sign of true love, I watched the days go by, and
+waited for, if I did not anticipate, the death which I fondly imagined
+would make all clear. At last it came, and I went again into Mr.
+Delafield's presence.
+
+"'My aunt has just died,' I announced, and stood waiting for the short,
+concise,
+
+"'Go ahead, then, my boy!' which I certainly expected.
+
+"Instead of that, he gave me a queer inexplicable smile, and merely
+said, 'I want to see the greenbacks, my lad. No color so good as green,
+not even the black upon white of 'I promise to pay.'
+
+"I went back to my desk in the bank, chagrined. Ona had told me a few
+days before that she was tired of waiting, that the young doctor from
+the next town was very assiduous in his attentions, and as there was no
+question as to his ability to support a wife, why--she did not finish
+her sentence, but the toss of her head and her careless tone at parting,
+were enough to inflame the jealousy of a less easily aroused nature than
+mine. I felt that I was in hourly danger of losing her, and all because
+I could not satisfy her father with a sight of the few thousands which
+were so soon to be mine.
+
+"The reading of my aunt's will, which confirmed my hopes, did not
+greatly improve matters. 'I want to see the money,' the old gentleman
+repeated; and I was forced to wait the action of the law and the
+settlement of the estate. It took longer than even he foresaw. Weeks
+went by and my poor little five thousand seemed as far from my control
+as on the day the will was read. There was some trouble, I was not told
+what, that made it seem improbable that I should reap the benefit of my
+legacy for some time. Meanwhile Ona accepted the attentions of the young
+doctor, and my chances of winning her, dwindled rapidly day by day. I
+became morbidly eager and insanely jealous. Instead of pursuing my
+advantage--for I undoubtedly possessed one in her own secret inclination
+towards me--I stood off, and let my rival work his way into her
+affections unhindered. I was too sore to interrupt his play, as I called
+it, and too afraid of myself to actually confront him in her presence.
+But the sight of them riding together one day, was more than I could
+endure even in my spirit of unresistance. 'He shall not have her,' I
+cried, and cast about in my mind how to bring my own matters into such
+shape as to satisfy her father and so win her own consent to my suit. My
+first thought was to borrow the money, but that was impracticable in a
+town where each man's affairs are known to his neighbor. My next was to
+hurry up the settlement of the estate by appeal to my lawyer. The result
+of the latter course was a letter of many promises, in the midst of
+which a great temptation assailed me.
+
+"Colonel Japha, of whose history you have heard more or less true
+accounts, was at that time living in the old mansion you took such pains
+to point out to me in that walk we took together in Grotewell. He had
+suffered a great anguish in the flight and degradation of his only
+daughter, and though the real facts connected with her departure were
+not known in the village, he was so overcome with shame, and so
+shattered in health, he lived in the utmost seclusion, opening his doors
+to but few visitors, among whom I, for some unexplained reason, was one.
+He used to say he liked me and saw in me the makings of a considerable
+man; and I, because he was Colonel Japha and a strong spirit, returned
+his appreciation, and spent many of my bitter and unhappy hours in his
+presence. It was upon one of these occasions the temptation came to
+which I have just alluded.
+
+
+"I had been talking about his health and the advisability of his taking
+a journey, when he suddenly rose and said, 'Come with me to my study.'
+
+"I of course went. The first thing I saw upon entering was a trunk
+locked and strapped. 'I am going to Europe to-morrow,' said he, 'to be
+gone six months.'
+
+"I was astonished, for in that town no one presumed to do anything of
+importance without consulting his neighbors; but I merely bowed my
+congratulations, and waited for him to speak, for I saw he had something
+on his mind that he wished to say. At last it came out. He had a
+daughter, he said, a daughter who had disgraced him and whom he had
+forbidden his house. She was not worthy of his consideration, yet he
+could not help but remember her, and while he never desired to see her
+enter his doors, it was not his wish that she should suffer want. He had
+a little money which he had laid by and which he wished to put into my
+hands for her use, provided anything should happen to him during his
+absence. 'She is a wanderer now,' he cried, 'but she may one day come
+back, and then if I am dead and gone, you may give it to her.' I was not
+to enter it in the bank under his name, but regard it as a personal
+trust to be used only under such circumstances as he mentioned.
+
+"The joy with which I listened to this proposal amounted almost to
+ecstacy when he went to his desk and brought out five one thousand
+dollar bills and laid them in my hand. 'It is not much,' said he, 'but
+it will save her from worse degradation if she chooses to avail herself
+of it.'
+
+"Not much; oh no, not much, but just the sum that would raise me out of
+the pit of despondency into which I had fallen, and give me my bride, a
+chance in the world, and last, but not least, revenge on the rival I had
+now learned to hate. I was obliged to give the colonel a paper
+acknowledging the trust, but that was no hindrance. I did not mean to
+use the money, only to show it; and long before the colonel could
+return, my own five thousand would be in my hands--and so, and so, and
+so, as the devil reasons and young infatuated ears listen.
+
+"Colonel Japha thought I was an honest man, nor did I consider myself
+otherwise at that time. It was a chance for clever action; a bit of
+opportune luck that it would be madness to discard. On the day the
+vessel sailed which carried Colonel Japha out of the country, I went to
+Mr. Delafield and showed him the five crisp bank notes that represented
+as it were by proxy, the fortune I so speedily expected to inherit. 'You
+have wanted to see five thousand dollars in my hand,' said I; 'there
+they are.'
+
+"His look of amazement was peculiar and ought to have given me warning;
+but I was blinded by my infatuation and thought it no more than the
+natural surprise incident to the occasion. 'I have been made to wait a
+long time for your consent to my suit,' said I; 'may I hope that you
+will now give me leave to press my claims upon your daughter?'
+
+"He did not answer at once, but smiled, eying meanwhile the notes in my
+hand with a fascinated gaze which instinctively warned me to return them
+to my pocket. But I no sooner made a move indicative of that resolve,
+than he thrust out his cold slim hand and prevented me. 'Let me see
+them,' cried he.
+
+"There was no reason for me to refuse so simple a request to one in Mr.
+Delafield's position, and though I had rather he had not asked for the
+notes, I handed them over. He at once seemed to grow taller. 'So this is
+your start off in life,' exclaimed he.
+
+"I bowed, and he let his eyes roam for a moment to my face. 'Many a man
+would be glad of worse,' smiled he; then suavely, 'you shall have my
+daughter, sir.'
+
+"I must have turned white in my relief, for he threw his head back and
+laughed in a low unmusical way that at any other time would have
+affected me unpleasantly. But my only thought then, was to get the money
+back and rush with my new hopes into the room from which came the low
+ceaseless hum of his daughter's voice. But at the first movement of my
+hand towards him, he assumed a mysterious air, and closing his fingers
+over the notes, said:
+
+"'These are yours, to do what you wish with, I suppose?'
+
+"I may have blushed, but if I did, he took no notice. 'What I wish to do
+with them,' returned I, 'is to shut them up in the bank for the present,
+at least till Ona is my wife.'
+
+"'Oh no, no, no, you do not,' came in easy, almost wheedling tones from
+the man before me. 'You want to put them where they will double
+themselves in two months.' And before I could realize to what he was
+tempting me, he had me down before his desk, showing me letters,
+documents, etc., of a certain scheme into which if a man should put a
+dollar to-day, it would 'come out three and no mistake, before the year
+was out. It is a chance in a thousand,' said he; 'if I had half a
+million I would invest it in this enterprise to-day. If you will listen
+to me and put your money in there, you will be a rich man before ten
+years have passed over your head.'
+
+"I was dazzled. I knew enough of such matters to see that it was neither
+a hoax nor a chimera. He did have a good thing, and if the five thousand
+dollars had been my own--But I soon came to consider the question
+without that conditional. He was so specious in his manner of putting
+the affair before me, so masterful in the way he held on to the money,
+he gave me no time to think. 'Say the word,' cried he, 'and in two
+months I bring you back ten thousand for your five. Only two months,' he
+repeated, and then slowly, 'Ona was born for luxury.'
+
+"Paula, you cannot realize what that temptation was. To amass wealth had
+never been my ambition before, but now everything seemed to urge it upon
+me. Dreams of unimagined luxury came to my mind as these words were
+uttered. A vision of Ona clad in garments worthy of her beauty floated
+before my eyes; the humble home I had hitherto pictured for myself,
+broadened and towered away into a palace; I beheld myself honored and
+accepted as the nabob of the town. I caught a glimpse of a new paradise,
+and hesitated to shut down the gate upon it. 'I will think of it,' said
+I, and went into the other room to speak to Ona.
+
+"Ah, if some angel had met me on the threshold! If my mother's spirit or
+the thought of your dear face could have risen before me then and
+stopped me! Dizzy, intoxicated with love and ambition, I crossed the
+room to where she sat reeling off a skein of blue silk with hands that
+were whiter than alabaster. Kneeling down by her side, I caught those
+fair hands in mine.
+
+"'Ona,' I cried, 'will you marry me? Your father has given his consent,
+and we shall be very happy.'
+
+"She bestowed upon me a little pout, and half mockingly, half earnestly
+inquired, 'What kind of a house are you going to put me in? I cannot
+live in a cottage.'
+
+"'I will put you in a palace,' I whispered, 'if you will only say that
+you will be mine.'
+
+"'A palace! Oh, I don't expect palaces; a house like the Japhas' would
+do. Not but what I should feel at home in a palace,' she added, lifting
+her lordly head and looking beautiful enough to grace a sceptre. Then,
+archly for her, 'And papa has given his consent?'
+
+"'Yes,' I ardently cried.
+
+"'Then Dr. Burton might as well go,' she answered. 'I will trust my
+father's judgment, and take the palace--when it comes.'
+
+"After that, it was impossible to disappoint her.
+
+"Paula, in stating all this, I have purposely confined myself to
+relating bare facts. You must see us as we were. The glamour which an
+unreasoning passion casts over even a dishonest act, if performed for
+the sake of winning a beautiful woman, is no excuse in my own soul for
+the evil to which I succumbed that day, nor shall it seem so to you.
+Bare, hard, stern, the fact confronts me from the past, that at the
+first call of temptation I fell; and with this blot on my character, you
+will have to consider me--unhappy being that I am!
+
+"I did not realize then, however, all that I had done. The operation
+entered into by Mr. Delafield prospered, and in two months I had, as he
+predicted, ten thousand dollars instead of five, in my possession.
+Besides, I had just married Ona, and for awhile life was a dream of
+delight and luxury. But there came a day when I awoke to an insight of
+the peril I had escaped by a mere chance of the die. The money which I
+had expected from my aunt's will, turned out to be amongst certain funds
+that had been risked in speculation by some agent during her sickness,
+and irrecoverably lost. The expression of her good-will was all that
+ever came to me of the legacy upon which I had so confidently relied.
+
+"I was sitting with my young wife in the pretty parlor of our new home,
+when the letter came from my lawyer announcing this fact, and I never
+can make you understand what effect it had upon me. The very walls
+seemed to shrivel up into the dimensions of a prison's cell; the face
+that only an hour before had possessed every conceivable charm for me,
+shone on my changed vision with the allurement, but also with the
+unreality of a will-o'-the-wisp. All that might have happened if the
+luck, instead of being in my favor, had turned against me, crushed like
+a thunderbolt upon my head, and I rose up and left the presence of my
+young wife, with the knowledge at my heart that I was no more nor less
+than a thief in the eyes of God, if not in that of my fellow-men; a base
+thief, who if he did not meet his fit punishment, was only saved from it
+by fortuitous circumstances and the ignorance of those he had been so
+near despoiling.
+
+"The bitterness of that hour never passed away. The streets in which I
+had been raised, the house which had been the scene of my temptation,
+Mr. Delafield's face, and my own home, all became unendurable to me. I
+felt as if each man I met must know what I had done; and secret as the
+transaction had been, it was long before I could enter the bank without
+a tremor of apprehension lest I should hear from some quarter, that my
+services there would no longer be required. The only comfort I received
+was in the thought that Ona did not know at what a cost her hand had
+been obtained. I was still under the glamour of her languid smiles and
+countless graces, and was fain to believe that notwithstanding a certain
+unresponsiveness and coldness in her nature, her love would yet prove a
+compensation for the remorse that I secretly suffered.
+
+"My distaste for Grotewell culminated. It was too small for me. The
+money I had acquired through the use of my neighbor's funds burned in my
+pocket. I determined to move to New York, and with the few thousands I
+possessed, venture upon other speculations. But this time in all
+honesty. Yes, I swore it before God and my own soul, that never again
+would I run a risk similar to that from which I had just escaped. I
+would profit by the money I had acquired, oh yes, but henceforth all my
+operations should be legitimate and honorable. My wife, who was fast
+developing a taste for ease and splendor, seconded my plans with
+something like fervor, while Mr. Delafield actually went so far as to
+urge my departure. 'You are bound to make a rich man,' said he 'and must
+go where great fortunes are to be secured.' He never asked me what
+became of the five thousand dollars I returned to Colonel Japha upon his
+arrival from Europe.
+
+"So I came to New York.
+
+"Paula, the man who loses at the outset of a doubtful game, is
+fortunate. I did not lose, I won. As if in that first dishonest deed of
+mine I had summoned to my side the aid of evil influences, each and
+every operation into which I entered prospered. It seemed as if I could
+not make a mistake; money flowed towards me from all quarters; power
+followed, and I found myself one of the most successful and one of the
+most unhappy men in New York. There are some things of which a man
+cannot write even to the one dear heart he most cherishes and adores.
+You have lived in my home, and will acquit me from saying much about her
+who, with all her faults and her omissions, was ever kind to you. But
+some things I must repeat in order to make intelligible to you the
+change which gradually took place within me as the years advanced.
+Beauty, while it wins the lover, can never of itself hold the heart of a
+husband who possesses aspirations beyond that which passion supplies.
+Reckless, worldly and narrow-minded as I had been before the commission
+of that deed which embittered my life, I had become by the very shock
+that followed the realization of my wrong-doing, a hungry-hearted,
+eager-minded and melancholy-spirited man, asking but one boon in
+recompense for my secret remorse, and that was domestic happiness and
+the sympathetic affection of wife and children. Woman, according to my
+belief, was born to be chiefly and above all, the consoler. What a man
+missed in the outside world, he was to find treasured at home. What a
+man lacked in his own nature, he was to discover in the delicate and
+sublimated one of his wife. Beautiful dream, which my life was not
+destined to see realized!
+
+"The birth of my only child was my first great consolation. With the
+opening of her blue eyes upon my face, a well-spring deep as my
+unfathomable longing, bubbled up within my breast. Alas, that very
+consolation brought a hideous grief; the mother did not love her child;
+and another strand of the regard with which I still endeavored to
+surround the wife of my youth, parted and floated away out of sight. To
+take my little one in my arms, to feel her delicate cheek press
+yearningly to mine, to behold her sweet infantile soul develop itself
+before my eyes, and yet to realize that that soul would never know the
+guidance or sympathy of a mother, was to me at once rapture and anguish.
+I sometimes forgot to follow up a fortunate speculation, in my
+indulgence of these feelings. I was passionately the father as I might
+have been passionately the husband and the friend. Geraldine died; how
+and with what attendant circumstances of pain and regret, I will not,
+dare not state. The blow struck to the core of my being. I stood shaken
+before God. The past, with its one grim remembrance--a remembrance that
+in the tide of business successes and the engrossing affection which had
+of late absorbed me, had been well-nigh swamped from sight--rose before
+me like an accusing spirit. I had sinned, and I had been punished; I had
+sown, and I had reaped.
+
+"More than that, I was sinning still. My very enjoyment of the position
+I had so doubtfully acquired, was unworthy of me. My very wealth was a
+disgrace. Had it not all been built upon another man's means? Could the
+very house I lived in be said to be my own, while a Japha existed in
+want? In the eyes of the world, perhaps, yes; in my own eyes, no. I
+became morbid on the subject. I asked myself what I could do to escape
+the sense of obligation that overwhelmed me. The few sums with which I
+had been secretly enabled to provide Colonel Japha during the final days
+of his ruined and impoverished life, were not sufficient. I desired to
+wipe out the past by some large and munificent return. Had the colonel
+been living, I should have gone to him, told him my tale and offered him
+the half of my fortune; but his death cut off all hopes of my righting
+myself in that way. Only his daughter remained, the poor, lost,
+reprobated being, whom he was willing to curse, but whom he could not
+bear to believe suffering. I determined that the debt due to my own
+peace of mind should be paid to her. But how? Where was I to find this
+wanderer? How was I to let her know that a comfortable living awaited
+her if she would only return to her friends and home? Consulting with a
+business associate, he advised me to advertise. I did so, but without
+success. I next resorted to the detectives, but all without avail.
+Jacqueline Japha was not to be found.
+
+"But I did not relinquish my resolve. Deliberately investing a hundred
+thousand dollars in Government bonds, I put them aside for her. They
+were to be no longer mine. I gave them to her and to her heirs as
+completely and irrevocably, I believed, as if I had laid them in her
+hand and seen her depart with them. I even inserted them as a legacy to
+her in my will. It was a clear and definite arrangement between me and
+my own soul; and after I had made it and given orders to my lawyer in
+Grotewell to acquaint me if he ever received the least news of
+Jacqueline Japha, I slept in peace.
+
+"Of the years that followed I have small need to speak. They were the
+years that preceded your coming, my Paula, and their story is best told
+by what I was when we met again, and you made me know the sweet things
+of life by entering into my home. Woman as a thoughtful, tender,
+elevated being had been so long unknown to me! The beauty of the
+feminine soul with its faith fixed upon high ideals, was one before
+which I had ever been ready to bow. All that I had missed in my youth,
+all that had failed me in my maturing manhood, seemed to flow back upon
+me like a river. I bathed in the sunshine of your pure spirit and
+imagined that the evil days were over and peace come at last.
+
+"A rude and bitter shock awoke me. Ona's father, who had followed us to
+New York, and of whose somewhat checkered career during the past few
+years, I have purposely forborne to speak, had not been above appealing
+to us for assistance at such times as his frequently unfortunate
+investments left him in a state of necessity. These appeals were usually
+made to Ona, and in a quiet way; but one day he met me on the street--it
+was during the second winter you spent in my home--and dragging me into
+a restaurant down town, began a long tale, to the effect that he wanted
+a few thousands from me to put into a certain investment, which if
+somewhat shady in its character, was very promising as to its results;
+and gave as a reason why he applied to me for the money, that he knew I
+had not been above doing a wrongful act once, in order to compass my
+ends, and therefore would not be liable to hesitate now.
+
+"It was the thunderbolt of my life. My sin was not then buried. It had
+been known to this man from the start. With an insight for which I had
+never given him credit, he had read my countenance in the days of my
+early temptation, and guessed, if he did not know, where the five
+thousand dollars came from with which I began my career as speculator.
+Worse than that, he had led me on to the act by which he now sought to
+hold me. Having been the secret agent in losing my aunt's money, he knew
+at the time that I was cherishing empty hopes as regarded a legacy from
+her, yet he let me dally with my expectations, and ensnare myself with
+his daughter's fascinations, till driven mad by disappointment and
+longing, I was ready to resort to any means to gain my purpose. It was a
+frightful revelation to come to me in days when, if I were not a
+thoroughly honest man, I had at least acquired a deep and ineradicable
+dread of dishonor. Answering him I know not how, but in a way that while
+it repudiated his proposition, unfortunately acknowledged the truth of
+the suppositions upon which it was founded, I left him and went home, a
+crushed and disheartened man. Life which had been so long in acquiring
+cheerful hues, was sunk again in darkness; and for days I could not bear
+the sight of your innocent face, or the sound of your pure voice, or the
+tokens of your tender and unsuspecting presence in my home. But soon the
+very natural thought came to comfort me, that the sin I so deplored was
+as much dead now, as it was before I learned the fact of this man's
+knowledge of it. That having repented and put it away, I was as free to
+accept your gentle offices and the regard of all true men, as ever I had
+been; and beguiled by this plausible consideration, I turned again to my
+one visible source of consolation, and in the diversion it offered, let
+the remembrance of this last bitter experience pass slowly from my mind.
+The fact that Mr. Delafield left town shortly after his interview with
+me, and smitten by shame perhaps, forbore to acquaint us with his
+whereabouts or afflict us with his letters, may have aided me in this
+strange forgetfulness.
+
+"But other and sharper trials were in store; trials that were to test me
+as a man, and as it proved, find me lacking just where I thought I was
+strongest. Paula, that saying of the Bible, 'Let him that thinketh he
+standeth take heed lest he fall,' might have been written over the door
+of my house on that day, ten months ago, when we two stood by the
+hearthstone and talked of the temptations that beset humanity, and the
+charity we should show to such as succumb to them. Before the day had
+waned, my own hour had come; and not all the experience of my life, not
+all the resolves, hopes, fears of my later years, not even the
+remembrance of your sweet trust and your natural recoil from evil, were
+sufficient to save me. The blow came so suddenly! the call for action
+was so peremptory! One moment I stood before the world, rich, powerful,
+honored, and beloved; the next, I saw myself threatened with a loss that
+undermined my whole position, and with it the very consideration that
+made me what I was. But I must explain.
+
+"When I entered the Madison Bank as President, I gave up in deference to
+the wishes of Mr. Stuyvesant all open speculation in Wall Street. But a
+wife and home such as I then had, are not to be supported on any petty
+income; and when shortly after your entrance into my home, the
+opportunity presented itself of investing in a particularly promising
+silver mine out West, I could not resist the temptation; regarding the
+affair as legitimate, and the hazard, if such it were, one that I was
+amply able to bear. But like most enterprises of the kind, one dollar
+drew another after it, and I soon found that to make available what I
+had already invested, I was obliged to add to it more and more of my
+available funds, until--to make myself as intelligible to you as I
+can--it had absorbed not only all that had remained to me after my
+somewhat liberal purchase of the Madison Bank stock, but all I could
+raise on a pledge of the stock itself. But there was nothing in this to
+alarm me. I had a man at the mine devoted to my interests; and as the
+present yield was excellent, and the future of more promise still, I
+went on my way with no special anxiety. But who can trust a silver mine?
+At the very point where we expected the greatest result, the vein
+suddenly gave out, and nothing prevented the stock from falling utterly
+flat on the market, but the discretion of my agent, who kept the fact a
+secret, while he quietly went about getting another portion of the mine
+into working order. He was fast succeeding in this, and affairs were
+looking daily more promising, when suddenly an intimation received by me
+in a bit of conversation casually overheard at that reception we
+attended together, convinced me that the secret was transpiring, and
+that if great care were not taken, we should be swamped before we could
+get things into working trim again. Filled with this anxiety, I was
+about to leave the building, in order to telegraph to my agent, when to
+my great surprise the card of that very person was brought in to me,
+together with a request for an immediate interview. You remember it,
+Paula, and how I went out to see him; but what you did not know then,
+and what I find some difficulty in relating now, is that his message to
+me was one of total ruin unless I could manage to give into his hand,
+for immediate use, the sum of a hundred thousand dollars.
+
+"The facts making this demand necessary were not what you may have been
+led to expect. They had little or nothing to do with the new operations,
+which were progressing successfully and with every promise of an
+immediate return, but arose entirely out of a law-suit then in the hands
+of a Colorado judge for decision, and which, though it involved
+well-nigh the whole interest of the mine, had never till this hour given
+me the least uneasiness, my lawyers having always assured me of my
+ultimate success. But it seems that notwithstanding all this, the
+decision was to be rendered in favor of the other party. My agent, who
+was a man to be trusted in these matters, averred that five days before,
+he had learned from most authentic sources what the decision was likely
+to be. That the judge's opinion had been seen--he did not tell me how,
+he dared not, nor did I presume to question, but I have since learned
+that not only had the copyist employed by the judge turned traitor, but
+that my own agent had been anything but scrupulous in the use he had
+made of a willing and corruptible instrument--and that if I wanted to
+save myself and the others connected with me from total and irremediable
+loss, I must compromise with the other parties at once, who not being
+advised of the true state of affairs, and having but little faith in
+their own case, had long ago expressed their willingness to accept the
+sum of a hundred thousand dollars as a final settlement of the
+controversy. My agent, if none too nice in his ideas of right and wrong,
+was, as I have intimated, not the man to make a mistake; and when to my
+question as to how long a time he would give me to look around among my
+friends and raise the required sum, he replied, 'Ten hours and no more,'
+I realized my position, and the urgent necessity for immediate action.
+
+"The remainder of the night is a dream to me. There was but one source
+from which I could hope in the present condition of my affairs, to
+procure a hundred thousand dollars; and that was from the box where I
+had stowed away the bonds destined for the use of the Japha heirs. To
+borrow was impossible, even if I had been in possession of proper
+securities to give. I was considered as having relinquished speculation
+and dared not risk the friendship of Mr. Stuyvesant by a public betrayal
+of my necessity. The Japha bonds or my own fortune must go, and it only
+remained with me to determine which.
+
+"Paula, nothing but the ingrained principle of a lifetime, the habit of
+doing the honest thing without thought or hesitation, saves a man at an
+hour like that. Strong as I believed myself to be in the determination
+never again to flaw my manhood by the least action unworthy of my
+position as the guardian of trusts, earnest as I was in my recoil from
+evil, and sincere as I may have been in my admiration of and desire for
+the good, I no sooner saw myself tottering between ruin and a compromise
+with conscience, than I hesitated--hesitated with you under my roof, and
+with the words we had been speaking still ringing in my ears. Ona's
+influence, for all the trials of our married life, was still too strong
+upon me. To think of her as deprived of the splendor which was her life,
+daunted my very soul. I dared not contemplate a future in which she must
+stand denuded of everything which made existence dear to her; yet how
+could I do the evil thing I contemplated, even to save her and preserve
+my own position! For--and you must understand this--I regarded any
+appropriation of these funds I had delegated to the use of the Japhas,
+as a fresh and veritable abuse of trust. They were not mine. I had given
+them away. Unknown to any one but my own soul and God, I had deeded them
+to a special purpose, and to risk them as I now proposed doing, was an
+act that carried me back to the days of my former delinquency, and made
+the repentance of the last few years the merest mockery. What if I might
+recover them hereafter and restore them to their place; the chances in
+favor of their utter loss were also possible, and honesty deals not with
+chances. I suffered so, I had a momentary temptation towards suicide;
+but suddenly, in the midst of the struggle, came the thought that
+perhaps in my estimate of Ona I had committed a gross injustice, that
+while she loved splendor seemingly more than any woman I had ever known,
+she might be as far from wishing me to retain her in it at the price of
+my own self-respect, as the most honest-hearted wife in the world; and
+struck by the hope, I left my agent at a hotel and hurried home through
+the early morning to her side. She Was asleep, of course, but I wakened
+her. It was dark and she had a right to be fretful, but when I whispered
+in her ear, 'Get up and listen to me, for our fortune is at stake,' she
+at once rose and having risen, was her clearest, coldest, most
+implacable self. Paula, I told her my story, my whole story as I have
+told it to you here. I dropped no thread, I smoothed over no offence.
+Torturing as it was to my pride, I laid bare my soul before her, and
+then in a burst of appeal such as I hope never to be obliged to make use
+of again, asked her as she was a woman and a wife, to save me in this
+hour of my temptation.
+
+"Paula, she refused. More than that, she expressed the bitterest scorn
+of my mawkish conscientiousness, as she called it. That I should
+consider myself as owing anything to the detestable wretch who was the
+only representative of the Japhas, was bad enough, but that I should go
+on treasuring the money that would save us, was disgraceful if not
+worse, and betrayed a weakness of mind for which she had never given me
+credit.
+
+"'But Ona,' I cried, 'if it is a weakness of mind, it is also an
+equivalent to my consciousness of right living. Would you have me
+sacrifice that?'
+
+"'I would have you sacrifice anything necessary to preserve us in our
+position,' said she; and I stood aghast before an unscrupulousness
+greater than any I had hitherto been called upon to face.
+
+"'Ona,' repeated I, for her look was cold, 'do you realize what I have
+been telling you? Most wives would shudder when informed that their
+husbands had perpetrated a dishonest act in order to win them.'
+
+"A thin strange smile heralded her reply. 'Most wives would,' returned
+she, 'but most wives are ignorant. Did you suppose I did not know what
+it cost you to marry me? Papa took care I should miss no knowledge that
+might be useful to me.'
+
+"'And you married me knowing what I had done!' exclaimed I, with
+incredulous dismay.
+
+"'I married you, knowing you were too clever, or believing you to be too
+clever, to run such a risk again.'
+
+"I can say no more concerning that hour. With a horror for this woman
+such as I had never before experienced for living creature, I rushed out
+of her presence, loathing the air she breathed, yet resolved to do her
+bidding. Can you understand a man hating a woman, yet obeying her;
+despising her, yet yielding? I cannot, _now_, but that day there seemed
+no alternative. Either I must kill myself or follow her wishes. I chose
+to do the latter, forgetting that God can kill, and that, too, whom and
+when He pleases.
+
+
+"Going down to the bank, I procured the bonds from my box in the safe. I
+felt like a thief, and the manner in which it was done was unwittingly
+suggestive of crime, but with that and the position in which I have
+since found myself placed by this very action, I need not cumber my
+present narrative. Handing the bonds to my agent with orders to sell
+them to the best advantage, I took a short walk to quiet my nerves and
+realize what I had done, and then went home.
+
+"Paula, had God in his righteous anger seen fit to strike me down that
+day, it would have been no more than my due and aroused in me, perhaps,
+no more than a natural repentence. But when I saw her for whose sake I
+had ostensibly committed this fresh abuse of trust, lying cold and dead
+before me, the sword of the Almighty pierced me to the soul, and I fell
+prostrate beneath a remorse to which any regret I had hitherto
+experienced, was as the playing of a child with shadows. Had I by the
+losing of my right arm been able to recall my action, I would have done
+it; indeed I made an effort to recover myself; had my agent followed up
+with an order to return me the bonds I had given him, but it was too
+late, the compromise had already been effected by telegraph and the
+money was out of our hands. The deed was done and I had made myself
+unworthy of your presence and your smile at the very hour when both
+would have been inestimable to me. You remember those days; remember our
+farewell. Let me believe you do not blame me now for what must have
+seemed harsh and unnecessary to you then.
+
+
+"There is but little more to write, but in that little is compressed the
+passion, longing, hope and despair of a lifetime. When I told you as I
+did a few hours ago that my sin was dead and its consequences at an end,
+I repeat that I fully and truly believed it. The hundred thousand
+dollars I had sent West, had been used to advantage, and only day before
+yesterday I was enabled to sell out my share in the mine, for a large
+sum that leaves me free and unembarrassed, to make the fortune of more
+than one Japha, should God ever see fit to send them across my pathway.
+More than that, Mr. Delafield, of whose discretion I had sometimes had
+my fears, was dead, having perished of a fever some months before in San
+Francisco; and of all men living, there were none as I believed, who
+knew anything to the discredit of my name. I was clear, or so I thought,
+in fortune and in fame; and being so, dreamed of taking to my empty and
+yearning arms, the loveliest and the purest of mortal women. But God
+watched over you and prevented an act whose consequences might have been
+so cruel. In an hour, Paula, in an hour, I had learned that the foul
+thing was not dead, that a witness had picked up the words I had allowed
+to fall in my interview with my father-in-law in the restaurant two
+years before; an unscrupulous witness who had been on my track ever
+since, and who now in his eagerness for a victim, had by mistake laid
+his clutch upon our Bertram. Yes, owing to the similarity of our voices
+and the fact that we both make use of a certain tell-tale word, this
+patient and upright nephew of mine stands at this moment under the
+charge of having acknowledged in the hearing of this person, to the
+committal of an act of dishonesty in the past. A foolish charge you will
+say, and one easily refuted. Alas, a fresh act of dishonesty lately
+perpetrated in the bank, complicates matters. A theft has been committed
+on some of Mr. Stuyvesant's effects, and that, too, under circumstances
+that involuntarily arouse suspicion against some one of the bank
+officials; and Bertram, if not sustained in his reputation, must suffer
+from the doubts which naturally have arisen in Mr. Stuyvesant's breast.
+The story which this man could tell, must of course shake the faith of
+any one in the reputation of him against whom it is directed, and the
+man intends to repeat his story, and that, too, in the very ears of him
+upon whose favor Bertram depends for his life's happiness and the
+winning of the woman he adores. I adore you, Paula, but I cannot clasp
+you to my heart across another sin. If the detectives whom we shall call
+in to-morrow, cannot exonerate those connected with the bank from the
+theft lately committed there--and the fact that you have been allowed to
+read this letter, prove they have not--I must do what I can to relieve
+Bertram from his painful position, by taking upon myself the onus of
+that past transgression which of right belongs to my account; and this
+once done, let the result be for good or ill, any bond between you and
+me is cut loose forever. I have not learned to love at this late hour,
+to wrong the precious thing I cherish. Death as it is to me to say
+good-bye to the one last gleam of heavenly light that has shot across my
+darkened way, it must be done, dear heart, if only to hold myself worthy
+of the tender and generous love you have designed to bestow upon me.
+Bertram, who is all generosity, may guess but does not know, what I am
+about to do. Go down to him, dear; tell him that at this very moment,
+perhaps, I am clearing his name before the wretch who has so ruthlessly
+fastened his fang upon him; that his love and Cicely's shall prosper, as
+he has been loyal, and she trusting, all these years of effort and
+probation; that I give him my blessing, and that if we do not meet
+again, I delegate to him the trust of which I so poorly acquitted
+myself. But before you go, stop a moment and in this room, which has
+always symbolized to my eyes the poverty which was my rightful due,
+kneel and pray for my soul; for if God grants me the wish of my heart,
+he will strike me with sudden death after I have taken upon myself the
+disgrace of my past offences. Life without love can be borne, but life
+without honor never. To come and go amongst my fellow-men with a shadow
+on the fame they have always believed spotless! Do not ask me to attempt
+it! Pray for my soul, but pray too, that I may perish in some quick and
+sudden way before ever your dear eyes rest upon my face again.
+
+"And now, as though this were to be the end, let me take my last
+farewell of you. I have loved you, Paula, loved you with my heart, my
+mind and my soul. You have been my angel of inspiration and the source
+of all my comfort. I kneel before you in gratitude, and I stand above
+you in blessing. May every pang I suffer this hour, redound to you in
+some sweet happiness hereafter. I do not quarrel with my fate, I only
+ask God to spare you from its shadow. And He will. Love will flow back
+upon your young life, and in regions where our eye now fails to pierce,
+you will taste every joy which your generous heart once thought to
+bestow on
+
+     "EDWARD SYLVESTER."
+
+
+
+
+XL.
+
+HALF-PAST SEVEN.
+
+     "I would it were midnight, Hal, and all well."
+
+     --HENRY IV.
+
+
+The library was dim; Bertram, who had felt the oppressive influence of
+the great empty room, had turned down the lights, and was now engaged in
+pacing the floor, with restless and uneven steps, asking himself a
+hundred questions, and wishing with all the power of his soul, that Mr.
+Sylvester would return, and by his appearance cut short a suspense that
+was fast becoming unendurable.
+
+He had just returned from his third visit to the front door, when the
+curtain between him and the hall was gently raised, and Paula glided in
+and stood before him. She was dressed for the street, and her face where
+the light touched it, shone like marble upon which has fallen the glare
+of a lifted torch.
+
+"Paula!" burst from the young man's lips in surprise.
+
+"Hush!" said she, her voice quavering with an emotion that put to
+defiance all conventionalities, "I want you to take me to the place
+where Mr. Sylvester is gone. He is in danger; I know it, I feel it. I
+dare not leave him any longer alone. I might be able to save him if--if
+he meditates anything that--" she did not try to say what, but drew
+nearer to Bertram and repeated her request. "You will take me, won't
+you?"
+
+He eyed her with amazement, and a shudder seized his own strong frame.
+"No," cried he, "I cannot take you; you do not know what you ask; but I
+will go myself if you apprehend anything serious. I remember where it
+is. I studied the address too closely, to readily forget it."
+
+"You shall not go without me," returned Paula with steady decision. "If
+the danger is what I fear, no one else can save him. I must go," she
+added, with passionate importunity as she saw him still looking
+doubtful. "Darkness and peril are nothing to me in comparison with his
+safety. He holds my life in his hand," she softly whispered, "and what
+will not one do for his life!" Then quickly, "If you go without me I
+shall follow with Aunt Belinda. Nothing shall keep me in the house
+to-night."
+
+He felt the uselessness of further objection, yet he ventured to say,
+"The place where he has gone is one of the worst in the city; a spot
+which men hesitate to enter after dark. You don't know what you ask in
+begging me to take you there."
+
+"I do, I realize everything."
+
+With a sudden awe of the great love which he thus beheld embodied before
+him, Bertram bowed his head and moved towards the door. "I may consider
+it wise to obtain the guidance of a policeman through the quarter into
+which we are about to venture. Will you object to that?"
+
+"No," was her quick reply, "I object to nothing but delay."
+
+And with a last look about the room, as if some sensation of farewell
+were stirring in her breast, she laid her hand on Bertram's arm, and
+together they hurried away into the night.
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK V.
+
+WOMAN'S LOVE.
+
+
+
+
+XLI.
+
+THE WORK OF AN HOUR.
+
+         Base is the slave that pays."--HENRY V.
+
+    "Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned,
+    Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned."
+                                         --CONGREVE.
+
+
+Mr. Sylvester upon leaving the bank, had taken his usual route up town.
+But after an aimless walk of a few blocks, he suddenly paused, and with
+a quiet look about him, drew from his pocket the small slip of paper
+which Bertram had laid on his table the night before, and hurriedly
+consulted its contents. Instantly an irrepressible exclamation escaped
+him, and he turned his face to the heavens with the look of one who
+recognizes the just providence of God. The name which he had just read,
+was that of the old lover of Jacqueline Japha, Roger Holt, and the
+address given, was 63 Baxter Street.
+
+Twilight comes with different aspects to the broad avenues of the rich,
+and the narrow alleys of the poor. In the reeking slums of Baxter
+Street, poetry would have had to search long for the purple glamour that
+makes day's dying hour fair in open fields and perfumed chambers. Even
+the last dazzling gleam of the sun could awaken no sparkle from the
+bleared windows of the hideous tenement houses that reared their blank
+and disfigured walls toward the west. The chill of the night blast and
+the quick dread that follows in the steps of coming darkness, were all
+that could enter these regions, unless it was the stealthy shades of
+vice and disease.
+
+Mr. Sylvester standing before the darkest and most threatening of the
+many dark and threatening houses that cumbered the street, was a sight
+to draw more than one head from the neighboring windows. Had it been
+earlier, he would have found himself surrounded by a dozen ragged and
+importunate children; had it been later, he would have run the risk of
+being garroted by some skulking assassin; as it was, he stood there
+unmolested, eying the structure that held within its gloomy recesses the
+once handsome and captivating lover of Jacqueline Japha. He was not the
+only man who would have hesitated before entering there. Low and
+insignificant as the building appeared--and its two stories certainly
+looked dwarfish enough in comparison with the two lofty tenement houses
+that pressed it upon either side--there was something in its quiet,
+almost uninhabited aspect that awakened a vague apprehension of lurking
+danger. A face at a window would have been a relief; even the sight of a
+customer in the noisome groggery that occupied the ground floor. From
+the dwellings about, came the hum of voices and now and then the sound
+of a shrill laugh or a smothered cry, but from this house came nothing,
+unless it was the slow ooze of a stream of half-melted snow that found
+its way from under the broken-down door-way to the gutter beyond.
+
+Stepping bravely forward, Mr. Sylvester entered the open door. A flight
+of bare and rickety steps met his eye. Ascending them, he found himself
+in a hall which must have been poorly lighted at any time, but which at
+this late hour was almost dark. It was not very encouraging, but
+pressing on, he stopped at a door and was about to knock, when his eyes
+becoming accustomed to the darkness, he detected standing at the foot of
+the stairs leading to the story above, the tall and silent figure of a
+woman. It was no common apparition. Like a sentinel at his post, or a
+spy on the outskirts of the enemy's camp, she stood drawn up against the
+wall, her whole wasted form quivering with eagerness or some other
+secret passion; darkness on her brow and uncertainty on her lip. She was
+listening, or waiting, or both, and that with an entire absorption that
+prevented her from heeding the approach of a stranger's step. Struck by
+so sinister a presence in a place so dark and desolate, Mr. Sylvester
+unconsciously drew back. As he did so, the woman thrilled and looked up,
+but not at him. A lame child's hesitating and uneven step was heard
+crossing the floor above, and it was towards it she turned, and for it
+she composed her whole form into a strange but evil calmness.
+
+"Ah, he let you come then!" Mr. Sylvester heard her exclaim in a low
+smothered tone, whose attempted lightness did not hide the malevolent
+nature of her interest.
+
+"Yes," came back in the clear and confiding tones of childhood. "I told
+him you loved me and gave me candy-balls, and he let me come."
+
+A laugh quick and soon smothered, disturbed the surrounding gloom. "You
+told him I loved you! Well, that is good; I do love you; love you as I
+do my own eyes that I could crush, crush, for ever having lingered on
+the face of my betrayer!"
+
+The last phrase was muttered, and did not seem to convey any impression
+to the child. "Hold out your arms and catch me," cried he; "I am going
+to jump."
+
+She appeared to comply; for he gave a little ringing laugh that was
+startlingly clear and fresh.
+
+"He asked me what your name was," babbled he, as he nestled in her arms.
+"He is always asking what your name is; Dad forgets, Dad does; or else
+it's because he's never seen you."
+
+"And what did you tell him?" she asked, ignoring the last remark with an
+echo of her sarcastic laugh.
+
+"Mrs. Smith, of course."
+
+She threw back her head and her whole form acquired an aspect that made
+Mr. Sylvester shudder. "That's good," she cried, "Mrs. Smith by all
+means." Then with a sudden lowering of her face to his--"Mrs. Smith is
+good to you, isn't she; lets you sit by her fire when she has any, and
+gives you peanuts to eat and sometimes spares you a penny!"
+
+"Yes, yes," the boy cried.
+
+"Come then," she said, "let's go home."
+
+She put him down on the floor, and gave him his little crutch. Her
+manner was not unkind, and yet Mr. Sylvester trembled as he saw the
+child about to follow her.
+
+"Didn't you ever have any little boys?" the child suddenly asked.
+
+The woman shrank as if a burning steel had been plunged against her
+breast. Looking down on the frightened child, she hissed out from
+between her teeth, "Did he tell you to ask me that? Did he dare--" She
+stopped and pressed her arms against her swelling heart as if she would
+smother its very beats. "Oh no, of course he didn't tell you; what does
+he know or care about Mrs. Smith!" Then with a quick gasp and a wild
+look into the space before her, "My child dead, and her child alive and
+beloved! What wonder that I hate earth and defy heaven!"
+
+She caught the boy by the hand and drew him quickly away. "You will be
+good to me," he cried, frightened by her manner yet evidently fascinated
+too, perhaps on account of the faint sparks of kindness that alternated
+with gusts of passion he did not understand. "You won't hurt me; you'll
+let me sit by the fire and get warm?"
+
+"Yes, yes."
+
+"And eat a bit of bread with butter on it?"
+
+"Yes, yes."
+
+"Then I'll go."
+
+She drew him down the hall. "Why do you like to have me come to your
+house?" he prattled away.
+
+She turned on him with a look which unfortunately Mr. Sylvester could
+not see. "Because your eyes are so blue and your skin is so white; they
+make me remember her!"
+
+"And who is _her_?"
+
+She laughed and seemed to hug herself in her rage and bitterness. "Your
+mother!" she cried, and in speaking it, she came upon Mr. Sylvester.
+
+He at once put out his hand.
+
+"I don't know who you are," said he, "but I do not think you had better
+take the child out to-night. From what you say, his father is evidently
+upstairs; if you will give the boy to me, I will take him back and leave
+him where he belongs."
+
+"You will?" The slow intensity of her tone was indescribable. "Know that
+I don't bear interference from strangers." And catching up the child,
+she rushed by him like a flash. "You are probably one of those
+missionaries who go stealing about unasked into respectable persons'
+rooms," she called back. "If by any chance you wander into his, tell him
+his child is in good hands, do you hear, in good hands!" And with a
+final burst of her hideous laugh, she dashed down the stairs and was
+gone.
+
+Mr. Sylvester stood shocked and undecided. His fatherly heart urged him
+to search at once for the parent of this lame boy, and warn him of the
+possible results of entrusting his child to a woman with so little
+command over herself. But upon taking out his watch and finding it later
+by a good half-hour than he expected, he was so struck with the
+necessity of completing his errand, that he forgot everything else in
+his anxiety to confront Holt. Knocking at the first door he came to, he
+waited. A quick snarl and a surprised, "Come in!" announced that he had
+scared up some sort of a living being, but whether man or woman he found
+it impossible to tell, even after the door opened and the creature,
+whoever it was, rose upon him from a pile of rags scattered in one
+corner.
+
+"I want Mr. Holt; can you tell me where to find him?"
+
+"Upstairs," was the only reply he received, as the creature settled down
+again upon its heap of tattered clothing.
+
+Fain to be content with this, he went up another flight and opened
+another door. He was more successful this time; one glance of his eye
+assured him that the man he was in search of, sat before him. He had
+never seen Mr. Holt; but the regular if vitiated features of the person
+upon whom he now intruded, his lank but not ungraceful form, and free if
+not airy manners, were not so common among the denizens of this
+unwholesome quarter, that there could be any doubt as to his being the
+accomplished but degenerate individual whose once attractive air had
+stolen the heart of Colonel Japha's daughter.
+
+He was sitting in front of a small pine table, and when Mr. Sylvester's
+eyes first fell upon him, was engaged in watching with a somewhat
+sinister smile, the final twirl of a solitary nickle which he had set
+spinning on the board before him. But at the sound of a step at the
+door, a lightning change passed over his countenance, and rising with a
+quick anticipatory "Ah!" he turned with hasty action to meet the
+intruder. A second exclamation and a still more hasty recoil were the
+result. This was not the face or the form of him whom he had expected.
+
+"Mr. Holt, I believe?" inquired Mr. Sylvester, advancing with his most
+dignified mien.
+
+The other bowed, but in a doubtful way that for a moment robbed him of
+his usual air of impudent self-assertion.
+
+"Then I have business with you," continued Mr. Sylvester, laying the
+man's own card down on the table before him. "My name is Sylvester," he
+proceeded, with a calmness that surprised himself; "and I am the uncle
+of the young man upon--whom you are at present presuming to levy
+blackmail."
+
+The assurance which for a moment had deserted the countenance of the
+other, returned with a flash. "His uncle!" reëchoed he, with a low
+anomalous bow; "then it is from you I may expect the not unreasonable
+sum which I demand as the price of my attentions to your nephew's
+interest. Very good, I am not particular from what quarter it comes, so
+that it does come and that before the clock has struck the hour which I
+have set as the limit of my forbearance."
+
+"Which is seven o'clock, I believe?"
+
+"Which is seven o'clock."
+
+Mr. Sylvester folded his arms and sternly eyed the man before him. "You
+still adhere to your intention, then, of forwarding to Mr. Stuyvesant at
+that hour, the sealed communication now in the hands of your lawyer?"
+
+The smile with which the other responded was like the glint of a partly
+sheathed dagger. "My lawyer has already received his instructions.
+Nothing but an immediate countermand on my part, will prevent the
+communication of which you speak, from going to Mr. Stuyvesant at seven
+o'clock."
+
+The sigh which rose in Mr. Sylvester's breast did not disturb the severe
+immobility of his lip. "Have you ever considered the possibility," said
+he, "of the man whom you overheard talking in the restaurant in Dey
+Street two years ago, not being Mr. Bertram Sylvester of the Madison
+Bank?"
+
+"No," returned the other, with a short, sharp, and wholly undisturbed
+laugh, "I do not think I ever have."
+
+
+"Will you give me credit, then, for speaking with reason, when I declare
+to you that the man you overheard talking in the manner you profess to
+describe in your communication, was not Mr. Bertram Sylvester?"
+
+A shrug of the shoulders, highly foreign and suggestive, was the other's
+answer. "It was Mr. Sylvester or it was the devil," proclaimed he--"with
+all deference to your reason, my good sir; or why are you here?" he
+keenly added.
+
+Mr. Sylvester did not reply. With a sarcastic twitch of his lips the man
+took up the nickle with which he had been amusing himself when the
+former came in, and set it spinning again upon the table. "It is
+half-past six," remarked he. "It will take me a good half hour to go to
+my lawyer."
+
+Mr. Sylvester made a final effort. "If you could be convinced," said he,
+"that you have got your grasp upon the wrong man, would you still
+persist in the course upon which you seem determined?"
+
+With a dexterous sleight-of-hand movement, the man picked up the
+whirling nickle and laid it flat on the table before him. "A fellow
+whose whole fortune is represented by a coin like that"--tapping the
+piece significantly--"is not as easily convinced as a man of your means,
+perhaps. But if I should be brought to own that I had made a mistake in
+my man, I should still feel myself justified in proceeding against him,
+since my very accusation of him seems to be enough to arouse such
+interest on the part of his friends."
+
+"Wretch!" leaped to Mr. Sylvester's lips, but he did not speak it. "His
+friends," declared he, "have most certainly a great interest in his
+reputation and his happiness; but they never will pay any thing upon
+coercion to preserve the one or to insure the other."
+
+"They won't!" And for the first time Roger Holt slightly quavered.
+
+"A man's honor and happiness are much, and he will struggle long before
+he will consent to part from them. But a citizen of a great town like
+this, owes something to his fellows, and submitting to blackmail is but
+a poor precedent to set. You will have to proceed as you will, Mr. Holt;
+neither my nephew nor myself, have any money to give you."
+
+The glare in the man's eyes was like that of an aroused tiger. "Do you
+mean to say," cried he, "that you will not give from your abundance, a
+paltry thousand dollars to save one of your blood from a suspicion that
+will never leave him, _never leave him_ to the end of his miserable
+days?"
+
+"I mean to say that not one cent will pass from me to you in payment of
+a silence, which as a gentleman, you ought to feel it incumbent upon you
+to preserve unasked, if only to prove to your fellow-men that you have
+not entirely lost all the instincts of the caste to which you once
+belonged. Not that I look for anything so disinterested from you," he
+went on. "A man who could enter the home of a respectable gentleman, and
+under cover of a brotherly regard, lure into degradation and despair,
+the woman who was at once its ornament and pride, cannot be expected to
+practice the virtues of ordinary manhood, much less those of a gentleman
+and a Christian. He is a wretch, who, whatever his breeding or
+antecedents, is open to nothing but execration and contempt."
+
+With an oath and a quick backward spring, Roger Holt cried out, "Who are
+you, and by what right do you come here to reproach me with a matter
+dead and buried, by heaven, a dozen years ago?"
+
+"The right of one who, though a stranger, knows well what you are and
+what you have done. Colonel Japha himself is dead, but the avenger of
+his honor yet lives! Roger Holt, _where is Jacqueline Japha_?"
+
+The force with which this was uttered, seemed to confound the man. For a
+moment he stood silent, his eye upon his guest, then a subtle change
+took place in his expression; he smiled with a slow devilish meaning,
+and tossing his head with an airy gesture, lightly remarked:
+
+"You must ask some more constant lover than I. A woman who was charming
+ten years ago--Bah! what would I be likely to know about her now!"
+
+"Everything, when that woman is Jacqueline Japha," cried Mr. Sylvester,
+advancing upon him with a look that would have shaken most men, but
+which only made the eye of this one burn more eagerly. "Though you might
+easily wish to give her the slip, she is not one to forget you. If she
+is alive, you know where she is; speak then, and let the worth of one
+good action make what amends it can for a long list of evil ones."
+
+"You really want to see the woman, then; enough to pay for it, I mean?"
+
+"The reward which has been offered for news of the fate or whereabouts
+of Jacqueline Japha, still stands good," was Mr. Sylvester's reply.
+
+The excited stare with which the man received this announcement, slowly
+subsided into his former subtle look.
+
+"Well, well," said he, "we will see." The truth was, that he knew no
+more than the other where this woman was to be found. "If I happen to
+come across her in any of my wanderings, I shall know where to apply for
+means to make her welcome. But that is not what at present concerns us.
+Your nephew is losing ground with every passing minute. In a half-hour
+more his future will be decided, unless you bid me order my lawyer to
+delay the forwarding of that communication to Mr. Stuyvesant. In that
+case--"
+
+"I believe I have already made it plain to you that I have no intentions
+of interfering with your action in this matter," quoth Mr. Sylvester,
+turning slowly toward the door. "If you are determined to send your
+statement, it must go, only--" And here he turned upon the bitterly
+disappointed man with an aspect whose nobility the other was but little
+calculated to appreciate--"only when you do so, be particular to state
+that the person whose story you thus forward to a director of the
+Madison Bank, is not Bertram Sylvester, the cashier, but Edward
+Sylvester, his uncle, and the bank's president."
+
+And the stately head bowed and the tall form was about to withdraw, when
+Holt with an excited tremble that affected even his words, advanced and
+seized Mr. Sylvester by the arm.
+
+"His uncle!" cried he, "why that is what you--Great heaven!" he
+exclaimed, falling back with an expression not unmixed with awe, "you
+are the man and you have denounced yourself!" Then quickly, "Speak
+again; let me hear your voice."
+
+And Mr. Sylvester with a sad smile, repeated in a slow and meaning tone,
+"It is but one little _fuss_ more!" then as the other cringed, added a
+dignified, "Good evening, Mr. Holt," and passed swiftly across the room
+towards the door.
+
+What was it that stopped him half-way, and made him look back with such
+a startled glance at the man he had left behind him? A smell of smoke in
+the air, the faint yet unmistakable odor of burning wood, as though the
+house were on fire, or--
+
+Ha! the man himself has discerned it, is on his feet, is at the window,
+has seen what? His cry of mingled terror and dismay does not reveal. Mr.
+Sylvester hastens to his side.
+
+The sight which met his eyes, did not for the moment seem sufficient to
+account for the degree of emotion expressed by the other. To be sure,
+the lofty tenement-house which towered above them from the other side of
+the narrow yard upon which the window looked, was oozing with smoke, but
+there were no flames visible, and as yet no special manifestations of
+alarm on the part of its occupants. But in an instant, even while they
+stood there, arose the sudden and awful cry of "Fire!" and at the same
+moment they beheld the roof and casements before them, swarm with pallid
+faces, as men, women and children rushed to the first outlet that
+offered escape, only to shrink back in renewed terror from the deadly
+gulf that yawned beneath them.
+
+It was horrible, all the more that the fire seem to be somewhere in the
+basement story, possibly at the foot of the stairs, for none of the poor
+shrieking wretches before them seemed to make any effort to escape
+downwards, but rather surged up towards the top of the building, waving
+their arms as they fled, and filling the dusk with cries that drowned
+the sound of the coming engines.
+
+
+The scene appeared to madden Holt. "My boy! my boy! my boy!" rose from
+his lips in an agonized shriek; then as Mr. Sylvester gave a sudden
+start, cried out with indiscribable anguish, "He is there, my boy, my
+own little chap! A woman in that house has bewitched him, and when he is
+not with me, he is always at her side. O God, curses on my head for ever
+letting him out of my sight! Do you see him, sir? Look for him, I
+beseech you; he is lame and small; his head would barely reach to the
+top of the window-sill."
+
+"And that was your boy!" cried Mr. Sylvester. And struck by an appeal
+which in spite of his abhorrence of the man at his side, woke every
+instinct of fatherhood within him, he searched with his glance the long
+row of windows before them. But before his eye had travelled half way
+across the building, he felt the man at his side quiver with sudden
+agony, and following the direction of his glance, saw a wan, little
+countenance looking down upon them from a window almost opposite to
+where they stood.
+
+"It is my boy!" shrieked the man, and in his madness would have leaped
+from the casement, if Mr. Sylvester had not prevented him.
+
+"You will not help him so," cried the latter. "See, he is only a few
+feet above a bridge that appears to communicate with the roof of the
+next house. If he could be let down--"
+
+But the man had already precipitated himself towards the door of the
+room in which they were. "Tell him not to jump," he called back. "I am
+going next door and will reach him in a moment. Tell him to hold on till
+I come."
+
+Mr. Sylvester at once raised his voice. "Don't jump, little boy Holt. If
+there is no one there to drop you down, wait for your father. He is
+going on the bridge and will catch you."
+
+The little fellow seemed to hear, for he immediately held out his arms,
+but if he spoke, his voice was drowned in the frightful hubbub.
+Meanwhile the smoke thickened around him, and a dull ominous glare broke
+out from the midst of the building, against which his weazen little face
+looked pallid as death.
+
+"His father will be too late," groaned Mr. Sylvester, feeling himself
+somehow to blame for the child's horrible situation; then observing that
+the other occupants of the building had all disappeared towards the
+front, realized that whatever fire-escapes may have been provided, were
+doubtless in that direction, and raising his voice once more, called out
+across the yard, "Don't wait any longer, little fellow; follow the rest
+to the front; you will be burned if you stay there."
+
+But the child did not move, only held out his arms in a way to unman the
+strongest heart; and presently while Mr. Sylvester was asking himself
+what could be done, he heard his shrill piping tones rising above the
+hiss of the flames, and listening, caught the words:
+
+"I cannot get away. She is holding me, Dad. Help your little feller;
+help me, I'm so afraid of being burnt." And looking closer, Mr.
+Sylvester discerned the outlines of a woman's head and shoulders above
+the small white face.
+
+A distinct and positive fear at once seized him. Leaning out, the better
+to display his own face and figure, he called to that unknown woman to
+quit her hold and let the child go; but a discordant laugh, rising above
+the roar of the approaching flames, was his only reply. Sickened with
+apprehension, he drew back and himself made for the stairs in the wild
+idea of finding the father. But just then the mad figure of Holt
+appeared at the door, with frenzy in all his looks.
+
+"I cannot push through the crowd," cried he, "I have fought and
+struggled and shrieked, but it is all of no use. My boy is burning alive
+and I cannot reach him." A lurid flame shot at that moment from the
+building before them, as if in emphasis to his words.
+
+"He is prisoned there by a woman," cried Mr. Sylvester, pointing to the
+figure whose distorted outlines was every moment becoming more and more
+visible in the increasing glare. "See, she has him tight in her arms and
+is pressing him against the window-sill."
+
+The man with a terrible recoil, looked in the direction of his child,
+saw the little white face with its wild expression of conscious terror,
+saw the face of her who towered implacably behind it, and shrieked
+appalled.
+
+"Jacqueline!" he cried, and put his hands up before his face as if his
+eyes had fallen upon an avenging spirit.
+
+"Is that Jacqueline Japha?" asked Mr. Sylvester, dragging down the
+other's hands and pointing relentlessly towards the ominous figure in
+the window before him.
+
+"Yes, or her ghost," cried the other, shuddering under a horror that
+left him little control of his reason.
+
+"Then your boy is lost," murmured Mr. Sylvester, with a vivid
+remembrance of the words he had overheard. "She will never save her
+rival's child, never."
+
+The man looked at him with dazed eyes. "She shall save him," he cried,
+and stretching far out of the window by which he stood, he pointed to
+the bridge and called out, "Drop him, Jacqueline, don't let him burn. He
+can still reach the next house if he runs. Save my darling, save him."
+
+But the woman as if waiting for his voice, only threw back her head, and
+while a bursting flame flashed up behind her, shrieked mockingly back:
+
+"Oh I have frightened you up at last, have I? You can see me now, can
+you? You can call on Jacqueline now? The brat can make you speak, can
+he? Well, well, call away, I love to hear your voice. It is music to me
+even in the face of death."
+
+"My boy! my boy," was all he could gasp; "save the child, Jacqueline,
+only save the child!"
+
+But the harsh scornful laugh she returned, spoke little of saving. "He
+is so dear," she hissed. "I love the offspring of my rival so much! the
+child that has taken the place of my own darling, dead before ever I had
+seen its innocent eyes. Oh yes, yes, I will save it, save it as my own
+was saved. When I saw the puny infant in your arms the day you passed me
+with _her_, I swore to be its friend, don't you remember! And I am so
+much of a one that I stick by him to the death, don't you see?" And
+raising him up in her arms till his whole stunted body was visible, she
+turned away her brow and seemed to laugh in the face of the flames.
+
+The father writhed below in his agony. "Forgive," he cried, "forgive the
+past and give me back my child. It's all I have to love; it's all I've
+ever loved. Be merciful, Jacqueline, be merciful!"
+
+Her face flashed back upon him, still and white. "And what mercy have
+you ever shown to me! Fool, idiot, don't you see I have lived for this
+hour! To make you feel for once; to make you suffer for once as I have
+suffered. You love the boy! Roger Holt, I once loved you."
+
+And heedless of the rolling volume of smoke that now began to pour
+towards her, heedless even of the long tongues of hungry flame that were
+stretched out as if feeling for her from the distance behind, she stood
+immovable, gazing down upon the casement where he knelt, with an
+indescribable and awful smile upon her lips.
+
+The sight was unbearable. With an instinct of despair both men drew
+back, when suddenly they saw the woman start, unloose her clasp and drop
+the child out of her arms upon the bridge. A hissing stream of water had
+fallen upon the flames, and the shock had taken her by surprise. In a
+moment the father was himself again.
+
+"Get up, little feller, get up," he cried, "or if you cannot walk, crawl
+along the bridge to the next house. I see a fireman there; he will lift
+you in."
+
+But at that moment the flames, till now held under some control, burst
+from an adjoining window, and caught at the woodwork of the bridge. The
+father yelled in dismay.
+
+"Hurry, little feller, hurry!" he cried. "Get over towards the next
+house before it is too late."
+
+But a paralysis seemed to have seized the child; he arose, then stopped,
+and looking wildly about, shook his head. "I cannot," he cried, "I
+cannot." And the woman laughed, and with a hug of her empty arms, seemed
+to throw her taunts into the space before her.
+
+"Are you a demon?" burst from Mr. Sylvester's lips in uncontrollable
+horror. "Don't you see you can save him if you will? Jump down, then,
+and carry him across, or your father's curse will follow you to the
+world beyond."
+
+"Yes, climb down," cried the fireman, "you are lighter than I. Don't
+waste a minute, a second."
+
+"It is your own child, Jacqueline, your own child!" came from Holt's
+white lips in final desperation. "I have deceived you; your baby did not
+die; I wanted to get rid of you and I wanted to save him, so I lied to
+you. The baby did not die; he lived, and that is he you see lying
+helpless on the bridge beneath you."
+
+Not the clutch of an advancing flame could have made her shrink more
+fearfully. "It is false," she cried; "you are lying now; you want me to
+save _her_ child, and dare to say it is mine."
+
+"As God lives!" he swore, lifting his hand and turning his face to the
+sky.
+
+Her whole attitude seemed to cry, "No, no," to his assertion but slowly
+as she stood there, the conviction of its truth seemed to strike her,
+and her hair rose on her forehead and she swayed to and fro, as if the
+earth were rolling under her feet. Suddenly she gave a yell, and bounded
+from the window. Catching the child in her arms, she attempted to regain
+the refuge beyond, but the flames had not dallied at their work while
+she hesitated. The bridge was on fire and her retreat was cut off. She
+did not attempt to escape. Stopping in the centre of the rocking mass,
+she looked down as only a mother in her last agony can do, on the child
+she held folded in her arms; then as the flames caught at her floating
+garments, stooped her head and printed one wild and passionate kiss upon
+his brow. Another instant and they saw her head rise to the accusing
+heavens, then all was rush and horror, and the swaying structure fell
+before their eyes, sweeping its living freight into the courtyard
+beneath their feet.
+
+
+
+
+XLII.
+
+PAULA RELATES A STORY SHE HAS HEARD.
+
+    "None are so desolate but something dear,
+    Dearer than self, possesses or possessed."
+
+    --BYRON.
+
+
+In the centre of a long low room not far from the scene of the late
+disaster, a solitary lamp was burning. It had been lit in haste and cast
+but a feeble flame, but its light was sufficient to illuminate the sad
+and silent group that gathered under its rays.
+
+On a bench by the wall, crouched the bowed and stricken form of Roger
+Holt, his face buried in his hands, his whole attitude expressive of the
+utmost grief; at his side stood Mr. Sylvester, his tall figure looming
+sombrely in the dim light; and on the floor at their feet, lay the dead
+form of the little lame boy.
+
+But it was not upon their faces, sad and striking as they were, that the
+eyes of the few men and women scattered in the open door-way, rested
+most intently. It was upon her, the bruised, bleeding, half-dead mother,
+who kneeling above the little corpse, gazed down upon it with the
+immobility of despair, moaning in utter heedlessness of her own
+condition, "My baby, my baby, my own, own baby!"
+
+The fixedness with which she eyed the child, though the blood was
+streaming from her forehead and bathing with a still deeper red her
+burned and blistered arms, made Mr. Sylvester's sympathetic heart beat.
+Turning to the silent figure of Holt, he touched him on the arm and said
+with a gesture in her direction:
+
+"You have not deceived the woman? That is really her own child that lies
+there?"
+
+The man beside him, started, looked up with slowly comprehending eyes,
+and mechanically bowed his head. "Yes," assented he, and relapsed into
+his former heavy silence.
+
+Mr. Sylvester touched him again. "If it is hers, how came she not to
+know it? How could you manage to deceive such a woman as that?"
+
+Holt started again and muttered, "She was sick and insensible. She never
+saw the baby; I sent it away, and when she came to herself, told her it
+was dead. We had become tired of each other long before, and only needed
+the breaking of this bond to separate us. When she saw me again, it was
+with another woman at my side and an infant in my arms. The child was
+weakly and looked younger than he was. She thought it her rival's and I
+did not undeceive her." And the heavy head again fell forward, and
+nothing disturbed the sombre silence of the room but the low unvarying
+moan of the wretched mother, "My baby, my baby, my own, own baby!"
+
+Mr. Sylvester moved over to her side. "Jacqueline," said he, "the child
+is dead and you yourself are very much hurt. Won't you let these good
+women lay you on a bed, and do what they can to bind up your poor
+blistered arms?"
+
+But she heard him no more than the wind's blowing. "My baby," she
+moaned, "my own, own baby!"
+
+He drew back with a troubled air. Grief like this he could understand
+but knew not how to alleviate. He was just on the point of beckoning
+forward one of the many women clustered in the door-way, when there came
+a sound from without that made him start, and in another moment a young
+man had stepped hastily into the room, followed by a girl, who no sooner
+saw Mr. Sylvester, than she bounded forward with a sudden cry of joy and
+relief.
+
+"Bertram! Paula! What does this mean? What are you doing here?"
+
+A burst of sobs from the agitated girl was her sole reply.
+
+"Such a night! such a place!" he exclaimed, throwing his arm about Paula
+with a look that made her tremble through her tears. "Were you so
+anxious about me, little one?" he whispered. "Would not your fears let
+you rest?"
+
+"No, no; and we have had such a dreadful time since we got here. The
+house where we expected to find you, is on fire, and we thought of
+nothing else but that you had perished within it. But finally some one
+told us to come here, and--" She paused horror-stricken; her eyes had
+just fallen upon the little dead child and the moaning mother.
+
+"That is Jacqueline Japha," whispered Mr. Sylvester. "We have found her,
+only to close her eyes, I fear."
+
+"Jacqueline Japha!" Paula's hands unclosed from his arm.
+
+"She was in the large tenement house that burned first; that is her
+child whose loss she is mourning."
+
+"Jacqueline Japha!" again fell with an indescribable tone from Paula's
+lips. "And who is that?" she asked, turning and indicating the silent
+figure by the wall.
+
+"That is Roger Holt, the man who should have been her husband."
+
+"Oh, I remember him," she cried; "and her, I remember her, and the
+little child too. But," she suddenly exclaimed, "she told me then that
+she was not his mother."
+
+"And she did not know that she was; the man had deceived her."
+
+With a quick thrill Paula bounded forward. "Jacqueline Japha," she
+cried, falling with outstretched hands beside the poor creature; "thank
+God you are found at last!"
+
+But the woman was as insensible to this cry as she had been to all
+others. "My baby," she wailed, "my baby, my own, own baby!"
+
+Paula recoiled in dismay, and for a moment stood looking down with fear
+and doubt upon the fearful being before her. But in another instant a
+heavenly instinct seized her, and ignoring the mother, she stooped over
+the child and tenderly kissed it. The woman at once woke from her
+stupor. "My baby!" she cried, snatching the child up in her arms with a
+gleam of wild jealousy; "nobody shall touch it but me. I killed it and
+it is all mine now!" But in a moment she had dropped the child back into
+its place, and was going on with the same set refrain that had stirred
+her lips from the first.
+
+Paula was not to be discouraged. Laying her hand on the child's brow,
+she gently smoothed back his hair, and when she saw the old gleam
+returning to the woman's countenance, said quietly, "Are you going to
+carry it to Grotewell to be buried? Margery Hamlin is waiting for you,
+you know?"
+
+The start which shook the woman's haggard frame, encouraged her to
+proceed.
+
+"Yes; you know she has been keeping watch, and waiting for you so long!
+She is quite worn out and disheartened; fifteen years is a long time to
+hope against hope, Jacqueline."
+
+The stare of the wretched creature deepened into a fierce and maddened
+glare. "You don't know what you are talking about," cried she, and bent
+herself again over the child.
+
+Paula went on as if she had not spoken. "Any one that is loved as much
+as you are, Jacqueline, ought not to give way to despair; even if your
+child is dead, there is still some one left whom you can make supremely
+happy."
+
+"Him?" the woman's look seemed to say, as she turned and pointed with
+frightful sarcasm to the man at their back.
+
+Paula shrank and hastily shook her head. "No, no, not him, but--Let me
+tell you a story," she whispered eagerly. "In a certain country-town not
+far from here, there is a great empty house. It is dark, and cold, and
+musty. No one ever goes there but one old lady, who every night at six,
+crosses its tangled garden, unlocks its great side door, enters within
+its deserted precincts, and for an hour remains there, praying for one
+whose return she has never ceased to hope and provide for. She is
+kneeling there to-night, at this very hour, Jacqueline, and the love she
+thus manifests is greater than that of man to woman or woman to man. It
+is like that of heaven or the Christ."
+
+The woman before her rose to her feet. She did not speak, but she looked
+like a creature before whose eyes a sudden torch had been waved.
+
+"Fifteen years has she done this," Paula solemnly continues. "She
+promised, you know; and she never has forgotten her promise."
+
+With a cry the woman put out her hands. "Stop!" she cried, "stop! I
+don't believe it. No one loves like that; else there is a God and I--"
+She paused, quivered, gave one wild look about her, and then with a
+quick cry, something between a moan and a prayer, succumbed to the pain
+of her injuries, and sank down insensible by the side of her dead child.
+
+With a reverent look Paula bent over her and kissed her seared and
+bleeding forehead. "For Mrs. Hamlin's sake," she whispered, and quietly
+smoothed down the tattered clothing about the poor creature's wasted
+frame.
+
+Mr. Sylvester turned quietly upon the man who had been the cause of all
+this misery. "I charge myself with the care of that woman," said he,
+"and with the burial of your child. It shall be placed in decent ground
+with all proper religious ceremonial."
+
+"What, you will do this!" cried Holt, a flush of real feeling for a
+moment disturbing the chalk-white pallor of his cheek. "Oh sir, this is
+Christian charity; and I beg your pardon for all that I may have
+meditated against you. It was done for the child," he went on wildly;
+"to get him the bread and butter he often lacked. I didn't care so much
+for myself. I hated to see him hungry and cold and ailing; I might have
+worked, but I detest work, and--But no matter about all that; enough
+that I am done with endeavoring to extort money from you. Whatever may
+have happened in the past, you are free from my persecutions in the
+future. Henceforth you and yours can rest in peace."
+
+"That is well," cried a voice over his shoulder, and Bertram with an air
+of relief stepped hastily forward. "You must be very tired," remarked
+he, turning to his uncle. "If you will take charge of Paula, I will do
+what I can to see that this injured woman and the dead child are
+properly cared for. I am so relieved, sir, at this result," he
+whispered, with a furtive wring of his uncle's hand, "that I must
+express my joy in some way."
+
+Mr. Sylvester smiled, but in a manner that reflected but little of the
+other's satisfaction. "Thank you," said he, "I am tired and will gladly
+delegate my duties to you. I trust you to do the most you can for both
+the living and the dead. That woman for all her seeming poverty is the
+possessor of a large fortune;" he whispered; "let her be treated as
+such." And with a final word to Holt who had sunk back against the wall
+in his old attitude of silent despair, Mr. Sylvester took Paula upon his
+arm, and quietly led her out of this humble but not unkind refuge.
+
+
+
+
+XLIII.
+
+DETERMINATION.
+
+                "But alas! to make me
+    A fixed figure for the time of scorn
+    To point his slow unmoving finger at!"
+
+    --OTHELLO.
+
+    "Let me but bear your love, I'll bear your cares."
+
+    --HENRY V.
+
+
+"Paula!"
+
+They had reached home and were standing in the library.
+
+"Yes," said she, lowering her head before his gaze with a sweet and
+conscious blush.
+
+"Did you read the letter I left for you in my desk up stairs?"
+
+She put her hand to her bosom and drew forth the closely written sheet.
+"Every word," she responded, and smilingly returned it to its place.
+
+He started and his chest heaved passionately. "You have read it," he
+cried, "and yet could follow me into that den of unknown dangers at an
+hour like this, and with no other guide than Bertram?"
+
+"Yes," she answered.
+
+He drew a deep breath and his brow lost its deepest shadow. "You do not
+despise me then," he exclaimed "My sin has not utterly blotted me out of
+your regard?"
+
+The glance with which she replied seemed to fill the whole room with its
+radiance. "I am only beginning to realize the worth of the man who has
+hitherto been a mystery to me," she declared. Then as he shook his head,
+added with a serious air, "The question with all true hearts must ever
+be, not what a man has been, but what he is. He who for the sake of
+shielding the innocent from shame and sorrow, would have taken upon
+himself the onus of a past disgrace, is not unworthy a woman's
+devotion."
+
+Mr. Sylvester smiled mournfully, and stroked her hand which he had taken
+in his. "Poor little one," he murmured. "I know not whether to feel
+proud or sorry for your trust and tender devotion. It would have been a
+great and unspeakable grief to me to have lost your regard, but it might
+have been better if I had; it might have been much better for you if I
+had!"
+
+"What, why do you say that?" she asked, with a startled gleam in her
+eye. "Do you think I am so eager for ease and enjoyment, that it will be
+a burden for me to bear the pain of those I love? A past pain, too," she
+added, "that will grow less and less as the days go by and happiness
+increases."
+
+He put her back with a quick hand. "Do not make it any harder for me
+than necessary," he entreated, "Do you not see that however gentle may
+be your judgment of my deserts, we can never marry, Paula?"
+
+The eyes which were fixed on his, deepened passionately. "No," she
+whispered, "no; not if your remorse for the past is all that separates
+us. The man who has conquered himself, has won the right to conquer the
+heart of a woman. I can say no more--" She timidly held out her hand.
+
+He grasped it with a man's impetuosity and pressed it to his heart, but
+he did not retain it. "Blessings upon you, dear and noble heart!" he
+cried. "God will hear my prayers and make you happy--but not with me.
+Paula," he passionately continued, taking her in his arms and holding
+her to his breast, "it cannot be. I love you--I will not, dare not say,
+how much--but love is no excuse for wronging you. My remorse is not all
+that separates us; possible disgrace lies before me; public exposure at
+all events; I would indeed be lacking in honor were I to subject you to
+these."
+
+"But," she stammered, drawing back to look into his face, "I thought
+that was all over; that the man had promised silence; that you were
+henceforth to be relieved from his persecutions? I am sure he said so."
+
+"He did, but he forgot that my fate no longer rested upon his
+forbearance. The letter which records my admission of sin was in his
+lawyer's hands, Paula, and has already been despatched to Mr.
+Stuyvesant. Say what we will, rebel against it as we will, Cicely's
+father knows by this time that the name of Sylvester is not spotless."
+
+The cry which she uttered in her sudden pain and loss made him stoop
+over her with despairing fondness. "Hush! my darling, hush!" cried he.
+"The trial is so heavy, I need all my strength to meet it. It breaks my
+heart to see you grieve. I cannot bear it. I deserve my fate, but
+you--Oh you--what have you done that you should be overwhelmed in my
+fall!" Putting her gently away from his breast, he drew himself up and
+with forced calmness said, "I have yet to inform Mr. Stuyvesant upon
+which of the Sylvesters' should rest the shadow of his distrust.
+To-night he believes in Bertram's lack of principle, but to-morrow--"
+
+Her trembling lips echoed the word.
+
+"He shall know that the man who confessed to having done a wrong deed in
+the past, is myself, Paula."
+
+The head which had fallen on her breast, rose as at the call of a
+clarion. "And is it at the noblest moment of your life that you would
+shut me away from your side? No, no. Heaven does not send us a great and
+mighty love for trivial purposes. The simple country maid whom you have
+sometimes declared was as the bringer of good news to you, shall not
+fail you now." Then slowly and with solemn assurance, "If you go to Mr.
+Stuyvesant's to-morrow, and you will, for that is your duty, you shall
+not go alone; Paula Fairchild accompanies you."
+
+
+
+
+XLIV.
+
+IN MR. STUYVESANT'S PARLORS.
+
+    "Was I deceived, or did a sable cloud
+    Turn forth her silver lining on the night?"
+
+    --COMUS.
+
+
+"Unworthy?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Cicely stared at her father with wide-open and incredulous eyes. "I
+cannot believe it," she murmured; "no, I cannot believe it."
+
+Her father drew up a chair to her side. "My daughter," said he, with
+unusual tenderness, "I have hesitated to tell you this, fearing to wound
+you; but my discretion will allow me to keep silence no longer. Bertram
+Sylvester is not an honest man, and the sooner you make up your mind to
+forget him, the better."
+
+"Not honest?" You would scarcely have recognized Cicely's voice. Her
+father's hand trembled as he drew her back to his side.
+
+"It is a hard revelation for me to make to you, after testifying my
+approval of the young man. I sympathize with you, my child, but none the
+less I expect you to meet this disappointment bravely. A theft has been
+committed in our bank--"
+
+"You do not accuse him of theft! Oh father, father!"
+
+"No," he stammered. "I do not accuse him, but facts look very strongly
+against some one in our trust, and--"
+
+"But that is not sufficient," she cried, rising in spite of his
+detaining hand till she stood erect before him. "You surely would not
+allow any mere circumstantial evidence to stand against a character as
+unblemished as his, even if he were not the man whom your daughter--"
+
+He would not let her continue. "I admit that I should be careful how I
+breathed suspicion against a man whose record was unimpeached," he
+assented, "but Bertram Sylvester does not enjoy that position. Indeed, I
+have just received a communication which goes to show, that he once
+actually acknowledged to having perpetrated an act of questionable
+integrity. Now a man as young as he, who--"
+
+"But I cannot believe it," she moaned. "It is impossible, clearly
+impossible. How could he look me in the face with such a sin on his
+conscience! He could not, simply could not. Why, father, his brow is as
+open as the day, his glance clear and unwavering as the sunlight. It is
+some dreadful mistake. It is not Bertram of whom you are speaking!"
+
+Her father sighed. "Of whom else should it be? Come my child, do you
+want to read the communication which I received last night? Do you want
+to be convinced?"
+
+"No, no;" she cried; but quickly contradicted herself with a hurried,
+"Yes, yes, let me be made acquainted with what there is against him, if
+only that I may prove to you it is all a mistake."
+
+
+"There is no mistake," he muttered, handing her a folded paper. "This
+statement was written two years ago; I witnessed it myself, though I
+little knew against whose honor it was directed. Read it, Cicely, and
+then remember that I have lost bonds out of my box at the bank, that
+could only have been taken by some one connected with the institution."
+
+She took the paper in her hand, and eagerly read it through. Suddenly
+she started and looked up. "And you say that this was Bertram, this
+gentleman who allowed another man to accuse him of a past dishonesty?"
+
+"So the person declares who forwarded me this statement; and though he
+is a poor wretch and evidently not above making mischief, I do not know
+as we have any special reason to doubt his word."
+
+Cicely's eyes fell and she stood before her father with an air of
+indecision. "I do not think it was Bertram," she faltered, but said no
+more.
+
+"I would to God for your sake, it was not!" he exclaimed. "But this
+communication together with the loss we have sustained at the bank, has
+shaken my faith, Cicely. Young men are so easily led astray nowadays;
+especially when playing for high stakes. A man who could leave his
+profession for the sake of winning a great heiress--"
+
+"Father!"
+
+"I know he has made you think it was for love; but when the woman whom a
+young man fancies, is rich, love and ambition run too closely together
+to be easily disentangled. And now, my dear, I have said my say and
+leave you to act according to the dictates of your judgment, sure that
+it will be in a direction worthy of your name and breeding." And
+stooping for a hasty kiss, he gave her a last fond look and quietly left
+the room.
+
+And Cicely? For a moment she stood as if frozen in her place, then a
+great tremble seized her, and sinking down upon a sofa, she buried her
+face from sight, in a chaos of feeling that left her scarcely mistress
+of herself. But suddenly she started up, her face flushed, her eyes
+gleaming, her whole delicate form quivering with an emotion more akin to
+hope than despair.
+
+"I cannot doubt him," she whispered; "it were as easy to doubt my own
+soul. He is worthy if I am worthy, true if I am true; and I will not try
+to unlove him!"
+
+But soon the reaction came again, and she was about to give full sway to
+her grief and shame, when the parlor door opened--she herself was
+sitting in the extension room--and she saw Mr. Sylvester and Paula come
+in. She at once rose to her feet; but she did not advance. A thousand
+hopes and fears held her enchained where she was; besides there was
+something in the aspect of her friends, which made her feel as though a
+welcome even from her, would at that moment be an intrusion.
+
+"They have come to see father," she thought "and--"
+
+Ah what, Cicely?
+
+Paula, who was too absorbed in her own feelings to glance into the
+extension room beyond, approached Mr. Sylvester and laid her hand upon
+his arm. "Whatever comes," said she, "truth, honor and love remain."
+
+And he bowed his head and seemed to kiss her hand, and Cicely observing
+the action, grew pale and dropped her eyes, realizing as by a
+lightning's flash, both the nature of the feeling that prompted this
+unusual manifestation on his part, and the possible sorrows that lay
+before her dearest friend, if not before herself, should the secret
+suspicions she cherished in regard to Mr. Sylvester prove true. When she
+had summoned up courage to glance again in their direction, Mr.
+Stuyvesant had entered the parlor and was nervously welcoming his
+guests.
+
+Mr. Sylvester waited for no preamble. "I have come," said he, in his
+most even and determined tones, "to speak to you in regard to a
+communication from a man by the name of Holt, which I was told was to be
+sent to you last evening. Did you receive such a one?"
+
+Mr. Stuyvesant flushed, grew still more nervous in his manner and
+uttered a short, "I did," in a tone severer than he perhaps intended.
+
+"It will not be too much for me, then, to conclude, that in your present
+estimation my nephew stands committed to a past dishonesty?"
+
+"It has been one of my chief sources of regret--one of them I say,"
+repeated Mr. Stuyvesant, "that any loss of esteem on the part of your
+nephew, must necessarily reflect upon the peace if not the honor of a
+man I hold in such high regard as yourself. I assure you I feel it quite
+as a brother might, quite as a brother."
+
+Mr. Sylvester at once rose. "Mr. Stuyvesant," declared he, "my nephew is
+as honest a man as walks this city's streets. If you will accord me a
+few minutes private conversation, I think I can convince you so."
+
+"I should be very glad," replied Mr. Stuyvesant, glancing towards the
+extension-room where he had left his daughter. "I have always liked the
+young man." Then with a quick look in the other's face, "You are not
+well, Mr. Sylvester?"
+
+"Thank you, I am not ill; let us say what we have to, at once, if you
+please." And with just a glance at Paula, he followed the now somewhat
+agitated director from the room.
+
+Cicely who had started forward at their departure, glanced down the long
+parlor before her, and hastily faltered back; Paula was praying. But in
+a few moments her feelings overcame her timidity, and hurrying into her
+friend's presence, she threw her arms about her neck and pressed her
+cheek to hers. "Let us pray together," she whispered.
+
+Paula drew back and looked her friend in the face. "You know what all
+this means?" she asked.
+
+"I guess," was the low reply.
+
+Paula checked a sob and clasped Cicely to her bosom. "He loves me," she
+faltered, "and he is doing at this moment what he believes will separate
+us. He is a noble man, Cicely, noble as Bertram, though he once did--"
+She paused. "It is for him to say what, not I," she softly concluded.
+
+"Then Bertram is noble," Cicely timidly put in.
+
+"Have you ever doubted it?"
+
+"No."
+
+And hiding their blushes on each other's shoulders, the two girls sat
+breathlessly waiting, while the clock ticked away in the music-room and
+the moments came and went that determined their fate. Suddenly they both
+rose. Mr. Stuyvesant and Mr. Sylvester were descending the stairs. Mr.
+Sylvester came in first. Walking straight up to Paula, he took her in
+his arms and kissed her on the forehead.
+
+"My betrothed wife!" he whispered.
+
+With a start of incredulous joy, Paula looked up. His glance was clear
+but strangely solemn and peaceful.
+
+"He has heard all I had to say," added he; "he is a just man, but he is
+also a merciful one. Like you he declares that not what a man was, but
+what he is, determines the judgment of true men concerning him." And
+taking her on his arm, he stood waiting for Mr. Stuyvesant who now came
+in.
+
+"Where is my daughter?" were that gentleman's words, as he closed the
+door behind him.
+
+"Here, papa."
+
+
+He held out his hand, and she sprang towards him. "Cicely," said he, not
+without some tokens of emotion in his voice, "it is only right that I
+should inform you that we were all laboring under a mistake, in charging
+Mr. Bertram Sylvester with the words that were uttered in the Dey Street
+coffee-house two years ago. Mr. Sylvester has amply convinced me that
+his nephew neither was, nor could have been present there at that time.
+It must have been some other man, of similar personality."
+
+"Oh thank you, thank you!" Cicely's look seemed to say to Mr. Sylvester.
+"And he is quite freed from reproach?" she asked, with a smiling glance
+into her father's face.
+
+A hesitancy in Mr. Stuyvesant's manner, struck with a chill upon more
+than one heart in that room.
+
+"Yes," he admitted at last; "the mere fact that a mysterious robbery has
+been committed upon certain effects in the bank of which he is cashier,
+is not sufficient to awaken distrust as to his integrity, but--"
+
+At that moment the door-bell rung.
+
+"Your father would say," cried Mr. Sylvester, taking advantage of the
+momentary break, to come to the relief of his host, "that my nephew is
+too much of a gentleman to desire to press any claim he may imagine
+himself as possessing over you, while even the possibility of a shadow
+rests upon his name."
+
+"The man who stole the bonds will be found," said Cicely.
+
+And as if in echo to her words the parlor door opened, and a messenger
+from the bank stepped briskly up to Mr. Stuyvesant.
+
+"A note from Mr. Folger," said he, with a quick glance at Mr. Sylvester.
+
+Mr. Stuyvesant took the paper handed him, read it hastily through, and
+looked up with an air of some bewilderment.
+
+"I can hardly believe it possible," cried he, "but Hopgood has
+absconded."
+
+"Hopgood absconded?"
+
+"Yes; is not that the talk at the bank?" inquired Mr. Stuyvesant,
+turning to the messenger.
+
+"Yes sir. He has not been seen since yesterday afternoon when he left
+before the bank was closed for the night. His wife says she thinks he
+meant to run away, for before going, he came into the room where she
+was, kissed her and then kissed the child; besides it seems that he took
+with him some of his clothes."
+
+"Humph! and I had as much confidence in that man--"
+
+"As I have now," came from Mr. Sylvester as the door closed upon the
+messenger. "If Hopgood has run away, it was from some generous but
+mistaken idea of sacrificing himself to the safety of another whom he
+may possibly believe guilty."
+
+"No," rejoined Mr. Stuyvesant, "for here is a note from him that refutes
+that supposition. It is addressed to me and runs thus:
+
+     "DEAR SIR.--I beg your pardon and that of Mr. Sylvester for
+     leaving my duties in this abrupt manner. But I have betrayed my
+     trust and am no longer worthy of confidence. I am a wretched
+     man and find it impossible to face those who have believed in
+     my honesty and discretion. If I can bring the money back, you
+     shall see me again, but if not, be kind to my wife and little
+     one, for the sake of the three years when I served the bank
+     faithfully.
+
+     "JOHN HOPGOOD."
+
+"I don't understand it," cried Mr. Sylvester, "that looks--"
+
+"As if he knew where the money was."
+
+"I begin to hope," breathed Cicely.
+
+Her father turned and surveyed her. "This puts a new aspect on matters,"
+said he.
+
+She glanced up beaming. "Oh, will you, do you say, that you think the
+shadow of this crime has at last found the spot upon which it can
+rightfully rest?"
+
+"It would not be common sense in me to deny that it has most certainly
+shifted its position."
+
+With a radiant look at Cicely, Paula crossed to Mr. Stuyvesant's side,
+and laying her hand on his sleeve, whispered a word or two in his ear.
+He immediately glanced out of the window at the carriage standing before
+the door, then looked back at her and nodded with something like a
+smile. In another moment he stood at the front door.
+
+"Be prepared," cried Paula to Cicely.
+
+It was well she spoke, for when in an instant later Mr. Stuyvesant
+re-entered the parlor with Bertram at his side, the rapidly changing
+cheek of the gentle girl showed that the surprise, even though thus
+tempered, was almost too much for her self-possession.
+
+Mr. Stuyvesant did not wait for the inevitable embarrassment of the
+moment to betray itself in words. "Mr. Sylvester," said he, to the young
+cashier, "we have just received a piece of news from the bank, that
+throws unexpected light upon the robbery we were discussing yesterday.
+Hopgood has absconded, and acknowledges here in writing that he had
+something to do with the theft!"
+
+"Hopgood, the janitor!" The exclamation was directed not to Mr.
+Stuyvesant but to Mr. Sylvester, towards whom Bertram turned with looks
+of amazement.
+
+"Yes, it is the greatest surprise I ever received," returned that
+gentleman.
+
+"And Mr. Sylvester," continued Mr. Stuyvesant, with nervous rapidity and
+a generous attempt to speak lightly, "there is a little lady here who is
+so shaken by the news, that nothing short of a word of reassurance on
+your part will comfort her."
+
+Bertram's eye followed that of Mr. Stuyvesant, and fell upon the
+blushing cheek of Cicely. With a flushing of his own brow, he stepped
+hastily forward.
+
+"Miss Stuyvesant!" he cried, and looking down in her face, forgot
+everything else in his infinite joy and satisfaction.
+
+"Yes," announced the father with abrupt decision, "she is yours; you
+have fairly earned her."
+
+Bertram bowed his head with irrepressible emotion, and for a moment the
+silence of perfect peace if not of awe, reigned over the apartment; but
+suddenly a low, determined "No!" was heard, and Bertram turning towards
+Mr. Stuyvesant, exclaimed, "You are very good, and the joy of this
+moment atones for many an hour of grief and impatience; but I have not
+earned her yet. The fact that Hopgood admits to having had something to
+do with the robbery, does not sufficiently exonerate the officers of the
+bank from all connection with the affair, to make it safe or honorable
+in me to unqualifiedly accept the inestimable boon of your daughter's
+regard. Till the real culprit is in custody and the mystery entirely
+cleared away, my impatience must continue to curb itself. I love your
+daughter too dearly to bring her anything but the purest of reputations.
+Am I not right, Miss Stuyvesant?"
+
+She cast a glance at her father, and bowed her head. "You are right,"
+she repeated.
+
+And Mr. Stuyvesant, with a visible lightening of his whole aspect, took
+the young man by the hand, and with as much geniality as his nature
+would allow, informed him that he was at last convinced that his
+daughter had made no mistake when she expressed her trust in Bertram
+Sylvester.
+
+And in other eyes than Cicely's, shone the light of satisfied love and
+unswerving faith.
+
+
+
+
+XLV.
+
+"THE HOUR OF SIX IS SACRED."
+
+                              "Mightier far
+    Than strength of nerve or sinew, or the sway
+    Of magic potent over sun and star,
+    Is love, though oft to agony distrest,
+
+    And though its favorite seat be feeble woman's breast."
+
+    --WORDSWORTH.
+
+
+It was at the close of a winter afternoon. Paula who had returned to
+Grotewell for the few weeks preceding her marriage, sat musing in the
+window of her aunt's quaint little parlor. Her eyes were on the fields
+before her all rosy with the departing rays of the sun, but her thoughts
+were far away. They were with him she best loved--with Cicely, waiting
+in patience for the solution of the mystery of the stolen bonds; with
+Bertram, eagerly, but as yet vainly, engaged in searching for the
+vanished janitor; and last but not least, with that poor, wretched
+specimen of humanity moaning away her life in a New York hospital;--for
+the sight of the Japha house, in a walk that day, had reawakened her
+most vivid remembrances of Jacqueline. All that had ever been done and
+suffered by this forsaken creature, lay on her heart like a weight; and
+the question which had disturbed her since her return to Grotewell,
+viz., whether or not she ought to acquaint Mrs. Hamlin with the fact
+that she had seen and spoken to the object of her love and prayers,
+pressed upon her mind with an insistence that required an answer. There
+was so much to be said for and against it. Mrs. Hamlin was not well, and
+though still able to continue her vigil, showed signs of weakening, day
+by day. It might be a comfort to her to know that another's eyes had
+rested on the haggard form for whose approach she daily watched; that
+another's kiss had touched the scarred and pallid forehead she longed to
+fold against her breast; that the woman she loved and of whose fate she
+had no intimation, was living and well cared for, though her shelter was
+that of a hospital, and her prospects those of the grave.
+
+On the other hand, the awful nature of the circumstances which had
+brought her to her present condition, were such as to make any generous
+heart pause before shocking the love and trust of such a woman as Mrs.
+Hamlin, by a relation of the criminal act by which Jacqueline had slain
+her child and endangered her own existence. Better let the poor old lady
+go on hoping against hope till she sinks into her grave, than destroy
+life and hope at once by a revelation of her darling's reckless
+depravity.
+
+And yet if the poor creature in the hospital might be moved to
+repentance by some word from Mrs. Hamlin, would it not be a kindness to
+the latter to allow her, though even at the risk of her life, to
+accomplish the end for which she indeed professed to live?
+
+The mind of Paula was as yet undecided, when a child from the village
+passed the window, and seeing her sitting there, handed her a small
+package with the simple message that Mrs. Hamlin was very ill. It
+contained, as she anticipated, the great key to the Japha mansion, and
+understanding without further words, what was demanded of her, Paula
+prepared to keep the promise she had long ago made to this devoted
+woman. For though she knew the uselessness of the vigil proposed to her,
+she none the less determined to complete it. Easier to sit an hour in
+that dark old house, than to explain herself to Mrs. Hamlin. Besides,
+the time was good for prayer, and God knows the wretched object of all
+this care and anxiety, stood in need of all the petitions that might be
+raised for her.
+
+Telling her aunts that she had a call to make in the village, she glided
+hurriedly away, and ere she realized all to which she was committed,
+found herself standing in the now darkened streets, before the grim door
+of that dread and mysterious mansion. Never had it looked more
+forbidding; never had the two gruesome poplars cast a deeper shadow, or
+rustled with a more woful sound in the chill evening air. The very
+windows seemed to repel her with their darkened panes, behind which she
+could easily imagine the spirits of the dead, moving and peering. A
+chill not unlike that of terror, assailed her limbs, and it was with a
+really heroic action that she finally opened the gate and glided up the
+path made by the daily steps of her aged friend. To thrust the big key
+into the lock required another effort, but that once accomplished, she
+stilled every tumultuous beating of her heart, by crying under her
+breath, "She has done this for one whom she has not seen for fifteen
+years; shall I then hesitate, who know the real necessity of her for
+whom this hour is made sacred?"
+
+The slow swinging open of the door was like an ushering into the abode
+of ghosts, but she struck a light at once, and soon had the satisfaction
+of beholding the dismal room with its weird shadows, resolve into its
+old and well remembered aspect. The ancient cabinet and stiff hair-cloth
+sofa, Colonel Japha's chair by the table, together with all the other
+objects that had attracted her attention in her former visit, confronted
+her again with the same appearance of standing ready and waiting, which
+had previously so thrilled her. Only she was alone this time, and terror
+mingled with her awe. She scarcely dared to glance at the doors that led
+to other portions of the house. In her present mood it would seem so
+natural for them to swing open, and let upon her horrified gaze the
+stately phantom of the proud old colonel or the gentler shade of
+Jacqueline's mother. The moan of the wind in the chimney was dreadful to
+her, and the faint rumbling sounds of mice scampering in the walls, made
+her start as though a voice had spoken.
+
+But presently the noise of a sleigh careering by the house recalled her
+to herself, and remembering it was but early night-fall, she sat down in
+a chair by the door, and prepared to keep her vigil with suitable
+patience and equanimity. Suddenly she recollected the clock on the
+mantel-piece and how she had seen Mrs. Hamlin wind it, and rising up,
+she followed her example, sighing unconsciously to find how many of the
+sixty minutes had yet to tick themselves away, "Can I endure it!" she
+thought, and shuddered as she pictured to herself the dim old staircase
+behind those doors, and the empty rooms above, and the little Bible
+lying thicker than ever with dust, on the yellowed pillows of
+Jacqueline's bed.
+
+Suddenly she stood still; the noise she had just heard, was not made by
+the pattering of mice along the rafters, or even the creaking of the
+withered vines that clung against the walls! It was a human sound, a
+clicking as of the gate without, a crunching as of feet dragging slowly
+over the snow. Was Mrs. Hamlin coming after all, or--she could not
+formulate her fear; a real and palpable danger from the outside world
+had never crossed her fancy till now. What if some stranger should
+enter, some tramp, some--a step on the porch without made her hair rise
+on her forehead; she clasped her hands and stood trembling, when a
+sudden moan startled her ears, followed by the sound of a heavy fall on
+the threshold, and throwing aside all hesitation, she flung herself
+forward, and tearing open the door, saw--oh, angels that rejoice in
+heaven over one sinner that repenteth, let your voices go up in praise
+this night, for Jacqueline Japha has returned to the home of her
+fathers!
+
+She had fainted, and lay quite still on the threshold, but Paula, who
+was all energy now, soon had her in the centre of the sitting-room, and
+was applying to her such restoratives as had been provided against this
+very emergency. She was holding the poor weary head on her knee, when
+the wan eyes opened, and looking up, grew wild with a disappointment
+which Paula was quick to appreciate.
+
+"You are looking for Margery," said she. "Margery will come by-and-by;
+she is not well to-night and I am taking her place, but when she hears
+you have returned, it will take more than sickness to keep her to her
+bed. I am Paula, and I love you, too, and welcome you--oh, welcome you
+so gladly."
+
+The yearning look which had crept into the woman's bleared and faded
+eyes, deepened and softened strangely.
+
+"You are the one who told me about Margery," said she, "and bade me
+bring my baby here to be buried. I remember, though I seemed to pay no
+heed then. Night and day through all my pain, I have remembered, and as
+soon as I could walk, stole away from the hospital. It has killed me,
+but I shall at least die in my father's house."
+
+Paula stooped and kissed her. "I am going to get your bed ready," said
+she. And without any hesitation now, she opened the door that led into
+those dim inner regions that but a few minutes before had inspired her
+with such dread.
+
+She went straight to Jacqueline's room. "It must all be according to
+Mrs. Hamlin's wishes," she cried, and lit the fire on the hearth, and
+pulled back the curtains yet farther from the bed, and gave the benefit
+of her womanly touch to the various objects about her, till cheerfulness
+seemed to reign in a spot once so peopled with hideous memories. Going
+back to Jacqueline, she helped her to rise, and throwing her arm about
+her waist, led her into the hall. But here memory, ghastly accusing
+memory, stepped in, and catching the wretched woman in its grasp, shook
+her, body and soul, till her shrieks reverberated through that desolate
+house. But Paula with gentle persistence urged her on, and smiling upon
+her like an angel of peace and mercy, led her up step after step of that
+dreadful staircase, till at last she saw her safely in the room of her
+early girlhood.
+
+The sight of it seemed at first to horrify but afterwards to soothe the
+forlorn being thus brought face to face with her own past. She moved
+over to the fire and held out her two cramped hands to the blaze, as if
+she saw an altar of mercy in its welcoming glow. From these she passed
+tottering and weak to the embroidery-frame, which she looked at for a
+moment with something almost like a smile; but she hurried by the
+mirror, and scarcely glanced at a portrait of herself which hung on the
+wall over her head. To sink on the bed seemed to be her object, and
+thither Paula accompanied her. But when she came to where it stood, and
+saw the clothes turned down and the pillows heaped at the head, and the
+little Bible lying open for her in the midst, she gave a great and
+mighty sob, and flinging herself down upon her knees, wept with a
+breaking up of her whole nature, in which her sins, red though they were
+as crimson, seemed to feel the touch of the Divine love, and vanish away
+in the oblivion He prepares for all His penitent ones.
+
+When everything was prepared and Jacqueline was laid quiet in bed, Paula
+stole out and down the stairs and wended her way to Mrs. Hamlin's
+cottage. She found her sitting up, but far from well, and very feeble.
+At the first sight of Paula's face, she started erect and seem to forget
+her weakness in a moment.
+
+"What is it?" she asked; "you look as though you had been gazing on the
+faces of angels. Has--has my hope come true at last? Has Jacqueline
+returned? Oh, has my poor, lost, erring child come back?"
+
+Paula drew near and gently steadied Mrs. Hamlin's swaying form. "Yes,"
+she smiled; and with the calmness of one who has entered the gates of
+peace, whispered in low and reverent tones: "She lies in the bed that
+you spread for her, with the Bible held close to her breast."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There are moments when the world about us seems to pause; when the
+hopes, fears and experiences of all humanity appear to sway away and
+leave us standing alone in the presence of our own great hope or
+scarcely comprehended fear. Such a moment was that which saw Paula
+re-enter Jacqueline's presence with Mrs. Hamlin at her side.
+
+Leaving the latter near the door, she went towards the bed. Why did she
+recoil and glance back at Mrs. Hamlin with that startled and
+apprehensive look? The face of Jacqueline was changed--changed as only
+one presence could change it, though the eyes were clearer than when she
+left her a few minutes before, and the lips were not without the shadow
+of a smile.
+
+"She is dying," whispered Paula, coming back to Mrs. Hamlin; "dying, and
+you have waited so long!"
+
+But the look that met hers from that aged face, was not one of grief;
+and startled, she knew not why, Paula drew aside, while Mrs. Hamlin
+crossed the room and quietly knelt down by her darling's side.
+
+"Margery!"
+
+"Jacqueline!"
+
+The two cries rang through the room, then all was quiet again.
+
+"You have come back!" were the next words Paula heard. "How could I ever
+have doubted that you would!"
+
+"I have been driven back by awful suffering," was the answer; and
+another silence fell. Suddenly Jacqueline's voice was heard. "Love slew
+me, and now love has saved me!" exclaimed she. And there came no answer
+to that cry, and Paula felt the shadow of a great awe settle down upon
+her, and moving nearer to where the aged woman knelt by her darling's
+bedside, she looked in her bended face and then in the one upturned on
+the pillow, and knew that of all the hearts that but an instant before
+had beat with earth's deepest emotion in that quiet room, one alone
+throbbed on to thank God and take courage.
+
+And the fire which had been kindled to welcome the prodigal back, burned
+on; and from the hollow depths of the great room below, came the sound
+of a clock as it struck the hour, seven!
+
+
+
+
+XLVI.
+
+THE MAN CUMMINS.
+
+     Oh day and night, but this is wondrous strange."--HENRY V.
+
+     "Shut up in measureless content."--OTHELLO.
+
+
+The lights were yet shining in Mr. Stuyvesant's parlors, though the
+guests were gone, who but a short time before had assembled there to
+witness the marriage of Cicely's dear friend, Paula.
+
+At one end of the room stood Mr. Sylvester and Bertram, the former
+gazing with the eyes of a bridegroom, at the delicate white-clad figure
+of Paula, just leaving the apartment with Cicely.
+
+"I have but one cause for regret," said Mr. Sylvester as the door
+closed. "I could have wished that you and Cicely had participated in our
+joy and received the minister's benediction at the same moment as
+ourselves."
+
+"Yes," said Bertram with a short sigh. "But it will come in time. It
+cannot be but that our efforts must finally succeed. I have just had a
+new idea; that of putting the watchman on the hunt for Hopgood. They are
+old friends, and he ought to know all the other's haunts and possible
+hiding-places."
+
+"If Fanning could have helped us, he would have told us long ago. He
+knows that Hopgood is missing and that we are ready to pay well for any
+information concerning him."
+
+"But they are old cronies, and possibly Fanning is keeping quiet out of
+consideration for his friend."
+
+"No; I have had a talk with Fanning, and there was no mistaking his look
+of surprise when told the other had run away under suspicion of being
+connected with a robbery on the bank's effects. He knows no more of
+Hopgood than we do, or his wife does, or the police even. It is a
+strange mystery, and one to which I fear we shall never obtain the key.
+But don't let me discourage you; after a suitable time Mr. Stuyvesant
+will--"
+
+He paused, for that gentleman was approaching him.
+
+"There is a man outside who insists upon seeing me; says he knows there
+has just been a wedding here, but that the matter he has to communicate
+is very important, and won't bear putting off. The name on his card is
+Cummins; I am afraid I shall have to admit him, that is, if you have no
+objection?"
+
+Mr. Sylvester and Bertram at once drew back with ready acquiescence.
+They had scarcely taken their stand at the other end of the apartment,
+when the man came in. He was of robust build, round, precise and
+business-like. He had taken off his hat, but still wore his overcoat;
+his face in spite of a profusion of red whiskers and a decided pair of
+goggles, was earnest and straightforward. He walked at once up to Mr.
+Stuyvesant.
+
+"Your pardon," said he, in a quick tone. "But I hear you have been
+somewhat exercised of late over the disappearance of certain bonds from
+one of the boxes in the Madison Bank. I am a detective, and in the
+course of my duty have come upon a few facts that may help to explain
+matters."
+
+Mr. Sylvester and Bertram at once started forward; this was a topic that
+demanded their attention as well as that of the master of the house.
+
+The man cast them a quick look from behind his goggles, and seeming to
+recognize them, included them in his next question.
+
+"What do you think of the watchman, Fanning?"
+
+"Think? we don't think," uttered Mr. Stuyvesant sharply. "He has been in
+the employ of the bank for twelve years, and we know him to be honest."
+
+"Yet he is the man who stole your bonds."
+
+"Impossible!"
+
+"The very man."
+
+Mr. Sylvester stepped up to him. "Who are you, and how do you know
+this?"
+
+"I have said my name is Cummins, and I know this, because I have wormed
+myself into the man's confidence and have got the bonds, together with
+his confession, here in my pocket." And he drew out the long lost bonds,
+which he handed to their owner, with a bit of paper on which was
+in-scribed in the handwriting of the watchman, an acknowledgment to the
+effect that he, alone and unassisted, had perpetrated the robbery which
+had raised such scandal in the bank and led to the disappearance of
+Hopgood.
+
+"And the man himself?" cried Bertram, when they had all read this.
+"Where is he?"
+
+"Oh, I allowed him to escape."
+
+Mr. Sylvester frowned.
+
+"There is something about this I don't understand," said he. "How came
+you to take such an interest in this matter; and why did you let the man
+escape after acknowledging his crime?"
+
+With a quick, not undignified action, Cummins stepped back. "Gentlemen,"
+said he, "it is allowable in a detective in the course of his duty, to
+resort to means for eliciting the truth, that in any other cause and for
+any other purpose, would be denominated as unmanly, if not mean and
+contemptible. When I heard of this robbery, as I did the day after its
+perpetration, my mind flew immediately to the watchman as the possible
+culprit. I did not know that he had done the deed, and I did not see how
+he could have possessed the means of doing it, but I had been acquainted
+with him for some time, and certain expressions which I had overheard
+him use--expressions that had passed over me lightly at the time, now
+recurred to my mind with startling distinctness. 'If a man knew the
+combination of the vault door, how easily he could make himself rich
+from the contents of those boxes!' was one, I remember; and another, 'I
+have worked in the bank for twelve years and have not so much money laid
+up against a rainy day, as would furnish Mr. Sylvester in cigars for a
+month.' The fact that he had no opportunity to learn the combination,
+was the only stumbling-block in the way of my conclusions. But that
+obstacle was soon removed. In a talk with the janitor's wife--a good
+woman, sirs, but a trifle conceited--I learned that he had once had the
+very opportunity of which I speak, provided he was smart enough to
+recognize the fact. The way it came about was this. Hopgood, who always
+meant to do about the right thing, as I know, was one morning very sick,
+so sick that when the time came for him to go down and open the vaults
+for the day, he couldn't stir from his bed, or at least thought he
+couldn't. Twice had the watchman rung for him, and twice had he tried to
+get up, only to fall back again on his pillow. At last the call became
+imperative; the clerks would soon be in, and the books were not even in
+readiness for them. Calling his wife to him, he asked if she thought she
+could open the vault door provided she knew the combination. She
+returned a quite eager, 'yes,' being a naturally vain woman and moreover
+a little sore over the fact that her husband never entrusted her with
+any of his secrets. 'Then,' said he, 'listen to those three numbers that
+I give you; and turn the knob accordingly,' explaining the matter in a
+way best calculated to enlighten her as to what she had to do. She
+professed herself as understanding perfectly and went off in quite a
+nutter of satisfaction to accomplish her task. But though he did not
+know it at the time, it seems that her heart failed her when she got
+into the hall, and struck with fear lest she should forget the numbers
+before she got to the foot of the stairs, she came back, and carefully
+wrote them down on a piece of paper, armed with which she started for
+the second time to fulfil her task. The watchman was in the bank when
+she entered, and to his expressions of surprise, she answered that her
+husband was ill and that she was going to open the vaults. He offered to
+help her, but she stared at him with astonishment, and waiting till he
+had walked to the other end of the bank, proceeded to the vault door,
+and after carefully consulting the paper in her hand, was about to turn
+the knob as directed, when Hopgood himself came into the room. He was
+too anxious, he said, to keep in bed, and though he trembled at every
+step, came forward and accomplished the task himself. He did not see the
+paper in his wife's hand, nor notice her when she tore it up and threw
+the pieces in the waste-basket near-by, but the watchman may have
+observed her, and as it afterwards proved, did; and thus became
+acquainted with the combination that unlocked the outer vault doors."
+
+"Humph!" broke in Mr. Sylvester, "if this is true, why didn't Hopgood
+inform me of the matter when I questioned him so closely?"
+
+"Because he had forgotten the circumstance. He was in a fever at the
+time, and having eventually unlocked the vault himself, lost sight of
+the fact that he had previously sent his wife to do it. He went back to
+his bed after the clerks came in, and did not get up again till night.
+He may have thought the whole occurrence part of the delirium which more
+than once assailed him that day."
+
+"I remember his being sick," said Bertram; "it was two or three days
+before the robbery."
+
+"The very day before," corrected the man; "but let me tell my story in
+my own way. Having learned from Mrs. Hopgood of this opportunity which
+had been given to Fanning, I made up my mind to sift the matter. Being
+as I have said a friend of his, I didn't, want to peach on him unless he
+was guilty. To blast an honest man's reputation, is, I think, one of the
+meanest tricks of which a fellow can be guilty: but the truth I had to
+know, and in order to learn it, a deep and delicate game was necessary.
+Gentlemen, when the police have strong suspicions against a person whose
+reputation is above reproach and whose conduct affords no opportunity
+for impeachment, they set a springe for him. One of their number
+disguises himself, and making the acquaintance of this person,
+insinuates himself by slow degrees--often at the cost of months of
+effort--into his friendship and if possible into his confidence. 'Tis a
+detestable piece of business, but it is all that will serve in some
+cases, and has at least the merit of being as dangerous as it is
+detestable. This plan, I undertook with Fanning. Changing my appearance
+to suit the necessities of the case, I took board in the small house in
+Brooklyn where he puts up, and being well acquainted with his tastes,
+knew how to adapt myself to his liking. He was a busy man, and being
+obliged by his duties to turn night into day, had not much time to
+bestow upon me or any one else; but heedful of this, I managed to make
+the most of the spare moments that saw us together, and ere long we were
+very good comrades, and further on, very good friends. The day when I
+first ventured to suggest that honesty was all very well as long as it
+paid, was a memorable one to me. In that cast of the die I was either to
+win or lose the game I had undertaken. I won. After a feint or two, to
+see if I were in earnest, he fell into the net, and though he did not
+commit himself then, it was not long before he came to me, and
+deliberately requested my assistance in disposing of some bonds which he
+was smart enough to acquire, but not daring enough to attempt to sell.
+Of course the whole story came out, and I was sympathetic enough till I
+got the bonds into my hands, then--But I leave you to imagine what
+followed. Enough that I wrung this confession from him, and that in
+consideration of the doubtful game I had played upon him, let him go
+where he is by this time beyond the chance of pursuit."
+
+
+"But your duty to your superior; your oath as a member of the force?"
+
+"My superior is here!" said the man pointing to Mr. Sylvester; "an
+unconscious one I own, but still my superior; and as for my being a
+member of the force, that was true five years ago, but not to-day." And
+brushing off his whiskers with one hand and taking off his goggles with
+the other, Hopgood, the janitor, stood before them!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a radiant figure that met Cicely, when she came down stairs with
+Paula, and a joyous group that soon surrounded the now blushing and
+embarrassed janitor, with questions and remarks concerning this great
+and unexpected development of affairs. But the fervor with which Mr.
+Stuyvesant clasped Bertram's hand, and the look with which Cicely turned
+from her young lover to bestow a final kiss upon the departing bride,
+was worth all the pains and self-denial of the last few weeks--or so the
+janitor thought, who with a quicker comprehension than usual, had
+divined the situation and rejoiced in the result. But the most curious
+thing of all was to observe how, with the taking off of his goggles,
+Hopgood had relapsed into his old shrinking, easily embarrassed self.
+The man who but a few minutes before had related in their hearing a
+clear and succinct narrative, now shrank if a question was put him, and
+stammered in quite his ancient fashion, when he answered Mr. Sylvester's
+shake of the hand, by a hurried:
+
+"I am going to see my wife now, sir. She's a good woman, if a little
+flighty, and will be the last one in the future to beg me to put more
+confidence in her. Will you tell me where she is, sir?"
+
+Mr. Sylvester informed him; then added, "But look here, Hopgood, answer
+me one thing before you go. Why is it that with such talents as you
+possess, you didn't stay in the police force? You are a regular genius
+in your way, and ought not to drone away your existence as a janitor."
+
+"Ah, sir," replied the other, shaking his head, "a man who is only
+capable of assuming one disguise, isn't good for much as a professional
+detective. Goggles and red whiskers will deceive one rogue, but not
+fifty. My eyes were my bane, sir, and ultimately cost me my place. While
+I could cover them up I was all right. It not only made a man of me,
+leaving me free to talk and freer to think, but disguised me so, my best
+friends couldn't recognize me; but after awhile my goggles were too well
+known for me to be considered of much further use to the department, and
+I was obliged to send in my resignation. It is too bad, but I have no
+versatility, sir. I'm either the clumsy, stammering creature you have
+always known, or else I am the man Cummins you saw here a few minutes
+ago."
+
+"In either case an honest fellow," answered Mr. Sylvester, and allowed
+the janitor to depart.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One more scene, and this in the house which Paula is henceforth to make
+a home for herself and its once melancholy owner. They have come back
+from their wedding-journey, and are standing in their old fashion, he at
+the foot, and she half way up the stairs. Suddenly she turns and
+descends to his side.
+
+"No, I will not wait," said she. "Here, on this spot we both love so
+well, and in this the first hour of our return, I will unburden my mind
+of what I have to say. Edward, is there nothing of all the past that
+still rests upon you like a shadow? Not one little regret you could wish
+taken away?"
+
+"No," said he, enfolding her in his arms with a solemn smile. "The great
+gift which I hold is the fruit of that past, perhaps; I cannot wish it
+changed."
+
+"But the sense of obligation never fulfilled, would you not be happier
+if that were removed?"
+
+"Perhaps," he said, "but it cannot be now. I shall have to live without
+being perfectly happy."
+
+She lifted her face and her smile shone like a star. "Oh God is good,"
+she cried, "you shall not lack being perfectly happy;" and taking a
+little paper out of her pocket she put it in his hand. "We found that
+hidden in Jacqueline Japha's breast, when we went to lay her out for
+burial."
+
+It was only a line; but it made Mr. Sylvester's brow flush and his voice
+tremble.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Whatever I own, and I have been told that I am far from penniless, I
+desire to have given to the dear and disinterested girl that first told
+me of Margery Hamlin's vigil."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Paula, Paula, Paula, thou art indeed my good gift! May God make me
+worthy of your love and of this His last and most unexpected mercy!"
+
+And the look which crossed her face, was that sweet and unearthly
+radiance which speaks of perfect peace.
+
+
+
+
+PUBLICATIONS OF G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS.
+
+
+THE LEAVENWORTH CASE. By ANNA KATHERINE GREEN.
+
+     "Wilkie Collins, in his best period, never invented a more
+     ingeniously constructed plot, nor held the reader in such
+     suspense until the final _denoûment_. The most blasé
+     novel-reader will be unable to put aside 'The Leavenworth Case'
+     until he has read the last sentence and mastered the mystery
+     which has baffled him from the beginning."--_N. Y. Evening
+     Express._
+
+A MAN'S A MAN FOR A' THAT.
+
+     "A novel of decided excellence. * * * Contains delicate and
+     charming work. Thoroughly clever * * * Its spirit is one of
+     robust and healthy enthusiasm for manliness and
+     womanliness."--_N. Y. Evening Post._
+
+THE BRETON MILLS: A ROMANCE OF NEW ENGLAND LIFE. By CHARLES J. BELLAMY.
+
+
+     "Nothing from the pen of Mrs. Burnett was ever more intensely
+     dramatic."--_Jackson Daily Citizen._
+
+     "Looked at from a purely literary point of view it is almost
+     faultless. It shows a hand both of culture and
+     power."--_Detroit Evening News._
+
+CUPID AND THE SPHINX. By HARFORD FLEMMING.
+
+     "Its characters are skilfully drawn, its incidents well
+     conceived, the dialogues brilliant, and the story told with
+     ease and gracefulness."--_Boston Transcript._
+
+     "The suggestion of the story is extremely beautiful, and its
+     treatment graceful and enchanting throughout."--_Hartford
+     Evening Post._
+
+A STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE. By ANNA KATHERINE GREEN.
+
+     "Wilkie Collins would not need to be ashamed of the
+     construction of this story. * * * It keeps the reader's close
+     attention from first to last."--_N. Y. Evening Post._
+
+     "Shows the same skill as 'The Leavenworth Case' in the
+     management of the plot and the incidents."--_Boston
+     Transcript._
+
+THE HEART OF IT: A Romance of East and West. By WILLIAM O. STODDARD.
+
+     "Uncommonly good reading, even for that uncommonly readable
+     Series."--_Philadelphia Times._
+
+     "An American novel, dealing with a few well-chosen characters
+     and involving a striking and original plot. * * * A thoroughly
+     entertaining piece of fiction."--_Boston Traveller._
+
+UNCLE JACK'S EXECUTORS. By ANNETTE LUCILLE NOBLE.
+
+     "Comes from a writer of unusual talent. * * * Remarkable for
+     its sketches of character, its naturalness, its frequent
+     flashes of intellectual brightness, and its genuine humor. * *
+     * One of the best novels of the season and deserving of a
+     permanent place among works of genuine American fiction."--_The
+     Churchman._
+
+THE STRANDED SHIP: A STORY OF SEA AND SHORE. By L. CLARKE DAVIS.
+
+     "Full of the finest dramatic action. * * * The work of a man of
+     firm genius and exquisite delicacy of touch."--_N. Y. Evening
+     Post._
+
+NESTLENOOK. By LEONARD KIP, Author of "The Dead Marquise," "Under the
+Bells," etc.
+
+     Of "The Dead Marquise" the _Boston Globe_ writes: "The book is
+     admirable and its style almost perfect in its transparent
+     simplicity."
+
+
+
+
+THE TRANS-ATLANTIC SERIES.
+
+I. CAPTAIN FRACASSE. By THEOPHILE GAUTIER. Translated by E. M. BEAM.
+
+     Of Le Capitaine Fracasse, Henry James, Jr., writes: "In this
+     delightful work Gautier surpassed himself, and produced the
+     model of picturesque romances. * * * The great charm of the
+     book is a sort of combined geniality of feeling and coloring,
+     which leaves one in doubt whether the author is the most joyous
+     of painters or the cleverest of poets. * * * Le Capitaine
+     Fracasse ranks, in our opinion, with the first works of
+     imagination produced in our day."
+
+     "A masterpiece of literary art."--_N. Y. Nation._
+
+     "The translation is most admirable."--_Troy Whig._
+
+II. THE AMAZON. By FRANZ DINGELSTEDT. Translated by JAS. MORGAN HART.
+
+     "Full of scintillations of wit. * * * Sparkles throughout with
+     vivacity and sparkling humor."--_Leipsic Blätter für Lit. Unt._
+
+     "A delightful novel, characterized by force and fire, strong
+     dramatic power, and rare skill in its analysis of human motives
+     and character."--_Philadelphia Times._
+
+MOTHER MOLLY. By FRANCES MARY PEARD.
+
+     "The book is charming; and, more than this, it is a
+     well-finished historical study of stirring
+     times."--_Philadelphia Times._
+
+     "It deserves to rank among the best English stories of the
+     year."--_Louisville Courier-Journal._
+
+THE LOST CASKET. Translated from _"La Main Coupée"_ of F. de BOISGOBEY
+by S. LEE.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Sword of Damocles, by Anna Katharine Green
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Sword of Damocles, by Anna Katharine Green
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Sword of Damocles
+       A Story of New York Life
+
+Author: Anna Katharine Green
+
+Release Date: July 31, 2010 [EBook #33301]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SWORD OF DAMOCLES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h1>THE SWORD OF DAMOCLES</h1>
+
+<h3>A STORY OF NEW YORK LIFE.</h3>
+
+<h2>BY ANNA KATHARINE GREEN</h2>
+
+<h4>AUTHOR OF "THE LEAVENWORTH CASE," "A STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE," ETC.</h4>
+
+
+<h4>NEW YORK<br />
+G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS<br />
+27 &amp; 29 West 23D Street</h4>
+
+<h4>1881</h4>
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Copyright, 1881, by G. P. Putnam's Sons.</span></h4>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h4>TO<br />
+MY FATHER<br />
+I DEDICATE THIS BOOK<br />
+AS EXPRESSING SOME OF THE PRINCIPLES OF<br />
+JUSTICE AND MERCY WHICH,<br />
+BY PRECEPT AND EXAMPLE, HE HAS<br />
+INSTILLED INTO MY<br />
+BREAST<br />
+FROM EARLY CHILDHOOD.</h4>
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">New York</span>, <i>April, 1881.</i></h4>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h4>"When all else fails love saves"</h4>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+
+
+<!-- Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. -->
+<p>
+<a href="#BOOK_I">BOOK I. TWO MEN.</a><br /><br />
+<a href="#I">I.&mdash;<span class="smcap">A Wanderer</span></a><br />
+<a href="#II">II.&mdash;<span class="smcap">A Discussion</span></a><br />
+<a href="#III">III.&mdash;<span class="smcap">A Mysterious Summons</span></a><br />
+<a href="#IV">IV.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Searchings</span></a><br />
+<a href="#V">V.&mdash;<span class="smcap">The Rubicon</span></a><br />
+<a href="#VI">VI.&mdash;<span class="smcap">A Hand Clasp</span></a><br />
+<a href="#VII">VII.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Mrs. Sylvester</span></a><br />
+<a href="#VIII">VIII.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Shadows of the Past</span></a><br />
+<a href="#IX">IX.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Paula</span></a><br />
+<a href="#X">X.&mdash;<span class="smcap">The Barred Door</span></a><br />
+<a href="#XI">XI.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Miss Stuyvesant</span></a><br />
+<a href="#XII">XII.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Miss Belinda Makes Conditions</span></a><br />
+<a href="#XIII">XIII.&mdash;<span class="smcap">The End of My Lady's Picture</span></a><br /><br />
+<a href="#BOOK_II">BOOK II. LIFE AND DEATH.</a><br /><br />
+<a href="#XIV">XIV.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Miss Belinda has a Question to Decide</span></a><br />
+<a href="#XV">XV.&mdash;<span class="smcap">An Adventure&mdash;or Something More</span></a><br />
+<a href="#XVI">XVI.&mdash;<span class="smcap">The Sword of Damocles</span></a><br />
+<a href="#XVII">XVII.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Grave and Gay</span></a><br />
+<a href="#XVIII">XVIII.&mdash;<span class="smcap">In the Night Watches</span></a><br />
+<a href="#XIX">XIX.&mdash;<span class="smcap">A Day at the Bank</span></a><br />
+<a href="#XX">XX.&mdash;<span class="smcap">The Dregs in the Cup</span></a><br />
+<a href="#XXI">XXI.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Departure</span></a><br />
+<a href="#XXII">XXII.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Hopgood</span></a><br /><br />
+<a href="#BOOK_III">BOOK III. THE JAPHA MYSTERY.</a><br /><br />
+<a href="#XXIII">XXIII.&mdash;<span class="smcap">The Poem</span></a><br />
+<a href="#XXIV">XXIV.&mdash;<span class="smcap">The Japha Mansion</span></a><br />
+<a href="#XXV">XXV.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Jacqueline</span></a><br />
+<a href="#XXVI">XXVI.&mdash;<span class="smcap">A Man's Justice and a Woman's Mercy</span></a><br />
+<a href="#XXVII">XXVII.&mdash;<span class="smcap">The Lone Watcher</span></a><br />
+<a href="#XXVIII">XXVIII.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Sunshine on the Hills</span></a><br />
+<a href="#XXIX">XXIX.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Mist in the Valley</span></a><br /><br />
+<a href="#BOOK_IV">BOOK IV. FROM A. TO Z.</a><br /><br />
+<a href="#XXX">XXX.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Miss Belinda Presents Mr. Sylvester with a Christmas Gift</span></a><br />
+<a href="#XXXI">XXXI.&mdash;<span class="smcap">A Question</span></a><br />
+<a href="#XXXII">XXXII.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Full Tide</span></a><br />
+<a href="#XXXIII">XXXIII.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Two Letters</span></a><br />
+<a href="#XXXIV">XXXIV.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Paula Makes her Choice</span></a><br />
+<a href="#XXXV">XXXV.&mdash;<span class="smcap">The Falling of the Sword</span></a><br />
+<a href="#XXXVI">XXXVI.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Morning</span></a><br />
+<a href="#XXXVII">XXXVII.&mdash;<span class="smcap">The Opinion of a Certain Noted Detective</span></a><br />
+<a href="#XXXVIII">XXXVIII.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Bluebeard's Chamber</span></a><br />
+<a href="#XXXIX">XXXIX.&mdash;<span class="smcap">From A. to Z</span></a><br />
+<a href="#XL">XL.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Half-past Seven</span></a><br /><br />
+<a href="#BOOK_V">BOOK V. WOMAN'S LOVE.</a><br /><br />
+<a href="#XLI">XLI.&mdash;<span class="smcap">The Work of an Hour</span></a><br />
+<a href="#XLII">XLII.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Paula Relates a Story She has Heard</span></a><br />
+<a href="#XLIII">XLIII.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Determination</span></a><br />
+<a href="#XLIV">XLIV.&mdash;<span class="smcap">In Mr. Stuyvesant's Parlors</span></a><br />
+<a href="#XLV">XLV.&mdash;"<span class="smcap">The Hour of Six is Sacred!</span>"</a><br />
+<a href="#XLVI">XLVI&mdash;<span class="smcap">The Man Cummins</span></a><br /><br />
+<a href="#PUBLICATIONS_OF_G_P_PUTNAMS_SONS">PUBLICATIONS OF G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS.</a><br />
+</p>
+<!-- End Autogenerated TOC. -->
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<blockquote><p>Damocles, one of the courtiers of Dionysius, was perpetually
+extolling with rapture that tyrant's treasures, grandeur, the
+number of his troops, the extent of his dominions, the
+magnificence of his palaces, and the universal abundance of all
+good things and enjoyments in his possession; always repeating,
+that never man was happier than Dionysius. "Since you are of
+that opinion," said the tyrant to him one day, "will you taste
+and make proof of my felicity in person?" The offer was
+accepted with joy; Damocles was placed upon a golden couch,
+covered with carpets richly embroidered. The side-boards were
+loaded with vessels of gold and silver. The most beautiful
+slaves in the most splendid habits stood around, ready to serve
+him at the slightest signal. The most exquisite essences and
+perfumes had not been spared. The table was spread with
+proportionate magnificence. Damocles was all joy, and looked
+upon himself as the happiest man in the world; when
+unfortunately casting up his eyes, he beheld over his head the
+point of a sword, which hung from the roof only by a single
+horse-hair.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Rollin.</span></p></blockquote>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE SWORD OF DAMOCLES.</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="BOOK_I" id="BOOK_I"></a>BOOK I.</h2>
+
+<h3>TWO MEN.</h3>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="I" id="I"></a>I.</h2>
+
+<h3>A WANDERER.</h3>
+
+<blockquote><p>"There's no such word."&mdash;<span class="smcap">BULWER.</span></p></blockquote>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+<p>A wind was blowing through the city. Not a gentle and balmy zephyr,
+stirring the locks on gentle ladies' foreheads and rustling the curtains
+in elegant boudoirs, but a chill and bitter gale that rushed with a
+swoop through narrow alleys and forsaken courtyards, biting the cheeks
+of the few solitary wanderers that still lingered abroad in the darkened
+streets.</p>
+
+<p>In front of a cathedral that reared its lofty steeple in the midst of
+the squalid houses and worse than squalid saloons of one of the
+dreariest portions of the East Side, stood the form of a woman. She had
+paused in her rush down the narrow street to listen to the music,
+perhaps, or to catch a glimpse of the light that now and then burst from
+the widely swinging doors as they opened and shut upon some tardy
+worshipper.</p>
+
+<p>She was tall and fearful looking; her face, when the light struck it,
+was seared and desperate; gloom and desolation were written on all the
+lines of her rigid but wasted form, and when she shuddered under the
+gale, it was with that force and abandon to which passion lends its aid,
+and in which the soul proclaims its doom.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly the doors before her swung wide and the preacher's voice was
+heard: "Love God and you will love your fellow-men. Love your fellow-men
+and you best show your love to God."</p>
+
+<p>She heard, started, and the charm was broken. "Love!" she echoed with a
+horrible laugh; "there is no love in heaven or on earth!"</p>
+
+<p>And she swept by, and the winds followed and the darkness swallowed her
+up like a gulf.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="II" id="II"></a>II.</h2>
+
+<h3>A DISCUSSION.</h3>
+
+<blockquote><p>"Young men think old men fools, and old men know young men to
+be so."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Ray's Proverbs.</span></p></blockquote>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>"And you are actually in earnest?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am."</p>
+
+<p>The first speaker, a fine-looking gentleman of some forty years of age,
+drummed with his fingers on the table before him and eyed the face of
+the young man who had repeated this assent so emphatically, with a
+certain close scrutiny indicative of surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"It is an unlooked-for move for you to make," he remarked at length.
+"Your success as a pianist has been so decided, I confess I do not
+understand why you should desire to abandon a profession that in five
+years' time has procured you both competence and a very enviable
+reputation&mdash;for the doubtful prospects of Wall Street, too!" he added
+with a deep and thoughtful frown that gave still further impressiveness
+to his strongly marked features.</p>
+
+<p>The young man with a sweep of his eye over the luxurious apartment in
+which they sat, shrugged his shoulders with that fine and nonchalant
+grace which was one of his chief characteristics.</p>
+
+<p>"With such a pilot as yourself, I ought to be able to steer clear of the
+shoals," said he, a frank smile illumining a face that was rather
+interesting than handsome.</p>
+
+<p>The elder gentleman did not return the smile. Instead of that he
+remained gazing at the ample coal-fire that burned in the grate before
+him with a look that to the young musician was simply inexplicable. "You
+see the ship in haven," he murmured at last; "but do not consider what
+storms it has weathered or what perils escaped. It is a voyage I would
+encourage no son of mine to undertake."</p>
+
+<p>"Yet you are not the man to shrink from danger or to hesitate in a
+course you had marked out for yourself, because of the struggle it
+involved or the difficulties it presented!" the young man exclaimed
+almost involuntarily as his glance lingered with a certain sort of
+fascination on the powerful brow and steady if somewhat melancholy eye
+of his companion.</p>
+
+<p>"No; but danger and difficulty should not be sought, only subdued when
+encountered. If you were driven into this path, I should say, 'God pity
+you!' and hold you out my hand to steady you along its precipices and
+above its sudden quicksands. But you are not driven to it. Your
+profession offers you the means of an ample livelihood while your good
+heart and fair talents insure you ultimate and honorable success, both
+in the social and artistic world. For a man of twenty-five such
+prospects are not common and he must be difficult to please not to be
+satisfied with them."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said the other rising with a fitful movement but instantly
+sitting again; "I have nothing to complain of as the world goes,
+only&mdash;Sir," he exclaimed with a sudden determination that lent a force
+to his features they had hitherto lacked, "you speak of being driven
+into a certain course; what do you mean by that?"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean," returned the other; "forced by circumstances to enter a line
+of business to which many others, if not all others are preferable."</p>
+
+<p>"You speak strongly, speculation evidently has none of your sympathy,
+notwithstanding the favorable results which have accrued to you from it.
+But excuse me, by circumstances you mean poverty, I suppose, and the
+lack of every other opening to wealth and position. You would not
+consider the desire to make a large fortune in a short space of time a
+circumstance of a sufficiently determining nature to reconcile you to my
+entering Wall Street speculation?"</p>
+
+<p>The elder gentleman rose, not as the other had done with a restless
+impulse quickly subsiding at the first excuse, but forcibly and with a
+feverish impatience that to appearance was somewhat out of proportion to
+the occasion. "A large fortune in a short space of time!" he reiterated,
+pausing where he had risen with an eagle glance at his companion and a
+ringing tone in his voice that bespoke a deep but hitherto suppressed
+agitation. "It is the alluring inscription above the pitfall into which
+many a noble youth has fallen; the battle-cry to a struggle that has led
+many a strong man the way of ruin; the guide-post to a life whose
+feverish days and sleepless nights offer but poor compensation for the
+sudden splendors and as sudden reverses attached to it. I had rather you
+had accounted for this sudden freak of yours by the strongest aspiration
+after power than by this cry of the merely mercenary man who in his
+desire to enjoy wealth, prefers to win it by a stroke of luck rather
+than conquer it by a life of endeavor." He stopped. "I am aware that
+this tirade against the ladder by which I myself have risen so rapidly,
+must strike you as in ill-taste. But Bertram, I am interested in your
+welfare and am willing to incur some slight charge of inconsistency in
+order to insure it," and here he turned upon his companion with that
+expression of extreme gentleness which lent such a peculiar charm to his
+countenance and explained perhaps the almost unlimited power he held
+over the hearts and minds of those who came within the circle of his
+influence.</p>
+
+<p>"You are very good, sir," murmured his young friend, who to explain
+matters at once was in reality the nephew of this Wall Street magnate,
+though from the fact of his having taken another name on entering the
+musical profession, was not generally known as such. "No one, not even
+my father himself, could have been more considerate and kind; but I do
+not think you understand me, or rather I should say I do not think I
+have made myself perfectly intelligible to you. It is not for the sake
+of wealth itself or the eclat attending its possession that I desire an
+immediate fortune, but that by means of it I may attain another object
+dearer than wealth, and more precious than my career."</p>
+
+<p>The elder gentleman turned quickly, evidently much surprised, and cast a
+sudden inquiring glance at his nephew, who blushed with a modest
+ingenuousness pleasing to see in one so well accustomed to the critical
+gaze of his fellow-men.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said he, as if in answer to that look, "I am in love."</p>
+
+<p>A deep silence for a moment pervaded the apartment, a sombre silence
+almost startling to young Mandeville, who had expected some audible
+expression to follow this announcement if only the good-natured "Pooh!
+pooh!" of the matured man of the world in the presence of ardent
+youthful enthusiasm. What could it mean? Looking up he encountered his
+uncle's eye fixed upon him with the last expression he could have
+anticipated seeing there, namely that of actual and unmistakable alarm.</p>
+
+<p>"You are displeased," Mandeville exclaimed. "You have thought me proof
+against such a passion, or perhaps you do not believe in the passion
+itself!" Then with a sudden remembrance of the notable if somewhat
+indolent loveliness of his uncle's wife, blushed again at his unusual
+want of tact, while his eye with an involuntary impulse sought the large
+panel at their right where, in the full bloom of her first youth, the
+lady of the house smiled upon all beholders.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not believe in that passion influencing a man's career," his uncle
+replied with no apparent attention to the other's embarrassment. "A
+woman needs be possessed of uncommon excellences to justify a man in
+leaving a path where success is certain, for one where it is not only
+doubtful but if attained must bring many a regret and heart-ache in its
+train. Beauty is not sufficient," he went on with sterner and sterner
+significance, "though it were of an angelic order. There must be worth."
+And here his mind's eye if not that of his bodily sense, certainly
+followed the glance of his companion.</p>
+
+<p>"I believe there is worth," the young man replied; "certainly, it is not
+her beauty that charms me. I do not even know if she <i>is</i> beautiful," he
+continued.</p>
+
+<p>"And you believe you love!" the elder exclaimed after another short
+pause.</p>
+
+<p>There was so much of bitterness in the tone in which this was uttered,
+that Mandeville forgot its incredulity. "I think I must," returned he
+with a certain masculine naïveté not out of keeping with his general
+style of face and manner, "else I should not be here. Three weeks ago I
+was satisfied with my profession, if not enthusiastic over it; to-day I
+ask nothing but to be allowed to enter upon some business that in three
+years' time at least will place me where I can be the fit mate of any
+woman in this land, that is not worth her millions."</p>
+
+<p>"The woman for whom you have conceived this violent attachment is, then,
+above you in social position?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir, or so considered, which amounts to the same thing, as far as
+I am concerned."</p>
+
+<p>"Bertram, I have lived longer than you and have seen much of both social
+and domestic life, and I tell you no woman is worth such a sacrifice on
+the part of a man as you propose. No woman of to-day, I should say; our
+mothers were different. The very fact that this young lady of whom you
+speak, obliges you to change your whole course of life in order to
+obtain her, ought to be sufficient to prove to you&mdash;" He stopped
+suddenly, arrested by the young man's lifted hand. "She does not oblige
+you, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not on her own account, sir. This lily," lifting a vase of blossoms at
+his elbow, "could not be more innocent of the necessities that govern
+the social circle it adorns, than the pure, single-minded girl to whom I
+have dedicated what is best and noblest in my manhood. It is her
+father&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, her father!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir," the young man pursued, more and more astonished at the
+other's tone. "He is a man who has a right to expect both wealth and
+position in a son-in-law. But I see I shall have to tell you my story,
+sir. It is an uncommon one and I never meant that it should pass my
+lips, but if by its relation I can win your sympathy for a pure and
+noble passion, I shall consider the sacred seal of secrecy broken in a
+good cause. But," said he, seeing his uncle cast a short and uneasy
+glance at the door, "perhaps I am interrupting you. You expect some
+one!"</p>
+
+
+<p>"No," said his uncle, "my wife is at church; I am ready to listen."</p>
+
+<p>The young man gave a hurried sigh, cast one look at his companion's
+immovable face, as if to assure himself that the narrative was
+necessary, then leaned back and in a steady business-like tone that
+softened, however, as he proceeded, began to relate as follows:</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="III" id="III"></a>III.</h2>
+
+<h3>A MYSTERIOUS SUMMONS.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Without unspotted, innocent within,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She feared no danger, for she knew no sin."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Dryden.</span><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>It was after a matinée performance at &mdash;&mdash; Hall some two weeks ago that
+I stopped to light a cigar in the small corridor leading to the back
+entrance. I was in a dissatisfied frame of mind. Something in the music
+I had been playing or the manner in which it had been received had
+touched unwonted chords in my own nature. I felt alone. I remember
+asking myself as I stood there, what it all amounted to? Who of all the
+applauding crowd would watch at my bedside through a long and harassing
+sickness, or lend their sympathy as they now yielded their praise, if
+instead of carrying off the honors of the day I had failed to do justice
+to my reputation. I was just smiling over the only exception I could
+make to this sweeping assertion, that of the pale-eyed youth you have
+sometimes observed dogging my steps, when Briggs came up to me.</p>
+
+<p>"There is a woman here, sir, who insists on seeing you; she has been
+waiting through half the last piece. Shall I tell her you are coming
+out?"</p>
+
+<p>"A woman!" exclaimed I, somewhat surprised, for my visitors are not apt
+to be of the gentler sex.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes sir, an old one. She seems very anxious to speak to you. I could
+not get rid of her no how."</p>
+
+<p>I hurried forward to the muffled figure which he pointed out cowering
+against the wall by the door. "Well, my good woman, what do you want?" I
+asked, bending towards her in the hopes of catching a glimpse of the
+face she held partly concealed from me.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you Mr. Mandeville?" she inquired in a tone shaken as much by
+agitation as age.</p>
+
+<p>I bowed.</p>
+
+<p>"The one who plays upon the piano?"</p>
+
+<p>"The very same," I declared.</p>
+
+<p>"You are not deceiving me," she went on, looking up with a marked
+anxiety plainly visible through her veil. "I haven't seen you play and
+couldn't contradict you, but&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Here!" said I calling to Briggs with a kindly look at the old woman,
+"help me on with my coat, will you?"</p>
+
+<p>The "Certainly, Mr. Mandeville," with which he complied seemed to
+reassure her, and as soon as the coat was on and he was gone, she
+grasped me by the arm and drew my ear down to her mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"If you are Mr. Mandeville, I have a message for you. This letter,"
+slipping one into my hand, "is from a young lady, sir. She bade me give
+it to you myself. She is young and pretty," she pursued as she saw me
+make a movement of distaste, "and a lady. We depend upon your honor,
+sir."</p>
+
+<p>I acknowledge that my first impulse was to fling her back the note and
+leave the building; I was in no mood for trifling, my next to burst into
+a laugh and politely hand her to the door, my last and best, to open the
+poor little note and see for myself whether the writer was a lady or
+not. Proceeding to the door, for it was already twilight in the dim
+passage way, I tore open the envelope which was dainty enough and took
+out a sheet of closely written paper. A certain qualm of conscience
+assailed me as I saw the delicate chirography it disclosed and I was
+tempted to thrust it back and return it unread to the old woman now
+trembling in the corner. But curiosity overcame my scruples, and hastily
+unfolding the sheet I read these lines:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"I do not know if what I do is right; I am sure aunty would not
+say it was; but aunty never thinks anything is right but going
+to church and reading the papers to papa. I am just a little
+girl who has heard you play, and who would think the world was
+too beautiful, if she could hear you say to her just once, some
+of the kind things you must speak every day to the persons who
+know you. I do not expect very much&mdash;you must have a great many
+friends, and you would not care for me&mdash;but the least little
+look, if it were all my own, would make me so happy and so
+proud I should not envy anybody in the world, unless it was
+some of those dear friends who see you always.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not come and hear you play often, for aunty thinks music
+frivolous, but I am always hearing you no matter where I am,
+and it makes me feel as if I were far away from everybody, in a
+beautiful land all sunshine and flowers. But nurse says I must
+not write so much or you will not read it, so I will stop here.
+But if you <i>would</i> come it would make some one happier than
+even your beautiful music could do."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>That was all; there was neither name nor date. A child's epistle,
+written with a woman's circumspection. With mingled sensations of doubt
+and curiosity I turned back to the old woman who stood awaiting me with
+eager anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>"Was this written by a child or woman?" I asked, meeting her eye with as
+much sternness as I could assume.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't ask me&mdash;don't ask me anything. I have promised to bring you if I
+could, but I cannot answer any questions."</p>
+
+<p>I stepped back with an incredulous laugh. Here was evidently an
+adventure. "You will at least tell me where the young miss lives," said
+I, "before I undertake to fulfil her request."</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head. "I have a carriage at the door, sir," said she. "All
+you have got to do is to get into it with me and we shall soon be at the
+house."</p>
+
+<p>I looked from her face to the letter in my hand, and knew not what to
+think. The spirit of simplicity and ingenuousness that marked the latter
+was scarcely in keeping with this air of mystery. The woman observing my
+hesitation moved towards the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you come, sir?" she inquired. "You will not regret it. Just a
+moment's talk with a pretty young girl&mdash;surely&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Hush," said I, hearing a hasty step behind me. And sure enough just
+then my intimate friend Selby came along and grasping me by the arm
+began dragging me towards the door. "You are my property," said he.
+"I've promised, on my word of honor as a gentleman and a musician, to
+bring you to the Handel Club this afternoon. I was afraid you had
+escaped me, but&mdash;" Here he caught sight of the small black figure
+halting in the door-way, and paused.</p>
+
+<p>"Who's this?" said he.</p>
+
+<p>I hesitated. For one instant the scale of my whole future destiny hung
+trembling in the balance, then the demon of curiosity got the better of
+my judgment, and with the rather unworthy consideration that I might as
+well enjoy my youth while I could, I released myself from my friend's
+detaining hand and replied, "Some one with whom I have very particular
+business. I cannot go to the Handel Club to-day," and darting out
+without further delay, I rejoined the old woman on the sidewalk.</p>
+
+<p>Without a word she drew me towards a carriage I now observed standing by
+the curbstone a few feet to the left. As I got in I remember pausing a
+moment to glance at the man on the box, but it was too dark for me to
+perceive anything but the fact that he was dressed in livery. More and
+more astonished I leaned back in my seat and endeavored to open
+conversation with my mysterious companion. But it did not work. Without
+being actually rude, she parried my questions in such a way that by the
+end of five minutes I found myself as far from any knowledge of the real
+situation of the case as when I started. I therefore desisted from any
+further attempts and turned to look out, when I made a discovery that
+for the first time awoke some vague feelings of alarm within my breast.
+This was, that the window was not covered by a curtain as I supposed,
+but by closed blinds which when I tried to raise them resisted all my
+efforts to do so.</p>
+
+<p>"It is very close here," I muttered, in some sort of excuse for this
+display of uneasiness. "Cannot you give us a little air?" But my
+companion remained silent, and I felt ashamed to press the matter though
+I took advantage of the darkness to remove to a safer place a roll of
+money which I had about me.</p>
+
+<p>Yet I was far from being really anxious, and did not once meditate
+backing out of an adventure that was at once so piquant and romantic.
+For by this time I became conscious from the sounds about me that we had
+left the side street for one of the avenues and were then proceeding
+rapidly up town. Listening, I heard the roll of omnibuses and the jingle
+of car-bells, which informed me that we were in Broadway, no other
+avenue in the city being traversed by both these methods of conveyance.
+But after awhile the jingle ceased and presently the livelier sounds of
+constant commotion inseparable from a business thoroughfare, and we
+entered what I took to be Madison Avenue at Twenty-third Street.</p>
+
+<p>Instantly I made up mind to notice every turn of the carriage, that I
+might fix to some degree the locality towards which we were tending. But
+it turned but once and that after a distance of steady travelling that
+quite overthrew any calculation I was able to make at that time of the
+probable number of streets we had passed since entering the avenue.
+Having turned, it went but about half a block to the left when it
+stopped. "I shall see where I am when I get out," thought I; but in this
+I was mistaken.</p>
+
+<p>First we had stopped in the middle of a block of houses built, as far as
+I could judge, all after one model. Next the fact of the front door
+being open, though I saw no one in the hall, somewhat disconcerted me,
+and I hurried across the sidewalk and up the stoop in a species of maze
+hardly to be expected from one of my naturally careless disposition. The
+next moment the door closed behind me and I found myself in a
+well-lighted hall whose quiet richness betokened it as belonging to a
+private dwelling of no mean pretensions to elegance.</p>
+
+<p>This was the first surprise I received.</p>
+
+<p>"Follow me," said the old woman, hurrying me down the hall and into a
+small room at the end. "The young lady will be here in a moment," and
+without lifting her veil or affording me the least glimpse of her
+features, she retired, leaving me to face the situation before me as
+best I might.</p>
+
+<p>It was anything but a pleasant one as it appeared to me at that moment,
+and for an instant I seriously thought of retracing my steps and leaving
+a domicile into which I had been introduced in such a mysterious manner.
+Then the quiet aspect of the room, which though sparsely furnished with
+a piano and chairs was still of an order rarely seen out of gentlemen's
+houses, struck my imagination and reawakened my curiosity, and nerving
+myself to meet whatever interview might be accorded me, I waited. It was
+only five minutes by the small clock ticking on the mantel-piece, but it
+seemed an hour before I heard a timid step at the door, and saw it swing
+slowly open, disclosing&mdash;well, I did not stop to inquire whether it was
+a child or a woman. I merely saw the shrinking modest form, the eager
+blushing face, and bowed almost to the ground in a sudden reverence for
+the sublime innocence revealed to me. Yes, it did not take a second look
+to read that tender countenance to its last guileless page. Had she been
+a woman of twenty-five I could not have mistaken her expression of pure
+delight and timid interest, but she was only sixteen, as I afterwards
+learned, and younger in experience than in age.</p>
+
+<p>Closing the door behind her, she stood for a moment without speaking,
+then with a deepening of the blush which was only a child's
+embarrassment in the presence of a stranger, looked up and murmured my
+name with a word or so of grateful acknowledgment that would have called
+forth a smile on my lips if I had not been startled by the sudden change
+that passed over her features when she met my eyes. Was it that I showed
+my surprise too plainly, or did my admiration manifest itself in my
+gaze? an admiration great as it was humble, and which was already of a
+nature such as I had never before given to girl or woman. Whatever it
+was, she no sooner met my look than she paused, trembled, and started
+back with a confused murmur, through which I plainly heard her whisper
+in a low distressed tone, "Oh, what have I done!"</p>
+
+<p>"Called a good friend to your side," said I in the frank, brotherly way
+I thought most likely to reassure her. "Do not be alarmed, I am only too
+happy to meet one who evidently enjoys music so well."</p>
+
+<p>But the hidden chord of womanhood had been struck in the child's soul,
+and she could not recover herself. For an instant I thought she would
+turn and flee, and struck as I was with remorse at my reckless invasion
+of this uncontaminated temple, I could not but admire the spirited
+picture she presented as, with form half turned and face bent back, she
+stood hesitating on the point of flight.</p>
+
+<p>I did not try to stop her. "She shall follow her own impulse," said I to
+myself, but I felt a vague relief that was deeper than I imagined, when
+she suddenly relinquished her strained attitude, and advancing a step or
+so began to murmur:</p>
+
+<p>"I did not know&mdash;I did not realize I was doing what was so very wrong.
+Young ladies do not ask gentlemen to come and see them, no matter how
+much they desire to make their acquaintance. I see it now; I did not
+before. Will you&mdash;can you forgive me?"</p>
+
+<p>I smiled; I could not help it. I could have taken her to my heart and
+soothed her as I would a child, but the pallor of womanhood, which had
+replaced the blush of the child, awed me and made my own words come
+hesitatingly.</p>
+
+<p>"Forgive you? You must forgive me! It was as wrong for me," I went on
+with a wild idea of not mincing matters with this pure soul, "to obey
+your innocent request, as it was for you to make it. I am a man of the
+world and know its <i>convenances</i>; you are very young."</p>
+
+<p>"I am sixteen," she murmured.</p>
+
+<p>The abrupt little confession, implying as it did her determination not
+to accept any palliation of her conduct which it did not deserve,
+touched me strangely. "But very young for that," I exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"So aunty says, but no one can ever say it any more," she answered. Then
+with a sudden gush, "We shall never see each other again, and you must
+forget the motherless girl who has met you in a way for which she must
+blush through life. It is no excuse," she pursued hurriedly, "that nurse
+thought it was all right. She always approves of everything I do or want
+to do, especially if it is anything aunt would be likely to forbid. I
+have been spoiled by nurse."</p>
+
+<p>"Was nurse the woman who came for me?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>She nodded her head with a quick little motion inexpressibly charming.
+"Yes, that was nurse. She said she would do it all, I need only write
+the note. She meant to give me a pleasure, but she did wrong."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," thought I, "how wrong you little know or realize." But I only
+said, "You must be guided by some one with more knowledge of the world
+after this. Not," I made haste to add, struck by the misery in her child
+eyes, "that any harm has been done. You could not have appealed to the
+friendship of any one who would hold you in greater respect than I.
+Whether we meet again or not, my memory of you shall be sweet and
+sacred, I promise you that."</p>
+
+<p>But she threw out her hand with a quick gesture. "No, do not remember
+me. My only happiness will lie in the thought you have forgotten." And
+the last remnants of the child soul vanished in that hurried utterance.
+"You must go now," she continued more calmly. "The carriage that brought
+you is at the door; I must ask you to take it back to your home."</p>
+
+<p>"But," I exclaimed with a wild and unbearable sense of sudden loss as
+she laid her hand on the knob of the door, "are we to part like this?
+Will you not at least trust me with your name before I go?"</p>
+
+<p>Her hand dropped from the knob as if it had been hot steel, and she
+turned towards me with a slow yearning motion that whatever it betokened
+set my heart beating violently. "You do not know it, then?" she
+inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"I know nothing but what this little note contains," I replied, drawing
+her letter from my pocket.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that letter! I must have it," she murmured; then, as I stepped
+towards her, drew back and pointing to the table said, "Lay it there,
+please."</p>
+
+<p>I did so, whereupon something like a smile crossed her lips and I
+thought she was going to reward me with her name, but she only said, "I
+thank you; now you know nothing;" and almost before I realized it she
+had opened the door and stepped into the hall.</p>
+
+<p>As I made haste to follow her, the sound of a low, "He is a gentleman,
+he will ask no questions," struck my ear, and looking up, I saw her just
+leaving the side of the old nurse who stood evidently awaiting me half
+down the hall. Bowing with formal ceremony, I passed her by and
+proceeded to the front door. As I did so I caught one glimpse of her
+face. It had escaped from all restraint and the expression of the eyes
+was overpowering. I subdued a wild impulse to leap back to her side, and
+stepped at once over the threshold. The nurse joined me, and together we
+went down the stoop to the street.</p>
+
+<p>"May I inquire where you wish to be taken?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>I told her, and she gave the order to the coachman, together with a few
+words I did not hear; then stepping back she waited for me to get in.
+There was no help for it. I gave one quick look behind me, saw the front
+door close, realized how impossible it would ever be for me to recognize
+the house again, and placed my foot on the carriage step. Suddenly a
+bright idea struck me, and hastily dropping my cane I stepped back to
+pick it up. As I did so I pulled out a bit of crayon I chanced to have
+in my pocket, and as I stooped, chalked a small cross on the curbstone
+directly in front of the house, after which I recovered my cane, uttered
+some murmured word of apology, jumped into the carriage and was about to
+shut the door, when the old nurse stepped in after me and quietly closed
+it herself. By the pang that shot through my breast as the carriage
+wheels left the house, I knew that for the first time in my life, I
+<i>loved</i>.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV.</h2>
+
+<h3>SEARCHINGS.</h3>
+
+<blockquote><p>"Patience, and shuffle the cards."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Cervantes.</span></p></blockquote>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p>If I had expected anything from the presence in the carriage of the
+woman who had arranged this interview, I was doomed to disappointment.
+Reticent before, she was absolutely silent now, sitting at my side like
+a grim statue or a frozen image of watchfulness, ready to awake and stop
+me if I offered to open the door or make any other move indicative of a
+determination to know where I was, or in what direction I was going.
+That her young mistress in the momentary conversation they had held
+before our departure had succeeded in giving her some idea of the shame
+with which she had felt herself overwhelmed and her present natural
+desire for secrecy, I do not doubt, but I think now, as I thought then,
+that the unusual precautions taken both at that time and before, to keep
+me in ignorance of the young lady's identity, were due to the elderly
+woman's own consciousness of the peril she had invoked in yielding to
+the wishes of her young and thoughtless mistress; a theory which, if
+true, argues more for the mind than the conscience of this mysterious
+woman. However, it is with facts we have to deal, and you will be more
+interested in learning what I did, than what I thought during that short
+ride in perfect darkness.</p>
+
+<p>The mark which I had left on the curbstone behind me sufficiently showed
+the nature of my resolve, and when we made the first turn at the end of
+the block I leaned back in my seat and laying my finger on my wrist,
+began to count the pulsations of my blood. It was the only device that
+suggested itself, by which I might afterward gather some approximate
+notion of the distance we travelled in a straight course down town. I
+had just arrived at the number seven hundred and sixty-two, and was
+inwardly congratulating myself upon this new method of reckoning
+distance, when the wheels gave a lurch and we passed over a car track.
+Instantly all my fine calculations fell to the ground. We were not in
+Madison Avenue, as I supposed; could not be, since no track crosses that
+avenue below Fifty-ninth Street, and we were proceeding on as we could
+not have done had we gained the terminus of the avenue at Twenty-third
+Street. Could it be that the carriage had not been turned around while I
+was in the house, and that we had come back by way of Fifth Avenue? I
+could not remember&mdash;in fact, the more I tried to think which way the
+horses' heads were directed when we went into the house, the more I was
+confused. But presently I considered that wherever we were, we certainly
+had not passed over the narrow strip of smooth pavement in front of the
+Worth monument, and therefore could not have reached Twenty-third Street
+by way of Fifth Avenue. We must be up town, and that track we crossed
+must have been at Fifty-ninth Street. And soon, as if to assure me of
+this, we took a turn, quickly followed at a block's length by another,
+after which I had no difficulty in recognizing the smooth pavement of
+the entrance to the Park or the roll down Fifth Avenue afterwards. "They
+have thought to confuse me by an extra mile or so of travel," thought I,
+with some complacency, "but the streets of New York are too simply laid
+out to lend themselves to any such easy mode of mystification." Yet I
+have thought since then how, with a smarter man on the box, the affair
+might have been conducted so as to have baffled the oldest citizen in
+any attempt at calculation.</p>
+
+<p>When we stopped in front of the Albemarle I quietly thanked the woman
+who had conducted me, and stepped to the ground. Instantly the door shut
+behind me, the carriage drove off, and I was left standing there like a
+man suddenly awakened from a dream.</p>
+
+<p>Entering my hotel, I ordered supper, thinking that the very practical
+occupation of eating would serve to divert my mind into its ordinary
+channels. But the dream, if dream it was, had made too vivid an
+impression to be shaken off so easily. It followed me to the hall in the
+evening and mingled with every chord I struck.</p>
+
+<p>I could scarcely sleep that night for thinking of the sweet child's face
+that had blossomed into a woman's before my eyes, and what a woman! With
+the first hint of daylight I rose, and as soon as it was in any degree
+suitable to be out, hired a cab and proceeded to the corner of
+Fifty-ninth Street and Madison Avenue, where, according to my
+calculations of the evening before, we had crossed the car track which
+had first interrupted me in that very original method of computing
+distance of which I have already spoken, a method by the way, which you
+must acknowledge is an improvement on the boy's plan of finding his way
+back from the woods by means of the bread-crumbs he had scattered behind
+him, forgetting that the birds would eat up his crumbs and leave him
+without a clew. Bidding the driver proceed at the ordinary jog trot down
+the avenue, I laid my finger on my wrist, and counted each throb of my
+pulse till I had reached the magical number seven hundred and sixty-two.
+Then putting my head out of the window, I bade him stop. We were in the
+middle of a block, but that did not disconcert me. I had not expected to
+gain more than an approximate idea of the spot where we had first turned
+into the avenue, it being impossible to regulate the horses' pace so as
+to tally with that taken by the span of the night before, even if the
+pulsations in my wrist were to be absolutely relied upon. Noting the
+streets between which we had paused, I bade the driver to turn down one
+and come back by the other, occupying myself in the meanwhile, in
+searching the curbstone for the small mark I had left in front of her
+door the night before. But though we drove slowly and I searched
+carefully, not a trace did I perceive of that tell-tale sign, and
+forsaking those two streets, I ordered my obedient Jehu to try the two
+outlying ones below and above. He did so, and I again consulted the
+curbstone, but with no better success. No mark or remnants of a mark was
+to be found anywhere. Nor, though we travelled through three or four
+other streets in the same way, did we come upon any clew liable to
+assist me in my search. Clean discouraged and somewhat out of temper
+with myself for my pusillanimity of the evening before in not having
+braved the anger of my companion by opening the carriage door at the
+first corner and leaping out, I commanded to be taken back to the hotel,
+where for a whole miserable day I racked my brain with devices for
+acquiring the knowledge I so much desired. The result was futile, as you
+may imagine; nor will I stop to recount the various expedients to which
+I afterwards resorted in my vain attempt to solve the mystery of this
+young girl's identity.</p>
+
+<p>Enough that they all failed, even the very promising one of searching
+the various photographic establishments of the city, for the valuable
+clew which her picture would give me. And so a week passed.</p>
+
+<p>"It is time this mad infatuation was at an end," said I to myself one
+morning as I sat down to write a letter. "There is no hope of my ever
+seeing her again, and I am but frittering away the best emotions of my
+life in thus indulging in a dream that is not the prelude to a reality."
+But in spite of the wise determination thus made, I soon found my
+thoughts recurring to their old channel, and seized with sudden
+impatience at my evident weakness, took up the letter I had been writing
+and was about to read it, when to my great amazement I perceived that
+instead of inditing the usual words of a business communication, I had
+been engaged in scribbling a certain number up and down the page and
+even across the bottom where my signature should have been.</p>
+
+<p>"Am I a fool?" I exclaimed, and was about to tear the sheet in two, when
+glancing again at the number, which was a simple thirty-six, I asked
+myself where I had got those especial figures. Instantly there arose
+before my mind's eye the vision of a brown-stone front with its
+vestibule and door. It was, then, the number of a house; but what house?
+a <i>chateau en Espagne</i> or a <i>bona fide</i> New York dwelling, which for
+some reason had unconsciously impressed itself upon my memory? I could
+not answer. There on the page was the number thirty-six, and equally
+plain in my mind was the look of the brown-stone front to which that
+number belonged&mdash;and that was all.</p>
+
+<p>But it was enough to awaken within me the spirit of inquiry. The few
+houses thus numbered in that quarter of the city where I had lately
+been, were not so hard to find but that a morning given to the business
+ought to satisfy me whether the vision in my mind had its basis in
+reality. Taking a cab, I rode up town and into that region of streets I
+had traversed so carefully a week before. For I was assured that if the
+impression had been made by an actual dwelling it had been done at that
+time. Following the same course I then took, I consulted the appearance
+of the various houses to which that number was assigned. The first was
+built of brick; that was not it. The next one had pillars to the
+vestibule; and that was not it. The third, to use an Irish bull, was no
+house at all, but a stable, while the fourth was an elegant structure of
+much more pretension than the plain and simple front I had in my mind or
+memory. I was about to utter a curse upon my folly and go home, when I
+remembered there was yet a street or two taken in my zig-zag course of
+the week before, which I had not yet tested. "Might as well be
+thorough," I muttered, and bade my driver proceed down &mdash;&mdash; Street.</p>
+
+<p>What was there in its aspect that dimly excited me at the first glance?
+A dim remembrance, a certain ghostly assurance that we had reached the
+right spot? As we neared the number I sought, I could not suppress an
+exclamation of surprise. For there before me to its last detail, stood
+the house which involuntarily presented itself to my mind, when my eye
+first fell upon that mysterious number scribbled at the foot of the page
+I was writing.</p>
+
+<p>It was, then, no chimera of an overwrought brain, this vision of a
+house-front which had been haunting me, but a distinct remembrance of an
+actual dwelling seen by me in my former journey through this street. But
+why this house-front above all others; what was there in it to make such
+an impression? Looking at it I could not determine, but after we had
+passed, something, I cannot tell what, brought back another remembrance,
+trivial in itself, but yet a link in the chain that was destined sooner
+or later to lead me out of the maze into which I had stumbled. It was
+merely this; that as I rode along the streets on that memorable morning,
+searching for that mark on the curbstone from which I hoped so much, I
+had come upon a spot where the pavement had been freshly washed. With
+that unconscious action of the brain with which we are familiar, I
+looked at the sidewalk a moment, running even then with the water that
+had been cast upon it, and then gave a quick glance at the house. That
+glance, account for it as you will, took in the picture before it as the
+camera catches the impression of a likeness, and though in another
+instant I had forgotten the whole occurrence, it needed but a certain
+train of thought or perhaps a certain state of emotion to revive it
+again.</p>
+
+<p>A noble cause for such an act of unconscious cerebration you will say, a
+freshly washed pavement: <i>Le jeu ne faut pas la chandelle.</i> And so I
+thought too, or would have thought if I had not been so interested in
+the pursuit in which I was engaged, and if the idea had not suggested
+itself that water and a broom might obliterate chalk-marks from
+curbstones, and that the imps that preside over our mental forces would
+not indulge in such a trick at my expense unless the play <i>was</i> worth
+the candle. At all events, from the moment I made this discovery, I
+fixed my faith on that house as the one which held the object of my
+search, and though I contented myself with merely noting the number of
+the street as we left it, I none the less determined to pursue my
+investigations, till I had learned beyond the possibility of a doubt
+whether my conjectures were not true.</p>
+
+<p>A perseverance worthy of a better cause you will say, but you are no
+longer twenty-five and under the influence of your first passion. I own
+I was astonished at myself and frequently paused in the pursuit I had
+undertaken, to ask if I were the same person who but a fortnight before
+laughed at the story of a man who had gone mad over the body of an
+unknown woman he had saved from a wreck only to find her dead in his
+arms.</p>
+
+<p>The first thing I did was to ascertain the name of the gentleman
+occupying the house I have specified. It was that of one of our
+wealthiest and most respectable bankers, a name as well known in the
+city&mdash;as your own for instance. This was somewhat disconcerting, but
+with a dogged resolution somewhat foreign to my natural disposition, I
+persevered in my investigations, and learning in the next breath that
+the gentleman alluded to was a widower with an only child, a young
+daughter of about sixteen or so, recovered my assurance, though not my
+equanimity. Seeking out my friend Farrar, who as you know is a walking
+gazette of New York society, I broached the subject of Mr.&mdash;excuse me
+if I do not mention his name; allow me to say, Preston's domestic
+affairs, and learned that Miss Preston, "A naive little piece for so
+great an heiress," I remember Farrar called her, had left town within a
+day or two for a visit to some friends in Baltimore. "I happen to know,"
+said he with that careless sweep of his hand at which you have so often
+laughed, "because my friend Miss Forsyth met her at the depot. She was
+intending to be gone&mdash;two weeks, I think she said. Do you know her?"</p>
+
+<p>That last question sprung upon me unawares, and I am afraid I blushed.
+"No," I returned, "I have not that honor but an acquaintance of mine
+has&mdash;well&mdash;has met her and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I see, I see," broke in Farrar with his most disagreeable smile. Then
+with a short laugh, meant to act as a warning, I suppose, added as he
+walked off, "I hope your friend is in fair circumstances and not
+connected with the fine arts. Music is Mr. Preston's detestation, while
+Miss Preston though too young to be much sought after yet, will in two
+years' time have the pick of the city at her command."</p>
+
+<p>"So!" thought I to myself; "my little innocent charmer is an embryo
+aristocrat, eh? Well then, I was a greater fool than I imagined." And I
+walked out of the hotel where I had met Farrar, with the very sensible
+conclusion to drop a subject that promised nothing but disappointment.</p>
+
+<p>But the fates were against me, or the good angels perhaps, and at the
+next comer I met an old acquaintance, the very opposite of Farrar in
+character, who with a long love story of his own fired, my imagination
+to such an extent that in spite of myself I turned down &mdash;&mdash; Street, and
+was proceeding to pass her house, when suddenly the thought struck me,
+"How do I know that this unapproachable daughter of one of our most
+prominent citizens is one and the same person with my dainty little
+charmer? Widowers with young daughters are not so rare in this great
+city that I need consider the question as decided, because by a half
+superstitious freak of my own I have settled upon this house as the one
+I was in the other night. My inamorata may be the offspring of a
+musician for all I know." And inflamed at the thought of this
+possibility&mdash;I remembered the piano, you see&mdash;I gave to the winds all my
+fine resolutions and only asked how I could determine for once and all,
+whether I had ever crossed the threshold of the house before me. Some
+men would have run up the stoop, rung the bell and asked to see Mr.
+Preston on some pretended business he could easily conjure up to suit
+the occasion, but my face is too well known for me to risk any such
+attempt, besides I was too anxious to win the confidence of the young
+girl to shock her awakened sense of propriety by seeming to seek her
+where she did not wish to be found. And yet I must enter that house and
+see for myself if it was the one that held her on that memorable
+evening.</p>
+
+<p>Pondering the question, I looked back at the door so obstinately closed
+against my curiosity, when to my satisfaction and delight it suddenly
+opened and a man stepped out, whom I instantly recognized as a business
+agent for one of the largest piano-forte manufactories in the city. "The
+heavens smile upon my enterprise," thought I, and waited for the man to
+come up with me. He was not only a friend of mine but largely indebted
+to me in various ways, so that I knew I had only to urge a request for
+it to be immediately granted, and that, too, without any questions or
+gossip.</p>
+
+<p>You will not be interested in anything but the result, which was
+somewhat out of the usual course, and may therefore shock you. But you
+must remember that I am telling you of matters which young men usually
+keep to themselves, and that whatever I did, was accomplished in a
+spirit of respect only a shade less constraining in its power than the
+love that was at once my impelling force, and my constant embarrassment.</p>
+
+<p>To come, then, to the point, a piano was to be set up in that house on
+that very day, Mr. Preston having yielded to the solicitations of his
+daughter for a new instrument. My friend was to be engaged in the
+transfer, and at my solicitation for leave to assist in the operation,
+gave his consent in perfect confidence as to my possessing good and
+sufficient reasons for such a remarkable request, and appointed the hour
+at which I was to meet him at the ware-rooms.</p>
+
+<p>Behold me, then, at half-past two that afternoon, assisting with my own
+hands in carrying a piano up the stoop of that house which, four hours
+before, I had regarded as unapproachable. Dressed in a workman's blouse
+and with my hair well roughened under a rude cap that effectually
+disguised me, I advanced with but little fear of detection. And yet no
+sooner had I entered the house and seen at a glance that the aspect of
+the hall coincided with my rather vague remembrance of that through
+which I had been ushered a week before, than I was struck by a sudden
+sense of my situation, and experiencing that uncomfortable consciousness
+of self-betrayal, which a blush always gives a man, stumbled forward
+under my heavy burden, feeling as if a thousand eyes were fixed upon me
+and my cherished secret, instead of the two sharp but totally
+unsuspicious orbs of the elderly matron that surveyed us from the top of
+the banisters. "Be careful there, you'll knock a hole through that glass
+door!" though a natural cry under the circumstances, struck on my ears
+with the force and mysterious power of a secret warning, and when after
+a moment of blind advance I suddenly lifted my eyes and found myself in
+the little room, which like a silhouette on a white ground, stood out in
+my memory in distinct detail as the spot where I had first heard my own
+heart beat, I own that I felt my hands slipping from my burden, and in
+another moment had disgraced my character of a workman if I had not
+caught the sudden ring of a well known voice in the hall, as nurse
+answered from above some question propounded by the elderly lady with
+the piercing eyes. As it was, I recovered myself and went through my
+duties as promptly and deftly as if my heart did not throb with memories
+that each passing hour and event only served to hallow to my
+imagination.</p>
+
+<p>At length the piano was duly set up and we turned to leave. Will you
+think I am too trivial in my details if I tell you that I lingered
+behind the rest and for an instant let my hand with all its
+possibilities for calling out a soul from that dead instrument, lie a
+moment on the keys over which her dainty fingers were so soon to
+traverse?</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="V" id="V"></a>V.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE RUBICON.</h3>
+
+<blockquote><p>"I'll stake my life upon her faith."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Othello.</span></p></blockquote>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>Once convinced of the identity of my sweet young friend with the Miss
+Preston at whose feet a two year hence, the wealth and aristocracy of
+New York would be kneeling, I drew back from further effort as having
+received a damper to my presumptuous hopes that would soon effectually
+stifle them. Everything I heard about the family&mdash;and it seemed as if
+suddenly each chance acquaintance that I met had something to say about
+Mr. Preston either as a banker or a man, only served to confirm me in
+this view. "He is a money worshipper," said one. "The bluest of blue
+Presbyterians," declared another. "The enemy of presumption and anything
+that looks like an overweening confidence in one's own worth or
+capabilities," remarked a third. "A man who would beggar himself to save
+the honor of a corporation with which he was concerned," observed a
+fourth "but who would not invite to his table the most influential man
+connected with it if that man was unable to trace his family back to the
+old Dutch settlers to which Mr. Preston's own ancestors belonged."</p>
+
+<p>This latter statement I have no doubt was exaggerated for I myself have
+seen him at dinners where half the gentlemen who lifted the wine glass
+were self-made in every sense of the term. But it showed the bent of his
+mind and it was a bent that left me entirely out of the sweep of his
+acquaintanceship much less that of his exquisite daughter, the pride of
+his soul if not the jewel of his heart.</p>
+
+<p>But when will a man who has seen or who flatters himself that he has
+seen in the eyes of the woman he admires, the least spark of that fire
+which is consuming his own soul, pause at an obstacle which after all
+has its basis simply in circumstances of position or will. By the time
+the two weeks of her expected absence had expired, I had settled it in
+my own mind that I would see her again and if I found the passing
+caprice of a child was likely to blossom into the steady regard of a
+woman, risk all in the attempt to win by honorable endeavor and
+persistence this bud of loveliness for my future wife.</p>
+
+<p>How I finally succeeded by means of my friend Farrar in being one
+evening invited to the same house as Miss Preston it is not necessary to
+state. You will believe me it was done with the utmost regard for her
+feelings and in a way that deceived Farrar himself, who if he is the
+most prying is certainly the most volatile of men. In a crowded parlor,
+then, in the midst of the flash of diamonds and the flutter of fans Miss
+Preston and I again met. When I first saw her she was engaged in
+conversation with some young companion, and I had the pleasure of
+watching for a few minutes, unobserved, the play of her ingenuous
+countenance, as she talked with her friend, or sat silently watching the
+brilliant array before her. I found her like and yet unlike the vision
+of my dreams. More blithesome in her appearance, as was not strange
+considering her party attire and the lustre of the chandelier under
+which she sat, there was still that indescribable something in her
+expression which more than the flash of her eye or the curve of her lip,
+though both were lovely to me, made her face the one woman's face in the
+world for me; a charm which circumstances might alter, or suffering
+impair, but of which nothing save death could ever completely divest her
+and not death either, for it was the seal of her individuality, and that
+she would take with her into the skies.</p>
+
+<p>"If I might but advance and sit down by her side without a word of
+explanation or the interference of conventionalities how happy I should
+be," thought I. But I knew that would not do, so I contented myself with
+my secret watch over her movements, longing for and yet dreading the
+advance of my hostess, with its inevitable introduction. Suddenly the
+piano was touched in a distant room and not till I saw the quick change
+in her face, a change hard to explain, did I recognize the selection as
+one I was in the habit of playing. <i>She</i> had not forgotten at least, and
+thrilled by the thought and the remembrance of that surge of color which
+had swept like a flood over her cheek, I turned away, feeling as if I
+were looking on what it was for no man's eyes to see, least of all mine.</p>
+
+<p>My hostess' voice arrested me and next moment I was bowing to the ground
+before Miss Preston.</p>
+
+<p>I am not a boy; nor have I been without my experiences: life with its
+vicissitudes has taught me many a lesson, subjected me to many a trial,
+yet in all my career have I never known a harder moment than when I
+raised my eyes to meet hers after that lowly obeisance. That she would
+be indignant I knew, that she might even misinterpret my motives and
+probably withdraw without giving me an opportunity to speak, I felt to
+be only too probable, but that she would betray an agitation so painful
+I had not anticipated, and for an instant I felt that I had hazarded my
+life's happiness on a cast that was going against me. But the necessity
+of saving her from remark speedily restored me to myself, and following
+the line of conduct I had previously laid out, I addressed her with the
+reserve of a stranger, and neither by word, look or manner conveyed to
+her a suggestion that we had ever met or spoken to each other before.
+She seemed to appreciate my consideration and though she was as yet too
+much unused to the ways of the world to completely hide her
+perturbation, she gradually regained a semblance of self-possession, and
+ere long was enabled to return short answers to my remarks, though her
+eyes remained studiously turned aside and never so much as ventured to
+raise themselves to the passing throng much less to my face, half turned
+away also.</p>
+
+<p>Presently however a change passed over her. Pressing her two little
+hands together, she drew back a step or two, speaking my name with a
+certain tone of command. Struck with apprehension, I knew not why, I
+followed her. Instantly like one repeating a lesson she spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"It is very good in you to talk to me as though we were the strangers
+that people believe us. I appreciate it and thank you very much. But it
+is not being just true; that is I feel as if I were not being just true,
+and as we can never be friends, would it not be better for us not to
+meet in this way any more?"</p>
+
+<p>"And why," I gently asked, with a sense of struggling for my life, "can
+we never be friends?"</p>
+
+<p>Her answer was a deep blush; not that timid conscious appeal of the
+blood that is beating too warmly for reply, but the quick flush of
+indignant generosity forced to do despite to its own instincts.</p>
+
+<p>"That is a question I would rather not answer," she murmured at length.
+"Only it is so; or I should not speak in this way."</p>
+
+<p>"But," I ventured, resolved to know on just what foundations my
+happiness was tottering, "you will at least tell me if this harsh decree
+is owing to any offence I myself may have inadvertently given. The honor
+of your acquaintance," I went on, determined she should know just what a
+hope she was slaying, "is much too earnestly desired, for me to wilfully
+hazard its loss by saying or doing aught that could be in any way
+displeasing to you."</p>
+
+<p>"You have done nothing but what was generous," said she with increasing
+womanliness of manner, "unless it was taking advantage of my being here,
+to learn my name and gain an introduction to me after I had desired you
+to forget my very existence."</p>
+
+<p>I recoiled at that, the chord of my self-respect was touched. "It was
+not here I learned your name, Miss Preston. It has been known to me for
+two weeks. At the risk of losing by your displeasure what is already
+hazarded by your prudence, I am bound to acknowledge that from the hour
+I left your father's house that night, I have spared no effort
+compatible with my deep respect for your feelings, to ascertain who the
+young lady was that had done me such an honor, and won from me such a
+deep regard. I had not intended to tell you this," I added, "but your
+truth has awakened mine, and whatever the result may be, you must see me
+as I am."</p>
+
+<p>"You are very kind," she replied governing with growing skill the
+trembling of her voice. "The acquaintance of a girl of sixteen is not
+worth so much trouble on the part of a man like yourself." And blushing
+with the vague apprehension of her sex in the presence of a devotion she
+rather feels than understands, she waved her trembling little hand and
+paused irresolute, seemingly anxious to terminate the interview but as
+yet too inexperienced to know how to manage a dismissal requiring so
+much tact and judgment.</p>
+
+<p>I saw, comprehended her position and hesitated. She was so young, uncle,
+her prospects in life were so bright; if I left her then, in a couple of
+weeks she would forget me. What was I that I should throw the shadow of
+manhood's deepest emotion across the paradise of her young untrammelled
+being. But the old Adam of selfishness has his say in my soul as well as
+in that of my fellow-men, and forgetting myself enough to glance at her
+half averted face, I could not remember myself sufficiently afterwards
+to forego without a struggle, all hope of some day beholding that soft
+cheek turn in confidence at my approach.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Preston," said I, "the promise of the bud atones for its folded
+leaves." Then with a fervor I did not seek to disguise, "You say we
+cannot be friends; would your decision be the same if this were our
+first meeting?"</p>
+
+<p>Again that flush of outraged feeling. "I don't know&mdash;yes I think&mdash;I fear
+it would."</p>
+
+<p>I strove to help her. "There is too great a difference between Bertram
+Mandeville the pianist, and the daughter of Thaddeus Preston."</p>
+
+<p>She turned and looked me gently in the eye, she did not need to speak.
+Regret, shame, longing flashed in her steady glance.</p>
+
+<p>"Do not answer," said I, "I understand; I am glad it is circumstances
+that stand in the way, and not any misconception on your part as to my
+motives and deep consideration for yourself. Circumstances can be
+changed." And satisfied with having thus dropped into the fruitful soil
+of that tender breast, the seed of a future hope, I bowed with all the
+deference at my command and softly withdrew.</p>
+
+<p>But not to rest. With all the earnestness with which a man sets himself
+to decide upon the momentous question of life or death, I gave myself up
+to a night of reflection, and seated in my solitary bachelor apartment,
+debated with myself as to the resolution at which I had dimly hinted in
+my parting words to Miss Preston.</p>
+
+<p>That I am a musician by nature, my success with the the public seems to
+indicate. That by following out the line upon which I had entered I
+would attain a certain eminence in my art, I do not doubt. But uncle,
+there are two kinds of artists in this world; those that work because
+the spirit is in them and they cannot be silent if they would, and those
+that speak from a conscientious desire to make apparent to others the
+beauty that has awakened their own admiration. The first could not give
+up his art for any cause, without the sacrifice of his soul's life; the
+latter&mdash;well the latter could and still be a man with his whole inner
+being intact. Or to speak plainer, the first has no choice, while the
+latter has, if he has a will to exert it. Now you will say, and the
+world at large, that I belong to the former class. I have risen in ten
+years from a choir boy in Trinity Church to a position in the world of
+music that insures me a full audience wherever and whenever I have a
+mind to exert my skill as a pianist. Not a man of my years has a more
+promising outlook in my profession, if you will pardon the seeming
+egotism of the remark, and yet by the ease with which I felt I could
+give it up at the first touch of a master passion, I know that I am not
+a prophet in my art but merely an interpreter, one who can speak well
+but who has never felt the descent of the burning tongue and hence not a
+sinner against my own soul if I turn aside from the way I am walking.
+The question was, then, should I make a choice? Love, as you say, seems
+at first blush too insecure a joy, if not often too trivial a one, to
+unsettle a man in his career and change the bent of his whole after
+life; especially a love born of surprise and fed by the romance of
+distance and mystery. Had I met her in ordinary intercourse, surrounded
+by her friends and without the charm cast over her by unwonted
+circumstances, and then had felt as I did now that of all women I had
+seen, she alone would ever move the deep springs of my being, it would
+be different. But with this atmosphere of romance surrounding and
+hallowing her girl's form till it seemed almost as ethereal and
+unearthly as that of an angel's, was I safe in risking fame or fortune
+in an attempt to acquire what in the possession might prove as bare and
+common-place as a sweep of mountain heather stripped of its sunshine.
+Curbing every erratic beat of my heart, I summoned up her image as it
+bloomed in my fancy, and surveying it with cruel eyes, asked what was
+real and what the fruit of my own imagination. The gentle eye, the
+trembling lip, the girlish form eloquent with the promise of coming
+womanhood,&mdash;were these so rare, that beside them no other woman should
+seem to glance or smile or move? And her words! what had she said, that
+any simple-minded, modest yet loving girl might not have uttered under
+the circumstances. Surely my belief in her being the one, the best and
+the dearest was a delusion, and to no delusion was I willing to
+sacrifice my art. But straight upon that conclusion came sweeping down a
+flood of counter-reasons. If not the wonder she seemed, she was at least
+a wonder to me. If I had seen her under romantic circumstances, and
+unconsciously been influenced by them, the influence had remained and
+nothing would ever rob her form of the halo thus acquired. Whether I
+ever won her to my fireside or not, she must always remain the fairy
+figure of my dreams, and being so, the gentle eye and tender lip
+acquired a value that made them what they seemed, the exponent of love
+and happiness. And lastly if love well or illy founded was an uncertain
+joy, and the passion for a woman a poor substitute for the natural
+incentive of talent or ambition, <i>this</i> love had within it the beginning
+of something deeper than joy, and in the passion thus cheaply
+characterized, dwelt a force and living fire that notwithstanding all I
+have hitherto achieved, has ever been lacking from my dreams of
+endeavor.</p>
+
+<p>As you will see, the most natural question of all did not disturb me in
+these cogitations: And that was, whether in making the sacrifice I
+proposed, I should meet with the reward I had promised myself. The
+fancies of a young girl of sixteen are not usually of a stable enough
+character to warrant a man in building upon them his whole future
+happiness, especially a young girl situated like Miss Preston in the
+midst of friends who would soon be admirers, and adulators who would
+soon be her humble slaves. But the doubt which a serious contemplation
+of this risk must have presented, was of so unnerving a character, I
+dared not admit it. <i>If</i> I made the sacrifice, I must meet with my
+reward. I would listen to no other conclusion. Besides, something in the
+young girl herself, I cannot tell what, assured me then as it assures me
+now, that whatever virtues or graces she might lack, that of fidelity to
+a noble idea was not among them; that once convinced of the purity and
+value of the flame that had been lit in her innocent breast, nothing
+short of the unworthiness of the object that had awakened it, would ever
+serve to eliminate or extinguish it. That I was not worthy but would
+make it the business of my life to become so, was certain; that she
+would mark my endeavors and bestow upon me the sympathy they deserved, I
+was equally sure. No one would ever make such a sacrifice to her love as
+I was willing to do, and consequently in no one would I find a rival.</p>
+
+<p>The morning light surprised me in the midst of the struggle, nor did I
+decide the question that day. Mr. Preston might not be as determined in
+his prejudices against musicians as my friends or even his daughter had
+imagined. I resolved to see him. Taking advantage of his connection with
+the &mdash;&mdash; Club, I procured an introducer in the shape of a highly
+respected person of his own class, and went one evening to the
+Club-rooms with the full intention of making his acquaintance if
+possible. He was already there and in conversation with some business
+associates. Procuring a seat as near him as possible, I anxiously
+surveyed his countenance. It was not a reassuring one, and studied in
+this way, had the effect of dampening any hopes I may have cherished in
+the outset. He soften to the sounds of sweet strains or the voice of
+youthful passion! As soon as the granite rock to the surge of the
+useless billow. His very necktie spoke volumes. It was an old fashioned
+stock, full of the traditions of other days, while his coat, shabbier
+than any I would presume to wear, betrayed in every well-worn seam the
+pride of the aristocrat and millionaire who in his native city and
+before the eyes of his fellow magnates does not need to carry the
+evidences of his respectability upon his back.</p>
+
+<p>"It would be worse than folly for me to approach him on such a subject,"
+I mentally ejaculated. "If he did not stare the musician out of
+countenance he would the newly risen man." And I came very near giving
+up the whole thing.</p>
+
+<p>But the genius that watches over the affairs of true love was with me
+notwithstanding the unpropitious state of my surroundings. In a few
+minutes I received my expected introduction to Mr. Preston, and I found
+that underneath the repelling austerity of his expression, was a kindly
+spark for youth, and a decided sympathy for all instances of manly
+endeavor if only it was in a direction he approved; further that my own
+personality was agreeable to him and that he was disposed to regard me
+with favor until by some chance and very natural allusion to my
+profession by the friend standing between us, he learned that I was a
+musician, when a decided change came over his countenance and he
+exclaimed in that blunt, decisive way of his that admits of no reply:</p>
+
+<p>"A jingler on the piano, eh? Pretty poor use for a man to put his brains
+to, I say, or even his fingers. Sorry to hear we cannot be friends." And
+without waiting for a reply, took my introducer by the arm and drew him
+a step or so to one side. "Why didn't you say at once he was Mandeville
+the musician," I overheard him ask in somewhat querulous tones. "Don't
+you know I consider the whole race of them an abomination. I would have
+more respect for my bank clerk than I would for the greatest man of them
+all, were it Rubenstein himself." Then in a lower tone but distinctly
+and almost as if he meant me to hear, "My daughter has a leaning towards
+this same fol-de-rol and has lately requested my permission to make the
+acquaintance of some musical characters, but I soon convinced her that
+manhood under the disguise of a harlequin's jacket could have no
+interest for her; that when a human being, man or woman has sunk to be a
+mere rattler of sweet sounds, he has reached a stage of infantile
+development that has little in common with the nervous energy and
+business force of her Dutch ancestry. And my daughter stoops to make no
+acquaintances she cannot bid sit at her father's table."</p>
+
+<p>"Your daughter is a child yet, I thought," was ventured by his
+companion.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Preston is sixteen, just the age at which my mother gave her hand
+to my respected father sixty-seven years ago." And with this drop of
+burning lead let fall into my already agitated bosom they passed on.</p>
+
+<p>He would have more respect for his bank clerk! Would his bank clerk or
+what was better, a young man with means at his command, working in a
+business capacity more in consonance with the tastes he had evinced,
+have a chance of winning his daughter? I began to think he might. "The
+way grows clearer!" I exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>But it was not till after another interview with him ten minutes later
+in the lobby that I finally made up my mind. He was standing quite alone
+in an obscure corner, fumbling in an awkward way with his muffler that
+had caught on the button of his coat. Seeing it, I hastened forward to
+his assistance and was rewarded by a kind enough nod to embolden me to
+say,</p>
+
+<p>"I have been introduced to you as a musician; would my acquaintance be
+more acceptable to you if I told you that the pursuit of art bids fair
+in my case to yield to the exigencies of business? That I purpose
+leaving the concert-room for the banker's office and that henceforth my
+only ambition promises to be that of Wall Street?"</p>
+
+<p>"It most certainly would," exclaimed he, holding out his hand with an
+unmistakable gesture of satisfaction. "You have too good a countenance
+to waste before a piano-top strumming to the smirks of women and the
+plaudits of weak-headed men. Let us see you at the desk, my lad. We are
+in want of trustworthy young men to take the place of us older ones."
+Then politely, "Do you expect to make the change soon?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do," said I.</p>
+
+<p>And the Rubicon was passed.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VI" id="VI"></a>VI.</h2>
+
+<h3>A HAND CLASP.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"<i>Fer.</i>&mdash;Here's my hand.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>Mir.</i>&mdash;And mine with my heart in it."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Tempest.</span><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>Once arrived at a settled conclusion, I put every thought of wavering
+out of my mind. Deciding that with such a friend in business circles as
+yourself, I needed no other introducer to my new life, I set apart this
+evening for a confab with you on the subject. Meanwhile it is pretty
+generally known that I make no more engagements to appear through the
+country.</p>
+
+<p>I have but one more incident to relate. Last Sunday in walking down
+Fifth Avenue I met her. I did not do this inadvertently. I knew her
+custom of attending Bible class and for once put myself in her way. I
+did not give her time to remonstrate.</p>
+
+<p>"Do not express your displeasure," said I, "this shall never be
+repeated. I merely wish to say that I have concluded to leave a
+profession so little appreciated by those whose esteem I most desire to
+possess; that I am about entering a banker's office where it shall be my
+ambition to rise if possible, to wealth and consequence. If I
+succeed&mdash;you shall then know what my incentive has been. But till I
+succeed or at least give such tokens of success as shall insure respect,
+silence must be my portion and patience my sole support. Only of one
+thing rest assured, that until I inform you with my own lips that the
+hope which now illumines me is gone, it will continue to burn on in my
+breast, shedding light upon a way that can never seem dark while that
+glow rests upon it." And bowing with the ceremonious politeness our
+positions demanded, I held out my hand. "One clasp to encourage me," I
+entreated.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed as if she did not comprehend. "You are going to give up music,
+and for&mdash;for&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You?" said I. "Yes, don't forbid me," I implored; "it is too late."</p>
+
+<p>Like a lovely image of blushing girlhood turned by a lightning flash
+into marble, she paused, pallid and breathless where she was, gazing
+upon me with eyes that burned deeper and deeper as the full
+comprehension of all that this implied gradually forced itself upon her
+mind.</p>
+
+<p>"You make a chaos of my little world," she murmured at length.</p>
+
+<p>"No," said I, "<i>your</i> world is untouched. If it should never be my good
+fortune to enter it, you are not to grieve. You are free, Miss Preston,
+free as this sunshiny air we breathe; I alone am bound, and that because
+I must be whether I will or no."</p>
+
+<p>Then I saw the woman I had worshipped in this young fair girl shine
+fully and fairly upon me. Drawing herself up, she looked me in the face
+and calmly laid her hand in mine. "I am young," said she, "and do not
+know what may be right to say to one so generous and so kind. But this
+much I can promise, that whether or not I am ever able to duly reward
+you for what you undertake, I will at least make it the study of my life
+never to prove unworthy of so much trust and devotion."</p>
+
+<p>And with the last lingering look natural to a parting for years, we
+separated then and there, and the crowd came between us, and the Sunday
+bells rang on, and what was so vividly real to us at the moment, became
+in remembrance more like the mist and shadow of a dream.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VII" id="VII"></a>VII.</h2>
+
+<h3>MRS. SYLVESTER.</h3>
+
+<blockquote><p>Love is more pleasant than marriage, for the same reason that
+romances are more amusing than history.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Chamfort.</span></p>
+
+<p>"He draweth out the thread of his verbosity, finer than the
+staple of his argument."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Loves Labor Lost.</span></p></blockquote>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>Young Mandeville having finished his story, looked at his uncle. He
+found him sitting in an attitude of extreme absorption, his right arm
+stretched before him on the table, his face bent thoughtfully downwards
+and clouded with that deep melancholy that seemed its most natural
+expression, "He has not heard me," was the young man's first mortifying
+reflection. But catching his uncle's eye which at that moment raised
+itself, he perceived he was mistaken and that he had rather been
+listened to only too well.</p>
+
+<p>"You must forgive me if I have seemed to rhapsodize," the young man
+stammered. "You were so quiet I half forgot I had a listener and went on
+much as I would if I had been thinking aloud."</p>
+
+<p>His uncle smiled and throwing off the weight of his reflections whatever
+they might be, arose and began pacing the floor. "I see you are past
+surgery," quoth he, "any wisdom of mine would be only thrown away."</p>
+
+<p>Young Mandeville was hurt. He had expected some token of approval on his
+uncle's part, or at least some betrayal of sympathy. His looks expressed
+his disappointment.</p>
+
+<p>"You expected to convert me by this story," continued the elder, pausing
+with a certain regret before his nephew; "nothing could convert me
+but&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What?" inquired Mandeville after waiting in vain for the other to
+finish.</p>
+
+<p>"Something which we will never find in the whirl of New York fashionable
+life. A woman with faith to reward and soul to understand such
+unqualified trust as yours."</p>
+
+<p>"But I believe Miss Preston is such a girl and will be such a woman. Her
+looks, her last words prove it."</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing proves it but time and as for your belief, I have believed
+too." Then as if fearing he had said too much, assumed his most
+business-like tone and observed, "But we will drop all that; you have
+resolved to quit music and enter Wall Street, your object money and the
+social consideration which money secures. Now, why Wall Street?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because I can think of no other means for attaining what I desire, in
+the space of time I would consent to keep a young lady of Miss Preston's
+position waiting."</p>
+
+<p>"Humph! and you have money, I suppose, which you propose to risk on the
+hazard?"</p>
+
+<p>"Some! enough to start with; a small amount to you, but sufficient if I
+am fortunate."</p>
+
+<p>"And if you are not?"</p>
+
+<p>The young man opened his arms with an expressive gesture, "I am done
+for, that is all."</p>
+
+<p>"Bertram," his uncle exclaimed with a change of tone, "has it ever
+struck you that Mr. Preston might have as strong a prejudice against
+speculation as against the musical profession?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, that is, pardon me but I have sometimes thought that even in the
+event of success I should have to struggle against his inherited
+instincts of caste and his natural dislike of all things new, even
+wealth, but I never thought of the possibility of my arousing his
+distrust by speculating in stocks and engaging in enterprises so nearly
+in accord with his own business operations."</p>
+
+<p>"Yet if I guess aright you would run greater risk of losing the support
+of his countenance by following the hazardous course you propose, than
+if you continued in the line of art that now engages you."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I know nothing, but I fear the chances, Bertram."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I am already defeated and must give up my hopes of happiness."</p>
+
+<p>A smile thin and indefinable crossed the other's face. "No," said he,
+"not necessarily." And sitting down by his nephew's side, he asked if he
+had any objections to enter a bank. "In a good capacity," he exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"No indeed; it would be an opportunity surpassing my hopes. Do you know
+of an opening?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said he, "under the circumstances I will let you into the secret
+of my own affairs. I have always had one ambition, and that was to be at
+the head of a bank. I have not said much about it, but for the last five
+years I have been working to this end, and to-day you see me the
+possessor of at least three-fourths of the stock of the Madison Bank. It
+has been deteriorating for some time, consequently I was enabled to buy
+it low, but now that I have got it I intend to build up the concern. I
+am able to throw business of an important nature in its way, and I dare
+prophesy that before the year is out you will see it re-established upon
+a solid and influential footing."</p>
+
+<p>"I have no doubt of it, sir; you have the knack of success, any thing
+that you touch is sure to go straight."</p>
+
+<p>"Unhappily yes, as far as business operations go. But no matter about
+that;&mdash;" as if the other had introduced some topic incongruous to the
+one they were considering&mdash;"the point is this. In two weeks time I shall
+be elected President of the Bank; if you will accept the position of
+assistant cashier,&mdash;the best I can offer in consideration of your total
+ignorance of all details of the business,&mdash;it is open to you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Uncle! how generous! I&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Hush! your duties will be nominal, the present cashier is fully
+competent; but the leisure thus afforded will offer you abundant
+opportunity to make yourself acquainted with all matters connected with
+the banking system as well as with such capitalists as it would be well
+for you to know. So that when the occasion comes, I can raise you to the
+cashier's place or make such other disposal of your talents as will best
+insure your rapid advance."</p>
+
+<p>The young man's eyes sparkled; with a sudden impetuous movement he
+jumped to his feet and grasped his uncle's hand. "I can never thank you
+enough; you have made me your debtor for life. Now let any one ask me
+who is my father, and I will say&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"He was Edward Sylvester's brother. But come, come, this extreme
+gratitude is unnecessary. You have always been a favorite with me,
+Bertram, and now that I have no child, you seem doubly near; it is my
+pleasure to do what I can for you. But&mdash;" and here he surveyed him with
+a wistful look, "I wish you were entering into this new line from love
+of the business rather than love of a woman. I fear for you my boy. It
+is an awful thing to stake one's future upon a single chance and that
+chance a woman's faith. If she should fail you after you had compassed
+your fortune, should die&mdash;well you could bear that perhaps; but if she
+turned false, and married some one else, or even married you and then&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What?" came in silvery accents from the door, and a woman richly clad,
+her trailing velvets filling the air at once with an oppressive perfume,
+entered the room and paused before them in an attitude meant to be arch,
+but which from the massiveness of her figure and the scornful carriage
+of her head, succeeded in being simply imperious.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester rose abruptly as if unpleasantly surprised. "Ona!" he
+exclaimed, hastening, however, to cover his embarassment by a courteous
+acknowledgement of her presence and a careless remark concerning the
+shortness of the services that had allowed her to return from church so
+early. "I did not hear you come in," he observed.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I judge not," she returned with a side glance at Mandeville. "But
+the services were not short, on the contrary I thought I should never
+hear the last amen. Mr. Turner's voice is very agreeable," she went on,
+in a rambling manner all her own, "it never interferes with your
+thoughts; not that I am considered as having any," she interjected with
+another glance at their silent guest, "a woman in society with a
+reputation for taste in all matters connected with fashionable living,
+has no thoughts of course; business men with only one idea in their
+heads, that of making money, have more no doubt. Do you know, Edward,"
+she went on with sudden inconsequence, which was another trait of this
+amiable lady's conversation, "that I have quite come to a conclusion in
+regard to the girl Philip Longtree is going to marry; she may be pretty,
+but she does not know how to dress. I wish you could have seen her
+to-night; she had on mauve with old gold trimmings. Now with one of her
+complexion&mdash;But I forget you haven't seen her. Bertram, I think I shall
+give a German next month, will you come? Oh, Edward!" as if the thought
+had suddenly struck her, "Princess Louise <i>is</i> the sixth child of Queen
+Victoria; I asked Mr. Turner to-night. By the way, I wonder if it will
+be pleasant enough to take the horses out to-morrow? Bird has been
+obliging enough to get sick just in the height of the season, Mr.
+Mandeville. There are a thousand things I have got to do and I hate
+hired horses." And with a petulant sigh she laid her prayer-book on the
+table and with a glance in the mirror near by, began pulling off her
+gloves in the slow and graceful fashion eminently in keeping with her
+every movement.</p>
+
+<p>It was as if an atmosphere of worldliness had settled down upon this
+room sanctified a moment before by the utterances of a pure and noble
+love. Mr. Sylvester looked uneasy, while Bertram searched in vain for
+something to say.</p>
+
+<p>"I seem to have brought a blight," she suddenly murmured in an easy tone
+somewhat at variance with the glance of half veiled suspicion which she
+darted from under her heavy lids, at first one and then the other of the
+two gentlemen before her. "No, I will not sit," she added as her husband
+offered her a chair. "I am tired almost to death and would retire
+immediately, but I interrupted you I believe in the utterance of some
+wise saying about matrimony. It is an interesting subject and I have a
+notion to hear what one so well qualified to speak in regard to it&mdash;"
+and here she made a slow, half lazy courtesy to her husband with a look
+that might mean anything from coquetry to defiance&mdash;"has to say to a
+young man like Mr. Mandeville."</p>
+
+<p>Edward Sylvester who was regarded as an autocrat among men, and who
+certainly was an acknowledged leader in any company he chose to enter,
+bowed his head before this anomalous glance with a gesture of something
+like submission.</p>
+
+<p>"One is not called upon to repeat every inadvertent phrase he may
+utter," said he. "Bertram was consulting me upon certain topics and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You answered him in your own brilliant style," she concluded. "What did
+you say?" she asked in another moment in a low unmoved tone which the
+final act of smoothing out her gloves on the table with hands delicate
+as white rose leaves but firm as marble, did not either hasten or
+retard.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh if you insist," he returned lightly, "and are willing to bear the
+reflection my unfortunate remark seems to cast upon the sex, I was
+merely observing to my nephew, that the man who centered all his hopes
+upon a woman's faith, was liable to disappointment. Even if he succeeded
+in marrying her there were still possibilities of his repenting any
+great sacrifice made in her behalf."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed!" and for once the delicate cheek flushed deeper than its rouge.
+"And why do you say this?" she inquired, dropping her coquettish manner
+and flashing upon them both, the haughty and implacable woman Bertram
+had always believed her to be, notwithstanding her vagaries and fashion.</p>
+
+<p>"Because I have seen much of life outside my own house," her husband
+replied with undiminished courtesy; "and feel bound to warn any young
+man of his probable fate, who thinks to find nothing but roses and
+felicity beyond the gates of fashionable marriage."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah then, it was on general principles you were speaking," she remarked
+with a soft laugh that undulated through an atmosphere suddenly grown
+too heavy for easy breathing. "I did not know; wives are so little apt
+to be appreciated in this world, Mr. Mandeville, I was afraid he might
+be giving you some homely advice founded upon personal experience." And
+she moved towards their guest with that strange smile of hers which some
+called dangerous but which he had always regarded as oppressive.</p>
+
+<p>She saw him drop his eyes, and smiled again, but in a different way.
+This woman, whom no one accused of anything worse than levity, hailed
+every tribute to her power, as a miser greets the glint of gold. With a
+turn of her large but elegant figure that in its slow swaying reminded
+you of some heavy tropical flower, hanging inert, intoxicated with its
+own fragrance, she dismissed at once the topic that had engaged them,
+and launched into one of her choicest streams of inconsequent talk. But
+Mandeville was in no mood to listen to trivialities, and being of a
+somewhat impatient nature, presently rose and excusing himself, took a
+hurried leave. Not so hurried however that he did not have time to
+murmur to his uncle as they walked towards the door:</p>
+
+<p>"You would make comparison between the girl I worship and other women in
+fashionable life. Do not I pray; she is no more like them than a star
+that shines is like a rose that blooms. My fate will not be like that of
+most men that we know, but better and higher."</p>
+
+<p>And his uncle standing there in the grand hall-way, with the fresh
+splendors of unlimited wealth gleaming upon him from every side, looked
+after the young man with a sigh and repeated, "Better and higher? God in
+his merciful goodness grant it."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VIII" id="VIII"></a>VIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>SHADOWS OF THE PAST.</h3>
+
+<blockquote><p>"Memory, the warder of the brain."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Macbeth.</span></p></blockquote>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>It was long past midnight. The fire in the grate burned dimly, shedding
+its lingering glow on the face of the master of the house as with bowed
+head and folded hands he sat alone and brooding before its dying embers.</p>
+
+<p>It was a lonesome sight. The very magnificence of the spacious apartment
+with its lofty walls and glittering works of art, seemed to give an air
+of remoteness to that solitary form, bending beneath the weight of its
+reflections. From the exquisitely decorated ceiling to the turkish rugs
+scattered over the polished floor, all was elegant and luxurious, and
+what had splendors like these to do with thoughts that bent the brows
+and overshadowed the lips of man? The very lights burned deprecatingly,
+illuminating beauties upon which no eye gazed and for which no heart
+beat. The master himself seemed to feel this, for he presently rose and
+put them out, after which he seated himself as before, only if possible
+with more abandon, as if with the extinguishing of the light some eye
+had been shut whose gaze he had hitherto feared. And in truth my lady's
+image shone fainter from its heavy panel, and the smile which had met
+with unrelenting sweetness the glare of the surrounding splendor,
+softened in the mellow glimmer of the fire-light to an etherial halo
+that left you at rest.</p>
+
+<p><i>One, two</i>, THREE, the small clock sounded from the mantel and yet no
+stir took place in the sombre figure keeping watch beneath. What were
+the thoughts which could thus detain from his comfortable bed a man
+already tired with manifold cares? It would be hard to tell. The waters
+that gush at the touch of the diviner's rod are tumultuous in their flow
+and rush hither and thither with little heed to the restraining force of
+rule and reason. But of the pictures that rose before his eyes in those
+dying embers, there were two which stood out in startling distinctness.
+Let us see if we can convey the impression of them to other eyes and
+hearts.</p>
+
+<p>First, the form of his mother. Ah grey-bearded men weighted with the
+cares of life and absorbed in the monotonous round of duties that to you
+are the be all and end all of existence, to whom morning means a
+jostling ride to the bank, the store or the office, and with whom night
+is but the name for a worse unrest because of its unfulfilled promises
+of slumber, what soul amongst you all is so callous to the holy memories
+of childhood, as not to thrill with something of the old time feeling of
+love and longing as the memory of that tender face with its watchful eye
+and ready smiles, comes back to you from the midst of weary years! Your
+mother!</p>
+
+<p>But Edward Sylvester with that black line across his life cutting past
+from present, what makes him think of his mother to-night; and the
+cottage door upon the hillside where she used to stand with eager eyes
+looking up and down the road as he came trudging home from school,
+swinging his satchel and shouting at every squirrel that started across
+the road or peeped from the branches of the grand old maples overhead!
+And the garret-chamber under the roof, the scene of many a romp with
+Elsie and Sonsie and Jack, neighbors' children to whom the man of to-day
+would be an awe and a mystery! And the little room where he slept with
+Tom his own blue-eyed brother so soon to die of a wasting disease, but
+full of warm blood then and all alive with boyish pranks. He could
+almost hear the wild clear laugh with which the mischievous fellow
+started upon its travels, the rooster whose legs he had tied a short
+space apart with one of Sonsie's faded ribbons, a laugh that became
+unrestrained when the poor creature in attempting to run down hill,
+rolled over and over, cutting such a figure before his late admirers,
+the hens, that even Elsie smiled in the midst of her gentle entreaties.
+And Jocko the crow, whom taming had made one of the boys! poor Jocko! is
+it nearly thirty years since you used to stalk in majesty through the
+village streets, with your neat raven coat closely buttoned across your
+breast and your genteel caw, caw, and condescending nod for old
+acquaintances? The day seems but as yesterday when you marred the stolen
+picnic up in the woods by flying off with a flock of your fellow
+black-coats, nor is it easy to realize that the circle of tow-headed
+fellows who hailed with shouts your ignominious return after a day or
+so's experience of the vaunted pleasures of freedom, are now sharp
+featured men without a smile for youth or a thought beyond the hard cold
+dollar buried deep in their pockets.</p>
+
+<p>And the church up over the hills! and the long Sunday walk at mother's
+side with the sunshine glowing on the dusty road and beating on the
+river flowing far beyond! The same road, the same river of Monday and
+Tuesday but how different it looked to the boy; almost like another
+scene, as if Sunday clothes were on the world as well as upon his
+restless little limbs. How he longed for it to be Monday though he did
+not say so; and what a different day Saturday would have been if only
+there was no long, sleepy Sunday to follow it.</p>
+
+<p>But the mother! She did not dread that day. Her eyes used to brighten
+when the bell began to ring from the old church steeple. Her eyes! how
+they mingled with every picture! They seemed to fill the night. What a
+sparkle they had, yet how they used to soften at his few hurried
+caresses. He was always too busy for kisses; there were the snares in
+the north woods to be looked after; the nest in the apple-tree to be
+inquired into; the skates to be ground before the river froze over; the
+nuts to be gathered and stored in that same old garret chamber under the
+eaves. But now how vividly her least look comes back to the tired man,
+from the glance of wistful sympathy with which she met his childish
+disappointments to the flash of joy that hailed his equally childish
+delights.</p>
+
+<p>And another scene there is in the embers to-night; a remembrance of
+later days when the mother with her love and yearning was laid low in
+the grave, and manhood had learned its first lessons of passion and
+ambition from the glance of younger eyes and the smile of riper lips.
+Not the picture of a woman, however; that was already present beside
+him, shining from its panel with an insistence that not even the putting
+out of the lights could quite quench or subdue, but of a child young,
+pure and beautiful, sitting by the river in the glow of a June sunshine,
+gazing at the hills of his boyhood's home with a look on her face such
+as he had never before seen on that of child or woman. A simple picture
+with a simple villager's daughter for its centre, but as he mused upon
+it to-night, the success and triumph of the last ten years faded from
+his sight like the ashes that fell at his feet, and he found himself
+questioning in vain as to what better thing he had met in all the walks
+of his busy life than that young child's innocence and faith as they
+shone upon him that day from her soft uplifted eyes.</p>
+
+<p>He had been sitting the whole warm noontide at the side of her whose
+half gracious, half scornful, wholly indolent acceptance of his homage,
+he called love, and enervated by an atmosphere he was as yet too
+inexperienced to recognize as of the world, worldly, had strolled forth
+to cool his fevered brow in the fresh autumn breeze that blew up from
+the river. He was a gay-hearted youth in those days, heedless of
+everything but the passing moment; nature meant little to him; and when
+in the course of his ramble he came upon the form of a child sitting on
+the edge of the river, he remembers wondering what she saw in a sweep of
+empty water to interest her so deeply. Indeed he was about to inquire
+when she turned and he caught a glimpse of her eyes and knew at once
+without asking. Yet in those days he was anything but quick to recognize
+the presence of feeling. A face was beautiful or plain to him, not
+eloquent or expressive. But this child's countenance was exceptional. It
+made you forget the cotton frock she wore, it made you forget yourself.
+As he gazed on it, he felt the stir of something in his breast he had
+never known before, and half dreaded to hear her speak lest the charm
+should fail or the influence be lost. Yet how could he pass on and not
+speak. Laying his hand on her head, he asked her what she was thinking
+of as she sat there all alone looking off on the river; and the wee
+thing drew in her breath and surveyed him with all her soul in her great
+black eyes before she replied, "I do not know, I never know." Then
+looking back she dreamily added, "It makes me want to go away, miles
+away,"&mdash;and she held out her tiny arms towards the river with a longing
+gesture; "and it makes me want to cry."</p>
+
+<p>And he understood or thought he did and for the first time in his life
+looked upon the river that had met his gaze from childhood, with eyes
+that saw its exceeding beauty. Ah it was an exquisite scene, a rare
+scene, mountain melting into mountain and meadow vanishing into meadow,
+till the flow of silver waters was lost in a horizon of azure mist. No
+wonder that a child without snares to set or nuts to gather, should
+pause a moment to gaze upon it, as even he in the days gone by would
+sometimes stop on Sabbath eves to snatch a kiss from his mother's lips.</p>
+
+<p>"It is like a fairy land, is it not?" quoth the child looking up into
+his face with a wistful glance. "Do you know what it is that makes me
+feel so?"</p>
+
+
+<p>He smiled and sat down by her side. Somehow he felt as if a talk with
+this innocent one would restore him more than a walk on the hills. "It
+is the spirit of beauty, my child, you are moved by the loveliness of
+the scene; is it a new one to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, oh no, but I always feel the same. As if something here was hungry,
+don't you know?" and she laid her little hand on her breast.</p>
+
+<p>He did not know, but he smiled upon her notwithstanding, and made her
+talk and talk till the gush of the sweet child spirit with its hidden
+longings and but half understood aspirations, bathed his whole being in
+a reviving shower, and he felt as if he had wandered into a new world
+where the languors of the tropics were unknown, and passion, if there
+was such, had the wings of an eagle instead of the siren's voice and
+fascination.</p>
+
+<p>Her name was Paula, she said, and before leaving he found that she was a
+relative of the woman he loved. This was a slight shock to him. The lily
+and the cactus abloom on one stalk! How could that be? and for a moment
+he felt as if the splendors of the glorious woman paled before the
+lustre of the innocent child. But the feeling, if it was strong enough
+to be called such, soon passed. As the days swept by bringing evenings
+with light and music and whispered words beneath the vine-leaves, the
+remembrance of the pure, sweet hour beside the river, gradually faded
+till only a vague memory of that gentle uplifted face sweet with its
+childish dimples, remained to hallow now and then a passing reverie or a
+fevered dream.</p>
+
+<p>But to-night its every lineament filled his soul, vying with the
+memories of his mother in its vividness and power. O why had he not
+learned the lesson it taught. Why had he turned his back upon the high
+things of life to yield himself to a current that swept him on and on
+until the power of resistance left him and&mdash;O dwell not here wild
+thoughts! Pause not on the threshold of the one dark memory that blasts
+the soul and sears the heart in the secret hours of night. Let the dead
+past bury its dead and if one must think, let it be of the hope, which
+the remembrance of that short glimpse into a pure if infantile soul has
+given to his long darkened spirit.</p>
+
+<p>One, two, three, FOUR; and the fire is dead and the night has grown
+chill, but he heeds it not. He has asked himself if his life's book is
+quite closed to the higher joys of existence? whether money getting and
+money holding is to absorb him body and soul forever; and with the
+question a great yearning seizes him to look upon that sweet child
+again, if haply in the gleam of her pure spirit, something of the noble
+and the pure that lay beneath the crust of life might be again revealed
+to his longing sight.</p>
+
+<p>"She must be a great girl now," murmured he to himself, "as old as if
+not older than she whom Bertram adores so passionately, but she will
+always be a child to me, a sweet pure child whose innocence is my
+teacher and whose ignorance is my better wisdom. If anything will save
+me&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But here the shadow settled again; when it lifted, the morning ray lay
+cool and ghostly over the hearthstone.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IX" id="IX"></a>IX.</h2>
+
+<h3>PAULA.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"The stars of midnight shall be dear<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To her; and she shall lean her ear<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In many a secret place<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where rivulets dance their wayward round,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And beauty born of murmuring sound<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Shall pass into her face."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Wordsworth.</span><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>A wintry scene. Snow-piled hills stretching beyond a frozen river. On
+the bank a solitary figure tall, dark and commanding, standing with eyes
+bent sadly on a long narrow mound at his feet. It is Edward Sylvester
+and the mound is the grave of his mother.</p>
+
+<p>It is ten years since he stood upon that spot. In all that time no
+memories of his childhood's home, no recollection of that lonely grave
+among the pines, had been sufficient to allure him from the city and its
+busy round of daily cares. Indeed he had always shrunk at the very name
+of the place and never of his own will alluded to it, but the reveries
+of a night had awakened a longing that was not to be appeased, and in
+the face of his wife's cold look of astonishment and a secret dread in
+his own heart, had left his comfortable fireside, for the scenes of his
+early life and marriage, and was now standing, in the bleak December
+air, gazing down upon the stone that marked his mother's grave.</p>
+
+<p>But tender as were the chords that reverberated at this sight, it was
+not to revisit this tomb he had returned to Grotewell. No, that other
+vision, the vision of young sweet appreciative life has drawn him more
+strongly than the memory of the dead. It was to search out and gaze
+again upon the innocent girl, whose eloquent eyes and lofty spirit had
+so deeply moved him in the past, that he had braved the chill of the
+Connecticut hills and incurred the displeasure of his wife.</p>
+
+<p>Yet when he turned away from that simple headstone and set his face
+towards the village streets it was with a sinking of the heart that
+first revealed to him the severity of the ordeal to which he had thus
+wantonly subjected himself. Not that the wintry trees and snow covered
+roofs appealed to him as strongly as the same trees and homes would have
+done in their summer aspect. The land was bright with verdure when that
+shadow fell whose gloom resting upon all the landscape, made a walk down
+this quiet road even at this remote day, a matter of such pain to him.
+But scenes that have caught the reflection of a life's joy or a heart's
+sorrow, lose not their power of appeal, with the leaves they shake from
+their trees, and nothing that had met the eyes of this man from the hour
+he left this spot, no, not the glance of his wife as his child fell back
+dead in his arms, had shot such a pang to his soul as the sight of that
+long street with its array of quiet homes, stretching out before him
+into the dim grey distance.</p>
+
+<p>But for all that he was determined to traverse it, ay to the very end,
+though his steps must pass the house whose ghostly portals were fraught
+with memories dismal as death to him. On then he proceeded, walking with
+his usual steady pace that only faltered or broke, as he met the shy
+eyes of some hurrying village maiden, speeding upon some errand down the
+snowy street, or encountered some old friend of his youth who despite
+his altered mien and commanding carriage, recognized in him the slim
+young bank cashier who had left them now ten long years ago to make a
+name and fortune in the great city.</p>
+
+<p>It was noon by the time he gained the heart of the village, and school
+was out and the children came rushing by with just the same shout and
+scamper with which he used to hail that hour of joyous release. How it
+carried him back to the days when those four red walls towered upon him
+with awful significance, as with books on his back and a half eaten
+apple in his pocket he crept up the walk, conscious that the bell had
+rung its last shrill note a good half hour before. He felt half tempted
+to stop and make his way through the crowd of shouting boys and dancing
+girls to that same old door again, and see for himself if the huge LATE
+which in a fit of childish revenge he had cut on its awkward panels, was
+still there to meet the eyes of tardy boys and loitering girls. But the
+wondering looks of the children unused to behold a figure so stately in
+their simple streets deterred him and he passed thoughtfully on. So
+engrossed was he by the reminiscences of Tom and Elsie which the school
+house had awakened, that he passed the ominous mansion which had been
+his dread, and the bank where he had worked, and the arbor by the side
+of the road where he had sat out the first hours of his fatal courtship,
+almost without realizing their presence, and was at the end of the
+street and in full view of the humble cottage which the little Paula had
+pointed out as her home on that day of their first acquaintance.</p>
+
+<p>"Good heaven! and I do not even know if she is alive," he suddenly
+ejaculated, stopping where he was and eying the lowly walls before him
+with a quick realization of the possibilities of a great disappointment.
+"Ten years have strown many a grave on the hillside and Ona would not
+mention it if she lost every relative she had in this town. What a fool
+I have been," thought he.</p>
+
+<p>But with the stern resolution which had carried him through many a
+difficulty, he prepared to advance, when he was again arrested by seeing
+the door of the house he was contemplating, suddenly open and a girlish
+figure issue forth. Could it be Paula? With eager, almost feverish
+interest he watched her approach. She was a slight young thing and came
+towards him with a rapid movement almost jaunty in its freedom. If it
+were Paula, he would know her by her eyes, but for some reason he hoped
+it was not she, not the child of his dreams.</p>
+
+<p>At a yard or two in front of him she paused astonished. This grave, tall
+figure with the melancholy brow, deep eyes and firmly compressed lips
+was an unaccustomed sight in this primitive town. Scarcely realizing
+what she did she gave a little courtesy and was proceeding on when he
+stopped her with a hurried gesture.</p>
+
+<p>"Is Mrs. Fairchild still living?" he asked, indicating the house she had
+just left.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Fairchild? O no," she returned, surveying him out of the corner of
+a very roguish pair of brown eyes, with a certain sly wonder at the
+suspense in his voice. "She has been dead as long as I can remember. Old
+Miss Abby and her sister live there now."</p>
+
+<p>"And who are they?" he hurriedly asked; he could not bring himself to
+mention Paula's name.</p>
+
+
+<p>"Why, Miss Abby and Miss Belinda," she returned with a puzzled air.
+"Miss Abby sews and Miss Belinda teaches the school. I don't know
+anything more about them, sir."</p>
+
+<p>The courteous gentleman bowed. "And they live there quite alone?"</p>
+
+<p>"O no sir, Paula lives with them."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, she does;" and the young girl looking at him could not detect the
+slightest change in his haughty countenance. "Paula is Mrs. Fairchild's
+daughter."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," said he, and allowed the pretty brown-eyed miss to pass on,
+which she did with lingering footsteps and many a backward glance of the
+eye.</p>
+
+<p>Halting at the door of that small cottage, Edward Sylvester reasoned
+with himself.</p>
+
+<p>"She may be just such another fresh-looking, round-faced,
+mischievous-eyed school-girl. Spiritual children do not always make
+earnest-souled women. Let me beware what hopes I build on a foundation
+so unsubstantial." Yet when in a moment later the door opened and a
+weazen-faced dapper, little woman appeared, all smiles and welcome, he
+owned to a sensation of dismay that sufficiently convinced him what a
+hold this hope of meeting with something exceptionally sweet and high,
+had taken upon his hitherto careless and worldly spirit.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Sylvester I am sure! I thought Ona would remember us after a while.
+Come in sir, do, my sister will be home in a few moments." And with a
+deprecatory flutter comical enough in a woman at least seventy odd years
+old, she led her distinguished guest into a large unused room where in
+spite of his remonstrances she at once proceeded to build a fire.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a pleasure sir," she said to every utterance of regret on his
+part at the trouble he was causing. And though her vocabulary was thus
+made to appear somewhat small, her sincerity was undoubted. "We have
+counted the days, Belinda and I, since we sent the last letter. It may
+seem foolish to you, sir; but Paula is growing so fast and Belinda says
+is so uncommon smart for her age that we did think that it was time Ona
+knew just what a straight we were in. Do you want to see Paula?"</p>
+
+<p>"Very much," he returned, shocked and embarrassed at the position in
+which he found himself put by the reticence of his wife on the subject
+of her relations. "They think I have come in reply to a letter," he
+mused, "and I did not even know my wife had received one."</p>
+
+<p>"You will be surprised," she exclaimed with a complacent nod as the fire
+blazed up brightly; "every one is surprised who sees her for the first
+time. Is my niece well?" And thus it was he learned the relation between
+his wife of ten years and these simple inhabitants of the little cottage
+in Grotewell.</p>
+
+<p>He replied as in duty bound, and presently by the use of a few dexterous
+questions succeeded in eliciting from this simple-minded old lady, the
+few facts necessary to a proper understanding of the situation. Miss
+Abby and Miss Belinda were two maiden ladies, sisters of Mrs. Fairchild
+and Ona's mother, who on the death of the former took up their abode in
+the little cottage for the purpose of bringing up the orphan Paula. They
+had succeeded in this by dint of the utmost industry, but Paula was not
+a common child, and Belinda, who was evidently the autocrat of the
+house, had decided that she ought to have other advantages. She had
+therefore written to Mrs. Sylvester concerning the child, in the hopes
+that that lady would take enough interest in her pretty little cousin to
+send her to boarding-school; but they had received no reply till now,
+all of which was perfectly right of course, Mrs. Sylvester being
+undoubtedly occupied and Mr. Sylvester himself being better than any
+letter.</p>
+
+<p>"And does Paula herself know what efforts you have been making in her
+behalf," asked Mr. Sylvester upon the receipt of this information.</p>
+
+<p>The little lady shook her head with vivacity. "Belinda advised me to say
+nothing," she remarked. "The child is contented with her home and we did
+not like to raise her expectations. You will never regret anything you
+may do for her," she went on in a hurried way with a peep now and then
+towards the door as if while enjoying a momentary freedom of speech, she
+feared an intrusion that would cut that pleasure short. "Paula is a
+grateful child and never has given us a moment of concern from the time
+she began to put pieces of patchwork together. But there is Belinda,"
+she suddenly exclaimed, rising with the little dip and jerk of her left
+shoulder that was habitual to her whenever she was amused or excited.
+"Belinda," she cried, going to the door and speaking with great
+impressiveness, "Mr. Sylvester is in the parlor." And almost instantly a
+tall middle aged lady entered, whose plain but powerful countenance and
+dignified demeanor, stamped her at once as belonging to a very different
+type of woman from her sister.</p>
+
+<p>"I am very glad to see you sir," she exclaimed in a slow determined
+voice as dissimilar as possible from the piping tones of Miss Abby. "Is
+not Mrs. Sylvester with you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," returned he, "I have come alone; my wife is not fond of travelling
+in winter."</p>
+
+<p>The slightest gleam shot from her bright keen eye. "Is she not well?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes quite well, but not over strong," he rejoined quietly.</p>
+
+<p>She gave him another quick look, settled some matter with herself and
+taking off her bonnet, sat down by the fire. At once her sister ceased
+in her hovering about the room and sitting also, became to all
+appearance her silent shadow.</p>
+
+<p>"Paula has gone up stairs to take off her bonnet," the younger woman
+said in a straightforward manner just short of being brusque. "She is a
+very remarkable girl, Mr. Sylvester, a genius I suppose some would call
+her, a child of nature I prefer to say. Whatever there is to be learned
+in this town she has learned. And in a place where nature speaks and
+good books abound that is not inconsiderable. I have taken pride in her
+talents I acknowledge, and have endeavored to do what I could to
+cultivate them to the best advantage. There is no girl in my school who
+can write so original a composition, nor is there one with a truer heart
+or more tractable disposition."</p>
+
+<p>"You have then been her teacher as well as her friend, she owes you a
+double debt of gratitude."</p>
+
+<p>A look hard to understand flashed over her homely face. "I have never
+thought of debt or gratitude in connection with Paula. The only effort
+which I have ever made in her behalf which cost me anything, is this one
+which threatens me with her loss." Then as if fearing she had said too
+much, set her firm lips still firmer and ignoring the subject of the
+child, astonished him by certain questions on the leading issues of the
+day that at once betrayed a truly virile mind.</p>
+
+<p>"She is a study," thought he to himself, but meeting her on the ground
+she had taken, replied at once and to her evident satisfaction in the
+direct and simple manner that appeals the most forcibly to a strong if
+somewhat unpolished understanding, while the meek little Miss Abby
+glanced from one to the other with a humble awe more indicative of her
+appreciation for their superiority than of her comprehension of the
+subject.</p>
+
+<p>But what with Miss Belinda's secret anxiety and Mr. Sylvester's
+unconscious listening for a step upon the stair, the conversation, brisk
+as it had opened, gradually languished, and ere long with a sort of
+clairvoyant understanding of her sister's wishes, Miss Abby arose and
+with her customary jerk left the room for Paula.</p>
+
+<p>"The child is not timid but has an unaccountable aversion to entering
+the presence of strangers alone," Miss Belinda explained; but Mr.
+Sylvester did not hear her, for at that moment the door re-opened and
+Miss Abby stepped in with the young girl thus heralded.</p>
+
+<p>Edward Sylvester never forgot that moment, and indeed few men could have
+beheld the picture of extraordinary loveliness thus revealed, without a
+shock of surprise equal to the delight it inspired. She was not pretty;
+the very word was a misnomer, she was simply one of nature's most
+exquisite and undeniable beauties. From the crown of her ebon locks to
+the sole of her dainty foot, she was perfect as the most delicate
+coloring and the utmost harmony of contour could make her. And not in
+the conventional type either. There was an individuality in her style
+that was as fresh as it was uncommon. She was at once unique and
+faultless, something that can be said of few women however beautiful or
+alluring.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester had not expected this, as indeed how could he, and for a
+moment he could only gaze with a certain swelling of the heart at the
+blooming loveliness that in one instant had transformed the odd little
+parlor into a bower fit for the habitation of princes. But soon his
+natural self-possession returned, and rising with his most courteous
+bow, he greeted the blushing girl with words of simple welcome.</p>
+
+<p>Instantly her eyes which had been hitherto kept bent upon the floor
+flashed upward to his face and a smile full of the wonder of an unlooked
+for, almost unhoped for delight, swept radiantly over her lips, and he
+saw with deep and sudden satisfaction that the hour which had made such
+an impression upon him, had not been forgotten by her; that his voice
+had recalled what his face failed to do, and that he was recognized.</p>
+
+<p>"It is Mr. Sylvester, your cousin Ona's husband," Miss Belinda
+interposed in a matter-of-fact way, evidently attributing the emotion of
+the child to her astonishment at the imposing appearance of their guest.</p>
+
+<p>"And it was <i>you</i> who married Ona!" she involuntarily murmured, blushing
+the next moment at this simple utterance of her thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, dear child," Mr. Sylvester hastened to say. "And so you remember
+me?" he presently added, smiling down upon her with a sense of new life
+that for the moment made every care and anxiety shrink into the
+background.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she simply returned, taking the chair beside him with the
+unconscious grace of perfect self-forgetfulness. "It was the first time
+I had found any one to listen to my childish enthusiasms; it is natural
+such kindness should make its impression."</p>
+
+<p>"Little Paula and I met long ago," quoth Mr. Sylvester turning to the
+somewhat astonished Miss Belinda. "It was before my marriage and she was
+then&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Just ten years old," finished Paula, seeing him cast her an inquiring
+glance.</p>
+
+<p>"Very young for such a thoughtful little miss," he exclaimed. "And have
+those childish enthusiasms quite departed?" he continued, smiling upon
+her with gentle encouragement. "Do you no longer find a fairy-land in
+the view up the river?"</p>
+
+<p>She flushed, casting a timid glance at her aunt, but meeting his eyes
+again seemed to forget everything and everybody in the inspiration which
+his presence afforded.</p>
+
+<p>"I fear I must acknowledge that it is more a fairy-land to me than
+ever," she softly replied. "Knowledge does not always bring disillusion,
+and though I have learned one by one the names of the towns scattered
+along those misty banks, and though I know they are no less prosaic in
+their character than our own humdrum village, yet I cannot rid myself of
+the notion that those verdant slopes with their archway of clouds, hide
+the portals of Paradise, and that I have only to follow the birds in
+their flight up the river to find myself on the verge of a mystery, the
+banks at my feet can never disclose."</p>
+
+<p>"May the gates of God's Paradise never recede as those would do, my
+child, if like the birds you attempted to pierce them."</p>
+
+<p>"Paula is a dreamer," quoth Miss Belinda in a matter-of-fact tone, "but
+she is a good girl notwithstanding and can solve a geometrical problem
+with the best."</p>
+
+<p>"And sew on the machine and make a very good pie," timidly put in Miss
+Abby.</p>
+
+<p>"That is well," laughed Mr. Sylvester, observing that the poor child's
+head had fallen forward in maidenly shame at her aunts' elogiums as well
+as at the length of the speech into which she had been betrayed. "It
+shows that her eyes can see what is at hand as well as what is beyond
+our reach." Then with a touch of his usual formal manner intended to
+restore her to herself, "Do you like study, Paula?"</p>
+
+<p>In an instant her eyes flashed. "I more than like it; it feeds me.
+Knowledge has its vistas too," she added with an arch look, the first he
+had seen on her hitherto serious countenance. "I can never outgrow my
+recognition of the portals it discloses or the fairy-land it opens up to
+every inquiring eye."</p>
+
+<p>"Even geometry," he ventured, more anxious to probe this fresh young
+mind than he had ever been to sound the opinions of the most notable men
+of the day.</p>
+
+<p>"Even geometry," she smiled. "To be sure its portals are somewhat
+methodical in shape, allowing no scope to the fancy, but from its
+triangles and circles have been born the grandeurs of architecture, and
+upright on the threshold of its exact laws and undeviating calculations,
+I see an angel with a golden rod in his hand, measuring the heavens."</p>
+
+<p>"Even a stone speaks to a poet," said Mr. Sylvester with a glance at
+Miss Belinda.</p>
+
+<p>"But Paula is no poet," returned that lady with strict and impartial
+honesty. "She has never put a line on paper to my knowledge. Have you
+child?"</p>
+
+<p>"No aunt, I would as soon imprison a falling sunbeam or try to catch the
+breeze that lifts my hair or kisses my cheek."</p>
+
+<p>"You see," continued Mr. Sylvester still looking at Miss Belinda.</p>
+
+<p>She answered with a doubtful shake of the head and an earnest glance at
+the girl as if she perceived something in that bright young soul, that
+even she had never observed before.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you ever been away from home?" he now asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Never, I know as little of the great world as a callow nestling. No, I
+should not say that, for the young bird has no Aunt Belinda to tell of
+the great cathedrals and the wonderful music she has heard and the
+glorious pictures she has seen in her visits to the city. It is almost
+as good as travelling one's self to hear Aunt Belinda talk."</p>
+
+<p>It was now the turn of the mature plain woman to blush, which she did
+under Mr. Sylvester's searching eye.</p>
+
+<p>"You have then been in the habit of visiting New York?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have been there twice," she returned evasively.</p>
+
+<p>"Since my marriage?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes sir;" with a firm closing of her lips.</p>
+
+<p>"I did not know you were there or I should have insisted upon your
+remaining at my house."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," said she with a quick triumphant glance at her demure
+little shadow, who looked back in amaze and was about to speak when Miss
+Belinda proceeded. "My visits usually have been on business; I should
+not think of troubling Mrs. Sylvester." And then he knew that his wife
+had been aware of those visits if he had not.</p>
+
+<p>But he refrained from testifying to his discovery. "You speak of music,"
+said he, turning gently back to Paula. "Have you a taste for it? Would
+it make you happy to hear such music as your aunt tells about?"</p>
+
+<p>"O yes, I can conceive nothing grander than to sit in a church whose
+every line is beauty and listen while the great organ utters its song of
+triumph or echoes in the wonderful way it does, the emotions you have
+tried to express and could not. I would give a whole week of my life on
+the hills, dear as it is, for one such hour, I think."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester smiled. "It is a rare kind of coin to offer for such a
+simple pleasure, but it may meet with its acceptance, nevertheless;" and
+in his look and in his voice there was an appearance of affectionate
+interest that completed the subjugation of the watchful Miss Belinda,
+who now became doubly assured that whatever neglect had been shown her
+by her niece was not due to that niece's husband.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester recognized the effect he had produced and hastened to
+complete it, feeling that the good opinion of Miss Belinda would be
+valuable to any man. "I have been a boy on these hills," said he, "and
+know what it is to long for what is beyond while enjoying what is
+present. You shall hear the organ my child." And stopped, wondering to
+himself over the new sweet interest he seemed to take in the prospect of
+pleasures which he had supposed himself to have long ago exhausted.</p>
+
+<p>"Hear the organ, I? why that means&mdash;O what does it mean?" she inquired,
+turning with a look of beaming hope towards her aunt.</p>
+
+<p>"You must ask Mr. Sylvester," that uncompromising lady replied, with a
+straightforward look at the fire.</p>
+
+<p>And he with a smile told the blushing girl that according to his
+reading, mortals went blindfold into fairy-land; and she understood what
+he meant and was silent, whereupon he turned the conversation upon more
+common-place subjects.</p>
+
+<p>For how could he tell her then of the intention that had awakened in his
+breast at the first glimpse of her grand young beauty. To make her his
+child, to bequeath to her the place of the babe that had perished in his
+arms three long years before&mdash;That meant to give Ona a care if not a
+rival in his affections, and Ona shrank from care, and was not a subject
+for rivalry. And the <i>if</i> which this implied weighed heavily on his
+heart as moment after moment flew by, and he felt again the reviving
+power of an unsullied mind and an aspiring nature.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="X" id="X"></a>X.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE BARRED DOOR.</h3>
+
+<blockquote><p>"A school boy's tale; the wonder of an hour."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Byron.</span></p></blockquote>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>"Did you know that your niece was gifted with rare beauty as well as
+talents?" asked Mr. Sylvester of Miss Belinda as a couple of hours or so
+later, they sat alone by the parlor fire, preparatory to his departure.</p>
+
+<p>"No, that is," she hastily corrected herself, "I knew she was very
+pretty of course, prettier by far than any of her mates, but I did not
+suppose she was what you call a beauty, or at least would be so
+considered by a person accustomed to New York society."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know of a woman in New York who can boast of any such claims
+to transcendent loveliness. Such faces are rare outside of art, Miss
+Belinda; was Mrs. Fairchild a handsome woman?"</p>
+
+<p>"She was my sister and if I may say so, my favorite sister, but she was
+no more agreeable to the eye than some others of her family," grimly
+returned the heavy browed spinster with a compression of her lips. "What
+beauty Paula has inherited came from her father. Her chief charm in my
+eyes, however, springs from her pure nature and the unselfish impulses
+of her heart."</p>
+
+<p>"And in mine," rejoined he quietly. Then with a sudden change of tone as
+he realized the necessity of saying something definite to this woman in
+regard to his intentions toward the child, he remarked, "Her great and
+unusual talents and manifest disposition to learn, demand as you say,
+superior advantages to any she can have in a small country town like
+this, fruitful as it has already been to her under your wise and
+fostering care and such shall she have; but just when and how I cannot
+say till I have seen my wife and learned what her wishes are likely to
+be in regard to the subject."</p>
+
+<p>"You are very kind, sir," returned Miss Belinda. "I have no doubt as to
+the good-will of your intentions, and the child shall be prepared at
+once for a change."</p>
+
+<p>"And will <i>the child</i>," he exclaimed with a smile as Paula re-entered
+the room, "be so kind as to give me her company in the walk I must now
+take to the cars?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," replied her aunt before the young girl could speak, "we owe
+you that much attention I am sure."</p>
+
+<p>And so it was that when he came to retrace his way through the village
+with its heavy memories, he had a guardian spirit at his side that
+robbed them of their power to sadden and oppress.</p>
+
+<p>"What shall I say for you to the grim, city streets when I get back?"
+inquired he as they hastened on over the snow covered road.</p>
+
+<p>"Say to them from me? O you may give them my greeting," she responded
+half shyly, half confidingly. Evidently for her he was one of those rare
+persons whose presence is perfect freedom and with whom she could not
+only think her best but speak it also. "I should like to make their
+acquaintance, but indeed they would have to do well to vie in attraction
+with these white roads girded by their silver-limbed trees. The very
+rush of life must seem oppressive. So many hopes, so many fears, so many
+interests jostling you at every step! Yet the thought is exhilarating
+too; don't you find it so?"</p>
+
+<p>It was the first question she had asked him and he knew not how to
+reply. Her eyes were so confiding, he could not bear to shake her faith
+in his imagined superiority. Yet what thoughts had he ever cherished in
+walking the busy streets, save those connected with his own selfish
+hopes and fears, plans and operations? "I have no doubt," said he after
+a moment's pause, "that I have felt this exhilaration of which you
+speak. Certainly the hurrying masses in Broadway awaken a far different
+sensation in a man, than this solitary stretch of country road."</p>
+
+<p>"Yet the road has its companionships," she murmured. "In the city one
+thinks most of men, but in the country, of God. Its very solitude
+compels you."</p>
+
+<p>"Compels <i>you</i>," he involuntarily answered. And shuddered as he said it,
+remembering days when he trod these very roads with anything but
+reverence in his heart for the Creator of the landscape before him. "Not
+every one has the inner vision, my child, to see the love and wisdom
+back of the works, or rather most men have a vision so short it does not
+reach so far. Yet I think I can understand what you mean and might even
+experience your emotions if my eyes had leisure to explore this space
+and my thoughts to rise out of their usual depressing atmosphere of care
+and anxiety. You did not think I was a busy man, he continued,"
+observing her gaze of wonder. "You thought riches brought ease; if you
+ever come to think, 'most of men' you will learn that the wealthy man is
+the greatest worker, for his rest comes not night or day."</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head with a sudden doubt. "It is a problem," she said,
+"which my knowledge of geometry does not help me to solve."</p>
+
+<p>"No," assented he; "and one in which even your fanciful soul would fail
+to find any poetry. But stop, Paula; isn't this the place where I found
+you that day, and you showed me the view up the river?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and it was on that stone I sat; it has a milk-white cushion now;
+and there is where you stood, looking so tall and grand to my childish
+eyes! The gates are of pearl now," she said, pointing to the
+snow-covered slopes in the west. "I wish the sky had been clear to-night
+and you could have seen the effect of a rosy sunset falling over those
+domes of ice and snow."</p>
+
+<p>"It would leave me less to expect when I come again," he responded
+almost gayly. "The next time we will have the sunset, Paula."</p>
+
+<p>She smiled and they hastened on, presently finding themselves in the
+village streets. Suddenly she paused. "Small towns have their mysteries
+as well as great cities," said she; "we are not without ours, look."</p>
+
+<p>He turned, followed with a glance the direction of her pointing finger
+and started in his sudden surprise. She had indicated to him the house
+whose ghostly and frowning front bore written across its grim gray
+boards, such an inscription of painful remembrance. "It is a solitary
+looking place, isn't it?" she went on, innocent of the pain she was
+inflicting. "No one lives there or ever will, I imagine. Do you see that
+board nailed across the front door?"</p>
+
+<p>He forced himself to look. He did more, he fixed his eyes upon the
+desolate structure before him until the aspect of its huge unpainted
+walls with their long rows of sealed-up windows and high smokeless
+chimneys was impressed indelibly upon his mind. The large front door
+with its weird and solemn barrier was the last thing upon which his eye
+rested.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said he, and involuntarily asked what it meant.</p>
+
+<p>"We do not know exactly," she responded. "It was nailed across there by
+the men who followed Colonel Japha to the grave. Colonel Japha was the
+owner of the house," she proceeded, too interested to observe the shadow
+which the utterance of that name had invoked upon his brow. "He was a
+peculiar man I judge, and had suffered great wrongs they say; at all
+events his life was very solitary and sad, and on his deathbed he made
+his neighbors promise him that they would carry out his body through
+that door and then seal it up against any further ingress or egress
+forever. His wishes were respected, and from that day to this no one has
+ever entered that door."</p>
+
+<p>"But the house!" stammered Mr. Sylvester in anything but his usual tone,
+"surely it has not been deserted all these years!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah," said she, "now we come to the greatest mystery of all." And laying
+her hand timidly on his arm, she drew his attention to the form of a
+decrepit old lady just then advancing towards them down the street "Do
+you see that aged figure?" she asked. "Every evening at this hour,
+winter and summer, stormy weather or clear, she is seen to leave her
+home up the street and come down to this forsaken dwelling, open the
+worm-eaten gate before you, cross the otherwise untrodden garden and
+enter the house by a side door which she opens with a huge key she
+carries in her pocket. For just one hour by the clock she remains there,
+and then she is seen to issue in the falling dusk, with a countenance
+whose heavy dejection is in striking contrast to the expression of hope
+with which she invariably enters. Why she makes this pilgrimage and for
+what purpose she secludes herself for a stated time each day in this
+otherwise deserted mansion, no man knows nor is it possible to
+determine, for though she is a worthy woman and approachable enough on
+all other topics, on this she is absolutely mute."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester started and surveyed the woman as she passed with an
+anxious gaze. "I know her," he muttered; "she was a connection of&mdash;of
+the family, who inhabited this house." He could not speak the name.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, so they say, and the owner of this house, though she does not live
+here. Did you notice how she looked at me? She often does that, just as
+if she wanted to speak. But she always goes by and opens the gate as you
+see her now and takes out the big key and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Come away," cried Mr. Sylvester with sudden impulse, seizing Paula by
+the hand and hurrying her down the street. "She is a walking goblin; you
+must have nothing to do with such uncanny folk." And endeavoring to turn
+off this irresistible display of feeling by a show of pleasantry he
+laughed aloud, but in a strained and unnatural way that made her eyes
+lift in unconscious amazement.</p>
+
+<p>"You are infected by the atmosphere of unreality that pervades the
+spot," said she, "I do not wonder." And with the gentle perversity that
+sometimes affects the most thoughtful amongst us, she went on talking
+upon the unwelcome subject. "I know of some folks who invariably cross
+to the other side of the street at night, rather than go through the
+shadows of the two gaunt poplars which guard that house. Yet there has
+been no murder committed there or any great crime that I know of, unless
+the disobedience of a daughter who ran away with a man her father
+detested, could be denominated by so fearful a word."</p>
+
+<p>The set gaze with which Mr. Sylvester surveyed the landscape before him
+quavered a trifle and then grew hard and cold. "And so," said he in a
+tone meant more for himself than her, "even your innocent ears have been
+assailed by the gossip about Miss Japha."</p>
+
+<p>"Gossip! I have never thought of it as gossip," returned she, struck for
+the first time by the change in his appearance. "It all happened so long
+ago it seems more like some quaint and ancient tale than a story of one
+of our neighbors. Besides, the fact that a wilful girl ran away from the
+house of her father, with the man of her choice, is not such a dreadful
+one is it, though she never returned to its walls with her husband, and
+her father was so overwhelmed by the shock, he was never seen to smile
+again."</p>
+
+<p>"No," said he, giving her a hurried glance of relief, "I only wondered
+at the tenacity of old stories to engage the popular ear. I had supposed
+even the remembrance of Jacqueline Japha would have been lost in the
+long silence that has followed that one disobedient act."</p>
+
+<p>"And so it might, were it not for that closely shut house with the
+sinister bar across its chief entrance, inviting curiosity while it
+effectually precludes all investigation. With that token ever before our
+eyes of a dead man's implacable animosity, who can wonder that we
+sometimes ponder over the fate of her who was its object."</p>
+
+<p>"And no intimations of that fate have been ever received in Grotewell.
+For all that is known to the contrary, Jacqueline Japha may have
+preceded her father to the tomb."</p>
+
+<p>Paula bowed her head, amazed at the gloomy tone in which this emphatic
+assertion was made by one whose supposed ignorance she had been
+endeavoring to enlighten. "You knew her history before, then," observed
+she, "I beg your pardon."</p>
+
+<p>"And it is granted," said he with a sudden throwing off of the shadow
+that had enveloped him. "You must not mind my sudden lapses into gloom.
+I was never a cheerful man, that is, not since I&mdash;since my early youth I
+should say. And the shadows which are short at your time of life grow
+long and chilly at mine. One thing can illumine them though, and that is
+a child's happy smile. You are a child to me; do not deny me a smile,
+then, before I go."</p>
+
+<p>"Not one nor a dozen," cried she, giving him her hands in good-bye for
+they had arrived at the depot by this time and the sound of the
+approaching train was heard in the distance.</p>
+
+<p>"God bless you!" said he, clasping those hands with a father's heartfelt
+tenderness. "God bless my little Paula and make her pillow soft till we
+meet again!" Then as the train came sweeping up the track, put on his
+brightest look and added, "If the fairy-godmother chances to visit you
+during my departure, don't hesitate to obey her commands, if you want to
+hear the famous organ peal."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no," she cried. And with a final look and smile he stepped upon the
+train and in another moment was whirled away from that place of many
+memories and a solitary hope.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XI" id="XI"></a>XI.</h2>
+
+<h3>MISS STUYVESANT.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"She smiled; but he could see arise<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her soul from far adown her eyes."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Mrs. Browning.</span><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>"She is a beauty; it is only right I should forewarn you of that."</p>
+
+<p>"Dark or light?"</p>
+
+<p>"Dark; that is her hair and eyes are almost oriental in their blackness,
+but her skin is fair, almost as dazzling as yours, Ona."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sylvester threw a careless glance in the long mirror before which
+she was slowly completing her toilet, and languidly smiled. But whether
+at this covert compliment to her greatest charm or at some passing fancy
+of her own, it would be difficult to decide. "The dark hair and eyes
+come from her father," remarked she in an abstracted way while she tried
+the effect of a bunch of snow-white roses at her waist with a backward
+toss of her proud blonde head. "His mother was a Greek. 'Tell it not in
+Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askelon,'" she exclaimed in a
+voice as nearly gay as her indolent nature would allow. For this lady of
+fashion was in one of her happiest moods. Her dress, a new one, fitted
+her to perfection and the vision mirrored in the glass before her was
+not lacking, so far as she could see in one charm that could captivate.
+"Do you think she could fasten a ribbon, or arrange a bow?" she further
+inquired. "I should like to have some one about me with a knack for
+helping a body in an emergency, if possible. Sarah is absolutely the
+destruction of any bit of ribbon she undertakes to handle. Look at that
+knot of black velvet over there for instance, wouldn't you think a raw
+Irish girl just from the other side would have known better than to tie
+it with half the wrong side showing?"</p>
+
+<p>With the habit long ago acquired of glancing wherever her ivory finger
+chanced to point, the grave man of the world slowly turned his head full
+of the weightiest cares and oppressed by the burden of innumerable
+responsibilities, and surveyed the cluster of velvet bows thus
+indicated, with a mechanical knitting of the brows.</p>
+
+<p>"I pay Sarah twenty-five dollars a month and that is the result," his
+wife proceeded. "Now if Paula&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Paula is not to come here as a waiting maid," her husband quickly
+interposed, a suspicion of color just showing itself for a moment on his
+cheek.</p>
+
+<p>"If Paula," his wife went on, unheeding the interruption save by casting
+him a hurried glance over the shoulder of her own reflection in the
+glass, "had the taste in such matters of some other members of our
+family and could manage to lend me a helping hand now and then, why I
+could almost imagine I had my younger sister back with me again, who
+with her skill in making one look fit for the eyes of the world, was
+such a blessing to us in our old home."</p>
+
+<p>"I have no doubt Paula could be taught to be equally efficient," her
+husband responded, carefully restraining any further show of impatience.
+"She is bright, I am certain, and ribbon-tying is not such a very
+difficult art, is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know about that; by the way Sarah succeeds I should say it was
+about on a par with the science of algebra or&mdash;what is that horrid study
+they used to threaten to inflict me with at the academy whenever I
+complained of a headache? Oh I remember&mdash;conic sections."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well," laughed her husband, "she ought soon to to be an expert in
+it then; Paula is a famous little mathematician."</p>
+
+<p>A silence followed this response; Mrs. Sylvester was fitting in her
+ear-rings. "I suppose," said she when the operation was completed, "that
+the snow will prevent half the people from coming to-night." It was a
+reception evening at the Sylvester mansion. "But so long as Mrs.
+Fitzgerald does not disappoint me, I do not care. What do you think of
+the setting of these diamonds?" she inquired, leaning forward to look at
+herself more closely, and slowly shaking her head till the rich gems
+sparkled like fire.</p>
+
+<p>"It is good," came in short, quick tones from the lips of her husband.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I don't know, there might be a shade more of enamel on the edge
+of that ring. I shall speak to the jeweller about it to-morrow. But what
+were we talking about?" she dreamily asked, still turning her head from
+side to side before the mirror.</p>
+
+<p>"We were talking about adopting your cousin in the place of our child
+who is dead," replied her husband with some severity, pausing in the
+middle of the floor which he was pacing, to honor her with a steady
+glance.</p>
+
+<p>"O yes! Dear me! what an awkward clasp that man has given to these rings
+after all. You will have to fasten them for me." Then as he stepped
+forward with studied courtesy, yawned just a trifle and remarked, "No
+one could ever take the place of one's own child of course. If Geraldine
+had lived she would have been a blonde, her eyes were blue as
+sapphires."</p>
+
+<p>He looked in his wife's face and his hands dropped. He thought of the
+day when those eyes, blue as sapphires indeed, flashed burning with
+death's own fever, from the little crib in the nursery, while with this
+same cool and self-satisfied countenance, the wife and mother before him
+had swept down the broad stairs to her carriage, murmuring
+apologetically as she gathered up her train, "O you needn't trouble
+yourself to look after her, she will do very well with Sarah."</p>
+
+<p>She may have thought of it too, for the least little bit of real crimson
+found its way through the rouge on her cheek as she encountered the
+stern look of his eye, but she only turned a trifle more towards the
+glass, saying, "I forgot you do not admire the rôle of waiting maid. I
+will try and manage them myself, seeing that you have banished Sarah."</p>
+
+<p>He exerted his self-control and again for the thousandth time buried
+that ghastly memory out of sight, actually forcing himself to smile as
+he gently took her hand from her ear and began deftly to fasten the
+rebellious ornaments.</p>
+
+<p>"You mistake," said he, "love can ask any favor without hesitation. I do
+not object to waiting upon my own wife."</p>
+
+<p>She gave him a little look which he obligingly took as a guerdon for
+this speech, and languidly held out her bracelets. As he stood clasping
+them on her arms, she quietly eyed him over from head to foot. "I don't
+know of a man who has your figure," said she with a certain tone of
+pride in her voice; "it is well you married a wife who does not look
+altogether inferior beside you." Then as he bowed with mock appreciation
+of the intended compliment, added with her usual inconsequence, "I dare
+say it would give me something to interest myself in. I don't suppose
+she has a decent thing to wear, and the fact of her being a dark beauty
+would lend quite a new impulse to my inventive faculty. Mrs. Walker has
+a daughter with black eyes, but dear me, what a guy she does make of
+her!"</p>
+
+<p>With a sigh Mr. Sylvester turned to the window where he stood looking
+out at the heavy flakes of snow falling with slow and fluctuating
+movement between him and the row of brown stone houses in front. Paula
+considered as a milliner's block upon which to try the effect of
+clothes!</p>
+
+<p>"Even Mrs. Fitzgerald with all her taste don't know how to dress her
+child," proceeded his wife, with a hurried, "Be still, Cherry!" to the
+importunate bird in the cage. "Now I should take as much pride in
+dressing any one under my charge as I would myself, provided the subject
+was likely to do credit to my efforts." And finding the bird
+incorrigible in his shrill singing, she moved over to the cage, where
+she stood balancing her white finger for the bird to peck at, with a
+pretty caressing motion of her lip, the little Geraldine of the wistful
+blue eyes, had never seen.</p>
+
+<p>"You are welcome to do what you please in such matters," was her
+husband's reply. He was thinking again of that same little Geraldine; a
+fall of snow like the present always made him think of her and her
+innocent query as to whether God threw down such big flakes to amuse
+little children. "I give you <i>carte blanche</i>," said he with sudden
+emphasis.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sylvester paused in her attentions to the bird to give him a sharp
+little look which might have aroused his surprise if he had been
+fortunate enough to see it. But his back was towards her, and there was
+nothing in the languidly careless tone with which she responded, to
+cause him to turn his head. "I see that you would really like to have me
+entertain the child; but&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She paused, pursing up her lips to meet the chattering bird's caress,
+while her husband in his impatience drummed with his fingers on the
+pane.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"I must see her before I decide upon the length of her visit,"
+continued she, as weary with the sport she drew back to give herself a
+final look in the glass. "Will you please to hand me that shawl,
+Edward."</p>
+
+<p>He turned with alacrity. In his relief he could have kissed the snowy
+neck held so erectly before him, as he drew around it the shawl he had
+hastily lifted from the chair at his side. But that would not have
+suited this calm and languid beauty who disliked any too overt tribute
+to her charms and saved her caresses for her bird. Besides it would look
+like gratitude, and gratitude would be misplaced towards a wife who had
+just indicated her acceptance of his offer to receive a relative of her
+own into his house.</p>
+
+<p>"She might as well come at once," was her final remark, as satisfied at
+last with the lay of every ribbon she swept in finished elegance from
+the room. "Mrs. Kittredge's reception comes off a week from Thursday,
+and I should like to see how a dark beauty with a fair skin would look
+in that new shade of heliotrope."</p>
+
+<p>And so the battle was over and the victory won; for Mrs. Sylvester for
+all her seeming indifference was never known to change a decision she
+had once made. As he realized the fact, as he meditated that ere long
+this very room which had been the scene of so much frivolity and the
+witness to so many secret heart-burnings, would reëcho to the tread of
+the pure and innocent child, whose mind had flights unknown to the
+slaves of fashion, and in whose heart lay impulses of goodness that
+would satisfy the long smothered cravings of his awakened nature, he
+experienced a feeling of relenting towards the wife who had not chosen
+to thwart him in this the strongest wish of his childless manhood, and
+crossing to her dressing table, he dropped among its treasures a costly
+ring which he had been induced to purchase that day from an old friend
+who had fallen into want. "She will wear it," murmured he to himself,
+"for its hue will make her hand look still whiter, and when I see it
+sparkle I will remember this hour and be patient." Had he known that she
+had yielded to this wish out of a certain vague feeling of compunction
+for the disappointments she had frequently occasioned him and would
+occasion him again, he might have added a tender thought to the rich and
+costly gift with which he had just endowed her.</p>
+
+<p>"I expect a young cousin of mine to spend the winter with me and pursue
+her studies," were the first words that greeted his ears as an hour or
+so later he entered the parlor where his wife was entertaining what few
+guests had been anxious enough for a sight of Mrs. Sylvester's newly
+furnished drawing-room, to brave the now rapidly falling snow. "I hope
+that you and she will be friends."</p>
+
+<p>Curious to see what sort of a companion his wife was thus somewhat
+prematurely providing for Paula, he hastily advanced towards the little
+group from which her voice had proceeded, and found himself face to face
+with a brown-haired girl whose appealing glance and somewhat infantile
+mouth were in striking contrast to the dignity with which she carried
+her small head and managed her whole somewhat petite person.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Stuyvesant! my husband!" came in musical tones from his wife, and
+somewhat surprised to hear a name that but a moment before had been the
+uppermost in his mind, he bowed with courtesy and then asked if he was
+so happy as to speak to a daughter of Thaddeus Stuyvesant.</p>
+
+<p>"If it will give you especial pleasure I will say yes," responded the
+little miss with a smile that irradiated her whole face. "Do you know my
+father?"</p>
+
+<p>"There are but few bankers in the city who have not that pleasure,"
+replied he with an answering look of regard. "I am especially happy to
+meet his daughter in my house to-night."</p>
+
+<p>There was something in his manner of saying this and in the short
+inquiring glance which at every opportunity he cast upon her bright
+young face with its nameless charm of mingled appeal and reserve, that
+astonished his wife.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Stuyvesant was in the carriage with Mrs. Fitzgerald," said that
+lady with a certain dignity she knew well how to assume. "I am afraid if
+it had not been for that circumstance we should not have enjoyed the
+pleasure of her presence." And with the rare tact of which she was
+certainly a mistress, as far as all social matters were concerned, she
+left the aspiring magnate of Wall Street to converse with the daughter
+of the man whom all New York bankers were expected to know, and hastened
+to join a group of ladies discussing ceramics before a huge placque of
+rarest <i>cloissone</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester followed her with his eyes; he had never seen her look
+more vivacious; had the hope of seeing a young face at their board
+touched some secret chord in her nature as well as his? Was she more of
+a woman than he imagined, and would she be, though in the most
+superficial of ways, a mother to Paula? Flushed with the thought, he
+turned back to the little lady at his side. She was gazing in an intent
+and thoughtful way at an engraving of Dubufe's "Prodigal Son" that
+adorned the wall above her head. There was something in her face that
+made him ask:</p>
+
+<p>"Is that a favorite picture of yours?"</p>
+
+<p>She smiled and nodded her small and delicate head.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes sir, it is indeed, but I was not looking at the picture so much as
+at the face of that dark-haired girl that sits in the centre, with that
+far-away expression in her eyes. Do you see what I mean? She is like
+none of the rest. Her form is before us, but her heart and her interest
+are in some distant clime or forsaken home to which the music murmured
+at her side recalls her. She has a soul above her surroundings, that
+girl; and her face is indescribably pathetic to me. In the recesses of
+her being she carries a memory or a regret that separates her from the
+world and makes certain moments of her life almost holy."</p>
+
+<p>"You look deep," said Mr. Sylvester, gazing down upon the little lady's
+face with strongly awakened interest. "You see more perhaps than the
+painter intended."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no; possibly more than the engraving expresses, but not more than
+the artist intended. I saw the original once, when as you remember it
+was on exhibition here. I was a wee thing, but I never forgot that
+girl's face. It spoke more than all the rest to me; perhaps because I so
+much honor reserve in one who holds in his breast a great pain or a
+great hope."</p>
+
+<p>The eye that was resting upon her, softened indescribably. "You believe
+in great hopes," said he.</p>
+
+<p>The little figure seemed to grow tall; and her face looked almost
+beautiful. "What would life be without them?" she answered.</p>
+
+<p>"True," returned Mr. Sylvester; and entering into the conversation with
+unusual spirit, was astonished to find how young she was and yet how
+thoroughly bright and self-possessed.</p>
+
+<p>"Lovely girls are cropping up around me in all directions," thought he;
+"I shall have to correct my judgment concerning our young ladies of
+fashion if I encounter many more as sensible and earnest-hearted as
+this." And for some reason his brow grew so light and his tone so
+cheerful that the ladies were attracted from all parts of the room to
+hear what the demure Miss Stuyvesant could have to say to the grave
+master of the house, to call forth such smiles of enjoyment upon his
+usually melancholy countenance.</p>
+
+<p>Take it all together, the occasion though small was one of the
+pleasantest of the season, and so Mrs. Sylvester announced when the last
+carriage had driven away, and she and her husband stood in the
+brilliantly lighted library, surveying a new cabinet of rare and antique
+workmanship which had been that day installed in the place of honor
+beneath my lady's picture.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you seemed to enjoy it, Ona," her husband remarked.</p>
+
+<p>"O, it was an occasion of triumph to me," she murmured. "It is the first
+time a Stuyvesant has crossed our threshold, <i>mon cher</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"Ha," he exclaimed, turning upon her a brisk displeased look. He was
+proud and considered no man his superior in a social sense. "Do you
+acknowledge yourself a parvenue that you rejoice at the entrance of any
+one special person into your doors?"</p>
+
+<p>"I thought," she replied somewhat mortified, "that you betrayed unusual
+pleasure yourself at her introduction."</p>
+
+<p>"That may be; I was glad to see her here, for her father is one of the
+most influential directors in the bank of which I shortly expect to be
+made president."</p>
+
+<p>The nature of this disclosure was calculated to be especially gratifying
+to her, and effectually blotted out any remembrance of the break by
+which it had been introduced. After a few hasty inquiries, followed by a
+scene of quite honest mutual congratulation, the gratified wife left her
+husband to put out the lights himself or call Samuel as he might choose,
+and glided up stairs to delight the curious Sarah with the broken
+soliloquies and inconsequent self-communings which formed another of her
+peculiar habits.</p>
+
+<p>As for her husband, he stood a few minutes where she left him,
+abstractedly eying the gorgeous vista that spread out before him down to
+the further mirror of the elaborate drawing-room, thinking perhaps with
+a certain degree of pride, of the swiftness with which he had risen to
+opulence and the certainty with which he had conquered position in the
+business as well as in the social world when he could speak of such a
+connection with Thaddeus Stuyvesant as a project already matured. Then
+with a hasty movement and a quick sigh which nothing in his prospects
+actual or apparent would seem to warrant, he proceeded to put out the
+lights, my lady's picture shining with less and less importunity as the
+flickering jets disappeared, till all was dark save for the faint
+glimmer that came in from the hall, a glimmer just sufficient to show
+the outlines of the various articles of furniture scattered about&mdash;and
+could it be the tall figure of the master himself standing in the centre
+of the room with his palms pressed against his forehead in an attitude
+of sorrow or despair? Yes, or whose that wild murmur, "Is it never given
+to man to forget!" Yet no, or who is this that calm and dignified, steps
+at this moment from the threshold? It must have been a dream, a
+phantasy. <i>This</i> is the master of the house who with sedate and regular
+step goes up flight after flight of the spiral staircase, and neither
+pauses or looks back till he reaches the top of the house where he takes
+out a key from his pocket, and opening a certain door, goes in and locks
+it behind him. It is his secret study or retreat, a room which no one is
+allowed to enter, the mystery of the house to the servants and something
+more than that to its inquisitive mistress. What he does there no man
+knows, but to-night if any one had been curious enough to listen, they
+would have heard nothing more ominous than the monotonous scratch of a
+pen. He was writing to Miss Belinda and the burden of his letter was
+that on a certain day he named, he was coming to take away Paula.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XII" id="XII"></a>XII.</h2>
+
+<h3>MISS BELINDA MAKES CONDITIONS.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"For of the soul the body form doth take,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For soul is form, and doth the body make."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Spenser.</span></span>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>Miss Belinda was somewhat taken aback at the proposal of Mr. Sylvester
+to receive Paula into his own house. She had not anticipated any such
+result to her efforts; the utmost she had expected was a couple of years
+or so of instruction in some state Academy. Nor did she know whether she
+was altogether pleased at the turn affairs were taking. From all she had
+heard, her niece Ona was, to say the least, a frivolous woman, and Paula
+had a mind too noble to be subjected to the deteriorating influence of a
+shallow and puerile companionship. Then the child had great beauty; Mr.
+Sylvester who ought to be a judge in such matters had declared it so,
+and what might not the adulation of the thoughtless and the envy of the
+jealous, do towards belittling a nature as yet uncontaminated.</p>
+
+<p>"We ought to think twice," she said to Miss Abby with some bitterness,
+who on the contrary never having thought once was full of the most
+childish hopes concerning a result which she considered with a certain
+secret complacency she would not have acknowledged for the world, had
+been very much furthered by her own wise recommendations to Mr.
+Sylvester in the beginning of his visit. Yet notwithstanding her doubts
+Miss Belinda allowed such preparations to be made as she considered
+necessary, and even lent her hand which was deft enough in its way, to
+the task of enlarging the child's small wardrobe. As for Paula, the
+thought of visiting the great city with the dear friend whose image had
+stood in her mind from early childhood as the impersonation of all that
+was noble, generous and protecting, was more than joyful; it was an
+inspiration. Not that she did not cling to the affectionate if somewhat
+quaint couple who had befriended her childhood and sacrificed their
+comfort to her culture and happiness. But the chord that lies deeper
+than gratitude had been struck, and fond as were her memories of the
+dear old home, the charm of that deep "My child," with its hint of
+fatherly affection, was more than her heart could stand; and no spot, no
+not the realms of fairy-land itself, looked so attractive to her fancy
+as that far fireside in an unknown home where she might sit with cousin
+Ona and alternately with her exert her wit to beguile the smile to his
+melancholy lips.</p>
+
+<p>When therefore upon the stated day, Mr. Sylvester made his second
+appearance at the little cottage in Grotewell, it was to find Paula
+radiant, Miss Abby tearfully exultant and Miss Belinda&mdash;O anomaly of
+human nature&mdash;silent and severe. Attributing this however to her very
+natural regret at parting with Paula, he entered into all the
+arrangements for their departure on the following morning without a
+suspicion of the real state of her mind, nor was he undeceived until the
+day was nearly over and they sat down to have a few minutes of social
+conversation before the early tea.</p>
+
+<p>They had been speaking on some local topic involving a question of right
+and wrong, and Mr. Sylvester's ears were yet thrilling to the deep
+ringing tones with which Paula uttered the words, "I do not see how any
+man can hesitate an instant when the voice of his conscience says no. I
+should think the very sunlight would daunt him at the first step of his
+foot across the forbidden line," when Miss Belinda suddenly spoke up and
+sending Paula out of the room on some trivial pretext, addressed Mr.
+Sylvester without reserve.</p>
+
+<p>"I have something to say to you, sir, before you take from my home the
+child of my care and affection."</p>
+
+<p>Could he have guessed what that something was that he should turn with
+such a flush of sudden anxiety to meet her determined gaze.</p>
+
+<p>"The rules of our life here have been simple," continued she in a tone
+of voice which those who knew her well recognized as belonging to her
+uncompromising moods. "To do our duty, love God and serve our neighbor.
+Paula has been brought up to reverence those rules in simplicity and
+honor; what will your gay city life with its hollow devices for pleasure
+and its loose hold on the firm principles of life, do for this innocent
+soul, Mr. Sylvester?"</p>
+
+<p>"The city," he said firmly but with a troubled undertone in his voice
+that was not unnoted by the watchful woman, "is a vast caldron of
+mingled good and evil. She will hear of more wrong doing, and be within
+the reach of more self-denying virtue, than if she had remained in this
+village alone with the nature that she so much loves. The tree of
+knowledge bears two kinds of fruit, Miss Belinda; would you therefore
+hinder the child from approaching its branches?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir; I am not so weak as to keep a child in swaddling-clothes after
+the period of infancy is past, neither am I so reckless as to set her
+adrift on an unknown sea without a pilot to guide her. Your wife&mdash;" she
+paused and fixed an intent look upon the flames leaping before her. "Ona
+is my niece," she resumed in a lower tone of voice, "and I feel entitled
+to speak with freedom concerning her. Is she such a guide as I would
+choose for a young girl just entering a new sphere in life? From all I
+have heard, I should judge she was somewhat over-devoted to this world
+and its fashions."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester flushed painfully, but seeing that any softening of the
+truth would be wholly ineffectual with this woman, replied in a candid
+tone, "Ona is the same now as she was in the days of her girlhood. If
+she loves the world too well she is not without her excuse; from her
+birth it has strewn nothing but roses in her path."</p>
+
+<p>"Humph!" came from the lips of the energetic spinster. Then with a
+second stern glance at the fire, continued, "Another question, Mr.
+Sylvester. Does your wife consent to receive my niece into her house,
+for the indefinite length of time which you mention, from interest in
+the girl herself or indeed from any motive I should judge worthy of
+Paula? It is a leading question I know, but this is no time for niceties
+of speech."</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Belinda," replied he, and his voice was firm though his fingers
+slightly trembled where they rested upon the arms of his chair, "I will
+try and forget for a moment that Ona is my wife, and frankly confide to
+you that any such motive on her part, as would meet with your entire
+approval, must not be expected from a woman who has never fully
+recognized the solemn responsibilities of life. That she will be kind to
+Paula I have no doubt, that she may even learn to take an interest in
+her for her own sake, is also very possible, but that she will ever take
+your place towards her as guide or instructor, I neither anticipate nor
+would feel myself justified in leading you to."</p>
+
+<p>The look which Miss Belinda cast him was anything but reassuring. "And
+yet," said she, "you will take away my darling and give her up to an
+influence that can not be for good, or your glance would not be so
+troubled or your lip so uncertain. You would set her young feet in a
+path where the very flowers are so thick they conceal its tendency and
+obscure its dangers. Mr. Sylvester you are a man who has seen life with
+naked eyes, and must recognize its responsibilities; dare you take this
+Paula, whom you have seen, out of the atmosphere of truth and purity in
+which she has been raised, and give her over to the enervating
+influences of folly and fashion? Will you assume the risk and brave the
+consequences?"</p>
+
+<p>As though an electric shock had touched the nerve of his nature, Mr.
+Sylvester hastily rose and moved in a restless manner to the window. It
+was his favorite refuge in any time of sudden perplexity or doubt, and
+this was surely an occasion for both.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Belinda," he began and then paused, looking out on the hills of
+his boyhood, every one of which spoke to him at that moment with a force
+that almost sickened his heart and benumbed the faculties of his mind;
+"I recognize the love which leads you to speak in this way, and I bow
+before it, but&mdash;" here his tongue faltered again, that ready tongue
+whose quick and persuasive eloquence on public occasions had won for him
+the name of Silver-speech among his friends and admirers&mdash;"but there are
+others who love your Paula also, love her with a yearning that only the
+childless can feel or the disappointed appreciate. I had hoped&mdash;" here
+he left the window and approached her side, "to do more for Paula than
+to give her the temporal benefit of a luxurious home and such
+instruction as her extraordinary talents demand. If Ona upon seeing and
+knowing the child had found she could love her, I had intended to ask
+you to yield her to us unreservedly and forever, in short to make her my
+child in place of the daughter I have lost. But now&mdash;" with a quick
+gesture he began pacing the floor and left the sentence unfinished.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Belinda's eyes which were of a light grey, wholly without beauty
+but with strange flashes of expression in them, left the fire and fell
+upon his face, and a tear of real feeling gathered beneath her lids.</p>
+
+<p>"I had no idea," said he, "that you cherished any such intention as
+that. If I had I might have worded my apprehensions differently. The
+yearning feeling of which you speak, I can easily understand, also the
+strength of the determination it must take on the part of a man like
+yourself, to give up a hope of this nature. Yet&mdash;" Seeing him pause in
+his hurried pacing and open his lips as if to speak, she deferentially
+stopped.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Belinda," said he, in the firm and steadfast way more in keeping
+with his features than his agitated manner of a moment before, "I cannot
+give it up. The injury it would do me is greater than the harm, which
+one of Paula's lofty nature would be apt to acquire in any atmosphere
+into which she might chance to be introduced. She is not a child, Miss
+Belinda, though we allude to her as such. The texture of those
+principles which you have instilled into her breast, is of no such weak
+material as to give way to the first petty breeze that blows. Paula's
+house will stand, while mine&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He paused and gave way to a momentary struggle, but that over, he set
+his lips firmly together and the last vestige of irresolution vanished.
+Sitting down by her side, he turned his face upon her, and for the first
+time she realized the power which with one exception he had always
+exerted over the minds of others. "Miss Belinda," said he, "I am going
+to give you an evidence of my trust; I am going to leave with you the
+responsibility of Paula's future. She shall go with me, and learn, if
+she can, to love me and mine, but she shall also be under obligations to
+open her heart to you on all matters that concern her life and happiness
+in my house, and the day you see any falling off in her pure and upright
+spirit, you shall demand her return, and though it tears the heart from
+my breast, I will yield her up without question or parley as I am a
+gentleman and a Christian. Does that content you?"</p>
+
+<p>"It certainly ought to, sir. No one could ask more, I am sure," returned
+the other in a voice somewhat unsteady for her.</p>
+
+<p>"It is opening my house to the gaze of a stranger," said he, "for I
+desire you to command Paula to withhold nothing that seriously affects
+her; but my confidence in you is unbounded and I am sure that whatever
+you may learn in this way, will be held as sacred by you as though it
+were buried in a tomb."</p>
+
+<p>"It certainly will, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"As for the dearer hope which I have mentioned, time and the condition
+of things must decide for us. Meanwhile I shall strive to win a father's
+place in her heart, if only to build myself a refuge for the days that
+are to come. You see I speak frankly, Miss Belinda; will you give me
+some token that you are not altogether dissatisfied with the result of
+this conversation?"</p>
+
+<p>With the straightforward if somewhat blunt action that characterized all
+her movements, she stretched out her hand, which he took with something
+more than his usual high-bred courtesy. "With you at the wheel," said
+she, "I think I may trust my darling, even to the whirl and follies of
+such a society as I know Ona loves. A man who can so command himself,
+ought to be a safe guide to pioneer others."</p>
+
+<p>And the considerate gentleman bowed; but the frank smile that hailed her
+genial clasp had somehow vanished, and from the sudden cloud that at
+that moment swept over the roseate heavens, fell a shadow that left its
+impress on his lip long after the cloud itself had departed.</p>
+
+<p>An hour or so had passed. The fire was burning brightly on the
+hearthstone, illumining with a steady glow the array of stuffed birds,
+worsted samplers and old-fashioned portraits with which the walls were
+adorned, but reserving its richest glow and fullest irradiation for the
+bended head of Paula, who seated on a little stool in the corner of the
+hearth, was watching the rise and fall of the flickering flames.</p>
+
+<p>She had packed her little trunk, had said good-bye to all her
+neighboring friends and was now sitting on the old hearthstone, musing
+upon the new life that was about to open before her. It was a happy
+musing, as the smile that vaguely dimpled her cheeks and brightened her
+eyes beneath their long lashes, amply testified. As Mr. Sylvester
+watched her from the opposite side of the hearth where he was sitting
+alone with his thoughts, he felt his heart sink with apprehension at the
+fervor of anticipation with which she evidently looked forward to the
+life in the new home. "The young wings think to gain freedom," thought
+he, "when they are only destined to the confinement of a gilded cage."</p>
+
+<p>He was so silent and looked so sad, Paula with a certain sort of
+sensitiveness to any change in the emotional atmosphere surrounding her,
+which was one of her chief characteristics, hastily looked up and
+meeting his eye fixed on her with that foreboding glance, softly arose
+and came and sat down by his side. "You look tired," murmured she; "the
+long ride after a day of business care has been too much for you."</p>
+
+
+<p>It was the first word of sympathy with his often over-wearied mind and
+body, that had greeted his ears for years. It made his eyes moisten.</p>
+
+<p>"I have been a little overworked," said he, "for the last two months,
+but I shall soon be myself again. What were you thinking of, Paula?"</p>
+
+<p>"What was I thinking of?" repeated she, drawing her chair nearer to his
+in her loving confidence. "I was thinking what wonders of beauty and art
+lay in that great kernel which you call the city. I shall see lovely
+faces and noble forms. I shall wander through halls of music, the echo
+of whose songs may have come to me in the sob of the river or the sigh
+of the pines, but whose notes in all their beauty and power have never
+been heard by me even in my dreams. I shall look on great men and touch
+the garments of thoughtful women. I shall see life in its fullness as I
+have felt nature in its mightiness, and my heart will be satisfied at
+last."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester drew a deep breath and his eyes burned strangely in the
+glow of the fire-light. "You expect high things," said he; "did you ever
+consider that the life in a great city, with its ceaseless rush and
+constant rivalries, must be often strangely petty in despite of its
+artistic and social advantages?"</p>
+
+<p>"All life has its petty side," said she, with a sweet arch look. "The
+eagle that cleaves the thunder-cloud, must sometimes stop to plume its
+wings. I should be sorry to lose the small things out of existence. Even
+we in the face of that great sunset appealing to us from the west, have
+to pile up the firewood on the hearth and set the table for supper."</p>
+
+<p>"But fashion, Paula," he pursued, concealing his wonder at the maturity
+of mind evinced by this simple child of nature, "that inexorable power
+that rules the very souls of women who once step within the magic circle
+of her realm! have you never thought of her and the demands that she
+makes on the time and attention even of the worshippers of the good and
+the true?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sometimes," she returned with a repetition of her arch little
+smile, "when I put on a certain bonnet I have, which Aunt Abby modeled
+over from one of my grandmother's. Fashion is a sort of obstinate
+step-dame I imagine, whom it is less trouble to obey than to oppose. I
+don't believe I shall quarrel with Fashion if she will only promise to
+keep her hands off my soul."</p>
+
+<p>"But if&mdash;" with a pause, "she asks your all, what then?"</p>
+
+<p>"I shall consider that I am in a country of democratic principles," she
+laughed, "and beg to be excused from acceding to the tyrannical demands
+of any autocrat male or female."</p>
+
+<p>"You have been listening to Miss Belinda," said he; "she is also opposed
+to all and any tyrannical measures." Then with a grave look from which
+all levity had fled, he leaned toward the young girl and gently asked,
+"Do you know that you are a very beautiful girl, Paula?"</p>
+
+<p>She flushed, looked at him in some surprise and slowly drooped her head.
+"I have been told I looked like my father," said she, "and I know that
+means something very kind."</p>
+
+<p>"My child," said he, with gentle insistence, "God has given you a great
+and wonderful gift, a treasure-casket of whose worth you scarcely
+realize the value. I tell you this myself, first because I prize your
+beauty as something quite sacred and pure, and secondly because you are
+going where you will hear words of adulation, whose folly and bluntness
+will often offend your ears, unless you carry in your soul some talisman
+to counteract their effect."</p>
+
+<p>"I understand," said she, "I know what you mean. I will remember that
+the most engaging beauty is nothing without a pure mind and a good
+heart."</p>
+
+<p>"And you will remember too," continued he, "that I blessed your innocent
+head to-night, not because it is circled by the roses of a youthful and
+fresh loveliness, but because of the pure mind and good heart I see
+shining in your eyes." And with a fond but solemn aspect he reached out
+his hand and laid it on her ebon locks.</p>
+
+<p>She bowed her head upon her breast. "I will never forget," said she, and
+the fire-light fell with a softening glow on the tears that trembled
+from her eye-lashes.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XIII" id="XIII"></a>XIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE END OF MY LADY'S PICTURE.</h3>
+
+<blockquote><p>"Heaven from all creatures tides the book of Fate."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Pope.</span></p></blockquote>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p>Mrs. Sylvester was spending an evening at home. This was something so
+unusual for this august lady of fashion to indulge in, that she found it
+difficult not to fall asleep in the huge crimson-backed chair in which
+she had chosen to ensconce herself. Not that she had desisted from
+making every effort known to mortal woman to keep herself awake and if
+possible amused till the expected travellers should arrive. She had
+played with her bird till the spoiled pet had himself protested, ducking
+his head under his wing and proceeding without ceremony to make up his
+little feather bed, as cunning Geraldine used to call the round, fluffy
+ball into which he rolled himself at night. More than that, she had
+looked over her ornaments and taken out such articles as she thought
+could be spared for Paula, to say nothing of playing a bar or so from
+the last operatic sensation, and laboriously cutting open the leaves of
+the new magazine. But it was all of no use, and the heavy white lids
+were slowly falling, when the bell rang and Mr. Bertram Mandeville was
+announced, or rather Bertram Sylvester as he now chose to be called.</p>
+
+<p>It was a godsend to her as she politely informed him upon his entrance;
+and though in his secret heart he felt anything but God sent&mdash;he was not
+of a make to appreciate his uncle's wife at her very evident value&mdash;he
+consented to remain and assist her in disposing of the evening till Mr.
+Sylvester should return.</p>
+
+<p>"He is going to bring a pretty girl with him," remarked she, in a tone
+of some interest, "a cousin of mine from Grotewell. I should like to
+have you see her."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," replied he, his mind roaming off at the suggestion, into
+the region of a certain plain little music-room where the clock on the
+mantel ticked to the beating of his own heart. And for ten minutes Mrs.
+Sylvester had the pleasure of filling the room with a stream of easy
+talk, in which Grotewell, dark beauties, the coming Seventh Regiment
+reception, the last bit of gossip from London, and the exact situation
+of the Madison Bank formed the principal topics.</p>
+
+<p>To the one last mentioned, it having taken the form of a question, he
+was forced to reply; but the simple locality having been learned, she
+rambled easily on, this time indulging him with a criticism upon the
+personal appearance of certain business gentlemen who visited the house,
+ending with the somewhat startling declaration:</p>
+
+<p>"If Edward were not the fine appearing gentleman that he undoubtedly is,
+I should feel utterly out of place in these handsome parlors. Anything
+but to see an elegant and modern home, decorated with the costliest
+works of art, and filled with <i>bijouterie</i> of the most exquisite
+delicacy, presided over by a plain and common-place woman or a
+bald-headed and inferior-looking man. The contrast is too vivid; works
+of the highest art do not need such a startling comparison to bring out
+their beauty. Now if Edward stood in the throne-room of a palace, he
+would somehow make it seem to others as a handsome set off to his own
+face and figure."</p>
+
+<p>This was all very wife-like if somewhat unnecessary, and Bertram could
+have listened to it with pleasure, if she had not cast the frequent and
+side-long glances at the mirror, which sufficiently betrayed the fact
+that she included herself in this complacent conclusion; as indeed she
+may have considered herself justified in doing, husband and wife being
+undoubtedly of one flesh. As it was, he maintained an immovable
+countenance, though he admired his uncle as much as she did, and the
+conversation gradually languished till the white somnolent lids of the
+lady again began to show certain premonitory signs of drooping, when
+suddenly they were both aroused by the well known click of a latch-key
+in the door, and in another moment Mr. Sylvester's voice was heard in
+the hall, saying, in tones whose cheery accents made his wife's eyes
+open in surprise&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Welcome home, my dear."</p>
+
+<p>"They have come," murmured Mrs. Sylvester rising with a look of
+undeniable expectation. Had Paula not been a beauty she would have
+remained seated.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, we have come," was heard in hearty tones from the door-way, and
+Mr. Sylvester with a proud look which Bertram long remembered, ushered
+into their presence a young girl whose simple cloak and bonnet in no
+wise prevented Mrs. Sylvester from recognizing the somewhat uncommon
+beauty she had been led to expect.</p>
+
+<p>"Paula, this is your cousin Ona, and&mdash;Ah, Bertram, glad to see you&mdash;this
+is my only nephew, Mr. Sylvester."</p>
+
+<p>The young girl, lost in the sudden glamour of numerous lights, shining
+upon splendors such as she may have dreamed of over the pages of
+Irving's Alhambra, but certainly had never before seen, blushed with
+very natural embarrassment, but yet managed to bestow a pretty enough
+greeting upon the elegant woman and handsome youth, while Ona after the
+first moment of almost involuntary hesitation, took in hers the two
+trembling hands of her youthful cousin and actually kissed her cheek.</p>
+
+<p>"I am not given to caresses as you know," she afterwards explained in a
+somewhat apologetic tone to her husband; "and anything like an appeal
+for one on the part of a child or an inferior, I detest; but her simple
+way of holding out her hand disarmed me, and then such a face demands a
+certain amount of homage, does it not?" And her husband in his surprise,
+was forced to acknowledge to himself, that as closely as he had studied
+his wife's nature for ten years, there were certain crooks and turns in
+it which even he had never penetrated.</p>
+
+<p>"You look dazzled," that lady exclaimed, gazing not unkindly into the
+young girl's face; "the sudden glare of so much gas-light has bewildered
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not think it is that," returned Paula with a frank and admiring
+look at the gorgeous room and the circle of pleasant faces about her.
+"Sudden lights I can bear, but I have come from a little cottage on the
+hillside and the magnificence of nature does not prepare you for the
+first sudden view of the splendors of art."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sylvester smiled and cast a side glance of amusement at Bertram.
+"You admire our new hangings I see," remarked she with an indulgence of
+the other's <i>näiveté</i> that greatly relieved her husband.</p>
+
+<p>But in that instant a change had come across Paula; the simple country
+maid had assimilated herself with the surroundings, and with a sudden
+grace and dignity that were unstudied as they were charming, dropped her
+eyes from her cousin's portrait&mdash;that for some reason seemed to shine
+with more than its usual insistence&mdash;and calmly replied, "I admire all
+beautiful color; it is my birthright as a Walton, to do so, I suppose."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sylvester was a Walton also and therefore smiled; but her husband,
+who had marked with inward distrust, the sudden transformation in Paula,
+now stepped forward with a word or two of remark concerning his
+appetite, a prosaic allusion that led to the rapid disappearance of the
+ladies upstairs and a short but hurried conversation between the two
+gentlemen.</p>
+
+<p>"I have brought you a sealed envelope from the office," said Bertram,
+who, in accordance with his uncle's advice, had already initiated
+himself into business by assuming the position of clerk in the office of
+the wealthy speculator.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah," returned his uncle hastily opening it. "As I expected, a meeting
+has been held this day by the board of Directors of the Madison Bank, a
+vote was cast, my proxy did his duty and I am duly elected President.
+Bertram, we know what that means," smiled he, holding out his hand with
+an affectionate warmth greatly in advance of the emotion displayed by
+him on a former occasion.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope so indeed," young Bertram responded. "An increase of fortune and
+honor for you, though you seem to have both in the fullest measure
+already, and a start in the new life for me to whom fortune and honor
+mean happiness."</p>
+
+<p>A smile younger and more full of hope than any he had seen on his
+uncle's face for years, responded to this burst. "Bertram," said he,
+"since our conversation of a couple of weeks ago something has occurred
+which somewhat alters the opinions I then expressed. If you have
+patience equal to your energy, and a self-control that will not put to
+shame your unbounded trust in women, I think I can say God-speed to your
+serious undertaking, with something like a good heart. Women are not all
+frivolous and foolish-minded; there are some jewels of simple goodness
+and faith yet left in the world."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank God for your conversion," returned his nephew smiling, "and if
+this lovely girl whom you have just introduced to me, is the cause of
+it, then thank God for her also."</p>
+
+<p>His uncle bowed with a gravity almost solemn, but the ladies returning
+at this moment, he refrained from further reply. After supper, to which
+unusual meal Mr. Sylvester insisted upon his nephew remaining, the two
+gentlemen again drew apart.</p>
+
+<p>"If you have decided upon buying the shares I have mentioned," said the
+former, "you had better get your money in a position to handle at once.
+I shall wish to present you to Mr. Stuyvesant to-morrow, and I should
+like to be able to mention you as a future stockholder in the bank."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Stuyvesant!" exclaimed Bertram, ignoring the rest of the sentence.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," returned his uncle with a smile, "Thaddeus Stuyvesant is the next
+largest stockholder to myself in the Madison Bank, and his patronage is
+not an undesirable one."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed&mdash;I was not aware&mdash;excuse me, I should be happy," stammered the
+young man. "As for the money, it is all in Governments and is at your
+command whenever you please."</p>
+
+<p>"That is good, I'll notify you when I'm ready for the transfer. And now
+come," said he, with a change from his deep business tone to the lighter
+one of ordinary social converse, "forget for a half hour that you have
+discarded the name of Mandeville, and give us an aria or a sonata from
+Mendelssohn before those hands have quite lost their cunning."</p>
+
+<p>"But the ladies," inquired the youth glancing towards the drawing-room
+where Mrs. Sylvester was giving Paula her first lesson in ceramics.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, it is to see how the charm will act upon my shy country lassie,
+that I request such a favor."</p>
+
+<p>"Has she never heard Mendelssohn?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not with your interpretation."</p>
+
+<p>Without further hesitation the young musician proceeded to the piano,
+which occupied a position opposite to my lady's picture in this
+anomalous room denominated by courtesy the library. In another instant,
+a chord delicate and ringing, disturbed the silence of the long vista,
+and one of Mendelssohn's most exquisite songs trembled in all its
+delicious harmony through these apartments of sensuous luxury.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester had seated himself where he could see the distant figure
+of Paula, and leaning back in his chair, watched for the first startled
+response on her part. He was not disappointed. At the first note, he
+beheld her spirited head turn in a certain wondering surprise, followed
+presently by her whole quivering form, till he could perceive her face,
+upon which were the dawnings of a great delight, flush and pale by
+turns, until the climax of the melody being reached, she came slowly
+down the room, stretching out her hands like a child, and breathing
+heavily as if her ecstacy of joy in its impotence to adequately express
+itself, had caught an expression from pain.</p>
+
+<p>"O Mr. Sylvester!" was all she said as she reached that gentleman's
+side; but Bertram Mandeville recognized the accents of an unfathomable
+appreciation in that simple exclamation, and struck into a grand old
+battle-song that had always made his own heart beat with something of
+the fire of ancient chivalry under its breastplate of modern broadcloth.</p>
+
+<p>"It is the voice of the thunder clouds when they marshal for battle!"
+exclaimed she at the conclusion. "I can hear the cry of a righteous
+struggle all through the sublime harmony."</p>
+
+<p>"You are right; it is a war-song ancient as the time of battle-axes and
+spears," quoth Bertram from his seat at the piano.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought I detected the flashing of steel," returned she. "O what a
+world lies in those simple bits of ivory!"</p>
+
+<p>"Say rather in the fingers that sweep them," uttered Mr. Sylvester. "You
+will not hear such music often."</p>
+
+<p>"I am glad of that," she cried simply, then in a quick conscious tone
+explained, "I mean that the hearing of such music makes an era in our
+life, a starting-point for thoughts that reach away into eternity; we
+could not bear such experiences often, it would confuse the spirit if
+not deaden its enjoyment. Or so it seems to me," she added naively,
+glancing at her cousin who now came sweeping in from the further room,
+where she had been trying the effect of a change in the arrangement of
+two little pet monstrosities of Japanese ware.</p>
+
+<p>"What seems to you?" that lady inquired. "O, Mr. Mandeville's playing? I
+beg pardon, Sylvester is the name by which you now wish to be addressed
+I suppose. Fine, isn't it?" she rambled on all in the same tone while
+she cautiously hid an unfortunate gape of her rosy mouth behind the
+folds of her airy handkerchief. "Mr. Turner says the hiatus you have
+made in the musical world by leaving the concert room for the desk, can
+never be repaired," she went on, supposedly to her nephew though she did
+not look his way, being at that instant engaged in sinking into her
+favorite chair.</p>
+
+<p>"I am glad," Bertram politely returned with a frank smile, "to have
+enjoyed the approval of so cultivated a critic as Mr. Turner. I own it
+occasions me a pang now and then," he remarked to his uncle over his
+shoulder, "to think I shall never again call up those looks of
+self-forgetful delight, which I have sometimes detected on the faces of
+certain ones in my audience."</p>
+
+<p>And he relapsed without pause into a solemn anthem, the very reverse of
+the stirring tones which he had previously accorded them.</p>
+
+<p>"Now we are in a temple!" whispered Paula, subduing the sudden interest
+and curiosity which this young man's last words had awakened. And the
+awe which crept over her countenance was the fittest interpretation to
+those noble sounds, which the one weary-hearted man in that room could
+have found.</p>
+
+<p>"I have something to tell you, Ona," remarked Mr. Sylvester shortly
+after this, as the music being over, they all sat down for a final chat
+about the fireside. "I have received notice that the directors of the
+Madison Bank have this day elected me their president. I thought you
+might like to know it to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"It is a very gratifying piece of news certainly. President of the
+Madison Bank sounds very well, does it not, Paula?"</p>
+
+<p>The young girl with her soul yet ringing with the grand and solemn
+harmonies of Mendelssohn and Chopin, turned at this with her brightest
+smile. "It certainly does and a little awe-inspiring too;" she added
+with her arch glance.</p>
+
+<p>"Your congratulations are also requested for our new assistant cashier.
+Arise, Bertram, and greet the ladies."</p>
+
+<p>With a blush his young nephew arose to his feet.</p>
+
+<p>"What! are you going into the banking business?" queried Mrs. Sylvester.
+"Mr. Turner will be more shocked than ever: he chooses to say that
+bankers, merchants and such are the solid rock of his church, while the
+lighter fry such as artists, musicians, and let us hope he includes us
+ladies, are its minarets, and steeples. Now to make a foundation out of
+a steeple will quite overturn his methodical mind I fear."</p>
+
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester looked genially at his wife; she was not accustomed to
+attempt the facetious; but Paula seemed to have the power of bringing
+out unexpected lights and shadows from all with whom she came in
+contact.</p>
+
+<p>"A clergyman who rears his church on the basis of wealth must expect
+some overturning now and then," laughed he.</p>
+
+<p>"If by means of it he turns a fresh side to the sun, it will do him no
+harm," chimed in Paula.</p>
+
+<p>Seldom had there been so much simple gaiety round that fireside; the
+very atmosphere grew lighter, and the brilliance of my lady's picture
+became less oppressive.</p>
+
+<p>"We ought to have a happy winter of it," spoke up Mr. Sylvester with a
+glance around him. "Life never looked more cheerful for us all, I think;
+what do you say, Bertram my boy."</p>
+
+<p>"It certainly looks promising for me."</p>
+
+<p>"And for me," murmured Paula.</p>
+
+<p>The complacent way with which Mrs. Sylvester smoothed out the feathers
+of her fan with her jewelled right hand,&mdash;she always carried a fan
+winter and summer, some said for the purpose of displaying those same
+jewelled fingers&mdash;was sufficient answer for her.</p>
+
+<p>At that moment there was a hush, when suddenly the small clock on the
+mantel-piece struck eleven, and instantly as if awaiting the signal,
+there came a rush and a heavy crash which drew every one to their feet,
+and the brilliant portrait of my lady fell from the wall, and toppling
+over the cabinet beneath, slid with the various articles of bronze and
+china thereon, almost to the very chair in which its handsome prototype
+had been sitting.</p>
+
+<p>It was a startling interruption and for an instant no one spoke, then
+Paula with a look towards her cousin breathed to herself rather than
+said, "Pray God it be not an omen!" And the pale countenances of the two
+gentlemen standing face to face on either side of that fallen picture,
+showed that the shadow of the same superstition had insensibly crossed
+their own minds.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sylvester was the only one who remained unmoved. "Lift if up,"
+cried she, "and let us see if it has sustained any injury."</p>
+
+<p>Instantly Bertram and her husband sprang forward, and in a moment its
+glowing surface was turned upward. Who could read the meaning of the
+look that crossed her husband's face as he perceived that the sharp
+spear of the bronze horseman, which had been overturned in the fall, had
+penetrated the rosy countenance of the portrait and destroyed that
+importunate smile forever.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose it is a judgment upon me for putting all the money you had
+allowed me for charitable purposes, into that exquisite bit of bronze,"
+observed Mrs. Sylvester, stooping above the overturned horseman with an
+expression of regret she had not chosen to bestow on her own ruined
+picture. "Ah he is less of a champion than I imagined; he has lost his
+spear in the struggle."</p>
+
+<p>Paula glanced at her cousin in surprise. Was this pleasantry only a veil
+assumed by this courtly lady to hide her very natural regret over the
+more serious accident? Even her husband turned toward her with a certain
+puzzled inquiry in his troubled countenance. But her expression of
+unconcern was too natural; evidently the destruction of the picture had
+awakened but small regret in her volatile mind.</p>
+
+<p>"She is less vain than I thought," was the inward comment of Paula.</p>
+
+<p>Ah simple child of the woods and streams, it is the extent of her vanity
+not the lack of it, that has produced this effect. She has begun to
+realize that ten years have elapsed since this picture was painted, and
+that people are beginning to say as they examine it, "Mrs. Sylvester has
+not yet lost her complexion, I see."</p>
+
+<p>A break necessarily followed this disturbance, and before long Bertram
+took his leave, not without a cordial pressure from his uncle's hand and
+a look of kindly interest from the stranger lassie, upon whose
+sympathetic and imaginative mind the hints let fall as to his former
+profession, had produced a deep impression. With his departure Mrs.
+Sylvester's weariness returned, and ere long she led the way to her
+apartments up stairs. As Paula was hastening to follow Mr. Sylvester
+stopped her.</p>
+
+<p>"You will not allow this unfortunate occurrence," he said, with a slight
+gesture towards the picture now standing with its face against the wall,
+"to mar your first sleep under my roof, will you Paula, my child?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, not if you say that you think Cousin Ona will not be likely to
+connect it with my appearance here."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not think she will; she is not superstitious and besides does not
+seem to greatly regret the misfortune."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I will forget it all and only remember the music."</p>
+
+<p>"It was all you anticipated?"</p>
+
+<p>"It was more."</p>
+
+<p>"Sometime I will tell you about the player and the sweet young girl he
+loves."</p>
+
+<p>"Does he&mdash;" she paused, blushing; love was a subject upon which she had
+never yet spoken to any one.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes he does," Mr. Sylvester returned smiling.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought there was a meaning in the music I did not quite understand.
+Good night, uncle,"&mdash;he had requested her to address him thus though he
+was in truth her cousin, "and many, many thanks."</p>
+
+<p>But he stopped her again. "You think you will be happy in these rooms,"
+said he; "you love splendor."</p>
+
+<p>She was not yet sufficiently acquainted with his voice to detect the
+regret underlying its kindly tone, and answered without suspicion. "I
+did not know it before, but I fear that I do. It dazzled at first, but
+now it seems as if I had reached a home towards which I had always been
+journeying. I shall dream away hours of joy before each little ornament
+that adorns your parlors. The very tiles that surround the fireplace
+will demand a week of attention at least."</p>
+
+<p>She ended with a smile, but unlike formerly he did not seem to catch the
+infection. "I had rather you had cared less," said he, but instantly
+regretted the seeming reproach, for her eyes filled with tears and the
+tones of her voice trembled as she replied,</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think the beauty I have seen has made me forget the kindness
+that has brought me here? I love fine and noble objects, glory of color
+and harmony of shape, but more than all these do I love a generous soul
+without a blot on its purity, or a flaw in its integrity."</p>
+
+<p>She had meant to utter something that would show her appreciation of his
+goodness and the universal esteem in which he was held, but was quite
+unprepared for the start that he gave and the unmistakable deepening of
+the shadow on his sombre face. But before she could express her regret
+at the offence, whatever it was, he had recovered himself, and it was
+with a fatherly tenderness that he laid his hand upon hers while he
+said, "Such a soul may yours ever continue, my child," and then stood
+watching her as she glided up the stairs, her charming face showing
+every now and then as she leaned on her winding way to the top, to
+bestow upon him the tender little smile she had already learned was his
+solace and delight.</p>
+
+<p>It was the beginning of happier days for him.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="BOOK_II" id="BOOK_II"></a>BOOK II.</h2>
+
+<h3>LIFE AND DEATH.</h3>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XIV" id="XIV"></a>XIV.</h2>
+
+<h3>MISS BELINDA HAS A QUESTION TO DECIDE.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"I pray you in your letters,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor set down aught in malice."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Othello.</span><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>Miss Belinda sitting before her bedroom fire on a certain windy night in
+January, presented a picture of the most profound thought. A year had
+elapsed since, with heavy heart and moistened eye, she had bidden
+good-bye to the child of her care, and beheld her drift away with her
+new friend into a strange and untried life. And now a letter had come
+from that friend, in which with the truest appreciation for the feelings
+of herself and sister, he requested their final permission to adopt
+Paula as his own child and the future occupant of his house and heart.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, after a year of increased comfort, Mrs. Sylvester, who would never
+have consented to receive as her own any child demanding care or
+attention, had decided it was quite a different matter to give place and
+position to a lovely girl already grown, whose beauty was sufficiently
+pronounced to do credit to the family while at the same time it was of a
+character to heighten by contrast her own very manifest attractions. So
+the letter, destined to create such a disturbance in the stern and
+powerful mind of Miss Belinda, had been written and dispatched.</p>
+
+<p>And indeed it was matter for the gravest reflection. To accede to this
+important request was to yield up all control over the dear young girl
+whose affection had constituted the brightness of this somewhat
+disappointed life, while to refuse an offer made with such evident love
+and anxiety, was to bring a pang of regret to a heart she hesitated to
+wound. The question of advantage which might have swayed others in their
+decision, did not in the least affect Miss Belinda. Now that Paula had
+seen the world and gained an insight into certain studies beyond the
+reach of her own attainments, any wishes in which she might have
+indulged on that score were satisfied, and mere wealth with its
+concomitant of luxuriant living, she regarded with distrust, and rather
+in the light of a stumbling-block to the great and grand end of all
+existence.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly with that energy which characterized all her movements, she
+rose from her seat, and first casting a look of somewhat cautious
+inquiry at the recumbent figure of her sister, asleep in the heavy old
+fashioned bed that occupied one corner of the room, she proceeded to a
+bureau drawer and took out a small box which she unlocked on the table.
+It was full of letters; those same honest epistles, which, as empowered
+by Mr. Sylvester, she had requested Paula to send her from week to week.
+Some of them were a year old, but she read them all carefully through,
+while the clock ticked on the shelf and the wind soughed in the chimney.
+Certain passages she marked, and when she had finished the pile, she
+took up the letters again and re-read those passages. They were
+necessarily desultory in their character, but they all had, in her mind
+at least, a bearing upon the question on hand, and as such, I give them
+to my readers.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>"O aunty, I have made a friend, a sweet girl friend who I have reason to
+hope will henceforth be to me as my other eye and hand. Her name is
+Stuyvesant&mdash;a name by the way that always calls up a certain complacent
+smile on Cousin Ona's countenance&mdash;and she is the daughter of one of the
+directors of Mr. Sylvester's bank. I met her in a rather curious way.
+For some reason Ona had expressed a wish for me to ride horseback. She
+is rather too large for the exercise herself, but thought it looked
+well, she said, to see a lady and groom ride from the front of the
+house; moreover it would keep me in color by establishing my health. So
+Mr. Sylvester who denies her nothing, promised us horses and the groom,
+and as a preparation for acquitting myself with credit, has sent me to
+one of the finest riding academies in the city. It was here I met Miss
+Stuyvesant. She is a small interesting-looking girl whose chief beauty
+lies in her expression which is certainly very charming. I was conscious
+of a calm and satisfied feeling the moment I saw her. Her eyes which are
+raised with a certain appeal to your face, are blue, while her lips that
+break into smiles only at rare moments, are rosy and delicately curved.
+In her riding-habit she looks like a child, but when dressed for the
+street she surprises you with the reserved and womanly air with which
+she carries her proud head. Altogether she is a sweet study to me,
+alluring me with her glance yet awing me by her dainty ladyhood, a
+ladyhood too unconscious to be affected and yet so completely a part of
+her whole delicate being, that you could as soon dissociate the bloom
+from the rose, as the air of highborn reserve, from this sweet scion of
+one of New York's oldest families.</p>
+
+<p>"I was mounting my horse when our eyes first met, and I never shall
+forget her look of delighted surprise. Did she recognize in me the
+friend I now hope to become? Later we were introduced by Mr. Sylvester
+who had been so kind as to accompany me that day. The way in which he
+said to her, 'This is Paula,' proved that I was no new topic of
+conversation between them, and indeed she afterwards explained to me
+that she had been forewarned of my arrival during an afternoon call at
+his house. There was in this first interview none of the unnecessary
+gush which you have so often reprobated as childish; indeed Miss
+Stuyvesant is not a person with whom one would presume to be familiar,
+nor was it till we had met several times that any acknowledgement was
+made of the mutual interest with which we found ourselves inspired.
+Cousin Ona to whom I had naturally spoken of the little lady, wished me
+to cultivate her acquaintance more assiduously, but I knew that if I had
+excited in her the same interest she had awakened in me, this would not
+be necessary; our friendship would grow of itself and blossom without
+any hot-house forcing. And so it did. One day she came to the
+riding-school with her eyes like stars and her cheeks like the oleanders
+in your sitting-room. Her brightness was so contagious, I stepped up to
+her. But she greeted me with almost formal reserve, and mounting her
+horse, proceeded to engage in her usual exercise. I was not hurt; I
+recognized the presence of some thought or feeling which made a barrier
+around her sensitive nature, and duly respected it. Mounting my own
+horse, I rode around the ring which is the somewhat limited field of my
+present equestrian efforts, and waited. For I knew from the looks which
+she cast me every now and then, that the flower of our friendship was
+outgrowing its sheath and would soon burst into the bud of perfect
+understanding. At the end of the lesson we approached each other. I do
+not know how it was done, but we walked home together, or rather I
+accompanied her to the stoop of her house, and before we parted we had
+exchanged those words which give emphasis to a sentiment long cherished
+but now for the first time avowed. Miss Stuyvesant and I are friends,
+and I feel as though a new stream of enjoyment had opened in my breast.</p>
+
+<p>"The fact that I still call her by this formal title instead of her very
+pretty name of Cicely, proves the nature of the respect she inspires
+even in the breasts of her girlish associates."</p>
+
+<p>"Why is it that I frequently hesitate as I go up the stairs and look
+about me with a vague feeling of apprehension? The bronze figure of
+Luxury that adorns the landing, wears no semblance of terror to the
+wildest imagination, and yet I often find myself seized by an
+inexplicable shudder as I hurry past it; and once I actually looked
+behind me with the same sensation as if some one had plucked me by the
+sleeve.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a folly; for recording which, I make my excuses."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>"Cousin Ona has decided that I must never wear colors. 'Soft grays, my
+dear, dead blacks and opaque whites are all that you need to bring out
+the fine contrast of your hair and complexion; the least hint of blue or
+pink would destroy it.' So she says and so I must believe, for who else
+has made such a study of the all important subject of dress. Behold me,
+then, arrayed for my first reception in a colorless robe of rich silk to
+which Ona after long consideration allowed me to add some ornaments of
+plain gold with which Mr. Sylvester has kindly presented me. But I think
+more of the people I am going to meet than of anything else, though I
+enjoy the home-feeling which a pretty dress gives me, as well as a
+violet does its bright blue coat."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>"I have heard a great preacher! What shall I say? At first it seems as
+if nothing could express my joy and satisfaction. The sapling that is
+shaken to its root by the winds of heaven, keeps silence I imagine. But
+O Aunty, if my smallness makes me quake, it also makes me feel. What
+gates of thought have been opened to me! What shining tracks of inquiry
+pointed out! I feel as if I had been shown a path where angels walked.
+Can it be that such words have been uttered every week of my life and I
+in ignorance of them? It is like the revelation of the ocean to
+unaccustomed eyes. Henceforth small things must seem like pebble stones
+above which stretch innumerable heavenly vistas. It is not so much that
+new things have been revealed to me as that old things have been made
+strangely eloquent. The voice of a daisy on the hill side, the breath of
+thunder in the mountain gorges, the blossoming of a child's smile under
+its mother's eye, the fact that golden portals are opened in every life
+for the coming and going of the messengers of God, all have been made
+real to me, real as the voice of the Saviour to his disciples as they
+walked in the fields or started back awe-stricken from the stupendous
+vision of the cross. It is a solemn thing to see one's humble thoughts
+caught by the imagination of a great mind and carried on and up into
+regions you never realized existed.</p>
+
+<p>"I was so burdened with joy that I could not forbear asking Mr.
+Sylvester if he did not feel as if the whole face of the world had
+changed since we entered those holy doors. He did not respond with the
+glad 'Yes' for which I hoped, and though his smile was very kind, I
+could not help wondering what it was that sometimes fell between us like
+a veil."</p>
+
+<p>"O Aunty, how my heart does yearn towards Mr. Sylvester at times! As I
+see him sitting with clouded brow in the midst of so much that ought to
+charm and enliven him, I ask myself if the advantages of wealth
+compensate for all this care and anxiety. But I notice he is much more
+cheerful now than when I first came. Ona says he is in danger of losing
+the air of melancholy reserve which made him look so distinguished, but
+I think we can spare a little of such doubtful distinguishment for the
+sake of the smiles with which he now and then indulges us."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>"I feel as if a hand had gripped my throat. Cousin Ona spoke to Mr.
+Sylvester this morning in a way that made my very heart stand still. And
+yet it was only a simple, 'Follow your own judgment, Mr. Sylvester.' But
+how she said it! Do these languid women carry venom in their tongues? I
+had always thought she was of too easy a disposition to feel anger or
+display it; but the spring of a serpent is all the deadlier for his long
+silent basking in the sun. O pardon me for making such a frightful
+allusion. But if you had seen her and heard Mr. Sylvester's sigh as he
+turned and left the room!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>"Mr. Bertram Sylvester has awakened my deepest interest. His uncle has
+told me his story, which alone of all the things I have heard in this
+house, I do not feel at liberty to repeat, and it has aroused in me
+strange thoughts and very peculiar emotions. He is devoted to some one
+we do not know, and the idea surrounds him in my eyes with a sort of
+halo that you would perhaps call fanciful, but which I am nevertheless
+bound to reverence. He does not know that I am acquainted with his
+story. I wish he did and would let me speak the words that rise to my
+lips whenever I see him or hear him play."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>"There are moments when I long to flee back to Grotewell. It is when
+Cousin Ona comes in from shopping with a dozen packages to be opened and
+commented upon, or when Mrs. Fitzgerald has been here or some other of
+her ultra-fashionable acquaintances. The atmosphere of the house for
+hours after either of the above occurrences is too heavy for breathing.
+I have to go away and clear my brain by a brisk walk or a look into
+Kn&oelig;dler's or Schaus'."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>"The panel where Cousin Ona's picture used to hang, has been filled by
+one of Meissonier's most interesting studies; and though I never thought
+Mr. Sylvester particularly fond of the French style of art, he seems
+very well satisfied with the result. I cannot understand how Cousin Ona
+can regard the misfortune to her portrait so calmly. I think it would
+break my heart to see a husband look with complacency on any picture, no
+matter how exquisite, that took the place of my own, especially if like
+her's, it was painted in my bridal days. I sometimes wonder if those
+days are as sacred to the memory of husband and wife as I have always
+imagined them to be."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>"Why does Cousin Ona never speak of Grotewell, and why, if by chance I
+mention the name, does she drop her eyes and a shadow cross the
+countenance of Mr. Sylvester?"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>"There is a word Mr. Sylvester uses in the most curious way; it is
+<i>fuss</i>. He calls everything a fuss that while insignificant in size or
+character has power either to irritate or please. A fly is a fuss; so is
+a dimple in a girl's cheek or a figure that goes wrong in accounts. I
+have even heard him call a child, 'That dear little fuss.' Bertram
+unconsciously imitates his uncle in this peculiar mannerism and is often
+heard alluding to this or that as a <i>fuss of fusses</i>. Indeed they say
+this use of the word is a peculiarity of the Sylvester family."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>"I think from the way Mr. Sylvester spoke yesterday, that he must have
+experienced some dreadful trouble in his life. We were walking in the
+wards of a hospital&mdash;that is, Miss Stuyvesant, Mr. Sylvester and
+myself&mdash;when some one near us gave utterance to the trite expression, 'O
+it will heal, but the scar will always remain.' 'That is a common
+saying,' remarked Mr. Sylvester, 'but how true a one no one realizes but
+he who carries the scar.'"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>"It may be imagination or simply the effect of increased appreciation on
+my part, but it does seem as if Miss Stuyvesant grew lovelier and more
+companionable each time that I meet her. She makes me think of a temple
+in which a holy lamp is burning. Her very silences are eloquent, and yet
+she is never <i>distraite</i> but always cheerful and frequently the
+brightest of the company. But it is a brightness without glitter, a
+gentle lustre that delights you but never astonishes. I meet many sweet
+girls in the so-called heartless circles of society, but none like her.
+She is my white lily on which a moonbeam rests."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>"This house contains a mystery, as Ona is pleased to designate the room
+at the top of the house to which Mr. Sylvester withdraws when he desires
+to be alone. And indeed it is a sort of Bluebeard's chamber, in that he
+keeps it rigidly under lock and key, allowing no one to enter it, not
+even his wife. The servants declare that no one but himself has ever
+crossed its threshold, but I can scarcely believe that. Ona has not, but
+there must surely be some trusty person to whom he allots the care of
+its furniture. Am I only proving myself to be a true member of my sex
+when I allow that I cannot hinder my own curiosity from hovering about a
+spot so religiously guarded? Yet what should we see if its doors were
+thrown open? A study surrounded with books it displeases him to see
+misplaced, or a luxurious apartment fitted with every appointment
+necessary to rest and comfort him when he comes home tired from
+business."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>"I never saw Mr. Sylvester angry till to-day. By some inadvertence he
+went down town without locking the door of his private room, and though
+he returned immediately upon missing the key from his pocket, he was
+barely in time to prevent Cousin Ona from invading the spot he has
+always kept so sacred from intrusion. I was not present and of course
+did not hear what was said, but I caught a glimpse of his face as he
+left the house, and found it quite sufficient to assure me of his
+dissatisfaction. As for Ona, she declares he pulled her back as if she
+had been daring the plague. 'I do not expect to find five beautiful
+wives hanging up there by their necks,' concluded she with a forced
+laugh, 'but I shall yet see the interior of that room, if only to
+establish my prerogative as the mistress of this house.'</p>
+
+<p>"I do not now feel as if I wished to see it."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>"There is one thing that strikes me as peculiar in Miss Stuyvesant, and
+that is, that as much pleasure as she seems to take in my society when
+we meet, she never comes to see me in Mr. Sylvester's house. For a long
+time I wondered over this but said nothing, but one day upon receiving a
+second invitation to visit her, I mentioned the fact as delicately as I
+could, and was quite distressed to observe how seriously she took the
+rebuke, if rebuke it could be called. 'I cannot explain myself,' she
+murmured in some embarrassment; 'but Mr. Sylvester's house is closed
+against me. You must not ask me to seek you there or expect me to do
+myself the pleasure of attending Mrs. Sylvester's receptions. I cannot.
+Is that enough for me to say to my dearest friend?' I hardly knew what
+to reply, but finally ventured to inquire if she was restrained by any
+fact that would make it undignified in me to seek her society and enjoy
+the pleasures she is continually offering me. And she answered with such
+a cheerful negative I was quite reassured. And so the matter is settled.
+Our friendship is to be emancipated from the bonds of etiquette and I am
+to enjoy her company whenever I can. To-morrow we are going to take our
+first ride in the park. The horses have been bought, and much to Cousin
+Ona's satisfaction, the groom has been hired."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>"I was told something the other day, of a nature so unpleasant that I
+should not think of repeating it, if you had not expressly commanded me
+to confide to you everything that for any reason produced an effect upon
+me in my new home. My informant was Sarah, the somewhat gossiping woman
+whom Ona has about her as seamstress and maid. She said&mdash;and she had
+spoken before I could prevent her&mdash;that the way Mrs. Sylvester took on
+about her mourning at the time of little Geraldine's death was enough to
+wear out the patience of Job. She even went so far as to tell the
+dressmaker that if she could not have her dress made to suit her she
+would not put on mourning at all! Aunty, can you wonder that Mr.
+Sylvester looks so bitterly sombre whenever mention is made of his
+child? He loved it, and its own mother could worry over the fit of a
+dress while his bereaved heart was breaking! I confess I can never feel
+the same indulgence towards what I considered the idiosyncrasies of a
+fashionable beauty again. Her smooth white skin makes me tremble; it has
+never flushed with delight over the innocent smiles of her firstborn."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>"Mr. Sylvester is very polite to Cousin Ona and seems to yield to her
+wishes in everything. But if I were she I think my heart would break
+over that very politeness. But then she is one who demands formality
+even from the persons of her household. I have never seen him stoop for
+a kiss or beheld her even so much as lay her hand on his shoulder. But I
+have observed him wait on her at moments when he was pale from weariness
+and she flushed with long twilight reclinings before her sleepy boudoir
+fire."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>"There are times when I would not exchange my present opportunities for
+any others which might be afforded me. General &mdash;&mdash; dined here to-day,
+and what a vision of a great struggle was raised up before me by his few
+simple words in regard to Gettysburg. I did not know which to admire
+most, the military bearing and vivid conversation of the great soldier,
+or the ease and dignity with which Mr. Sylvester met his remarks and
+answered each glowing sentence. General &mdash;&mdash; spoke a few words to me.
+How gentle these lion-like men can be when they stoop their tall heads
+to address little children or young women!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+
+<p>"What a noble-hearted man Mr. Sylvester is! Mr. Turner in speaking of
+him the other night, declared there is no one in his congregation who in
+a quiet way does so much for the poor. 'He is especially interested in
+young men,' said he, 'and will leave his own affairs at any time to aid
+or advise them.' I knew Mr. Sylvester was kind, but Mr. Turner's
+enthusiasm was uncommon. He evidently admires Mr. Sylvester as much as
+every one else loves him. And he is not alone in this. Almost every day
+I hear some remark made of a nature complimentary to my benefactor's
+character or ability. Even Mr. Stuyvesant who so seldom appears to
+notice us girls, once interrupted a conversation between Cicely and
+myself to inquire if Mr. Sylvester was quite well. 'I thought he looked
+pale to-day,' remarked he, in his dry but not unkindly way, and then
+added, 'He must not get sick; he is too valuable to us.' This was a
+great deal for Mr. Stuyvesant to say, and it caused a visible
+gratification to Mr. Sylvester when I related it to him in the evening.
+'I had rather satisfy that man than any other I know,' declared he. 'He
+is of the stern old-fashioned sort, and it is an honor to any one to
+merit his approval. I did not tell him that I had also heard Mr.
+Stuyvesant observe in a conversation with some business friend of his,
+that Edward Sylvester was the only speculator he knew in whom he felt
+implicit confidence. Somehow it always gives me an uncomfortable feeling
+to hear Mr. Sylvester alluded to as a speculator. Besides since he has
+entered the Bank, he has I am told, entirely restricted himself to what
+are called legitimate operations."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>"Mr. Sylvester came home with a dreadful look on his face to-day. We
+were standing in the hall at the time the door opened, and he went by us
+without a nod, almost as if he did not see us. Even Ona was startled and
+stood gazing after him with an anxiety such as I had never observed in
+her before, while I was conscious of that sick feeling I have sometimes
+experienced when he came upon me suddenly from his small room above, or
+paused in the midst of the gayest talk, to ask me some question that was
+wholly irrelevant and most frequently sad.</p>
+
+<p>"'He has met with some heavy loss,' murmured his wife, glancing down the
+handsome parlors with a look such as a mother might bestow upon the face
+of a sick child. But I was sure she had not sounded his trouble, and in
+my impetuosity was about to fly to his side when we saw him pause before
+the image of Luxury that stands on the stair, look at it for a moment
+with a strange intentness, then suddenly and with a gesture of
+irrepressible passion, lift his arm as if he would fell it from its
+place. The action was so startling, Ona clutched my sleeve in terror,
+but he passed on and in another moment we heard him shut the door of his
+room.</p>
+
+<p>"Would he be down to dinner? that was the next question. Ona thought
+not; I did not dare to think. Nevertheless it was a great relief to me
+when I saw him enter the dining-room with that set immovable look he
+sometimes wears when Ona begins one of her long and rambling streams of
+fashionable gossip. 'It is nothing,' flashed from his wife's eyes to
+mine, and she lapsed at once into her most graceful self, but she
+nevertheless hastened her meal and I was quite prepared to observe her
+follow him, as with the polite excuse of weariness, he left the table
+before desert. I could not hear what she asked him, but his answer came
+distinctly to my ears from the midst of the library to which they had
+withdrawn. 'It is nothing in which you have an interest, Ona. Thank
+heaven you do not always know the price with which the splendors you so
+love are bought.' And she did not cry out, 'O never pay such a price for
+any joy of mine! Sooner than cost you so dear I would live on crusts and
+dwell in a garret.' No, she kept silence, and when in a few minutes
+later I joined her in the library, it was to find on her usually placid
+lips, a thin cool smile that struck like ice to my heart, and made it
+impossible for me to speak.</p>
+
+<p>"But the hardest trial of the day was to hear Mr. Sylvester come in at
+eleven o'clock&mdash;he went out again immediately after dinner&mdash;and go up
+stairs without giving me my usual good-night. It was such a grief to me
+I could not keep still, but hurried to the foot of the stairs in the
+hopes he would yet remember me and come back. But instead of that, he no
+sooner saw me than he threw out his hand almost as if he would push me
+back, and hastened on up the whole winding flight till he reached the
+refuge of that mysterious room of his at the top of the house.</p>
+
+<p>"I could not go back to Ona after that&mdash;she had been to make a call
+somewhere with a young gentleman friend of hers;&mdash;yes on this very night
+had been to make a call&mdash;but I took advantage of the late hour to retire
+to my own room where for a long time I lay awake listening for his
+descending step and seeing, as in a vision, the startling picture of his
+lifted arm raised against the unconscious piece of bronze on the stair.
+Henceforth that statue will possess for me a still more dreadful
+significance."</p>
+
+<p>"It is the twenty-fifth of February. Why should I feel as if I must be
+sure of the exact date before I slept?"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The next extract followed close on this and was the last which Miss
+Belinda read.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Sylvester seems to have recovered from his late anxiety. He does
+not shrink from me any more with that half bitter, half sad expression
+that has so long troubled and bewildered me, but draws me to his side
+and sits listening to my talk until I feel as if I were really of some
+comfort to this great and able man. Ona does not notice the change; she
+is all absorbed in preparing for the visit to Washington, which Mr.
+Sylvester has promised her."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Miss Belinda calmly folded up the letters and locked them again in the
+little mahogany box, after which she covered up the embers and quietly
+went to bed. But next morning a letter was despatched to Mr. Sylvester
+which ran thus:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"<span class="smcap">Dear Mr. Sylvester</span>:</p>
+
+<p>"For the present at least you may keep Paula with you. But I am
+not ready to say that I think it would be for her best good to
+be received and acknowledged as your daughter&mdash;yet. Hoping you
+will appreciate the motives that actuate this decision,</p>
+
+<p>"I remain, respectfully yours,</p>
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">Belinda Ann Walton</span>."</p></blockquote>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XV" id="XV"></a>XV.</h2>
+
+<h3>AN ADVENTURE&mdash;OR SOMETHING MORE.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">But to be young was very heaven."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Wordsworth.</span><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<blockquote><p><i>Oph.</i>&mdash;What means this, my lord?</p>
+
+<p><i>Ham.</i>&mdash;Marry, this is the miching mallecho; it means
+mischief."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Hamlet.</span></p></blockquote>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p>A ride in the Central Park is an every-day matter to most people. It
+signifies an indolent bowling over a smooth road all alive with the
+glitter of passing equipages, waving ribbons and fluttering plumes, and
+brightened now and then by the sight of a well known face amid the
+general rush of old and young, plain and handsome, sad and gay
+countenances that flash by you in one long and brilliant procession.</p>
+
+<p>But to Paula and her friend Miss Stuyvesant starting out in the early
+freshness of a fair April morning, it meant new life, reawakening joy,
+the sparkle of young leaves just loosed from the bonds of winter, the
+sweetness and promise of spring airs, and all the budding glory of a new
+year with its summer of countless roses and its autumn of incalculable
+glories. Not the twitter of a bird was lost to them, not the smile of an
+opening flower, not the welcome of a waving branch. Youth, joy, and
+innocence lived in their hearts and showed them nothing in the mirror of
+nature that was not equally young, joyous and innocent. Then they were
+alone, or sufficiently so. The stray wanderers whom they met sitting
+under the flowering trees, were equally with themselves lovers of nature
+or they would not be seated in converse with it at this early hour;
+while the laugh of little children startled from their play by the
+prance of their high-stepping horses, was only another expression of the
+sweet but unexpressed delight that breathed in all the radiant
+atmosphere.</p>
+
+<p>"We are two birds who have escaped thralldom and are taking our first
+flight into our natural ether," cried Miss Stuyvesant gaily.</p>
+
+<p>"We are two pioneers lit by the spirit of adventure, who have left the
+cosy hearth of wintry-fires to explore the domains of the frost king,
+and lo, we have come upon a Paradise of bloom and color!" responded the
+ringing voice of Paula.</p>
+
+<p>"I feel as if I could mount that little white cloud we see over there,"
+continued Cicely with a quick lively wave of her whip. "I wonder how
+Dandy would enjoy an empyrean journey?"</p>
+
+<p>"From the haughty bend of his neck I should say he was quite satisfied
+with his present condition. But perhaps his chief pride is due to the
+mistress he carries."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you attempting to vie with Mr. Williams, Paula?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Williams was the meek-eyed, fair complexioned gentleman, whose
+predilection for compliment was just then a subject of talk in
+fashionable circles.</p>
+
+<p>"Only so far as my admiration goes of the most charming lady I see this
+morning. But who is this?"</p>
+
+<p>Miss Stuyvesant looked up. "Ah, that is some one with whom there is very
+little danger of your falling in love."</p>
+
+<p>Paula blushed. The gentleman approaching them upon horseback was
+conspicuous for long side whiskers of a decidedly auburn tinge.</p>
+
+<p>"His name is&mdash;" But she had not time to finish, for the gentleman with a
+glance of astonished delight at Paula, bowed to the speaker with a
+liveliness and grace that demanded some recognition.</p>
+
+<p>Instantly he drew rein. "Do I behold Miss Stuyvesant among the nymphs!"
+cried he, in those ringing pleasant tones that at once predispose you
+towards their possessor.</p>
+
+<p>"If you allude to my friend Miss Fairchild, you certainly do, Mr.
+Ensign," the wicked little lady rejoined with a waiving of her usual
+ceremony that astonished Paula.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Ensign bestowed upon them his most courtly bow, but the flush that
+mounted to his brow&mdash;making his face one red, as certain of his friends
+were malicious enough to observe on similar occasions&mdash;indicated that he
+had been taken a little more at his word than perhaps suited even one of
+his easy and proverbially careless temperament. "Miss Fairchild will
+understand that I am not a Harvey Williams&mdash;at least before an
+introduction," said he with something like seriousness.</p>
+
+<p>But at this allusion to the gentleman whose name had been upon their
+lips but a moment before, both ladies laughed outright.</p>
+
+<p>"I have just been accused of attempting the rôle of that gentleman
+myself," exclaimed Paula. "If the fresh morning air will persist in
+painting such roses on ladies' cheeks," continued she, with a loving
+look at her pretty companion "what can one be expected to do?"</p>
+
+<p>"Admire," quoth the red bannered cavalier with a glance, however, at the
+beautiful speaker instead of the demure little Cicely at her side.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Stuyvesant perceived this look and a curious smile disturbed the
+corners of her rosy lips. "What a fortunate man to be able to do the
+right thing at the right time," laughed she, gaily touching up her horse
+that was beginning to show symptoms of restlessness.</p>
+
+<p>"If Miss Stuyvesant will put that in the future tense and then assure us
+she has been among the prophets, I should be singularly obliged," said
+he with a touch of his hat and a smiling look at Paula that was at once
+manly and gentle, careless and yet respectful.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, life is too bright for prophesies this morning. The moment is
+enough."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it Miss Fairchild?" queried Mr. Ensign looking back over his
+shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>She turned just a bit of her cheek towards him. "What Miss Stuyvesant
+declares to be true, that am I bound to believe," said she, and with the
+least little ripple of a laugh, rode on.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a pity you have such a dislike for whiskers," Cicely presently
+remarked with an air of great gravity.</p>
+
+<p>Paula gave a start and cast a glance of reproach at her companion. "I
+did not notice his whiskers after the first word or two," said she,
+fixing her eyes on a turn of the road before them. "Such cheerfulness is
+infectious. I was merry before, but now I feel as if I had been bathed
+in sunshine."</p>
+
+<p>Cicely's eyes flashed wide with surprise and her face grew serious in
+earnest. "Mr. Ensign is a delightful companion," observed she; "a room
+is always brighter for his entrance; and with all that, he is the only
+young man I know, who having come into a large fortune, feels any of the
+responsibilities of his position. The sunshine is the result of a good
+heart and pure living, and that is what makes it infectious, I suppose."</p>
+
+<p>"Let us canter," said Paula. And so the glad young things swept on, life
+breaking in bubbles around them and rippling away into unfathomable
+wells of feeling in one of their pure hearts at least. Suddenly a hand
+seemed to swoop from heaven and dash them both back in dismay. They had
+reached one of those places where the foot path crosses the equestrian
+and they had run over and thrown down a little child.</p>
+
+<p>"O heaven!" cried Paula leaping from her horse, "I had rather been
+killed myself." The groom rode up and she bent anxiously over the child.</p>
+
+<p>It was a boy of some seven or eight years, whose misfortune&mdash;he was
+lame, as the little crutch fallen at his side sufficiently denoted&mdash;made
+appear much younger. He had been struck on his arm and was moaning with
+pain, but did not seem to be otherwise hurt. "Are you alone?" cried
+Paula, lifting his head on her arm and glancing hurriedly about.</p>
+
+<p>The little fellow raised his heavy lids and for a moment stared into her
+face with eyes so deeply blue and beautiful they almost startled her,
+then with an effort pointed down the path, saying,</p>
+
+<p>"Dad's over there in the long tunnel talking to some one. Tell him I got
+hurt. I want Dad."</p>
+
+<p>She gently lifted him to his feet and led him out of the road into the
+apparently deserted path where she made him sit down. "I am going to
+find his father," said Paula to Cicely, "I will be back in a moment."</p>
+
+<p>"But wait; you shall not go alone," authoritatively exclaimed that
+little damsel, leaping in her turn to the ground. "Where does he say his
+father is?"</p>
+
+<p>"In the tunnel, by which I suppose he means that long passage under the
+bridge over there."</p>
+
+<p>Holding up the skirts of their riding-habits in their trembling right
+hands, they hurried forward. Suddenly they both paused. A woman had
+crossed their path; a woman whom to look at but once was to remember
+with ghastly shrinking for a lifetime. She was wrapped in a long and
+ragged cloak, and her eyes, startling in their blackness, were fixed
+upon the pain-drawn countenance of the poor little hurt boy behind them,
+with a gleam whose feverish hatred and deep malignant enjoyment of his
+very evident sufferings, was like a revelation from the lowest pit to
+the two innocent-minded girls hastening forward on their errand of
+mercy.</p>
+
+<p>"Is he much hurt?" gasped the woman in an ineffectual effort to conceal
+the evil nature of her interest. "Do you think he will die?" with a
+shrill lingering emphasis on the last word as if she longed to roll it
+like a sweet morsel under her tongue.</p>
+
+<p>"Who are you?" asked Cicely, shrinking to one side with dilated eyes
+fixed on the woman's hardened countenance and the white, too white hand
+with which she had pointed as she spoke of the child.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you his mother?" queried Paula, paling at the thought but keeping
+her ground with an air of unconscious authority.</p>
+
+<p>"His mother!" shrieked the woman, hugging herself in her long cloak and
+laughing with fiendish sarcasm: "I look like his mother, don't I? His
+eyes&mdash;did you notice his eyes? they are just like mine, aren't they? and
+his body, poor weazen little thing, looks as if it had drawn sustenance
+from mine, don't it? His mother! O heaven!"</p>
+
+<p>Nothing like the suppressed force of this invocation seething as it was
+with the worst passions of a depraved human nature, had ever startled
+those ears before. Clasping Cicely by the hand, she called out to the
+groom behind them, "Guard that child as you would your life!" and then
+flashing upon the wretched creature before her with all the force of her
+aroused nature, she exclaimed, "If you are not his mother, move aside
+and let us pass, we are in search of assistance."</p>
+
+<p>For an instant the woman stood awe-struck before this vision of maidenly
+beauty and indignation, then she laughed and cried out with shrill
+emphasis:</p>
+
+<p>"When next you look like that, go to your mirror, and when you see the
+image it reflects, say to yourself, 'So once looked the woman who defied
+me in the Park!'"</p>
+
+<p>With a quick shudder and a feeling as if the noisome cloak of this
+degraded being had somehow been dropped upon her own fair and spotless
+shoulders, Paula clasped the hand of Cicely more tightly in her own, and
+rushed with her down the steps that led into the underground passage
+towards which they had been directed.</p>
+
+<p>There were but two persons in it when they entered. A short thickset man
+and another man of a slighter and more gentlemanly build. They were
+engaged in talking, and the latter was bringing down his right hand upon
+the palm of his left with a gesture almost foreign in its expressive
+energy.</p>
+
+<p>"I tell you," declared he, with a voice that while low, reverberated
+through the hollow vault above him with strange intensity, "I tell you
+I've got my grip on a certain rich man in this city, and if you will
+only wait, you shall see strange things. I don't know his name and I
+don't know his face, but I do know what he has done, and a thousand
+dollars down couldn't buy the knowledge of me."</p>
+
+<p>"But if you don't know his name and don't know his face, how in the name
+of all that's mischievous are you going to know your man?"</p>
+
+<p>"Leave that to me! If I once meet him and hear him talk, one more rich
+man goes down and one more poor devil goes up, or I've not the wit that
+starvation usually teaches."</p>
+
+<p>The nature of these sentences together with the various manifestations
+of interest with which they were received, had for a moment deterred the
+two girls in their hurried advance, but now they put away every thought
+save that of the poor little creature awaiting his Dad, and lifting up
+her voice, Paula said,</p>
+
+<p>"Are either of you the father of a little lame lad&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Instantly and before she could conclude, the taller of the two, who had
+also been the chief speaker in the above conversation, turned, and she
+saw his hand begrimed though it was with dirt and dark with many a
+disgraceful trick, go to his heart in a gesture too natural to be
+anything but involuntary.</p>
+
+<p>"Is he hurt?" gasped he, but in how different a tone from that of the
+woman who had used the same words a few minutes before. Then seeing that
+the persons who addressed him were ladies and one of them at least a
+very beautiful one, took off his hat with an easy action, that together
+with what they had heard, proved him to be one of that most dangerous
+class among us, a gentleman who has gone thoroughly and irretrievably to
+the bad.</p>
+
+<p>"I am afraid he is, sir," said Paula. "He was attempting to cross the
+road, and a horse advancing hurriedly, struck him." She had not courage
+to say her horse in face of the white and trembling dismay that seized
+him at these words.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is he?" cried he. "Where's my poor boy?" And he bounded up the
+steps, his hat still in his hand, his long unkempt locks flying, and his
+whole form expressive of the utmost alarm.</p>
+
+<p>"Down by the carriage road," called out Paula, finding it impossible for
+them to keep up with such haste.</p>
+
+<p>"But is he much injured?" cried a smooth voice at their side.</p>
+
+<p>They turned; it was the short thickset man who had been the other's
+companion in the conversation above recorded.</p>
+
+<p>"We trust not," answered Cicely; "his arm received the blow, and he
+suffers very much, but we hope it is not serious;" and they hurried on.</p>
+
+<p>They found the father seated on the grass holding the little fellow in
+his arms. The look on his once handsome but now thoroughly corrupt and
+dissipated face, made their hearts melt within them. However wicked he
+might be&mdash;and that sly treacherous eye, that false impudent lip, that
+settling of the whole face into the mould which Vice applies to all her
+votaries, left no doubt of his complete depravity&mdash;he dearly loved his
+child, and love, no matter how it is expressed, or in what garb it
+appears, is a sacred and beautiful thing, and ennobles for the time
+being any creature who displays it.</p>
+
+<p>"'Twas a hard knock up, Dad," came from the white lips of the child as
+he felt his father's trembling hand feel up and down his arm, "but I
+guess the 'little fellar' can stand it." "Little feller" was evidently
+the name by which his father was accustomed to address him.</p>
+
+<p>"There are no bones broken," said the father. "To be lame and maimed too
+would be&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He did not finish, for a delicately gloved hand was here laid on his
+sleeve, and a gentle voice whispered, "Money cannot pay for an injury
+like that, but please accept this;" and Paula thrust a purse into his
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>He clutched it eagerly, but at her next request that he should tell her
+where he lived that they might inquire after the boy, he shook his head
+with a return of his old emphasis.</p>
+
+<p>"The haunts of bats and jackals are not for ladies." Then as he caught
+sight of her pitiful face bending in farewell over the little urchin,
+some remembrance perhaps of the days when he had a right to stoop to the
+ear of beautiful women and walk unrebuked at their side, returned to him
+from the past, and respectfully lowering his voice, he asked her name.</p>
+
+<p>She gave it and he seemed to lay it away in his mind; then as the ladies
+turned to remount their horses, rose and began carrying the little
+fellow off. As he vanished in the turn of the path that led towards the
+main entrance, they perceived a tall dark figure arise from a seat in
+the distance and stand looking after him, with a leer on its face and a
+malicious hugging of itself in a long black cloak, that proclaimed her
+to be the same ominous being who had before so grievously startled them.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XVI" id="XVI"></a>XVI.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE SWORD OF DAMOCLES.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"And my imaginations are as foul<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As Vulcan's smithy."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Hamlet</span>.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Why, all the souls that were, were forfeit once;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And He that might the vantage best have took<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Found out the remedy."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Measure for Measure</span>.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>Mrs. Sylvester reclining on the palest of blue couches, in the slanting
+sunlight of an April afternoon, is a study for a painter. Not that such
+inspiring loveliness breathed from her person, conspicuous as it was for
+its rich and indolent grace, but because in every attitude of her large
+and well formed limbs, in every raise of the thick white lids from eyes
+whose natural brightness was obscured by the mist of aimless fancies,
+she presented such an embodiment of luxurious ease, one might almost
+imagine they were gazing upon the favorite Sultana of some eastern
+court, or, to be for once poetical as the subject demands, a full blown
+Egyptian lotos floating in hushed enjoyment on the placid waters of its
+native stream. Indeed for all the blonde character of her beauty, there
+was certainly something oriental about the physique of this favored
+child of fortune. Had the tint of her skin been richened to a magnolia
+bloom instead of reminding you of that description accorded to the
+complexion of one of Napoleon's sisters, that it looked like white satin
+seen through pink glass, she would have passed in any Eastern market,
+for a rare specimen of Circassian beauty.</p>
+
+<p>But Mr. Sylvester coming home fatigued and harassed, cared little for
+Circassian beauties or Oriental odalisques. It was a welcome that he
+desired, and such refreshment as a quick eye and ready hand can bestow
+when guided by a tender and loving heart; or so thought the watchful
+Paula as she glided from her room at the sound of his step in the hall,
+and met him coming weary and disheartened from the side of Ona's couch.
+The sight of her revived him at once.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, little one, what have you been doing to-day?"</p>
+
+<p>Instantly a shade fell over her countenance. "I hardly know how to tell
+you. It has been a day of great experiences to me. I am literally shaken
+with them. I have been wanting to talk to Ona about what I have seen and
+heard, but thought I had best wait till you came home, for I could not
+repeat the story twice."</p>
+
+<p>"What! you look pale. Nothing has happened to frighten you I hope,"
+exclaimed he, leading her back to Ona's side, who stirred a little, and
+presently deigned to take an upright position.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know if it is fear or horror," cried Paula, shuddering; "I
+have seen a fearful woman&mdash;But first I ought to tell you that I took a
+ride with Miss Stuyvesant in the Park this morning&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and persisted in going for that lady on horseback instead of
+sending the groom after her, and all starting from the front of our
+house," murmured Mrs. Sylvester with lazy chagrin.</p>
+
+<p>Paula smiled, but otherwise took no notice of this standing topic of
+disagreement.</p>
+
+<p>"It was a beautiful day," she proceeded, "and we enjoyed it very much,
+but we were so unfortunate as to run over a little boy, at that place
+where the equestrian road crosses the foot path; a lame child, Mr.
+Sylvester, who could not get out of our way; poor too, with a ragged
+jacket on which seemed to make it all the worse."</p>
+
+<p>Ona gave a shrug with her white shoulders, that seemed to question this.
+"Did you injure him very much?" queried she, with a show of interest;
+not sufficient however to impair her curiosity as to the cut of one of
+her nails.</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot say; his little arm was struck, and when I went to pick him
+up, he lay back in my lap and moaned till I thought my heart would
+break. But that was not the worst that happened. As we went hurrying up
+the walk to find the child's father, we were met by a woman wrapped in a
+black cloak whose long and greasy folds seemed like the symbol of her
+own untold depravity. Her glance as she encountered the child writhing
+in pain at my feet, made my heart stand still. It was more than
+malignant, it was actually fiendish. 'Is he hurt?' she asked, and it
+seemed as if she gloated over the question; she evidently longed to hear
+that he was, longed to be told that he would die; and when I inquired if
+she was his mother, she broke into a string of laughter, that seemed to
+darken the daylight. 'His mother! O yes, we look alike, don't we!' she
+exclaimed, pointing with a mocking gesture frightful to see, first at
+his eyes which were very blue and beautiful, and then at her own which
+were dark as evil thoughts could make them. I never saw anything so
+dreadful. Malignancy! and towards a little lame child! what could be
+more horrible!"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester and his wife exchanged looks, then the former asked, "Did
+she follow you, Paula?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; after telling me that I&mdash;But I cannot repeat what she said,"
+exclaimed the young girl with a quick shudder. "Since I came home," she
+musingly continued, "I have looked and looked at my face in the glass,
+but I cannot believe that what she declared is true. There is no
+similarity between us, could never have been any: I will not have it
+that she ever saw in all the days of her life such a picture as that in
+her glass." And with a sudden gesture Paula started up and pointed to
+herself as she stood reflected in one of the tall mirrors with which
+Ona's boudoir abounded.</p>
+
+<p>"And did she dare to make any comparison between you and her own
+degraded self?" exclaimed Mr. Sylvester, with a glance at the exquisite
+vision of pure girlhood thus doubly presented to his notice.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, what I am, she was once, or so she said. And it may be true. I
+have never suffered sorrow or experienced wrong, and cannot measure
+their power to carve the human face with such lines as I beheld on that
+woman's countenance to-day. But do not let us talk of her any more. She
+left us at last, and we found the child's father. Mr. Sylvester," she
+suddenly asked, "are there to be found in this city, men occupying
+honorable positions and as such highly esteemed, who like Damocles of
+old, may be said to sit under the constant terror of a falling sword in
+the shape of some possible disclosure, that if made, would ruin their
+position before the world forever?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester started as if he had been shot. "Paula!" cried he, and
+instantly was silent again. He did not look at his wife, but if he had,
+he would have perceived that even her fair skin was capable of blanching
+to a yet more startling whiteness, and that her sleepy eyes could flash
+open with something like expression in their lazy depths.</p>
+
+<p>"I mean," dreamily continued Paula, absorbed in her own remembrance,
+"that if what we overheard said by the father of that child to-day is
+true, some one of our prominent men, whose life is not all it appears,
+is standing on the verge of possible exposure and shame; that a hound is
+on his track in the form of a starving man; and that sooner or later he
+will have to pay the price of an unprincipled creature's silence, or
+fall into public discredit like some others of whom we have lately
+read." Then as silence filled the room, she added, "It makes me tremble
+to think that a man of means and seeming honor should be placed in such
+a position, but worse still that we may know such a one and be ignorant
+of his misery and his shame."</p>
+
+<p>"It is getting time for me to dress," murmured Ona, sinking back on her
+pillow and speaking in her most languid tone of voice. "Could you not
+hasten your story a little Paula?"</p>
+
+<p>But Mr. Sylvester with a hurried glance at the closing eyes of his wife,
+requested on the contrary that she would explain herself more
+definitely. "Ona will pardon the delay," said he, with a set, strained
+politeness that called up the least little quiver of suppressed sarcasm
+about the rosy infantile lips that he evidently did not consider it
+worth his while to notice.</p>
+
+<p>"But that is all," said Paula. However she repeated as nearly as she
+could just what the boy's father had said. At the conclusion Mr.
+Sylvester rose.</p>
+
+<p>"What kind of a looking man was he?" said that gentleman as he crossed
+to the window.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, as nearly as I can describe, he was tall, dark and seedy, with a
+shock of black hair and a pair of black whiskers that floated on the
+wind as he walked. He was evidently of the order of decayed gentleman,
+and his manner of talking, especially in the profuse use he made of his
+arms and hands, was decidedly foreign. Yet his speech was pure and
+without accent."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester's face as he asked the next question was comparatively
+cheerful. "Was the other man with whom he was talking, as dark and
+foreign as himself?"</p>
+
+<p>"O no, he was round and jovial, a little too insinuating perhaps, in his
+way of speaking to ladies, but otherwise a a well enough appearing man."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester bowed and looked at his watch. (Why do gentlemen always
+consult their watches even in the face of the clock?) "Ona, you are
+right," said he, "it is time you were dressing for dinner." And
+concluding with a word or two of sympathy as to the peculiar nature of
+Paula's adventures as he called them, he hastened from the room and
+proceeded to his little refuge above.</p>
+
+<p>"He has not asked me what became of the child," thought Paula, with a
+certain pang of surprise. "I expected him to say, 'Shall we not try and
+see the little fellow, Paula?' if only to allow me to explain that the
+child's father would not tell me where they lived. But the later affair
+has evidently put the child out of his head. And indeed it is only
+natural that a business man should be more interested in such a fact as
+I have related, than in the sprained arm of a wretched creature's
+'little feller.'" And she turned to assist Ona, who had arisen from her
+couch and was now absorbed in the intricacies of an uncommonly elaborate
+toilet.</p>
+
+<p>"Those men did not mention any names?" suddenly queried that lady,
+looking with an expression of careful anxiety, at the twist of her back
+hair, in the small hand-mirror she held over her shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Paula, dropping a red rose into the blonde locks she was so
+carefully arranging. "He expressly said he did not know the name of the
+person to whom he alluded. It was a strange conversation for me to
+overhear, was it not?" she remarked, happy to have interested her cousin
+in anything out of the domains of fashion.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know&mdash;certainly&mdash;of course&mdash;" returned Mrs. Sylvester with some
+incoherence. "Do you think red looks as well with this black as the
+lavender would do?" she rambled on in her lightest tone, pulling out a
+box of feathers.</p>
+
+<p>Paula gave her a little wistful glance of disappointment and decided in
+favor of the lavender.</p>
+
+<p>"I am bound to look well to-night if I never do so again," said Ona.
+They were all going to a public reception at which a foreign lord was
+expected to be present. "How fortunate I am to have a perfect little
+hairdresser in my own family, without being obliged to send for some
+gossipy, fussy old Madame with her stories of how such and such a one
+looked when dressed for the Grand Duke's ball, or how Mrs. So and So
+always gave her more than her price because she rolled up puffs so
+exquisitely." And stopping to aid the deft girl in substituting the
+lavender feather for the red rose in her hair&mdash;she forgot to ask any
+more questions.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>"Ona," remarked her husband, coming into the room on his way down to
+dinner&mdash;Mrs. Sylvester never dined when she was going to any grand
+entertainment; it made her look flushed she said&mdash;"I am not in the habit
+of troubling you about your family matters, but have you heard from your
+father of late?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sylvester turned from her jewel-casket and calmly surveyed his
+face. It was fixed and formal, the face he turned to his servants and
+sometimes&mdash;to his wife. "No," said she, with a light little gesture as
+though she were speaking of the most trivial matter. "In one respect at
+least, papa is like an angel, his visits are few and far between."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester's eye-brows drew heavily together. For a man with a smile
+of strange sweetness, he could sometimes look very forbidding. "<i>When</i>
+was he here last?" he inquired in a tone more commanding than he knew.</p>
+
+<p>She did not appear to resent it. "Let me see," mused she. "When was it I
+lost my diamond ear-ring? O I remember, it was on the eve of New Year's
+day a year ago; I recollect because I had to wear pearls with my garnet
+brocade," she pettishly sighed. "And papa came the next week, after you
+had given me the money for a new pair. I have reason to remember <i>that</i>,
+for not a dollar did he leave me."</p>
+
+<p>"Ona!" exclaimed her husband, shrinking back in uncontrollable surprise,
+while his eyes flashed inquiringly to her ears in which two noble
+diamonds were brilliantly shining.</p>
+
+<p>"O," she cried, just raising one snowy hand to those sparkling
+ornaments, while a faint blush, the existence of which he had sometimes
+doubted, swept over her careless face. "I was enabled to procure them in
+time; but for a whole two months I had to go without diamonds." She did
+not say that she had bartered her wedding jewels to make up the sum she
+needed, but he may have understood that without being told.</p>
+
+<p>"And that is the last time you have seen him?" He held her eyes with
+his, she could not look away.</p>
+
+<p>"The very last, sir; strange to say."</p>
+
+<p>His glance shifted from her face and he turned with a bow towards the
+door.</p>
+
+<p>"May I ask," she slowly inquired as he moved across the floor, "what is
+the reason of this sudden interest in poor papa?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly," said he, pausing and looking back, not without some emotion
+of pity in his glance. "I am sometimes struck with a sense of the duty I
+owe you, in helping you to bear the burden of certain secret
+responsibilities which I fear may sometimes prove too heavy for you."</p>
+
+<p>She gave a little rippling laugh that only sounded hollow to the image
+listening in the glass. "You choose strange times in which to be
+struck," said she, holding up two dresses for his inspection, with a
+lift of her brows evidently meant as an inquiry as to which he thought
+the most becoming.</p>
+
+<p>"Conscience is the chooser, not I," declared he, for once allowing
+himself to ignore the weighty question of dress thus propounded.</p>
+
+<p>His wife gave a little toss of her head and he left the room.</p>
+
+<p>"I should like Edward very much," murmured she in a burst of confidence
+to her own reflection in the glass, "if only he would not bother himself
+so much about that same disagreeable conscience."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>"You look unhappy," said Mr. Sylvester to Paula as they came from the
+dining-room. "Have the adventures of the day made such an impression
+upon you that you will not be able to enjoy the evening's festivities?"</p>
+
+<p>She lifted her face and the quick smile came.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not like to see your brow so clouded," continued he, smoothing his
+own to meet her searching eye. "Smiles should sit on the lips of youth,
+or else why are they so rosy."</p>
+
+<p>"Would you have me smile in face of my first glimpse of wickedness,"
+asked she, but in a gentle tone that robbed her words of half their
+reproach. "You must remember that I have had but little experience with
+the world. I have lived all my life in a town of wholesome virtues, and
+while here I have been kept from contact with anything low or base. I
+have never known vice, and now all in a moment I feel as if I have been
+bathed in it."</p>
+
+<p>He took her by the hand and drew her gently towards him. "Does your
+whole being recoil so from evil, my Paula? What will you do in this
+wicked world? What will you say to the sinner when you meet him&mdash;as you
+must?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know; it's a problem I have never been brought to consider. I
+feel as if launched on a dismal sea for which I have neither chart nor
+compass. Life was so joyous to me this morning&mdash;" a flush swept over her
+cheek but he did not notice it&mdash;"I held, or seemed to hold, a cup of
+white wine in my hand, but suddenly as I looked at it, it turned black
+and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Ah, the outreach, the dismal breaking away of thought into the
+unfathomable, that lies in the pause of an <i>and</i>!</p>
+
+<p>"And do you refuse to drink a cup across which has fallen a shadow,"
+murmured Mr. Sylvester, his eyes fixed on her face, "the inevitable
+shadow of that great mass of human frailty and woe which has been
+accumulating from the foundation of the world?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, I cannot, and retain my humanity. If there is such evil in the
+world, its pressure must drive it across the path of innocence."</p>
+
+<p>"And you accept the cup?"</p>
+
+<p>"I must; but oh, my vanished beliefs! This morning the wine of my life
+was pure and white, now it is black and befouled. What will make it
+clean again?"</p>
+
+<p>With a sigh Mr. Sylvester dropped her hand and turned towards the
+mantle-piece. It was April as I have said, and there was no fire in the
+grate, but he posed his foot on the fender and looked sadly down at the
+empty hearthstone.</p>
+
+<p>"Paula," said he after a space of pregnant silence, "it had to come. The
+veil of the temple must be rent in every life. Evil is too near us all
+for us to tread long upon the flowers without starting up the adders
+that hide beneath them. You had to have your first look into the cells
+of darkness, and perhaps it is best you had it here and now. The deeps
+are for men's eyes as well as the starry heavens."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes."</p>
+
+<p>"There are some persons," he went on slowly, "you know them, who tread
+the ways of life with their eyelids closed to everything but the strip
+of velvet lawn on which they choose to walk. Earth's sighs and
+deep-drawn groans are nothing to them. The world may swing on in its way
+to perdition; so long as their pathway feels soft, they neither heed nor
+care. But you do not desire to be one of these, Paula! With your great
+soul and your strong heart, you would not ask to sit in a flowery maze,
+while the rest of the world went sliding on and down into wells of
+destruction, you might have made pools of healing by the touch of your
+womanly sympathy."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no."</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot tell you, I dare not tell you," he went on in a strange
+pleading voice that tore at the very roots of her heart, and rung in her
+memory forever, "what evil underlies the whole strata of life! At home
+and abroad, on our hearthstones and within our offices, the mocking
+devil sits. You can scarcely walk a block, my little one, without
+encountering a man or brushing against the dress of a woman across whose
+soul the black shadow lies heavier than any words of his or hers could
+tell. What the man you saw to-day, said of one unhappy being in this
+city, is true, God help us all, of many. Dark spots are easier acquired
+than blotted out, my Paula. In business as in society, one needs to
+carry the white shield of a noble purpose or a self-forgetting love, to
+escape the dripping of the deadly upas tree that branches above all
+humanity. I have walked its ways, my darling, and I know of what I
+speak. Your white robe is spotless but&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"O there is where the pain comes in," she cried; "there, just there, is
+where the dagger strikes. She says she was once like me. O, could any
+temptation, any suffering, any wrong or misfortune that might befall me,
+ever bring me to where she is! If it could&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Paula!" This time his voice came authoritatively. "You are making too
+much of a frenzied woman's impulsive exclamation. To her darkened and
+despairing eyes any young woman of a similar style of beauty would have
+called forth the same remark. It was a sign that she was not entirely
+given up to evil, that she could remember her youth. Instead of feeling
+contaminated by her words, you ought to feel, that unconsciously to
+yourself, your fresh young countenance with its innocent eyes did an
+angel's work to-day. They made her recall what she was in the days of
+her own innocence; and who can tell what may follow such a
+recollection."</p>
+
+<p>"O Mr. Sylvester," said she, "you fill me with shame. If I could think
+that&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You can, nothing appeals to the heart of crime like the glance of
+perfect innocence. If evil walks the world, God's ministers walk it
+also, and none can tell in what glance of the eye or what touch of the
+hand, that ministry will speak."</p>
+
+<p>It was her turn now to take his hand in hers. "O how good, how
+thoughtful you are; you have comforted me and you have taught me. I
+thank you very much."</p>
+
+<p>With a look she did not perceive, he drew his hand away. "I am glad I
+have helped you, Paula; there is but one thing more to say, and this I
+would emphasize with every saddened look you have ever met in all your
+life. Great sins make great sufferers. Side by side came the two
+dreadful powers of vice and retribution into the world, and side by side
+will they keep till they sink at last into the awful deeps of the
+bottomless pit. When you turn your back on a man who has committed a
+crime, one more door shuts in his darkened spirit."</p>
+
+<p>The tears were falling from Paula's eyes now. He looked at them with
+strange wistfulness and involuntarily his hand rose to her head,
+smoothing her locks with fatherly touches. "Do not think," said he,
+"that I would lessen by a hair's breadth your hatred of evil. I can more
+easily bear to see the shadow upon your cup of joy than upon the banner
+of truth you carry. These eyes must lose none of their inner light in
+glancing compassionately on your fellow-men. Only remember that divinity
+itself has stooped to rescue, and let the thought make your contact with
+weary, wicked-hearted humanity a little less trying and a little more
+hopeful to you. And now, my dear, that is enough of serious talk for
+to-day. We are bound for a reception, you know, and it is time we were
+dressing. Do you want me to tell you a secret?" asked he in a light
+mysterious tone, as he saw her eyes still filling.</p>
+
+<p>She glanced up with sudden interest.</p>
+
+<p>"I know it is treason," resumed he, "I am fully aware of the grave
+nature of my offence; but Paula I hate all public receptions, and shall
+only be able to enjoy myself to-night just so much as I see that you are
+doing so. Life has its dark portals and its bright ones. This is one
+that you must enter with your most brilliant smiles."</p>
+
+<p>"And they shall not be lacking," said she. "When a treasure-box of
+thought is given us, we do not open it and scatter its contents abroad,
+but lay it away where the heart keeps its secrets, to be opened in the
+hush of night when we are alone with our own souls and God."</p>
+
+<p>He smiled and she moved towards the door. "None the less do we carry
+with us wherever we go, the remembrance of our hidden treasure," she
+smilingly added, looking back upon him from the stair.</p>
+
+<p>And again as upon the first night of her entrance into the house, did he
+stand below and watch her as she softly went up, her lovely face
+flashing one moment against the dark background of the luxurious bronze,
+towering from the platform behind, then glowing with faint and fainter
+lustre, as the distance widened between them and she vanished in the
+regions above.</p>
+
+<p>She did not see the toss of his arm with which he threw off the burden
+that rested upon his soul.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XVII" id="XVII"></a>XVII.</h2>
+
+<h3>GRAVE AND GAY.</h3>
+
+<blockquote><p>"No scandal about Queen Elizabeth I hope."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Sheridan.</span></p>
+
+<p>"Stands Scotland where it did?"&mdash;<span class="smcap">Macbeth.</span></p></blockquote>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+<p>"Who is that talking with Miss Stuyvesant?" asked Mr. Sylvester,
+approaching his wife during one of the lulls that will fall at times
+upon vast assemblies.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sylvester followed the direction of his glance and immediately
+responded, "O that is Mr. Ensign, one of the best <i>partis</i> of the
+season. He evidently knows where to pay his court."</p>
+
+<p>"I inquired because he has just requested me to honor him with a formal
+introduction to Paula."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed! then oblige him by all means; it would be a great match for
+her. To say nothing of his wealth, he is <i>haut ton</i>, and his red
+whiskers will not look badly beside Paula's dark hair."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester frowned, then sighed, but in a few minutes Paula observed
+him approaching with Mr. Ensign. At once her hitherto pale cheek
+flushed, but the young gentleman did not seem to object to that, and
+after the formal introduction which he had sought was over, he exclaimed
+in his own bright ringing tones,</p>
+
+<p>"The fates have surely forgotten their usual rôle of unpropitiousness. I
+did not dare hope to meet you here to-night, Miss Fairchild. Was the
+ride all that your fancy painted?"</p>
+
+<p>"O," said she, speaking very low and glancing around, "do not allude to
+it here. We had an adventure shortly after you parted from us."</p>
+
+<p>"An adventure! and no cavalier at your side! If I could but have known!
+Was it so serious?" he inquired in a moment, seeing her look grave.</p>
+
+<p>"Ask Miss Stuyvesant;" said she. "I cannot talk about it any more
+to-night. Besides the music carries off one's thoughts. It is like a
+joyous breeze that whirls away the thistle-down whether it will or no."</p>
+
+<p>He gave her a short quick look grave enough in its way, but responded
+with his usual graceful humor, "The thistle-down is too vicious a sprite
+to be beguiled away so easily. If I were to give my opinion on the
+subject, I should say there was method in its madness. If you have been
+brought up in the country, as I suspect from your remark, you must know
+that the white floating ball is not as harmless as it would lead you to
+imagine. It is a meddlesome nobody, that's what it is, and like some
+country gossips I know, launches forth from a pure love of mischief to
+establish his prickers in his neighbor's field."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>His!</i> I thought it must be feminine at least to fulfill the conditions
+you mention. A male gossip, O fie! I shall never have patience with a
+thistle-ball after this."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," laughed he, "I did start with the intention of making it
+feminine, but I caught a glimpse of your eyes and lost my courage. I did
+what I could," added he with a mirthful glance.</p>
+
+<p>"So do the thistles," cried she. Then while both voices joined in a
+merry laugh, she continued, "But where have we strayed? For a moment it
+seemed as if we were on the hills at Grotewell; I could almost see the
+blue sky."</p>
+
+<p>"And I," said he, with his eyes on her face.</p>
+
+<p>"I am sure the brooks bubbled."</p>
+
+<p>"I distinctly heard a bird singing."</p>
+
+<p>"It was a whippowill."</p>
+
+<p>"But my name is Clarence?"</p>
+
+<p>And here both being young and without a care in the world, they laughed
+again. And the crowded perfumed room seemed to freshen as with a whiff
+of mountain air.</p>
+
+
+<p>"You love the country, Miss Fairchild?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes;" and her smile was the reflection of the summer-lands that arose
+before her at the word. "With the right side of my heart do I love the
+spot where nature speaks and man is dumb."</p>
+
+<p>"And with the left?"</p>
+
+<p>"I love the place where great men congregate to face their destiny and
+control it."</p>
+
+<p>"The latter is the deeper love," said he.</p>
+
+<p>She nodded her head and then said, "I need both to make me happy.
+Sometimes as I walk these city streets, I feel as if my very longing to
+escape to the heart of the hills, would carry me there. I remember when
+I was a child, I was one day running through a meadow, when suddenly a
+whole flock of birds flew up from the grass and surrounded my head. I
+was not sure but what I should be caught up and carried away by the
+force of their flight; and when they rose to mid heaven, something in my
+breast seemed to follow them. So it is often with me here, only that it
+is the rush of my thoughts that threatens such a Hegira. Yet if I were
+to be transported to my native hills, I know I should long to be back
+again."</p>
+
+<p>"The mountain lassie has wandered into the courts of the king. The
+perfume of palaces is not easily forgotten."</p>
+
+<p>Her eye turned towards Mr. Sylvester standing near them upright and
+firm, talking to a group of attentive gentlemen every one of whom
+boasted a name of more than local celebrity. "Without a royal heart to
+govern, there would be no palace;" said she, and blushed under a sudden
+sense of the possible interpretation he might give to her words, till
+the rose in her hand looked pallid.</p>
+
+<p>But he had followed her glance and understood her better than she
+thought. "And Mr. Sylvester has such a heart, so a hundred good fellows
+have told me. You are fortunate to see the city from the loop-hole of
+such a home as his."</p>
+
+<p>"It is more than a loop-hole," said she.</p>
+
+<p>"Of that I shall never be satisfied till I see it?"</p>
+
+<p>And being content with the look he received, he took her on his arm and
+led her into the midst of the dancers.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile in a certain corner not far off, two gentlemen were talking.</p>
+
+<p>"Sylvester shows off well to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"He always does. With such a figure as that, a man needs but to enter a
+room to make himself felt. But then he's a good talker too. Ever heard
+him speak?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Fine voice, true snap, right ring. Great favorite at elections. The
+fact is, Sylvester is a remarkable man."</p>
+
+<p>"Hum, ha, so I should judge."</p>
+
+<p>"And so fortunate! He has never been known to run foul in a great
+operation. Put your money in his hand and whew!&mdash;your fortune is as good
+as made."</p>
+
+<p>The other, a rich man, connected heavily with the mining business in
+Colorado, smiled with that bland overflow of the whole countenance which
+is sometimes seen in large men of great self-importance.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a pity he's gone out of Wall Street," continued his companion.
+"The younger fry feel now something like a flock of sheep that has lost
+its bell-wether."</p>
+
+<p>"They straggle&mdash;eh?" returned his portly friend with an increase of his
+smile that was not altogether pleasant. "So Sylvester has left Wall
+Street?"</p>
+
+<p>"He closed his last enterprise two weeks before accepting the Presidency
+of the Madison Bank. Stuyvesant is down on speculation, and well&mdash;It
+looks better you know; the Madison Bank is an old institution, and
+Sylvester is ambitious. There'll be no reckless handling of funds
+<i>there</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"No!" What was there in that <i>no</i> that made the other look up? "I'm not
+acquainted with Sylvester myself. Has he much family?"</p>
+
+<p>"A wife&mdash;there she is, that handsome woman talking with Ditman,&mdash;and a
+daughter, niece or somebody who just now is setting all our young
+scapegraces by the ears. You can see her if you just crane your neck a
+little."</p>
+
+<p>"Humph, ha, very pretty, very pretty. How much do you suppose Mrs.
+Sylvester is worth as she stands, diamonds you know, and all that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well I should say some where near ten thousand; that sprig in her hair
+cost a clean five."</p>
+
+<p>"So, so. They live in a handsome house I suppose?"</p>
+
+<p>"A regular palace, corner of Fifth Avenue and &mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"All his?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nobody's else I reckon."</p>
+
+<p>"Sports horses and carriage I suppose?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course."</p>
+
+<p>"Yacht, opera box?"</p>
+
+<p>"No reason why he shouldn't."</p>
+
+<p>"What is his salary?"</p>
+
+<p>"A nominal sum, five or ten thousand perhaps."</p>
+
+<p>"Owns good share of the bank's stock I presume?"</p>
+
+<p>"Enough to control it."</p>
+
+<p>"Below par though?"</p>
+
+<p>"A trifle, going up, however."</p>
+
+<p>"And <i>don't</i> speculate?"</p>
+
+<p>The way this man drawled his words was excessively disagreeable.</p>
+
+<p>"Not that any one knows of. He's made his fortune and now asks only to
+enjoy it."</p>
+
+<p>The man from the West strutted back and looked at his companion
+knowingly. "What do you think of my judgment, Stadler?"</p>
+
+<p>"None better this side of the Pacific."</p>
+
+<p>"Pretty good at spying out cracks, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"I wouldn't like to undertake the puttying up that would deceive you."</p>
+
+<p>"Humph! Well then, mark this. In two months from to-day you will see Mr.
+Sylvester rent his house and go south for his health, or the pretty one
+over there will marry one of the scapegraces you mention, who will lend
+the man <i>who don't engage in any further ventures</i>, more than one or two
+hundred thousand dollars."</p>
+
+<p>"Ha, you know something."</p>
+
+
+<p>"I own mines in Colorado and I have my points."</p>
+
+<p>"And Mr. Sylvester?"</p>
+
+<p>"Will find them too sharp for him."</p>
+
+<p>And having made his joke, he yielded to the other's apparent
+restlessness, and they sauntered off.</p>
+
+<p>They did not observe a pale, demure, little lady that sat near them
+abstractedly nodding her dainty head to the remarks of a pale-whiskered
+youth at her side, nor notice the emotion with which she suddenly rose
+at their departure and dismissed her chattering companion on some
+impromptu errand. It was only one of the ordinary group of dancers, a
+pretty, plainly dressed girl, but her name was Stuyvesant.</p>
+
+<p>Rising with a decision that gave a very attractive color to her cheeks,
+she hastily looked around. A trio of young gentlemen started towards her
+but she gave them no encouragement; her eye had detected Mr. Sylvester's
+tall figure a few feet off and it was to him she desired to speak. But
+at her first movement in his direction, her glance encountered another
+face, and like a stream that melts into a rushing torrent, her purpose
+seemed to vanish, leaving her quivering with a new emotion of so vivid a
+character she involuntarily looked about her for a refuge.</p>
+
+<p>But in another instant her eyes had again sought the countenance that
+had so moved her, and finding it bent upon her own, faltered a little
+and unconsciously allowed the lilies she was carrying to drop from her
+hand. Before she realized her loss, the face before her had vanished,
+and with it something of her hesitation and alarm.</p>
+
+<p>With a hasty action she drew near Mr. Sylvester. "Will you lend me your
+arm for a minute?" she asked, with her usual appealing look rendered
+doubly forcible by the experience of a moment before.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Stuyvesant! I am happy to see you."</p>
+
+<p>Never had his face looked more cheerful she thought, never had his smile
+struck her more pleasantly.</p>
+
+<p>"A little talk with a little girl will not hinder you too much, will
+it?" she queried, glancing at the group of gentlemen that had shrunk
+back at her approach.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you call that hindrance which relieves one from listening to
+quotations of bank stock at an evening reception?"</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head with a confused movement, and led him up before a
+stand of flowering exotics.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to tell you something," she said eagerly but with a marked
+timidity also, the tall form beside her looked so imposing for all its
+encouraging bend. "I beg your pardon if I am doing wrong, but papa
+regards you with such esteem and&mdash;Mr. Sylvester do you know a man by the
+name of Stadler?"</p>
+
+<p>Astonished at such a question from lips so young and dainty, he turned
+and surveyed her for a moment with quick surprise. Something in her
+aspect struck him. He answered at once and without circumlocution. "Yes,
+if you refer to that spry keen-faced man, just entering the
+supper-room."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know his companion?" she proceeded; "the portly, highly
+pompous-looking gentleman with the gold eye-glasses? Look quickly."</p>
+
+<p>"No." There was an uneasiness in his tone however that struck her
+painfully.</p>
+
+<p>"He is a stranger in town; has not the honor of your acquaintance he
+says, but from the questions he asked, I judge he has a great interest
+in your affairs. He spoke of being connected with mines in Colorado. I
+was sitting behind a curtain and overheard what was said."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester turned pale and regarded her attentively. "Might I be so
+bold," he inquired after a moment, "as to ask you what that was?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir, certainly, but it is even harder for me to repeat than it was
+for me to hear. He inquired about your domestic concerns, your home and
+your income," she murmured blushing; "and then said, in what I thought
+was a somewhat exulting tone, that in two months or so we should see you
+go South for your health or&mdash;Is not that enough for me to tell you, Mr.
+Sylvester?"</p>
+
+<p>He gave her a short stare, opened his lips as if to speak, then turned
+abruptly aside and began picking mechanically at the blossoms before
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"I, of course, do not know what men mean when they talk of possessing
+points. But the leer and side glance which accompanies such talk, have a
+universal language we all understand, and I felt that I must warn you of
+that man's malice if only because papa regards you so highly."</p>
+
+<p>He shrank as if touched on a sore place, but bowed and answered the
+wistful appeal of her glance with a shadow of his usual smile, then he
+turned, and looking towards the door through which the two men had
+disappeared, made a movement as if he would follow. But remembering
+himself, escorted her to a seat, saying as he did so:</p>
+
+<p>"You are very kind, Miss Stuyvesant; please say nothing of this to
+Paula."</p>
+
+<p>She bowed and a flitting smile crossed her upturned countenance. "I am
+not much of a gossip, Mr. Sylvester, or I should have been tempted to
+have carried my information to my father instead of to you."</p>
+
+<p>He understood the implied promise in this remark and gave the hand on
+his arm a quick pressure, before relinquishing her to the care of the
+pale-complexioned youth who by this time had returned to her side.</p>
+
+<p>In another moment Paula came up on the arm of a black-whiskered
+gentleman all shirt front and eye-glasses. "O Cicely," she cried, (she
+called Miss Stuyvesant, Cicely now) "is it not a delightful evening?"</p>
+
+<p>"Are you enjoying yourself so much?" inquired that somewhat agitated
+little lady, with a glance at the countenance of her friend's attendant.</p>
+
+<p>"I fear it would scarcely seem consistent in me now to say no," returned
+the radiant girl, with a laughing glance towards the same gentleman.</p>
+
+<p>But when they were alone, the gentleman having departed on some of the
+innumerable errands with which ladies seem to delight in afflicting
+their attendant cavaliers at balls or receptions, she atoned for that
+glance by remarking,</p>
+
+<p>"I do not find the average partner that falls to one's lot in such
+receptions all that fancy paints." And then finding she had repeated a
+phrase of Mr. Ensign's, blushed, though no one stood near her but
+Cicely.</p>
+
+<p>"Fancy's brush would need to be dipped in but two colors to present to
+our eye the mass of them," was Cicely's laughing reply. "A streak of
+black for the coat, and a daub of white for the shirt front. <i>Voila
+tout.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"With perhaps a dash of red in some cases," murmured a voice over their
+shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>They turned with hurried blushes. "Ah, Mr. Ensign," quoth Cicely in
+unabashed gaiety, "we reserve red for the exceptions. We did not intend
+to include our acknowledged friends in our somewhat sweeping assertion."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, I see, the black streak and the white daub are a symbol of,
+'Er&mdash;Miss Stuyvesant&mdash;very warm this evening! Have an ice, do. <i>I</i>
+always have an ice after dancing; so refreshing, you know.'"</p>
+
+<p>The manner in which he imitated the usual languid drawl of certain of
+the young scapegraces heretofore mentioned, was irresistible. Paula
+forgot her confusion in her mirth.</p>
+
+<p>"You are blessed with a capacity for playing both rôles, I perceive,"
+cried Cicely with unusual abandon. "Well, it is convenient, there is
+nothing like scope."</p>
+
+<p>"Unless it is hope," whispered Mr. Ensign so low that only Paula could
+hear.</p>
+
+<p>"But I warn you," continued Cicely, with a sweet soft laugh that seemed
+to carry her heart far out into the passing throng, "that we have no
+fondness for the model beau of the period. A dish of milk makes a very
+good supper but it looks decidedly pale on the dinner table."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Paula, eying the various young men that filed up and down
+before them, some pale, some dark, some handsome, some plain, but all
+smiling and dapper, if not debonair, "some men could be endured if only
+they were not <i>men</i>."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Ensign gave her a quick look, and while he laughed at the paradox,
+straightened himself like one who could be a man if the occasion called.
+She saw the action and blushed.</p>
+
+<p>But their conversation was soon interrupted. Mr. Sylvester was seen
+returning from the supper-room, looking decidedly anxious, and while
+Paula was ignorant of what had transpired to annoy him, her ready spirit
+caught the alarm, and she was about to rush up to him and address him,
+when one of the waiters approached, and murmuring a few words she did
+not hear, handed him a card upon which she descried nothing but a simple
+circle. Instantly a change crossed his already agitated countenance, and
+advancing to the ladies with a word or two that while seemingly
+cheerful, struck Paula as somewhat forced, excused himself with the
+information that a business friend had been so inconsiderate as to
+importune him for an interview in the hall. And with just a nod towards
+Mr. Ensign, who had drawn back at his advance, left them and disappeared
+in the crowd about the door.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not like these interruptions from business friends in a time of
+pleasure," cried Paula, looking after him with anxious eyes. "Did you
+notice how agitated he seemed, Cicely? And half an hour ago he was the
+picture of calm enjoyment."</p>
+
+<p>"Business is beyond our comprehension, Paula," returned her friend
+evasively. "It is something like a neuralgic twinge, it takes a man when
+he least expects it. Have you told Mr. Ensign of our adventure?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, but I informed Mr. Sylvester, and he said such good, true words to
+me, Cicely. I can never forget them."</p>
+
+<p>"And I told papa; but he only frowned and made some observation about
+the degeneracy of the times, and the number of scamps thrown to the top
+by the modern methods of acquiring instantaneous fortunes."</p>
+
+<p>"Your papa is sometimes hard, is he not, Cicely?"</p>
+
+<p>With a flush Miss Stuyvesant allowed her eye to rest for a moment on the
+crowd shifting before her. "He was dug from a quarry of granite, Paula.
+He is both hard and substantial; capable of being hewn but not of being
+moulded. Of such stuff are formed monuments of enduring beauty and
+solidity. You must do papa justice."</p>
+
+<p>"I do, but I sometimes have a feeling as if the granite column would
+fall and crush me, Cicely."</p>
+
+<p>"You, Paula?"</p>
+
+<p>Before she could again reply, Mr. Sylvester returned. His face was still
+pale, but it had acquired an expression of rigidity even more alarming
+to Paula than its previous aspect of forced merriment. Lifting her by
+the hand, he drew her apart.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall have to leave you somewhat abruptly," said he. "An important
+matter demands my instant attention. Bertram is somewhere here, and will
+see that you and Ona arrive home in safety. You won't allow your
+enjoyment to be clouded by my hasty departure, will you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not if it will make you anxious. But I would rather go home with you
+now. I am sure Cousin Ona would be willing."</p>
+
+<p>"But I am not going home at present," said he; and she ventured upon no
+further remonstrance.</p>
+
+<p>But her enjoyment was clouded; the sight of suffering or anxiety on that
+face was more than she could bear; and ere long she said good-night to
+Cicely, and accepting the arm of Mr. Ensign, who was never very far from
+her side, proceeded to search for her cousin.</p>
+
+<p>She found her standing in the midst of an admiring throng to whom her
+diamonds, if not her smiles, were an object of undoubted interest. She
+was in the full tide of one of her longest and most widely rambling
+speeches, and to Paula, with that stir of anxiety at her breast, was an
+image of self-satisfied complacency from which she was fain to drop her
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Sylvester shares the honors with her husband," remarked Mr. Ensign
+as they drew near.</p>
+
+<p>"But not the trials, or the pain, or the care?" was Paula's inward
+comment.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sylvester was not easily wooed away from a circle in which she
+found herself creating such an impression, but at length she yielded to
+Paula's importunities, and consented to accept young Mr. Sylvester's
+attendance to their home. The next thing was to find Bertram. Mr. Ensign
+engaged to do this. Leaving Paula with her cousin, who may or may not
+have been pleased at this sudden addition to her circle, he sought for
+the young man who as Mr. Mandeville was not unknown to any of the
+fashionable men and women of the day. It was no easy task, nor did he
+find him readily, but at last he came upon him leaning out of a window
+and gazing at a white lily which he held in his hand. Without preamble,
+Mr. Ensign made known his errand, and Bertram at once prepared to
+accompany him back to the ladies.</p>
+
+<p>"By Jove! I didn't know the fellow was so handsome!" thought the former,
+and frowned he hardly knew why. Bertram was not handsome, but then
+Clarence Ensign was plain, which Bertram certainly was not.</p>
+
+<p>It was to Mr. Ensign's face however that Paula's eyes turned as the two
+came up, and he with the ready vivacity of his natural temperament
+observed it, and took courage.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall soon wish to measure that loop-hole of which I have spoken,"
+said he.</p>
+
+<p>And the soft look in her large dark eye as she responded, "It is always
+open to friends," filled up the measure of his cup of happiness; a cup
+which unlike hers, had not been darkened that day by the falling of
+earth's most dismal shadows.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XVIII" id="XVIII"></a>XVIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>IN THE NIGHT WATCHES.</h3>
+
+<blockquote><p>"Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn?"&mdash;<span class="smcap">Hen. iv.</span></p>
+
+<p>"What doth gravity out of his bed at midnight?"&mdash;<span class="smcap">Hen. iv.</span></p></blockquote>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>"It has been the most delightful evening I have ever passed," said Mrs.
+Sylvester, as she threw aside her rich white mantle in her ample
+boudoir. "Sarah, two loops on that dolman to-morrow; do you hear? I
+thought my arms would freeze. Such an elegant gentleman as the Count de
+Frassac is! He absolutely went wild over you, Paula, but not
+understanding a word of English&mdash;O there, if that horrid little wretch
+didn't drop his spoon on my dress after all! He swore it never touched a
+thread of it, but just look at that spot, right in the middle of a
+pleating too. Paula, your opinion in regard to the lavendar was correct.
+I heard Mrs. Forsyth Jones whisper behind my back that lavendar always
+made blondes look <i>fade</i>. Of course I needed no further evidence to
+convince me that I had entirely succeeded in eclipsing her pale-faced
+daughter. Her daughter!" and the lazy gurgle echoed softly through the
+room, "As if every white-haired girl in the city considered herself
+entitled to be called a blonde!" She stopped to listen, examining
+herself in the glass near by. "I thought I heard Edward. It was very
+provoking in him to leave us in the cavalier manner in which he did. I
+was just going to introduce him to the count, not that he would have
+esteemed it much of an honor, Edward I mean, but when one has a
+good-looking husband&mdash;Sarah, that curtain over there hangs crooked, pull
+it straight this instant. Did you try the oysters, Paula? They were
+perfection, I shall have to dismiss Lorenzo without ceremony and procure
+me a cook that can make an oyster fricassee. By the way did you
+notice&mdash;" and so on and on for five minutes additional. Presently she
+burst forth with&mdash;"I do believe I know what it is to be thoroughly
+satisfied at last. The consideration which one receives as the wife of
+the president of the Madison bank is certainly very gratifying. If I had
+known I would feel such a change in the social atmosphere, I would have
+advocated Edward's dropping speculation long ago. Beauty and wealth may
+help one up the social ladder, but only a settled position such as he
+has now obtained, can carry you safely over the top. I feel at last as
+if we had reached the pinnacle of my ambition and had seen the ladder by
+which we mounted thrown down behind us. If I get my costume from Worth
+in time, I shall give a German next month."</p>
+
+<p>Paula from her stand at the door&mdash;for some minutes she had been
+endeavoring to escape to her room&mdash;surveyed her cousin in wonder. She
+had never seen her look as she did at that moment. Any one who speaks
+from the heart, acquires a certain eloquence, and Ona for once was
+speaking from her heart. The unwonted emotion made her cheeks burn, and
+even her diamonds, ten thousand dollars worth as we have heard declared,
+were less brilliant than her eyes. Paula left her station on the
+door-sill and glided rapidly back to her side. "O Ona," said she, "if
+you would only look like that when&mdash;" she paused, what right had she to
+venture upon giving lessons to her benefactor.</p>
+
+<p>"When what?" inquired the other, subsiding at once into her naturally
+languid manner. Then with a total forgetfulness of the momentary
+curiosity that had prompted the question, held out her head to the
+attendant Sarah, with a command to be relieved of her ornaments. Paula
+sighed and hastened to her room. She could not bring herself to mention
+her anxiety in regard to the still absent master of the house, to this
+lazily-smiling thoroughly satisfied woman.</p>
+
+<p>But none the less did she herself sit up in the moonlight, listening
+with bended head for the sound of his step on the walk beneath. She
+could not sleep while he was absent; and yet the thoughts that disturbed
+her and kept her from her virgin pillow could not have been entirely for
+him, or why those wandering smiles that ever and anon passed flitting
+over her cheek, awakening the dimples that slumbered there, until she
+looked more like a dreamy picture of delight than a wakeful vision of
+apprehension. Not entirely for him&mdash;yet when somewhere towards three
+o'clock, she heard the long delayed step upon the stoop, she started up
+with eager eyes and a nervous gesture that sufficiently betrayed how
+intense was her interest in her benefactor's welfare and happiness. "If
+he goes to Ona's room it is all right," thought she; "but if he keeps on
+upstairs, I shall know that something is wrong and that he needs a
+comforter."</p>
+
+<p>He did not stop at Ona's room; and struck with alarm, Paula opened wide
+her door and was about to step out to meet him, when she caught a sight
+of his face, and started back. Here was no anxiety, that she could
+palliate! The very fact that he did not observe her slight form standing
+before him in the brilliant moonlight, proved that a woman's look or
+touch was not what he was in search of; and shrinking sensitively to one
+side, she sat down on the edge of her dainty bed, dropping her cheek
+into her hand with a weary troubled gesture from which all the delight
+had fled and only the apprehension remained. Suddenly she started
+alertly up; he was coming down again, this time with a gliding muffled
+tread. Sliding past her door, he descended to the floor below. She could
+hear the one weak stair in the heavy staircase creak, and&mdash;What! he has
+passed Ona's room, passed the bronze figure of Luxury on the platform
+beneath, is on his way to the front door, has opened it, shut it softly
+behind him and gone out again into the blank midnight streets. What did
+it mean? For a moment she thought she would run down and awaken Ona, but
+an involuntary remembrance of how those lazy eyes would open, stare
+peevishly and then shut again, stopped her on the threshold of her door;
+and sitting down again upon the side of her bed, she waited, this time
+with opened eyes eagerly staring before her, and quivering form that
+started at each and every sound that disturbed the silence of the great
+echoing house. At six o'clock she again rose; he had just re-entered and
+this time he stopped at Ona's room.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XIX" id="XIX"></a>XIX.</h2>
+
+<h3>A DAY AT THE BANK.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"There's a divinity that shapes our ends,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rough-hew them how we will."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Hamlet.</span><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>There are days when the whole world seems to smile upon one without
+stint or reservation. Bertram Sylvester wending his way to the bank on
+the morning following the reception, was a cheerful sight to behold.
+Youth, health, hope spake in every lineament of his face and brightened
+every glance of his wide-awake eye. His new life was pleasant to him.
+Bach, Beethoven and Chopin were scarcely regretted now by the ambitious
+assistant cashier of the Madison Bank, with a friend in each of its
+directors and a something more than that in the popular president
+himself. Besides he had developed a talent for the business and was in
+the confidence of the cashier, a somewhat sickly man who more than once
+had found himself compelled to rely upon the rapidly maturing judgment
+of his young associate, in matters oftentimes of the utmost importance.
+The manner in which Bertram found himself able to respond to these
+various calls, convinced him that he had been correct in his opinion of
+his own nature, when he informed his uncle that music was his pleasure
+rather than his necessity.</p>
+
+<p>Entering the building by way of Pearl Street, he was about to open the
+door leading into the bank proper, when he heard a little piping voice
+at his side, and turning, confronted the janitor's baby daughter. She
+was a sweet and interesting child, and with his usual good nature
+Bertram at once stopped to give her a kiss.</p>
+
+<p>"I likes you," prattled she as he put her down again after lifting her
+up high over his head, "but I likes de oder one best."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope the other one duly appreciates your preference," laughed he, and
+was again on the point of entering the bank when he felt or thought he
+felt a hand laid on his arm. It was the janitor himself this time, a
+worthy man, greatly trusted in the bank, but possessed of such an
+extraordinary peculiarity in the way of a pair of protruding eyes, that
+his appearance was always attended by a shock.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Hopgood, what is it?" cried Bertram, in his cheery tone.</p>
+
+<p>The janitor drew back and mercifully shifted his gaze from the young
+man's face. "Nothing sir; did I stop you? Beg pardon," he continued,
+half stammering, "I'm dreadful awkward sometimes." And with a nod he
+sidled off towards his little one whom he confusedly took up in his
+arms.</p>
+
+<p>Now Bertram was sure the man had touched him and that, too, with a very
+eager hand, but being late that morning and consequently in somewhat of
+a hurry, he did not stop to pursue the matter. Hastening into the Bank,
+he assisted the teller in opening the safe, that being his especial
+duty, and was taking out such papers as he himself required, when he was
+surprised to catch another sight of those same extraordinary organs of
+which I have just spoken, peering upon him from the door by which he had
+previously entered. They vanished as soon as he encountered them, but
+more than once during the morning he perceived them looking upon him
+from various quarters of the bank, till he felt himself growing
+seriously annoyed, and sending for the man, asked him what he meant by
+this unusual surveillance. The janitor seemed troubled, flushed
+painfully and fixed his eyes in manifest anxiety on the cashier who,
+engaged in some search of his own, was just handling over the tin boxes
+that lined the vault before them. Not till he had seen him shove them
+back into their place and leave the spot, did he venture upon his reply.
+"I'm sure, sir, I'm very sorry if I have annoyed you, but do you think
+Mr. Sylvester will be down at the usual hour?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know of no reason why he should not," returned Bertram.</p>
+
+<p>"I have something to say to him when he comes in," stammered the man,
+evidently taken aback by Bertram's look of surprise. "Will you be kind
+enough to ring the bell the first moment he seems to be at leisure? I
+don't know as it is a matter of any importance but&mdash;" He stopped,
+evidently putting a curb upon himself. "Can I rely on you, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, certainly, I will tell my uncle when he comes in that you want to
+speak to him. He will doubtless send for you at once."</p>
+
+<p>The man looked embarrassed. "Excuse me, sir, but that's just what I'd
+rather you wouldn't do. Mr. Sylvester is always very busy and he might
+think I wished to annoy him about some matters of my own, sir, as indeed
+I have not been above doing at odd times. If you would ring when he
+comes in, that is all I ask."</p>
+
+<p>Bertram thought this a strange request, but seeing the man so anxious,
+gave the required promise, and the janitor hurried off. "Curious!"
+muttered Bertram. "Can anything be wrong?" And he glanced about him with
+some curiosity as he went to his desk. But every one was at his post as
+usual and the countenances of all were equally undisturbed.</p>
+
+<p>It was a busy morning and in the rush of various matters Bertram forgot
+the entire occurrence. But it was presently recalled to him by hearing
+some one remark, "Mr. Sylvester is late to-day," and looking up from
+some papers he was considering, he found it was a full hour after the
+time at which his uncle was in the habit of appearing. Just then he
+caught still another sight of the protruding eyes of Hopgood staring in
+upon him from the half-opened door at the end of the bank.</p>
+
+<p>"The fellow's getting impatient," thought he, and experienced a vague
+feeling of uneasiness.</p>
+
+<p>Another half hour passed. "What can have detained Mr. Sylvester?" cried
+Mr. Wheelock the cashier, hastily approaching Bertram.</p>
+
+<p>"There is to be an important meeting of the Directors to-day, and some
+of the gentlemen are already coming in. Mr. Sylvester is not accustomed
+to keep us waiting."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know, I am sure," returned Bertram, remembering with an
+accession of uneasiness, the abruptness with which his uncle had left
+the entertainment the evening before.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I telegraph to the house?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, that is not necessary. Besides Folger says he passed him on
+Broadway this morning."</p>
+
+<p>"Going down street with a valise in his hand," that gentlemen quietly
+put in. Folger was the teller. "He was looking very pale and didn't see
+me when I nodded."</p>
+
+<p>"What time was that?" asked Bertram.</p>
+
+<p>"About twelve; when I went out to lunch."</p>
+
+<p>A quick gasp sounded at their side, followed by a hurried cough.
+Turning, Bertram encountered for the fifth time the eyes of Hopgood. He
+had entered unperceived by the small door that separated the inner
+inclosure from the outer, and was now standing very close to them, eying
+with side-long looks the safe at their back, the faces of the gentleman
+speaking, yes, and even the countenances of the clerks, as they bent
+busily over their books.</p>
+
+
+<p>"Did you ring, sir?" asked he, catching Bertram's look of displeasure.</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>The man seemed to feel the rebuke implied in this short response, and
+ambled softly away. But in another moment he was stopped by Bertram.</p>
+
+<p>"What is the matter with you to-day, Hopgood? Can you have anything of
+real importance on your mind; anything connected with my uncle?"</p>
+
+<p>The janitor started, and looked almost frightened. "Be careful what you
+say," whispered he; then with a keen look at Mr. Wheelock just then on
+the point of entering the directors' room, he was turning to escape by
+the little door just mentioned, when it opened and Mr. Stuyvesant came
+in. With a look almost of terror the janitor recoiled, throwing himself
+as it were between the latter and the door of the safe; but recovering
+himself, surveyed the keen quiet visage of the veteran banker with a
+rolling of his great eyes absolutely painful to behold. Mr. Stuyvesant,
+who was somewhat absorbed in thought, did not appear to notice the
+agitation he had caused, and with just a hurried nod followed Mr.
+Wheelock into the Directors' room. Instantly the janitor drew himself up
+with an air of relief, and shortly glancing at the clock which lacked a
+few minutes yet of the time fixed for the meeting, slided hastily away
+from Bertram's detaining hand, and disappeared in the crowd without. In
+another moment Bertram saw him standing at the outer door, looking
+anxiously up and down the street.</p>
+
+<p>"Something <i>is</i> wrong," murmured Bertram. "What?" And for a moment he
+felt half tempted to return Mr. Stuyvesant's friendly bow with a few
+words expressive of his uneasiness, but the emphasis with which Hopgood
+had murmured the words, "Be careful what you say," unconsciously
+deterred him, and concealing his nervousness as best he might, he
+entered the Directors' office.</p>
+
+<p>It was now time for the meeting to open, and the gentlemen were all
+seated around the low green baize table that occupied the centre of the
+room. Impatience was written on all their countenances. Mr. Stuyvesant
+especially was looking at the heavy gold watch in his hand, with a frown
+on his deeply wrinkled brow that did not add to its expression of
+benevolence. The empty seat at the head of the table stared upon Bertram
+uncompromisingly.</p>
+
+<p>"My wife gives a reception to-day," ventured one gentleman to his
+neighbor.</p>
+
+<p>"And I have an engagement at five that won't bear postponement."</p>
+
+<p>"Sylvester has always been on hand before."</p>
+
+<p>"We can't proceed without him," was the reply.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Wheelock looked thoughtful.</p>
+
+<p>With a nod of his head towards such gentlemen as met his eye, Bertram
+hastened to a little cupboard devoted to the use of himself and uncle.
+Opening it, he looked within, took down a coat he saw hanging before
+him, and unconsciously uttered an exclamation. It was a dress-coat such
+as had been worn by Mr. Sylvester the evening before.</p>
+
+<p>"What does this mean! My uncle has been here!" were the words that
+sprang to his lips; but he subdued his impulse to speak, and hastily
+hanging up the coat, relocked the door. Proceeding at once to the outer
+room, he asked two or three of the clerks if they were sure Mr.
+Sylvester had not been in during the day. But they all returned an
+unequivocal "no," and that too with a certain stare of surprise that at
+once convinced him he was betraying his agitation too plainly.</p>
+
+<p>"I will telegraph whether Wheelock considers it necessary or not,"
+thought he, and was moving to summon a messenger boy when he caught
+sight of Hopgood slowly making his way in from the street. He was very
+pale and walked with his eyes fixed on the ground, ominously shaking his
+great head in a way that bespoke an inner struggle of no ordinary
+nature. Bertram at once sauntered out to meet him.</p>
+
+<p>"Hopgood," said he, "your evident anxiety is infectious. What has
+happened to make my uncle's detention a matter of such apparent import?
+If you do not wish to confide in me, his nephew almost his son, speak to
+Mr. Wheelock or to one of the directors, but don't keep anything to
+yourself which concerns his welfare or&mdash;What are you looking at?"</p>
+
+<p>The man was gazing as if fascinated at the keys in Bertram's hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing sir, nothing. You must not detain me; I have nothing to say. I
+will wait ten minutes," he muttered to himself, glancing again at the
+clock. Suddenly he saw the various directors come filing out of the
+inner room, and darted for the second time from Bertram's detaining
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope nothing has happened to Mr. Sylvester," exclaimed one gentleman
+to another as they filed by.</p>
+
+<p>"If he were given to a loose ends' sort of business it would be another
+thing."</p>
+
+<p>"He looked exceedingly well at the reception last night," exclaimed
+another; "but in these days&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly there was a hush. A telegraph boy had just entered the door and
+was asking for Mr. Bertram Sylvester.</p>
+
+<p>"Here I am," said Bertram, hastily taking the envelope presented him.
+Slightly turning his back, he opened it. Instantly his face grew white
+as chalk.</p>
+
+<p>"Gentlemen," said he, "you will have to excuse my uncle to-day; a great
+misfortune has occurred to him." Then with a slow and horror-stricken
+movement, he looked about him and exclaimed, "<i>Mrs. Sylvester is dead</i>."</p>
+
+<p>A confused murmur at once arose, followed by a hurried rush; but of all
+the faces that flocked out of the bank, none wore such a look of blank
+and helpless astonishment as that of Hopgood the janitor, as with
+bulging eyes and nervously working hands, he slowly wended his way to
+the foot of the stairs and there sat down gazing into vacancy.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XX" id="XX"></a>XX.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE DREGS IN THE CUP.</h3>
+
+<blockquote><p>"O eloquent, just and mightie death! whom none could advise,
+thou hast persuaded; what none hath dared, thou hast done; and
+whom all the world hath flattered, thou only hast cast out of
+the world and despised: thou hast drawn together all the farre
+stretched greatnesses; all the pride, crueltie and ambition of
+man and covered it all over with these two narrow words, <i>Hic
+jacet</i>."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Sir Walter Raleigh.</span></p></blockquote>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>Bertram's hurried ring at his uncle's door was answered by Samuel the
+butler.</p>
+
+<p>"What is this I hear?" cried the young man, entering with considerable
+agitation, "Mrs. Sylvester dead?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes sir," returned the old and trusty servant, with something like a
+sob in his voice. "She went out riding this morning behind a pair of
+borrowed horses&mdash;and being unused to Michael's way of driving, they ran
+away and she was thrown from the carriage and instantly killed."</p>
+
+<p>"And Miss Fairchild?"</p>
+
+<p>"She didn't go with her. Mrs. Sylvester was alone."</p>
+
+<p>"Horrible, horrible! Where is my uncle, can I see him?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know, sir," the man returned with a strange look of anxiety.
+"Mr. Sylvester is feeling very bad, sir. He has shut himself up in his
+room and none of his servants dare disturb him, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"I should, however, like him to know I am here. In what room shall I
+find him?"</p>
+
+<p>"In the little one, sir, at the top of the house. It has a curious lock
+on the door; you will know it by that."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well. Please be in the hall when I come down; I may want to give
+you some orders."</p>
+
+<p>The old servant bowed and Bertram hastened with hushed steps to ascend
+the stairs. At the first platform he paused. What is there in a house of
+death, of sudden death especially, that draws a veil of spectral
+unreality over each familiar object! Behind that door now inexorably
+closed before him, lay without doubt the shrouded form of her who but a
+few short hours before, had dazzled the eyes of men and made envious the
+hearts of women with her imposing beauty! No such quiet then reigned
+over the spot filled by her presence. As the vision of a dream returns,
+he saw her again in all her splendor. Never a brow in all the great hall
+shone more brightly beneath its sparkling diamonds; never a lip in the
+whole vast throng curled with more self-complacent pride, or melted into
+a more alluring smile, than that of her who now lay here, a marble image
+beneath the eye of day. It was as if a flowery field had split beneath
+the dancing foot of some laughing siren. One moment your gaze is upon
+the swaying voluptuous form, the half-shut beguiling eye, the white
+out-reaching arms upon whose satin surface a thousand loves seem
+perching; the next you stare horror-stricken upon the closing jaws of an
+awful pit, with the flash of something bright in your eyes, and the
+sense of a hideous noiseless rush in which earth and heaven appear to
+join, sink and be swallowed! Bertram felt his heart grow sick. Moving
+on, he passed the bronze image of Luxury lying half asleep on its bed of
+crumpled roses. Hideous mockery! What has luxury to do with death? She
+who was luxury itself has vanished from these halls. Shall the mute
+bronze go on smiling over its wine cup while she who was its prototype
+is carried by without a smile on the lips once so vermeil with pride and
+tropical languors!</p>
+
+<p>Arrived at the top of the house, Bertram knocked at the door with the
+strange lock, and uttering his own name, asked if there was anything he
+could do here or elsewhere to show his sympathy and desire to be of use
+in this great and sudden bereavement. There was no immediate reply and
+he began to fear he would be obliged to retire without seeing his uncle,
+when the door was slowly opened and Mr. Sylvester came out. Instantly
+Bertram understood the anxiety of the servant. Not only did Mr.
+Sylvester's countenance exhibit the usual traces of grief and horror
+incident to a sudden and awful calamity, but there were visible upon it
+the tokens of another and still more unfathomable emotion, a wild and
+paralyzed look that altered the very contour of his features, and made
+his face almost like that of a stranger.</p>
+
+<p>"Uncle, what is it?" sprang involuntarily to his lips. But Mr. Sylvester
+betraying by a sudden backward movement an instinctive desire to escape
+scrutiny, he bethought himself, and with hasty utterance offered some
+words of consolation that sounded strangely hollow and superficial in
+that dim and silent corridor. "Is there nothing I can do for you?" he
+finally asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Everything is being done," exclaimed his uncle in a strained and
+altered voice; "Robert is here." And a silence fell over the hall, that
+Bertram dared not break.</p>
+
+<p>"I have help for everything but&mdash;" He did not say what, it seemed as if
+something rose up in his throat that choked him.</p>
+
+<p>"Bertram," said he at last in a more natural tone, "come with me."</p>
+
+<p>He led him into an adjoining room and shut the door. It was a room from
+which the sunshine had not been excluded and it seemed as if they could
+both breathe more easily.</p>
+
+<p>"Sit down," said his uncle, pointing to a chair. The young man did so,
+but Mr. Sylvester remained standing. Then without preamble, "Have you
+seen her?"</p>
+
+<p>There was no grief in the question, only a quiet respect. Death clothes
+the most volatile with a garment of awe. Bertram slowly shook his head.
+"No," said he, "I came at once up stairs."</p>
+
+<p>"There is no mark on her white body, save the least little discolored
+dent here," continued his uncle, pointing calmly to his temple. "She had
+one moment of fear while the horses ran, and then&mdash;" He gave a quick
+shudder and advancing towards Bertram, laid his hand on his nephew's
+shoulder in such a way as to prevent him from turning his head.
+"Bertram," said he, "I have no son. If I were to call upon you to
+perform a son's work for me; to obey and ask no questions, would you
+comply?"</p>
+
+<p>"Can you ask?" sprang from the young man's lips; "you know that you have
+only to command for me to be proud to obey. Anything you can require
+will find me ready."</p>
+
+<p>The hand on his shoulder weighed heavier. "It seems a strange time to
+talk about business, Bertram, but necessity knows no law. There is a
+matter in which you can afford me great assistance if you will undertake
+to do immediately what I ask."</p>
+
+<p>"Can you doubt&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Hush, it is this. On this paper you will find a name; below it a number
+of addresses. They are all of places down town and some of them not very
+reputable I fear. What I desire is for you to seek out the man whose
+name you here see, going to these very places after him, beginning with
+the first, and continuing down the list until you find him. When you
+come upon him, he will ask you for a card. Give him one on which you
+will scrawl before his eyes, a circle, so. It is a token which he should
+instantly understand. If he does, address him with freedom and tell him
+that your employer&mdash;you need make use of no names&mdash;re-demands the papers
+made over to him this morning. If he manifests surprise or is seen to
+hesitate, tell him your orders are imperative. If he declares ruin will
+follow, inform him that you are not to be frightened by words; that your
+employer is as fully aware of the position of affairs as he. Whatever he
+says, bring the papers."</p>
+
+<p>Bertram nodded his head and endeavored to rise, but his uncle's hand
+rested upon him too heavily.</p>
+
+<p>"He is a small man; you need have no dread of him physically. The sooner
+you find him and acquit yourself of your task, the better I shall be
+pleased." And then the hand lifted.</p>
+
+<p>On his way down stairs Bertram encountered Paula. She was standing in
+the hall and accosted him with a very trembling tone in her voice. All
+her questions were in regard to Mr. Sylvester.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you seen him?" she asked. "Does he speak&mdash;say anything? No one has
+heard him utter a word since he came in from down town and saw her lying
+there."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, certainly; he spoke to me; he has been giving me some commissions
+to perform. I am on my way now to attend to them."</p>
+
+<p>She drew a deep breath. "O!" she cried, "would that he had a son, a
+daughter, a child, some one!"</p>
+
+<p>This exclamation following what had taken place above struck Bertram
+forcibly. "He has a son in me, Paula. Love as well as duty binds me to
+him. All that a child could do will I perform with pleasure. You can
+trust me for that."</p>
+
+<p>She threw him a glance of searching inquiry. "His need is greater than
+it seems," whispered she. "He was deeply troubled before this terrible
+accident occurred. I am afraid the arrow is poisoned that has made this
+dreadful wound. I cannot explain myself," she went on hurriedly, "but if
+you indeed regard him as a father, be ready with any comfort, any help,
+that affection can bestow, or his necessities require. Let me feel that
+he has near him some stay that will not yield to pressure."</p>
+
+<p>There was so much passion in this appeal that Bertram involuntarily
+bowed his head. "He has two friends," said he, "and here is my hand that
+I will never forsake him."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not need to offer mine," she returned, "He is great and good
+enough to do without my assistance." But nevertheless she gave her hand
+to Bertram and with a glow of her lip and eye that made her beauty,
+supreme at all times, something almost supernatural in its character.</p>
+
+<p>"I dared not tell him," she whispered to herself as the front door
+closed with the dull slow thud proper to a house of mourning. "I dare
+not tell any one, but&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>What lay beyond that but?</p>
+
+<p>When Mr. Sylvester came in at six o'clock in the morning, Paula had
+risen from the bed on which she had been sitting, but not to make
+preparation for rest, for she could not rest. The vague shadow of some
+surrounding evil or threatened catastrophe was upon her, and though she
+forced herself to change her dress for a warmer and more suitable one,
+she did not otherwise break her vigil, though the necessity for it
+seemed to be at an end. It was a midwinter morning and the sun had not
+yet risen, so being chilly as well as restless, she began to pace the
+floor, stopping now and then to glance out of the window, in the hopes
+of detecting some signs of awakening day in the blank and solemn east.
+Suddenly as she was thus consulting the horizon, a light flashed up from
+below, and looking down upon the face of the extension that ran along at
+right angles to her window, she perceived that the shades were up in
+Mrs. Sylvester's boudoir. They had doubtless been left so the evening
+before, and Mr. Sylvester upon turning up the gas had failed to observe
+the fact. Instantly she felt her heart stand still, for the house being
+wide and the extension narrow, all that went on in that boudoir, or at
+least in that portion of it which Mr. Sylvester at present occupied, was
+easily observable from the window at which she stood; and that something
+was going on of a serious and important nature, was sufficiently evident
+from the expression of Mr. Sylvester's countenance. He was standing with
+his face bent towards some one seated out of sight, his wife
+undoubtedly, though what could have called her from her dreams&mdash;and was
+busily engaged in talking. The subject whatever it was, absorbed him
+completely. If Paula had allowed herself the thought, she would have
+described him as pleading and that with no ordinary vehemence. But
+suddenly while she gazed half fascinated and but little realizing what
+she was doing, he started back and a fierce change swept over his face,
+a certain incredulity, that presently gave way to a glance of horror and
+repugnance, which the quick action of his out-thrown palm sufficiently
+emphasized. He was pushing something from him, but what? A suggestion or
+a remembrance? It was impossible to determine.</p>
+
+<p>The countenance of Mrs. Sylvester who that moment appeared in sight
+sailing across the floor in her azure wrapper, offered but little
+assistance in the way of explanation. Immovable under most
+circumstances, it was simply at this juncture a trifle more calm and
+cold than usual, presenting to Paula's mind the thought of a white and
+icy barrier, against which the most glowing of arrows must fall chilled
+and powerless.</p>
+
+<p>"O for a woman's soul to inform that breast if but for a moment!" cried
+Paula, lost in the passion of this scene, while so little understanding
+its import. When as if in mockery to this invocation, the haughty form
+upon which she was gazing started rigidly erect, while the lip acquired
+a scorn and the eye a menace that betrayed the serpent ever in hiding
+under this white rose.</p>
+
+<p>Paula could look no longer. This last revelation had awakened her to the
+fact that she was gazing upon a scene sacred to the husband and wife
+engaged in it. With a sense of shame she rushed to the bed and threw
+herself upon it, but the vision of what she had beheld would not leave
+her so easily. Like letters of fire upon a black ground, the panorama of
+looks and gestures to which she had just been witness, floated before
+her mind's eye, awakening a train of thought so intense that she did not
+know which was worse, to be there in the awful dawn dreaming over this
+episode of the night, or to rise and face again the reality. The
+fascination which all forbidden sights insensibly exert over the minds
+of the best of us, finally prevailed, and she slowly crept to the window
+to catch a parting glimpse of Mr. Sylvester's tall form hurrying blindly
+from the boudoir followed by his wife's cold glance. The next minute the
+exposed condition of the room seemed to catch that lady's attention, and
+with an anxious look into the dull gray morn, Mrs. Sylvester drew down
+the shades, and the episode was over.</p>
+
+<p>Or so Paula thought; but when she was returning up stairs after her
+solitary breakfast&mdash;Mrs. Sylvester was too tired and Mr. Sylvester too
+much engaged to eat, as the attentive Samuel informed her&mdash;the door of
+Ona's room swung ajar, and she distinctly heard her give utterance to
+the following exclamation:</p>
+
+<p>"What! give up this elegant home, my horses and carriage, the friends I
+have had such difficulty in obtaining, and the position which I was born
+to adorn? I had rather die!" And Paula feeling as if she had received
+the key to the enigma of the last night's unaccountable manifestations,
+was about to rush away to her own apartment, when the door swayed open
+again and she heard his voice respond with hard and bitter emphasis,</p>
+
+<p>"And it might be better that you should. But since you will probably
+live, let it be according to your mind. I have not the courage&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>There the door swung to.</p>
+
+<p>An hour from that Mr. Sylvester left the house with a small valise in
+his hand, and Mrs. Sylvester dressed in her showiest costume, entered
+her carriage for an early shopping excursion.</p>
+
+<p>And so when Paula whispered to herself, "I did not dare to tell him; I
+did not dare to tell any one, but&mdash;" she thought of those terrible
+words, "Die? It might be better, perhaps, that you should!" and then
+remembered the ghastly look of immeasurable horror with which a few
+hours later, he staggered away from that awful burden, whose rigid lines
+would never again melt into mocking curves, and to whom the morning's
+wide soaring hopes, high reaching ambitions and boundless luxuries were
+now no more than the shadows of a vanished world; life, love, longing,
+with all their demands, having dwindled to a noisome rest between four
+close planks, with darkness for its present portion and beyond&mdash;what?</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXI" id="XXI"></a>XXI.</h2>
+
+<h3>DEPARTURE.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Forever and forever, farewell Cassius.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If we do meet again, why we shall smile;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If not, why then, this parting was well made."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Julius Cæsar.</span><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p>Samuel had received his orders to admit Mr. Bertram Sylvester to his
+uncle's room, at whatever hour of the day or night he chose to make his
+appearance. But evening wore away and finally the night, before his
+well-known face was seen at the door. Proceeding at once to the
+apartment occupied by Mr. Sylvester, he anxiously knocked. The door was
+opened immediately.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, Bertram, I have been expecting you all night." And from the haggard
+appearance of both men, it was evident that neither of them had slept.</p>
+
+<p>"I have sat down but twice since I left you, and then only in
+conveyances. I have been obliged to go to Brooklyn, to&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But you have found him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I found him."</p>
+
+<p>His uncle glanced inquiringly at his hands; they were empty.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall have to sit down," said Bertram; his brow was very gloomy, his
+words came hesitatingly. "I had rather have knocked my head against the
+wall, than have disappointed you," he murmured after a moment's pause.
+"But when I did find him, it was too late."</p>
+
+<p>"Too late!" The tone in which this simple phrase was uttered was
+indescribable. Bertram slowly nodded his head.</p>
+
+<p>"He had already disposed of all the papers, and favorably," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And not only that," pursued Bertram. "He had issued orders by
+telegraph, that it was impossible to countermand. It was at the Forty
+Second Street depôt I found him at last. He was just on the point of
+starting for the west."</p>
+
+<p>"And has he gone?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes sir."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester walked slowly to the window. It was raining drearily
+without, but he did not notice the falling drops or raise his eyes to
+the leaden skies.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you meet any one?" he asked at length. "Any one that you know, I
+mean, or who knows you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No one but Mr. Stuyvesant."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Stuyvesant!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes sir," returned Bertram, dropping his eyes before his uncle's
+astonished glance. "I was coming out of a house in Broad Street when he
+passed by and saw me, or at least I believed he saw me. There is no
+mistaking him, sir, for any one else; besides it is a custom of his I am
+told, to saunter through the down town streets after the warehouses are
+all closed for the night. He enjoys the quiet I suppose, finds food for
+reflection in the sleeping aspect of our great city." There was gloom in
+Bertram's tone; his uncle looked at him curiously.</p>
+
+<p>"What house was it from which you were coming when he passed you?"</p>
+
+<p>"A building where Tueller and Co. do business, shady operators in paper,
+as you know."</p>
+
+<p>"And you believed he recognized you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot be sure, sir. It was dark, but I thought I saw him look at me
+and give a slight start."</p>
+
+<p>Ah, how desolate sounds the drip, drip of a ceaseless rain, when
+conversation languishes and the ear has time to listen!</p>
+
+<p>"I will explain to Mr. Stuyvesant when I see him, that you were in
+search of a man with whom I had pressing business," observed Mr.
+Sylvester at last.</p>
+
+<p>"No," murmured Bertram with effort, "it might emphasize the occurrence
+in his mind; let the matter drop where it is."</p>
+
+<p>There was another silence, during which the drip of the rain on the
+window-ledge struck on the young man's ears like the premonitory thud of
+falling earth upon a coffin-lid. At length his uncle turned and advanced
+rapidly towards him.</p>
+
+<p>"Bertram," said he, "you have done me a favor for which I thank you.
+What you have learned in the course of its accomplishment I cannot tell.
+Enough perhaps to make you understand why I warned you from the
+dangerous path of speculation, and set your feet in a way that if
+adhered to with steadfast purpose, ought to lead you at last to a safe
+and honorable prosperity. Now&mdash;No, Bertram," he bitterly interrupted
+himself as the other opened his lips, "I am in need of no especial
+commiseration, my affairs seem bound to prosper whether I will or
+not&mdash;now I have one more commission to give you. Miss Fairchild&mdash;" his
+voice quavered and he leaned heavily on the chair near which he was
+standing. "Have you seen her, Bertram? Is the poor child quite
+prostrated? Has this frightful occurrence made her ill, or does she bear
+up with fortitude under the shock of this sudden calamity?"</p>
+
+<p>"She is not ill, but her suffering is undoubted. If you could see her
+and say a few words to relieve her anxiety in regard to yourself, I
+think it would greatly comfort her. Her main thought seems to be for
+you, sir."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester frowned, raised his hand with a repelling gesture, and
+hastily opened his lips. Bertram thought he was about to utter some
+passionate phrase. But instead of that he merely remarked, "I am sorry I
+cannot see her, but it is quite impossible. You must stand between me
+and this poor child, Bertram. Tell her I send her my love; tell her that
+I am quite well; anything to solace her and make these dark days less
+dreary. If she wants a friend with her, let a messenger be sent for
+whomever she desires. I place no restrictions upon anything you choose
+to do for her comfort or happiness, but let me be spared the sight of
+any other face than yours until this is all over. After the funeral&mdash;it
+nay sound ungracious, but I am far from feeling so&mdash;I shall wish to be
+left alone for awhile. If she can be made to understand this&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I think her instincts, sir, have already led her to divine your wishes.
+If I am not mistaken, she is even now making preparations to return to
+her relatives."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester gave a start. "What, so soon!" he murmured, and the
+sadness of his tone smote Bertram to the heart. But in another moment he
+recovered himself and shortly exclaimed, "Well! well! that is as it
+should be. You will watch over her Bertram, and see that she is kindly
+cared for. It would be a grief to me to have her go away with any more
+than the necessary regret at losing one who was always kind to <i>her</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"I will look after her as after a sister," returned Bertram. "She shall
+miss no attention which I can supply."</p>
+
+<p>With a look Mr. Sylvester expressed his thanks. Then while Bertram again
+attempted to speak, he gave him a cordial pressure of the hand, and
+withdrew once more to his favorite spot.</p>
+
+<p>And the rain beat, beat, and it sounded more and more like the droppings
+of earth upon a nailed down coffin-lid.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The funeral was a large one. The largest some said that had ever been
+seen in that quarter of the city. If Mrs. Sylvester's position had not
+been what it was, the sudden and awful nature of her death, would have
+been sufficient to draw together a large crowd. Among those who thus
+endeavored to show their respect was Miss Stuyvesant.</p>
+
+<p>"I could not join you here in your pleasures," she whispered to Paula in
+the short interview they had upstairs, preparatory to the services, "but
+I cannot keep away in the dark hours!" And from her look and the clasp
+of her hand, Paula gained fresh courage to endure the slow pressure of
+anxiety and grief with which she was secretly burdened.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover she had the pleasure of introducing her beloved friend to Mr.
+Bertram Sylvester, a pleasure which she had long promised herself
+whenever the opportunity should arrive, as Miss Stuyvesant was somewhat
+of an enthusiast as regards music. She did not notice particularly then,
+but she remembered afterwards, with what a blushing cheek and beautiful
+glance the dainty young girl received his bow, and responded to his few
+respectful words of pleasure at meeting the daughter of a man whom he
+had learned to regard with so much respect.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester was in a room by himself. The few glimpses obtained of him
+by his friends, convinced them all, that this trouble touched him more
+deeply than those who knew his wife intimately could have supposed. Yet
+he was calm, and already wore that fixed look of rigidity which was
+henceforth to distinguish the expression of his fine and noble features.</p>
+
+<p>In the ride to Greenwood he spoke little. Paula who sat in the carriage
+with him did not receive a word, though now and then his eye wandered
+towards her with an expression that drove the blood to her heart, and
+made the whole day one awful memory of incomprehensible agony and dim
+but terrible forebodings. The ways of the human soul, in its crises of
+grief or remorse were so new to her. She had passed her life beside
+rippling streams and in peaceful meadows, and now all at once, with
+shadow on shadow, the dark pictures of life settled down before her, and
+she could not walk without stumbling upon jagged rocks, deep yawning
+chasms and caves of impenetrable gloom.</p>
+
+<p>The sight of the grave appalled her. To lay in such a bed as that, the
+fair and delicate head that had often found the downy pillows of its
+azure couch too hard for its languid pressure. To hide in such a dismal,
+deep, dark gap, a form so white and but a little while before, so
+imposing in its splendor and so commanding in its requirements. The
+thought of heaven brought no comfort. The beauty they had known lay
+here; soulless, inert, rigid and responseless, but here. It was gifted
+with no wings with which to rise. It owned no attachment to higher
+spheres. Death had scattered the leaves of this white rose, but from all
+the boundless mirror of the outspread heavens, no recovered semblance of
+its perfected beauty, looked forth to solace Paula or assuage the misery
+of her glance into this gloomy pit. Ah, Ona, the social ladder reaches
+high, but it does not scale the regions where your poor soul could find
+comfort now.</p>
+
+<p>Bertram saw the white look on Paula's face and silently offered his arm.
+But there are moments when no mortal help can aid us; instants when the
+soul stands as solitary in the universe, as the ship-wrecked mariner on
+a narrow strip of rock in a boundless sea. Life may touch, but eternity
+enfolds us; we are single before God and as such must stand or fall.</p>
+
+<p>Upon their return to the house, Mr. Sylvester withdrew with a few
+intimate friends to his room, and Paula, lonely beyond expression, went
+to her own empty apartment to finish packing her trunks and answer such
+notes as had arrived during her absence. For attention from outsiders
+was only too obtrusive. Many whom she had never met save in the most
+formal intercourse, flooded her now with expressions of condolence,
+which if they had not been all upon one pattern and that the most
+conventional, might have afforded her some relief. Two or three of the
+notes were precious to her and these she stowed safely away, one
+contained a deliberate offer of marriage from a wealthy old
+stock-broker; this she as deliberately burned after she had written a
+proper refusal. "He thinks I have no home," she murmured.</p>
+
+<p>And had she? As she paced through the silent halls and elaborately
+furnished rooms on her way to her solitary dinner, she asked herself if
+any place would ever seem like home after this. Not that she was
+infatuated by its elegance. The lofty walls might dwindle, the gorgeous
+furniture grow dim, the works of beauty disappear, the whole towering
+structure contract to the dimensions of a simple cottage or what was
+worse, a seedy down-town house, if only the something would remain, the
+something that made return to Grotewell seem like the bending back of a
+towering stalk to the ground from which it had taken its root. "If?" she
+cried&mdash;and stopped there, her heart swelling she knew not why. Then
+again, "I thought I had found a father!" Then after a longer pause, a
+wild uncontrollable; "Bless! bless! bless!" which seemed to re-echo in
+the room long after her lingering step had left it.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>"Will he let me go without a word?"</p>
+
+<p>It was early morning and the time had come for Paula's departure. She
+was standing on the threshold of her room, her hands clasped, her eyes
+roving up and down the empty halls. "Will he let me go without a word?"</p>
+
+<p>"O Miss Paula, what do you think?" cried Sarah, creeping slowly towards
+her from the spectral recesses of a dim corner. "Jane says Mr. Sylvester
+was up all last night too. She heard him go down stairs about midnight
+and he went through all the rooms like a gliding spectre and into <i>her</i>
+room too!" she fearfully whispered; "and what he did there no one knows,
+but when he came out he locked the door, and this morning the cook heard
+him give orders to Samuel to have the trunks that were ready in Mrs.
+Sylvester's room taken away. O Miss, do you think he can be going to
+give all those beautiful things to you?"</p>
+
+<p>Paula recoiled in horror. "Sarah!" said she, and could say no more. The
+vision of that tall form gliding through the desolate house at midnight,
+bending over the soulless finery of his dead wife, perhaps stowing it
+away in boxes, came with too powerful a suggestion to her mind.</p>
+
+<p>"Shure, I thought you would be pleased," murmured the girl and
+disappeared again into one of the dim recesses.</p>
+
+<p>"Will he let me go without a word?"</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Paula, Mr. Bertram Sylvester is waiting at the door in a
+carriage," came in low respectful tones to her ears, and Samuel's face
+full of regret appeared at the top of the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>"I am coming," murmured the sad-hearted girl, and with a sob which she
+could not control, she took her last look of the pretty pink chamber in
+which she had dreamed so many dreams of youthful delight, and perhaps of
+youthful sorrow also, and slowly descended the stairs. Suddenly as she
+was passing a door on the second floor, she heard a low deep cry.</p>
+
+<p>"Paula!"</p>
+
+<p>She stopped and her hand went to her heart, the reaction was so sudden.
+"Yes," she murmured, standing still with great heart-beats of joy, or
+was it pain?</p>
+
+<p>The door slowly opened. "Did you think I could let you go without a
+blessing, my Paula, my little one!" came in those deep heart-tones which
+always made her tears start. And Mr. Sylvester stepped out of the
+shadows beyond and stood in the shadows at her side.</p>
+
+<p>"I did not know," she murmured. "I am so young, so feeble, such a mote
+in this great atmosphere of anguish. I longed to see you, to say
+good-bye, to thank you, but&mdash;" tears stopped her words; this was a
+parting that rent her leader heart.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester watched her and his deep chest rose spasmodically.
+"Paula," said he, and there was a depth in his tone even she had never
+heard before, "are these tears for me?"</p>
+
+<p>With a strong effort she controlled herself, looked up and faintly
+smiled. "I am an orphan," she gently murmured; "you have been kind and
+tender to me beyond words; I have let myself love you as a father."</p>
+
+<p>A spasm crossed his features, the hand he had lifted to lay upon her
+head fell at his side, he surveyed her with eyes whose despairing
+fondness told her that her love had been more than met by this desolate
+childless man. But he did not reply as seemed natural, "Be to me then as
+a child. I can offer you no mother to guide or watch over you, but one
+parent is better than none. Henceforth you shall be known as my
+daughter." Instead of that he shook his head mournfully, yearningly but
+irrevocably, and said, "To be your father would have been a dear
+position to occupy. I have sometimes hoped that I might be so blessed as
+to call it mine, but that is all past now. Your father I can never be.
+But I can bless you," he murmured brokenly, "not as I did that day in
+your aunt's little cottage, but silently and from afar as God always
+meant you should be blessed by me. Good-bye, Paula."</p>
+
+<p>Then all the deeps in her great nature broke up. She did not weep, but
+she looked at him with her large dark eyes and the cry in them smote his
+heart. With a struggle that blanched his face, he kept his arms at his
+side, but his lips worked in agony, and he slowly murmured, "If after a
+time your heart loves me like this, and you are willing to bear shadow
+as well as sunshine with me, come back with your aunt and sit at my
+hearthstone, not as my child but as a dear and honored guest. I will try
+and be worthy&mdash;" He paused, "Will you come, Paula?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Not soon, not now," he murmured, "God will show you when."</p>
+
+<p>And with nothing but a look, without having touched her or so much as
+brushed her garments with his, he retired again into his room.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXII" id="XXII"></a>XXII.</h2>
+
+<h3>HOPGOOD.</h3>
+
+<blockquote><p>"Give it an understanding but no tongue."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Hamlet.</span></p></blockquote>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>Hopgood was a man who could keep a secret, but who made so much ado in
+the process that he reminded one of the placard found posted up
+somewhere out west which reads, "A treasure of gold concealed here;
+don't dig!" Or so his wife used to say, and she ought to know, for she
+had lived with him five years, three of which he had spent in the
+detective service.</p>
+
+<p>"If he would only trust the wife of his bosom with whatever he's got on
+his mind, instead of ambling around the building with his eyes rolling
+about like peas in a caldron of boiling water, one might manage to take
+some comfort in life, and not hurt anybody either. For two days now,
+ever since the wife of Mr. Sylvester died and Mr. Sylvester has been
+away from the bank, he's acted just like a lunatic. Not that that has
+anything to do with his gettin up of nights and roamin down five pair of
+stairs to see if the watchman is up to his duty, or with his askin a
+dozen times a day if I remembers how Mr. Sylvester found him and me,
+well nigh starvin in Broad Street, and gave him the good word which got
+him into this place? O no! O no, of course not! But <i>something</i> has, and
+while he persists in shutting out from his breast the woman he swore to
+love, honor, and cherish, that woman is not bound to bear the trials of
+life with patience. Every time he jumps out of his chair at the sound of
+Mr. Sylvester's name, and some one is always mentionin' it, I plumps me
+down on mine with an expression of my views regarding a kitchen stove
+that does all its drawin' when the oven's empty."</p>
+
+<p>So spake Mrs. Hopgood to her special crony and constant visitor, Mrs.
+Kirkshaw of Water Street, pursing up a mouth that might have been
+good-natured if she had ever given it an opportunity. But Mrs. Kirkshaw
+who passed for a gossip with her neighbors, was a philosopher in the
+retirement of the domestic circle and did not believe in the blow for
+blow system.</p>
+
+<p>"La!" quoth she, with a smoothing out of her apron suggestive of her
+employment as laundress, "show a dog that you want his bone and you'll
+never get it. Husbands is like that very stove you've been a slanderin
+of. Rattle on coal when the fire's low and you put it out entirely; but
+be a bit patient and drop it on piece by piece, coaxing-like, and you'll
+have a hot stove afore you know it."</p>
+
+<p>Which suggestion struck Mrs. Hopgood like a revelation, and for a day
+and night she resorted to the coaxing system; the result of which was to
+send Mr. Hopgood out of the room to sit on the stairs in mortal terror,
+lest his good nature should get the better of his discretion. His little
+daughter, Constantia Maria&mdash;so named and so called from two
+grandmothers, equally exacting in their claims and equally impecunious
+as regards their resources&mdash;was his sole solace in this long vigil. Her
+pretty innocent prattle scarcely disturbed his meditation, while it
+soothed his nerves, and with no one by but this unsuspecting child, he
+could roll his great eyes to his heart's content without fear of her
+descrying anything in them, but the love with which her own little heart
+abounded.</p>
+
+<p>On the morning after the funeral, however, Constantia Maria was restored
+to his wife's arms on the plea that she did not seem quite well, and
+Hopgood went out and sat alone. In a few minutes, however, he returned,
+and ambling restlessly up and down the room, stopped before his
+persistently smiling wife and said somewhat tremulously:</p>
+
+<p>"If Mr. Sylvester takes a notion to come up and see Constantia Maria
+to-day, I hope you'll take the opportunity to finish your ironing or
+whatever else it is you may have to do. I've noticed he seems a little
+shy with the child when you are around."</p>
+
+<p>"Shy with the child when I am around! well I do declare!" exclaimed she,
+forgetting her late rôle in her somewhat natural indignation. "And what
+have I ever done to frighten Mr. Sylvester? Nothing but putting on of a
+clean apron, when he comes in and a dustin' of the best chair for his
+use. It's a trick of yours to get a chance of speakin' to him alone, and
+I'll not put up with it. As if it wasn't bad enough to have a kettle
+with the nozzle dangling, without living with a man who has a secret he
+won't share with his own wife and the mother of his innocent babe."</p>
+
+<p>With a start the worthy man stared at her till he grew red in the face,
+probably with the effort of keeping his eyes steady for so long a time.
+"Who told you I had a secret?" said he.</p>
+
+<p>"Who told me?" and then she laughed, though in a somewhat hysterical
+way, and sat down in the middle of the floor and shook and shook again.
+"Hear the man!" she cried. And she told him the story of the placard out
+west and then asked him, "if he thought she didn't remember how he used
+to act when he was a chasin' up of a thief in the days when he was on
+the police force."</p>
+
+<p>"But," he cried, quite as pale now as he had been florid the moment
+before, "I'm not in the police force now and you are acting quite silly
+and I've no patience with you." And he was making for the door,
+presumably to sit upon the stairs, when with a late repentance she
+seized him by the arm and said:</p>
+
+<p>"La now," an expression she had caught from Mrs. Kirkshaw, "I didn't
+mean nothin' by my talk. Come back, John; Constantia Maria is not well,
+and if Mr. Sylvester comes up to see her, I'll just slip out and leave
+you alone."</p>
+
+<p>And upon that he told her she was a good wife and that if he had any
+secret from her it was only because he was a poor man. "Honesty and
+prudence are all the treasures I possess to keep us three from starving.
+Shall I part with either of them just to satisfy your curiosity?" and
+being a good woman at heart, she said "no," though she secretly
+concluded that prudence in his case involved trust in one's wife first,
+and disbelief in the rest of the world afterward; and took her future
+resolutions accordingly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Hopgood, you look anxious; do you want to speak to me?"</p>
+
+<p>The janitor eyed the changed and melancholy face of his patron, with an
+expression in which real sympathy for his trouble, struggled with the
+respectful awe which Mr. Sylvester's presence was calculated to inspire.</p>
+
+<p>"If you please," said he, speaking very low, for more or less of the
+bank employees were moving busily to and fro, "Constantia Maria is not
+well and she has been asking all day for the <i>dear man</i>, as she insists
+upon calling you, sir, with many apologies for the freedom."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester smiled with a faint far-away look in his dark eye that
+made Hopgood stare uneasily out of the window. "Sick! why then I must go
+up and see her," he returned in a matter-of-fact way that proved his
+visits in that direction were of no uncommon occurrence. "A moment more
+and I shall be at liberty."</p>
+
+<p>Hopgood bowed and renewed his stare out of the window, with an intensity
+happily spared from serious consequences to the passers-by, by the
+merciful celerity with which Mr. Sylvester procured his overcoat, put
+such papers in his pocket as he required, and joined him.</p>
+
+<p>"Constantia Maria, here is Mr. Sylvester come to see you."</p>
+
+<p>It was a pleasure to observe how the little thing brightened in her
+mother's arms, where but a moment before she had lain quite pale and
+still, and slipping to the ground rushed up to meet the embrace of this
+stern and melancholy-faced man. "I am so glad you have come," she cried
+over and over again; and her little arms went round his neck, and her
+soft cheek nestled against his, with a content that made the mother's
+eyes sparkle with pleasure, as obedient to her promise, she quietly left
+the room.</p>
+
+<p>And Mr. Sylvester? If any one had seen the abandon with which he yielded
+to her caresses and returned them, he would have understood why this
+child should have loved him with such extraordinary affection. He kissed
+her forehead, he kissed her cheek, and seemed never weary of smoothing
+down her bright and silky curls. She reminded him of Geraldine. She had
+the same blue eyes and caressing ways. From the day he had come upon his
+old friend Hopgood in a condition of necessity almost of want, this
+blue-eyed baby had held its small sceptre over his lonely heart, and
+unbeknown to the rest of the world, had solaced many a spare five
+minutes with her innocent prattle. The Hopgoods understood the cause of
+his predilection and were silent. It was the one thing Mrs. Hopgood
+never alluded to in her gossips with Mrs. Kirkshaw. But to-day the
+attentions of Mr. Sylvester to the little one seemed to make the janitor
+restless. He walked up and down the narrow room uneasily surveying the
+pair out of the corner of his great glassy eyes, till even Mr. Sylvester
+noticed his unusual manner and put the child down, observing with a
+sigh, "You think she is not well enough for any excitement?"</p>
+
+<p>"No sir, it is not that," returned the other uneasily, with a hasty look
+around him. "The fact is, I have something to say to you, sir, about&mdash;a
+discovery&mdash;I made the other day." His words came very slowly, and he
+looked down with great embarrassment.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester frowned slightly, and drew himself up to the full height
+of his very imposing figure. "A discovery," repeated he, "when?"</p>
+
+<p>"The day you paid that early visit to the bank, sir, the day Mrs.
+Sylvester died."</p>
+
+<p>The frown on Mr. Sylvester's brow grew deeper. "The day&mdash;" he began, and
+stopped.</p>
+
+<p>"Excuse me, sir," exclaimed Hopgood with a burst. "I ought not to have
+mentioned it, but you asked me <i>when</i>, and I&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What was this discovery?" inquired his superior, imperatively.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing much," murmured the other now all in a cold sweat. "But I felt
+as if I ought to tell you. You have been my benefactor, sir, I can never
+forget what you have done for me and mine. If I saw death or bereavement
+between me and any favor I could do for you, sir, I would not hesitate
+to risk them. I am no talker, sir, but I am true and I am grateful." He
+stopped, choked, and his eyes rolled frightfully. Mr. Sylvester looked
+at him, grew a trifle pale, and put the little child away that was
+nestling up against his knee.</p>
+
+<p>"You have not told me what you have discovered," said he.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sir, only this." And he took from his pocket a small roll of
+paper which he unfolded and held out in his hand. It contained a gold
+tooth-pick somewhat bent and distorted.</p>
+
+<p>A flush dark and ominous crept over Mr. Sylvester's cheek. He glanced
+sternly at the trembling janitor, and uttered a short, "Well?"</p>
+
+<p>"I found it on the floor of the bank just after you went out the other
+morning," the other pursued well-nigh inaudibly. "It was lying near the
+safe. As it was not there when you went in, I took it for granted it was
+yours. Am I right, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>The anxious tone in which this last question was uttered, the studied
+way in which the janitor kept his eyes upon the floor could not have
+been unnoticed by Mr. Sylvester, but he simply said,</p>
+
+<p>"I have lost mine, that may very possibly be it."</p>
+
+<p>The janitor held it towards him; his eyes did not leave the floor. "The
+responsibility of my position here is sometimes felt by me to be very
+heavy," muttered the man in a low, unmodulated tone. It was his duty in
+those days previous to the Manhattan Bank robbery, to open the vault in
+the morning, procure the books that were needed, and lay them about on
+the various desks in readiness for the clerks upon their arrival. He had
+also the charge of the boxes of the various customers of the bank who
+chose to entrust their valuables to its safe keeping; which boxes were
+kept, together with the books, in that portion of the vault to which he
+had access. "I should regret my comfortable situation here, but if it
+was necessary, I would go without a murmur, trusting that God would take
+care of my poor little lamb."</p>
+
+<p>"Hopgood, what do you mean?" asked Mr. Sylvester somewhat sternly. "Who
+talks about dismissing you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No one," responded the other, turning aside to attend to some trivial
+matter. "But if ever you think a younger or a fresher man would be
+preferable in my place, do not hesitate to make the change your own
+necessities or that of the Bank may seem to require."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester's eye which was fixed upon the janitor's face, slowly
+darkened.</p>
+
+<p>"There is something underlying all this," said he, "what is it?"</p>
+
+<p>At once and as if he had taken his resolution, the janitor turned. "I
+beg your pardon," said he, "I ought to have told you in the first place.
+When I opened the vaults as usual on the morning of which I speak, I
+found the boxes displaced; that was nothing if you had been to them,
+sir; but what did alarm me and make me feel as if I had held my position
+too long was to find that one of them was unlocked."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester fell back a step.</p>
+
+<p>"It was Mr. Stuyvesant's box, sir, and I remember distinctly seeing him
+lock it the previous afternoon before putting it back on the shelf."</p>
+
+<p>The arms which Mr. Sylvester had crossed upon his breast tightened
+spasmodically. "And it has been in that condition ever since?" asked he.</p>
+
+<p>The janitor shook his head. "No," said he, taking his little girl up in
+his arms, possibly to hide his countenance. "As you did not come down
+again on that day, I took the liberty of locking it with a key of my own
+when I went to put away the books and shut the vault for the night." And
+he quietly buried his face in his baby's floating curls, who feeling his
+cheek against her own put up her hand and stroked it lovingly, crying in
+her caressing infantile tones,</p>
+
+<p>"Poor papa! poor tired papa."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester's stern brow contracted painfully. The look with which his
+eye sought the sky without, would have made Paula's young heart ache.
+Taking the child from her father's clasp, he laid her on the bed. When
+he again confronted the janitor his face was like a mask.</p>
+
+<p>"Hopgood," said he, "you are an honest man and a faithful one; I
+appreciate your worth and have had confidence in your judgment. Whom
+have you told of this occurrence beside myself?"</p>
+
+<p>"No one, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Another question; if Mr. Stuyvesant had required his box that day and
+had found it in the condition you describe, what would you have replied
+to his inquiries?"</p>
+
+<p>The janitor colored to the roots of his hair in an agony of shame Mr.
+Sylvester may or may not have appreciated, but replied with the
+straightforward earnestness of a man driven to bay, "I should have been
+obliged to tell him the truth sir; that whereas I had no personal
+knowledge of any one but myself, having been to the vaults since the
+evening before, I was called upon early that morning to open the outside
+door to you, sir, and that you came into the bank," (he did not say
+looking very pale, agitated and unnatural, but he could not help
+remembering it) "and finding no one on duty but myself,&mdash;the watchman
+having gone up stairs to take his usual cup of coffee before going home
+for the day&mdash;you sent me out of the room on an errand, which delayed me
+some little time, and that when I came back I found you gone, and every
+thing as I had left it except that small pick lying on the floor."</p>
+
+<p>The last words were nearly inaudible but they must have been heard by
+Mr. Sylvester, for immediately upon their utterance, the hand which
+unconsciously had kept its hold upon the tooth-pick, opened and with an
+uncontrollable gesture flung the miserable tell-tale into the stove near
+by.</p>
+
+<p>"Hopgood," said the stately gentleman, coming nearer and holding him
+with his eyes till the poor man turned pale and cold as a stone, "has
+Mr. Stuyvesant had occasion to open his box since you locked it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes sir, he called for it yesterday afternoon."</p>
+
+<p>"And who gave it to him?"</p>
+
+<p>"I sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Did he appear to miss anything from it?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you believe, Hopgood, that there was anything missing from it?"</p>
+
+<p>The janitor shrank like a man subjected to the torture. He fixed his
+glance on Mr. Sylvester's face and his own gradually lightened.</p>
+
+<p>"No sir!" said he at last, with a gasp that made the little one lift her
+curly head from her pillow and shake it with a slow and wistful motion
+strange to see in a child of only two years.</p>
+
+<p>The proud man bowed, not with the severity however that might have been
+expected; indeed his manner was strangely shadowed, and though his lip
+betrayed no uneasiness and his eye neither faltered or fell, there was a
+vague expression of awe upon his countenance, which it would take more
+than the simple understanding of the worthy but not over subtle man
+before him, to detect much less to comprehend.</p>
+
+<p>"You may be sure that Mr. Stuyvesant will never complain of any one
+having tampered with his effects while you are the guardian of the
+vaults," exclaimed Mr. Sylvester in clear ringing tones. "As for his box
+being open, it is right that I should explain that it was the result of
+a mistake. I had occasion to go to a box of my own in a hurry that
+morning, and misled by the darkness and my own nervousness perhaps, took
+up his instead of my own. Not till I had opened it&mdash;with the tooth-pick,
+Hopgood, for I had been to a reception and did not have my keys with
+me&mdash;did I notice my mistake. I had intended to explain the matter to Mr.
+Stuyvesant, but you know what happened that day, and since then I have
+thought nothing of it."</p>
+
+<p>The janitor's face cleared to its natural expression. "You are very
+kind, sir, to explain yourself to me," said he; "it was not necessary."
+But his lightened face spoke volumes. "I have been on the police force
+and I know how to hold my tongue when it is my duty, but it is very hard
+work when the duty is on the other side. Have you any commands for me?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester shook his head, and his eye roamed over the humble
+furniture and scanty comforts of this poor man's domicile. Hopgood
+thought he might be going to offer him some gift or guerdon, and in a
+low distressed tone spoke up:</p>
+
+<p>"I shall not try to ask your pardon, sir, for anything I have said.
+Honesty that is afraid to show itself, is no honesty for me. I could not
+meet your eye, knowing that I was aware of any circumstance of which you
+supposed me ignorant. What I know, you must know, as long as I remain in
+the position you were once kind enough to procure for me. And now that
+is all I believe, sir."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester dropped his eyes from the bare walls over which they had
+been restlessly wandering, and fixed them for a passing moment on the
+countenance of the man before him. Then with a grave action he lifted
+his hat from his head, and bowed with the deference he might have shown
+to one of his proudest colleagues, and without another look or word,
+quietly left the room.</p>
+
+<p>Hopgood in his surprise stared after him somewhat awe-struck. But when
+the door had quite closed, he caught up his child almost passionately in
+his arms, and crushing her against his breast, asked, while his eye
+roamed round the humble room that in its warmth and comfort was a palace
+to him, "Will he take the first opportunity to have me dismissed, or
+will his heart forgive the expression of my momentary doubts, for the
+sake of this poor wee one that he so tenderly fancies?"</p>
+
+<p>The question did not answer itself, and indeed it was one to which time
+alone could reply.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="BOOK_III" id="BOOK_III"></a>BOOK III.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE JAPHA MYSTERY.</h3>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXIII" id="XXIII"></a>XXIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE POEM.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"I've shot my arrow o'er the house<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And hurt my brother."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Hamlet.</span><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>When Miss Belinda first saw Paula, she did not, like her sister, remark
+upon the elegance of her appearance, the growth of her beauty, or the
+evidences of increased refinement in the expression of her countenance
+and the carriage of her form, but with her usual penetration noted
+simply, the sadness in her eye and the tremulous motion of her lip.</p>
+
+<p>"You had then become fond of your cousin?" queried she with
+characteristic bluntness.</p>
+
+<p>Paula not understanding the motive of this remark, questioned her with a
+look.</p>
+
+<p>"Young faces do not grow pale or bright eyes become troubled without a
+cause. Grief for your cousin might explain it, but if you have suffered
+from no grief&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"My cousin was very kind to me," hurriedly interrupted Paula. "Her death
+was very sudden and very heart-rending."</p>
+
+<p>"So it was;" returned Miss Belinda, "and I expected to see you look worn
+and sad but not restless and feverish. You have a living grief, Paula,
+what is it?"</p>
+
+<p>The young girl started and looked down. For the first time in her life
+she wished to avoid that penetrating glance. "If I have, I cannot talk
+of it," she murmured. "I have experienced so much this past week; my
+coming away was so unexpected, that I hardly understand my own feelings,
+or realize just what it is that troubles me most. All that I know is,
+that I am very tired and so sad, it seems as if the sun would never
+shine again."</p>
+
+<p>"There is then something you have not written me?" inquired the
+inexorable Miss Belinda.</p>
+
+<p>"The experiences of this last week could never be written,&mdash;or told,"
+returned Paula with a droop of her head. "Upon some things our better
+wisdom places a stone which only the angels can roll away. The future
+lies all open before us; do not let us disturb the past."</p>
+
+<p>And Miss Belinda was forced to be content lest she should seem to be
+over anxious.</p>
+
+<p>Not so the various neighbors and friends to whom the lengthened sojourn
+of one of their number in an atmosphere of such wealth and splendor,
+possessed something of the charm of a forbidden romance. For months
+Paula was obliged to endure questions, that it required all her
+self-control to answer with calmness and propriety. But at length the
+most insatiable gossip amongst them was satisfied; Paula's figure was no
+longer a novelty in their streets; curiosity languished and the young
+girl was allowed to rest.</p>
+
+<p>And now could those who loved her, discern that with the lapse of time
+and the daily breathings of her native air, the sad white look had faded
+from her face, leaving it a marvel of freshness and positive, if
+somewhat spiritualized, beauty. The print of deeper thoughts and holier
+yearnings was there, but no sign of blighted hopes or uncomprehended
+passions. A passing wind had blown the froth from off the cup, but had
+not disturbed the sparkle of the wine. She had looked in the face of
+grief, but had not as yet been clasped in her relentless arms. Only two
+things could vitally disturb her; a letter from Cicely, or a sudden
+meeting in the village streets with that elderly lady who haunted the
+Japha mansion. The former because it recalled a life around which her
+fancies still played with dangerous persistency, and the latter because
+it aroused vain and inexplicable conjectures as to that person's strange
+and lingering look in her direction. Otherwise she was happy; finding in
+this simple village-life a meaning and a purpose which her short but
+passionate outlook on a broader field, had taught her, perhaps, both to
+detect and comprehend. She no longer walked solitary with nature. The
+woods, the mountains with all their varying panoply of exuberant
+verdure, had acquired a human significance. At her side went the
+memories of beloved faces, the thoughts of trusted friends. From the
+clouds looked forth a living eye, and in the sound of rustling leaf and
+singing streamlet, spake the voices of human longing and human joy.</p>
+
+<p>Her aunts had explained their position to Paula and she had responded by
+expressing her determination to be a teacher. But they would not hear of
+that at present, and while she waited their pleasure in the matter, she
+did what she could to assist them in their simple home-life and daily
+duties, lending her beauty to tasks that would have made the eyes of
+some of her quondam admirers open with surprise, if only they could have
+followed the action of her hands, after having once caught a glimpse of
+the face that brightened above them. And so the summer months went by
+and September came.</p>
+
+<p>There was to be an entertainment in the village and Paula was to assist.
+The idea had come from her aunt and was not to be rejected. In one of
+the strange incomprehensible moods which sometimes came upon her at this
+time, she had written a poem, and nothing would do but that she mast
+read it before the assembled company of neighbors and friends, that were
+to be gathered at the Squire's house on this gala evening. She did not
+wish to do it. The sacred sense of possession passes when we uncover our
+treasure to another's eyes, giving way to a lower feeling not to be
+courted by one of Paula's sensitive nature. Besides she would rather
+have poured this first outburst of secret enthusiasm into other ears
+than these; but she had given her word and the ordeal must be submitted
+to. There are many who remember how she looked on that night. She had
+arrayed herself for the occasion, in the prettiest of her dresses, and
+mindful of Ona's injunction, did not mar the effect of its soft and
+uniform gray with any hint of extraneous color. The result was that they
+saw only her beauty; and what beauty! A very old man, an early settler
+in the village, who had tottered out to enjoy a last glimpse of life
+before turning his aged face to the wall, said it made the thought of
+heaven a little more real. "I can go home and think how the angels
+look," said he in his simple, half-childish way. And no one contradicted
+him, for there was a still light on her face that was less of earth than
+heaven, though why it should rest there to-night she least of all could
+have told, for her poem had to do with earth and its deepest passions
+and its wildest unrest. It was a clarion blast, not a dreaming rhapsody,
+that lay coiled up in the paper she held in her hand.</p>
+
+<p>My readers must pardon me if I give them Paula's poem, for without it
+they would not understand its effect and consequent result. It was
+called, "The Defence of the Bride," and was of the old ballad order. As
+she rose to read, many of the younger ones in the audience began
+cautiously to move to one side, but at the first words, young as well as
+old paused and listened where they stood, for her voice was round and
+full, and the memory of clashing spears and whirling battle-axes that
+informed the war-song which she had heard Bertram play, was with her, to
+give color to her tones and fire to her glance.</p>
+
+<h4>THE DEFENCE OF THE BRIDE.</h4>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He was coming from the altar when the tocsin rang alarm,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With his fair young wife beside him, lovely in her bridal charm;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But he was not one to palter with a duty, or to slight<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The trumpet-call of honor for his vantage or delight.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Turning from the bride beside him to his stern and martial train,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From their midst he summoned to him the brothers of Germain;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At the word they stepped before him, nine strong warriors brave and true,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From the youngest to the eldest, Enguerrand to mighty Hugh.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Sons of Germain, to your keeping do I yield my bride to-day.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Guard her well as you do love me; guard her well and holily.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dearer than mine own soul to me, you will hold her as your life,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Gainst the guile of seeming friendship and the force of open strife."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"We will guard her," cried they firmly; and with just another glance<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On the yearning and despairing in his young wife's countenance,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gallant Beaufort strode before them down the aisle and through the door,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And a shadow came and lingered where the sunlight stood before.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Eight long months the young wife waited, watching from her bridal room<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the coming of her husband up the valley forest's gloom.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Eight long months the sons of Germain paced the ramparts and the wall,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With their hands upon their halberds ready for the battle-call.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then there came a sound of trumpets pealing up the vale below,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And a dozen floating banners lit the forest with their glow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the bride arose like morning when it feels the sunlight nigh,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And her smile was like a rainbow flashing from a misty sky.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But the eldest son of Germain lifting voice from off the wall,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cried aloud, "It is a stranger's and not Sir Beaufort's call;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have you ne'er a slighted lover or a kinsman with a heart<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Base enough to seek his vengeance at the sharp end of the dart?"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"There is Sassard of the Mountains," answered she without guile,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"While I wedded at the chancel, he stood mocking in the aisle;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And my maidens say he swore there that for all my plighted vow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They would see me in his castle yet upon Morency's brow."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"It is Sassard and no other then," her noble guardian cried;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"There is craft in yonder summons," and he rung his sword beside.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"To the walls, ye sons of Germain! and as each would hold his life<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From the bitter shame of falsehood, let us hold our master's wife."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Can you hold her, can you shield her from the breezes that await?"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cried the stinging voice of Sassard from his stand beside the gate.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"If you have the power to shield her from the sunlight and the wind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You may shield her from stern Sassard when his falchion is untwined."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"We can hold her, we can shield her," leaped like fire from off the wall,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And young Enguerrand the valiant, sprang out before them all.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"And if breezes bring dishonor, we will guard her from their breath,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though we yield her to the keeping of the sacred arms of Death."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And with force that never faltered, did they guard her all that day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though the strength of triple armies seemed to battle in the fray,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The old castle's rugged ramparts holding firm against the foe,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As a goodly dyke resisteth the whelming billow's flow.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But next morning as the sunlight rose in splendor over all,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hugh the mighty, sank heart-wounded in his station on the wall,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At the noon the valiant Raoul of the merry eye and heart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gave his beauty and his jestings to the foeman's jealous dart.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Gallant Maurice next sank faltering with a death wound 'neath his hair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But still fighting on till Sassard pressed across him up the stair.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Generous Clement followed after, crying as his spirit passed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Sons of Germain to the rescue, and be loyal to the last!"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Gentle Jaspar, lordly Clarence, Sessamine the doughty brand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Even Henri who had yielded ne'er before to mortal hand;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One by one they fall and perish, while the vaunting foemen pour<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through the breach and up the courtway to the very turret's door.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Enguerrand and Stephen only now were left of all that nine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To protect the single stairway from the traitor's fell design;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But with might as 'twere of thirty, did they wield the axe and brand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Striving in their desperation the fierce onslaught to withstand.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But what man of power so godlike he can stay the billow's wrack,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or with single-handed weapon hold an hundred foemen back!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As the sun turned sadly westward, with a wild despairing cry,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stephen bowed his noble forehead and sank down on earth to die.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Ah ha!" then cried cruel Sassard with his foot upon the stair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Have I come to thee, my boaster?" and he whirled his sword in air.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Thou who pratest of thy power to protect her to the death,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What think'st thou now of Sassard and the wind's aspiring breath?"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"What I think let this same show you," answered fiery Enguerrand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And he poised his lofty battle-ax with sure and steady hand;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Now as Heaven loveth justice, may this deathly weapon fall<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On the murderer of my brothers and th' undoer of us all."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">With one mighty whirl he sent it; flashing from his hand it came,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like the lightning from the heavens in a whirl of awful flame,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And betwixt the brows of Sassard and his two false eyeballs passed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the murderer sank before it, like a tree before the blast.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Now ye minions of a traitor if you look for vengeance, come!"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And his voice was like a trumpet when it clangs a victor home.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But a cry from far below him rose like thunder upward, "Nay!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let them turn and meet the <i>husband</i> if they hunger for the fray."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O the yell that sprang to heaven as that voice swept up the stair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the slaughter dire that followed in another moment there!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From the least unto the greatest, from the henchman to the lord,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not a man on all that stairway lived to sheath again his sword.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">At the top that flame-bound forehead, at the base that blade of fire&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Twas the meeting of two tempests in their potency and ire.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ere the moon could falter inward with its pity and its woe,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beaufort saw the path before him unencumbered of the foe.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Saw his pathway unencumbered and strode up and o'er the floor,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Even to the very threshold of his lovely lady's door,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And already in his fancy did he see the golden beam<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of her locks upon his shoulder and her sweet eyes' happy gleam:<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When behold a form upstarting from the shadows at his side.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That with naked sword uplifted barred the passage to his bride;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It was Enguerrand the dauntless, but with staring eyes and hair<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Blowing wild about a forehead pale as snow in moonlit glare.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Ah my master, we have held her, we have guarded her," he said,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Not a shadow of dishonor has so much as touched her head.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Twenty wretches lie below there with the brothers of Germain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Twenty foemen of her honor that I, Enguerrand, have slain.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"But one other foe remaineth, one remaineth yet," he cried,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Which it fits this hand to punish ere you cross unto your bride.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It is I, Enguerrand!" shrieked he; "and as I have slain the rest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So I smite this foeman also!"&mdash;and his sword plunged through his breast.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O the horror of that moment! "Art thou mad my Enguerrand?"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cried his master, striving wildly to withdraw the fatal brand.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But the stern youth smiling sadly, started back from his embrace,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While a flash like summer lightning, flickered direful on his face.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Yes, a traitor worse than Sassard;" and he pointed down the stair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"For my heart has dared to love her whom my hand defended there.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While the others fought for honor, I by passion was made strong,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Set your heel upon my bosom for my soul has done you wrong.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"But," and here he swayed and faltered till his knee sank on the floor,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet in falling turned his forehead ever toward that silent door;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"But your warrior hand my master, may take mine without a stain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For my hand has e'er been loyal, and your enemy is slain."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>A short silence followed the last word, then a burst of applause
+testified to the appreciation of her audience, and Paula crept away to
+hide her blushing cheeks in the comparative darkness of a little
+vine-covered balcony that jutted out from the ante-room. What were her
+thoughts as she leaned there! In the subsidence of any great
+emotion&mdash;and Paula had felt every word she uttered&mdash;there is more or
+less of shock and tumult. She did not think, she only felt. Suddenly a
+hand was laid on her arm and a low voice whispered in her ear,</p>
+
+<p>"Did you write that poem yourself?"</p>
+
+<p>Turning, she encountered the shadowy form of a woman leaning close at
+her side and appearing in the dim light that shone on her from the lamps
+beyond, an eager image of expectancy.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," returned Paula, "why do you ask?"</p>
+
+<p>The woman, whoever she was, did not answer. "And you believe in such
+devotion as that!" she murmured. "You can understand a man, aye, or a
+woman either, risking happiness and fame, life and death, for the sake
+of a trust! Such things are not folly to you! You could see a heart
+spill itself drop by drop through a longer vigil than the eight months
+watching on the ramparts, and not sneer at a fidelity that could not
+falter because it had given its word? Speak; you write of faithfulness
+with a pen of fire, is your heart faithful too?"</p>
+
+<p>There was something in these words, spoken as they were in a tone of
+suppressed passion, that startled and aroused Paula. Leaning forward,
+she endeavored to see the face of the woman who thus forcibly addressed
+her, but the light was too dim. The outline of a brow covered by some
+close headgear was all she could detect.</p>
+
+<p>"You speak earnestly," said Paula, "but that is what I like. Fidelity to
+a cause, or fidelity to a trust, demands the sympathy and admiration of
+all honest and generous hearts. If I am ever called upon to maintain
+either, I hope that my enthusiasm will not have all been expended in
+words."</p>
+
+<p>"You please me," murmured the woman, "you please me; will you come and
+see me and let me tell you a story to mate the poem you have given us
+to-night?"</p>
+
+<p>The trembling eagerness of her tone it would be impossible to describe.
+Paula was thrilled by it. "If you will tell me who you are," said Paula,
+"I certainly will try and come. I should be glad to hear anything you
+have to relate to me."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought every one knew who I was," returned the woman; and drawing
+Paula back into the ante-room, she turned her face upon her. "Any one
+will tell you where Margery Hamlin lives," said she. "Do not disappoint
+me, and do not keep me waiting long." And with a nod and a deep strange
+smile that made her aged face almost youthful, she entered the crowd and
+disappeared from Paula's sight.</p>
+
+<p>It was the woman whose nightly visits to the deserted home of the Japhas
+had once been the talk and was still the unsolved mystery of the town.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXIV" id="XXIV"></a>XXIV.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE JAPHA MANSION.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Ah what a warning for a thoughtless man,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Could field or grove, could any spot on earth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Show to his eye an image of the pangs<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which it has witnessed; render back an echo<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of the sad steps by which it hath been trod.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Wordsworth.</span><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p>Unexplained actions if long continued, lose after awhile their interest
+if not their mystery. The aged lady who now for many years had been seen
+at every night-fall to leave her home, traverse the village streets,
+enter the Japha mansion, remain there an hour and then re-issue with
+tremulous steps and bowed head, had become so common a sight to the
+village eye, that even the children forgot to ask what her errand was,
+or why she held her head so hopefully when she entered, or looked so
+despondent when she came forth.</p>
+
+<p>But to Paula, for reasons already mentioned, this secret and persistent
+vigil in a forsaken and mysterious dwelling, was fraught with a
+significance which had never lost its power either to excite her
+curiosity or to arouse her imagination. Many a time had she gone home
+from some late encounter with the aged lady, to brood by the hour upon
+the expression of that restless eye which in its wanderings never failed
+to turn upon her own youthful face and linger there in the manner I have
+already noted. She thought of it by night, she thought of it by day. She
+felt herself drawn to that woman's suffering heart as by invisible
+cords. To understand the feelings of this desolate being, she had even
+studied the face of that old house, until she knew it under its every
+aspect. Often in shutting her eyes at night, she would perceive as in a
+mirror a vision of its long gray front, barred door and sealed windows
+shining in the moon, save where the deep impenetrable shadows of its two
+guardian poplars lay black and dismal upon its ghostly surface. Again
+she would behold it as it reared itself dark and dripping in a blinding
+storm, its walls plastered with leaves from the immovable poplars, and
+its neglected garden lying sodden and forlorn under the flail of the
+ceaseless storm. Then its early morning face would strike her fancy. The
+slow looming of its chimney-tops against a brightening sky; the gradual
+coming out of its forsaken windows and solemn looking doors from the
+mystery of darkness into the no less mystery of day; the hint of
+roselight on its barren boards; the gleam of sunshine on its untrodden
+threshold; a sunshine as pure and sweet as if a bride stood there in her
+beauty, waiting for admission into the deserted halls beyond. All and
+everything that could tend to invest the house and its constant visitor
+with an atmosphere of awe and interest, had occurred to this young girl
+in her daily reveries and nightly dreams. It was therefore with a thrill
+deep as her expectation and vivid as her sympathy, that she recognized
+in her eager interlocutor and proposed confident, the woman about whose
+life and actions rested for her such a veil of impenetrable mystery. The
+thought moved her, excited her, and made the rest of the evening pass
+like a dream. She was anxious for the next day to come, that she might
+seek this Mrs. Hamlin in her home, and hear from her lips the tale of
+devotion that should mate her own simple but enthusiastic poem.</p>
+
+<p>When the next day did come, it rained, rained bitterly, persistent and
+with a steady drive from the north east, that made her going out
+impossible. The day following she was indisposed, and upon the
+succeeding afternoon, she was engaged in duties that precluded all
+thought of visiting. The next day was Sunday, and Monday had its own
+demands which she could not slight. It was therefore well nigh a week
+from the night of the entertainment, before the opportunity offered for
+which she was so anxious. Her curiosity and expectation had thus time to
+grow, and it was with a determination to allow nothing to stand in her
+way, that she set out from home in a flood of mild September sunshine,
+to visit Mrs. Hamlin. But alas, for resolutions made in a country
+village prior to the opening of a church fair! She had scarcely gone a
+dozen steps before she was accosted by one of the managers, a woman who
+neither observes your haste, nor pays any attention to your possible
+preoccupation. Do what she could, she found it impossible to escape from
+this persistent individual until she had satisfied her upon matters
+which it took a full half hour to discuss, and when at last she
+succeeded in doing so, it was only to fall into the hands of an aged
+deacon of the church, whose protecting friendship it were a sin to
+wound, while his garrulous tongue made it no ordinary trial of patience
+to stand and listen. In short the best part of the afternoon was gone
+before she found herself at the door of Mrs. Hamlin's house. But she was
+not to be deterred by further hesitation from the pursuit of her object.
+Rapping smartly on the door, she listened. No stir came from within.
+Again she rapped and again she listened. No response came to assure her
+that her summons had been heard. Surprised at this, for she had been
+told Mrs. Hamlin was always at home during the afternoon, she glanced up
+at the church clock in plain view from the doorstep, and blushed to
+observe that it was six o'clock, the hour at which this mysterious woman
+always left her house, to accomplish her vigil at the Japha mansion.</p>
+
+<p>"What have I done?" thought Paula, and felt a strange thrill as she
+realized that even at that moment, the woman with the eager but restless
+eyes, was shut within the precincts of that deserted dwelling, engaged
+in prayer, perhaps wet with tears, who knows? The secret of what she did
+in that long and quiet twilight hour had never been revealed. Leaving
+the little brown house behind, Paula found herself insensibly taking the
+road to the Japha mansion. If she could not enter it and share the watch
+of the devoted woman who had promised her her confidence, she could at
+least observe if the windows were open or the blinds raised. To be sure
+she ought to be at home, but Miss Belinda was indulgent and did not
+question her comings and goings too closely. An irresistible force drew
+her down the street, and she did not hesitate to follow the lead of her
+impulse. No one accosted her now, it was the tea hour in most of these
+houses and the streets were comparatively deserted. The only house whose
+chimneys lacked the rising smoke, was the one towards which her
+footsteps were tending. She could descry it from afar. Its gaunt walls
+from which the paint had long ago faded, stared uncompromisingly upon
+her in the autumn sunshine. There was no welcome in its close shutters
+with their broken slats from which hung tangled strips of old rags&mdash;the
+remnants of some boy's kite. The stiff and solemn poplars rose grim and
+forbidding at the gate once swung wide to the fashion and gallantry of
+proud ladies and stalwart gentlemen, but now pushed aside solely by the
+hand of a tremulous old woman, or the irreverent palm of some daring
+school-boy. From the tangled garden looked forth neither flower nor
+blossoming shrub. Beauty and grace could not thrive in this wilderness
+of decay. A dandelion would have felt itself out of place beneath the
+eye of that ghostly door, with the sinister plank nailed across it, like
+the separating line between light and darkness, right and wrong, life
+and death. What loneliness! what a monument of buried passions outliving
+death itself!</p>
+
+<p>Paula paused as she reached the gate; but remembering that Mrs. Hamlin
+was accustomed to enter the house by a side door, hurried around the
+corner and carefully surveyed the windows from that quarter. One of the
+shutters was open, allowing the flame of the setting sun to gild the
+panes like gold. She did not know then nor has she been able to explain
+since, what it was that came over her at the sight, but almost before
+she realized it, she had returned to the gate, opened it, threaded the
+overgrown garden, reached the door which she had so frequently beheld
+the aged woman enter and knocked.</p>
+
+<p>Instantly she was seized with a consciousness of what she had done, and
+frightened at her temerity, meditated an immediate escape. Drawing the
+folds of her mantle about her form and face, she prepared to fly, when
+she remembered the look of entreaty with which this woman had said on
+that night of their conversation, "Do not disappoint me! Do not keep me
+long in suspense!" and moved by a fresh impulse, turned and inflicted
+another resounding knock on the door.</p>
+
+<p>The result was unlooked-for and surprising. To the sound from within of
+a quick passionate cry, there came a hurried movement, followed by a
+deep silence, then another hasty stir succeeded by a longer silence,
+then a rush which seemed to bring all things with it, and the door
+opened and Mrs. Hamlin appeared before her with a countenance so pallid
+with expectancy, that Paula instinctively felt that in some unconscious
+way, she had loosened the bonds of an uncontrollable emotion, and was
+drawing back, when the woman with a quick look in her shrouded face,
+exultantly caught her hand in hers, and drawing her over the threshold,
+gasped out in a delirium of incomprehensible joy:</p>
+
+<p>"I knew you would come! I knew that God would not let you forget!
+Fifteen years have I waited, Jacqueline! fifteen long, tedious,
+suffering years! But they all seem like nothing now! You have come, you
+have come, and all that I ask, is that God will not let me die till I
+realize my joy!"</p>
+
+<p>The emotion with which she uttered these strange words was so
+overpowering, and her body seemed so weak to stand the strain, that
+Paula instinctively put forth her hand to sustain her. The action
+loosened her cloak. Instantly the eyes that had been fixed upon her with
+such delirious rapture grew blank with dismay, a frightful shudder ran
+through the woman's aged frame; she tore at the cloak that still
+enveloped the young girl's shoulders, and pulling it off, took one view
+of the fresh and beautiful countenance before her, and without uttering
+a word, fell back in a deep and deadly swoon upon the floor.</p>
+
+<p>"O what have I done?" cried Paula, flinging herself down beside that
+pale and rigid figure; but instantly remembering herself she leaped to
+her feet and looked about for some means to resuscitate the sufferer.
+There was a goblet of water on a table near by. Seizing it, she bathed
+the face and hands of the woman before her, moaning aloud in her grief
+and dismay, "Have I killed her! O what is this mystery that brings such
+a doom of anguish to this poor heart?"</p>
+
+<p>But from those pallid lips came no response, and feeling greatly
+alarmed, Paula was about to rush from the house for assistance, when she
+felt a tremulous pull upon her skirt, and turning, saw that the glassy
+eyes had opened at last and were now gazing upon her with mute but
+eloquent appeal.</p>
+
+<p>She instantly returned. "O I am so sorry," she murmured, sinking again
+upon her knees beside the suffering woman. "I did not know, could not
+realize that my presence here would affect you so deeply. Forgive me and
+tell me what I can do to make you forget my presumption."</p>
+
+<p>The woman shook her head, her lips moved and she struggled vainly to
+rise. Paula immediately lent her the aid of her strong young hand and in
+a few minutes, Mrs. Hamlin was on her feet. "O God!" were her first
+words as she sank into the chair which Paula hastily drew forward, "that
+I should taste the joy and she be still unsaved!"</p>
+
+<p>Seeing her so absorbed, Paula ventured to glance around her. She found
+herself in a large square room sparsely but comfortably furnished in a
+style that bespake it as the former sitting-room of the dead and buried
+Japhas. From the walls above hung a few ancient pictures. A large
+hair-cloth sofa of a heavy antique shape, confronted the eye from one
+side of the room, an equally ancient book-case from the other. The
+carpet was faded and so were the curtains, but they had once been of an
+attractive hue and pattern. Conspicuous in the midst stood a large table
+with a well-trimmed lamp upon it, and close against it an easy chair
+with an upright back. This last as well as everything else in the room,
+was in a condition of neatness that would have surprised Paula if she
+had not been acquainted with the love and devotion of this woman, who in
+her daily visits to this house, probably took every pains to keep things
+freshened and in order.</p>
+
+<p>Satisfied with her survey, she again directed her attention to Mrs.
+Hamlin, and started to find that person's eyes fixed upon her own with
+an expression of deep, demanding interest.</p>
+
+<p>"You are looking at the shadows of things that were," exclaimed the old
+lady in thrilling tones. "It is a fearful thought to be shut up with the
+ghost of a vanished past, is it not? That chair by your side has not
+been sat in since Colonel Japha rose from it twelve years ago to totter
+to the bed where he breathed his last. It is waiting, everything is
+waiting. I thought the end had come to-night, that the vigil was over,
+the watch finished, but God in his wisdom says, 'No,' and I must wait a
+little longer. Alas in a little while longer the end will be here
+indeed!"</p>
+
+<p>The despondency with which she uttered these last words showed where her
+thoughts were tending, and to comfort her, Paula drew up a chair and sat
+down by her side. "You were going to tell me the story of a great love
+and a great devotion. Cannot you do so now?"</p>
+
+<p>The woman started, glanced hastily around, and let her eyes travel to
+Paula's face where they rested with something of their old look of
+secret longing and doubt.</p>
+
+<p>"You are the one who wrote the poem," she murmured; "I remember." Then
+with a sudden feverish impulse, leaned forward, and stroking back the
+waving locks from Paula's brow, exclaimed hurriedly, "You look like her,
+you have the same dark hair and wonderful eyes, more beautiful perhaps,
+but like her, O so like her! That is why I made such a mistake." She
+shuddered, with a quick low sob, but instantly subdued her emotion and
+taking Paula's hand in hers continued, "You are young, my daughter;
+youth does not enjoy carrying burdens; can I, a stranger ask you to
+assist me with mine?"</p>
+
+<p>"You may," returned Paula. "If it will give you any relief I will help
+you bear it willingly."</p>
+
+<p>"You will! Has heaven then sent me the aid my failing spirits demand?
+Can I count on you, child? But I will ask for no promise till you have
+heard my story. To no one have I ever imparted the secret of my life,
+but from the first moment I saw your fair young face, I felt that
+through you would come my help, if help ever came to make my final
+moments easier and my last days less bitter." And rising up, she led
+Paula to a door which she solemnly opened. "I am glad that you are
+here," said she. "I could never have asked you to come, but since you
+have braved the dead and crossed this threshold, you must see and know
+the whole. You will understand my story better."</p>
+
+<p>Taking her through a dark passage, she threw wide another door, and the
+parlors of the vanished Japhas opened before them. It was a ghostly
+vision. A weird twilight scene of clustered shadows brooding above
+articles of musty grandeur. In spite of the self-command learned by her
+late experiences, Paula recoiled, saying,</p>
+
+<p>"It is too sad, too lonesome!" But the woman without heeding her,
+hurried her on over the worm-eaten carpet and between the time-worn
+chairs and heavy-browed cabinets, to the hall beyond.</p>
+
+<p>"I have not been here, myself, for a year," said Mrs. Hamlin, glancing
+fearfully up and down the dusky corridor. "It is not often I can brave
+the memories of this spot." And she pointed with one hand towards the
+darkened door at its end, whose spacious if not stately panels gave no
+hint to the eye of the dread bar that crossed it like a line of doom
+upon the outside, and then turning, let her eye fall with still heavier
+significance upon the broad and imposing staircase that rose from the
+centre of the hall to the duskier and more dismal regions above.</p>
+
+<p>"A brave, old fashioned flight of steps is it not! But the scene of a
+curse, my child." And unheeding Paula's shudder, she drew her up the
+stairs.</p>
+
+<p>"See," continued her panting guide as they reached a square platform
+near the top, from which some half dozen or more steps branched up on
+either side. "They do not build like this nowadays. But Colonel Japha
+believed in nothing new, and thought more of his grand old hall and
+staircase, than he did of all the rest of his house. He little dreamed
+of what a scene it would be the witness. But come, it is getting late
+and you must see her room."</p>
+
+<p>It was near the top of the staircase and was fully as musty, faded and
+dismal as the rest. Yet there was an air of expectancy about it, too,
+that touched Paula deeply. From between the dingy hangings of the bed,
+looked forth a pair of downy pillows, edged with yellowed lace, and
+beneath them a neatly spread counterpane carefully turned back over
+comfortable-looking blankets, as one sees in a bed that only awaits its
+occupant; while on the ancient hearth, a pile of logs stood heaped and
+ready for the kindling match.</p>
+
+<p>"It is all waiting you see," said the old lady in a trembling voice,
+"like everything else, just waiting."</p>
+
+<p>There was an embroidery frame in one corner of the room, from which
+looked a piece of faded and half completed work. The needle was hanging
+from it by a thread, and a skein of green worsted hung over the top,
+Paula glanced at it inquiringly.</p>
+
+<p>"It is just as she left it! He never entered the room after she went and
+I would never let it be touched. It is just the same with the piano
+below. The last piece she played is still standing open on the rack. I
+loved her so, and I thought then that a few months would bring her back!
+See, here is her bible. She never used to read it, but she prized it
+because it was her mother's. I have placed it on the pillow where she
+will see it when she comes to lay her poor tired head down to rest." And
+with a reverent hand the aged matron drew the curtains back from the
+open bed, and disclosed the little bible lying thick with dust in the
+centre of the nearest pillow.</p>
+
+<p>"O who was this you loved so well? And why did she leave you?" cried
+Paula with the tears in her eyes, at sight of this humble token.</p>
+
+<p>The aged lady seized her hand and hurried her back into the room below.
+"I will tell you where I have waited and watched so long. Only be
+patient till I light the lamp. It is getting late and any chance
+wanderer going by and seeing all dark, might think I had forgotten my
+promise and was not here."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXV" id="XXV"></a>XXV.</h2>
+
+<h3>JACQUELINE.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"The cold in clime are cold in blood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And love as scarce deserves the name,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But mine is like the lava flood<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That burns in Etna's breast of flame."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Byron.</span><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p>"There are some men that have the appearance of being devoid of family
+affection, who in reality cherish it in the deepest and most passionate
+degree. Such a man was Colonel Japha. You have doubtless heard from your
+cradle what the neighbors thought of this stately, old fashioned
+gentleman. He was too handsome in his youth, too proudly reticent in his
+manhood, too self-contained and unrelenting in his age, not to be the
+talk of any town that numbered him among its inhabitants. But only from
+myself, a relative of the family and his housekeeper for years, can you
+learn with what undeviating faith and love he clung to the few upon whom
+he allowed his heart to fasten in affection. When he married Miss Carey,
+the world said, 'He has chosen a beauty, because fine manners and a
+pretty face look well behind the Japha coffee-urn!' But we, that is,
+this same young wife and myself, knew that in marrying her he had taken
+unto himself his other half, the one sweet woman for whom his proud
+heart could beat and before whom his stately head could bow. When she
+died, the world exclaimed, 'He will soon fill her place!' But I who
+watched the last look that passed between them in the valley of the
+shadow of that death, knew that the years would come and the years would
+go without seeing Colonel Japha marry again.</p>
+
+<p>"The little babe whom she left to his care, took all the love which he
+had left. From the moment it began to speak, he centered in its tiny
+life all the hope and all the pride of his solitary heart. And the Japha
+pride was nearly as great as the Japha heart. She was a pretty child;
+not a beauty like her mother or like you, my dear, who however so nearly
+resemble her. But for all that, pretty enough to satisfy the eyes of her
+secretly doting father, and her openly doting nurse and cousin. I say
+secretly doting father. I do not mean by that that he regarded her with
+an affection which he never displayed, but that it was his way to lavish
+his caresses at home and in the privacy of her little nursery. He never
+made a parade of anything but his pride. If he loved her, it was enough
+for her to know it. In the street and the houses of their friends, he
+was the strict, somewhat severe father, to whom her childish eyes lifted
+at first with awe, but afterwards with a quiet defiance, that when I
+first saw it, made my heart stand still with unreasoning alarm.</p>
+
+<p>"She was so reserved a child and yet so deeply passionate. From the
+beginning I felt that I did not understand her. I loved her; I have
+never loved any mortal as I did her&mdash;and do; but I could not follow her
+impulses or judge of her feelings by her looks.</p>
+
+<p>"When she grew older it was still worse. She never contradicted her
+father, or appeared in any open way to disobey his commands, or thwart
+him in his plans. Yet she always did what she pleased, and that so
+quietly, he frequently did not observe that matters had taken any other
+direction, than that which he had himself ordained. 'It is her mother's
+tact,' he used to say. Alas it was something more than that; it was her
+father's will united to the unscrupulousness of some forgotten ancestor.</p>
+
+<p>"But with the glamour of her eighteen years upon me, I did not recognize
+this then, any more than he. I saw her through the magic glasses of my
+own absorbing love, and tremble as I frequently would in the still scorn
+of her unfathomable passion, I never dreamed she could do anything that
+would seriously offend her father's affection or mortify his pride. The
+truth is, that Jacqueline did not love us. Say what you will of the
+claims of kindred, and the right of every father to his childrens'
+regard, Jacqueline Japha accepted the devotion that was lavished upon
+her, but she gave none in return. She could not, perhaps. Her father was
+too cold in public and too warm in his home-bursts of affection. I was
+plain and a widow; no mate for her in age, condition or estate. She
+could neither look up to me nor lean upon me. I had been her nurse in
+childhood and though a relative, was still a dependent; what was there
+in all that to love! If her mother had lived&mdash;But we will not dwell on
+possibilities. Jacqueline had no mother and no friend that was dear
+enough to her, to teach her unwilling soul the great lesson of
+self-control and sacrifice.</p>
+
+<p>"You will say that is strange. That situated as she was, she ought to
+have found friends both dear and congenial; but that would be to declare
+that Jacqueline was like others of her age and class, whereas she was
+single and alone; a dark-browed girl, who allured the gaze of both men
+and women, but who cared but little for any one till&mdash;But wait, child. I
+shall have to speak of matters that will cause your cheeks to blush. Lay
+your head down on my knee, for I cannot bear the sight of blushes upon a
+cheek more innocent than hers."</p>
+
+<p>With a gentle movement she urged Paula to sit upon a little stool at her
+feet, pressed the young girl's head down upon her lap, and burying the
+lovely brow beneath her aged hands, went hurriedly on.</p>
+
+<p>"You are young, dear, and may not know what it is to love a man.
+Jacqueline was young also, but from the moment she returned home to us
+from a visit she had been making in Boston, I perceived that something
+had entered her life that was destined to make a great change in her;
+and when a few weeks later, young Robert Holt from Boston, came to pay
+his respects to her in her father's house, I knew, or thought I did,
+what that something was. We were sitting in this room I remember, when
+the servant-girl came in, and announced that Mr. Holt was in the parlor.
+Jacqueline was lying on the sofa, and her father was in his usual chair
+by the table. At the name, Holt, the girl rose as if it had suddenly
+thundered, or the lightning had flashed. I see her now. She was dressed
+in white&mdash;though it was early fall she still clung to her summer
+dresses&mdash;her dark hair was piled high, and caught here and there with
+old-fashioned gold pins, a splendid red rose burned on her bosom, and
+another flashed crimson as blood from her folded hands.</p>
+
+<p>"'Holt?' repeated the Colonel without turning his head, 'I know no such
+man.'</p>
+
+<p>"'He said he wished to see Miss Jacqueline,' simpered the servant.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh,' returned the Colonel indifferently. He never showed surprise
+before the servants&mdash;and went on with his book, still without turning
+his head.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought if he had turned it, he would scarcely sit there reading so
+quietly; for Jacqueline who had not stirred from her alert and upright
+position, was looking at him in a way no father, least of all a father
+who loved his child as he did her, could have beheld without agitation.
+It was the glance of a tigress waiting for the sight of an inconsiderate
+move, in order to spring. It was wild unconstrainable joy, eying a
+possible check and madly defying it. I shuddered as I looked at her eye,
+and sickened as I perceived a huge drop of blood ooze from her white
+fingers, where they unconsciously clutched a thorn, and drop dark and
+disfiguring upon her virgin garments. At the indifferent exclamation of
+her father, her features relaxed, and she turned haughtily towards the
+girl, with a veiling of her secret delight that already bespoke the
+woman of the world.</p>
+
+<p>"'Tell Mr. Holt that I will see him presently,' said she, and was about
+to follow the girl from the room when I caught her by the sleeve.</p>
+
+<p>"'You will have to change your dress,' said I, and I pointed to the
+ominous blot disfiguring its otherwise spotless white.</p>
+
+<p>"She started and gave me a quick glance.</p>
+
+<p>"'I have a skin like a spider's web," cried she. 'I should never meddle
+with roses.' But I noticed she did not toss the blossom away.</p>
+
+<p>"'Who is this Mr. Holt?' now asked the Colonel suddenly turning, the
+servant having left the room.</p>
+
+<p>"'He is a gentleman I met in Boston,' came from his daughter's lips, in
+her usual light and easy tones. 'He is probably passing through our town
+on his way to Providence, where I was told he did business. His call is
+no more than a formality, I presume.' And with an indifferent little
+smile and nod, she vanished from the room, that a moment before had been
+filled with the threat of her silent passion. The Colonel gave a short
+sigh but returned undisturbed to his book.</p>
+
+<p>"In the course of a few minutes Jacqueline came back. She had changed
+her dress for one as summerlike as the other, but still finer and more
+elaborate. She looked elegant, imperious, but the joy had died out from
+her eyes, and in its place was another expression incomprehensible to
+me, but fully as alarming as any that had gone before. 'Mr. Holt finds
+himself obliged to remain in town over night, and would like to pay his
+respects to you,' said she to her father.</p>
+
+<p>"The Colonel immediately rose, looking very grand as he turned and
+surveyed his daughter with his clear penetrating eye.'</p>
+
+<p>"'You have a lover, have you not?' he asked, laying his hand on her bare
+and beautifully polished shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"An odd little smile crossed her lip. She looked at her hands on which
+never a ring shone, and coquettishly tossed her head. 'Let the gentleman
+speak for himself,' said she, 'I give no man his title until he has
+earned it.'</p>
+
+<p>"Her father laughed. A lover was not such a dreadful thing in his eyes
+provided he were worthy. And Jacqueline would not choose unworthily of
+course&mdash;a Japha and his daughter! 'Well then,' said he, 'let us see if
+he can make good his title; Holt is not a bad name and Boston is not a
+poor place to hail from.' And without more ado, they hurried from the
+room. But the light had all died out from her face! What did it mean?</p>
+
+<p>"At tea time I met the gentleman. He had evidently made his title good.
+I was not only favorably impressed with him but actually struck. Of all
+the high-bred, clear-eyed, polished and kindly gentlemen who had sat
+about the board since I first came into the family in Mrs. Japha's
+lifetime, here was surely the finest, the handsomest and the best; and
+surprised in more ways than one, I was giving full play to my relief and
+exhilaration, when I caught sight of Jacqueline's eye, and felt again
+the cold shudders of secret doubt and apprehension. Smile upon him as
+she would, coquet with him as she did, the flame and the glory that drew
+her like an inspiration to her feet when his name was announced, had
+fled, and left not a shadow behind. Had he failed in his expressions of
+devotion? Was he hard or cold or severe, under all that pleasant and
+charming manner? Had the hot soul of our motherless child rushed upon
+ice, and in the shock of the dreadful chill, fallen inert? No, his looks
+bespake no coldness; they dwelt upon Jacqueline's lovely but inscrutable
+face, with honest fervor and boundless regard. He evidently loved her
+most passionately, but she&mdash;if it had not been for that first moment of
+unconscious betrayal, I should have decided that she cared for him no
+more than she did for the few others who had adored her, in the short
+space of her incomprehensible life.</p>
+
+<p>"The mystery was not cleared up when she came to me that night with a
+short, 'How do you like my lover, Margery?' I was forty years her
+senior, but she always called me Margery.</p>
+
+<p>"'I think he is the finest, most agreeable man I ever met,' said I. 'Is
+he your lover, Jacqueline? Are you going to marry him?'</p>
+
+<p>"She turned about from the vase which she was denuding of its flowers,
+and gave me one of her sphinx-like looks. 'You must ask papa,' said she.
+'He holds the destinies of the Japhas in his hand, does he not?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Does he?' I involuntarily whispered to myself; following the steady
+poise of her head and the assured movements of her graceful form, with a
+glance of doubt, but loving her all the same, O loving her all and ever
+the same!</p>
+
+<p>"'Your father is not the man to cross you when the object of your
+affections is as worthy as this gentleman. He loved your mother too
+fondly.'</p>
+
+<p>"'He did?' She had turned quick as a flash and was looking me straight
+in the eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"'I never saw such union!' I exclaimed, vaguely remembering that her
+mother's name had always seemed to have power to move her. 'There was no
+parade of it before the world; but here at their own fireside, it was
+heart to heart and soul to soul. It was not love it was assimilation.'</p>
+
+<p>"The young girl rose upon me like a flame; her very eyes seemed to dart
+fire; her lips looked like living coals; she was almost appalling in her
+terrible beauty and superhuman passion. 'Not love!' she exclaimed, her
+every word falling like a burning spark, 'not love but assimilation! Yet
+do you suppose if I told my father that my soul had found its mate; my
+heart its other half; that this, <i>this</i> nature,' here she struck her
+breast as she would a stone, 'had at last found its master; that the
+wayward spirit of which you have sometimes been afraid, was become a
+part of another's life, another's soul, another's hope, do you suppose
+he would listen? Hush!' she cried, seeing me about to speak. 'You talk
+of love, what do you know of it, what does he know of it, who saw his
+young wife die, yet himself consented to live? Is love a sitting by the
+fire with hand locked in hand while the winter winds rage and the
+droning kettle sings? Love is a going through the fire, a braving of the
+winter winds, a scattering of the soul in sparks that the night and the
+tempest lick up without putting out the germ of the eternal flame.
+Love!' she half laughed; 'O, it takes a soul that has never squandered
+its treasure upon every passing beggar, to know how to love! Do you see
+that star?' It was night as I have said and we were standing near an
+open window. 'It has lost its moorings and is falling; when it descries
+the ocean it will plunge into it; so with some natures, they soar high
+and keep their orbit well, till an invisible hand turns them from their
+course and they fall, to be swallowed up, aye swallowed up, lost and
+buried in the great sea that has awaited them so long.'</p>
+
+<p>"'And you love&mdash;like this&mdash;' I murmured, quailing before the power of
+her passion.</p>
+
+<p>"'Would it not be strange if I did not,' she asked in an altered voice.
+'You say he is everything noble, handsome and attractive.'</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes,' I murmured, 'but&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"She did not wait to hear what lay behind that but. Picking up her
+flowers, she hastily crossed the room. 'Did my young mother shriek from
+joy, when my father's horses ran away with them along that deadly
+precipice at the side of the Southmore road? To lie for a few maddening
+moments on the breast of the man you love, earth reeling beneath you,
+heaven swimming above you, and then with a cry of bliss to fall heart to
+heart, down the hideous gap of some awful gulf, and be dashed into
+eternity with the cry still on your lips, that is what I call love and
+that is what I&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"She paused, turned upon me the whole splendor of her face, seemed to
+realize to what an extent her impetuosity had lifted the veil with which
+she usually shrouded her bitterly suppressed nature, and calming herself
+with a sudden quick movement, gave me a short mocking courtesy and left
+the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you wonder that for half the night I sat up brooding and alive to
+the faintest sounds!</p>
+
+<p>"Next day Mr. Holt called again, and a couple of weeks after&mdash;long
+enough to enable Colonel Japha to make whatever inquiries he chose as to
+his claims as a gentleman of means and position&mdash;sent a formal entreaty
+for Jacqueline's hand. I had never seen Colonel Japha more moved. His
+admiration for the young man was hearty and sincere. From a worldly
+point of view, as well as from all higher standpoints, the match was one
+of which he could be proud; and yet to speak the word that would
+separate from him the only creature that he loved, was hard as the
+cutting off an arm or the plucking out of an eye. 'Do you think she
+loves him?' asked he of me with a rare condescension of which he was not
+often guilty. 'You are a woman and ought to understand her better than
+I. Do you think she loves him?'</p>
+
+<p>"After the words I had heard her speak, what could I reply but, 'Yes,
+sir; she is of a reserved nature and controls her feelings in his
+presence, but she loves him for all that, with the intensest fervor and
+passion.'</p>
+
+<p>"He repeated again, 'You are a woman and you ought to know.' And then
+called his daughter to him.</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot tell what passed between them, but the upshot of it was, that
+the Colonel despatched an answer to the effect that the father's consent
+would not be lacking, provided the daughter's could be obtained. I
+learned this from Jacqueline herself who brought me the letter to post.</p>
+
+<p>"'You see then, that your father understands,' said I.</p>
+
+<p>"Her rich red lip curled mockingly, but she did not reply.</p>
+
+<p>"Naturally Mr. Holt answered to this communication in person. Jacqueline
+received him with a fitful coquetry that evidently puzzled him, for all
+the distinguishing charm which it added to a beauty apt to be too
+reserved and statue-like. She however took his ring which blazed on her
+finger like a drop of ice on congealed snow. 'I am engaged,' she
+murmured as she passed by my door, 'and to a Holt!' The words rang long
+in my ears; why?</p>
+
+<p>"She desired no congratulations; she permitted nothing to be said about
+her engagement, among the neighbors. She had even taken off her ring
+which I found lying loose in one of her bureau drawers. And no one dared
+to remonstrate, not even her father, punctillious as he was in all
+matters of social etiquette. The fact is, Jacqueline was not the same
+girl she had been before she gave her promise to Mr. Holt. From the
+moment he bade her good-bye, with the remark that he was going away to
+get a golden cage for his bride, she began to reveal a change. The cold
+reserve gave way to feverish expectancy. She trod these rooms as if
+there were burning steels in the floors, she looked from the windows as
+if they were prison bars; night and day she gazed from them yet she
+never went out. The letters she received from him were barely read and
+tossed aside; it was his coming for which she hungered. Her father
+noticed her restless and eager gaze, and frequently sighed. I felt her
+strange removed manner and secretly wept. 'If he does not amply return
+this passion,' thought I, 'my darling will find her life a hell!'</p>
+
+<p>"But he did return it; of that I felt sure. It was my only comfort.</p>
+
+<p>"Suddenly one day the restlessness vanished. Her beauty burst like a
+flame from smoke; she trod like a spirit that hears invisible airs. I
+watched her with amazement till she said 'Mr. Holt comes to-night,' then
+I thought all was explained and went smiling about my work. She came
+down in the afternoon clad as I had never seen her before. She wore one
+of her Boston dresses and she looked superb in it. From the crown of her
+head to the sole of her foot, she dazzled like a moving picture; but she
+lacked one adornment; there was no ring on her finger. 'Jacqueline!'
+cried I, 'you have forgotten something.' And I pointed towards her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"She glanced at it, blushed a trifle as I thought, and pulled it out of
+her pocket. 'I have it,' said she, 'but it is too large,' and she thrust
+it carelessly back.</p>
+
+<p>"At three o'clock the train came in. Then I saw her eye flash and her
+lip burn. In a few minutes later two gentlemen appeared at the gate.</p>
+
+<p>"'Mr. Holt and his brother!' were the words I heard whispered through
+the house. But I did not need that announcement to understand Jacqueline
+at last."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXVI" id="XXVI"></a>XXVI.</h2>
+
+<h3>A MAN'S JUSTICE AND A WOMAN'S MERCY.</h3>
+
+<blockquote><p>"Fair is foul and foul is fair."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Macbeth.</span></p></blockquote>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>"Have you ever seen a man whose instantaneous effect upon you was
+electrical; in whose expression, carriage, or manner, there was
+concealed a charm that attracted and interested you, apart from his
+actual worth and beauty? Such a one was Mr. Roger Holt, the gentleman I
+now discerned entering the gate with Jacqueline's lover. It was not that
+he was handsome. He could not for one moment bear any comparison with
+his brother in substantial attraction, and yet when they were both in
+the room, you looked at him in preference to the other, and was vexed
+with yourself for doing so. He seemed to be the younger as he was
+certainly the smaller; yet he took the lead, even in coming up the walk.
+Why had he not taken it in the deeper and more important matter? Was it
+because he did not love her?</p>
+
+<p>"I was not present when Jacqueline greeted her guests and presented Mr.
+Roger Holt to her father. But later in the day I spent a half hour with
+them and saw enough to be able to satisfy myself as to the falsity of my
+last supposition. Never had I seen on a human countenance the evidences
+of a wilder passion than that which informed his features, as he sat in
+the further window of the parlor, presumably engaged in admiring the
+autumn landscape, but really occupied in casting short side-long glances
+at Jacqueline, who sat listening with a superb nonchalence, but with a
+restless gleam in her wandering eye, to the genial talk between her
+acknowledged lover and the Colonel. I half feared he would rise from his
+seat, and flinging himself before her, demand then and there an
+explanation of her engagement.</p>
+
+<p>"But beyond the impatience of those short burning glances, he controlled
+himself well, and it was Jacqueline who moved at last.</p>
+
+<p>"I saw the purpose growing in her eyes long before she stirred. The face
+which had been a mystery to me from her cradle, was in the presence of
+this man, like an open page which all might read. Its letters were
+flame, but that did not make them any less clear. I felt her swaying
+towards him, before an eyelash trembled or a quiver shook her tall form.</p>
+
+<p>He may have understood her purpose also, for his eye wandered towards
+the open piano. She rose like a queen.</p>
+
+<p>"'Mr. Roger Holt is a singer,' said she in passing her father, 'I am
+going to ask him to give us one of the old ballads you profess to like
+so much.'</p>
+
+<p>"The conversation at once ceased. The Colonel who made no secret of his
+fondness for music, turned at once towards the stranger, with an
+expression of great courtesy. Instantly that gentleman rose, and meeting
+the request of his hostess with a profound bow, proceeded at once to the
+piano. 'He will not leave it till he has spoken to her,' thought I. Nor
+did he, for that very moment as they stood turning her music over, I
+perceived his lips move in a hurried question, to which she as briefly
+responded, whereupon he caught up a sheet of music from the pile, and
+flinging back his head with a victorious smile, began to sing.</p>
+
+<p>"Had I known what lay behind his words, I would have braved everything
+rather than have allowed him to utter a note in that room which had once
+rung with the carols of Jacqueline's mother. But what could I guess of
+the possible evil underlying the natural ebullition of unrestrained
+passion that from some cause of pride or pique, had met with a strange
+inexplicable check. So I sat still, shuddering perhaps, but quiet in my
+corner; while the haunting tones of his strange and thrilling voice,
+rose and fell in the most uncanny of Scottish love songs. Nor did I do
+more than wonder with all my agitated soul, when at the conclusion
+Jacqueline came back, and pausing beside the man to whom she had given
+her troth, looked down in his beaming face and smiled with that overflow
+of delight, which she dared not bestow upon his brother.</p>
+
+<p>"Another little incident of that hour remains engraven upon my memory.
+She had been showing to the gentlemen a rare plant that stood in the
+front parlor window, and was dilating upon its marvels, when Mr. Robert
+Holt, her accepted lover, took in his clasp the small white hand
+wandering so invitingly among the leaves of the huge palm, and glancing
+at the finger which should have worn his ring, looked inquiringly into
+her face.</p>
+
+<p>"'O,' said she, interrupting her little speech to draw away her hand,
+'you miss your diamond? I have it, sir. It lies very safe in my pocket;
+it is a beautiful gem, but <i>your ring does not fit me</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>"The way she said those words and the air with which she tossed back her
+head, must have made one heart in that room beat joyously, but it did
+not reassure me or subdue my secret apprehension.</p>
+
+<p>"'Not fit!' her lover responded; and begged her to allow him to try it
+on and see, but she shook her head with wilful coquetry, and turning to
+the piano, commenced singing a gay little song that was like silver
+bells, shaken by a sudden and mighty tempest.</p>
+
+<p>"Even the Colonel felt the change in his daughter, though he never
+guessed the cause, and came and went during the evening that followed,
+with certain odd sighs that made my heart ache with strange forebodings.
+Only her lover was unconscious, or if he felt the new and wayward force
+and fire in her manner, attributed it to his own presence and
+unspeakable devotion. Mr. Roger Holt, on the contrary, thoroughly
+understood it. Though he was strangely calm, as calm now as he had
+previously been alert and fiery, he never lost a gleam of her eye in his
+direction, or a turn of her form towards the chair where he sat. But the
+smile with which he contemplated her was not pleasant to me. It was
+informed with self-consciousness, and a certain hard triumph, that made
+it almost sinister. 'She has given her hand to the true man,' I mused,
+'wherever her heart may be. But had she given it?' I began to doubt as I
+began to muse. With that uncontrollable will of hers, she was capable of
+anything; did she intend to break with Robert, now that she had seen
+Roger? I detected no signs of it beyond the evident delight they took in
+each other's presence. They were guilty of no further conversation of a
+secret or intimate character, and when with the striking of the clock at
+ten, Mr. Robert Holt rose to leave, his brother followed without any
+demur, even preceding him in his departure and limiting his farewell to
+a short brotherly pressure of Jacqueline's fair hand.</p>
+
+<p>"But much may be conveyed in a pressure, or so I began to think as I
+heard the low laugh that rippled from Jacqueline's lips as she turned to
+go up to her room; and if I had been her mother&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"But that is not what you want to hear. Enough that I did not follow
+her, that I did not even acquaint Colonel Japha with my fears, that
+indeed I did nothing but lie awake, praying and asking what I ought to
+do. There had been so little said; there had been so little done. A
+word, a sentence between them, the interchange of a couple of songs,
+and&mdash;What else that I could communicate to another?</p>
+
+<p>"A week, two weeks passed, and her look of wilful happiness did not fly.
+She was flooded with notes from her accepted lover, whose handwriting I
+had learned by this time to distinguish, but not one, so far as I could
+learn, from any other source; yet her feet tripped lightly through the
+house, and her form had a rich grace in its every movement, that bespoke
+a mind settled in some deep joy or quiet determination. I felt the
+impenetrability of a secretly cherished hope, whenever I looked at her.
+If I had not known to the contrary, I should have said that her
+prospective marriage had become to her a dream of unfathomable delight.
+Whence then came this rapture? Through what communication was born this
+secret hope? I could not guess, I could only watch and wait.</p>
+
+<p>"Meanwhile some random guesses at the truth had been made by the
+neighbors. Jacqueline had a lover. That lover was a gentleman; but the
+Colonel was critical; he had refused his consent and the young people
+had parted. Such was the talk, begotten perhaps by the persistency with
+which Jacqueline remained in the house, and the almost severe look with
+which Colonel Japha trod the streets of his native village, which he
+soon felt would lose all their charm in the departure of his only child.
+I scarcely ventured out more than Jacqueline; for I have but little
+control over my feelings and did not know what I would do, if any one
+should closely press me with questions.</p>
+
+<p>"The unexpected discovery that our pretty young servant girl was in the
+habit of stealing into Jacqueline's room late at night, was the first
+thing that startled me into asking whether or not my supposition was
+true, that Jacqueline received no messages from Mr. Robert Holt. And
+scarcely had I become certain that a clandestine correspondence was
+being carried on between them through the medium of this girl, then the
+climax came, and knowledge on my part and secrecy on hers availed no
+longer.</p>
+
+<p>"It was a day in October. The stoves had been put up in the house, and
+seeing Jacqueline roaming about the halls, in a renewed fit of that
+strange restlessness which had affected her the day before Mr. Roger
+Holt's visit, I went into her room to light a fire, and make everything
+look cheerful before dusk. I found the atmosphere warm, and going to the
+stove, discovered that a fire had been already kindled there, but had
+gone out for want of fuel. I at once commenced to rake away the ashes,
+in order to make preparations for a new one, when I came upon several
+scraps of half burned paper.</p>
+
+<p>"Jacqueline had been burning letters. Do you blame me for picking out
+those scraps and hastening with them to another room, when I tell you
+they were written in a marked and characteristic hand that bore little
+or no resemblance to that of her accepted lover, and that the words
+which flashed first upon my eye were those ominous ones of <i>my wife</i>!</p>
+
+<p>"They were three in number, and while more or less discolored and
+irregular, were still legible. Think child with what a thrill of horror
+and sharp motherly anguish, I read such words as 'Love you! I would
+press you in my arms if you were plague-stricken! The least turn of your
+head makes my blood cringe, as if a flame had touched me. I would follow
+you on my knees, if you led me round the world. Let me see Robert take
+your hand again and I will&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"'Forget you! Do we forget the dagger that has struck us? I am another
+man since&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"'I will have you if Robert goes mad and your father kills me. That I am
+burdened with a wife, is nothing. What is a wife that I do not&mdash;' 'You
+shall be my true wife, my&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"'To-night then, be ready; I will wait for you at the gate. A little
+resolution on your part, and then&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"I could read no further. The living, burning truth had forced itself
+upon me, that Jacqueline, our darling, our pride, the soul of our life,
+stood tottering upon the brink of a gulf horrible as the mouth of hell.
+For I never doubted for an instant what her answer would be to this
+entreaty. In all her past life, God pity us, there had been no tokens of
+that immovable hold on virtue, that would save her in such an extremity
+as this. Nevertheless, to make all sure, I flew back to her room, and
+tearing open bureau drawers and closet doors, discovered that her
+prettiest things had been sent away. She was going, then, and on that
+very night! and her father did not even know she was untrue to her
+betrothed lover. The horror of the situation was too much for me; I
+faltered as I left her room, her dainty, maidenly room, and actually
+crouched against the wall like a guilty thing, as I heard the sound of
+her voice singing some maddening strain in the parlors below. What
+should I do? Appeal to her, or warn her father of the frightful peril in
+which his honor and happiness stood? Alas, any appeal to her would be
+useless. In the glare of this awful revelation I had come to a full
+comprehension of her nature. But her father was a man; he could command
+as well as entreat, could even force obedience if all other methods
+failed. To him, then, must I go; but I had rather have gone to the rack.
+He was so proud a man! Had owned to such undeviating trust in his
+daughter's honor, as a Japha and his child! The blow would kill him; or
+daze him so, he might better have been killed. My knees shook under me,
+as I traversed the hall to his little study over the parlor, and when I
+came to the door, I rather fell against it than knocked, so great was my
+own anguish, and so deep my terror of his. He was a ready man and he
+came to the door at once, but upon seeing me, drew back as if his eye
+had fallen upon a phantom.</p>
+
+<p>"'Hush!' said I, scarcely knowing what I uttered; and going in, I closed
+the door and latched it firmly behind me. 'I have come,' said I in a
+voice that made him start, 'to ask you to save your daughter. She is in
+deadly peril; she&mdash;' a strain of her song came in at that moment from
+the staircase. She was ascending to her room. He looked at me in a doubt
+of my sanity.</p>
+
+<p>"'Not physical peril,' I stammered, 'but <i>moral</i>. She loves madly,
+unreasonably, and with a headlong passion that laughs at every obstacle,
+a man whom neither you nor heaven can look upon with aught but
+execration. She&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"'Mrs. Hamlin!'&mdash;How well I remember his cool, calm voice, so deliberate
+in his impressive moments, so deliberate now, when perhaps she was
+donning hat and shawl for her elopement&mdash;'You are laboring under a great
+mistake. Instead of execrating Mr. Holt, I admire him most profoundly.
+Since the time has come for me to give up my daughter, I know of no one
+to whom I would rather surrender her.'</p>
+
+<p>"'But Mr. Holt is not the man,' I cried, half wild in my fear and
+desperation. 'Do you remember the gentleman who came with him on his
+last visit? He called him his brother, and he is I believe, but&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"The way he turned his grand white forehead towards me at that, made
+every fibre in my being quiver. 'Jacqueline does not love <i>him</i>!'
+exclaimed he. How sharp his voice, how changed his eye! I shrank back,
+trembling as I bowed my head, thinking of the word yet to be said.</p>
+
+<p>"'But he won't compare&mdash;' he went on with a severe intonation. 'Besides
+her honor is engaged. You are dealing in fancies, Mrs. Hamlin.'</p>
+
+<p>"I tore out of my breast the scraps of paper which had enlightened me so
+horribly, and held them towards him; then bethought myself, and drew
+back. 'I have proof,' said I; 'but first I must tell you that Jacqueline
+is not as good a girl as you have thought her. She is not her mother's
+child in the qualities of love and honor. She is destined to bring a
+great woe upon your head. In her passion for this man, she has forgotten
+your trust in her, the incorruptibility of your name, the honor of your
+house. Be strong, sir, for God is about to smite you in your tenderest
+spot.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, with what pride he towered upon me! this white-haired, stately
+gentleman before whom I had hitherto held my breath in admiring awe;
+towered upon me though his face was ghostly pale and his hand trembled
+like an aspen as he held it out!</p>
+
+<p>"'Give me the papers you hold there,' cried he. 'Either you are gone
+mad, or else&mdash;Who wrote these lines?' he demanded, glancing down upon
+the hard, firm scrawl that blackened the bits of paper I had given him.</p>
+
+<p>"'Mr. Roger Holt,' I returned unhesitatingly. 'I found those bits in
+Jacqueline's stove. Her clothes have been sent away, sir,' I continued
+as I saw his face grow fixed above the scraps he consulted. 'Twilight is
+coming on and&mdash;Mr. Roger Holt is a married man!'</p>
+
+<p>"'What!'</p>
+
+<p>"I never saw such a look flash from a human face as that which darted
+from his at that terrible moment. I thought he would have fallen, but he
+only dropped the papers out of his hand. 'Heaven forgive us!' murmured
+I, calmed by a sight of his misery, into some semblance of of
+self-control, 'but we have never understood Jacqueline. She is not to be
+led, sir, by principles or duty. She loves this man, and love with her
+is a stormy wind, capable of sweeping her into any abyss of contumely or
+suffering. If you would save her, kill her love; the death of her lover
+would only transform her into a demon.'</p>
+
+<p>"He looked at me as if I had told him the world had come to an end. 'My
+Jacqueline!' he murmured in a low, incredulous voice of the tenderest
+yearning. 'My Jacqueline!'</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh!' I shrieked, torn by my anguish for him and the terror of her
+escaping while we were yet talking, 'God knows I had rather have died
+than contaminate her by such words as I have uttered. She is dear to me
+as my soul; dearer to me than my life. I have a mother's feeling for
+her, sir. If to fling myself headlong from that window, would delay her
+feet from going down the stairs to meet her guilty lover, I would gladly
+do it. It is her danger makes me speak. O sir, realize that danger and
+hasten before she has taken the irrevocable step.'</p>
+
+<p>"He started like a man pricked by a sudden dart. 'She is going&mdash;you
+believe she is going to meet him?'</p>
+
+
+<p>"'I do,' said I.</p>
+
+<p>"He gave me a terrible look and started for the door. I hurriedly picked
+up the scraps that had fallen to the floor, and rushed around by an
+inner passage-way to my own little room, hiding my head and waiting as
+for the crash of a falling avalanche. Suddenly a cry rose in the hall.</p>
+
+<p>"There are some sounds that lift you unconsciously to your feet. Dashing
+out of my room, I detected the face of the servant-girl whom I have
+before mentioned, looking out of her door some distance down the
+corridor. Hastening towards her, I uttered some words about her being a
+busy-body, and thrusting her inside her room, locked the door upon her.
+Then I hastened with what speed I might to the front of the house, and
+coming out upon the grand staircase, met a sight that shook me to the
+very soul. You have been up the stairs; you know how they branch off to
+left and right from the platform near the top. The left branch led in
+those days to Colonel Japha's room, the right to the apartments occupied
+by Jacqueline and myself. Coming upon them, then, as I did from my side
+of the house, I found myself in full view of the opposite approach, and
+there on the topmost step I beheld Colonel Japha, standing in an
+attitude of awful denunciation, while half way down the staircase, I
+beheld the figure of Jacqueline, hindered in her gliding course towards
+the front door by the terrible, 'Stop!' whose echo had reached me in my
+room and caused me to rush quaking and horrified to this spot. I leaned
+back sick and horror-stricken against the wall. There was no mercy in
+his voice: he had awakened to a full realization of the situation and
+the pride of the Japhas had made him steel.</p>
+
+<p>"'You are my child!' he was saying. 'I have loved you and do still; but
+proceed one step farther towards the man that awaits you at the gate,
+and the door that opens upon you, <i>shuts</i> never to open again!'</p>
+
+<p>"'Colonel!' I exclaimed, starting forward; but he heard me no more than
+he would a fly buzzing or a bird singing.</p>
+
+<p>"'I desire it to shut; I have no wish to come back!' issued from the set
+white lips of the girl beneath us. 'There is no such charm for me in
+this humdrum house, that I should wish to exchange life with the man I
+adore, for its droning, spiritless existence!' And she lifted her foot
+to proceed.</p>
+
+<p>"'Jacqueline!' I shrieked, leaning forward in my turn, and holding her
+by my anguish, as I never believed she could be held by anything,
+'Think, child, think what you do! It is not life you are going to but
+death. A man who can take a young girl from her father's house, from her
+lover's arms, from her mother's grave, from the shrine of all that is
+pure and holy, to dash her into a pit of all that is corrupt, loathsome
+and deadly, is not one with whom you can <i>live</i>. You say you adore him:
+can one adore falsehood, selfishness and depravity? Does hypocrisy win
+love? Can the embraces of a serpent bring peace? Jacqueline, Jacqueline,
+you are yet pure; come back to our love and our hearts, before we die
+here in our shame at the head of the stairs, where your mother was
+carried out to her grave!'</p>
+
+<p>"She trembled. I saw the hand that clutched the banister loosen its
+grip; she cast one quick look behind her, and her eyes flashed upon her
+father's face; it was set like a flint.</p>
+
+<p>"'If you come back,' cried he, leaning towards her, but not advancing a
+step from where he stood, 'you must come back of your own free will. I
+will hold no creature prisoner in my house. I must trust you implicitly,
+or not at all. Speak then, which shall it be?' And he raised his hand
+above his head, with a supreme and awful gesture, 'a father's blessing
+or a father's curse?'</p>
+
+<p>"'A father's curse, then! since you command me to choose,' rang out from
+her lips in a burst of uncontrollable passion. 'I want no blessing that
+separates me from <i>him</i>!' And she pointed towards the door with a look
+that, defiant as it was, spoke of a terrible love before which all our
+warnings and entreaties were but as empty air.</p>
+
+<p>"'Curses then upon your head, slayer of a family's honor, a father's
+love, and a mother's memory! Curses upon you, at home and abroad! in the
+joy of your first passion and in the agony of your last despair! May you
+live to look upon that door as the gateway to heaven, and find it shut!
+May your children, if you are cursed with them, turn in your face, as
+you are turning now in mine! May the lightning of heaven be your candle,
+and the blackness of death your daily food and your nightly drink!' And
+with a look in which all the terrors he invoked, seemed to crash
+downward from his reeling brain upon her shrinking terror-crouched head,
+he gave one mighty gasp and fell back stricken to the floor.</p>
+
+<p>"'God!' burst from her lips, and she rushed downwards to the door like a
+creature hunted to its quarry. I saw her white face gleam marble-like in
+the fading light that came in from the chinks about the door. I saw her
+trembling hand fumbling with the knob, and rousing from my stupor,
+called down to her with all the force of a breaking heart,</p>
+
+<p>"'Jacqueline, beware!'</p>
+
+<p>"She turned once more. There was something in my voice she could not
+withstand. 'I do not hope to keep you,' cried I, 'but before you go,
+hear this. In the days to come, when the face that now beams upon you
+with such longing, shall have learned to turn from you in weariness, if
+not distaste, when hunger, cold, contumely and disease shall have
+blasted that fair brow and seared those soft cheeks, know, that although
+a father can curse, a woman who loves like a mother can forgive. The
+father cries, 'Once go out of that door and it shuts upon you never to
+open!' 'Once come to <i>that</i> door, say I,' pointing in the direction of
+the house's other entrance, 'and if I live and if I move, it shall open
+to you, were you as defiled and wretched and forsaken as Magdalen.
+Remember! Each day at this hour will I watch for you, kneeling upon its
+threshold. In sickness or in health, in joy or in sorrow, in cold or in
+heat. The hour of six is sacred. Some one of them shall see you falling
+weeping on my breast!'</p>
+
+<p>"She gave me a quick stare out of her wide black eyes, then a mocking
+smile curled her lips, and murmuring a short, 'You rave!' opened the
+door, and rushed out into the falling dusk. With a resounding clang like
+the noise of a stone rolled upon an open grave, the great door swung to,
+and I was left alone in that desolated house with my stricken master.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXVII" id="XXVII"></a>XXVII.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE LONE WATCHER.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Hark! to the hurried question of Despair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where is my child?&mdash;and Echo answers&mdash;Where?"&mdash;<span class="smcap">Byron.</span><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>"Colonel Japha recovered from his shock, but was never the same man
+again. All that was genial, affectionate and confiding in his nature,
+had been turned as by a lightning's stroke, to all that was hard, bitter
+and suspicious. He would not allow the name of Jacqueline to be spoken
+in his presence; he would listen to no allusion made to those days when
+she was the care and perplexity, but also the light and pleasure of the
+house. Men are not like women, my child; when they turn, it is at an
+angle, the whole direction of their nature changes.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps the news that presently came to us from Boston may have had
+something to do with this. It was surely dreadful enough; Jacqueline's
+perfidy had slain her lover. Mr. Robert Holt, the cultured, noble,
+high-souled gentleman, had been found lying dead on the floor of his
+room, a few days after the events I have just related, with a lady's
+diamond ring in his hand and the remnants of a hastily burned letter in
+the grate before him. He had burst a blood-vessel, and had expired
+instantly.</p>
+
+<p>"This sudden and tragic ending of a man of energy and will, was also the
+reason, perhaps, why Grotewell never arrived at the truth of
+Jacqueline's history. Boston was a long way from here in those days, and
+the story of her lover's death was not generally known, while the fact
+of her elopement was. Consequently she was supposed to have fled with
+the man who had been seen to visit her most frequently; a report which
+neither the Colonel nor myself had the courage to deny.</p>
+
+<p>"My child, you have a brow like snow, and a cheek like roses; you know
+little of life's sorrows and little of life's sins. To you the skies are
+blue, the woods vernal, the air balmy; the sad looks upon men's and
+women's faces, tell but shallow tales of the ceaseless grinding of grief
+in their pent up souls. But you are gentle, and you have an imagination
+that goes beyond your experience; perhaps if you pause and think, you
+can understand what a tale could be told of the weeks and months and
+years that now followed, without hint or whisper of the fate of her who
+had gone out from amongst us with the brand of her father's curse upon
+her brow. At first we hoped, yes, <i>he</i> hoped,&mdash;I could see it in his
+eyes when there came a sudden ring at the bell,&mdash;that some sign of her
+penitence, or some proof of her existence, would come to relieve the
+torture of our fears, if not the shame of our memories. But the door
+that closed upon her on that fatal eve, had shut without an echo. While
+we vainly waited, time had ample leisure to carve the furrows of age as
+well as of suffering on the Colonel's once smooth brow, and to change my
+daily vigil into a custom of despair, rather than of hope. Time had also
+leisure to rob us of much of our worldly goods and to make our continued
+living in this grand old house, an act that involved constant care and
+the closest economy. That we were enabled to preserve appearances to the
+day that beheld the Colonel laid low by the final stroke of his dread
+disease, was only due to the secret charity of a certain gentleman, who,
+declaring he was indebted to us, secretly supplied me with means of
+support.</p>
+
+<p>"But of all this you care little.</p>
+
+<p>"You had rather hear about the evening watch with its hopeful assurance,
+'Yet another day and she will be here,' to be followed so soon by the
+despairing acknowledgement, 'Yet another day and she has not come!' or
+of those dark hours when the Colonel lay blank and white upon his
+pillow, with his eyes fixed on the door which would never open to the
+beating of a daughter's heart, while the gray shadow of an awful
+resolution deepened upon his immovable face. What that resolution was I
+could not know, but I feared it, when I saw what a sternness it gave to
+his eye, what a fixedness to his set and implacable lip; and when in the
+waning light of a certain December afternoon, the circle of neighbors
+about his bed gave way to the stiff and forbidding form of Mr. Phelps, I
+felt a thrill of mortal apprehension and only waited to hear the short,
+'It shall be done,' of the lawyer to some slowly whispered command of
+the colonel, to rise from my far off corner and stand ready to accost
+Mr. Phelps as he came from the bedside of the dying man.</p>
+
+<p>"'What is it?' I asked, rushing up to him as he issued forth into the
+hall, and seizing him by the arm, with a woman's unreasoning
+impetuosity. 'I have nursed his daughter on my knee; tell me, then, what
+it is he has ordered you to do in this final moment?'</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Phelps for all his ungainly bearing, is not a hard-hearted man, as
+you know, and he doubtless saw the depth of the misery that made me
+forget myself. Giving me a look that was not without its touch of
+sarcasm, he replied, 'The colonel has made me promise, to see that a
+plank is nailed across the front door of this house, after his body has
+been carried out to burial.'</p>
+
+<p>"A board across the front door! His anger then was implacable. The
+withering curse that had rung in my ears for ten years, was to outlive
+his death! With a horrified groan, I pressed my hands over my eyes and
+rushed back. My first glimpse of the Colonel's face showed me that the
+end was at hand, but that fact only made more imperative my consuming
+desire to see that curse removed, even though it were done with his
+final breath. Drawing near his bedside, I leaned down, and waiting till
+his eye wandered to my face, asked him if there was nothing he wished
+amended before his strength failed. He understood me. We had not sat for
+so long, face to face across the chasm of a hideous memory, without
+knowing something of the workings of each other's mind. Glancing up at
+his wife's portrait which ever faced him as he lay upon his pillow, his
+mouth grew severe and he essayed to shake his head. I at once pointed to
+the portrait.</p>
+
+<p>"'What will you say to her when she meets you on the borders of heaven?'
+I demanded with the courage of despair.' She will ask, 'Where is my
+child?' And what will you reply?'</p>
+
+<p>"The fingers that lay upon the coverlid moved spasmodically; he eyed me
+with a steady deepening stare, awful to meet, fearful to remember. I
+went on steadily; 'She has gone out of this house with your curse; tell
+me that if she comes back, she may be greeted with your forgiveness.'
+Still that awful stare which changed not. 'I have watched and waited for
+her every day since her departure,' I whispered, 'and shall watch and
+wait for her, every day until I die. Shall a stranger's love be greater
+than a father's?' This time his lips twitched and the grey shadow
+shifted, but it did not rise. 'I had sworn to do it,' I went on. 'When
+you lay there at the top of the stairs, smitten down by your first
+shock, I told her, come sickness, come health, I should keep a daily
+vigil at that door of the house which your severity had not closed upon
+her; and I have kept my word till now and shall keep it to the end. What
+will you do for this miserable child of whose being you are the author?'</p>
+
+<p>"With indescribable anxiety I paused and watched him, for his lips were
+moving. 'Do for her?' he repeated.</p>
+
+<p>"How awful is the voice of the dying! I shivered as I listened, but drew
+near and nearer, that I might lose no word that came from his stony
+lips.</p>
+
+<p>"'She will not come,' gasped he, with an effort that raised him up in
+bed, and deepened that horrible stare, 'but&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"Who shall say what he might have uttered if Death's hand had delayed a
+single instant, but the inexorable shadow fell, and he never finished
+the sentence.</p>
+
+<p>"My child, these are frightful things for you to hear. God knows I would
+not assail your pure ears with a tale like this, if it were not for the
+help and sympathy I hope to gain from you. Sin is a hideous thing; the
+gulf it opens is wide and deep; well may it be said to swallow those who
+trust themselves above its flower-hung brink. But we who are human, owe
+something to humanity. Love stops not because of the gulf; love follows
+the sinner with wilder and more heart-breaking longing, the deeper and
+deeper he sinks into the illimitable darkness. Ten years have passed
+since we laid the Colonel away in the burying-place of all the Japhas,
+and dutiful to his last request, nailed up the front door of his
+speedily to be forsaken mansion. In all that time my watch has remained
+unbroken in this house, which by will he had left to me, but which I
+secretly hold in trust for her. The hour of six has found me at my post,
+sometimes elate with hope, sometimes depressed with repeated
+disappointments, but whether hopeful or sad, always trustful that the
+great God who Himself so loved all sinners, that He gave the life of His
+Son to rescue them, would ultimately grant me the desire of my heart.
+But the decrepitude of age is coming upon me, and each morning I leave
+my bed, with growing fear lest my infirmities will increase until they
+finally overcome my resolution. Child, if this should happen, if lying
+in my bed I should some day hear that she had come back, and failing to
+find the lamp burning and the welcome ready, had gone away again&mdash;But
+the thought is madness. I cannot bear it. A sinner, lost, degraded,
+suffering, starving, perhaps, is wandering this way. She is hardened and
+old in guilt; she has drunk the cup of life's passions and found them
+corrupting poison; all that was lovely and pure and good has withdrawn
+from her; she stands alone, shut off by her sin, like a wild thing in a
+circle of flame. What shall touch this soul? The preacher's voice has no
+charm for her; good men's advice is but empty air. God's love must be
+mirrored in human love, to strike an eye so unused to looking up. Where
+shall she find such love? It is all that can rescue her; love as great
+as her sin, as boundless as her degradation, as persistent as her
+suffering. Child&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I know what you are going to say," suddenly exclaimed Paula, rising up
+and confronting Mrs. Hamlin with a steady high look of determination.
+"In the day of your weakness or illness you want some one to unlock the
+door and light the lamp. You have found her!"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXVIII" id="XXVIII"></a>XXVIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>SUNSHINE ON THE HILLS.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"If I speak to thee in Friendship's name,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Thou think'st I speak too coldly;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If I mention Love's devoted flame,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Thou say'st I speak too boldly."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Moore.</span><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>The story told by Mrs. Hamlin had a great effect upon Paula, not only on
+account of its own interest and the promise it had elicited from her,
+but because of the remembrances it revived of Mr. Sylvester and her life
+in New York. Any vision of evil or suffering, any experience that roused
+the affections or awakened the sensibilities, could not fail to recall
+to her mind the forcible figure of Mr. Sylvester as he stood that day by
+his own hearthstone, talking of the temptations that assail humanity;
+and any reminiscence of him must necessarily bring with it much that
+charmed and aroused. For a week, then, she felt the effect of a great
+unsettlement. Her village home appeared a prison; she longed to run,
+soar&mdash;anything to escape; the horizon was full of beckoning hands. A
+brooding melancholy settled upon her reveries; the prospect of a life
+spent in the narrow circle to which she had endeavored to re-accustom
+herself, became unendurable.</p>
+
+<p>Thus it is with us. We slide in a groove and seem happy, when suddenly a
+book we read, a story we hear, an experience we encounter, shakes us out
+of our content, and makes continuance in the old course a violation of
+the most demanding instincts of our nature.</p>
+
+<p>In the full tide of this unrest, Paula went out for a solitary walk on
+the hills. Nature can soothe if she cannot satisfy. Then the day itself
+was one to make the soul glad and the heart rejoice. As the young girl
+trod the meadows, she wondered that she could be sad. Earth and air were
+so full of splendor. Nature seemed to be in league with the angels of
+light. September stood upon the earth like a goddess of might and glory.
+Every tint of green that variegated the mountain-side, wooed the eye
+with suggestions of unfathomable beauty. A bough of scarlet flame lit
+here and there amid the verdure, served to illuminate the woods as for
+the passage of a king; and not Solomon in all his glory ever wore an
+aspect more sumptuous than the flowers that flecked the meadow and
+fringed the hardy roadside with imperial purple. A wind was blowing, a
+keen but kindly breeze, laden with sweetness and alert to awaken Æolian
+airs from the boughs of whistling beech and alder. Even the low field
+grasses seemed to partake in the general cheer, and nodded to each other
+with a witching and irresistible abandon. Had a poet been at her side,
+or any one capable of divining the hidden things of nature, what a
+commentary to all their united thoughts she would have found in the
+delicious tremble of the laughing leaves, in the restless music of the
+runaway brooks, in the lowly crickets with their single song, in the
+cloud-haunting birds with their trailing melodies, and in all the roll
+and rumble of earth's commingled noises. Alluring as was the book of
+nature, she could not read it alone. She felt the lack of a loving hand
+to turn the page. "Is it that I am lonely!" she murmured.</p>
+
+<p>The thought deepened her trouble. Coming down from the hillside, she
+entered a skirting of woods that ran along by the river. Here she had
+always found peace and some of her richest treasures of thought. Through
+this opaline archway she had walked with her fancies, like Saint
+Catherine with her lily. It was sacred to all that was sweet and deep
+and pure within her. "Lonely!" she whispered; "I will not be lonely. To
+some God gives years of happy companionship; to others but a day. Shall
+one complain because it has fallen to his portion to have the lesser
+share? I will remember my one day and be glad."</p>
+
+<p>"My one day!" She caught herself at the utterance and literally started
+at the suggestion it offered. There was but one person whom she had seen
+but for a day. Could she have been thinking of him?</p>
+
+<p>With a flush deep as the autumn leaves she carried, she was hurrying on,
+when suddenly in the opening before her, a shadow fell, and a mellow
+voice exclaimed in her ear,</p>
+
+<p>"Do I meet Miss Fairchild in her native woods?"</p>
+
+<p>It was Clarence Ensign.</p>
+
+<p>The surprise was very great and it took her a moment to steady herself.
+She had felt so assured that she should never see him or any other of
+her New York friends again. Had not Cicely written that he had gone
+West, soon after her own departure from New York. With a deepening of
+his voice Mr. Ensign repeated the question.</p>
+
+<p>At once the day seemed to acquire all it had hitherto lacked. Looking
+up, she met his eye fixed admiringly upon her, and all that was merry,
+lightsome and gay within her, leaped at once to the surface. Ignoring
+his question with smiling abandon, she exclaimed,</p>
+
+<p>"What shall be done to the man who delights in surprises and startles
+timid maidens without a cause?"</p>
+
+<p>"He shall be held in captivity by the hand of his denouncer, until he
+has sued for pardon and obtained her generous forgiveness," returned he,
+holding out his palm.</p>
+
+<p>She barely touched it with her own. "I see that your repentance is
+sincere, so your pardon shall be speedy," laughed she.</p>
+
+<p>"Your discrimination is at fault, I never felt more impenitent in my
+life. I am a hardened wretch, Miss Fairchild, a hardened wretch! But you
+do not ask me from what corner of the earth I have come. You take me too
+much for granted; like the chirrup of a squirrel, let me say, or the
+whistle of a bullfinch. But perhaps you think I inhabit these woods?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; but a day like this is so full of miracles, why should we be
+astonished at one more! I suppose you came on the train, but should not
+be surprised to hear you started, like Pluto, from the earth. Anything
+seems possible in such a sunshine."</p>
+
+<p>"You are right, and I have sprung from the earth. I have been buried
+five mortal months in a law-suit out west, or else I should have been
+here before. I hope my delay has made me none the less welcome."</p>
+
+<p>He was holding back a branch as he spoke, and his eyes were on a level
+with hers. She felt caught as in a net, and struggled vainly to keep
+down her color. "No," said she, "welcome is a guest's due, whether he
+come early or late. I should be sorry to be lacking in the duties of a
+hostess, though my drawing-room is somewhat more spacious than cosy,"
+she continued, looking around on the fields into which they had emerged,
+"and my facilities for bespeaking you welcome greater than my power to
+make you comfortable."</p>
+
+<p>"Comfort is a satisfaction of the mind, rather than of the body. I am
+not <i>un</i>comfortable, Miss Fairchild." Then as he stooped to relieve her
+of half her burden of trailing leaves and flowers, he exclaimed in a
+matter-of-fact tone, "Your aunt is a notable woman, Miss Fairchild, I
+admire her greatly."</p>
+
+<p>"What!" said she, "you have been to the cottage? You have seen Aunt
+Belinda?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," laughed he, "or how should I be here? You have been sent
+for, Miss Fairchild, and I am the humble bearer of your aunt's commands.
+But I forget, the practical has nothing to do with such a day. I am
+supposed to have sprung from the ground, and to know by instinct, just
+in what nook you were hiding from the sunlight. Very well. I acknowledge
+that instinct is sometimes capable of going a great way."</p>
+
+<p>But this time her ready answer was lacking. She was wondering what her
+aunt would think of this sudden appearance of a stranger whose name she
+had never so much as mentioned.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a pleasant rest to stand and look at a view like that, after a
+summer of musty labor," said he, gazing up the river with a truly
+appreciative eye. "I do not wonder you carry the charm of the wild woods
+in your laugh and glance, if you have been brought up in the sight of
+such a view as that."</p>
+
+<p>"It has been my meat and drink from childhood," said she, and wondered
+why she wanted to say no more upon her favorite theme.</p>
+
+<p>"Yet you tell me you love the city?"</p>
+
+<p>"Too much to ever again be happy here."</p>
+
+<p>It was a slip for which her cheek burned and her lids fell, the moment
+after. She had been thinking of Mr. Sylvester, and unconsciously spake
+as she might have done, if he had been at her side, instead of this
+genial-hearted young man. With a woman's instinctive desire to retrieve
+herself, she hurriedly continued, "Life is so full and large and deep in
+a great town, if you are only happy enough to meet those who are its
+blood and brain and sinew. One misses the rush of the great wheel of
+time in a spot like this. The world moves, but we do not feel it; it is
+like the quiet sweep of the stars over our heads. But in the city, days,
+weeks and months make themselves felt. The universe jars under the feet
+of hurrying masses. The story of the world is being written on pavement,
+corridor, and dome, so that he who runs may read. One realizes he is
+alive; the unit is part of the multiple. To those who are tired, God
+gives the rest of the everlasting hills, but to those who are eager, he
+holds out the city with its innumerable opportunities and incentives.
+And I am eager," she said. "The flower blooms on the mountain, and its
+perfume is sweet, but the chariot sings as it rushes, and the noise of
+its wheels is music in my ears."</p>
+
+<p>She paused, turned her face to the breeze, and seemed to forget she was
+not alone. Clarence Ensign eyed her with astonishment; he had never
+heard her speak like this; the earnest side of her great nature had
+never been turned towards him before, and he felt himself shrink into
+insignificance in its presence. What was he that he should pluck a star
+from the heavens, to buckle on his breast! Wealth and position were a
+match for beauty great as hers, and a kind heart current coin all the
+world over, for a gentle disposition and a loving nature; but for
+this&mdash;He turned away and in his abstraction switched his foot with his
+cane.</p>
+
+<p>"Then it was in New York that I met Cicely," exclaimed Paula.</p>
+
+<p>He shook off his broodings, turned with a manful gesture, and met her
+sweet unfathomable eye, so brilliant with enthusiasm a moment ago, but
+at this instant so softly deep and tender.</p>
+
+<p>"And the friendship of Miss Stuyvesant is a precious thing to you?" said
+he.</p>
+
+<p>"Few things are more so," was her reply.</p>
+
+<p>He bit his lip and his brow grew lighter. After all, great souls
+frequently cling to those of lesser calibre, provided they are true and
+unflawed. He would not be discouraged. But his tone when he spoke had
+acquired a reverence that did not lessen its music. "You are, then, one
+of the few women who believe in friendship?"</p>
+
+<p>"As I believe in heaven."</p>
+
+<p>Looking at her, he took off his hat. Her eye stole to his serious
+countenance. "Miss Stuyvesant is to be envied," said he.</p>
+
+<p>"Are friends so rare?"</p>
+
+<p>"Such friends are," said he.</p>
+
+<p>She gave him a bright little look. "Had you been with Miss Stuyvesant,
+and she had expressed herself as I have done, you would have said, 'Miss
+Fairchild is to be envied,' and you would have been nearer the truth
+than now. Cicely's friendship is to mine what an unbroken mirror is to a
+little racing brook. It reflects but one image, while mine&mdash;" She could
+not go on. How could she explain to this stranger that Cicely's heart
+was undivided in its regard, while hers owned allegiance to more than
+her bosom friend.</p>
+
+<p>"If I were with Miss Stuyvesant now," he declared, too absorbed in his
+own ideas to notice the break in hers, "I should still say in face of
+this friendship, 'Miss Stuyvesant is to be envied.' I have no mind for
+more than one thought to-day," exclaimed he, with a look that made her
+tremble.</p>
+
+<p>There are some men who never know in what field to stay the current of
+their impetuosity: Clarence Ensign did. He said no more than this of all
+that was seething in his mind and heart. He felt that he must prove
+himself a man, before he exercised a man's privilege. Besides, his
+temperament was mercurial, and never remained long under the bondage of
+a severe thought, or an impressive tone of mind. He worshipped the
+lofty, but it was with tabor and cymbal and high-sounding lute. A climb
+over the stile at the foot of the hill was enough to restore him to
+himself. It was therefore with merry eyes and laughing lips that they
+approached the house and entered Miss Belinda's presence.</p>
+
+<p>There are some persons whose prerogative it is to carry sunshine with
+them wherever they go. Clarence Ensign was one of these. Without an
+effort, without any display of incongruous hilarity, he always succeeded
+by the mere joyousness of his own nature, in calling forth all that was
+bright and enjoyable in others. When therefore they stepped into the
+quaint old-fashioned parlor, all prepared to receive them, Paula was not
+surprised to perceive it brighten, and her aunts' faces grow cheerful
+and smiling. Who could meet Clarence Ensign's laughing eye and not
+smile? What did astonish her, however, was the sight of an elegant
+basket of hot-house lowers perched on a table in the centre of the room.
+It made her pause, and cast looks of inquiry at the demure countenance
+of Miss Abby, and the quietly satisfied expression of her more
+thoughtful aunt.</p>
+
+<p>"A remembrance from the city!" said Mr. Ensign gracefully. "I thought it
+might help to recall some happy hours to you."</p>
+
+<p>With a swelling of the heart which she could not understand, she leaned
+over the ample cluster of roses and heliotrope. She felt as though she
+could embrace them; they were more than flowers, they were the visible
+emblem of all she had missed, and for which she had longed these many
+months.</p>
+
+<p>"I seem to receive the whole in the part," said she.</p>
+
+<p>He may or may not have understood her, but he saw she was gratified, and
+that was sufficient. The afternoon flew by on wings of light. Miss
+Belinda, who was not accustomed to holidays, but who thoroughly
+appreciated them when they came, entered into the conversation with
+zest; while Miss Abby's unconscious expressions of pleasure were too
+<i>naïve</i> not to add to, rather than detract from the general enjoyment.
+The twilight, with its good-bye, came all too soon.</p>
+
+<p>"I have a request to make before I go," said Mr. Ensign. He was standing
+alone with Paula in the embrasure of the window, a few moments before
+his departure. "When we see a flower nodding on a ledge above our heads,
+we long for it; I have heard you talk of friendship, and a great desire
+has seized me. Miss Fairchild will you be my friend?"</p>
+
+<p>She gave him a startled glance that, however, soon settled into a mellow
+radiant look of sympathy and pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>"That is asking for something which if I hesitate to accord, it is
+because the word, 'friend,' carries with it so much," said she, with a
+sweet seriousness that disarmed her words of any latent sting they might
+otherwise have contained.</p>
+
+<p>"I know it," he replied, "and I am very bold to ask it upon so slight an
+acquaintance; but life is short and real treasure is so scarce. You will
+not deny me, Miss Fairchild?" Then seeing her look down, hastily
+continued, "I have acquaintances by the score&mdash;friends who style
+themselves thus, by the dozen, but no <i>friend</i>. I want one; I want you
+for that one. Will you be it? I shall be jealous though, I warn you," he
+went on, with a cropping out of his mirthful nature; "I shall not be
+pleased to observe the circle widened indefinitely. I shall want my own
+place and no one else in my place."</p>
+
+<p>"No one else can fill the place once given to a friend. Each one has his
+own niche."</p>
+
+<p>"And I am to have mine?" His look was firm, his eye steadfast.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she breathed.</p>
+
+<p>With a proud stooping of his head, he took her hand and kissed it. The
+action became him; he was tall and well made, and gallantry induced by
+feeling, sat well upon him. In spite of herself, she thought of old-time
+stories of the Norse chivalry; he stood so radiant and bent so low.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall prize my friend at her queenly value," said he; and without
+more ado, uttered his farewell and took his departure.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>"Paula!"</p>
+
+<p>The young girl started from a reverie which had held her for a long time
+enchained at that fast darkening window, and hastily looking up,
+perceived her Aunt Belinda standing before her, with her eye fixed upon
+her face, with a kind but searching glance.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, aunt."</p>
+
+<p>"You have not told me who this Mr. Ensign is. In all the letters you
+wrote me you did not mention his name, I think."</p>
+
+<p>"No, aunt. The fact is, I did not meet him until a few days before I
+left, and then only for an evening, you might say."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed! that one evening seems to have made its impression. Tell me
+something about him, Paula."</p>
+
+<p>"His own countenance speaks for him better than I can, aunt. He is good
+and he is kind; an honest young man, who need fear the eye of no one. He
+is wealthy, I am informed, and the son of highly respected parents. He
+was first presented to me by Miss Stuyvesant, whose friend he is,
+afterwards by Mr. Sylvester. His coming here was a surprise to me."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Belinda's firm mouth, which had expanded at this dutiful response,
+twitched with a certain amused expression over this last announcement.
+Eying her niece with unrelenting inquiry, she pursued, "You have not
+been happy for the last few weeks, Paula. Our life seems narrow to you;
+you long to fly away to larger fields and more expansive skies."</p>
+
+<p>With a guilty droop of her head, Paula stole her hand into that of her
+aunt's.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not wonder," continued Miss Belinda, still watching the flushing
+cheek and slightly troubled mouth of the lovely girl before her. "I once
+breathed other air myself, and know well what charms lie beyond these
+mountains. In giving you up for awhile, I gave you up forever, I fear."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no," whispered the young girl, "I am always yours wherever I go.
+Not that I am going away," she hastily murmured.</p>
+
+<p>Her aunt smiled and gently stroked her niece's hand. "When the time
+comes, I shall bid you God speed, Paula. I am no ogress to tie my dove's
+wings to her nest. Love and the home it provides are the natural lot of
+women. None feel it more than those who have missed both."</p>
+
+<p>"Aunt!" Paula was shocked and perplexed. A breaking wave full of doubts
+and possibilities, seemed to dash over her at this suggestion.</p>
+
+<p>"Young men of judgment and principle do not come so many miles to see a
+youthful maiden, without a purpose," continued her aunt inexorably. "You
+know that, do you not, Paula?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; but the purpose may differ in different cases," returned the young
+girl hurriedly. "I would not like to believe that Mr. Ensign came here
+with the one you give him credit for&mdash;not yet. You trouble me, aunt,"
+pursued she, glancing tremulously about. "It is like opening a great
+door flooded with sunshine, upon eyes scarcely strong enough to bear the
+glimmer sifting through its cracks. I feel humiliated and&mdash;" She did not
+finish, perhaps her thought itself was incomplete.</p>
+
+<p>"If a light comes sifting through the cracks, I am satisfied," said her
+aunt in a lighter tone than common. And she kissed her niece, and went
+smiling out of the room, murmuring to herself,</p>
+
+<p>"I have been over-fearful; everything is coming right."</p>
+
+<p>There are moments when life's great mystery overpowers us; when the
+riddle of the soul flaunts itself before us unexplained, and we can do
+no more than stand and take the rush of the tide that comes sweeping
+down upon us. Paula was not the girl she was before she went to New
+York. Love was no longer a dreamy possibility, a hazy blending of the
+unknown and the fancied; its tale had been too often breathed in her
+ear, its reality made too often apparent to her eye. But love to which
+she could listen, was as new and fresh and strange, as a world into
+which her foot had never ventured. That her aunt should point to a
+certain masculine form, no matter how attractive or interesting, and
+say, "Love and home are the lot of women," made her blood rush back on
+her heart, like a stream from which a dam has been ruthlessly wrenched
+away. It was too wild, too sudden; a friend's name was so much easier to
+speak, or to contemplate. She did not know what to do with her own
+heart, made to speak thus before its time; its beatings choked her;
+everything choked her; this was a worse imprisonment than the other.
+Looking round, her eye fell upon the flowers. Ah, was not their language
+expressive enough, without this new suggestion? They seemed to lose
+something in this very gain. She liked them less she thought, and yet
+her feet drew near, and near, and nearer, to where they stood, exhaling
+their very souls out in delicious perfume. "I am too young!" came from
+Paula's lips. "I will not think of it!" quickly followed. Yet the smile
+with which she bent over the fragrant blossoms, had an ethereal beauty
+in it, which was not all unmixed with the</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Light that never was on land or sea,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The consecration and the poet's dream."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"He has asked to be my friend," murmured she, as she slowly turned away.
+"It is enough; it must be enough." But the blossom she had stolen from
+the midst of the fragrant collection, seemed to whisper a merry nay, as
+it nodded against her hand, and afterwards gushed out its sweet life on
+her pure young breast.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXIX" id="XXIX"></a>XXIX.</h2>
+
+<h3>MIST IN THE VALLEY.</h3>
+
+<blockquote><p>"The true beginning of our end."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Midsummer Night's Dream.</span></p></blockquote>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p>Mr. Ensign was not slow in developing his ideas of friendship. Though he
+did not venture upon repeating his visit too soon, scarcely a week
+passed without bringing to Paula a letter or some other testimonial of
+his increasing devotion. The blindest eye could not fail to remark
+whither he was tending. Even Paula was forced to acknowledge to herself
+that she was on the verge of a flowery incline, that sooner or later
+would bring her up breathless against the dread alternative of a decided
+yes or no. Friendship is a wide portal, and sometimes admits love; had
+it served her traitorously in this?</p>
+
+<p>Her aunt who watched her with secret but lynx-eyed scrutiny, saw no
+reason to alter the first judgment of that mysterious, "It is all coming
+right," with which she viewed the first symptoms of Paula's girlish
+appreciation of her lover. If eyes and lips could speak, Paula was
+happy. The mournful shadows which of late had flitted with more or less
+persistency over her face, had vanished in a living smile, which if not
+deep, was cloudlessly radiant; and her voice when not used in speech,
+was rippling away in song, as glad as a finch's on the mountain side.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Belinda was therefore very much astonished when one day Paula burst
+into her presence, and flinging herself down on her knees, threw her
+arms about her waist, crying,</p>
+
+<p>"Take me away, dear aunt, I cannot, dare not stay here another day."</p>
+
+<p>"Paula, what do you mean?" exclaimed Miss Belinda, holding her back and
+endeavoring to look into her face. But the young girl gently resisted.</p>
+
+<p>"I have just had a letter from Cicely," she returned in a low and
+muffled voice. "She has seen Mr. Sylvester, and says he looks both wan
+and ill. He told her, too, that he was lonely, and I know what that
+means; he wants his child. The time has come for me to go back. He said
+it would, and that I would know when it came. Take me, aunt, take me to
+Mr. Sylvester."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Belinda, to whom self-control was one of the cardinal virtues,
+leaned back in her chair and contemplated the eager, tear-stained face
+that was now raised to hers, with silent scrutiny. "Paula," said she at
+last, "is that your only reason for desiring to return to New York?"</p>
+
+<p>A flush, delicate as it was fleeting, swept over the dew of Paula's
+cheek. She rose to her feet and met her aunt's eye, with a look of
+gentle dignity. "No," said she, "I wish to test myself. Birds that are
+prisoned will caress any hand that offers them freedom. I wish to see if
+the lure holds good when my wings are in mid-heaven."</p>
+
+<p>There was a dreamy cadence to her voice as she uttered that last phrase,
+that startled her aunt. "Paula," exclaimed she, "Paula, don't you know
+your own heart?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who does?" returned Paula; then in a sudden rush of emotion threw
+herself once more at her aunt's side, saying, "It is in order to know
+it, that I ask you to take me away."</p>
+
+<p>And Miss Belinda, as she smoothed back her darling's locks, was obliged
+to acknowledge to herself, that time has a way of opening, in the stream
+of life, unforeseen channels to whose current we perforce must yield, or
+else hopelessly strand upon the shoals.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="BOOK_IV" id="BOOK_IV"></a>BOOK IV.</h2>
+
+<h3>FROM A. TO Z.</h3>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXX" id="XXX"></a>XXX.</h2>
+
+<h3>MISS BELINDA PRESENTS MR. SYLVESTER WITH A CHRISTMAS GIFT.</h3>
+
+<blockquote><p>"For, O; for, O the hobby horse is forgot."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Hamlet.</span></p>
+</blockquote>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>It was a clear winter evening. Mr. Sylvester sat in his library, musing
+before a bright coal fire, whose superabundant heat and blaze seemed to
+make the loneliness of the great empty room more apparent. He had just
+said to himself that it was Christmas eve, and that he, of all men in
+the world, had the least reason to realize it, when the door-bell rang.
+He was expecting Bertram, whose advancement to the position of cashier
+in place of Mr. Wheelock, now thoroughly broken down in health, had that
+day been fully determined upon in a late meeting of the Board of
+Directors. He therefore did not disturb himself. It was consequently a
+startling surprise, when a deep, pleasant voice uttered from the
+threshold of the door, "I have brought you a Christmas present;" and
+looking up, he saw Miss Belinda standing before him, with Paula at her
+side.</p>
+
+<p>"My child!" was his involuntary exclamation, and before the young girl
+knew it, she was folded against his breast with a passionate fervor that
+more than words, convinced her of the depth of the sacrifice which had
+held them separate for so long. "My darling! my little Paula!"</p>
+
+<p>She felt her heart stand still. Gently disengaging herself, she looked
+in his face. She found it thin and wan, but lit by such a pleasure she
+could not keep back her smile. "You are glad, then, of your little
+Christmas present?" said she.</p>
+
+<p>He smiled and shook his head; he had no words with which to express a
+joy like this.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Belinda meanwhile stood with a set expression on her face, that, to
+one who did not know her, would immediately have proclaimed her to be an
+ogress of the very worst type. Not a glance did she give to the unusual
+splendor about her, not a wavering of her eye betokened that she was in
+any way conscious that she had just stepped from the threshold of a very
+humble cottage, into a home little short of a palace in size and the
+splendor of its appointments. All her attention was concentrated on the
+two faces before her.</p>
+
+<p>"The ride on the cars has made Paula feverish," cried she, in sharp
+clear tones that rang with unexpected brusqueness through the curtained
+alcoves of that lordly apartment.</p>
+
+<p>They both started at this sudden introduction of the prosaic into the
+hush of their happy meeting, but remembering themselves, drew Miss
+Belinda forward to the fire and made her welcome in this house of many
+memories.</p>
+
+<p>It was a strange moment to Paula when she first turned to go up those
+stairs, down which she had come in such grief eight months or more ago.
+She found herself lingering on its well-remembered steps, and the first
+sight of the rich bronze image at the top, struck her with a sense of
+the old-time pleasure, that was not unlinked with the old-time dread.
+But the aspect of her little room calmed her. It was just as she had
+left it; not an article had been changed. "It is as if I had gone out
+one door and come in another," she whispered. All the months that had
+intervened seemed to float away. She felt this even more when upon again
+descending, she found Bertram in the library. His frank and interesting
+face had always been pleasant to her, but in the joy of her return it
+shone upon her with almost the attraction of a brother's. "I am at home
+again," she kept whispering to herself, "I am at home."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Belinda was engrossed in conversation with Bertram, so that Paula
+was left free to take her old place by Mr. Sylvester's side, where she
+sat with such an aspect of contentment, that her beauty was half
+forgotten in her happiness.</p>
+
+<p>"You remembered me, then, sometimes in the little cottage in Grotewell?"
+asked he, after a silent contemplation of her countenance. "I was not
+forgotten when you left the city streets?"</p>
+
+<p>She answered with a bright little shake of her head, but she was
+inwardly wondering as she looked at his strong and picturesque face,
+with its nobly carved features and melancholy smile, if he had been
+absent from her thoughts for so much as a moment, in all these dreary
+months of separation.</p>
+
+<p>"I did not believe you would forget," he gently pursued, "but I scarcely
+dared hope you would lighten my fireside with your face again. It is
+such a dismal one, and youth is so linked to brightness."</p>
+
+<p>The flush that crossed her cheek, startled him into sudden silence. She
+recovered herself and slowly shook her head. "It is not a dismal one to
+me. I always feel brighter and better when I sit beside it. I have
+missed your counsel," she said; "brightness is nothing without depth."</p>
+
+<p>His eyes which had been fixed on her face, turned slowly away. He seemed
+to hold an instant's communion with himself; suddenly he said, "And
+depth is worse than nothing, without it mirrors the skies. It is not
+from shadowed pools, such bright young lips should drink, but from the
+waves of an inexhaustible sea, smote upon by all the winds and sunshine
+of heaven."</p>
+
+<p>In another moment, however, he was all cheerfulness. "You have brought
+me a Christmas present," cried he, "and we must make it a Christmas
+holiday indeed. Here is the beginning:" and with one of his old grave
+smiles, he handed Bertram a little note which had been awaiting him on
+the library table. "But Paula and Miss Belinda must have their pleasure
+too. Paula, are you too tired for a ride down town? I will show you New
+York on a Christmas eve," continued he to Miss Walton, seeing that
+Paula's attention was absorbed by the expression of sudden and moving
+surprise which had visited Bertram's face, upon the perusal of his note.
+"It is a stirring sight. Nothing more cheering can be found the wide
+world over, for those who have a home and children to make happy."</p>
+
+<p>"I certainly should enjoy a glimpse of holiday cheer," assented Miss
+Belinda. And Paula recalled to herself by the sound of her aunt's voice,
+gayly re-echoed her assertion.</p>
+
+<p>So Samuel was despatched for a carriage, and in a few minutes they were
+all riding down Fifth Avenue, <i>en route</i> for Tiffany's, Macy's, and any
+other store that might offer special attractions. It was a happy
+company. As they rolled along, Paula felt her heart grow lighter and
+lighter, Mr. Sylvester was almost gay, while even Aunt Belinda
+condescended to be merry. Bertram alone was silent, but as Paula caught
+short glimpses of his face, while speeding past some illuminated corner,
+she felt that it was that silence which is "the perfectest herald of
+joy."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall make you get out and mix with the crowd," said Mr. Sylvester.
+"I want you to feel the throb of the great heart of the city on such a
+night as this. It is as if all men were brothers&mdash;or fathers, I should
+say. People that ordinarily pass each other without a sign, nod and
+smile with pleasing recognition of the evening's cheer. Grave and
+reverend seigniors, are not ashamed to be seen carrying packages by the
+dozen. Indeed, he who is most laden is considered the best fellow, and
+he who is so unfortunate as to show nothing but empty arms, feels shy if
+not ashamed; a condition of mind into which I shall soon fall myself, if
+we do not presently reach our destination."</p>
+
+<p>Paula never forgot that night. As from the midst of our common-place
+memories, some one hour stands out distinct and strange, like a sweet
+foreigner in a crowd of village faces, so to Paula, this ride through
+the lighted streets, with the ensuing rush from store to store, piloted
+by Bertram and Miss Belinda, and protected by Mr. Sylvester, was her one
+weird glimpse into the Arabian Nights' country. Why, she could not have
+told; why, she did not stop to think. She had been to all these places
+before, but never with such a heart as this&mdash;never, never with such an
+overflowing heart as this.</p>
+
+<p>"I have washed away my reproach," cried Mr. Sylvester, coming out to the
+carriage with his arms full of bundles. "Aunt Belinda is to blame for
+this; she set the example, you see." And with a merry laugh, he tossed
+one thing after another into Paula's lap, reserving only one small
+package for himself. "I scarcely know what I have bought," said he. "I
+shall be as much surprised as any one, when you come to undo the
+bundles. 'A pretty thing,' was all I waited to hear from the shop
+girls."</p>
+
+<p>"There is a small printing press for one thing," cried Paula merrily. "I
+saw the man at Holton's eye you with a certain sort of shrewd humor, and
+hastily do it up. You paid for it; probably thinking it one of the
+'pretty things.' We shall have to make it over to Bertram, as being the
+only one amongst us who by any stretch of imagination can be said to be
+near enough the age of boyhood to enjoy it."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know about that," cried Bertram, with a ringing infectious
+laugh, "my imagination has been luring me into believing that I am not
+the only boy in this crowd."</p>
+
+<p>And so they went on, toying with their new-found joy as with a
+plaything, and hard would it have been to tell in which of those voices
+rang the deeper contentment.</p>
+
+<p>The opening of the packages on the library-table afforded another season
+of merriment. Such treasures as came to light! A roll of black silk,
+which could only have been meant for Miss Belinda. A casket of fretted
+silver, just large enough to hold Paula's gloves; a scarf-ring, to which
+no one but Bertram could lay claim; a bundle of confections, a pair of
+diamond-studded bracelets, a scarf of delicate lace, articles for the
+desk, and knick-knacks for the toilet table, and last, but not least, in
+weight at least, the honest little printing-press.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I never dreamed of this," said Paula, "when we chose Christmas eve
+for our journey."</p>
+
+<p>"Nor would you have done right to stay away if you had," returned Mr.
+Sylvester gayly.</p>
+
+<p>But when the sport was all over, and Paula stood alone with Mr.
+Sylvester in the library, awaiting his last good-night, the deeper
+influences of this holy time made themselves felt, and it was with an
+air of gentle seriousness, he told her that it had been a happy
+Christmas eve to him.</p>
+
+<p>"And to me," returned Paula. "Bertram too, seemed very happy. Would it
+be too inquisitive in me to ask what good news the little note
+contained, to work such wonders?"</p>
+
+<p>A smile such as was seldom seen on Mr. Sylvester's face of late, flashed
+brightly over it. "It was only a card of invitation to dinner," said he,
+"but it came from Mr. Stuyvesant, and that to Bertram means a great
+deal."</p>
+
+<p>The surprise in Paula's eyes made him smile again. "Will it be a great
+shock to you, if I tell you that the name of the woman for whom Bertram
+made the sacrifice of his art, was Cicely Stuyvesant?"</p>
+
+<p>"Cicely? my Cicely?" Her astonishment was great, but it was also happy.
+"Oh, I never dreamed&mdash;ah, now I see," she went on naively. "That is the
+reason she refrained from coming to this house; she was afraid of
+meeting <i>him</i>. But to think I should never have guessed it, and she my
+dearest friend! Oh, I am very happy; I admire Bertram so much, and it is
+such a beautiful secret. And Mr. Stuyvesant has invited him to his
+house! I do not wonder you felt like making the evening a gala one. Mr.
+Stuyvesant would not do that if he were not learning to appreciate
+Bertram."</p>
+
+<p>"No; there is method in all that Mr. Stuyvesant does. More than that, if
+I am not mistaken, he has known this beautiful secret, as you call it,
+from the first, and would be the last to receive Bertram as a guest to
+his table, if he did not mean him the best and truest encouragement."</p>
+
+<p>"I believe you are right," said Paula. "I remember now that one day when
+I was spending the afternoon with Cicely, he came into the room where I
+was, and finding me for the moment alone, sat down, and in his quaint
+old-fashioned manner asked me in the most abrupt way what I thought of
+Bertram Sylvester. I was surprised, but told him I considered him one of
+the noblest young men I knew, adding that if a fine mind, a kind heart,
+and a pure life were open to regard, Bertram had the right to claim the
+esteem of all his friends and associates. The old gentleman looked at me
+somewhat curiously, but nodded his head as if pleased, and merely
+remarking, 'It is not necessary to mention we had this conversation, my
+dear,' got up and proceeded slowly from the room. I thought it was
+simply a not unnatural curiosity concerning a young man with whom he had
+more or less business connection; but now I perceive it had a deeper
+significance."</p>
+
+<p>"He could scarcely have found a more zealous little advocate for Bertram
+if he had hunted the city over. Bertram may be more obliged to you than
+he knows. He has been very patient, but the day of his happiness is
+approaching."</p>
+
+<p>"And Cicely's! I feel as if I could scarcely wait to see her with this
+new hope in her eyes. She has kept me without the door of her suspense,
+but she must let me across the threshold of her happiness."</p>
+
+<p>The look with which Mr. Sylvester eyed the fair girl's radiant face
+deepened. "Paula," said be, "can you leave these new thoughts for a
+moment to hear a request I have to make?"</p>
+
+<p>She at once turned to him with her most self-forgetful smile.</p>
+
+<p>"I have been making myself a little present," pursued he, slowly taking
+out of his pocket the single package he had reserved from the rest.
+"Open it, dear."</p>
+
+<p>With fingers that unconsciously trembled, she hastily undid the package.
+A little box rolled out. Taking off its cover, she took out a plain gold
+locket of the style usually worn by gentlemen on their watch-chains.
+"Fasten it on for me," said he.</p>
+
+<p>Wondering at his tone which was almost solemn, she quietly did his
+bidding. But when she essayed to lift her head upon the completion of
+her task, he gently laid his hand upon her brow and so stood for a
+moment without a word.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?" she asked, with a sudden indrawing of her breath. "What
+moves you so, Mr. Sylvester?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have just taken a vow," said he.</p>
+
+<p>She started back agitated and trembling.</p>
+
+<p>"I had reason to," he murmured, "pray at nights when you go to bed, that
+I may be able to keep it."</p>
+
+<p>"What?" sprang to her lips; but she restrained herself and only allowed
+her glance to speak.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you do it, Paula?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, oh yes!" Her whole heart seemed to rush out in the phrase. She
+drew back as at the opening of a door in an unexpected spot. Her eye had
+something of fear in it and something of secret desperation too. He
+watched her with a gaze that strangely faltered.</p>
+
+<p>"A woman's prayers are a man's best safeguard," murmured he. "He must be
+a wretch who does not feel himself surrounded by a sacred halo, while he
+knows that pure lips are breathing his name in love and trust before the
+throne of the Most High."</p>
+
+<p>"I will pray for you as for myself," she whispered, and endeavored to
+meet his eyes. But her head drooped and she did not speak as she would
+have done a few months before; and when a few instants later they parted
+in their old fashion at the foot of the stairs, she did not turn to give
+him the accustomed smile and nod with which she used to mount the
+stairs, spiral by spiral, and disappear in her little room above. Yet he
+did not grieve at the change, but stood looking up the way she had gone,
+like a man before whom some vision of unexpected promise had opened.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXXI" id="XXXI"></a>XXXI.</h2>
+
+<h3>A QUESTION.</h3>
+
+<blockquote><p>"Think on thy sins."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Othello.</span></p></blockquote>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>The next morning when Mr. Sylvester came down to breakfast, he found on
+the library-table an exquisite casket, similar to the one he had given
+Paula the night before, but larger, and filled with flowers of the most
+delicious odor.</p>
+
+<p>"For Miss Fairchild," explained Samuel, who was at that moment passing
+through the room.</p>
+
+<p>With a pang of jealous surprise, that, however, failed to betray itself
+in his steadily composed countenance, Mr. Sylvester advanced to the side
+of the table, and lifted up the card that hung attached to the beautiful
+present. The name he read there seemed to startle him; he moved away,
+and took up his paper with a dark flush on his brow, that had not
+disappeared when Miss Belinda entered the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Humph!" was her immediate exclamation, as her eye rested upon the
+conspicuous offering in the centre of the apartment. But instantly
+remembering herself, advanced with a cheerful good-morning, which
+however did not prevent her eyes from wandering with no small
+satisfaction towards this fresh evidence of Mr. Ensign's assiduous
+regard.</p>
+
+<p>"Paula is remembered by others than ourselves," remarked Mr. Sylvester,
+probably observing her glance.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; she has a very attentive suitor in Mr. Ensign," returned Miss
+Belinda shortly. "A pleasant appearing young man," she ejaculated next
+moment; "worthy in many respects of success, I should say."</p>
+
+<p>"Has he&mdash;do you mean to say that he has visited you in Grotewell?" asked
+Mr. Sylvester, his eye upon the paper in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly; a few more interviews will settle it."</p>
+
+<p>The paper rustled in Mr. Sylvester's grasp, but his voice was composed
+if not formal, as he observed, "She regards his attentions then with
+favor?"</p>
+
+<p>"She wears his flowers in her bosom, and brightens like a flower herself
+when he is seen to approach. If allowed to go her way unhindered, I have
+but little doubt as to how it will end. Mr. Ensign is not handsome, but
+I am told that he has every other qualification likely to make a gentle
+creature like Paula happy."</p>
+
+<p>"He is a good fellow," exclaimed Mr. Sylvester under his breath.</p>
+
+<p>"And goodness is the first essential in the character of the man who is
+to marry Paula," inexorably observed Miss Belinda. "An open, cheerful
+disposition, a clear conscience and a past with no dark pages in its
+history, must mark him who is to link unto his fate our pure and
+sensitive Paula. Is it not so, Mr. Sylvester?"</p>
+
+<p>The advertisements in that morning's <i>Tribune</i> must have been unusually
+interesting, judging from the difficulty which Mr. Sylvester experienced
+in withdrawing his eyes from them. "The man whom Paula marries," said he
+at last, "can neither be too good, too kind, or too pure. Nor shall any
+other than a good, kind, and pure man possess her," he added in a tone
+that while low, effectually hushed even the slow-to-be-intimidated Miss
+Belinda. In another moment Paula entered.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, the morning freshness of some faces! Like the singing of birds in a
+prison, is the sound and sight of a lovely maiden coming into the grim,
+gray atmosphere of a winter breakfast room. Paula was exceptionally
+gifted with this auroral cheer which starts the day so brightly. At
+sight of her face Mr. Sylvester dropped his paper, and even Miss Belinda
+straightened herself more energetically. "Merry Christmas," cried her
+sweet young voice, and immediately the whole day seemed to grow glad
+with promise and gaysome with ringing sleigh-bells. "It's snowing, did
+you know it? A world of life is in the air; the flakes dance as they
+come down, like dervishes in a frenzy. It was all we lacked to make the
+day complete; now we have everything."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Miss Belinda, with a significant glance at the table,
+"everything."</p>
+
+<p>Paula followed her glance, saw the silver box with its wealth of
+blossoms, and faltered back with a quick look at Mr. Sylvester's grave
+and watchful countenance.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Ensign seems to be possessed of clairvoyance," observed Miss
+Belinda easily. "How he could know that you were to be in town to-day, I
+cannot imagine."</p>
+
+<p>"I wrote him in my last letter that in all probability I should spend
+the holidays with Mr. Sylvester," explained Paula simply, but with a
+slow and deepening flush, that left the roses she contemplated nothing
+of which to boast. "I did so, because he proposed to visit Grotewell on
+Christmas."</p>
+
+<p>There was a short silence in the room, then Mr. Sylvester rose, and
+remarking with polite composure, "It is a very pretty remembrance," led
+the way into the dining-room. Paula with a slow drooping of her head
+quickly followed, while Miss Belinda brought up the rear, with the look
+of a successful diplomat.</p>
+
+<p>A meal in the Sylvester mansion was always a formal affair, but this was
+more than formal. A vague oppression seemed to fill the air; an
+oppression which Miss Belinda's stirring conversation found it
+impossible to dissipate. In compliance to Mr. Sylvester's request, she
+sat at the head of the table, and was the only one who seemed able to
+eat anything. For one thing she had never seen Ona in that post of
+honor, but Paula and Mr. Sylvester could not forget the graceful form
+that once occupied that seat. The first meal above a grave, no matter
+how long it has been dug, must ever seem weighted with more or less
+unreality.</p>
+
+<p>Besides, with Paula there was a vague unsettled feeling, as if some
+delicate inner balance had been too rudely shaken. She longed to fly
+away and think, and she was obliged to sit still and talk.</p>
+
+<p>The end of the meal was a relief to all parties. Miss Belinda went up
+stairs, thoughtfully shaking her firm head; Mr. Sylvester sat down again
+to his paper, and Paula advanced towards the dainty gift that awaited
+her inspection on the library table. But half way to it she paused. A
+strange shyness had seized her. With Mr. Sylvester sitting there, she
+dared not approach this delicate testimonial of another's affection. She
+did not know as she wished to. Her eyes stole in hesitation to the
+floor. Suddenly Mr. Sylvester spoke:</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you not look at your pretty present, Paula?"</p>
+
+<p>She started, gave him a quick glance, and advanced hurriedly towards the
+table; but scarcely had she reached it when she paused, turned and
+hastened over to his side. He was still reading, or appearing to read,
+but she saw his hand tremble where it grasped the sheet, though his face
+with its clear cut profile, shone calm and cold against the dark
+background of the wall beyond.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not care to look at it now," said she, with a hurried interlacing
+of her restless fingers.</p>
+
+<p>He turned towards her and a quick thrill passed over his countenance.
+"Sit down, Paula," said he, "I want to talk to you."</p>
+
+<p>She obeyed as might an automaton. Was it the tone of his voice that
+chilled her, or the studied aspect of his fixed and solemn countenance?
+He did not speak at once, but when he did, there was no faltering in his
+voice, that was lower than common, but deep, like still waters that have
+run into dark channels far from the light of day.</p>
+
+<p>"Paula, I want to ask you a question. What would you think of a man
+that, with deliberate selfishness, went into the king's garden, and
+plucking up by the roots the most beautiful flower he could find there,
+carried it into a dungeon to pant out its exquisite life amid chill and
+darkness?"</p>
+
+<p>"I should think," replied she, after the first startled moment of
+silence, "that the man did well, if by its one breath of sweetness, the
+flower could comfort the heart of him who sat in the dungeon."</p>
+
+<p>The glance with which Mr. Sylvester regarded her, suddenly faltered; he
+turned with quickness towards the fire. "A moment's joy is, then, excuse
+for a murder," exclaimed he. "God and the angels would not agree with
+you, Paula."</p>
+
+<p>There was a quivering in his tone, made all the more apparent by its
+studied self-possession of a moment before. She trembled where she sat,
+and opened her lips to speak, but closed them again, awed by his steady
+and abstracted gaze, now fixed before him in gloomy reverie. A moment
+passed. The clock ticking away on the mantel-piece seemed to echo the
+inevitable "Forever! never!" of Longfellow's old song. Neither of them
+moved. At length, in a low and trembling voice, Paula spoke:</p>
+
+<p>"Is it murder, when the flower loves the dark of the dungeon more than
+it does the light of day?"</p>
+
+<p>With a subdued but passionate cry he rose hastily to his feet. "Yes,"
+said he, and drew back as if he could not bear the sight of her face or
+the glance of her eye. "Sunshine is the breath of flowers; sweet wooing
+gales, their natural atmosphere. He who meddles with a treasure so
+choice does it at his peril." Then as she hurriedly rose in turn,
+softened his whole tone, and assuming his usual air of kindly
+fatherhood, asked her in the most natural way in the world, what he
+could do to make her happy that day.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing," replied she, with a droop of her head; "I think I will go and
+see Cicely."</p>
+
+<p>A short sigh escaped him. "The carriage shall be ready for you," said
+he. "I hope your friend's happiness will overflow into your own gentle
+bosom, and make the day a very pleasant one. God bless your young sweet
+heart, my Paula!"</p>
+
+<p>Her breast heaved, her large, dark, mellow eyes flashed with one quick
+glance towards his face, then she drew back, and in another moment left
+his side and quietly glided from the room. His very life seemed to go
+with her, yet he did not stir; but he sighed deeply when, upon turning
+towards the library-table, he found that she had carried away with her
+the silent testimonial of another and more fortunate man's love and
+devotion.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXXII" id="XXXII"></a>XXXII.</h2>
+
+<h3>FULL TIDE.</h3>
+
+<blockquote><p>"A skirmish of wit between them."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Much Ado About Nothing.</span></p></blockquote>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>Man thinks he is strong, and lays his foundations, raises his walls, and
+dreams of his completed turrets, without reckoning the force of the
+gales or the insidious inundating of the waters that may bring low the
+mounting structure before its time. When with a firm hand, Mr. Sylvester
+thrust back from his heart the one delight which of all the world could
+afford, seemed to him at that moment the dearest and the best, he
+thought the struggle was over and the victory won. It had not even
+commenced. He was made startlingly alive to this fact at the very next
+interview he had with Paula. She had just come from Miss Stuyvesant, and
+the reflection of her friend's scarcely comprehended joy was on her
+countenance, together with a look he could not comprehend, but which
+stirred and haunted him, until he felt forced to ask if she had seen any
+other of her old friends, in the short visit she had paid.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said she, with a distressed blush. "Mr. Ensign was unexpectedly
+there."</p>
+
+<p>It is comparatively easy to restrain your own hand from snatching at a
+treasure you greatly covet, but it is much more difficult to behold
+another and a lesser one grasp and carry it away before your eyes. He
+succeeded in hiding the shadow that oppressed him, but he was
+constrained to recognize the sharpness of the conflict that was about to
+be waged in the recesses of his own breast. A conflict, because he knew
+that a lift of his finger, or a glance of his eye would decide the
+matter then, while in a week, perhaps, the glamour of a young sunshiny
+love, would have worked its inevitable result, and the happiness that
+had so unexpectedly startled upon him in his monotonous and sombre path,
+would have wandered forever out of his reach. How did he meet its
+unexpected rush. Sternly at first, but with greater and greater wavering
+as the days went by, each one revealing fresh beauties of character and
+deeper springs of feeling in the enchanting girl thus brought in all her
+varied charm before his eyes. Why should he not be happy? If there were
+dark pages in his life, had they not long ago been closed and sealed,
+and was not the future bright with promise? A man of his years was not
+through with life. He felt at times as he gazed upon her face with its
+indescribable power of awakening far-reaching thoughts and feelings in
+callous breasts long unused to the holy influence of either, that he had
+just begun to live; that the golden country, with its enticing vistas,
+lay all before him, and that the youth, which he had missed, had somehow
+returned to his prime, fresh with more than its usual enthusiasm and
+bright with more than its wonted hopes and projects. With this glorious
+woman at his side, life would be new indeed, and if new why not pure and
+sweet and noble? What was there to hinder him from making the existence
+of this sweet soul a walking amongst gentle duties, satisfied dreams and
+holy aspirations? A past remorse? Why the gates could be closed on that!
+A strain of innate weakness for the world's good opinion and applause?
+Ah! with love in his life such a weakness must disappear; besides had he
+not taken a vow on her dear head, that ought to hedge him about as with
+angel's wings in the hour of temptation? Men with his experience do not
+invoke the protection of innocence to guard a degraded soul. Why, then,
+all this hesitation? A great boon was being offered to him after years
+of loneliness and immeasurable longing; was it not the will of heaven,
+that he should meet and enjoy this unexpected grace? He dared to stop
+and ask, and once daring to ask, the insidious waters found their way
+beneath the foundations of his resolution, and the lofty structure he
+had reared in such self-confidence, began to tremble where it stood,
+though as yet it betrayed no visible sign of weakness.</p>
+
+
+<p>Meanwhile, society with its innumerable demands, had drawn the beautiful
+young girl within its controlling grasp. She must go here, she must go
+there; she must lend her talents to this, her beauty to that. Before she
+had decided whether she ought to remain in the city a week, two had
+flown by, and in all this time Mr. Ensign had been ever at her side,
+brightening in her own despite, hours which might else have been sad,
+and surrounding her difficult path with proofs of his silent and wary
+devotion. A golden net seemed to be closing around her, and, though as
+yet, she had given no token of a special recognition of her position,
+Miss Belinda betrayed by the uniform complacence of her demeanor, that
+she for one regarded the matter as effectually settled.</p>
+
+<p>The success which Bertram had met in his first visit at Mr.
+Stuyvesant's, was not the least agitating factor in this fortnight's
+secret history. He was too much a part of the home life at Mr.
+Sylvester's, not to make the lightest thrill of his frank and sensitive
+nature felt by all who invaded its precincts. And he was in a state of
+repressed expectancy at this time, that unconsciously created an
+atmosphere about him of vague but restless excitement. The hearts of all
+who encountered his look of concentrated delight, must unconsciously
+beat with his. A strain sweeter than his old-time music was in his
+voice. When he played upon the piano, which was but seldom, it was as if
+he breathed out his soul before the holy images. When he walked, he
+seemed to tread on air. His every glance was a question as to whether
+this great joy, for which he had so long and patiently waited, was to be
+his? Love, living and apotheosized, appeared to blaze before them, and
+no one can look on love without feeling somewhere in his soul the stir
+of those deep waters, whose pulsing throb even in the darkness of
+midnight, proves that we are the children of God.</p>
+
+<p>Cicely was uncommunicative, but her face, when Paula beheld it, was like
+the glowing countenance of some sculptured saint, from which the veil is
+slowly being withdrawn.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly there came an evening when the force of the spell that held all
+these various hearts enchained gave way. It was the night of a private
+entertainment of great elegance, to be held at the house of a friend of
+Miss Stuyvesant. Bertram had received formal permission from the father
+of Cicely, to act as his daughter's escort, and the fact had transformed
+him from a hopeful dreamer, into a man determined to speak and know his
+fate at once. Paula was engaged to take part in the entertainment, and
+the sight of her daintily-decked figure leaving the house with Mr.
+Ensign, was the last drop in the slowly gathering tide that was secretly
+swelling in Mr. Sylvester's breast; and it was with a sudden outrush of
+his whole determined nature that he stepped upstairs, dressed himself in
+evening attire, and deliberately followed them to the place where they
+were going. "The wealth of the Indies is slipping from my grasp," was
+his passionate exclamation, as he rode through the lighted streets. "I
+cannot see it go; if she can care more for me than for this sleek,
+merry-hearted young fellow, she shall. I know that my love is to his,
+what the mighty ocean is to a placid lake, and with such love one ought
+to be panoplied as with resisting steel."</p>
+
+<p>A stream of light and music met him, as he went up the stoop of the
+house that held his treasure. It seemed to intoxicate him. Glow, melody
+and perfume, were so many expressions of Paula. His friends, of whom
+there were many present, received him with tokens of respect, not
+unmingled with surprise. It was the first time he had been seen in
+public since his wife's death, and they could not but remark upon the
+cheerfulness of his bearing, and the almost exalted expression of his
+proud and restless eye. Had Paula accompanied him, they might have
+understood his emotion, but with the beautiful girl under the care of
+one of the most eligible gentlemen in town, what could have happened to
+Mr. Sylvester to make his once melancholy countenance blazon like a star
+amid this joyous and merrily-laughing throng. He did not enlighten them,
+but moved from group to group, searching for Paula. Suddenly the thought
+flashed upon him, "Is it only an hour or so since I smiled upon her in
+my own hall, and shook my head when she asked me with a quick, pleading
+look, to come with them to this very spot?" It seemed days, since that
+time. The rush of these new thoughts, the final making up of this
+slowly-maturing purpose, the sudden allowing of his heart to regard her
+as a woman to be won, had carried the past away as by the sweep of a
+mountain torrent. He could not believe he had ever known a moment of
+hesitancy, ever looked at her as a father, ever bid her go on her way
+and leave the prisoner to his fate. He must always have felt like this;
+such momentum could not have been gathered in an hour; she must know
+that he loved her wildly, deeply, sacredly, wholly, with the fibre of
+his mind, his body and his soul; that to call her his in life and in
+death, was the one demanding passion of his existence, making the past a
+dream, and the future&mdash;ah, he dared not question that! He must behold
+her face before he could even speculate upon the realities lying behind
+fate's down-drawn curtain.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile fair faces and lovely forms flitted before him, carrying his
+glance along in their train, but only because youth was a symbol of
+Paula. If these fresh young girls could smile and look back upon him,
+with that lingering glance which his presence ever invoked, why not she
+who was not only sweet, tender, and lovely, but gifted with a nature
+that responded to the deep things of life, and the stern passions of
+potent humanity. Could a merry laugh lure her while he stood by? Was the
+sunshine the natural atmosphere of this flower, that had bloomed under
+his eye so sweetly and shed out its innocent fragrance, at the approach
+of his solemn-pacing foot? He began to mirror before his mind's eye the
+startled look of happy wonder with which she would greet his impassioned
+glance, when released from whatever duties might be now pressing upon
+her; she wandered into these rooms, to find him awaiting her, when
+suddenly there was a stir in the throng, a pleased and excited rush, and
+the large curtain which he had vaguely noticed hanging at one end of the
+room, uplifted and&mdash;was it Paula? this coy, brilliant, saucy-eyed
+Florentine maiden, stepping out from a bower of greenery, with finger on
+her lip, and a backward glance of saucy defiance that seemed to people
+the verdant walks behind her with gallant cavaliers, eager to follow
+upon her footsteps? Yes; he could not be mistaken; there was but one
+face like that in the world. It was Paula, but Paula with youth's
+merriest glamour upon her, a glamour that had caught its radiant light
+from other thoughts than those in which he had been engaged. He bowed
+his head, and a shudder went through him like that which precedes the
+falling knife of the executioner. Even the applause that greeted the
+revelation of so much loveliness and alluring charm, passed over him
+like a dream. He was battling with his first recognition of the
+possibility of his being too late. Suddenly her voice was heard.</p>
+
+<p>She was speaking aloud to herself, this Florentine maiden who had
+outstripped her lover in the garden, but the tone was the same he had
+heard beside his own hearthstone, and the archness that accompanied it
+had frequently met and encouraged some cheerful expression of his own.
+These are the words she uttered. Listen with him to the <i>naïve</i>, half
+tender, half pettish voice, and mark with his eyes the alternate lights
+and shadows that flit across her cheek as she broodingly murmurs:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>He is certainly a most notable gallant. His "Good day, lady!"
+and his "Good even to you!" are flavored with the cream of
+perfectest courtesy. But gallantry while it sits well upon a
+man, does not make him one, any more than a feather makes the
+cap it adorns. For a Tuscan he hath also a certain comeliness,
+but then I have ever sworn, in good faith too, that I would not
+marry a Tuscan, were he the best made man in Italy. Then there
+is his glance, which proclaims to all men's understandings that
+he loves me, which same seems overbold; but then his smile!</p>
+
+<p>Well, for a smile it certainly does credit to his wit, but one
+cannot live upon smiles; though if one could, one might consent
+to make a trial of his&mdash;and starve belike for her pains. (<i>She
+drops her cheek into her hand and stands musing.</i>)</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester drew a deep breath and let his eyes fall, when suddenly a
+hum ran through the audience about him, and looking quickly up, he
+beheld Mr. Ensign dressed in full cavalier costume, standing behind the
+musing maiden with a half merry, half tender gleam upon his face, that
+made the thickly beating heart of his rival shrink as if clutched in an
+iron vise. What followed, he heard as we do the words of a sentence read
+to us from the judge's seat. The cavalier spoke first and a thousand
+dancing colors seemed to flash in the merry banter that followed.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p><i>Martino.</i>&mdash;She muses, and on no other than myself, as I am
+ready to swear by that coy and tremulous glance. I will move
+her to avow it. (<i>Advances.</i>) Fair lady, greeting! A kiss for
+your sweet thoughts.</p>
+
+<p><i>Nita.</i> (<i>With a start</i>).&mdash;A kiss, Signior Martino? You must
+acknowledge that were but a sorry exchange for thoughts like
+mine, so if it please you, I will keep my thoughts and you your
+kiss; and lest it should seem ungracious in me to give nothing
+upon your asking, I will bestow upon you my most choice good
+day, and so leave you to your meditations. (<i>Curtseys and is
+about to depart.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><i>Martino.</i>&mdash;You have the true generosity, lady; you give away
+what it costs you the dearest to part from. Nay, rumple not
+your lip; it is the truth for all your pretty poutings!
+Convince me it is not.</p>
+
+<p><i>Nita.</i>&mdash;Your pardon, but that would take words, and words
+would take time, and time given to one of your persuasion would
+refute all my arguments on the face of them. (<i>Still
+retreating.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><i>Martino.</i>&mdash;Well, lady, since it is your pleasure to be
+consistent, rather than happy, adieu. Had you stayed but as
+long as the bee pauses on an oleander blossom, you would have
+heard&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><i>Nita.</i>&mdash;Buzzing, signior?</p>
+
+<p><i>Martino.</i>&mdash;Yes, if by that word you would denominate vows of
+constancy and devotion. For I do greatly love you, and would
+tell you so.</p>
+
+<p><i>Nita.</i>&mdash;And for that you expect me to linger! as though vows
+were new to my ears, and words of love as strange to my
+understanding as tropical birds to the eyes of a Norseman.</p>
+
+<p><i>Martino.</i>&mdash;If you do love me, you will linger.</p>
+
+<p><i>Nita.</i>&mdash;Yet if I do, (<i>Slowly advancing</i>) be assured it is
+from some other motive than love.</p>
+
+<p><i>Martino.</i>&mdash;So it be not from hate I am contented.</p>
+
+<p><i>Nita.</i>&mdash;To be contented with little, proves you a man of much
+virtue.</p>
+
+<p><i>Martino.</i>&mdash;When I have you, I am contented with much.</p>
+
+<p><i>Nita.</i>&mdash;That <i>when</i> is a wise insertion, signior; it saves you
+from shame and me from anger.&mdash;Hark! some one calls.</p>
+
+<p><i>Martino.</i>&mdash;None other but the wind; it is a kindly breeze, and
+grieves to hear how harsh a pretty maiden can be to the lover
+who adores her.</p>
+
+<p><i>Nita.</i>&mdash;Please your worship, I do not own a lover.</p>
+
+<p><i>Martino.</i>&mdash;Then mend your poverty, and accept one.</p>
+
+<p><i>Nita.</i>&mdash;I am no beggar to accept of alms.</p>
+
+
+<p><i>Martino.</i>&mdash;In this case, he who offers is the beggar.</p>
+
+<p><i>Nita.</i>&mdash;I am too young to wear a jewel of so much pretension.</p>
+
+<p><i>Martino.</i>&mdash;Time is a cure for youth, and marriage a happy
+speeder of time.</p>
+
+<p><i>Nita.</i>&mdash;But youth needs no cure, and if marriage speedeth
+time, I'll live a maid and die one. The days run swift enough
+without goading, Signior Martino.</p>
+
+<p><i>Martino.</i>&mdash;But lady&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><i>Nita.</i>.&mdash;Nay, your tongue will outstrip time, if you put not a
+curb upon it. In faith, signior, I would not seem rude, but if
+in your courtesy you would consent to woo some other maiden
+to-day, why I would strive and bear it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Martino.</i>&mdash;When I stoop to woo any other lady than thee, the
+moon shall hide its face from the earth, and shine upon it no
+more.</p>
+
+<p><i>Nita.</i>&mdash;Your thoughts are daring in their flight to-day.</p>
+
+<p><i>Martino.</i>&mdash;They are in search of your love.</p>
+
+<p><i>Nita.</i>&mdash;Alack, your wings will fail.</p>
+
+<p><i>Martino.</i>&mdash;Ay, when they reach their goal.</p>
+
+<p><i>Nita.</i>&mdash;Dost think to reach it?</p>
+
+<p><i>Martino.</i>&mdash;Shall I not, lady?</p>
+
+<p><i>Nita.</i>&mdash;'Tis hard to believe it possible, yet who can tell?
+You are not so handsome, signior, that one would die for you.</p>
+
+<p><i>Martino.</i>&mdash;No, lady; but what goes to make other men's faces
+fair, goes to make my heart great. The virtue of my manhood
+rests in the fact that I love you.</p>
+
+<p><i>Nita.</i>&mdash;Faith! so in some others. 'Tis the common fault of the
+gallants, I find. If that is all&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><i>Martino.</i>&mdash;But I will always love you, even unto death.</p>
+
+<p><i>Nita.</i>&mdash;I doubt it not, so death come soon enough.</p>
+
+<p><i>Martino.</i> (<i>Taps his poiniard with his hand.</i>)&mdash;Would you
+have it come now, and so prove me true to my word?</p>
+
+<p><i>Nita.</i> (<i>Demurely</i>).&mdash;I am no judge, to utter the doom that
+your presumption merits.</p>
+
+<p><i>Martino.</i>&mdash;Your looks speak doom, and your sweet lips hide a
+sword keener than that of justice.</p>
+
+<p><i>Nita.</i>&mdash;Have you tried them, signior, that you speak so
+knowingly concerning them? (<i>Retreating.</i>) Your words,
+methinks, are somewhat like your kisses, all breath and no
+substance.</p>
+
+<p><i>Martino.</i>&mdash;Lady! sweet one! (<i>Follows her.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><i>Nita.</i>&mdash;Nay, I am gone. (<i>Exit.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><i>Martino.</i>&mdash;I were of the fools' fold, did I fail to follow at
+a beck so gentle. (<i>Exit.</i>)</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>That was not all, but it was all that Mr. Sylvester heard. Hastily
+retreating, he went out into the corridor and ere long found himself in
+the conservatory. He felt shaken; felt that he could not face all this
+unmoved. He knew he had been gazing at a play; that because this
+Florentine maiden looked at her lover with coyness, gentleness,
+tenderness perhaps, it did not follow that she, his Paula, loved the
+real man behind this dashing cavalier. But the possibility was there,
+and in his present frame of mind could not be encountered without pain.
+He dared not stay where men's eyes could follow him, or women's delicate
+glances note the heaving of his chest. He had in the last three hours
+given himself over so completely to hope. He realized it now though he
+would not have believed it before. With man's usual egotism he had felt
+that it was only necessary for him to come to a decision, to behold all
+else fall out according to his mind. He had forgotten for the nonce the
+power of a youthful lover, eager to serve, ready to wait, careful to
+press his way at every advantage. He could have cursed himself for the
+folly of his delay, as he strode up and down among the flowering shrubs
+in the solitude which the attractions of the play created. "Fool! fool!"
+he muttered between his teeth, "to halt on the threshold of Paradise
+till the door closed in my face, when a step would have carried me
+where&mdash;" He grew dizzy as he contemplated. The goal looks never so fair
+as when just within reach of a rival's hand.</p>
+
+<p>A vigorous clapping, followed by a low gush of music, woke him at last
+to the realization that the little drama had terminated. With a hasty
+movement he was about to return to the parlors, when he heard the low
+murmur of voices, and on looking up, saw a youthful couple advancing
+into the conservatory, whom at first glance he recognized for Bertram
+and Miss Stuyvesant. They were absorbed in each other, and believing
+themselves alone, came on without fear, presenting such a picture of
+love and deep, unspeakable joy, that Mr. Sylvester paused and gazed upon
+them as upon the sudden embodiment of a cherished vision of his own
+imaginings. Bertram was speaking ordinary words no doubt, words suited
+to the occasion and the time, but his voice was attuned to the beatings
+of his long repressed heart, while the bend of his proud young head and
+the glance of his yearning eye were more eloquent than speech, of the
+leaning of his whole nature in love and protection towards the dainty,
+flushing creature at his side. It was a sight to make old hearts young
+and a less happy lover sick with envy. In spite of his gratification at
+his nephew's success, Mr. Sylvester's brow contracted, and it was with
+difficulty he could subdue himself into the appearance of calm
+benevolence necessary to pass them with propriety. Had it been Paula and
+Mr. Ensign!</p>
+
+<p>He did not know how it was that he managed to find her at last. But just
+as he was beginning to realize that wisdom demanded his departure from
+this scene, he suddenly came upon her sitting with her face turned
+toward the crowd and waiting&mdash;for whom? He had never seen her look so
+beautiful, possibly because he had never before allowed himself to gaze
+upon her with a lover's eyes. She had exchanged her piquant Roman
+costume for the pearl gray satin in which Ona had delighted to array
+her, and its rich substance and delicate neutral tint harmonized well
+with the amber brocade of the curtain against which she sat.</p>
+
+<p>Power, passion and purity breathed in her look, and lent enchantment to
+her form. She was poetry's unique jewel, and at this moment, thought
+rather than merriment sat upon her lips, and haunted her somewhat
+tremulous smiles. He approached her as a priest to his shrine, but once
+at her side, once in view of her first startled blush, stooped
+passionately, and forgetting everything but the suspense at his heart,
+asked with a look and tone such as he had never before bestowed upon
+her, if the play which he had seen that evening had been real, or only
+the baseless fabric of a dream.</p>
+
+<p>She understood him and drew back with a look almost of awe, shaking her
+head and replying in a startled way, "I do not know, I dare not say, I
+scarcely have taken time to think."</p>
+
+<p>"Then take it," he murmured in a voice that shook her body and soul,
+"for <i>I</i> must know, if <i>he</i> does not." And without venturing another
+word, or supplying by look or gesture any explanation of his unexpected
+appearance, or as equally unexpected departure, he bowed before her as
+if she had been a queen instead of the child he had been wont in other
+days to regard her, and speedily left her side.</p>
+
+<p>But he had not taken two steps before he paused. Mr. Ensign was
+approaching.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Sylvester! you are worse than the old woman of the tale, who
+declaring she would not, that nothing could ever induce her to&mdash;<i>did</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"You utter a deeper truth than you realize," returned that gentleman,
+with a grave emphasis meant rather for her ears than his. "It is the
+curse of mortals to overrate their strength in the face of great
+temptations. I am no exception to the rule." And with a second bow that
+included this apparently triumphant lover within its dignified sweep, he
+calmly proceeded upon his way, and in a few moments had left the house.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Ensign, who for all his careless disposition, was quick to recognize
+depths in others, stared after his commanding figure until he had
+disappeared, then turned and looked at Paula. Why did his heart sink,
+and the lights and joy and promise of the evening seem to turn dark and
+shrivel to nothing before his eyes!</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXXIII" id="XXXIII"></a>XXXIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>TWO LETTERS.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"I have no other but a woman's reason,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I think him so, because I think him so."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Two Gentlemen of Verona.</span><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p>A woman who has submitted to the undivided attentions of a gentleman for
+any length of time, feels herself more or less bound to him, whether any
+special words of devotion have passed between them or not, particularly
+if from sensitiveness of nature, she has manifested any pleasure in his
+society. Paula therefore felt as if her wings had been caught in a
+snare, when Mr. Ensign upon leaving her that evening, put a small note
+in her hand, saying that he would do himself the pleasure of calling for
+his reply the next day. She did not need to open it. She knew
+intuitively the manly honest words with which he would be likely to
+offer his heart and life for her acceptance; yet she did open it almost
+as soon as she reached her room, sitting down in her outside wraps for
+the purpose. She was not disappointed. Every line was earnest, ardent,
+and respectful. A true love and a happy cheerful home awaited her
+if&mdash;the stupendous meaning latent in an <i>if</i>!</p>
+
+<p>With folded hands lying across the white page, with glance fixed on the
+fire always kept burning brightly in the grate, she sat querying her own
+soul and the awful future. He was such a charming companion; life had
+flashed and glimmered with a thousand lights and colors since she knew
+him; his very laugh made her want to sing. With him she would move in
+sunshiny paths, open to the regard of all the world, giving and
+receiving good. Life would need no veils and love no check. A placid
+stream would bear her on through fields of smiling verdure. Dread hopes,
+strange fears, uneasy doubts and vague unrests, would not disturb the
+heart that rested its faith upon his frank and manly bosom. A breeze
+blew through his life that would sweep all such evils from the path of
+her who walked in trust and love by his side. In trust and love; ah!
+that was it. She trusted him, but did she love him? At one time she had
+been convinced that she did, else these past few weeks would have owned
+a different history. He came upon her so brightly amid her gloom; filled
+her days with such genial thoughts, and drew the surface of her soul so
+unconsciously after him. It was like a zephyr sweeping over the sea;
+every billow that leaps to follow seems to own the power of that passing
+wind. But could she think so now, since she had found that the mere
+voice and look of another man had power to awaken depths such as she
+could not name and scarcely as yet had been able to recognize? that
+though the billows might flow under the genial smile of her young lover,
+the tide rose only at the call of a deeper voice and a more imposing
+presence?</p>
+
+<p>She was a thinking spirit and recoiled from yielding too readily to any
+passing impulse. Love was a sacrament in her eyes; something entirely
+too precious to be accepted in counterfeit. She must know the secret of
+her inclinations, must weigh the influence that swayed her, for once
+given over to earth's sublimest passion, she felt that it would have
+power to sweep her on to an eternity of bliss or suffering.</p>
+
+<p>She therefore forced herself to probe deep into the past, and pitilessly
+asked her conscience, what her emotions had been in reference to Mr.
+Sylvester before she positively knew that love for her as a woman had
+taken the place of his former fatherly regard. Her blushing cheek seemed
+to answer for her. Right or wrong, her life had never been complete away
+from his presence. She was lonesome and unsatisfied. When Mr. Ensign
+came she thought her previous unrest was explained, but the letter from
+Cicely describing Mr. Sylvester as sick and sorrowful, had withdrawn the
+veil from the delusion, and though it had settled again with Mr.
+Sylvester's studied refusal to accept her devotion, was by this
+evening's betrayal utterly wrenched away and trampled into oblivion. By
+every wild throb of her heart at the sound of his voice in her ear, by
+every out-reaching of her soul to enter into his every mood, by the deep
+sensation of rest she felt in his presence, and the uneasy longing that
+absorbed her in his absence, she knew that she loved Mr. Sylvester as
+she never could his younger, blither, and perhaps nobler rival. Each
+word spoken by him lay treasured in her heart of hearts. When she
+thought of manly beauty, his face and figure started upon her from the
+surrounding shadows, making all romance possible and poetry the truest
+expression of the human soul. While she lived, he must ever seem the man
+of men to charm the eye, affect the heart, and move the soul. Yet she
+hesitated. Why?</p>
+
+
+<p>There is nothing so hard to acknowledge to ourselves as the presence of
+a blemish in the character of those we love and long to revere. It was
+like giving herself to the rack to drag from its hiding-place and
+confront in all its hideous deformity, the doubt which, unconfessed
+perhaps, had of late mingled with her great reverence and admiring
+affection for this not easily to be comprehended man. But in this
+momentous hour she had power to do it. Conscience and self-respect
+demanded that the image before which she was ready to bow with such
+abandon, should be worthy her worship. She was not one who could carry
+offerings to a clouded shrine. She must see the glory shining from
+between the cherubim. "I must worship with my spirit as well as with my
+body, and how can I do that if there is a spot on his manhood, or a
+false note in his heart. If I did but know the secret of his past; why
+the prisoner sits in the dungeon! He is gentle, he is kindly, he loves
+goodness and strives to lead me in the paths of purity and wisdom, and
+yet something that is not good or pure clings to him, which he has never
+been able to shake loose. I perceive it in his melancholy glance; I
+catch its accents in his uneven tones; it rises upon me from his most
+thoughtful words, and makes his taking of a vow fearfully and warningly
+significant. Yet how much he is honored by his fellow-men, and with what
+reliance they look up to him for guidance and support. If I only knew
+the secrets of his heart!" thought she.</p>
+
+<p>It was a trembling scale that hung balancing in that young girl's hand
+that night. On one side, frankness, cheerfulness, manly worth, honest
+devotion, and a home with every adjunct of peace and prosperity; on the
+other, love, gratitude, longing, admiration, and a dark shadow
+enveloping all, called doubt. The scale would not adjust itself. It tore
+her heart to turn from Mr. Sylvester, it troubled her conscience to
+dismiss the thought of Mr. Ensign. The question was yet undecided when
+she rose and began putting away her ornaments for the night.</p>
+
+<p>What was there on her dressing-table that made her pause with such a
+start, and cast that look of half beseeching inquiry at her own image in
+the glass? Only another envelope with her name written upon it. But the
+way in which she took it in her hand, and the half guilty air with which
+she stole back with it to the fire, would have satisfied any looker-on I
+imagine, that conscience or no conscience, debate or no debate, the
+writer of these lines had gained a hold upon her heart, which no other
+could dispute.</p>
+
+<p>It was a compactly written note and ran thus:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"A man is not always responsible for what he does in moments of
+great suspense or agitation. But if, upon reflection, he finds
+that he has spoken harshly or acted unwisely, it is his duty to
+remedy his fault; and therefore it is that I write you this
+little note. Paula, I love you; not as I once did, with a
+fatherly longing and a protective delight, but passionately,
+yearningly, and entirely, with the whole force of my somewhat
+disappointed life; as a man loves for whom the world has
+dissolved leaving but one creature in it, and that a woman. I
+showed you this too plainly to-night. I have no right to
+startle or intimidate your sweet soul into any relation that
+might hereafter curb or dissatisfy you; if you can love me
+freely, with no back-lookings to any younger lover left behind,
+know that naught you could bestow, can ever equal the world of
+love and feeling which I long to lavish upon you from my heart
+of hearts. But if another has already won upon your affections
+too much for you to give an undivided response to my appeal,
+then by all the purity and innocence of your nature, forget I
+have ever marred the past or disturbed the present by any word
+warmer than that of a father.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall not meet you at breakfast and possibly not at dinner
+to-morrow, but when evening comes I shall look for my soul's
+dearer and better half, or my childless manhood's nearest and
+most cherished friend, as God pleaseth and your own heart and
+conscience shall decree.</p>
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">Edward Sylvester.</span>"</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Miss Belinda was very much surprised to be awakened early the next
+morning, by a pair of loving arms clasped yearningly about her neck.</p>
+
+<p>Looking up, she descried Paula kneeling beside her bed in the faint
+morning light, her cheeks burning, and her eyelids drooping; and
+guessing perhaps how it was, started up from her recumbent position with
+an energy strongly suggestive of the charger, that smells the battle
+afar off.</p>
+
+<p>"What has happened?" she asked. "You look as if you had not slept a
+wink."</p>
+
+<p>For reply Paula pulled aside the curtain at the head of her bed, and
+slipped into her hand Mr. Ensign's letter. Miss Belinda read it
+conscientiously through, with many grunts of approval, and having
+finished it, laid it down with a significant nod, after which she turned
+and surveyed Paula with keen but cautious scrutiny. "And you don't know
+what answer to give," she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I should," said Paula, "if&mdash;Oh aunt, you know what stands in my way! I
+have seen it in your eyes for some time. There is some one else&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But he has not spoken?" vigorously ejaculated her aunt.</p>
+
+<p>Without answering, Paula put into her hand, with a slow reluctance she
+had not manifested before, a second little note, and then hid her head
+amid the bedclothes, waiting with quickly beating heart for what her
+aunt might say.</p>
+
+<p>She did not seem in haste to speak, but when she did, her words came
+with a quick sigh that echoed very drearily in the young girl's anxious
+ears. "You have been placed by this in a somewhat painful position. I
+sympathize with you, my child. It is very hard to give denial to a
+benefactor."</p>
+
+<p>Paula's head drew nearer to her aunt's breast, her arms crept round her
+neck. "But must I?" she breathed.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Belinda knitted her brows with great force, and stared severely at
+the wall opposite. "I am sorry there is any question about it," she
+replied.</p>
+
+<p>Paula started up and looked at her with sudden determination. "Aunt,"
+said she, "what is your objection to Mr. Sylvester?"</p>
+
+<p>Miss Belinda shook her head, and pushing the girl gently away, hurriedly
+arose and began dressing with great rapidity. Not until she was entirely
+prepared for breakfast did she draw Paula to her, and prepare to answer
+her question.</p>
+
+<p>"My objection to him is, that I do not thoroughly understand him. I am
+afraid of the skeleton in the closet, Paula. I never feel at ease when I
+am with him, much as I admire his conversation and appreciate the
+undoubtedly noble instincts of his heart. His brow is not open enough to
+satisfy an eye which has accustomed itself to the study of human
+nature."</p>
+
+<p>"He has had many sorrows!" Paula faintly exclaimed, stricken by this
+echo of her own doubts.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," returned her aunt, "and sorrow bows the head and darkens the eye,
+but it does not make the glance wavering or its expression mysterious."</p>
+
+<p>"Some sorrows might," urged Paula tremulously, arguing as much with her
+own doubts as with those of her aunt. "His have been of no ordinary
+nature. I have never told you, aunt, but there were circumstances
+attending Cousin Ona's death that made it especially harrowing. He had a
+stormy interview with her the very morning she was killed; words passed
+between them, and he left her with a look that was almost desperate.
+When he next saw her, she lay lifeless and inert before him. I sometimes
+think that the shadow that fell upon him at that hour will never pass
+away."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know what was the subject of their disagreement?" asked Miss
+Belinda anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>"No, but I have reason to believe it had something to do with business
+affairs, as nothing else could ever arouse Cousin Ona into being at all
+disagreeable."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't like that phrase, <i>business affairs</i>; like charity, it covers
+entirely too much. Have you never had any doubts yourself about Mr.
+Sylvester?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, you touch me to the quick, aunt. I may have had my doubts, but when
+I look back on the past, I cannot see as they have any very substantial
+foundation. Supposing, aunt, that he has been merely unfortunate, and I
+should live to find that I had discarded one whose heart was darkened by
+nothing but sorrow? I should never forgive myself, nor could life yield
+me any recompense that would make amends for a sacrifice so
+unnecessary."</p>
+
+<p>"You love him, then, very dearly, Paula?"</p>
+
+<p>A sudden light fell on the young girl's face. "Hearts cannot tell their
+love," said she, "but since I received this letter from him, it has
+seemed as if my life hung balancing on the question, as to whether he is
+worthy of a woman's homage. If he is not, I would give my life to have
+him so. The world is only dear to me now as it holds him."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Belinda picked up Mr. Ensign's letter with trembling fingers. "I
+thought you were safe when the younger man came to woo," said she.
+"Girls, as a rule, prefer what is bright to what is sombre, and Mr.
+Ensign is truly a very agreeable as well as worthy young man."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, aunt, and he came very near stealing my heart as he undoubtedly
+did my fancy, but a stronger hand snatched it away, and now I do not
+know what to do or how to act, so as to awaken in the future no remorse
+or vain regrets."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Belinda opened the letters again and consulted their contents in a
+matter-of-fact way. "Mr. Ensign proposes to come this afternoon for his
+answer, while Mr. Sylvester defers seeing you till evening. What if I
+seek Mr. Sylvester this morning and have a little conversation with him,
+which shall determine, for once and all, the question which so troubles
+us? Would you not find it easier to meet Mr. Ensign when he comes?"</p>
+
+<p>"You talk to Mr. Sylvester, and upon such a topic! Oh, I could not bear
+that. Pardon me, aunt, but I think I am more jealous of his feelings
+than of my own. If his secret can be learned in a half-hour's talk, it
+must be listened to by no one but myself. And I believe it can," she
+murmured reverently; "he is so tender of me he would never let me go
+blindfold into any path, concerning which I had once expressed anxiety.
+If I ask him whether there is any good reason before God or man why I
+should not give him my entire faith and homage, he will answer honestly,
+though it be the destruction of his hopes to do so?"</p>
+
+<p>"Have you such trust as that in his uprightness as a lover, and the
+guardian of your happiness?"</p>
+
+<p>"Have not you, aunt?"</p>
+
+<p>And Miss Belinda remembering his words on the occasion of his first
+proposal to adopt Paula, was forced to acknowledge that she had.</p>
+
+<p>So without further preliminaries, it was agreed upon that Paula should
+refrain from making a final decision until she had eased her heart by an
+interview with Mr. Sylvester.</p>
+
+<p>"Meantime, you can request Mr. Ensign to wait another day for his
+answer," said Miss Belinda.</p>
+
+<p>But Paula with a look of astonishment shook her head. "Is it you who
+would counsel me to such a piece of coquetry as that?" said she. "No,
+dear aunt, my heart is not with Mr. Ensign, as you know, and it is
+impossible for me to encourage him. If Mr. Sylvester should prove
+unworthy of my affection, I must bear, as best I may, the loss which
+must accrue; but till he does, let me not dishonor my womanhood by
+allowing hope to enter, even for a passing moment, the breast of his
+rival."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Belinda blushed, and drew her niece fondly towards her. "You are
+right," said she, "and my great desire for your happiness has led me
+into error. Honesty is the noblest adjunct of all true love, and must
+never be sacrificed to considerations of selfish expediency. The refusal
+which you contemplate bestowing upon Mr. Ensign, must be forwarded to
+him at once."</p>
+
+<p>And with a final embrace, in which Miss Belinda allowed herself to let
+fall some few natural tears of disappointment, she dismissed the young
+girl to her task.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXXIV" id="XXXIV"></a>XXXIV.</h2>
+
+<h3>PAULA MAKES HER CHOICE.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">"Good fortune then,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To make me bless't or cursed'st among men."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Merchant of Venice.</span><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>It was evening in the Sylvester mansion. Mr. Sylvester who, according to
+his understanding with Paula, had been absent from his home all day, had
+just come in and now stood in his library waiting for the coming
+footfall that should decide whether the future held for him any promise
+of joy.</p>
+
+<p>He had never looked more worthy of a woman's regard than he did that
+night. A matter that had been troubling him for some time had just been
+satisfactorily disposed of, and not a shadow, so far as he knew, lay
+upon his business outlook. This naturally brightened his cheek and lent
+a light to his eye. Then, hope is no mean beautifier, and this he
+possessed notwithstanding the disparity of years between himself and
+Paula. It was not, however, of sufficiently assured a nature to prevent
+him from starting at every sound from above, and flushing with quite a
+disagreeable sense of betrayal when the door opened and Bertram entered
+the room, instead of the gentle and exquisite being he had expected.</p>
+
+<p>"Uncle, I am so full of happiness, I had to stop and bestow a portion of
+it upon you. Do you think any one could mistake the nature of Miss
+Stuyvesant's feelings, who saw her last night?"</p>
+
+<p>"Hardly," was the smiling reply. "At all events I have not felt like
+wasting much but pleasant sympathy upon you. Your pathway to happiness
+looks secure, my boy."</p>
+
+<p>His nephew gave him a wistful glance, but hid his thought whatever it
+was. "I am going to see her to-night," remarked he. "I am afraid my love
+is something like a torrent that has once burst its barrier; it cannot
+rest until it has worked its channel and won its rightful repose."</p>
+
+<p>"That is something the way with all love," returned his uncle. "It may
+be dallied with while asleep, but once aroused, better meet a lion in
+his fury or a tempest in its rush. Are you going to test your hope,
+to-night?"</p>
+
+<p>The young man flushed. "I cannot say." But in another moment gayly
+added, "I only know that I am prepared for any emergency."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, my boy, I wish you God-speed. If ever a man has won a right to
+happiness, you are that man; and you shall enjoy it too, if any word or
+action of mine can serve to advance it."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you!" replied Bertram, and with a bright look around the
+apartment, prepared to take his leave. "When I come back," he remarked,
+with a touch of that manly <i>naïveté</i> to which I have before alluded, "I
+hope I shall not find you alone."</p>
+
+<p>Ignoring this wish which was re-echoed somewhat too deeply within his
+own breast for light expression, Mr. Sylvester accompanied his nephew to
+the front door.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us see what kind of a night it is," observed he, stepping out upon
+the stoop. "It is going to rain."</p>
+
+<p>"So it is," returned Bertram, with a quick glance overhead; "but I shall
+not let such a little fuss as that deter me from fulfilling my
+engagement." And bestowing a hasty nod upon his uncle, he bounded down
+the step.</p>
+
+<p>Instantly a man who was loitering along the walk in front of the house,
+stopped, as if struck by these simple words, turned, gave Bertram a
+quick look, and then with a sly glance back at the open door where Mr.
+Sylvester still stood gazing at the lowering heavens, set himself
+cautiously to follow him.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester, who was too much pre-occupied to observe this suspicious
+action, remained for a moment contemplating the sky; then with an
+aimless glance down the avenue, during which his eye undoubtedly fell
+upon Bertram and the creeping shadow of a man behind him, closed the
+door and returned to the library.</p>
+
+<p>The sight of another's joy has the tendency to either unduly depress the
+spirits or greatly to elate them. When Paula came into the room a few
+minutes later, it was to find Mr. Sylvester awaiting her with an
+expression that was almost radiant. It made her duty seem doubly hard,
+and she came forward with the slow step of one who goes to meet or carry
+doom. He saw, and instantly the light died out of his face, leaving it
+one blank of despair. But controlling himself, he took her cold hand in
+his, and looking down upon her with a tender but veiled regard, asked in
+those low and tremulous tones that exerted such an influence upon her:</p>
+
+<p>"Do I see before me my affectionate and much to be cherished child, or
+that still dearer object of love and worship, which it shall be the
+delight of my life to render truly and deeply happy?"</p>
+
+<p>"You see," returned she, after a moment of silent emotion, "a girl
+without father or brother to advise her; who loves, or believes she
+does, a great and noble man, but who is smitten with fear also, she
+cannot tell why, and trembles to take a step to which no loving and
+devoted friend has set the seal of his approval."</p>
+
+<p>The clasp with which Mr. Sylvester held her hand in his, tightened for
+an instant with irrepressible emotion, then slowly unloosed. Drawing
+back, he surveyed her with eyes that slowly filled with a bitter
+comprehension of her meaning.</p>
+
+<p>"You are the only man," continued she, with a glance of humble entreaty,
+"that has ever stood to me for a moment in the light of a relation. You
+<i>have</i> been a father to me in days gone by, and to you it therefore
+seems most natural for me to appeal when a question comes up that either
+puzzles or distresses me. Mr. Sylvester, you have offered me your love
+and the refuge of your home; if you say that in your judgment the
+counsel of all true friends would be for me to accept this love, then my
+hand is yours and with it my heart; a heart that only hesitates because
+it would fain be sure it has the smile of heaven upon its every
+prompting."</p>
+
+<p>"Paula!"</p>
+
+<p>The voice was so strange she looked up to see if it really was Mr.
+Sylvester who spoke. He had sunk back into a chair and had covered his
+face with his hands. With a cry she moved towards him, but he motioned
+her back.</p>
+
+<p>"Condemned to be my own executioner!" he muttered. "Placed on the rack
+and bid to turn the wheel that shall wrench my own sinews! My God, 'tis
+hard!"</p>
+
+<p>She did not hear the words, but she saw the action. Slowly the blood
+left her cheek, and her hand fell upon her swelling breast with a
+despairing gesture that would have smitten Miss Belinda to the heart,
+could she have seen it. "I have asked too much," she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>With a start Mr. Sylvester rose. "Paula," said he, in a stern and
+different tone, "is this fear of which you speak, the offspring of your
+own instincts, or has it been engendered in your breast by the words of
+another?"</p>
+
+<p>"My Aunt Belinda is in my confidence, if it is she to whom you allude,"
+rejoined she, meeting his glance fully and bravely. "But from no lips
+but yours could any words proceed capable of affecting my estimate of
+you as the one best qualified to make me happy."</p>
+
+<p>"Then it is my words alone that have awakened this doubt, this
+apprehension?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have not spoken of doubt," said she, but her eyelids fell.</p>
+
+<p>"No, thank God!" he passionately exclaimed. "And yet you feel it," he
+went on more composedly. "I have studied your face too long and closely
+not to understand it."</p>
+
+<p>She put out her hands in appeal, but for once it passed unheeded.</p>
+
+<p>"Paula," said he, "you must tell me just what that doubt is; I must know
+what is passing in your mind. You say you love me&mdash;" he paused, and a
+tremble shook him from head to foot, but he went inexorably on&mdash;"it is
+more than I had a right to expect, and God knows I am grateful for the
+precious and inestimable boon, far as it is above my deserts; but while
+loving me, you hesitate to give me your hand. Why? What is the name of
+the doubt that disturbs that pure breast and affects your choice? Tell
+me, I must know."</p>
+
+<p>"You ask me to dissect my own heart!" she cried, quivering under the
+torture of his glance; "how can I? What do I know of its secret springs
+or the terrors that disturb its even beatings? I cannot name my fear; it
+has no name, or if it has&mdash;Oh, sir!" she cried in a burst of passionate
+longing, "your life has been one of sorrow and disappointment; grief has
+touched you close, and you might well be the melancholy and sombre man
+that all behold. I do not shrink from grief; say that the only shadow
+that lies across your dungeon-door is that cast by the great and
+heart-rending sorrows of your life, and without question and without
+fear I enter that dungeon with you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The hand he raised stopped her. "Paula," cried he, "do you believe in
+repentance?"</p>
+
+<p>The words struck her like a blow. Falling slowly back, she looked at him
+for an instant, then her head sank on her breast.</p>
+
+<p>"I know what your hatred of sin is," continued he. "I have seen your
+whole form tremble at the thought of evil. Is your belief in the
+redeeming power of God as great as your recoil from the wrong that makes
+that redemption necessary?"</p>
+
+<p>Quickly her head raised, a light fell on her brow, and her lips moved in
+a vain effort to utter what her eyes unconsciously expressed.</p>
+
+<p>"Paula, I would be unworthy the name of a man, if with the consciousness
+of possessing a dark and evil nature, I strove by use of any hypocrisy
+or specious pretense at goodness, to lure to my side one so
+exceptionally pure, beautiful and high-minded. The ravening wolf and the
+innocent lamb would be nothing to it. Neither would I for an instant be
+esteemed worthy of your regard, if in this hour of my wooing there
+remained in my life the shadow of any latent wrong that might hereafter
+rise up and overwhelm you. Whatever of wrong has ever been committed by
+me&mdash;and it is my punishment that I must acknowledge before your pure
+eyes that my soul is not spotless&mdash;was done in the past, and is known
+only to my own heart and the God who I reverently trust has long ago
+pardoned me. The shadow is that of remorse, not of fear, and the evil,
+one against my own soul, rather than against the life or fortunes of
+other men. Paula, such sins can be forgiven if one has a mind to
+comprehend the temptations that beset men in their early struggles. I
+have never forgiven myself, but&mdash;" He paused, looked at her for an
+instant, his hand clenched over his heart, his whole noble form shaken
+by struggle, then said&mdash;"forgiveness implies no promise, Paula; you
+shall never link yourself to a man who has been obliged to bow his head
+in shame before you, but by the mercy that informs that dear glance and
+trembling lip, do you think you can ever grow to forgive me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," she cried, with a burst of sobs, violent as her grief and shame,
+"God be merciful to me, as I am merciful to those who repent of their
+sins and do good and not evil all the remaining days of their life."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you would <i>forgive</i> me," murmured he, looking down upon her,
+as the miser eyes the gold that has slipped from his paralyzed hand.
+"Him whom the hard-hearted sinner and the hypocrite despise, God's
+dearest lambs regard with mercy. I learned to revere God before I knew
+you, Paula, but I learned to love Him in the light of your gentleness
+and your trust. Rise up now and let me wipe away your tears&mdash;my
+daughter."</p>
+
+<p>She sprang up as if stung. "No, no," she cried, "not that; I cannot bear
+that yet. I must think, I must know what all this means," and she laid
+her hand upon her heart. "God surely does not give so much love for
+one's undoing; if I were not destined to comfort a life so saddened, He
+would have bequeathed me more pity and less&mdash;" The lifted head fell, the
+word she would have uttered, stirred her bosom, but not her lips.</p>
+
+<p>It was a trial to his strength, but his firm man's heart did not waver.
+"You do comfort me," said he; "from early morning to late night your
+presence is my healing and my help, and will always be so, whatever may
+befal. A daughter can do much, my Paula."</p>
+
+<p>She took a step back towards the door, her eyes, dark with unfathomable
+impulses, flashing on him through the tears that hung thickly on her
+lashes.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it for your own sake or for mine, that you make use of that word?"
+said she.</p>
+
+<p>He summoned up his courage, met that searching glance with all its wild,
+bewildering beauty, and responded, "Can you ask, Paula?"</p>
+
+<p>With a lift of her head that gave an almost queenly stateliness to her
+form, she advanced a step, and drawing a crumpled paper from her pocket,
+said, "When I went to my room last night, it was to read <i>two</i> letters,
+one from yourself, and one from Mr. Ensign. This is his, and a manly and
+noble letter it is too; but hearts have right to hearts, and I was
+obliged to refuse his petition." And with a reverent but inexorable
+hand, she dropped the letter on the burning coals of the grate at their
+side, and softly turned to leave the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Paula!" With a bound the stern and hitherto forcibly repressed man,
+leaped to her side. "My darling! my life!" and with a wild,
+uncontrollable impulse, he caught her for one breathless moment to his
+heart; then as suddenly released her, and laying his hand in reverence
+on her brow, said softly, "Now go and pray, little one; and when you are
+quite calm, an hour hence or a week hence whichever it may be, come and
+tell me my fate as God and the angels reveal it to you." And he smiled,
+and she saw his smile, and went out of the room softly, as one who
+treadeth upon holy ground.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester was considered by his friends and admirers as a proud man.
+If a vote had been cast among those who knew him best, as from what
+especial passion common to humanity he would soonest recoil, it would
+have been unanimously pronounced shame, and his own hand would have
+emphasized the judgment of his fellows. But shame which is open to the
+gaze of the whole world, differs from that which is sacred to the eyes
+of one human being, and that the one who lies nearest the heart.</p>
+
+<p>As Paula's retreating footsteps died away on the stairs, and he awoke to
+the full consciousness that his secret was shared by her whose love was
+his life, and whose good opinion had been his incentive and his pride,
+his first sensation was one of unmitigated anguish, but his next,
+strange to say, that of a restful relief. He had cast aside the cloak he
+had hugged so closely to his breast these many years, and displayed to
+her shrinking gaze the fox that was gnawing at his vitals; and Spartan
+though he was, the dew that had filled her loving eyes was balm to him.
+And not only that; he had won claim to the title of true man. Her
+regard, if regard it remained, was no longer an airy fabric built upon a
+plausible seeming, but a firm structure with knowledge for its
+foundation. "I shall not live to whisper, 'If she knew my whole life,
+would she love me so well?'"</p>
+
+<p>His first marriage had been so wholly uncongenial and devoid of
+sympathy, that his greatest longing in connection with a fresh contract,
+was to enjoy the full happiness of perfect union and mutual trust; and
+though he could never have summoned up courage to take her into his
+confidence, unsolicited, now that it had been done he would not have it
+undone, no, not if by the doing he had lost her confidence and
+affection.</p>
+
+<p>But something told him he had not lost it. That out of the darkness and
+the shock of this very discovery, a new and deeper love would spring,
+which having its birth in human frailty and human repentance, would gain
+in the actual what it lost in the ideal, bringing to his weary,
+suffering and yearning man's nature, the honest help of a strong and
+loving sympathy, growing trust, and sweetest because wisest
+encouragement.</p>
+
+<p>It was therefore, with a growing sense of deep unfathomable comfort, and
+a reverent thankfulness for the mercies of God, that he sat by the fire
+idly watching the rise and fall of the golden flames above the
+fluttering ashes of his rival's letter, and dreaming with a hallowing
+sense of his unworthiness, upon the possible bliss of coming days.
+Happiness in its truest and most serene sense was so new to him, it
+affected him like the presence of something strangely commanding. He was
+awe-struck before it, and unconsciously bowed his head at its
+contemplation. Only his eyes betrayed the peace that comes with all
+great joy, his eyes and perhaps the faint, almost unearthly smile that
+flitted across his mouth, disturbing its firm line and making his face
+for all its inevitable expression of melancholy, one that his mother
+would have loved to look upon. "Paula!" came now and then in a reverent,
+yearning accent from between his lips, and once a low, "Thank God!"
+which showed that he was praying.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly he rose; a more human mood had set in, and he felt the
+necessity of assuring himself that it was really he upon whom the dreary
+past had closed, and a future of such possible brightness opened. He
+walked about the room, surveying the rich articles within it, as the
+possible belongings of the beautiful woman he adored; he stood and
+pictured her as coming into the door as his wife, and before he realized
+what he was doing, had planned certain changes he would make in his home
+to adapt it to the wants of her young and growing mind, when with a
+strange suddenness, the door upon which he was gazing flew back, and
+Bertram Sylvester entered just as he had come from the street. He looked
+so haggard, so wild, so little the picture of himself as he ventured
+forth a couple of hours before, that Mr. Sylvester started, and
+forgetting his happiness in his alarm, asked in a tone of dismay:</p>
+
+<p>"What has happened? Has Miss Stuyvesant&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Bertram's hand went up as if his uncle had touched him upon a festering
+wound. "Don't!" gasped he, and advancing to the table, sat down and
+buried his face for a moment in his arms, then rose, and summoning up a
+certain manly dignity that became him well, met Mr. Sylvester's eye with
+forced calmness, and inquired:</p>
+
+<p>"Did you know there was a thief in our bank, Uncle Edward?"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXXV" id="XXXV"></a>XXXV.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE FALLING OF THE SWORD.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">"Foul deeds will rise,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though all the world o'erwhelm them, to men's eyes."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Hamlet.</span><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester towered on his nephew with an expression such as few men
+had ever seen even on his powerful and commanding face.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?" asked he, and his voice rang like a clarion through
+the room.</p>
+
+<p>Bertram trembled and for a moment stood aghast, the ready flush bathing
+his brow with burning crimson. "I mean," stammered he, with difficulty
+recovering himself, "that when Mr. Stuyvesant came to open his private
+box in the bank to-day, that he not only found its lock had been
+tampered with, but that money and valuables to the amount of some twelve
+hundred dollars were missing from among its contents."</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>The expression which had made Mr. Sylvester's brow so terrible had
+vanished, but his wonder remained.</p>
+
+<p>"It is impossible," he declared. "Our vaults are too well watched for
+any such thing to occur. He has made some mistake; a robbery of that
+nature could not take place without detection."</p>
+
+<p>"It would seem not, and yet the fact remains. Mr. Stuyvesant himself
+informed me of it, to-night. He is not a careless man, nor reckless in
+his statements. Some one has robbed the bank and it remains with us to
+find out who."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester, who had been standing all this while, sat down like a man
+dazed, the wild lost look on Bertram's face daunting him with a fearful
+premonition. "There are but four men who have access to the vault where
+the boxes are kept," said he: then quickly, "Why did Mr. Stuyvesant wait
+till to-night to speak to you? Why did he not notify us at once of a
+loss so important for us to know?"</p>
+
+<p>The flush on Bertram's brow slowly subsided, giving way to a steady
+pallor. "He waited to be sure," said he. "He had a memorandum at home
+which he desired to consult; he was not ready to make any rash
+statement: he is a thinking man and more considerate than many of his
+friends are apt to imagine. If the lock had not been found open he would
+have thought with you that he had made some mistake; if he had not
+missed from the box some of its contents, he would have considered the
+condition of the lock the result of some oversight on his own part or of
+some mistake on the part of another, but the two facts together were
+damning and could force upon him but one conclusion. Uncle," said he,
+with a straightforward look into Mr. Sylvester's countenance, "Mr.
+Stuyvesant knows as well as we do who are the men who have access to the
+vaults. As you say, the opening of a box during business hours and the
+abstracting from it of papers or valuables by any one who has not such
+access, would be impossible. Only Hopgood, you and myself, and possibly
+Folger, could find either time or opportunity for such a piece of work;
+while after business hours, the same four, minus Folger who contents
+himself with knowing the combination of the inner safe, could open the
+vaults even in case of an emergency. Now of the four named, two are
+above suspicion. I might almost say three, for Hopgood is not a man it
+is easy to mistrust. One alone, then, of all the men whom Mr. Stuyvesant
+is in the habit of meeting at the Bank, is open to a doubt. A young man,
+uncle, whose rising has been rapid, whose hopes have been lofty, whose
+life may or may not be known to himself as pure, but which in the eyes
+of a matured man of the world might easily be questioned, just because
+its hopes are so lofty and its means for attaining them so limited."</p>
+
+<p>"Bertram!" sprang from Mr. Sylvester's white lips.</p>
+
+<p>But the young man raised his hand with almost a commanding gesture.
+"Hush," said he, "no sympathy or surprise. Facts like these have to be
+met with silent endurance, as we walk up to the mouth of the cannon we
+cannot evade, or bare our breast to the thrust of the bayonet gleaming
+before our eyes.&mdash;I would not have you think," he somewhat hurriedly
+pursued, "that Mr. Stuyvesant insinuated anything of the kind, but his
+daughter was not present in the parlor, and&mdash;" A sigh, almost a gasp
+finished the sentence.</p>
+
+<p>"Bertram!" again exclaimed his uncle, this time with some authority in
+his voice. "The shock of this discovery has unnerved you. You act like a
+man capable of being suspected. That is simply preposterous. One half
+hour's conversation with Mr. Stuyvesant on my part will convince him, if
+he needs convincing, which I do not believe, that whoever is unworthy of
+trust in our bank, you are not the man."</p>
+
+<p>Bertram raised his head with a gleam of hope, but instantly dropped it
+again with a despairing gesture that made his uncle frown.</p>
+
+<p>"I did not know that you were inclined to be so pusillanimous," cried
+Mr. Sylvester; "and in presence of a foe so unsubstantial as this you
+have conjured up almost out of nothing. If the bank has been robbed, it
+cannot be difficult to find the thief. I will order in detectives
+to-morrow. We will hold a board of inquiry, and the culprit shall be
+unmasked; that is, if he is one of the employees of the bank, which it
+is very hard to believe."</p>
+
+<p>"Very, and which, if true, would make it unadvisable in us to give the
+alarm that any public measures taken could not fail to do."</p>
+
+<p>"The inquiry shall be private, and the detectives, men who can be
+trusted to keep their business secret."</p>
+
+<p>"How can any inquiry be private? Uncle, we are treading on delicate
+ground, and have a task before us requiring great tact and discretion.
+If the safe had only been assaulted, or there were any evidences of
+burglary to be seen! But we surely should have heard of it from some one
+of the men, if anything unusual had been observed. Hopgood would have
+spoken at least."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Hopgood would have spoken."</p>
+
+<p>The tone in which this was uttered made Bertram look up. "You agree with
+me, then, that Hopgood is absolutely to be relied upon?"</p>
+
+<p>"Absolutely." A faint flush on Mr. Sylvester's face lent force to this
+statement.</p>
+
+<p>"He could not be beguiled or forced by another man to reveal the
+combination, or to relax his watch over the vaults entrusted to his
+keeping?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"He is alone with the vaults where the boxes are kept for an hour or two
+in the early morning!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and has been for three years. Hopgood is honesty itself."</p>
+
+<p>"And so are Folger and Jessup and Watson," exclaimed Bertram
+emphatically.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," his uncle admitted, with equal emphasis.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a mystery," Bertram declared; "and one I fear that will undo me."</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense!" broke forth somewhat impatiently from Mr. Sylvester's lips;
+"there is no reason at this time for any such conclusion. If there is a
+thief in the bank he can be found; if the robbery was committed by an
+outsider, he may still be discovered. If he is not, if the mystery rests
+forever unexplained, you have your character, Bertram, a character as
+spotless as that of any of your fellows, whom we regard as above
+suspicion. A man is not going to be condemned by such a judge of human
+nature as Mr. Stuyvesant, just because a mysterious crime has been
+committed, to which the circumstances of his position alone render it
+possible for him to be party. You might as well say that Jessup and
+Folger and Watson&mdash;yes, or myself, would in that case lose his
+confidence. They are in the bank, and are constantly in the habit of
+going to the vaults."</p>
+
+<p>"None of those gentlemen want to marry his daughter," murmured Bertram.
+"It is not the director I fear, but the father. I have so little to
+bring her. Only my character and my devotion."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well, pluck up courage, my boy. I have hopes yet that the whole
+matter can be referred to some mistake easily explainable when once it
+is discovered. Mistakes, even amongst the honest and the judicious, are
+not so uncommon as one is apt to imagine. I, myself, have known of one
+which if providence had not interfered, might have led to doubts
+seemingly as inconsistent as yours. To-morrow we will consider the
+question at length. To-night&mdash;Well, Bertram, what is it?"</p>
+
+<p>The young man started and dropped his eyes, which during the last words
+of his uncle had been fixed upon his face with strange and penetrating
+inquiry. "Nothing," said he, "that is, nothing more;" and rose as if to
+leave.</p>
+
+<p>But Mr. Sylvester put out his hand and stopped him. "There <i>is</i>
+something," said he. "I have seen it in your face ever since you entered
+this room. What is it?"</p>
+
+<p>The young man drew a deep breath and leaned back in his chair. Mr.
+Sylvester watched him with growing pallor. "You are right," murmured his
+nephew at last; "there is something more, and it is only justice that
+you should hear it. I have had two adventures to-night; one quite apart
+from my conversation with Mr. Stuyvesant. Heaven that watches above us,
+has seen fit to accumulate difficulties in my path, and this last,
+perhaps, is the least explainable and the hardest to encounter."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you allude to?" cried his uncle, imperatively; "I have had an
+evening of too much agitation to endure suspense with equanimity.
+Explain yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"It will not take long," said the other; "a few words will reveal to you
+the position in which I stand. Let me relate it in the form of a
+narrative. You know what a dark portion of the block that is in which
+Mr. Stuyvesant's house is situated. A man might hide in any of the areas
+along there, without being observed by you unless he made some sound to
+attract your attention. I was, therefore, more alarmed than surprised
+when, shortly after leaving Mr. Stuyvesant's dwelling, I felt a hand
+laid on my shoulder, and turning, beheld a dark figure at my side, of an
+appearance calculated to arouse any man's apprehension. He was tall,
+unkempt, with profuse beard, and eyes that glared even in the darkness
+of his surroundings, with a feverish intensity. 'You are Mr. Sylvester,'
+said he, with a look of a wild animal ready to pounce upon his prey.
+'Yes,' said I, involuntarily stepping back, 'I am Mr. Sylvester.' 'I
+want to speak to you,' exclaimed he, with a rush of words as though a
+stream had broken loose; 'now, at once, on business that concerns you.
+Will you listen?'</p>
+
+<p>"I thought of the only business that seemed to concern me then, and
+starting still farther back, surveyed him with surprise. 'I don't know
+you,' said I; 'what business can you have with me?' 'Will you step into
+some place where it is warm and find out?' he asked, shivering in his
+thin cloak, but not abating a jot of his eagerness. 'Go on before me,'
+said I, 'and we will see.' He complied at once, and in this way we
+reached Beale's Coffee-Room, where we went in. 'Now,' said I, 'out with
+what you have to say and be quick about it. I have no time to listen to
+nonsense and no heart to attend to it.' His eye brightened; he did not
+cast a glance at the smoking victuals about him, though I knew he was
+hungry as a dog. 'It is no nonsense,' said he, 'that I have to
+communicate to you.' And then I saw he had once been a gentleman. 'For
+two years and a half have I been searching for you,' he went on, 'in
+order that I might recall to your mind a little incident. You remember
+the afternoon of February, the twenty-fifth, two years ago?'</p>
+
+<p>"'No,' said I, in great surprise, for his whole countenance was flushed
+with expectancy. 'What was there about that day that I should remember
+it?' He smiled and bent his face nearer to mine. 'Don't you recollect a
+little conversation you had in a small eating-house in Dey Street, with
+a gentleman of a high-sounding voice to whom you were obliged
+continually to say 'hush!'" I stared at the man, as you may believe,
+with some notion of his being a wandering lunatic. 'I have never taken a
+meal in any eating-house in Dey Street,' I declared, motioning to a
+waiter to approach us. The man observing it, turned swiftly upon me. 'Do
+you think I care for any such petty <i>fuss</i> as that?' asked he,
+indicating the rather slightly built man I had called to my rescue,
+while he covertly studied my face to observe the effect of his words.</p>
+
+<p>"I started. I could not help it; this use of an expression almost
+peculiar to myself, assured me that the man knew me better than I
+supposed. Involuntarily I waved the waiter back and turned upon the man
+with an inquiring look.</p>
+
+<p>"'I thought you might consider it worth your while to listen,' said he,
+smiling with the air of one who has or thinks he has a grip upon you.
+Then suddenly, 'You are a rich man, are you not? a proud man and an
+honored one. You hold a position of trust and are considered worthy of
+it; how would you like men to know that you once committed a mean and
+dirty trick; that those white hands that have the handling of such large
+funds at present, have in days gone by been known to dip into such funds
+a little too deeply; that, in short, you, Bertram Sylvester, cashier of
+the Madison Bank, and looking forward to no one knows what future honors
+and emoluments, have been in a position better suited to a felon's cell
+than the trusted agent of a great and wealthy corporation?'</p>
+
+<p>"I did not collar him; I was too dumb-stricken for any such display of
+indignation. I simply stared, feeling somewhat alarmed as I remembered
+my late interview with Mr. Stuyvesant, and considered the possibility of
+a plot being formed against me. He smiled again at the effect he had
+produced, and drew me into a corner of the room where we sat down. 'I am
+going to tell you a story,' said he, 'just to show you what a good
+memory I have. One day, a year and more ago, I sauntered into an
+eating-house on Dey Street. I have not always been what you see me now,
+though to tell you the truth, I was but little better off at the time of
+which I speak, except that I did have a dime or so in my pocket, and
+could buy a meal of victuals&mdash;if I wished.' And his eyes roamed for the
+first time to the tables stretching out before him down the room. 'The
+proprietor was an acquaintance of mine, and finding I was sleepy as well
+as hungry, let me go into a certain dark pantry, where I curled up amid
+all sorts of old rubbish and went to sleep. I was awakened by the sound
+of voices talking very earnestly. The closet in which I was hidden was a
+temporary affair built up of loose boards, and the talk of a couple of
+men seated against it was easy enough to be heard. Do you want to know
+what that conversation was?'</p>
+
+<p>"My curiosity was roused by this time and I said yes. If this was a plot
+to extort money from me, it was undeniably better for me to know upon
+just what foundations it rested. I thought the man looked surprised, but
+with an aplomb difficult to believe assumed, he went on to say, 'The
+voices gave me my only means of judging of the age, character, or
+position of the men conversing, but I have a quick ear, and my memory is
+never at fault. From the slow, broken, nervously anxious tone of one of
+the men, I made up my mind that he was elderly, hard up, and not over
+scrupulous; the other voice was that of a gentleman, musical and yet
+pronounced, and not easily forgotten, as you see, sir. The first words I
+heard aroused me and convinced me it was worth while to listen. They
+were uttered by the gentleman. 'You come to me with such a dirty piece
+of business! What right have you to suppose I would hearken to you for
+an instant!' 'The right,' returned the other, 'of knowing you have not
+been above doing dirty work in your life time.' The partition creaked at
+that, as though one of the two had started forward, but I didn't hear
+any reply made to this strange accusation. 'Do you think,' the same
+voice went on, 'that I do not know where the five thousand dollars came
+from which you gave me for that first speculation? I knew it when I took
+it, and if I hadn't been sure the operation would turn out fortunately,
+you would never have been the man you are to-day. It came out of funds
+entrusted to you, and was not the gift of a relative as you would have
+made me believe.' 'Good heaven!' exclaimed the other, after a silence
+that was very expressive just then and there, 'and you let me&mdash;' 'Oh we
+won't go into that,' interrupted the less cultivated voice. 'All you
+wanted was a start, to make you the successful man you have since
+become. I never worried much about morals, and I don't worry about them
+now, only when you say you won't do a thing likely to make my fortune,
+just because it is not entirely free from reproach, I say, remember what
+I know about you, and don't talk virtue to me.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I am rightly punished,' came from the other, in a tone that proved him
+to be a man more ready to do a wrong thing than to face the accusation
+of it. 'If I ever did what you suppose, the repentance that has
+embittered all my success, and the position in which you have this day
+placed me, is surely an ample atonement.' 'Will you do what I request?'
+inquired the other, giving little heed to this expression of misery, of
+which I on the contrary took special heed. 'No,' was the energetic
+reply; 'because I am not spotless it is no sign that I will wade into
+filth. I will give you money as I have done scores of times before, but
+I will lend my hand to no scheme which is likely to throw discredit on
+me or mine. Were you not connected to me in the way in which you are&mdash;'
+'You would pursue the scheme,' interrupted the other; 'it is because you
+know that I cannot talk, that you dare repudiate it. Well I will go to
+one&mdash;' 'You shall not,' came in short quick tones, just such tones as
+you used to me, sir, when we first entered this room. 'You shall leave
+the country before you do anything more, or say anything more, to
+compromise me or yourself. I may have done wrong in my day, but that is
+no reason why I should suffer for it at your hands, tempter of youth,
+and deceiver of your own flesh and blood! <i>You</i> shall never bring back
+those days to me again; they are buried, and have been stamped out of
+sight by many an honest dealing since, and many as I trust before God,
+good and sterling action. I have long since begun a new life; a life of
+honor, and pure, if successful, dealing. Not only my own happiness, but
+that of one who should be considered by you, depends upon my maintaining
+that life to the end, unshadowed by unholy remembrances, and unharrassed
+by any such proffers as you have presumed to make to me here to-day. If
+you want a few thousand dollars to leave the country, say so, but never
+again presume to offend my ears, or those of any one else we may know,
+with any such words as you have made use of to-day.' And the spiritless
+creature subsided, sir, and said no more to that rich, honored, and
+successful man who was so sensitive to even the imputation of guilt.</p>
+
+<p>"But I am not spiritless and just where he dropped the affair, I took it
+up. 'Here is a chance for me to turn an honest penny,' thought I, and
+with a deliberation little to be expected of me, perhaps, set myself to
+spot that man and make the most out of the matter I could. Unfortunately
+I lost the opportunity of seeing his face. I was too anxious to catch
+every word they uttered, to quit my place of concealment till their
+conversation was concluded, and then I was too late to be sure which of
+the many men leaving the building before me was the one I was after. The
+waiters were too busy to talk, and the proprietor himself had taken no
+notice. Happily as I have before said, I never forget voices; moreover
+one of the two speakers had made use of a phrase peculiar enough to
+serve as a clue to his identity. It was in answer to some parting threat
+of the older man, and will remind you of an expression uttered by
+yourself an hour or so ago. 'Do you suppose I will let such a little
+fuss as that deter me?' It was the cue to his speech, by which I
+intended to hunt out my man from amongst the rich, the trusted and the
+influential persons of this city, and when found, to hold him.'</p>
+
+
+<p>"'And you think you have done this?' said I, too conscious of the
+possible net about my feet to be simply angry. 'I know it,' said he;
+'every word you have uttered since we have been here has made me more
+and more certain of the fact. I could swear to your voice, and as to
+your use of that tell-tale word, it was not till I thought to inquire of
+a certain wide-awake fellow down town, who amongst our business men were
+in the habit of using that expression, and was told Mr. Sylvester of the
+Madison Bank, that I was enabled to track you. I know I have got my hand
+on my man at last and&mdash;' He looked down at his thread-bare coat and
+around at the tables with their smoking dishes, and left me to draw my
+own conclusion.</p>
+
+<p>"Uncle, there are crises in life which no former experience teaches you
+how to meet. I had arrived at such a one. Perhaps you can understand me
+when I say I was well nigh appalled. Denial of what was imputed to me
+might be wisdom and might not. I felt the coil of a deadly serpent about
+me, and knew not whether it was best to struggle or to simply submit.
+The man noted the effect he had made and complacently folded his arms.
+He was of a nervous organization and possessed an eye like a hungry
+wolf, but he could wait. 'This is a pretty story,' said I at last, and I
+reject it altogether. 'I am an honest man and have always been so; you
+will have to give up your hopes of making anything out of me.' 'Then you
+are willing,' said he, 'that I should repeat this story to one of the
+directors of your bank, whom I know?'</p>
+
+<p>"I looked at him; he returned my gaze with a cold nonchalence more
+suggestive of a deep laid purpose, than even his previous glance of
+feverish determination. I immediately let my eye run over his scanty
+clothing and loose flowing hair and beard. 'Yes,' said I, with as much
+sarcasm as I knew how to assume, 'if you dare risk the consequences, I
+think I may.' He at once drew himself up. 'You think,' said he, 'that
+you have a common-place adventurer to deal with; that my appearance is
+going to testify in your favor; that you have but to deny any accusation
+which such a hungry-looking, tattered wretch as I, may make, and that I
+shall be ignominiously kicked out of the presence into which I have
+forced myself; that in short I have been building my castle in the air.
+Mr. Sylvester, I am a poor devil but I am no fool. When I left Dey
+Street on the twenty-fifth of February two years ago, it was with a
+sealed paper in my pocket, in which was inscribed all that I had heard
+on that day. This I took to a lawyer's office, and not being, as I have
+before said, quite as impecunious in those days as at present, succeeded
+in getting the lawyer, whom I took care should be a most respectable
+man, to draw up a paper to the effect that I had entrusted him with this
+statement&mdash;of whose contents he however knew nothing&mdash;on such a day and
+hour, to which paper a gentleman then present, consented at my
+respectful solicitation to affix his name as witness, which gentleman,
+strange to say, has since proved to be a director of the bank of which
+you are the present cashier, and consequently the very man of all others
+best adapted to open the paper whose seal you profess to be so willing
+to see broken.'</p>
+
+<p>"'His name!' It was all that I could say. 'Stuyvesant,' cried the man,
+fixing me with his eye in which I in vain sought for some signs of
+secret doubt or unconscious wavering. I rose; the position in which I
+found myself was too overwhelming for instant decision. I needed time
+for reflection, possibly advice&mdash;from you. A resolution to brave the
+devil must be founded on something more solid than impulse, to hold its
+own unmoved. I only stopped to utter one final word and ask one leading
+question. 'You are a smart man,' said I, 'and you are also a villain.
+Your smartness would give you food and drink, if you exercised it in a
+manner worthy of a man, but your villainy if persisted in, will
+eventually rob you of both, and bring you to the prison's cell or the
+hangman's gallows. As for myself, I persist in saying that I am now and
+always have been an honest man, whatever you may have overheard or find
+yourself capable of swearing to. Yet a lie is an inconvenient thing to
+have uttered against you at any time, and I may want to see you again;
+if I do, where shall I find you?' He thrust his hand into his pocket and
+drew out a small slip of folded paper, which he passed to me with a bow
+that Chesterfield would have admired. 'You will find it written within,'
+said he 'I shall look for you any time to-morrow, up to seven o'clock.
+At that hour the lawyer of whom I have spoken, sends the statement which
+he has in his possession to Mr. Stuyvesant.' I nodded my assent, and he
+moved slowly towards the door. As he did so, his eyes fell upon a roll
+of bread lying on a counter. I at once stepped forward and bought it.
+Vile as he was, and deadly as was the snare he contemplated drawing
+about me, I could not see that wolfish look of hunger, and not offer him
+something to ease it. He took the loaf from my hands and bit greedily
+into it but suddenly paused, and shook his head with a look like
+self-reproach, and thrusting the loaf under his arm, turned towards the
+door with the quick action of one escaping. Instantly, and before he was
+out of sight or hearing, I drew the attention of the proprietor to him.
+'Do you see that man?' I asked. 'He has been attempting a system of
+blackmail upon me.' And satisfied with thus having provided a witness
+able of identifying the man, in case of an emergency, I left the
+building.</p>
+
+<p>"And now you know it all," concluded he; and the silence that followed
+the utterance of those simple words, was a silence that could be felt.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>"Bertram?"</p>
+
+<p>The young man started from his fixed position, and his eyes slowly
+traversed toward his uncle.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you that slip of paper which the man gave you before departing?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said he.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me have it, if you please."</p>
+
+<p>The young man with an agitated look, plunged his hand into his pocket,
+drew out the small note and laid it on the table between them. Mr.
+Sylvester let it lie, and again there was a silence.</p>
+
+<p>"If this had happened at any other time," Bertram pursued, "one could
+afford to let the man have his say; but now, just as this other mystery
+has come up&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe in submitting to blackmail," came from his uncle in
+short, quick tones.</p>
+
+<p>Bertram gave a start. "You then advise me to leave him alone?" asked he,
+with unmistakable emotion.</p>
+
+<p>His uncle dropped the hand which till now he had held before his face,
+and hastily confronted his nephew. "You will have enough to do to attend
+to the other matter without bestowing any time or attention upon this.
+The man that robbed Mr. Stuyvesant's box, can be found and must. It is
+the one indispensable business to which I now delegate you. No amount of
+money and no amount of diligence is to be spared. I rely on you to carry
+the affair to a successful termination. Will you undertake the task?"</p>
+
+<p>"Can you ask?" murmured the young man, with a shocked look at his
+uncle's changed expression.</p>
+
+<p>"As to this other matter, we will let it rest for to-night. To-morrow's
+revelations may be more favorable than we expect. At all events let us
+try and get a little rest now; I am sure we are both in a condition to
+need it."</p>
+
+<p>Bertram rose. "I am at your command," said he, and moved to go. Suddenly
+he turned, and the two men stood face to face. "I have no wish," pursued
+he, "to be relieved of my burden at the expense of any one else. If it
+is to be borne by any one, let it be carried by him who is young and
+stalwart enough to sustain it." And his hand went out involuntarily
+towards his uncle.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester took that hand and eyed his nephew long and earnestly.
+Bertram thought he was going to speak, and nerved himself to meet with
+fortitude whatever might be said. But the lips which Mr. Sylvester had
+opened, closed firmly, and contenting himself with a mere wring of his
+nephew's hand, he allowed him to go. The slip of paper remained upon the
+table unopened.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>That night as Paula lay slumbering on her pillow, a sound passed through
+the house. It was like a quick irrepressible cry of desolation, and the
+poor child hearing it, started, thinking her name had been called. But
+when she listened, all was still, and believing she had dreamed, she
+turned her face upon her pillow, and softly murmuring the name that was
+dearest to her in all the world, fell again into a peaceful sleep.</p>
+
+<p>But he whose voice had uttered that cry in the dreary emptiness of the
+great parlors below, slept not.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXXVI" id="XXXVI"></a>XXXVI.</h2>
+
+<h3>MORNING.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Two maidens by one fountain's joyous brink,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And one was sad and one had cause for sadness."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>Cicely Stuyvesant waiting for her father at the foot of the stairs, on
+the morning after these occurrences, was a pretty and a touching
+spectacle. She had not slept very well the night before, and her brow
+showed signs of trouble and so did her trembling lips. She held in her
+hand a letter which she twirled about with very unsteady fingers. The
+morning was bright, but she did not seem to observe it; the air was
+fresh, but it did not seem to invigorate her. A rose-leaf of care lay on
+the tremulous waters of her soul, and her sensitive nature thrilled
+under it.</p>
+
+<p>"Why does he not come?" she whispered, looking again at the letter's
+inscription.</p>
+
+<p>It was in Mr. Sylvester's handwriting, and ought not to have occasioned
+her any uneasiness, but her father had intimated a wish the night
+before, that she should not come down into the parlor if Bertram called,
+and&mdash;Her thoughts paused there, but she was anxious about the letter and
+wished her father would hasten.</p>
+
+<p>Let us look at the little lady. She had been so bright and lovesome
+yesterday at this time. Never a maiden in all this great city of ours
+had shown a sweeter or more etherial smile. At once radiant and
+reserved, she flashed on the eye and trembled from the grasp like some
+dainty tropical creature as yet unused to our stranger clime. Her father
+had surveyed her with satisfaction, and her lover&mdash;oh, that we were all
+young again to experience that leap of the heart with which youth meets
+and recognizes the sweet perfections of the woman it adores! But a mist
+had obscured the radiance of her aspect, and she looks very sad as she
+stands in her father's hall this morning, leaning her cheek against the
+banister, and thinking of the night when three years ago, she lingered
+in that very spot, and watched the form of the young musician go by her
+and disappear in the darkness of the night, as she then thought forever.
+Joy had come to her by such slow steps and after such long waiting. Hope
+had burst upon her so brilliantly, and with such a speedy promise of
+culmination. She thrilled as she thought how short a time ago it was,
+since she leaned upon Bertram's arm and dropped her eyes before his
+gaze.</p>
+
+<p>The appearance of her father at length aroused her. Flushing slightly,
+she held the letter towards him.</p>
+
+<p>"A letter for you, papa. I thought you might like to read it before you
+went out."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Stuyvesant, who for an hour or more had been frowning over his
+morning paper with a steady pertinacity that left more than the usual
+amount of wrinkles upon his brow, started at the wistful tone of this
+announcement from his daughter's lips, and taking the letter from her
+hand, stepped into the parlor to peruse it. It was, as the handwriting
+declared, from Mr. Sylvester, and ran thus:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"<span class="smcap">Dear Mr. Stuyvesant</span>:</p>
+
+<p>"I have heard of your loss and am astounded. Though the Bank is
+not liable for any accident to trusts of this nature, both
+Bertram and myself are determined to make every effort
+possible, to detect and punish the man who either through our
+negligence, or by means of the opportunities afforded him under
+our present system of management, has been able to commit this
+robbery upon your effects. We therefore request that you will
+meet us at the bank this morning at as early an hour as
+practicable, there to assist us in making such inquiries and
+instituting such measures, as may be considered necessary to
+the immediate attainment of the object desired.</p>
+
+<p>"Respectfully yours,</p>
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">Edward Sylvester</span>."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>"Is it anything serious?" asked his daughter, coming into the parlor and
+looking up into his face with a strange wistfulness he could not fail to
+remark.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Stuyvesant gave her a quick glance, shook his head with some
+nervousness and hastily pocketed the epistle. "Business," mumbled he,
+"business." And ignoring the sigh that escaped her lips, began to make
+his preparations for going at once down town.</p>
+
+<p>He was always an awkward man at such matters, and it was her habit to
+afford him what assistance she could. This she now did, lending her hand
+to help him on with his overcoat, rising on tip-toe to tie his muffler,
+and bending her bright head to see that his galoshes were properly
+fastened; her charming face with its far-away look, shining strangely
+sweet in the dim hall, in contrast with his severe and antiquated
+countenance.</p>
+
+<p>He watched her carefully but with seeming indifference till all was done
+and he stood ready to depart, then in an awkward enough way&mdash;he was not
+accustomed to bestow endearments&mdash;drew her to him and kissed her on the
+forehead; after which he turned about and departed without a word to
+season or explain this unwonted manifestation of tenderness.</p>
+
+<p>A kiss was an unusual occurrence in that confiding but undemonstrative
+household, and the little maiden trembled. "Something is wrong," she
+murmured half to herself, half to the dim vista of the lonely parlor,
+where but a night or so ago had stood the beloved form of him, who, bury
+the thought as she would, had become, if indeed he had not always been,
+the beginning and the ending of all her maidenly dreams: "what? what?"
+And her young heart swelled painfully as she realized like many a woman
+before her, that whatever might be her doubts, fears, anguish or
+suspense, nothing remained for her but silence and a tedious waiting for
+others to recognize her misery and speak.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile how was it with her dearest friend and confident, Paula? The
+morning, as I have already declared, was bright and exceptionally
+beautiful. Sunshine filled the air and freshness invigorated the breeze.
+Cicely was blind to it all, but as Paula looked from her window
+preparatory to going below, a close observer might have perceived that
+the serenity of the cloudless sky was reflected in her beaming eyes,
+that peace brooded above her soul and ruled her tender spirit. She had
+held a long conversation with Miss Belinda, she had prayed, she had
+slept and she had risen with a confirmed love in her heart for the man
+who was at once the admiration of her eyes and the well-spring of her
+deepest thoughts and wildest longings. "I will show him so plainly what
+the angels have told me," whispered she, "that he will have no need to
+ask." And she wound her long locks into the coil that she knew he best
+liked and fixed a rose at her throat, and so with a smile on her lip
+went softly down stairs. O the timid eager step of maidenhood when
+drawing toward the shrine of all it adores! Could those halls and lofty
+corridors have whispered their secret, what a story they would have told
+of beating heart and tremulous glance, eager longings, and maidenly
+shrinkings, as the lovely form, swaying with a thousand hopes and fears,
+glided from landing to landing, carrying with it love and joy and peace.
+And trust! As she neared the bronze image that had always awakened such
+vague feelings of repugnance on her part, and found its terrors gone and
+its smile assuring, she realized that her breast held nothing but faith
+in him, who may have sinned in his youth, but who had repented in his
+manhood, and now stood clear and noble in her eyes. The assurance was
+too sweet, the flood of feeling too overwhelming. With a quick glance
+around her, she stopped and flung her arms about the hitherto repellant
+bronze, pressing her young breast against the cold metal with a fervor
+that ought to have hallowed its sensuous mould forever. Then she hurried
+down.</p>
+
+<p>Her first glance into the dining-room brought her a disappointment. Mr.
+Sylvester had already breakfasted and gone; only Aunt Belinda sat at the
+table. With a slightly troubled brow, Paula advanced to her own place at
+the board.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Sylvester has urgent business on hand to-day," quoth her aunt. "I
+met him going out just as I came down."</p>
+
+<p>Her look lingered on Paula as she said this, and if it had not been for
+the servants, she would doubtless have given utterance to some further
+expression on the matter, for she had been greatly struck by Mr.
+Sylvester's appearance and the sad, firm, almost lofty expression of his
+eye, as it met hers in their hurried conversation.</p>
+
+<p>"He is a very busy man," returned Paula simply, and was silent, struck
+by some secret dread she could not have explained. Suddenly she rose;
+she had found an envelope beneath her plate, addressed to herself. It
+was bulky and evidently contained a key. Hastening behind the curtains
+of the window, she opened it. The key was to that secret study of his at
+the top of the house, which no one but himself had ever been seen to
+enter, and the words that enwrapped it were these:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"If I send you no word to the contrary, and if I do not come
+back by seven o'clock this evening, go to the room of which
+this is the key, open my desk, and read what I have prepared
+for your eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"E. S."</p></blockquote>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXXVII" id="XXXVII"></a>XXXVII.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE OPINION OF A CERTAIN NOTED DETECTIVE.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i12">"But still there clung<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One hope, like a keen sword on starting threads uphung."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Revolt of Islam.</span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Facts are stubborn things."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Elliott.</span><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>Meanwhile Mr. Stuyvesant hasted on his way down town and ere long made
+his appearance at the bank. He found Mr. Sylvester and Bertram seated in
+the directors' room, with a portly smooth-faced man whose appearance was
+at once strange and vaguely familiar.</p>
+
+<p>"A detective, sir," explained Mr. Sylvester rising with forced
+composure; "a man upon whose judgment I have been told we may rely. Mr.
+Gryce, Mr. Stuyvesant."</p>
+
+<p>The latter gentleman nodded, cast a glance around the room, during which
+his eye rested for a moment on Bertram's somewhat pale countenance, and
+nervously took a seat.</p>
+
+<p>"A mysterious piece of business, this," came from the detective's lips
+in an easy tone, calculated to relieve the tension of embarrassment into
+which the entrance of Mr. Stuyvesant seemed to have thrown all parties.
+"What were the numbers of the bonds found missing, if you please?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Stuyvesant told him.</p>
+
+<p>"You are positively assured these bonds were all in the box when you
+last locked it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am."</p>
+
+<p>"When was that, sir? On what day and at what hour of the day, if you
+please?"</p>
+
+<p>"Tuesday, at about three o'clock, I should say."</p>
+
+<p>"The box was locked by you? There is no doubt about that fact?"</p>
+
+<p>"None in the least."</p>
+
+<p>"Where were you standing at the time?"</p>
+
+<p>"In front of the vault door. I had taken out the box myself as I am in
+the habit of doing, and had stepped there to put it back."</p>
+
+<p>"Was any one near you then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. The cashier was at his desk and the teller had occasion to go to
+the safe while I stood there. I do not remember seeing any one else in
+my immediate vicinity."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you remember ever going to the vaults and not finding some one near
+you at the time or at least in full view of your movements?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"I have informed Mr. Gryce," interposed Mr. Sylvester, with a ring in
+his deep voice that made Mr. Stuyvesant start, "that our chief desire at
+present is to have his judgment upon the all important question, as to
+whether this theft was committed by a stranger, or one in the employ and
+consequently in the confidence of the bank."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Stuyvesant bowed, every wrinkle in his face manifesting itself with
+startling distinctness as he slowly moved his eyes and fixed them on the
+inscrutable countenance of the detective.</p>
+
+<p>"You agree then with these gentlemen," continued the latter, who had a
+way of seeming more interested in everything and everybody present than
+the person he was addressing, "that it would be difficult if not
+impossible for any one unconnected with the bank, to approach the vaults
+during business hours and abstract anything from them without
+detection?"</p>
+
+<p>"And do these gentleman both assert that?" queried Mr. Stuyvesant, with
+a sharp look from uncle to nephew.</p>
+
+<p>"I believe they do," replied the detective, as both the gentlemen bowed,
+Bertram with an uncontrollable quiver of his lip, and Mr. Sylvester with
+a deepening of the lines about his mouth, which may or may not have been
+noticed by this man who appeared to observe nothing.</p>
+
+<p>"I should be loth to conclude that the robbery was committed by any one
+but a stranger," remarked Mr. Stuyvesant; "but if these gentlemen concur
+in the statement you have just made, I am bound to acknowledge that I do
+not myself see how the theft could have been perpetrated by an outsider.
+Had the box itself been missing, it would be different. I remember my
+old friend Mr. A&mdash;, the president of the police department, telling me
+of a case where a box containing securities to the amount of two hundred
+thousand dollars, was abstracted in full daylight from the vaults of one
+of our largest banks; an act requiring such daring, the directors for a
+long time refused to believe it possible, until a detective one day
+showed them another box of theirs which he had succeeded in abstracting
+in the same way.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> But the vaults in that instance were in a less
+conspicuous portion of the bank than ours, besides to approach an open
+vault, snatch a box from it and escape, is a much simpler matter than to
+remain long enough to open a box and choose from its contents such
+papers as appeared most marketable. If a regular thief could do such a
+thing, it does not seem probable that he would. Nevertheless the most
+acute judgment is often at fault in these matters, and I do not pretend
+to have formed an opinion."</p>
+
+<p>The detective who had listened to these words with marked attention,
+bowed his concurrence and asked if the bonds mentioned by Mr. Stuyvesant
+were all that had been found missing from the bank. If any of the other
+boxes had been opened, or if the contents of the safe itself had ever
+been tampered with.</p>
+
+<p>"The contents of the safe are all correct," came in deep tones from Mr.
+Sylvester. "Mr. Folger, my nephew and myself went through them this
+morning. As for the boxes I cannot say, many of them belong to persons
+travelling; some of them have been left here by trustees of estates,
+consequently often lie for weeks in the vaults untouched. If however any
+of them have been opened, we ought to be able to see it. Would you like
+an examination made of their condition?"</p>
+
+<p>The detective nodded.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester at once turned to Mr. Stuyvesant. "May I ask you to
+mention what officer of the bank you would like to have go to the
+vaults?"</p>
+
+<p>That gentleman started, looked uneasily about, but meeting Bertram's
+eye, nervously dropped his own and muttered the name of Folger.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester suppressed a sigh, sent for the paying-teller, and
+informed him of their wishes. He at once proceeded to the vaults. While
+he was gone, Mr. Gryce took the opportunity to make the following
+remark.</p>
+
+<p>"Gentlemen," said he, "let us understand ourselves. What you want of me,
+is to tell you whether this robbery has been committed by a stranger or
+by some one in your employ. Now to decide this question it is necessary
+for me to ask first, whether you have ever had reason to doubt the
+honesty of any person connected with the bank?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," came from Mr. Sylvester with sharp and shrill distinctness. "Since
+I have had the honor of conducting the affairs of this institution, I
+have made it my business to observe and note the bearing and character
+of each and every man employed under me, and I believe them all to be honest."</p>
+
+<p>The glance of the detective while it did not perceptibly move from the
+large screen drawn across the room at the back of Mr. Sylvester, seemed
+to request the opinions of the other two gentlemen on this point.</p>
+
+<p>Bertram observing it, subdued the rapid beatings of his heart and spoke
+with like distinctness. "I have been in the bank the same length of time
+as my uncle," said he, "and most heartily endorse his good opinion of
+the various persons in our employ."</p>
+
+<p>"And Mr. Stuyvesant?" the immovable glance seemed to say.</p>
+
+<p>"Men are honest in my opinion till they are proved otherwise," came in
+short stern accents from the director's lips.</p>
+
+<p>The detective drew back in his chair as if he considered that point
+decided, and yet Bertram's eye which had clouded at Mr. Stuyvesant's too
+abrupt assertion, did not clear again as might have been expected.</p>
+
+<p>"There is one more question I desire to settle," continued the
+detective, "and that is, whether this robbery could have been
+perpetrated after business hours, by some one in collusion with the
+person who is here left in charge?"</p>
+
+<p>"No;" again came from Mr. Sylvester, with impartial justice. "The
+watchman&mdash;who by the way has been in the bank for twelve years&mdash;could
+not help a man to find entrance to the vaults. His simple duty is to
+watch over the bank and give alarm in case of fire or burglary. It would
+necessitate a knowledge of the combination by which the vault doors are
+opened, to do what you suggest, and that is possessed by but three
+persons in the bank."</p>
+
+<p>"And those are?"</p>
+
+<p>"The cashier, the janitor, and myself."</p>
+
+<p>He endeavored to speak calmly and without any betrayal of the effort it
+caused him to utter those simple words, but a detective's ear is nice
+and it is doubtful if he perfectly succeeded.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Gryce however limited himself to a muttered, humph! and a long and
+thoughtful look at a spot on the green baize of the table before which
+he sat.</p>
+
+<p>"The janitor lives in the building, I suppose?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and is, as I am sure Mr. Stuyvesant will second me in asserting,
+honesty to the back-bone."</p>
+
+<p>"Janitors always are," observed the detective; then shortly, "How long
+has <i>he</i> been with you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Three years."</p>
+
+<p>Another "humph!" and an increased interest in the ink spot.</p>
+
+<p>"That is not long, considering the responsibility of his position."</p>
+
+<p>"He was on the police force before he came to us," remarked Mr.
+Sylvester.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Gryce looked as if that was not much of a recommendation.</p>
+
+<p>"As for the short time he has been with us," resumed the other, "he came
+into the bank the same winter as my nephew and myself, and has found the
+time sufficient to earn the respect of all who know him."</p>
+
+<p>The detective bowed, seemingly awed by the dignity with which the last
+statement had been uttered; but any one who knew him well, would have
+perceived that the film of uncertainty which had hitherto dimmed the
+brightness of his regard was gone, as if in the other's impressive
+manner, if not in the suggestion his words had unconsciously offered,
+the detective had received an answer to some question which had been
+puzzling him, or laid his hand upon some clue which had till now eluded
+his grasp. The inquiries which he made haste to pursue, betrayed,
+however, but little of the tendency of his thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>"The janitor, you say, knows the combination by which the vault doors
+are opened?"</p>
+
+<p>"The <i>vault doors</i>," emphasized Mr. Sylvester. "The safe is another
+matter; that stands inside the vault and is locked by a triple
+combination which as a whole is not known to any one man in this
+building, not even to myself."</p>
+
+<p>"But the boxes are not kept in the safe?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, they are piled up with the books in the vaults at the side of the
+safe, as you can see for yourself, if you choose to join Mr. Folger."</p>
+
+<p>"Not necessary. The janitor, then, is the only man besides yourselves,
+who under any circumstances or for any reason, could get at those boxes
+after business hours?"</p>
+
+<p>"He is."</p>
+
+<p>"One question more. Who is the man to attend to those boxes? I mean to
+ask, which of the men in your employ is expected to procure a box out of
+the vaults when it is called for, and put it back in its place when its
+owner is through with it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Hopgood usually does that business, the janitor of whom we have just
+been speaking. When he is upstairs or out of the way, any one else whom
+it may be convenient to call."</p>
+
+<p>"The janitor, then, has free access to the boxes at all times, night and
+day?"</p>
+
+<p>"In one sense, yes, in another, no. Should he unlock the vaults at
+night, the watchman would report upon his proceedings."</p>
+
+<p>"But there must be time between the closing and opening of the bank,
+when the janitor is alone with the vaults?"</p>
+
+<p>"There is a space of two hours after seven in the morning, when he is
+likely to be the sole one in charge. The watchman goes home, and Hopgood
+employs himself in sweeping out the bank and preparing it for the
+business of the day."</p>
+
+<p>"Are the watchman and the janitor on good terms with one another?"</p>
+
+<p>"Very, I believe."</p>
+
+<p>The detective looked thoughtful. "I should like to see this Hopgood,"
+said he.</p>
+
+<p>But just then the door opened and Mr. Folger came in, looking somewhat
+pale and disturbed. "We are in a difficulty," cried he, stepping up to
+the table where they sat. "I have found two of the boxes unlocked; that
+belonging to Hicks, Saltzer and Co., and another with the name of
+Harrington upon it. The former has been wrenched apart, the latter
+opened with some sort of instrument. Would you like to see them, sir?"
+This to Mr. Sylvester.</p>
+
+<p>With a start that gentleman rose, and as suddenly reseated himself.
+"Yes," returned he, carefully avoiding his nephew's eye; "bring them
+in."</p>
+
+<p>"Hicks, Saltzer and Co., is a foreign house," remarked Mr. Stuyvesant to
+the detective, "and do not send for their box once a fortnight, as I
+have heard Mr. Sylvester declare. Mr. Harrington is on an exploring
+expedition and is at present in South America." Then in lower tones,
+whose sternness was not unmixed with gloom, "The thief seems to have
+known what boxes to go to."</p>
+
+<p>Bertram flushed and made some passing rejoinder; Mr. Sylvester and the
+detective alone remained silent.</p>
+
+<p>The boxes being brought in, Mr. Gryce opened them without ceremony.
+Several papers met his eye in both, but as no one but the owners could
+know their rightful contents, it was of course impossible for him to
+determine whether anything had been stolen from them or not.</p>
+
+<p>"Send for the New York agent of Hicks, Saltzer and Co.," came from Mr.
+Sylvester, in short, business-like command.</p>
+
+<p>Bertram at once rose. "I will see to it," said he. His agitation was too
+great for suppression, the expression of Mr. Stuyvesant's eye, that in
+its restlessness wandered in every direction but his own, troubled him
+beyond endurance. With a hasty move he left the room. The cold eye of
+the detective followed him.</p>
+
+<p>"Looks bad," came in laconic tones from the paying teller.</p>
+
+<p>"I had hoped the affair begun and ended with my individual loss,"
+muttered Mr. Stuyvesant under his breath.</p>
+
+<p>The stately president and the inscrutable detective still maintained
+their silence.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly the latter moved. Turning towards Mr. Sylvester, he requested
+him to step with him to the window. "I want to have a look at your
+several employees," whispered he, as they thus withdrew. "I want to see
+them without being seen by them. If you can manage to have them come in
+here one by one upon some pretext or other, I can so arrange that screen
+under the mantel-piece, that it shall not only hide me, but give me a
+very good view of their faces in the mirror overhead."</p>
+
+<p>"There will be no difficulty about summoning the men," said Mr.
+Sylvester.</p>
+
+<p>"And you consent to the scheme?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, if you think anything is to be gained by it."</p>
+
+<p>"I am sure that nothing will be lost. And sir, let the cashier be
+present if you please; and sir," squeezing his watch chain with a
+complacent air, as the other dropped his eyes, "talk to them about
+anything that you please, only let it be of a nature that will
+necessitate a sentence or more in reply. I judge a man as much by his
+voice as his expression."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester bowed, and without losing his self-command, though the
+short allusion to Bertram had greatly startled him, turned back to the
+table where Mr. Folger was still standing in conversation with the
+director.</p>
+
+<p>"I will not detain you longer," said he to the paying teller. "Your
+discretion will prevent you from speaking of this matter, I trust." Then
+as the other bowed, added carelessly, "I have something to say to
+Jessup; will you see that he steps here for a moment?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Folger again nodded and left the room. Instantly Mr. Gryce bustled
+forward, and pulling the screen into the position he thought best
+calculated to answer his requirements, slid rapidly behind it. Mr.
+Stuyvesant looked up in surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"I am going to interview the clerks for Mr. Gryce's benefit," exclaimed
+Mr. Sylvester. "Will you in the meantime look over the morning paper?"</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," returned the other, edging nervously to one side, "my
+note-book will do just as well," and sitting down at the remote end of
+the table, he took out a book from his pocket, above which he bent with
+very well simulated preoccupation. Mr. Sylvester called in Bertram and
+then seated himself with a hopeless and unexpectant look, which he for
+the moment forgot would be reflected in the mirror before him, and so
+carried to the eye of the watchful detective. In another instant Jessup
+entered.</p>
+
+<p>What was said in the short interview that followed, is unimportant. Mr.
+Jessup, the third teller, was one of those clear eyed, straightforward
+appearing men whose countenance is its own guarantee. It was not
+necessary to detain him or make him speak. The next man to come in was
+Watson, and after he had gone, two or three of the clerks, and later the
+receiving teller and one of the runners. All stopped long enough to
+insure Mr. Gryce a good view of their faces, and from each and all did
+Mr. Sylvester succeed in eliciting more or less conversation in response
+to the questions he chose to put.</p>
+
+<p>With the disappearance of the last mentioned individual, Mr. Gryce
+peeped from behind the screen. "A set of as honest-looking men as I wish
+to see!" uttered he with a frank cordiality that was scarcely reflected
+in the anxious countenances about him. "No sly-boots among them; how
+about the janitor, Hopgood?"</p>
+
+<p>"He shall be summoned at once, if you desire it," said Mr. Sylvester, "I
+have only delayed calling him that I might have leisure to interrogate
+him with reference to his duties, and this very theft. That is if you
+judge it advisable in me to tamper with the subject unassisted?"</p>
+
+<p>"Your nephew can help you if necessary," replied the imperturbable
+detective. "I should like to hear what the man, Hopgood, has to say for
+himself," and he glided back into his old position.</p>
+
+<p>But Mr. Sylvester had scarcely reached out his hand to ring the bell by
+which he usually summoned the janitor, when the agent of Hicks, Saltzer
+&amp; Co. came in. It was an interruption that demanded instant attention.
+Saluting the gentleman with his usual proud reserve, he drew his
+attention to the box lying upon the table.</p>
+
+<p>"This is yours, I believe, sir," said he. "It was found in our vaults
+this morning in the condition in which you now behold it, and we are
+anxious to know if its contents are all correct."</p>
+
+<p>"They have been handled," returned the agent, after a careful survey of
+the various papers that filled the box, "but nothing appears to be
+missing."</p>
+
+<p>Three persons at least in that room breathed more easily.</p>
+
+<p>"But the truth is," the gentleman continued, with a half smile towards
+the silent President of the bank, "there was nothing in this box that
+would have been of much use to any other parties than ourselves. If
+there had been a bond or so here, I doubt if we should have come off so
+fortunately, eh? The lock has evidently been wrenched open, and that is
+certainly a pretty sure sign that something is not right hereabouts."</p>
+
+<p>"Something is decidedly wrong," came from Mr. Sylvester sternly; "but
+through whose fault we do not as yet know." And with a few words
+expressive of his relief at finding the other had sustained no material
+loss, he allowed the agent to depart.</p>
+
+<p>He had no sooner left the room than Mr. Stuyvesant rose. "Are you going
+to question Hopgood now?" queried he, nervously pocketing his note-book.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes sir, if you have no objections."</p>
+
+<p>The director fidgeted with his chair and finally moved towards the door.</p>
+
+<p>"I think you will get along better with him alone," said he. "He is a
+man who very easily gets embarrassed, and has a way of acting as if he
+were afraid of me. I will just step outside while you talk to him."</p>
+
+<p>But Mr. Sylvester with a sudden dark flush on his brow, hastily stopped
+him. "I beg you will not," said he, with a quick realization of what
+Hopgood might be led to say in the forthcoming interview, if he were not
+restrained by the presence of the director. "Hopgood is not so afraid of
+you that he will not answer every question that is put to him with
+straightforward frankness." And he pushed up a chair, with a smile that
+Mr. Stuyvesant evidently found himself unable to resist. The screen
+trembled slightly, but none of them noticed it; Mr. Sylvester at once
+rang for Hopgood.</p>
+
+<p>He came in panting with his hurried descent from the fifth story, his
+face flushed and his eyes rolling, but without any of the secret
+perturbation Bertram had observed in them on a former occasion. "He
+cannot help us," was the thought that darkened the young man's brow as
+his eyes left the janitor, and faltering towards his uncle, fell upon
+the table before him.</p>
+
+<p>Everything was reflected in the mirror.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Hopgood, I have a few questions to put to you this morning," said
+Mr. Sylvester in a restrained, but not unkindly tone.</p>
+
+<p>The worthy man bowed, bestowed a salutatory roll of his eyes on Mr.
+Stuyvesant, and stood deferentially waiting.</p>
+
+<p>"No, he cannot help us," was again Bertram's thought, and again his eyes
+faltered to his uncle's face, and again fell anxiously before him.</p>
+
+<p>"It has not been my habit to trouble you with inquiries about your
+management of matters under your charge," continued Mr. Sylvester,
+stopping till the janitor's wandering eyes settled upon his own. "Your
+conduct has always been exemplary, and your attention to duty
+satisfactory; but I would like to ask you to-day if you have observed
+anything amiss with the vaults of late? anything wrong about the boxes
+kept there? anything in short, that excited your suspicion or caused you
+to ask yourself if everything was as it should be?"</p>
+
+<p>The janitor's ruddy face grew pale, and his eye fell with startled
+inquiry on Mr. Harrington's box that still occupied the centre of the
+table. "No, sir," he emphatically replied, "has anything&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But Mr. Sylvester did not wait to be questioned. "You have attended to
+your duties as promptly and conscientiously as usual; you have allowed
+no one to go to the vaults day or night, who had no business there? You
+have not relaxed your accustomed vigilance, or left the bank alone at
+any time during the hours it is under your charge?"</p>
+
+<p>"No sir, not for a minute, sir; that is&mdash;" He stopped and his eye
+wandered towards Mr. Stuyvesant. "Never for a minute, sir," he went on,
+"without I knew some one was in the bank, who was capable of looking
+after it."</p>
+
+<p>"The watchman has been at his post every night up to the usual hour?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes sir."</p>
+
+<p>"There has been no carelessness in closing the vault doors after the
+departure of the clerks?"</p>
+
+<p>"No sir."</p>
+
+<p>"And no trouble," he continued, with a shade more of dignity, possibly
+because Hopgood's tell-tale face was beginning to show signs of anxious
+confusion, "and no trouble in opening them at the proper time each
+morning?"</p>
+
+<p>"No sir."</p>
+
+<p>"One question more&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But here Bertram was called out, and in the momentary stir occasioned by
+his departure, Hopgood allowed himself to glance at the box before him
+more intently than he had hitherto presumed to do. He saw it was
+unlocked, and his hands began to tremble. Mr. Sylvester's voice recalled
+him to himself.</p>
+
+<p>"You are a faithful man," said that gentleman, continuing his speech of
+a minute before, "and as such we are ready to acknowledge you; but the
+most conscientious amongst us are sometimes led into indiscretions. Now
+have you ever through carelessness or by means of any inadvertence,
+revealed to any one in or out of the bank, the particular combination by
+which the lock of the vault-door is at present opened?"</p>
+
+<p>"No sir, indeed no; I am much too anxious, and feel my own
+responsibility entirely too much, not to preserve so important a secret
+with the utmost care and jealousy."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester's voice, careful as he was to modulate it, showed a secret
+discouragement. "The vaults then as far as you know, are safe when once
+they are closed for the night?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes sir." The janitor's face expressed a slight degree of wonder, but
+his voice was emphatic.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester's eye travelled in the direction of the screen. "Very
+well," said he; and paused to reflect.</p>
+
+<p>In the interim the door opened for a second time. "A gentleman to see
+Mr. Stuyvesant," said a voice.</p>
+
+<p>With an air of relief the director hastily rose, and before Mr.
+Sylvester had realized his position, left the room and closed the door
+behind him. A knell seemed to ring its note in Mr. Sylvester's breast.
+The janitor, released as he supposed from all constraint, stepped
+hastily forward.</p>
+
+<p>"That box has been found unlocked," he cried with a wave of his hand
+towards the table; "some one has been to the vaults, and I&mdash;Oh, sir," he
+hurriedly exclaimed, disregarding in his agitation the stern and
+forbidding look which Mr. Sylvester in his secret despair had made haste
+to assume, "you did not want me to say anything about the time you came
+down so early in the morning, and I went out and left you alone in the
+bank, and you went to the vaults and opened Mr. Stuyvesant's box by
+mistake, with a tooth-pick as you remember?"</p>
+
+<p>The mirror that looked down upon that pair, showed one very white face
+at that moment, but the screen that had trembled a moment before, stood
+strangely still in the silence.</p>
+
+<p>"No," came at length from Mr. Sylvester, with a composure that
+astonished himself. "I was not questioning you about matters of a year
+agone. But you might have told that incident if you pleased; it was very
+easily explainable."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes sir, I know, and I beg pardon for alluding to it, but I was so
+taken aback, sir, by your questions; I wanted to tell the exact truth,
+and I did not want to say anything that would hurt you with Mr.
+Stuyvesant; that is if I could help it. I hope I did right, sir," he
+blundered on, conscious he was uttering words he might better have kept
+to himself, but too embarrassed to know how to emerge from the
+difficulty into which his mingled zeal and anxiety had betrayed him. "I
+was never a good hand at answering questions, and if any thing really
+serious has happened, I shall wish you had taken me at my word and
+dismissed me immediately after that affair. Constantia Maria would have
+been a little worse off perhaps, but I should not be on hand to answer
+questions, and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Hopgood!"</p>
+
+<p>The man started, eyed Mr. Sylvester's white but powerfully controlled
+countenance, seemed struck with something he saw there, and was silent.</p>
+
+<p>"You make too much now, as you made too much then of a matter that
+having its sole ground in a mistake, is, as I say, easily explainable.
+This affair which has come up now, is not so clear. Three of the boxes
+have been opened, and from one certain valuables have been taken. Can
+you give me any information that will assist us in our search after the
+culprit?"</p>
+
+<p>"No sir." The tone was quite humble, Hopgood drew back unconsciously
+towards the door.</p>
+
+<p>"As for the mistake of a year ago to which you have seen proper to
+allude, I shall myself take pains to inform Mr. Stuyvesant of it, since
+it has made such an impression upon you that it trammels your honesty
+and makes you consider it at all necessary to be anxious about it at
+this time."</p>
+
+<p>And Hopgood unused to sarcasm from those lips, drew himself together,
+and with one more agitated look at the box on the table, sidled
+awkwardly from the room. Mr. Sylvester at once advanced to the screen
+which he hastily pushed aside. "Well, sir," said he, meeting the
+detective's wavering eye and forcing him to return his look, "you have
+now seen the various employees of the bank and heard most of them
+converse. Is there anything more you would like to inquire into before
+giving us the opinion I requested?"</p>
+
+<p>"No sir," said the detective, coming forward, but very slowly and
+somewhat hesitatingly for him. "I think I am ready to say&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Here the door opened, and Mr. Stuyvesant returned. The detective drew a
+breath of relief and repeated his words with a business-like assurance.
+"I think I am ready to say, that from the nature of the theft and the
+mysterious manner in which it has been perpetrated, suspicion
+undoubtedly points to some one connected with the bank. That is all that
+you require of me to-day?" he added, with a bow of some formality in the
+direction of Mr. Sylvester.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," was the short reply. But in an instant a change passed over the
+stately form of the speaker. Advancing to Mr. Gryce, he confronted him
+with a countenance almost majestic in its severity, and somewhat
+severely remarked, "This is a serious charge to bring against men whose
+countenances you yourself have denominated as honest. Are we to believe
+you have fully considered the question, and realize the importance of
+what you say?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Sylvester," replied the detective, with great self-possession and
+some dignity, "a man who is brought every day of his life into positions
+where the least turning of a hair will sink a man or save him, learns to
+weigh his words, before he speaks even in such informal inquiries as
+these."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester bowed and turned towards Mr. Stuyvesant. "Is there any
+further action you would like to have taken in regard to this matter
+to-day?" he asked, without a tremble in his voice.</p>
+
+<p>With a glance at the half open box of the absent Mr. Harrington, the
+agitated director slowly shook his head. "We must have time to think,"
+said he.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Gryce at once took up his hat. "If the charge implied in my opinion
+strikes you, gentlemen, as serious, you must at least acknowledge that
+your own judgment does not greatly differ from mine, or why such
+unnecessary agitation in regard to a loss so petty, by a gentleman worth
+as we are told his millions." And with this passing shot, to which
+neither of his auditors responded, he made his final obeisance and
+calmly left the room.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester and Mr. Stuyvesant slowly confronted one another.</p>
+
+<p>"The man speaks the truth," said the former. "You at least suspect some
+one in the bank, Mr. Stuyvesant?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have no wish to," hastily returned the other, "but facts&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Would facts of this nature have any weight with you against the
+unspotted character of a man never known by you to meditate, much less
+commit a dishonest action?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; yet facts are facts, and if it is proved that some one in our
+employ has perpetrated a theft, the mind will unconsciously ask who, and
+remain uneasy till it is satisfied."</p>
+
+<p>"And if it never is?"</p>
+
+<p>"It will always ask who, I suppose."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester drew back. "The matter shall be pushed," said he; "you
+shall be satisfied. Surveillance over each man employed in this
+institution ought sooner or later to elicit the truth. The police shall
+take it in charge."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Stuyvesant looked uneasy. "I suppose it is only justice," murmured
+he, "but it is a scandal I would have been glad to avoid."</p>
+
+<p>"And I, but circumstances admit of no other course. The innocent must
+not suffer for the guilty, even so far as an unfounded suspicion would
+lead."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, of course not." And the director bustled about after his
+overcoat and hat.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester watched him with growing sadness. "Mr. Stuyvesant," said
+he, as the latter stood before him ready for the street, "we have always
+been on terms of friendship, and nothing but the most pleasant relations
+have ever existed between us. Will you pardon me if I ask you to give me
+your hand in good-day?"</p>
+
+<p>The director paused, looked a trifle astonished, but held out his hand
+not only with cordiality but very evident affection.</p>
+
+<p>"Good day," cried he, "good-day."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester pressed that hand, and then with a dignified bow, allowed
+the director to depart. It was his last effort at composure. When the
+door closed, his head sank on his hands, and life with all its hopes and
+honors, love and happiness, seemed to die within him.</p>
+
+<p>He was interrupted at length by Bertram. "Well, uncle?" asked the young
+man with unrestrained emotion.</p>
+
+<p>"The theft has been committed by some one in this bank; so the detective
+gives out, and so we are called upon to believe. <i>Who</i> the man is who
+has caused us all this misery, neither he, nor you, nor I, nor any one,
+is likely to very soon determine. Meantime&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" cried Bertram anxiously, after a moment of suspense.</p>
+
+<p>"Meantime, courage!" his uncle resumed with forced cheerfulness.</p>
+
+<p>But as he was leaving the bank he came up to Bertram, and laying his
+hand on his shoulder, quietly said:</p>
+
+<p>"I want you to go immediately to my house upon leaving here. I may not
+be back till midnight, and Miss Fairchild may need the comfort of your
+presence. Will you do it, Bertram?"</p>
+
+<p>"Uncle! I&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Hush! you will comfort me best by doing what I ask. May I rely upon
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Always."</p>
+
+<p>"That is enough."</p>
+
+<p>And with just a final look, the two gentlemen parted, and the shadow
+which had rested all day upon the bank, deepened over Bertram's head
+like a pall.</p>
+
+<p>It was not lifted by the sight of Hopgood stealing a few minutes later
+towards the door by which his uncle had departed, his face pale, and his
+eyes fixed in a stare, that bespoke some deep and moving determination.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXXVIII" id="XXXVIII"></a>XXXVIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>BLUE-BEARD'S CHAMBER.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">"Present fears<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Are less than horrible imaginings."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Macbeth</span>.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>Clarence Ensign was not surprised at the refusal he received from Paula.
+He had realized from the first that the love of this beautiful woman
+would be difficult to obtain, even if no rival with more powerful
+inducements than his own, should chance to cross his path. She was one
+who could be won to give friendship, consideration, and sympathy without
+stint; but from the very fact that she could so easily be induced to
+grant these, he foresaw the improbability, or at least the difficulty of
+enticing her to yield more. A woman whose hand warms towards the other
+sex in ready friendship, is the last to succumb to the entreaties of
+love. The circle of her sympathies is so large, the man must do well,
+who of all his sex, pierces to the sacred centre. The appearance of Mr.
+Sylvester on the scene, settled his fate, or so he believed; but he was
+too much in earnest to yield his hopes without another effort; so upon
+the afternoon of this eventful day, he called upon Paula.</p>
+
+<p>The first glimpse he obtained of her countenance, convinced him that he
+was indeed too late. Not for him that anxious pallor, giving way to a
+rosy tinge at the least sound in the streets without. Not for him that
+wandering glance, burning with questions to which nothing seemed able to
+grant reply. The very smile with which she greeted him, was a blow; it
+was so forgetful of the motive that had brought him there.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Fairchild," he stammered, with a generous impulse to save her
+unnecessary pain, "you have rejected my offer and settled my doom; but
+let me believe that I have not lost your regard, or that hold upon your
+friendship which it has hitherto been my pleasure to enjoy."</p>
+
+<p>She woke at once to a realization of his position. "Oh Mr. Ensign," she
+murmured, "can you doubt my regard or the truth of my friendship? It is
+for me to doubt; I have caused you such pain, and as you may think, so
+ruthlessly and with such lack of consideration. I have been peculiarly
+placed," she blushingly proceeded. "A woman does not always know her own
+heart, or if she does, sometimes hesitates to yield to its secret
+impulses. I have led you astray these last few weeks, but I first went
+astray myself. The real path in which I ought to tread, was only last
+night revealed to me. I can say no more, Mr. Ensign."</p>
+
+<p>"Nor is it necessary," replied he. "You have chosen the better path, and
+the better man. May life abound in joys for you, Miss Fairchild."</p>
+
+<p>She drew herself up and her hand went involuntarily to her heart. "It is
+not joy I seek," said she, "but&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What?" He looked at her face lit with that heavenly gleam that visited
+it in rare moments of deepest emotion, and wondered.</p>
+
+<p>"Joy is in seeing the one you love happy," cried she; "earth holds none
+that is sweeter or higher."</p>
+
+<p>"Then may that be yours," he murmured, manfully subduing the jealous
+pang natural under the circumstances. And taking the hand she held out
+to him, he kissed it with greater reverence and truer affection than
+when, in the first joyous hours of their intercourse, he carried it so
+gallantly to his lips.</p>
+
+<p>And she&mdash;oh, difference of time and feeling&mdash;did not remember as of
+yore, the noble days of chivalry, though he was in this moment, so much
+more than ever the true knight and the reproachless cavalier.</p>
+
+<p>For Paula's heart was heavy. Fears too unsubstantial to be met and
+vanquished, had haunted her steps all day. The short note which Mr.
+Sylvester had written her, lay like lead upon her bosom. She longed for
+the hours to fly, yet dreaded to hear the clock tick out the moments
+that possibly were destined to bring her untold suffering and
+disappointment. A revelation awaiting her in Mr. Sylvester's desk up
+stairs? That meant separation and farewell; for words of promise and
+devotion can be spoken, and the heart that hopes, does not limit time to
+hours.</p>
+
+<p>With Bertram's entrance, her fears took absolute shape. Mr. Sylvester
+was not coming home to dinner. Thenceforward till seven o'clock, she sat
+with her hand on her heart, waiting. At the stroke of the clock, she
+rose, and procuring a candle from her room, went slowly up stairs.
+"Watch for me," she had said to Aunt Belinda, "for I fear I shall need
+your care when I come down."</p>
+
+<p>What is there about a mystery however trivial, that thrills the heart
+with vague expectancy at the least lift of the concealing curtain! As
+Paula paused before the door, which never to her knowledge had opened to
+the passage of any other form than that of Mr. Sylvester, she was
+conscious of an agitation wholly distinct from that which had hitherto
+afflicted her. All the past curiosity of Ona concerning this room,
+together with her devices for satisfying that curiosity, recurred to
+Paula with startling distinctness. It was as if the white hand of that
+dead wife had thrust itself forth from the shadows to pull her back. The
+candle trembled in her grasp, and she unconsciously recoiled. But the
+next moment the thought of Mr. Sylvester struck warmth and determination
+through her being, and hastily thrusting the key into the lock, she
+pushed open the door and stepped across the threshold.</p>
+
+<p>Her first movement was that of surprise. In all her dreams of the
+possible appearance of this room, she had never imagined it to be like
+this. Plain, rude and homely, its high walls unornamented, its floor
+uncovered, its furniture limited to a plain desk and two or three rather
+uncomfortable-looking chairs, it struck upon her fancy with the same
+sense of incongruity, as might the sight of a low-eaved cottage in the
+midst of stately palaces and lordly pleasure-grounds. Setting down her
+candle, she folded her hands to still their tremblings, and slowly
+looked around her. This was the spot, then, to which he was accustomed
+to flee when oppressed by any care or harassed by any difficulty; this
+cold, bare, uninviting apartment with its forbidding aspect unsoftened
+by the tokens of a woman's care or presence! To this room, humbler than
+any in her aunt's home in Grotewell, he had brought all his griefs, from
+the day his baby lay dead in the rooms below, to that awful hour which
+saw the wife and mother brought into his doors and laid a cold and
+pulseless form in the midst of his gorgeous parlors! Here he had met his
+own higher impulses face to face, and wrestled with them through the
+watches of the night! In this wilderness of seeming poverty, he had
+dreamed, perhaps, his first fond dream of her as a woman, and signed
+perhaps his final renunciation of her as the future companion of his
+life! What did it mean? Why a spot of so much desolation in the midst of
+so much that was lordly and luxurious? Her fears might give her a
+possible interpretation, but she would not listen to fears. Only his
+words should instruct her. Going to the desk, she opened it. A sealed
+envelope addressed to herself, immediately met her eyes. Taking it out
+with a slow and reverent touch, she began to read the long and closely
+written letter which it contained.</p>
+
+<p>And the little candle burned on, shedding its rays over her bended head
+and upon the dismal walls about her, with a persistency that seemed to
+bring out, as in letters of fire, the hidden history of long ago, with
+its vanished days and its forgotten midnights.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXXIX" id="XXXIX"></a>XXXIX.</h2>
+
+<h3>FROM A. TO Z.</h3>
+
+<blockquote><p>"A naked human heart."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Young.</span></p></blockquote>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>"My Beloved Child:</p>
+
+<p>"So may I call you in this the final hour of our separation, but never
+again, dear one, never again. When I said to you, just twenty-four hours
+ago, that my sin was buried and my future was clear, I spake as men
+speak who forget the justice of God and dream only of his mercy. An
+hour's time convinced me that an evil deed once perpetrated by a man, is
+never buried so that its ghost will not rise. Do as we will, repent as
+we may, the shadowy phantom of a stained and unrighteous youth is never
+laid; nor is a man justified in believing it so, till death has closed
+his eyes, and fame written its epitaph upon his tomb.</p>
+
+<p>"Paula, I am at this hour wandering in search of the being who holds the
+secret of my life and who will to-morrow blazon it before all the world.
+It is with no hope I seek him. God has not brought me to this pass, to
+release me at last, from shame and disgrace. Suffering and the loss of
+all my sad heart cherished, wait at my gates. Only one boon remains, and
+that is, your sympathy and the consolation of your regard. These, though
+bestowed as friends bestow them, are very precious to me; I cannot see
+them go, and that they may not, I tell you the full story of my life.</p>
+
+<p>"My youth was happy&mdash;my early youth, I mean. Bertram's father was a dear
+brother to me, and my mother a watchful guardian and a tender friend. At
+fifteen, I entered a bank, the small bank in Grotewell, which you ought
+to remember. From the lowest position in it, I gradually worked my way
+up till I occupied the cashier's place; and was just congratulating
+myself upon my prospects, when Ona Delafield returned from
+boarding-school, a young lady.</p>
+
+<p>"Paula, there is a fascination, which some men who have known nothing
+deeper and higher, call love. I, who in those days had cherished but few
+thoughts beyond the ordinary reach of a narrow and somewhat selfish
+business mind, imagined that the well-spring of all romance had bubbled
+up within me, when my eyes first fell upon this regal blonde, with her
+sleepy, inscrutable eyes and bewildering smile. Ulysses within sound of
+the siren's voice, was nothing to it. He had been warned of his danger
+and had only his own curiosity to combat, while I was not even aware of
+my peril, and floated within reach of this woman's power, without making
+an effort to escape. She was so subtle in her influence, Paula; so
+careless in the very exercise of her sovereignty. She never seemed to
+command; yet men and women obeyed her. Peculiarities which mar the
+matron, are often graces in a young, unmarried girl, whose thoughts are
+a mystery, and whose emotions an untried field. I believed I had found
+the queen of all beauty and when in an unguarded hour she betrayed her
+first appreciation of my devotion, I seemed to burst into a Paradise of
+delights, where every step I took, only the more intoxicated and
+bewildered me. My first realization of the sensuous and earthly
+character of my happiness came with the glimpse of your child-face on
+that never-to-be-forgotten day when we met beside the river. Like a star
+seen above the glare of a conflagration, the pure spirit that informed
+your glance, flashed on my burning soul, and for a moment I knew that in
+you budded the kind of woman-nature which it befitted a man to seek;
+that in the hands of such a one as you would make, should he trust his
+honor and bequeath his happiness. But when did a lover ever break the
+bonds that imprisoned his fancy, at the inspiration of a passing voice.
+I went back to Ona and forgot the child by the river.</p>
+
+<p>"Paula, I have no time to utter regrets. This is a hard plain tale which
+I have to relate; but if you love me still&mdash;if, as I have sometimes
+imagined, you have always loved me&mdash;think what my life had been if I had
+heeded the warning which God vouchsafed me on that day, and contrast it
+with what it is, and what it must be.</p>
+
+<p>"I went back to Ona, then, and the hold which she had upon me from the
+first, took form and shape. As well as she could love any one, she loved
+me, and though she had offers from one or two more advantageous sources,
+she finally decided that she would risk the future and accept me, if her
+father consented to the alliance. You who are the niece of the man of
+whom I must now speak, may or may not know what that meant. I doubt if
+you do; he left Grotewell while you were a child, and any gossip
+concerning him must ever fall short of the real truth. Enough, then,
+that it meant, if Jacob Delafield could see in my future any promises of
+success sufficient to warrant him in accepting me as his son-in-law, no
+woman living ought to hesitate to trust me with her hand. He was the
+Squire of the town, and as such entitled to respect, but he was also
+something more, as you will presently discover. His answer to my plea
+was:</p>
+
+<p>"'Well, how much money have you to show?'</p>
+
+<p>"Now I had none. My salary as cashier of a small country bank was not
+large, and my brother's prolonged sickness and subsequent death,
+together with my own somewhat luxurious habits, had utterly exhausted
+it. I told him so, but added that I had, somewhere up among the hills,
+an old maiden aunt who had promised me five thousand dollars at her
+death; and that as she was very ill at that time&mdash;hopelessly so, her
+neighbors thought&mdash;in a few weeks I should doubtless be able to satisfy
+him with the sight of a sum sufficient to start us in housekeeping, if
+no more.</p>
+
+<p>"He nodded at this, but gave me no distinct reply. 'Let us wait,' said
+he.</p>
+
+<p>"But youth is not inclined to wait. I considered my cause as good as
+won, and began to make all my preparations accordingly. With a feverish
+impatience which is no sign of true love, I watched the days go by, and
+waited for, if I did not anticipate, the death which I fondly imagined
+would make all clear. At last it came, and I went again into Mr.
+Delafield's presence.</p>
+
+<p>"'My aunt has just died,' I announced, and stood waiting for the short,
+concise,</p>
+
+<p>"'Go ahead, then, my boy!' which I certainly expected.</p>
+
+<p>"Instead of that, he gave me a queer inexplicable smile, and merely
+said, 'I want to see the greenbacks, my lad. No color so good as green,
+not even the black upon white of 'I promise to pay.'</p>
+
+<p>"I went back to my desk in the bank, chagrined. Ona had told me a few
+days before that she was tired of waiting, that the young doctor from
+the next town was very assiduous in his attentions, and as there was no
+question as to his ability to support a wife, why&mdash;she did not finish
+her sentence, but the toss of her head and her careless tone at parting,
+were enough to inflame the jealousy of a less easily aroused nature than
+mine. I felt that I was in hourly danger of losing her, and all because
+I could not satisfy her father with a sight of the few thousands which
+were so soon to be mine.</p>
+
+<p>"The reading of my aunt's will, which confirmed my hopes, did not
+greatly improve matters. 'I want to see the money,' the old gentleman
+repeated; and I was forced to wait the action of the law and the
+settlement of the estate. It took longer than even he foresaw. Weeks
+went by and my poor little five thousand seemed as far from my control
+as on the day the will was read. There was some trouble, I was not told
+what, that made it seem improbable that I should reap the benefit of my
+legacy for some time. Meanwhile Ona accepted the attentions of the young
+doctor, and my chances of winning her, dwindled rapidly day by day. I
+became morbidly eager and insanely jealous. Instead of pursuing my
+advantage&mdash;for I undoubtedly possessed one in her own secret inclination
+towards me&mdash;I stood off, and let my rival work his way into her
+affections unhindered. I was too sore to interrupt his play, as I called
+it, and too afraid of myself to actually confront him in her presence.
+But the sight of them riding together one day, was more than I could
+endure even in my spirit of unresistance. 'He shall not have her,' I
+cried, and cast about in my mind how to bring my own matters into such
+shape as to satisfy her father and so win her own consent to my suit. My
+first thought was to borrow the money, but that was impracticable in a
+town where each man's affairs are known to his neighbor. My next was to
+hurry up the settlement of the estate by appeal to my lawyer. The result
+of the latter course was a letter of many promises, in the midst of
+which a great temptation assailed me.</p>
+
+<p>"Colonel Japha, of whose history you have heard more or less true
+accounts, was at that time living in the old mansion you took such pains
+to point out to me in that walk we took together in Grotewell. He had
+suffered a great anguish in the flight and degradation of his only
+daughter, and though the real facts connected with her departure were
+not known in the village, he was so overcome with shame, and so
+shattered in health, he lived in the utmost seclusion, opening his doors
+to but few visitors, among whom I, for some unexplained reason, was one.
+He used to say he liked me and saw in me the makings of a considerable
+man; and I, because he was Colonel Japha and a strong spirit, returned
+his appreciation, and spent many of my bitter and unhappy hours in his
+presence. It was upon one of these occasions the temptation came to
+which I have just alluded.</p>
+
+<p>"I had been talking about his health and the advisability of his taking
+a journey, when he suddenly rose and said, 'Come with me to my study.'</p>
+
+<p>"I of course went. The first thing I saw upon entering was a trunk
+locked and strapped. 'I am going to Europe to-morrow,' said he, 'to be
+gone six months.'</p>
+
+<p>"I was astonished, for in that town no one presumed to do anything of
+importance without consulting his neighbors; but I merely bowed my
+congratulations, and waited for him to speak, for I saw he had something
+on his mind that he wished to say. At last it came out. He had a
+daughter, he said, a daughter who had disgraced him and whom he had
+forbidden his house. She was not worthy of his consideration, yet he
+could not help but remember her, and while he never desired to see her
+enter his doors, it was not his wish that she should suffer want. He had
+a little money which he had laid by and which he wished to put into my
+hands for her use, provided anything should happen to him during his
+absence. 'She is a wanderer now,' he cried, 'but she may one day come
+back, and then if I am dead and gone, you may give it to her.' I was not
+to enter it in the bank under his name, but regard it as a personal
+trust to be used only under such circumstances as he mentioned.</p>
+
+<p>"The joy with which I listened to this proposal amounted almost to
+ecstacy when he went to his desk and brought out five one thousand
+dollar bills and laid them in my hand. 'It is not much,' said he, 'but
+it will save her from worse degradation if she chooses to avail herself
+of it.'</p>
+
+<p>"Not much; oh no, not much, but just the sum that would raise me out of
+the pit of despondency into which I had fallen, and give me my bride, a
+chance in the world, and last, but not least, revenge on the rival I had
+now learned to hate. I was obliged to give the colonel a paper
+acknowledging the trust, but that was no hindrance. I did not mean to
+use the money, only to show it; and long before the colonel could
+return, my own five thousand would be in my hands&mdash;and so, and so, and
+so, as the devil reasons and young infatuated ears listen.</p>
+
+<p>"Colonel Japha thought I was an honest man, nor did I consider myself
+otherwise at that time. It was a chance for clever action; a bit of
+opportune luck that it would be madness to discard. On the day the
+vessel sailed which carried Colonel Japha out of the country, I went to
+Mr. Delafield and showed him the five crisp bank notes that represented
+as it were by proxy, the fortune I so speedily expected to inherit. 'You
+have wanted to see five thousand dollars in my hand,' said I; 'there
+they are.'</p>
+
+<p>"His look of amazement was peculiar and ought to have given me warning;
+but I was blinded by my infatuation and thought it no more than the
+natural surprise incident to the occasion. 'I have been made to wait a
+long time for your consent to my suit,' said I; 'may I hope that you
+will now give me leave to press my claims upon your daughter?'</p>
+
+<p>"He did not answer at once, but smiled, eying meanwhile the notes in my
+hand with a fascinated gaze which instinctively warned me to return them
+to my pocket. But I no sooner made a move indicative of that resolve,
+than he thrust out his cold slim hand and prevented me. 'Let me see them,' cried he.</p>
+
+<p>"There was no reason for me to refuse so simple a request to one in Mr.
+Delafield's position, and though I had rather he had not asked for the
+notes, I handed them over. He at once seemed to grow taller. 'So this is
+your start off in life,' exclaimed he.</p>
+
+<p>"I bowed, and he let his eyes roam for a moment to my face. 'Many a man
+would be glad of worse,' smiled he; then suavely, 'you shall have my
+daughter, sir.'</p>
+
+<p>"I must have turned white in my relief, for he threw his head back and
+laughed in a low unmusical way that at any other time would have
+affected me unpleasantly. But my only thought then, was to get the money
+back and rush with my new hopes into the room from which came the low
+ceaseless hum of his daughter's voice. But at the first movement of my
+hand towards him, he assumed a mysterious air, and closing his fingers
+over the notes, said:</p>
+
+<p>"'These are yours, to do what you wish with, I suppose?'</p>
+
+<p>"I may have blushed, but if I did, he took no notice. 'What I wish to do
+with them,' returned I, 'is to shut them up in the bank for the present,
+at least till Ona is my wife.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh no, no, no, you do not,' came in easy, almost wheedling tones from
+the man before me. 'You want to put them where they will double
+themselves in two months.' And before I could realize to what he was
+tempting me, he had me down before his desk, showing me letters,
+documents, etc., of a certain scheme into which if a man should put a
+dollar to-day, it would 'come out three and no mistake, before the year
+was out. It is a chance in a thousand,' said he; 'if I had half a
+million I would invest it in this enterprise to-day. If you will listen
+to me and put your money in there, you will be a rich man before ten
+years have passed over your head.'</p>
+
+<p>"I was dazzled. I knew enough of such matters to see that it was neither
+a hoax nor a chimera. He did have a good thing, and if the five thousand
+dollars had been my own&mdash;But I soon came to consider the question
+without that conditional. He was so specious in his manner of putting
+the affair before me, so masterful in the way he held on to the money,
+he gave me no time to think. 'Say the word,' cried he, 'and in two
+months I bring you back ten thousand for your five. Only two months,' he
+repeated, and then slowly, 'Ona was born for luxury.'</p>
+
+<p>"Paula, you cannot realize what that temptation was. To amass wealth had
+never been my ambition before, but now everything seemed to urge it upon
+me. Dreams of unimagined luxury came to my mind as these words were
+uttered. A vision of Ona clad in garments worthy of her beauty floated
+before my eyes; the humble home I had hitherto pictured for myself,
+broadened and towered away into a palace; I beheld myself honored and
+accepted as the nabob of the town. I caught a glimpse of a new paradise,
+and hesitated to shut down the gate upon it. 'I will think of it,' said
+I, and went into the other room to speak to Ona.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, if some angel had met me on the threshold! If my mother's spirit or
+the thought of your dear face could have risen before me then and
+stopped me! Dizzy, intoxicated with love and ambition, I crossed the
+room to where she sat reeling off a skein of blue silk with hands that
+were whiter than alabaster. Kneeling down by her side, I caught those
+fair hands in mine.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ona,' I cried, 'will you marry me? Your father has given his consent,
+and we shall be very happy.'</p>
+
+<p>"She bestowed upon me a little pout, and half mockingly, half earnestly
+inquired, 'What kind of a house are you going to put me in? I cannot
+live in a cottage.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I will put you in a palace,' I whispered, 'if you will only say that
+you will be mine.'</p>
+
+<p>"'A palace! Oh, I don't expect palaces; a house like the Japhas' would
+do. Not but what I should feel at home in a palace,' she added, lifting
+her lordly head and looking beautiful enough to grace a sceptre. Then,
+archly for her, 'And papa has given his consent?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes,' I ardently cried.</p>
+
+<p>"'Then Dr. Burton might as well go,' she answered. 'I will trust my
+father's judgment, and take the palace&mdash;when it comes.'</p>
+
+<p>"After that, it was impossible to disappoint her.</p>
+
+<p>"Paula, in stating all this, I have purposely confined myself to
+relating bare facts. You must see us as we were. The glamour which an
+unreasoning passion casts over even a dishonest act, if performed for
+the sake of winning a beautiful woman, is no excuse in my own soul for
+the evil to which I succumbed that day, nor shall it seem so to you.
+Bare, hard, stern, the fact confronts me from the past, that at the
+first call of temptation I fell; and with this blot on my character, you
+will have to consider me&mdash;unhappy being that I am!</p>
+
+<p>"I did not realize then, however, all that I had done. The operation
+entered into by Mr. Delafield prospered, and in two months I had, as he
+predicted, ten thousand dollars instead of five, in my possession.
+Besides, I had just married Ona, and for awhile life was a dream of
+delight and luxury. But there came a day when I awoke to an insight of
+the peril I had escaped by a mere chance of the die. The money which I
+had expected from my aunt's will, turned out to be amongst certain funds
+that had been risked in speculation by some agent during her sickness,
+and irrecoverably lost. The expression of her good-will was all that
+ever came to me of the legacy upon which I had so confidently relied.</p>
+
+<p>"I was sitting with my young wife in the pretty parlor of our new home,
+when the letter came from my lawyer announcing this fact, and I never
+can make you understand what effect it had upon me. The very walls
+seemed to shrivel up into the dimensions of a prison's cell; the face
+that only an hour before had possessed every conceivable charm for me,
+shone on my changed vision with the allurement, but also with the
+unreality of a will-o'-the-wisp. All that might have happened if the
+luck, instead of being in my favor, had turned against me, crushed like
+a thunderbolt upon my head, and I rose up and left the presence of my
+young wife, with the knowledge at my heart that I was no more nor less
+than a thief in the eyes of God, if not in that of my fellow-men; a base
+thief, who if he did not meet his fit punishment, was only saved from it
+by fortuitous circumstances and the ignorance of those he had been so
+near despoiling.</p>
+
+<p>"The bitterness of that hour never passed away. The streets in which I
+had been raised, the house which had been the scene of my temptation,
+Mr. Delafield's face, and my own home, all became unendurable to me. I
+felt as if each man I met must know what I had done; and secret as the
+transaction had been, it was long before I could enter the bank without
+a tremor of apprehension lest I should hear from some quarter, that my
+services there would no longer be required. The only comfort I received
+was in the thought that Ona did not know at what a cost her hand had
+been obtained. I was still under the glamour of her languid smiles and
+countless graces, and was fain to believe that notwithstanding a certain
+unresponsiveness and coldness in her nature, her love would yet prove a
+compensation for the remorse that I secretly suffered.</p>
+
+<p>"My distaste for Grotewell culminated. It was too small for me. The
+money I had acquired through the use of my neighbor's funds burned in my
+pocket. I determined to move to New York, and with the few thousands I
+possessed, venture upon other speculations. But this time in all
+honesty. Yes, I swore it before God and my own soul, that never again
+would I run a risk similar to that from which I had just escaped. I
+would profit by the money I had acquired, oh yes, but henceforth all my
+operations should be legitimate and honorable. My wife, who was fast
+developing a taste for ease and splendor, seconded my plans with
+something like fervor, while Mr. Delafield actually went so far as to
+urge my departure. 'You are bound to make a rich man,' said he 'and must
+go where great fortunes are to be secured.' He never asked me what
+became of the five thousand dollars I returned to Colonel Japha upon his
+arrival from Europe.</p>
+
+<p>"So I came to New York.</p>
+
+<p>"Paula, the man who loses at the outset of a doubtful game, is
+fortunate. I did not lose, I won. As if in that first dishonest deed of
+mine I had summoned to my side the aid of evil influences, each and
+every operation into which I entered prospered. It seemed as if I could
+not make a mistake; money flowed towards me from all quarters; power
+followed, and I found myself one of the most successful and one of the
+most unhappy men in New York. There are some things of which a man
+cannot write even to the one dear heart he most cherishes and adores.
+You have lived in my home, and will acquit me from saying much about her
+who, with all her faults and her omissions, was ever kind to you. But
+some things I must repeat in order to make intelligible to you the
+change which gradually took place within me as the years advanced.
+Beauty, while it wins the lover, can never of itself hold the heart of a
+husband who possesses aspirations beyond that which passion supplies.
+Reckless, worldly and narrow-minded as I had been before the commission
+of that deed which embittered my life, I had become by the very shock
+that followed the realization of my wrong-doing, a hungry-hearted,
+eager-minded and melancholy-spirited man, asking but one boon in
+recompense for my secret remorse, and that was domestic happiness and
+the sympathetic affection of wife and children. Woman, according to my
+belief, was born to be chiefly and above all, the consoler. What a man
+missed in the outside world, he was to find treasured at home. What a
+man lacked in his own nature, he was to discover in the delicate and
+sublimated one of his wife. Beautiful dream, which my life was not
+destined to see realized!</p>
+
+<p>"The birth of my only child was my first great consolation. With the
+opening of her blue eyes upon my face, a well-spring deep as my
+unfathomable longing, bubbled up within my breast. Alas, that very
+consolation brought a hideous grief; the mother did not love her child;
+and another strand of the regard with which I still endeavored to
+surround the wife of my youth, parted and floated away out of sight. To
+take my little one in my arms, to feel her delicate cheek press
+yearningly to mine, to behold her sweet infantile soul develop itself
+before my eyes, and yet to realize that that soul would never know the
+guidance or sympathy of a mother, was to me at once rapture and anguish.
+I sometimes forgot to follow up a fortunate speculation, in my
+indulgence of these feelings. I was passionately the father as I might
+have been passionately the husband and the friend. Geraldine died; how
+and with what attendant circumstances of pain and regret, I will not,
+dare not state. The blow struck to the core of my being. I stood shaken
+before God. The past, with its one grim remembrance&mdash;a remembrance that
+in the tide of business successes and the engrossing affection which had
+of late absorbed me, had been well-nigh swamped from sight&mdash;rose before
+me like an accusing spirit. I had sinned, and I had been punished; I had
+sown, and I had reaped.</p>
+
+<p>"More than that, I was sinning still. My very enjoyment of the position
+I had so doubtfully acquired, was unworthy of me. My very wealth was a
+disgrace. Had it not all been built upon another man's means? Could the
+very house I lived in be said to be my own, while a Japha existed in
+want? In the eyes of the world, perhaps, yes; in my own eyes, no. I
+became morbid on the subject. I asked myself what I could do to escape
+the sense of obligation that overwhelmed me. The few sums with which I
+had been secretly enabled to provide Colonel Japha during the final days
+of his ruined and impoverished life, were not sufficient. I desired to
+wipe out the past by some large and munificent return. Had the colonel
+been living, I should have gone to him, told him my tale and offered him
+the half of my fortune; but his death cut off all hopes of my righting
+myself in that way. Only his daughter remained, the poor, lost,
+reprobated being, whom he was willing to curse, but whom he could not
+bear to believe suffering. I determined that the debt due to my own
+peace of mind should be paid to her. But how? Where was I to find this
+wanderer? How was I to let her know that a comfortable living awaited
+her if she would only return to her friends and home? Consulting with a
+business associate, he advised me to advertise. I did so, but without
+success. I next resorted to the detectives, but all without avail.
+Jacqueline Japha was not to be found.</p>
+
+<p>"But I did not relinquish my resolve. Deliberately investing a hundred
+thousand dollars in Government bonds, I put them aside for her. They
+were to be no longer mine. I gave them to her and to her heirs as
+completely and irrevocably, I believed, as if I had laid them in her
+hand and seen her depart with them. I even inserted them as a legacy to
+her in my will. It was a clear and definite arrangement between me and
+my own soul; and after I had made it and given orders to my lawyer in
+Grotewell to acquaint me if he ever received the least news of
+Jacqueline Japha, I slept in peace.</p>
+
+<p>"Of the years that followed I have small need to speak. They were the
+years that preceded your coming, my Paula, and their story is best told
+by what I was when we met again, and you made me know the sweet things
+of life by entering into my home. Woman as a thoughtful, tender,
+elevated being had been so long unknown to me! The beauty of the
+feminine soul with its faith fixed upon high ideals, was one before
+which I had ever been ready to bow. All that I had missed in my youth,
+all that had failed me in my maturing manhood, seemed to flow back upon
+me like a river. I bathed in the sunshine of your pure spirit and
+imagined that the evil days were over and peace come at last.</p>
+
+<p>"A rude and bitter shock awoke me. Ona's father, who had followed us to
+New York, and of whose somewhat checkered career during the past few
+years, I have purposely forborne to speak, had not been above appealing
+to us for assistance at such times as his frequently unfortunate
+investments left him in a state of necessity. These appeals were usually
+made to Ona, and in a quiet way; but one day he met me on the street&mdash;it
+was during the second winter you spent in my home&mdash;and dragging me into
+a restaurant down town, began a long tale, to the effect that he wanted
+a few thousands from me to put into a certain investment, which if
+somewhat shady in its character, was very promising as to its results;
+and gave as a reason why he applied to me for the money, that he knew I
+had not been above doing a wrongful act once, in order to compass my
+ends, and therefore would not be liable to hesitate now.</p>
+
+<p>"It was the thunderbolt of my life. My sin was not then buried. It had
+been known to this man from the start. With an insight for which I had
+never given him credit, he had read my countenance in the days of my
+early temptation, and guessed, if he did not know, where the five
+thousand dollars came from with which I began my career as speculator.
+Worse than that, he had led me on to the act by which he now sought to
+hold me. Having been the secret agent in losing my aunt's money, he knew
+at the time that I was cherishing empty hopes as regarded a legacy from
+her, yet he let me dally with my expectations, and ensnare myself with
+his daughter's fascinations, till driven mad by disappointment and
+longing, I was ready to resort to any means to gain my purpose. It was a
+frightful revelation to come to me in days when, if I were not a
+thoroughly honest man, I had at least acquired a deep and ineradicable
+dread of dishonor. Answering him I know not how, but in a way that while
+it repudiated his proposition, unfortunately acknowledged the truth of
+the suppositions upon which it was founded, I left him and went home, a
+crushed and disheartened man. Life which had been so long in acquiring
+cheerful hues, was sunk again in darkness; and for days I could not bear
+the sight of your innocent face, or the sound of your pure voice, or the
+tokens of your tender and unsuspecting presence in my home. But soon the
+very natural thought came to comfort me, that the sin I so deplored was
+as much dead now, as it was before I learned the fact of this man's
+knowledge of it. That having repented and put it away, I was as free to
+accept your gentle offices and the regard of all true men, as ever I had
+been; and beguiled by this plausible consideration, I turned again to my
+one visible source of consolation, and in the diversion it offered, let
+the remembrance of this last bitter experience pass slowly from my mind.
+The fact that Mr. Delafield left town shortly after his interview with
+me, and smitten by shame perhaps, forbore to acquaint us with his
+whereabouts or afflict us with his letters, may have aided me in this
+strange forgetfulness.</p>
+
+<p>"But other and sharper trials were in store; trials that were to test me
+as a man, and as it proved, find me lacking just where I thought I was
+strongest. Paula, that saying of the Bible, 'Let him that thinketh he
+standeth take heed lest he fall,' might have been written over the door
+of my house on that day, ten months ago, when we two stood by the
+hearthstone and talked of the temptations that beset humanity, and the
+charity we should show to such as succumb to them. Before the day had
+waned, my own hour had come; and not all the experience of my life, not
+all the resolves, hopes, fears of my later years, not even the
+remembrance of your sweet trust and your natural recoil from evil, were
+sufficient to save me. The blow came so suddenly! the call for action
+was so peremptory! One moment I stood before the world, rich, powerful,
+honored, and beloved; the next, I saw myself threatened with a loss that
+undermined my whole position, and with it the very consideration that
+made me what I was. But I must explain.</p>
+
+<p>"When I entered the Madison Bank as President, I gave up in deference to
+the wishes of Mr. Stuyvesant all open speculation in Wall Street. But a
+wife and home such as I then had, are not to be supported on any petty
+income; and when shortly after your entrance into my home, the
+opportunity presented itself of investing in a particularly promising
+silver mine out West, I could not resist the temptation; regarding the
+affair as legitimate, and the hazard, if such it were, one that I was
+amply able to bear. But like most enterprises of the kind, one dollar
+drew another after it, and I soon found that to make available what I
+had already invested, I was obliged to add to it more and more of my
+available funds, until&mdash;to make myself as intelligible to you as I
+can&mdash;it had absorbed not only all that had remained to me after my
+somewhat liberal purchase of the Madison Bank stock, but all I could
+raise on a pledge of the stock itself. But there was nothing in this to
+alarm me. I had a man at the mine devoted to my interests; and as the
+present yield was excellent, and the future of more promise still, I
+went on my way with no special anxiety. But who can trust a silver mine?
+At the very point where we expected the greatest result, the vein
+suddenly gave out, and nothing prevented the stock from falling utterly
+flat on the market, but the discretion of my agent, who kept the fact a
+secret, while he quietly went about getting another portion of the mine
+into working order. He was fast succeeding in this, and affairs were
+looking daily more promising, when suddenly an intimation received by me
+in a bit of conversation casually overheard at that reception we
+attended together, convinced me that the secret was transpiring, and
+that if great care were not taken, we should be swamped before we could
+get things into working trim again. Filled with this anxiety, I was
+about to leave the building, in order to telegraph to my agent, when to
+my great surprise the card of that very person was brought in to me,
+together with a request for an immediate interview. You remember it,
+Paula, and how I went out to see him; but what you did not know then,
+and what I find some difficulty in relating now, is that his message to
+me was one of total ruin unless I could manage to give into his hand,
+for immediate use, the sum of a hundred thousand dollars.</p>
+
+<p>"The facts making this demand necessary were not what you may have been
+led to expect. They had little or nothing to do with the new operations,
+which were progressing successfully and with every promise of an
+immediate return, but arose entirely out of a law-suit then in the hands
+of a Colorado judge for decision, and which, though it involved
+well-nigh the whole interest of the mine, had never till this hour given
+me the least uneasiness, my lawyers having always assured me of my
+ultimate success. But it seems that notwithstanding all this, the
+decision was to be rendered in favor of the other party. My agent, who
+was a man to be trusted in these matters, averred that five days before,
+he had learned from most authentic sources what the decision was likely
+to be. That the judge's opinion had been seen&mdash;he did not tell me how,
+he dared not, nor did I presume to question, but I have since learned
+that not only had the copyist employed by the judge turned traitor, but
+that my own agent had been anything but scrupulous in the use he had
+made of a willing and corruptible instrument&mdash;and that if I wanted to
+save myself and the others connected with me from total and irremediable
+loss, I must compromise with the other parties at once, who not being
+advised of the true state of affairs, and having but little faith in
+their own case, had long ago expressed their willingness to accept the
+sum of a hundred thousand dollars as a final settlement of the
+controversy. My agent, if none too nice in his ideas of right and wrong,
+was, as I have intimated, not the man to make a mistake; and when to my
+question as to how long a time he would give me to look around among my
+friends and raise the required sum, he replied, 'Ten hours and no more,'
+I realized my position, and the urgent necessity for immediate action.</p>
+
+<p>"The remainder of the night is a dream to me. There was but one source
+from which I could hope in the present condition of my affairs, to
+procure a hundred thousand dollars; and that was from the box where I
+had stowed away the bonds destined for the use of the Japha heirs. To
+borrow was impossible, even if I had been in possession of proper
+securities to give. I was considered as having relinquished speculation
+and dared not risk the friendship of Mr. Stuyvesant by a public betrayal
+of my necessity. The Japha bonds or my own fortune must go, and it only
+remained with me to determine which.</p>
+
+<p>"Paula, nothing but the ingrained principle of a lifetime, the habit of
+doing the honest thing without thought or hesitation, saves a man at an
+hour like that. Strong as I believed myself to be in the determination
+never again to flaw my manhood by the least action unworthy of my
+position as the guardian of trusts, earnest as I was in my recoil from
+evil, and sincere as I may have been in my admiration of and desire for
+the good, I no sooner saw myself tottering between ruin and a compromise
+with conscience, than I hesitated&mdash;hesitated with you under my roof, and
+with the words we had been speaking still ringing in my ears. Ona's
+influence, for all the trials of our married life, was still too strong
+upon me. To think of her as deprived of the splendor which was her life,
+daunted my very soul. I dared not contemplate a future in which she must
+stand denuded of everything which made existence dear to her; yet how
+could I do the evil thing I contemplated, even to save her and preserve
+my own position! For&mdash;and you must understand this&mdash;I regarded any
+appropriation of these funds I had delegated to the use of the Japhas,
+as a fresh and veritable abuse of trust. They were not mine. I had given
+them away. Unknown to any one but my own soul and God, I had deeded them
+to a special purpose, and to risk them as I now proposed doing, was an
+act that carried me back to the days of my former delinquency, and made
+the repentance of the last few years the merest mockery. What if I might
+recover them hereafter and restore them to their place; the chances in
+favor of their utter loss were also possible, and honesty deals not with
+chances. I suffered so, I had a momentary temptation towards suicide;
+but suddenly, in the midst of the struggle, came the thought that
+perhaps in my estimate of Ona I had committed a gross injustice, that
+while she loved splendor seemingly more than any woman I had ever known,
+she might be as far from wishing me to retain her in it at the price of
+my own self-respect, as the most honest-hearted wife in the world; and
+struck by the hope, I left my agent at a hotel and hurried home through
+the early morning to her side. She Was asleep, of course, but I wakened
+her. It was dark and she had a right to be fretful, but when I whispered
+in her ear, 'Get up and listen to me, for our fortune is at stake,' she
+at once rose and having risen, was her clearest, coldest, most
+implacable self. Paula, I told her my story, my whole story as I have
+told it to you here. I dropped no thread, I smoothed over no offence.
+Torturing as it was to my pride, I laid bare my soul before her, and
+then in a burst of appeal such as I hope never to be obliged to make use
+of again, asked her as she was a woman and a wife, to save me in this
+hour of my temptation.</p>
+
+<p>"Paula, she refused. More than that, she expressed the bitterest scorn
+of my mawkish conscientiousness, as she called it. That I should
+consider myself as owing anything to the detestable wretch who was the
+only representative of the Japhas, was bad enough, but that I should go
+on treasuring the money that would save us, was disgraceful if not
+worse, and betrayed a weakness of mind for which she had never given me
+credit.</p>
+
+<p>"'But Ona,' I cried, 'if it is a weakness of mind, it is also an
+equivalent to my consciousness of right living. Would you have me
+sacrifice that?'</p>
+
+<p>"'I would have you sacrifice anything necessary to preserve us in our
+position,' said she; and I stood aghast before an unscrupulousness
+greater than any I had hitherto been called upon to face.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ona,' repeated I, for her look was cold, 'do you realize what I have
+been telling you? Most wives would shudder when informed that their
+husbands had perpetrated a dishonest act in order to win them.'</p>
+
+<p>"A thin strange smile heralded her reply. 'Most wives would,' returned
+she, 'but most wives are ignorant. Did you suppose I did not know what
+it cost you to marry me? Papa took care I should miss no knowledge that
+might be useful to me.'</p>
+
+<p>"'And you married me knowing what I had done!' exclaimed I, with
+incredulous dismay.</p>
+
+<p>"'I married you, knowing you were too clever, or believing you to be too
+clever, to run such a risk again.'</p>
+
+<p>"I can say no more concerning that hour. With a horror for this woman
+such as I had never before experienced for living creature, I rushed out
+of her presence, loathing the air she breathed, yet resolved to do her
+bidding. Can you understand a man hating a woman, yet obeying her;
+despising her, yet yielding? I cannot, <i>now</i>, but that day there seemed
+no alternative. Either I must kill myself or follow her wishes. I chose
+to do the latter, forgetting that God can kill, and that, too, whom and
+when He pleases.</p>
+
+<p>"Going down to the bank, I procured the bonds from my box in the safe. I
+felt like a thief, and the manner in which it was done was unwittingly
+suggestive of crime, but with that and the position in which I have
+since found myself placed by this very action, I need not cumber my
+present narrative. Handing the bonds to my agent with orders to sell
+them to the best advantage, I took a short walk to quiet my nerves and
+realize what I had done, and then went home.</p>
+
+<p>"Paula, had God in his righteous anger seen fit to strike me down that
+day, it would have been no more than my due and aroused in me, perhaps,
+no more than a natural repentence. But when I saw her for whose sake I
+had ostensibly committed this fresh abuse of trust, lying cold and dead
+before me, the sword of the Almighty pierced me to the soul, and I fell
+prostrate beneath a remorse to which any regret I had hitherto
+experienced, was as the playing of a child with shadows. Had I by the
+losing of my right arm been able to recall my action, I would have done
+it; indeed I made an effort to recover myself; had my agent followed up
+with an order to return me the bonds I had given him, but it was too
+late, the compromise had already been effected by telegraph and the
+money was out of our hands. The deed was done and I had made myself
+unworthy of your presence and your smile at the very hour when both
+would have been inestimable to me. You remember those days; remember our
+farewell. Let me believe you do not blame me now for what must have
+seemed harsh and unnecessary to you then.</p>
+
+<p>"There is but little more to write, but in that little is compressed the
+passion, longing, hope and despair of a lifetime. When I told you as I
+did a few hours ago that my sin was dead and its consequences at an end,
+I repeat that I fully and truly believed it. The hundred thousand
+dollars I had sent West, had been used to advantage, and only day before
+yesterday I was enabled to sell out my share in the mine, for a large
+sum that leaves me free and unembarrassed, to make the fortune of more
+than one Japha, should God ever see fit to send them across my pathway.
+More than that, Mr. Delafield, of whose discretion I had sometimes had
+my fears, was dead, having perished of a fever some months before in San
+Francisco; and of all men living, there were none as I believed, who
+knew anything to the discredit of my name. I was clear, or so I thought,
+in fortune and in fame; and being so, dreamed of taking to my empty and
+yearning arms, the loveliest and the purest of mortal women. But God
+watched over you and prevented an act whose consequences might have been
+so cruel. In an hour, Paula, in an hour, I had learned that the foul
+thing was not dead, that a witness had picked up the words I had allowed
+to fall in my interview with my father-in-law in the restaurant two
+years before; an unscrupulous witness who had been on my track ever
+since, and who now in his eagerness for a victim, had by mistake laid
+his clutch upon our Bertram. Yes, owing to the similarity of our voices
+and the fact that we both make use of a certain tell-tale word, this
+patient and upright nephew of mine stands at this moment under the
+charge of having acknowledged in the hearing of this person, to the
+committal of an act of dishonesty in the past. A foolish charge you will
+say, and one easily refuted. Alas, a fresh act of dishonesty lately
+perpetrated in the bank, complicates matters. A theft has been committed
+on some of Mr. Stuyvesant's effects, and that, too, under circumstances
+that involuntarily arouse suspicion against some one of the bank
+officials; and Bertram, if not sustained in his reputation, must suffer
+from the doubts which naturally have arisen in Mr. Stuyvesant's breast.
+The story which this man could tell, must of course shake the faith of
+any one in the reputation of him against whom it is directed, and the
+man intends to repeat his story, and that, too, in the very ears of him
+upon whose favor Bertram depends for his life's happiness and the
+winning of the woman he adores. I adore you, Paula, but I cannot clasp
+you to my heart across another sin. If the detectives whom we shall call
+in to-morrow, cannot exonerate those connected with the bank from the
+theft lately committed there&mdash;and the fact that you have been allowed to
+read this letter, prove they have not&mdash;I must do what I can to relieve
+Bertram from his painful position, by taking upon myself the onus of
+that past transgression which of right belongs to my account; and this
+once done, let the result be for good or ill, any bond between you and
+me is cut loose forever. I have not learned to love at this late hour,
+to wrong the precious thing I cherish. Death as it is to me to say
+good-bye to the one last gleam of heavenly light that has shot across my
+darkened way, it must be done, dear heart, if only to hold myself worthy
+of the tender and generous love you have designed to bestow upon me.
+Bertram, who is all generosity, may guess but does not know, what I am
+about to do. Go down to him, dear; tell him that at this very moment,
+perhaps, I am clearing his name before the wretch who has so ruthlessly
+fastened his fang upon him; that his love and Cicely's shall prosper, as
+he has been loyal, and she trusting, all these years of effort and
+probation; that I give him my blessing, and that if we do not meet
+again, I delegate to him the trust of which I so poorly acquitted
+myself. But before you go, stop a moment and in this room, which has
+always symbolized to my eyes the poverty which was my rightful due,
+kneel and pray for my soul; for if God grants me the wish of my heart,
+he will strike me with sudden death after I have taken upon myself the
+disgrace of my past offences. Life without love can be borne, but life
+without honor never. To come and go amongst my fellow-men with a shadow
+on the fame they have always believed spotless! Do not ask me to attempt
+it! Pray for my soul, but pray too, that I may perish in some quick and
+sudden way before ever your dear eyes rest upon my face again.</p>
+
+<p>"And now, as though this were to be the end, let me take my last
+farewell of you. I have loved you, Paula, loved you with my heart, my
+mind and my soul. You have been my angel of inspiration and the source
+of all my comfort. I kneel before you in gratitude, and I stand above
+you in blessing. May every pang I suffer this hour, redound to you in
+some sweet happiness hereafter. I do not quarrel with my fate, I only
+ask God to spare you from its shadow. And He will. Love will flow back
+upon your young life, and in regions where our eye now fails to pierce,
+you will taste every joy which your generous heart once thought to
+bestow on</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"<span class="smcap">Edward Sylvester.</span>"</p></blockquote>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XL" id="XL"></a>XL.</h2>
+
+<h3>HALF-PAST SEVEN.</h3>
+
+<blockquote><p>"I would it were midnight, Hal, and all well."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Henry IV.</span></p></blockquote>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>The library was dim; Bertram, who had felt the oppressive influence of
+the great empty room, had turned down the lights, and was now engaged in
+pacing the floor, with restless and uneven steps, asking himself a
+hundred questions, and wishing with all the power of his soul, that Mr.
+Sylvester would return, and by his appearance cut short a suspense that
+was fast becoming unendurable.</p>
+
+<p>He had just returned from his third visit to the front door, when the
+curtain between him and the hall was gently raised, and Paula glided in
+and stood before him. She was dressed for the street, and her face where
+the light touched it, shone like marble upon which has fallen the glare
+of a lifted torch.</p>
+
+<p>"Paula!" burst from the young man's lips in surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"Hush!" said she, her voice quavering with an emotion that put to
+defiance all conventionalities, "I want you to take me to the place
+where Mr. Sylvester is gone. He is in danger; I know it, I feel it. I
+dare not leave him any longer alone. I might be able to save him if&mdash;if
+he meditates anything that&mdash;" she did not try to say what, but drew
+nearer to Bertram and repeated her request. "You will take me, won't
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>He eyed her with amazement, and a shudder seized his own strong frame.
+"No," cried he, "I cannot take you; you do not know what you ask; but I
+will go myself if you apprehend anything serious. I remember where it
+is. I studied the address too closely, to readily forget it."</p>
+
+<p>"You shall not go without me," returned Paula with steady decision. "If
+the danger is what I fear, no one else can save him. I must go," she
+added, with passionate importunity as she saw him still looking
+doubtful. "Darkness and peril are nothing to me in comparison with his
+safety. He holds my life in his hand," she softly whispered, "and what
+will not one do for his life!" Then quickly, "If you go without me I
+shall follow with Aunt Belinda. Nothing shall keep me in the house
+to-night."</p>
+
+<p>He felt the uselessness of further objection, yet he ventured to say,
+"The place where he has gone is one of the worst in the city; a spot
+which men hesitate to enter after dark. You don't know what you ask in
+begging me to take you there."</p>
+
+<p>"I do, I realize everything."</p>
+
+<p>With a sudden awe of the great love which he thus beheld embodied before
+him, Bertram bowed his head and moved towards the door. "I may consider
+it wise to obtain the guidance of a policeman through the quarter into
+which we are about to venture. Will you object to that?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," was her quick reply, "I object to nothing but delay."</p>
+
+<p>And with a last look about the room, as if some sensation of farewell
+were stirring in her breast, she laid her hand on Bertram's arm, and
+together they hurried away into the night.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="BOOK_V" id="BOOK_V"></a>BOOK V.</h2>
+
+<h3>WOMAN'S LOVE.</h3>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XLI" id="XLI"></a>XLI.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE WORK OF AN HOUR.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">Base is the slave that pays."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Henry V.</span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Congreve.</span><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester upon leaving the bank, had taken his usual route up town.
+But after an aimless walk of a few blocks, he suddenly paused, and with
+a quiet look about him, drew from his pocket the small slip of paper
+which Bertram had laid on his table the night before, and hurriedly
+consulted its contents. Instantly an irrepressible exclamation escaped
+him, and he turned his face to the heavens with the look of one who
+recognizes the just providence of God. The name which he had just read,
+was that of the old lover of Jacqueline Japha, Roger Holt, and the
+address given, was 63 Baxter Street.</p>
+
+<p>Twilight comes with different aspects to the broad avenues of the rich,
+and the narrow alleys of the poor. In the reeking slums of Baxter
+Street, poetry would have had to search long for the purple glamour that
+makes day's dying hour fair in open fields and perfumed chambers. Even
+the last dazzling gleam of the sun could awaken no sparkle from the
+bleared windows of the hideous tenement houses that reared their blank
+and disfigured walls toward the west. The chill of the night blast and
+the quick dread that follows in the steps of coming darkness, were all
+that could enter these regions, unless it was the stealthy shades of
+vice and disease.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester standing before the darkest and most threatening of the
+many dark and threatening houses that cumbered the street, was a sight
+to draw more than one head from the neighboring windows. Had it been
+earlier, he would have found himself surrounded by a dozen ragged and
+importunate children; had it been later, he would have run the risk of
+being garroted by some skulking assassin; as it was, he stood there
+unmolested, eying the structure that held within its gloomy recesses the
+once handsome and captivating lover of Jacqueline Japha. He was not the
+only man who would have hesitated before entering there. Low and
+insignificant as the building appeared&mdash;and its two stories certainly
+looked dwarfish enough in comparison with the two lofty tenement houses
+that pressed it upon either side&mdash;there was something in its quiet,
+almost uninhabited aspect that awakened a vague apprehension of lurking
+danger. A face at a window would have been a relief; even the sight of a
+customer in the noisome groggery that occupied the ground floor. From
+the dwellings about, came the hum of voices and now and then the sound
+of a shrill laugh or a smothered cry, but from this house came nothing,
+unless it was the slow ooze of a stream of half-melted snow that found
+its way from under the broken-down door-way to the gutter beyond.</p>
+
+<p>Stepping bravely forward, Mr. Sylvester entered the open door. A flight
+of bare and rickety steps met his eye. Ascending them, he found himself
+in a hall which must have been poorly lighted at any time, but which at
+this late hour was almost dark. It was not very encouraging, but
+pressing on, he stopped at a door and was about to knock, when his eyes
+becoming accustomed to the darkness, he detected standing at the foot of
+the stairs leading to the story above, the tall and silent figure of a
+woman. It was no common apparition. Like a sentinel at his post, or a
+spy on the outskirts of the enemy's camp, she stood drawn up against the
+wall, her whole wasted form quivering with eagerness or some other
+secret passion; darkness on her brow and uncertainty on her lip. She was
+listening, or waiting, or both, and that with an entire absorption that
+prevented her from heeding the approach of a stranger's step. Struck by
+so sinister a presence in a place so dark and desolate, Mr. Sylvester
+unconsciously drew back. As he did so, the woman thrilled and looked up,
+but not at him. A lame child's hesitating and uneven step was heard
+crossing the floor above, and it was towards it she turned, and for it
+she composed her whole form into a strange but evil calmness.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, he let you come then!" Mr. Sylvester heard her exclaim in a low
+smothered tone, whose attempted lightness did not hide the malevolent
+nature of her interest.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," came back in the clear and confiding tones of childhood. "I told
+him you loved me and gave me candy-balls, and he let me come."</p>
+
+<p>A laugh quick and soon smothered, disturbed the surrounding gloom. "You
+told him I loved you! Well, that is good; I do love you; love you as I
+do my own eyes that I could crush, crush, for ever having lingered on
+the face of my betrayer!"</p>
+
+<p>The last phrase was muttered, and did not seem to convey any impression
+to the child. "Hold out your arms and catch me," cried he; "I am going
+to jump."</p>
+
+<p>She appeared to comply; for he gave a little ringing laugh that was
+startlingly clear and fresh.</p>
+
+<p>"He asked me what your name was," babbled he, as he nestled in her arms.
+"He is always asking what your name is; Dad forgets, Dad does; or else
+it's because he's never seen you."</p>
+
+<p>"And what did you tell him?" she asked, ignoring the last remark with an
+echo of her sarcastic laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Smith, of course."</p>
+
+<p>She threw back her head and her whole form acquired an aspect that made
+Mr. Sylvester shudder. "That's good," she cried, "Mrs. Smith by all
+means." Then with a sudden lowering of her face to his&mdash;"Mrs. Smith is
+good to you, isn't she; lets you sit by her fire when she has any, and
+gives you peanuts to eat and sometimes spares you a penny!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes," the boy cried.</p>
+
+<p>"Come then," she said, "let's go home."</p>
+
+<p>She put him down on the floor, and gave him his little crutch. Her
+manner was not unkind, and yet Mr. Sylvester trembled as he saw the
+child about to follow her.</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't you ever have any little boys?" the child suddenly asked.</p>
+
+<p>The woman shrank as if a burning steel had been plunged against her
+breast. Looking down on the frightened child, she hissed out from
+between her teeth, "Did he tell you to ask me that? Did he dare&mdash;" She
+stopped and pressed her arms against her swelling heart as if she would
+smother its very beats. "Oh no, of course he didn't tell you; what does
+he know or care about Mrs. Smith!" Then with a quick gasp and a wild
+look into the space before her, "My child dead, and her child alive and
+beloved! What wonder that I hate earth and defy heaven!"</p>
+
+<p>She caught the boy by the hand and drew him quickly away. "You will be
+good to me," he cried, frightened by her manner yet evidently fascinated
+too, perhaps on account of the faint sparks of kindness that alternated
+with gusts of passion he did not understand. "You won't hurt me; you'll
+let me sit by the fire and get warm?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes."</p>
+
+<p>"And eat a bit of bread with butter on it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I'll go."</p>
+
+<p>She drew him down the hall. "Why do you like to have me come to your
+house?" he prattled away.</p>
+
+<p>She turned on him with a look which unfortunately Mr. Sylvester could
+not see. "Because your eyes are so blue and your skin is so white; they
+make me remember her!"</p>
+
+<p>"And who is <i>her</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>She laughed and seemed to hug herself in her rage and bitterness. "Your
+mother!" she cried, and in speaking it, she came upon Mr. Sylvester.</p>
+
+<p>He at once put out his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know who you are," said he, "but I do not think you had better
+take the child out to-night. From what you say, his father is evidently
+upstairs; if you will give the boy to me, I will take him back and leave
+him where he belongs."</p>
+
+<p>"You will?" The slow intensity of her tone was indescribable. "Know that
+I don't bear interference from strangers." And catching up the child,
+she rushed by him like a flash. "You are probably one of those
+missionaries who go stealing about unasked into respectable persons'
+rooms," she called back. "If by any chance you wander into his, tell him
+his child is in good hands, do you hear, in good hands!" And with a
+final burst of her hideous laugh, she dashed down the stairs and was
+gone.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester stood shocked and undecided. His fatherly heart urged him
+to search at once for the parent of this lame boy, and warn him of the
+possible results of entrusting his child to a woman with so little
+command over herself. But upon taking out his watch and finding it later
+by a good half-hour than he expected, he was so struck with the
+necessity of completing his errand, that he forgot everything else in
+his anxiety to confront Holt. Knocking at the first door he came to, he
+waited. A quick snarl and a surprised, "Come in!" announced that he had
+scared up some sort of a living being, but whether man or woman he found
+it impossible to tell, even after the door opened and the creature,
+whoever it was, rose upon him from a pile of rags scattered in one
+corner.</p>
+
+<p>"I want Mr. Holt; can you tell me where to find him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Upstairs," was the only reply he received, as the creature settled down
+again upon its heap of tattered clothing.</p>
+
+<p>Fain to be content with this, he went up another flight and opened
+another door. He was more successful this time; one glance of his eye
+assured him that the man he was in search of, sat before him. He had
+never seen Mr. Holt; but the regular if vitiated features of the person
+upon whom he now intruded, his lank but not ungraceful form, and free if
+not airy manners, were not so common among the denizens of this
+unwholesome quarter, that there could be any doubt as to his being the
+accomplished but degenerate individual whose once attractive air had
+stolen the heart of Colonel Japha's daughter.</p>
+
+<p>He was sitting in front of a small pine table, and when Mr. Sylvester's
+eyes first fell upon him, was engaged in watching with a somewhat
+sinister smile, the final twirl of a solitary nickle which he had set
+spinning on the board before him. But at the sound of a step at the
+door, a lightning change passed over his countenance, and rising with a
+quick anticipatory "Ah!" he turned with hasty action to meet the
+intruder. A second exclamation and a still more hasty recoil were the
+result. This was not the face or the form of him whom he had expected.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Holt, I believe?" inquired Mr. Sylvester, advancing with his most
+dignified mien.</p>
+
+<p>The other bowed, but in a doubtful way that for a moment robbed him of
+his usual air of impudent self-assertion.</p>
+
+<p>"Then I have business with you," continued Mr. Sylvester, laying the
+man's own card down on the table before him. "My name is Sylvester," he
+proceeded, with a calmness that surprised himself; "and I am the uncle
+of the young man upon&mdash;whom you are at present presuming to levy
+blackmail."</p>
+
+<p>The assurance which for a moment had deserted the countenance of the
+other, returned with a flash. "His uncle!" reëchoed he, with a low
+anomalous bow; "then it is from you I may expect the not unreasonable
+sum which I demand as the price of my attentions to your nephew's
+interest. Very good, I am not particular from what quarter it comes, so
+that it does come and that before the clock has struck the hour which I
+have set as the limit of my forbearance."</p>
+
+<p>"Which is seven o'clock, I believe?"</p>
+
+<p>"Which is seven o'clock."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester folded his arms and sternly eyed the man before him. "You
+still adhere to your intention, then, of forwarding to Mr. Stuyvesant at
+that hour, the sealed communication now in the hands of your lawyer?"</p>
+
+<p>The smile with which the other responded was like the glint of a partly
+sheathed dagger. "My lawyer has already received his instructions.
+Nothing but an immediate countermand on my part, will prevent the
+communication of which you speak, from going to Mr. Stuyvesant at seven
+o'clock."</p>
+
+<p>The sigh which rose in Mr. Sylvester's breast did not disturb the severe
+immobility of his lip. "Have you ever considered the possibility," said
+he, "of the man whom you overheard talking in the restaurant in Dey
+Street two years ago, not being Mr. Bertram Sylvester of the Madison
+Bank?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," returned the other, with a short, sharp, and wholly undisturbed
+laugh, "I do not think I ever have."</p>
+
+<p>"Will you give me credit, then, for speaking with reason, when I declare
+to you that the man you overheard talking in the manner you profess to
+describe in your communication, was not Mr. Bertram Sylvester?"</p>
+
+<p>A shrug of the shoulders, highly foreign and suggestive, was the other's
+answer. "It was Mr. Sylvester or it was the devil," proclaimed he&mdash;"with
+all deference to your reason, my good sir; or why are you here?" he
+keenly added.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester did not reply. With a sarcastic twitch of his lips the man
+took up the nickle with which he had been amusing himself when the
+former came in, and set it spinning again upon the table. "It is
+half-past six," remarked he. "It will take me a good half hour to go to
+my lawyer."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester made a final effort. "If you could be convinced," said he,
+"that you have got your grasp upon the wrong man, would you still
+persist in the course upon which you seem determined?"</p>
+
+<p>With a dexterous sleight-of-hand movement, the man picked up the
+whirling nickle and laid it flat on the table before him. "A fellow
+whose whole fortune is represented by a coin like that"&mdash;tapping the
+piece significantly&mdash;"is not as easily convinced as a man of your means,
+perhaps. But if I should be brought to own that I had made a mistake in
+my man, I should still feel myself justified in proceeding against him,
+since my very accusation of him seems to be enough to arouse such
+interest on the part of his friends."</p>
+
+<p>"Wretch!" leaped to Mr. Sylvester's lips, but he did not speak it. "His
+friends," declared he, "have most certainly a great interest in his
+reputation and his happiness; but they never will pay any thing upon
+coercion to preserve the one or to insure the other."</p>
+
+<p>"They won't!" And for the first time Roger Holt slightly quavered.</p>
+
+<p>"A man's honor and happiness are much, and he will struggle long before
+he will consent to part from them. But a citizen of a great town like
+this, owes something to his fellows, and submitting to blackmail is but
+a poor precedent to set. You will have to proceed as you will, Mr. Holt;
+neither my nephew nor myself, have any money to give you."</p>
+
+<p>The glare in the man's eyes was like that of an aroused tiger. "Do you
+mean to say," cried he, "that you will not give from your abundance, a
+paltry thousand dollars to save one of your blood from a suspicion that
+will never leave him, <i>never leave him</i> to the end of his miserable
+days?"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean to say that not one cent will pass from me to you in payment of
+a silence, which as a gentleman, you ought to feel it incumbent upon you
+to preserve unasked, if only to prove to your fellow-men that you have
+not entirely lost all the instincts of the caste to which you once
+belonged. Not that I look for anything so disinterested from you," he
+went on. "A man who could enter the home of a respectable gentleman, and
+under cover of a brotherly regard, lure into degradation and despair,
+the woman who was at once its ornament and pride, cannot be expected to
+practice the virtues of ordinary manhood, much less those of a gentleman
+and a Christian. He is a wretch, who, whatever his breeding or
+antecedents, is open to nothing but execration and contempt."</p>
+
+<p>With an oath and a quick backward spring, Roger Holt cried out, "Who are
+you, and by what right do you come here to reproach me with a matter
+dead and buried, by heaven, a dozen years ago?"</p>
+
+<p>"The right of one who, though a stranger, knows well what you are and
+what you have done. Colonel Japha himself is dead, but the avenger of
+his honor yet lives! Roger Holt, <i>where is Jacqueline Japha</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>The force with which this was uttered, seemed to confound the man. For a
+moment he stood silent, his eye upon his guest, then a subtle change
+took place in his expression; he smiled with a slow devilish meaning,
+and tossing his head with an airy gesture, lightly remarked:</p>
+
+<p>"You must ask some more constant lover than I. A woman who was charming
+ten years ago&mdash;Bah! what would I be likely to know about her now!"</p>
+
+<p>"Everything, when that woman is Jacqueline Japha," cried Mr. Sylvester,
+advancing upon him with a look that would have shaken most men, but
+which only made the eye of this one burn more eagerly. "Though you might
+easily wish to give her the slip, she is not one to forget you. If she
+is alive, you know where she is; speak then, and let the worth of one
+good action make what amends it can for a long list of evil ones."</p>
+
+<p>"You really want to see the woman, then; enough to pay for it, I mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"The reward which has been offered for news of the fate or whereabouts
+of Jacqueline Japha, still stands good," was Mr. Sylvester's reply.</p>
+
+<p>The excited stare with which the man received this announcement, slowly
+subsided into his former subtle look.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well," said he, "we will see." The truth was, that he knew no
+more than the other where this woman was to be found. "If I happen to
+come across her in any of my wanderings, I shall know where to apply for
+means to make her welcome. But that is not what at present concerns us.
+Your nephew is losing ground with every passing minute. In a half-hour
+more his future will be decided, unless you bid me order my lawyer to
+delay the forwarding of that communication to Mr. Stuyvesant. In that
+case&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I believe I have already made it plain to you that I have no intentions
+of interfering with your action in this matter," quoth Mr. Sylvester,
+turning slowly toward the door. "If you are determined to send your
+statement, it must go, only&mdash;" And here he turned upon the bitterly
+disappointed man with an aspect whose nobility the other was but little
+calculated to appreciate&mdash;"only when you do so, be particular to state
+that the person whose story you thus forward to a director of the
+Madison Bank, is not Bertram Sylvester, the cashier, but Edward
+Sylvester, his uncle, and the bank's president."</p>
+
+<p>And the stately head bowed and the tall form was about to withdraw, when
+Holt with an excited tremble that affected even his words, advanced and
+seized Mr. Sylvester by the arm.</p>
+
+<p>"His uncle!" cried he, "why that is what you&mdash;Great heaven!" he
+exclaimed, falling back with an expression not unmixed with awe, "you
+are the man and you have denounced yourself!" Then quickly, "Speak
+again; let me hear your voice."</p>
+
+<p>And Mr. Sylvester with a sad smile, repeated in a slow and meaning tone,
+"It is but one little <i>fuss</i> more!" then as the other cringed, added a
+dignified, "Good evening, Mr. Holt," and passed swiftly across the room
+towards the door.</p>
+
+<p>What was it that stopped him half-way, and made him look back with such
+a startled glance at the man he had left behind him? A smell of smoke in
+the air, the faint yet unmistakable odor of burning wood, as though the
+house were on fire, or&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Ha! the man himself has discerned it, is on his feet, is at the window,
+has seen what? His cry of mingled terror and dismay does not reveal. Mr.
+Sylvester hastens to his side.</p>
+
+<p>The sight which met his eyes, did not for the moment seem sufficient to
+account for the degree of emotion expressed by the other. To be sure,
+the lofty tenement-house which towered above them from the other side of
+the narrow yard upon which the window looked, was oozing with smoke, but
+there were no flames visible, and as yet no special manifestations of
+alarm on the part of its occupants. But in an instant, even while they
+stood there, arose the sudden and awful cry of "Fire!" and at the same
+moment they beheld the roof and casements before them, swarm with pallid
+faces, as men, women and children rushed to the first outlet that
+offered escape, only to shrink back in renewed terror from the deadly
+gulf that yawned beneath them.</p>
+
+<p>It was horrible, all the more that the fire seem to be somewhere in the
+basement story, possibly at the foot of the stairs, for none of the poor
+shrieking wretches before them seemed to make any effort to escape
+downwards, but rather surged up towards the top of the building, waving
+their arms as they fled, and filling the dusk with cries that drowned
+the sound of the coming engines.</p>
+
+<p>The scene appeared to madden Holt. "My boy! my boy! my boy!" rose from
+his lips in an agonized shriek; then as Mr. Sylvester gave a sudden
+start, cried out with indiscribable anguish, "He is there, my boy, my
+own little chap! A woman in that house has bewitched him, and when he is
+not with me, he is always at her side. O God, curses on my head for ever
+letting him out of my sight! Do you see him, sir? Look for him, I
+beseech you; he is lame and small; his head would barely reach to the
+top of the window-sill."</p>
+
+<p>"And that was your boy!" cried Mr. Sylvester. And struck by an appeal
+which in spite of his abhorrence of the man at his side, woke every
+instinct of fatherhood within him, he searched with his glance the long
+row of windows before them. But before his eye had travelled half way
+across the building, he felt the man at his side quiver with sudden
+agony, and following the direction of his glance, saw a wan, little
+countenance looking down upon them from a window almost opposite to
+where they stood.</p>
+
+<p>"It is my boy!" shrieked the man, and in his madness would have leaped
+from the casement, if Mr. Sylvester had not prevented him.</p>
+
+<p>"You will not help him so," cried the latter. "See, he is only a few
+feet above a bridge that appears to communicate with the roof of the
+next house. If he could be let down&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But the man had already precipitated himself towards the door of the
+room in which they were. "Tell him not to jump," he called back. "I am
+going next door and will reach him in a moment. Tell him to hold on till
+I come."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester at once raised his voice. "Don't jump, little boy Holt. If
+there is no one there to drop you down, wait for your father. He is
+going on the bridge and will catch you."</p>
+
+<p>The little fellow seemed to hear, for he immediately held out his arms,
+but if he spoke, his voice was drowned in the frightful hubbub.
+Meanwhile the smoke thickened around him, and a dull ominous glare broke
+out from the midst of the building, against which his weazen little face
+looked pallid as death.</p>
+
+<p>"His father will be too late," groaned Mr. Sylvester, feeling himself
+somehow to blame for the child's horrible situation; then observing that
+the other occupants of the building had all disappeared towards the
+front, realized that whatever fire-escapes may have been provided, were
+doubtless in that direction, and raising his voice once more, called out
+across the yard, "Don't wait any longer, little fellow; follow the rest
+to the front; you will be burned if you stay there."</p>
+
+<p>But the child did not move, only held out his arms in a way to unman the
+strongest heart; and presently while Mr. Sylvester was asking himself
+what could be done, he heard his shrill piping tones rising above the
+hiss of the flames, and listening, caught the words:</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot get away. She is holding me, Dad. Help your little feller;
+help me, I'm so afraid of being burnt." And looking closer, Mr.
+Sylvester discerned the outlines of a woman's head and shoulders above
+the small white face.</p>
+
+<p>A distinct and positive fear at once seized him. Leaning out, the better
+to display his own face and figure, he called to that unknown woman to
+quit her hold and let the child go; but a discordant laugh, rising above
+the roar of the approaching flames, was his only reply. Sickened with
+apprehension, he drew back and himself made for the stairs in the wild
+idea of finding the father. But just then the mad figure of Holt
+appeared at the door, with frenzy in all his looks.</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot push through the crowd," cried he, "I have fought and
+struggled and shrieked, but it is all of no use. My boy is burning alive
+and I cannot reach him." A lurid flame shot at that moment from the
+building before them, as if in emphasis to his words.</p>
+
+<p>"He is prisoned there by a woman," cried Mr. Sylvester, pointing to the
+figure whose distorted outlines was every moment becoming more and more
+visible in the increasing glare. "See, she has him tight in her arms and
+is pressing him against the window-sill."</p>
+
+<p>The man with a terrible recoil, looked in the direction of his child,
+saw the little white face with its wild expression of conscious terror,
+saw the face of her who towered implacably behind it, and shrieked
+appalled.</p>
+
+<p>"Jacqueline!" he cried, and put his hands up before his face as if his
+eyes had fallen upon an avenging spirit.</p>
+
+<p>"Is that Jacqueline Japha?" asked Mr. Sylvester, dragging down the
+other's hands and pointing relentlessly towards the ominous figure in
+the window before him.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, or her ghost," cried the other, shuddering under a horror that
+left him little control of his reason.</p>
+
+<p>"Then your boy is lost," murmured Mr. Sylvester, with a vivid
+remembrance of the words he had overheard. "She will never save her
+rival's child, never."</p>
+
+<p>The man looked at him with dazed eyes. "She shall save him," he cried,
+and stretching far out of the window by which he stood, he pointed to
+the bridge and called out, "Drop him, Jacqueline, don't let him burn. He
+can still reach the next house if he runs. Save my darling, save him."</p>
+
+<p>But the woman as if waiting for his voice, only threw back her head, and
+while a bursting flame flashed up behind her, shrieked mockingly back:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh I have frightened you up at last, have I? You can see me now, can
+you? You can call on Jacqueline now? The brat can make you speak, can
+he? Well, well, call away, I love to hear your voice. It is music to me
+even in the face of death."</p>
+
+<p>"My boy! my boy," was all he could gasp; "save the child, Jacqueline,
+only save the child!"</p>
+
+<p>But the harsh scornful laugh she returned, spoke little of saving. "He
+is so dear," she hissed. "I love the offspring of my rival so much! the
+child that has taken the place of my own darling, dead before ever I had
+seen its innocent eyes. Oh yes, yes, I will save it, save it as my own
+was saved. When I saw the puny infant in your arms the day you passed me
+with <i>her</i>, I swore to be its friend, don't you remember! And I am so
+much of a one that I stick by him to the death, don't you see?" And
+raising him up in her arms till his whole stunted body was visible, she
+turned away her brow and seemed to laugh in the face of the flames.</p>
+
+<p>The father writhed below in his agony. "Forgive," he cried, "forgive the
+past and give me back my child. It's all I have to love; it's all I've
+ever loved. Be merciful, Jacqueline, be merciful!"</p>
+
+<p>Her face flashed back upon him, still and white. "And what mercy have
+you ever shown to me! Fool, idiot, don't you see I have lived for this
+hour! To make you feel for once; to make you suffer for once as I have
+suffered. You love the boy! Roger Holt, I once loved you."</p>
+
+<p>And heedless of the rolling volume of smoke that now began to pour
+towards her, heedless even of the long tongues of hungry flame that were
+stretched out as if feeling for her from the distance behind, she stood
+immovable, gazing down upon the casement where he knelt, with an
+indescribable and awful smile upon her lips.</p>
+
+<p>The sight was unbearable. With an instinct of despair both men drew
+back, when suddenly they saw the woman start, unloose her clasp and drop
+the child out of her arms upon the bridge. A hissing stream of water had
+fallen upon the flames, and the shock had taken her by surprise. In a
+moment the father was himself again.</p>
+
+<p>"Get up, little feller, get up," he cried, "or if you cannot walk, crawl
+along the bridge to the next house. I see a fireman there; he will lift
+you in."</p>
+
+<p>But at that moment the flames, till now held under some control, burst
+from an adjoining window, and caught at the woodwork of the bridge. The
+father yelled in dismay.</p>
+
+<p>"Hurry, little feller, hurry!" he cried. "Get over towards the next
+house before it is too late."</p>
+
+<p>But a paralysis seemed to have seized the child; he arose, then stopped,
+and looking wildly about, shook his head. "I cannot," he cried, "I
+cannot." And the woman laughed, and with a hug of her empty arms, seemed
+to throw her taunts into the space before her.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you a demon?" burst from Mr. Sylvester's lips in uncontrollable
+horror. "Don't you see you can save him if you will? Jump down, then,
+and carry him across, or your father's curse will follow you to the
+world beyond."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, climb down," cried the fireman, "you are lighter than I. Don't
+waste a minute, a second."</p>
+
+<p>"It is your own child, Jacqueline, your own child!" came from Holt's
+white lips in final desperation. "I have deceived you; your baby did not
+die; I wanted to get rid of you and I wanted to save him, so I lied to
+you. The baby did not die; he lived, and that is he you see lying
+helpless on the bridge beneath you."</p>
+
+<p>Not the clutch of an advancing flame could have made her shrink more
+fearfully. "It is false," she cried; "you are lying now; you want me to
+save <i>her</i> child, and dare to say it is mine."</p>
+
+<p>"As God lives!" he swore, lifting his hand and turning his face to the
+sky.</p>
+
+<p>Her whole attitude seemed to cry, "No, no," to his assertion but slowly
+as she stood there, the conviction of its truth seemed to strike her,
+and her hair rose on her forehead and she swayed to and fro, as if the
+earth were rolling under her feet. Suddenly she gave a yell, and bounded
+from the window. Catching the child in her arms, she attempted to regain
+the refuge beyond, but the flames had not dallied at their work while
+she hesitated. The bridge was on fire and her retreat was cut off. She
+did not attempt to escape. Stopping in the centre of the rocking mass,
+she looked down as only a mother in her last agony can do, on the child
+she held folded in her arms; then as the flames caught at her floating
+garments, stooped her head and printed one wild and passionate kiss upon
+his brow. Another instant and they saw her head rise to the accusing
+heavens, then all was rush and horror, and the swaying structure fell
+before their eyes, sweeping its living freight into the courtyard
+beneath their feet.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XLII" id="XLII"></a>XLII.</h2>
+
+<h3>PAULA RELATES A STORY SHE HAS HEARD.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"None are so desolate but something dear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dearer than self, possesses or possessed."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Byron.</span><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>In the centre of a long low room not far from the scene of the late
+disaster, a solitary lamp was burning. It had been lit in haste and cast
+but a feeble flame, but its light was sufficient to illuminate the sad
+and silent group that gathered under its rays.</p>
+
+<p>On a bench by the wall, crouched the bowed and stricken form of Roger
+Holt, his face buried in his hands, his whole attitude expressive of the
+utmost grief; at his side stood Mr. Sylvester, his tall figure looming
+sombrely in the dim light; and on the floor at their feet, lay the dead
+form of the little lame boy.</p>
+
+<p>But it was not upon their faces, sad and striking as they were, that the
+eyes of the few men and women scattered in the open door-way, rested
+most intently. It was upon her, the bruised, bleeding, half-dead mother,
+who kneeling above the little corpse, gazed down upon it with the
+immobility of despair, moaning in utter heedlessness of her own
+condition, "My baby, my baby, my own, own baby!"</p>
+
+<p>The fixedness with which she eyed the child, though the blood was
+streaming from her forehead and bathing with a still deeper red her
+burned and blistered arms, made Mr. Sylvester's sympathetic heart beat.
+Turning to the silent figure of Holt, he touched him on the arm and said
+with a gesture in her direction:</p>
+
+<p>"You have not deceived the woman? That is really her own child that lies
+there?"</p>
+
+<p>The man beside him, started, looked up with slowly comprehending eyes,
+and mechanically bowed his head. "Yes," assented he, and relapsed into
+his former heavy silence.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester touched him again. "If it is hers, how came she not to
+know it? How could you manage to deceive such a woman as that?"</p>
+
+<p>Holt started again and muttered, "She was sick and insensible. She never
+saw the baby; I sent it away, and when she came to herself, told her it
+was dead. We had become tired of each other long before, and only needed
+the breaking of this bond to separate us. When she saw me again, it was
+with another woman at my side and an infant in my arms. The child was
+weakly and looked younger than he was. She thought it her rival's and I
+did not undeceive her." And the heavy head again fell forward, and
+nothing disturbed the sombre silence of the room but the low unvarying
+moan of the wretched mother, "My baby, my baby, my own, own baby!"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester moved over to her side. "Jacqueline," said he, "the child
+is dead and you yourself are very much hurt. Won't you let these good
+women lay you on a bed, and do what they can to bind up your poor
+blistered arms?"</p>
+
+<p>But she heard him no more than the wind's blowing. "My baby," she
+moaned, "my own, own baby!"</p>
+
+<p>He drew back with a troubled air. Grief like this he could understand
+but knew not how to alleviate. He was just on the point of beckoning
+forward one of the many women clustered in the door-way, when there came
+a sound from without that made him start, and in another moment a young
+man had stepped hastily into the room, followed by a girl, who no sooner
+saw Mr. Sylvester, than she bounded forward with a sudden cry of joy and
+relief.</p>
+
+<p>"Bertram! Paula! What does this mean? What are you doing here?"</p>
+
+<p>A burst of sobs from the agitated girl was her sole reply.</p>
+
+<p>"Such a night! such a place!" he exclaimed, throwing his arm about Paula
+with a look that made her tremble through her tears. "Were you so
+anxious about me, little one?" he whispered. "Would not your fears let
+you rest?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no; and we have had such a dreadful time since we got here. The
+house where we expected to find you, is on fire, and we thought of
+nothing else but that you had perished within it. But finally some one
+told us to come here, and&mdash;" She paused horror-stricken; her eyes had
+just fallen upon the little dead child and the moaning mother.</p>
+
+<p>"That is Jacqueline Japha," whispered Mr. Sylvester. "We have found her,
+only to close her eyes, I fear."</p>
+
+<p>"Jacqueline Japha!" Paula's hands unclosed from his arm.</p>
+
+<p>"She was in the large tenement house that burned first; that is her
+child whose loss she is mourning."</p>
+
+<p>"Jacqueline Japha!" again fell with an indescribable tone from Paula's
+lips. "And who is that?" she asked, turning and indicating the silent
+figure by the wall.</p>
+
+<p>"That is Roger Holt, the man who should have been her husband."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I remember him," she cried; "and her, I remember her, and the
+little child too. But," she suddenly exclaimed, "she told me then that
+she was not his mother."</p>
+
+<p>"And she did not know that she was; the man had deceived her."</p>
+
+<p>With a quick thrill Paula bounded forward. "Jacqueline Japha," she
+cried, falling with outstretched hands beside the poor creature; "thank
+God you are found at last!"</p>
+
+<p>But the woman was as insensible to this cry as she had been to all
+others. "My baby," she wailed, "my baby, my own, own baby!"</p>
+
+<p>Paula recoiled in dismay, and for a moment stood looking down with fear
+and doubt upon the fearful being before her. But in another instant a
+heavenly instinct seized her, and ignoring the mother, she stooped over
+the child and tenderly kissed it. The woman at once woke from her
+stupor. "My baby!" she cried, snatching the child up in her arms with a
+gleam of wild jealousy; "nobody shall touch it but me. I killed it and
+it is all mine now!" But in a moment she had dropped the child back into
+its place, and was going on with the same set refrain that had stirred
+her lips from the first.</p>
+
+<p>Paula was not to be discouraged. Laying her hand on the child's brow,
+she gently smoothed back his hair, and when she saw the old gleam
+returning to the woman's countenance, said quietly, "Are you going to
+carry it to Grotewell to be buried? Margery Hamlin is waiting for you,
+you know?"</p>
+
+<p>The start which shook the woman's haggard frame, encouraged her to
+proceed.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; you know she has been keeping watch, and waiting for you so long!
+She is quite worn out and disheartened; fifteen years is a long time to
+hope against hope, Jacqueline."</p>
+
+<p>The stare of the wretched creature deepened into a fierce and maddened
+glare. "You don't know what you are talking about," cried she, and bent
+herself again over the child.</p>
+
+<p>Paula went on as if she had not spoken. "Any one that is loved as much
+as you are, Jacqueline, ought not to give way to despair; even if your
+child is dead, there is still some one left whom you can make supremely
+happy."</p>
+
+<p>"Him?" the woman's look seemed to say, as she turned and pointed with
+frightful sarcasm to the man at their back.</p>
+
+<p>Paula shrank and hastily shook her head. "No, no, not him, but&mdash;Let me
+tell you a story," she whispered eagerly. "In a certain country-town not
+far from here, there is a great empty house. It is dark, and cold, and
+musty. No one ever goes there but one old lady, who every night at six,
+crosses its tangled garden, unlocks its great side door, enters within
+its deserted precincts, and for an hour remains there, praying for one
+whose return she has never ceased to hope and provide for. She is
+kneeling there to-night, at this very hour, Jacqueline, and the love she
+thus manifests is greater than that of man to woman or woman to man. It
+is like that of heaven or the Christ."</p>
+
+<p>The woman before her rose to her feet. She did not speak, but she looked
+like a creature before whose eyes a sudden torch had been waved.</p>
+
+<p>"Fifteen years has she done this," Paula solemnly continues. "She
+promised, you know; and she never has forgotten her promise."</p>
+
+<p>With a cry the woman put out her hands. "Stop!" she cried, "stop! I
+don't believe it. No one loves like that; else there is a God and I&mdash;"
+She paused, quivered, gave one wild look about her, and then with a
+quick cry, something between a moan and a prayer, succumbed to the pain
+of her injuries, and sank down insensible by the side of her dead child.</p>
+
+<p>With a reverent look Paula bent over her and kissed her seared and
+bleeding forehead. "For Mrs. Hamlin's sake," she whispered, and quietly
+smoothed down the tattered clothing about the poor creature's wasted
+frame.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester turned quietly upon the man who had been the cause of all
+this misery. "I charge myself with the care of that woman," said he,
+"and with the burial of your child. It shall be placed in decent ground
+with all proper religious ceremonial."</p>
+
+<p>"What, you will do this!" cried Holt, a flush of real feeling for a
+moment disturbing the chalk-white pallor of his cheek. "Oh sir, this is
+Christian charity; and I beg your pardon for all that I may have
+meditated against you. It was done for the child," he went on wildly;
+"to get him the bread and butter he often lacked. I didn't care so much
+for myself. I hated to see him hungry and cold and ailing; I might have
+worked, but I detest work, and&mdash;But no matter about all that; enough
+that I am done with endeavoring to extort money from you. Whatever may
+have happened in the past, you are free from my persecutions in the
+future. Henceforth you and yours can rest in peace."</p>
+
+<p>"That is well," cried a voice over his shoulder, and Bertram with an air
+of relief stepped hastily forward. "You must be very tired," remarked
+he, turning to his uncle. "If you will take charge of Paula, I will do
+what I can to see that this injured woman and the dead child are
+properly cared for. I am so relieved, sir, at this result," he
+whispered, with a furtive wring of his uncle's hand, "that I must
+express my joy in some way."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester smiled, but in a manner that reflected but little of the
+other's satisfaction. "Thank you," said he, "I am tired and will gladly
+delegate my duties to you. I trust you to do the most you can for both
+the living and the dead. That woman for all her seeming poverty is the
+possessor of a large fortune;" he whispered; "let her be treated as
+such." And with a final word to Holt who had sunk back against the wall
+in his old attitude of silent despair, Mr. Sylvester took Paula upon his
+arm, and quietly led her out of this humble but not unkind refuge.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XLIII" id="XLIII"></a>XLIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>DETERMINATION.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"But alas! to make me<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A fixed figure for the time of scorn<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To point his slow unmoving finger at!"&mdash;<span class="smcap">Othello.</span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Let me but bear your love, I'll bear your cares."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Henry V.</span><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>"Paula!"</p>
+
+<p>They had reached home and were standing in the library.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said she, lowering her head before his gaze with a sweet and
+conscious blush.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you read the letter I left for you in my desk up stairs?"</p>
+
+<p>She put her hand to her bosom and drew forth the closely written sheet.
+"Every word," she responded, and smilingly returned it to its place.</p>
+
+<p>He started and his chest heaved passionately. "You have read it," he
+cried, "and yet could follow me into that den of unknown dangers at an
+hour like this, and with no other guide than Bertram?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she answered.</p>
+
+<p>He drew a deep breath and his brow lost its deepest shadow. "You do not
+despise me then," he exclaimed "My sin has not utterly blotted me out of
+your regard?"</p>
+
+<p>The glance with which she replied seemed to fill the whole room with its
+radiance. "I am only beginning to realize the worth of the man who has
+hitherto been a mystery to me," she declared. Then as he shook his head,
+added with a serious air, "The question with all true hearts must ever
+be, not what a man has been, but what he is. He who for the sake of
+shielding the innocent from shame and sorrow, would have taken upon
+himself the onus of a past disgrace, is not unworthy a woman's
+devotion."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester smiled mournfully, and stroked her hand which he had taken
+in his. "Poor little one," he murmured. "I know not whether to feel
+proud or sorry for your trust and tender devotion. It would have been a
+great and unspeakable grief to me to have lost your regard, but it might
+have been better if I had; it might have been much better for you if I
+had!"</p>
+
+<p>"What, why do you say that?" she asked, with a startled gleam in her
+eye. "Do you think I am so eager for ease and enjoyment, that it will be
+a burden for me to bear the pain of those I love? A past pain, too," she
+added, "that will grow less and less as the days go by and happiness
+increases."</p>
+
+<p>He put her back with a quick hand. "Do not make it any harder for me
+than necessary," he entreated, "Do you not see that however gentle may
+be your judgment of my deserts, we can never marry, Paula?"</p>
+
+<p>The eyes which were fixed on his, deepened passionately. "No," she
+whispered, "no; not if your remorse for the past is all that separates
+us. The man who has conquered himself, has won the right to conquer the
+heart of a woman. I can say no more&mdash;" She timidly held out her hand.</p>
+
+<p>He grasped it with a man's impetuosity and pressed it to his heart, but
+he did not retain it. "Blessings upon you, dear and noble heart!" he
+cried. "God will hear my prayers and make you happy&mdash;but not with me.
+Paula," he passionately continued, taking her in his arms and holding
+her to his breast, "it cannot be. I love you&mdash;I will not, dare not say,
+how much&mdash;but love is no excuse for wronging you. My remorse is not all
+that separates us; possible disgrace lies before me; public exposure at
+all events; I would indeed be lacking in honor were I to subject you to
+these."</p>
+
+<p>"But," she stammered, drawing back to look into his face, "I thought
+that was all over; that the man had promised silence; that you were
+henceforth to be relieved from his persecutions? I am sure he said so."</p>
+
+<p>"He did, but he forgot that my fate no longer rested upon his
+forbearance. The letter which records my admission of sin was in his
+lawyer's hands, Paula, and has already been despatched to Mr.
+Stuyvesant. Say what we will, rebel against it as we will, Cicely's
+father knows by this time that the name of Sylvester is not spotless."</p>
+
+<p>The cry which she uttered in her sudden pain and loss made him stoop
+over her with despairing fondness. "Hush! my darling, hush!" cried he.
+"The trial is so heavy, I need all my strength to meet it. It breaks my
+heart to see you grieve. I cannot bear it. I deserve my fate, but
+you&mdash;Oh you&mdash;what have you done that you should be overwhelmed in my
+fall!" Putting her gently away from his breast, he drew himself up and
+with forced calmness said, "I have yet to inform Mr. Stuyvesant upon
+which of the Sylvesters' should rest the shadow of his distrust.
+To-night he believes in Bertram's lack of principle, but to-morrow&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Her trembling lips echoed the word.</p>
+
+<p>"He shall know that the man who confessed to having done a wrong deed in
+the past, is myself, Paula."</p>
+
+<p>The head which had fallen on her breast, rose as at the call of a
+clarion. "And is it at the noblest moment of your life that you would
+shut me away from your side? No, no. Heaven does not send us a great and
+mighty love for trivial purposes. The simple country maid whom you have
+sometimes declared was as the bringer of good news to you, shall not
+fail you now." Then slowly and with solemn assurance, "If you go to Mr.
+Stuyvesant's to-morrow, and you will, for that is your duty, you shall
+not go alone; Paula Fairchild accompanies you."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XLIV" id="XLIV"></a>XLIV.</h2>
+
+<h3>IN MR. STUYVESANT'S PARLORS.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Was I deceived, or did a sable cloud<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Turn forth her silver lining on the night?"&mdash;<span class="smcap">Comus.</span><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>"Unworthy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>Cicely stared at her father with wide-open and incredulous eyes. "I
+cannot believe it," she murmured; "no, I cannot believe it."</p>
+
+<p>Her father drew up a chair to her side. "My daughter," said he, with
+unusual tenderness, "I have hesitated to tell you this, fearing to wound
+you; but my discretion will allow me to keep silence no longer. Bertram
+Sylvester is not an honest man, and the sooner you make up your mind to
+forget him, the better."</p>
+
+<p>"Not honest?" You would scarcely have recognized Cicely's voice. Her
+father's hand trembled as he drew her back to his side.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a hard revelation for me to make to you, after testifying my
+approval of the young man. I sympathize with you, my child, but none the
+less I expect you to meet this disappointment bravely. A theft has been
+committed in our bank&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You do not accuse him of theft! Oh father, father!"</p>
+
+<p>"No," he stammered. "I do not accuse him, but facts look very strongly
+against some one in our trust, and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But that is not sufficient," she cried, rising in spite of his
+detaining hand till she stood erect before him. "You surely would not
+allow any mere circumstantial evidence to stand against a character as
+unblemished as his, even if he were not the man whom your daughter&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He would not let her continue. "I admit that I should be careful how I
+breathed suspicion against a man whose record was unimpeached," he
+assented, "but Bertram Sylvester does not enjoy that position. Indeed, I
+have just received a communication which goes to show, that he once
+actually acknowledged to having perpetrated an act of questionable
+integrity. Now a man as young as he, who&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But I cannot believe it," she moaned. "It is impossible, clearly
+impossible. How could he look me in the face with such a sin on his
+conscience! He could not, simply could not. Why, father, his brow is as
+open as the day, his glance clear and unwavering as the sunlight. It is
+some dreadful mistake. It is not Bertram of whom you are speaking!"</p>
+
+<p>Her father sighed. "Of whom else should it be? Come my child, do you
+want to read the communication which I received last night? Do you want
+to be convinced?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no;" she cried; but quickly contradicted herself with a hurried,
+"Yes, yes, let me be made acquainted with what there is against him, if
+only that I may prove to you it is all a mistake."</p>
+
+<p>"There is no mistake," he muttered, handing her a folded paper. "This
+statement was written two years ago; I witnessed it myself, though I
+little knew against whose honor it was directed. Read it, Cicely, and
+then remember that I have lost bonds out of my box at the bank, that
+could only have been taken by some one connected with the institution."</p>
+
+<p>She took the paper in her hand, and eagerly read it through. Suddenly
+she started and looked up. "And you say that this was Bertram, this
+gentleman who allowed another man to accuse him of a past dishonesty?"</p>
+
+<p>"So the person declares who forwarded me this statement; and though he
+is a poor wretch and evidently not above making mischief, I do not know
+as we have any special reason to doubt his word."</p>
+
+<p>Cicely's eyes fell and she stood before her father with an air of
+indecision. "I do not think it was Bertram," she faltered, but said no
+more.</p>
+
+<p>"I would to God for your sake, it was not!" he exclaimed. "But this
+communication together with the loss we have sustained at the bank, has
+shaken my faith, Cicely. Young men are so easily led astray nowadays;
+especially when playing for high stakes. A man who could leave his
+profession for the sake of winning a great heiress&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Father!"</p>
+
+<p>"I know he has made you think it was for love; but when the woman whom a
+young man fancies, is rich, love and ambition run too closely together
+to be easily disentangled. And now, my dear, I have said my say and
+leave you to act according to the dictates of your judgment, sure that
+it will be in a direction worthy of your name and breeding." And
+stooping for a hasty kiss, he gave her a last fond look and quietly left
+the room.</p>
+
+<p>And Cicely? For a moment she stood as if frozen in her place, then a
+great tremble seized her, and sinking down upon a sofa, she buried her
+face from sight, in a chaos of feeling that left her scarcely mistress
+of herself. But suddenly she started up, her face flushed, her eyes
+gleaming, her whole delicate form quivering with an emotion more akin to
+hope than despair.</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot doubt him," she whispered; "it were as easy to doubt my own
+soul. He is worthy if I am worthy, true if I am true; and I will not try
+to unlove him!"</p>
+
+<p>But soon the reaction came again, and she was about to give full sway to
+her grief and shame, when the parlor door opened&mdash;she herself was
+sitting in the extension room&mdash;and she saw Mr. Sylvester and Paula come
+in. She at once rose to her feet; but she did not advance. A thousand
+hopes and fears held her enchained where she was; besides there was
+something in the aspect of her friends, which made her feel as though a
+welcome even from her, would at that moment be an intrusion.</p>
+
+<p>"They have come to see father," she thought "and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Ah what, Cicely?</p>
+
+<p>Paula, who was too absorbed in her own feelings to glance into the
+extension room beyond, approached Mr. Sylvester and laid her hand upon
+his arm. "Whatever comes," said she, "truth, honor and love remain."</p>
+
+<p>And he bowed his head and seemed to kiss her hand, and Cicely observing
+the action, grew pale and dropped her eyes, realizing as by a
+lightning's flash, both the nature of the feeling that prompted this
+unusual manifestation on his part, and the possible sorrows that lay
+before her dearest friend, if not before herself, should the secret
+suspicions she cherished in regard to Mr. Sylvester prove true. When she
+had summoned up courage to glance again in their direction, Mr.
+Stuyvesant had entered the parlor and was nervously welcoming his
+guests.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester waited for no preamble. "I have come," said he, in his
+most even and determined tones, "to speak to you in regard to a
+communication from a man by the name of Holt, which I was told was to be
+sent to you last evening. Did you receive such a one?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Stuyvesant flushed, grew still more nervous in his manner and
+uttered a short, "I did," in a tone severer than he perhaps intended.</p>
+
+<p>"It will not be too much for me, then, to conclude, that in your present
+estimation my nephew stands committed to a past dishonesty?"</p>
+
+<p>"It has been one of my chief sources of regret&mdash;one of them I say,"
+repeated Mr. Stuyvesant, "that any loss of esteem on the part of your
+nephew, must necessarily reflect upon the peace if not the honor of a
+man I hold in such high regard as yourself. I assure you I feel it quite
+as a brother might, quite as a brother."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester at once rose. "Mr. Stuyvesant," declared he, "my nephew is
+as honest a man as walks this city's streets. If you will accord me a
+few minutes private conversation, I think I can convince you so."</p>
+
+<p>"I should be very glad," replied Mr. Stuyvesant, glancing towards the
+extension-room where he had left his daughter. "I have always liked the
+young man." Then with a quick look in the other's face, "You are not
+well, Mr. Sylvester?"</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, I am not ill; let us say what we have to, at once, if you
+please." And with just a glance at Paula, he followed the now somewhat
+agitated director from the room.</p>
+
+<p>Cicely who had started forward at their departure, glanced down the long
+parlor before her, and hastily faltered back; Paula was praying. But in
+a few moments her feelings overcame her timidity, and hurrying into her
+friend's presence, she threw her arms about her neck and pressed her
+cheek to hers. "Let us pray together," she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>Paula drew back and looked her friend in the face. "You know what all
+this means?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I guess," was the low reply.</p>
+
+<p>Paula checked a sob and clasped Cicely to her bosom. "He loves me," she
+faltered, "and he is doing at this moment what he believes will separate
+us. He is a noble man, Cicely, noble as Bertram, though he once did&mdash;"
+She paused. "It is for him to say what, not I," she softly concluded.</p>
+
+<p>"Then Bertram is noble," Cicely timidly put in.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you ever doubted it?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>And hiding their blushes on each other's shoulders, the two girls sat
+breathlessly waiting, while the clock ticked away in the music-room and
+the moments came and went that determined their fate. Suddenly they both
+rose. Mr. Stuyvesant and Mr. Sylvester were descending the stairs. Mr.
+Sylvester came in first. Walking straight up to Paula, he took her in
+his arms and kissed her on the forehead.</p>
+
+<p>"My betrothed wife!" he whispered.</p>
+
+<p>With a start of incredulous joy, Paula looked up. His glance was clear
+but strangely solemn and peaceful.</p>
+
+<p>"He has heard all I had to say," added he; "he is a just man, but he is
+also a merciful one. Like you he declares that not what a man was, but
+what he is, determines the judgment of true men concerning him." And
+taking her on his arm, he stood waiting for Mr. Stuyvesant who now came
+in.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is my daughter?" were that gentleman's words, as he closed the
+door behind him.</p>
+
+<p>"Here, papa."</p>
+
+<p>He held out his hand, and she sprang towards him. "Cicely," said he, not
+without some tokens of emotion in his voice, "it is only right that I
+should inform you that we were all laboring under a mistake, in charging
+Mr. Bertram Sylvester with the words that were uttered in the Dey Street
+coffee-house two years ago. Mr. Sylvester has amply convinced me that
+his nephew neither was, nor could have been present there at that time.
+It must have been some other man, of similar personality."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh thank you, thank you!" Cicely's look seemed to say to Mr. Sylvester.
+"And he is quite freed from reproach?" she asked, with a smiling glance
+into her father's face.</p>
+
+<p>A hesitancy in Mr. Stuyvesant's manner, struck with a chill upon more
+than one heart in that room.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he admitted at last; "the mere fact that a mysterious robbery has
+been committed upon certain effects in the bank of which he is cashier,
+is not sufficient to awaken distrust as to his integrity, but&mdash;"</p>
+
+
+<p>At that moment the door-bell rung.</p>
+
+<p>"Your father would say," cried Mr. Sylvester, taking advantage of the
+momentary break, to come to the relief of his host, "that my nephew is
+too much of a gentleman to desire to press any claim he may imagine
+himself as possessing over you, while even the possibility of a shadow
+rests upon his name."</p>
+
+<p>"The man who stole the bonds will be found," said Cicely.</p>
+
+<p>And as if in echo to her words the parlor door opened, and a messenger
+from the bank stepped briskly up to Mr. Stuyvesant.</p>
+
+<p>"A note from Mr. Folger," said he, with a quick glance at Mr. Sylvester.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Stuyvesant took the paper handed him, read it hastily through, and
+looked up with an air of some bewilderment.</p>
+
+<p>"I can hardly believe it possible," cried he, "but Hopgood has
+absconded."</p>
+
+<p>"Hopgood absconded?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; is not that the talk at the bank?" inquired Mr. Stuyvesant,
+turning to the messenger.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes sir. He has not been seen since yesterday afternoon when he left
+before the bank was closed for the night. His wife says she thinks he
+meant to run away, for before going, he came into the room where she
+was, kissed her and then kissed the child; besides it seems that he took
+with him some of his clothes."</p>
+
+<p>"Humph! and I had as much confidence in that man&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"As I have now," came from Mr. Sylvester as the door closed upon the
+messenger. "If Hopgood has run away, it was from some generous but
+mistaken idea of sacrificing himself to the safety of another whom he
+may possibly believe guilty."</p>
+
+<p>"No," rejoined Mr. Stuyvesant, "for here is a note from him that refutes
+that supposition. It is addressed to me and runs thus:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"<span class="smcap">Dear Sir.</span>&mdash;I beg your pardon and that of Mr. Sylvester for
+leaving my duties in this abrupt manner. But I have betrayed my
+trust and am no longer worthy of confidence. I am a wretched
+man and find it impossible to face those who have believed in
+my honesty and discretion. If I can bring the money back, you
+shall see me again, but if not, be kind to my wife and little
+one, for the sake of the three years when I served the bank
+faithfully.</p>
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">John Hopgood.</span>"</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>"I don't understand it," cried Mr. Sylvester, "that looks&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"As if he knew where the money was."</p>
+
+<p>"I begin to hope," breathed Cicely.</p>
+
+<p>Her father turned and surveyed her. "This puts a new aspect on matters,"
+said he.</p>
+
+<p>She glanced up beaming. "Oh, will you, do you say, that you think the
+shadow of this crime has at last found the spot upon which it can
+rightfully rest?"</p>
+
+<p>"It would not be common sense in me to deny that it has most certainly
+shifted its position."</p>
+
+<p>With a radiant look at Cicely, Paula crossed to Mr. Stuyvesant's side,
+and laying her hand on his sleeve, whispered a word or two in his ear.
+He immediately glanced out of the window at the carriage standing before
+the door, then looked back at her and nodded with something like a
+smile. In another moment he stood at the front door.</p>
+
+<p>"Be prepared," cried Paula to Cicely.</p>
+
+<p>It was well she spoke, for when in an instant later Mr. Stuyvesant
+re-entered the parlor with Bertram at his side, the rapidly changing
+cheek of the gentle girl showed that the surprise, even though thus
+tempered, was almost too much for her self-possession.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Stuyvesant did not wait for the inevitable embarrassment of the
+moment to betray itself in words. "Mr. Sylvester," said he, to the young
+cashier, "we have just received a piece of news from the bank, that
+throws unexpected light upon the robbery we were discussing yesterday.
+Hopgood has absconded, and acknowledges here in writing that he had
+something to do with the theft!"</p>
+
+<p>"Hopgood, the janitor!" The exclamation was directed not to Mr.
+Stuyvesant but to Mr. Sylvester, towards whom Bertram turned with looks
+of amazement.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it is the greatest surprise I ever received," returned that
+gentleman.</p>
+
+<p>"And Mr. Sylvester," continued Mr. Stuyvesant, with nervous rapidity and
+a generous attempt to speak lightly, "there is a little lady here who is
+so shaken by the news, that nothing short of a word of reassurance on
+your part will comfort her."</p>
+
+<p>Bertram's eye followed that of Mr. Stuyvesant, and fell upon the
+blushing cheek of Cicely. With a flushing of his own brow, he stepped
+hastily forward.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Stuyvesant!" he cried, and looking down in her face, forgot
+everything else in his infinite joy and satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," announced the father with abrupt decision, "she is yours; you
+have fairly earned her."</p>
+
+<p>Bertram bowed his head with irrepressible emotion, and for a moment the
+silence of perfect peace if not of awe, reigned over the apartment; but
+suddenly a low, determined "No!" was heard, and Bertram turning towards
+Mr. Stuyvesant, exclaimed, "You are very good, and the joy of this
+moment atones for many an hour of grief and impatience; but I have not
+earned her yet. The fact that Hopgood admits to having had something to
+do with the robbery, does not sufficiently exonerate the officers of the
+bank from all connection with the affair, to make it safe or honorable
+in me to unqualifiedly accept the inestimable boon of your daughter's
+regard. Till the real culprit is in custody and the mystery entirely
+cleared away, my impatience must continue to curb itself. I love your
+daughter too dearly to bring her anything but the purest of reputations.
+Am I not right, Miss Stuyvesant?"</p>
+
+<p>She cast a glance at her father, and bowed her head. "You are right,"
+she repeated.</p>
+
+<p>And Mr. Stuyvesant, with a visible lightening of his whole aspect, took
+the young man by the hand, and with as much geniality as his nature
+would allow, informed him that he was at last convinced that his
+daughter had made no mistake when she expressed her trust in Bertram
+Sylvester.</p>
+
+<p>And in other eyes than Cicely's, shone the light of satisfied love and
+unswerving faith.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XLV" id="XLV"></a>XLV.</h2>
+
+<h3>"THE HOUR OF SIX IS SACRED."</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">"Mightier far<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than strength of nerve or sinew, or the sway<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of magic potent over sun and star,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is love, though oft to agony distrest,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And though its favorite seat be feeble woman's breast."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Wordsworth.</span><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>It was at the close of a winter afternoon. Paula who had returned to
+Grotewell for the few weeks preceding her marriage, sat musing in the
+window of her aunt's quaint little parlor. Her eyes were on the fields
+before her all rosy with the departing rays of the sun, but her thoughts
+were far away. They were with him she best loved&mdash;with Cicely, waiting
+in patience for the solution of the mystery of the stolen bonds; with
+Bertram, eagerly, but as yet vainly, engaged in searching for the
+vanished janitor; and last but not least, with that poor, wretched
+specimen of humanity moaning away her life in a New York hospital;&mdash;for
+the sight of the Japha house, in a walk that day, had reawakened her
+most vivid remembrances of Jacqueline. All that had ever been done and
+suffered by this forsaken creature, lay on her heart like a weight; and
+the question which had disturbed her since her return to Grotewell,
+viz., whether or not she ought to acquaint Mrs. Hamlin with the fact
+that she had seen and spoken to the object of her love and prayers,
+pressed upon her mind with an insistence that required an answer. There
+was so much to be said for and against it. Mrs. Hamlin was not well, and
+though still able to continue her vigil, showed signs of weakening, day
+by day. It might be a comfort to her to know that another's eyes had
+rested on the haggard form for whose approach she daily watched; that
+another's kiss had touched the scarred and pallid forehead she longed to
+fold against her breast; that the woman she loved and of whose fate she
+had no intimation, was living and well cared for, though her shelter was
+that of a hospital, and her prospects those of the grave.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, the awful nature of the circumstances which had
+brought her to her present condition, were such as to make any generous
+heart pause before shocking the love and trust of such a woman as Mrs.
+Hamlin, by a relation of the criminal act by which Jacqueline had slain
+her child and endangered her own existence. Better let the poor old lady
+go on hoping against hope till she sinks into her grave, than destroy
+life and hope at once by a revelation of her darling's reckless
+depravity.</p>
+
+<p>And yet if the poor creature in the hospital might be moved to
+repentance by some word from Mrs. Hamlin, would it not be a kindness to
+the latter to allow her, though even at the risk of her life, to
+accomplish the end for which she indeed professed to live?</p>
+
+<p>The mind of Paula was as yet undecided, when a child from the village
+passed the window, and seeing her sitting there, handed her a small
+package with the simple message that Mrs. Hamlin was very ill. It
+contained, as she anticipated, the great key to the Japha mansion, and
+understanding without further words, what was demanded of her, Paula
+prepared to keep the promise she had long ago made to this devoted
+woman. For though she knew the uselessness of the vigil proposed to her,
+she none the less determined to complete it. Easier to sit an hour in
+that dark old house, than to explain herself to Mrs. Hamlin. Besides,
+the time was good for prayer, and God knows the wretched object of all
+this care and anxiety, stood in need of all the petitions that might be
+raised for her.</p>
+
+<p>Telling her aunts that she had a call to make in the village, she glided
+hurriedly away, and ere she realized all to which she was committed,
+found herself standing in the now darkened streets, before the grim door
+of that dread and mysterious mansion. Never had it looked more
+forbidding; never had the two gruesome poplars cast a deeper shadow, or
+rustled with a more woful sound in the chill evening air. The very
+windows seemed to repel her with their darkened panes, behind which she
+could easily imagine the spirits of the dead, moving and peering. A
+chill not unlike that of terror, assailed her limbs, and it was with a
+really heroic action that she finally opened the gate and glided up the
+path made by the daily steps of her aged friend. To thrust the big key
+into the lock required another effort, but that once accomplished, she
+stilled every tumultuous beating of her heart, by crying under her
+breath, "She has done this for one whom she has not seen for fifteen
+years; shall I then hesitate, who know the real necessity of her for
+whom this hour is made sacred?"</p>
+
+<p>The slow swinging open of the door was like an ushering into the abode
+of ghosts, but she struck a light at once, and soon had the satisfaction
+of beholding the dismal room with its weird shadows, resolve into its
+old and well remembered aspect. The ancient cabinet and stiff hair-cloth
+sofa, Colonel Japha's chair by the table, together with all the other
+objects that had attracted her attention in her former visit, confronted
+her again with the same appearance of standing ready and waiting, which
+had previously so thrilled her. Only she was alone this time, and terror
+mingled with her awe. She scarcely dared to glance at the doors that led
+to other portions of the house. In her present mood it would seem so
+natural for them to swing open, and let upon her horrified gaze the
+stately phantom of the proud old colonel or the gentler shade of
+Jacqueline's mother. The moan of the wind in the chimney was dreadful to
+her, and the faint rumbling sounds of mice scampering in the walls, made
+her start as though a voice had spoken.</p>
+
+<p>But presently the noise of a sleigh careering by the house recalled her
+to herself, and remembering it was but early night-fall, she sat down in
+a chair by the door, and prepared to keep her vigil with suitable
+patience and equanimity. Suddenly she recollected the clock on the
+mantel-piece and how she had seen Mrs. Hamlin wind it, and rising up,
+she followed her example, sighing unconsciously to find how many of the
+sixty minutes had yet to tick themselves away, "Can I endure it!" she
+thought, and shuddered as she pictured to herself the dim old staircase
+behind those doors, and the empty rooms above, and the little Bible
+lying thicker than ever with dust, on the yellowed pillows of
+Jacqueline's bed.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she stood still; the noise she had just heard, was not made by
+the pattering of mice along the rafters, or even the creaking of the
+withered vines that clung against the walls! It was a human sound, a
+clicking as of the gate without, a crunching as of feet dragging slowly
+over the snow. Was Mrs. Hamlin coming after all, or&mdash;she could not
+formulate her fear; a real and palpable danger from the outside world
+had never crossed her fancy till now. What if some stranger should
+enter, some tramp, some&mdash;a step on the porch without made her hair rise
+on her forehead; she clasped her hands and stood trembling, when a
+sudden moan startled her ears, followed by the sound of a heavy fall on
+the threshold, and throwing aside all hesitation, she flung herself
+forward, and tearing open the door, saw&mdash;oh, angels that rejoice in
+heaven over one sinner that repenteth, let your voices go up in praise
+this night, for Jacqueline Japha has returned to the home of her
+fathers!</p>
+
+<p>She had fainted, and lay quite still on the threshold, but Paula, who
+was all energy now, soon had her in the centre of the sitting-room, and
+was applying to her such restoratives as had been provided against this
+very emergency. She was holding the poor weary head on her knee, when
+the wan eyes opened, and looking up, grew wild with a disappointment
+which Paula was quick to appreciate.</p>
+
+<p>"You are looking for Margery," said she. "Margery will come by-and-by;
+she is not well to-night and I am taking her place, but when she hears
+you have returned, it will take more than sickness to keep her to her
+bed. I am Paula, and I love you, too, and welcome you&mdash;oh, welcome you
+so gladly."</p>
+
+<p>The yearning look which had crept into the woman's bleared and faded
+eyes, deepened and softened strangely.</p>
+
+<p>"You are the one who told me about Margery," said she, "and bade me
+bring my baby here to be buried. I remember, though I seemed to pay no
+heed then. Night and day through all my pain, I have remembered, and as
+soon as I could walk, stole away from the hospital. It has killed me,
+but I shall at least die in my father's house."</p>
+
+<p>Paula stooped and kissed her. "I am going to get your bed ready," said
+she. And without any hesitation now, she opened the door that led into
+those dim inner regions that but a few minutes before had inspired her
+with such dread.</p>
+
+<p>She went straight to Jacqueline's room. "It must all be according to
+Mrs. Hamlin's wishes," she cried, and lit the fire on the hearth, and
+pulled back the curtains yet farther from the bed, and gave the benefit
+of her womanly touch to the various objects about her, till cheerfulness
+seemed to reign in a spot once so peopled with hideous memories. Going
+back to Jacqueline, she helped her to rise, and throwing her arm about
+her waist, led her into the hall. But here memory, ghastly accusing
+memory, stepped in, and catching the wretched woman in its grasp, shook
+her, body and soul, till her shrieks reverberated through that desolate
+house. But Paula with gentle persistence urged her on, and smiling upon
+her like an angel of peace and mercy, led her up step after step of that
+dreadful staircase, till at last she saw her safely in the room of her
+early girlhood.</p>
+
+<p>The sight of it seemed at first to horrify but afterwards to soothe the
+forlorn being thus brought face to face with her own past. She moved
+over to the fire and held out her two cramped hands to the blaze, as if
+she saw an altar of mercy in its welcoming glow. From these she passed
+tottering and weak to the embroidery-frame, which she looked at for a
+moment with something almost like a smile; but she hurried by the
+mirror, and scarcely glanced at a portrait of herself which hung on the
+wall over her head. To sink on the bed seemed to be her object, and
+thither Paula accompanied her. But when she came to where it stood, and
+saw the clothes turned down and the pillows heaped at the head, and the
+little Bible lying open for her in the midst, she gave a great and
+mighty sob, and flinging herself down upon her knees, wept with a
+breaking up of her whole nature, in which her sins, red though they were
+as crimson, seemed to feel the touch of the Divine love, and vanish away
+in the oblivion He prepares for all His penitent ones.</p>
+
+<p>When everything was prepared and Jacqueline was laid quiet in bed, Paula
+stole out and down the stairs and wended her way to Mrs. Hamlin's
+cottage. She found her sitting up, but far from well, and very feeble.
+At the first sight of Paula's face, she started erect and seem to forget
+her weakness in a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?" she asked; "you look as though you had been gazing on the
+faces of angels. Has&mdash;has my hope come true at last? Has Jacqueline
+returned? Oh, has my poor, lost, erring child come back?"</p>
+
+<p>Paula drew near and gently steadied Mrs. Hamlin's swaying form. "Yes,"
+she smiled; and with the calmness of one who has entered the gates of
+peace, whispered in low and reverent tones: "She lies in the bed that
+you spread for her, with the Bible held close to her breast."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>There are moments when the world about us seems to pause; when the
+hopes, fears and experiences of all humanity appear to sway away and
+leave us standing alone in the presence of our own great hope or
+scarcely comprehended fear. Such a moment was that which saw Paula
+re-enter Jacqueline's presence with Mrs. Hamlin at her side.</p>
+
+<p>Leaving the latter near the door, she went towards the bed. Why did she
+recoil and glance back at Mrs. Hamlin with that startled and
+apprehensive look? The face of Jacqueline was changed&mdash;changed as only
+one presence could change it, though the eyes were clearer than when she
+left her a few minutes before, and the lips were not without the shadow
+of a smile.</p>
+
+<p>"She is dying," whispered Paula, coming back to Mrs. Hamlin; "dying, and
+you have waited so long!"</p>
+
+<p>But the look that met hers from that aged face, was not one of grief;
+and startled, she knew not why, Paula drew aside, while Mrs. Hamlin
+crossed the room and quietly knelt down by her darling's side.</p>
+
+<p>"Margery!"</p>
+
+<p>"Jacqueline!"</p>
+
+<p>The two cries rang through the room, then all was quiet again.</p>
+
+<p>"You have come back!" were the next words Paula heard. "How could I ever
+have doubted that you would!"</p>
+
+<p>"I have been driven back by awful suffering," was the answer; and
+another silence fell. Suddenly Jacqueline's voice was heard. "Love slew
+me, and now love has saved me!" exclaimed she. And there came no answer
+to that cry, and Paula felt the shadow of a great awe settle down upon
+her, and moving nearer to where the aged woman knelt by her darling's
+bedside, she looked in her bended face and then in the one upturned on
+the pillow, and knew that of all the hearts that but an instant before
+had beat with earth's deepest emotion in that quiet room, one alone
+throbbed on to thank God and take courage.</p>
+
+<p>And the fire which had been kindled to welcome the prodigal back, burned
+on; and from the hollow depths of the great room below, came the sound
+of a clock as it struck the hour, seven!</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XLVI" id="XLVI"></a>XLVI.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE MAN CUMMINS.</h3>
+
+<blockquote><p>Oh day and night, but this is wondrous strange."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Henry V.</span></p>
+
+<p>"Shut up in measureless content."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Othello.</span></p></blockquote>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>The lights were yet shining in Mr. Stuyvesant's parlors, though the
+guests were gone, who but a short time before had assembled there to
+witness the marriage of Cicely's dear friend, Paula.</p>
+
+<p>At one end of the room stood Mr. Sylvester and Bertram, the former
+gazing with the eyes of a bridegroom, at the delicate white-clad figure
+of Paula, just leaving the apartment with Cicely.</p>
+
+<p>"I have but one cause for regret," said Mr. Sylvester as the door
+closed. "I could have wished that you and Cicely had participated in our
+joy and received the minister's benediction at the same moment as
+ourselves."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Bertram with a short sigh. "But it will come in time. It
+cannot be but that our efforts must finally succeed. I have just had a
+new idea; that of putting the watchman on the hunt for Hopgood. They are
+old friends, and he ought to know all the other's haunts and possible
+hiding-places."</p>
+
+<p>"If Fanning could have helped us, he would have told us long ago. He
+knows that Hopgood is missing and that we are ready to pay well for any
+information concerning him."</p>
+
+<p>"But they are old cronies, and possibly Fanning is keeping quiet out of
+consideration for his friend."</p>
+
+<p>"No; I have had a talk with Fanning, and there was no mistaking his look
+of surprise when told the other had run away under suspicion of being
+connected with a robbery on the bank's effects. He knows no more of
+Hopgood than we do, or his wife does, or the police even. It is a
+strange mystery, and one to which I fear we shall never obtain the key.
+But don't let me discourage you; after a suitable time Mr. Stuyvesant
+will&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He paused, for that gentleman was approaching him.</p>
+
+<p>"There is a man outside who insists upon seeing me; says he knows there
+has just been a wedding here, but that the matter he has to communicate
+is very important, and won't bear putting off. The name on his card is
+Cummins; I am afraid I shall have to admit him, that is, if you have no
+objection?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester and Bertram at once drew back with ready acquiescence.
+They had scarcely taken their stand at the other end of the apartment,
+when the man came in. He was of robust build, round, precise and
+business-like. He had taken off his hat, but still wore his overcoat;
+his face in spite of a profusion of red whiskers and a decided pair of
+goggles, was earnest and straightforward. He walked at once up to Mr.
+Stuyvesant.</p>
+
+<p>"Your pardon," said he, in a quick tone. "But I hear you have been
+somewhat exercised of late over the disappearance of certain bonds from
+one of the boxes in the Madison Bank. I am a detective, and in the
+course of my duty have come upon a few facts that may help to explain
+matters."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester and Bertram at once started forward; this was a topic that
+demanded their attention as well as that of the master of the house.</p>
+
+<p>The man cast them a quick look from behind his goggles, and seeming to
+recognize them, included them in his next question.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you think of the watchman, Fanning?"</p>
+
+<p>"Think? we don't think," uttered Mr. Stuyvesant sharply. "He has been in
+the employ of the bank for twelve years, and we know him to be honest."</p>
+
+<p>"Yet he is the man who stole your bonds."</p>
+
+<p>"Impossible!"</p>
+
+<p>"The very man."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester stepped up to him. "Who are you, and how do you know
+this?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have said my name is Cummins, and I know this, because I have wormed
+myself into the man's confidence and have got the bonds, together with
+his confession, here in my pocket." And he drew out the long lost bonds,
+which he handed to their owner, with a bit of paper on which was
+in-scribed in the handwriting of the watchman, an acknowledgment to the
+effect that he, alone and unassisted, had perpetrated the robbery which
+had raised such scandal in the bank and led to the disappearance of
+Hopgood.</p>
+
+<p>"And the man himself?" cried Bertram, when they had all read this.
+"Where is he?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I allowed him to escape."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester frowned.</p>
+
+<p>"There is something about this I don't understand," said he. "How came
+you to take such an interest in this matter; and why did you let the man
+escape after acknowledging his crime?"</p>
+
+<p>With a quick, not undignified action, Cummins stepped back. "Gentlemen,"
+said he, "it is allowable in a detective in the course of his duty, to
+resort to means for eliciting the truth, that in any other cause and for
+any other purpose, would be denominated as unmanly, if not mean and
+contemptible. When I heard of this robbery, as I did the day after its
+perpetration, my mind flew immediately to the watchman as the possible
+culprit. I did not know that he had done the deed, and I did not see how
+he could have possessed the means of doing it, but I had been acquainted
+with him for some time, and certain expressions which I had overheard
+him use&mdash;expressions that had passed over me lightly at the time, now
+recurred to my mind with startling distinctness. 'If a man knew the
+combination of the vault door, how easily he could make himself rich
+from the contents of those boxes!' was one, I remember; and another, 'I
+have worked in the bank for twelve years and have not so much money laid
+up against a rainy day, as would furnish Mr. Sylvester in cigars for a
+month.' The fact that he had no opportunity to learn the combination,
+was the only stumbling-block in the way of my conclusions. But that
+obstacle was soon removed. In a talk with the janitor's wife&mdash;a good
+woman, sirs, but a trifle conceited&mdash;I learned that he had once had the
+very opportunity of which I speak, provided he was smart enough to
+recognize the fact. The way it came about was this. Hopgood, who always
+meant to do about the right thing, as I know, was one morning very sick,
+so sick that when the time came for him to go down and open the vaults
+for the day, he couldn't stir from his bed, or at least thought he
+couldn't. Twice had the watchman rung for him, and twice had he tried to
+get up, only to fall back again on his pillow. At last the call became
+imperative; the clerks would soon be in, and the books were not even in
+readiness for them. Calling his wife to him, he asked if she thought she
+could open the vault door provided she knew the combination. She
+returned a quite eager, 'yes,' being a naturally vain woman and moreover
+a little sore over the fact that her husband never entrusted her with
+any of his secrets. 'Then,' said he, 'listen to those three numbers that
+I give you; and turn the knob accordingly,' explaining the matter in a
+way best calculated to enlighten her as to what she had to do. She
+professed herself as understanding perfectly and went off in quite a
+nutter of satisfaction to accomplish her task. But though he did not
+know it at the time, it seems that her heart failed her when she got
+into the hall, and struck with fear lest she should forget the numbers
+before she got to the foot of the stairs, she came back, and carefully
+wrote them down on a piece of paper, armed with which she started for
+the second time to fulfil her task. The watchman was in the bank when
+she entered, and to his expressions of surprise, she answered that her
+husband was ill and that she was going to open the vaults. He offered to
+help her, but she stared at him with astonishment, and waiting till he
+had walked to the other end of the bank, proceeded to the vault door,
+and after carefully consulting the paper in her hand, was about to turn
+the knob as directed, when Hopgood himself came into the room. He was
+too anxious, he said, to keep in bed, and though he trembled at every
+step, came forward and accomplished the task himself. He did not see the
+paper in his wife's hand, nor notice her when she tore it up and threw
+the pieces in the waste-basket near-by, but the watchman may have
+observed her, and as it afterwards proved, did; and thus became
+acquainted with the combination that unlocked the outer vault doors."</p>
+
+<p>"Humph!" broke in Mr. Sylvester, "if this is true, why didn't Hopgood
+inform me of the matter when I questioned him so closely?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because he had forgotten the circumstance. He was in a fever at the
+time, and having eventually unlocked the vault himself, lost sight of
+the fact that he had previously sent his wife to do it. He went back to
+his bed after the clerks came in, and did not get up again till night.
+He may have thought the whole occurrence part of the delirium which more
+than once assailed him that day."</p>
+
+<p>"I remember his being sick," said Bertram; "it was two or three days
+before the robbery."</p>
+
+<p>"The very day before," corrected the man; "but let me tell my story in
+my own way. Having learned from Mrs. Hopgood of this opportunity which
+had been given to Fanning, I made up my mind to sift the matter. Being
+as I have said a friend of his, I didn't, want to peach on him unless he
+was guilty. To blast an honest man's reputation, is, I think, one of the
+meanest tricks of which a fellow can be guilty: but the truth I had to
+know, and in order to learn it, a deep and delicate game was necessary.
+Gentlemen, when the police have strong suspicions against a person whose
+reputation is above reproach and whose conduct affords no opportunity
+for impeachment, they set a springe for him. One of their number
+disguises himself, and making the acquaintance of this person,
+insinuates himself by slow degrees&mdash;often at the cost of months of
+effort&mdash;into his friendship and if possible into his confidence. 'Tis a
+detestable piece of business, but it is all that will serve in some
+cases, and has at least the merit of being as dangerous as it is
+detestable. This plan, I undertook with Fanning. Changing my appearance
+to suit the necessities of the case, I took board in the small house in
+Brooklyn where he puts up, and being well acquainted with his tastes,
+knew how to adapt myself to his liking. He was a busy man, and being
+obliged by his duties to turn night into day, had not much time to
+bestow upon me or any one else; but heedful of this, I managed to make
+the most of the spare moments that saw us together, and ere long we were
+very good comrades, and further on, very good friends. The day when I
+first ventured to suggest that honesty was all very well as long as it
+paid, was a memorable one to me. In that cast of the die I was either to
+win or lose the game I had undertaken. I won. After a feint or two, to
+see if I were in earnest, he fell into the net, and though he did not
+commit himself then, it was not long before he came to me, and
+deliberately requested my assistance in disposing of some bonds which he
+was smart enough to acquire, but not daring enough to attempt to sell.
+Of course the whole story came out, and I was sympathetic enough till I
+got the bonds into my hands, then&mdash;But I leave you to imagine what
+followed. Enough that I wrung this confession from him, and that in
+consideration of the doubtful game I had played upon him, let him go
+where he is by this time beyond the chance of pursuit."</p>
+
+<p>"But your duty to your superior; your oath as a member of the force?"</p>
+
+<p>"My superior is here!" said the man pointing to Mr. Sylvester; "an
+unconscious one I own, but still my superior; and as for my being a
+member of the force, that was true five years ago, but not to-day." And
+brushing off his whiskers with one hand and taking off his goggles with
+the other, Hopgood, the janitor, stood before them!</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>It was a radiant figure that met Cicely, when she came down stairs with
+Paula, and a joyous group that soon surrounded the now blushing and
+embarrassed janitor, with questions and remarks concerning this great
+and unexpected development of affairs. But the fervor with which Mr.
+Stuyvesant clasped Bertram's hand, and the look with which Cicely turned
+from her young lover to bestow a final kiss upon the departing bride,
+was worth all the pains and self-denial of the last few weeks&mdash;or so the
+janitor thought, who with a quicker comprehension than usual, had
+divined the situation and rejoiced in the result. But the most curious
+thing of all was to observe how, with the taking off of his goggles,
+Hopgood had relapsed into his old shrinking, easily embarrassed self.
+The man who but a few minutes before had related in their hearing a
+clear and succinct narrative, now shrank if a question was put him, and
+stammered in quite his ancient fashion, when he answered Mr. Sylvester's
+shake of the hand, by a hurried:</p>
+
+<p>"I am going to see my wife now, sir. She's a good woman, if a little
+flighty, and will be the last one in the future to beg me to put more
+confidence in her. Will you tell me where she is, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester informed him; then added, "But look here, Hopgood, answer
+me one thing before you go. Why is it that with such talents as you
+possess, you didn't stay in the police force? You are a regular genius
+in your way, and ought not to drone away your existence as a janitor."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, sir," replied the other, shaking his head, "a man who is only
+capable of assuming one disguise, isn't good for much as a professional
+detective. Goggles and red whiskers will deceive one rogue, but not
+fifty. My eyes were my bane, sir, and ultimately cost me my place. While
+I could cover them up I was all right. It not only made a man of me,
+leaving me free to talk and freer to think, but disguised me so, my best
+friends couldn't recognize me; but after awhile my goggles were too well
+known for me to be considered of much further use to the department, and
+I was obliged to send in my resignation. It is too bad, but I have no
+versatility, sir. I'm either the clumsy, stammering creature you have
+always known, or else I am the man Cummins you saw here a few minutes
+ago."</p>
+
+<p>"In either case an honest fellow," answered Mr. Sylvester, and allowed
+the janitor to depart.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>One more scene, and this in the house which Paula is henceforth to make
+a home for herself and its once melancholy owner. They have come back
+from their wedding-journey, and are standing in their old fashion, he at
+the foot, and she half way up the stairs. Suddenly she turns and
+descends to his side.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I will not wait," said she. "Here, on this spot we both love so
+well, and in this the first hour of our return, I will unburden my mind
+of what I have to say. Edward, is there nothing of all the past that
+still rests upon you like a shadow? Not one little regret you could wish
+taken away?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," said he, enfolding her in his arms with a solemn smile. "The great
+gift which I hold is the fruit of that past, perhaps; I cannot wish it
+changed."</p>
+
+<p>"But the sense of obligation never fulfilled, would you not be happier
+if that were removed?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps," he said, "but it cannot be now. I shall have to live without
+being perfectly happy."</p>
+
+<p>She lifted her face and her smile shone like a star. "Oh God is good,"
+she cried, "you shall not lack being perfectly happy;" and taking a
+little paper out of her pocket she put it in his hand. "We found that
+hidden in Jacqueline Japha's breast, when we went to lay her out for
+burial."</p>
+
+<p>It was only a line; but it made Mr. Sylvester's brow flush and his voice
+tremble.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>"Whatever I own, and I have been told that I am far from penniless, I
+desire to have given to the dear and disinterested girl that first told
+me of Margery Hamlin's vigil."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>"Paula, Paula, Paula, thou art indeed my good gift! May God make me
+worthy of your love and of this His last and most unexpected mercy!"</p>
+
+<p>And the look which crossed her face, was that sweet and unearthly
+radiance which speaks of perfect peace.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> A fact.</p></div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="PUBLICATIONS_OF_G_P_PUTNAMS_SONS" id="PUBLICATIONS_OF_G_P_PUTNAMS_SONS"></a>PUBLICATIONS OF G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS.</h2>
+
+
+<h3>THE LEAVENWORTH CASE. By <span class="smcap">Anna Katherine Green.</span></h3>
+
+<blockquote><p>"Wilkie Collins, in his best period, never invented a more
+ingeniously constructed plot, nor held the reader in such
+suspense until the final <i>denoûment</i>. The most blasé
+novel-reader will be unable to put aside 'The Leavenworth Case'
+until he has read the last sentence and mastered the mystery
+which has baffled him from the beginning."&mdash;<i>N. Y. Evening
+Express.</i></p></blockquote>
+
+<h3>A MAN'S A MAN FOR A' THAT.</h3>
+
+<blockquote><p>"A novel of decided excellence. * * * Contains delicate and
+charming work. Thoroughly clever * * * Its spirit is one of
+robust and healthy enthusiasm for manliness and
+womanliness."&mdash;<i>N. Y. Evening Post.</i></p></blockquote>
+
+<h3>THE BRETON MILLS: <span class="smcap">A Romance of New England Life.</span> By <span class="smcap">Charles J. Bellamy</span>.</h3>
+
+
+<blockquote><p>"Nothing from the pen of Mrs. Burnett was ever more intensely
+dramatic."&mdash;<i>Jackson Daily Citizen.</i></p>
+
+<p>"Looked at from a purely literary point of view it is almost
+faultless. It shows a hand both of culture and
+power."&mdash;<i>Detroit Evening News.</i></p></blockquote>
+
+<h3>CUPID AND THE SPHINX. By <span class="smcap">Harford Flemming</span>.</h3>
+
+<blockquote><p>"Its characters are skilfully drawn, its incidents well
+conceived, the dialogues brilliant, and the story told with
+ease and gracefulness."&mdash;<i>Boston Transcript.</i></p>
+
+<p>"The suggestion of the story is extremely beautiful, and its
+treatment graceful and enchanting throughout."&mdash;<i>Hartford
+Evening Post.</i></p></blockquote>
+
+<h3>A STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE. By <span class="smcap">Anna Katherine Green</span>.</h3>
+
+<blockquote><p>"Wilkie Collins would not need to be ashamed of the
+construction of this story. * * * It keeps the reader's close
+attention from first to last."&mdash;<i>N. Y. Evening Post.</i></p>
+
+
+<p>"Shows the same skill as 'The Leavenworth Case' in the
+management of the plot and the incidents."&mdash;<i>Boston
+Transcript.</i></p></blockquote>
+
+<h3>THE HEART OF IT: A Romance of East and West. By <span class="smcap">William O. Stoddard</span>.</h3>
+
+<blockquote><p>"Uncommonly good reading, even for that uncommonly readable
+Series."&mdash;<i>Philadelphia Times.</i></p>
+
+<p>"An American novel, dealing with a few well-chosen characters
+and involving a striking and original plot. * * * A thoroughly
+entertaining piece of fiction."&mdash;<i>Boston Traveller.</i></p></blockquote>
+
+<h3>UNCLE JACK'S EXECUTORS. By <span class="smcap">Annette Lucille Noble</span>.</h3>
+
+<blockquote><p>"Comes from a writer of unusual talent. * * * Remarkable for
+its sketches of character, its naturalness, its frequent
+flashes of intellectual brightness, and its genuine humor. * *
+* One of the best novels of the season and deserving of a
+permanent place among works of genuine American fiction."&mdash;<i>The
+Churchman.</i></p></blockquote>
+
+<h3>THE STRANDED SHIP: <span class="smcap">A Story of Sea and Shore</span>. By <span class="smcap">L. Clarke Davis</span>.</h3>
+
+<blockquote><p>"Full of the finest dramatic action. * * * The work of a man of
+firm genius and exquisite delicacy of touch."&mdash;<i>N. Y. Evening
+Post.</i></p></blockquote>
+
+<h3>NESTLENOOK. By <span class="smcap">Leonard Kip</span>, Author of "The Dead Marquise," "Under the
+Bells," etc.</h3>
+
+<blockquote><p>Of "The Dead Marquise" the <i>Boston Globe</i> writes: "The book is
+admirable and its style almost perfect in its transparent
+simplicity."</p></blockquote>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<h3>THE TRANS-ATLANTIC SERIES.</h3>
+
+<h3>I. CAPTAIN FRACASSE. By <span class="smcap">Theophile Gautier</span>. Translated by <span class="smcap">E. M. Beam</span>.</h3>
+
+<blockquote><p>Of Le Capitaine Fracasse, Henry James, Jr., writes: "In this
+delightful work Gautier surpassed himself, and produced the
+model of picturesque romances. * * * The great charm of the
+book is a sort of combined geniality of feeling and coloring,
+which leaves one in doubt whether the author is the most joyous
+of painters or the cleverest of poets. * * * Le Capitaine
+Fracasse ranks, in our opinion, with the first works of
+imagination produced in our day."</p>
+
+<p>"A masterpiece of literary art."&mdash;<i>N. Y. Nation.</i></p>
+
+<p>"The translation is most admirable."&mdash;<i>Troy Whig.</i></p></blockquote>
+
+<h3>II. THE AMAZON. By <span class="smcap">Franz Dingelstedt</span>. Translated by <span class="smcap">Jas. Morgan Hart</span>.</h3>
+
+<blockquote><p>"Full of scintillations of wit. * * * Sparkles throughout with
+vivacity and sparkling humor."&mdash;<i>Leipsic Blätter für Lit. Unt.</i></p>
+
+<p>"A delightful novel, characterized by force and fire, strong
+dramatic power, and rare skill in its analysis of human motives
+and character."&mdash;<i>Philadelphia Times.</i></p></blockquote>
+
+<h3>MOTHER MOLLY. By <span class="smcap">Frances Mary Peard</span>.</h3>
+
+<blockquote><p>"The book is charming; and, more than this, it is a
+well-finished historical study of stirring
+times."&mdash;<i>Philadelphia Times.</i></p>
+
+<p>"It deserves to rank among the best English stories of the
+year."&mdash;<i>Louisville Courier-Journal.</i></p></blockquote>
+
+<h3>THE LOST CASKET. Translated from <i>"La Main Coupée"</i> of <span class="smcap">F. de Boisgobey</span>
+by <span class="smcap">S. Lee</span>.</h3>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Sword of Damocles, by Anna Katharine Green
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Sword of Damocles, by Anna Katharine Green
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Sword of Damocles
+       A Story of New York Life
+
+Author: Anna Katharine Green
+
+Release Date: July 31, 2010 [EBook #33301]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SWORD OF DAMOCLES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                        THE SWORD OF DAMOCLES
+
+                      A STORY OF NEW YORK LIFE.
+
+                       BY ANNA KATHARINE GREEN
+
+    AUTHOR OF "THE LEAVENWORTH CASE," "A STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE," ETC.
+
+
+NEW YORK
+G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
+27 & 29 West 23D Street
+
+1881
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1881, BY G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS.
+
+
+                      TO
+                   MY FATHER
+              I DEDICATE THIS BOOK
+    AS EXPRESSING SOME OF THE PRINCIPLES OF
+            JUSTICE AND MERCY WHICH,
+         BY PRECEPT AND EXAMPLE, HE HAS
+              INSTILLED INTO MY
+                    BREAST
+             FROM EARLY CHILDHOOD.
+
+    NEW YORK, _April, 1881._
+
+
+
+     "When all else fails love saves"
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+BOOK I. TWO MEN.
+
+I.--A WANDERER
+
+II.--A DISCUSSION
+
+III.--A MYSTERIOUS SUMMONS
+
+IV.--SEARCHINGS
+
+V.--THE RUBICON
+
+VI.--A HAND CLASP
+
+VII.--MRS. SYLVESTER
+
+VIII.--SHADOWS OF THE PAST
+
+IX.--PAULA
+
+X.--THE BARRED DOOR
+
+XI.--MISS STUYVESANT
+
+XII.--MISS BELINDA MAKES CONDITIONS
+
+XIII.--THE END OF MY LADY'S PICTURE
+
+
+BOOK II. LIFE AND DEATH.
+
+XIV.--MISS BELINDA HAS A QUESTION TO DECIDE
+
+XV.--AN ADVENTURE--OR SOMETHING MORE
+
+XVI.--THE SWORD OF DAMOCLES
+
+XVII.--GRAVE AND GAY
+
+XVIII.--IN THE NIGHT WATCHES
+
+XIX.--A DAY AT THE BANK
+
+XX.--THE DREGS IN THE CUP
+
+XXI.--DEPARTURE
+
+XXII.--HOPGOOD
+
+
+BOOK III. THE JAPHA MYSTERY.
+
+XXIII.--THE POEM
+
+XXIV.--THE JAPHA MANSION
+
+XXV.--JACQUELINE
+
+XXVI.--A MAN'S JUSTICE AND A WOMAN'S MERCY
+
+XXVII.--THE LONE WATCHER
+
+XXVIII.--SUNSHINE ON THE HILLS
+
+XXIX.--MIST IN THE VALLEY
+
+
+BOOK IV. FROM A. TO Z.
+
+XXX.--MISS BELINDA PRESENTS MR. SYLVESTER WITH A CHRISTMAS GIFT
+
+XXXI.--A QUESTION
+
+XXXII.--FULL TIDE
+
+XXXIII.--TWO LETTERS
+
+XXXIV.--PAULA MAKES HER CHOICE
+
+XXXV.--THE FALLING OF THE SWORD
+
+XXXVI.--MORNING
+
+XXXVII.--THE OPINION OF A CERTAIN NOTED DETECTIVE
+
+XXXVIII.--BLUEBEARD'S CHAMBER
+
+XXXIX.--FROM A. TO Z
+
+XL.--HALF-PAST SEVEN
+
+
+BOOK V. WOMAN'S LOVE.
+
+XLI.--THE WORK OF AN HOUR
+
+XLII.--PAULA RELATES A STORY SHE HAS HEARD
+
+XLIII.--DETERMINATION
+
+XLIV.--IN MR. STUYVESANT'S PARLORS
+
+XLV.--"THE HOUR OF SIX IS SACRED!"
+
+XLVI.--THE MAN CUMMINS
+
+
+
+
+     Damocles, one of the courtiers of Dionysius, was perpetually
+     extolling with rapture that tyrant's treasures, grandeur, the
+     number of his troops, the extent of his dominions, the
+     magnificence of his palaces, and the universal abundance of all
+     good things and enjoyments in his possession; always repeating,
+     that never man was happier than Dionysius. "Since you are of
+     that opinion," said the tyrant to him one day, "will you taste
+     and make proof of my felicity in person?" The offer was
+     accepted with joy; Damocles was placed upon a golden couch,
+     covered with carpets richly embroidered. The side-boards were
+     loaded with vessels of gold and silver. The most beautiful
+     slaves in the most splendid habits stood around, ready to serve
+     him at the slightest signal. The most exquisite essences and
+     perfumes had not been spared. The table was spread with
+     proportionate magnificence. Damocles was all joy, and looked
+     upon himself as the happiest man in the world; when
+     unfortunately casting up his eyes, he beheld over his head the
+     point of a sword, which hung from the roof only by a single
+     horse-hair.
+
+     ROLLIN.
+
+
+
+
+     THE SWORD OF DAMOCLES.
+
+
+
+
+     BOOK I.
+
+     TWO MEN.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+A WANDERER.
+
+     "There's no such word."--BULWER.
+
+
+A wind was blowing through the city. Not a gentle and balmy zephyr,
+stirring the locks on gentle ladies' foreheads and rustling the curtains
+in elegant boudoirs, but a chill and bitter gale that rushed with a
+swoop through narrow alleys and forsaken courtyards, biting the cheeks
+of the few solitary wanderers that still lingered abroad in the darkened
+streets.
+
+In front of a cathedral that reared its lofty steeple in the midst of
+the squalid houses and worse than squalid saloons of one of the
+dreariest portions of the East Side, stood the form of a woman. She had
+paused in her rush down the narrow street to listen to the music,
+perhaps, or to catch a glimpse of the light that now and then burst from
+the widely swinging doors as they opened and shut upon some tardy
+worshipper.
+
+She was tall and fearful looking; her face, when the light struck it,
+was seared and desperate; gloom and desolation were written on all the
+lines of her rigid but wasted form, and when she shuddered under the
+gale, it was with that force and abandon to which passion lends its aid,
+and in which the soul proclaims its doom.
+
+Suddenly the doors before her swung wide and the preacher's voice was
+heard: "Love God and you will love your fellow-men. Love your fellow-men
+and you best show your love to God."
+
+She heard, started, and the charm was broken. "Love!" she echoed with a
+horrible laugh; "there is no love in heaven or on earth!"
+
+And she swept by, and the winds followed and the darkness swallowed her
+up like a gulf.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+A DISCUSSION.
+
+     "Young men think old men fools, and old men know young men to
+     be so." RAY'S PROVERBS.
+
+
+"And you are actually in earnest?"
+
+"I am."
+
+The first speaker, a fine-looking gentleman of some forty years of age,
+drummed with his fingers on the table before him and eyed the face of
+the young man who had repeated this assent so emphatically, with a
+certain close scrutiny indicative of surprise.
+
+"It is an unlooked-for move for you to make," he remarked at length.
+"Your success as a pianist has been so decided, I confess I do not
+understand why you should desire to abandon a profession that in five
+years' time has procured you both competence and a very enviable
+reputation--for the doubtful prospects of Wall Street, too!" he added
+with a deep and thoughtful frown that gave still further impressiveness
+to his strongly marked features.
+
+The young man with a sweep of his eye over the luxurious apartment in
+which they sat, shrugged his shoulders with that fine and nonchalant
+grace which was one of his chief characteristics.
+
+"With such a pilot as yourself, I ought to be able to steer clear of the
+shoals," said he, a frank smile illumining a face that was rather
+interesting than handsome.
+
+The elder gentleman did not return the smile. Instead of that he
+remained gazing at the ample coal-fire that burned in the grate before
+him with a look that to the young musician was simply inexplicable. "You
+see the ship in haven," he murmured at last; "but do not consider what
+storms it has weathered or what perils escaped. It is a voyage I would
+encourage no son of mine to undertake."
+
+"Yet you are not the man to shrink from danger or to hesitate in a
+course you had marked out for yourself, because of the struggle it
+involved or the difficulties it presented!" the young man exclaimed
+almost involuntarily as his glance lingered with a certain sort of
+fascination on the powerful brow and steady if somewhat melancholy eye
+of his companion.
+
+"No; but danger and difficulty should not be sought, only subdued when
+encountered. If you were driven into this path, I should say, 'God pity
+you!' and hold you out my hand to steady you along its precipices and
+above its sudden quicksands. But you are not driven to it. Your
+profession offers you the means of an ample livelihood while your good
+heart and fair talents insure you ultimate and honorable success, both
+in the social and artistic world. For a man of twenty-five such
+prospects are not common and he must be difficult to please not to be
+satisfied with them."
+
+"Yes," said the other rising with a fitful movement but instantly
+sitting again; "I have nothing to complain of as the world goes,
+only--Sir," he exclaimed with a sudden determination that lent a force
+to his features they had hitherto lacked, "you speak of being driven
+into a certain course; what do you mean by that?"
+
+"I mean," returned the other; "forced by circumstances to enter a line
+of business to which many others, if not all others are preferable."
+
+"You speak strongly, speculation evidently has none of your sympathy,
+notwithstanding the favorable results which have accrued to you from it.
+But excuse me, by circumstances you mean poverty, I suppose, and the
+lack of every other opening to wealth and position. You would not
+consider the desire to make a large fortune in a short space of time a
+circumstance of a sufficiently determining nature to reconcile you to my
+entering Wall Street speculation?"
+
+The elder gentleman rose, not as the other had done with a restless
+impulse quickly subsiding at the first excuse, but forcibly and with a
+feverish impatience that to appearance was somewhat out of proportion to
+the occasion. "A large fortune in a short space of time!" he reiterated,
+pausing where he had risen with an eagle glance at his companion and a
+ringing tone in his voice that bespoke a deep but hitherto suppressed
+agitation. "It is the alluring inscription above the pitfall into which
+many a noble youth has fallen; the battle-cry to a struggle that has led
+many a strong man the way of ruin; the guide-post to a life whose
+feverish days and sleepless nights offer but poor compensation for the
+sudden splendors and as sudden reverses attached to it. I had rather you
+had accounted for this sudden freak of yours by the strongest aspiration
+after power than by this cry of the merely mercenary man who in his
+desire to enjoy wealth, prefers to win it by a stroke of luck rather
+than conquer it by a life of endeavor." He stopped. "I am aware that
+this tirade against the ladder by which I myself have risen so rapidly,
+must strike you as in ill-taste. But Bertram, I am interested in your
+welfare and am willing to incur some slight charge of inconsistency in
+order to insure it," and here he turned upon his companion with that
+expression of extreme gentleness which lent such a peculiar charm to his
+countenance and explained perhaps the almost unlimited power he held
+over the hearts and minds of those who came within the circle of his
+influence.
+
+"You are very good, sir," murmured his young friend, who to explain
+matters at once was in reality the nephew of this Wall Street magnate,
+though from the fact of his having taken another name on entering the
+musical profession, was not generally known as such. "No one, not even
+my father himself, could have been more considerate and kind; but I do
+not think you understand me, or rather I should say I do not think I
+have made myself perfectly intelligible to you. It is not for the sake
+of wealth itself or the eclat attending its possession that I desire an
+immediate fortune, but that by means of it I may attain another object
+dearer than wealth, and more precious than my career."
+
+The elder gentleman turned quickly, evidently much surprised, and cast a
+sudden inquiring glance at his nephew, who blushed with a modest
+ingenuousness pleasing to see in one so well accustomed to the critical
+gaze of his fellow-men.
+
+"Yes," said he, as if in answer to that look, "I am in love."
+
+A deep silence for a moment pervaded the apartment, a sombre silence
+almost startling to young Mandeville, who had expected some audible
+expression to follow this announcement if only the good-natured "Pooh!
+pooh!" of the matured man of the world in the presence of ardent
+youthful enthusiasm. What could it mean? Looking up he encountered his
+uncle's eye fixed upon him with the last expression he could have
+anticipated seeing there, namely that of actual and unmistakable alarm.
+
+"You are displeased," Mandeville exclaimed. "You have thought me proof
+against such a passion, or perhaps you do not believe in the passion
+itself!" Then with a sudden remembrance of the notable if somewhat
+indolent loveliness of his uncle's wife, blushed again at his unusual
+want of tact, while his eye with an involuntary impulse sought the large
+panel at their right where, in the full bloom of her first youth, the
+lady of the house smiled upon all beholders.
+
+"I do not believe in that passion influencing a man's career," his uncle
+replied with no apparent attention to the other's embarrassment. "A
+woman needs be possessed of uncommon excellences to justify a man in
+leaving a path where success is certain, for one where it is not only
+doubtful but if attained must bring many a regret and heart-ache in its
+train. Beauty is not sufficient," he went on with sterner and sterner
+significance, "though it were of an angelic order. There must be worth."
+And here his mind's eye if not that of his bodily sense, certainly
+followed the glance of his companion.
+
+"I believe there is worth," the young man replied; "certainly, it is not
+her beauty that charms me. I do not even know if she _is_ beautiful," he
+continued.
+
+
+"And you believe you love!" the elder exclaimed after another short
+pause.
+
+There was so much of bitterness in the tone in which this was uttered,
+that Mandeville forgot its incredulity. "I think I must," returned he
+with a certain masculine naivete not out of keeping with his general
+style of face and manner, "else I should not be here. Three weeks ago I
+was satisfied with my profession, if not enthusiastic over it; to-day I
+ask nothing but to be allowed to enter upon some business that in three
+years' time at least will place me where I can be the fit mate of any
+woman in this land, that is not worth her millions."
+
+"The woman for whom you have conceived this violent attachment is, then,
+above you in social position?"
+
+"Yes, sir, or so considered, which amounts to the same thing, as far as
+I am concerned."
+
+"Bertram, I have lived longer than you and have seen much of both social
+and domestic life, and I tell you no woman is worth such a sacrifice on
+the part of a man as you propose. No woman of to-day, I should say; our
+mothers were different. The very fact that this young lady of whom you
+speak, obliges you to change your whole course of life in order to
+obtain her, ought to be sufficient to prove to you--" He stopped
+suddenly, arrested by the young man's lifted hand. "She does not oblige
+you, then?"
+
+"Not on her own account, sir. This lily," lifting a vase of blossoms at
+his elbow, "could not be more innocent of the necessities that govern
+the social circle it adorns, than the pure, single-minded girl to whom I
+have dedicated what is best and noblest in my manhood. It is her
+father--"
+
+"Ah, her father!"
+
+"Yes, sir," the young man pursued, more and more astonished at the
+other's tone. "He is a man who has a right to expect both wealth and
+position in a son-in-law. But I see I shall have to tell you my story,
+sir. It is an uncommon one and I never meant that it should pass my
+lips, but if by its relation I can win your sympathy for a pure and
+noble passion, I shall consider the sacred seal of secrecy broken in a
+good cause. But," said he, seeing his uncle cast a short and uneasy
+glance at the door, "perhaps I am interrupting you. You expect some
+one!"
+
+
+"No," said his uncle, "my wife is at church; I am ready to listen."
+
+The young man gave a hurried sigh, cast one look at his companion's
+immovable face, as if to assure himself that the narrative was
+necessary, then leaned back and in a steady business-like tone that
+softened, however, as he proceeded, began to relate as follows:
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+A MYSTERIOUS SUMMONS.
+
+    "Without unspotted, innocent within,
+    She feared no danger, for she knew no sin."--DRYDEN.
+
+
+It was after a matinee performance at ---- Hall some two weeks ago that
+I stopped to light a cigar in the small corridor leading to the back
+entrance. I was in a dissatisfied frame of mind. Something in the music
+I had been playing or the manner in which it had been received had
+touched unwonted chords in my own nature. I felt alone. I remember
+asking myself as I stood there, what it all amounted to? Who of all the
+applauding crowd would watch at my bedside through a long and harassing
+sickness, or lend their sympathy as they now yielded their praise, if
+instead of carrying off the honors of the day I had failed to do justice
+to my reputation. I was just smiling over the only exception I could
+make to this sweeping assertion, that of the pale-eyed youth you have
+sometimes observed dogging my steps, when Briggs came up to me.
+
+"There is a woman here, sir, who insists on seeing you; she has been
+waiting through half the last piece. Shall I tell her you are coming
+out?"
+
+"A woman!" exclaimed I, somewhat surprised, for my visitors are not apt
+to be of the gentler sex.
+
+"Yes sir, an old one. She seems very anxious to speak to you. I could
+not get rid of her no how."
+
+I hurried forward to the muffled figure which he pointed out cowering
+against the wall by the door. "Well, my good woman, what do you want?" I
+asked, bending towards her in the hopes of catching a glimpse of the
+face she held partly concealed from me.
+
+"Are you Mr. Mandeville?" she inquired in a tone shaken as much by
+agitation as age.
+
+I bowed.
+
+"The one who plays upon the piano?"
+
+"The very same," I declared.
+
+"You are not deceiving me," she went on, looking up with a marked
+anxiety plainly visible through her veil. "I haven't seen you play and
+couldn't contradict you, but--"
+
+"Here!" said I calling to Briggs with a kindly look at the old woman,
+"help me on with my coat, will you?"
+
+The "Certainly, Mr. Mandeville," with which he complied seemed to
+reassure her, and as soon as the coat was on and he was gone, she
+grasped me by the arm and drew my ear down to her mouth.
+
+"If you are Mr. Mandeville, I have a message for you. This letter,"
+slipping one into my hand, "is from a young lady, sir. She bade me give
+it to you myself. She is young and pretty," she pursued as she saw me
+make a movement of distaste, "and a lady. We depend upon your honor,
+sir."
+
+I acknowledge that my first impulse was to fling her back the note and
+leave the building; I was in no mood for trifling, my next to burst into
+a laugh and politely hand her to the door, my last and best, to open the
+poor little note and see for myself whether the writer was a lady or
+not. Proceeding to the door, for it was already twilight in the dim
+passage way, I tore open the envelope which was dainty enough and took
+out a sheet of closely written paper. A certain qualm of conscience
+assailed me as I saw the delicate chirography it disclosed and I was
+tempted to thrust it back and return it unread to the old woman now
+trembling in the corner. But curiosity overcame my scruples, and hastily
+unfolding the sheet I read these lines:
+
+     "I do not know if what I do is right; I am sure aunty would not
+     say it was; but aunty never thinks anything is right but going
+     to church and reading the papers to papa. I am just a little
+     girl who has heard you play, and who would think the world was
+     too beautiful, if she could hear you say to her just once, some
+     of the kind things you must speak every day to the persons who
+     know you. I do not expect very much--you must have a great many
+     friends, and you would not care for me--but the least little
+     look, if it were all my own, would make me so happy and so
+     proud I should not envy anybody in the world, unless it was
+     some of those dear friends who see you always.
+
+     "I do not come and hear you play often, for aunty thinks music
+     frivolous, but I am always hearing you no matter where I am,
+     and it makes me feel as if I were far away from everybody, in a
+     beautiful land all sunshine and flowers. But nurse says I must
+     not write so much or you will not read it, so I will stop here.
+     But if you _would_ come it would make some one happier than
+     even your beautiful music could do."
+
+That was all; there was neither name nor date. A child's epistle,
+written with a woman's circumspection. With mingled sensations of doubt
+and curiosity I turned back to the old woman who stood awaiting me with
+eager anxiety.
+
+"Was this written by a child or woman?" I asked, meeting her eye with as
+much sternness as I could assume.
+
+"Don't ask me--don't ask me anything. I have promised to bring you if I
+could, but I cannot answer any questions."
+
+I stepped back with an incredulous laugh. Here was evidently an
+adventure. "You will at least tell me where the young miss lives," said
+I, "before I undertake to fulfil her request."
+
+She shook her head. "I have a carriage at the door, sir," said she. "All
+you have got to do is to get into it with me and we shall soon be at the
+house."
+
+I looked from her face to the letter in my hand, and knew not what to
+think. The spirit of simplicity and ingenuousness that marked the latter
+was scarcely in keeping with this air of mystery. The woman observing my
+hesitation moved towards the door.
+
+"Will you come, sir?" she inquired. "You will not regret it. Just a
+moment's talk with a pretty young girl--surely--"
+
+"Hush," said I, hearing a hasty step behind me. And sure enough just
+then my intimate friend Selby came along and grasping me by the arm
+began dragging me towards the door. "You are my property," said he.
+"I've promised, on my word of honor as a gentleman and a musician, to
+bring you to the Handel Club this afternoon. I was afraid you had
+escaped me, but--" Here he caught sight of the small black figure
+halting in the door-way, and paused.
+
+"Who's this?" said he.
+
+I hesitated. For one instant the scale of my whole future destiny hung
+trembling in the balance, then the demon of curiosity got the better of
+my judgment, and with the rather unworthy consideration that I might as
+well enjoy my youth while I could, I released myself from my friend's
+detaining hand and replied, "Some one with whom I have very particular
+business. I cannot go to the Handel Club to-day," and darting out
+without further delay, I rejoined the old woman on the sidewalk.
+
+Without a word she drew me towards a carriage I now observed standing by
+the curbstone a few feet to the left. As I got in I remember pausing a
+moment to glance at the man on the box, but it was too dark for me to
+perceive anything but the fact that he was dressed in livery. More and
+more astonished I leaned back in my seat and endeavored to open
+conversation with my mysterious companion. But it did not work. Without
+being actually rude, she parried my questions in such a way that by the
+end of five minutes I found myself as far from any knowledge of the real
+situation of the case as when I started. I therefore desisted from any
+further attempts and turned to look out, when I made a discovery that
+for the first time awoke some vague feelings of alarm within my breast.
+This was, that the window was not covered by a curtain as I supposed,
+but by closed blinds which when I tried to raise them resisted all my
+efforts to do so.
+
+"It is very close here," I muttered, in some sort of excuse for this
+display of uneasiness. "Cannot you give us a little air?" But my
+companion remained silent, and I felt ashamed to press the matter though
+I took advantage of the darkness to remove to a safer place a roll of
+money which I had about me.
+
+Yet I was far from being really anxious, and did not once meditate
+backing out of an adventure that was at once so piquant and romantic.
+For by this time I became conscious from the sounds about me that we had
+left the side street for one of the avenues and were then proceeding
+rapidly up town. Listening, I heard the roll of omnibuses and the jingle
+of car-bells, which informed me that we were in Broadway, no other
+avenue in the city being traversed by both these methods of conveyance.
+But after awhile the jingle ceased and presently the livelier sounds of
+constant commotion inseparable from a business thoroughfare, and we
+entered what I took to be Madison Avenue at Twenty-third Street.
+
+Instantly I made up mind to notice every turn of the carriage, that I
+might fix to some degree the locality towards which we were tending. But
+it turned but once and that after a distance of steady travelling that
+quite overthrew any calculation I was able to make at that time of the
+probable number of streets we had passed since entering the avenue.
+Having turned, it went but about half a block to the left when it
+stopped. "I shall see where I am when I get out," thought I; but in this
+I was mistaken.
+
+First we had stopped in the middle of a block of houses built, as far as
+I could judge, all after one model. Next the fact of the front door
+being open, though I saw no one in the hall, somewhat disconcerted me,
+and I hurried across the sidewalk and up the stoop in a species of maze
+hardly to be expected from one of my naturally careless disposition. The
+next moment the door closed behind me and I found myself in a
+well-lighted hall whose quiet richness betokened it as belonging to a
+private dwelling of no mean pretensions to elegance.
+
+This was the first surprise I received.
+
+"Follow me," said the old woman, hurrying me down the hall and into a
+small room at the end. "The young lady will be here in a moment," and
+without lifting her veil or affording me the least glimpse of her
+features, she retired, leaving me to face the situation before me as
+best I might.
+
+It was anything but a pleasant one as it appeared to me at that moment,
+and for an instant I seriously thought of retracing my steps and leaving
+a domicile into which I had been introduced in such a mysterious manner.
+Then the quiet aspect of the room, which though sparsely furnished with
+a piano and chairs was still of an order rarely seen out of gentlemen's
+houses, struck my imagination and reawakened my curiosity, and nerving
+myself to meet whatever interview might be accorded me, I waited. It was
+only five minutes by the small clock ticking on the mantel-piece, but it
+seemed an hour before I heard a timid step at the door, and saw it swing
+slowly open, disclosing--well, I did not stop to inquire whether it was
+a child or a woman. I merely saw the shrinking modest form, the eager
+blushing face, and bowed almost to the ground in a sudden reverence for
+the sublime innocence revealed to me. Yes, it did not take a second look
+to read that tender countenance to its last guileless page. Had she been
+a woman of twenty-five I could not have mistaken her expression of pure
+delight and timid interest, but she was only sixteen, as I afterwards
+learned, and younger in experience than in age.
+
+Closing the door behind her, she stood for a moment without speaking,
+then with a deepening of the blush which was only a child's
+embarrassment in the presence of a stranger, looked up and murmured my
+name with a word or so of grateful acknowledgment that would have called
+forth a smile on my lips if I had not been startled by the sudden change
+that passed over her features when she met my eyes. Was it that I showed
+my surprise too plainly, or did my admiration manifest itself in my
+gaze? an admiration great as it was humble, and which was already of a
+nature such as I had never before given to girl or woman. Whatever it
+was, she no sooner met my look than she paused, trembled, and started
+back with a confused murmur, through which I plainly heard her whisper
+in a low distressed tone, "Oh, what have I done!"
+
+"Called a good friend to your side," said I in the frank, brotherly way
+I thought most likely to reassure her. "Do not be alarmed, I am only too
+happy to meet one who evidently enjoys music so well."
+
+But the hidden chord of womanhood had been struck in the child's soul,
+and she could not recover herself. For an instant I thought she would
+turn and flee, and struck as I was with remorse at my reckless invasion
+of this uncontaminated temple, I could not but admire the spirited
+picture she presented as, with form half turned and face bent back, she
+stood hesitating on the point of flight.
+
+I did not try to stop her. "She shall follow her own impulse," said I to
+myself, but I felt a vague relief that was deeper than I imagined, when
+she suddenly relinquished her strained attitude, and advancing a step or
+so began to murmur:
+
+"I did not know--I did not realize I was doing what was so very wrong.
+Young ladies do not ask gentlemen to come and see them, no matter how
+much they desire to make their acquaintance. I see it now; I did not
+before. Will you--can you forgive me?"
+
+I smiled; I could not help it. I could have taken her to my heart and
+soothed her as I would a child, but the pallor of womanhood, which had
+replaced the blush of the child, awed me and made my own words come
+hesitatingly.
+
+"Forgive you? You must forgive me! It was as wrong for me," I went on
+with a wild idea of not mincing matters with this pure soul, "to obey
+your innocent request, as it was for you to make it. I am a man of the
+world and know its _convenances_; you are very young."
+
+"I am sixteen," she murmured.
+
+The abrupt little confession, implying as it did her determination not
+to accept any palliation of her conduct which it did not deserve,
+touched me strangely. "But very young for that," I exclaimed.
+
+"So aunty says, but no one can ever say it any more," she answered. Then
+with a sudden gush, "We shall never see each other again, and you must
+forget the motherless girl who has met you in a way for which she must
+blush through life. It is no excuse," she pursued hurriedly, "that nurse
+thought it was all right. She always approves of everything I do or want
+to do, especially if it is anything aunt would be likely to forbid. I
+have been spoiled by nurse."
+
+"Was nurse the woman who came for me?" I asked.
+
+She nodded her head with a quick little motion inexpressibly charming.
+"Yes, that was nurse. She said she would do it all, I need only write
+the note. She meant to give me a pleasure, but she did wrong."
+
+"Yes," thought I, "how wrong you little know or realize." But I only
+said, "You must be guided by some one with more knowledge of the world
+after this. Not," I made haste to add, struck by the misery in her child
+eyes, "that any harm has been done. You could not have appealed to the
+friendship of any one who would hold you in greater respect than I.
+Whether we meet again or not, my memory of you shall be sweet and
+sacred, I promise you that."
+
+But she threw out her hand with a quick gesture. "No, do not remember
+me. My only happiness will lie in the thought you have forgotten." And
+the last remnants of the child soul vanished in that hurried utterance.
+"You must go now," she continued more calmly. "The carriage that brought
+you is at the door; I must ask you to take it back to your home."
+
+"But," I exclaimed with a wild and unbearable sense of sudden loss as
+she laid her hand on the knob of the door, "are we to part like this?
+Will you not at least trust me with your name before I go?"
+
+Her hand dropped from the knob as if it had been hot steel, and she
+turned towards me with a slow yearning motion that whatever it betokened
+set my heart beating violently. "You do not know it, then?" she
+inquired.
+
+"I know nothing but what this little note contains," I replied, drawing
+her letter from my pocket.
+
+"Oh, that letter! I must have it," she murmured; then, as I stepped
+towards her, drew back and pointing to the table said, "Lay it there,
+please."
+
+I did so, whereupon something like a smile crossed her lips and I
+thought she was going to reward me with her name, but she only said, "I
+thank you; now you know nothing;" and almost before I realized it she
+had opened the door and stepped into the hall.
+
+As I made haste to follow her, the sound of a low, "He is a gentleman,
+he will ask no questions," struck my ear, and looking up, I saw her just
+leaving the side of the old nurse who stood evidently awaiting me half
+down the hall. Bowing with formal ceremony, I passed her by and
+proceeded to the front door. As I did so I caught one glimpse of her
+face. It had escaped from all restraint and the expression of the eyes
+was overpowering. I subdued a wild impulse to leap back to her side, and
+stepped at once over the threshold. The nurse joined me, and together we
+went down the stoop to the street.
+
+"May I inquire where you wish to be taken?" she asked.
+
+I told her, and she gave the order to the coachman, together with a few
+words I did not hear; then stepping back she waited for me to get in.
+There was no help for it. I gave one quick look behind me, saw the front
+door close, realized how impossible it would ever be for me to recognize
+the house again, and placed my foot on the carriage step. Suddenly a
+bright idea struck me, and hastily dropping my cane I stepped back to
+pick it up. As I did so I pulled out a bit of crayon I chanced to have
+in my pocket, and as I stooped, chalked a small cross on the curbstone
+directly in front of the house, after which I recovered my cane, uttered
+some murmured word of apology, jumped into the carriage and was about to
+shut the door, when the old nurse stepped in after me and quietly closed
+it herself. By the pang that shot through my breast as the carriage
+wheels left the house, I knew that for the first time in my life, I
+_loved_.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+SEARCHINGS.
+
+     "Patience, and shuffle the cards."--CERVANTES.
+
+
+If I had expected anything from the presence in the carriage of the
+woman who had arranged this interview, I was doomed to disappointment.
+Reticent before, she was absolutely silent now, sitting at my side like
+a grim statue or a frozen image of watchfulness, ready to awake and stop
+me if I offered to open the door or make any other move indicative of a
+determination to know where I was, or in what direction I was going.
+That her young mistress in the momentary conversation they had held
+before our departure had succeeded in giving her some idea of the shame
+with which she had felt herself overwhelmed and her present natural
+desire for secrecy, I do not doubt, but I think now, as I thought then,
+that the unusual precautions taken both at that time and before, to keep
+me in ignorance of the young lady's identity, were due to the elderly
+woman's own consciousness of the peril she had invoked in yielding to
+the wishes of her young and thoughtless mistress; a theory which, if
+true, argues more for the mind than the conscience of this mysterious
+woman. However, it is with facts we have to deal, and you will be more
+interested in learning what I did, than what I thought during that short
+ride in perfect darkness.
+
+The mark which I had left on the curbstone behind me sufficiently showed
+the nature of my resolve, and when we made the first turn at the end of
+the block I leaned back in my seat and laying my finger on my wrist,
+began to count the pulsations of my blood. It was the only device that
+suggested itself, by which I might afterward gather some approximate
+notion of the distance we travelled in a straight course down town. I
+had just arrived at the number seven hundred and sixty-two, and was
+inwardly congratulating myself upon this new method of reckoning
+distance, when the wheels gave a lurch and we passed over a car track.
+Instantly all my fine calculations fell to the ground. We were not in
+Madison Avenue, as I supposed; could not be, since no track crosses that
+avenue below Fifty-ninth Street, and we were proceeding on as we could
+not have done had we gained the terminus of the avenue at Twenty-third
+Street. Could it be that the carriage had not been turned around while I
+was in the house, and that we had come back by way of Fifth Avenue? I
+could not remember--in fact, the more I tried to think which way the
+horses' heads were directed when we went into the house, the more I was
+confused. But presently I considered that wherever we were, we certainly
+had not passed over the narrow strip of smooth pavement in front of the
+Worth monument, and therefore could not have reached Twenty-third Street
+by way of Fifth Avenue. We must be up town, and that track we crossed
+must have been at Fifty-ninth Street. And soon, as if to assure me of
+this, we took a turn, quickly followed at a block's length by another,
+after which I had no difficulty in recognizing the smooth pavement of
+the entrance to the Park or the roll down Fifth Avenue afterwards. "They
+have thought to confuse me by an extra mile or so of travel," thought I,
+with some complacency, "but the streets of New York are too simply laid
+out to lend themselves to any such easy mode of mystification." Yet I
+have thought since then how, with a smarter man on the box, the affair
+might have been conducted so as to have baffled the oldest citizen in
+any attempt at calculation.
+
+When we stopped in front of the Albemarle I quietly thanked the woman
+who had conducted me, and stepped to the ground. Instantly the door shut
+behind me, the carriage drove off, and I was left standing there like a
+man suddenly awakened from a dream.
+
+Entering my hotel, I ordered supper, thinking that the very practical
+occupation of eating would serve to divert my mind into its ordinary
+channels. But the dream, if dream it was, had made too vivid an
+impression to be shaken off so easily. It followed me to the hall in the
+evening and mingled with every chord I struck.
+
+I could scarcely sleep that night for thinking of the sweet child's face
+that had blossomed into a woman's before my eyes, and what a woman! With
+the first hint of daylight I rose, and as soon as it was in any degree
+suitable to be out, hired a cab and proceeded to the corner of
+Fifty-ninth Street and Madison Avenue, where, according to my
+calculations of the evening before, we had crossed the car track which
+had first interrupted me in that very original method of computing
+distance of which I have already spoken, a method by the way, which you
+must acknowledge is an improvement on the boy's plan of finding his way
+back from the woods by means of the bread-crumbs he had scattered behind
+him, forgetting that the birds would eat up his crumbs and leave him
+without a clew. Bidding the driver proceed at the ordinary jog trot down
+the avenue, I laid my finger on my wrist, and counted each throb of my
+pulse till I had reached the magical number seven hundred and sixty-two.
+Then putting my head out of the window, I bade him stop. We were in the
+middle of a block, but that did not disconcert me. I had not expected to
+gain more than an approximate idea of the spot where we had first turned
+into the avenue, it being impossible to regulate the horses' pace so as
+to tally with that taken by the span of the night before, even if the
+pulsations in my wrist were to be absolutely relied upon. Noting the
+streets between which we had paused, I bade the driver to turn down one
+and come back by the other, occupying myself in the meanwhile, in
+searching the curbstone for the small mark I had left in front of her
+door the night before. But though we drove slowly and I searched
+carefully, not a trace did I perceive of that tell-tale sign, and
+forsaking those two streets, I ordered my obedient Jehu to try the two
+outlying ones below and above. He did so, and I again consulted the
+curbstone, but with no better success. No mark or remnants of a mark was
+to be found anywhere. Nor, though we travelled through three or four
+other streets in the same way, did we come upon any clew liable to
+assist me in my search. Clean discouraged and somewhat out of temper
+with myself for my pusillanimity of the evening before in not having
+braved the anger of my companion by opening the carriage door at the
+first corner and leaping out, I commanded to be taken back to the hotel,
+where for a whole miserable day I racked my brain with devices for
+acquiring the knowledge I so much desired. The result was futile, as you
+may imagine; nor will I stop to recount the various expedients to which
+I afterwards resorted in my vain attempt to solve the mystery of this
+young girl's identity.
+
+Enough that they all failed, even the very promising one of searching
+the various photographic establishments of the city, for the valuable
+clew which her picture would give me. And so a week passed.
+
+"It is time this mad infatuation was at an end," said I to myself one
+morning as I sat down to write a letter. "There is no hope of my ever
+seeing her again, and I am but frittering away the best emotions of my
+life in thus indulging in a dream that is not the prelude to a reality."
+But in spite of the wise determination thus made, I soon found my
+thoughts recurring to their old channel, and seized with sudden
+impatience at my evident weakness, took up the letter I had been writing
+and was about to read it, when to my great amazement I perceived that
+instead of inditing the usual words of a business communication, I had
+been engaged in scribbling a certain number up and down the page and
+even across the bottom where my signature should have been.
+
+"Am I a fool?" I exclaimed, and was about to tear the sheet in two, when
+glancing again at the number, which was a simple thirty-six, I asked
+myself where I had got those especial figures. Instantly there arose
+before my mind's eye the vision of a brown-stone front with its
+vestibule and door. It was, then, the number of a house; but what house?
+a _chateau en Espagne_ or a _bona fide_ New York dwelling, which for
+some reason had unconsciously impressed itself upon my memory? I could
+not answer. There on the page was the number thirty-six, and equally
+plain in my mind was the look of the brown-stone front to which that
+number belonged--and that was all.
+
+But it was enough to awaken within me the spirit of inquiry. The few
+houses thus numbered in that quarter of the city where I had lately
+been, were not so hard to find but that a morning given to the business
+ought to satisfy me whether the vision in my mind had its basis in
+reality. Taking a cab, I rode up town and into that region of streets I
+had traversed so carefully a week before. For I was assured that if the
+impression had been made by an actual dwelling it had been done at that
+time. Following the same course I then took, I consulted the appearance
+of the various houses to which that number was assigned. The first was
+built of brick; that was not it. The next one had pillars to the
+vestibule; and that was not it. The third, to use an Irish bull, was no
+house at all, but a stable, while the fourth was an elegant structure of
+much more pretension than the plain and simple front I had in my mind or
+memory. I was about to utter a curse upon my folly and go home, when I
+remembered there was yet a street or two taken in my zig-zag course of
+the week before, which I had not yet tested. "Might as well be
+thorough," I muttered, and bade my driver proceed down ---- Street.
+
+What was there in its aspect that dimly excited me at the first glance?
+A dim remembrance, a certain ghostly assurance that we had reached the
+right spot? As we neared the number I sought, I could not suppress an
+exclamation of surprise. For there before me to its last detail, stood
+the house which involuntarily presented itself to my mind, when my eye
+first fell upon that mysterious number scribbled at the foot of the page
+I was writing.
+
+It was, then, no chimera of an overwrought brain, this vision of a
+house-front which had been haunting me, but a distinct remembrance of an
+actual dwelling seen by me in my former journey through this street. But
+why this house-front above all others; what was there in it to make such
+an impression? Looking at it I could not determine, but after we had
+passed, something, I cannot tell what, brought back another remembrance,
+trivial in itself, but yet a link in the chain that was destined sooner
+or later to lead me out of the maze into which I had stumbled. It was
+merely this; that as I rode along the streets on that memorable morning,
+searching for that mark on the curbstone from which I hoped so much, I
+had come upon a spot where the pavement had been freshly washed. With
+that unconscious action of the brain with which we are familiar, I
+looked at the sidewalk a moment, running even then with the water that
+had been cast upon it, and then gave a quick glance at the house. That
+glance, account for it as you will, took in the picture before it as the
+camera catches the impression of a likeness, and though in another
+instant I had forgotten the whole occurrence, it needed but a certain
+train of thought or perhaps a certain state of emotion to revive it
+again.
+
+A noble cause for such an act of unconscious cerebration you will say, a
+freshly washed pavement: _Le jeu ne faut pas la chandelle._ And so I
+thought too, or would have thought if I had not been so interested in
+the pursuit in which I was engaged, and if the idea had not suggested
+itself that water and a broom might obliterate chalk-marks from
+curbstones, and that the imps that preside over our mental forces would
+not indulge in such a trick at my expense unless the play _was_ worth
+the candle. At all events, from the moment I made this discovery, I
+fixed my faith on that house as the one which held the object of my
+search, and though I contented myself with merely noting the number of
+the street as we left it, I none the less determined to pursue my
+investigations, till I had learned beyond the possibility of a doubt
+whether my conjectures were not true.
+
+A perseverance worthy of a better cause you will say, but you are no
+longer twenty-five and under the influence of your first passion. I own
+I was astonished at myself and frequently paused in the pursuit I had
+undertaken, to ask if I were the same person who but a fortnight before
+laughed at the story of a man who had gone mad over the body of an
+unknown woman he had saved from a wreck only to find her dead in his
+arms.
+
+The first thing I did was to ascertain the name of the gentleman
+occupying the house I have specified. It was that of one of our
+wealthiest and most respectable bankers, a name as well known in the
+city--as your own for instance. This was somewhat disconcerting, but
+with a dogged resolution somewhat foreign to my natural disposition, I
+persevered in my investigations, and learning in the next breath that
+the gentleman alluded to was a widower with an only child, a young
+daughter of about sixteen or so, recovered my assurance, though not my
+equanimity. Seeking out my friend Farrar, who as you know is a walking
+gazette of New York society, I broached the subject of Mr.--excuse me
+if I do not mention his name; allow me to say, Preston's domestic
+affairs, and learned that Miss Preston, "A naive little piece for so
+great an heiress," I remember Farrar called her, had left town within a
+day or two for a visit to some friends in Baltimore. "I happen to know,"
+said he with that careless sweep of his hand at which you have so often
+laughed, "because my friend Miss Forsyth met her at the depot. She was
+intending to be gone--two weeks, I think she said. Do you know her?"
+
+That last question sprung upon me unawares, and I am afraid I blushed.
+"No," I returned, "I have not that honor but an acquaintance of mine
+has--well--has met her and--"
+
+"I see, I see," broke in Farrar with his most disagreeable smile. Then
+with a short laugh, meant to act as a warning, I suppose, added as he
+walked off, "I hope your friend is in fair circumstances and not
+connected with the fine arts. Music is Mr. Preston's detestation, while
+Miss Preston though too young to be much sought after yet, will in two
+years' time have the pick of the city at her command."
+
+"So!" thought I to myself; "my little innocent charmer is an embryo
+aristocrat, eh? Well then, I was a greater fool than I imagined." And I
+walked out of the hotel where I had met Farrar, with the very sensible
+conclusion to drop a subject that promised nothing but disappointment.
+
+But the fates were against me, or the good angels perhaps, and at the
+next comer I met an old acquaintance, the very opposite of Farrar in
+character, who with a long love story of his own fired, my imagination
+to such an extent that in spite of myself I turned down ---- Street, and
+was proceeding to pass her house, when suddenly the thought struck me,
+"How do I know that this unapproachable daughter of one of our most
+prominent citizens is one and the same person with my dainty little
+charmer? Widowers with young daughters are not so rare in this great
+city that I need consider the question as decided, because by a half
+superstitious freak of my own I have settled upon this house as the one
+I was in the other night. My inamorata may be the offspring of a
+musician for all I know." And inflamed at the thought of this
+possibility--I remembered the piano, you see--I gave to the winds all my
+fine resolutions and only asked how I could determine for once and all,
+whether I had ever crossed the threshold of the house before me. Some
+men would have run up the stoop, rung the bell and asked to see Mr.
+Preston on some pretended business he could easily conjure up to suit
+the occasion, but my face is too well known for me to risk any such
+attempt, besides I was too anxious to win the confidence of the young
+girl to shock her awakened sense of propriety by seeming to seek her
+where she did not wish to be found. And yet I must enter that house and
+see for myself if it was the one that held her on that memorable
+evening.
+
+Pondering the question, I looked back at the door so obstinately closed
+against my curiosity, when to my satisfaction and delight it suddenly
+opened and a man stepped out, whom I instantly recognized as a business
+agent for one of the largest piano-forte manufactories in the city. "The
+heavens smile upon my enterprise," thought I, and waited for the man to
+come up with me. He was not only a friend of mine but largely indebted
+to me in various ways, so that I knew I had only to urge a request for
+it to be immediately granted, and that, too, without any questions or
+gossip.
+
+You will not be interested in anything but the result, which was
+somewhat out of the usual course, and may therefore shock you. But you
+must remember that I am telling you of matters which young men usually
+keep to themselves, and that whatever I did, was accomplished in a
+spirit of respect only a shade less constraining in its power than the
+love that was at once my impelling force, and my constant embarrassment.
+
+To come, then, to the point, a piano was to be set up in that house on
+that very day, Mr. Preston having yielded to the solicitations of his
+daughter for a new instrument. My friend was to be engaged in the
+transfer, and at my solicitation for leave to assist in the operation,
+gave his consent in perfect confidence as to my possessing good and
+sufficient reasons for such a remarkable request, and appointed the hour
+at which I was to meet him at the ware-rooms.
+
+Behold me, then, at half-past two that afternoon, assisting with my own
+hands in carrying a piano up the stoop of that house which, four hours
+before, I had regarded as unapproachable. Dressed in a workman's blouse
+and with my hair well roughened under a rude cap that effectually
+disguised me, I advanced with but little fear of detection. And yet no
+sooner had I entered the house and seen at a glance that the aspect of
+the hall coincided with my rather vague remembrance of that through
+which I had been ushered a week before, than I was struck by a sudden
+sense of my situation, and experiencing that uncomfortable consciousness
+of self-betrayal, which a blush always gives a man, stumbled forward
+under my heavy burden, feeling as if a thousand eyes were fixed upon me
+and my cherished secret, instead of the two sharp but totally
+unsuspicious orbs of the elderly matron that surveyed us from the top of
+the banisters. "Be careful there, you'll knock a hole through that glass
+door!" though a natural cry under the circumstances, struck on my ears
+with the force and mysterious power of a secret warning, and when after
+a moment of blind advance I suddenly lifted my eyes and found myself in
+the little room, which like a silhouette on a white ground, stood out in
+my memory in distinct detail as the spot where I had first heard my own
+heart beat, I own that I felt my hands slipping from my burden, and in
+another moment had disgraced my character of a workman if I had not
+caught the sudden ring of a well known voice in the hall, as nurse
+answered from above some question propounded by the elderly lady with
+the piercing eyes. As it was, I recovered myself and went through my
+duties as promptly and deftly as if my heart did not throb with memories
+that each passing hour and event only served to hallow to my
+imagination.
+
+At length the piano was duly set up and we turned to leave. Will you
+think I am too trivial in my details if I tell you that I lingered
+behind the rest and for an instant let my hand with all its
+possibilities for calling out a soul from that dead instrument, lie a
+moment on the keys over which her dainty fingers were so soon to
+traverse?
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+THE RUBICON.
+
+     "I'll stake my life upon her faith."--OTHELLO.
+
+
+Once convinced of the identity of my sweet young friend with the Miss
+Preston at whose feet a two year hence, the wealth and aristocracy of
+New York would be kneeling, I drew back from further effort as having
+received a damper to my presumptuous hopes that would soon effectually
+stifle them. Everything I heard about the family--and it seemed as if
+suddenly each chance acquaintance that I met had something to say about
+Mr. Preston either as a banker or a man, only served to confirm me in
+this view. "He is a money worshipper," said one. "The bluest of blue
+Presbyterians," declared another. "The enemy of presumption and anything
+that looks like an overweening confidence in one's own worth or
+capabilities," remarked a third. "A man who would beggar himself to save
+the honor of a corporation with which he was concerned," observed a
+fourth "but who would not invite to his table the most influential man
+connected with it if that man was unable to trace his family back to the
+old Dutch settlers to which Mr. Preston's own ancestors belonged."
+
+This latter statement I have no doubt was exaggerated for I myself have
+seen him at dinners where half the gentlemen who lifted the wine glass
+were self-made in every sense of the term. But it showed the bent of his
+mind and it was a bent that left me entirely out of the sweep of his
+acquaintanceship much less that of his exquisite daughter, the pride of
+his soul if not the jewel of his heart.
+
+But when will a man who has seen or who flatters himself that he has
+seen in the eyes of the woman he admires, the least spark of that fire
+which is consuming his own soul, pause at an obstacle which after all
+has its basis simply in circumstances of position or will. By the time
+the two weeks of her expected absence had expired, I had settled it in
+my own mind that I would see her again and if I found the passing
+caprice of a child was likely to blossom into the steady regard of a
+woman, risk all in the attempt to win by honorable endeavor and
+persistence this bud of loveliness for my future wife.
+
+How I finally succeeded by means of my friend Farrar in being one
+evening invited to the same house as Miss Preston it is not necessary to
+state. You will believe me it was done with the utmost regard for her
+feelings and in a way that deceived Farrar himself, who if he is the
+most prying is certainly the most volatile of men. In a crowded parlor,
+then, in the midst of the flash of diamonds and the flutter of fans Miss
+Preston and I again met. When I first saw her she was engaged in
+conversation with some young companion, and I had the pleasure of
+watching for a few minutes, unobserved, the play of her ingenuous
+countenance, as she talked with her friend, or sat silently watching the
+brilliant array before her. I found her like and yet unlike the vision
+of my dreams. More blithesome in her appearance, as was not strange
+considering her party attire and the lustre of the chandelier under
+which she sat, there was still that indescribable something in her
+expression which more than the flash of her eye or the curve of her lip,
+though both were lovely to me, made her face the one woman's face in the
+world for me; a charm which circumstances might alter, or suffering
+impair, but of which nothing save death could ever completely divest her
+and not death either, for it was the seal of her individuality, and that
+she would take with her into the skies.
+
+"If I might but advance and sit down by her side without a word of
+explanation or the interference of conventionalities how happy I should
+be," thought I. But I knew that would not do, so I contented myself with
+my secret watch over her movements, longing for and yet dreading the
+advance of my hostess, with its inevitable introduction. Suddenly the
+piano was touched in a distant room and not till I saw the quick change
+in her face, a change hard to explain, did I recognize the selection as
+one I was in the habit of playing. _She_ had not forgotten at least, and
+thrilled by the thought and the remembrance of that surge of color which
+had swept like a flood over her cheek, I turned away, feeling as if I
+were looking on what it was for no man's eyes to see, least of all mine.
+
+My hostess' voice arrested me and next moment I was bowing to the ground
+before Miss Preston.
+
+I am not a boy; nor have I been without my experiences: life with its
+vicissitudes has taught me many a lesson, subjected me to many a trial,
+yet in all my career have I never known a harder moment than when I
+raised my eyes to meet hers after that lowly obeisance. That she would
+be indignant I knew, that she might even misinterpret my motives and
+probably withdraw without giving me an opportunity to speak, I felt to
+be only too probable, but that she would betray an agitation so painful
+I had not anticipated, and for an instant I felt that I had hazarded my
+life's happiness on a cast that was going against me. But the necessity
+of saving her from remark speedily restored me to myself, and following
+the line of conduct I had previously laid out, I addressed her with the
+reserve of a stranger, and neither by word, look or manner conveyed to
+her a suggestion that we had ever met or spoken to each other before.
+She seemed to appreciate my consideration and though she was as yet too
+much unused to the ways of the world to completely hide her
+perturbation, she gradually regained a semblance of self-possession, and
+ere long was enabled to return short answers to my remarks, though her
+eyes remained studiously turned aside and never so much as ventured to
+raise themselves to the passing throng much less to my face, half turned
+away also.
+
+Presently however a change passed over her. Pressing her two little
+hands together, she drew back a step or two, speaking my name with a
+certain tone of command. Struck with apprehension, I knew not why, I
+followed her. Instantly like one repeating a lesson she spoke.
+
+"It is very good in you to talk to me as though we were the strangers
+that people believe us. I appreciate it and thank you very much. But it
+is not being just true; that is I feel as if I were not being just true,
+and as we can never be friends, would it not be better for us not to
+meet in this way any more?"
+
+"And why," I gently asked, with a sense of struggling for my life, "can
+we never be friends?"
+
+Her answer was a deep blush; not that timid conscious appeal of the
+blood that is beating too warmly for reply, but the quick flush of
+indignant generosity forced to do despite to its own instincts.
+
+"That is a question I would rather not answer," she murmured at length.
+"Only it is so; or I should not speak in this way."
+
+"But," I ventured, resolved to know on just what foundations my
+happiness was tottering, "you will at least tell me if this harsh decree
+is owing to any offence I myself may have inadvertently given. The honor
+of your acquaintance," I went on, determined she should know just what a
+hope she was slaying, "is much too earnestly desired, for me to wilfully
+hazard its loss by saying or doing aught that could be in any way
+displeasing to you."
+
+"You have done nothing but what was generous," said she with increasing
+womanliness of manner, "unless it was taking advantage of my being here,
+to learn my name and gain an introduction to me after I had desired you
+to forget my very existence."
+
+I recoiled at that, the chord of my self-respect was touched. "It was
+not here I learned your name, Miss Preston. It has been known to me for
+two weeks. At the risk of losing by your displeasure what is already
+hazarded by your prudence, I am bound to acknowledge that from the hour
+I left your father's house that night, I have spared no effort
+compatible with my deep respect for your feelings, to ascertain who the
+young lady was that had done me such an honor, and won from me such a
+deep regard. I had not intended to tell you this," I added, "but your
+truth has awakened mine, and whatever the result may be, you must see me
+as I am."
+
+"You are very kind," she replied governing with growing skill the
+trembling of her voice. "The acquaintance of a girl of sixteen is not
+worth so much trouble on the part of a man like yourself." And blushing
+with the vague apprehension of her sex in the presence of a devotion she
+rather feels than understands, she waved her trembling little hand and
+paused irresolute, seemingly anxious to terminate the interview but as
+yet too inexperienced to know how to manage a dismissal requiring so
+much tact and judgment.
+
+I saw, comprehended her position and hesitated. She was so young, uncle,
+her prospects in life were so bright; if I left her then, in a couple of
+weeks she would forget me. What was I that I should throw the shadow of
+manhood's deepest emotion across the paradise of her young untrammelled
+being. But the old Adam of selfishness has his say in my soul as well as
+in that of my fellow-men, and forgetting myself enough to glance at her
+half averted face, I could not remember myself sufficiently afterwards
+to forego without a struggle, all hope of some day beholding that soft
+cheek turn in confidence at my approach.
+
+"Miss Preston," said I, "the promise of the bud atones for its folded
+leaves." Then with a fervor I did not seek to disguise, "You say we
+cannot be friends; would your decision be the same if this were our
+first meeting?"
+
+Again that flush of outraged feeling. "I don't know--yes I think--I fear
+it would."
+
+I strove to help her. "There is too great a difference between Bertram
+Mandeville the pianist, and the daughter of Thaddeus Preston."
+
+She turned and looked me gently in the eye, she did not need to speak.
+Regret, shame, longing flashed in her steady glance.
+
+"Do not answer," said I, "I understand; I am glad it is circumstances
+that stand in the way, and not any misconception on your part as to my
+motives and deep consideration for yourself. Circumstances can be
+changed." And satisfied with having thus dropped into the fruitful soil
+of that tender breast, the seed of a future hope, I bowed with all the
+deference at my command and softly withdrew.
+
+But not to rest. With all the earnestness with which a man sets himself
+to decide upon the momentous question of life or death, I gave myself up
+to a night of reflection, and seated in my solitary bachelor apartment,
+debated with myself as to the resolution at which I had dimly hinted in
+my parting words to Miss Preston.
+
+That I am a musician by nature, my success with the the public seems to
+indicate. That by following out the line upon which I had entered I
+would attain a certain eminence in my art, I do not doubt. But uncle,
+there are two kinds of artists in this world; those that work because
+the spirit is in them and they cannot be silent if they would, and those
+that speak from a conscientious desire to make apparent to others the
+beauty that has awakened their own admiration. The first could not give
+up his art for any cause, without the sacrifice of his soul's life; the
+latter--well the latter could and still be a man with his whole inner
+being intact. Or to speak plainer, the first has no choice, while the
+latter has, if he has a will to exert it. Now you will say, and the
+world at large, that I belong to the former class. I have risen in ten
+years from a choir boy in Trinity Church to a position in the world of
+music that insures me a full audience wherever and whenever I have a
+mind to exert my skill as a pianist. Not a man of my years has a more
+promising outlook in my profession, if you will pardon the seeming
+egotism of the remark, and yet by the ease with which I felt I could
+give it up at the first touch of a master passion, I know that I am not
+a prophet in my art but merely an interpreter, one who can speak well
+but who has never felt the descent of the burning tongue and hence not a
+sinner against my own soul if I turn aside from the way I am walking.
+The question was, then, should I make a choice? Love, as you say, seems
+at first blush too insecure a joy, if not often too trivial a one, to
+unsettle a man in his career and change the bent of his whole after
+life; especially a love born of surprise and fed by the romance of
+distance and mystery. Had I met her in ordinary intercourse, surrounded
+by her friends and without the charm cast over her by unwonted
+circumstances, and then had felt as I did now that of all women I had
+seen, she alone would ever move the deep springs of my being, it would
+be different. But with this atmosphere of romance surrounding and
+hallowing her girl's form till it seemed almost as ethereal and
+unearthly as that of an angel's, was I safe in risking fame or fortune
+in an attempt to acquire what in the possession might prove as bare and
+common-place as a sweep of mountain heather stripped of its sunshine.
+Curbing every erratic beat of my heart, I summoned up her image as it
+bloomed in my fancy, and surveying it with cruel eyes, asked what was
+real and what the fruit of my own imagination. The gentle eye, the
+trembling lip, the girlish form eloquent with the promise of coming
+womanhood,--were these so rare, that beside them no other woman should
+seem to glance or smile or move? And her words! what had she said, that
+any simple-minded, modest yet loving girl might not have uttered under
+the circumstances. Surely my belief in her being the one, the best and
+the dearest was a delusion, and to no delusion was I willing to
+sacrifice my art. But straight upon that conclusion came sweeping down a
+flood of counter-reasons. If not the wonder she seemed, she was at least
+a wonder to me. If I had seen her under romantic circumstances, and
+unconsciously been influenced by them, the influence had remained and
+nothing would ever rob her form of the halo thus acquired. Whether I
+ever won her to my fireside or not, she must always remain the fairy
+figure of my dreams, and being so, the gentle eye and tender lip
+acquired a value that made them what they seemed, the exponent of love
+and happiness. And lastly if love well or illy founded was an uncertain
+joy, and the passion for a woman a poor substitute for the natural
+incentive of talent or ambition, _this_ love had within it the beginning
+of something deeper than joy, and in the passion thus cheaply
+characterized, dwelt a force and living fire that notwithstanding all I
+have hitherto achieved, has ever been lacking from my dreams of
+endeavor.
+
+As you will see, the most natural question of all did not disturb me in
+these cogitations: And that was, whether in making the sacrifice I
+proposed, I should meet with the reward I had promised myself. The
+fancies of a young girl of sixteen are not usually of a stable enough
+character to warrant a man in building upon them his whole future
+happiness, especially a young girl situated like Miss Preston in the
+midst of friends who would soon be admirers, and adulators who would
+soon be her humble slaves. But the doubt which a serious contemplation
+of this risk must have presented, was of so unnerving a character, I
+dared not admit it. _If_ I made the sacrifice, I must meet with my
+reward. I would listen to no other conclusion. Besides, something in the
+young girl herself, I cannot tell what, assured me then as it assures me
+now, that whatever virtues or graces she might lack, that of fidelity to
+a noble idea was not among them; that once convinced of the purity and
+value of the flame that had been lit in her innocent breast, nothing
+short of the unworthiness of the object that had awakened it, would ever
+serve to eliminate or extinguish it. That I was not worthy but would
+make it the business of my life to become so, was certain; that she
+would mark my endeavors and bestow upon me the sympathy they deserved, I
+was equally sure. No one would ever make such a sacrifice to her love as
+I was willing to do, and consequently in no one would I find a rival.
+
+The morning light surprised me in the midst of the struggle, nor did I
+decide the question that day. Mr. Preston might not be as determined in
+his prejudices against musicians as my friends or even his daughter had
+imagined. I resolved to see him. Taking advantage of his connection with
+the ---- Club, I procured an introducer in the shape of a highly
+respected person of his own class, and went one evening to the
+Club-rooms with the full intention of making his acquaintance if
+possible. He was already there and in conversation with some business
+associates. Procuring a seat as near him as possible, I anxiously
+surveyed his countenance. It was not a reassuring one, and studied in
+this way, had the effect of dampening any hopes I may have cherished in
+the outset. He soften to the sounds of sweet strains or the voice of
+youthful passion! As soon as the granite rock to the surge of the
+useless billow. His very necktie spoke volumes. It was an old fashioned
+stock, full of the traditions of other days, while his coat, shabbier
+than any I would presume to wear, betrayed in every well-worn seam the
+pride of the aristocrat and millionaire who in his native city and
+before the eyes of his fellow magnates does not need to carry the
+evidences of his respectability upon his back.
+
+"It would be worse than folly for me to approach him on such a subject,"
+I mentally ejaculated. "If he did not stare the musician out of
+countenance he would the newly risen man." And I came very near giving
+up the whole thing.
+
+But the genius that watches over the affairs of true love was with me
+notwithstanding the unpropitious state of my surroundings. In a few
+minutes I received my expected introduction to Mr. Preston, and I found
+that underneath the repelling austerity of his expression, was a kindly
+spark for youth, and a decided sympathy for all instances of manly
+endeavor if only it was in a direction he approved; further that my own
+personality was agreeable to him and that he was disposed to regard me
+with favor until by some chance and very natural allusion to my
+profession by the friend standing between us, he learned that I was a
+musician, when a decided change came over his countenance and he
+exclaimed in that blunt, decisive way of his that admits of no reply:
+
+"A jingler on the piano, eh? Pretty poor use for a man to put his brains
+to, I say, or even his fingers. Sorry to hear we cannot be friends." And
+without waiting for a reply, took my introducer by the arm and drew him
+a step or so to one side. "Why didn't you say at once he was Mandeville
+the musician," I overheard him ask in somewhat querulous tones. "Don't
+you know I consider the whole race of them an abomination. I would have
+more respect for my bank clerk than I would for the greatest man of them
+all, were it Rubenstein himself." Then in a lower tone but distinctly
+and almost as if he meant me to hear, "My daughter has a leaning towards
+this same fol-de-rol and has lately requested my permission to make the
+acquaintance of some musical characters, but I soon convinced her that
+manhood under the disguise of a harlequin's jacket could have no
+interest for her; that when a human being, man or woman has sunk to be a
+mere rattler of sweet sounds, he has reached a stage of infantile
+development that has little in common with the nervous energy and
+business force of her Dutch ancestry. And my daughter stoops to make no
+acquaintances she cannot bid sit at her father's table."
+
+"Your daughter is a child yet, I thought," was ventured by his
+companion.
+
+"Miss Preston is sixteen, just the age at which my mother gave her hand
+to my respected father sixty-seven years ago." And with this drop of
+burning lead let fall into my already agitated bosom they passed on.
+
+He would have more respect for his bank clerk! Would his bank clerk or
+what was better, a young man with means at his command, working in a
+business capacity more in consonance with the tastes he had evinced,
+have a chance of winning his daughter? I began to think he might. "The
+way grows clearer!" I exclaimed.
+
+But it was not till after another interview with him ten minutes later
+in the lobby that I finally made up my mind. He was standing quite alone
+in an obscure corner, fumbling in an awkward way with his muffler that
+had caught on the button of his coat. Seeing it, I hastened forward to
+his assistance and was rewarded by a kind enough nod to embolden me to
+say,
+
+"I have been introduced to you as a musician; would my acquaintance be
+more acceptable to you if I told you that the pursuit of art bids fair
+in my case to yield to the exigencies of business? That I purpose
+leaving the concert-room for the banker's office and that henceforth my
+only ambition promises to be that of Wall Street?"
+
+"It most certainly would," exclaimed he, holding out his hand with an
+unmistakable gesture of satisfaction. "You have too good a countenance
+to waste before a piano-top strumming to the smirks of women and the
+plaudits of weak-headed men. Let us see you at the desk, my lad. We are
+in want of trustworthy young men to take the place of us older ones."
+Then politely, "Do you expect to make the change soon?"
+
+"I do," said I.
+
+And the Rubicon was passed.
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+A HAND CLASP.
+
+    "_Fer._--Here's my hand.
+
+    _Mir._--And mine with my heart in it."
+
+    --TEMPEST.
+
+
+Once arrived at a settled conclusion, I put every thought of wavering
+out of my mind. Deciding that with such a friend in business circles as
+yourself, I needed no other introducer to my new life, I set apart this
+evening for a confab with you on the subject. Meanwhile it is pretty
+generally known that I make no more engagements to appear through the
+country.
+
+I have but one more incident to relate. Last Sunday in walking down
+Fifth Avenue I met her. I did not do this inadvertently. I knew her
+custom of attending Bible class and for once put myself in her way. I
+did not give her time to remonstrate.
+
+"Do not express your displeasure," said I, "this shall never be
+repeated. I merely wish to say that I have concluded to leave a
+profession so little appreciated by those whose esteem I most desire to
+possess; that I am about entering a banker's office where it shall be my
+ambition to rise if possible, to wealth and consequence. If I
+succeed--you shall then know what my incentive has been. But till I
+succeed or at least give such tokens of success as shall insure respect,
+silence must be my portion and patience my sole support. Only of one
+thing rest assured, that until I inform you with my own lips that the
+hope which now illumines me is gone, it will continue to burn on in my
+breast, shedding light upon a way that can never seem dark while that
+glow rests upon it." And bowing with the ceremonious politeness our
+positions demanded, I held out my hand. "One clasp to encourage me," I
+entreated.
+
+It seemed as if she did not comprehend. "You are going to give up music,
+and for--for--"
+
+"You?" said I. "Yes, don't forbid me," I implored; "it is too late."
+
+Like a lovely image of blushing girlhood turned by a lightning flash
+into marble, she paused, pallid and breathless where she was, gazing
+upon me with eyes that burned deeper and deeper as the full
+comprehension of all that this implied gradually forced itself upon her
+mind.
+
+"You make a chaos of my little world," she murmured at length.
+
+"No," said I, "_your_ world is untouched. If it should never be my good
+fortune to enter it, you are not to grieve. You are free, Miss Preston,
+free as this sunshiny air we breathe; I alone am bound, and that because
+I must be whether I will or no."
+
+Then I saw the woman I had worshipped in this young fair girl shine
+fully and fairly upon me. Drawing herself up, she looked me in the face
+and calmly laid her hand in mine. "I am young," said she, "and do not
+know what may be right to say to one so generous and so kind. But this
+much I can promise, that whether or not I am ever able to duly reward
+you for what you undertake, I will at least make it the study of my life
+never to prove unworthy of so much trust and devotion."
+
+And with the last lingering look natural to a parting for years, we
+separated then and there, and the crowd came between us, and the Sunday
+bells rang on, and what was so vividly real to us at the moment, became
+in remembrance more like the mist and shadow of a dream.
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+MRS. SYLVESTER.
+
+     Love is more pleasant than marriage, for the same reason that
+     romances are more amusing than history.
+
+     --CHAMFORT.
+
+     "He draweth out the thread of his verbosity, finer than the
+     staple of his argument."
+
+     --LOVES LABOR LOST.
+
+
+Young Mandeville having finished his story, looked at his uncle. He
+found him sitting in an attitude of extreme absorption, his right arm
+stretched before him on the table, his face bent thoughtfully downwards
+and clouded with that deep melancholy that seemed its most natural
+expression, "He has not heard me," was the young man's first mortifying
+reflection. But catching his uncle's eye which at that moment raised
+itself, he perceived he was mistaken and that he had rather been
+listened to only too well.
+
+"You must forgive me if I have seemed to rhapsodize," the young man
+stammered. "You were so quiet I half forgot I had a listener and went on
+much as I would if I had been thinking aloud."
+
+His uncle smiled and throwing off the weight of his reflections whatever
+they might be, arose and began pacing the floor. "I see you are past
+surgery," quoth he, "any wisdom of mine would be only thrown away."
+
+Young Mandeville was hurt. He had expected some token of approval on his
+uncle's part, or at least some betrayal of sympathy. His looks expressed
+his disappointment.
+
+"You expected to convert me by this story," continued the elder, pausing
+with a certain regret before his nephew; "nothing could convert me
+but--"
+
+"What?" inquired Mandeville after waiting in vain for the other to
+finish.
+
+"Something which we will never find in the whirl of New York fashionable
+life. A woman with faith to reward and soul to understand such
+unqualified trust as yours."
+
+"But I believe Miss Preston is such a girl and will be such a woman. Her
+looks, her last words prove it."
+
+"Nothing proves it but time and as for your belief, I have believed
+too." Then as if fearing he had said too much, assumed his most
+business-like tone and observed, "But we will drop all that; you have
+resolved to quit music and enter Wall Street, your object money and the
+social consideration which money secures. Now, why Wall Street?"
+
+"Because I can think of no other means for attaining what I desire, in
+the space of time I would consent to keep a young lady of Miss Preston's
+position waiting."
+
+"Humph! and you have money, I suppose, which you propose to risk on the
+hazard?"
+
+"Some! enough to start with; a small amount to you, but sufficient if I
+am fortunate."
+
+"And if you are not?"
+
+
+The young man opened his arms with an expressive gesture, "I am done
+for, that is all."
+
+"Bertram," his uncle exclaimed with a change of tone, "has it ever
+struck you that Mr. Preston might have as strong a prejudice against
+speculation as against the musical profession?"
+
+"No, that is, pardon me but I have sometimes thought that even in the
+event of success I should have to struggle against his inherited
+instincts of caste and his natural dislike of all things new, even
+wealth, but I never thought of the possibility of my arousing his
+distrust by speculating in stocks and engaging in enterprises so nearly
+in accord with his own business operations."
+
+"Yet if I guess aright you would run greater risk of losing the support
+of his countenance by following the hazardous course you propose, than
+if you continued in the line of art that now engages you."
+
+"Do you know--"
+
+"I know nothing, but I fear the chances, Bertram."
+
+"Then I am already defeated and must give up my hopes of happiness."
+
+
+A smile thin and indefinable crossed the other's face. "No," said he,
+"not necessarily." And sitting down by his nephew's side, he asked if he
+had any objections to enter a bank. "In a good capacity," he exclaimed.
+
+"No indeed; it would be an opportunity surpassing my hopes. Do you know
+of an opening?"
+
+"Well," said he, "under the circumstances I will let you into the secret
+of my own affairs. I have always had one ambition, and that was to be at
+the head of a bank. I have not said much about it, but for the last five
+years I have been working to this end, and to-day you see me the
+possessor of at least three-fourths of the stock of the Madison Bank. It
+has been deteriorating for some time, consequently I was enabled to buy
+it low, but now that I have got it I intend to build up the concern. I
+am able to throw business of an important nature in its way, and I dare
+prophesy that before the year is out you will see it re-established upon
+a solid and influential footing."
+
+"I have no doubt of it, sir; you have the knack of success, any thing
+that you touch is sure to go straight."
+
+"Unhappily yes, as far as business operations go. But no matter about
+that;--" as if the other had introduced some topic incongruous to the
+one they were considering--"the point is this. In two weeks time I shall
+be elected President of the Bank; if you will accept the position of
+assistant cashier,--the best I can offer in consideration of your total
+ignorance of all details of the business,--it is open to you--"
+
+
+"Uncle! how generous! I--"
+
+"Hush! your duties will be nominal, the present cashier is fully
+competent; but the leisure thus afforded will offer you abundant
+opportunity to make yourself acquainted with all matters connected with
+the banking system as well as with such capitalists as it would be well
+for you to know. So that when the occasion comes, I can raise you to the
+cashier's place or make such other disposal of your talents as will best
+insure your rapid advance."
+
+The young man's eyes sparkled; with a sudden impetuous movement he
+jumped to his feet and grasped his uncle's hand. "I can never thank you
+enough; you have made me your debtor for life. Now let any one ask me
+who is my father, and I will say--"
+
+"He was Edward Sylvester's brother. But come, come, this extreme
+gratitude is unnecessary. You have always been a favorite with me,
+Bertram, and now that I have no child, you seem doubly near; it is my
+pleasure to do what I can for you. But--" and here he surveyed him with
+a wistful look, "I wish you were entering into this new line from love
+of the business rather than love of a woman. I fear for you my boy. It
+is an awful thing to stake one's future upon a single chance and that
+chance a woman's faith. If she should fail you after you had compassed
+your fortune, should die--well you could bear that perhaps; but if she
+turned false, and married some one else, or even married you and then--"
+
+"What?" came in silvery accents from the door, and a woman richly clad,
+her trailing velvets filling the air at once with an oppressive perfume,
+entered the room and paused before them in an attitude meant to be arch,
+but which from the massiveness of her figure and the scornful carriage
+of her head, succeeded in being simply imperious.
+
+Mr. Sylvester rose abruptly as if unpleasantly surprised. "Ona!" he
+exclaimed, hastening, however, to cover his embarassment by a courteous
+acknowledgement of her presence and a careless remark concerning the
+shortness of the services that had allowed her to return from church so
+early. "I did not hear you come in," he observed.
+
+"No, I judge not," she returned with a side glance at Mandeville. "But
+the services were not short, on the contrary I thought I should never
+hear the last amen. Mr. Turner's voice is very agreeable," she went on,
+in a rambling manner all her own, "it never interferes with your
+thoughts; not that I am considered as having any," she interjected with
+another glance at their silent guest, "a woman in society with a
+reputation for taste in all matters connected with fashionable living,
+has no thoughts of course; business men with only one idea in their
+heads, that of making money, have more no doubt. Do you know, Edward,"
+she went on with sudden inconsequence, which was another trait of this
+amiable lady's conversation, "that I have quite come to a conclusion in
+regard to the girl Philip Longtree is going to marry; she may be pretty,
+but she does not know how to dress. I wish you could have seen her
+to-night; she had on mauve with old gold trimmings. Now with one of her
+complexion--But I forget you haven't seen her. Bertram, I think I shall
+give a German next month, will you come? Oh, Edward!" as if the thought
+had suddenly struck her, "Princess Louise _is_ the sixth child of Queen
+Victoria; I asked Mr. Turner to-night. By the way, I wonder if it will
+be pleasant enough to take the horses out to-morrow? Bird has been
+obliging enough to get sick just in the height of the season, Mr.
+Mandeville. There are a thousand things I have got to do and I hate
+hired horses." And with a petulant sigh she laid her prayer-book on the
+table and with a glance in the mirror near by, began pulling off her
+gloves in the slow and graceful fashion eminently in keeping with her
+every movement.
+
+It was as if an atmosphere of worldliness had settled down upon this
+room sanctified a moment before by the utterances of a pure and noble
+love. Mr. Sylvester looked uneasy, while Bertram searched in vain for
+something to say.
+
+"I seem to have brought a blight," she suddenly murmured in an easy tone
+somewhat at variance with the glance of half veiled suspicion which she
+darted from under her heavy lids, at first one and then the other of the
+two gentlemen before her. "No, I will not sit," she added as her husband
+offered her a chair. "I am tired almost to death and would retire
+immediately, but I interrupted you I believe in the utterance of some
+wise saying about matrimony. It is an interesting subject and I have a
+notion to hear what one so well qualified to speak in regard to it--"
+and here she made a slow, half lazy courtesy to her husband with a look
+that might mean anything from coquetry to defiance--"has to say to a
+young man like Mr. Mandeville."
+
+Edward Sylvester who was regarded as an autocrat among men, and who
+certainly was an acknowledged leader in any company he chose to enter,
+bowed his head before this anomalous glance with a gesture of something
+like submission.
+
+"One is not called upon to repeat every inadvertent phrase he may
+utter," said he. "Bertram was consulting me upon certain topics and--"
+
+"You answered him in your own brilliant style," she concluded. "What did
+you say?" she asked in another moment in a low unmoved tone which the
+final act of smoothing out her gloves on the table with hands delicate
+as white rose leaves but firm as marble, did not either hasten or
+retard.
+
+"Oh if you insist," he returned lightly, "and are willing to bear the
+reflection my unfortunate remark seems to cast upon the sex, I was
+merely observing to my nephew, that the man who centered all his hopes
+upon a woman's faith, was liable to disappointment. Even if he succeeded
+in marrying her there were still possibilities of his repenting any
+great sacrifice made in her behalf."
+
+"Indeed!" and for once the delicate cheek flushed deeper than its rouge.
+"And why do you say this?" she inquired, dropping her coquettish manner
+and flashing upon them both, the haughty and implacable woman Bertram
+had always believed her to be, notwithstanding her vagaries and fashion.
+
+"Because I have seen much of life outside my own house," her husband
+replied with undiminished courtesy; "and feel bound to warn any young
+man of his probable fate, who thinks to find nothing but roses and
+felicity beyond the gates of fashionable marriage."
+
+"Ah then, it was on general principles you were speaking," she remarked
+with a soft laugh that undulated through an atmosphere suddenly grown
+too heavy for easy breathing. "I did not know; wives are so little apt
+to be appreciated in this world, Mr. Mandeville, I was afraid he might
+be giving you some homely advice founded upon personal experience." And
+she moved towards their guest with that strange smile of hers which some
+called dangerous but which he had always regarded as oppressive.
+
+She saw him drop his eyes, and smiled again, but in a different way.
+This woman, whom no one accused of anything worse than levity, hailed
+every tribute to her power, as a miser greets the glint of gold. With a
+turn of her large but elegant figure that in its slow swaying reminded
+you of some heavy tropical flower, hanging inert, intoxicated with its
+own fragrance, she dismissed at once the topic that had engaged them,
+and launched into one of her choicest streams of inconsequent talk. But
+Mandeville was in no mood to listen to trivialities, and being of a
+somewhat impatient nature, presently rose and excusing himself, took a
+hurried leave. Not so hurried however that he did not have time to
+murmur to his uncle as they walked towards the door:
+
+"You would make comparison between the girl I worship and other women in
+fashionable life. Do not I pray; she is no more like them than a star
+that shines is like a rose that blooms. My fate will not be like that of
+most men that we know, but better and higher."
+
+And his uncle standing there in the grand hall-way, with the fresh
+splendors of unlimited wealth gleaming upon him from every side, looked
+after the young man with a sigh and repeated, "Better and higher? God in
+his merciful goodness grant it."
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+SHADOWS OF THE PAST.
+
+     "Memory, the warder of the brain."
+
+     MACBETH.
+
+
+It was long past midnight. The fire in the grate burned dimly, shedding
+its lingering glow on the face of the master of the house as with bowed
+head and folded hands he sat alone and brooding before its dying embers.
+
+It was a lonesome sight. The very magnificence of the spacious apartment
+with its lofty walls and glittering works of art, seemed to give an air
+of remoteness to that solitary form, bending beneath the weight of its
+reflections. From the exquisitely decorated ceiling to the turkish rugs
+scattered over the polished floor, all was elegant and luxurious, and
+what had splendors like these to do with thoughts that bent the brows
+and overshadowed the lips of man? The very lights burned deprecatingly,
+illuminating beauties upon which no eye gazed and for which no heart
+beat. The master himself seemed to feel this, for he presently rose and
+put them out, after which he seated himself as before, only if possible
+with more abandon, as if with the extinguishing of the light some eye
+had been shut whose gaze he had hitherto feared. And in truth my lady's
+image shone fainter from its heavy panel, and the smile which had met
+with unrelenting sweetness the glare of the surrounding splendor,
+softened in the mellow glimmer of the fire-light to an etherial halo
+that left you at rest.
+
+_One, two_, THREE, the small clock sounded from the mantel and yet no
+stir took place in the sombre figure keeping watch beneath. What were
+the thoughts which could thus detain from his comfortable bed a man
+already tired with manifold cares? It would be hard to tell. The waters
+that gush at the touch of the diviner's rod are tumultuous in their flow
+and rush hither and thither with little heed to the restraining force of
+rule and reason. But of the pictures that rose before his eyes in those
+dying embers, there were two which stood out in startling distinctness.
+Let us see if we can convey the impression of them to other eyes and
+hearts.
+
+First, the form of his mother. Ah grey-bearded men weighted with the
+cares of life and absorbed in the monotonous round of duties that to you
+are the be all and end all of existence, to whom morning means a
+jostling ride to the bank, the store or the office, and with whom night
+is but the name for a worse unrest because of its unfulfilled promises
+of slumber, what soul amongst you all is so callous to the holy memories
+of childhood, as not to thrill with something of the old time feeling of
+love and longing as the memory of that tender face with its watchful eye
+and ready smiles, comes back to you from the midst of weary years! Your
+mother!
+
+But Edward Sylvester with that black line across his life cutting past
+from present, what makes him think of his mother to-night; and the
+cottage door upon the hillside where she used to stand with eager eyes
+looking up and down the road as he came trudging home from school,
+swinging his satchel and shouting at every squirrel that started across
+the road or peeped from the branches of the grand old maples overhead!
+And the garret-chamber under the roof, the scene of many a romp with
+Elsie and Sonsie and Jack, neighbors' children to whom the man of to-day
+would be an awe and a mystery! And the little room where he slept with
+Tom his own blue-eyed brother so soon to die of a wasting disease, but
+full of warm blood then and all alive with boyish pranks. He could
+almost hear the wild clear laugh with which the mischievous fellow
+started upon its travels, the rooster whose legs he had tied a short
+space apart with one of Sonsie's faded ribbons, a laugh that became
+unrestrained when the poor creature in attempting to run down hill,
+rolled over and over, cutting such a figure before his late admirers,
+the hens, that even Elsie smiled in the midst of her gentle entreaties.
+And Jocko the crow, whom taming had made one of the boys! poor Jocko! is
+it nearly thirty years since you used to stalk in majesty through the
+village streets, with your neat raven coat closely buttoned across your
+breast and your genteel caw, caw, and condescending nod for old
+acquaintances? The day seems but as yesterday when you marred the stolen
+picnic up in the woods by flying off with a flock of your fellow
+black-coats, nor is it easy to realize that the circle of tow-headed
+fellows who hailed with shouts your ignominious return after a day or
+so's experience of the vaunted pleasures of freedom, are now sharp
+featured men without a smile for youth or a thought beyond the hard cold
+dollar buried deep in their pockets.
+
+And the church up over the hills! and the long Sunday walk at mother's
+side with the sunshine glowing on the dusty road and beating on the
+river flowing far beyond! The same road, the same river of Monday and
+Tuesday but how different it looked to the boy; almost like another
+scene, as if Sunday clothes were on the world as well as upon his
+restless little limbs. How he longed for it to be Monday though he did
+not say so; and what a different day Saturday would have been if only
+there was no long, sleepy Sunday to follow it.
+
+But the mother! She did not dread that day. Her eyes used to brighten
+when the bell began to ring from the old church steeple. Her eyes! how
+they mingled with every picture! They seemed to fill the night. What a
+sparkle they had, yet how they used to soften at his few hurried
+caresses. He was always too busy for kisses; there were the snares in
+the north woods to be looked after; the nest in the apple-tree to be
+inquired into; the skates to be ground before the river froze over; the
+nuts to be gathered and stored in that same old garret chamber under the
+eaves. But now how vividly her least look comes back to the tired man,
+from the glance of wistful sympathy with which she met his childish
+disappointments to the flash of joy that hailed his equally childish
+delights.
+
+And another scene there is in the embers to-night; a remembrance of
+later days when the mother with her love and yearning was laid low in
+the grave, and manhood had learned its first lessons of passion and
+ambition from the glance of younger eyes and the smile of riper lips.
+Not the picture of a woman, however; that was already present beside
+him, shining from its panel with an insistence that not even the putting
+out of the lights could quite quench or subdue, but of a child young,
+pure and beautiful, sitting by the river in the glow of a June sunshine,
+gazing at the hills of his boyhood's home with a look on her face such
+as he had never before seen on that of child or woman. A simple picture
+with a simple villager's daughter for its centre, but as he mused upon
+it to-night, the success and triumph of the last ten years faded from
+his sight like the ashes that fell at his feet, and he found himself
+questioning in vain as to what better thing he had met in all the walks
+of his busy life than that young child's innocence and faith as they
+shone upon him that day from her soft uplifted eyes.
+
+He had been sitting the whole warm noontide at the side of her whose
+half gracious, half scornful, wholly indolent acceptance of his homage,
+he called love, and enervated by an atmosphere he was as yet too
+inexperienced to recognize as of the world, worldly, had strolled forth
+to cool his fevered brow in the fresh autumn breeze that blew up from
+the river. He was a gay-hearted youth in those days, heedless of
+everything but the passing moment; nature meant little to him; and when
+in the course of his ramble he came upon the form of a child sitting on
+the edge of the river, he remembers wondering what she saw in a sweep of
+empty water to interest her so deeply. Indeed he was about to inquire
+when she turned and he caught a glimpse of her eyes and knew at once
+without asking. Yet in those days he was anything but quick to recognize
+the presence of feeling. A face was beautiful or plain to him, not
+eloquent or expressive. But this child's countenance was exceptional. It
+made you forget the cotton frock she wore, it made you forget yourself.
+As he gazed on it, he felt the stir of something in his breast he had
+never known before, and half dreaded to hear her speak lest the charm
+should fail or the influence be lost. Yet how could he pass on and not
+speak. Laying his hand on her head, he asked her what she was thinking
+of as she sat there all alone looking off on the river; and the wee
+thing drew in her breath and surveyed him with all her soul in her great
+black eyes before she replied, "I do not know, I never know." Then
+looking back she dreamily added, "It makes me want to go away, miles
+away,"--and she held out her tiny arms towards the river with a longing
+gesture; "and it makes me want to cry."
+
+And he understood or thought he did and for the first time in his life
+looked upon the river that had met his gaze from childhood, with eyes
+that saw its exceeding beauty. Ah it was an exquisite scene, a rare
+scene, mountain melting into mountain and meadow vanishing into meadow,
+till the flow of silver waters was lost in a horizon of azure mist. No
+wonder that a child without snares to set or nuts to gather, should
+pause a moment to gaze upon it, as even he in the days gone by would
+sometimes stop on Sabbath eves to snatch a kiss from his mother's lips.
+
+"It is like a fairy land, is it not?" quoth the child looking up into
+his face with a wistful glance. "Do you know what it is that makes me
+feel so?"
+
+He smiled and sat down by her side. Somehow he felt as if a talk with
+this innocent one would restore him more than a walk on the hills. "It
+is the spirit of beauty, my child, you are moved by the loveliness of
+the scene; is it a new one to you?"
+
+"No, oh no, but I always feel the same. As if something here was hungry,
+don't you know?" and she laid her little hand on her breast.
+
+He did not know, but he smiled upon her notwithstanding, and made her
+talk and talk till the gush of the sweet child spirit with its hidden
+longings and but half understood aspirations, bathed his whole being in
+a reviving shower, and he felt as if he had wandered into a new world
+where the languors of the tropics were unknown, and passion, if there
+was such, had the wings of an eagle instead of the siren's voice and
+fascination.
+
+Her name was Paula, she said, and before leaving he found that she was a
+relative of the woman he loved. This was a slight shock to him. The lily
+and the cactus abloom on one stalk! How could that be? and for a moment
+he felt as if the splendors of the glorious woman paled before the
+lustre of the innocent child. But the feeling, if it was strong enough
+to be called such, soon passed. As the days swept by bringing evenings
+with light and music and whispered words beneath the vine-leaves, the
+remembrance of the pure, sweet hour beside the river, gradually faded
+till only a vague memory of that gentle uplifted face sweet with its
+childish dimples, remained to hallow now and then a passing reverie or a
+fevered dream.
+
+
+But to-night its every lineament filled his soul, vying with the
+memories of his mother in its vividness and power. O why had he not
+learned the lesson it taught. Why had he turned his back upon the high
+things of life to yield himself to a current that swept him on and on
+until the power of resistance left him and--O dwell not here wild
+thoughts! Pause not on the threshold of the one dark memory that blasts
+the soul and sears the heart in the secret hours of night. Let the dead
+past bury its dead and if one must think, let it be of the hope, which
+the remembrance of that short glimpse into a pure if infantile soul has
+given to his long darkened spirit.
+
+One, two, three, FOUR; and the fire is dead and the night has grown
+chill, but he heeds it not. He has asked himself if his life's book is
+quite closed to the higher joys of existence? whether money getting and
+money holding is to absorb him body and soul forever; and with the
+question a great yearning seizes him to look upon that sweet child
+again, if haply in the gleam of her pure spirit, something of the noble
+and the pure that lay beneath the crust of life might be again revealed
+to his longing sight.
+
+"She must be a great girl now," murmured he to himself, "as old as if
+not older than she whom Bertram adores so passionately, but she will
+always be a child to me, a sweet pure child whose innocence is my
+teacher and whose ignorance is my better wisdom. If anything will save
+me--"
+
+But here the shadow settled again; when it lifted, the morning ray lay
+cool and ghostly over the hearthstone.
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+PAULA.
+
+    "The stars of midnight shall be dear
+    To her; and she shall lean her ear
+    In many a secret place
+    Where rivulets dance their wayward round,
+    And beauty born of murmuring sound
+            Shall pass into her face."
+
+    --WORDSWORTH.
+
+
+A wintry scene. Snow-piled hills stretching beyond a frozen river. On
+the bank a solitary figure tall, dark and commanding, standing with eyes
+bent sadly on a long narrow mound at his feet. It is Edward Sylvester
+and the mound is the grave of his mother.
+
+It is ten years since he stood upon that spot. In all that time no
+memories of his childhood's home, no recollection of that lonely grave
+among the pines, had been sufficient to allure him from the city and its
+busy round of daily cares. Indeed he had always shrunk at the very name
+of the place and never of his own will alluded to it, but the reveries
+of a night had awakened a longing that was not to be appeased, and in
+the face of his wife's cold look of astonishment and a secret dread in
+his own heart, had left his comfortable fireside, for the scenes of his
+early life and marriage, and was now standing, in the bleak December
+air, gazing down upon the stone that marked his mother's grave.
+
+But tender as were the chords that reverberated at this sight, it was
+not to revisit this tomb he had returned to Grotewell. No, that other
+vision, the vision of young sweet appreciative life has drawn him more
+strongly than the memory of the dead. It was to search out and gaze
+again upon the innocent girl, whose eloquent eyes and lofty spirit had
+so deeply moved him in the past, that he had braved the chill of the
+Connecticut hills and incurred the displeasure of his wife.
+
+Yet when he turned away from that simple headstone and set his face
+towards the village streets it was with a sinking of the heart that
+first revealed to him the severity of the ordeal to which he had thus
+wantonly subjected himself. Not that the wintry trees and snow covered
+roofs appealed to him as strongly as the same trees and homes would have
+done in their summer aspect. The land was bright with verdure when that
+shadow fell whose gloom resting upon all the landscape, made a walk down
+this quiet road even at this remote day, a matter of such pain to him.
+But scenes that have caught the reflection of a life's joy or a heart's
+sorrow, lose not their power of appeal, with the leaves they shake from
+their trees, and nothing that had met the eyes of this man from the hour
+he left this spot, no, not the glance of his wife as his child fell back
+dead in his arms, had shot such a pang to his soul as the sight of that
+long street with its array of quiet homes, stretching out before him
+into the dim grey distance.
+
+But for all that he was determined to traverse it, ay to the very end,
+though his steps must pass the house whose ghostly portals were fraught
+with memories dismal as death to him. On then he proceeded, walking with
+his usual steady pace that only faltered or broke, as he met the shy
+eyes of some hurrying village maiden, speeding upon some errand down the
+snowy street, or encountered some old friend of his youth who despite
+his altered mien and commanding carriage, recognized in him the slim
+young bank cashier who had left them now ten long years ago to make a
+name and fortune in the great city.
+
+It was noon by the time he gained the heart of the village, and school
+was out and the children came rushing by with just the same shout and
+scamper with which he used to hail that hour of joyous release. How it
+carried him back to the days when those four red walls towered upon him
+with awful significance, as with books on his back and a half eaten
+apple in his pocket he crept up the walk, conscious that the bell had
+rung its last shrill note a good half hour before. He felt half tempted
+to stop and make his way through the crowd of shouting boys and dancing
+girls to that same old door again, and see for himself if the huge LATE
+which in a fit of childish revenge he had cut on its awkward panels, was
+still there to meet the eyes of tardy boys and loitering girls. But the
+wondering looks of the children unused to behold a figure so stately in
+their simple streets deterred him and he passed thoughtfully on. So
+engrossed was he by the reminiscences of Tom and Elsie which the school
+house had awakened, that he passed the ominous mansion which had been
+his dread, and the bank where he had worked, and the arbor by the side
+of the road where he had sat out the first hours of his fatal courtship,
+almost without realizing their presence, and was at the end of the
+street and in full view of the humble cottage which the little Paula had
+pointed out as her home on that day of their first acquaintance.
+
+"Good heaven! and I do not even know if she is alive," he suddenly
+ejaculated, stopping where he was and eying the lowly walls before him
+with a quick realization of the possibilities of a great disappointment.
+"Ten years have strown many a grave on the hillside and Ona would not
+mention it if she lost every relative she had in this town. What a fool
+I have been," thought he.
+
+But with the stern resolution which had carried him through many a
+difficulty, he prepared to advance, when he was again arrested by seeing
+the door of the house he was contemplating, suddenly open and a girlish
+figure issue forth. Could it be Paula? With eager, almost feverish
+interest he watched her approach. She was a slight young thing and came
+towards him with a rapid movement almost jaunty in its freedom. If it
+were Paula, he would know her by her eyes, but for some reason he hoped
+it was not she, not the child of his dreams.
+
+
+At a yard or two in front of him she paused astonished. This grave, tall
+figure with the melancholy brow, deep eyes and firmly compressed lips
+was an unaccustomed sight in this primitive town. Scarcely realizing
+what she did she gave a little courtesy and was proceeding on when he
+stopped her with a hurried gesture.
+
+"Is Mrs. Fairchild still living?" he asked, indicating the house she had
+just left.
+
+"Mrs. Fairchild? O no," she returned, surveying him out of the corner of
+a very roguish pair of brown eyes, with a certain sly wonder at the
+suspense in his voice. "She has been dead as long as I can remember. Old
+Miss Abby and her sister live there now."
+
+"And who are they?" he hurriedly asked; he could not bring himself to
+mention Paula's name.
+
+"Why, Miss Abby and Miss Belinda," she returned with a puzzled air.
+"Miss Abby sews and Miss Belinda teaches the school. I don't know
+anything more about them, sir."
+
+The courteous gentleman bowed. "And they live there quite alone?"
+
+"O no sir, Paula lives with them."
+
+"Ah, she does;" and the young girl looking at him could not detect the
+slightest change in his haughty countenance. "Paula is Mrs. Fairchild's
+daughter."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Thank you," said he, and allowed the pretty brown-eyed miss to pass on,
+which she did with lingering footsteps and many a backward glance of the
+eye.
+
+Halting at the door of that small cottage, Edward Sylvester reasoned
+with himself.
+
+"She may be just such another fresh-looking, round-faced,
+mischievous-eyed school-girl. Spiritual children do not always make
+earnest-souled women. Let me beware what hopes I build on a foundation
+so unsubstantial." Yet when in a moment later the door opened and a
+weazen-faced dapper, little woman appeared, all smiles and welcome, he
+owned to a sensation of dismay that sufficiently convinced him what a
+hold this hope of meeting with something exceptionally sweet and high,
+had taken upon his hitherto careless and worldly spirit.
+
+"Mr. Sylvester I am sure! I thought Ona would remember us after a while.
+Come in sir, do, my sister will be home in a few moments." And with a
+deprecatory flutter comical enough in a woman at least seventy odd years
+old, she led her distinguished guest into a large unused room where in
+spite of his remonstrances she at once proceeded to build a fire.
+
+"It is a pleasure sir," she said to every utterance of regret on his
+part at the trouble he was causing. And though her vocabulary was thus
+made to appear somewhat small, her sincerity was undoubted. "We have
+counted the days, Belinda and I, since we sent the last letter. It may
+seem foolish to you, sir; but Paula is growing so fast and Belinda says
+is so uncommon smart for her age that we did think that it was time Ona
+knew just what a straight we were in. Do you want to see Paula?"
+
+"Very much," he returned, shocked and embarrassed at the position in
+which he found himself put by the reticence of his wife on the subject
+of her relations. "They think I have come in reply to a letter," he
+mused, "and I did not even know my wife had received one."
+
+"You will be surprised," she exclaimed with a complacent nod as the fire
+blazed up brightly; "every one is surprised who sees her for the first
+time. Is my niece well?" And thus it was he learned the relation between
+his wife of ten years and these simple inhabitants of the little cottage
+in Grotewell.
+
+He replied as in duty bound, and presently by the use of a few dexterous
+questions succeeded in eliciting from this simple-minded old lady, the
+few facts necessary to a proper understanding of the situation. Miss
+Abby and Miss Belinda were two maiden ladies, sisters of Mrs. Fairchild
+and Ona's mother, who on the death of the former took up their abode in
+the little cottage for the purpose of bringing up the orphan Paula. They
+had succeeded in this by dint of the utmost industry, but Paula was not
+a common child, and Belinda, who was evidently the autocrat of the
+house, had decided that she ought to have other advantages. She had
+therefore written to Mrs. Sylvester concerning the child, in the hopes
+that that lady would take enough interest in her pretty little cousin to
+send her to boarding-school; but they had received no reply till now,
+all of which was perfectly right of course, Mrs. Sylvester being
+undoubtedly occupied and Mr. Sylvester himself being better than any
+letter.
+
+"And does Paula herself know what efforts you have been making in her
+behalf," asked Mr. Sylvester upon the receipt of this information.
+
+The little lady shook her head with vivacity. "Belinda advised me to say
+nothing," she remarked. "The child is contented with her home and we did
+not like to raise her expectations. You will never regret anything you
+may do for her," she went on in a hurried way with a peep now and then
+towards the door as if while enjoying a momentary freedom of speech, she
+feared an intrusion that would cut that pleasure short. "Paula is a
+grateful child and never has given us a moment of concern from the time
+she began to put pieces of patchwork together. But there is Belinda,"
+she suddenly exclaimed, rising with the little dip and jerk of her left
+shoulder that was habitual to her whenever she was amused or excited.
+"Belinda," she cried, going to the door and speaking with great
+impressiveness, "Mr. Sylvester is in the parlor." And almost instantly a
+tall middle aged lady entered, whose plain but powerful countenance and
+dignified demeanor, stamped her at once as belonging to a very different
+type of woman from her sister.
+
+"I am very glad to see you sir," she exclaimed in a slow determined
+voice as dissimilar as possible from the piping tones of Miss Abby. "Is
+not Mrs. Sylvester with you?"
+
+"No," returned he, "I have come alone; my wife is not fond of travelling
+in winter."
+
+The slightest gleam shot from her bright keen eye. "Is she not well?"
+
+"Yes quite well, but not over strong," he rejoined quietly.
+
+She gave him another quick look, settled some matter with herself and
+taking off her bonnet, sat down by the fire. At once her sister ceased
+in her hovering about the room and sitting also, became to all
+appearance her silent shadow.
+
+"Paula has gone up stairs to take off her bonnet," the younger woman
+said in a straightforward manner just short of being brusque. "She is a
+very remarkable girl, Mr. Sylvester, a genius I suppose some would call
+her, a child of nature I prefer to say. Whatever there is to be learned
+in this town she has learned. And in a place where nature speaks and
+good books abound that is not inconsiderable. I have taken pride in her
+talents I acknowledge, and have endeavored to do what I could to
+cultivate them to the best advantage. There is no girl in my school who
+can write so original a composition, nor is there one with a truer heart
+or more tractable disposition."
+
+"You have then been her teacher as well as her friend, she owes you a
+double debt of gratitude."
+
+A look hard to understand flashed over her homely face. "I have never
+thought of debt or gratitude in connection with Paula. The only effort
+which I have ever made in her behalf which cost me anything, is this one
+which threatens me with her loss." Then as if fearing she had said too
+much, set her firm lips still firmer and ignoring the subject of the
+child, astonished him by certain questions on the leading issues of the
+day that at once betrayed a truly virile mind.
+
+"She is a study," thought he to himself, but meeting her on the ground
+she had taken, replied at once and to her evident satisfaction in the
+direct and simple manner that appeals the most forcibly to a strong if
+somewhat unpolished understanding, while the meek little Miss Abby
+glanced from one to the other with a humble awe more indicative of her
+appreciation for their superiority than of her comprehension of the
+subject.
+
+
+But what with Miss Belinda's secret anxiety and Mr. Sylvester's
+unconscious listening for a step upon the stair, the conversation, brisk
+as it had opened, gradually languished, and ere long with a sort of
+clairvoyant understanding of her sister's wishes, Miss Abby arose and
+with her customary jerk left the room for Paula.
+
+"The child is not timid but has an unaccountable aversion to entering
+the presence of strangers alone," Miss Belinda explained; but Mr.
+Sylvester did not hear her, for at that moment the door re-opened and
+Miss Abby stepped in with the young girl thus heralded.
+
+Edward Sylvester never forgot that moment, and indeed few men could have
+beheld the picture of extraordinary loveliness thus revealed, without a
+shock of surprise equal to the delight it inspired. She was not pretty;
+the very word was a misnomer, she was simply one of nature's most
+exquisite and undeniable beauties. From the crown of her ebon locks to
+the sole of her dainty foot, she was perfect as the most delicate
+coloring and the utmost harmony of contour could make her. And not in
+the conventional type either. There was an individuality in her style
+that was as fresh as it was uncommon. She was at once unique and
+faultless, something that can be said of few women however beautiful or
+alluring.
+
+Mr. Sylvester had not expected this, as indeed how could he, and for a
+moment he could only gaze with a certain swelling of the heart at the
+blooming loveliness that in one instant had transformed the odd little
+parlor into a bower fit for the habitation of princes. But soon his
+natural self-possession returned, and rising with his most courteous
+bow, he greeted the blushing girl with words of simple welcome.
+
+Instantly her eyes which had been hitherto kept bent upon the floor
+flashed upward to his face and a smile full of the wonder of an unlooked
+for, almost unhoped for delight, swept radiantly over her lips, and he
+saw with deep and sudden satisfaction that the hour which had made such
+an impression upon him, had not been forgotten by her; that his voice
+had recalled what his face failed to do, and that he was recognized.
+
+"It is Mr. Sylvester, your cousin Ona's husband," Miss Belinda
+interposed in a matter-of-fact way, evidently attributing the emotion of
+the child to her astonishment at the imposing appearance of their guest.
+
+"And it was _you_ who married Ona!" she involuntarily murmured, blushing
+the next moment at this simple utterance of her thoughts.
+
+"Yes, dear child," Mr. Sylvester hastened to say. "And so you remember
+me?" he presently added, smiling down upon her with a sense of new life
+that for the moment made every care and anxiety shrink into the
+background.
+
+"Yes," she simply returned, taking the chair beside him with the
+unconscious grace of perfect self-forgetfulness. "It was the first time
+I had found any one to listen to my childish enthusiasms; it is natural
+such kindness should make its impression."
+
+"Little Paula and I met long ago," quoth Mr. Sylvester turning to the
+somewhat astonished Miss Belinda. "It was before my marriage and she was
+then--"
+
+"Just ten years old," finished Paula, seeing him cast her an inquiring
+glance.
+
+"Very young for such a thoughtful little miss," he exclaimed. "And have
+those childish enthusiasms quite departed?" he continued, smiling upon
+her with gentle encouragement. "Do you no longer find a fairy-land in
+the view up the river?"
+
+She flushed, casting a timid glance at her aunt, but meeting his eyes
+again seemed to forget everything and everybody in the inspiration which
+his presence afforded.
+
+"I fear I must acknowledge that it is more a fairy-land to me than
+ever," she softly replied. "Knowledge does not always bring disillusion,
+and though I have learned one by one the names of the towns scattered
+along those misty banks, and though I know they are no less prosaic in
+their character than our own humdrum village, yet I cannot rid myself of
+the notion that those verdant slopes with their archway of clouds, hide
+the portals of Paradise, and that I have only to follow the birds in
+their flight up the river to find myself on the verge of a mystery, the
+banks at my feet can never disclose."
+
+"May the gates of God's Paradise never recede as those would do, my
+child, if like the birds you attempted to pierce them."
+
+"Paula is a dreamer," quoth Miss Belinda in a matter-of-fact tone, "but
+she is a good girl notwithstanding and can solve a geometrical problem
+with the best."
+
+"And sew on the machine and make a very good pie," timidly put in Miss
+Abby.
+
+"That is well," laughed Mr. Sylvester, observing that the poor child's
+head had fallen forward in maidenly shame at her aunts' elogiums as well
+as at the length of the speech into which she had been betrayed. "It
+shows that her eyes can see what is at hand as well as what is beyond
+our reach." Then with a touch of his usual formal manner intended to
+restore her to herself, "Do you like study, Paula?"
+
+In an instant her eyes flashed. "I more than like it; it feeds me.
+Knowledge has its vistas too," she added with an arch look, the first he
+had seen on her hitherto serious countenance. "I can never outgrow my
+recognition of the portals it discloses or the fairy-land it opens up to
+every inquiring eye."
+
+"Even geometry," he ventured, more anxious to probe this fresh young
+mind than he had ever been to sound the opinions of the most notable men
+of the day.
+
+"Even geometry," she smiled. "To be sure its portals are somewhat
+methodical in shape, allowing no scope to the fancy, but from its
+triangles and circles have been born the grandeurs of architecture, and
+upright on the threshold of its exact laws and undeviating calculations,
+I see an angel with a golden rod in his hand, measuring the heavens."
+
+"Even a stone speaks to a poet," said Mr. Sylvester with a glance at
+Miss Belinda.
+
+"But Paula is no poet," returned that lady with strict and impartial
+honesty. "She has never put a line on paper to my knowledge. Have you
+child?"
+
+"No aunt, I would as soon imprison a falling sunbeam or try to catch the
+breeze that lifts my hair or kisses my cheek."
+
+"You see," continued Mr. Sylvester still looking at Miss Belinda.
+
+She answered with a doubtful shake of the head and an earnest glance at
+the girl as if she perceived something in that bright young soul, that
+even she had never observed before.
+
+"Have you ever been away from home?" he now asked.
+
+"Never, I know as little of the great world as a callow nestling. No, I
+should not say that, for the young bird has no Aunt Belinda to tell of
+the great cathedrals and the wonderful music she has heard and the
+glorious pictures she has seen in her visits to the city. It is almost
+as good as travelling one's self to hear Aunt Belinda talk."
+
+It was now the turn of the mature plain woman to blush, which she did
+under Mr. Sylvester's searching eye.
+
+"You have then been in the habit of visiting New York?"
+
+"I have been there twice," she returned evasively.
+
+"Since my marriage?"
+
+"Yes sir;" with a firm closing of her lips.
+
+"I did not know you were there or I should have insisted upon your
+remaining at my house."
+
+"Thank you," said she with a quick triumphant glance at her demure
+little shadow, who looked back in amaze and was about to speak when Miss
+Belinda proceeded. "My visits usually have been on business; I should
+not think of troubling Mrs. Sylvester." And then he knew that his wife
+had been aware of those visits if he had not.
+
+But he refrained from testifying to his discovery. "You speak of music,"
+said he, turning gently back to Paula. "Have you a taste for it? Would
+it make you happy to hear such music as your aunt tells about?"
+
+"O yes, I can conceive nothing grander than to sit in a church whose
+every line is beauty and listen while the great organ utters its song of
+triumph or echoes in the wonderful way it does, the emotions you have
+tried to express and could not. I would give a whole week of my life on
+the hills, dear as it is, for one such hour, I think."
+
+Mr. Sylvester smiled. "It is a rare kind of coin to offer for such a
+simple pleasure, but it may meet with its acceptance, nevertheless;" and
+in his look and in his voice there was an appearance of affectionate
+interest that completed the subjugation of the watchful Miss Belinda,
+who now became doubly assured that whatever neglect had been shown her
+by her niece was not due to that niece's husband.
+
+Mr. Sylvester recognized the effect he had produced and hastened to
+complete it, feeling that the good opinion of Miss Belinda would be
+valuable to any man. "I have been a boy on these hills," said he, "and
+know what it is to long for what is beyond while enjoying what is
+present. You shall hear the organ my child." And stopped, wondering to
+himself over the new sweet interest he seemed to take in the prospect of
+pleasures which he had supposed himself to have long ago exhausted.
+
+"Hear the organ, I? why that means--O what does it mean?" she inquired,
+turning with a look of beaming hope towards her aunt.
+
+
+"You must ask Mr. Sylvester," that uncompromising lady replied, with a
+straightforward look at the fire.
+
+And he with a smile told the blushing girl that according to his
+reading, mortals went blindfold into fairy-land; and she understood what
+he meant and was silent, whereupon he turned the conversation upon more
+common-place subjects.
+
+For how could he tell her then of the intention that had awakened in his
+breast at the first glimpse of her grand young beauty. To make her his
+child, to bequeath to her the place of the babe that had perished in his
+arms three long years before--That meant to give Ona a care if not a
+rival in his affections, and Ona shrank from care, and was not a subject
+for rivalry. And the _if_ which this implied weighed heavily on his
+heart as moment after moment flew by, and he felt again the reviving
+power of an unsullied mind and an aspiring nature.
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+THE BARRED DOOR.
+
+     "A school boy's tale; the wonder of an hour."
+
+     BYRON.
+
+
+"Did you know that your niece was gifted with rare beauty as well as
+talents?" asked Mr. Sylvester of Miss Belinda as a couple of hours or so
+later, they sat alone by the parlor fire, preparatory to his departure.
+
+"No, that is," she hastily corrected herself, "I knew she was very
+pretty of course, prettier by far than any of her mates, but I did not
+suppose she was what you call a beauty, or at least would be so
+considered by a person accustomed to New York society."
+
+"I do not know of a woman in New York who can boast of any such claims
+to transcendent loveliness. Such faces are rare outside of art, Miss
+Belinda; was Mrs. Fairchild a handsome woman?"
+
+"She was my sister and if I may say so, my favorite sister, but she was
+no more agreeable to the eye than some others of her family," grimly
+returned the heavy browed spinster with a compression of her lips. "What
+beauty Paula has inherited came from her father. Her chief charm in my
+eyes, however, springs from her pure nature and the unselfish impulses
+of her heart."
+
+"And in mine," rejoined he quietly. Then with a sudden change of tone as
+he realized the necessity of saying something definite to this woman in
+regard to his intentions toward the child, he remarked, "Her great and
+unusual talents and manifest disposition to learn, demand as you say,
+superior advantages to any she can have in a small country town like
+this, fruitful as it has already been to her under your wise and
+fostering care and such shall she have; but just when and how I cannot
+say till I have seen my wife and learned what her wishes are likely to
+be in regard to the subject."
+
+"You are very kind, sir," returned Miss Belinda. "I have no doubt as to
+the good-will of your intentions, and the child shall be prepared at
+once for a change."
+
+"And will _the child_," he exclaimed with a smile as Paula re-entered
+the room, "be so kind as to give me her company in the walk I must now
+take to the cars?"
+
+"Of course," replied her aunt before the young girl could speak, "we owe
+you that much attention I am sure."
+
+And so it was that when he came to retrace his way through the village
+with its heavy memories, he had a guardian spirit at his side that
+robbed them of their power to sadden and oppress.
+
+"What shall I say for you to the grim, city streets when I get back?"
+inquired he as they hastened on over the snow covered road.
+
+"Say to them from me? O you may give them my greeting," she responded
+half shyly, half confidingly. Evidently for her he was one of those rare
+persons whose presence is perfect freedom and with whom she could not
+only think her best but speak it also. "I should like to make their
+acquaintance, but indeed they would have to do well to vie in attraction
+with these white roads girded by their silver-limbed trees. The very
+rush of life must seem oppressive. So many hopes, so many fears, so many
+interests jostling you at every step! Yet the thought is exhilarating
+too; don't you find it so?"
+
+It was the first question she had asked him and he knew not how to
+reply. Her eyes were so confiding, he could not bear to shake her faith
+in his imagined superiority. Yet what thoughts had he ever cherished in
+walking the busy streets, save those connected with his own selfish
+hopes and fears, plans and operations? "I have no doubt," said he after
+a moment's pause, "that I have felt this exhilaration of which you
+speak. Certainly the hurrying masses in Broadway awaken a far different
+sensation in a man, than this solitary stretch of country road."
+
+"Yet the road has its companionships," she murmured. "In the city one
+thinks most of men, but in the country, of God. Its very solitude
+compels you."
+
+"Compels _you_," he involuntarily answered. And shuddered as he said it,
+remembering days when he trod these very roads with anything but
+reverence in his heart for the Creator of the landscape before him. "Not
+every one has the inner vision, my child, to see the love and wisdom
+back of the works, or rather most men have a vision so short it does not
+reach so far. Yet I think I can understand what you mean and might even
+experience your emotions if my eyes had leisure to explore this space
+and my thoughts to rise out of their usual depressing atmosphere of care
+and anxiety. You did not think I was a busy man, he continued,"
+observing her gaze of wonder. "You thought riches brought ease; if you
+ever come to think, 'most of men' you will learn that the wealthy man is
+the greatest worker, for his rest comes not night or day."
+
+She shook her head with a sudden doubt. "It is a problem," she said,
+"which my knowledge of geometry does not help me to solve."
+
+"No," assented he; "and one in which even your fanciful soul would fail
+to find any poetry. But stop, Paula; isn't this the place where I found
+you that day, and you showed me the view up the river?"
+
+"Yes, and it was on that stone I sat; it has a milk-white cushion now;
+and there is where you stood, looking so tall and grand to my childish
+eyes! The gates are of pearl now," she said, pointing to the
+snow-covered slopes in the west. "I wish the sky had been clear to-night
+and you could have seen the effect of a rosy sunset falling over those
+domes of ice and snow."
+
+"It would leave me less to expect when I come again," he responded
+almost gayly. "The next time we will have the sunset, Paula."
+
+She smiled and they hastened on, presently finding themselves in the
+village streets. Suddenly she paused. "Small towns have their mysteries
+as well as great cities," said she; "we are not without ours, look."
+
+He turned, followed with a glance the direction of her pointing finger
+and started in his sudden surprise. She had indicated to him the house
+whose ghostly and frowning front bore written across its grim gray
+boards, such an inscription of painful remembrance. "It is a solitary
+looking place, isn't it?" she went on, innocent of the pain she was
+inflicting. "No one lives there or ever will, I imagine. Do you see that
+board nailed across the front door?"
+
+He forced himself to look. He did more, he fixed his eyes upon the
+desolate structure before him until the aspect of its huge unpainted
+walls with their long rows of sealed-up windows and high smokeless
+chimneys was impressed indelibly upon his mind. The large front door
+with its weird and solemn barrier was the last thing upon which his eye
+rested.
+
+"Yes," said he, and involuntarily asked what it meant.
+
+"We do not know exactly," she responded. "It was nailed across there by
+the men who followed Colonel Japha to the grave. Colonel Japha was the
+owner of the house," she proceeded, too interested to observe the shadow
+which the utterance of that name had invoked upon his brow. "He was a
+peculiar man I judge, and had suffered great wrongs they say; at all
+events his life was very solitary and sad, and on his deathbed he made
+his neighbors promise him that they would carry out his body through
+that door and then seal it up against any further ingress or egress
+forever. His wishes were respected, and from that day to this no one has
+ever entered that door."
+
+"But the house!" stammered Mr. Sylvester in anything but his usual tone,
+"surely it has not been deserted all these years!"
+
+
+"Ah," said she, "now we come to the greatest mystery of all." And laying
+her hand timidly on his arm, she drew his attention to the form of a
+decrepit old lady just then advancing towards them down the street "Do
+you see that aged figure?" she asked. "Every evening at this hour,
+winter and summer, stormy weather or clear, she is seen to leave her
+home up the street and come down to this forsaken dwelling, open the
+worm-eaten gate before you, cross the otherwise untrodden garden and
+enter the house by a side door which she opens with a huge key she
+carries in her pocket. For just one hour by the clock she remains there,
+and then she is seen to issue in the falling dusk, with a countenance
+whose heavy dejection is in striking contrast to the expression of hope
+with which she invariably enters. Why she makes this pilgrimage and for
+what purpose she secludes herself for a stated time each day in this
+otherwise deserted mansion, no man knows nor is it possible to
+determine, for though she is a worthy woman and approachable enough on
+all other topics, on this she is absolutely mute."
+
+Mr. Sylvester started and surveyed the woman as she passed with an
+anxious gaze. "I know her," he muttered; "she was a connection of--of
+the family, who inhabited this house." He could not speak the name.
+
+"Yes, so they say, and the owner of this house, though she does not live
+here. Did you notice how she looked at me? She often does that, just as
+if she wanted to speak. But she always goes by and opens the gate as you
+see her now and takes out the big key and--"
+
+"Come away," cried Mr. Sylvester with sudden impulse, seizing Paula by
+the hand and hurrying her down the street. "She is a walking goblin; you
+must have nothing to do with such uncanny folk." And endeavoring to turn
+off this irresistible display of feeling by a show of pleasantry he
+laughed aloud, but in a strained and unnatural way that made her eyes
+lift in unconscious amazement.
+
+"You are infected by the atmosphere of unreality that pervades the
+spot," said she, "I do not wonder." And with the gentle perversity that
+sometimes affects the most thoughtful amongst us, she went on talking
+upon the unwelcome subject. "I know of some folks who invariably cross
+to the other side of the street at night, rather than go through the
+shadows of the two gaunt poplars which guard that house. Yet there has
+been no murder committed there or any great crime that I know of, unless
+the disobedience of a daughter who ran away with a man her father
+detested, could be denominated by so fearful a word."
+
+The set gaze with which Mr. Sylvester surveyed the landscape before him
+quavered a trifle and then grew hard and cold. "And so," said he in a
+tone meant more for himself than her, "even your innocent ears have been
+assailed by the gossip about Miss Japha."
+
+"Gossip! I have never thought of it as gossip," returned she, struck for
+the first time by the change in his appearance. "It all happened so long
+ago it seems more like some quaint and ancient tale than a story of one
+of our neighbors. Besides, the fact that a wilful girl ran away from the
+house of her father, with the man of her choice, is not such a dreadful
+one is it, though she never returned to its walls with her husband, and
+her father was so overwhelmed by the shock, he was never seen to smile
+again."
+
+"No," said he, giving her a hurried glance of relief, "I only wondered
+at the tenacity of old stories to engage the popular ear. I had supposed
+even the remembrance of Jacqueline Japha would have been lost in the
+long silence that has followed that one disobedient act."
+
+"And so it might, were it not for that closely shut house with the
+sinister bar across its chief entrance, inviting curiosity while it
+effectually precludes all investigation. With that token ever before our
+eyes of a dead man's implacable animosity, who can wonder that we
+sometimes ponder over the fate of her who was its object."
+
+"And no intimations of that fate have been ever received in Grotewell.
+For all that is known to the contrary, Jacqueline Japha may have
+preceded her father to the tomb."
+
+Paula bowed her head, amazed at the gloomy tone in which this emphatic
+assertion was made by one whose supposed ignorance she had been
+endeavoring to enlighten. "You knew her history before, then," observed
+she, "I beg your pardon."
+
+"And it is granted," said he with a sudden throwing off of the shadow
+that had enveloped him. "You must not mind my sudden lapses into gloom.
+I was never a cheerful man, that is, not since I--since my early youth I
+should say. And the shadows which are short at your time of life grow
+long and chilly at mine. One thing can illumine them though, and that is
+a child's happy smile. You are a child to me; do not deny me a smile,
+then, before I go."
+
+"Not one nor a dozen," cried she, giving him her hands in good-bye for
+they had arrived at the depot by this time and the sound of the
+approaching train was heard in the distance.
+
+"God bless you!" said he, clasping those hands with a father's heartfelt
+tenderness. "God bless my little Paula and make her pillow soft till we
+meet again!" Then as the train came sweeping up the track, put on his
+brightest look and added, "If the fairy-godmother chances to visit you
+during my departure, don't hesitate to obey her commands, if you want to
+hear the famous organ peal."
+
+"No, no," she cried. And with a final look and smile he stepped upon the
+train and in another moment was whirled away from that place of many
+memories and a solitary hope.
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+MISS STUYVESANT.
+
+    "She smiled; but he could see arise
+    Her soul from far adown her eyes."
+
+    --MRS. BROWNING.
+
+
+"She is a beauty; it is only right I should forewarn you of that."
+
+"Dark or light?"
+
+"Dark; that is her hair and eyes are almost oriental in their blackness,
+but her skin is fair, almost as dazzling as yours, Ona."
+
+Mrs. Sylvester threw a careless glance in the long mirror before which
+she was slowly completing her toilet, and languidly smiled. But whether
+at this covert compliment to her greatest charm or at some passing fancy
+of her own, it would be difficult to decide. "The dark hair and eyes
+come from her father," remarked she in an abstracted way while she tried
+the effect of a bunch of snow-white roses at her waist with a backward
+toss of her proud blonde head. "His mother was a Greek. 'Tell it not in
+Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askelon,'" she exclaimed in a
+voice as nearly gay as her indolent nature would allow. For this lady of
+fashion was in one of her happiest moods. Her dress, a new one, fitted
+her to perfection and the vision mirrored in the glass before her was
+not lacking, so far as she could see in one charm that could captivate.
+"Do you think she could fasten a ribbon, or arrange a bow?" she further
+inquired. "I should like to have some one about me with a knack for
+helping a body in an emergency, if possible. Sarah is absolutely the
+destruction of any bit of ribbon she undertakes to handle. Look at that
+knot of black velvet over there for instance, wouldn't you think a raw
+Irish girl just from the other side would have known better than to tie
+it with half the wrong side showing?"
+
+With the habit long ago acquired of glancing wherever her ivory finger
+chanced to point, the grave man of the world slowly turned his head full
+of the weightiest cares and oppressed by the burden of innumerable
+responsibilities, and surveyed the cluster of velvet bows thus
+indicated, with a mechanical knitting of the brows.
+
+"I pay Sarah twenty-five dollars a month and that is the result," his
+wife proceeded. "Now if Paula--"
+
+"Paula is not to come here as a waiting maid," her husband quickly
+interposed, a suspicion of color just showing itself for a moment on his
+cheek.
+
+"If Paula," his wife went on, unheeding the interruption save by casting
+him a hurried glance over the shoulder of her own reflection in the
+glass, "had the taste in such matters of some other members of our
+family and could manage to lend me a helping hand now and then, why I
+could almost imagine I had my younger sister back with me again, who
+with her skill in making one look fit for the eyes of the world, was
+such a blessing to us in our old home."
+
+"I have no doubt Paula could be taught to be equally efficient," her
+husband responded, carefully restraining any further show of impatience.
+"She is bright, I am certain, and ribbon-tying is not such a very
+difficult art, is it?"
+
+"I don't know about that; by the way Sarah succeeds I should say it was
+about on a par with the science of algebra or--what is that horrid study
+they used to threaten to inflict me with at the academy whenever I
+complained of a headache? Oh I remember--conic sections."
+
+"Well, well," laughed her husband, "she ought soon to to be an expert in
+it then; Paula is a famous little mathematician."
+
+A silence followed this response; Mrs. Sylvester was fitting in her
+ear-rings. "I suppose," said she when the operation was completed, "that
+the snow will prevent half the people from coming to-night." It was a
+reception evening at the Sylvester mansion. "But so long as Mrs.
+Fitzgerald does not disappoint me, I do not care. What do you think of
+the setting of these diamonds?" she inquired, leaning forward to look at
+herself more closely, and slowly shaking her head till the rich gems
+sparkled like fire.
+
+"It is good," came in short, quick tones from the lips of her husband.
+
+"Well, I don't know, there might be a shade more of enamel on the edge
+of that ring. I shall speak to the jeweller about it to-morrow. But what
+were we talking about?" she dreamily asked, still turning her head from
+side to side before the mirror.
+
+"We were talking about adopting your cousin in the place of our child
+who is dead," replied her husband with some severity, pausing in the
+middle of the floor which he was pacing, to honor her with a steady
+glance.
+
+"O yes! Dear me! what an awkward clasp that man has given to these rings
+after all. You will have to fasten them for me." Then as he stepped
+forward with studied courtesy, yawned just a trifle and remarked, "No
+one could ever take the place of one's own child of course. If Geraldine
+had lived she would have been a blonde, her eyes were blue as
+sapphires."
+
+
+He looked in his wife's face and his hands dropped. He thought of the
+day when those eyes, blue as sapphires indeed, flashed burning with
+death's own fever, from the little crib in the nursery, while with this
+same cool and self-satisfied countenance, the wife and mother before him
+had swept down the broad stairs to her carriage, murmuring
+apologetically as she gathered up her train, "O you needn't trouble
+yourself to look after her, she will do very well with Sarah."
+
+She may have thought of it too, for the least little bit of real crimson
+found its way through the rouge on her cheek as she encountered the
+stern look of his eye, but she only turned a trifle more towards the
+glass, saying, "I forgot you do not admire the role of waiting maid. I
+will try and manage them myself, seeing that you have banished Sarah."
+
+He exerted his self-control and again for the thousandth time buried
+that ghastly memory out of sight, actually forcing himself to smile as
+he gently took her hand from her ear and began deftly to fasten the
+rebellious ornaments.
+
+"You mistake," said he, "love can ask any favor without hesitation. I do
+not object to waiting upon my own wife."
+
+She gave him a little look which he obligingly took as a guerdon for
+this speech, and languidly held out her bracelets. As he stood clasping
+them on her arms, she quietly eyed him over from head to foot. "I don't
+know of a man who has your figure," said she with a certain tone of
+pride in her voice; "it is well you married a wife who does not look
+altogether inferior beside you." Then as he bowed with mock appreciation
+of the intended compliment, added with her usual inconsequence, "I dare
+say it would give me something to interest myself in. I don't suppose
+she has a decent thing to wear, and the fact of her being a dark beauty
+would lend quite a new impulse to my inventive faculty. Mrs. Walker has
+a daughter with black eyes, but dear me, what a guy she does make of
+her!"
+
+With a sigh Mr. Sylvester turned to the window where he stood looking
+out at the heavy flakes of snow falling with slow and fluctuating
+movement between him and the row of brown stone houses in front. Paula
+considered as a milliner's block upon which to try the effect of
+clothes!
+
+"Even Mrs. Fitzgerald with all her taste don't know how to dress her
+child," proceeded his wife, with a hurried, "Be still, Cherry!" to the
+importunate bird in the cage. "Now I should take as much pride in
+dressing any one under my charge as I would myself, provided the subject
+was likely to do credit to my efforts." And finding the bird
+incorrigible in his shrill singing, she moved over to the cage, where
+she stood balancing her white finger for the bird to peck at, with a
+pretty caressing motion of her lip, the little Geraldine of the wistful
+blue eyes, had never seen.
+
+"You are welcome to do what you please in such matters," was her
+husband's reply. He was thinking again of that same little Geraldine; a
+fall of snow like the present always made him think of her and her
+innocent query as to whether God threw down such big flakes to amuse
+little children. "I give you _carte blanche_," said he with sudden
+emphasis.
+
+Mrs. Sylvester paused in her attentions to the bird to give him a sharp
+little look which might have aroused his surprise if he had been
+fortunate enough to see it. But his back was towards her, and there was
+nothing in the languidly careless tone with which she responded, to
+cause him to turn his head. "I see that you would really like to have me
+entertain the child; but--"
+
+She paused, pursing up her lips to meet the chattering bird's caress,
+while her husband in his impatience drummed with his fingers on the
+pane.
+
+--"I must see her before I decide upon the length of her visit,"
+continued she, as weary with the sport she drew back to give herself a
+final look in the glass. "Will you please to hand me that shawl,
+Edward."
+
+He turned with alacrity. In his relief he could have kissed the snowy
+neck held so erectly before him, as he drew around it the shawl he had
+hastily lifted from the chair at his side. But that would not have
+suited this calm and languid beauty who disliked any too overt tribute
+to her charms and saved her caresses for her bird. Besides it would look
+like gratitude, and gratitude would be misplaced towards a wife who had
+just indicated her acceptance of his offer to receive a relative of her
+own into his house.
+
+"She might as well come at once," was her final remark, as satisfied at
+last with the lay of every ribbon she swept in finished elegance from
+the room. "Mrs. Kittredge's reception comes off a week from Thursday,
+and I should like to see how a dark beauty with a fair skin would look
+in that new shade of heliotrope."
+
+And so the battle was over and the victory won; for Mrs. Sylvester for
+all her seeming indifference was never known to change a decision she
+had once made. As he realized the fact, as he meditated that ere long
+this very room which had been the scene of so much frivolity and the
+witness to so many secret heart-burnings, would reecho to the tread of
+the pure and innocent child, whose mind had flights unknown to the
+slaves of fashion, and in whose heart lay impulses of goodness that
+would satisfy the long smothered cravings of his awakened nature, he
+experienced a feeling of relenting towards the wife who had not chosen
+to thwart him in this the strongest wish of his childless manhood, and
+crossing to her dressing table, he dropped among its treasures a costly
+ring which he had been induced to purchase that day from an old friend
+who had fallen into want. "She will wear it," murmured he to himself,
+"for its hue will make her hand look still whiter, and when I see it
+sparkle I will remember this hour and be patient." Had he known that she
+had yielded to this wish out of a certain vague feeling of compunction
+for the disappointments she had frequently occasioned him and would
+occasion him again, he might have added a tender thought to the rich and
+costly gift with which he had just endowed her.
+
+"I expect a young cousin of mine to spend the winter with me and pursue
+her studies," were the first words that greeted his ears as an hour or
+so later he entered the parlor where his wife was entertaining what few
+guests had been anxious enough for a sight of Mrs. Sylvester's newly
+furnished drawing-room, to brave the now rapidly falling snow. "I hope
+that you and she will be friends."
+
+Curious to see what sort of a companion his wife was thus somewhat
+prematurely providing for Paula, he hastily advanced towards the little
+group from which her voice had proceeded, and found himself face to face
+with a brown-haired girl whose appealing glance and somewhat infantile
+mouth were in striking contrast to the dignity with which she carried
+her small head and managed her whole somewhat petite person.
+
+"Miss Stuyvesant! my husband!" came in musical tones from his wife, and
+somewhat surprised to hear a name that but a moment before had been the
+uppermost in his mind, he bowed with courtesy and then asked if he was
+so happy as to speak to a daughter of Thaddeus Stuyvesant.
+
+"If it will give you especial pleasure I will say yes," responded the
+little miss with a smile that irradiated her whole face. "Do you know my
+father?"
+
+
+"There are but few bankers in the city who have not that pleasure,"
+replied he with an answering look of regard. "I am especially happy to
+meet his daughter in my house to-night."
+
+There was something in his manner of saying this and in the short
+inquiring glance which at every opportunity he cast upon her bright
+young face with its nameless charm of mingled appeal and reserve, that
+astonished his wife.
+
+"Miss Stuyvesant was in the carriage with Mrs. Fitzgerald," said that
+lady with a certain dignity she knew well how to assume. "I am afraid if
+it had not been for that circumstance we should not have enjoyed the
+pleasure of her presence." And with the rare tact of which she was
+certainly a mistress, as far as all social matters were concerned, she
+left the aspiring magnate of Wall Street to converse with the daughter
+of the man whom all New York bankers were expected to know, and hastened
+to join a group of ladies discussing ceramics before a huge placque of
+rarest _cloissone_.
+
+Mr. Sylvester followed her with his eyes; he had never seen her look
+more vivacious; had the hope of seeing a young face at their board
+touched some secret chord in her nature as well as his? Was she more of
+a woman than he imagined, and would she be, though in the most
+superficial of ways, a mother to Paula? Flushed with the thought, he
+turned back to the little lady at his side. She was gazing in an intent
+and thoughtful way at an engraving of Dubufe's "Prodigal Son" that
+adorned the wall above her head. There was something in her face that
+made him ask:
+
+"Is that a favorite picture of yours?"
+
+She smiled and nodded her small and delicate head.
+
+"Yes sir, it is indeed, but I was not looking at the picture so much as
+at the face of that dark-haired girl that sits in the centre, with that
+far-away expression in her eyes. Do you see what I mean? She is like
+none of the rest. Her form is before us, but her heart and her interest
+are in some distant clime or forsaken home to which the music murmured
+at her side recalls her. She has a soul above her surroundings, that
+girl; and her face is indescribably pathetic to me. In the recesses of
+her being she carries a memory or a regret that separates her from the
+world and makes certain moments of her life almost holy."
+
+"You look deep," said Mr. Sylvester, gazing down upon the little lady's
+face with strongly awakened interest. "You see more perhaps than the
+painter intended."
+
+"No, no; possibly more than the engraving expresses, but not more than
+the artist intended. I saw the original once, when as you remember it
+was on exhibition here. I was a wee thing, but I never forgot that
+girl's face. It spoke more than all the rest to me; perhaps because I so
+much honor reserve in one who holds in his breast a great pain or a
+great hope."
+
+The eye that was resting upon her, softened indescribably. "You believe
+in great hopes," said he.
+
+The little figure seemed to grow tall; and her face looked almost
+beautiful. "What would life be without them?" she answered.
+
+"True," returned Mr. Sylvester; and entering into the conversation with
+unusual spirit, was astonished to find how young she was and yet how
+thoroughly bright and self-possessed.
+
+"Lovely girls are cropping up around me in all directions," thought he;
+"I shall have to correct my judgment concerning our young ladies of
+fashion if I encounter many more as sensible and earnest-hearted as
+this." And for some reason his brow grew so light and his tone so
+cheerful that the ladies were attracted from all parts of the room to
+hear what the demure Miss Stuyvesant could have to say to the grave
+master of the house, to call forth such smiles of enjoyment upon his
+usually melancholy countenance.
+
+Take it all together, the occasion though small was one of the
+pleasantest of the season, and so Mrs. Sylvester announced when the last
+carriage had driven away, and she and her husband stood in the
+brilliantly lighted library, surveying a new cabinet of rare and antique
+workmanship which had been that day installed in the place of honor
+beneath my lady's picture.
+
+"I thought you seemed to enjoy it, Ona," her husband remarked.
+
+"O, it was an occasion of triumph to me," she murmured. "It is the first
+time a Stuyvesant has crossed our threshold, _mon cher_."
+
+"Ha," he exclaimed, turning upon her a brisk displeased look. He was
+proud and considered no man his superior in a social sense. "Do you
+acknowledge yourself a parvenue that you rejoice at the entrance of any
+one special person into your doors?"
+
+"I thought," she replied somewhat mortified, "that you betrayed unusual
+pleasure yourself at her introduction."
+
+"That may be; I was glad to see her here, for her father is one of the
+most influential directors in the bank of which I shortly expect to be
+made president."
+
+The nature of this disclosure was calculated to be especially gratifying
+to her, and effectually blotted out any remembrance of the break by
+which it had been introduced. After a few hasty inquiries, followed by a
+scene of quite honest mutual congratulation, the gratified wife left her
+husband to put out the lights himself or call Samuel as he might choose,
+and glided up stairs to delight the curious Sarah with the broken
+soliloquies and inconsequent self-communings which formed another of her
+peculiar habits.
+
+As for her husband, he stood a few minutes where she left him,
+abstractedly eying the gorgeous vista that spread out before him down to
+the further mirror of the elaborate drawing-room, thinking perhaps with
+a certain degree of pride, of the swiftness with which he had risen to
+opulence and the certainty with which he had conquered position in the
+business as well as in the social world when he could speak of such a
+connection with Thaddeus Stuyvesant as a project already matured. Then
+with a hasty movement and a quick sigh which nothing in his prospects
+actual or apparent would seem to warrant, he proceeded to put out the
+lights, my lady's picture shining with less and less importunity as the
+flickering jets disappeared, till all was dark save for the faint
+glimmer that came in from the hall, a glimmer just sufficient to show
+the outlines of the various articles of furniture scattered about--and
+could it be the tall figure of the master himself standing in the centre
+of the room with his palms pressed against his forehead in an attitude
+of sorrow or despair? Yes, or whose that wild murmur, "Is it never given
+to man to forget!" Yet no, or who is this that calm and dignified, steps
+at this moment from the threshold? It must have been a dream, a
+phantasy. _This_ is the master of the house who with sedate and regular
+step goes up flight after flight of the spiral staircase, and neither
+pauses or looks back till he reaches the top of the house where he takes
+out a key from his pocket, and opening a certain door, goes in and locks
+it behind him. It is his secret study or retreat, a room which no one is
+allowed to enter, the mystery of the house to the servants and something
+more than that to its inquisitive mistress. What he does there no man
+knows, but to-night if any one had been curious enough to listen, they
+would have heard nothing more ominous than the monotonous scratch of a
+pen. He was writing to Miss Belinda and the burden of his letter was
+that on a certain day he named, he was coming to take away Paula.
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+MISS BELINDA MAKES CONDITIONS.
+
+    "For of the soul the body form doth take,
+    For soul is form, and doth the body make."
+
+    SPENSER.
+
+
+Miss Belinda was somewhat taken aback at the proposal of Mr. Sylvester
+to receive Paula into his own house. She had not anticipated any such
+result to her efforts; the utmost she had expected was a couple of years
+or so of instruction in some state Academy. Nor did she know whether she
+was altogether pleased at the turn affairs were taking. From all she had
+heard, her niece Ona was, to say the least, a frivolous woman, and Paula
+had a mind too noble to be subjected to the deteriorating influence of a
+shallow and puerile companionship. Then the child had great beauty; Mr.
+Sylvester who ought to be a judge in such matters had declared it so,
+and what might not the adulation of the thoughtless and the envy of the
+jealous, do towards belittling a nature as yet uncontaminated.
+
+"We ought to think twice," she said to Miss Abby with some bitterness,
+who on the contrary never having thought once was full of the most
+childish hopes concerning a result which she considered with a certain
+secret complacency she would not have acknowledged for the world, had
+been very much furthered by her own wise recommendations to Mr.
+Sylvester in the beginning of his visit. Yet notwithstanding her doubts
+Miss Belinda allowed such preparations to be made as she considered
+necessary, and even lent her hand which was deft enough in its way, to
+the task of enlarging the child's small wardrobe. As for Paula, the
+thought of visiting the great city with the dear friend whose image had
+stood in her mind from early childhood as the impersonation of all that
+was noble, generous and protecting, was more than joyful; it was an
+inspiration. Not that she did not cling to the affectionate if somewhat
+quaint couple who had befriended her childhood and sacrificed their
+comfort to her culture and happiness. But the chord that lies deeper
+than gratitude had been struck, and fond as were her memories of the
+dear old home, the charm of that deep "My child," with its hint of
+fatherly affection, was more than her heart could stand; and no spot, no
+not the realms of fairy-land itself, looked so attractive to her fancy
+as that far fireside in an unknown home where she might sit with cousin
+Ona and alternately with her exert her wit to beguile the smile to his
+melancholy lips.
+
+When therefore upon the stated day, Mr. Sylvester made his second
+appearance at the little cottage in Grotewell, it was to find Paula
+radiant, Miss Abby tearfully exultant and Miss Belinda--O anomaly of
+human nature--silent and severe. Attributing this however to her very
+natural regret at parting with Paula, he entered into all the
+arrangements for their departure on the following morning without a
+suspicion of the real state of her mind, nor was he undeceived until the
+day was nearly over and they sat down to have a few minutes of social
+conversation before the early tea.
+
+They had been speaking on some local topic involving a question of right
+and wrong, and Mr. Sylvester's ears were yet thrilling to the deep
+ringing tones with which Paula uttered the words, "I do not see how any
+man can hesitate an instant when the voice of his conscience says no. I
+should think the very sunlight would daunt him at the first step of his
+foot across the forbidden line," when Miss Belinda suddenly spoke up and
+sending Paula out of the room on some trivial pretext, addressed Mr.
+Sylvester without reserve.
+
+"I have something to say to you, sir, before you take from my home the
+child of my care and affection."
+
+Could he have guessed what that something was that he should turn with
+such a flush of sudden anxiety to meet her determined gaze.
+
+"The rules of our life here have been simple," continued she in a tone
+of voice which those who knew her well recognized as belonging to her
+uncompromising moods. "To do our duty, love God and serve our neighbor.
+Paula has been brought up to reverence those rules in simplicity and
+honor; what will your gay city life with its hollow devices for pleasure
+and its loose hold on the firm principles of life, do for this innocent
+soul, Mr. Sylvester?"
+
+"The city," he said firmly but with a troubled undertone in his voice
+that was not unnoted by the watchful woman, "is a vast caldron of
+mingled good and evil. She will hear of more wrong doing, and be within
+the reach of more self-denying virtue, than if she had remained in this
+village alone with the nature that she so much loves. The tree of
+knowledge bears two kinds of fruit, Miss Belinda; would you therefore
+hinder the child from approaching its branches?"
+
+"No, sir; I am not so weak as to keep a child in swaddling-clothes after
+the period of infancy is past, neither am I so reckless as to set her
+adrift on an unknown sea without a pilot to guide her. Your wife--" she
+paused and fixed an intent look upon the flames leaping before her. "Ona
+is my niece," she resumed in a lower tone of voice, "and I feel entitled
+to speak with freedom concerning her. Is she such a guide as I would
+choose for a young girl just entering a new sphere in life? From all I
+have heard, I should judge she was somewhat over-devoted to this world
+and its fashions."
+
+Mr. Sylvester flushed painfully, but seeing that any softening of the
+truth would be wholly ineffectual with this woman, replied in a candid
+tone, "Ona is the same now as she was in the days of her girlhood. If
+she loves the world too well she is not without her excuse; from her
+birth it has strewn nothing but roses in her path."
+
+"Humph!" came from the lips of the energetic spinster. Then with a
+second stern glance at the fire, continued, "Another question, Mr.
+Sylvester. Does your wife consent to receive my niece into her house,
+for the indefinite length of time which you mention, from interest in
+the girl herself or indeed from any motive I should judge worthy of
+Paula? It is a leading question I know, but this is no time for niceties
+of speech."
+
+"Miss Belinda," replied he, and his voice was firm though his fingers
+slightly trembled where they rested upon the arms of his chair, "I will
+try and forget for a moment that Ona is my wife, and frankly confide to
+you that any such motive on her part, as would meet with your entire
+approval, must not be expected from a woman who has never fully
+recognized the solemn responsibilities of life. That she will be kind to
+Paula I have no doubt, that she may even learn to take an interest in
+her for her own sake, is also very possible, but that she will ever take
+your place towards her as guide or instructor, I neither anticipate nor
+would feel myself justified in leading you to."
+
+The look which Miss Belinda cast him was anything but reassuring. "And
+yet," said she, "you will take away my darling and give her up to an
+influence that can not be for good, or your glance would not be so
+troubled or your lip so uncertain. You would set her young feet in a
+path where the very flowers are so thick they conceal its tendency and
+obscure its dangers. Mr. Sylvester you are a man who has seen life with
+naked eyes, and must recognize its responsibilities; dare you take this
+Paula, whom you have seen, out of the atmosphere of truth and purity in
+which she has been raised, and give her over to the enervating
+influences of folly and fashion? Will you assume the risk and brave the
+consequences?"
+
+As though an electric shock had touched the nerve of his nature, Mr.
+Sylvester hastily rose and moved in a restless manner to the window. It
+was his favorite refuge in any time of sudden perplexity or doubt, and
+this was surely an occasion for both.
+
+"Miss Belinda," he began and then paused, looking out on the hills of
+his boyhood, every one of which spoke to him at that moment with a force
+that almost sickened his heart and benumbed the faculties of his mind;
+"I recognize the love which leads you to speak in this way, and I bow
+before it, but--" here his tongue faltered again, that ready tongue
+whose quick and persuasive eloquence on public occasions had won for him
+the name of Silver-speech among his friends and admirers--"but there are
+others who love your Paula also, love her with a yearning that only the
+childless can feel or the disappointed appreciate. I had hoped--" here
+he left the window and approached her side, "to do more for Paula than
+to give her the temporal benefit of a luxurious home and such
+instruction as her extraordinary talents demand. If Ona upon seeing and
+knowing the child had found she could love her, I had intended to ask
+you to yield her to us unreservedly and forever, in short to make her my
+child in place of the daughter I have lost. But now--" with a quick
+gesture he began pacing the floor and left the sentence unfinished.
+
+Miss Belinda's eyes which were of a light grey, wholly without beauty
+but with strange flashes of expression in them, left the fire and fell
+upon his face, and a tear of real feeling gathered beneath her lids.
+
+"I had no idea," said he, "that you cherished any such intention as
+that. If I had I might have worded my apprehensions differently. The
+yearning feeling of which you speak, I can easily understand, also the
+strength of the determination it must take on the part of a man like
+yourself, to give up a hope of this nature. Yet--" Seeing him pause in
+his hurried pacing and open his lips as if to speak, she deferentially
+stopped.
+
+
+"Miss Belinda," said he, in the firm and steadfast way more in keeping
+with his features than his agitated manner of a moment before, "I cannot
+give it up. The injury it would do me is greater than the harm, which
+one of Paula's lofty nature would be apt to acquire in any atmosphere
+into which she might chance to be introduced. She is not a child, Miss
+Belinda, though we allude to her as such. The texture of those
+principles which you have instilled into her breast, is of no such weak
+material as to give way to the first petty breeze that blows. Paula's
+house will stand, while mine--"
+
+He paused and gave way to a momentary struggle, but that over, he set
+his lips firmly together and the last vestige of irresolution vanished.
+Sitting down by her side, he turned his face upon her, and for the first
+time she realized the power which with one exception he had always
+exerted over the minds of others. "Miss Belinda," said he, "I am going
+to give you an evidence of my trust; I am going to leave with you the
+responsibility of Paula's future. She shall go with me, and learn, if
+she can, to love me and mine, but she shall also be under obligations to
+open her heart to you on all matters that concern her life and happiness
+in my house, and the day you see any falling off in her pure and upright
+spirit, you shall demand her return, and though it tears the heart from
+my breast, I will yield her up without question or parley as I am a
+gentleman and a Christian. Does that content you?"
+
+"It certainly ought to, sir. No one could ask more, I am sure," returned
+the other in a voice somewhat unsteady for her.
+
+"It is opening my house to the gaze of a stranger," said he, "for I
+desire you to command Paula to withhold nothing that seriously affects
+her; but my confidence in you is unbounded and I am sure that whatever
+you may learn in this way, will be held as sacred by you as though it
+were buried in a tomb."
+
+"It certainly will, sir."
+
+"As for the dearer hope which I have mentioned, time and the condition
+of things must decide for us. Meanwhile I shall strive to win a father's
+place in her heart, if only to build myself a refuge for the days that
+are to come. You see I speak frankly, Miss Belinda; will you give me
+some token that you are not altogether dissatisfied with the result of
+this conversation?"
+
+With the straightforward if somewhat blunt action that characterized all
+her movements, she stretched out her hand, which he took with something
+more than his usual high-bred courtesy. "With you at the wheel," said
+she, "I think I may trust my darling, even to the whirl and follies of
+such a society as I know Ona loves. A man who can so command himself,
+ought to be a safe guide to pioneer others."
+
+And the considerate gentleman bowed; but the frank smile that hailed her
+genial clasp had somehow vanished, and from the sudden cloud that at
+that moment swept over the roseate heavens, fell a shadow that left its
+impress on his lip long after the cloud itself had departed.
+
+An hour or so had passed. The fire was burning brightly on the
+hearthstone, illumining with a steady glow the array of stuffed birds,
+worsted samplers and old-fashioned portraits with which the walls were
+adorned, but reserving its richest glow and fullest irradiation for the
+bended head of Paula, who seated on a little stool in the corner of the
+hearth, was watching the rise and fall of the flickering flames.
+
+She had packed her little trunk, had said good-bye to all her
+neighboring friends and was now sitting on the old hearthstone, musing
+upon the new life that was about to open before her. It was a happy
+musing, as the smile that vaguely dimpled her cheeks and brightened her
+eyes beneath their long lashes, amply testified. As Mr. Sylvester
+watched her from the opposite side of the hearth where he was sitting
+alone with his thoughts, he felt his heart sink with apprehension at the
+fervor of anticipation with which she evidently looked forward to the
+life in the new home. "The young wings think to gain freedom," thought
+he, "when they are only destined to the confinement of a gilded cage."
+
+He was so silent and looked so sad, Paula with a certain sort of
+sensitiveness to any change in the emotional atmosphere surrounding her,
+which was one of her chief characteristics, hastily looked up and
+meeting his eye fixed on her with that foreboding glance, softly arose
+and came and sat down by his side. "You look tired," murmured she; "the
+long ride after a day of business care has been too much for you."
+
+It was the first word of sympathy with his often over-wearied mind and
+body, that had greeted his ears for years. It made his eyes moisten.
+
+"I have been a little overworked," said he, "for the last two months,
+but I shall soon be myself again. What were you thinking of, Paula?"
+
+"What was I thinking of?" repeated she, drawing her chair nearer to his
+in her loving confidence. "I was thinking what wonders of beauty and art
+lay in that great kernel which you call the city. I shall see lovely
+faces and noble forms. I shall wander through halls of music, the echo
+of whose songs may have come to me in the sob of the river or the sigh
+of the pines, but whose notes in all their beauty and power have never
+been heard by me even in my dreams. I shall look on great men and touch
+the garments of thoughtful women. I shall see life in its fullness as I
+have felt nature in its mightiness, and my heart will be satisfied at
+last."
+
+Mr. Sylvester drew a deep breath and his eyes burned strangely in the
+glow of the fire-light. "You expect high things," said he; "did you ever
+consider that the life in a great city, with its ceaseless rush and
+constant rivalries, must be often strangely petty in despite of its
+artistic and social advantages?"
+
+"All life has its petty side," said she, with a sweet arch look. "The
+eagle that cleaves the thunder-cloud, must sometimes stop to plume its
+wings. I should be sorry to lose the small things out of existence. Even
+we in the face of that great sunset appealing to us from the west, have
+to pile up the firewood on the hearth and set the table for supper."
+
+"But fashion, Paula," he pursued, concealing his wonder at the maturity
+of mind evinced by this simple child of nature, "that inexorable power
+that rules the very souls of women who once step within the magic circle
+of her realm! have you never thought of her and the demands that she
+makes on the time and attention even of the worshippers of the good and
+the true?"
+
+"Yes, sometimes," she returned with a repetition of her arch little
+smile, "when I put on a certain bonnet I have, which Aunt Abby modeled
+over from one of my grandmother's. Fashion is a sort of obstinate
+step-dame I imagine, whom it is less trouble to obey than to oppose. I
+don't believe I shall quarrel with Fashion if she will only promise to
+keep her hands off my soul."
+
+"But if--" with a pause, "she asks your all, what then?"
+
+"I shall consider that I am in a country of democratic principles," she
+laughed, "and beg to be excused from acceding to the tyrannical demands
+of any autocrat male or female."
+
+"You have been listening to Miss Belinda," said he; "she is also opposed
+to all and any tyrannical measures." Then with a grave look from which
+all levity had fled, he leaned toward the young girl and gently asked,
+"Do you know that you are a very beautiful girl, Paula?"
+
+She flushed, looked at him in some surprise and slowly drooped her head.
+"I have been told I looked like my father," said she, "and I know that
+means something very kind."
+
+"My child," said he, with gentle insistence, "God has given you a great
+and wonderful gift, a treasure-casket of whose worth you scarcely
+realize the value. I tell you this myself, first because I prize your
+beauty as something quite sacred and pure, and secondly because you are
+going where you will hear words of adulation, whose folly and bluntness
+will often offend your ears, unless you carry in your soul some talisman
+to counteract their effect."
+
+"I understand," said she, "I know what you mean. I will remember that
+the most engaging beauty is nothing without a pure mind and a good
+heart."
+
+"And you will remember too," continued he, "that I blessed your innocent
+head to-night, not because it is circled by the roses of a youthful and
+fresh loveliness, but because of the pure mind and good heart I see
+shining in your eyes." And with a fond but solemn aspect he reached out
+his hand and laid it on her ebon locks.
+
+She bowed her head upon her breast. "I will never forget," said she, and
+the fire-light fell with a softening glow on the tears that trembled
+from her eye-lashes.
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+THE END OF MY LADY'S PICTURE.
+
+     "Heaven from all creatures tides the book of Fate."--POPE.
+
+
+Mrs. Sylvester was spending an evening at home. This was something so
+unusual for this august lady of fashion to indulge in, that she found it
+difficult not to fall asleep in the huge crimson-backed chair in which
+she had chosen to ensconce herself. Not that she had desisted from
+making every effort known to mortal woman to keep herself awake and if
+possible amused till the expected travellers should arrive. She had
+played with her bird till the spoiled pet had himself protested, ducking
+his head under his wing and proceeding without ceremony to make up his
+little feather bed, as cunning Geraldine used to call the round, fluffy
+ball into which he rolled himself at night. More than that, she had
+looked over her ornaments and taken out such articles as she thought
+could be spared for Paula, to say nothing of playing a bar or so from
+the last operatic sensation, and laboriously cutting open the leaves of
+the new magazine. But it was all of no use, and the heavy white lids
+were slowly falling, when the bell rang and Mr. Bertram Mandeville was
+announced, or rather Bertram Sylvester as he now chose to be called.
+
+It was a godsend to her as she politely informed him upon his entrance;
+and though in his secret heart he felt anything but God sent--he was not
+of a make to appreciate his uncle's wife at her very evident value--he
+consented to remain and assist her in disposing of the evening till Mr.
+Sylvester should return.
+
+"He is going to bring a pretty girl with him," remarked she, in a tone
+of some interest, "a cousin of mine from Grotewell. I should like to
+have you see her."
+
+"Thank you," replied he, his mind roaming off at the suggestion, into
+the region of a certain plain little music-room where the clock on the
+mantel ticked to the beating of his own heart. And for ten minutes Mrs.
+Sylvester had the pleasure of filling the room with a stream of easy
+talk, in which Grotewell, dark beauties, the coming Seventh Regiment
+reception, the last bit of gossip from London, and the exact situation
+of the Madison Bank formed the principal topics.
+
+To the one last mentioned, it having taken the form of a question, he
+was forced to reply; but the simple locality having been learned, she
+rambled easily on, this time indulging him with a criticism upon the
+personal appearance of certain business gentlemen who visited the house,
+ending with the somewhat startling declaration:
+
+"If Edward were not the fine appearing gentleman that he undoubtedly is,
+I should feel utterly out of place in these handsome parlors. Anything
+but to see an elegant and modern home, decorated with the costliest
+works of art, and filled with _bijouterie_ of the most exquisite
+delicacy, presided over by a plain and common-place woman or a
+bald-headed and inferior-looking man. The contrast is too vivid; works
+of the highest art do not need such a startling comparison to bring out
+their beauty. Now if Edward stood in the throne-room of a palace, he
+would somehow make it seem to others as a handsome set off to his own
+face and figure."
+
+This was all very wife-like if somewhat unnecessary, and Bertram could
+have listened to it with pleasure, if she had not cast the frequent and
+side-long glances at the mirror, which sufficiently betrayed the fact
+that she included herself in this complacent conclusion; as indeed she
+may have considered herself justified in doing, husband and wife being
+undoubtedly of one flesh. As it was, he maintained an immovable
+countenance, though he admired his uncle as much as she did, and the
+conversation gradually languished till the white somnolent lids of the
+lady again began to show certain premonitory signs of drooping, when
+suddenly they were both aroused by the well known click of a latch-key
+in the door, and in another moment Mr. Sylvester's voice was heard in
+the hall, saying, in tones whose cheery accents made his wife's eyes
+open in surprise--
+
+"Welcome home, my dear."
+
+"They have come," murmured Mrs. Sylvester rising with a look of
+undeniable expectation. Had Paula not been a beauty she would have
+remained seated.
+
+"Yes, we have come," was heard in hearty tones from the door-way, and
+Mr. Sylvester with a proud look which Bertram long remembered, ushered
+into their presence a young girl whose simple cloak and bonnet in no
+wise prevented Mrs. Sylvester from recognizing the somewhat uncommon
+beauty she had been led to expect.
+
+"Paula, this is your cousin Ona, and--Ah, Bertram, glad to see you--this
+is my only nephew, Mr. Sylvester."
+
+The young girl, lost in the sudden glamour of numerous lights, shining
+upon splendors such as she may have dreamed of over the pages of
+Irving's Alhambra, but certainly had never before seen, blushed with
+very natural embarrassment, but yet managed to bestow a pretty enough
+greeting upon the elegant woman and handsome youth, while Ona after the
+first moment of almost involuntary hesitation, took in hers the two
+trembling hands of her youthful cousin and actually kissed her cheek.
+
+"I am not given to caresses as you know," she afterwards explained in a
+somewhat apologetic tone to her husband; "and anything like an appeal
+for one on the part of a child or an inferior, I detest; but her simple
+way of holding out her hand disarmed me, and then such a face demands a
+certain amount of homage, does it not?" And her husband in his surprise,
+was forced to acknowledge to himself, that as closely as he had studied
+his wife's nature for ten years, there were certain crooks and turns in
+it which even he had never penetrated.
+
+"You look dazzled," that lady exclaimed, gazing not unkindly into the
+young girl's face; "the sudden glare of so much gas-light has bewildered
+you."
+
+"I do not think it is that," returned Paula with a frank and admiring
+look at the gorgeous room and the circle of pleasant faces about her.
+"Sudden lights I can bear, but I have come from a little cottage on the
+hillside and the magnificence of nature does not prepare you for the
+first sudden view of the splendors of art."
+
+Mrs. Sylvester smiled and cast a side glance of amusement at Bertram.
+"You admire our new hangings I see," remarked she with an indulgence of
+the other's _naeivete_ that greatly relieved her husband.
+
+But in that instant a change had come across Paula; the simple country
+maid had assimilated herself with the surroundings, and with a sudden
+grace and dignity that were unstudied as they were charming, dropped her
+eyes from her cousin's portrait--that for some reason seemed to shine
+with more than its usual insistence--and calmly replied, "I admire all
+beautiful color; it is my birthright as a Walton, to do so, I suppose."
+
+Mrs. Sylvester was a Walton also and therefore smiled; but her husband,
+who had marked with inward distrust, the sudden transformation in Paula,
+now stepped forward with a word or two of remark concerning his
+appetite, a prosaic allusion that led to the rapid disappearance of the
+ladies upstairs and a short but hurried conversation between the two
+gentlemen.
+
+"I have brought you a sealed envelope from the office," said Bertram,
+who, in accordance with his uncle's advice, had already initiated
+himself into business by assuming the position of clerk in the office of
+the wealthy speculator.
+
+"Ah," returned his uncle hastily opening it. "As I expected, a meeting
+has been held this day by the board of Directors of the Madison Bank, a
+vote was cast, my proxy did his duty and I am duly elected President.
+Bertram, we know what that means," smiled he, holding out his hand with
+an affectionate warmth greatly in advance of the emotion displayed by
+him on a former occasion.
+
+"I hope so indeed," young Bertram responded. "An increase of fortune and
+honor for you, though you seem to have both in the fullest measure
+already, and a start in the new life for me to whom fortune and honor
+mean happiness."
+
+A smile younger and more full of hope than any he had seen on his
+uncle's face for years, responded to this burst. "Bertram," said he,
+"since our conversation of a couple of weeks ago something has occurred
+which somewhat alters the opinions I then expressed. If you have
+patience equal to your energy, and a self-control that will not put to
+shame your unbounded trust in women, I think I can say God-speed to your
+serious undertaking, with something like a good heart. Women are not all
+frivolous and foolish-minded; there are some jewels of simple goodness
+and faith yet left in the world."
+
+"Thank God for your conversion," returned his nephew smiling, "and if
+this lovely girl whom you have just introduced to me, is the cause of
+it, then thank God for her also."
+
+His uncle bowed with a gravity almost solemn, but the ladies returning
+at this moment, he refrained from further reply. After supper, to which
+unusual meal Mr. Sylvester insisted upon his nephew remaining, the two
+gentlemen again drew apart.
+
+"If you have decided upon buying the shares I have mentioned," said the
+former, "you had better get your money in a position to handle at once.
+I shall wish to present you to Mr. Stuyvesant to-morrow, and I should
+like to be able to mention you as a future stockholder in the bank."
+
+"Mr. Stuyvesant!" exclaimed Bertram, ignoring the rest of the sentence.
+
+
+"Yes," returned his uncle with a smile, "Thaddeus Stuyvesant is the next
+largest stockholder to myself in the Madison Bank, and his patronage is
+not an undesirable one."
+
+"Indeed--I was not aware--excuse me, I should be happy," stammered the
+young man. "As for the money, it is all in Governments and is at your
+command whenever you please."
+
+"That is good, I'll notify you when I'm ready for the transfer. And now
+come," said he, with a change from his deep business tone to the lighter
+one of ordinary social converse, "forget for a half hour that you have
+discarded the name of Mandeville, and give us an aria or a sonata from
+Mendelssohn before those hands have quite lost their cunning."
+
+"But the ladies," inquired the youth glancing towards the drawing-room
+where Mrs. Sylvester was giving Paula her first lesson in ceramics.
+
+"Ah, it is to see how the charm will act upon my shy country lassie,
+that I request such a favor."
+
+"Has she never heard Mendelssohn?"
+
+"Not with your interpretation."
+
+Without further hesitation the young musician proceeded to the piano,
+which occupied a position opposite to my lady's picture in this
+anomalous room denominated by courtesy the library. In another instant,
+a chord delicate and ringing, disturbed the silence of the long vista,
+and one of Mendelssohn's most exquisite songs trembled in all its
+delicious harmony through these apartments of sensuous luxury.
+
+Mr. Sylvester had seated himself where he could see the distant figure
+of Paula, and leaning back in his chair, watched for the first startled
+response on her part. He was not disappointed. At the first note, he
+beheld her spirited head turn in a certain wondering surprise, followed
+presently by her whole quivering form, till he could perceive her face,
+upon which were the dawnings of a great delight, flush and pale by
+turns, until the climax of the melody being reached, she came slowly
+down the room, stretching out her hands like a child, and breathing
+heavily as if her ecstacy of joy in its impotence to adequately express
+itself, had caught an expression from pain.
+
+"O Mr. Sylvester!" was all she said as she reached that gentleman's
+side; but Bertram Mandeville recognized the accents of an unfathomable
+appreciation in that simple exclamation, and struck into a grand old
+battle-song that had always made his own heart beat with something of
+the fire of ancient chivalry under its breastplate of modern broadcloth.
+
+"It is the voice of the thunder clouds when they marshal for battle!"
+exclaimed she at the conclusion. "I can hear the cry of a righteous
+struggle all through the sublime harmony."
+
+"You are right; it is a war-song ancient as the time of battle-axes and
+spears," quoth Bertram from his seat at the piano.
+
+"I thought I detected the flashing of steel," returned she. "O what a
+world lies in those simple bits of ivory!"
+
+"Say rather in the fingers that sweep them," uttered Mr. Sylvester. "You
+will not hear such music often."
+
+"I am glad of that," she cried simply, then in a quick conscious tone
+explained, "I mean that the hearing of such music makes an era in our
+life, a starting-point for thoughts that reach away into eternity; we
+could not bear such experiences often, it would confuse the spirit if
+not deaden its enjoyment. Or so it seems to me," she added naively,
+glancing at her cousin who now came sweeping in from the further room,
+where she had been trying the effect of a change in the arrangement of
+two little pet monstrosities of Japanese ware.
+
+"What seems to you?" that lady inquired. "O, Mr. Mandeville's playing? I
+beg pardon, Sylvester is the name by which you now wish to be addressed
+I suppose. Fine, isn't it?" she rambled on all in the same tone while
+she cautiously hid an unfortunate gape of her rosy mouth behind the
+folds of her airy handkerchief. "Mr. Turner says the hiatus you have
+made in the musical world by leaving the concert room for the desk, can
+never be repaired," she went on, supposedly to her nephew though she did
+not look his way, being at that instant engaged in sinking into her
+favorite chair.
+
+"I am glad," Bertram politely returned with a frank smile, "to have
+enjoyed the approval of so cultivated a critic as Mr. Turner. I own it
+occasions me a pang now and then," he remarked to his uncle over his
+shoulder, "to think I shall never again call up those looks of
+self-forgetful delight, which I have sometimes detected on the faces of
+certain ones in my audience."
+
+And he relapsed without pause into a solemn anthem, the very reverse of
+the stirring tones which he had previously accorded them.
+
+"Now we are in a temple!" whispered Paula, subduing the sudden interest
+and curiosity which this young man's last words had awakened. And the
+awe which crept over her countenance was the fittest interpretation to
+those noble sounds, which the one weary-hearted man in that room could
+have found.
+
+"I have something to tell you, Ona," remarked Mr. Sylvester shortly
+after this, as the music being over, they all sat down for a final chat
+about the fireside. "I have received notice that the directors of the
+Madison Bank have this day elected me their president. I thought you
+might like to know it to-night."
+
+"It is a very gratifying piece of news certainly. President of the
+Madison Bank sounds very well, does it not, Paula?"
+
+The young girl with her soul yet ringing with the grand and solemn
+harmonies of Mendelssohn and Chopin, turned at this with her brightest
+smile. "It certainly does and a little awe-inspiring too;" she added
+with her arch glance.
+
+"Your congratulations are also requested for our new assistant cashier.
+Arise, Bertram, and greet the ladies."
+
+With a blush his young nephew arose to his feet.
+
+"What! are you going into the banking business?" queried Mrs. Sylvester.
+"Mr. Turner will be more shocked than ever: he chooses to say that
+bankers, merchants and such are the solid rock of his church, while the
+lighter fry such as artists, musicians, and let us hope he includes us
+ladies, are its minarets, and steeples. Now to make a foundation out of
+a steeple will quite overturn his methodical mind I fear."
+
+Mr. Sylvester looked genially at his wife; she was not accustomed to
+attempt the facetious; but Paula seemed to have the power of bringing
+out unexpected lights and shadows from all with whom she came in
+contact.
+
+"A clergyman who rears his church on the basis of wealth must expect
+some overturning now and then," laughed he.
+
+"If by means of it he turns a fresh side to the sun, it will do him no
+harm," chimed in Paula.
+
+Seldom had there been so much simple gaiety round that fireside; the
+very atmosphere grew lighter, and the brilliance of my lady's picture
+became less oppressive.
+
+"We ought to have a happy winter of it," spoke up Mr. Sylvester with a
+glance around him. "Life never looked more cheerful for us all, I think;
+what do you say, Bertram my boy."
+
+"It certainly looks promising for me."
+
+"And for me," murmured Paula.
+
+The complacent way with which Mrs. Sylvester smoothed out the feathers
+of her fan with her jewelled right hand,--she always carried a fan
+winter and summer, some said for the purpose of displaying those same
+jewelled fingers--was sufficient answer for her.
+
+At that moment there was a hush, when suddenly the small clock on the
+mantel-piece struck eleven, and instantly as if awaiting the signal,
+there came a rush and a heavy crash which drew every one to their feet,
+and the brilliant portrait of my lady fell from the wall, and toppling
+over the cabinet beneath, slid with the various articles of bronze and
+china thereon, almost to the very chair in which its handsome prototype
+had been sitting.
+
+It was a startling interruption and for an instant no one spoke, then
+Paula with a look towards her cousin breathed to herself rather than
+said, "Pray God it be not an omen!" And the pale countenances of the two
+gentlemen standing face to face on either side of that fallen picture,
+showed that the shadow of the same superstition had insensibly crossed
+their own minds.
+
+Mrs. Sylvester was the only one who remained unmoved. "Lift if up,"
+cried she, "and let us see if it has sustained any injury."
+
+Instantly Bertram and her husband sprang forward, and in a moment its
+glowing surface was turned upward. Who could read the meaning of the
+look that crossed her husband's face as he perceived that the sharp
+spear of the bronze horseman, which had been overturned in the fall, had
+penetrated the rosy countenance of the portrait and destroyed that
+importunate smile forever.
+
+"I suppose it is a judgment upon me for putting all the money you had
+allowed me for charitable purposes, into that exquisite bit of bronze,"
+observed Mrs. Sylvester, stooping above the overturned horseman with an
+expression of regret she had not chosen to bestow on her own ruined
+picture. "Ah he is less of a champion than I imagined; he has lost his
+spear in the struggle."
+
+Paula glanced at her cousin in surprise. Was this pleasantry only a veil
+assumed by this courtly lady to hide her very natural regret over the
+more serious accident? Even her husband turned toward her with a certain
+puzzled inquiry in his troubled countenance. But her expression of
+unconcern was too natural; evidently the destruction of the picture had
+awakened but small regret in her volatile mind.
+
+"She is less vain than I thought," was the inward comment of Paula.
+
+Ah simple child of the woods and streams, it is the extent of her vanity
+not the lack of it, that has produced this effect. She has begun to
+realize that ten years have elapsed since this picture was painted, and
+that people are beginning to say as they examine it, "Mrs. Sylvester has
+not yet lost her complexion, I see."
+
+A break necessarily followed this disturbance, and before long Bertram
+took his leave, not without a cordial pressure from his uncle's hand and
+a look of kindly interest from the stranger lassie, upon whose
+sympathetic and imaginative mind the hints let fall as to his former
+profession, had produced a deep impression. With his departure Mrs.
+Sylvester's weariness returned, and ere long she led the way to her
+apartments up stairs. As Paula was hastening to follow Mr. Sylvester
+stopped her.
+
+"You will not allow this unfortunate occurrence," he said, with a slight
+gesture towards the picture now standing with its face against the wall,
+"to mar your first sleep under my roof, will you Paula, my child?"
+
+"No, not if you say that you think Cousin Ona will not be likely to
+connect it with my appearance here."
+
+"I do not think she will; she is not superstitious and besides does not
+seem to greatly regret the misfortune."
+
+"Then I will forget it all and only remember the music."
+
+"It was all you anticipated?"
+
+"It was more."
+
+"Sometime I will tell you about the player and the sweet young girl he
+loves."
+
+"Does he--" she paused, blushing; love was a subject upon which she had
+never yet spoken to any one.
+
+"Yes he does," Mr. Sylvester returned smiling.
+
+"I thought there was a meaning in the music I did not quite understand.
+Good night, uncle,"--he had requested her to address him thus though he
+was in truth her cousin, "and many, many thanks."
+
+But he stopped her again. "You think you will be happy in these rooms,"
+said he; "you love splendor."
+
+She was not yet sufficiently acquainted with his voice to detect the
+regret underlying its kindly tone, and answered without suspicion. "I
+did not know it before, but I fear that I do. It dazzled at first, but
+now it seems as if I had reached a home towards which I had always been
+journeying. I shall dream away hours of joy before each little ornament
+that adorns your parlors. The very tiles that surround the fireplace
+will demand a week of attention at least."
+
+She ended with a smile, but unlike formerly he did not seem to catch the
+infection. "I had rather you had cared less," said he, but instantly
+regretted the seeming reproach, for her eyes filled with tears and the
+tones of her voice trembled as she replied,
+
+"Do you think the beauty I have seen has made me forget the kindness
+that has brought me here? I love fine and noble objects, glory of color
+and harmony of shape, but more than all these do I love a generous soul
+without a blot on its purity, or a flaw in its integrity."
+
+She had meant to utter something that would show her appreciation of his
+goodness and the universal esteem in which he was held, but was quite
+unprepared for the start that he gave and the unmistakable deepening of
+the shadow on his sombre face. But before she could express her regret
+at the offence, whatever it was, he had recovered himself, and it was
+with a fatherly tenderness that he laid his hand upon hers while he
+said, "Such a soul may yours ever continue, my child," and then stood
+watching her as she glided up the stairs, her charming face showing
+every now and then as she leaned on her winding way to the top, to
+bestow upon him the tender little smile she had already learned was his
+solace and delight.
+
+It was the beginning of happier days for him.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK II.
+
+LIFE AND DEATH.
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+MISS BELINDA HAS A QUESTION TO DECIDE.
+
+               "I pray you in your letters,
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate,
+    Nor set down aught in malice."             --OTHELLO.
+
+
+Miss Belinda sitting before her bedroom fire on a certain windy night in
+January, presented a picture of the most profound thought. A year had
+elapsed since, with heavy heart and moistened eye, she had bidden
+good-bye to the child of her care, and beheld her drift away with her
+new friend into a strange and untried life. And now a letter had come
+from that friend, in which with the truest appreciation for the feelings
+of herself and sister, he requested their final permission to adopt
+Paula as his own child and the future occupant of his house and heart.
+
+Yes, after a year of increased comfort, Mrs. Sylvester, who would never
+have consented to receive as her own any child demanding care or
+attention, had decided it was quite a different matter to give place and
+position to a lovely girl already grown, whose beauty was sufficiently
+pronounced to do credit to the family while at the same time it was of a
+character to heighten by contrast her own very manifest attractions. So
+the letter, destined to create such a disturbance in the stern and
+powerful mind of Miss Belinda, had been written and dispatched.
+
+And indeed it was matter for the gravest reflection. To accede to this
+important request was to yield up all control over the dear young girl
+whose affection had constituted the brightness of this somewhat
+disappointed life, while to refuse an offer made with such evident love
+and anxiety, was to bring a pang of regret to a heart she hesitated to
+wound. The question of advantage which might have swayed others in their
+decision, did not in the least affect Miss Belinda. Now that Paula had
+seen the world and gained an insight into certain studies beyond the
+reach of her own attainments, any wishes in which she might have
+indulged on that score were satisfied, and mere wealth with its
+concomitant of luxuriant living, she regarded with distrust, and rather
+in the light of a stumbling-block to the great and grand end of all
+existence.
+
+Suddenly with that energy which characterized all her movements, she
+rose from her seat, and first casting a look of somewhat cautious
+inquiry at the recumbent figure of her sister, asleep in the heavy old
+fashioned bed that occupied one corner of the room, she proceeded to a
+bureau drawer and took out a small box which she unlocked on the table.
+It was full of letters; those same honest epistles, which, as empowered
+by Mr. Sylvester, she had requested Paula to send her from week to week.
+Some of them were a year old, but she read them all carefully through,
+while the clock ticked on the shelf and the wind soughed in the chimney.
+Certain passages she marked, and when she had finished the pile, she
+took up the letters again and re-read those passages. They were
+necessarily desultory in their character, but they all had, in her mind
+at least, a bearing upon the question on hand, and as such, I give them
+to my readers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"O aunty, I have made a friend, a sweet girl friend who I have reason to
+hope will henceforth be to me as my other eye and hand. Her name is
+Stuyvesant--a name by the way that always calls up a certain complacent
+smile on Cousin Ona's countenance--and she is the daughter of one of the
+directors of Mr. Sylvester's bank. I met her in a rather curious way.
+For some reason Ona had expressed a wish for me to ride horseback. She
+is rather too large for the exercise herself, but thought it looked
+well, she said, to see a lady and groom ride from the front of the
+house; moreover it would keep me in color by establishing my health. So
+Mr. Sylvester who denies her nothing, promised us horses and the groom,
+and as a preparation for acquitting myself with credit, has sent me to
+one of the finest riding academies in the city. It was here I met Miss
+Stuyvesant. She is a small interesting-looking girl whose chief beauty
+lies in her expression which is certainly very charming. I was conscious
+of a calm and satisfied feeling the moment I saw her. Her eyes which are
+raised with a certain appeal to your face, are blue, while her lips that
+break into smiles only at rare moments, are rosy and delicately curved.
+In her riding-habit she looks like a child, but when dressed for the
+street she surprises you with the reserved and womanly air with which
+she carries her proud head. Altogether she is a sweet study to me,
+alluring me with her glance yet awing me by her dainty ladyhood, a
+ladyhood too unconscious to be affected and yet so completely a part of
+her whole delicate being, that you could as soon dissociate the bloom
+from the rose, as the air of highborn reserve, from this sweet scion of
+one of New York's oldest families.
+
+"I was mounting my horse when our eyes first met, and I never shall
+forget her look of delighted surprise. Did she recognize in me the
+friend I now hope to become? Later we were introduced by Mr. Sylvester
+who had been so kind as to accompany me that day. The way in which he
+said to her, 'This is Paula,' proved that I was no new topic of
+conversation between them, and indeed she afterwards explained to me
+that she had been forewarned of my arrival during an afternoon call at
+his house. There was in this first interview none of the unnecessary
+gush which you have so often reprobated as childish; indeed Miss
+Stuyvesant is not a person with whom one would presume to be familiar,
+nor was it till we had met several times that any acknowledgement was
+made of the mutual interest with which we found ourselves inspired.
+Cousin Ona to whom I had naturally spoken of the little lady, wished me
+to cultivate her acquaintance more assiduously, but I knew that if I had
+excited in her the same interest she had awakened in me, this would not
+be necessary; our friendship would grow of itself and blossom without
+any hot-house forcing. And so it did. One day she came to the
+riding-school with her eyes like stars and her cheeks like the oleanders
+in your sitting-room. Her brightness was so contagious, I stepped up to
+her. But she greeted me with almost formal reserve, and mounting her
+horse, proceeded to engage in her usual exercise. I was not hurt; I
+recognized the presence of some thought or feeling which made a barrier
+around her sensitive nature, and duly respected it. Mounting my own
+horse, I rode around the ring which is the somewhat limited field of my
+present equestrian efforts, and waited. For I knew from the looks which
+she cast me every now and then, that the flower of our friendship was
+outgrowing its sheath and would soon burst into the bud of perfect
+understanding. At the end of the lesson we approached each other. I do
+not know how it was done, but we walked home together, or rather I
+accompanied her to the stoop of her house, and before we parted we had
+exchanged those words which give emphasis to a sentiment long cherished
+but now for the first time avowed. Miss Stuyvesant and I are friends,
+and I feel as though a new stream of enjoyment had opened in my breast.
+
+"The fact that I still call her by this formal title instead of her very
+pretty name of Cicely, proves the nature of the respect she inspires
+even in the breasts of her girlish associates."
+
+"Why is it that I frequently hesitate as I go up the stairs and look
+about me with a vague feeling of apprehension? The bronze figure of
+Luxury that adorns the landing, wears no semblance of terror to the
+wildest imagination, and yet I often find myself seized by an
+inexplicable shudder as I hurry past it; and once I actually looked
+behind me with the same sensation as if some one had plucked me by the
+sleeve.
+
+"It is a folly; for recording which, I make my excuses."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Cousin Ona has decided that I must never wear colors. 'Soft grays, my
+dear, dead blacks and opaque whites are all that you need to bring out
+the fine contrast of your hair and complexion; the least hint of blue or
+pink would destroy it.' So she says and so I must believe, for who else
+has made such a study of the all important subject of dress. Behold me,
+then, arrayed for my first reception in a colorless robe of rich silk to
+which Ona after long consideration allowed me to add some ornaments of
+plain gold with which Mr. Sylvester has kindly presented me. But I think
+more of the people I am going to meet than of anything else, though I
+enjoy the home-feeling which a pretty dress gives me, as well as a
+violet does its bright blue coat."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I have heard a great preacher! What shall I say? At first it seems as
+if nothing could express my joy and satisfaction. The sapling that is
+shaken to its root by the winds of heaven, keeps silence I imagine. But
+O Aunty, if my smallness makes me quake, it also makes me feel. What
+gates of thought have been opened to me! What shining tracks of inquiry
+pointed out! I feel as if I had been shown a path where angels walked.
+Can it be that such words have been uttered every week of my life and I
+in ignorance of them? It is like the revelation of the ocean to
+unaccustomed eyes. Henceforth small things must seem like pebble stones
+above which stretch innumerable heavenly vistas. It is not so much that
+new things have been revealed to me as that old things have been made
+strangely eloquent. The voice of a daisy on the hill side, the breath of
+thunder in the mountain gorges, the blossoming of a child's smile under
+its mother's eye, the fact that golden portals are opened in every life
+for the coming and going of the messengers of God, all have been made
+real to me, real as the voice of the Saviour to his disciples as they
+walked in the fields or started back awe-stricken from the stupendous
+vision of the cross. It is a solemn thing to see one's humble thoughts
+caught by the imagination of a great mind and carried on and up into
+regions you never realized existed.
+
+"I was so burdened with joy that I could not forbear asking Mr.
+Sylvester if he did not feel as if the whole face of the world had
+changed since we entered those holy doors. He did not respond with the
+glad 'Yes' for which I hoped, and though his smile was very kind, I
+could not help wondering what it was that sometimes fell between us like
+a veil."
+
+"O Aunty, how my heart does yearn towards Mr. Sylvester at times! As I
+see him sitting with clouded brow in the midst of so much that ought to
+charm and enliven him, I ask myself if the advantages of wealth
+compensate for all this care and anxiety. But I notice he is much more
+cheerful now than when I first came. Ona says he is in danger of losing
+the air of melancholy reserve which made him look so distinguished, but
+I think we can spare a little of such doubtful distinguishment for the
+sake of the smiles with which he now and then indulges us."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I feel as if a hand had gripped my throat. Cousin Ona spoke to Mr.
+Sylvester this morning in a way that made my very heart stand still. And
+yet it was only a simple, 'Follow your own judgment, Mr. Sylvester.' But
+how she said it! Do these languid women carry venom in their tongues? I
+had always thought she was of too easy a disposition to feel anger or
+display it; but the spring of a serpent is all the deadlier for his long
+silent basking in the sun. O pardon me for making such a frightful
+allusion. But if you had seen her and heard Mr. Sylvester's sigh as he
+turned and left the room!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Mr. Bertram Sylvester has awakened my deepest interest. His uncle has
+told me his story, which alone of all the things I have heard in this
+house, I do not feel at liberty to repeat, and it has aroused in me
+strange thoughts and very peculiar emotions. He is devoted to some one
+we do not know, and the idea surrounds him in my eyes with a sort of
+halo that you would perhaps call fanciful, but which I am nevertheless
+bound to reverence. He does not know that I am acquainted with his
+story. I wish he did and would let me speak the words that rise to my
+lips whenever I see him or hear him play."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"There are moments when I long to flee back to Grotewell. It is when
+Cousin Ona comes in from shopping with a dozen packages to be opened and
+commented upon, or when Mrs. Fitzgerald has been here or some other of
+her ultra-fashionable acquaintances. The atmosphere of the house for
+hours after either of the above occurrences is too heavy for breathing.
+I have to go away and clear my brain by a brisk walk or a look into
+Knoedler's or Schaus'."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"The panel where Cousin Ona's picture used to hang, has been filled by
+one of Meissonier's most interesting studies; and though I never thought
+Mr. Sylvester particularly fond of the French style of art, he seems
+very well satisfied with the result. I cannot understand how Cousin Ona
+can regard the misfortune to her portrait so calmly. I think it would
+break my heart to see a husband look with complacency on any picture, no
+matter how exquisite, that took the place of my own, especially if like
+her's, it was painted in my bridal days. I sometimes wonder if those
+days are as sacred to the memory of husband and wife as I have always
+imagined them to be."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Why does Cousin Ona never speak of Grotewell, and why, if by chance I
+mention the name, does she drop her eyes and a shadow cross the
+countenance of Mr. Sylvester?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"There is a word Mr. Sylvester uses in the most curious way; it is
+_fuss_. He calls everything a fuss that while insignificant in size or
+character has power either to irritate or please. A fly is a fuss; so is
+a dimple in a girl's cheek or a figure that goes wrong in accounts. I
+have even heard him call a child, 'That dear little fuss.' Bertram
+unconsciously imitates his uncle in this peculiar mannerism and is often
+heard alluding to this or that as a _fuss of fusses_. Indeed they say
+this use of the word is a peculiarity of the Sylvester family."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I think from the way Mr. Sylvester spoke yesterday, that he must have
+experienced some dreadful trouble in his life. We were walking in the
+wards of a hospital--that is, Miss Stuyvesant, Mr. Sylvester and
+myself--when some one near us gave utterance to the trite expression, 'O
+it will heal, but the scar will always remain.' 'That is a common
+saying,' remarked Mr. Sylvester, 'but how true a one no one realizes but
+he who carries the scar.'"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"It may be imagination or simply the effect of increased appreciation on
+my part, but it does seem as if Miss Stuyvesant grew lovelier and more
+companionable each time that I meet her. She makes me think of a temple
+in which a holy lamp is burning. Her very silences are eloquent, and yet
+she is never _distraite_ but always cheerful and frequently the
+brightest of the company. But it is a brightness without glitter, a
+gentle lustre that delights you but never astonishes. I meet many sweet
+girls in the so-called heartless circles of society, but none like her.
+She is my white lily on which a moonbeam rests."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"This house contains a mystery, as Ona is pleased to designate the room
+at the top of the house to which Mr. Sylvester withdraws when he desires
+to be alone. And indeed it is a sort of Bluebeard's chamber, in that he
+keeps it rigidly under lock and key, allowing no one to enter it, not
+even his wife. The servants declare that no one but himself has ever
+crossed its threshold, but I can scarcely believe that. Ona has not, but
+there must surely be some trusty person to whom he allots the care of
+its furniture. Am I only proving myself to be a true member of my sex
+when I allow that I cannot hinder my own curiosity from hovering about a
+spot so religiously guarded? Yet what should we see if its doors were
+thrown open? A study surrounded with books it displeases him to see
+misplaced, or a luxurious apartment fitted with every appointment
+necessary to rest and comfort him when he comes home tired from
+business."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I never saw Mr. Sylvester angry till to-day. By some inadvertence he
+went down town without locking the door of his private room, and though
+he returned immediately upon missing the key from his pocket, he was
+barely in time to prevent Cousin Ona from invading the spot he has
+always kept so sacred from intrusion. I was not present and of course
+did not hear what was said, but I caught a glimpse of his face as he
+left the house, and found it quite sufficient to assure me of his
+dissatisfaction. As for Ona, she declares he pulled her back as if she
+had been daring the plague. 'I do not expect to find five beautiful
+wives hanging up there by their necks,' concluded she with a forced
+laugh, 'but I shall yet see the interior of that room, if only to
+establish my prerogative as the mistress of this house.'
+
+"I do not now feel as if I wished to see it."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"There is one thing that strikes me as peculiar in Miss Stuyvesant, and
+that is, that as much pleasure as she seems to take in my society when
+we meet, she never comes to see me in Mr. Sylvester's house. For a long
+time I wondered over this but said nothing, but one day upon receiving a
+second invitation to visit her, I mentioned the fact as delicately as I
+could, and was quite distressed to observe how seriously she took the
+rebuke, if rebuke it could be called. 'I cannot explain myself,' she
+murmured in some embarrassment; 'but Mr. Sylvester's house is closed
+against me. You must not ask me to seek you there or expect me to do
+myself the pleasure of attending Mrs. Sylvester's receptions. I cannot.
+Is that enough for me to say to my dearest friend?' I hardly knew what
+to reply, but finally ventured to inquire if she was restrained by any
+fact that would make it undignified in me to seek her society and enjoy
+the pleasures she is continually offering me. And she answered with such
+a cheerful negative I was quite reassured. And so the matter is settled.
+Our friendship is to be emancipated from the bonds of etiquette and I am
+to enjoy her company whenever I can. To-morrow we are going to take our
+first ride in the park. The horses have been bought, and much to Cousin
+Ona's satisfaction, the groom has been hired."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I was told something the other day, of a nature so unpleasant that I
+should not think of repeating it, if you had not expressly commanded me
+to confide to you everything that for any reason produced an effect upon
+me in my new home. My informant was Sarah, the somewhat gossiping woman
+whom Ona has about her as seamstress and maid. She said--and she had
+spoken before I could prevent her--that the way Mrs. Sylvester took on
+about her mourning at the time of little Geraldine's death was enough to
+wear out the patience of Job. She even went so far as to tell the
+dressmaker that if she could not have her dress made to suit her she
+would not put on mourning at all! Aunty, can you wonder that Mr.
+Sylvester looks so bitterly sombre whenever mention is made of his
+child? He loved it, and its own mother could worry over the fit of a
+dress while his bereaved heart was breaking! I confess I can never feel
+the same indulgence towards what I considered the idiosyncrasies of a
+fashionable beauty again. Her smooth white skin makes me tremble; it has
+never flushed with delight over the innocent smiles of her firstborn."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Mr. Sylvester is very polite to Cousin Ona and seems to yield to her
+wishes in everything. But if I were she I think my heart would break
+over that very politeness. But then she is one who demands formality
+even from the persons of her household. I have never seen him stoop for
+a kiss or beheld her even so much as lay her hand on his shoulder. But I
+have observed him wait on her at moments when he was pale from weariness
+and she flushed with long twilight reclinings before her sleepy boudoir
+fire."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"There are times when I would not exchange my present opportunities for
+any others which might be afforded me. General ---- dined here to-day,
+and what a vision of a great struggle was raised up before me by his few
+simple words in regard to Gettysburg. I did not know which to admire
+most, the military bearing and vivid conversation of the great soldier,
+or the ease and dignity with which Mr. Sylvester met his remarks and
+answered each glowing sentence. General ---- spoke a few words to me.
+How gentle these lion-like men can be when they stoop their tall heads
+to address little children or young women!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"What a noble-hearted man Mr. Sylvester is! Mr. Turner in speaking of
+him the other night, declared there is no one in his congregation who in
+a quiet way does so much for the poor. 'He is especially interested in
+young men,' said he, 'and will leave his own affairs at any time to aid
+or advise them.' I knew Mr. Sylvester was kind, but Mr. Turner's
+enthusiasm was uncommon. He evidently admires Mr. Sylvester as much as
+every one else loves him. And he is not alone in this. Almost every day
+I hear some remark made of a nature complimentary to my benefactor's
+character or ability. Even Mr. Stuyvesant who so seldom appears to
+notice us girls, once interrupted a conversation between Cicely and
+myself to inquire if Mr. Sylvester was quite well. 'I thought he looked
+pale to-day,' remarked he, in his dry but not unkindly way, and then
+added, 'He must not get sick; he is too valuable to us.' This was a
+great deal for Mr. Stuyvesant to say, and it caused a visible
+gratification to Mr. Sylvester when I related it to him in the evening.
+'I had rather satisfy that man than any other I know,' declared he. 'He
+is of the stern old-fashioned sort, and it is an honor to any one to
+merit his approval. I did not tell him that I had also heard Mr.
+Stuyvesant observe in a conversation with some business friend of his,
+that Edward Sylvester was the only speculator he knew in whom he felt
+implicit confidence. Somehow it always gives me an uncomfortable feeling
+to hear Mr. Sylvester alluded to as a speculator. Besides since he has
+entered the Bank, he has I am told, entirely restricted himself to what
+are called legitimate operations."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Mr. Sylvester came home with a dreadful look on his face to-day. We
+were standing in the hall at the time the door opened, and he went by us
+without a nod, almost as if he did not see us. Even Ona was startled and
+stood gazing after him with an anxiety such as I had never observed in
+her before, while I was conscious of that sick feeling I have sometimes
+experienced when he came upon me suddenly from his small room above, or
+paused in the midst of the gayest talk, to ask me some question that was
+wholly irrelevant and most frequently sad.
+
+"'He has met with some heavy loss,' murmured his wife, glancing down the
+handsome parlors with a look such as a mother might bestow upon the face
+of a sick child. But I was sure she had not sounded his trouble, and in
+my impetuosity was about to fly to his side when we saw him pause before
+the image of Luxury that stands on the stair, look at it for a moment
+with a strange intentness, then suddenly and with a gesture of
+irrepressible passion, lift his arm as if he would fell it from its
+place. The action was so startling, Ona clutched my sleeve in terror,
+but he passed on and in another moment we heard him shut the door of his
+room.
+
+"Would he be down to dinner? that was the next question. Ona thought
+not; I did not dare to think. Nevertheless it was a great relief to me
+when I saw him enter the dining-room with that set immovable look he
+sometimes wears when Ona begins one of her long and rambling streams of
+fashionable gossip. 'It is nothing,' flashed from his wife's eyes to
+mine, and she lapsed at once into her most graceful self, but she
+nevertheless hastened her meal and I was quite prepared to observe her
+follow him, as with the polite excuse of weariness, he left the table
+before desert. I could not hear what she asked him, but his answer came
+distinctly to my ears from the midst of the library to which they had
+withdrawn. 'It is nothing in which you have an interest, Ona. Thank
+heaven you do not always know the price with which the splendors you so
+love are bought.' And she did not cry out, 'O never pay such a price for
+any joy of mine! Sooner than cost you so dear I would live on crusts and
+dwell in a garret.' No, she kept silence, and when in a few minutes
+later I joined her in the library, it was to find on her usually placid
+lips, a thin cool smile that struck like ice to my heart, and made it
+impossible for me to speak.
+
+"But the hardest trial of the day was to hear Mr. Sylvester come in at
+eleven o'clock--he went out again immediately after dinner--and go up
+stairs without giving me my usual good-night. It was such a grief to me
+I could not keep still, but hurried to the foot of the stairs in the
+hopes he would yet remember me and come back. But instead of that, he no
+sooner saw me than he threw out his hand almost as if he would push me
+back, and hastened on up the whole winding flight till he reached the
+refuge of that mysterious room of his at the top of the house.
+
+"I could not go back to Ona after that--she had been to make a call
+somewhere with a young gentleman friend of hers;--yes on this very night
+had been to make a call--but I took advantage of the late hour to retire
+to my own room where for a long time I lay awake listening for his
+descending step and seeing, as in a vision, the startling picture of his
+lifted arm raised against the unconscious piece of bronze on the stair.
+Henceforth that statue will possess for me a still more dreadful
+significance."
+
+"It is the twenty-fifth of February. Why should I feel as if I must be
+sure of the exact date before I slept?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next extract followed close on this and was the last which Miss
+Belinda read.
+
+"Mr. Sylvester seems to have recovered from his late anxiety. He does
+not shrink from me any more with that half bitter, half sad expression
+that has so long troubled and bewildered me, but draws me to his side
+and sits listening to my talk until I feel as if I were really of some
+comfort to this great and able man. Ona does not notice the change; she
+is all absorbed in preparing for the visit to Washington, which Mr.
+Sylvester has promised her."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+Miss Belinda calmly folded up the letters and locked them again in the
+little mahogany box, after which she covered up the embers and quietly
+went to bed. But next morning a letter was despatched to Mr. Sylvester
+which ran thus:
+
+     "DEAR MR. SYLVESTER:
+
+     "For the present at least you may keep Paula with you. But I am
+     not ready to say that I think it would be for her best good to
+     be received and acknowledged as your daughter--yet. Hoping you
+     will appreciate the motives that actuate this decision,
+
+     "I remain, respectfully yours,
+
+     "BELINDA ANN WALTON."
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+AN ADVENTURE--OR SOMETHING MORE.
+
+    "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
+     But to be young was very heaven."--WORDSWORTH.
+
+
+
+     _Oph._--What means this, my lord?
+
+     _Ham._--Marry, this is the miching mallecho; it means
+     mischief."
+
+     --HAMLET.
+
+
+A ride in the Central Park is an every-day matter to most people. It
+signifies an indolent bowling over a smooth road all alive with the
+glitter of passing equipages, waving ribbons and fluttering plumes, and
+brightened now and then by the sight of a well known face amid the
+general rush of old and young, plain and handsome, sad and gay
+countenances that flash by you in one long and brilliant procession.
+
+But to Paula and her friend Miss Stuyvesant starting out in the early
+freshness of a fair April morning, it meant new life, reawakening joy,
+the sparkle of young leaves just loosed from the bonds of winter, the
+sweetness and promise of spring airs, and all the budding glory of a new
+year with its summer of countless roses and its autumn of incalculable
+glories. Not the twitter of a bird was lost to them, not the smile of an
+opening flower, not the welcome of a waving branch. Youth, joy, and
+innocence lived in their hearts and showed them nothing in the mirror of
+nature that was not equally young, joyous and innocent. Then they were
+alone, or sufficiently so. The stray wanderers whom they met sitting
+under the flowering trees, were equally with themselves lovers of nature
+or they would not be seated in converse with it at this early hour;
+while the laugh of little children startled from their play by the
+prance of their high-stepping horses, was only another expression of the
+sweet but unexpressed delight that breathed in all the radiant
+atmosphere.
+
+"We are two birds who have escaped thralldom and are taking our first
+flight into our natural ether," cried Miss Stuyvesant gaily.
+
+"We are two pioneers lit by the spirit of adventure, who have left the
+cosy hearth of wintry-fires to explore the domains of the frost king,
+and lo, we have come upon a Paradise of bloom and color!" responded the
+ringing voice of Paula.
+
+"I feel as if I could mount that little white cloud we see over there,"
+continued Cicely with a quick lively wave of her whip. "I wonder how
+Dandy would enjoy an empyrean journey?"
+
+"From the haughty bend of his neck I should say he was quite satisfied
+with his present condition. But perhaps his chief pride is due to the
+mistress he carries."
+
+"Are you attempting to vie with Mr. Williams, Paula?"
+
+Mr. Williams was the meek-eyed, fair complexioned gentleman, whose
+predilection for compliment was just then a subject of talk in
+fashionable circles.
+
+"Only so far as my admiration goes of the most charming lady I see this
+morning. But who is this?"
+
+Miss Stuyvesant looked up. "Ah, that is some one with whom there is very
+little danger of your falling in love."
+
+Paula blushed. The gentleman approaching them upon horseback was
+conspicuous for long side whiskers of a decidedly auburn tinge.
+
+"His name is--" But she had not time to finish, for the gentleman with a
+glance of astonished delight at Paula, bowed to the speaker with a
+liveliness and grace that demanded some recognition.
+
+Instantly he drew rein. "Do I behold Miss Stuyvesant among the nymphs!"
+cried he, in those ringing pleasant tones that at once predispose you
+towards their possessor.
+
+"If you allude to my friend Miss Fairchild, you certainly do, Mr.
+Ensign," the wicked little lady rejoined with a waiving of her usual
+ceremony that astonished Paula.
+
+Mr. Ensign bestowed upon them his most courtly bow, but the flush that
+mounted to his brow--making his face one red, as certain of his friends
+were malicious enough to observe on similar occasions--indicated that he
+had been taken a little more at his word than perhaps suited even one of
+his easy and proverbially careless temperament. "Miss Fairchild will
+understand that I am not a Harvey Williams--at least before an
+introduction," said he with something like seriousness.
+
+But at this allusion to the gentleman whose name had been upon their
+lips but a moment before, both ladies laughed outright.
+
+"I have just been accused of attempting the role of that gentleman
+myself," exclaimed Paula. "If the fresh morning air will persist in
+painting such roses on ladies' cheeks," continued she, with a loving
+look at her pretty companion "what can one be expected to do?"
+
+"Admire," quoth the red bannered cavalier with a glance, however, at the
+beautiful speaker instead of the demure little Cicely at her side.
+
+Miss Stuyvesant perceived this look and a curious smile disturbed the
+corners of her rosy lips. "What a fortunate man to be able to do the
+right thing at the right time," laughed she, gaily touching up her horse
+that was beginning to show symptoms of restlessness.
+
+"If Miss Stuyvesant will put that in the future tense and then assure us
+she has been among the prophets, I should be singularly obliged," said
+he with a touch of his hat and a smiling look at Paula that was at once
+manly and gentle, careless and yet respectful.
+
+"Ah, life is too bright for prophesies this morning. The moment is
+enough."
+
+"Is it Miss Fairchild?" queried Mr. Ensign looking back over his
+shoulder.
+
+She turned just a bit of her cheek towards him. "What Miss Stuyvesant
+declares to be true, that am I bound to believe," said she, and with the
+least little ripple of a laugh, rode on.
+
+"It is a pity you have such a dislike for whiskers," Cicely presently
+remarked with an air of great gravity.
+
+Paula gave a start and cast a glance of reproach at her companion. "I
+did not notice his whiskers after the first word or two," said she,
+fixing her eyes on a turn of the road before them. "Such cheerfulness is
+infectious. I was merry before, but now I feel as if I had been bathed
+in sunshine."
+
+Cicely's eyes flashed wide with surprise and her face grew serious in
+earnest. "Mr. Ensign is a delightful companion," observed she; "a room
+is always brighter for his entrance; and with all that, he is the only
+young man I know, who having come into a large fortune, feels any of the
+responsibilities of his position. The sunshine is the result of a good
+heart and pure living, and that is what makes it infectious, I suppose."
+
+"Let us canter," said Paula. And so the glad young things swept on, life
+breaking in bubbles around them and rippling away into unfathomable
+wells of feeling in one of their pure hearts at least. Suddenly a hand
+seemed to swoop from heaven and dash them both back in dismay. They had
+reached one of those places where the foot path crosses the equestrian
+and they had run over and thrown down a little child.
+
+"O heaven!" cried Paula leaping from her horse, "I had rather been
+killed myself." The groom rode up and she bent anxiously over the child.
+
+It was a boy of some seven or eight years, whose misfortune--he was
+lame, as the little crutch fallen at his side sufficiently denoted--made
+appear much younger. He had been struck on his arm and was moaning with
+pain, but did not seem to be otherwise hurt. "Are you alone?" cried
+Paula, lifting his head on her arm and glancing hurriedly about.
+
+The little fellow raised his heavy lids and for a moment stared into her
+face with eyes so deeply blue and beautiful they almost startled her,
+then with an effort pointed down the path, saying,
+
+"Dad's over there in the long tunnel talking to some one. Tell him I got
+hurt. I want Dad."
+
+She gently lifted him to his feet and led him out of the road into the
+apparently deserted path where she made him sit down. "I am going to
+find his father," said Paula to Cicely, "I will be back in a moment."
+
+"But wait; you shall not go alone," authoritatively exclaimed that
+little damsel, leaping in her turn to the ground. "Where does he say his
+father is?"
+
+"In the tunnel, by which I suppose he means that long passage under the
+bridge over there."
+
+Holding up the skirts of their riding-habits in their trembling right
+hands, they hurried forward. Suddenly they both paused. A woman had
+crossed their path; a woman whom to look at but once was to remember
+with ghastly shrinking for a lifetime. She was wrapped in a long and
+ragged cloak, and her eyes, startling in their blackness, were fixed
+upon the pain-drawn countenance of the poor little hurt boy behind them,
+with a gleam whose feverish hatred and deep malignant enjoyment of his
+very evident sufferings, was like a revelation from the lowest pit to
+the two innocent-minded girls hastening forward on their errand of
+mercy.
+
+"Is he much hurt?" gasped the woman in an ineffectual effort to conceal
+the evil nature of her interest. "Do you think he will die?" with a
+shrill lingering emphasis on the last word as if she longed to roll it
+like a sweet morsel under her tongue.
+
+"Who are you?" asked Cicely, shrinking to one side with dilated eyes
+fixed on the woman's hardened countenance and the white, too white hand
+with which she had pointed as she spoke of the child.
+
+"Are you his mother?" queried Paula, paling at the thought but keeping
+her ground with an air of unconscious authority.
+
+"His mother!" shrieked the woman, hugging herself in her long cloak and
+laughing with fiendish sarcasm: "I look like his mother, don't I? His
+eyes--did you notice his eyes? they are just like mine, aren't they? and
+his body, poor weazen little thing, looks as if it had drawn sustenance
+from mine, don't it? His mother! O heaven!"
+
+Nothing like the suppressed force of this invocation seething as it was
+with the worst passions of a depraved human nature, had ever startled
+those ears before. Clasping Cicely by the hand, she called out to the
+groom behind them, "Guard that child as you would your life!" and then
+flashing upon the wretched creature before her with all the force of her
+aroused nature, she exclaimed, "If you are not his mother, move aside
+and let us pass, we are in search of assistance."
+
+For an instant the woman stood awe-struck before this vision of maidenly
+beauty and indignation, then she laughed and cried out with shrill
+emphasis:
+
+"When next you look like that, go to your mirror, and when you see the
+image it reflects, say to yourself, 'So once looked the woman who defied
+me in the Park!'"
+
+With a quick shudder and a feeling as if the noisome cloak of this
+degraded being had somehow been dropped upon her own fair and spotless
+shoulders, Paula clasped the hand of Cicely more tightly in her own, and
+rushed with her down the steps that led into the underground passage
+towards which they had been directed.
+
+There were but two persons in it when they entered. A short thickset man
+and another man of a slighter and more gentlemanly build. They were
+engaged in talking, and the latter was bringing down his right hand upon
+the palm of his left with a gesture almost foreign in its expressive
+energy.
+
+"I tell you," declared he, with a voice that while low, reverberated
+through the hollow vault above him with strange intensity, "I tell you
+I've got my grip on a certain rich man in this city, and if you will
+only wait, you shall see strange things. I don't know his name and I
+don't know his face, but I do know what he has done, and a thousand
+dollars down couldn't buy the knowledge of me."
+
+"But if you don't know his name and don't know his face, how in the name
+of all that's mischievous are you going to know your man?"
+
+"Leave that to me! If I once meet him and hear him talk, one more rich
+man goes down and one more poor devil goes up, or I've not the wit that
+starvation usually teaches."
+
+The nature of these sentences together with the various manifestations
+of interest with which they were received, had for a moment deterred the
+two girls in their hurried advance, but now they put away every thought
+save that of the poor little creature awaiting his Dad, and lifting up
+her voice, Paula said,
+
+"Are either of you the father of a little lame lad--"
+
+Instantly and before she could conclude, the taller of the two, who had
+also been the chief speaker in the above conversation, turned, and she
+saw his hand begrimed though it was with dirt and dark with many a
+disgraceful trick, go to his heart in a gesture too natural to be
+anything but involuntary.
+
+"Is he hurt?" gasped he, but in how different a tone from that of the
+woman who had used the same words a few minutes before. Then seeing that
+the persons who addressed him were ladies and one of them at least a
+very beautiful one, took off his hat with an easy action, that together
+with what they had heard, proved him to be one of that most dangerous
+class among us, a gentleman who has gone thoroughly and irretrievably to
+the bad.
+
+"I am afraid he is, sir," said Paula. "He was attempting to cross the
+road, and a horse advancing hurriedly, struck him." She had not courage
+to say her horse in face of the white and trembling dismay that seized
+him at these words.
+
+"Where is he?" cried he. "Where's my poor boy?" And he bounded up the
+steps, his hat still in his hand, his long unkempt locks flying, and his
+whole form expressive of the utmost alarm.
+
+"Down by the carriage road," called out Paula, finding it impossible for
+them to keep up with such haste.
+
+"But is he much injured?" cried a smooth voice at their side.
+
+They turned; it was the short thickset man who had been the other's
+companion in the conversation above recorded.
+
+"We trust not," answered Cicely; "his arm received the blow, and he
+suffers very much, but we hope it is not serious;" and they hurried on.
+
+They found the father seated on the grass holding the little fellow in
+his arms. The look on his once handsome but now thoroughly corrupt and
+dissipated face, made their hearts melt within them. However wicked he
+might be--and that sly treacherous eye, that false impudent lip, that
+settling of the whole face into the mould which Vice applies to all her
+votaries, left no doubt of his complete depravity--he dearly loved his
+child, and love, no matter how it is expressed, or in what garb it
+appears, is a sacred and beautiful thing, and ennobles for the time
+being any creature who displays it.
+
+"'Twas a hard knock up, Dad," came from the white lips of the child as
+he felt his father's trembling hand feel up and down his arm, "but I
+guess the 'little fellar' can stand it." "Little feller" was evidently
+the name by which his father was accustomed to address him.
+
+"There are no bones broken," said the father. "To be lame and maimed too
+would be--"
+
+He did not finish, for a delicately gloved hand was here laid on his
+sleeve, and a gentle voice whispered, "Money cannot pay for an injury
+like that, but please accept this;" and Paula thrust a purse into his
+hand.
+
+He clutched it eagerly, but at her next request that he should tell her
+where he lived that they might inquire after the boy, he shook his head
+with a return of his old emphasis.
+
+
+"The haunts of bats and jackals are not for ladies." Then as he caught
+sight of her pitiful face bending in farewell over the little urchin,
+some remembrance perhaps of the days when he had a right to stoop to the
+ear of beautiful women and walk unrebuked at their side, returned to him
+from the past, and respectfully lowering his voice, he asked her name.
+
+She gave it and he seemed to lay it away in his mind; then as the ladies
+turned to remount their horses, rose and began carrying the little
+fellow off. As he vanished in the turn of the path that led towards the
+main entrance, they perceived a tall dark figure arise from a seat in
+the distance and stand looking after him, with a leer on its face and a
+malicious hugging of itself in a long black cloak, that proclaimed her
+to be the same ominous being who had before so grievously startled them.
+
+
+
+
+XVI.
+
+THE SWORD OF DAMOCLES.
+
+    "And my imaginations are as foul
+    As Vulcan's smithy."
+
+    --HAMLET.
+
+    "Why, all the souls that were, were forfeit once;
+    And He that might the vantage best have took
+    Found out the remedy."
+
+    --MEASURE FOR MEASURE.
+
+
+Mrs. Sylvester reclining on the palest of blue couches, in the slanting
+sunlight of an April afternoon, is a study for a painter. Not that such
+inspiring loveliness breathed from her person, conspicuous as it was for
+its rich and indolent grace, but because in every attitude of her large
+and well formed limbs, in every raise of the thick white lids from eyes
+whose natural brightness was obscured by the mist of aimless fancies,
+she presented such an embodiment of luxurious ease, one might almost
+imagine they were gazing upon the favorite Sultana of some eastern
+court, or, to be for once poetical as the subject demands, a full blown
+Egyptian lotos floating in hushed enjoyment on the placid waters of its
+native stream. Indeed for all the blonde character of her beauty, there
+was certainly something oriental about the physique of this favored
+child of fortune. Had the tint of her skin been richened to a magnolia
+bloom instead of reminding you of that description accorded to the
+complexion of one of Napoleon's sisters, that it looked like white satin
+seen through pink glass, she would have passed in any Eastern market,
+for a rare specimen of Circassian beauty.
+
+But Mr. Sylvester coming home fatigued and harassed, cared little for
+Circassian beauties or Oriental odalisques. It was a welcome that he
+desired, and such refreshment as a quick eye and ready hand can bestow
+when guided by a tender and loving heart; or so thought the watchful
+Paula as she glided from her room at the sound of his step in the hall,
+and met him coming weary and disheartened from the side of Ona's couch.
+The sight of her revived him at once.
+
+"Well, little one, what have you been doing to-day?"
+
+Instantly a shade fell over her countenance. "I hardly know how to tell
+you. It has been a day of great experiences to me. I am literally shaken
+with them. I have been wanting to talk to Ona about what I have seen and
+heard, but thought I had best wait till you came home, for I could not
+repeat the story twice."
+
+"What! you look pale. Nothing has happened to frighten you I hope,"
+exclaimed he, leading her back to Ona's side, who stirred a little, and
+presently deigned to take an upright position.
+
+"I do not know if it is fear or horror," cried Paula, shuddering; "I
+have seen a fearful woman--But first I ought to tell you that I took a
+ride with Miss Stuyvesant in the Park this morning--"
+
+"Yes, and persisted in going for that lady on horseback instead of
+sending the groom after her, and all starting from the front of our
+house," murmured Mrs. Sylvester with lazy chagrin.
+
+Paula smiled, but otherwise took no notice of this standing topic of
+disagreement.
+
+"It was a beautiful day," she proceeded, "and we enjoyed it very much,
+but we were so unfortunate as to run over a little boy, at that place
+where the equestrian road crosses the foot path; a lame child, Mr.
+Sylvester, who could not get out of our way; poor too, with a ragged
+jacket on which seemed to make it all the worse."
+
+Ona gave a shrug with her white shoulders, that seemed to question this.
+"Did you injure him very much?" queried she, with a show of interest;
+not sufficient however to impair her curiosity as to the cut of one of
+her nails.
+
+"I cannot say; his little arm was struck, and when I went to pick him
+up, he lay back in my lap and moaned till I thought my heart would
+break. But that was not the worst that happened. As we went hurrying up
+the walk to find the child's father, we were met by a woman wrapped in a
+black cloak whose long and greasy folds seemed like the symbol of her
+own untold depravity. Her glance as she encountered the child writhing
+in pain at my feet, made my heart stand still. It was more than
+malignant, it was actually fiendish. 'Is he hurt?' she asked, and it
+seemed as if she gloated over the question; she evidently longed to hear
+that he was, longed to be told that he would die; and when I inquired if
+she was his mother, she broke into a string of laughter, that seemed to
+darken the daylight. 'His mother! O yes, we look alike, don't we!' she
+exclaimed, pointing with a mocking gesture frightful to see, first at
+his eyes which were very blue and beautiful, and then at her own which
+were dark as evil thoughts could make them. I never saw anything so
+dreadful. Malignancy! and towards a little lame child! what could be
+more horrible!"
+
+Mr. Sylvester and his wife exchanged looks, then the former asked, "Did
+she follow you, Paula?"
+
+"No; after telling me that I--But I cannot repeat what she said,"
+exclaimed the young girl with a quick shudder. "Since I came home," she
+musingly continued, "I have looked and looked at my face in the glass,
+but I cannot believe that what she declared is true. There is no
+similarity between us, could never have been any: I will not have it
+that she ever saw in all the days of her life such a picture as that in
+her glass." And with a sudden gesture Paula started up and pointed to
+herself as she stood reflected in one of the tall mirrors with which
+Ona's boudoir abounded.
+
+"And did she dare to make any comparison between you and her own
+degraded self?" exclaimed Mr. Sylvester, with a glance at the exquisite
+vision of pure girlhood thus doubly presented to his notice.
+
+"Yes, what I am, she was once, or so she said. And it may be true. I
+have never suffered sorrow or experienced wrong, and cannot measure
+their power to carve the human face with such lines as I beheld on that
+woman's countenance to-day. But do not let us talk of her any more. She
+left us at last, and we found the child's father. Mr. Sylvester," she
+suddenly asked, "are there to be found in this city, men occupying
+honorable positions and as such highly esteemed, who like Damocles of
+old, may be said to sit under the constant terror of a falling sword in
+the shape of some possible disclosure, that if made, would ruin their
+position before the world forever?"
+
+Mr. Sylvester started as if he had been shot. "Paula!" cried he, and
+instantly was silent again. He did not look at his wife, but if he had,
+he would have perceived that even her fair skin was capable of blanching
+to a yet more startling whiteness, and that her sleepy eyes could flash
+open with something like expression in their lazy depths.
+
+"I mean," dreamily continued Paula, absorbed in her own remembrance,
+"that if what we overheard said by the father of that child to-day is
+true, some one of our prominent men, whose life is not all it appears,
+is standing on the verge of possible exposure and shame; that a hound is
+on his track in the form of a starving man; and that sooner or later he
+will have to pay the price of an unprincipled creature's silence, or
+fall into public discredit like some others of whom we have lately
+read." Then as silence filled the room, she added, "It makes me tremble
+to think that a man of means and seeming honor should be placed in such
+a position, but worse still that we may know such a one and be ignorant
+of his misery and his shame."
+
+"It is getting time for me to dress," murmured Ona, sinking back on her
+pillow and speaking in her most languid tone of voice. "Could you not
+hasten your story a little Paula?"
+
+But Mr. Sylvester with a hurried glance at the closing eyes of his wife,
+requested on the contrary that she would explain herself more
+definitely. "Ona will pardon the delay," said he, with a set, strained
+politeness that called up the least little quiver of suppressed sarcasm
+about the rosy infantile lips that he evidently did not consider it
+worth his while to notice.
+
+"But that is all," said Paula. However she repeated as nearly as she
+could just what the boy's father had said. At the conclusion Mr.
+Sylvester rose.
+
+"What kind of a looking man was he?" said that gentleman as he crossed
+to the window.
+
+"Well, as nearly as I can describe, he was tall, dark and seedy, with a
+shock of black hair and a pair of black whiskers that floated on the
+wind as he walked. He was evidently of the order of decayed gentleman,
+and his manner of talking, especially in the profuse use he made of his
+arms and hands, was decidedly foreign. Yet his speech was pure and
+without accent."
+
+Mr. Sylvester's face as he asked the next question was comparatively
+cheerful. "Was the other man with whom he was talking, as dark and
+foreign as himself?"
+
+"O no, he was round and jovial, a little too insinuating perhaps, in his
+way of speaking to ladies, but otherwise a a well enough appearing man."
+
+Mr. Sylvester bowed and looked at his watch. (Why do gentlemen always
+consult their watches even in the face of the clock?) "Ona, you are
+right," said he, "it is time you were dressing for dinner." And
+concluding with a word or two of sympathy as to the peculiar nature of
+Paula's adventures as he called them, he hastened from the room and
+proceeded to his little refuge above.
+
+"He has not asked me what became of the child," thought Paula, with a
+certain pang of surprise. "I expected him to say, 'Shall we not try and
+see the little fellow, Paula?' if only to allow me to explain that the
+child's father would not tell me where they lived. But the later affair
+has evidently put the child out of his head. And indeed it is only
+natural that a business man should be more interested in such a fact as
+I have related, than in the sprained arm of a wretched creature's
+'little feller.'" And she turned to assist Ona, who had arisen from her
+couch and was now absorbed in the intricacies of an uncommonly elaborate
+toilet.
+
+"Those men did not mention any names?" suddenly queried that lady,
+looking with an expression of careful anxiety, at the twist of her back
+hair, in the small hand-mirror she held over her shoulder.
+
+"No," said Paula, dropping a red rose into the blonde locks she was so
+carefully arranging. "He expressly said he did not know the name of the
+person to whom he alluded. It was a strange conversation for me to
+overhear, was it not?" she remarked, happy to have interested her cousin
+in anything out of the domains of fashion.
+
+"I don't know--certainly--of course--" returned Mrs. Sylvester with some
+incoherence. "Do you think red looks as well with this black as the
+lavender would do?" she rambled on in her lightest tone, pulling out a
+box of feathers.
+
+Paula gave her a little wistful glance of disappointment and decided in
+favor of the lavender.
+
+"I am bound to look well to-night if I never do so again," said Ona.
+They were all going to a public reception at which a foreign lord was
+expected to be present. "How fortunate I am to have a perfect little
+hairdresser in my own family, without being obliged to send for some
+gossipy, fussy old Madame with her stories of how such and such a one
+looked when dressed for the Grand Duke's ball, or how Mrs. So and So
+always gave her more than her price because she rolled up puffs so
+exquisitely." And stopping to aid the deft girl in substituting the
+lavender feather for the red rose in her hair--she forgot to ask any
+more questions.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Ona," remarked her husband, coming into the room on his way down to
+dinner--Mrs. Sylvester never dined when she was going to any grand
+entertainment; it made her look flushed she said--"I am not in the habit
+of troubling you about your family matters, but have you heard from your
+father of late?"
+
+Mrs. Sylvester turned from her jewel-casket and calmly surveyed his
+face. It was fixed and formal, the face he turned to his servants and
+sometimes--to his wife. "No," said she, with a light little gesture as
+though she were speaking of the most trivial matter. "In one respect at
+least, papa is like an angel, his visits are few and far between."
+
+Mr. Sylvester's eye-brows drew heavily together. For a man with a smile
+of strange sweetness, he could sometimes look very forbidding. "_When_
+was he here last?" he inquired in a tone more commanding than he knew.
+
+She did not appear to resent it. "Let me see," mused she. "When was it I
+lost my diamond ear-ring? O I remember, it was on the eve of New Year's
+day a year ago; I recollect because I had to wear pearls with my garnet
+brocade," she pettishly sighed. "And papa came the next week, after you
+had given me the money for a new pair. I have reason to remember _that_,
+for not a dollar did he leave me."
+
+"Ona!" exclaimed her husband, shrinking back in uncontrollable surprise,
+while his eyes flashed inquiringly to her ears in which two noble
+diamonds were brilliantly shining.
+
+"O," she cried, just raising one snowy hand to those sparkling
+ornaments, while a faint blush, the existence of which he had sometimes
+doubted, swept over her careless face. "I was enabled to procure them in
+time; but for a whole two months I had to go without diamonds." She did
+not say that she had bartered her wedding jewels to make up the sum she
+needed, but he may have understood that without being told.
+
+"And that is the last time you have seen him?" He held her eyes with
+his, she could not look away.
+
+"The very last, sir; strange to say."
+
+His glance shifted from her face and he turned with a bow towards the
+door.
+
+"May I ask," she slowly inquired as he moved across the floor, "what is
+the reason of this sudden interest in poor papa?"
+
+"Certainly," said he, pausing and looking back, not without some emotion
+of pity in his glance. "I am sometimes struck with a sense of the duty I
+owe you, in helping you to bear the burden of certain secret
+responsibilities which I fear may sometimes prove too heavy for you."
+
+She gave a little rippling laugh that only sounded hollow to the image
+listening in the glass. "You choose strange times in which to be
+struck," said she, holding up two dresses for his inspection, with a
+lift of her brows evidently meant as an inquiry as to which he thought
+the most becoming.
+
+"Conscience is the chooser, not I," declared he, for once allowing
+himself to ignore the weighty question of dress thus propounded.
+
+His wife gave a little toss of her head and he left the room.
+
+"I should like Edward very much," murmured she in a burst of confidence
+to her own reflection in the glass, "if only he would not bother himself
+so much about that same disagreeable conscience."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"You look unhappy," said Mr. Sylvester to Paula as they came from the
+dining-room. "Have the adventures of the day made such an impression
+upon you that you will not be able to enjoy the evening's festivities?"
+
+She lifted her face and the quick smile came.
+
+"I do not like to see your brow so clouded," continued he, smoothing his
+own to meet her searching eye. "Smiles should sit on the lips of youth,
+or else why are they so rosy."
+
+"Would you have me smile in face of my first glimpse of wickedness,"
+asked she, but in a gentle tone that robbed her words of half their
+reproach. "You must remember that I have had but little experience with
+the world. I have lived all my life in a town of wholesome virtues, and
+while here I have been kept from contact with anything low or base. I
+have never known vice, and now all in a moment I feel as if I have been
+bathed in it."
+
+He took her by the hand and drew her gently towards him. "Does your
+whole being recoil so from evil, my Paula? What will you do in this
+wicked world? What will you say to the sinner when you meet him--as you
+must?"
+
+"I don't know; it's a problem I have never been brought to consider. I
+feel as if launched on a dismal sea for which I have neither chart nor
+compass. Life was so joyous to me this morning--" a flush swept over her
+cheek but he did not notice it--"I held, or seemed to hold, a cup of
+white wine in my hand, but suddenly as I looked at it, it turned black
+and--"
+
+Ah, the outreach, the dismal breaking away of thought into the
+unfathomable, that lies in the pause of an _and_!
+
+"And do you refuse to drink a cup across which has fallen a shadow,"
+murmured Mr. Sylvester, his eyes fixed on her face, "the inevitable
+shadow of that great mass of human frailty and woe which has been
+accumulating from the foundation of the world?"
+
+"No, no, I cannot, and retain my humanity. If there is such evil in the
+world, its pressure must drive it across the path of innocence."
+
+"And you accept the cup?"
+
+"I must; but oh, my vanished beliefs! This morning the wine of my life
+was pure and white, now it is black and befouled. What will make it
+clean again?"
+
+With a sigh Mr. Sylvester dropped her hand and turned towards the
+mantle-piece. It was April as I have said, and there was no fire in the
+grate, but he posed his foot on the fender and looked sadly down at the
+empty hearthstone.
+
+"Paula," said he after a space of pregnant silence, "it had to come. The
+veil of the temple must be rent in every life. Evil is too near us all
+for us to tread long upon the flowers without starting up the adders
+that hide beneath them. You had to have your first look into the cells
+of darkness, and perhaps it is best you had it here and now. The deeps
+are for men's eyes as well as the starry heavens."
+
+"Yes, yes."
+
+"There are some persons," he went on slowly, "you know them, who tread
+the ways of life with their eyelids closed to everything but the strip
+of velvet lawn on which they choose to walk. Earth's sighs and
+deep-drawn groans are nothing to them. The world may swing on in its way
+to perdition; so long as their pathway feels soft, they neither heed nor
+care. But you do not desire to be one of these, Paula! With your great
+soul and your strong heart, you would not ask to sit in a flowery maze,
+while the rest of the world went sliding on and down into wells of
+destruction, you might have made pools of healing by the touch of your
+womanly sympathy."
+
+"No, no."
+
+"I cannot tell you, I dare not tell you," he went on in a strange
+pleading voice that tore at the very roots of her heart, and rung in her
+memory forever, "what evil underlies the whole strata of life! At home
+and abroad, on our hearthstones and within our offices, the mocking
+devil sits. You can scarcely walk a block, my little one, without
+encountering a man or brushing against the dress of a woman across whose
+soul the black shadow lies heavier than any words of his or hers could
+tell. What the man you saw to-day, said of one unhappy being in this
+city, is true, God help us all, of many. Dark spots are easier acquired
+than blotted out, my Paula. In business as in society, one needs to
+carry the white shield of a noble purpose or a self-forgetting love, to
+escape the dripping of the deadly upas tree that branches above all
+humanity. I have walked its ways, my darling, and I know of what I
+speak. Your white robe is spotless but--"
+
+"O there is where the pain comes in," she cried; "there, just there, is
+where the dagger strikes. She says she was once like me. O, could any
+temptation, any suffering, any wrong or misfortune that might befall me,
+ever bring me to where she is! If it could--"
+
+"Paula!" This time his voice came authoritatively. "You are making too
+much of a frenzied woman's impulsive exclamation. To her darkened and
+despairing eyes any young woman of a similar style of beauty would have
+called forth the same remark. It was a sign that she was not entirely
+given up to evil, that she could remember her youth. Instead of feeling
+contaminated by her words, you ought to feel, that unconsciously to
+yourself, your fresh young countenance with its innocent eyes did an
+angel's work to-day. They made her recall what she was in the days of
+her own innocence; and who can tell what may follow such a
+recollection."
+
+"O Mr. Sylvester," said she, "you fill me with shame. If I could think
+that--"
+
+"You can, nothing appeals to the heart of crime like the glance of
+perfect innocence. If evil walks the world, God's ministers walk it
+also, and none can tell in what glance of the eye or what touch of the
+hand, that ministry will speak."
+
+It was her turn now to take his hand in hers. "O how good, how
+thoughtful you are; you have comforted me and you have taught me. I
+thank you very much."
+
+With a look she did not perceive, he drew his hand away. "I am glad I
+have helped you, Paula; there is but one thing more to say, and this I
+would emphasize with every saddened look you have ever met in all your
+life. Great sins make great sufferers. Side by side came the two
+dreadful powers of vice and retribution into the world, and side by side
+will they keep till they sink at last into the awful deeps of the
+bottomless pit. When you turn your back on a man who has committed a
+crime, one more door shuts in his darkened spirit."
+
+The tears were falling from Paula's eyes now. He looked at them with
+strange wistfulness and involuntarily his hand rose to her head,
+smoothing her locks with fatherly touches. "Do not think," said he,
+"that I would lessen by a hair's breadth your hatred of evil. I can more
+easily bear to see the shadow upon your cup of joy than upon the banner
+of truth you carry. These eyes must lose none of their inner light in
+glancing compassionately on your fellow-men. Only remember that divinity
+itself has stooped to rescue, and let the thought make your contact with
+weary, wicked-hearted humanity a little less trying and a little more
+hopeful to you. And now, my dear, that is enough of serious talk for
+to-day. We are bound for a reception, you know, and it is time we were
+dressing. Do you want me to tell you a secret?" asked he in a light
+mysterious tone, as he saw her eyes still filling.
+
+She glanced up with sudden interest.
+
+"I know it is treason," resumed he, "I am fully aware of the grave
+nature of my offence; but Paula I hate all public receptions, and shall
+only be able to enjoy myself to-night just so much as I see that you are
+doing so. Life has its dark portals and its bright ones. This is one
+that you must enter with your most brilliant smiles."
+
+"And they shall not be lacking," said she. "When a treasure-box of
+thought is given us, we do not open it and scatter its contents abroad,
+but lay it away where the heart keeps its secrets, to be opened in the
+hush of night when we are alone with our own souls and God."
+
+He smiled and she moved towards the door. "None the less do we carry
+with us wherever we go, the remembrance of our hidden treasure," she
+smilingly added, looking back upon him from the stair.
+
+And again as upon the first night of her entrance into the house, did he
+stand below and watch her as she softly went up, her lovely face
+flashing one moment against the dark background of the luxurious bronze,
+towering from the platform behind, then glowing with faint and fainter
+lustre, as the distance widened between them and she vanished in the
+regions above.
+
+She did not see the toss of his arm with which he threw off the burden
+that rested upon his soul.
+
+
+
+
+XVII.
+
+
+GRAVE AND GAY.
+
+     "No scandal about Queen Elizabeth I hope."
+
+     --SHERIDAN.
+
+     "Stands Scotland where it did?"
+
+     --MACBETH.
+
+
+"Who is that talking with Miss Stuyvesant?" asked Mr. Sylvester,
+approaching his wife during one of the lulls that will fall at times
+upon vast assemblies.
+
+Mrs. Sylvester followed the direction of his glance and immediately
+responded, "O that is Mr. Ensign, one of the best _partis_ of the
+season. He evidently knows where to pay his court."
+
+"I inquired because he has just requested me to honor him with a formal
+introduction to Paula."
+
+"Indeed! then oblige him by all means; it would be a great match for
+her. To say nothing of his wealth, he is _haut ton_, and his red
+whiskers will not look badly beside Paula's dark hair."
+
+Mr. Sylvester frowned, then sighed, but in a few minutes Paula observed
+him approaching with Mr. Ensign. At once her hitherto pale cheek
+flushed, but the young gentleman did not seem to object to that, and
+after the formal introduction which he had sought was over, he exclaimed
+in his own bright ringing tones,
+
+"The fates have surely forgotten their usual role of unpropitiousness. I
+did not dare hope to meet you here to-night, Miss Fairchild. Was the
+ride all that your fancy painted?"
+
+"O," said she, speaking very low and glancing around, "do not allude to
+it here. We had an adventure shortly after you parted from us."
+
+"An adventure! and no cavalier at your side! If I could but have known!
+Was it so serious?" he inquired in a moment, seeing her look grave.
+
+"Ask Miss Stuyvesant;" said she. "I cannot talk about it any more
+to-night. Besides the music carries off one's thoughts. It is like a
+joyous breeze that whirls away the thistle-down whether it will or no."
+
+
+He gave her a short quick look grave enough in its way, but responded
+with his usual graceful humor, "The thistle-down is too vicious a sprite
+to be beguiled away so easily. If I were to give my opinion on the
+subject, I should say there was method in its madness. If you have been
+brought up in the country, as I suspect from your remark, you must know
+that the white floating ball is not as harmless as it would lead you to
+imagine. It is a meddlesome nobody, that's what it is, and like some
+country gossips I know, launches forth from a pure love of mischief to
+establish his prickers in his neighbor's field."
+
+"_His!_ I thought it must be feminine at least to fulfill the conditions
+you mention. A male gossip, O fie! I shall never have patience with a
+thistle-ball after this."
+
+"Well," laughed he, "I did start with the intention of making it
+feminine, but I caught a glimpse of your eyes and lost my courage. I did
+what I could," added he with a mirthful glance.
+
+"So do the thistles," cried she. Then while both voices joined in a
+merry laugh, she continued, "But where have we strayed? For a moment it
+seemed as if we were on the hills at Grotewell; I could almost see the
+blue sky."
+
+"And I," said he, with his eyes on her face.
+
+"I am sure the brooks bubbled."
+
+"I distinctly heard a bird singing."
+
+"It was a whippowill."
+
+"But my name is Clarence?"
+
+And here both being young and without a care in the world, they laughed
+again. And the crowded perfumed room seemed to freshen as with a whiff
+of mountain air.
+
+"You love the country, Miss Fairchild?"
+
+"Yes;" and her smile was the reflection of the summer-lands that arose
+before her at the word. "With the right side of my heart do I love the
+spot where nature speaks and man is dumb."
+
+"And with the left?"
+
+"I love the place where great men congregate to face their destiny and
+control it."
+
+"The latter is the deeper love," said he.
+
+She nodded her head and then said, "I need both to make me happy.
+Sometimes as I walk these city streets, I feel as if my very longing to
+escape to the heart of the hills, would carry me there. I remember when
+I was a child, I was one day running through a meadow, when suddenly a
+whole flock of birds flew up from the grass and surrounded my head. I
+was not sure but what I should be caught up and carried away by the
+force of their flight; and when they rose to mid heaven, something in my
+breast seemed to follow them. So it is often with me here, only that it
+is the rush of my thoughts that threatens such a Hegira. Yet if I were
+to be transported to my native hills, I know I should long to be back
+again."
+
+"The mountain lassie has wandered into the courts of the king. The
+perfume of palaces is not easily forgotten."
+
+Her eye turned towards Mr. Sylvester standing near them upright and
+firm, talking to a group of attentive gentlemen every one of whom
+boasted a name of more than local celebrity. "Without a royal heart to
+govern, there would be no palace;" said she, and blushed under a sudden
+sense of the possible interpretation he might give to her words, till
+the rose in her hand looked pallid.
+
+But he had followed her glance and understood her better than she
+thought. "And Mr. Sylvester has such a heart, so a hundred good fellows
+have told me. You are fortunate to see the city from the loop-hole of
+such a home as his."
+
+"It is more than a loop-hole," said she.
+
+"Of that I shall never be satisfied till I see it?"
+
+And being content with the look he received, he took her on his arm and
+led her into the midst of the dancers.
+
+Meanwhile in a certain corner not far off, two gentlemen were talking.
+
+"Sylvester shows off well to-night."
+
+"He always does. With such a figure as that, a man needs but to enter a
+room to make himself felt. But then he's a good talker too. Ever heard
+him speak?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Fine voice, true snap, right ring. Great favorite at elections. The
+fact is, Sylvester is a remarkable man."
+
+"Hum, ha, so I should judge."
+
+"And so fortunate! He has never been known to run foul in a great
+operation. Put your money in his hand and whew!--your fortune is as good
+as made."
+
+The other, a rich man, connected heavily with the mining business in
+Colorado, smiled with that bland overflow of the whole countenance which
+is sometimes seen in large men of great self-importance.
+
+"It's a pity he's gone out of Wall Street," continued his companion.
+"The younger fry feel now something like a flock of sheep that has lost
+its bell-wether."
+
+"They straggle--eh?" returned his portly friend with an increase of his
+smile that was not altogether pleasant. "So Sylvester has left Wall
+Street?"
+
+"He closed his last enterprise two weeks before accepting the Presidency
+of the Madison Bank. Stuyvesant is down on speculation, and well--It
+looks better you know; the Madison Bank is an old institution, and
+Sylvester is ambitious. There'll be no reckless handling of funds
+_there_."
+
+"No!" What was there in that _no_ that made the other look up? "I'm not
+acquainted with Sylvester myself. Has he much family?"
+
+"A wife--there she is, that handsome woman talking with Ditman,--and a
+daughter, niece or somebody who just now is setting all our young
+scapegraces by the ears. You can see her if you just crane your neck a
+little."
+
+"Humph, ha, very pretty, very pretty. How much do you suppose Mrs.
+Sylvester is worth as she stands, diamonds you know, and all that?"
+
+"Well I should say some where near ten thousand; that sprig in her hair
+cost a clean five."
+
+"So, so. They live in a handsome house I suppose?"
+
+"A regular palace, corner of Fifth Avenue and ----"
+
+"All his?"
+
+"Nobody's else I reckon."
+
+"Sports horses and carriage I suppose?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+"Yacht, opera box?"
+
+"No reason why he shouldn't."
+
+"What is his salary?"
+
+"A nominal sum, five or ten thousand perhaps."
+
+"Owns good share of the bank's stock I presume?"
+
+"Enough to control it."
+
+"Below par though?"
+
+"A trifle, going up, however."
+
+"And _don't_ speculate?"
+
+The way this man drawled his words was excessively disagreeable.
+
+"Not that any one knows of. He's made his fortune and now asks only to
+enjoy it."
+
+The man from the West strutted back and looked at his companion
+knowingly. "What do you think of my judgment, Stadler?"
+
+"None better this side of the Pacific."
+
+"Pretty good at spying out cracks, eh?"
+
+"I wouldn't like to undertake the puttying up that would deceive you."
+
+"Humph! Well then, mark this. In two months from to-day you will see Mr.
+Sylvester rent his house and go south for his health, or the pretty one
+over there will marry one of the scapegraces you mention, who will lend
+the man _who don't engage in any further ventures_, more than one or two
+hundred thousand dollars."
+
+"Ha, you know something."
+
+"I own mines in Colorado and I have my points."
+
+"And Mr. Sylvester?"
+
+"Will find them too sharp for him."
+
+And having made his joke, he yielded to the other's apparent
+restlessness, and they sauntered off.
+
+They did not observe a pale, demure, little lady that sat near them
+abstractedly nodding her dainty head to the remarks of a pale-whiskered
+youth at her side, nor notice the emotion with which she suddenly rose
+at their departure and dismissed her chattering companion on some
+impromptu errand. It was only one of the ordinary group of dancers, a
+pretty, plainly dressed girl, but her name was Stuyvesant.
+
+Rising with a decision that gave a very attractive color to her cheeks,
+she hastily looked around. A trio of young gentlemen started towards her
+but she gave them no encouragement; her eye had detected Mr. Sylvester's
+tall figure a few feet off and it was to him she desired to speak. But
+at her first movement in his direction, her glance encountered another
+face, and like a stream that melts into a rushing torrent, her purpose
+seemed to vanish, leaving her quivering with a new emotion of so vivid a
+character she involuntarily looked about her for a refuge.
+
+But in another instant her eyes had again sought the countenance that
+had so moved her, and finding it bent upon her own, faltered a little
+and unconsciously allowed the lilies she was carrying to drop from her
+hand. Before she realized her loss, the face before her had vanished,
+and with it something of her hesitation and alarm.
+
+With a hasty action she drew near Mr. Sylvester. "Will you lend me your
+arm for a minute?" she asked, with her usual appealing look rendered
+doubly forcible by the experience of a moment before.
+
+"Miss Stuyvesant! I am happy to see you."
+
+Never had his face looked more cheerful she thought, never had his smile
+struck her more pleasantly.
+
+"A little talk with a little girl will not hinder you too much, will
+it?" she queried, glancing at the group of gentlemen that had shrunk
+back at her approach.
+
+"Do you call that hindrance which relieves one from listening to
+quotations of bank stock at an evening reception?"
+
+She shook her head with a confused movement, and led him up before a
+stand of flowering exotics.
+
+"I want to tell you something," she said eagerly but with a marked
+timidity also, the tall form beside her looked so imposing for all its
+encouraging bend. "I beg your pardon if I am doing wrong, but papa
+regards you with such esteem and--Mr. Sylvester do you know a man by the
+name of Stadler?"
+
+Astonished at such a question from lips so young and dainty, he turned
+and surveyed her for a moment with quick surprise. Something in her
+aspect struck him. He answered at once and without circumlocution. "Yes,
+if you refer to that spry keen-faced man, just entering the
+supper-room."
+
+"Do you know his companion?" she proceeded; "the portly, highly
+pompous-looking gentleman with the gold eye-glasses? Look quickly."
+
+"No." There was an uneasiness in his tone however that struck her
+painfully.
+
+"He is a stranger in town; has not the honor of your acquaintance he
+says, but from the questions he asked, I judge he has a great interest
+in your affairs. He spoke of being connected with mines in Colorado. I
+was sitting behind a curtain and overheard what was said."
+
+Mr. Sylvester turned pale and regarded her attentively. "Might I be so
+bold," he inquired after a moment, "as to ask you what that was?"
+
+"Yes, sir, certainly, but it is even harder for me to repeat than it was
+for me to hear. He inquired about your domestic concerns, your home and
+your income," she murmured blushing; "and then said, in what I thought
+was a somewhat exulting tone, that in two months or so we should see you
+go South for your health or--Is not that enough for me to tell you, Mr.
+Sylvester?"
+
+He gave her a short stare, opened his lips as if to speak, then turned
+abruptly aside and began picking mechanically at the blossoms before
+him.
+
+"I, of course, do not know what men mean when they talk of possessing
+points. But the leer and side glance which accompanies such talk, have a
+universal language we all understand, and I felt that I must warn you of
+that man's malice if only because papa regards you so highly."
+
+He shrank as if touched on a sore place, but bowed and answered the
+wistful appeal of her glance with a shadow of his usual smile, then he
+turned, and looking towards the door through which the two men had
+disappeared, made a movement as if he would follow. But remembering
+himself, escorted her to a seat, saying as he did so:
+
+"You are very kind, Miss Stuyvesant; please say nothing of this to
+Paula."
+
+She bowed and a flitting smile crossed her upturned countenance. "I am
+not much of a gossip, Mr. Sylvester, or I should have been tempted to
+have carried my information to my father instead of to you."
+
+He understood the implied promise in this remark and gave the hand on
+his arm a quick pressure, before relinquishing her to the care of the
+pale-complexioned youth who by this time had returned to her side.
+
+In another moment Paula came up on the arm of a black-whiskered
+gentleman all shirt front and eye-glasses. "O Cicely," she cried, (she
+called Miss Stuyvesant, Cicely now) "is it not a delightful evening?"
+
+"Are you enjoying yourself so much?" inquired that somewhat agitated
+little lady, with a glance at the countenance of her friend's attendant.
+
+"I fear it would scarcely seem consistent in me now to say no," returned
+the radiant girl, with a laughing glance towards the same gentleman.
+
+But when they were alone, the gentleman having departed on some of the
+innumerable errands with which ladies seem to delight in afflicting
+their attendant cavaliers at balls or receptions, she atoned for that
+glance by remarking,
+
+"I do not find the average partner that falls to one's lot in such
+receptions all that fancy paints." And then finding she had repeated a
+phrase of Mr. Ensign's, blushed, though no one stood near her but
+Cicely.
+
+"Fancy's brush would need to be dipped in but two colors to present to
+our eye the mass of them," was Cicely's laughing reply. "A streak of
+black for the coat, and a daub of white for the shirt front. _Voila
+tout._"
+
+"With perhaps a dash of red in some cases," murmured a voice over their
+shoulders.
+
+They turned with hurried blushes. "Ah, Mr. Ensign," quoth Cicely in
+unabashed gaiety, "we reserve red for the exceptions. We did not intend
+to include our acknowledged friends in our somewhat sweeping assertion."
+
+"Ah, I see, the black streak and the white daub are a symbol of,
+'Er--Miss Stuyvesant--very warm this evening! Have an ice, do. _I_
+always have an ice after dancing; so refreshing, you know.'"
+
+The manner in which he imitated the usual languid drawl of certain of
+the young scapegraces heretofore mentioned, was irresistible. Paula
+forgot her confusion in her mirth.
+
+"You are blessed with a capacity for playing both roles, I perceive,"
+cried Cicely with unusual abandon. "Well, it is convenient, there is
+nothing like scope."
+
+"Unless it is hope," whispered Mr. Ensign so low that only Paula could
+hear.
+
+"But I warn you," continued Cicely, with a sweet soft laugh that seemed
+to carry her heart far out into the passing throng, "that we have no
+fondness for the model beau of the period. A dish of milk makes a very
+good supper but it looks decidedly pale on the dinner table."
+
+"Yes," said Paula, eying the various young men that filed up and down
+before them, some pale, some dark, some handsome, some plain, but all
+smiling and dapper, if not debonair, "some men could be endured if only
+they were not _men_."
+
+Mr. Ensign gave her a quick look, and while he laughed at the paradox,
+straightened himself like one who could be a man if the occasion called.
+She saw the action and blushed.
+
+But their conversation was soon interrupted. Mr. Sylvester was seen
+returning from the supper-room, looking decidedly anxious, and while
+Paula was ignorant of what had transpired to annoy him, her ready spirit
+caught the alarm, and she was about to rush up to him and address him,
+when one of the waiters approached, and murmuring a few words she did
+not hear, handed him a card upon which she descried nothing but a simple
+circle. Instantly a change crossed his already agitated countenance, and
+advancing to the ladies with a word or two that while seemingly
+cheerful, struck Paula as somewhat forced, excused himself with the
+information that a business friend had been so inconsiderate as to
+importune him for an interview in the hall. And with just a nod towards
+Mr. Ensign, who had drawn back at his advance, left them and disappeared
+in the crowd about the door.
+
+"I do not like these interruptions from business friends in a time of
+pleasure," cried Paula, looking after him with anxious eyes. "Did you
+notice how agitated he seemed, Cicely? And half an hour ago he was the
+picture of calm enjoyment."
+
+"Business is beyond our comprehension, Paula," returned her friend
+evasively. "It is something like a neuralgic twinge, it takes a man when
+he least expects it. Have you told Mr. Ensign of our adventure?"
+
+"No, but I informed Mr. Sylvester, and he said such good, true words to
+me, Cicely. I can never forget them."
+
+"And I told papa; but he only frowned and made some observation about
+the degeneracy of the times, and the number of scamps thrown to the top
+by the modern methods of acquiring instantaneous fortunes."
+
+"Your papa is sometimes hard, is he not, Cicely?"
+
+With a flush Miss Stuyvesant allowed her eye to rest for a moment on the
+crowd shifting before her. "He was dug from a quarry of granite, Paula.
+He is both hard and substantial; capable of being hewn but not of being
+moulded. Of such stuff are formed monuments of enduring beauty and
+solidity. You must do papa justice."
+
+"I do, but I sometimes have a feeling as if the granite column would
+fall and crush me, Cicely."
+
+"You, Paula?"
+
+Before she could again reply, Mr. Sylvester returned. His face was still
+pale, but it had acquired an expression of rigidity even more alarming
+to Paula than its previous aspect of forced merriment. Lifting her by
+the hand, he drew her apart.
+
+"I shall have to leave you somewhat abruptly," said he. "An important
+matter demands my instant attention. Bertram is somewhere here, and will
+see that you and Ona arrive home in safety. You won't allow your
+enjoyment to be clouded by my hasty departure, will you?"
+
+"Not if it will make you anxious. But I would rather go home with you
+now. I am sure Cousin Ona would be willing."
+
+"But I am not going home at present," said he; and she ventured upon no
+further remonstrance.
+
+But her enjoyment was clouded; the sight of suffering or anxiety on that
+face was more than she could bear; and ere long she said good-night to
+Cicely, and accepting the arm of Mr. Ensign, who was never very far from
+her side, proceeded to search for her cousin.
+
+She found her standing in the midst of an admiring throng to whom her
+diamonds, if not her smiles, were an object of undoubted interest. She
+was in the full tide of one of her longest and most widely rambling
+speeches, and to Paula, with that stir of anxiety at her breast, was an
+image of self-satisfied complacency from which she was fain to drop her
+eyes.
+
+"Mrs. Sylvester shares the honors with her husband," remarked Mr. Ensign
+as they drew near.
+
+"But not the trials, or the pain, or the care?" was Paula's inward
+comment.
+
+Mrs. Sylvester was not easily wooed away from a circle in which she
+found herself creating such an impression, but at length she yielded to
+Paula's importunities, and consented to accept young Mr. Sylvester's
+attendance to their home. The next thing was to find Bertram. Mr. Ensign
+engaged to do this. Leaving Paula with her cousin, who may or may not
+have been pleased at this sudden addition to her circle, he sought for
+the young man who as Mr. Mandeville was not unknown to any of the
+fashionable men and women of the day. It was no easy task, nor did he
+find him readily, but at last he came upon him leaning out of a window
+and gazing at a white lily which he held in his hand. Without preamble,
+Mr. Ensign made known his errand, and Bertram at once prepared to
+accompany him back to the ladies.
+
+"By Jove! I didn't know the fellow was so handsome!" thought the former,
+and frowned he hardly knew why. Bertram was not handsome, but then
+Clarence Ensign was plain, which Bertram certainly was not.
+
+It was to Mr. Ensign's face however that Paula's eyes turned as the two
+came up, and he with the ready vivacity of his natural temperament
+observed it, and took courage.
+
+"I shall soon wish to measure that loop-hole of which I have spoken,"
+said he.
+
+And the soft look in her large dark eye as she responded, "It is always
+open to friends," filled up the measure of his cup of happiness; a cup
+which unlike hers, had not been darkened that day by the falling of
+earth's most dismal shadows.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+IN THE NIGHT WATCHES.
+
+     "Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn?"
+
+
+     --HEN. IV.
+
+     "What doth gravity out of his bed at midnight?"
+
+     --HEN. IV.
+
+
+"It has been the most delightful evening I have ever passed," said Mrs.
+Sylvester, as she threw aside her rich white mantle in her ample
+boudoir. "Sarah, two loops on that dolman to-morrow; do you hear? I
+thought my arms would freeze. Such an elegant gentleman as the Count de
+Frassac is! He absolutely went wild over you, Paula, but not
+understanding a word of English--O there, if that horrid little wretch
+didn't drop his spoon on my dress after all! He swore it never touched a
+thread of it, but just look at that spot, right in the middle of a
+pleating too. Paula, your opinion in regard to the lavendar was correct.
+I heard Mrs. Forsyth Jones whisper behind my back that lavendar always
+made blondes look _fade_. Of course I needed no further evidence to
+convince me that I had entirely succeeded in eclipsing her pale-faced
+daughter. Her daughter!" and the lazy gurgle echoed softly through the
+room, "As if every white-haired girl in the city considered herself
+entitled to be called a blonde!" She stopped to listen, examining
+herself in the glass near by. "I thought I heard Edward. It was very
+provoking in him to leave us in the cavalier manner in which he did. I
+was just going to introduce him to the count, not that he would have
+esteemed it much of an honor, Edward I mean, but when one has a
+good-looking husband--Sarah, that curtain over there hangs crooked, pull
+it straight this instant. Did you try the oysters, Paula? They were
+perfection, I shall have to dismiss Lorenzo without ceremony and procure
+me a cook that can make an oyster fricassee. By the way did you
+notice--" and so on and on for five minutes additional. Presently she
+burst forth with--"I do believe I know what it is to be thoroughly
+satisfied at last. The consideration which one receives as the wife of
+the president of the Madison bank is certainly very gratifying. If I had
+known I would feel such a change in the social atmosphere, I would have
+advocated Edward's dropping speculation long ago. Beauty and wealth may
+help one up the social ladder, but only a settled position such as he
+has now obtained, can carry you safely over the top. I feel at last as
+if we had reached the pinnacle of my ambition and had seen the ladder by
+which we mounted thrown down behind us. If I get my costume from Worth
+in time, I shall give a German next month."
+
+Paula from her stand at the door--for some minutes she had been
+endeavoring to escape to her room--surveyed her cousin in wonder. She
+had never seen her look as she did at that moment. Any one who speaks
+from the heart, acquires a certain eloquence, and Ona for once was
+speaking from her heart. The unwonted emotion made her cheeks burn, and
+even her diamonds, ten thousand dollars worth as we have heard declared,
+were less brilliant than her eyes. Paula left her station on the
+door-sill and glided rapidly back to her side. "O Ona," said she, "if
+you would only look like that when--" she paused, what right had she to
+venture upon giving lessons to her benefactor.
+
+"When what?" inquired the other, subsiding at once into her naturally
+languid manner. Then with a total forgetfulness of the momentary
+curiosity that had prompted the question, held out her head to the
+attendant Sarah, with a command to be relieved of her ornaments. Paula
+sighed and hastened to her room. She could not bring herself to mention
+her anxiety in regard to the still absent master of the house, to this
+lazily-smiling thoroughly satisfied woman.
+
+But none the less did she herself sit up in the moonlight, listening
+with bended head for the sound of his step on the walk beneath. She
+could not sleep while he was absent; and yet the thoughts that disturbed
+her and kept her from her virgin pillow could not have been entirely for
+him, or why those wandering smiles that ever and anon passed flitting
+over her cheek, awakening the dimples that slumbered there, until she
+looked more like a dreamy picture of delight than a wakeful vision of
+apprehension. Not entirely for him--yet when somewhere towards three
+o'clock, she heard the long delayed step upon the stoop, she started up
+with eager eyes and a nervous gesture that sufficiently betrayed how
+intense was her interest in her benefactor's welfare and happiness. "If
+he goes to Ona's room it is all right," thought she; "but if he keeps on
+upstairs, I shall know that something is wrong and that he needs a
+comforter."
+
+He did not stop at Ona's room; and struck with alarm, Paula opened wide
+her door and was about to step out to meet him, when she caught a sight
+of his face, and started back. Here was no anxiety, that she could
+palliate! The very fact that he did not observe her slight form standing
+before him in the brilliant moonlight, proved that a woman's look or
+touch was not what he was in search of; and shrinking sensitively to one
+side, she sat down on the edge of her dainty bed, dropping her cheek
+into her hand with a weary troubled gesture from which all the delight
+had fled and only the apprehension remained. Suddenly she started
+alertly up; he was coming down again, this time with a gliding muffled
+tread. Sliding past her door, he descended to the floor below. She could
+hear the one weak stair in the heavy staircase creak, and--What! he has
+passed Ona's room, passed the bronze figure of Luxury on the platform
+beneath, is on his way to the front door, has opened it, shut it softly
+behind him and gone out again into the blank midnight streets. What did
+it mean? For a moment she thought she would run down and awaken Ona, but
+an involuntary remembrance of how those lazy eyes would open, stare
+peevishly and then shut again, stopped her on the threshold of her door;
+and sitting down again upon the side of her bed, she waited, this time
+with opened eyes eagerly staring before her, and quivering form that
+started at each and every sound that disturbed the silence of the great
+echoing house. At six o'clock she again rose; he had just re-entered and
+this time he stopped at Ona's room.
+
+
+
+
+XIX.
+
+A DAY AT THE BANK.
+
+    "There's a divinity that shapes our ends,
+    Rough-hew them how we will."
+
+    --HAMLET.
+
+
+There are days when the whole world seems to smile upon one without
+stint or reservation. Bertram Sylvester wending his way to the bank on
+the morning following the reception, was a cheerful sight to behold.
+Youth, health, hope spake in every lineament of his face and brightened
+every glance of his wide-awake eye. His new life was pleasant to him.
+Bach, Beethoven and Chopin were scarcely regretted now by the ambitious
+assistant cashier of the Madison Bank, with a friend in each of its
+directors and a something more than that in the popular president
+himself. Besides he had developed a talent for the business and was in
+the confidence of the cashier, a somewhat sickly man who more than once
+had found himself compelled to rely upon the rapidly maturing judgment
+of his young associate, in matters oftentimes of the utmost importance.
+The manner in which Bertram found himself able to respond to these
+various calls, convinced him that he had been correct in his opinion of
+his own nature, when he informed his uncle that music was his pleasure
+rather than his necessity.
+
+Entering the building by way of Pearl Street, he was about to open the
+door leading into the bank proper, when he heard a little piping voice
+at his side, and turning, confronted the janitor's baby daughter. She
+was a sweet and interesting child, and with his usual good nature
+Bertram at once stopped to give her a kiss.
+
+"I likes you," prattled she as he put her down again after lifting her
+up high over his head, "but I likes de oder one best."
+
+"I hope the other one duly appreciates your preference," laughed he, and
+was again on the point of entering the bank when he felt or thought he
+felt a hand laid on his arm. It was the janitor himself this time, a
+worthy man, greatly trusted in the bank, but possessed of such an
+extraordinary peculiarity in the way of a pair of protruding eyes, that
+his appearance was always attended by a shock.
+
+"Well, Hopgood, what is it?" cried Bertram, in his cheery tone.
+
+The janitor drew back and mercifully shifted his gaze from the young
+man's face. "Nothing sir; did I stop you? Beg pardon," he continued,
+half stammering, "I'm dreadful awkward sometimes." And with a nod he
+sidled off towards his little one whom he confusedly took up in his
+arms.
+
+Now Bertram was sure the man had touched him and that, too, with a very
+eager hand, but being late that morning and consequently in somewhat of
+a hurry, he did not stop to pursue the matter. Hastening into the Bank,
+he assisted the teller in opening the safe, that being his especial
+duty, and was taking out such papers as he himself required, when he was
+surprised to catch another sight of those same extraordinary organs of
+which I have just spoken, peering upon him from the door by which he had
+previously entered. They vanished as soon as he encountered them, but
+more than once during the morning he perceived them looking upon him
+from various quarters of the bank, till he felt himself growing
+seriously annoyed, and sending for the man, asked him what he meant by
+this unusual surveillance. The janitor seemed troubled, flushed
+painfully and fixed his eyes in manifest anxiety on the cashier who,
+engaged in some search of his own, was just handling over the tin boxes
+that lined the vault before them. Not till he had seen him shove them
+back into their place and leave the spot, did he venture upon his reply.
+"I'm sure, sir, I'm very sorry if I have annoyed you, but do you think
+Mr. Sylvester will be down at the usual hour?"
+
+"I know of no reason why he should not," returned Bertram.
+
+"I have something to say to him when he comes in," stammered the man,
+evidently taken aback by Bertram's look of surprise. "Will you be kind
+enough to ring the bell the first moment he seems to be at leisure? I
+don't know as it is a matter of any importance but--" He stopped,
+evidently putting a curb upon himself. "Can I rely on you, sir?"
+
+"Yes, certainly, I will tell my uncle when he comes in that you want to
+speak to him. He will doubtless send for you at once."
+
+The man looked embarrassed. "Excuse me, sir, but that's just what I'd
+rather you wouldn't do. Mr. Sylvester is always very busy and he might
+think I wished to annoy him about some matters of my own, sir, as indeed
+I have not been above doing at odd times. If you would ring when he
+comes in, that is all I ask."
+
+Bertram thought this a strange request, but seeing the man so anxious,
+gave the required promise, and the janitor hurried off. "Curious!"
+muttered Bertram. "Can anything be wrong?" And he glanced about him with
+some curiosity as he went to his desk. But every one was at his post as
+usual and the countenances of all were equally undisturbed.
+
+It was a busy morning and in the rush of various matters Bertram forgot
+the entire occurrence. But it was presently recalled to him by hearing
+some one remark, "Mr. Sylvester is late to-day," and looking up from
+some papers he was considering, he found it was a full hour after the
+time at which his uncle was in the habit of appearing. Just then he
+caught still another sight of the protruding eyes of Hopgood staring in
+upon him from the half-opened door at the end of the bank.
+
+"The fellow's getting impatient," thought he, and experienced a vague
+feeling of uneasiness.
+
+Another half hour passed. "What can have detained Mr. Sylvester?" cried
+Mr. Wheelock the cashier, hastily approaching Bertram.
+
+"There is to be an important meeting of the Directors to-day, and some
+of the gentlemen are already coming in. Mr. Sylvester is not accustomed
+to keep us waiting."
+
+"I don't know, I am sure," returned Bertram, remembering with an
+accession of uneasiness, the abruptness with which his uncle had left
+the entertainment the evening before.
+
+"Shall I telegraph to the house?"
+
+"No, that is not necessary. Besides Folger says he passed him on
+Broadway this morning."
+
+"Going down street with a valise in his hand," that gentlemen quietly
+put in. Folger was the teller. "He was looking very pale and didn't see
+me when I nodded."
+
+"What time was that?" asked Bertram.
+
+"About twelve; when I went out to lunch."
+
+A quick gasp sounded at their side, followed by a hurried cough.
+Turning, Bertram encountered for the fifth time the eyes of Hopgood. He
+had entered unperceived by the small door that separated the inner
+inclosure from the outer, and was now standing very close to them, eying
+with side-long looks the safe at their back, the faces of the gentleman
+speaking, yes, and even the countenances of the clerks, as they bent
+busily over their books.
+
+"Did you ring, sir?" asked he, catching Bertram's look of displeasure.
+
+"No."
+
+The man seemed to feel the rebuke implied in this short response, and
+ambled softly away. But in another moment he was stopped by Bertram.
+
+"What is the matter with you to-day, Hopgood? Can you have anything of
+real importance on your mind; anything connected with my uncle?"
+
+The janitor started, and looked almost frightened. "Be careful what you
+say," whispered he; then with a keen look at Mr. Wheelock just then on
+the point of entering the directors' room, he was turning to escape by
+the little door just mentioned, when it opened and Mr. Stuyvesant came
+in. With a look almost of terror the janitor recoiled, throwing himself
+as it were between the latter and the door of the safe; but recovering
+himself, surveyed the keen quiet visage of the veteran banker with a
+rolling of his great eyes absolutely painful to behold. Mr. Stuyvesant,
+who was somewhat absorbed in thought, did not appear to notice the
+agitation he had caused, and with just a hurried nod followed Mr.
+Wheelock into the Directors' room. Instantly the janitor drew himself up
+with an air of relief, and shortly glancing at the clock which lacked a
+few minutes yet of the time fixed for the meeting, slided hastily away
+from Bertram's detaining hand, and disappeared in the crowd without. In
+another moment Bertram saw him standing at the outer door, looking
+anxiously up and down the street.
+
+"Something _is_ wrong," murmured Bertram. "What?" And for a moment he
+felt half tempted to return Mr. Stuyvesant's friendly bow with a few
+words expressive of his uneasiness, but the emphasis with which Hopgood
+had murmured the words, "Be careful what you say," unconsciously
+deterred him, and concealing his nervousness as best he might, he
+entered the Directors' office.
+
+It was now time for the meeting to open, and the gentlemen were all
+seated around the low green baize table that occupied the centre of the
+room. Impatience was written on all their countenances. Mr. Stuyvesant
+especially was looking at the heavy gold watch in his hand, with a frown
+on his deeply wrinkled brow that did not add to its expression of
+benevolence. The empty seat at the head of the table stared upon Bertram
+uncompromisingly.
+
+"My wife gives a reception to-day," ventured one gentleman to his
+neighbor.
+
+"And I have an engagement at five that won't bear postponement."
+
+"Sylvester has always been on hand before."
+
+"We can't proceed without him," was the reply.
+
+Mr. Wheelock looked thoughtful.
+
+With a nod of his head towards such gentlemen as met his eye, Bertram
+hastened to a little cupboard devoted to the use of himself and uncle.
+Opening it, he looked within, took down a coat he saw hanging before
+him, and unconsciously uttered an exclamation. It was a dress-coat such
+as had been worn by Mr. Sylvester the evening before.
+
+"What does this mean! My uncle has been here!" were the words that
+sprang to his lips; but he subdued his impulse to speak, and hastily
+hanging up the coat, relocked the door. Proceeding at once to the outer
+room, he asked two or three of the clerks if they were sure Mr.
+Sylvester had not been in during the day. But they all returned an
+unequivocal "no," and that too with a certain stare of surprise that at
+once convinced him he was betraying his agitation too plainly.
+
+"I will telegraph whether Wheelock considers it necessary or not,"
+thought he, and was moving to summon a messenger boy when he caught
+sight of Hopgood slowly making his way in from the street. He was very
+pale and walked with his eyes fixed on the ground, ominously shaking his
+great head in a way that bespoke an inner struggle of no ordinary
+nature. Bertram at once sauntered out to meet him.
+
+"Hopgood," said he, "your evident anxiety is infectious. What has
+happened to make my uncle's detention a matter of such apparent import?
+If you do not wish to confide in me, his nephew almost his son, speak to
+Mr. Wheelock or to one of the directors, but don't keep anything to
+yourself which concerns his welfare or--What are you looking at?"
+
+The man was gazing as if fascinated at the keys in Bertram's hand.
+
+"Nothing sir, nothing. You must not detain me; I have nothing to say. I
+will wait ten minutes," he muttered to himself, glancing again at the
+clock. Suddenly he saw the various directors come filing out of the
+inner room, and darted for the second time from Bertram's detaining
+hand.
+
+"I hope nothing has happened to Mr. Sylvester," exclaimed one gentleman
+to another as they filed by.
+
+"If he were given to a loose ends' sort of business it would be another
+thing."
+
+"He looked exceedingly well at the reception last night," exclaimed
+another; "but in these days--"
+
+Suddenly there was a hush. A telegraph boy had just entered the door and
+was asking for Mr. Bertram Sylvester.
+
+"Here I am," said Bertram, hastily taking the envelope presented him.
+Slightly turning his back, he opened it. Instantly his face grew white
+as chalk.
+
+"Gentlemen," said he, "you will have to excuse my uncle to-day; a great
+misfortune has occurred to him." Then with a slow and horror-stricken
+movement, he looked about him and exclaimed, "_Mrs. Sylvester is dead_."
+
+A confused murmur at once arose, followed by a hurried rush; but of all
+the faces that flocked out of the bank, none wore such a look of blank
+and helpless astonishment as that of Hopgood the janitor, as with
+bulging eyes and nervously working hands, he slowly wended his way to
+the foot of the stairs and there sat down gazing into vacancy.
+
+
+
+
+XX.
+
+THE DREGS IN THE CUP.
+
+     "O eloquent, just and mightie death! whom none could advise,
+     thou hast persuaded; what none hath dared, thou hast done; and
+     whom all the world hath flattered, thou only hast cast out of
+     the world and despised: thou hast drawn together all the farre
+     stretched greatnesses; all the pride, crueltie and ambition of
+     man and covered it all over with these two narrow words, _Hic
+     jacet_."
+
+
+     --SIR WALTER RALEIGH.
+
+
+Bertram's hurried ring at his uncle's door was answered by Samuel the
+butler.
+
+"What is this I hear?" cried the young man, entering with considerable
+agitation, "Mrs. Sylvester dead?"
+
+"Yes sir," returned the old and trusty servant, with something like a
+sob in his voice. "She went out riding this morning behind a pair of
+borrowed horses--and being unused to Michael's way of driving, they ran
+away and she was thrown from the carriage and instantly killed."
+
+"And Miss Fairchild?"
+
+"She didn't go with her. Mrs. Sylvester was alone."
+
+"Horrible, horrible! Where is my uncle, can I see him?"
+
+"I don't know, sir," the man returned with a strange look of anxiety.
+"Mr. Sylvester is feeling very bad, sir. He has shut himself up in his
+room and none of his servants dare disturb him, sir."
+
+"I should, however, like him to know I am here. In what room shall I
+find him?"
+
+"In the little one, sir, at the top of the house. It has a curious lock
+on the door; you will know it by that."
+
+"Very well. Please be in the hall when I come down; I may want to give
+you some orders."
+
+The old servant bowed and Bertram hastened with hushed steps to ascend
+the stairs. At the first platform he paused. What is there in a house of
+death, of sudden death especially, that draws a veil of spectral
+unreality over each familiar object! Behind that door now inexorably
+closed before him, lay without doubt the shrouded form of her who but a
+few short hours before, had dazzled the eyes of men and made envious the
+hearts of women with her imposing beauty! No such quiet then reigned
+over the spot filled by her presence. As the vision of a dream returns,
+he saw her again in all her splendor. Never a brow in all the great hall
+shone more brightly beneath its sparkling diamonds; never a lip in the
+whole vast throng curled with more self-complacent pride, or melted into
+a more alluring smile, than that of her who now lay here, a marble image
+beneath the eye of day. It was as if a flowery field had split beneath
+the dancing foot of some laughing siren. One moment your gaze is upon
+the swaying voluptuous form, the half-shut beguiling eye, the white
+out-reaching arms upon whose satin surface a thousand loves seem
+perching; the next you stare horror-stricken upon the closing jaws of an
+awful pit, with the flash of something bright in your eyes, and the
+sense of a hideous noiseless rush in which earth and heaven appear to
+join, sink and be swallowed! Bertram felt his heart grow sick. Moving
+on, he passed the bronze image of Luxury lying half asleep on its bed of
+crumpled roses. Hideous mockery! What has luxury to do with death? She
+who was luxury itself has vanished from these halls. Shall the mute
+bronze go on smiling over its wine cup while she who was its prototype
+is carried by without a smile on the lips once so vermeil with pride and
+tropical languors!
+
+Arrived at the top of the house, Bertram knocked at the door with the
+strange lock, and uttering his own name, asked if there was anything he
+could do here or elsewhere to show his sympathy and desire to be of use
+in this great and sudden bereavement. There was no immediate reply and
+he began to fear he would be obliged to retire without seeing his uncle,
+when the door was slowly opened and Mr. Sylvester came out. Instantly
+Bertram understood the anxiety of the servant. Not only did Mr.
+Sylvester's countenance exhibit the usual traces of grief and horror
+incident to a sudden and awful calamity, but there were visible upon it
+the tokens of another and still more unfathomable emotion, a wild and
+paralyzed look that altered the very contour of his features, and made
+his face almost like that of a stranger.
+
+"Uncle, what is it?" sprang involuntarily to his lips. But Mr. Sylvester
+betraying by a sudden backward movement an instinctive desire to escape
+scrutiny, he bethought himself, and with hasty utterance offered some
+words of consolation that sounded strangely hollow and superficial in
+that dim and silent corridor. "Is there nothing I can do for you?" he
+finally asked.
+
+"Everything is being done," exclaimed his uncle in a strained and
+altered voice; "Robert is here." And a silence fell over the hall, that
+Bertram dared not break.
+
+"I have help for everything but--" He did not say what, it seemed as if
+something rose up in his throat that choked him.
+
+"Bertram," said he at last in a more natural tone, "come with me."
+
+He led him into an adjoining room and shut the door. It was a room from
+which the sunshine had not been excluded and it seemed as if they could
+both breathe more easily.
+
+"Sit down," said his uncle, pointing to a chair. The young man did so,
+but Mr. Sylvester remained standing. Then without preamble, "Have you
+seen her?"
+
+
+There was no grief in the question, only a quiet respect. Death clothes
+the most volatile with a garment of awe. Bertram slowly shook his head.
+"No," said he, "I came at once up stairs."
+
+"There is no mark on her white body, save the least little discolored
+dent here," continued his uncle, pointing calmly to his temple. "She had
+one moment of fear while the horses ran, and then--" He gave a quick
+shudder and advancing towards Bertram, laid his hand on his nephew's
+shoulder in such a way as to prevent him from turning his head.
+"Bertram," said he, "I have no son. If I were to call upon you to
+perform a son's work for me; to obey and ask no questions, would you
+comply?"
+
+"Can you ask?" sprang from the young man's lips; "you know that you have
+only to command for me to be proud to obey. Anything you can require
+will find me ready."
+
+The hand on his shoulder weighed heavier. "It seems a strange time to
+talk about business, Bertram, but necessity knows no law. There is a
+matter in which you can afford me great assistance if you will undertake
+to do immediately what I ask."
+
+"Can you doubt--"
+
+"Hush, it is this. On this paper you will find a name; below it a number
+of addresses. They are all of places down town and some of them not very
+reputable I fear. What I desire is for you to seek out the man whose
+name you here see, going to these very places after him, beginning with
+the first, and continuing down the list until you find him. When you
+come upon him, he will ask you for a card. Give him one on which you
+will scrawl before his eyes, a circle, so. It is a token which he should
+instantly understand. If he does, address him with freedom and tell him
+that your employer--you need make use of no names--re-demands the papers
+made over to him this morning. If he manifests surprise or is seen to
+hesitate, tell him your orders are imperative. If he declares ruin will
+follow, inform him that you are not to be frightened by words; that your
+employer is as fully aware of the position of affairs as he. Whatever he
+says, bring the papers."
+
+Bertram nodded his head and endeavored to rise, but his uncle's hand
+rested upon him too heavily.
+
+"He is a small man; you need have no dread of him physically. The sooner
+you find him and acquit yourself of your task, the better I shall be
+pleased." And then the hand lifted.
+
+On his way down stairs Bertram encountered Paula. She was standing in
+the hall and accosted him with a very trembling tone in her voice. All
+her questions were in regard to Mr. Sylvester.
+
+"Have you seen him?" she asked. "Does he speak--say anything? No one has
+heard him utter a word since he came in from down town and saw her lying
+there."
+
+"Yes, certainly; he spoke to me; he has been giving me some commissions
+to perform. I am on my way now to attend to them."
+
+She drew a deep breath. "O!" she cried, "would that he had a son, a
+daughter, a child, some one!"
+
+This exclamation following what had taken place above struck Bertram
+forcibly. "He has a son in me, Paula. Love as well as duty binds me to
+him. All that a child could do will I perform with pleasure. You can
+trust me for that."
+
+She threw him a glance of searching inquiry. "His need is greater than
+it seems," whispered she. "He was deeply troubled before this terrible
+accident occurred. I am afraid the arrow is poisoned that has made this
+dreadful wound. I cannot explain myself," she went on hurriedly, "but if
+you indeed regard him as a father, be ready with any comfort, any help,
+that affection can bestow, or his necessities require. Let me feel that
+he has near him some stay that will not yield to pressure."
+
+There was so much passion in this appeal that Bertram involuntarily
+bowed his head. "He has two friends," said he, "and here is my hand that
+I will never forsake him."
+
+"I do not need to offer mine," she returned, "He is great and good
+enough to do without my assistance." But nevertheless she gave her hand
+to Bertram and with a glow of her lip and eye that made her beauty,
+supreme at all times, something almost supernatural in its character.
+
+"I dared not tell him," she whispered to herself as the front door
+closed with the dull slow thud proper to a house of mourning. "I dare
+not tell any one, but--"
+
+What lay beyond that but?
+
+When Mr. Sylvester came in at six o'clock in the morning, Paula had
+risen from the bed on which she had been sitting, but not to make
+preparation for rest, for she could not rest. The vague shadow of some
+surrounding evil or threatened catastrophe was upon her, and though she
+forced herself to change her dress for a warmer and more suitable one,
+she did not otherwise break her vigil, though the necessity for it
+seemed to be at an end. It was a midwinter morning and the sun had not
+yet risen, so being chilly as well as restless, she began to pace the
+floor, stopping now and then to glance out of the window, in the hopes
+of detecting some signs of awakening day in the blank and solemn east.
+Suddenly as she was thus consulting the horizon, a light flashed up from
+below, and looking down upon the face of the extension that ran along at
+right angles to her window, she perceived that the shades were up in
+Mrs. Sylvester's boudoir. They had doubtless been left so the evening
+before, and Mr. Sylvester upon turning up the gas had failed to observe
+the fact. Instantly she felt her heart stand still, for the house being
+wide and the extension narrow, all that went on in that boudoir, or at
+least in that portion of it which Mr. Sylvester at present occupied, was
+easily observable from the window at which she stood; and that something
+was going on of a serious and important nature, was sufficiently evident
+from the expression of Mr. Sylvester's countenance. He was standing with
+his face bent towards some one seated out of sight, his wife
+undoubtedly, though what could have called her from her dreams--and was
+busily engaged in talking. The subject whatever it was, absorbed him
+completely. If Paula had allowed herself the thought, she would have
+described him as pleading and that with no ordinary vehemence. But
+suddenly while she gazed half fascinated and but little realizing what
+she was doing, he started back and a fierce change swept over his face,
+a certain incredulity, that presently gave way to a glance of horror and
+repugnance, which the quick action of his out-thrown palm sufficiently
+emphasized. He was pushing something from him, but what? A suggestion or
+a remembrance? It was impossible to determine.
+
+The countenance of Mrs. Sylvester who that moment appeared in sight
+sailing across the floor in her azure wrapper, offered but little
+assistance in the way of explanation. Immovable under most
+circumstances, it was simply at this juncture a trifle more calm and
+cold than usual, presenting to Paula's mind the thought of a white and
+icy barrier, against which the most glowing of arrows must fall chilled
+and powerless.
+
+"O for a woman's soul to inform that breast if but for a moment!" cried
+Paula, lost in the passion of this scene, while so little understanding
+its import. When as if in mockery to this invocation, the haughty form
+upon which she was gazing started rigidly erect, while the lip acquired
+a scorn and the eye a menace that betrayed the serpent ever in hiding
+under this white rose.
+
+Paula could look no longer. This last revelation had awakened her to the
+fact that she was gazing upon a scene sacred to the husband and wife
+engaged in it. With a sense of shame she rushed to the bed and threw
+herself upon it, but the vision of what she had beheld would not leave
+her so easily. Like letters of fire upon a black ground, the panorama of
+looks and gestures to which she had just been witness, floated before
+her mind's eye, awakening a train of thought so intense that she did not
+know which was worse, to be there in the awful dawn dreaming over this
+episode of the night, or to rise and face again the reality. The
+fascination which all forbidden sights insensibly exert over the minds
+of the best of us, finally prevailed, and she slowly crept to the window
+to catch a parting glimpse of Mr. Sylvester's tall form hurrying blindly
+from the boudoir followed by his wife's cold glance. The next minute the
+exposed condition of the room seemed to catch that lady's attention, and
+with an anxious look into the dull gray morn, Mrs. Sylvester drew down
+the shades, and the episode was over.
+
+Or so Paula thought; but when she was returning up stairs after her
+solitary breakfast--Mrs. Sylvester was too tired and Mr. Sylvester too
+much engaged to eat, as the attentive Samuel informed her--the door of
+Ona's room swung ajar, and she distinctly heard her give utterance to
+the following exclamation:
+
+"What! give up this elegant home, my horses and carriage, the friends I
+have had such difficulty in obtaining, and the position which I was born
+to adorn? I had rather die!" And Paula feeling as if she had received
+the key to the enigma of the last night's unaccountable manifestations,
+was about to rush away to her own apartment, when the door swayed open
+again and she heard his voice respond with hard and bitter emphasis,
+
+"And it might be better that you should. But since you will probably
+live, let it be according to your mind. I have not the courage--"
+
+There the door swung to.
+
+An hour from that Mr. Sylvester left the house with a small valise in
+his hand, and Mrs. Sylvester dressed in her showiest costume, entered
+her carriage for an early shopping excursion.
+
+And so when Paula whispered to herself, "I did not dare to tell him; I
+did not dare to tell any one, but--" she thought of those terrible
+words, "Die? It might be better, perhaps, that you should!" and then
+remembered the ghastly look of immeasurable horror with which a few
+hours later, he staggered away from that awful burden, whose rigid lines
+would never again melt into mocking curves, and to whom the morning's
+wide soaring hopes, high reaching ambitions and boundless luxuries were
+now no more than the shadows of a vanished world; life, love, longing,
+with all their demands, having dwindled to a noisome rest between four
+close planks, with darkness for its present portion and beyond--what?
+
+
+
+
+XXI.
+
+DEPARTURE.
+
+    "Forever and forever, farewell Cassius.
+    If we do meet again, why we shall smile;
+    If not, why then, this parting was well made."
+
+    --JULIUS CAESAR.
+
+
+Samuel had received his orders to admit Mr. Bertram Sylvester to his
+uncle's room, at whatever hour of the day or night he chose to make his
+appearance. But evening wore away and finally the night, before his
+well-known face was seen at the door. Proceeding at once to the
+apartment occupied by Mr. Sylvester, he anxiously knocked. The door was
+opened immediately.
+
+"Ah, Bertram, I have been expecting you all night." And from the haggard
+appearance of both men, it was evident that neither of them had slept.
+
+"I have sat down but twice since I left you, and then only in
+conveyances. I have been obliged to go to Brooklyn, to--"
+
+"But you have found him?"
+
+"Yes, I found him."
+
+His uncle glanced inquiringly at his hands; they were empty.
+
+"I shall have to sit down," said Bertram; his brow was very gloomy, his
+words came hesitatingly. "I had rather have knocked my head against the
+wall, than have disappointed you," he murmured after a moment's pause.
+"But when I did find him, it was too late."
+
+"Too late!" The tone in which this simple phrase was uttered was
+indescribable. Bertram slowly nodded his head.
+
+"He had already disposed of all the papers, and favorably," he said.
+
+"But--"
+
+"And not only that," pursued Bertram. "He had issued orders by
+telegraph, that it was impossible to countermand. It was at the Forty
+Second Street depot I found him at last. He was just on the point of
+starting for the west."
+
+"And has he gone?"
+
+"Yes sir."
+
+Mr. Sylvester walked slowly to the window. It was raining drearily
+without, but he did not notice the falling drops or raise his eyes to
+the leaden skies.
+
+"Did you meet any one?" he asked at length. "Any one that you know, I
+mean, or who knows you?"
+
+"No one but Mr. Stuyvesant."
+
+"Mr. Stuyvesant!"
+
+"Yes sir," returned Bertram, dropping his eyes before his uncle's
+astonished glance. "I was coming out of a house in Broad Street when he
+passed by and saw me, or at least I believed he saw me. There is no
+mistaking him, sir, for any one else; besides it is a custom of his I am
+told, to saunter through the down town streets after the warehouses are
+all closed for the night. He enjoys the quiet I suppose, finds food for
+reflection in the sleeping aspect of our great city." There was gloom in
+Bertram's tone; his uncle looked at him curiously.
+
+"What house was it from which you were coming when he passed you?"
+
+"A building where Tueller and Co. do business, shady operators in paper,
+as you know."
+
+"And you believed he recognized you?"
+
+"I cannot be sure, sir. It was dark, but I thought I saw him look at me
+and give a slight start."
+
+Ah, how desolate sounds the drip, drip of a ceaseless rain, when
+conversation languishes and the ear has time to listen!
+
+"I will explain to Mr. Stuyvesant when I see him, that you were in
+search of a man with whom I had pressing business," observed Mr.
+Sylvester at last.
+
+"No," murmured Bertram with effort, "it might emphasize the occurrence
+in his mind; let the matter drop where it is."
+
+There was another silence, during which the drip of the rain on the
+window-ledge struck on the young man's ears like the premonitory thud of
+falling earth upon a coffin-lid. At length his uncle turned and advanced
+rapidly towards him.
+
+"Bertram," said he, "you have done me a favor for which I thank you.
+What you have learned in the course of its accomplishment I cannot tell.
+Enough perhaps to make you understand why I warned you from the
+dangerous path of speculation, and set your feet in a way that if
+adhered to with steadfast purpose, ought to lead you at last to a safe
+and honorable prosperity. Now--No, Bertram," he bitterly interrupted
+himself as the other opened his lips, "I am in need of no especial
+commiseration, my affairs seem bound to prosper whether I will or
+not--now I have one more commission to give you. Miss Fairchild--" his
+voice quavered and he leaned heavily on the chair near which he was
+standing. "Have you seen her, Bertram? Is the poor child quite
+prostrated? Has this frightful occurrence made her ill, or does she bear
+up with fortitude under the shock of this sudden calamity?"
+
+"She is not ill, but her suffering is undoubted. If you could see her
+and say a few words to relieve her anxiety in regard to yourself, I
+think it would greatly comfort her. Her main thought seems to be for
+you, sir."
+
+Mr. Sylvester frowned, raised his hand with a repelling gesture, and
+hastily opened his lips. Bertram thought he was about to utter some
+passionate phrase. But instead of that he merely remarked, "I am sorry I
+cannot see her, but it is quite impossible. You must stand between me
+and this poor child, Bertram. Tell her I send her my love; tell her that
+I am quite well; anything to solace her and make these dark days less
+dreary. If she wants a friend with her, let a messenger be sent for
+whomever she desires. I place no restrictions upon anything you choose
+to do for her comfort or happiness, but let me be spared the sight of
+any other face than yours until this is all over. After the funeral--it
+nay sound ungracious, but I am far from feeling so--I shall wish to be
+left alone for awhile. If she can be made to understand this--"
+
+"I think her instincts, sir, have already led her to divine your wishes.
+If I am not mistaken, she is even now making preparations to return to
+her relatives."
+
+Mr. Sylvester gave a start. "What, so soon!" he murmured, and the
+sadness of his tone smote Bertram to the heart. But in another moment he
+recovered himself and shortly exclaimed, "Well! well! that is as it
+should be. You will watch over her Bertram, and see that she is kindly
+cared for. It would be a grief to me to have her go away with any more
+than the necessary regret at losing one who was always kind to _her_."
+
+"I will look after her as after a sister," returned Bertram. "She shall
+miss no attention which I can supply."
+
+With a look Mr. Sylvester expressed his thanks. Then while Bertram again
+attempted to speak, he gave him a cordial pressure of the hand, and
+withdrew once more to his favorite spot.
+
+And the rain beat, beat, and it sounded more and more like the droppings
+of earth upon a nailed down coffin-lid.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The funeral was a large one. The largest some said that had ever been
+seen in that quarter of the city. If Mrs. Sylvester's position had not
+been what it was, the sudden and awful nature of her death, would have
+been sufficient to draw together a large crowd. Among those who thus
+endeavored to show their respect was Miss Stuyvesant.
+
+"I could not join you here in your pleasures," she whispered to Paula in
+the short interview they had upstairs, preparatory to the services, "but
+I cannot keep away in the dark hours!" And from her look and the clasp
+of her hand, Paula gained fresh courage to endure the slow pressure of
+anxiety and grief with which she was secretly burdened.
+
+Moreover she had the pleasure of introducing her beloved friend to Mr.
+Bertram Sylvester, a pleasure which she had long promised herself
+whenever the opportunity should arrive, as Miss Stuyvesant was somewhat
+of an enthusiast as regards music. She did not notice particularly then,
+but she remembered afterwards, with what a blushing cheek and beautiful
+glance the dainty young girl received his bow, and responded to his few
+respectful words of pleasure at meeting the daughter of a man whom he
+had learned to regard with so much respect.
+
+Mr. Sylvester was in a room by himself. The few glimpses obtained of him
+by his friends, convinced them all, that this trouble touched him more
+deeply than those who knew his wife intimately could have supposed. Yet
+he was calm, and already wore that fixed look of rigidity which was
+henceforth to distinguish the expression of his fine and noble features.
+
+In the ride to Greenwood he spoke little. Paula who sat in the carriage
+with him did not receive a word, though now and then his eye wandered
+towards her with an expression that drove the blood to her heart, and
+made the whole day one awful memory of incomprehensible agony and dim
+but terrible forebodings. The ways of the human soul, in its crises of
+grief or remorse were so new to her. She had passed her life beside
+rippling streams and in peaceful meadows, and now all at once, with
+shadow on shadow, the dark pictures of life settled down before her, and
+she could not walk without stumbling upon jagged rocks, deep yawning
+chasms and caves of impenetrable gloom.
+
+The sight of the grave appalled her. To lay in such a bed as that, the
+fair and delicate head that had often found the downy pillows of its
+azure couch too hard for its languid pressure. To hide in such a dismal,
+deep, dark gap, a form so white and but a little while before, so
+imposing in its splendor and so commanding in its requirements. The
+thought of heaven brought no comfort. The beauty they had known lay
+here; soulless, inert, rigid and responseless, but here. It was gifted
+with no wings with which to rise. It owned no attachment to higher
+spheres. Death had scattered the leaves of this white rose, but from all
+the boundless mirror of the outspread heavens, no recovered semblance of
+its perfected beauty, looked forth to solace Paula or assuage the misery
+of her glance into this gloomy pit. Ah, Ona, the social ladder reaches
+high, but it does not scale the regions where your poor soul could find
+comfort now.
+
+Bertram saw the white look on Paula's face and silently offered his arm.
+But there are moments when no mortal help can aid us; instants when the
+soul stands as solitary in the universe, as the ship-wrecked mariner on
+a narrow strip of rock in a boundless sea. Life may touch, but eternity
+enfolds us; we are single before God and as such must stand or fall.
+
+Upon their return to the house, Mr. Sylvester withdrew with a few
+intimate friends to his room, and Paula, lonely beyond expression, went
+to her own empty apartment to finish packing her trunks and answer such
+notes as had arrived during her absence. For attention from outsiders
+was only too obtrusive. Many whom she had never met save in the most
+formal intercourse, flooded her now with expressions of condolence,
+which if they had not been all upon one pattern and that the most
+conventional, might have afforded her some relief. Two or three of the
+notes were precious to her and these she stowed safely away, one
+contained a deliberate offer of marriage from a wealthy old
+stock-broker; this she as deliberately burned after she had written a
+proper refusal. "He thinks I have no home," she murmured.
+
+And had she? As she paced through the silent halls and elaborately
+furnished rooms on her way to her solitary dinner, she asked herself if
+any place would ever seem like home after this. Not that she was
+infatuated by its elegance. The lofty walls might dwindle, the gorgeous
+furniture grow dim, the works of beauty disappear, the whole towering
+structure contract to the dimensions of a simple cottage or what was
+worse, a seedy down-town house, if only the something would remain, the
+something that made return to Grotewell seem like the bending back of a
+towering stalk to the ground from which it had taken its root. "If?" she
+cried--and stopped there, her heart swelling she knew not why. Then
+again, "I thought I had found a father!" Then after a longer pause, a
+wild uncontrollable; "Bless! bless! bless!" which seemed to re-echo in
+the room long after her lingering step had left it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Will he let me go without a word?"
+
+It was early morning and the time had come for Paula's departure. She
+was standing on the threshold of her room, her hands clasped, her eyes
+roving up and down the empty halls. "Will he let me go without a word?"
+
+"O Miss Paula, what do you think?" cried Sarah, creeping slowly towards
+her from the spectral recesses of a dim corner. "Jane says Mr. Sylvester
+was up all last night too. She heard him go down stairs about midnight
+and he went through all the rooms like a gliding spectre and into _her_
+room too!" she fearfully whispered; "and what he did there no one knows,
+but when he came out he locked the door, and this morning the cook heard
+him give orders to Samuel to have the trunks that were ready in Mrs.
+Sylvester's room taken away. O Miss, do you think he can be going to
+give all those beautiful things to you?"
+
+Paula recoiled in horror. "Sarah!" said she, and could say no more. The
+vision of that tall form gliding through the desolate house at midnight,
+bending over the soulless finery of his dead wife, perhaps stowing it
+away in boxes, came with too powerful a suggestion to her mind.
+
+"Shure, I thought you would be pleased," murmured the girl and
+disappeared again into one of the dim recesses.
+
+"Will he let me go without a word?"
+
+"Miss Paula, Mr. Bertram Sylvester is waiting at the door in a
+carriage," came in low respectful tones to her ears, and Samuel's face
+full of regret appeared at the top of the stairs.
+
+"I am coming," murmured the sad-hearted girl, and with a sob which she
+could not control, she took her last look of the pretty pink chamber in
+which she had dreamed so many dreams of youthful delight, and perhaps of
+youthful sorrow also, and slowly descended the stairs. Suddenly as she
+was passing a door on the second floor, she heard a low deep cry.
+
+"Paula!"
+
+She stopped and her hand went to her heart, the reaction was so sudden.
+"Yes," she murmured, standing still with great heart-beats of joy, or
+was it pain?
+
+The door slowly opened. "Did you think I could let you go without a
+blessing, my Paula, my little one!" came in those deep heart-tones which
+always made her tears start. And Mr. Sylvester stepped out of the
+shadows beyond and stood in the shadows at her side.
+
+"I did not know," she murmured. "I am so young, so feeble, such a mote
+in this great atmosphere of anguish. I longed to see you, to say
+good-bye, to thank you, but--" tears stopped her words; this was a
+parting that rent her leader heart.
+
+Mr. Sylvester watched her and his deep chest rose spasmodically.
+"Paula," said he, and there was a depth in his tone even she had never
+heard before, "are these tears for me?"
+
+With a strong effort she controlled herself, looked up and faintly
+smiled. "I am an orphan," she gently murmured; "you have been kind and
+tender to me beyond words; I have let myself love you as a father."
+
+A spasm crossed his features, the hand he had lifted to lay upon her
+head fell at his side, he surveyed her with eyes whose despairing
+fondness told her that her love had been more than met by this desolate
+childless man. But he did not reply as seemed natural, "Be to me then as
+a child. I can offer you no mother to guide or watch over you, but one
+parent is better than none. Henceforth you shall be known as my
+daughter." Instead of that he shook his head mournfully, yearningly but
+irrevocably, and said, "To be your father would have been a dear
+position to occupy. I have sometimes hoped that I might be so blessed as
+to call it mine, but that is all past now. Your father I can never be.
+But I can bless you," he murmured brokenly, "not as I did that day in
+your aunt's little cottage, but silently and from afar as God always
+meant you should be blessed by me. Good-bye, Paula."
+
+Then all the deeps in her great nature broke up. She did not weep, but
+she looked at him with her large dark eyes and the cry in them smote his
+heart. With a struggle that blanched his face, he kept his arms at his
+side, but his lips worked in agony, and he slowly murmured, "If after a
+time your heart loves me like this, and you are willing to bear shadow
+as well as sunshine with me, come back with your aunt and sit at my
+hearthstone, not as my child but as a dear and honored guest. I will try
+and be worthy--" He paused, "Will you come, Paula?"
+
+"Yes, yes."
+
+"Not soon, not now," he murmured, "God will show you when."
+
+And with nothing but a look, without having touched her or so much as
+brushed her garments with his, he retired again into his room.
+
+
+
+
+XXII.
+
+HOPGOOD.
+
+     "Give it an understanding but no tongue."
+
+     --HAMLET.
+
+
+Hopgood was a man who could keep a secret, but who made so much ado in
+the process that he reminded one of the placard found posted up
+somewhere out west which reads, "A treasure of gold concealed here;
+don't dig!" Or so his wife used to say, and she ought to know, for she
+had lived with him five years, three of which he had spent in the
+detective service.
+
+"If he would only trust the wife of his bosom with whatever he's got on
+his mind, instead of ambling around the building with his eyes rolling
+about like peas in a caldron of boiling water, one might manage to take
+some comfort in life, and not hurt anybody either. For two days now,
+ever since the wife of Mr. Sylvester died and Mr. Sylvester has been
+away from the bank, he's acted just like a lunatic. Not that that has
+anything to do with his gettin up of nights and roamin down five pair of
+stairs to see if the watchman is up to his duty, or with his askin a
+dozen times a day if I remembers how Mr. Sylvester found him and me,
+well nigh starvin in Broad Street, and gave him the good word which got
+him into this place? O no! O no, of course not! But _something_ has, and
+while he persists in shutting out from his breast the woman he swore to
+love, honor, and cherish, that woman is not bound to bear the trials of
+life with patience. Every time he jumps out of his chair at the sound of
+Mr. Sylvester's name, and some one is always mentionin' it, I plumps me
+down on mine with an expression of my views regarding a kitchen stove
+that does all its drawin' when the oven's empty."
+
+So spake Mrs. Hopgood to her special crony and constant visitor, Mrs.
+Kirkshaw of Water Street, pursing up a mouth that might have been
+good-natured if she had ever given it an opportunity. But Mrs. Kirkshaw
+who passed for a gossip with her neighbors, was a philosopher in the
+retirement of the domestic circle and did not believe in the blow for
+blow system.
+
+"La!" quoth she, with a smoothing out of her apron suggestive of her
+employment as laundress, "show a dog that you want his bone and you'll
+never get it. Husbands is like that very stove you've been a slanderin
+of. Rattle on coal when the fire's low and you put it out entirely; but
+be a bit patient and drop it on piece by piece, coaxing-like, and you'll
+have a hot stove afore you know it."
+
+Which suggestion struck Mrs. Hopgood like a revelation, and for a day
+and night she resorted to the coaxing system; the result of which was to
+send Mr. Hopgood out of the room to sit on the stairs in mortal terror,
+lest his good nature should get the better of his discretion. His little
+daughter, Constantia Maria--so named and so called from two
+grandmothers, equally exacting in their claims and equally impecunious
+as regards their resources--was his sole solace in this long vigil. Her
+pretty innocent prattle scarcely disturbed his meditation, while it
+soothed his nerves, and with no one by but this unsuspecting child, he
+could roll his great eyes to his heart's content without fear of her
+descrying anything in them, but the love with which her own little heart
+abounded.
+
+On the morning after the funeral, however, Constantia Maria was restored
+to his wife's arms on the plea that she did not seem quite well, and
+Hopgood went out and sat alone. In a few minutes, however, he returned,
+and ambling restlessly up and down the room, stopped before his
+persistently smiling wife and said somewhat tremulously:
+
+"If Mr. Sylvester takes a notion to come up and see Constantia Maria
+to-day, I hope you'll take the opportunity to finish your ironing or
+whatever else it is you may have to do. I've noticed he seems a little
+shy with the child when you are around."
+
+"Shy with the child when I am around! well I do declare!" exclaimed she,
+forgetting her late role in her somewhat natural indignation. "And what
+have I ever done to frighten Mr. Sylvester? Nothing but putting on of a
+clean apron, when he comes in and a dustin' of the best chair for his
+use. It's a trick of yours to get a chance of speakin' to him alone, and
+I'll not put up with it. As if it wasn't bad enough to have a kettle
+with the nozzle dangling, without living with a man who has a secret he
+won't share with his own wife and the mother of his innocent babe."
+
+With a start the worthy man stared at her till he grew red in the face,
+probably with the effort of keeping his eyes steady for so long a time.
+"Who told you I had a secret?" said he.
+
+"Who told me?" and then she laughed, though in a somewhat hysterical
+way, and sat down in the middle of the floor and shook and shook again.
+"Hear the man!" she cried. And she told him the story of the placard out
+west and then asked him, "if he thought she didn't remember how he used
+to act when he was a chasin' up of a thief in the days when he was on
+the police force."
+
+"But," he cried, quite as pale now as he had been florid the moment
+before, "I'm not in the police force now and you are acting quite silly
+and I've no patience with you." And he was making for the door,
+presumably to sit upon the stairs, when with a late repentance she
+seized him by the arm and said:
+
+"La now," an expression she had caught from Mrs. Kirkshaw, "I didn't
+mean nothin' by my talk. Come back, John; Constantia Maria is not well,
+and if Mr. Sylvester comes up to see her, I'll just slip out and leave
+you alone."
+
+And upon that he told her she was a good wife and that if he had any
+secret from her it was only because he was a poor man. "Honesty and
+prudence are all the treasures I possess to keep us three from starving.
+Shall I part with either of them just to satisfy your curiosity?" and
+being a good woman at heart, she said "no," though she secretly
+concluded that prudence in his case involved trust in one's wife first,
+and disbelief in the rest of the world afterward; and took her future
+resolutions accordingly.
+
+"Well, Hopgood, you look anxious; do you want to speak to me?"
+
+The janitor eyed the changed and melancholy face of his patron, with an
+expression in which real sympathy for his trouble, struggled with the
+respectful awe which Mr. Sylvester's presence was calculated to inspire.
+
+"If you please," said he, speaking very low, for more or less of the
+bank employees were moving busily to and fro, "Constantia Maria is not
+well and she has been asking all day for the _dear man_, as she insists
+upon calling you, sir, with many apologies for the freedom."
+
+Mr. Sylvester smiled with a faint far-away look in his dark eye that
+made Hopgood stare uneasily out of the window. "Sick! why then I must go
+up and see her," he returned in a matter-of-fact way that proved his
+visits in that direction were of no uncommon occurrence. "A moment more
+and I shall be at liberty."
+
+Hopgood bowed and renewed his stare out of the window, with an intensity
+happily spared from serious consequences to the passers-by, by the
+merciful celerity with which Mr. Sylvester procured his overcoat, put
+such papers in his pocket as he required, and joined him.
+
+"Constantia Maria, here is Mr. Sylvester come to see you."
+
+It was a pleasure to observe how the little thing brightened in her
+mother's arms, where but a moment before she had lain quite pale and
+still, and slipping to the ground rushed up to meet the embrace of this
+stern and melancholy-faced man. "I am so glad you have come," she cried
+over and over again; and her little arms went round his neck, and her
+soft cheek nestled against his, with a content that made the mother's
+eyes sparkle with pleasure, as obedient to her promise, she quietly left
+the room.
+
+And Mr. Sylvester? If any one had seen the abandon with which he yielded
+to her caresses and returned them, he would have understood why this
+child should have loved him with such extraordinary affection. He kissed
+her forehead, he kissed her cheek, and seemed never weary of smoothing
+down her bright and silky curls. She reminded him of Geraldine. She had
+the same blue eyes and caressing ways. From the day he had come upon his
+old friend Hopgood in a condition of necessity almost of want, this
+blue-eyed baby had held its small sceptre over his lonely heart, and
+unbeknown to the rest of the world, had solaced many a spare five
+minutes with her innocent prattle. The Hopgoods understood the cause of
+his predilection and were silent. It was the one thing Mrs. Hopgood
+never alluded to in her gossips with Mrs. Kirkshaw. But to-day the
+attentions of Mr. Sylvester to the little one seemed to make the janitor
+restless. He walked up and down the narrow room uneasily surveying the
+pair out of the corner of his great glassy eyes, till even Mr. Sylvester
+noticed his unusual manner and put the child down, observing with a
+sigh, "You think she is not well enough for any excitement?"
+
+"No sir, it is not that," returned the other uneasily, with a hasty look
+around him. "The fact is, I have something to say to you, sir, about--a
+discovery--I made the other day." His words came very slowly, and he
+looked down with great embarrassment.
+
+Mr. Sylvester frowned slightly, and drew himself up to the full height
+of his very imposing figure. "A discovery," repeated he, "when?"
+
+"The day you paid that early visit to the bank, sir, the day Mrs.
+Sylvester died."
+
+The frown on Mr. Sylvester's brow grew deeper. "The day--" he began, and
+stopped.
+
+"Excuse me, sir," exclaimed Hopgood with a burst. "I ought not to have
+mentioned it, but you asked me _when_, and I--"
+
+"What was this discovery?" inquired his superior, imperatively.
+
+"Nothing much," murmured the other now all in a cold sweat. "But I felt
+as if I ought to tell you. You have been my benefactor, sir, I can never
+forget what you have done for me and mine. If I saw death or bereavement
+between me and any favor I could do for you, sir, I would not hesitate
+to risk them. I am no talker, sir, but I am true and I am grateful." He
+stopped, choked, and his eyes rolled frightfully. Mr. Sylvester looked
+at him, grew a trifle pale, and put the little child away that was
+nestling up against his knee.
+
+"You have not told me what you have discovered," said he.
+
+"Well, sir, only this." And he took from his pocket a small roll of
+paper which he unfolded and held out in his hand. It contained a gold
+tooth-pick somewhat bent and distorted.
+
+A flush dark and ominous crept over Mr. Sylvester's cheek. He glanced
+sternly at the trembling janitor, and uttered a short, "Well?"
+
+"I found it on the floor of the bank just after you went out the other
+morning," the other pursued well-nigh inaudibly. "It was lying near the
+safe. As it was not there when you went in, I took it for granted it was
+yours. Am I right, sir?"
+
+The anxious tone in which this last question was uttered, the studied
+way in which the janitor kept his eyes upon the floor could not have
+been unnoticed by Mr. Sylvester, but he simply said,
+
+"I have lost mine, that may very possibly be it."
+
+The janitor held it towards him; his eyes did not leave the floor. "The
+responsibility of my position here is sometimes felt by me to be very
+heavy," muttered the man in a low, unmodulated tone. It was his duty in
+those days previous to the Manhattan Bank robbery, to open the vault in
+the morning, procure the books that were needed, and lay them about on
+the various desks in readiness for the clerks upon their arrival. He had
+also the charge of the boxes of the various customers of the bank who
+chose to entrust their valuables to its safe keeping; which boxes were
+kept, together with the books, in that portion of the vault to which he
+had access. "I should regret my comfortable situation here, but if it
+was necessary, I would go without a murmur, trusting that God would take
+care of my poor little lamb."
+
+"Hopgood, what do you mean?" asked Mr. Sylvester somewhat sternly. "Who
+talks about dismissing you?"
+
+"No one," responded the other, turning aside to attend to some trivial
+matter. "But if ever you think a younger or a fresher man would be
+preferable in my place, do not hesitate to make the change your own
+necessities or that of the Bank may seem to require."
+
+Mr. Sylvester's eye which was fixed upon the janitor's face, slowly
+darkened.
+
+"There is something underlying all this," said he, "what is it?"
+
+At once and as if he had taken his resolution, the janitor turned. "I
+beg your pardon," said he, "I ought to have told you in the first place.
+When I opened the vaults as usual on the morning of which I speak, I
+found the boxes displaced; that was nothing if you had been to them,
+sir; but what did alarm me and make me feel as if I had held my position
+too long was to find that one of them was unlocked."
+
+Mr. Sylvester fell back a step.
+
+"It was Mr. Stuyvesant's box, sir, and I remember distinctly seeing him
+lock it the previous afternoon before putting it back on the shelf."
+
+The arms which Mr. Sylvester had crossed upon his breast tightened
+spasmodically. "And it has been in that condition ever since?" asked he.
+
+The janitor shook his head. "No," said he, taking his little girl up in
+his arms, possibly to hide his countenance. "As you did not come down
+again on that day, I took the liberty of locking it with a key of my own
+when I went to put away the books and shut the vault for the night." And
+he quietly buried his face in his baby's floating curls, who feeling his
+cheek against her own put up her hand and stroked it lovingly, crying in
+her caressing infantile tones,
+
+"Poor papa! poor tired papa."
+
+Mr. Sylvester's stern brow contracted painfully. The look with which his
+eye sought the sky without, would have made Paula's young heart ache.
+Taking the child from her father's clasp, he laid her on the bed. When
+he again confronted the janitor his face was like a mask.
+
+"Hopgood," said he, "you are an honest man and a faithful one; I
+appreciate your worth and have had confidence in your judgment. Whom
+have you told of this occurrence beside myself?"
+
+"No one, sir."
+
+"Another question; if Mr. Stuyvesant had required his box that day and
+had found it in the condition you describe, what would you have replied
+to his inquiries?"
+
+The janitor colored to the roots of his hair in an agony of shame Mr.
+Sylvester may or may not have appreciated, but replied with the
+straightforward earnestness of a man driven to bay, "I should have been
+obliged to tell him the truth sir; that whereas I had no personal
+knowledge of any one but myself, having been to the vaults since the
+evening before, I was called upon early that morning to open the outside
+door to you, sir, and that you came into the bank," (he did not say
+looking very pale, agitated and unnatural, but he could not help
+remembering it) "and finding no one on duty but myself,--the watchman
+having gone up stairs to take his usual cup of coffee before going home
+for the day--you sent me out of the room on an errand, which delayed me
+some little time, and that when I came back I found you gone, and every
+thing as I had left it except that small pick lying on the floor."
+
+The last words were nearly inaudible but they must have been heard by
+Mr. Sylvester, for immediately upon their utterance, the hand which
+unconsciously had kept its hold upon the tooth-pick, opened and with an
+uncontrollable gesture flung the miserable tell-tale into the stove near
+by.
+
+"Hopgood," said the stately gentleman, coming nearer and holding him
+with his eyes till the poor man turned pale and cold as a stone, "has
+Mr. Stuyvesant had occasion to open his box since you locked it?"
+
+"Yes sir, he called for it yesterday afternoon."
+
+"And who gave it to him?"
+
+"I sir."
+
+"Did he appear to miss anything from it?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Do you believe, Hopgood, that there was anything missing from it?"
+
+The janitor shrank like a man subjected to the torture. He fixed his
+glance on Mr. Sylvester's face and his own gradually lightened.
+
+"No sir!" said he at last, with a gasp that made the little one lift her
+curly head from her pillow and shake it with a slow and wistful motion
+strange to see in a child of only two years.
+
+The proud man bowed, not with the severity however that might have been
+expected; indeed his manner was strangely shadowed, and though his lip
+betrayed no uneasiness and his eye neither faltered or fell, there was a
+vague expression of awe upon his countenance, which it would take more
+than the simple understanding of the worthy but not over subtle man
+before him, to detect much less to comprehend.
+
+"You may be sure that Mr. Stuyvesant will never complain of any one
+having tampered with his effects while you are the guardian of the
+vaults," exclaimed Mr. Sylvester in clear ringing tones. "As for his box
+being open, it is right that I should explain that it was the result of
+a mistake. I had occasion to go to a box of my own in a hurry that
+morning, and misled by the darkness and my own nervousness perhaps, took
+up his instead of my own. Not till I had opened it--with the tooth-pick,
+Hopgood, for I had been to a reception and did not have my keys with
+me--did I notice my mistake. I had intended to explain the matter to Mr.
+Stuyvesant, but you know what happened that day, and since then I have
+thought nothing of it."
+
+The janitor's face cleared to its natural expression. "You are very
+kind, sir, to explain yourself to me," said he; "it was not necessary."
+But his lightened face spoke volumes. "I have been on the police force
+and I know how to hold my tongue when it is my duty, but it is very hard
+work when the duty is on the other side. Have you any commands for me?"
+
+Mr. Sylvester shook his head, and his eye roamed over the humble
+furniture and scanty comforts of this poor man's domicile. Hopgood
+thought he might be going to offer him some gift or guerdon, and in a
+low distressed tone spoke up:
+
+"I shall not try to ask your pardon, sir, for anything I have said.
+Honesty that is afraid to show itself, is no honesty for me. I could not
+meet your eye, knowing that I was aware of any circumstance of which you
+supposed me ignorant. What I know, you must know, as long as I remain in
+the position you were once kind enough to procure for me. And now that
+is all I believe, sir."
+
+Mr. Sylvester dropped his eyes from the bare walls over which they had
+been restlessly wandering, and fixed them for a passing moment on the
+countenance of the man before him. Then with a grave action he lifted
+his hat from his head, and bowed with the deference he might have shown
+to one of his proudest colleagues, and without another look or word,
+quietly left the room.
+
+Hopgood in his surprise stared after him somewhat awe-struck. But when
+the door had quite closed, he caught up his child almost passionately in
+his arms, and crushing her against his breast, asked, while his eye
+roamed round the humble room that in its warmth and comfort was a palace
+to him, "Will he take the first opportunity to have me dismissed, or
+will his heart forgive the expression of my momentary doubts, for the
+sake of this poor wee one that he so tenderly fancies?"
+
+The question did not answer itself, and indeed it was one to which time
+alone could reply.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK III.
+
+THE JAPHA MYSTERY.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII.
+
+THE POEM.
+
+    "I've shot my arrow o'er the house
+    And hurt my brother."
+
+    --HAMLET.
+
+
+When Miss Belinda first saw Paula, she did not, like her sister, remark
+upon the elegance of her appearance, the growth of her beauty, or the
+evidences of increased refinement in the expression of her countenance
+and the carriage of her form, but with her usual penetration noted
+simply, the sadness in her eye and the tremulous motion of her lip.
+
+"You had then become fond of your cousin?" queried she with
+characteristic bluntness.
+
+Paula not understanding the motive of this remark, questioned her with a
+look.
+
+"Young faces do not grow pale or bright eyes become troubled without a
+cause. Grief for your cousin might explain it, but if you have suffered
+from no grief--"
+
+"My cousin was very kind to me," hurriedly interrupted Paula. "Her death
+was very sudden and very heart-rending."
+
+"So it was;" returned Miss Belinda, "and I expected to see you look worn
+and sad but not restless and feverish. You have a living grief, Paula,
+what is it?"
+
+The young girl started and looked down. For the first time in her life
+she wished to avoid that penetrating glance. "If I have, I cannot talk
+of it," she murmured. "I have experienced so much this past week; my
+coming away was so unexpected, that I hardly understand my own feelings,
+or realize just what it is that troubles me most. All that I know is,
+that I am very tired and so sad, it seems as if the sun would never
+shine again."
+
+"There is then something you have not written me?" inquired the
+inexorable Miss Belinda.
+
+"The experiences of this last week could never be written,--or told,"
+returned Paula with a droop of her head. "Upon some things our better
+wisdom places a stone which only the angels can roll away. The future
+lies all open before us; do not let us disturb the past."
+
+And Miss Belinda was forced to be content lest she should seem to be
+over anxious.
+
+Not so the various neighbors and friends to whom the lengthened sojourn
+of one of their number in an atmosphere of such wealth and splendor,
+possessed something of the charm of a forbidden romance. For months
+Paula was obliged to endure questions, that it required all her
+self-control to answer with calmness and propriety. But at length the
+most insatiable gossip amongst them was satisfied; Paula's figure was no
+longer a novelty in their streets; curiosity languished and the young
+girl was allowed to rest.
+
+And now could those who loved her, discern that with the lapse of time
+and the daily breathings of her native air, the sad white look had faded
+from her face, leaving it a marvel of freshness and positive, if
+somewhat spiritualized, beauty. The print of deeper thoughts and holier
+yearnings was there, but no sign of blighted hopes or uncomprehended
+passions. A passing wind had blown the froth from off the cup, but had
+not disturbed the sparkle of the wine. She had looked in the face of
+grief, but had not as yet been clasped in her relentless arms. Only two
+things could vitally disturb her; a letter from Cicely, or a sudden
+meeting in the village streets with that elderly lady who haunted the
+Japha mansion. The former because it recalled a life around which her
+fancies still played with dangerous persistency, and the latter because
+it aroused vain and inexplicable conjectures as to that person's strange
+and lingering look in her direction. Otherwise she was happy; finding in
+this simple village-life a meaning and a purpose which her short but
+passionate outlook on a broader field, had taught her, perhaps, both to
+detect and comprehend. She no longer walked solitary with nature. The
+woods, the mountains with all their varying panoply of exuberant
+verdure, had acquired a human significance. At her side went the
+memories of beloved faces, the thoughts of trusted friends. From the
+clouds looked forth a living eye, and in the sound of rustling leaf and
+singing streamlet, spake the voices of human longing and human joy.
+
+Her aunts had explained their position to Paula and she had responded by
+expressing her determination to be a teacher. But they would not hear of
+that at present, and while she waited their pleasure in the matter, she
+did what she could to assist them in their simple home-life and daily
+duties, lending her beauty to tasks that would have made the eyes of
+some of her quondam admirers open with surprise, if only they could have
+followed the action of her hands, after having once caught a glimpse of
+the face that brightened above them. And so the summer months went by
+and September came.
+
+There was to be an entertainment in the village and Paula was to assist.
+The idea had come from her aunt and was not to be rejected. In one of
+the strange incomprehensible moods which sometimes came upon her at this
+time, she had written a poem, and nothing would do but that she mast
+read it before the assembled company of neighbors and friends, that were
+to be gathered at the Squire's house on this gala evening. She did not
+wish to do it. The sacred sense of possession passes when we uncover our
+treasure to another's eyes, giving way to a lower feeling not to be
+courted by one of Paula's sensitive nature. Besides she would rather
+have poured this first outburst of secret enthusiasm into other ears
+than these; but she had given her word and the ordeal must be submitted
+to. There are many who remember how she looked on that night. She had
+arrayed herself for the occasion, in the prettiest of her dresses, and
+mindful of Ona's injunction, did not mar the effect of its soft and
+uniform gray with any hint of extraneous color. The result was that they
+saw only her beauty; and what beauty! A very old man, an early settler
+in the village, who had tottered out to enjoy a last glimpse of life
+before turning his aged face to the wall, said it made the thought of
+heaven a little more real. "I can go home and think how the angels
+look," said he in his simple, half-childish way. And no one contradicted
+him, for there was a still light on her face that was less of earth than
+heaven, though why it should rest there to-night she least of all could
+have told, for her poem had to do with earth and its deepest passions
+and its wildest unrest. It was a clarion blast, not a dreaming rhapsody,
+that lay coiled up in the paper she held in her hand.
+
+My readers must pardon me if I give them Paula's poem, for without it
+they would not understand its effect and consequent result. It was
+called, "The Defence of the Bride," and was of the old ballad order. As
+she rose to read, many of the younger ones in the audience began
+cautiously to move to one side, but at the first words, young as well as
+old paused and listened where they stood, for her voice was round and
+full, and the memory of clashing spears and whirling battle-axes that
+informed the war-song which she had heard Bertram play, was with her, to
+give color to her tones and fire to her glance.
+
+THE DEFENCE OF THE BRIDE.
+
+    He was coming from the altar when the tocsin rang alarm,
+    With his fair young wife beside him, lovely in her bridal charm;
+    But he was not one to palter with a duty, or to slight
+    The trumpet-call of honor for his vantage or delight.
+
+    Turning from the bride beside him to his stern and martial train,
+    From their midst he summoned to him the brothers of Germain;
+    At the word they stepped before him, nine strong warriors brave and
+         true,
+    From the youngest to the eldest, Enguerrand to mighty Hugh.
+
+    "Sons of Germain, to your keeping do I yield my bride to-day.
+    Guard her well as you do love me; guard her well and holily.
+    Dearer than mine own soul to me, you will hold her as your life,
+    'Gainst the guile of seeming friendship and the force of open strife."
+
+    "We will guard her," cried they firmly; and with just another glance
+    On the yearning and despairing in his young wife's countenance,
+    Gallant Beaufort strode before them down the aisle and through the
+         door,
+    And a shadow came and lingered where the sunlight stood before.
+
+    Eight long months the young wife waited, watching from her bridal room
+    For the coming of her husband up the valley forest's gloom.
+    Eight long months the sons of Germain paced the ramparts and the wall,
+    With their hands upon their halberds ready for the battle-call.
+
+    Then there came a sound of trumpets pealing up the vale below,
+    And a dozen floating banners lit the forest with their glow,
+    And the bride arose like morning when it feels the sunlight nigh,
+    And her smile was like a rainbow flashing from a misty sky.
+
+    But the eldest son of Germain lifting voice from off the wall,
+    Cried aloud, "It is a stranger's and not Sir Beaufort's call;
+    Have you ne'er a slighted lover or a kinsman with a heart
+    Base enough to seek his vengeance at the sharp end of the dart?"
+
+    "There is Sassard of the Mountains," answered she without guile,
+    "While I wedded at the chancel, he stood mocking in the aisle;
+    And my maidens say he swore there that for all my plighted vow,
+    They would see me in his castle yet upon Morency's brow."
+
+    "It is Sassard and no other then," her noble guardian cried;
+    "There is craft in yonder summons," and he rung his sword beside.
+    "To the walls, ye sons of Germain! and as each would hold his life
+    From the bitter shame of falsehood, let us hold our master's wife."
+
+    "Can you hold her, can you shield her from the breezes that await?"
+    Cried the stinging voice of Sassard from his stand beside the gate.
+    "If you have the power to shield her from the sunlight and the wind,
+    You may shield her from stern Sassard when his falchion is untwined."
+
+    "We can hold her, we can shield her," leaped like fire from off the
+         wall,
+    And young Enguerrand the valiant, sprang out before them all.
+    "And if breezes bring dishonor, we will guard her from their breath,
+    Though we yield her to the keeping of the sacred arms of Death."
+
+    And with force that never faltered, did they guard her all that day,
+    Though the strength of triple armies seemed to battle in the fray,
+    The old castle's rugged ramparts holding firm against the foe,
+    As a goodly dyke resisteth the whelming billow's flow.
+
+    But next morning as the sunlight rose in splendor over all,
+    Hugh the mighty, sank heart-wounded in his station on the wall,
+    At the noon the valiant Raoul of the merry eye and heart,
+    Gave his beauty and his jestings to the foeman's jealous dart.
+
+    Gallant Maurice next sank faltering with a death wound 'neath his hair,
+    But still fighting on till Sassard pressed across him up the stair.
+
+    Generous Clement followed after, crying as his spirit passed,
+    "Sons of Germain to the rescue, and be loyal to the last!"
+
+    Gentle Jaspar, lordly Clarence, Sessamine the doughty brand,
+    Even Henri who had yielded ne'er before to mortal hand;
+    One by one they fall and perish, while the vaunting foemen pour
+    Through the breach and up the courtway to the very turret's door.
+
+    Enguerrand and Stephen only now were left of all that nine,
+    To protect the single stairway from the traitor's fell design;
+    But with might as 'twere of thirty, did they wield the axe and brand,
+    Striving in their desperation the fierce onslaught to withstand.
+
+    But what man of power so godlike he can stay the billow's wrack,
+    Or with single-handed weapon hold an hundred foemen back!
+
+    As the sun turned sadly westward, with a wild despairing cry,
+    Stephen bowed his noble forehead and sank down on earth to die.
+
+    "Ah ha!" then cried cruel Sassard with his foot upon the stair,
+    "Have I come to thee, my boaster?" and he whirled his sword in air.
+    "Thou who pratest of thy power to protect her to the death,
+    What think'st thou now of Sassard and the wind's aspiring breath?"
+
+    "What I think let this same show you," answered fiery Enguerrand,
+    And he poised his lofty battle-ax with sure and steady hand;
+    "Now as Heaven loveth justice, may this deathly weapon fall
+    On the murderer of my brothers and th' undoer of us all."
+
+    With one mighty whirl he sent it; flashing from his hand it came,
+    Like the lightning from the heavens in a whirl of awful flame,
+    And betwixt the brows of Sassard and his two false eyeballs passed,
+    And the murderer sank before it, like a tree before the blast.
+
+    "Now ye minions of a traitor if you look for vengeance, come!"
+    And his voice was like a trumpet when it clangs a victor home.
+    But a cry from far below him rose like thunder upward, "Nay!
+    Let them turn and meet the _husband_ if they hunger for the fray."
+
+    O the yell that sprang to heaven as that voice swept up the stair,
+    And the slaughter dire that followed in another moment there!
+    From the least unto the greatest, from the henchman to the lord,
+    Not a man on all that stairway lived to sheath again his sword.
+
+    At the top that flame-bound forehead, at the base that blade of fire--
+    'Twas the meeting of two tempests in their potency and ire.
+    Ere the moon could falter inward with its pity and its woe,
+    Beaufort saw the path before him unencumbered of the foe.
+
+    Saw his pathway unencumbered and strode up and o'er the floor,
+    Even to the very threshold of his lovely lady's door,
+    And already in his fancy did he see the golden beam
+    Of her locks upon his shoulder and her sweet eyes' happy gleam:
+
+
+    When behold a form upstarting from the shadows at his side.
+    That with naked sword uplifted barred the passage to his bride;
+    It was Enguerrand the dauntless, but with staring eyes and hair
+    Blowing wild about a forehead pale as snow in moonlit glare.
+
+    "Ah my master, we have held her, we have guarded her," he said,
+    "Not a shadow of dishonor has so much as touched her head.
+    Twenty wretches lie below there with the brothers of Germain,
+    Twenty foemen of her honor that I, Enguerrand, have slain.
+
+    "But one other foe remaineth, one remaineth yet," he cried,
+    "Which it fits this hand to punish ere you cross unto your bride.
+    It is I, Enguerrand!" shrieked he; "and as I have slain the rest,
+    So I smite this foeman also!"--and his sword plunged through his
+         breast.
+
+    O the horror of that moment! "Art thou mad my Enguerrand?"
+    Cried his master, striving wildly to withdraw the fatal brand.
+    But the stern youth smiling sadly, started back from his embrace,
+    While a flash like summer lightning, flickered direful on his face.
+
+    "Yes, a traitor worse than Sassard;" and he pointed down the stair,
+    "For my heart has dared to love her whom my hand defended there.
+    While the others fought for honor, I by passion was made strong,
+    Set your heel upon my bosom for my soul has done you wrong.
+
+    "But," and here he swayed and faltered till his knee sank on the floor,
+    Yet in falling turned his forehead ever toward that silent door;
+    "But your warrior hand my master, may take mine without a stain,
+    For my hand has e'er been loyal, and your enemy is slain."
+
+A short silence followed the last word, then a burst of applause
+testified to the appreciation of her audience, and Paula crept away to
+hide her blushing cheeks in the comparative darkness of a little
+vine-covered balcony that jutted out from the ante-room. What were her
+thoughts as she leaned there! In the subsidence of any great
+emotion--and Paula had felt every word she uttered--there is more or
+less of shock and tumult. She did not think, she only felt. Suddenly a
+hand was laid on her arm and a low voice whispered in her ear,
+
+"Did you write that poem yourself?"
+
+Turning, she encountered the shadowy form of a woman leaning close at
+her side and appearing in the dim light that shone on her from the lamps
+beyond, an eager image of expectancy.
+
+"Yes," returned Paula, "why do you ask?"
+
+The woman, whoever she was, did not answer. "And you believe in such
+devotion as that!" she murmured. "You can understand a man, aye, or a
+woman either, risking happiness and fame, life and death, for the sake
+of a trust! Such things are not folly to you! You could see a heart
+spill itself drop by drop through a longer vigil than the eight months
+watching on the ramparts, and not sneer at a fidelity that could not
+falter because it had given its word? Speak; you write of faithfulness
+with a pen of fire, is your heart faithful too?"
+
+There was something in these words, spoken as they were in a tone of
+suppressed passion, that startled and aroused Paula. Leaning forward,
+she endeavored to see the face of the woman who thus forcibly addressed
+her, but the light was too dim. The outline of a brow covered by some
+close headgear was all she could detect.
+
+"You speak earnestly," said Paula, "but that is what I like. Fidelity to
+a cause, or fidelity to a trust, demands the sympathy and admiration of
+all honest and generous hearts. If I am ever called upon to maintain
+either, I hope that my enthusiasm will not have all been expended in
+words."
+
+"You please me," murmured the woman, "you please me; will you come and
+see me and let me tell you a story to mate the poem you have given us
+to-night?"
+
+The trembling eagerness of her tone it would be impossible to describe.
+Paula was thrilled by it. "If you will tell me who you are," said Paula,
+"I certainly will try and come. I should be glad to hear anything you
+have to relate to me."
+
+"I thought every one knew who I was," returned the woman; and drawing
+Paula back into the ante-room, she turned her face upon her. "Any one
+will tell you where Margery Hamlin lives," said she. "Do not disappoint
+me, and do not keep me waiting long." And with a nod and a deep strange
+smile that made her aged face almost youthful, she entered the crowd and
+disappeared from Paula's sight.
+
+It was the woman whose nightly visits to the deserted home of the Japhas
+had once been the talk and was still the unsolved mystery of the town.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV.
+
+THE JAPHA MANSION.
+
+    "Ah what a warning for a thoughtless man,
+    Could field or grove, could any spot on earth
+    Show to his eye an image of the pangs
+    Which it has witnessed; render back an echo
+    Of the sad steps by which it hath been trod.
+
+    --WORDSWORTH.
+
+
+Unexplained actions if long continued, lose after awhile their interest
+if not their mystery. The aged lady who now for many years had been seen
+at every night-fall to leave her home, traverse the village streets,
+enter the Japha mansion, remain there an hour and then re-issue with
+tremulous steps and bowed head, had become so common a sight to the
+village eye, that even the children forgot to ask what her errand was,
+or why she held her head so hopefully when she entered, or looked so
+despondent when she came forth.
+
+But to Paula, for reasons already mentioned, this secret and persistent
+vigil in a forsaken and mysterious dwelling, was fraught with a
+significance which had never lost its power either to excite her
+curiosity or to arouse her imagination. Many a time had she gone home
+from some late encounter with the aged lady, to brood by the hour upon
+the expression of that restless eye which in its wanderings never failed
+to turn upon her own youthful face and linger there in the manner I have
+already noted. She thought of it by night, she thought of it by day. She
+felt herself drawn to that woman's suffering heart as by invisible
+cords. To understand the feelings of this desolate being, she had even
+studied the face of that old house, until she knew it under its every
+aspect. Often in shutting her eyes at night, she would perceive as in a
+mirror a vision of its long gray front, barred door and sealed windows
+shining in the moon, save where the deep impenetrable shadows of its two
+guardian poplars lay black and dismal upon its ghostly surface. Again
+she would behold it as it reared itself dark and dripping in a blinding
+storm, its walls plastered with leaves from the immovable poplars, and
+its neglected garden lying sodden and forlorn under the flail of the
+ceaseless storm. Then its early morning face would strike her fancy. The
+slow looming of its chimney-tops against a brightening sky; the gradual
+coming out of its forsaken windows and solemn looking doors from the
+mystery of darkness into the no less mystery of day; the hint of
+roselight on its barren boards; the gleam of sunshine on its untrodden
+threshold; a sunshine as pure and sweet as if a bride stood there in her
+beauty, waiting for admission into the deserted halls beyond. All and
+everything that could tend to invest the house and its constant visitor
+with an atmosphere of awe and interest, had occurred to this young girl
+in her daily reveries and nightly dreams. It was therefore with a thrill
+deep as her expectation and vivid as her sympathy, that she recognized
+in her eager interlocutor and proposed confident, the woman about whose
+life and actions rested for her such a veil of impenetrable mystery. The
+thought moved her, excited her, and made the rest of the evening pass
+like a dream. She was anxious for the next day to come, that she might
+seek this Mrs. Hamlin in her home, and hear from her lips the tale of
+devotion that should mate her own simple but enthusiastic poem.
+
+When the next day did come, it rained, rained bitterly, persistent and
+with a steady drive from the north east, that made her going out
+impossible. The day following she was indisposed, and upon the
+succeeding afternoon, she was engaged in duties that precluded all
+thought of visiting. The next day was Sunday, and Monday had its own
+demands which she could not slight. It was therefore well nigh a week
+from the night of the entertainment, before the opportunity offered for
+which she was so anxious. Her curiosity and expectation had thus time to
+grow, and it was with a determination to allow nothing to stand in her
+way, that she set out from home in a flood of mild September sunshine,
+to visit Mrs. Hamlin. But alas, for resolutions made in a country
+village prior to the opening of a church fair! She had scarcely gone a
+dozen steps before she was accosted by one of the managers, a woman who
+neither observes your haste, nor pays any attention to your possible
+preoccupation. Do what she could, she found it impossible to escape from
+this persistent individual until she had satisfied her upon matters
+which it took a full half hour to discuss, and when at last she
+succeeded in doing so, it was only to fall into the hands of an aged
+deacon of the church, whose protecting friendship it were a sin to
+wound, while his garrulous tongue made it no ordinary trial of patience
+to stand and listen. In short the best part of the afternoon was gone
+before she found herself at the door of Mrs. Hamlin's house. But she was
+not to be deterred by further hesitation from the pursuit of her object.
+Rapping smartly on the door, she listened. No stir came from within.
+Again she rapped and again she listened. No response came to assure her
+that her summons had been heard. Surprised at this, for she had been
+told Mrs. Hamlin was always at home during the afternoon, she glanced up
+at the church clock in plain view from the doorstep, and blushed to
+observe that it was six o'clock, the hour at which this mysterious woman
+always left her house, to accomplish her vigil at the Japha mansion.
+
+"What have I done?" thought Paula, and felt a strange thrill as she
+realized that even at that moment, the woman with the eager but restless
+eyes, was shut within the precincts of that deserted dwelling, engaged
+in prayer, perhaps wet with tears, who knows? The secret of what she did
+in that long and quiet twilight hour had never been revealed. Leaving
+the little brown house behind, Paula found herself insensibly taking the
+road to the Japha mansion. If she could not enter it and share the watch
+of the devoted woman who had promised her her confidence, she could at
+least observe if the windows were open or the blinds raised. To be sure
+she ought to be at home, but Miss Belinda was indulgent and did not
+question her comings and goings too closely. An irresistible force drew
+her down the street, and she did not hesitate to follow the lead of her
+impulse. No one accosted her now, it was the tea hour in most of these
+houses and the streets were comparatively deserted. The only house whose
+chimneys lacked the rising smoke, was the one towards which her
+footsteps were tending. She could descry it from afar. Its gaunt walls
+from which the paint had long ago faded, stared uncompromisingly upon
+her in the autumn sunshine. There was no welcome in its close shutters
+with their broken slats from which hung tangled strips of old rags--the
+remnants of some boy's kite. The stiff and solemn poplars rose grim and
+forbidding at the gate once swung wide to the fashion and gallantry of
+proud ladies and stalwart gentlemen, but now pushed aside solely by the
+hand of a tremulous old woman, or the irreverent palm of some daring
+school-boy. From the tangled garden looked forth neither flower nor
+blossoming shrub. Beauty and grace could not thrive in this wilderness
+of decay. A dandelion would have felt itself out of place beneath the
+eye of that ghostly door, with the sinister plank nailed across it, like
+the separating line between light and darkness, right and wrong, life
+and death. What loneliness! what a monument of buried passions outliving
+death itself!
+
+Paula paused as she reached the gate; but remembering that Mrs. Hamlin
+was accustomed to enter the house by a side door, hurried around the
+corner and carefully surveyed the windows from that quarter. One of the
+shutters was open, allowing the flame of the setting sun to gild the
+panes like gold. She did not know then nor has she been able to explain
+since, what it was that came over her at the sight, but almost before
+she realized it, she had returned to the gate, opened it, threaded the
+overgrown garden, reached the door which she had so frequently beheld
+the aged woman enter and knocked.
+
+Instantly she was seized with a consciousness of what she had done, and
+frightened at her temerity, meditated an immediate escape. Drawing the
+folds of her mantle about her form and face, she prepared to fly, when
+she remembered the look of entreaty with which this woman had said on
+that night of their conversation, "Do not disappoint me! Do not keep me
+long in suspense!" and moved by a fresh impulse, turned and inflicted
+another resounding knock on the door.
+
+The result was unlooked-for and surprising. To the sound from within of
+a quick passionate cry, there came a hurried movement, followed by a
+deep silence, then another hasty stir succeeded by a longer silence,
+then a rush which seemed to bring all things with it, and the door
+opened and Mrs. Hamlin appeared before her with a countenance so pallid
+with expectancy, that Paula instinctively felt that in some unconscious
+way, she had loosened the bonds of an uncontrollable emotion, and was
+drawing back, when the woman with a quick look in her shrouded face,
+exultantly caught her hand in hers, and drawing her over the threshold,
+gasped out in a delirium of incomprehensible joy:
+
+"I knew you would come! I knew that God would not let you forget!
+Fifteen years have I waited, Jacqueline! fifteen long, tedious,
+suffering years! But they all seem like nothing now! You have come, you
+have come, and all that I ask, is that God will not let me die till I
+realize my joy!"
+
+The emotion with which she uttered these strange words was so
+overpowering, and her body seemed so weak to stand the strain, that
+Paula instinctively put forth her hand to sustain her. The action
+loosened her cloak. Instantly the eyes that had been fixed upon her with
+such delirious rapture grew blank with dismay, a frightful shudder ran
+through the woman's aged frame; she tore at the cloak that still
+enveloped the young girl's shoulders, and pulling it off, took one view
+of the fresh and beautiful countenance before her, and without uttering
+a word, fell back in a deep and deadly swoon upon the floor.
+
+"O what have I done?" cried Paula, flinging herself down beside that
+pale and rigid figure; but instantly remembering herself she leaped to
+her feet and looked about for some means to resuscitate the sufferer.
+There was a goblet of water on a table near by. Seizing it, she bathed
+the face and hands of the woman before her, moaning aloud in her grief
+and dismay, "Have I killed her! O what is this mystery that brings such
+a doom of anguish to this poor heart?"
+
+But from those pallid lips came no response, and feeling greatly
+alarmed, Paula was about to rush from the house for assistance, when she
+felt a tremulous pull upon her skirt, and turning, saw that the glassy
+eyes had opened at last and were now gazing upon her with mute but
+eloquent appeal.
+
+She instantly returned. "O I am so sorry," she murmured, sinking again
+upon her knees beside the suffering woman. "I did not know, could not
+realize that my presence here would affect you so deeply. Forgive me and
+tell me what I can do to make you forget my presumption."
+
+The woman shook her head, her lips moved and she struggled vainly to
+rise. Paula immediately lent her the aid of her strong young hand and in
+a few minutes, Mrs. Hamlin was on her feet. "O God!" were her first
+words as she sank into the chair which Paula hastily drew forward, "that
+I should taste the joy and she be still unsaved!"
+
+Seeing her so absorbed, Paula ventured to glance around her. She found
+herself in a large square room sparsely but comfortably furnished in a
+style that bespake it as the former sitting-room of the dead and buried
+Japhas. From the walls above hung a few ancient pictures. A large
+hair-cloth sofa of a heavy antique shape, confronted the eye from one
+side of the room, an equally ancient book-case from the other. The
+carpet was faded and so were the curtains, but they had once been of an
+attractive hue and pattern. Conspicuous in the midst stood a large table
+with a well-trimmed lamp upon it, and close against it an easy chair
+with an upright back. This last as well as everything else in the room,
+was in a condition of neatness that would have surprised Paula if she
+had not been acquainted with the love and devotion of this woman, who in
+her daily visits to this house, probably took every pains to keep things
+freshened and in order.
+
+Satisfied with her survey, she again directed her attention to Mrs.
+Hamlin, and started to find that person's eyes fixed upon her own with
+an expression of deep, demanding interest.
+
+"You are looking at the shadows of things that were," exclaimed the old
+lady in thrilling tones. "It is a fearful thought to be shut up with the
+ghost of a vanished past, is it not? That chair by your side has not
+been sat in since Colonel Japha rose from it twelve years ago to totter
+to the bed where he breathed his last. It is waiting, everything is
+waiting. I thought the end had come to-night, that the vigil was over,
+the watch finished, but God in his wisdom says, 'No,' and I must wait a
+little longer. Alas in a little while longer the end will be here
+indeed!"
+
+The despondency with which she uttered these last words showed where her
+thoughts were tending, and to comfort her, Paula drew up a chair and sat
+down by her side. "You were going to tell me the story of a great love
+and a great devotion. Cannot you do so now?"
+
+The woman started, glanced hastily around, and let her eyes travel to
+Paula's face where they rested with something of their old look of
+secret longing and doubt.
+
+
+"You are the one who wrote the poem," she murmured; "I remember." Then
+with a sudden feverish impulse, leaned forward, and stroking back the
+waving locks from Paula's brow, exclaimed hurriedly, "You look like her,
+you have the same dark hair and wonderful eyes, more beautiful perhaps,
+but like her, O so like her! That is why I made such a mistake." She
+shuddered, with a quick low sob, but instantly subdued her emotion and
+taking Paula's hand in hers continued, "You are young, my daughter;
+youth does not enjoy carrying burdens; can I, a stranger ask you to
+assist me with mine?"
+
+"You may," returned Paula. "If it will give you any relief I will help
+you bear it willingly."
+
+"You will! Has heaven then sent me the aid my failing spirits demand?
+Can I count on you, child? But I will ask for no promise till you have
+heard my story. To no one have I ever imparted the secret of my life,
+but from the first moment I saw your fair young face, I felt that
+through you would come my help, if help ever came to make my final
+moments easier and my last days less bitter." And rising up, she led
+Paula to a door which she solemnly opened. "I am glad that you are
+here," said she. "I could never have asked you to come, but since you
+have braved the dead and crossed this threshold, you must see and know
+the whole. You will understand my story better."
+
+Taking her through a dark passage, she threw wide another door, and the
+parlors of the vanished Japhas opened before them. It was a ghostly
+vision. A weird twilight scene of clustered shadows brooding above
+articles of musty grandeur. In spite of the self-command learned by her
+late experiences, Paula recoiled, saying,
+
+"It is too sad, too lonesome!" But the woman without heeding her,
+hurried her on over the worm-eaten carpet and between the time-worn
+chairs and heavy-browed cabinets, to the hall beyond.
+
+"I have not been here, myself, for a year," said Mrs. Hamlin, glancing
+fearfully up and down the dusky corridor. "It is not often I can brave
+the memories of this spot." And she pointed with one hand towards the
+darkened door at its end, whose spacious if not stately panels gave no
+hint to the eye of the dread bar that crossed it like a line of doom
+upon the outside, and then turning, let her eye fall with still heavier
+significance upon the broad and imposing staircase that rose from the
+centre of the hall to the duskier and more dismal regions above.
+
+"A brave, old fashioned flight of steps is it not! But the scene of a
+curse, my child." And unheeding Paula's shudder, she drew her up the
+stairs.
+
+"See," continued her panting guide as they reached a square platform
+near the top, from which some half dozen or more steps branched up on
+either side. "They do not build like this nowadays. But Colonel Japha
+believed in nothing new, and thought more of his grand old hall and
+staircase, than he did of all the rest of his house. He little dreamed
+of what a scene it would be the witness. But come, it is getting late
+and you must see her room."
+
+It was near the top of the staircase and was fully as musty, faded and
+dismal as the rest. Yet there was an air of expectancy about it, too,
+that touched Paula deeply. From between the dingy hangings of the bed,
+looked forth a pair of downy pillows, edged with yellowed lace, and
+beneath them a neatly spread counterpane carefully turned back over
+comfortable-looking blankets, as one sees in a bed that only awaits its
+occupant; while on the ancient hearth, a pile of logs stood heaped and
+ready for the kindling match.
+
+"It is all waiting you see," said the old lady in a trembling voice,
+"like everything else, just waiting."
+
+There was an embroidery frame in one corner of the room, from which
+looked a piece of faded and half completed work. The needle was hanging
+from it by a thread, and a skein of green worsted hung over the top,
+Paula glanced at it inquiringly.
+
+"It is just as she left it! He never entered the room after she went and
+I would never let it be touched. It is just the same with the piano
+below. The last piece she played is still standing open on the rack. I
+loved her so, and I thought then that a few months would bring her back!
+See, here is her bible. She never used to read it, but she prized it
+because it was her mother's. I have placed it on the pillow where she
+will see it when she comes to lay her poor tired head down to rest." And
+with a reverent hand the aged matron drew the curtains back from the
+open bed, and disclosed the little bible lying thick with dust in the
+centre of the nearest pillow.
+
+"O who was this you loved so well? And why did she leave you?" cried
+Paula with the tears in her eyes, at sight of this humble token.
+
+The aged lady seized her hand and hurried her back into the room below.
+"I will tell you where I have waited and watched so long. Only be
+patient till I light the lamp. It is getting late and any chance
+wanderer going by and seeing all dark, might think I had forgotten my
+promise and was not here."
+
+
+
+
+XXV.
+
+JACQUELINE.
+
+    "The cold in clime are cold in blood,
+    And love as scarce deserves the name,
+    But mine is like the lava flood
+    That burns in Etna's breast of flame."
+
+    --BYRON.
+
+
+
+"There are some men that have the appearance of being devoid of family
+affection, who in reality cherish it in the deepest and most passionate
+degree. Such a man was Colonel Japha. You have doubtless heard from your
+cradle what the neighbors thought of this stately, old fashioned
+gentleman. He was too handsome in his youth, too proudly reticent in his
+manhood, too self-contained and unrelenting in his age, not to be the
+talk of any town that numbered him among its inhabitants. But only from
+myself, a relative of the family and his housekeeper for years, can you
+learn with what undeviating faith and love he clung to the few upon whom
+he allowed his heart to fasten in affection. When he married Miss Carey,
+the world said, 'He has chosen a beauty, because fine manners and a
+pretty face look well behind the Japha coffee-urn!' But we, that is,
+this same young wife and myself, knew that in marrying her he had taken
+unto himself his other half, the one sweet woman for whom his proud
+heart could beat and before whom his stately head could bow. When she
+died, the world exclaimed, 'He will soon fill her place!' But I who
+watched the last look that passed between them in the valley of the
+shadow of that death, knew that the years would come and the years would
+go without seeing Colonel Japha marry again.
+
+"The little babe whom she left to his care, took all the love which he
+had left. From the moment it began to speak, he centered in its tiny
+life all the hope and all the pride of his solitary heart. And the Japha
+pride was nearly as great as the Japha heart. She was a pretty child;
+not a beauty like her mother or like you, my dear, who however so nearly
+resemble her. But for all that, pretty enough to satisfy the eyes of her
+secretly doting father, and her openly doting nurse and cousin. I say
+secretly doting father. I do not mean by that that he regarded her with
+an affection which he never displayed, but that it was his way to lavish
+his caresses at home and in the privacy of her little nursery. He never
+made a parade of anything but his pride. If he loved her, it was enough
+for her to know it. In the street and the houses of their friends, he
+was the strict, somewhat severe father, to whom her childish eyes lifted
+at first with awe, but afterwards with a quiet defiance, that when I
+first saw it, made my heart stand still with unreasoning alarm.
+
+"She was so reserved a child and yet so deeply passionate. From the
+beginning I felt that I did not understand her. I loved her; I have
+never loved any mortal as I did her--and do; but I could not follow her
+impulses or judge of her feelings by her looks.
+
+"When she grew older it was still worse. She never contradicted her
+father, or appeared in any open way to disobey his commands, or thwart
+him in his plans. Yet she always did what she pleased, and that so
+quietly, he frequently did not observe that matters had taken any other
+direction, than that which he had himself ordained. 'It is her mother's
+tact,' he used to say. Alas it was something more than that; it was her
+father's will united to the unscrupulousness of some forgotten ancestor.
+
+"But with the glamour of her eighteen years upon me, I did not recognize
+this then, any more than he. I saw her through the magic glasses of my
+own absorbing love, and tremble as I frequently would in the still scorn
+of her unfathomable passion, I never dreamed she could do anything that
+would seriously offend her father's affection or mortify his pride. The
+truth is, that Jacqueline did not love us. Say what you will of the
+claims of kindred, and the right of every father to his childrens'
+regard, Jacqueline Japha accepted the devotion that was lavished upon
+her, but she gave none in return. She could not, perhaps. Her father was
+too cold in public and too warm in his home-bursts of affection. I was
+plain and a widow; no mate for her in age, condition or estate. She
+could neither look up to me nor lean upon me. I had been her nurse in
+childhood and though a relative, was still a dependent; what was there
+in all that to love! If her mother had lived--But we will not dwell on
+possibilities. Jacqueline had no mother and no friend that was dear
+enough to her, to teach her unwilling soul the great lesson of
+self-control and sacrifice.
+
+
+"You will say that is strange. That situated as she was, she ought to
+have found friends both dear and congenial; but that would be to declare
+that Jacqueline was like others of her age and class, whereas she was
+single and alone; a dark-browed girl, who allured the gaze of both men
+and women, but who cared but little for any one till--But wait, child. I
+shall have to speak of matters that will cause your cheeks to blush. Lay
+your head down on my knee, for I cannot bear the sight of blushes upon a
+cheek more innocent than hers."
+
+With a gentle movement she urged Paula to sit upon a little stool at her
+feet, pressed the young girl's head down upon her lap, and burying the
+lovely brow beneath her aged hands, went hurriedly on.
+
+"You are young, dear, and may not know what it is to love a man.
+Jacqueline was young also, but from the moment she returned home to us
+from a visit she had been making in Boston, I perceived that something
+had entered her life that was destined to make a great change in her;
+and when a few weeks later, young Robert Holt from Boston, came to pay
+his respects to her in her father's house, I knew, or thought I did,
+what that something was. We were sitting in this room I remember, when
+the servant-girl came in, and announced that Mr. Holt was in the parlor.
+Jacqueline was lying on the sofa, and her father was in his usual chair
+by the table. At the name, Holt, the girl rose as if it had suddenly
+thundered, or the lightning had flashed. I see her now. She was dressed
+in white--though it was early fall she still clung to her summer
+dresses--her dark hair was piled high, and caught here and there with
+old-fashioned gold pins, a splendid red rose burned on her bosom, and
+another flashed crimson as blood from her folded hands.
+
+"'Holt?' repeated the Colonel without turning his head, 'I know no such
+man.'
+
+"'He said he wished to see Miss Jacqueline,' simpered the servant.
+
+"'Oh,' returned the Colonel indifferently. He never showed surprise
+before the servants--and went on with his book, still without turning
+his head.
+
+"I thought if he had turned it, he would scarcely sit there reading so
+quietly; for Jacqueline who had not stirred from her alert and upright
+position, was looking at him in a way no father, least of all a father
+who loved his child as he did her, could have beheld without agitation.
+It was the glance of a tigress waiting for the sight of an inconsiderate
+move, in order to spring. It was wild unconstrainable joy, eying a
+possible check and madly defying it. I shuddered as I looked at her eye,
+and sickened as I perceived a huge drop of blood ooze from her white
+fingers, where they unconsciously clutched a thorn, and drop dark and
+disfiguring upon her virgin garments. At the indifferent exclamation of
+her father, her features relaxed, and she turned haughtily towards the
+girl, with a veiling of her secret delight that already bespoke the
+woman of the world.
+
+"'Tell Mr. Holt that I will see him presently,' said she, and was about
+to follow the girl from the room when I caught her by the sleeve.
+
+"'You will have to change your dress,' said I, and I pointed to the
+ominous blot disfiguring its otherwise spotless white.
+
+"She started and gave me a quick glance.
+
+"'I have a skin like a spider's web," cried she. 'I should never meddle
+with roses.' But I noticed she did not toss the blossom away.
+
+"'Who is this Mr. Holt?' now asked the Colonel suddenly turning, the
+servant having left the room.
+
+"'He is a gentleman I met in Boston,' came from his daughter's lips, in
+her usual light and easy tones. 'He is probably passing through our town
+on his way to Providence, where I was told he did business. His call is
+no more than a formality, I presume.' And with an indifferent little
+smile and nod, she vanished from the room, that a moment before had been
+filled with the threat of her silent passion. The Colonel gave a short
+sigh but returned undisturbed to his book.
+
+"In the course of a few minutes Jacqueline came back. She had changed
+her dress for one as summerlike as the other, but still finer and more
+elaborate. She looked elegant, imperious, but the joy had died out from
+her eyes, and in its place was another expression incomprehensible to
+me, but fully as alarming as any that had gone before. 'Mr. Holt finds
+himself obliged to remain in town over night, and would like to pay his
+respects to you,' said she to her father.
+
+"The Colonel immediately rose, looking very grand as he turned and
+surveyed his daughter with his clear penetrating eye.'
+
+"'You have a lover, have you not?' he asked, laying his hand on her bare
+and beautifully polished shoulder.
+
+"An odd little smile crossed her lip. She looked at her hands on which
+never a ring shone, and coquettishly tossed her head. 'Let the gentleman
+speak for himself,' said she, 'I give no man his title until he has
+earned it.'
+
+"Her father laughed. A lover was not such a dreadful thing in his eyes
+provided he were worthy. And Jacqueline would not choose unworthily of
+course--a Japha and his daughter! 'Well then,' said he, 'let us see if
+he can make good his title; Holt is not a bad name and Boston is not a
+poor place to hail from.' And without more ado, they hurried from the
+room. But the light had all died out from her face! What did it mean?
+
+"At tea time I met the gentleman. He had evidently made his title good.
+I was not only favorably impressed with him but actually struck. Of all
+the high-bred, clear-eyed, polished and kindly gentlemen who had sat
+about the board since I first came into the family in Mrs. Japha's
+lifetime, here was surely the finest, the handsomest and the best; and
+surprised in more ways than one, I was giving full play to my relief and
+exhilaration, when I caught sight of Jacqueline's eye, and felt again
+the cold shudders of secret doubt and apprehension. Smile upon him as
+she would, coquet with him as she did, the flame and the glory that drew
+her like an inspiration to her feet when his name was announced, had
+fled, and left not a shadow behind. Had he failed in his expressions of
+devotion? Was he hard or cold or severe, under all that pleasant and
+charming manner? Had the hot soul of our motherless child rushed upon
+ice, and in the shock of the dreadful chill, fallen inert? No, his looks
+bespake no coldness; they dwelt upon Jacqueline's lovely but inscrutable
+face, with honest fervor and boundless regard. He evidently loved her
+most passionately, but she--if it had not been for that first moment of
+unconscious betrayal, I should have decided that she cared for him no
+more than she did for the few others who had adored her, in the short
+space of her incomprehensible life.
+
+"The mystery was not cleared up when she came to me that night with a
+short, 'How do you like my lover, Margery?' I was forty years her
+senior, but she always called me Margery.
+
+"'I think he is the finest, most agreeable man I ever met,' said I. 'Is
+he your lover, Jacqueline? Are you going to marry him?'
+
+"She turned about from the vase which she was denuding of its flowers,
+and gave me one of her sphinx-like looks. 'You must ask papa,' said she.
+'He holds the destinies of the Japhas in his hand, does he not?'
+
+"'Does he?' I involuntarily whispered to myself; following the steady
+poise of her head and the assured movements of her graceful form, with a
+glance of doubt, but loving her all the same, O loving her all and ever
+the same!
+
+"'Your father is not the man to cross you when the object of your
+affections is as worthy as this gentleman. He loved your mother too
+fondly.'
+
+"'He did?' She had turned quick as a flash and was looking me straight
+in the eyes.
+
+"'I never saw such union!' I exclaimed, vaguely remembering that her
+mother's name had always seemed to have power to move her. 'There was no
+parade of it before the world; but here at their own fireside, it was
+heart to heart and soul to soul. It was not love it was assimilation.'
+
+"The young girl rose upon me like a flame; her very eyes seemed to dart
+fire; her lips looked like living coals; she was almost appalling in her
+terrible beauty and superhuman passion. 'Not love!' she exclaimed, her
+every word falling like a burning spark, 'not love but assimilation! Yet
+do you suppose if I told my father that my soul had found its mate; my
+heart its other half; that this, _this_ nature,' here she struck her
+breast as she would a stone, 'had at last found its master; that the
+wayward spirit of which you have sometimes been afraid, was become a
+part of another's life, another's soul, another's hope, do you suppose
+he would listen? Hush!' she cried, seeing me about to speak. 'You talk
+of love, what do you know of it, what does he know of it, who saw his
+young wife die, yet himself consented to live? Is love a sitting by the
+fire with hand locked in hand while the winter winds rage and the
+droning kettle sings? Love is a going through the fire, a braving of the
+winter winds, a scattering of the soul in sparks that the night and the
+tempest lick up without putting out the germ of the eternal flame.
+Love!' she half laughed; 'O, it takes a soul that has never squandered
+its treasure upon every passing beggar, to know how to love! Do you see
+that star?' It was night as I have said and we were standing near an
+open window. 'It has lost its moorings and is falling; when it descries
+the ocean it will plunge into it; so with some natures, they soar high
+and keep their orbit well, till an invisible hand turns them from their
+course and they fall, to be swallowed up, aye swallowed up, lost and
+buried in the great sea that has awaited them so long.'
+
+
+"'And you love--like this--' I murmured, quailing before the power of
+her passion.
+
+"'Would it not be strange if I did not,' she asked in an altered voice.
+'You say he is everything noble, handsome and attractive.'
+
+"Yes, yes,' I murmured, 'but--'
+
+"She did not wait to hear what lay behind that but. Picking up her
+flowers, she hastily crossed the room. 'Did my young mother shriek from
+joy, when my father's horses ran away with them along that deadly
+precipice at the side of the Southmore road? To lie for a few maddening
+moments on the breast of the man you love, earth reeling beneath you,
+heaven swimming above you, and then with a cry of bliss to fall heart to
+heart, down the hideous gap of some awful gulf, and be dashed into
+eternity with the cry still on your lips, that is what I call love and
+that is what I--'
+
+"She paused, turned upon me the whole splendor of her face, seemed to
+realize to what an extent her impetuosity had lifted the veil with which
+she usually shrouded her bitterly suppressed nature, and calming herself
+with a sudden quick movement, gave me a short mocking courtesy and left
+the room.
+
+"Do you wonder that for half the night I sat up brooding and alive to
+the faintest sounds!
+
+"Next day Mr. Holt called again, and a couple of weeks after--long
+enough to enable Colonel Japha to make whatever inquiries he chose as to
+his claims as a gentleman of means and position--sent a formal entreaty
+for Jacqueline's hand. I had never seen Colonel Japha more moved. His
+admiration for the young man was hearty and sincere. From a worldly
+point of view, as well as from all higher standpoints, the match was one
+of which he could be proud; and yet to speak the word that would
+separate from him the only creature that he loved, was hard as the
+cutting off an arm or the plucking out of an eye. 'Do you think she
+loves him?' asked he of me with a rare condescension of which he was not
+often guilty. 'You are a woman and ought to understand her better than
+I. Do you think she loves him?'
+
+"After the words I had heard her speak, what could I reply but, 'Yes,
+sir; she is of a reserved nature and controls her feelings in his
+presence, but she loves him for all that, with the intensest fervor and
+passion.'
+
+"He repeated again, 'You are a woman and you ought to know.' And then
+called his daughter to him.
+
+"I cannot tell what passed between them, but the upshot of it was, that
+the Colonel despatched an answer to the effect that the father's consent
+would not be lacking, provided the daughter's could be obtained. I
+learned this from Jacqueline herself who brought me the letter to post.
+
+"'You see then, that your father understands,' said I.
+
+"Her rich red lip curled mockingly, but she did not reply.
+
+"Naturally Mr. Holt answered to this communication in person. Jacqueline
+received him with a fitful coquetry that evidently puzzled him, for all
+the distinguishing charm which it added to a beauty apt to be too
+reserved and statue-like. She however took his ring which blazed on her
+finger like a drop of ice on congealed snow. 'I am engaged,' she
+murmured as she passed by my door, 'and to a Holt!' The words rang long
+in my ears; why?
+
+"She desired no congratulations; she permitted nothing to be said about
+her engagement, among the neighbors. She had even taken off her ring
+which I found lying loose in one of her bureau drawers. And no one dared
+to remonstrate, not even her father, punctillious as he was in all
+matters of social etiquette. The fact is, Jacqueline was not the same
+girl she had been before she gave her promise to Mr. Holt. From the
+moment he bade her good-bye, with the remark that he was going away to
+get a golden cage for his bride, she began to reveal a change. The cold
+reserve gave way to feverish expectancy. She trod these rooms as if
+there were burning steels in the floors, she looked from the windows as
+if they were prison bars; night and day she gazed from them yet she
+never went out. The letters she received from him were barely read and
+tossed aside; it was his coming for which she hungered. Her father
+noticed her restless and eager gaze, and frequently sighed. I felt her
+strange removed manner and secretly wept. 'If he does not amply return
+this passion,' thought I, 'my darling will find her life a hell!'
+
+"But he did return it; of that I felt sure. It was my only comfort.
+
+"Suddenly one day the restlessness vanished. Her beauty burst like a
+flame from smoke; she trod like a spirit that hears invisible airs. I
+watched her with amazement till she said 'Mr. Holt comes to-night,' then
+I thought all was explained and went smiling about my work. She came
+down in the afternoon clad as I had never seen her before. She wore one
+of her Boston dresses and she looked superb in it. From the crown of her
+head to the sole of her foot, she dazzled like a moving picture; but she
+lacked one adornment; there was no ring on her finger. 'Jacqueline!'
+cried I, 'you have forgotten something.' And I pointed towards her hand.
+
+"She glanced at it, blushed a trifle as I thought, and pulled it out of
+her pocket. 'I have it,' said she, 'but it is too large,' and she thrust
+it carelessly back.
+
+"At three o'clock the train came in. Then I saw her eye flash and her
+lip burn. In a few minutes later two gentlemen appeared at the gate.
+
+"'Mr. Holt and his brother!' were the words I heard whispered through
+the house. But I did not need that announcement to understand Jacqueline
+at last."
+
+
+
+
+XXVI.
+
+A MAN'S JUSTICE AND A WOMAN'S MERCY.
+
+     "Fair is foul and foul is fair."
+
+     --MACBETH.
+
+
+"Have you ever seen a man whose instantaneous effect upon you was
+electrical; in whose expression, carriage, or manner, there was
+concealed a charm that attracted and interested you, apart from his
+actual worth and beauty? Such a one was Mr. Roger Holt, the gentleman I
+now discerned entering the gate with Jacqueline's lover. It was not that
+he was handsome. He could not for one moment bear any comparison with
+his brother in substantial attraction, and yet when they were both in
+the room, you looked at him in preference to the other, and was vexed
+with yourself for doing so. He seemed to be the younger as he was
+certainly the smaller; yet he took the lead, even in coming up the walk.
+Why had he not taken it in the deeper and more important matter? Was it
+because he did not love her?
+
+"I was not present when Jacqueline greeted her guests and presented Mr.
+Roger Holt to her father. But later in the day I spent a half hour with
+them and saw enough to be able to satisfy myself as to the falsity of my
+last supposition. Never had I seen on a human countenance the evidences
+of a wilder passion than that which informed his features, as he sat in
+the further window of the parlor, presumably engaged in admiring the
+autumn landscape, but really occupied in casting short side-long glances
+at Jacqueline, who sat listening with a superb nonchalence, but with a
+restless gleam in her wandering eye, to the genial talk between her
+acknowledged lover and the Colonel. I half feared he would rise from his
+seat, and flinging himself before her, demand then and there an
+explanation of her engagement.
+
+"But beyond the impatience of those short burning glances, he controlled
+himself well, and it was Jacqueline who moved at last.
+
+"I saw the purpose growing in her eyes long before she stirred. The face
+which had been a mystery to me from her cradle, was in the presence of
+this man, like an open page which all might read. Its letters were
+flame, but that did not make them any less clear. I felt her swaying
+towards him, before an eyelash trembled or a quiver shook her tall form.
+He may have understood her purpose also, for his eye wandered towards
+the open piano. She rose like a queen.
+
+"'Mr. Roger Holt is a singer,' said she in passing her father, 'I am
+going to ask him to give us one of the old ballads you profess to like
+so much.'
+
+"The conversation at once ceased. The Colonel who made no secret of his
+fondness for music, turned at once towards the stranger, with an
+expression of great courtesy. Instantly that gentleman rose, and meeting
+the request of his hostess with a profound bow, proceeded at once to the
+piano. 'He will not leave it till he has spoken to her,' thought I. Nor
+did he, for that very moment as they stood turning her music over, I
+perceived his lips move in a hurried question, to which she as briefly
+responded, whereupon he caught up a sheet of music from the pile, and
+flinging back his head with a victorious smile, began to sing.
+
+"Had I known what lay behind his words, I would have braved everything
+rather than have allowed him to utter a note in that room which had once
+rung with the carols of Jacqueline's mother. But what could I guess of
+the possible evil underlying the natural ebullition of unrestrained
+passion that from some cause of pride or pique, had met with a strange
+inexplicable check. So I sat still, shuddering perhaps, but quiet in my
+corner; while the haunting tones of his strange and thrilling voice,
+rose and fell in the most uncanny of Scottish love songs. Nor did I do
+more than wonder with all my agitated soul, when at the conclusion
+Jacqueline came back, and pausing beside the man to whom she had given
+her troth, looked down in his beaming face and smiled with that overflow
+of delight, which she dared not bestow upon his brother.
+
+"Another little incident of that hour remains engraven upon my memory.
+She had been showing to the gentlemen a rare plant that stood in the
+front parlor window, and was dilating upon its marvels, when Mr. Robert
+Holt, her accepted lover, took in his clasp the small white hand
+wandering so invitingly among the leaves of the huge palm, and glancing
+at the finger which should have worn his ring, looked inquiringly into
+her face.
+
+"'O,' said she, interrupting her little speech to draw away her hand,
+'you miss your diamond? I have it, sir. It lies very safe in my pocket;
+it is a beautiful gem, but _your ring does not fit me_.'
+
+"The way she said those words and the air with which she tossed back her
+head, must have made one heart in that room beat joyously, but it did
+not reassure me or subdue my secret apprehension.
+
+
+"'Not fit!' her lover responded; and begged her to allow him to try it
+on and see, but she shook her head with wilful coquetry, and turning to
+the piano, commenced singing a gay little song that was like silver
+bells, shaken by a sudden and mighty tempest.
+
+"Even the Colonel felt the change in his daughter, though he never
+guessed the cause, and came and went during the evening that followed,
+with certain odd sighs that made my heart ache with strange forebodings.
+Only her lover was unconscious, or if he felt the new and wayward force
+and fire in her manner, attributed it to his own presence and
+unspeakable devotion. Mr. Roger Holt, on the contrary, thoroughly
+understood it. Though he was strangely calm, as calm now as he had
+previously been alert and fiery, he never lost a gleam of her eye in his
+direction, or a turn of her form towards the chair where he sat. But the
+smile with which he contemplated her was not pleasant to me. It was
+informed with self-consciousness, and a certain hard triumph, that made
+it almost sinister. 'She has given her hand to the true man,' I mused,
+'wherever her heart may be. But had she given it?' I began to doubt as I
+began to muse. With that uncontrollable will of hers, she was capable of
+anything; did she intend to break with Robert, now that she had seen
+Roger? I detected no signs of it beyond the evident delight they took in
+each other's presence. They were guilty of no further conversation of a
+secret or intimate character, and when with the striking of the clock at
+ten, Mr. Robert Holt rose to leave, his brother followed without any
+demur, even preceding him in his departure and limiting his farewell to
+a short brotherly pressure of Jacqueline's fair hand.
+
+"But much may be conveyed in a pressure, or so I began to think as I
+heard the low laugh that rippled from Jacqueline's lips as she turned to
+go up to her room; and if I had been her mother--
+
+"But that is not what you want to hear. Enough that I did not follow
+her, that I did not even acquaint Colonel Japha with my fears, that
+indeed I did nothing but lie awake, praying and asking what I ought to
+do. There had been so little said; there had been so little done. A
+word, a sentence between them, the interchange of a couple of songs,
+and--What else that I could communicate to another?
+
+"A week, two weeks passed, and her look of wilful happiness did not fly.
+She was flooded with notes from her accepted lover, whose handwriting I
+had learned by this time to distinguish, but not one, so far as I could
+learn, from any other source; yet her feet tripped lightly through the
+house, and her form had a rich grace in its every movement, that bespoke
+a mind settled in some deep joy or quiet determination. I felt the
+impenetrability of a secretly cherished hope, whenever I looked at her.
+If I had not known to the contrary, I should have said that her
+prospective marriage had become to her a dream of unfathomable delight.
+Whence then came this rapture? Through what communication was born this
+secret hope? I could not guess, I could only watch and wait.
+
+"Meanwhile some random guesses at the truth had been made by the
+neighbors. Jacqueline had a lover. That lover was a gentleman; but the
+Colonel was critical; he had refused his consent and the young people
+had parted. Such was the talk, begotten perhaps by the persistency with
+which Jacqueline remained in the house, and the almost severe look with
+which Colonel Japha trod the streets of his native village, which he
+soon felt would lose all their charm in the departure of his only child.
+I scarcely ventured out more than Jacqueline; for I have but little
+control over my feelings and did not know what I would do, if any one
+should closely press me with questions.
+
+"The unexpected discovery that our pretty young servant girl was in the
+habit of stealing into Jacqueline's room late at night, was the first
+thing that startled me into asking whether or not my supposition was
+true, that Jacqueline received no messages from Mr. Robert Holt. And
+scarcely had I become certain that a clandestine correspondence was
+being carried on between them through the medium of this girl, then the
+climax came, and knowledge on my part and secrecy on hers availed no
+longer.
+
+"It was a day in October. The stoves had been put up in the house, and
+seeing Jacqueline roaming about the halls, in a renewed fit of that
+strange restlessness which had affected her the day before Mr. Roger
+Holt's visit, I went into her room to light a fire, and make everything
+look cheerful before dusk. I found the atmosphere warm, and going to the
+stove, discovered that a fire had been already kindled there, but had
+gone out for want of fuel. I at once commenced to rake away the ashes,
+in order to make preparations for a new one, when I came upon several
+scraps of half burned paper.
+
+"Jacqueline had been burning letters. Do you blame me for picking out
+those scraps and hastening with them to another room, when I tell you
+they were written in a marked and characteristic hand that bore little
+or no resemblance to that of her accepted lover, and that the words
+which flashed first upon my eye were those ominous ones of _my wife_!
+
+"They were three in number, and while more or less discolored and
+irregular, were still legible. Think child with what a thrill of horror
+and sharp motherly anguish, I read such words as 'Love you! I would
+press you in my arms if you were plague-stricken! The least turn of your
+head makes my blood cringe, as if a flame had touched me. I would follow
+you on my knees, if you led me round the world. Let me see Robert take
+your hand again and I will--'
+
+"'Forget you! Do we forget the dagger that has struck us? I am another
+man since--'
+
+"'I will have you if Robert goes mad and your father kills me. That I am
+burdened with a wife, is nothing. What is a wife that I do not--' 'You
+shall be my true wife, my--'
+
+"'To-night then, be ready; I will wait for you at the gate. A little
+resolution on your part, and then--'
+
+"I could read no further. The living, burning truth had forced itself
+upon me, that Jacqueline, our darling, our pride, the soul of our life,
+stood tottering upon the brink of a gulf horrible as the mouth of hell.
+For I never doubted for an instant what her answer would be to this
+entreaty. In all her past life, God pity us, there had been no tokens of
+that immovable hold on virtue, that would save her in such an extremity
+as this. Nevertheless, to make all sure, I flew back to her room, and
+tearing open bureau drawers and closet doors, discovered that her
+prettiest things had been sent away. She was going, then, and on that
+very night! and her father did not even know she was untrue to her
+betrothed lover. The horror of the situation was too much for me; I
+faltered as I left her room, her dainty, maidenly room, and actually
+crouched against the wall like a guilty thing, as I heard the sound of
+her voice singing some maddening strain in the parlors below. What
+should I do? Appeal to her, or warn her father of the frightful peril in
+which his honor and happiness stood? Alas, any appeal to her would be
+useless. In the glare of this awful revelation I had come to a full
+comprehension of her nature. But her father was a man; he could command
+as well as entreat, could even force obedience if all other methods
+failed. To him, then, must I go; but I had rather have gone to the rack.
+He was so proud a man! Had owned to such undeviating trust in his
+daughter's honor, as a Japha and his child! The blow would kill him; or
+daze him so, he might better have been killed. My knees shook under me,
+as I traversed the hall to his little study over the parlor, and when I
+came to the door, I rather fell against it than knocked, so great was my
+own anguish, and so deep my terror of his. He was a ready man and he
+came to the door at once, but upon seeing me, drew back as if his eye
+had fallen upon a phantom.
+
+"'Hush!' said I, scarcely knowing what I uttered; and going in, I closed
+the door and latched it firmly behind me. 'I have come,' said I in a
+voice that made him start, 'to ask you to save your daughter. She is in
+deadly peril; she--' a strain of her song came in at that moment from
+the staircase. She was ascending to her room. He looked at me in a doubt
+of my sanity.
+
+"'Not physical peril,' I stammered, 'but _moral_. She loves madly,
+unreasonably, and with a headlong passion that laughs at every obstacle,
+a man whom neither you nor heaven can look upon with aught but
+execration. She--'
+
+"'Mrs. Hamlin!'--How well I remember his cool, calm voice, so deliberate
+in his impressive moments, so deliberate now, when perhaps she was
+donning hat and shawl for her elopement--'You are laboring under a great
+mistake. Instead of execrating Mr. Holt, I admire him most profoundly.
+Since the time has come for me to give up my daughter, I know of no one
+to whom I would rather surrender her.'
+
+"'But Mr. Holt is not the man,' I cried, half wild in my fear and
+desperation. 'Do you remember the gentleman who came with him on his
+last visit? He called him his brother, and he is I believe, but--'
+
+"The way he turned his grand white forehead towards me at that, made
+every fibre in my being quiver. 'Jacqueline does not love _him_!'
+exclaimed he. How sharp his voice, how changed his eye! I shrank back,
+trembling as I bowed my head, thinking of the word yet to be said.
+
+"'But he won't compare--' he went on with a severe intonation. 'Besides
+her honor is engaged. You are dealing in fancies, Mrs. Hamlin.'
+
+"I tore out of my breast the scraps of paper which had enlightened me so
+horribly, and held them towards him; then bethought myself, and drew
+back. 'I have proof,' said I; 'but first I must tell you that Jacqueline
+is not as good a girl as you have thought her. She is not her mother's
+child in the qualities of love and honor. She is destined to bring a
+great woe upon your head. In her passion for this man, she has forgotten
+your trust in her, the incorruptibility of your name, the honor of your
+house. Be strong, sir, for God is about to smite you in your tenderest
+spot.
+
+"Ah, with what pride he towered upon me! this white-haired, stately
+gentleman before whom I had hitherto held my breath in admiring awe;
+towered upon me though his face was ghostly pale and his hand trembled
+like an aspen as he held it out!
+
+"'Give me the papers you hold there,' cried he. 'Either you are gone
+mad, or else--Who wrote these lines?' he demanded, glancing down upon
+the hard, firm scrawl that blackened the bits of paper I had given him.
+
+"'Mr. Roger Holt,' I returned unhesitatingly. 'I found those bits in
+Jacqueline's stove. Her clothes have been sent away, sir,' I continued
+as I saw his face grow fixed above the scraps he consulted. 'Twilight is
+coming on and--Mr. Roger Holt is a married man!'
+
+"'What!'
+
+"I never saw such a look flash from a human face as that which darted
+from his at that terrible moment. I thought he would have fallen, but he
+only dropped the papers out of his hand. 'Heaven forgive us!' murmured
+I, calmed by a sight of his misery, into some semblance of of
+self-control, 'but we have never understood Jacqueline. She is not to be
+led, sir, by principles or duty. She loves this man, and love with her
+is a stormy wind, capable of sweeping her into any abyss of contumely or
+suffering. If you would save her, kill her love; the death of her lover
+would only transform her into a demon.'
+
+"He looked at me as if I had told him the world had come to an end. 'My
+Jacqueline!' he murmured in a low, incredulous voice of the tenderest
+yearning. 'My Jacqueline!'
+
+"'Oh!' I shrieked, torn by my anguish for him and the terror of her
+escaping while we were yet talking, 'God knows I had rather have died
+than contaminate her by such words as I have uttered. She is dear to me
+as my soul; dearer to me than my life. I have a mother's feeling for
+her, sir. If to fling myself headlong from that window, would delay her
+feet from going down the stairs to meet her guilty lover, I would gladly
+do it. It is her danger makes me speak. O sir, realize that danger and
+hasten before she has taken the irrevocable step.'
+
+"He started like a man pricked by a sudden dart. 'She is going--you
+believe she is going to meet him?'
+
+"'I do,' said I.
+
+"He gave me a terrible look and started for the door. I hurriedly picked
+up the scraps that had fallen to the floor, and rushed around by an
+inner passage-way to my own little room, hiding my head and waiting as
+for the crash of a falling avalanche. Suddenly a cry rose in the hall.
+
+"There are some sounds that lift you unconsciously to your feet. Dashing
+out of my room, I detected the face of the servant-girl whom I have
+before mentioned, looking out of her door some distance down the
+corridor. Hastening towards her, I uttered some words about her being a
+busy-body, and thrusting her inside her room, locked the door upon her.
+Then I hastened with what speed I might to the front of the house, and
+coming out upon the grand staircase, met a sight that shook me to the
+very soul. You have been up the stairs; you know how they branch off to
+left and right from the platform near the top. The left branch led in
+those days to Colonel Japha's room, the right to the apartments occupied
+by Jacqueline and myself. Coming upon them, then, as I did from my side
+of the house, I found myself in full view of the opposite approach, and
+there on the topmost step I beheld Colonel Japha, standing in an
+attitude of awful denunciation, while half way down the staircase, I
+beheld the figure of Jacqueline, hindered in her gliding course towards
+the front door by the terrible, 'Stop!' whose echo had reached me in my
+room and caused me to rush quaking and horrified to this spot. I leaned
+back sick and horror-stricken against the wall. There was no mercy in
+his voice: he had awakened to a full realization of the situation and
+the pride of the Japhas had made him steel.
+
+"'You are my child!' he was saying. 'I have loved you and do still; but
+proceed one step farther towards the man that awaits you at the gate,
+and the door that opens upon you, _shuts_ never to open again!'
+
+"'Colonel!' I exclaimed, starting forward; but he heard me no more than
+he would a fly buzzing or a bird singing.
+
+"'I desire it to shut; I have no wish to come back!' issued from the set
+white lips of the girl beneath us. 'There is no such charm for me in
+this humdrum house, that I should wish to exchange life with the man I
+adore, for its droning, spiritless existence!' And she lifted her foot
+to proceed.
+
+"'Jacqueline!' I shrieked, leaning forward in my turn, and holding her
+by my anguish, as I never believed she could be held by anything,
+'Think, child, think what you do! It is not life you are going to but
+death. A man who can take a young girl from her father's house, from her
+lover's arms, from her mother's grave, from the shrine of all that is
+pure and holy, to dash her into a pit of all that is corrupt, loathsome
+and deadly, is not one with whom you can _live_. You say you adore him:
+can one adore falsehood, selfishness and depravity? Does hypocrisy win
+love? Can the embraces of a serpent bring peace? Jacqueline, Jacqueline,
+you are yet pure; come back to our love and our hearts, before we die
+here in our shame at the head of the stairs, where your mother was
+carried out to her grave!'
+
+"She trembled. I saw the hand that clutched the banister loosen its
+grip; she cast one quick look behind her, and her eyes flashed upon her
+father's face; it was set like a flint.
+
+"'If you come back,' cried he, leaning towards her, but not advancing a
+step from where he stood, 'you must come back of your own free will. I
+will hold no creature prisoner in my house. I must trust you implicitly,
+or not at all. Speak then, which shall it be?' And he raised his hand
+above his head, with a supreme and awful gesture, 'a father's blessing
+or a father's curse?'
+
+"'A father's curse, then! since you command me to choose,' rang out from
+her lips in a burst of uncontrollable passion. 'I want no blessing that
+separates me from _him_!' And she pointed towards the door with a look
+that, defiant as it was, spoke of a terrible love before which all our
+warnings and entreaties were but as empty air.
+
+"'Curses then upon your head, slayer of a family's honor, a father's
+love, and a mother's memory! Curses upon you, at home and abroad! in the
+joy of your first passion and in the agony of your last despair! May you
+live to look upon that door as the gateway to heaven, and find it shut!
+May your children, if you are cursed with them, turn in your face, as
+you are turning now in mine! May the lightning of heaven be your candle,
+and the blackness of death your daily food and your nightly drink!' And
+with a look in which all the terrors he invoked, seemed to crash
+downward from his reeling brain upon her shrinking terror-crouched head,
+he gave one mighty gasp and fell back stricken to the floor.
+
+"'God!' burst from her lips, and she rushed downwards to the door like a
+creature hunted to its quarry. I saw her white face gleam marble-like in
+the fading light that came in from the chinks about the door. I saw her
+trembling hand fumbling with the knob, and rousing from my stupor,
+called down to her with all the force of a breaking heart,
+
+"'Jacqueline, beware!'
+
+"She turned once more. There was something in my voice she could not
+withstand. 'I do not hope to keep you,' cried I, 'but before you go,
+hear this. In the days to come, when the face that now beams upon you
+with such longing, shall have learned to turn from you in weariness, if
+not distaste, when hunger, cold, contumely and disease shall have
+blasted that fair brow and seared those soft cheeks, know, that although
+a father can curse, a woman who loves like a mother can forgive. The
+father cries, 'Once go out of that door and it shuts upon you never to
+open!' 'Once come to _that_ door, say I,' pointing in the direction of
+the house's other entrance, 'and if I live and if I move, it shall open
+to you, were you as defiled and wretched and forsaken as Magdalen.
+Remember! Each day at this hour will I watch for you, kneeling upon its
+threshold. In sickness or in health, in joy or in sorrow, in cold or in
+heat. The hour of six is sacred. Some one of them shall see you falling
+weeping on my breast!'
+
+"She gave me a quick stare out of her wide black eyes, then a mocking
+smile curled her lips, and murmuring a short, 'You rave!' opened the
+door, and rushed out into the falling dusk. With a resounding clang like
+the noise of a stone rolled upon an open grave, the great door swung to,
+and I was left alone in that desolated house with my stricken master.
+
+
+
+
+XXVII.
+
+THE LONE WATCHER.
+
+    "Hark! to the hurried question of Despair,
+    Where is my child?--and Echo answers--Where?"
+
+    --BYRON.
+
+
+"Colonel Japha recovered from his shock, but was never the same man
+again. All that was genial, affectionate and confiding in his nature,
+had been turned as by a lightning's stroke, to all that was hard, bitter
+and suspicious. He would not allow the name of Jacqueline to be spoken
+in his presence; he would listen to no allusion made to those days when
+she was the care and perplexity, but also the light and pleasure of the
+house. Men are not like women, my child; when they turn, it is at an
+angle, the whole direction of their nature changes.
+
+"Perhaps the news that presently came to us from Boston may have had
+something to do with this. It was surely dreadful enough; Jacqueline's
+perfidy had slain her lover. Mr. Robert Holt, the cultured, noble,
+high-souled gentleman, had been found lying dead on the floor of his
+room, a few days after the events I have just related, with a lady's
+diamond ring in his hand and the remnants of a hastily burned letter in
+the grate before him. He had burst a blood-vessel, and had expired
+instantly.
+
+"This sudden and tragic ending of a man of energy and will, was also the
+reason, perhaps, why Grotewell never arrived at the truth of
+Jacqueline's history. Boston was a long way from here in those days, and
+the story of her lover's death was not generally known, while the fact
+of her elopement was. Consequently she was supposed to have fled with
+the man who had been seen to visit her most frequently; a report which
+neither the Colonel nor myself had the courage to deny.
+
+"My child, you have a brow like snow, and a cheek like roses; you know
+little of life's sorrows and little of life's sins. To you the skies are
+blue, the woods vernal, the air balmy; the sad looks upon men's and
+women's faces, tell but shallow tales of the ceaseless grinding of grief
+in their pent up souls. But you are gentle, and you have an imagination
+that goes beyond your experience; perhaps if you pause and think, you
+can understand what a tale could be told of the weeks and months and
+years that now followed, without hint or whisper of the fate of her who
+had gone out from amongst us with the brand of her father's curse upon
+her brow. At first we hoped, yes, _he_ hoped,--I could see it in his
+eyes when there came a sudden ring at the bell,--that some sign of her
+penitence, or some proof of her existence, would come to relieve the
+torture of our fears, if not the shame of our memories. But the door
+that closed upon her on that fatal eve, had shut without an echo. While
+we vainly waited, time had ample leisure to carve the furrows of age as
+well as of suffering on the Colonel's once smooth brow, and to change my
+daily vigil into a custom of despair, rather than of hope. Time had also
+leisure to rob us of much of our worldly goods and to make our continued
+living in this grand old house, an act that involved constant care and
+the closest economy. That we were enabled to preserve appearances to the
+day that beheld the Colonel laid low by the final stroke of his dread
+disease, was only due to the secret charity of a certain gentleman, who,
+declaring he was indebted to us, secretly supplied me with means of
+support.
+
+"But of all this you care little.
+
+"You had rather hear about the evening watch with its hopeful assurance,
+'Yet another day and she will be here,' to be followed so soon by the
+despairing acknowledgement, 'Yet another day and she has not come!' or
+of those dark hours when the Colonel lay blank and white upon his
+pillow, with his eyes fixed on the door which would never open to the
+beating of a daughter's heart, while the gray shadow of an awful
+resolution deepened upon his immovable face. What that resolution was I
+could not know, but I feared it, when I saw what a sternness it gave to
+his eye, what a fixedness to his set and implacable lip; and when in the
+waning light of a certain December afternoon, the circle of neighbors
+about his bed gave way to the stiff and forbidding form of Mr. Phelps, I
+felt a thrill of mortal apprehension and only waited to hear the short,
+'It shall be done,' of the lawyer to some slowly whispered command of
+the colonel, to rise from my far off corner and stand ready to accost
+Mr. Phelps as he came from the bedside of the dying man.
+
+"'What is it?' I asked, rushing up to him as he issued forth into the
+hall, and seizing him by the arm, with a woman's unreasoning
+impetuosity. 'I have nursed his daughter on my knee; tell me, then, what
+it is he has ordered you to do in this final moment?'
+
+"Mr. Phelps for all his ungainly bearing, is not a hard-hearted man, as
+you know, and he doubtless saw the depth of the misery that made me
+forget myself. Giving me a look that was not without its touch of
+sarcasm, he replied, 'The colonel has made me promise, to see that a
+plank is nailed across the front door of this house, after his body has
+been carried out to burial.'
+
+"A board across the front door! His anger then was implacable. The
+withering curse that had rung in my ears for ten years, was to outlive
+his death! With a horrified groan, I pressed my hands over my eyes and
+rushed back. My first glimpse of the Colonel's face showed me that the
+end was at hand, but that fact only made more imperative my consuming
+desire to see that curse removed, even though it were done with his
+final breath. Drawing near his bedside, I leaned down, and waiting till
+his eye wandered to my face, asked him if there was nothing he wished
+amended before his strength failed. He understood me. We had not sat for
+so long, face to face across the chasm of a hideous memory, without
+knowing something of the workings of each other's mind. Glancing up at
+his wife's portrait which ever faced him as he lay upon his pillow, his
+mouth grew severe and he essayed to shake his head. I at once pointed to
+the portrait.
+
+"'What will you say to her when she meets you on the borders of heaven?'
+I demanded with the courage of despair.' She will ask, 'Where is my
+child?' And what will you reply?'
+
+
+"The fingers that lay upon the coverlid moved spasmodically; he eyed me
+with a steady deepening stare, awful to meet, fearful to remember. I
+went on steadily; 'She has gone out of this house with your curse; tell
+me that if she comes back, she may be greeted with your forgiveness.'
+Still that awful stare which changed not. 'I have watched and waited for
+her every day since her departure,' I whispered, 'and shall watch and
+wait for her, every day until I die. Shall a stranger's love be greater
+than a father's?' This time his lips twitched and the grey shadow
+shifted, but it did not rise. 'I had sworn to do it,' I went on. 'When
+you lay there at the top of the stairs, smitten down by your first
+shock, I told her, come sickness, come health, I should keep a daily
+vigil at that door of the house which your severity had not closed upon
+her; and I have kept my word till now and shall keep it to the end. What
+will you do for this miserable child of whose being you are the author?'
+
+"With indescribable anxiety I paused and watched him, for his lips were
+moving. 'Do for her?' he repeated.
+
+"How awful is the voice of the dying! I shivered as I listened, but drew
+near and nearer, that I might lose no word that came from his stony
+lips.
+
+"'She will not come,' gasped he, with an effort that raised him up in
+bed, and deepened that horrible stare, 'but--'
+
+"Who shall say what he might have uttered if Death's hand had delayed a
+single instant, but the inexorable shadow fell, and he never finished
+the sentence.
+
+"My child, these are frightful things for you to hear. God knows I would
+not assail your pure ears with a tale like this, if it were not for the
+help and sympathy I hope to gain from you. Sin is a hideous thing; the
+gulf it opens is wide and deep; well may it be said to swallow those who
+trust themselves above its flower-hung brink. But we who are human, owe
+something to humanity. Love stops not because of the gulf; love follows
+the sinner with wilder and more heart-breaking longing, the deeper and
+deeper he sinks into the illimitable darkness. Ten years have passed
+since we laid the Colonel away in the burying-place of all the Japhas,
+and dutiful to his last request, nailed up the front door of his
+speedily to be forsaken mansion. In all that time my watch has remained
+unbroken in this house, which by will he had left to me, but which I
+secretly hold in trust for her. The hour of six has found me at my post,
+sometimes elate with hope, sometimes depressed with repeated
+disappointments, but whether hopeful or sad, always trustful that the
+great God who Himself so loved all sinners, that He gave the life of His
+Son to rescue them, would ultimately grant me the desire of my heart.
+But the decrepitude of age is coming upon me, and each morning I leave
+my bed, with growing fear lest my infirmities will increase until they
+finally overcome my resolution. Child, if this should happen, if lying
+in my bed I should some day hear that she had come back, and failing to
+find the lamp burning and the welcome ready, had gone away again--But
+the thought is madness. I cannot bear it. A sinner, lost, degraded,
+suffering, starving, perhaps, is wandering this way. She is hardened and
+old in guilt; she has drunk the cup of life's passions and found them
+corrupting poison; all that was lovely and pure and good has withdrawn
+from her; she stands alone, shut off by her sin, like a wild thing in a
+circle of flame. What shall touch this soul? The preacher's voice has no
+charm for her; good men's advice is but empty air. God's love must be
+mirrored in human love, to strike an eye so unused to looking up. Where
+shall she find such love? It is all that can rescue her; love as great
+as her sin, as boundless as her degradation, as persistent as her
+suffering. Child--"
+
+"I know what you are going to say," suddenly exclaimed Paula, rising up
+and confronting Mrs. Hamlin with a steady high look of determination.
+"In the day of your weakness or illness you want some one to unlock the
+door and light the lamp. You have found her!"
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII.
+
+SUNSHINE ON THE HILLS.
+
+    "If I speak to thee in Friendship's name,
+      Thou think'st I speak too coldly;
+    If I mention Love's devoted flame,
+      Thou say'st I speak too boldly."
+
+
+    --MOORE.
+
+
+The story told by Mrs. Hamlin had a great effect upon Paula, not only on
+account of its own interest and the promise it had elicited from her,
+but because of the remembrances it revived of Mr. Sylvester and her life
+in New York. Any vision of evil or suffering, any experience that roused
+the affections or awakened the sensibilities, could not fail to recall
+to her mind the forcible figure of Mr. Sylvester as he stood that day by
+his own hearthstone, talking of the temptations that assail humanity;
+and any reminiscence of him must necessarily bring with it much that
+charmed and aroused. For a week, then, she felt the effect of a great
+unsettlement. Her village home appeared a prison; she longed to run,
+soar--anything to escape; the horizon was full of beckoning hands. A
+brooding melancholy settled upon her reveries; the prospect of a life
+spent in the narrow circle to which she had endeavored to re-accustom
+herself, became unendurable.
+
+Thus it is with us. We slide in a groove and seem happy, when suddenly a
+book we read, a story we hear, an experience we encounter, shakes us out
+of our content, and makes continuance in the old course a violation of
+the most demanding instincts of our nature.
+
+In the full tide of this unrest, Paula went out for a solitary walk on
+the hills. Nature can soothe if she cannot satisfy. Then the day itself
+was one to make the soul glad and the heart rejoice. As the young girl
+trod the meadows, she wondered that she could be sad. Earth and air were
+so full of splendor. Nature seemed to be in league with the angels of
+light. September stood upon the earth like a goddess of might and glory.
+Every tint of green that variegated the mountain-side, wooed the eye
+with suggestions of unfathomable beauty. A bough of scarlet flame lit
+here and there amid the verdure, served to illuminate the woods as for
+the passage of a king; and not Solomon in all his glory ever wore an
+aspect more sumptuous than the flowers that flecked the meadow and
+fringed the hardy roadside with imperial purple. A wind was blowing, a
+keen but kindly breeze, laden with sweetness and alert to awaken AEolian
+airs from the boughs of whistling beech and alder. Even the low field
+grasses seemed to partake in the general cheer, and nodded to each other
+with a witching and irresistible abandon. Had a poet been at her side,
+or any one capable of divining the hidden things of nature, what a
+commentary to all their united thoughts she would have found in the
+delicious tremble of the laughing leaves, in the restless music of the
+runaway brooks, in the lowly crickets with their single song, in the
+cloud-haunting birds with their trailing melodies, and in all the roll
+and rumble of earth's commingled noises. Alluring as was the book of
+nature, she could not read it alone. She felt the lack of a loving hand
+to turn the page. "Is it that I am lonely!" she murmured.
+
+The thought deepened her trouble. Coming down from the hillside, she
+entered a skirting of woods that ran along by the river. Here she had
+always found peace and some of her richest treasures of thought. Through
+this opaline archway she had walked with her fancies, like Saint
+Catherine with her lily. It was sacred to all that was sweet and deep
+and pure within her. "Lonely!" she whispered; "I will not be lonely. To
+some God gives years of happy companionship; to others but a day. Shall
+one complain because it has fallen to his portion to have the lesser
+share? I will remember my one day and be glad."
+
+"My one day!" She caught herself at the utterance and literally started
+at the suggestion it offered. There was but one person whom she had seen
+but for a day. Could she have been thinking of him?
+
+With a flush deep as the autumn leaves she carried, she was hurrying on,
+when suddenly in the opening before her, a shadow fell, and a mellow
+voice exclaimed in her ear,
+
+"Do I meet Miss Fairchild in her native woods?"
+
+It was Clarence Ensign.
+
+The surprise was very great and it took her a moment to steady herself.
+She had felt so assured that she should never see him or any other of
+her New York friends again. Had not Cicely written that he had gone
+West, soon after her own departure from New York. With a deepening of
+his voice Mr. Ensign repeated the question.
+
+At once the day seemed to acquire all it had hitherto lacked. Looking
+up, she met his eye fixed admiringly upon her, and all that was merry,
+lightsome and gay within her, leaped at once to the surface. Ignoring
+his question with smiling abandon, she exclaimed,
+
+"What shall be done to the man who delights in surprises and startles
+timid maidens without a cause?"
+
+"He shall be held in captivity by the hand of his denouncer, until he
+has sued for pardon and obtained her generous forgiveness," returned he,
+holding out his palm.
+
+She barely touched it with her own. "I see that your repentance is
+sincere, so your pardon shall be speedy," laughed she.
+
+"Your discrimination is at fault, I never felt more impenitent in my
+life. I am a hardened wretch, Miss Fairchild, a hardened wretch! But you
+do not ask me from what corner of the earth I have come. You take me too
+much for granted; like the chirrup of a squirrel, let me say, or the
+whistle of a bullfinch. But perhaps you think I inhabit these woods?"
+
+"No; but a day like this is so full of miracles, why should we be
+astonished at one more! I suppose you came on the train, but should not
+be surprised to hear you started, like Pluto, from the earth. Anything
+seems possible in such a sunshine."
+
+"You are right, and I have sprung from the earth. I have been buried
+five mortal months in a law-suit out west, or else I should have been
+here before. I hope my delay has made me none the less welcome."
+
+He was holding back a branch as he spoke, and his eyes were on a level
+with hers. She felt caught as in a net, and struggled vainly to keep
+down her color. "No," said she, "welcome is a guest's due, whether he
+come early or late. I should be sorry to be lacking in the duties of a
+hostess, though my drawing-room is somewhat more spacious than cosy,"
+she continued, looking around on the fields into which they had emerged,
+"and my facilities for bespeaking you welcome greater than my power to
+make you comfortable."
+
+"Comfort is a satisfaction of the mind, rather than of the body. I am
+not _un_comfortable, Miss Fairchild." Then as he stooped to relieve her
+of half her burden of trailing leaves and flowers, he exclaimed in a
+matter-of-fact tone, "Your aunt is a notable woman, Miss Fairchild, I
+admire her greatly."
+
+"What!" said she, "you have been to the cottage? You have seen Aunt
+Belinda?"
+
+"Of course," laughed he, "or how should I be here? You have been sent
+for, Miss Fairchild, and I am the humble bearer of your aunt's commands.
+But I forget, the practical has nothing to do with such a day. I am
+supposed to have sprung from the ground, and to know by instinct, just
+in what nook you were hiding from the sunlight. Very well. I acknowledge
+that instinct is sometimes capable of going a great way."
+
+But this time her ready answer was lacking. She was wondering what her
+aunt would think of this sudden appearance of a stranger whose name she
+had never so much as mentioned.
+
+"It is a pleasant rest to stand and look at a view like that, after a
+summer of musty labor," said he, gazing up the river with a truly
+appreciative eye. "I do not wonder you carry the charm of the wild woods
+in your laugh and glance, if you have been brought up in the sight of
+such a view as that."
+
+"It has been my meat and drink from childhood," said she, and wondered
+why she wanted to say no more upon her favorite theme.
+
+"Yet you tell me you love the city?"
+
+"Too much to ever again be happy here."
+
+It was a slip for which her cheek burned and her lids fell, the moment
+after. She had been thinking of Mr. Sylvester, and unconsciously spake
+as she might have done, if he had been at her side, instead of this
+genial-hearted young man. With a woman's instinctive desire to retrieve
+herself, she hurriedly continued, "Life is so full and large and deep in
+a great town, if you are only happy enough to meet those who are its
+blood and brain and sinew. One misses the rush of the great wheel of
+time in a spot like this. The world moves, but we do not feel it; it is
+like the quiet sweep of the stars over our heads. But in the city, days,
+weeks and months make themselves felt. The universe jars under the feet
+of hurrying masses. The story of the world is being written on pavement,
+corridor, and dome, so that he who runs may read. One realizes he is
+alive; the unit is part of the multiple. To those who are tired, God
+gives the rest of the everlasting hills, but to those who are eager, he
+holds out the city with its innumerable opportunities and incentives.
+And I am eager," she said. "The flower blooms on the mountain, and its
+perfume is sweet, but the chariot sings as it rushes, and the noise of
+its wheels is music in my ears."
+
+She paused, turned her face to the breeze, and seemed to forget she was
+not alone. Clarence Ensign eyed her with astonishment; he had never
+heard her speak like this; the earnest side of her great nature had
+never been turned towards him before, and he felt himself shrink into
+insignificance in its presence. What was he that he should pluck a star
+from the heavens, to buckle on his breast! Wealth and position were a
+match for beauty great as hers, and a kind heart current coin all the
+world over, for a gentle disposition and a loving nature; but for
+this--He turned away and in his abstraction switched his foot with his
+cane.
+
+"Then it was in New York that I met Cicely," exclaimed Paula.
+
+He shook off his broodings, turned with a manful gesture, and met her
+sweet unfathomable eye, so brilliant with enthusiasm a moment ago, but
+at this instant so softly deep and tender.
+
+"And the friendship of Miss Stuyvesant is a precious thing to you?" said
+he.
+
+"Few things are more so," was her reply.
+
+He bit his lip and his brow grew lighter. After all, great souls
+frequently cling to those of lesser calibre, provided they are true and
+unflawed. He would not be discouraged. But his tone when he spoke had
+acquired a reverence that did not lessen its music. "You are, then, one
+of the few women who believe in friendship?"
+
+"As I believe in heaven."
+
+Looking at her, he took off his hat. Her eye stole to his serious
+countenance. "Miss Stuyvesant is to be envied," said he.
+
+"Are friends so rare?"
+
+"Such friends are," said he.
+
+She gave him a bright little look. "Had you been with Miss Stuyvesant,
+and she had expressed herself as I have done, you would have said, 'Miss
+Fairchild is to be envied,' and you would have been nearer the truth
+than now. Cicely's friendship is to mine what an unbroken mirror is to a
+little racing brook. It reflects but one image, while mine--" She could
+not go on. How could she explain to this stranger that Cicely's heart
+was undivided in its regard, while hers owned allegiance to more than
+her bosom friend.
+
+"If I were with Miss Stuyvesant now," he declared, too absorbed in his
+own ideas to notice the break in hers, "I should still say in face of
+this friendship, 'Miss Stuyvesant is to be envied.' I have no mind for
+more than one thought to-day," exclaimed he, with a look that made her
+tremble.
+
+There are some men who never know in what field to stay the current of
+their impetuosity: Clarence Ensign did. He said no more than this of all
+that was seething in his mind and heart. He felt that he must prove
+himself a man, before he exercised a man's privilege. Besides, his
+temperament was mercurial, and never remained long under the bondage of
+a severe thought, or an impressive tone of mind. He worshipped the
+lofty, but it was with tabor and cymbal and high-sounding lute. A climb
+over the stile at the foot of the hill was enough to restore him to
+himself. It was therefore with merry eyes and laughing lips that they
+approached the house and entered Miss Belinda's presence.
+
+There are some persons whose prerogative it is to carry sunshine with
+them wherever they go. Clarence Ensign was one of these. Without an
+effort, without any display of incongruous hilarity, he always succeeded
+by the mere joyousness of his own nature, in calling forth all that was
+bright and enjoyable in others. When therefore they stepped into the
+quaint old-fashioned parlor, all prepared to receive them, Paula was not
+surprised to perceive it brighten, and her aunts' faces grow cheerful
+and smiling. Who could meet Clarence Ensign's laughing eye and not
+smile? What did astonish her, however, was the sight of an elegant
+basket of hot-house lowers perched on a table in the centre of the room.
+It made her pause, and cast looks of inquiry at the demure countenance
+of Miss Abby, and the quietly satisfied expression of her more
+thoughtful aunt.
+
+"A remembrance from the city!" said Mr. Ensign gracefully. "I thought it
+might help to recall some happy hours to you."
+
+With a swelling of the heart which she could not understand, she leaned
+over the ample cluster of roses and heliotrope. She felt as though she
+could embrace them; they were more than flowers, they were the visible
+emblem of all she had missed, and for which she had longed these many
+months.
+
+"I seem to receive the whole in the part," said she.
+
+He may or may not have understood her, but he saw she was gratified, and
+that was sufficient. The afternoon flew by on wings of light. Miss
+Belinda, who was not accustomed to holidays, but who thoroughly
+appreciated them when they came, entered into the conversation with
+zest; while Miss Abby's unconscious expressions of pleasure were too
+_naive_ not to add to, rather than detract from the general enjoyment.
+The twilight, with its good-bye, came all too soon.
+
+"I have a request to make before I go," said Mr. Ensign. He was standing
+alone with Paula in the embrasure of the window, a few moments before
+his departure. "When we see a flower nodding on a ledge above our heads,
+we long for it; I have heard you talk of friendship, and a great desire
+has seized me. Miss Fairchild will you be my friend?"
+
+She gave him a startled glance that, however, soon settled into a mellow
+radiant look of sympathy and pleasure.
+
+"That is asking for something which if I hesitate to accord, it is
+because the word, 'friend,' carries with it so much," said she, with a
+sweet seriousness that disarmed her words of any latent sting they might
+otherwise have contained.
+
+"I know it," he replied, "and I am very bold to ask it upon so slight an
+acquaintance; but life is short and real treasure is so scarce. You will
+not deny me, Miss Fairchild?" Then seeing her look down, hastily
+continued, "I have acquaintances by the score--friends who style
+themselves thus, by the dozen, but no _friend_. I want one; I want you
+for that one. Will you be it? I shall be jealous though, I warn you," he
+went on, with a cropping out of his mirthful nature; "I shall not be
+pleased to observe the circle widened indefinitely. I shall want my own
+place and no one else in my place."
+
+"No one else can fill the place once given to a friend. Each one has his
+own niche."
+
+"And I am to have mine?" His look was firm, his eye steadfast.
+
+"Yes," she breathed.
+
+With a proud stooping of his head, he took her hand and kissed it. The
+action became him; he was tall and well made, and gallantry induced by
+feeling, sat well upon him. In spite of herself, she thought of old-time
+stories of the Norse chivalry; he stood so radiant and bent so low.
+
+
+"I shall prize my friend at her queenly value," said he; and without
+more ado, uttered his farewell and took his departure.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Paula!"
+
+The young girl started from a reverie which had held her for a long time
+enchained at that fast darkening window, and hastily looking up,
+perceived her Aunt Belinda standing before her, with her eye fixed upon
+her face, with a kind but searching glance.
+
+"Yes, aunt."
+
+"You have not told me who this Mr. Ensign is. In all the letters you
+wrote me you did not mention his name, I think."
+
+"No, aunt. The fact is, I did not meet him until a few days before I
+left, and then only for an evening, you might say."
+
+"Indeed! that one evening seems to have made its impression. Tell me
+something about him, Paula."
+
+"His own countenance speaks for him better than I can, aunt. He is good
+and he is kind; an honest young man, who need fear the eye of no one. He
+is wealthy, I am informed, and the son of highly respected parents. He
+was first presented to me by Miss Stuyvesant, whose friend he is,
+afterwards by Mr. Sylvester. His coming here was a surprise to me."
+
+Miss Belinda's firm mouth, which had expanded at this dutiful response,
+twitched with a certain amused expression over this last announcement.
+Eying her niece with unrelenting inquiry, she pursued, "You have not
+been happy for the last few weeks, Paula. Our life seems narrow to you;
+you long to fly away to larger fields and more expansive skies."
+
+With a guilty droop of her head, Paula stole her hand into that of her
+aunt's.
+
+"I do not wonder," continued Miss Belinda, still watching the flushing
+cheek and slightly troubled mouth of the lovely girl before her. "I once
+breathed other air myself, and know well what charms lie beyond these
+mountains. In giving you up for awhile, I gave you up forever, I fear."
+
+"No, no," whispered the young girl, "I am always yours wherever I go.
+Not that I am going away," she hastily murmured.
+
+Her aunt smiled and gently stroked her niece's hand. "When the time
+comes, I shall bid you God speed, Paula. I am no ogress to tie my dove's
+wings to her nest. Love and the home it provides are the natural lot of
+women. None feel it more than those who have missed both."
+
+"Aunt!" Paula was shocked and perplexed. A breaking wave full of doubts
+and possibilities, seemed to dash over her at this suggestion.
+
+"Young men of judgment and principle do not come so many miles to see a
+youthful maiden, without a purpose," continued her aunt inexorably. "You
+know that, do you not, Paula?"
+
+"Yes; but the purpose may differ in different cases," returned the young
+girl hurriedly. "I would not like to believe that Mr. Ensign came here
+with the one you give him credit for--not yet. You trouble me, aunt,"
+pursued she, glancing tremulously about. "It is like opening a great
+door flooded with sunshine, upon eyes scarcely strong enough to bear the
+glimmer sifting through its cracks. I feel humiliated and--" She did not
+finish, perhaps her thought itself was incomplete.
+
+"If a light comes sifting through the cracks, I am satisfied," said her
+aunt in a lighter tone than common. And she kissed her niece, and went
+smiling out of the room, murmuring to herself,
+
+"I have been over-fearful; everything is coming right."
+
+There are moments when life's great mystery overpowers us; when the
+riddle of the soul flaunts itself before us unexplained, and we can do
+no more than stand and take the rush of the tide that comes sweeping
+down upon us. Paula was not the girl she was before she went to New
+York. Love was no longer a dreamy possibility, a hazy blending of the
+unknown and the fancied; its tale had been too often breathed in her
+ear, its reality made too often apparent to her eye. But love to which
+she could listen, was as new and fresh and strange, as a world into
+which her foot had never ventured. That her aunt should point to a
+certain masculine form, no matter how attractive or interesting, and
+say, "Love and home are the lot of women," made her blood rush back on
+her heart, like a stream from which a dam has been ruthlessly wrenched
+away. It was too wild, too sudden; a friend's name was so much easier to
+speak, or to contemplate. She did not know what to do with her own
+heart, made to speak thus before its time; its beatings choked her;
+everything choked her; this was a worse imprisonment than the other.
+Looking round, her eye fell upon the flowers. Ah, was not their language
+expressive enough, without this new suggestion? They seemed to lose
+something in this very gain. She liked them less she thought, and yet
+her feet drew near, and near, and nearer, to where they stood, exhaling
+their very souls out in delicious perfume. "I am too young!" came from
+Paula's lips. "I will not think of it!" quickly followed. Yet the smile
+with which she bent over the fragrant blossoms, had an ethereal beauty
+in it, which was not all unmixed with the
+
+    "Light that never was on land or sea,
+    The consecration and the poet's dream."
+
+"He has asked to be my friend," murmured she, as she slowly turned away.
+"It is enough; it must be enough." But the blossom she had stolen from
+the midst of the fragrant collection, seemed to whisper a merry nay, as
+it nodded against her hand, and afterwards gushed out its sweet life on
+her pure young breast.
+
+
+
+
+XXIX.
+
+MIST IN THE VALLEY.
+
+     "The true beginning of our end."
+
+     --MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM.
+
+
+Mr. Ensign was not slow in developing his ideas of friendship. Though he
+did not venture upon repeating his visit too soon, scarcely a week
+passed without bringing to Paula a letter or some other testimonial of
+his increasing devotion. The blindest eye could not fail to remark
+whither he was tending. Even Paula was forced to acknowledge to herself
+that she was on the verge of a flowery incline, that sooner or later
+would bring her up breathless against the dread alternative of a decided
+yes or no. Friendship is a wide portal, and sometimes admits love; had
+it served her traitorously in this?
+
+Her aunt who watched her with secret but lynx-eyed scrutiny, saw no
+reason to alter the first judgment of that mysterious, "It is all coming
+right," with which she viewed the first symptoms of Paula's girlish
+appreciation of her lover. If eyes and lips could speak, Paula was
+happy. The mournful shadows which of late had flitted with more or less
+persistency over her face, had vanished in a living smile, which if not
+deep, was cloudlessly radiant; and her voice when not used in speech,
+was rippling away in song, as glad as a finch's on the mountain side.
+
+Miss Belinda was therefore very much astonished when one day Paula burst
+into her presence, and flinging herself down on her knees, threw her
+arms about her waist, crying,
+
+"Take me away, dear aunt, I cannot, dare not stay here another day."
+
+"Paula, what do you mean?" exclaimed Miss Belinda, holding her back and
+endeavoring to look into her face. But the young girl gently resisted.
+
+"I have just had a letter from Cicely," she returned in a low and
+muffled voice. "She has seen Mr. Sylvester, and says he looks both wan
+and ill. He told her, too, that he was lonely, and I know what that
+means; he wants his child. The time has come for me to go back. He said
+it would, and that I would know when it came. Take me, aunt, take me to
+Mr. Sylvester."
+
+Miss Belinda, to whom self-control was one of the cardinal virtues,
+leaned back in her chair and contemplated the eager, tear-stained face
+that was now raised to hers, with silent scrutiny. "Paula," said she at
+last, "is that your only reason for desiring to return to New York?"
+
+A flush, delicate as it was fleeting, swept over the dew of Paula's
+cheek. She rose to her feet and met her aunt's eye, with a look of
+gentle dignity. "No," said she, "I wish to test myself. Birds that are
+prisoned will caress any hand that offers them freedom. I wish to see if
+the lure holds good when my wings are in mid-heaven."
+
+There was a dreamy cadence to her voice as she uttered that last phrase,
+that startled her aunt. "Paula," exclaimed she, "Paula, don't you know
+your own heart?"
+
+"Who does?" returned Paula; then in a sudden rush of emotion threw
+herself once more at her aunt's side, saying, "It is in order to know
+it, that I ask you to take me away."
+
+And Miss Belinda, as she smoothed back her darling's locks, was obliged
+to acknowledge to herself, that time has a way of opening, in the stream
+of life, unforeseen channels to whose current we perforce must yield, or
+else hopelessly strand upon the shoals.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK IV.
+
+FROM A. TO Z.
+
+
+
+
+XXX.
+
+MISS BELINDA PRESENTS MR. SYLVESTER WITH A CHRISTMAS GIFT.
+
+     "For, O; for, O the hobby horse is forgot."
+
+     --HAMLET.
+
+
+It was a clear winter evening. Mr. Sylvester sat in his library, musing
+before a bright coal fire, whose superabundant heat and blaze seemed to
+make the loneliness of the great empty room more apparent. He had just
+said to himself that it was Christmas eve, and that he, of all men in
+the world, had the least reason to realize it, when the door-bell rang.
+He was expecting Bertram, whose advancement to the position of cashier
+in place of Mr. Wheelock, now thoroughly broken down in health, had that
+day been fully determined upon in a late meeting of the Board of
+Directors. He therefore did not disturb himself. It was consequently a
+startling surprise, when a deep, pleasant voice uttered from the
+threshold of the door, "I have brought you a Christmas present;" and
+looking up, he saw Miss Belinda standing before him, with Paula at her
+side.
+
+"My child!" was his involuntary exclamation, and before the young girl
+knew it, she was folded against his breast with a passionate fervor that
+more than words, convinced her of the depth of the sacrifice which had
+held them separate for so long. "My darling! my little Paula!"
+
+She felt her heart stand still. Gently disengaging herself, she looked
+in his face. She found it thin and wan, but lit by such a pleasure she
+could not keep back her smile. "You are glad, then, of your little
+Christmas present?" said she.
+
+He smiled and shook his head; he had no words with which to express a
+joy like this.
+
+Miss Belinda meanwhile stood with a set expression on her face, that, to
+one who did not know her, would immediately have proclaimed her to be an
+ogress of the very worst type. Not a glance did she give to the unusual
+splendor about her, not a wavering of her eye betokened that she was in
+any way conscious that she had just stepped from the threshold of a very
+humble cottage, into a home little short of a palace in size and the
+splendor of its appointments. All her attention was concentrated on the
+two faces before her.
+
+"The ride on the cars has made Paula feverish," cried she, in sharp
+clear tones that rang with unexpected brusqueness through the curtained
+alcoves of that lordly apartment.
+
+They both started at this sudden introduction of the prosaic into the
+hush of their happy meeting, but remembering themselves, drew Miss
+Belinda forward to the fire and made her welcome in this house of many
+memories.
+
+It was a strange moment to Paula when she first turned to go up those
+stairs, down which she had come in such grief eight months or more ago.
+She found herself lingering on its well-remembered steps, and the first
+sight of the rich bronze image at the top, struck her with a sense of
+the old-time pleasure, that was not unlinked with the old-time dread.
+But the aspect of her little room calmed her. It was just as she had
+left it; not an article had been changed. "It is as if I had gone out
+one door and come in another," she whispered. All the months that had
+intervened seemed to float away. She felt this even more when upon again
+descending, she found Bertram in the library. His frank and interesting
+face had always been pleasant to her, but in the joy of her return it
+shone upon her with almost the attraction of a brother's. "I am at home
+again," she kept whispering to herself, "I am at home."
+
+Miss Belinda was engrossed in conversation with Bertram, so that Paula
+was left free to take her old place by Mr. Sylvester's side, where she
+sat with such an aspect of contentment, that her beauty was half
+forgotten in her happiness.
+
+"You remembered me, then, sometimes in the little cottage in Grotewell?"
+asked he, after a silent contemplation of her countenance. "I was not
+forgotten when you left the city streets?"
+
+She answered with a bright little shake of her head, but she was
+inwardly wondering as she looked at his strong and picturesque face,
+with its nobly carved features and melancholy smile, if he had been
+absent from her thoughts for so much as a moment, in all these dreary
+months of separation.
+
+"I did not believe you would forget," he gently pursued, "but I scarcely
+dared hope you would lighten my fireside with your face again. It is
+such a dismal one, and youth is so linked to brightness."
+
+The flush that crossed her cheek, startled him into sudden silence. She
+recovered herself and slowly shook her head. "It is not a dismal one to
+me. I always feel brighter and better when I sit beside it. I have
+missed your counsel," she said; "brightness is nothing without depth."
+
+His eyes which had been fixed on her face, turned slowly away. He seemed
+to hold an instant's communion with himself; suddenly he said, "And
+depth is worse than nothing, without it mirrors the skies. It is not
+from shadowed pools, such bright young lips should drink, but from the
+waves of an inexhaustible sea, smote upon by all the winds and sunshine
+of heaven."
+
+In another moment, however, he was all cheerfulness. "You have brought
+me a Christmas present," cried he, "and we must make it a Christmas
+holiday indeed. Here is the beginning:" and with one of his old grave
+smiles, he handed Bertram a little note which had been awaiting him on
+the library table. "But Paula and Miss Belinda must have their pleasure
+too. Paula, are you too tired for a ride down town? I will show you New
+York on a Christmas eve," continued he to Miss Walton, seeing that
+Paula's attention was absorbed by the expression of sudden and moving
+surprise which had visited Bertram's face, upon the perusal of his note.
+"It is a stirring sight. Nothing more cheering can be found the wide
+world over, for those who have a home and children to make happy."
+
+"I certainly should enjoy a glimpse of holiday cheer," assented Miss
+Belinda. And Paula recalled to herself by the sound of her aunt's voice,
+gayly re-echoed her assertion.
+
+So Samuel was despatched for a carriage, and in a few minutes they were
+all riding down Fifth Avenue, _en route_ for Tiffany's, Macy's, and any
+other store that might offer special attractions. It was a happy
+company. As they rolled along, Paula felt her heart grow lighter and
+lighter, Mr. Sylvester was almost gay, while even Aunt Belinda
+condescended to be merry. Bertram alone was silent, but as Paula caught
+short glimpses of his face, while speeding past some illuminated corner,
+she felt that it was that silence which is "the perfectest herald of
+joy."
+
+"I shall make you get out and mix with the crowd," said Mr. Sylvester.
+"I want you to feel the throb of the great heart of the city on such a
+night as this. It is as if all men were brothers--or fathers, I should
+say. People that ordinarily pass each other without a sign, nod and
+smile with pleasing recognition of the evening's cheer. Grave and
+reverend seigniors, are not ashamed to be seen carrying packages by the
+dozen. Indeed, he who is most laden is considered the best fellow, and
+he who is so unfortunate as to show nothing but empty arms, feels shy if
+not ashamed; a condition of mind into which I shall soon fall myself, if
+we do not presently reach our destination."
+
+Paula never forgot that night. As from the midst of our common-place
+memories, some one hour stands out distinct and strange, like a sweet
+foreigner in a crowd of village faces, so to Paula, this ride through
+the lighted streets, with the ensuing rush from store to store, piloted
+by Bertram and Miss Belinda, and protected by Mr. Sylvester, was her one
+weird glimpse into the Arabian Nights' country. Why, she could not have
+told; why, she did not stop to think. She had been to all these places
+before, but never with such a heart as this--never, never with such an
+overflowing heart as this.
+
+"I have washed away my reproach," cried Mr. Sylvester, coming out to the
+carriage with his arms full of bundles. "Aunt Belinda is to blame for
+this; she set the example, you see." And with a merry laugh, he tossed
+one thing after another into Paula's lap, reserving only one small
+package for himself. "I scarcely know what I have bought," said he. "I
+shall be as much surprised as any one, when you come to undo the
+bundles. 'A pretty thing,' was all I waited to hear from the shop
+girls."
+
+"There is a small printing press for one thing," cried Paula merrily. "I
+saw the man at Holton's eye you with a certain sort of shrewd humor, and
+hastily do it up. You paid for it; probably thinking it one of the
+'pretty things.' We shall have to make it over to Bertram, as being the
+only one amongst us who by any stretch of imagination can be said to be
+near enough the age of boyhood to enjoy it."
+
+"I do not know about that," cried Bertram, with a ringing infectious
+laugh, "my imagination has been luring me into believing that I am not
+the only boy in this crowd."
+
+And so they went on, toying with their new-found joy as with a
+plaything, and hard would it have been to tell in which of those voices
+rang the deeper contentment.
+
+The opening of the packages on the library-table afforded another season
+of merriment. Such treasures as came to light! A roll of black silk,
+which could only have been meant for Miss Belinda. A casket of fretted
+silver, just large enough to hold Paula's gloves; a scarf-ring, to which
+no one but Bertram could lay claim; a bundle of confections, a pair of
+diamond-studded bracelets, a scarf of delicate lace, articles for the
+desk, and knick-knacks for the toilet table, and last, but not least, in
+weight at least, the honest little printing-press.
+
+"Oh, I never dreamed of this," said Paula, "when we chose Christmas eve
+for our journey."
+
+"Nor would you have done right to stay away if you had," returned Mr.
+Sylvester gayly.
+
+But when the sport was all over, and Paula stood alone with Mr.
+Sylvester in the library, awaiting his last good-night, the deeper
+influences of this holy time made themselves felt, and it was with an
+air of gentle seriousness, he told her that it had been a happy
+Christmas eve to him.
+
+"And to me," returned Paula. "Bertram too, seemed very happy. Would it
+be too inquisitive in me to ask what good news the little note
+contained, to work such wonders?"
+
+A smile such as was seldom seen on Mr. Sylvester's face of late, flashed
+brightly over it. "It was only a card of invitation to dinner," said he,
+"but it came from Mr. Stuyvesant, and that to Bertram means a great
+deal."
+
+The surprise in Paula's eyes made him smile again. "Will it be a great
+shock to you, if I tell you that the name of the woman for whom Bertram
+made the sacrifice of his art, was Cicely Stuyvesant?"
+
+"Cicely? my Cicely?" Her astonishment was great, but it was also happy.
+"Oh, I never dreamed--ah, now I see," she went on naively. "That is the
+reason she refrained from coming to this house; she was afraid of
+meeting _him_. But to think I should never have guessed it, and she my
+dearest friend! Oh, I am very happy; I admire Bertram so much, and it is
+such a beautiful secret. And Mr. Stuyvesant has invited him to his
+house! I do not wonder you felt like making the evening a gala one. Mr.
+Stuyvesant would not do that if he were not learning to appreciate
+Bertram."
+
+"No; there is method in all that Mr. Stuyvesant does. More than that, if
+I am not mistaken, he has known this beautiful secret, as you call it,
+from the first, and would be the last to receive Bertram as a guest to
+his table, if he did not mean him the best and truest encouragement."
+
+"I believe you are right," said Paula. "I remember now that one day when
+I was spending the afternoon with Cicely, he came into the room where I
+was, and finding me for the moment alone, sat down, and in his quaint
+old-fashioned manner asked me in the most abrupt way what I thought of
+Bertram Sylvester. I was surprised, but told him I considered him one of
+the noblest young men I knew, adding that if a fine mind, a kind heart,
+and a pure life were open to regard, Bertram had the right to claim the
+esteem of all his friends and associates. The old gentleman looked at me
+somewhat curiously, but nodded his head as if pleased, and merely
+remarking, 'It is not necessary to mention we had this conversation, my
+dear,' got up and proceeded slowly from the room. I thought it was
+simply a not unnatural curiosity concerning a young man with whom he had
+more or less business connection; but now I perceive it had a deeper
+significance."
+
+"He could scarcely have found a more zealous little advocate for Bertram
+if he had hunted the city over. Bertram may be more obliged to you than
+he knows. He has been very patient, but the day of his happiness is
+approaching."
+
+"And Cicely's! I feel as if I could scarcely wait to see her with this
+new hope in her eyes. She has kept me without the door of her suspense,
+but she must let me across the threshold of her happiness."
+
+The look with which Mr. Sylvester eyed the fair girl's radiant face
+deepened. "Paula," said be, "can you leave these new thoughts for a
+moment to hear a request I have to make?"
+
+She at once turned to him with her most self-forgetful smile.
+
+"I have been making myself a little present," pursued he, slowly taking
+out of his pocket the single package he had reserved from the rest.
+"Open it, dear."
+
+With fingers that unconsciously trembled, she hastily undid the package.
+A little box rolled out. Taking off its cover, she took out a plain gold
+locket of the style usually worn by gentlemen on their watch-chains.
+"Fasten it on for me," said he.
+
+Wondering at his tone which was almost solemn, she quietly did his
+bidding. But when she essayed to lift her head upon the completion of
+her task, he gently laid his hand upon her brow and so stood for a
+moment without a word.
+
+"What is it?" she asked, with a sudden indrawing of her breath. "What
+moves you so, Mr. Sylvester?"
+
+"I have just taken a vow," said he.
+
+She started back agitated and trembling.
+
+"I had reason to," he murmured, "pray at nights when you go to bed, that
+I may be able to keep it."
+
+"What?" sprang to her lips; but she restrained herself and only allowed
+her glance to speak.
+
+"Will you do it, Paula?"
+
+"Yes, oh yes!" Her whole heart seemed to rush out in the phrase. She
+drew back as at the opening of a door in an unexpected spot. Her eye had
+something of fear in it and something of secret desperation too. He
+watched her with a gaze that strangely faltered.
+
+"A woman's prayers are a man's best safeguard," murmured he. "He must be
+a wretch who does not feel himself surrounded by a sacred halo, while he
+knows that pure lips are breathing his name in love and trust before the
+throne of the Most High."
+
+"I will pray for you as for myself," she whispered, and endeavored to
+meet his eyes. But her head drooped and she did not speak as she would
+have done a few months before; and when a few instants later they parted
+in their old fashion at the foot of the stairs, she did not turn to give
+him the accustomed smile and nod with which she used to mount the
+stairs, spiral by spiral, and disappear in her little room above. Yet he
+did not grieve at the change, but stood looking up the way she had gone,
+like a man before whom some vision of unexpected promise had opened.
+
+
+
+
+XXXI.
+
+A QUESTION.
+
+     "Think on thy sins."--OTHELLO.
+
+
+The next morning when Mr. Sylvester came down to breakfast, he found on
+the library-table an exquisite casket, similar to the one he had given
+Paula the night before, but larger, and filled with flowers of the most
+delicious odor.
+
+"For Miss Fairchild," explained Samuel, who was at that moment passing
+through the room.
+
+With a pang of jealous surprise, that, however, failed to betray itself
+in his steadily composed countenance, Mr. Sylvester advanced to the side
+of the table, and lifted up the card that hung attached to the beautiful
+present. The name he read there seemed to startle him; he moved away,
+and took up his paper with a dark flush on his brow, that had not
+disappeared when Miss Belinda entered the room.
+
+"Humph!" was her immediate exclamation, as her eye rested upon the
+conspicuous offering in the centre of the apartment. But instantly
+remembering herself, advanced with a cheerful good-morning, which
+however did not prevent her eyes from wandering with no small
+satisfaction towards this fresh evidence of Mr. Ensign's assiduous
+regard.
+
+"Paula is remembered by others than ourselves," remarked Mr. Sylvester,
+probably observing her glance.
+
+"Yes; she has a very attentive suitor in Mr. Ensign," returned Miss
+Belinda shortly. "A pleasant appearing young man," she ejaculated next
+moment; "worthy in many respects of success, I should say."
+
+"Has he--do you mean to say that he has visited you in Grotewell?" asked
+Mr. Sylvester, his eye upon the paper in his hand.
+
+"Certainly; a few more interviews will settle it."
+
+The paper rustled in Mr. Sylvester's grasp, but his voice was composed
+if not formal, as he observed, "She regards his attentions then with
+favor?"
+
+"She wears his flowers in her bosom, and brightens like a flower herself
+when he is seen to approach. If allowed to go her way unhindered, I have
+but little doubt as to how it will end. Mr. Ensign is not handsome, but
+I am told that he has every other qualification likely to make a gentle
+creature like Paula happy."
+
+"He is a good fellow," exclaimed Mr. Sylvester under his breath.
+
+"And goodness is the first essential in the character of the man who is
+to marry Paula," inexorably observed Miss Belinda. "An open, cheerful
+disposition, a clear conscience and a past with no dark pages in its
+history, must mark him who is to link unto his fate our pure and
+sensitive Paula. Is it not so, Mr. Sylvester?"
+
+The advertisements in that morning's _Tribune_ must have been unusually
+interesting, judging from the difficulty which Mr. Sylvester experienced
+in withdrawing his eyes from them. "The man whom Paula marries," said he
+at last, "can neither be too good, too kind, or too pure. Nor shall any
+other than a good, kind, and pure man possess her," he added in a tone
+that while low, effectually hushed even the slow-to-be-intimidated Miss
+Belinda. In another moment Paula entered.
+
+Oh, the morning freshness of some faces! Like the singing of birds in a
+prison, is the sound and sight of a lovely maiden coming into the grim,
+gray atmosphere of a winter breakfast room. Paula was exceptionally
+gifted with this auroral cheer which starts the day so brightly. At
+sight of her face Mr. Sylvester dropped his paper, and even Miss Belinda
+straightened herself more energetically. "Merry Christmas," cried her
+sweet young voice, and immediately the whole day seemed to grow glad
+with promise and gaysome with ringing sleigh-bells. "It's snowing, did
+you know it? A world of life is in the air; the flakes dance as they
+come down, like dervishes in a frenzy. It was all we lacked to make the
+day complete; now we have everything."
+
+"Yes," said Miss Belinda, with a significant glance at the table,
+"everything."
+
+Paula followed her glance, saw the silver box with its wealth of
+blossoms, and faltered back with a quick look at Mr. Sylvester's grave
+and watchful countenance.
+
+"Mr. Ensign seems to be possessed of clairvoyance," observed Miss
+Belinda easily. "How he could know that you were to be in town to-day, I
+cannot imagine."
+
+"I wrote him in my last letter that in all probability I should spend
+the holidays with Mr. Sylvester," explained Paula simply, but with a
+slow and deepening flush, that left the roses she contemplated nothing
+of which to boast. "I did so, because he proposed to visit Grotewell on
+Christmas."
+
+There was a short silence in the room, then Mr. Sylvester rose, and
+remarking with polite composure, "It is a very pretty remembrance," led
+the way into the dining-room. Paula with a slow drooping of her head
+quickly followed, while Miss Belinda brought up the rear, with the look
+of a successful diplomat.
+
+A meal in the Sylvester mansion was always a formal affair, but this was
+more than formal. A vague oppression seemed to fill the air; an
+oppression which Miss Belinda's stirring conversation found it
+impossible to dissipate. In compliance to Mr. Sylvester's request, she
+sat at the head of the table, and was the only one who seemed able to
+eat anything. For one thing she had never seen Ona in that post of
+honor, but Paula and Mr. Sylvester could not forget the graceful form
+that once occupied that seat. The first meal above a grave, no matter
+how long it has been dug, must ever seem weighted with more or less
+unreality.
+
+Besides, with Paula there was a vague unsettled feeling, as if some
+delicate inner balance had been too rudely shaken. She longed to fly
+away and think, and she was obliged to sit still and talk.
+
+The end of the meal was a relief to all parties. Miss Belinda went up
+stairs, thoughtfully shaking her firm head; Mr. Sylvester sat down again
+to his paper, and Paula advanced towards the dainty gift that awaited
+her inspection on the library table. But half way to it she paused. A
+strange shyness had seized her. With Mr. Sylvester sitting there, she
+dared not approach this delicate testimonial of another's affection. She
+did not know as she wished to. Her eyes stole in hesitation to the
+floor. Suddenly Mr. Sylvester spoke:
+
+"Why do you not look at your pretty present, Paula?"
+
+She started, gave him a quick glance, and advanced hurriedly towards the
+table; but scarcely had she reached it when she paused, turned and
+hastened over to his side. He was still reading, or appearing to read,
+but she saw his hand tremble where it grasped the sheet, though his face
+with its clear cut profile, shone calm and cold against the dark
+background of the wall beyond.
+
+"I do not care to look at it now," said she, with a hurried interlacing
+of her restless fingers.
+
+He turned towards her and a quick thrill passed over his countenance.
+"Sit down, Paula," said he, "I want to talk to you."
+
+She obeyed as might an automaton. Was it the tone of his voice that
+chilled her, or the studied aspect of his fixed and solemn countenance?
+He did not speak at once, but when he did, there was no faltering in his
+voice, that was lower than common, but deep, like still waters that have
+run into dark channels far from the light of day.
+
+"Paula, I want to ask you a question. What would you think of a man
+that, with deliberate selfishness, went into the king's garden, and
+plucking up by the roots the most beautiful flower he could find there,
+carried it into a dungeon to pant out its exquisite life amid chill and
+darkness?"
+
+"I should think," replied she, after the first startled moment of
+silence, "that the man did well, if by its one breath of sweetness, the
+flower could comfort the heart of him who sat in the dungeon."
+
+The glance with which Mr. Sylvester regarded her, suddenly faltered; he
+turned with quickness towards the fire. "A moment's joy is, then, excuse
+for a murder," exclaimed he. "God and the angels would not agree with
+you, Paula."
+
+There was a quivering in his tone, made all the more apparent by its
+studied self-possession of a moment before. She trembled where she sat,
+and opened her lips to speak, but closed them again, awed by his steady
+and abstracted gaze, now fixed before him in gloomy reverie. A moment
+passed. The clock ticking away on the mantel-piece seemed to echo the
+inevitable "Forever! never!" of Longfellow's old song. Neither of them
+moved. At length, in a low and trembling voice, Paula spoke:
+
+"Is it murder, when the flower loves the dark of the dungeon more than
+it does the light of day?"
+
+With a subdued but passionate cry he rose hastily to his feet. "Yes,"
+said he, and drew back as if he could not bear the sight of her face or
+the glance of her eye. "Sunshine is the breath of flowers; sweet wooing
+gales, their natural atmosphere. He who meddles with a treasure so
+choice does it at his peril." Then as she hurriedly rose in turn,
+softened his whole tone, and assuming his usual air of kindly
+fatherhood, asked her in the most natural way in the world, what he
+could do to make her happy that day.
+
+"Nothing," replied she, with a droop of her head; "I think I will go and
+see Cicely."
+
+A short sigh escaped him. "The carriage shall be ready for you," said
+he. "I hope your friend's happiness will overflow into your own gentle
+bosom, and make the day a very pleasant one. God bless your young sweet
+heart, my Paula!"
+
+Her breast heaved, her large, dark, mellow eyes flashed with one quick
+glance towards his face, then she drew back, and in another moment left
+his side and quietly glided from the room. His very life seemed to go
+with her, yet he did not stir; but he sighed deeply when, upon turning
+towards the library-table, he found that she had carried away with her
+the silent testimonial of another and more fortunate man's love and
+devotion.
+
+
+
+
+XXXII.
+
+FULL TIDE.
+
+     "A skirmish of wit between them."
+
+     --MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.
+
+
+Man thinks he is strong, and lays his foundations, raises his walls, and
+dreams of his completed turrets, without reckoning the force of the
+gales or the insidious inundating of the waters that may bring low the
+mounting structure before its time. When with a firm hand, Mr. Sylvester
+thrust back from his heart the one delight which of all the world could
+afford, seemed to him at that moment the dearest and the best, he
+thought the struggle was over and the victory won. It had not even
+commenced. He was made startlingly alive to this fact at the very next
+interview he had with Paula. She had just come from Miss Stuyvesant, and
+the reflection of her friend's scarcely comprehended joy was on her
+countenance, together with a look he could not comprehend, but which
+stirred and haunted him, until he felt forced to ask if she had seen any
+other of her old friends, in the short visit she had paid.
+
+"Yes," said she, with a distressed blush. "Mr. Ensign was unexpectedly
+there."
+
+It is comparatively easy to restrain your own hand from snatching at a
+treasure you greatly covet, but it is much more difficult to behold
+another and a lesser one grasp and carry it away before your eyes. He
+succeeded in hiding the shadow that oppressed him, but he was
+constrained to recognize the sharpness of the conflict that was about to
+be waged in the recesses of his own breast. A conflict, because he knew
+that a lift of his finger, or a glance of his eye would decide the
+matter then, while in a week, perhaps, the glamour of a young sunshiny
+love, would have worked its inevitable result, and the happiness that
+had so unexpectedly startled upon him in his monotonous and sombre path,
+would have wandered forever out of his reach. How did he meet its
+unexpected rush. Sternly at first, but with greater and greater wavering
+as the days went by, each one revealing fresh beauties of character and
+deeper springs of feeling in the enchanting girl thus brought in all her
+varied charm before his eyes. Why should he not be happy? If there were
+dark pages in his life, had they not long ago been closed and sealed,
+and was not the future bright with promise? A man of his years was not
+through with life. He felt at times as he gazed upon her face with its
+indescribable power of awakening far-reaching thoughts and feelings in
+callous breasts long unused to the holy influence of either, that he had
+just begun to live; that the golden country, with its enticing vistas,
+lay all before him, and that the youth, which he had missed, had somehow
+returned to his prime, fresh with more than its usual enthusiasm and
+bright with more than its wonted hopes and projects. With this glorious
+woman at his side, life would be new indeed, and if new why not pure and
+sweet and noble? What was there to hinder him from making the existence
+of this sweet soul a walking amongst gentle duties, satisfied dreams and
+holy aspirations? A past remorse? Why the gates could be closed on that!
+A strain of innate weakness for the world's good opinion and applause?
+Ah! with love in his life such a weakness must disappear; besides had he
+not taken a vow on her dear head, that ought to hedge him about as with
+angel's wings in the hour of temptation? Men with his experience do not
+invoke the protection of innocence to guard a degraded soul. Why, then,
+all this hesitation? A great boon was being offered to him after years
+of loneliness and immeasurable longing; was it not the will of heaven,
+that he should meet and enjoy this unexpected grace? He dared to stop
+and ask, and once daring to ask, the insidious waters found their way
+beneath the foundations of his resolution, and the lofty structure he
+had reared in such self-confidence, began to tremble where it stood,
+though as yet it betrayed no visible sign of weakness.
+
+Meanwhile, society with its innumerable demands, had drawn the beautiful
+young girl within its controlling grasp. She must go here, she must go
+there; she must lend her talents to this, her beauty to that. Before she
+had decided whether she ought to remain in the city a week, two had
+flown by, and in all this time Mr. Ensign had been ever at her side,
+brightening in her own despite, hours which might else have been sad,
+and surrounding her difficult path with proofs of his silent and wary
+devotion. A golden net seemed to be closing around her, and, though as
+yet, she had given no token of a special recognition of her position,
+Miss Belinda betrayed by the uniform complacence of her demeanor, that
+she for one regarded the matter as effectually settled.
+
+The success which Bertram had met in his first visit at Mr.
+Stuyvesant's, was not the least agitating factor in this fortnight's
+secret history. He was too much a part of the home life at Mr.
+Sylvester's, not to make the lightest thrill of his frank and sensitive
+nature felt by all who invaded its precincts. And he was in a state of
+repressed expectancy at this time, that unconsciously created an
+atmosphere about him of vague but restless excitement. The hearts of all
+who encountered his look of concentrated delight, must unconsciously
+beat with his. A strain sweeter than his old-time music was in his
+voice. When he played upon the piano, which was but seldom, it was as if
+he breathed out his soul before the holy images. When he walked, he
+seemed to tread on air. His every glance was a question as to whether
+this great joy, for which he had so long and patiently waited, was to be
+his? Love, living and apotheosized, appeared to blaze before them, and
+no one can look on love without feeling somewhere in his soul the stir
+of those deep waters, whose pulsing throb even in the darkness of
+midnight, proves that we are the children of God.
+
+Cicely was uncommunicative, but her face, when Paula beheld it, was like
+the glowing countenance of some sculptured saint, from which the veil is
+slowly being withdrawn.
+
+Suddenly there came an evening when the force of the spell that held all
+these various hearts enchained gave way. It was the night of a private
+entertainment of great elegance, to be held at the house of a friend of
+Miss Stuyvesant. Bertram had received formal permission from the father
+of Cicely, to act as his daughter's escort, and the fact had transformed
+him from a hopeful dreamer, into a man determined to speak and know his
+fate at once. Paula was engaged to take part in the entertainment, and
+the sight of her daintily-decked figure leaving the house with Mr.
+Ensign, was the last drop in the slowly gathering tide that was secretly
+swelling in Mr. Sylvester's breast; and it was with a sudden outrush of
+his whole determined nature that he stepped upstairs, dressed himself in
+evening attire, and deliberately followed them to the place where they
+were going. "The wealth of the Indies is slipping from my grasp," was
+his passionate exclamation, as he rode through the lighted streets. "I
+cannot see it go; if she can care more for me than for this sleek,
+merry-hearted young fellow, she shall. I know that my love is to his,
+what the mighty ocean is to a placid lake, and with such love one ought
+to be panoplied as with resisting steel."
+
+A stream of light and music met him, as he went up the stoop of the
+house that held his treasure. It seemed to intoxicate him. Glow, melody
+and perfume, were so many expressions of Paula. His friends, of whom
+there were many present, received him with tokens of respect, not
+unmingled with surprise. It was the first time he had been seen in
+public since his wife's death, and they could not but remark upon the
+cheerfulness of his bearing, and the almost exalted expression of his
+proud and restless eye. Had Paula accompanied him, they might have
+understood his emotion, but with the beautiful girl under the care of
+one of the most eligible gentlemen in town, what could have happened to
+Mr. Sylvester to make his once melancholy countenance blazon like a star
+amid this joyous and merrily-laughing throng. He did not enlighten them,
+but moved from group to group, searching for Paula. Suddenly the thought
+flashed upon him, "Is it only an hour or so since I smiled upon her in
+my own hall, and shook my head when she asked me with a quick, pleading
+look, to come with them to this very spot?" It seemed days, since that
+time. The rush of these new thoughts, the final making up of this
+slowly-maturing purpose, the sudden allowing of his heart to regard her
+as a woman to be won, had carried the past away as by the sweep of a
+mountain torrent. He could not believe he had ever known a moment of
+hesitancy, ever looked at her as a father, ever bid her go on her way
+and leave the prisoner to his fate. He must always have felt like this;
+such momentum could not have been gathered in an hour; she must know
+that he loved her wildly, deeply, sacredly, wholly, with the fibre of
+his mind, his body and his soul; that to call her his in life and in
+death, was the one demanding passion of his existence, making the past a
+dream, and the future--ah, he dared not question that! He must behold
+her face before he could even speculate upon the realities lying behind
+fate's down-drawn curtain.
+
+Meanwhile fair faces and lovely forms flitted before him, carrying his
+glance along in their train, but only because youth was a symbol of
+Paula. If these fresh young girls could smile and look back upon him,
+with that lingering glance which his presence ever invoked, why not she
+who was not only sweet, tender, and lovely, but gifted with a nature
+that responded to the deep things of life, and the stern passions of
+potent humanity. Could a merry laugh lure her while he stood by? Was the
+sunshine the natural atmosphere of this flower, that had bloomed under
+his eye so sweetly and shed out its innocent fragrance, at the approach
+of his solemn-pacing foot? He began to mirror before his mind's eye the
+startled look of happy wonder with which she would greet his impassioned
+glance, when released from whatever duties might be now pressing upon
+her; she wandered into these rooms, to find him awaiting her, when
+suddenly there was a stir in the throng, a pleased and excited rush, and
+the large curtain which he had vaguely noticed hanging at one end of the
+room, uplifted and--was it Paula? this coy, brilliant, saucy-eyed
+Florentine maiden, stepping out from a bower of greenery, with finger on
+her lip, and a backward glance of saucy defiance that seemed to people
+the verdant walks behind her with gallant cavaliers, eager to follow
+upon her footsteps? Yes; he could not be mistaken; there was but one
+face like that in the world. It was Paula, but Paula with youth's
+merriest glamour upon her, a glamour that had caught its radiant light
+from other thoughts than those in which he had been engaged. He bowed
+his head, and a shudder went through him like that which precedes the
+falling knife of the executioner. Even the applause that greeted the
+revelation of so much loveliness and alluring charm, passed over him
+like a dream. He was battling with his first recognition of the
+possibility of his being too late. Suddenly her voice was heard.
+
+She was speaking aloud to herself, this Florentine maiden who had
+outstripped her lover in the garden, but the tone was the same he had
+heard beside his own hearthstone, and the archness that accompanied it
+had frequently met and encouraged some cheerful expression of his own.
+These are the words she uttered. Listen with him to the _naive_, half
+tender, half pettish voice, and mark with his eyes the alternate lights
+and shadows that flit across her cheek as she broodingly murmurs:
+
+     He is certainly a most notable gallant. His "Good day, lady!"
+     and his "Good even to you!" are flavored with the cream of
+     perfectest courtesy. But gallantry while it sits well upon a
+     man, does not make him one, any more than a feather makes the
+     cap it adorns. For a Tuscan he hath also a certain comeliness,
+     but then I have ever sworn, in good faith too, that I would not
+     marry a Tuscan, were he the best made man in Italy. Then there
+     is his glance, which proclaims to all men's understandings that
+     he loves me, which same seems overbold; but then his smile!
+
+     Well, for a smile it certainly does credit to his wit, but one
+     cannot live upon smiles; though if one could, one might consent
+     to make a trial of his--and starve belike for her pains. (_She
+     drops her cheek into her hand and stands musing._)
+
+Mr. Sylvester drew a deep breath and let his eyes fall, when suddenly a
+hum ran through the audience about him, and looking quickly up, he
+beheld Mr. Ensign dressed in full cavalier costume, standing behind the
+musing maiden with a half merry, half tender gleam upon his face, that
+made the thickly beating heart of his rival shrink as if clutched in an
+iron vise. What followed, he heard as we do the words of a sentence read
+to us from the judge's seat. The cavalier spoke first and a thousand
+dancing colors seemed to flash in the merry banter that followed.
+
+     _Martino._--She muses, and on no other than myself, as I am
+     ready to swear by that coy and tremulous glance. I will move
+     her to avow it. (_Advances._) Fair lady, greeting! A kiss for
+     your sweet thoughts.
+
+     _Nita._ (_With a start_).--A kiss, Signior Martino? You must
+     acknowledge that were but a sorry exchange for thoughts like
+     mine, so if it please you, I will keep my thoughts and you your
+     kiss; and lest it should seem ungracious in me to give nothing
+     upon your asking, I will bestow upon you my most choice good
+     day, and so leave you to your meditations. (_Curtseys and is
+     about to depart._)
+
+     _Martino._--You have the true generosity, lady; you give away
+     what it costs you the dearest to part from. Nay, rumple not
+     your lip; it is the truth for all your pretty poutings!
+     Convince me it is not.
+
+     _Nita._--Your pardon, but that would take words, and words
+     would take time, and time given to one of your persuasion would
+     refute all my arguments on the face of them. (_Still
+     retreating._)
+
+     _Martino._--Well, lady, since it is your pleasure to be
+     consistent, rather than happy, adieu. Had you stayed but as
+     long as the bee pauses on an oleander blossom, you would have
+     heard--
+
+     _Nita._--Buzzing, signior?
+
+     _Martino._--Yes, if by that word you would denominate vows of
+     constancy and devotion. For I do greatly love you, and would
+     tell you so.
+
+     _Nita._--And for that you expect me to linger! as though vows
+     were new to my ears, and words of love as strange to my
+     understanding as tropical birds to the eyes of a Norseman.
+
+     _Martino._--If you do love me, you will linger.
+
+     _Nita._--Yet if I do, (_Slowly advancing_) be assured it is
+     from some other motive than love.
+
+     _Martino._--So it be not from hate I am contented.
+
+
+     _Nita._--To be contented with little, proves you a man of much
+     virtue.
+
+     _Martino._--When I have you, I am contented with much.
+
+     _Nita._--That _when_ is a wise insertion, signior; it saves you
+     from shame and me from anger.--Hark! some one calls.
+
+     _Martino._--None other but the wind; it is a kindly breeze, and
+     grieves to hear how harsh a pretty maiden can be to the lover
+     who adores her.
+
+     _Nita._--Please your worship, I do not own a lover.
+
+     _Martino._--Then mend your poverty, and accept one.
+
+     _Nita._--I am no beggar to accept of alms.
+
+     _Martino._--In this case, he who offers is the beggar.
+
+     _Nita._--I am too young to wear a jewel of so much pretension.
+
+     _Martino._--Time is a cure for youth, and marriage a happy
+     speeder of time.
+
+     _Nita._--But youth needs no cure, and if marriage speedeth
+     time, I'll live a maid and die one. The days run swift enough
+     without goading, Signior Martino.
+
+     _Martino._--But lady--
+
+     _Nita._.--Nay, your tongue will outstrip time, if you put not a
+     curb upon it. In faith, signior, I would not seem rude, but if
+     in your courtesy you would consent to woo some other maiden
+     to-day, why I would strive and bear it.
+
+     _Martino._--When I stoop to woo any other lady than thee, the
+     moon shall hide its face from the earth, and shine upon it no
+     more.
+
+     _Nita._--Your thoughts are daring in their flight to-day.
+
+     _Martino._--They are in search of your love.
+
+     _Nita._--Alack, your wings will fail.
+
+     _Martino._--Ay, when they reach their goal.
+
+     _Nita._--Dost think to reach it?
+
+     _Martino._--Shall I not, lady?
+
+     _Nita._--'Tis hard to believe it possible, yet who can tell?
+     You are not so handsome, signior, that one would die for you.
+
+     _Martino._--No, lady; but what goes to make other men's faces
+     fair, goes to make my heart great. The virtue of my manhood
+     rests in the fact that I love you.
+
+     _Nita._--Faith! so in some others. 'Tis the common fault of the
+     gallants, I find. If that is all--
+
+     _Martino._--But I will always love you, even unto death.
+
+     _Nita._--I doubt it not, so death come soon enough.
+
+     _Martino._ (_Taps his poiniard with his hand._)--Would you
+     have it come now, and so prove me true to my word?
+
+     _Nita._ (_Demurely_).--I am no judge, to utter the doom that
+     your presumption merits.
+
+     _Martino._--Your looks speak doom, and your sweet lips hide a
+     sword keener than that of justice.
+
+     _Nita._--Have you tried them, signior, that you speak so
+     knowingly concerning them? (_Retreating._) Your words,
+     methinks, are somewhat like your kisses, all breath and no
+     substance.
+
+     _Martino._--Lady! sweet one! (_Follows her._)
+
+     _Nita._--Nay, I am gone. (_Exit._)
+
+     _Martino._--I were of the fools' fold, did I fail to follow at
+     a beck so gentle. (_Exit._)
+
+That was not all, but it was all that Mr. Sylvester heard. Hastily
+retreating, he went out into the corridor and ere long found himself in
+the conservatory. He felt shaken; felt that he could not face all this
+unmoved. He knew he had been gazing at a play; that because this
+Florentine maiden looked at her lover with coyness, gentleness,
+tenderness perhaps, it did not follow that she, his Paula, loved the
+real man behind this dashing cavalier. But the possibility was there,
+and in his present frame of mind could not be encountered without pain.
+He dared not stay where men's eyes could follow him, or women's delicate
+glances note the heaving of his chest. He had in the last three hours
+given himself over so completely to hope. He realized it now though he
+would not have believed it before. With man's usual egotism he had felt
+that it was only necessary for him to come to a decision, to behold all
+else fall out according to his mind. He had forgotten for the nonce the
+power of a youthful lover, eager to serve, ready to wait, careful to
+press his way at every advantage. He could have cursed himself for the
+folly of his delay, as he strode up and down among the flowering shrubs
+in the solitude which the attractions of the play created. "Fool! fool!"
+he muttered between his teeth, "to halt on the threshold of Paradise
+till the door closed in my face, when a step would have carried me
+where--" He grew dizzy as he contemplated. The goal looks never so fair
+as when just within reach of a rival's hand.
+
+A vigorous clapping, followed by a low gush of music, woke him at last
+to the realization that the little drama had terminated. With a hasty
+movement he was about to return to the parlors, when he heard the low
+murmur of voices, and on looking up, saw a youthful couple advancing
+into the conservatory, whom at first glance he recognized for Bertram
+and Miss Stuyvesant. They were absorbed in each other, and believing
+themselves alone, came on without fear, presenting such a picture of
+love and deep, unspeakable joy, that Mr. Sylvester paused and gazed upon
+them as upon the sudden embodiment of a cherished vision of his own
+imaginings. Bertram was speaking ordinary words no doubt, words suited
+to the occasion and the time, but his voice was attuned to the beatings
+of his long repressed heart, while the bend of his proud young head and
+the glance of his yearning eye were more eloquent than speech, of the
+leaning of his whole nature in love and protection towards the dainty,
+flushing creature at his side. It was a sight to make old hearts young
+and a less happy lover sick with envy. In spite of his gratification at
+his nephew's success, Mr. Sylvester's brow contracted, and it was with
+difficulty he could subdue himself into the appearance of calm
+benevolence necessary to pass them with propriety. Had it been Paula and
+Mr. Ensign!
+
+He did not know how it was that he managed to find her at last. But just
+as he was beginning to realize that wisdom demanded his departure from
+this scene, he suddenly came upon her sitting with her face turned
+toward the crowd and waiting--for whom? He had never seen her look so
+beautiful, possibly because he had never before allowed himself to gaze
+upon her with a lover's eyes. She had exchanged her piquant Roman
+costume for the pearl gray satin in which Ona had delighted to array
+her, and its rich substance and delicate neutral tint harmonized well
+with the amber brocade of the curtain against which she sat.
+
+Power, passion and purity breathed in her look, and lent enchantment to
+her form. She was poetry's unique jewel, and at this moment, thought
+rather than merriment sat upon her lips, and haunted her somewhat
+tremulous smiles. He approached her as a priest to his shrine, but once
+at her side, once in view of her first startled blush, stooped
+passionately, and forgetting everything but the suspense at his heart,
+asked with a look and tone such as he had never before bestowed upon
+her, if the play which he had seen that evening had been real, or only
+the baseless fabric of a dream.
+
+She understood him and drew back with a look almost of awe, shaking her
+head and replying in a startled way, "I do not know, I dare not say, I
+scarcely have taken time to think."
+
+"Then take it," he murmured in a voice that shook her body and soul,
+"for _I_ must know, if _he_ does not." And without venturing another
+word, or supplying by look or gesture any explanation of his unexpected
+appearance, or as equally unexpected departure, he bowed before her as
+if she had been a queen instead of the child he had been wont in other
+days to regard her, and speedily left her side.
+
+But he had not taken two steps before he paused. Mr. Ensign was
+approaching.
+
+"Mr. Sylvester! you are worse than the old woman of the tale, who
+declaring she would not, that nothing could ever induce her to--_did_."
+
+"You utter a deeper truth than you realize," returned that gentleman,
+with a grave emphasis meant rather for her ears than his. "It is the
+curse of mortals to overrate their strength in the face of great
+temptations. I am no exception to the rule." And with a second bow that
+included this apparently triumphant lover within its dignified sweep, he
+calmly proceeded upon his way, and in a few moments had left the house.
+
+Mr. Ensign, who for all his careless disposition, was quick to recognize
+depths in others, stared after his commanding figure until he had
+disappeared, then turned and looked at Paula. Why did his heart sink,
+and the lights and joy and promise of the evening seem to turn dark and
+shrivel to nothing before his eyes!
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII.
+
+TWO LETTERS.
+
+    "I have no other but a woman's reason,
+    I think him so, because I think him so."
+
+    --TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA.
+
+
+A woman who has submitted to the undivided attentions of a gentleman for
+any length of time, feels herself more or less bound to him, whether any
+special words of devotion have passed between them or not, particularly
+if from sensitiveness of nature, she has manifested any pleasure in his
+society. Paula therefore felt as if her wings had been caught in a
+snare, when Mr. Ensign upon leaving her that evening, put a small note
+in her hand, saying that he would do himself the pleasure of calling for
+his reply the next day. She did not need to open it. She knew
+intuitively the manly honest words with which he would be likely to
+offer his heart and life for her acceptance; yet she did open it almost
+as soon as she reached her room, sitting down in her outside wraps for
+the purpose. She was not disappointed. Every line was earnest, ardent,
+and respectful. A true love and a happy cheerful home awaited her
+if--the stupendous meaning latent in an _if_!
+
+With folded hands lying across the white page, with glance fixed on the
+fire always kept burning brightly in the grate, she sat querying her own
+soul and the awful future. He was such a charming companion; life had
+flashed and glimmered with a thousand lights and colors since she knew
+him; his very laugh made her want to sing. With him she would move in
+sunshiny paths, open to the regard of all the world, giving and
+receiving good. Life would need no veils and love no check. A placid
+stream would bear her on through fields of smiling verdure. Dread hopes,
+strange fears, uneasy doubts and vague unrests, would not disturb the
+heart that rested its faith upon his frank and manly bosom. A breeze
+blew through his life that would sweep all such evils from the path of
+her who walked in trust and love by his side. In trust and love; ah!
+that was it. She trusted him, but did she love him? At one time she had
+been convinced that she did, else these past few weeks would have owned
+a different history. He came upon her so brightly amid her gloom; filled
+her days with such genial thoughts, and drew the surface of her soul so
+unconsciously after him. It was like a zephyr sweeping over the sea;
+every billow that leaps to follow seems to own the power of that passing
+wind. But could she think so now, since she had found that the mere
+voice and look of another man had power to awaken depths such as she
+could not name and scarcely as yet had been able to recognize? that
+though the billows might flow under the genial smile of her young lover,
+the tide rose only at the call of a deeper voice and a more imposing
+presence?
+
+She was a thinking spirit and recoiled from yielding too readily to any
+passing impulse. Love was a sacrament in her eyes; something entirely
+too precious to be accepted in counterfeit. She must know the secret of
+her inclinations, must weigh the influence that swayed her, for once
+given over to earth's sublimest passion, she felt that it would have
+power to sweep her on to an eternity of bliss or suffering.
+
+She therefore forced herself to probe deep into the past, and pitilessly
+asked her conscience, what her emotions had been in reference to Mr.
+Sylvester before she positively knew that love for her as a woman had
+taken the place of his former fatherly regard. Her blushing cheek seemed
+to answer for her. Right or wrong, her life had never been complete away
+from his presence. She was lonesome and unsatisfied. When Mr. Ensign
+came she thought her previous unrest was explained, but the letter from
+Cicely describing Mr. Sylvester as sick and sorrowful, had withdrawn the
+veil from the delusion, and though it had settled again with Mr.
+Sylvester's studied refusal to accept her devotion, was by this
+evening's betrayal utterly wrenched away and trampled into oblivion. By
+every wild throb of her heart at the sound of his voice in her ear, by
+every out-reaching of her soul to enter into his every mood, by the deep
+sensation of rest she felt in his presence, and the uneasy longing that
+absorbed her in his absence, she knew that she loved Mr. Sylvester as
+she never could his younger, blither, and perhaps nobler rival. Each
+word spoken by him lay treasured in her heart of hearts. When she
+thought of manly beauty, his face and figure started upon her from the
+surrounding shadows, making all romance possible and poetry the truest
+expression of the human soul. While she lived, he must ever seem the man
+of men to charm the eye, affect the heart, and move the soul. Yet she
+hesitated. Why?
+
+There is nothing so hard to acknowledge to ourselves as the presence of
+a blemish in the character of those we love and long to revere. It was
+like giving herself to the rack to drag from its hiding-place and
+confront in all its hideous deformity, the doubt which, unconfessed
+perhaps, had of late mingled with her great reverence and admiring
+affection for this not easily to be comprehended man. But in this
+momentous hour she had power to do it. Conscience and self-respect
+demanded that the image before which she was ready to bow with such
+abandon, should be worthy her worship. She was not one who could carry
+offerings to a clouded shrine. She must see the glory shining from
+between the cherubim. "I must worship with my spirit as well as with my
+body, and how can I do that if there is a spot on his manhood, or a
+false note in his heart. If I did but know the secret of his past; why
+the prisoner sits in the dungeon! He is gentle, he is kindly, he loves
+goodness and strives to lead me in the paths of purity and wisdom, and
+yet something that is not good or pure clings to him, which he has never
+been able to shake loose. I perceive it in his melancholy glance; I
+catch its accents in his uneven tones; it rises upon me from his most
+thoughtful words, and makes his taking of a vow fearfully and warningly
+significant. Yet how much he is honored by his fellow-men, and with what
+reliance they look up to him for guidance and support. If I only knew
+the secrets of his heart!" thought she.
+
+It was a trembling scale that hung balancing in that young girl's hand
+that night. On one side, frankness, cheerfulness, manly worth, honest
+devotion, and a home with every adjunct of peace and prosperity; on the
+other, love, gratitude, longing, admiration, and a dark shadow
+enveloping all, called doubt. The scale would not adjust itself. It tore
+her heart to turn from Mr. Sylvester, it troubled her conscience to
+dismiss the thought of Mr. Ensign. The question was yet undecided when
+she rose and began putting away her ornaments for the night.
+
+What was there on her dressing-table that made her pause with such a
+start, and cast that look of half beseeching inquiry at her own image in
+the glass? Only another envelope with her name written upon it. But the
+way in which she took it in her hand, and the half guilty air with which
+she stole back with it to the fire, would have satisfied any looker-on I
+imagine, that conscience or no conscience, debate or no debate, the
+writer of these lines had gained a hold upon her heart, which no other
+could dispute.
+
+It was a compactly written note and ran thus:
+
+     "A man is not always responsible for what he does in moments of
+     great suspense or agitation. But if, upon reflection, he finds
+     that he has spoken harshly or acted unwisely, it is his duty to
+     remedy his fault; and therefore it is that I write you this
+     little note. Paula, I love you; not as I once did, with a
+     fatherly longing and a protective delight, but passionately,
+     yearningly, and entirely, with the whole force of my somewhat
+     disappointed life; as a man loves for whom the world has
+     dissolved leaving but one creature in it, and that a woman. I
+     showed you this too plainly to-night. I have no right to
+     startle or intimidate your sweet soul into any relation that
+     might hereafter curb or dissatisfy you; if you can love me
+     freely, with no back-lookings to any younger lover left behind,
+     know that naught you could bestow, can ever equal the world of
+     love and feeling which I long to lavish upon you from my heart
+     of hearts. But if another has already won upon your affections
+     too much for you to give an undivided response to my appeal,
+     then by all the purity and innocence of your nature, forget I
+     have ever marred the past or disturbed the present by any word
+     warmer than that of a father.
+
+     "I shall not meet you at breakfast and possibly not at dinner
+     to-morrow, but when evening comes I shall look for my soul's
+     dearer and better half, or my childless manhood's nearest and
+     most cherished friend, as God pleaseth and your own heart and
+     conscience shall decree.
+
+     "EDWARD SYLVESTER."
+
+Miss Belinda was very much surprised to be awakened early the next
+morning, by a pair of loving arms clasped yearningly about her neck.
+
+Looking up, she descried Paula kneeling beside her bed in the faint
+morning light, her cheeks burning, and her eyelids drooping; and
+guessing perhaps how it was, started up from her recumbent position with
+an energy strongly suggestive of the charger, that smells the battle
+afar off.
+
+"What has happened?" she asked. "You look as if you had not slept a
+wink."
+
+For reply Paula pulled aside the curtain at the head of her bed, and
+slipped into her hand Mr. Ensign's letter. Miss Belinda read it
+conscientiously through, with many grunts of approval, and having
+finished it, laid it down with a significant nod, after which she turned
+and surveyed Paula with keen but cautious scrutiny. "And you don't know
+what answer to give," she asked.
+
+"I should," said Paula, "if--Oh aunt, you know what stands in my way! I
+have seen it in your eyes for some time. There is some one else--"
+
+"But he has not spoken?" vigorously ejaculated her aunt.
+
+Without answering, Paula put into her hand, with a slow reluctance she
+had not manifested before, a second little note, and then hid her head
+amid the bedclothes, waiting with quickly beating heart for what her
+aunt might say.
+
+She did not seem in haste to speak, but when she did, her words came
+with a quick sigh that echoed very drearily in the young girl's anxious
+ears. "You have been placed by this in a somewhat painful position. I
+sympathize with you, my child. It is very hard to give denial to a
+benefactor."
+
+Paula's head drew nearer to her aunt's breast, her arms crept round her
+neck. "But must I?" she breathed.
+
+Miss Belinda knitted her brows with great force, and stared severely at
+the wall opposite. "I am sorry there is any question about it," she
+replied.
+
+Paula started up and looked at her with sudden determination. "Aunt,"
+said she, "what is your objection to Mr. Sylvester?"
+
+Miss Belinda shook her head, and pushing the girl gently away, hurriedly
+arose and began dressing with great rapidity. Not until she was entirely
+prepared for breakfast did she draw Paula to her, and prepare to answer
+her question.
+
+"My objection to him is, that I do not thoroughly understand him. I am
+afraid of the skeleton in the closet, Paula. I never feel at ease when I
+am with him, much as I admire his conversation and appreciate the
+undoubtedly noble instincts of his heart. His brow is not open enough to
+satisfy an eye which has accustomed itself to the study of human
+nature."
+
+
+"He has had many sorrows!" Paula faintly exclaimed, stricken by this
+echo of her own doubts.
+
+"Yes," returned her aunt, "and sorrow bows the head and darkens the eye,
+but it does not make the glance wavering or its expression mysterious."
+
+"Some sorrows might," urged Paula tremulously, arguing as much with her
+own doubts as with those of her aunt. "His have been of no ordinary
+nature. I have never told you, aunt, but there were circumstances
+attending Cousin Ona's death that made it especially harrowing. He had a
+stormy interview with her the very morning she was killed; words passed
+between them, and he left her with a look that was almost desperate.
+When he next saw her, she lay lifeless and inert before him. I sometimes
+think that the shadow that fell upon him at that hour will never pass
+away."
+
+"Do you know what was the subject of their disagreement?" asked Miss
+Belinda anxiously.
+
+"No, but I have reason to believe it had something to do with business
+affairs, as nothing else could ever arouse Cousin Ona into being at all
+disagreeable."
+
+"I don't like that phrase, _business affairs_; like charity, it covers
+entirely too much. Have you never had any doubts yourself about Mr.
+Sylvester?"
+
+"Ah, you touch me to the quick, aunt. I may have had my doubts, but when
+I look back on the past, I cannot see as they have any very substantial
+foundation. Supposing, aunt, that he has been merely unfortunate, and I
+should live to find that I had discarded one whose heart was darkened by
+nothing but sorrow? I should never forgive myself, nor could life yield
+me any recompense that would make amends for a sacrifice so
+unnecessary."
+
+"You love him, then, very dearly, Paula?"
+
+A sudden light fell on the young girl's face. "Hearts cannot tell their
+love," said she, "but since I received this letter from him, it has
+seemed as if my life hung balancing on the question, as to whether he is
+worthy of a woman's homage. If he is not, I would give my life to have
+him so. The world is only dear to me now as it holds him."
+
+Miss Belinda picked up Mr. Ensign's letter with trembling fingers. "I
+thought you were safe when the younger man came to woo," said she.
+"Girls, as a rule, prefer what is bright to what is sombre, and Mr.
+Ensign is truly a very agreeable as well as worthy young man."
+
+"Yes, aunt, and he came very near stealing my heart as he undoubtedly
+did my fancy, but a stronger hand snatched it away, and now I do not
+know what to do or how to act, so as to awaken in the future no remorse
+or vain regrets."
+
+Miss Belinda opened the letters again and consulted their contents in a
+matter-of-fact way. "Mr. Ensign proposes to come this afternoon for his
+answer, while Mr. Sylvester defers seeing you till evening. What if I
+seek Mr. Sylvester this morning and have a little conversation with him,
+which shall determine, for once and all, the question which so troubles
+us? Would you not find it easier to meet Mr. Ensign when he comes?"
+
+"You talk to Mr. Sylvester, and upon such a topic! Oh, I could not bear
+that. Pardon me, aunt, but I think I am more jealous of his feelings
+than of my own. If his secret can be learned in a half-hour's talk, it
+must be listened to by no one but myself. And I believe it can," she
+murmured reverently; "he is so tender of me he would never let me go
+blindfold into any path, concerning which I had once expressed anxiety.
+If I ask him whether there is any good reason before God or man why I
+should not give him my entire faith and homage, he will answer honestly,
+though it be the destruction of his hopes to do so?"
+
+"Have you such trust as that in his uprightness as a lover, and the
+guardian of your happiness?"
+
+"Have not you, aunt?"
+
+And Miss Belinda remembering his words on the occasion of his first
+proposal to adopt Paula, was forced to acknowledge that she had.
+
+So without further preliminaries, it was agreed upon that Paula should
+refrain from making a final decision until she had eased her heart by an
+interview with Mr. Sylvester.
+
+"Meantime, you can request Mr. Ensign to wait another day for his
+answer," said Miss Belinda.
+
+But Paula with a look of astonishment shook her head. "Is it you who
+would counsel me to such a piece of coquetry as that?" said she. "No,
+dear aunt, my heart is not with Mr. Ensign, as you know, and it is
+impossible for me to encourage him. If Mr. Sylvester should prove
+unworthy of my affection, I must bear, as best I may, the loss which
+must accrue; but till he does, let me not dishonor my womanhood by
+allowing hope to enter, even for a passing moment, the breast of his
+rival."
+
+Miss Belinda blushed, and drew her niece fondly towards her. "You are
+right," said she, "and my great desire for your happiness has led me
+into error. Honesty is the noblest adjunct of all true love, and must
+never be sacrificed to considerations of selfish expediency. The refusal
+which you contemplate bestowing upon Mr. Ensign, must be forwarded to
+him at once."
+
+And with a final embrace, in which Miss Belinda allowed herself to let
+fall some few natural tears of disappointment, she dismissed the young
+girl to her task.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV.
+
+PAULA MAKES HER CHOICE.
+
+                    "Good fortune then,
+    To make me bless't or cursed'st among men."
+
+    --MERCHANT OF VENICE.
+
+
+It was evening in the Sylvester mansion. Mr. Sylvester who, according to
+his understanding with Paula, had been absent from his home all day, had
+just come in and now stood in his library waiting for the coming
+footfall that should decide whether the future held for him any promise
+of joy.
+
+He had never looked more worthy of a woman's regard than he did that
+night. A matter that had been troubling him for some time had just been
+satisfactorily disposed of, and not a shadow, so far as he knew, lay
+upon his business outlook. This naturally brightened his cheek and lent
+a light to his eye. Then, hope is no mean beautifier, and this he
+possessed notwithstanding the disparity of years between himself and
+Paula. It was not, however, of sufficiently assured a nature to prevent
+him from starting at every sound from above, and flushing with quite a
+disagreeable sense of betrayal when the door opened and Bertram entered
+the room, instead of the gentle and exquisite being he had expected.
+
+"Uncle, I am so full of happiness, I had to stop and bestow a portion of
+it upon you. Do you think any one could mistake the nature of Miss
+Stuyvesant's feelings, who saw her last night?"
+
+"Hardly," was the smiling reply. "At all events I have not felt like
+wasting much but pleasant sympathy upon you. Your pathway to happiness
+looks secure, my boy."
+
+His nephew gave him a wistful glance, but hid his thought whatever it
+was. "I am going to see her to-night," remarked he. "I am afraid my love
+is something like a torrent that has once burst its barrier; it cannot
+rest until it has worked its channel and won its rightful repose."
+
+"That is something the way with all love," returned his uncle. "It may
+be dallied with while asleep, but once aroused, better meet a lion in
+his fury or a tempest in its rush. Are you going to test your hope,
+to-night?"
+
+The young man flushed. "I cannot say." But in another moment gayly
+added, "I only know that I am prepared for any emergency."
+
+"Well, my boy, I wish you God-speed. If ever a man has won a right to
+happiness, you are that man; and you shall enjoy it too, if any word or
+action of mine can serve to advance it."
+
+"Thank you!" replied Bertram, and with a bright look around the
+apartment, prepared to take his leave. "When I come back," he remarked,
+with a touch of that manly _naivete_ to which I have before alluded, "I
+hope I shall not find you alone."
+
+Ignoring this wish which was re-echoed somewhat too deeply within his
+own breast for light expression, Mr. Sylvester accompanied his nephew to
+the front door.
+
+"Let us see what kind of a night it is," observed he, stepping out upon
+the stoop. "It is going to rain."
+
+"So it is," returned Bertram, with a quick glance overhead; "but I shall
+not let such a little fuss as that deter me from fulfilling my
+engagement." And bestowing a hasty nod upon his uncle, he bounded down
+the step.
+
+Instantly a man who was loitering along the walk in front of the house,
+stopped, as if struck by these simple words, turned, gave Bertram a
+quick look, and then with a sly glance back at the open door where Mr.
+Sylvester still stood gazing at the lowering heavens, set himself
+cautiously to follow him.
+
+Mr. Sylvester, who was too much pre-occupied to observe this suspicious
+action, remained for a moment contemplating the sky; then with an
+aimless glance down the avenue, during which his eye undoubtedly fell
+upon Bertram and the creeping shadow of a man behind him, closed the
+door and returned to the library.
+
+The sight of another's joy has the tendency to either unduly depress the
+spirits or greatly to elate them. When Paula came into the room a few
+minutes later, it was to find Mr. Sylvester awaiting her with an
+expression that was almost radiant. It made her duty seem doubly hard,
+and she came forward with the slow step of one who goes to meet or carry
+doom. He saw, and instantly the light died out of his face, leaving it
+one blank of despair. But controlling himself, he took her cold hand in
+his, and looking down upon her with a tender but veiled regard, asked in
+those low and tremulous tones that exerted such an influence upon her:
+
+"Do I see before me my affectionate and much to be cherished child, or
+that still dearer object of love and worship, which it shall be the
+delight of my life to render truly and deeply happy?"
+
+"You see," returned she, after a moment of silent emotion, "a girl
+without father or brother to advise her; who loves, or believes she
+does, a great and noble man, but who is smitten with fear also, she
+cannot tell why, and trembles to take a step to which no loving and
+devoted friend has set the seal of his approval."
+
+The clasp with which Mr. Sylvester held her hand in his, tightened for
+an instant with irrepressible emotion, then slowly unloosed. Drawing
+back, he surveyed her with eyes that slowly filled with a bitter
+comprehension of her meaning.
+
+"You are the only man," continued she, with a glance of humble entreaty,
+"that has ever stood to me for a moment in the light of a relation. You
+_have_ been a father to me in days gone by, and to you it therefore
+seems most natural for me to appeal when a question comes up that either
+puzzles or distresses me. Mr. Sylvester, you have offered me your love
+and the refuge of your home; if you say that in your judgment the
+counsel of all true friends would be for me to accept this love, then my
+hand is yours and with it my heart; a heart that only hesitates because
+it would fain be sure it has the smile of heaven upon its every
+prompting."
+
+"Paula!"
+
+The voice was so strange she looked up to see if it really was Mr.
+Sylvester who spoke. He had sunk back into a chair and had covered his
+face with his hands. With a cry she moved towards him, but he motioned
+her back.
+
+"Condemned to be my own executioner!" he muttered. "Placed on the rack
+and bid to turn the wheel that shall wrench my own sinews! My God, 'tis
+hard!"
+
+She did not hear the words, but she saw the action. Slowly the blood
+left her cheek, and her hand fell upon her swelling breast with a
+despairing gesture that would have smitten Miss Belinda to the heart,
+could she have seen it. "I have asked too much," she whispered.
+
+With a start Mr. Sylvester rose. "Paula," said he, in a stern and
+different tone, "is this fear of which you speak, the offspring of your
+own instincts, or has it been engendered in your breast by the words of
+another?"
+
+"My Aunt Belinda is in my confidence, if it is she to whom you allude,"
+rejoined she, meeting his glance fully and bravely. "But from no lips
+but yours could any words proceed capable of affecting my estimate of
+you as the one best qualified to make me happy."
+
+"Then it is my words alone that have awakened this doubt, this
+apprehension?"
+
+"I have not spoken of doubt," said she, but her eyelids fell.
+
+"No, thank God!" he passionately exclaimed. "And yet you feel it," he
+went on more composedly. "I have studied your face too long and closely
+not to understand it."
+
+She put out her hands in appeal, but for once it passed unheeded.
+
+"Paula," said he, "you must tell me just what that doubt is; I must know
+what is passing in your mind. You say you love me--" he paused, and a
+tremble shook him from head to foot, but he went inexorably on--"it is
+more than I had a right to expect, and God knows I am grateful for the
+precious and inestimable boon, far as it is above my deserts; but while
+loving me, you hesitate to give me your hand. Why? What is the name of
+the doubt that disturbs that pure breast and affects your choice? Tell
+me, I must know."
+
+"You ask me to dissect my own heart!" she cried, quivering under the
+torture of his glance; "how can I? What do I know of its secret springs
+or the terrors that disturb its even beatings? I cannot name my fear; it
+has no name, or if it has--Oh, sir!" she cried in a burst of passionate
+longing, "your life has been one of sorrow and disappointment; grief has
+touched you close, and you might well be the melancholy and sombre man
+that all behold. I do not shrink from grief; say that the only shadow
+that lies across your dungeon-door is that cast by the great and
+heart-rending sorrows of your life, and without question and without
+fear I enter that dungeon with you--"
+
+The hand he raised stopped her. "Paula," cried he, "do you believe in
+repentance?"
+
+The words struck her like a blow. Falling slowly back, she looked at him
+for an instant, then her head sank on her breast.
+
+"I know what your hatred of sin is," continued he. "I have seen your
+whole form tremble at the thought of evil. Is your belief in the
+redeeming power of God as great as your recoil from the wrong that makes
+that redemption necessary?"
+
+Quickly her head raised, a light fell on her brow, and her lips moved in
+a vain effort to utter what her eyes unconsciously expressed.
+
+"Paula, I would be unworthy the name of a man, if with the consciousness
+of possessing a dark and evil nature, I strove by use of any hypocrisy
+or specious pretense at goodness, to lure to my side one so
+exceptionally pure, beautiful and high-minded. The ravening wolf and the
+innocent lamb would be nothing to it. Neither would I for an instant be
+esteemed worthy of your regard, if in this hour of my wooing there
+remained in my life the shadow of any latent wrong that might hereafter
+rise up and overwhelm you. Whatever of wrong has ever been committed by
+me--and it is my punishment that I must acknowledge before your pure
+eyes that my soul is not spotless--was done in the past, and is known
+only to my own heart and the God who I reverently trust has long ago
+pardoned me. The shadow is that of remorse, not of fear, and the evil,
+one against my own soul, rather than against the life or fortunes of
+other men. Paula, such sins can be forgiven if one has a mind to
+comprehend the temptations that beset men in their early struggles. I
+have never forgiven myself, but--" He paused, looked at her for an
+instant, his hand clenched over his heart, his whole noble form shaken
+by struggle, then said--"forgiveness implies no promise, Paula; you
+shall never link yourself to a man who has been obliged to bow his head
+in shame before you, but by the mercy that informs that dear glance and
+trembling lip, do you think you can ever grow to forgive me?"
+
+"Oh," she cried, with a burst of sobs, violent as her grief and shame,
+"God be merciful to me, as I am merciful to those who repent of their
+sins and do good and not evil all the remaining days of their life."
+
+"I thought you would _forgive_ me," murmured he, looking down upon her,
+as the miser eyes the gold that has slipped from his paralyzed hand.
+"Him whom the hard-hearted sinner and the hypocrite despise, God's
+dearest lambs regard with mercy. I learned to revere God before I knew
+you, Paula, but I learned to love Him in the light of your gentleness
+and your trust. Rise up now and let me wipe away your tears--my
+daughter."
+
+She sprang up as if stung. "No, no," she cried, "not that; I cannot bear
+that yet. I must think, I must know what all this means," and she laid
+her hand upon her heart. "God surely does not give so much love for
+one's undoing; if I were not destined to comfort a life so saddened, He
+would have bequeathed me more pity and less--" The lifted head fell, the
+word she would have uttered, stirred her bosom, but not her lips.
+
+It was a trial to his strength, but his firm man's heart did not waver.
+"You do comfort me," said he; "from early morning to late night your
+presence is my healing and my help, and will always be so, whatever may
+befal. A daughter can do much, my Paula."
+
+She took a step back towards the door, her eyes, dark with unfathomable
+impulses, flashing on him through the tears that hung thickly on her
+lashes.
+
+"Is it for your own sake or for mine, that you make use of that word?"
+said she.
+
+He summoned up his courage, met that searching glance with all its wild,
+bewildering beauty, and responded, "Can you ask, Paula?"
+
+With a lift of her head that gave an almost queenly stateliness to her
+form, she advanced a step, and drawing a crumpled paper from her pocket,
+said, "When I went to my room last night, it was to read _two_ letters,
+one from yourself, and one from Mr. Ensign. This is his, and a manly and
+noble letter it is too; but hearts have right to hearts, and I was
+obliged to refuse his petition." And with a reverent but inexorable
+hand, she dropped the letter on the burning coals of the grate at their
+side, and softly turned to leave the room.
+
+"Paula!" With a bound the stern and hitherto forcibly repressed man,
+leaped to her side. "My darling! my life!" and with a wild,
+uncontrollable impulse, he caught her for one breathless moment to his
+heart; then as suddenly released her, and laying his hand in reverence
+on her brow, said softly, "Now go and pray, little one; and when you are
+quite calm, an hour hence or a week hence whichever it may be, come and
+tell me my fate as God and the angels reveal it to you." And he smiled,
+and she saw his smile, and went out of the room softly, as one who
+treadeth upon holy ground.
+
+Mr. Sylvester was considered by his friends and admirers as a proud man.
+If a vote had been cast among those who knew him best, as from what
+especial passion common to humanity he would soonest recoil, it would
+have been unanimously pronounced shame, and his own hand would have
+emphasized the judgment of his fellows. But shame which is open to the
+gaze of the whole world, differs from that which is sacred to the eyes
+of one human being, and that the one who lies nearest the heart.
+
+As Paula's retreating footsteps died away on the stairs, and he awoke to
+the full consciousness that his secret was shared by her whose love was
+his life, and whose good opinion had been his incentive and his pride,
+his first sensation was one of unmitigated anguish, but his next,
+strange to say, that of a restful relief. He had cast aside the cloak he
+had hugged so closely to his breast these many years, and displayed to
+her shrinking gaze the fox that was gnawing at his vitals; and Spartan
+though he was, the dew that had filled her loving eyes was balm to him.
+And not only that; he had won claim to the title of true man. Her
+regard, if regard it remained, was no longer an airy fabric built upon a
+plausible seeming, but a firm structure with knowledge for its
+foundation. "I shall not live to whisper, 'If she knew my whole life,
+would she love me so well?'"
+
+His first marriage had been so wholly uncongenial and devoid of
+sympathy, that his greatest longing in connection with a fresh contract,
+was to enjoy the full happiness of perfect union and mutual trust; and
+though he could never have summoned up courage to take her into his
+confidence, unsolicited, now that it had been done he would not have it
+undone, no, not if by the doing he had lost her confidence and
+affection.
+
+But something told him he had not lost it. That out of the darkness and
+the shock of this very discovery, a new and deeper love would spring,
+which having its birth in human frailty and human repentance, would gain
+in the actual what it lost in the ideal, bringing to his weary,
+suffering and yearning man's nature, the honest help of a strong and
+loving sympathy, growing trust, and sweetest because wisest
+encouragement.
+
+It was therefore, with a growing sense of deep unfathomable comfort, and
+a reverent thankfulness for the mercies of God, that he sat by the fire
+idly watching the rise and fall of the golden flames above the
+fluttering ashes of his rival's letter, and dreaming with a hallowing
+sense of his unworthiness, upon the possible bliss of coming days.
+Happiness in its truest and most serene sense was so new to him, it
+affected him like the presence of something strangely commanding. He was
+awe-struck before it, and unconsciously bowed his head at its
+contemplation. Only his eyes betrayed the peace that comes with all
+great joy, his eyes and perhaps the faint, almost unearthly smile that
+flitted across his mouth, disturbing its firm line and making his face
+for all its inevitable expression of melancholy, one that his mother
+would have loved to look upon. "Paula!" came now and then in a reverent,
+yearning accent from between his lips, and once a low, "Thank God!"
+which showed that he was praying.
+
+Suddenly he rose; a more human mood had set in, and he felt the
+necessity of assuring himself that it was really he upon whom the dreary
+past had closed, and a future of such possible brightness opened. He
+walked about the room, surveying the rich articles within it, as the
+possible belongings of the beautiful woman he adored; he stood and
+pictured her as coming into the door as his wife, and before he realized
+what he was doing, had planned certain changes he would make in his home
+to adapt it to the wants of her young and growing mind, when with a
+strange suddenness, the door upon which he was gazing flew back, and
+Bertram Sylvester entered just as he had come from the street. He looked
+so haggard, so wild, so little the picture of himself as he ventured
+forth a couple of hours before, that Mr. Sylvester started, and
+forgetting his happiness in his alarm, asked in a tone of dismay:
+
+"What has happened? Has Miss Stuyvesant--"
+
+Bertram's hand went up as if his uncle had touched him upon a festering
+wound. "Don't!" gasped he, and advancing to the table, sat down and
+buried his face for a moment in his arms, then rose, and summoning up a
+certain manly dignity that became him well, met Mr. Sylvester's eye with
+forced calmness, and inquired:
+
+"Did you know there was a thief in our bank, Uncle Edward?"
+
+
+
+
+XXXV.
+
+THE FALLING OF THE SWORD.
+
+                      "Foul deeds will rise,
+    Though all the world o'erwhelm them, to men's eyes."--HAMLET.
+
+
+
+Mr. Sylvester towered on his nephew with an expression such as few men
+had ever seen even on his powerful and commanding face.
+
+"What do you mean?" asked he, and his voice rang like a clarion through
+the room.
+
+Bertram trembled and for a moment stood aghast, the ready flush bathing
+his brow with burning crimson. "I mean," stammered he, with difficulty
+recovering himself, "that when Mr. Stuyvesant came to open his private
+box in the bank to-day, that he not only found its lock had been
+tampered with, but that money and valuables to the amount of some twelve
+hundred dollars were missing from among its contents."
+
+"What?"
+
+The expression which had made Mr. Sylvester's brow so terrible had
+vanished, but his wonder remained.
+
+"It is impossible," he declared. "Our vaults are too well watched for
+any such thing to occur. He has made some mistake; a robbery of that
+nature could not take place without detection."
+
+"It would seem not, and yet the fact remains. Mr. Stuyvesant himself
+informed me of it, to-night. He is not a careless man, nor reckless in
+his statements. Some one has robbed the bank and it remains with us to
+find out who."
+
+Mr. Sylvester, who had been standing all this while, sat down like a man
+dazed, the wild lost look on Bertram's face daunting him with a fearful
+premonition. "There are but four men who have access to the vault where
+the boxes are kept," said he: then quickly, "Why did Mr. Stuyvesant wait
+till to-night to speak to you? Why did he not notify us at once of a
+loss so important for us to know?"
+
+The flush on Bertram's brow slowly subsided, giving way to a steady
+pallor. "He waited to be sure," said he. "He had a memorandum at home
+which he desired to consult; he was not ready to make any rash
+statement: he is a thinking man and more considerate than many of his
+friends are apt to imagine. If the lock had not been found open he would
+have thought with you that he had made some mistake; if he had not
+missed from the box some of its contents, he would have considered the
+condition of the lock the result of some oversight on his own part or of
+some mistake on the part of another, but the two facts together were
+damning and could force upon him but one conclusion. Uncle," said he,
+with a straightforward look into Mr. Sylvester's countenance, "Mr.
+Stuyvesant knows as well as we do who are the men who have access to the
+vaults. As you say, the opening of a box during business hours and the
+abstracting from it of papers or valuables by any one who has not such
+access, would be impossible. Only Hopgood, you and myself, and possibly
+Folger, could find either time or opportunity for such a piece of work;
+while after business hours, the same four, minus Folger who contents
+himself with knowing the combination of the inner safe, could open the
+vaults even in case of an emergency. Now of the four named, two are
+above suspicion. I might almost say three, for Hopgood is not a man it
+is easy to mistrust. One alone, then, of all the men whom Mr. Stuyvesant
+is in the habit of meeting at the Bank, is open to a doubt. A young man,
+uncle, whose rising has been rapid, whose hopes have been lofty, whose
+life may or may not be known to himself as pure, but which in the eyes
+of a matured man of the world might easily be questioned, just because
+its hopes are so lofty and its means for attaining them so limited."
+
+"Bertram!" sprang from Mr. Sylvester's white lips.
+
+But the young man raised his hand with almost a commanding gesture.
+"Hush," said he, "no sympathy or surprise. Facts like these have to be
+met with silent endurance, as we walk up to the mouth of the cannon we
+cannot evade, or bare our breast to the thrust of the bayonet gleaming
+before our eyes.--I would not have you think," he somewhat hurriedly
+pursued, "that Mr. Stuyvesant insinuated anything of the kind, but his
+daughter was not present in the parlor, and--" A sigh, almost a gasp
+finished the sentence.
+
+"Bertram!" again exclaimed his uncle, this time with some authority in
+his voice. "The shock of this discovery has unnerved you. You act like a
+man capable of being suspected. That is simply preposterous. One half
+hour's conversation with Mr. Stuyvesant on my part will convince him, if
+he needs convincing, which I do not believe, that whoever is unworthy of
+trust in our bank, you are not the man."
+
+Bertram raised his head with a gleam of hope, but instantly dropped it
+again with a despairing gesture that made his uncle frown.
+
+"I did not know that you were inclined to be so pusillanimous," cried
+Mr. Sylvester; "and in presence of a foe so unsubstantial as this you
+have conjured up almost out of nothing. If the bank has been robbed, it
+cannot be difficult to find the thief. I will order in detectives
+to-morrow. We will hold a board of inquiry, and the culprit shall be
+unmasked; that is, if he is one of the employees of the bank, which it
+is very hard to believe."
+
+"Very, and which, if true, would make it unadvisable in us to give the
+alarm that any public measures taken could not fail to do."
+
+"The inquiry shall be private, and the detectives, men who can be
+trusted to keep their business secret."
+
+
+"How can any inquiry be private? Uncle, we are treading on delicate
+ground, and have a task before us requiring great tact and discretion.
+If the safe had only been assaulted, or there were any evidences of
+burglary to be seen! But we surely should have heard of it from some one
+of the men, if anything unusual had been observed. Hopgood would have
+spoken at least."
+
+"Yes, Hopgood would have spoken."
+
+The tone in which this was uttered made Bertram look up. "You agree with
+me, then, that Hopgood is absolutely to be relied upon?"
+
+"Absolutely." A faint flush on Mr. Sylvester's face lent force to this
+statement.
+
+"He could not be beguiled or forced by another man to reveal the
+combination, or to relax his watch over the vaults entrusted to his
+keeping?"
+
+"No."
+
+"He is alone with the vaults where the boxes are kept for an hour or two
+in the early morning!"
+
+"Yes, and has been for three years. Hopgood is honesty itself."
+
+"And so are Folger and Jessup and Watson," exclaimed Bertram
+emphatically.
+
+"Yes," his uncle admitted, with equal emphasis.
+
+"It is a mystery," Bertram declared; "and one I fear that will undo me."
+
+"Nonsense!" broke forth somewhat impatiently from Mr. Sylvester's lips;
+"there is no reason at this time for any such conclusion. If there is a
+thief in the bank he can be found; if the robbery was committed by an
+outsider, he may still be discovered. If he is not, if the mystery rests
+forever unexplained, you have your character, Bertram, a character as
+spotless as that of any of your fellows, whom we regard as above
+suspicion. A man is not going to be condemned by such a judge of human
+nature as Mr. Stuyvesant, just because a mysterious crime has been
+committed, to which the circumstances of his position alone render it
+possible for him to be party. You might as well say that Jessup and
+Folger and Watson--yes, or myself, would in that case lose his
+confidence. They are in the bank, and are constantly in the habit of
+going to the vaults."
+
+"None of those gentlemen want to marry his daughter," murmured Bertram.
+"It is not the director I fear, but the father. I have so little to
+bring her. Only my character and my devotion."
+
+"Well, well, pluck up courage, my boy. I have hopes yet that the whole
+matter can be referred to some mistake easily explainable when once it
+is discovered. Mistakes, even amongst the honest and the judicious, are
+not so uncommon as one is apt to imagine. I, myself, have known of one
+which if providence had not interfered, might have led to doubts
+seemingly as inconsistent as yours. To-morrow we will consider the
+question at length. To-night--Well, Bertram, what is it?"
+
+The young man started and dropped his eyes, which during the last words
+of his uncle had been fixed upon his face with strange and penetrating
+inquiry. "Nothing," said he, "that is, nothing more;" and rose as if to
+leave.
+
+But Mr. Sylvester put out his hand and stopped him. "There _is_
+something," said he. "I have seen it in your face ever since you entered
+this room. What is it?"
+
+The young man drew a deep breath and leaned back in his chair. Mr.
+Sylvester watched him with growing pallor. "You are right," murmured his
+nephew at last; "there is something more, and it is only justice that
+you should hear it. I have had two adventures to-night; one quite apart
+from my conversation with Mr. Stuyvesant. Heaven that watches above us,
+has seen fit to accumulate difficulties in my path, and this last,
+perhaps, is the least explainable and the hardest to encounter."
+
+"What do you allude to?" cried his uncle, imperatively; "I have had an
+evening of too much agitation to endure suspense with equanimity.
+Explain yourself."
+
+"It will not take long," said the other; "a few words will reveal to you
+the position in which I stand. Let me relate it in the form of a
+narrative. You know what a dark portion of the block that is in which
+Mr. Stuyvesant's house is situated. A man might hide in any of the areas
+along there, without being observed by you unless he made some sound to
+attract your attention. I was, therefore, more alarmed than surprised
+when, shortly after leaving Mr. Stuyvesant's dwelling, I felt a hand
+laid on my shoulder, and turning, beheld a dark figure at my side, of an
+appearance calculated to arouse any man's apprehension. He was tall,
+unkempt, with profuse beard, and eyes that glared even in the darkness
+of his surroundings, with a feverish intensity. 'You are Mr. Sylvester,'
+said he, with a look of a wild animal ready to pounce upon his prey.
+'Yes,' said I, involuntarily stepping back, 'I am Mr. Sylvester.' 'I
+want to speak to you,' exclaimed he, with a rush of words as though a
+stream had broken loose; 'now, at once, on business that concerns you.
+Will you listen?'
+
+"I thought of the only business that seemed to concern me then, and
+starting still farther back, surveyed him with surprise. 'I don't know
+you,' said I; 'what business can you have with me?' 'Will you step into
+some place where it is warm and find out?' he asked, shivering in his
+thin cloak, but not abating a jot of his eagerness. 'Go on before me,'
+said I, 'and we will see.' He complied at once, and in this way we
+reached Beale's Coffee-Room, where we went in. 'Now,' said I, 'out with
+what you have to say and be quick about it. I have no time to listen to
+nonsense and no heart to attend to it.' His eye brightened; he did not
+cast a glance at the smoking victuals about him, though I knew he was
+hungry as a dog. 'It is no nonsense,' said he, 'that I have to
+communicate to you.' And then I saw he had once been a gentleman. 'For
+two years and a half have I been searching for you,' he went on, 'in
+order that I might recall to your mind a little incident. You remember
+the afternoon of February, the twenty-fifth, two years ago?'
+
+"'No,' said I, in great surprise, for his whole countenance was flushed
+with expectancy. 'What was there about that day that I should remember
+it?' He smiled and bent his face nearer to mine. 'Don't you recollect a
+little conversation you had in a small eating-house in Dey Street, with
+a gentleman of a high-sounding voice to whom you were obliged
+continually to say 'hush!'" I stared at the man, as you may believe,
+with some notion of his being a wandering lunatic. 'I have never taken a
+meal in any eating-house in Dey Street,' I declared, motioning to a
+waiter to approach us. The man observing it, turned swiftly upon me. 'Do
+you think I care for any such petty _fuss_ as that?' asked he,
+indicating the rather slightly built man I had called to my rescue,
+while he covertly studied my face to observe the effect of his words.
+
+"I started. I could not help it; this use of an expression almost
+peculiar to myself, assured me that the man knew me better than I
+supposed. Involuntarily I waved the waiter back and turned upon the man
+with an inquiring look.
+
+"'I thought you might consider it worth your while to listen,' said he,
+smiling with the air of one who has or thinks he has a grip upon you.
+Then suddenly, 'You are a rich man, are you not? a proud man and an
+honored one. You hold a position of trust and are considered worthy of
+it; how would you like men to know that you once committed a mean and
+dirty trick; that those white hands that have the handling of such large
+funds at present, have in days gone by been known to dip into such funds
+a little too deeply; that, in short, you, Bertram Sylvester, cashier of
+the Madison Bank, and looking forward to no one knows what future honors
+and emoluments, have been in a position better suited to a felon's cell
+than the trusted agent of a great and wealthy corporation?'
+
+"I did not collar him; I was too dumb-stricken for any such display of
+indignation. I simply stared, feeling somewhat alarmed as I remembered
+my late interview with Mr. Stuyvesant, and considered the possibility of
+a plot being formed against me. He smiled again at the effect he had
+produced, and drew me into a corner of the room where we sat down. 'I am
+going to tell you a story,' said he, 'just to show you what a good
+memory I have. One day, a year and more ago, I sauntered into an
+eating-house on Dey Street. I have not always been what you see me now,
+though to tell you the truth, I was but little better off at the time of
+which I speak, except that I did have a dime or so in my pocket, and
+could buy a meal of victuals--if I wished.' And his eyes roamed for the
+first time to the tables stretching out before him down the room. 'The
+proprietor was an acquaintance of mine, and finding I was sleepy as well
+as hungry, let me go into a certain dark pantry, where I curled up amid
+all sorts of old rubbish and went to sleep. I was awakened by the sound
+of voices talking very earnestly. The closet in which I was hidden was a
+temporary affair built up of loose boards, and the talk of a couple of
+men seated against it was easy enough to be heard. Do you want to know
+what that conversation was?'
+
+"My curiosity was roused by this time and I said yes. If this was a plot
+to extort money from me, it was undeniably better for me to know upon
+just what foundations it rested. I thought the man looked surprised, but
+with an aplomb difficult to believe assumed, he went on to say, 'The
+voices gave me my only means of judging of the age, character, or
+position of the men conversing, but I have a quick ear, and my memory is
+never at fault. From the slow, broken, nervously anxious tone of one of
+the men, I made up my mind that he was elderly, hard up, and not over
+scrupulous; the other voice was that of a gentleman, musical and yet
+pronounced, and not easily forgotten, as you see, sir. The first words I
+heard aroused me and convinced me it was worth while to listen. They
+were uttered by the gentleman. 'You come to me with such a dirty piece
+of business! What right have you to suppose I would hearken to you for
+an instant!' 'The right,' returned the other, 'of knowing you have not
+been above doing dirty work in your life time.' The partition creaked at
+that, as though one of the two had started forward, but I didn't hear
+any reply made to this strange accusation. 'Do you think,' the same
+voice went on, 'that I do not know where the five thousand dollars came
+from which you gave me for that first speculation? I knew it when I took
+it, and if I hadn't been sure the operation would turn out fortunately,
+you would never have been the man you are to-day. It came out of funds
+entrusted to you, and was not the gift of a relative as you would have
+made me believe.' 'Good heaven!' exclaimed the other, after a silence
+that was very expressive just then and there, 'and you let me--' 'Oh we
+won't go into that,' interrupted the less cultivated voice. 'All you
+wanted was a start, to make you the successful man you have since
+become. I never worried much about morals, and I don't worry about them
+now, only when you say you won't do a thing likely to make my fortune,
+just because it is not entirely free from reproach, I say, remember what
+I know about you, and don't talk virtue to me.'
+
+"'I am rightly punished,' came from the other, in a tone that proved him
+to be a man more ready to do a wrong thing than to face the accusation
+of it. 'If I ever did what you suppose, the repentance that has
+embittered all my success, and the position in which you have this day
+placed me, is surely an ample atonement.' 'Will you do what I request?'
+inquired the other, giving little heed to this expression of misery, of
+which I on the contrary took special heed. 'No,' was the energetic
+reply; 'because I am not spotless it is no sign that I will wade into
+filth. I will give you money as I have done scores of times before, but
+I will lend my hand to no scheme which is likely to throw discredit on
+me or mine. Were you not connected to me in the way in which you are--'
+'You would pursue the scheme,' interrupted the other; 'it is because you
+know that I cannot talk, that you dare repudiate it. Well I will go to
+one--' 'You shall not,' came in short quick tones, just such tones as
+you used to me, sir, when we first entered this room. 'You shall leave
+the country before you do anything more, or say anything more, to
+compromise me or yourself. I may have done wrong in my day, but that is
+no reason why I should suffer for it at your hands, tempter of youth,
+and deceiver of your own flesh and blood! _You_ shall never bring back
+those days to me again; they are buried, and have been stamped out of
+sight by many an honest dealing since, and many as I trust before God,
+good and sterling action. I have long since begun a new life; a life of
+honor, and pure, if successful, dealing. Not only my own happiness, but
+that of one who should be considered by you, depends upon my maintaining
+that life to the end, unshadowed by unholy remembrances, and unharrassed
+by any such proffers as you have presumed to make to me here to-day. If
+you want a few thousand dollars to leave the country, say so, but never
+again presume to offend my ears, or those of any one else we may know,
+with any such words as you have made use of to-day.' And the spiritless
+creature subsided, sir, and said no more to that rich, honored, and
+successful man who was so sensitive to even the imputation of guilt.
+
+"But I am not spiritless and just where he dropped the affair, I took it
+up. 'Here is a chance for me to turn an honest penny,' thought I, and
+with a deliberation little to be expected of me, perhaps, set myself to
+spot that man and make the most out of the matter I could. Unfortunately
+I lost the opportunity of seeing his face. I was too anxious to catch
+every word they uttered, to quit my place of concealment till their
+conversation was concluded, and then I was too late to be sure which of
+the many men leaving the building before me was the one I was after. The
+waiters were too busy to talk, and the proprietor himself had taken no
+notice. Happily as I have before said, I never forget voices; moreover
+one of the two speakers had made use of a phrase peculiar enough to
+serve as a clue to his identity. It was in answer to some parting threat
+of the older man, and will remind you of an expression uttered by
+yourself an hour or so ago. 'Do you suppose I will let such a little
+fuss as that deter me?' It was the cue to his speech, by which I
+intended to hunt out my man from amongst the rich, the trusted and the
+influential persons of this city, and when found, to hold him.'
+
+"'And you think you have done this?' said I, too conscious of the
+possible net about my feet to be simply angry. 'I know it,' said he;
+'every word you have uttered since we have been here has made me more
+and more certain of the fact. I could swear to your voice, and as to
+your use of that tell-tale word, it was not till I thought to inquire of
+a certain wide-awake fellow down town, who amongst our business men were
+in the habit of using that expression, and was told Mr. Sylvester of the
+Madison Bank, that I was enabled to track you. I know I have got my hand
+on my man at last and--' He looked down at his thread-bare coat and
+around at the tables with their smoking dishes, and left me to draw my
+own conclusion.
+
+"Uncle, there are crises in life which no former experience teaches you
+how to meet. I had arrived at such a one. Perhaps you can understand me
+when I say I was well nigh appalled. Denial of what was imputed to me
+might be wisdom and might not. I felt the coil of a deadly serpent about
+me, and knew not whether it was best to struggle or to simply submit.
+The man noted the effect he had made and complacently folded his arms.
+He was of a nervous organization and possessed an eye like a hungry
+wolf, but he could wait. 'This is a pretty story,' said I at last, and I
+reject it altogether. 'I am an honest man and have always been so; you
+will have to give up your hopes of making anything out of me.' 'Then you
+are willing,' said he, 'that I should repeat this story to one of the
+directors of your bank, whom I know?'
+
+"I looked at him; he returned my gaze with a cold nonchalence more
+suggestive of a deep laid purpose, than even his previous glance of
+feverish determination. I immediately let my eye run over his scanty
+clothing and loose flowing hair and beard. 'Yes,' said I, with as much
+sarcasm as I knew how to assume, 'if you dare risk the consequences, I
+think I may.' He at once drew himself up. 'You think,' said he, 'that
+you have a common-place adventurer to deal with; that my appearance is
+going to testify in your favor; that you have but to deny any accusation
+which such a hungry-looking, tattered wretch as I, may make, and that I
+shall be ignominiously kicked out of the presence into which I have
+forced myself; that in short I have been building my castle in the air.
+Mr. Sylvester, I am a poor devil but I am no fool. When I left Dey
+Street on the twenty-fifth of February two years ago, it was with a
+sealed paper in my pocket, in which was inscribed all that I had heard
+on that day. This I took to a lawyer's office, and not being, as I have
+before said, quite as impecunious in those days as at present, succeeded
+in getting the lawyer, whom I took care should be a most respectable
+man, to draw up a paper to the effect that I had entrusted him with this
+statement--of whose contents he however knew nothing--on such a day and
+hour, to which paper a gentleman then present, consented at my
+respectful solicitation to affix his name as witness, which gentleman,
+strange to say, has since proved to be a director of the bank of which
+you are the present cashier, and consequently the very man of all others
+best adapted to open the paper whose seal you profess to be so willing
+to see broken.'
+
+"'His name!' It was all that I could say. 'Stuyvesant,' cried the man,
+fixing me with his eye in which I in vain sought for some signs of
+secret doubt or unconscious wavering. I rose; the position in which I
+found myself was too overwhelming for instant decision. I needed time
+for reflection, possibly advice--from you. A resolution to brave the
+devil must be founded on something more solid than impulse, to hold its
+own unmoved. I only stopped to utter one final word and ask one leading
+question. 'You are a smart man,' said I, 'and you are also a villain.
+Your smartness would give you food and drink, if you exercised it in a
+manner worthy of a man, but your villainy if persisted in, will
+eventually rob you of both, and bring you to the prison's cell or the
+hangman's gallows. As for myself, I persist in saying that I am now and
+always have been an honest man, whatever you may have overheard or find
+yourself capable of swearing to. Yet a lie is an inconvenient thing to
+have uttered against you at any time, and I may want to see you again;
+if I do, where shall I find you?' He thrust his hand into his pocket and
+drew out a small slip of folded paper, which he passed to me with a bow
+that Chesterfield would have admired. 'You will find it written within,'
+said he 'I shall look for you any time to-morrow, up to seven o'clock.
+At that hour the lawyer of whom I have spoken, sends the statement which
+he has in his possession to Mr. Stuyvesant.' I nodded my assent, and he
+moved slowly towards the door. As he did so, his eyes fell upon a roll
+of bread lying on a counter. I at once stepped forward and bought it.
+Vile as he was, and deadly as was the snare he contemplated drawing
+about me, I could not see that wolfish look of hunger, and not offer him
+something to ease it. He took the loaf from my hands and bit greedily
+into it but suddenly paused, and shook his head with a look like
+self-reproach, and thrusting the loaf under his arm, turned towards the
+door with the quick action of one escaping. Instantly, and before he was
+out of sight or hearing, I drew the attention of the proprietor to him.
+'Do you see that man?' I asked. 'He has been attempting a system of
+blackmail upon me.' And satisfied with thus having provided a witness
+able of identifying the man, in case of an emergency, I left the
+building.
+
+"And now you know it all," concluded he; and the silence that followed
+the utterance of those simple words, was a silence that could be felt.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Bertram?"
+
+The young man started from his fixed position, and his eyes slowly
+traversed toward his uncle.
+
+"Have you that slip of paper which the man gave you before departing?"
+
+"Yes," said he.
+
+"Let me have it, if you please."
+
+The young man with an agitated look, plunged his hand into his pocket,
+drew out the small note and laid it on the table between them. Mr.
+Sylvester let it lie, and again there was a silence.
+
+"If this had happened at any other time," Bertram pursued, "one could
+afford to let the man have his say; but now, just as this other mystery
+has come up--"
+
+"I don't believe in submitting to blackmail," came from his uncle in
+short, quick tones.
+
+Bertram gave a start. "You then advise me to leave him alone?" asked he,
+with unmistakable emotion.
+
+His uncle dropped the hand which till now he had held before his face,
+and hastily confronted his nephew. "You will have enough to do to attend
+to the other matter without bestowing any time or attention upon this.
+The man that robbed Mr. Stuyvesant's box, can be found and must. It is
+the one indispensable business to which I now delegate you. No amount of
+money and no amount of diligence is to be spared. I rely on you to carry
+the affair to a successful termination. Will you undertake the task?"
+
+"Can you ask?" murmured the young man, with a shocked look at his
+uncle's changed expression.
+
+"As to this other matter, we will let it rest for to-night. To-morrow's
+revelations may be more favorable than we expect. At all events let us
+try and get a little rest now; I am sure we are both in a condition to
+need it."
+
+Bertram rose. "I am at your command," said he, and moved to go. Suddenly
+he turned, and the two men stood face to face. "I have no wish," pursued
+he, "to be relieved of my burden at the expense of any one else. If it
+is to be borne by any one, let it be carried by him who is young and
+stalwart enough to sustain it." And his hand went out involuntarily
+towards his uncle.
+
+Mr. Sylvester took that hand and eyed his nephew long and earnestly.
+Bertram thought he was going to speak, and nerved himself to meet with
+fortitude whatever might be said. But the lips which Mr. Sylvester had
+opened, closed firmly, and contenting himself with a mere wring of his
+nephew's hand, he allowed him to go. The slip of paper remained upon the
+table unopened.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That night as Paula lay slumbering on her pillow, a sound passed through
+the house. It was like a quick irrepressible cry of desolation, and the
+poor child hearing it, started, thinking her name had been called. But
+when she listened, all was still, and believing she had dreamed, she
+turned her face upon her pillow, and softly murmuring the name that was
+dearest to her in all the world, fell again into a peaceful sleep.
+
+But he whose voice had uttered that cry in the dreary emptiness of the
+great parlors below, slept not.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVI.
+
+MORNING.
+
+    "Two maidens by one fountain's joyous brink,
+    And one was sad and one had cause for sadness."
+
+
+Cicely Stuyvesant waiting for her father at the foot of the stairs, on
+the morning after these occurrences, was a pretty and a touching
+spectacle. She had not slept very well the night before, and her brow
+showed signs of trouble and so did her trembling lips. She held in her
+hand a letter which she twirled about with very unsteady fingers. The
+morning was bright, but she did not seem to observe it; the air was
+fresh, but it did not seem to invigorate her. A rose-leaf of care lay on
+the tremulous waters of her soul, and her sensitive nature thrilled
+under it.
+
+"Why does he not come?" she whispered, looking again at the letter's
+inscription.
+
+It was in Mr. Sylvester's handwriting, and ought not to have occasioned
+her any uneasiness, but her father had intimated a wish the night
+before, that she should not come down into the parlor if Bertram called,
+and--Her thoughts paused there, but she was anxious about the letter and
+wished her father would hasten.
+
+Let us look at the little lady. She had been so bright and lovesome
+yesterday at this time. Never a maiden in all this great city of ours
+had shown a sweeter or more etherial smile. At once radiant and
+reserved, she flashed on the eye and trembled from the grasp like some
+dainty tropical creature as yet unused to our stranger clime. Her father
+had surveyed her with satisfaction, and her lover--oh, that we were all
+young again to experience that leap of the heart with which youth meets
+and recognizes the sweet perfections of the woman it adores! But a mist
+had obscured the radiance of her aspect, and she looks very sad as she
+stands in her father's hall this morning, leaning her cheek against the
+banister, and thinking of the night when three years ago, she lingered
+in that very spot, and watched the form of the young musician go by her
+and disappear in the darkness of the night, as she then thought forever.
+Joy had come to her by such slow steps and after such long waiting. Hope
+had burst upon her so brilliantly, and with such a speedy promise of
+culmination. She thrilled as she thought how short a time ago it was,
+since she leaned upon Bertram's arm and dropped her eyes before his
+gaze.
+
+The appearance of her father at length aroused her. Flushing slightly,
+she held the letter towards him.
+
+"A letter for you, papa. I thought you might like to read it before you
+went out."
+
+Mr. Stuyvesant, who for an hour or more had been frowning over his
+morning paper with a steady pertinacity that left more than the usual
+amount of wrinkles upon his brow, started at the wistful tone of this
+announcement from his daughter's lips, and taking the letter from her
+hand, stepped into the parlor to peruse it. It was, as the handwriting
+declared, from Mr. Sylvester, and ran thus:
+
+     "DEAR MR. STUYVESANT:
+
+     "I have heard of your loss and am astounded. Though the Bank is
+     not liable for any accident to trusts of this nature, both
+     Bertram and myself are determined to make every effort
+     possible, to detect and punish the man who either through our
+     negligence, or by means of the opportunities afforded him under
+     our present system of management, has been able to commit this
+     robbery upon your effects. We therefore request that you will
+     meet us at the bank this morning at as early an hour as
+     practicable, there to assist us in making such inquiries and
+     instituting such measures, as may be considered necessary to
+     the immediate attainment of the object desired.
+
+     "Respectfully yours,
+
+     "EDWARD SYLVESTER."
+
+"Is it anything serious?" asked his daughter, coming into the parlor and
+looking up into his face with a strange wistfulness he could not fail to
+remark.
+
+Mr. Stuyvesant gave her a quick glance, shook his head with some
+nervousness and hastily pocketed the epistle. "Business," mumbled he,
+"business." And ignoring the sigh that escaped her lips, began to make
+his preparations for going at once down town.
+
+He was always an awkward man at such matters, and it was her habit to
+afford him what assistance she could. This she now did, lending her hand
+to help him on with his overcoat, rising on tip-toe to tie his muffler,
+and bending her bright head to see that his galoshes were properly
+fastened; her charming face with its far-away look, shining strangely
+sweet in the dim hall, in contrast with his severe and antiquated
+countenance.
+
+He watched her carefully but with seeming indifference till all was done
+and he stood ready to depart, then in an awkward enough way--he was not
+accustomed to bestow endearments--drew her to him and kissed her on the
+forehead; after which he turned about and departed without a word to
+season or explain this unwonted manifestation of tenderness.
+
+A kiss was an unusual occurrence in that confiding but undemonstrative
+household, and the little maiden trembled. "Something is wrong," she
+murmured half to herself, half to the dim vista of the lonely parlor,
+where but a night or so ago had stood the beloved form of him, who, bury
+the thought as she would, had become, if indeed he had not always been,
+the beginning and the ending of all her maidenly dreams: "what? what?"
+And her young heart swelled painfully as she realized like many a woman
+before her, that whatever might be her doubts, fears, anguish or
+suspense, nothing remained for her but silence and a tedious waiting for
+others to recognize her misery and speak.
+
+Meanwhile how was it with her dearest friend and confident, Paula? The
+morning, as I have already declared, was bright and exceptionally
+beautiful. Sunshine filled the air and freshness invigorated the breeze.
+Cicely was blind to it all, but as Paula looked from her window
+preparatory to going below, a close observer might have perceived that
+the serenity of the cloudless sky was reflected in her beaming eyes,
+that peace brooded above her soul and ruled her tender spirit. She had
+held a long conversation with Miss Belinda, she had prayed, she had
+slept and she had risen with a confirmed love in her heart for the man
+who was at once the admiration of her eyes and the well-spring of her
+deepest thoughts and wildest longings. "I will show him so plainly what
+the angels have told me," whispered she, "that he will have no need to
+ask." And she wound her long locks into the coil that she knew he best
+liked and fixed a rose at her throat, and so with a smile on her lip
+went softly down stairs. O the timid eager step of maidenhood when
+drawing toward the shrine of all it adores! Could those halls and lofty
+corridors have whispered their secret, what a story they would have told
+of beating heart and tremulous glance, eager longings, and maidenly
+shrinkings, as the lovely form, swaying with a thousand hopes and fears,
+glided from landing to landing, carrying with it love and joy and peace.
+And trust! As she neared the bronze image that had always awakened such
+vague feelings of repugnance on her part, and found its terrors gone and
+its smile assuring, she realized that her breast held nothing but faith
+in him, who may have sinned in his youth, but who had repented in his
+manhood, and now stood clear and noble in her eyes. The assurance was
+too sweet, the flood of feeling too overwhelming. With a quick glance
+around her, she stopped and flung her arms about the hitherto repellant
+bronze, pressing her young breast against the cold metal with a fervor
+that ought to have hallowed its sensuous mould forever. Then she hurried
+down.
+
+Her first glance into the dining-room brought her a disappointment. Mr.
+Sylvester had already breakfasted and gone; only Aunt Belinda sat at the
+table. With a slightly troubled brow, Paula advanced to her own place at
+the board.
+
+"Mr. Sylvester has urgent business on hand to-day," quoth her aunt. "I
+met him going out just as I came down."
+
+Her look lingered on Paula as she said this, and if it had not been for
+the servants, she would doubtless have given utterance to some further
+expression on the matter, for she had been greatly struck by Mr.
+Sylvester's appearance and the sad, firm, almost lofty expression of his
+eye, as it met hers in their hurried conversation.
+
+"He is a very busy man," returned Paula simply, and was silent, struck
+by some secret dread she could not have explained. Suddenly she rose;
+she had found an envelope beneath her plate, addressed to herself. It
+was bulky and evidently contained a key. Hastening behind the curtains
+of the window, she opened it. The key was to that secret study of his at
+the top of the house, which no one but himself had ever been seen to
+enter, and the words that enwrapped it were these:
+
+     "If I send you no word to the contrary, and if I do not come
+     back by seven o'clock this evening, go to the room of which
+     this is the key, open my desk, and read what I have prepared
+     for your eyes.
+
+     "E. S."
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXVII.
+
+THE OPINION OF A CERTAIN NOTED DETECTIVE.
+
+                            "But still there clung
+    One hope, like a keen sword on starting threads uphung."
+
+    --REVOLT OF ISLAM.
+
+    "Facts are stubborn things."--ELLIOTT.
+
+
+Meanwhile Mr. Stuyvesant hasted on his way down town and ere long made
+his appearance at the bank. He found Mr. Sylvester and Bertram seated in
+the directors' room, with a portly smooth-faced man whose appearance was
+at once strange and vaguely familiar.
+
+"A detective, sir," explained Mr. Sylvester rising with forced
+composure; "a man upon whose judgment I have been told we may rely. Mr.
+Gryce, Mr. Stuyvesant."
+
+The latter gentleman nodded, cast a glance around the room, during which
+his eye rested for a moment on Bertram's somewhat pale countenance, and
+nervously took a seat.
+
+"A mysterious piece of business, this," came from the detective's lips
+in an easy tone, calculated to relieve the tension of embarrassment into
+which the entrance of Mr. Stuyvesant seemed to have thrown all parties.
+"What were the numbers of the bonds found missing, if you please?"
+
+Mr. Stuyvesant told him.
+
+"You are positively assured these bonds were all in the box when you
+last locked it?"
+
+"I am."
+
+"When was that, sir? On what day and at what hour of the day, if you
+please?"
+
+"Tuesday, at about three o'clock, I should say."
+
+"The box was locked by you? There is no doubt about that fact?"
+
+"None in the least."
+
+"Where were you standing at the time?"
+
+"In front of the vault door. I had taken out the box myself as I am in
+the habit of doing, and had stepped there to put it back."
+
+"Was any one near you then?"
+
+"Yes. The cashier was at his desk and the teller had occasion to go to
+the safe while I stood there. I do not remember seeing any one else in
+my immediate vicinity."
+
+"Do you remember ever going to the vaults and not finding some one near
+you at the time or at least in full view of your movements?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I have informed Mr. Gryce," interposed Mr. Sylvester, with a ring in
+his deep voice that made Mr. Stuyvesant start, "that our chief desire at
+present is to have his judgment upon the all important question, as to
+whether this theft was committed by a stranger, or one in the employ and
+consequently in the confidence of the bank."
+
+Mr. Stuyvesant bowed, every wrinkle in his face manifesting itself with
+startling distinctness as he slowly moved his eyes and fixed them on the
+inscrutable countenance of the detective.
+
+"You agree then with these gentlemen," continued the latter, who had a
+way of seeming more interested in everything and everybody present than
+the person he was addressing, "that it would be difficult if not
+impossible for any one unconnected with the bank, to approach the vaults
+during business hours and abstract anything from them without
+detection?"
+
+"And do these gentleman both assert that?" queried Mr. Stuyvesant, with
+a sharp look from uncle to nephew.
+
+"I believe they do," replied the detective, as both the gentlemen bowed,
+Bertram with an uncontrollable quiver of his lip, and Mr. Sylvester with
+a deepening of the lines about his mouth, which may or may not have been
+noticed by this man who appeared to observe nothing.
+
+"I should be loth to conclude that the robbery was committed by any one
+but a stranger," remarked Mr. Stuyvesant; "but if these gentlemen concur
+in the statement you have just made, I am bound to acknowledge that I do
+not myself see how the theft could have been perpetrated by an outsider.
+Had the box itself been missing, it would be different. I remember my
+old friend Mr. A--, the president of the police department, telling me
+of a case where a box containing securities to the amount of two hundred
+thousand dollars, was abstracted in full daylight from the vaults of one
+of our largest banks; an act requiring such daring, the directors for a
+long time refused to believe it possible, until a detective one day
+showed them another box of theirs which he had succeeded in abstracting
+in the same way.[1] But the vaults in that instance were in a less
+conspicuous portion of the bank than ours, besides to approach an open
+vault, snatch a box from it and escape, is a much simpler matter than to
+remain long enough to open a box and choose from its contents such
+papers as appeared most marketable. If a regular thief could do such a
+thing, it does not seem probable that he would. Nevertheless the most
+acute judgment is often at fault in these matters, and I do not pretend
+to have formed an opinion."
+
+[Footnote 1: A fact.]
+
+The detective who had listened to these words with marked attention,
+bowed his concurrence and asked if the bonds mentioned by Mr. Stuyvesant
+were all that had been found missing from the bank. If any of the other
+boxes had been opened, or if the contents of the safe itself had ever
+been tampered with.
+
+"The contents of the safe are all correct," came in deep tones from Mr.
+Sylvester. "Mr. Folger, my nephew and myself went through them this
+morning. As for the boxes I cannot say, many of them belong to persons
+travelling; some of them have been left here by trustees of estates,
+consequently often lie for weeks in the vaults untouched. If however any
+of them have been opened, we ought to be able to see it. Would you like
+an examination made of their condition?"
+
+The detective nodded.
+
+Mr. Sylvester at once turned to Mr. Stuyvesant. "May I ask you to
+mention what officer of the bank you would like to have go to the
+vaults?"
+
+That gentleman started, looked uneasily about, but meeting Bertram's
+eye, nervously dropped his own and muttered the name of Folger.
+
+Mr. Sylvester suppressed a sigh, sent for the paying-teller, and
+informed him of their wishes. He at once proceeded to the vaults. While
+he was gone, Mr. Gryce took the opportunity to make the following
+remark.
+
+"Gentlemen," said he, "let us understand ourselves. What you want of me,
+is to tell you whether this robbery has been committed by a stranger or
+by some one in your employ. Now to decide this question it is necessary
+for me to ask first, whether you have ever had reason to doubt the
+honesty of any person connected with the bank?"
+
+"No," came from Mr. Sylvester with sharp and shrill distinctness. "Since
+I have had the honor of conducting the affairs of this institution, I
+have made it my business to observe and note the bearing and character
+of each and every man employed under me, and I believe them all to be
+honest."
+
+The glance of the detective while it did not perceptibly move from the
+large screen drawn across the room at the back of Mr. Sylvester, seemed
+to request the opinions of the other two gentlemen on this point.
+
+Bertram observing it, subdued the rapid beatings of his heart and spoke
+with like distinctness. "I have been in the bank the same length of time
+as my uncle," said he, "and most heartily endorse his good opinion of
+the various persons in our employ."
+
+"And Mr. Stuyvesant?" the immovable glance seemed to say.
+
+"Men are honest in my opinion till they are proved otherwise," came in
+short stern accents from the director's lips.
+
+The detective drew back in his chair as if he considered that point
+decided, and yet Bertram's eye which had clouded at Mr. Stuyvesant's too
+abrupt assertion, did not clear again as might have been expected.
+
+"There is one more question I desire to settle," continued the
+detective, "and that is, whether this robbery could have been
+perpetrated after business hours, by some one in collusion with the
+person who is here left in charge?"
+
+"No;" again came from Mr. Sylvester, with impartial justice. "The
+watchman--who by the way has been in the bank for twelve years--could
+not help a man to find entrance to the vaults. His simple duty is to
+watch over the bank and give alarm in case of fire or burglary. It would
+necessitate a knowledge of the combination by which the vault doors are
+opened, to do what you suggest, and that is possessed by but three
+persons in the bank."
+
+"And those are?"
+
+"The cashier, the janitor, and myself."
+
+He endeavored to speak calmly and without any betrayal of the effort it
+caused him to utter those simple words, but a detective's ear is nice
+and it is doubtful if he perfectly succeeded.
+
+Mr. Gryce however limited himself to a muttered, humph! and a long and
+thoughtful look at a spot on the green baize of the table before which
+he sat.
+
+"The janitor lives in the building, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes, and is, as I am sure Mr. Stuyvesant will second me in asserting,
+honesty to the back-bone."
+
+"Janitors always are," observed the detective; then shortly, "How long
+has _he_ been with you?"
+
+"Three years."
+
+Another "humph!" and an increased interest in the ink spot.
+
+"That is not long, considering the responsibility of his position."
+
+"He was on the police force before he came to us," remarked Mr.
+Sylvester.
+
+Mr. Gryce looked as if that was not much of a recommendation.
+
+"As for the short time he has been with us," resumed the other, "he came
+into the bank the same winter as my nephew and myself, and has found the
+time sufficient to earn the respect of all who know him."
+
+The detective bowed, seemingly awed by the dignity with which the last
+statement had been uttered; but any one who knew him well, would have
+perceived that the film of uncertainty which had hitherto dimmed the
+brightness of his regard was gone, as if in the other's impressive
+manner, if not in the suggestion his words had unconsciously offered,
+the detective had received an answer to some question which had been
+puzzling him, or laid his hand upon some clue which had till now eluded
+his grasp. The inquiries which he made haste to pursue, betrayed,
+however, but little of the tendency of his thoughts.
+
+"The janitor, you say, knows the combination by which the vault doors
+are opened?"
+
+"The _vault doors_," emphasized Mr. Sylvester. "The safe is another
+matter; that stands inside the vault and is locked by a triple
+combination which as a whole is not known to any one man in this
+building, not even to myself."
+
+"But the boxes are not kept in the safe?"
+
+"No, they are piled up with the books in the vaults at the side of the
+safe, as you can see for yourself, if you choose to join Mr. Folger."
+
+"Not necessary. The janitor, then, is the only man besides yourselves,
+who under any circumstances or for any reason, could get at those boxes
+after business hours?"
+
+"He is."
+
+"One question more. Who is the man to attend to those boxes? I mean to
+ask, which of the men in your employ is expected to procure a box out of
+the vaults when it is called for, and put it back in its place when its
+owner is through with it?"
+
+"Hopgood usually does that business, the janitor of whom we have just
+been speaking. When he is upstairs or out of the way, any one else whom
+it may be convenient to call."
+
+"The janitor, then, has free access to the boxes at all times, night and
+day?"
+
+"In one sense, yes, in another, no. Should he unlock the vaults at
+night, the watchman would report upon his proceedings."
+
+"But there must be time between the closing and opening of the bank,
+when the janitor is alone with the vaults?"
+
+"There is a space of two hours after seven in the morning, when he is
+likely to be the sole one in charge. The watchman goes home, and Hopgood
+employs himself in sweeping out the bank and preparing it for the
+business of the day."
+
+"Are the watchman and the janitor on good terms with one another?"
+
+"Very, I believe."
+
+The detective looked thoughtful. "I should like to see this Hopgood,"
+said he.
+
+But just then the door opened and Mr. Folger came in, looking somewhat
+pale and disturbed. "We are in a difficulty," cried he, stepping up to
+the table where they sat. "I have found two of the boxes unlocked; that
+belonging to Hicks, Saltzer and Co., and another with the name of
+Harrington upon it. The former has been wrenched apart, the latter
+opened with some sort of instrument. Would you like to see them, sir?"
+This to Mr. Sylvester.
+
+With a start that gentleman rose, and as suddenly reseated himself.
+"Yes," returned he, carefully avoiding his nephew's eye; "bring them
+in."
+
+"Hicks, Saltzer and Co., is a foreign house," remarked Mr. Stuyvesant to
+the detective, "and do not send for their box once a fortnight, as I
+have heard Mr. Sylvester declare. Mr. Harrington is on an exploring
+expedition and is at present in South America." Then in lower tones,
+whose sternness was not unmixed with gloom, "The thief seems to have
+known what boxes to go to."
+
+Bertram flushed and made some passing rejoinder; Mr. Sylvester and the
+detective alone remained silent.
+
+The boxes being brought in, Mr. Gryce opened them without ceremony.
+Several papers met his eye in both, but as no one but the owners could
+know their rightful contents, it was of course impossible for him to
+determine whether anything had been stolen from them or not.
+
+
+"Send for the New York agent of Hicks, Saltzer and Co.," came from Mr.
+Sylvester, in short, business-like command.
+
+Bertram at once rose. "I will see to it," said he. His agitation was too
+great for suppression, the expression of Mr. Stuyvesant's eye, that in
+its restlessness wandered in every direction but his own, troubled him
+beyond endurance. With a hasty move he left the room. The cold eye of
+the detective followed him.
+
+"Looks bad," came in laconic tones from the paying teller.
+
+"I had hoped the affair begun and ended with my individual loss,"
+muttered Mr. Stuyvesant under his breath.
+
+The stately president and the inscrutable detective still maintained
+their silence.
+
+Suddenly the latter moved. Turning towards Mr. Sylvester, he requested
+him to step with him to the window. "I want to have a look at your
+several employees," whispered he, as they thus withdrew. "I want to see
+them without being seen by them. If you can manage to have them come in
+here one by one upon some pretext or other, I can so arrange that screen
+under the mantel-piece, that it shall not only hide me, but give me a
+very good view of their faces in the mirror overhead."
+
+"There will be no difficulty about summoning the men," said Mr.
+Sylvester.
+
+"And you consent to the scheme?"
+
+"Certainly, if you think anything is to be gained by it."
+
+"I am sure that nothing will be lost. And sir, let the cashier be
+present if you please; and sir," squeezing his watch chain with a
+complacent air, as the other dropped his eyes, "talk to them about
+anything that you please, only let it be of a nature that will
+necessitate a sentence or more in reply. I judge a man as much by his
+voice as his expression."
+
+Mr. Sylvester bowed, and without losing his self-command, though the
+short allusion to Bertram had greatly startled him, turned back to the
+table where Mr. Folger was still standing in conversation with the
+director.
+
+"I will not detain you longer," said he to the paying teller. "Your
+discretion will prevent you from speaking of this matter, I trust." Then
+as the other bowed, added carelessly, "I have something to say to
+Jessup; will you see that he steps here for a moment?"
+
+Mr. Folger again nodded and left the room. Instantly Mr. Gryce bustled
+forward, and pulling the screen into the position he thought best
+calculated to answer his requirements, slid rapidly behind it. Mr.
+Stuyvesant looked up in surprise.
+
+"I am going to interview the clerks for Mr. Gryce's benefit," exclaimed
+Mr. Sylvester. "Will you in the meantime look over the morning paper?"
+
+"Thank you," returned the other, edging nervously to one side, "my
+note-book will do just as well," and sitting down at the remote end of
+the table, he took out a book from his pocket, above which he bent with
+very well simulated preoccupation. Mr. Sylvester called in Bertram and
+then seated himself with a hopeless and unexpectant look, which he for
+the moment forgot would be reflected in the mirror before him, and so
+carried to the eye of the watchful detective. In another instant Jessup
+entered.
+
+What was said in the short interview that followed, is unimportant. Mr.
+Jessup, the third teller, was one of those clear eyed, straightforward
+appearing men whose countenance is its own guarantee. It was not
+necessary to detain him or make him speak. The next man to come in was
+Watson, and after he had gone, two or three of the clerks, and later the
+receiving teller and one of the runners. All stopped long enough to
+insure Mr. Gryce a good view of their faces, and from each and all did
+Mr. Sylvester succeed in eliciting more or less conversation in response
+to the questions he chose to put.
+
+With the disappearance of the last mentioned individual, Mr. Gryce
+peeped from behind the screen. "A set of as honest-looking men as I wish
+to see!" uttered he with a frank cordiality that was scarcely reflected
+in the anxious countenances about him. "No sly-boots among them; how
+about the janitor, Hopgood?"
+
+"He shall be summoned at once, if you desire it," said Mr. Sylvester, "I
+have only delayed calling him that I might have leisure to interrogate
+him with reference to his duties, and this very theft. That is if you
+judge it advisable in me to tamper with the subject unassisted?"
+
+"Your nephew can help you if necessary," replied the imperturbable
+detective. "I should like to hear what the man, Hopgood, has to say for
+himself," and he glided back into his old position.
+
+But Mr. Sylvester had scarcely reached out his hand to ring the bell by
+which he usually summoned the janitor, when the agent of Hicks, Saltzer
+& Co. came in. It was an interruption that demanded instant attention.
+Saluting the gentleman with his usual proud reserve, he drew his
+attention to the box lying upon the table.
+
+
+"This is yours, I believe, sir," said he. "It was found in our vaults
+this morning in the condition in which you now behold it, and we are
+anxious to know if its contents are all correct."
+
+"They have been handled," returned the agent, after a careful survey of
+the various papers that filled the box, "but nothing appears to be
+missing."
+
+Three persons at least in that room breathed more easily.
+
+"But the truth is," the gentleman continued, with a half smile towards
+the silent President of the bank, "there was nothing in this box that
+would have been of much use to any other parties than ourselves. If
+there had been a bond or so here, I doubt if we should have come off so
+fortunately, eh? The lock has evidently been wrenched open, and that is
+certainly a pretty sure sign that something is not right hereabouts."
+
+"Something is decidedly wrong," came from Mr. Sylvester sternly; "but
+through whose fault we do not as yet know." And with a few words
+expressive of his relief at finding the other had sustained no material
+loss, he allowed the agent to depart.
+
+He had no sooner left the room than Mr. Stuyvesant rose. "Are you going
+to question Hopgood now?" queried he, nervously pocketing his note-book.
+
+"Yes sir, if you have no objections."
+
+The director fidgeted with his chair and finally moved towards the door.
+"I think you will get along better with him alone," said he. "He is a
+man who very easily gets embarrassed, and has a way of acting as if he
+were afraid of me. I will just step outside while you talk to him."
+
+But Mr. Sylvester with a sudden dark flush on his brow, hastily stopped
+him. "I beg you will not," said he, with a quick realization of what
+Hopgood might be led to say in the forthcoming interview, if he were not
+restrained by the presence of the director. "Hopgood is not so afraid of
+you that he will not answer every question that is put to him with
+straightforward frankness." And he pushed up a chair, with a smile that
+Mr. Stuyvesant evidently found himself unable to resist. The screen
+trembled slightly, but none of them noticed it; Mr. Sylvester at once
+rang for Hopgood.
+
+He came in panting with his hurried descent from the fifth story, his
+face flushed and his eyes rolling, but without any of the secret
+perturbation Bertram had observed in them on a former occasion. "He
+cannot help us," was the thought that darkened the young man's brow as
+his eyes left the janitor, and faltering towards his uncle, fell upon
+the table before him.
+
+Everything was reflected in the mirror.
+
+"Well, Hopgood, I have a few questions to put to you this morning," said
+Mr. Sylvester in a restrained, but not unkindly tone.
+
+The worthy man bowed, bestowed a salutatory roll of his eyes on Mr.
+Stuyvesant, and stood deferentially waiting.
+
+"No, he cannot help us," was again Bertram's thought, and again his eyes
+faltered to his uncle's face, and again fell anxiously before him.
+
+"It has not been my habit to trouble you with inquiries about your
+management of matters under your charge," continued Mr. Sylvester,
+stopping till the janitor's wandering eyes settled upon his own. "Your
+conduct has always been exemplary, and your attention to duty
+satisfactory; but I would like to ask you to-day if you have observed
+anything amiss with the vaults of late? anything wrong about the boxes
+kept there? anything in short, that excited your suspicion or caused you
+to ask yourself if everything was as it should be?"
+
+The janitor's ruddy face grew pale, and his eye fell with startled
+inquiry on Mr. Harrington's box that still occupied the centre of the
+table. "No, sir," he emphatically replied, "has anything--"
+
+But Mr. Sylvester did not wait to be questioned. "You have attended to
+your duties as promptly and conscientiously as usual; you have allowed
+no one to go to the vaults day or night, who had no business there? You
+have not relaxed your accustomed vigilance, or left the bank alone at
+any time during the hours it is under your charge?"
+
+"No sir, not for a minute, sir; that is--" He stopped and his eye
+wandered towards Mr. Stuyvesant. "Never for a minute, sir," he went on,
+"without I knew some one was in the bank, who was capable of looking
+after it."
+
+"The watchman has been at his post every night up to the usual hour?"
+
+"Yes sir."
+
+"There has been no carelessness in closing the vault doors after the
+departure of the clerks?"
+
+"No sir."
+
+"And no trouble," he continued, with a shade more of dignity, possibly
+because Hopgood's tell-tale face was beginning to show signs of anxious
+confusion, "and no trouble in opening them at the proper time each
+morning?"
+
+"No sir."
+
+
+"One question more--"
+
+But here Bertram was called out, and in the momentary stir occasioned by
+his departure, Hopgood allowed himself to glance at the box before him
+more intently than he had hitherto presumed to do. He saw it was
+unlocked, and his hands began to tremble. Mr. Sylvester's voice recalled
+him to himself.
+
+"You are a faithful man," said that gentleman, continuing his speech of
+a minute before, "and as such we are ready to acknowledge you; but the
+most conscientious amongst us are sometimes led into indiscretions. Now
+have you ever through carelessness or by means of any inadvertence,
+revealed to any one in or out of the bank, the particular combination by
+which the lock of the vault-door is at present opened?"
+
+"No sir, indeed no; I am much too anxious, and feel my own
+responsibility entirely too much, not to preserve so important a secret
+with the utmost care and jealousy."
+
+Mr. Sylvester's voice, careful as he was to modulate it, showed a secret
+discouragement. "The vaults then as far as you know, are safe when once
+they are closed for the night?"
+
+"Yes sir." The janitor's face expressed a slight degree of wonder, but
+his voice was emphatic.
+
+Mr. Sylvester's eye travelled in the direction of the screen. "Very
+well," said he; and paused to reflect.
+
+In the interim the door opened for a second time. "A gentleman to see
+Mr. Stuyvesant," said a voice.
+
+
+With an air of relief the director hastily rose, and before Mr.
+Sylvester had realized his position, left the room and closed the door
+behind him. A knell seemed to ring its note in Mr. Sylvester's breast.
+The janitor, released as he supposed from all constraint, stepped
+hastily forward.
+
+"That box has been found unlocked," he cried with a wave of his hand
+towards the table; "some one has been to the vaults, and I--Oh, sir," he
+hurriedly exclaimed, disregarding in his agitation the stern and
+forbidding look which Mr. Sylvester in his secret despair had made haste
+to assume, "you did not want me to say anything about the time you came
+down so early in the morning, and I went out and left you alone in the
+bank, and you went to the vaults and opened Mr. Stuyvesant's box by
+mistake, with a tooth-pick as you remember?"
+
+The mirror that looked down upon that pair, showed one very white face
+at that moment, but the screen that had trembled a moment before, stood
+strangely still in the silence.
+
+"No," came at length from Mr. Sylvester, with a composure that
+astonished himself. "I was not questioning you about matters of a year
+agone. But you might have told that incident if you pleased; it was very
+easily explainable."
+
+"Yes sir, I know, and I beg pardon for alluding to it, but I was so
+taken aback, sir, by your questions; I wanted to tell the exact truth,
+and I did not want to say anything that would hurt you with Mr.
+Stuyvesant; that is if I could help it. I hope I did right, sir," he
+blundered on, conscious he was uttering words he might better have kept
+to himself, but too embarrassed to know how to emerge from the
+difficulty into which his mingled zeal and anxiety had betrayed him. "I
+was never a good hand at answering questions, and if any thing really
+serious has happened, I shall wish you had taken me at my word and
+dismissed me immediately after that affair. Constantia Maria would have
+been a little worse off perhaps, but I should not be on hand to answer
+questions, and--"
+
+"Hopgood!"
+
+The man started, eyed Mr. Sylvester's white but powerfully controlled
+countenance, seemed struck with something he saw there, and was silent.
+
+"You make too much now, as you made too much then of a matter that
+having its sole ground in a mistake, is, as I say, easily explainable.
+This affair which has come up now, is not so clear. Three of the boxes
+have been opened, and from one certain valuables have been taken. Can
+you give me any information that will assist us in our search after the
+culprit?"
+
+"No sir." The tone was quite humble, Hopgood drew back unconsciously
+towards the door.
+
+"As for the mistake of a year ago to which you have seen proper to
+allude, I shall myself take pains to inform Mr. Stuyvesant of it, since
+it has made such an impression upon you that it trammels your honesty
+and makes you consider it at all necessary to be anxious about it at
+this time."
+
+And Hopgood unused to sarcasm from those lips, drew himself together,
+and with one more agitated look at the box on the table, sidled
+awkwardly from the room. Mr. Sylvester at once advanced to the screen
+which he hastily pushed aside. "Well, sir," said he, meeting the
+detective's wavering eye and forcing him to return his look, "you have
+now seen the various employees of the bank and heard most of them
+converse. Is there anything more you would like to inquire into before
+giving us the opinion I requested?"
+
+"No sir," said the detective, coming forward, but very slowly and
+somewhat hesitatingly for him. "I think I am ready to say--"
+
+Here the door opened, and Mr. Stuyvesant returned. The detective drew a
+breath of relief and repeated his words with a business-like assurance.
+"I think I am ready to say, that from the nature of the theft and the
+mysterious manner in which it has been perpetrated, suspicion
+undoubtedly points to some one connected with the bank. That is all that
+you require of me to-day?" he added, with a bow of some formality in the
+direction of Mr. Sylvester.
+
+"Yes," was the short reply. But in an instant a change passed over the
+stately form of the speaker. Advancing to Mr. Gryce, he confronted him
+with a countenance almost majestic in its severity, and somewhat
+severely remarked, "This is a serious charge to bring against men whose
+countenances you yourself have denominated as honest. Are we to believe
+you have fully considered the question, and realize the importance of
+what you say?"
+
+"Mr. Sylvester," replied the detective, with great self-possession and
+some dignity, "a man who is brought every day of his life into positions
+where the least turning of a hair will sink a man or save him, learns to
+weigh his words, before he speaks even in such informal inquiries as
+these."
+
+Mr. Sylvester bowed and turned towards Mr. Stuyvesant. "Is there any
+further action you would like to have taken in regard to this matter
+to-day?" he asked, without a tremble in his voice.
+
+With a glance at the half open box of the absent Mr. Harrington, the
+agitated director slowly shook his head. "We must have time to think,"
+said he.
+
+Mr. Gryce at once took up his hat. "If the charge implied in my opinion
+strikes you, gentlemen, as serious, you must at least acknowledge that
+your own judgment does not greatly differ from mine, or why such
+unnecessary agitation in regard to a loss so petty, by a gentleman worth
+as we are told his millions." And with this passing shot, to which
+neither of his auditors responded, he made his final obeisance and
+calmly left the room.
+
+Mr. Sylvester and Mr. Stuyvesant slowly confronted one another.
+
+"The man speaks the truth," said the former. "You at least suspect some
+one in the bank, Mr. Stuyvesant?"
+
+"I have no wish to," hastily returned the other, "but facts--"
+
+"Would facts of this nature have any weight with you against the
+unspotted character of a man never known by you to meditate, much less
+commit a dishonest action?"
+
+"No; yet facts are facts, and if it is proved that some one in our
+employ has perpetrated a theft, the mind will unconsciously ask who, and
+remain uneasy till it is satisfied."
+
+"And if it never is?"
+
+"It will always ask who, I suppose."
+
+Mr. Sylvester drew back. "The matter shall be pushed," said he; "you
+shall be satisfied. Surveillance over each man employed in this
+institution ought sooner or later to elicit the truth. The police shall
+take it in charge."
+
+Mr. Stuyvesant looked uneasy. "I suppose it is only justice," murmured
+he, "but it is a scandal I would have been glad to avoid."
+
+"And I, but circumstances admit of no other course. The innocent must
+not suffer for the guilty, even so far as an unfounded suspicion would
+lead."
+
+"No, no, of course not." And the director bustled about after his
+overcoat and hat.
+
+Mr. Sylvester watched him with growing sadness. "Mr. Stuyvesant," said
+he, as the latter stood before him ready for the street, "we have always
+been on terms of friendship, and nothing but the most pleasant relations
+have ever existed between us. Will you pardon me if I ask you to give me
+your hand in good-day?"
+
+The director paused, looked a trifle astonished, but held out his hand
+not only with cordiality but very evident affection.
+
+"Good day," cried he, "good-day."
+
+Mr. Sylvester pressed that hand, and then with a dignified bow, allowed
+the director to depart. It was his last effort at composure. When the
+door closed, his head sank on his hands, and life with all its hopes and
+honors, love and happiness, seemed to die within him.
+
+He was interrupted at length by Bertram. "Well, uncle?" asked the young
+man with unrestrained emotion.
+
+"The theft has been committed by some one in this bank; so the detective
+gives out, and so we are called upon to believe. _Who_ the man is who
+has caused us all this misery, neither he, nor you, nor I, nor any one,
+is likely to very soon determine. Meantime--"
+
+"Well?" cried Bertram anxiously, after a moment of suspense.
+
+"Meantime, courage!" his uncle resumed with forced cheerfulness.
+
+But as he was leaving the bank he came up to Bertram, and laying his
+hand on his shoulder, quietly said:
+
+"I want you to go immediately to my house upon leaving here. I may not
+be back till midnight, and Miss Fairchild may need the comfort of your
+presence. Will you do it, Bertram?"
+
+"Uncle! I--"
+
+"Hush! you will comfort me best by doing what I ask. May I rely upon
+you?"
+
+"Always."
+
+"That is enough."
+
+And with just a final look, the two gentlemen parted, and the shadow
+which had rested all day upon the bank, deepened over Bertram's head
+like a pall.
+
+It was not lifted by the sight of Hopgood stealing a few minutes later
+towards the door by which his uncle had departed, his face pale, and his
+eyes fixed in a stare, that bespoke some deep and moving determination.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVIII.
+
+BLUE-BEARD'S CHAMBER.
+
+                   "Present fears
+    Are less than horrible imaginings."
+     --MACBETH.
+
+
+Clarence Ensign was not surprised at the refusal he received from Paula.
+He had realized from the first that the love of this beautiful woman
+would be difficult to obtain, even if no rival with more powerful
+inducements than his own, should chance to cross his path. She was one
+who could be won to give friendship, consideration, and sympathy without
+stint; but from the very fact that she could so easily be induced to
+grant these, he foresaw the improbability, or at least the difficulty of
+enticing her to yield more. A woman whose hand warms towards the other
+sex in ready friendship, is the last to succumb to the entreaties of
+love. The circle of her sympathies is so large, the man must do well,
+who of all his sex, pierces to the sacred centre. The appearance of Mr.
+Sylvester on the scene, settled his fate, or so he believed; but he was
+too much in earnest to yield his hopes without another effort; so upon
+the afternoon of this eventful day, he called upon Paula.
+
+The first glimpse he obtained of her countenance, convinced him that he
+was indeed too late. Not for him that anxious pallor, giving way to a
+rosy tinge at the least sound in the streets without. Not for him that
+wandering glance, burning with questions to which nothing seemed able to
+grant reply. The very smile with which she greeted him, was a blow; it
+was so forgetful of the motive that had brought him there.
+
+"Miss Fairchild," he stammered, with a generous impulse to save her
+unnecessary pain, "you have rejected my offer and settled my doom; but
+let me believe that I have not lost your regard, or that hold upon your
+friendship which it has hitherto been my pleasure to enjoy."
+
+She woke at once to a realization of his position. "Oh Mr. Ensign," she
+murmured, "can you doubt my regard or the truth of my friendship? It is
+for me to doubt; I have caused you such pain, and as you may think, so
+ruthlessly and with such lack of consideration. I have been peculiarly
+placed," she blushingly proceeded. "A woman does not always know her own
+heart, or if she does, sometimes hesitates to yield to its secret
+impulses. I have led you astray these last few weeks, but I first went
+astray myself. The real path in which I ought to tread, was only last
+night revealed to me. I can say no more, Mr. Ensign."
+
+"Nor is it necessary," replied he. "You have chosen the better path, and
+the better man. May life abound in joys for you, Miss Fairchild."
+
+She drew herself up and her hand went involuntarily to her heart. "It is
+not joy I seek," said she, "but--"
+
+"What?" He looked at her face lit with that heavenly gleam that visited
+it in rare moments of deepest emotion, and wondered.
+
+"Joy is in seeing the one you love happy," cried she; "earth holds none
+that is sweeter or higher."
+
+"Then may that be yours," he murmured, manfully subduing the jealous
+pang natural under the circumstances. And taking the hand she held out
+to him, he kissed it with greater reverence and truer affection than
+when, in the first joyous hours of their intercourse, he carried it so
+gallantly to his lips.
+
+And she--oh, difference of time and feeling--did not remember as of
+yore, the noble days of chivalry, though he was in this moment, so much
+more than ever the true knight and the reproachless cavalier.
+
+For Paula's heart was heavy. Fears too unsubstantial to be met and
+vanquished, had haunted her steps all day. The short note which Mr.
+Sylvester had written her, lay like lead upon her bosom. She longed for
+the hours to fly, yet dreaded to hear the clock tick out the moments
+that possibly were destined to bring her untold suffering and
+disappointment. A revelation awaiting her in Mr. Sylvester's desk up
+stairs? That meant separation and farewell; for words of promise and
+devotion can be spoken, and the heart that hopes, does not limit time to
+hours.
+
+With Bertram's entrance, her fears took absolute shape. Mr. Sylvester
+was not coming home to dinner. Thenceforward till seven o'clock, she sat
+with her hand on her heart, waiting. At the stroke of the clock, she
+rose, and procuring a candle from her room, went slowly up stairs.
+"Watch for me," she had said to Aunt Belinda, "for I fear I shall need
+your care when I come down."
+
+What is there about a mystery however trivial, that thrills the heart
+with vague expectancy at the least lift of the concealing curtain! As
+Paula paused before the door, which never to her knowledge had opened to
+the passage of any other form than that of Mr. Sylvester, she was
+conscious of an agitation wholly distinct from that which had hitherto
+afflicted her. All the past curiosity of Ona concerning this room,
+together with her devices for satisfying that curiosity, recurred to
+Paula with startling distinctness. It was as if the white hand of that
+dead wife had thrust itself forth from the shadows to pull her back. The
+candle trembled in her grasp, and she unconsciously recoiled. But the
+next moment the thought of Mr. Sylvester struck warmth and determination
+through her being, and hastily thrusting the key into the lock, she
+pushed open the door and stepped across the threshold.
+
+Her first movement was that of surprise. In all her dreams of the
+possible appearance of this room, she had never imagined it to be like
+this. Plain, rude and homely, its high walls unornamented, its floor
+uncovered, its furniture limited to a plain desk and two or three rather
+uncomfortable-looking chairs, it struck upon her fancy with the same
+sense of incongruity, as might the sight of a low-eaved cottage in the
+midst of stately palaces and lordly pleasure-grounds. Setting down her
+candle, she folded her hands to still their tremblings, and slowly
+looked around her. This was the spot, then, to which he was accustomed
+to flee when oppressed by any care or harassed by any difficulty; this
+cold, bare, uninviting apartment with its forbidding aspect unsoftened
+by the tokens of a woman's care or presence! To this room, humbler than
+any in her aunt's home in Grotewell, he had brought all his griefs, from
+the day his baby lay dead in the rooms below, to that awful hour which
+saw the wife and mother brought into his doors and laid a cold and
+pulseless form in the midst of his gorgeous parlors! Here he had met his
+own higher impulses face to face, and wrestled with them through the
+watches of the night! In this wilderness of seeming poverty, he had
+dreamed, perhaps, his first fond dream of her as a woman, and signed
+perhaps his final renunciation of her as the future companion of his
+life! What did it mean? Why a spot of so much desolation in the midst of
+so much that was lordly and luxurious? Her fears might give her a
+possible interpretation, but she would not listen to fears. Only his
+words should instruct her. Going to the desk, she opened it. A sealed
+envelope addressed to herself, immediately met her eyes. Taking it out
+with a slow and reverent touch, she began to read the long and closely
+written letter which it contained.
+
+And the little candle burned on, shedding its rays over her bended head
+and upon the dismal walls about her, with a persistency that seemed to
+bring out, as in letters of fire, the hidden history of long ago, with
+its vanished days and its forgotten midnights.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIX.
+
+FROM A. TO Z.
+
+     "A naked human heart."--YOUNG.
+
+
+"My Beloved Child:
+
+"So may I call you in this the final hour of our separation, but never
+again, dear one, never again. When I said to you, just twenty-four hours
+ago, that my sin was buried and my future was clear, I spake as men
+speak who forget the justice of God and dream only of his mercy. An
+hour's time convinced me that an evil deed once perpetrated by a man, is
+never buried so that its ghost will not rise. Do as we will, repent as
+we may, the shadowy phantom of a stained and unrighteous youth is never
+laid; nor is a man justified in believing it so, till death has closed
+his eyes, and fame written its epitaph upon his tomb.
+
+"Paula, I am at this hour wandering in search of the being who holds the
+secret of my life and who will to-morrow blazon it before all the world.
+It is with no hope I seek him. God has not brought me to this pass, to
+release me at last, from shame and disgrace. Suffering and the loss of
+all my sad heart cherished, wait at my gates. Only one boon remains, and
+that is, your sympathy and the consolation of your regard. These, though
+bestowed as friends bestow them, are very precious to me; I cannot see
+them go, and that they may not, I tell you the full story of my life.
+
+"My youth was happy--my early youth, I mean. Bertram's father was a dear
+brother to me, and my mother a watchful guardian and a tender friend. At
+fifteen, I entered a bank, the small bank in Grotewell, which you ought
+to remember. From the lowest position in it, I gradually worked my way
+up till I occupied the cashier's place; and was just congratulating
+myself upon my prospects, when Ona Delafield returned from
+boarding-school, a young lady.
+
+"Paula, there is a fascination, which some men who have known nothing
+deeper and higher, call love. I, who in those days had cherished but few
+thoughts beyond the ordinary reach of a narrow and somewhat selfish
+business mind, imagined that the well-spring of all romance had bubbled
+up within me, when my eyes first fell upon this regal blonde, with her
+sleepy, inscrutable eyes and bewildering smile. Ulysses within sound of
+the siren's voice, was nothing to it. He had been warned of his danger
+and had only his own curiosity to combat, while I was not even aware of
+my peril, and floated within reach of this woman's power, without making
+an effort to escape. She was so subtle in her influence, Paula; so
+careless in the very exercise of her sovereignty. She never seemed to
+command; yet men and women obeyed her. Peculiarities which mar the
+matron, are often graces in a young, unmarried girl, whose thoughts are
+a mystery, and whose emotions an untried field. I believed I had found
+the queen of all beauty and when in an unguarded hour she betrayed her
+first appreciation of my devotion, I seemed to burst into a Paradise of
+delights, where every step I took, only the more intoxicated and
+bewildered me. My first realization of the sensuous and earthly
+character of my happiness came with the glimpse of your child-face on
+that never-to-be-forgotten day when we met beside the river. Like a star
+seen above the glare of a conflagration, the pure spirit that informed
+your glance, flashed on my burning soul, and for a moment I knew that in
+you budded the kind of woman-nature which it befitted a man to seek;
+that in the hands of such a one as you would make, should he trust his
+honor and bequeath his happiness. But when did a lover ever break the
+bonds that imprisoned his fancy, at the inspiration of a passing voice.
+I went back to Ona and forgot the child by the river.
+
+"Paula, I have no time to utter regrets. This is a hard plain tale which
+I have to relate; but if you love me still--if, as I have sometimes
+imagined, you have always loved me--think what my life had been if I had
+heeded the warning which God vouchsafed me on that day, and contrast it
+with what it is, and what it must be.
+
+"I went back to Ona, then, and the hold which she had upon me from the
+first, took form and shape. As well as she could love any one, she loved
+me, and though she had offers from one or two more advantageous sources,
+she finally decided that she would risk the future and accept me, if her
+father consented to the alliance. You who are the niece of the man of
+whom I must now speak, may or may not know what that meant. I doubt if
+you do; he left Grotewell while you were a child, and any gossip
+concerning him must ever fall short of the real truth. Enough, then,
+that it meant, if Jacob Delafield could see in my future any promises of
+success sufficient to warrant him in accepting me as his son-in-law, no
+woman living ought to hesitate to trust me with her hand. He was the
+Squire of the town, and as such entitled to respect, but he was also
+something more, as you will presently discover. His answer to my plea
+was:
+
+"'Well, how much money have you to show?'
+
+"Now I had none. My salary as cashier of a small country bank was not
+large, and my brother's prolonged sickness and subsequent death,
+together with my own somewhat luxurious habits, had utterly exhausted
+it. I told him so, but added that I had, somewhere up among the hills,
+an old maiden aunt who had promised me five thousand dollars at her
+death; and that as she was very ill at that time--hopelessly so, her
+neighbors thought--in a few weeks I should doubtless be able to satisfy
+him with the sight of a sum sufficient to start us in housekeeping, if
+no more.
+
+"He nodded at this, but gave me no distinct reply. 'Let us wait,' said
+he.
+
+"But youth is not inclined to wait. I considered my cause as good as
+won, and began to make all my preparations accordingly. With a feverish
+impatience which is no sign of true love, I watched the days go by, and
+waited for, if I did not anticipate, the death which I fondly imagined
+would make all clear. At last it came, and I went again into Mr.
+Delafield's presence.
+
+"'My aunt has just died,' I announced, and stood waiting for the short,
+concise,
+
+"'Go ahead, then, my boy!' which I certainly expected.
+
+"Instead of that, he gave me a queer inexplicable smile, and merely
+said, 'I want to see the greenbacks, my lad. No color so good as green,
+not even the black upon white of 'I promise to pay.'
+
+"I went back to my desk in the bank, chagrined. Ona had told me a few
+days before that she was tired of waiting, that the young doctor from
+the next town was very assiduous in his attentions, and as there was no
+question as to his ability to support a wife, why--she did not finish
+her sentence, but the toss of her head and her careless tone at parting,
+were enough to inflame the jealousy of a less easily aroused nature than
+mine. I felt that I was in hourly danger of losing her, and all because
+I could not satisfy her father with a sight of the few thousands which
+were so soon to be mine.
+
+"The reading of my aunt's will, which confirmed my hopes, did not
+greatly improve matters. 'I want to see the money,' the old gentleman
+repeated; and I was forced to wait the action of the law and the
+settlement of the estate. It took longer than even he foresaw. Weeks
+went by and my poor little five thousand seemed as far from my control
+as on the day the will was read. There was some trouble, I was not told
+what, that made it seem improbable that I should reap the benefit of my
+legacy for some time. Meanwhile Ona accepted the attentions of the young
+doctor, and my chances of winning her, dwindled rapidly day by day. I
+became morbidly eager and insanely jealous. Instead of pursuing my
+advantage--for I undoubtedly possessed one in her own secret inclination
+towards me--I stood off, and let my rival work his way into her
+affections unhindered. I was too sore to interrupt his play, as I called
+it, and too afraid of myself to actually confront him in her presence.
+But the sight of them riding together one day, was more than I could
+endure even in my spirit of unresistance. 'He shall not have her,' I
+cried, and cast about in my mind how to bring my own matters into such
+shape as to satisfy her father and so win her own consent to my suit. My
+first thought was to borrow the money, but that was impracticable in a
+town where each man's affairs are known to his neighbor. My next was to
+hurry up the settlement of the estate by appeal to my lawyer. The result
+of the latter course was a letter of many promises, in the midst of
+which a great temptation assailed me.
+
+"Colonel Japha, of whose history you have heard more or less true
+accounts, was at that time living in the old mansion you took such pains
+to point out to me in that walk we took together in Grotewell. He had
+suffered a great anguish in the flight and degradation of his only
+daughter, and though the real facts connected with her departure were
+not known in the village, he was so overcome with shame, and so
+shattered in health, he lived in the utmost seclusion, opening his doors
+to but few visitors, among whom I, for some unexplained reason, was one.
+He used to say he liked me and saw in me the makings of a considerable
+man; and I, because he was Colonel Japha and a strong spirit, returned
+his appreciation, and spent many of my bitter and unhappy hours in his
+presence. It was upon one of these occasions the temptation came to
+which I have just alluded.
+
+
+"I had been talking about his health and the advisability of his taking
+a journey, when he suddenly rose and said, 'Come with me to my study.'
+
+"I of course went. The first thing I saw upon entering was a trunk
+locked and strapped. 'I am going to Europe to-morrow,' said he, 'to be
+gone six months.'
+
+"I was astonished, for in that town no one presumed to do anything of
+importance without consulting his neighbors; but I merely bowed my
+congratulations, and waited for him to speak, for I saw he had something
+on his mind that he wished to say. At last it came out. He had a
+daughter, he said, a daughter who had disgraced him and whom he had
+forbidden his house. She was not worthy of his consideration, yet he
+could not help but remember her, and while he never desired to see her
+enter his doors, it was not his wish that she should suffer want. He had
+a little money which he had laid by and which he wished to put into my
+hands for her use, provided anything should happen to him during his
+absence. 'She is a wanderer now,' he cried, 'but she may one day come
+back, and then if I am dead and gone, you may give it to her.' I was not
+to enter it in the bank under his name, but regard it as a personal
+trust to be used only under such circumstances as he mentioned.
+
+"The joy with which I listened to this proposal amounted almost to
+ecstacy when he went to his desk and brought out five one thousand
+dollar bills and laid them in my hand. 'It is not much,' said he, 'but
+it will save her from worse degradation if she chooses to avail herself
+of it.'
+
+"Not much; oh no, not much, but just the sum that would raise me out of
+the pit of despondency into which I had fallen, and give me my bride, a
+chance in the world, and last, but not least, revenge on the rival I had
+now learned to hate. I was obliged to give the colonel a paper
+acknowledging the trust, but that was no hindrance. I did not mean to
+use the money, only to show it; and long before the colonel could
+return, my own five thousand would be in my hands--and so, and so, and
+so, as the devil reasons and young infatuated ears listen.
+
+"Colonel Japha thought I was an honest man, nor did I consider myself
+otherwise at that time. It was a chance for clever action; a bit of
+opportune luck that it would be madness to discard. On the day the
+vessel sailed which carried Colonel Japha out of the country, I went to
+Mr. Delafield and showed him the five crisp bank notes that represented
+as it were by proxy, the fortune I so speedily expected to inherit. 'You
+have wanted to see five thousand dollars in my hand,' said I; 'there
+they are.'
+
+"His look of amazement was peculiar and ought to have given me warning;
+but I was blinded by my infatuation and thought it no more than the
+natural surprise incident to the occasion. 'I have been made to wait a
+long time for your consent to my suit,' said I; 'may I hope that you
+will now give me leave to press my claims upon your daughter?'
+
+"He did not answer at once, but smiled, eying meanwhile the notes in my
+hand with a fascinated gaze which instinctively warned me to return them
+to my pocket. But I no sooner made a move indicative of that resolve,
+than he thrust out his cold slim hand and prevented me. 'Let me see
+them,' cried he.
+
+"There was no reason for me to refuse so simple a request to one in Mr.
+Delafield's position, and though I had rather he had not asked for the
+notes, I handed them over. He at once seemed to grow taller. 'So this is
+your start off in life,' exclaimed he.
+
+"I bowed, and he let his eyes roam for a moment to my face. 'Many a man
+would be glad of worse,' smiled he; then suavely, 'you shall have my
+daughter, sir.'
+
+"I must have turned white in my relief, for he threw his head back and
+laughed in a low unmusical way that at any other time would have
+affected me unpleasantly. But my only thought then, was to get the money
+back and rush with my new hopes into the room from which came the low
+ceaseless hum of his daughter's voice. But at the first movement of my
+hand towards him, he assumed a mysterious air, and closing his fingers
+over the notes, said:
+
+"'These are yours, to do what you wish with, I suppose?'
+
+"I may have blushed, but if I did, he took no notice. 'What I wish to do
+with them,' returned I, 'is to shut them up in the bank for the present,
+at least till Ona is my wife.'
+
+"'Oh no, no, no, you do not,' came in easy, almost wheedling tones from
+the man before me. 'You want to put them where they will double
+themselves in two months.' And before I could realize to what he was
+tempting me, he had me down before his desk, showing me letters,
+documents, etc., of a certain scheme into which if a man should put a
+dollar to-day, it would 'come out three and no mistake, before the year
+was out. It is a chance in a thousand,' said he; 'if I had half a
+million I would invest it in this enterprise to-day. If you will listen
+to me and put your money in there, you will be a rich man before ten
+years have passed over your head.'
+
+"I was dazzled. I knew enough of such matters to see that it was neither
+a hoax nor a chimera. He did have a good thing, and if the five thousand
+dollars had been my own--But I soon came to consider the question
+without that conditional. He was so specious in his manner of putting
+the affair before me, so masterful in the way he held on to the money,
+he gave me no time to think. 'Say the word,' cried he, 'and in two
+months I bring you back ten thousand for your five. Only two months,' he
+repeated, and then slowly, 'Ona was born for luxury.'
+
+"Paula, you cannot realize what that temptation was. To amass wealth had
+never been my ambition before, but now everything seemed to urge it upon
+me. Dreams of unimagined luxury came to my mind as these words were
+uttered. A vision of Ona clad in garments worthy of her beauty floated
+before my eyes; the humble home I had hitherto pictured for myself,
+broadened and towered away into a palace; I beheld myself honored and
+accepted as the nabob of the town. I caught a glimpse of a new paradise,
+and hesitated to shut down the gate upon it. 'I will think of it,' said
+I, and went into the other room to speak to Ona.
+
+"Ah, if some angel had met me on the threshold! If my mother's spirit or
+the thought of your dear face could have risen before me then and
+stopped me! Dizzy, intoxicated with love and ambition, I crossed the
+room to where she sat reeling off a skein of blue silk with hands that
+were whiter than alabaster. Kneeling down by her side, I caught those
+fair hands in mine.
+
+"'Ona,' I cried, 'will you marry me? Your father has given his consent,
+and we shall be very happy.'
+
+"She bestowed upon me a little pout, and half mockingly, half earnestly
+inquired, 'What kind of a house are you going to put me in? I cannot
+live in a cottage.'
+
+"'I will put you in a palace,' I whispered, 'if you will only say that
+you will be mine.'
+
+"'A palace! Oh, I don't expect palaces; a house like the Japhas' would
+do. Not but what I should feel at home in a palace,' she added, lifting
+her lordly head and looking beautiful enough to grace a sceptre. Then,
+archly for her, 'And papa has given his consent?'
+
+"'Yes,' I ardently cried.
+
+"'Then Dr. Burton might as well go,' she answered. 'I will trust my
+father's judgment, and take the palace--when it comes.'
+
+"After that, it was impossible to disappoint her.
+
+"Paula, in stating all this, I have purposely confined myself to
+relating bare facts. You must see us as we were. The glamour which an
+unreasoning passion casts over even a dishonest act, if performed for
+the sake of winning a beautiful woman, is no excuse in my own soul for
+the evil to which I succumbed that day, nor shall it seem so to you.
+Bare, hard, stern, the fact confronts me from the past, that at the
+first call of temptation I fell; and with this blot on my character, you
+will have to consider me--unhappy being that I am!
+
+"I did not realize then, however, all that I had done. The operation
+entered into by Mr. Delafield prospered, and in two months I had, as he
+predicted, ten thousand dollars instead of five, in my possession.
+Besides, I had just married Ona, and for awhile life was a dream of
+delight and luxury. But there came a day when I awoke to an insight of
+the peril I had escaped by a mere chance of the die. The money which I
+had expected from my aunt's will, turned out to be amongst certain funds
+that had been risked in speculation by some agent during her sickness,
+and irrecoverably lost. The expression of her good-will was all that
+ever came to me of the legacy upon which I had so confidently relied.
+
+"I was sitting with my young wife in the pretty parlor of our new home,
+when the letter came from my lawyer announcing this fact, and I never
+can make you understand what effect it had upon me. The very walls
+seemed to shrivel up into the dimensions of a prison's cell; the face
+that only an hour before had possessed every conceivable charm for me,
+shone on my changed vision with the allurement, but also with the
+unreality of a will-o'-the-wisp. All that might have happened if the
+luck, instead of being in my favor, had turned against me, crushed like
+a thunderbolt upon my head, and I rose up and left the presence of my
+young wife, with the knowledge at my heart that I was no more nor less
+than a thief in the eyes of God, if not in that of my fellow-men; a base
+thief, who if he did not meet his fit punishment, was only saved from it
+by fortuitous circumstances and the ignorance of those he had been so
+near despoiling.
+
+"The bitterness of that hour never passed away. The streets in which I
+had been raised, the house which had been the scene of my temptation,
+Mr. Delafield's face, and my own home, all became unendurable to me. I
+felt as if each man I met must know what I had done; and secret as the
+transaction had been, it was long before I could enter the bank without
+a tremor of apprehension lest I should hear from some quarter, that my
+services there would no longer be required. The only comfort I received
+was in the thought that Ona did not know at what a cost her hand had
+been obtained. I was still under the glamour of her languid smiles and
+countless graces, and was fain to believe that notwithstanding a certain
+unresponsiveness and coldness in her nature, her love would yet prove a
+compensation for the remorse that I secretly suffered.
+
+"My distaste for Grotewell culminated. It was too small for me. The
+money I had acquired through the use of my neighbor's funds burned in my
+pocket. I determined to move to New York, and with the few thousands I
+possessed, venture upon other speculations. But this time in all
+honesty. Yes, I swore it before God and my own soul, that never again
+would I run a risk similar to that from which I had just escaped. I
+would profit by the money I had acquired, oh yes, but henceforth all my
+operations should be legitimate and honorable. My wife, who was fast
+developing a taste for ease and splendor, seconded my plans with
+something like fervor, while Mr. Delafield actually went so far as to
+urge my departure. 'You are bound to make a rich man,' said he 'and must
+go where great fortunes are to be secured.' He never asked me what
+became of the five thousand dollars I returned to Colonel Japha upon his
+arrival from Europe.
+
+"So I came to New York.
+
+"Paula, the man who loses at the outset of a doubtful game, is
+fortunate. I did not lose, I won. As if in that first dishonest deed of
+mine I had summoned to my side the aid of evil influences, each and
+every operation into which I entered prospered. It seemed as if I could
+not make a mistake; money flowed towards me from all quarters; power
+followed, and I found myself one of the most successful and one of the
+most unhappy men in New York. There are some things of which a man
+cannot write even to the one dear heart he most cherishes and adores.
+You have lived in my home, and will acquit me from saying much about her
+who, with all her faults and her omissions, was ever kind to you. But
+some things I must repeat in order to make intelligible to you the
+change which gradually took place within me as the years advanced.
+Beauty, while it wins the lover, can never of itself hold the heart of a
+husband who possesses aspirations beyond that which passion supplies.
+Reckless, worldly and narrow-minded as I had been before the commission
+of that deed which embittered my life, I had become by the very shock
+that followed the realization of my wrong-doing, a hungry-hearted,
+eager-minded and melancholy-spirited man, asking but one boon in
+recompense for my secret remorse, and that was domestic happiness and
+the sympathetic affection of wife and children. Woman, according to my
+belief, was born to be chiefly and above all, the consoler. What a man
+missed in the outside world, he was to find treasured at home. What a
+man lacked in his own nature, he was to discover in the delicate and
+sublimated one of his wife. Beautiful dream, which my life was not
+destined to see realized!
+
+"The birth of my only child was my first great consolation. With the
+opening of her blue eyes upon my face, a well-spring deep as my
+unfathomable longing, bubbled up within my breast. Alas, that very
+consolation brought a hideous grief; the mother did not love her child;
+and another strand of the regard with which I still endeavored to
+surround the wife of my youth, parted and floated away out of sight. To
+take my little one in my arms, to feel her delicate cheek press
+yearningly to mine, to behold her sweet infantile soul develop itself
+before my eyes, and yet to realize that that soul would never know the
+guidance or sympathy of a mother, was to me at once rapture and anguish.
+I sometimes forgot to follow up a fortunate speculation, in my
+indulgence of these feelings. I was passionately the father as I might
+have been passionately the husband and the friend. Geraldine died; how
+and with what attendant circumstances of pain and regret, I will not,
+dare not state. The blow struck to the core of my being. I stood shaken
+before God. The past, with its one grim remembrance--a remembrance that
+in the tide of business successes and the engrossing affection which had
+of late absorbed me, had been well-nigh swamped from sight--rose before
+me like an accusing spirit. I had sinned, and I had been punished; I had
+sown, and I had reaped.
+
+"More than that, I was sinning still. My very enjoyment of the position
+I had so doubtfully acquired, was unworthy of me. My very wealth was a
+disgrace. Had it not all been built upon another man's means? Could the
+very house I lived in be said to be my own, while a Japha existed in
+want? In the eyes of the world, perhaps, yes; in my own eyes, no. I
+became morbid on the subject. I asked myself what I could do to escape
+the sense of obligation that overwhelmed me. The few sums with which I
+had been secretly enabled to provide Colonel Japha during the final days
+of his ruined and impoverished life, were not sufficient. I desired to
+wipe out the past by some large and munificent return. Had the colonel
+been living, I should have gone to him, told him my tale and offered him
+the half of my fortune; but his death cut off all hopes of my righting
+myself in that way. Only his daughter remained, the poor, lost,
+reprobated being, whom he was willing to curse, but whom he could not
+bear to believe suffering. I determined that the debt due to my own
+peace of mind should be paid to her. But how? Where was I to find this
+wanderer? How was I to let her know that a comfortable living awaited
+her if she would only return to her friends and home? Consulting with a
+business associate, he advised me to advertise. I did so, but without
+success. I next resorted to the detectives, but all without avail.
+Jacqueline Japha was not to be found.
+
+"But I did not relinquish my resolve. Deliberately investing a hundred
+thousand dollars in Government bonds, I put them aside for her. They
+were to be no longer mine. I gave them to her and to her heirs as
+completely and irrevocably, I believed, as if I had laid them in her
+hand and seen her depart with them. I even inserted them as a legacy to
+her in my will. It was a clear and definite arrangement between me and
+my own soul; and after I had made it and given orders to my lawyer in
+Grotewell to acquaint me if he ever received the least news of
+Jacqueline Japha, I slept in peace.
+
+"Of the years that followed I have small need to speak. They were the
+years that preceded your coming, my Paula, and their story is best told
+by what I was when we met again, and you made me know the sweet things
+of life by entering into my home. Woman as a thoughtful, tender,
+elevated being had been so long unknown to me! The beauty of the
+feminine soul with its faith fixed upon high ideals, was one before
+which I had ever been ready to bow. All that I had missed in my youth,
+all that had failed me in my maturing manhood, seemed to flow back upon
+me like a river. I bathed in the sunshine of your pure spirit and
+imagined that the evil days were over and peace come at last.
+
+"A rude and bitter shock awoke me. Ona's father, who had followed us to
+New York, and of whose somewhat checkered career during the past few
+years, I have purposely forborne to speak, had not been above appealing
+to us for assistance at such times as his frequently unfortunate
+investments left him in a state of necessity. These appeals were usually
+made to Ona, and in a quiet way; but one day he met me on the street--it
+was during the second winter you spent in my home--and dragging me into
+a restaurant down town, began a long tale, to the effect that he wanted
+a few thousands from me to put into a certain investment, which if
+somewhat shady in its character, was very promising as to its results;
+and gave as a reason why he applied to me for the money, that he knew I
+had not been above doing a wrongful act once, in order to compass my
+ends, and therefore would not be liable to hesitate now.
+
+"It was the thunderbolt of my life. My sin was not then buried. It had
+been known to this man from the start. With an insight for which I had
+never given him credit, he had read my countenance in the days of my
+early temptation, and guessed, if he did not know, where the five
+thousand dollars came from with which I began my career as speculator.
+Worse than that, he had led me on to the act by which he now sought to
+hold me. Having been the secret agent in losing my aunt's money, he knew
+at the time that I was cherishing empty hopes as regarded a legacy from
+her, yet he let me dally with my expectations, and ensnare myself with
+his daughter's fascinations, till driven mad by disappointment and
+longing, I was ready to resort to any means to gain my purpose. It was a
+frightful revelation to come to me in days when, if I were not a
+thoroughly honest man, I had at least acquired a deep and ineradicable
+dread of dishonor. Answering him I know not how, but in a way that while
+it repudiated his proposition, unfortunately acknowledged the truth of
+the suppositions upon which it was founded, I left him and went home, a
+crushed and disheartened man. Life which had been so long in acquiring
+cheerful hues, was sunk again in darkness; and for days I could not bear
+the sight of your innocent face, or the sound of your pure voice, or the
+tokens of your tender and unsuspecting presence in my home. But soon the
+very natural thought came to comfort me, that the sin I so deplored was
+as much dead now, as it was before I learned the fact of this man's
+knowledge of it. That having repented and put it away, I was as free to
+accept your gentle offices and the regard of all true men, as ever I had
+been; and beguiled by this plausible consideration, I turned again to my
+one visible source of consolation, and in the diversion it offered, let
+the remembrance of this last bitter experience pass slowly from my mind.
+The fact that Mr. Delafield left town shortly after his interview with
+me, and smitten by shame perhaps, forbore to acquaint us with his
+whereabouts or afflict us with his letters, may have aided me in this
+strange forgetfulness.
+
+"But other and sharper trials were in store; trials that were to test me
+as a man, and as it proved, find me lacking just where I thought I was
+strongest. Paula, that saying of the Bible, 'Let him that thinketh he
+standeth take heed lest he fall,' might have been written over the door
+of my house on that day, ten months ago, when we two stood by the
+hearthstone and talked of the temptations that beset humanity, and the
+charity we should show to such as succumb to them. Before the day had
+waned, my own hour had come; and not all the experience of my life, not
+all the resolves, hopes, fears of my later years, not even the
+remembrance of your sweet trust and your natural recoil from evil, were
+sufficient to save me. The blow came so suddenly! the call for action
+was so peremptory! One moment I stood before the world, rich, powerful,
+honored, and beloved; the next, I saw myself threatened with a loss that
+undermined my whole position, and with it the very consideration that
+made me what I was. But I must explain.
+
+"When I entered the Madison Bank as President, I gave up in deference to
+the wishes of Mr. Stuyvesant all open speculation in Wall Street. But a
+wife and home such as I then had, are not to be supported on any petty
+income; and when shortly after your entrance into my home, the
+opportunity presented itself of investing in a particularly promising
+silver mine out West, I could not resist the temptation; regarding the
+affair as legitimate, and the hazard, if such it were, one that I was
+amply able to bear. But like most enterprises of the kind, one dollar
+drew another after it, and I soon found that to make available what I
+had already invested, I was obliged to add to it more and more of my
+available funds, until--to make myself as intelligible to you as I
+can--it had absorbed not only all that had remained to me after my
+somewhat liberal purchase of the Madison Bank stock, but all I could
+raise on a pledge of the stock itself. But there was nothing in this to
+alarm me. I had a man at the mine devoted to my interests; and as the
+present yield was excellent, and the future of more promise still, I
+went on my way with no special anxiety. But who can trust a silver mine?
+At the very point where we expected the greatest result, the vein
+suddenly gave out, and nothing prevented the stock from falling utterly
+flat on the market, but the discretion of my agent, who kept the fact a
+secret, while he quietly went about getting another portion of the mine
+into working order. He was fast succeeding in this, and affairs were
+looking daily more promising, when suddenly an intimation received by me
+in a bit of conversation casually overheard at that reception we
+attended together, convinced me that the secret was transpiring, and
+that if great care were not taken, we should be swamped before we could
+get things into working trim again. Filled with this anxiety, I was
+about to leave the building, in order to telegraph to my agent, when to
+my great surprise the card of that very person was brought in to me,
+together with a request for an immediate interview. You remember it,
+Paula, and how I went out to see him; but what you did not know then,
+and what I find some difficulty in relating now, is that his message to
+me was one of total ruin unless I could manage to give into his hand,
+for immediate use, the sum of a hundred thousand dollars.
+
+"The facts making this demand necessary were not what you may have been
+led to expect. They had little or nothing to do with the new operations,
+which were progressing successfully and with every promise of an
+immediate return, but arose entirely out of a law-suit then in the hands
+of a Colorado judge for decision, and which, though it involved
+well-nigh the whole interest of the mine, had never till this hour given
+me the least uneasiness, my lawyers having always assured me of my
+ultimate success. But it seems that notwithstanding all this, the
+decision was to be rendered in favor of the other party. My agent, who
+was a man to be trusted in these matters, averred that five days before,
+he had learned from most authentic sources what the decision was likely
+to be. That the judge's opinion had been seen--he did not tell me how,
+he dared not, nor did I presume to question, but I have since learned
+that not only had the copyist employed by the judge turned traitor, but
+that my own agent had been anything but scrupulous in the use he had
+made of a willing and corruptible instrument--and that if I wanted to
+save myself and the others connected with me from total and irremediable
+loss, I must compromise with the other parties at once, who not being
+advised of the true state of affairs, and having but little faith in
+their own case, had long ago expressed their willingness to accept the
+sum of a hundred thousand dollars as a final settlement of the
+controversy. My agent, if none too nice in his ideas of right and wrong,
+was, as I have intimated, not the man to make a mistake; and when to my
+question as to how long a time he would give me to look around among my
+friends and raise the required sum, he replied, 'Ten hours and no more,'
+I realized my position, and the urgent necessity for immediate action.
+
+"The remainder of the night is a dream to me. There was but one source
+from which I could hope in the present condition of my affairs, to
+procure a hundred thousand dollars; and that was from the box where I
+had stowed away the bonds destined for the use of the Japha heirs. To
+borrow was impossible, even if I had been in possession of proper
+securities to give. I was considered as having relinquished speculation
+and dared not risk the friendship of Mr. Stuyvesant by a public betrayal
+of my necessity. The Japha bonds or my own fortune must go, and it only
+remained with me to determine which.
+
+"Paula, nothing but the ingrained principle of a lifetime, the habit of
+doing the honest thing without thought or hesitation, saves a man at an
+hour like that. Strong as I believed myself to be in the determination
+never again to flaw my manhood by the least action unworthy of my
+position as the guardian of trusts, earnest as I was in my recoil from
+evil, and sincere as I may have been in my admiration of and desire for
+the good, I no sooner saw myself tottering between ruin and a compromise
+with conscience, than I hesitated--hesitated with you under my roof, and
+with the words we had been speaking still ringing in my ears. Ona's
+influence, for all the trials of our married life, was still too strong
+upon me. To think of her as deprived of the splendor which was her life,
+daunted my very soul. I dared not contemplate a future in which she must
+stand denuded of everything which made existence dear to her; yet how
+could I do the evil thing I contemplated, even to save her and preserve
+my own position! For--and you must understand this--I regarded any
+appropriation of these funds I had delegated to the use of the Japhas,
+as a fresh and veritable abuse of trust. They were not mine. I had given
+them away. Unknown to any one but my own soul and God, I had deeded them
+to a special purpose, and to risk them as I now proposed doing, was an
+act that carried me back to the days of my former delinquency, and made
+the repentance of the last few years the merest mockery. What if I might
+recover them hereafter and restore them to their place; the chances in
+favor of their utter loss were also possible, and honesty deals not with
+chances. I suffered so, I had a momentary temptation towards suicide;
+but suddenly, in the midst of the struggle, came the thought that
+perhaps in my estimate of Ona I had committed a gross injustice, that
+while she loved splendor seemingly more than any woman I had ever known,
+she might be as far from wishing me to retain her in it at the price of
+my own self-respect, as the most honest-hearted wife in the world; and
+struck by the hope, I left my agent at a hotel and hurried home through
+the early morning to her side. She Was asleep, of course, but I wakened
+her. It was dark and she had a right to be fretful, but when I whispered
+in her ear, 'Get up and listen to me, for our fortune is at stake,' she
+at once rose and having risen, was her clearest, coldest, most
+implacable self. Paula, I told her my story, my whole story as I have
+told it to you here. I dropped no thread, I smoothed over no offence.
+Torturing as it was to my pride, I laid bare my soul before her, and
+then in a burst of appeal such as I hope never to be obliged to make use
+of again, asked her as she was a woman and a wife, to save me in this
+hour of my temptation.
+
+"Paula, she refused. More than that, she expressed the bitterest scorn
+of my mawkish conscientiousness, as she called it. That I should
+consider myself as owing anything to the detestable wretch who was the
+only representative of the Japhas, was bad enough, but that I should go
+on treasuring the money that would save us, was disgraceful if not
+worse, and betrayed a weakness of mind for which she had never given me
+credit.
+
+"'But Ona,' I cried, 'if it is a weakness of mind, it is also an
+equivalent to my consciousness of right living. Would you have me
+sacrifice that?'
+
+"'I would have you sacrifice anything necessary to preserve us in our
+position,' said she; and I stood aghast before an unscrupulousness
+greater than any I had hitherto been called upon to face.
+
+"'Ona,' repeated I, for her look was cold, 'do you realize what I have
+been telling you? Most wives would shudder when informed that their
+husbands had perpetrated a dishonest act in order to win them.'
+
+"A thin strange smile heralded her reply. 'Most wives would,' returned
+she, 'but most wives are ignorant. Did you suppose I did not know what
+it cost you to marry me? Papa took care I should miss no knowledge that
+might be useful to me.'
+
+"'And you married me knowing what I had done!' exclaimed I, with
+incredulous dismay.
+
+"'I married you, knowing you were too clever, or believing you to be too
+clever, to run such a risk again.'
+
+"I can say no more concerning that hour. With a horror for this woman
+such as I had never before experienced for living creature, I rushed out
+of her presence, loathing the air she breathed, yet resolved to do her
+bidding. Can you understand a man hating a woman, yet obeying her;
+despising her, yet yielding? I cannot, _now_, but that day there seemed
+no alternative. Either I must kill myself or follow her wishes. I chose
+to do the latter, forgetting that God can kill, and that, too, whom and
+when He pleases.
+
+
+"Going down to the bank, I procured the bonds from my box in the safe. I
+felt like a thief, and the manner in which it was done was unwittingly
+suggestive of crime, but with that and the position in which I have
+since found myself placed by this very action, I need not cumber my
+present narrative. Handing the bonds to my agent with orders to sell
+them to the best advantage, I took a short walk to quiet my nerves and
+realize what I had done, and then went home.
+
+"Paula, had God in his righteous anger seen fit to strike me down that
+day, it would have been no more than my due and aroused in me, perhaps,
+no more than a natural repentence. But when I saw her for whose sake I
+had ostensibly committed this fresh abuse of trust, lying cold and dead
+before me, the sword of the Almighty pierced me to the soul, and I fell
+prostrate beneath a remorse to which any regret I had hitherto
+experienced, was as the playing of a child with shadows. Had I by the
+losing of my right arm been able to recall my action, I would have done
+it; indeed I made an effort to recover myself; had my agent followed up
+with an order to return me the bonds I had given him, but it was too
+late, the compromise had already been effected by telegraph and the
+money was out of our hands. The deed was done and I had made myself
+unworthy of your presence and your smile at the very hour when both
+would have been inestimable to me. You remember those days; remember our
+farewell. Let me believe you do not blame me now for what must have
+seemed harsh and unnecessary to you then.
+
+
+"There is but little more to write, but in that little is compressed the
+passion, longing, hope and despair of a lifetime. When I told you as I
+did a few hours ago that my sin was dead and its consequences at an end,
+I repeat that I fully and truly believed it. The hundred thousand
+dollars I had sent West, had been used to advantage, and only day before
+yesterday I was enabled to sell out my share in the mine, for a large
+sum that leaves me free and unembarrassed, to make the fortune of more
+than one Japha, should God ever see fit to send them across my pathway.
+More than that, Mr. Delafield, of whose discretion I had sometimes had
+my fears, was dead, having perished of a fever some months before in San
+Francisco; and of all men living, there were none as I believed, who
+knew anything to the discredit of my name. I was clear, or so I thought,
+in fortune and in fame; and being so, dreamed of taking to my empty and
+yearning arms, the loveliest and the purest of mortal women. But God
+watched over you and prevented an act whose consequences might have been
+so cruel. In an hour, Paula, in an hour, I had learned that the foul
+thing was not dead, that a witness had picked up the words I had allowed
+to fall in my interview with my father-in-law in the restaurant two
+years before; an unscrupulous witness who had been on my track ever
+since, and who now in his eagerness for a victim, had by mistake laid
+his clutch upon our Bertram. Yes, owing to the similarity of our voices
+and the fact that we both make use of a certain tell-tale word, this
+patient and upright nephew of mine stands at this moment under the
+charge of having acknowledged in the hearing of this person, to the
+committal of an act of dishonesty in the past. A foolish charge you will
+say, and one easily refuted. Alas, a fresh act of dishonesty lately
+perpetrated in the bank, complicates matters. A theft has been committed
+on some of Mr. Stuyvesant's effects, and that, too, under circumstances
+that involuntarily arouse suspicion against some one of the bank
+officials; and Bertram, if not sustained in his reputation, must suffer
+from the doubts which naturally have arisen in Mr. Stuyvesant's breast.
+The story which this man could tell, must of course shake the faith of
+any one in the reputation of him against whom it is directed, and the
+man intends to repeat his story, and that, too, in the very ears of him
+upon whose favor Bertram depends for his life's happiness and the
+winning of the woman he adores. I adore you, Paula, but I cannot clasp
+you to my heart across another sin. If the detectives whom we shall call
+in to-morrow, cannot exonerate those connected with the bank from the
+theft lately committed there--and the fact that you have been allowed to
+read this letter, prove they have not--I must do what I can to relieve
+Bertram from his painful position, by taking upon myself the onus of
+that past transgression which of right belongs to my account; and this
+once done, let the result be for good or ill, any bond between you and
+me is cut loose forever. I have not learned to love at this late hour,
+to wrong the precious thing I cherish. Death as it is to me to say
+good-bye to the one last gleam of heavenly light that has shot across my
+darkened way, it must be done, dear heart, if only to hold myself worthy
+of the tender and generous love you have designed to bestow upon me.
+Bertram, who is all generosity, may guess but does not know, what I am
+about to do. Go down to him, dear; tell him that at this very moment,
+perhaps, I am clearing his name before the wretch who has so ruthlessly
+fastened his fang upon him; that his love and Cicely's shall prosper, as
+he has been loyal, and she trusting, all these years of effort and
+probation; that I give him my blessing, and that if we do not meet
+again, I delegate to him the trust of which I so poorly acquitted
+myself. But before you go, stop a moment and in this room, which has
+always symbolized to my eyes the poverty which was my rightful due,
+kneel and pray for my soul; for if God grants me the wish of my heart,
+he will strike me with sudden death after I have taken upon myself the
+disgrace of my past offences. Life without love can be borne, but life
+without honor never. To come and go amongst my fellow-men with a shadow
+on the fame they have always believed spotless! Do not ask me to attempt
+it! Pray for my soul, but pray too, that I may perish in some quick and
+sudden way before ever your dear eyes rest upon my face again.
+
+"And now, as though this were to be the end, let me take my last
+farewell of you. I have loved you, Paula, loved you with my heart, my
+mind and my soul. You have been my angel of inspiration and the source
+of all my comfort. I kneel before you in gratitude, and I stand above
+you in blessing. May every pang I suffer this hour, redound to you in
+some sweet happiness hereafter. I do not quarrel with my fate, I only
+ask God to spare you from its shadow. And He will. Love will flow back
+upon your young life, and in regions where our eye now fails to pierce,
+you will taste every joy which your generous heart once thought to
+bestow on
+
+     "EDWARD SYLVESTER."
+
+
+
+
+XL.
+
+HALF-PAST SEVEN.
+
+     "I would it were midnight, Hal, and all well."
+
+     --HENRY IV.
+
+
+The library was dim; Bertram, who had felt the oppressive influence of
+the great empty room, had turned down the lights, and was now engaged in
+pacing the floor, with restless and uneven steps, asking himself a
+hundred questions, and wishing with all the power of his soul, that Mr.
+Sylvester would return, and by his appearance cut short a suspense that
+was fast becoming unendurable.
+
+He had just returned from his third visit to the front door, when the
+curtain between him and the hall was gently raised, and Paula glided in
+and stood before him. She was dressed for the street, and her face where
+the light touched it, shone like marble upon which has fallen the glare
+of a lifted torch.
+
+"Paula!" burst from the young man's lips in surprise.
+
+"Hush!" said she, her voice quavering with an emotion that put to
+defiance all conventionalities, "I want you to take me to the place
+where Mr. Sylvester is gone. He is in danger; I know it, I feel it. I
+dare not leave him any longer alone. I might be able to save him if--if
+he meditates anything that--" she did not try to say what, but drew
+nearer to Bertram and repeated her request. "You will take me, won't
+you?"
+
+He eyed her with amazement, and a shudder seized his own strong frame.
+"No," cried he, "I cannot take you; you do not know what you ask; but I
+will go myself if you apprehend anything serious. I remember where it
+is. I studied the address too closely, to readily forget it."
+
+"You shall not go without me," returned Paula with steady decision. "If
+the danger is what I fear, no one else can save him. I must go," she
+added, with passionate importunity as she saw him still looking
+doubtful. "Darkness and peril are nothing to me in comparison with his
+safety. He holds my life in his hand," she softly whispered, "and what
+will not one do for his life!" Then quickly, "If you go without me I
+shall follow with Aunt Belinda. Nothing shall keep me in the house
+to-night."
+
+He felt the uselessness of further objection, yet he ventured to say,
+"The place where he has gone is one of the worst in the city; a spot
+which men hesitate to enter after dark. You don't know what you ask in
+begging me to take you there."
+
+"I do, I realize everything."
+
+With a sudden awe of the great love which he thus beheld embodied before
+him, Bertram bowed his head and moved towards the door. "I may consider
+it wise to obtain the guidance of a policeman through the quarter into
+which we are about to venture. Will you object to that?"
+
+"No," was her quick reply, "I object to nothing but delay."
+
+And with a last look about the room, as if some sensation of farewell
+were stirring in her breast, she laid her hand on Bertram's arm, and
+together they hurried away into the night.
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK V.
+
+WOMAN'S LOVE.
+
+
+
+
+XLI.
+
+THE WORK OF AN HOUR.
+
+         Base is the slave that pays."--HENRY V.
+
+    "Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned,
+    Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned."
+                                         --CONGREVE.
+
+
+Mr. Sylvester upon leaving the bank, had taken his usual route up town.
+But after an aimless walk of a few blocks, he suddenly paused, and with
+a quiet look about him, drew from his pocket the small slip of paper
+which Bertram had laid on his table the night before, and hurriedly
+consulted its contents. Instantly an irrepressible exclamation escaped
+him, and he turned his face to the heavens with the look of one who
+recognizes the just providence of God. The name which he had just read,
+was that of the old lover of Jacqueline Japha, Roger Holt, and the
+address given, was 63 Baxter Street.
+
+Twilight comes with different aspects to the broad avenues of the rich,
+and the narrow alleys of the poor. In the reeking slums of Baxter
+Street, poetry would have had to search long for the purple glamour that
+makes day's dying hour fair in open fields and perfumed chambers. Even
+the last dazzling gleam of the sun could awaken no sparkle from the
+bleared windows of the hideous tenement houses that reared their blank
+and disfigured walls toward the west. The chill of the night blast and
+the quick dread that follows in the steps of coming darkness, were all
+that could enter these regions, unless it was the stealthy shades of
+vice and disease.
+
+Mr. Sylvester standing before the darkest and most threatening of the
+many dark and threatening houses that cumbered the street, was a sight
+to draw more than one head from the neighboring windows. Had it been
+earlier, he would have found himself surrounded by a dozen ragged and
+importunate children; had it been later, he would have run the risk of
+being garroted by some skulking assassin; as it was, he stood there
+unmolested, eying the structure that held within its gloomy recesses the
+once handsome and captivating lover of Jacqueline Japha. He was not the
+only man who would have hesitated before entering there. Low and
+insignificant as the building appeared--and its two stories certainly
+looked dwarfish enough in comparison with the two lofty tenement houses
+that pressed it upon either side--there was something in its quiet,
+almost uninhabited aspect that awakened a vague apprehension of lurking
+danger. A face at a window would have been a relief; even the sight of a
+customer in the noisome groggery that occupied the ground floor. From
+the dwellings about, came the hum of voices and now and then the sound
+of a shrill laugh or a smothered cry, but from this house came nothing,
+unless it was the slow ooze of a stream of half-melted snow that found
+its way from under the broken-down door-way to the gutter beyond.
+
+Stepping bravely forward, Mr. Sylvester entered the open door. A flight
+of bare and rickety steps met his eye. Ascending them, he found himself
+in a hall which must have been poorly lighted at any time, but which at
+this late hour was almost dark. It was not very encouraging, but
+pressing on, he stopped at a door and was about to knock, when his eyes
+becoming accustomed to the darkness, he detected standing at the foot of
+the stairs leading to the story above, the tall and silent figure of a
+woman. It was no common apparition. Like a sentinel at his post, or a
+spy on the outskirts of the enemy's camp, she stood drawn up against the
+wall, her whole wasted form quivering with eagerness or some other
+secret passion; darkness on her brow and uncertainty on her lip. She was
+listening, or waiting, or both, and that with an entire absorption that
+prevented her from heeding the approach of a stranger's step. Struck by
+so sinister a presence in a place so dark and desolate, Mr. Sylvester
+unconsciously drew back. As he did so, the woman thrilled and looked up,
+but not at him. A lame child's hesitating and uneven step was heard
+crossing the floor above, and it was towards it she turned, and for it
+she composed her whole form into a strange but evil calmness.
+
+"Ah, he let you come then!" Mr. Sylvester heard her exclaim in a low
+smothered tone, whose attempted lightness did not hide the malevolent
+nature of her interest.
+
+"Yes," came back in the clear and confiding tones of childhood. "I told
+him you loved me and gave me candy-balls, and he let me come."
+
+A laugh quick and soon smothered, disturbed the surrounding gloom. "You
+told him I loved you! Well, that is good; I do love you; love you as I
+do my own eyes that I could crush, crush, for ever having lingered on
+the face of my betrayer!"
+
+The last phrase was muttered, and did not seem to convey any impression
+to the child. "Hold out your arms and catch me," cried he; "I am going
+to jump."
+
+She appeared to comply; for he gave a little ringing laugh that was
+startlingly clear and fresh.
+
+"He asked me what your name was," babbled he, as he nestled in her arms.
+"He is always asking what your name is; Dad forgets, Dad does; or else
+it's because he's never seen you."
+
+"And what did you tell him?" she asked, ignoring the last remark with an
+echo of her sarcastic laugh.
+
+"Mrs. Smith, of course."
+
+She threw back her head and her whole form acquired an aspect that made
+Mr. Sylvester shudder. "That's good," she cried, "Mrs. Smith by all
+means." Then with a sudden lowering of her face to his--"Mrs. Smith is
+good to you, isn't she; lets you sit by her fire when she has any, and
+gives you peanuts to eat and sometimes spares you a penny!"
+
+"Yes, yes," the boy cried.
+
+"Come then," she said, "let's go home."
+
+She put him down on the floor, and gave him his little crutch. Her
+manner was not unkind, and yet Mr. Sylvester trembled as he saw the
+child about to follow her.
+
+"Didn't you ever have any little boys?" the child suddenly asked.
+
+The woman shrank as if a burning steel had been plunged against her
+breast. Looking down on the frightened child, she hissed out from
+between her teeth, "Did he tell you to ask me that? Did he dare--" She
+stopped and pressed her arms against her swelling heart as if she would
+smother its very beats. "Oh no, of course he didn't tell you; what does
+he know or care about Mrs. Smith!" Then with a quick gasp and a wild
+look into the space before her, "My child dead, and her child alive and
+beloved! What wonder that I hate earth and defy heaven!"
+
+She caught the boy by the hand and drew him quickly away. "You will be
+good to me," he cried, frightened by her manner yet evidently fascinated
+too, perhaps on account of the faint sparks of kindness that alternated
+with gusts of passion he did not understand. "You won't hurt me; you'll
+let me sit by the fire and get warm?"
+
+"Yes, yes."
+
+"And eat a bit of bread with butter on it?"
+
+"Yes, yes."
+
+"Then I'll go."
+
+She drew him down the hall. "Why do you like to have me come to your
+house?" he prattled away.
+
+She turned on him with a look which unfortunately Mr. Sylvester could
+not see. "Because your eyes are so blue and your skin is so white; they
+make me remember her!"
+
+"And who is _her_?"
+
+She laughed and seemed to hug herself in her rage and bitterness. "Your
+mother!" she cried, and in speaking it, she came upon Mr. Sylvester.
+
+He at once put out his hand.
+
+"I don't know who you are," said he, "but I do not think you had better
+take the child out to-night. From what you say, his father is evidently
+upstairs; if you will give the boy to me, I will take him back and leave
+him where he belongs."
+
+"You will?" The slow intensity of her tone was indescribable. "Know that
+I don't bear interference from strangers." And catching up the child,
+she rushed by him like a flash. "You are probably one of those
+missionaries who go stealing about unasked into respectable persons'
+rooms," she called back. "If by any chance you wander into his, tell him
+his child is in good hands, do you hear, in good hands!" And with a
+final burst of her hideous laugh, she dashed down the stairs and was
+gone.
+
+Mr. Sylvester stood shocked and undecided. His fatherly heart urged him
+to search at once for the parent of this lame boy, and warn him of the
+possible results of entrusting his child to a woman with so little
+command over herself. But upon taking out his watch and finding it later
+by a good half-hour than he expected, he was so struck with the
+necessity of completing his errand, that he forgot everything else in
+his anxiety to confront Holt. Knocking at the first door he came to, he
+waited. A quick snarl and a surprised, "Come in!" announced that he had
+scared up some sort of a living being, but whether man or woman he found
+it impossible to tell, even after the door opened and the creature,
+whoever it was, rose upon him from a pile of rags scattered in one
+corner.
+
+"I want Mr. Holt; can you tell me where to find him?"
+
+"Upstairs," was the only reply he received, as the creature settled down
+again upon its heap of tattered clothing.
+
+Fain to be content with this, he went up another flight and opened
+another door. He was more successful this time; one glance of his eye
+assured him that the man he was in search of, sat before him. He had
+never seen Mr. Holt; but the regular if vitiated features of the person
+upon whom he now intruded, his lank but not ungraceful form, and free if
+not airy manners, were not so common among the denizens of this
+unwholesome quarter, that there could be any doubt as to his being the
+accomplished but degenerate individual whose once attractive air had
+stolen the heart of Colonel Japha's daughter.
+
+He was sitting in front of a small pine table, and when Mr. Sylvester's
+eyes first fell upon him, was engaged in watching with a somewhat
+sinister smile, the final twirl of a solitary nickle which he had set
+spinning on the board before him. But at the sound of a step at the
+door, a lightning change passed over his countenance, and rising with a
+quick anticipatory "Ah!" he turned with hasty action to meet the
+intruder. A second exclamation and a still more hasty recoil were the
+result. This was not the face or the form of him whom he had expected.
+
+"Mr. Holt, I believe?" inquired Mr. Sylvester, advancing with his most
+dignified mien.
+
+The other bowed, but in a doubtful way that for a moment robbed him of
+his usual air of impudent self-assertion.
+
+"Then I have business with you," continued Mr. Sylvester, laying the
+man's own card down on the table before him. "My name is Sylvester," he
+proceeded, with a calmness that surprised himself; "and I am the uncle
+of the young man upon--whom you are at present presuming to levy
+blackmail."
+
+The assurance which for a moment had deserted the countenance of the
+other, returned with a flash. "His uncle!" reechoed he, with a low
+anomalous bow; "then it is from you I may expect the not unreasonable
+sum which I demand as the price of my attentions to your nephew's
+interest. Very good, I am not particular from what quarter it comes, so
+that it does come and that before the clock has struck the hour which I
+have set as the limit of my forbearance."
+
+"Which is seven o'clock, I believe?"
+
+"Which is seven o'clock."
+
+Mr. Sylvester folded his arms and sternly eyed the man before him. "You
+still adhere to your intention, then, of forwarding to Mr. Stuyvesant at
+that hour, the sealed communication now in the hands of your lawyer?"
+
+The smile with which the other responded was like the glint of a partly
+sheathed dagger. "My lawyer has already received his instructions.
+Nothing but an immediate countermand on my part, will prevent the
+communication of which you speak, from going to Mr. Stuyvesant at seven
+o'clock."
+
+The sigh which rose in Mr. Sylvester's breast did not disturb the severe
+immobility of his lip. "Have you ever considered the possibility," said
+he, "of the man whom you overheard talking in the restaurant in Dey
+Street two years ago, not being Mr. Bertram Sylvester of the Madison
+Bank?"
+
+"No," returned the other, with a short, sharp, and wholly undisturbed
+laugh, "I do not think I ever have."
+
+
+"Will you give me credit, then, for speaking with reason, when I declare
+to you that the man you overheard talking in the manner you profess to
+describe in your communication, was not Mr. Bertram Sylvester?"
+
+A shrug of the shoulders, highly foreign and suggestive, was the other's
+answer. "It was Mr. Sylvester or it was the devil," proclaimed he--"with
+all deference to your reason, my good sir; or why are you here?" he
+keenly added.
+
+Mr. Sylvester did not reply. With a sarcastic twitch of his lips the man
+took up the nickle with which he had been amusing himself when the
+former came in, and set it spinning again upon the table. "It is
+half-past six," remarked he. "It will take me a good half hour to go to
+my lawyer."
+
+Mr. Sylvester made a final effort. "If you could be convinced," said he,
+"that you have got your grasp upon the wrong man, would you still
+persist in the course upon which you seem determined?"
+
+With a dexterous sleight-of-hand movement, the man picked up the
+whirling nickle and laid it flat on the table before him. "A fellow
+whose whole fortune is represented by a coin like that"--tapping the
+piece significantly--"is not as easily convinced as a man of your means,
+perhaps. But if I should be brought to own that I had made a mistake in
+my man, I should still feel myself justified in proceeding against him,
+since my very accusation of him seems to be enough to arouse such
+interest on the part of his friends."
+
+"Wretch!" leaped to Mr. Sylvester's lips, but he did not speak it. "His
+friends," declared he, "have most certainly a great interest in his
+reputation and his happiness; but they never will pay any thing upon
+coercion to preserve the one or to insure the other."
+
+"They won't!" And for the first time Roger Holt slightly quavered.
+
+"A man's honor and happiness are much, and he will struggle long before
+he will consent to part from them. But a citizen of a great town like
+this, owes something to his fellows, and submitting to blackmail is but
+a poor precedent to set. You will have to proceed as you will, Mr. Holt;
+neither my nephew nor myself, have any money to give you."
+
+The glare in the man's eyes was like that of an aroused tiger. "Do you
+mean to say," cried he, "that you will not give from your abundance, a
+paltry thousand dollars to save one of your blood from a suspicion that
+will never leave him, _never leave him_ to the end of his miserable
+days?"
+
+"I mean to say that not one cent will pass from me to you in payment of
+a silence, which as a gentleman, you ought to feel it incumbent upon you
+to preserve unasked, if only to prove to your fellow-men that you have
+not entirely lost all the instincts of the caste to which you once
+belonged. Not that I look for anything so disinterested from you," he
+went on. "A man who could enter the home of a respectable gentleman, and
+under cover of a brotherly regard, lure into degradation and despair,
+the woman who was at once its ornament and pride, cannot be expected to
+practice the virtues of ordinary manhood, much less those of a gentleman
+and a Christian. He is a wretch, who, whatever his breeding or
+antecedents, is open to nothing but execration and contempt."
+
+With an oath and a quick backward spring, Roger Holt cried out, "Who are
+you, and by what right do you come here to reproach me with a matter
+dead and buried, by heaven, a dozen years ago?"
+
+"The right of one who, though a stranger, knows well what you are and
+what you have done. Colonel Japha himself is dead, but the avenger of
+his honor yet lives! Roger Holt, _where is Jacqueline Japha_?"
+
+The force with which this was uttered, seemed to confound the man. For a
+moment he stood silent, his eye upon his guest, then a subtle change
+took place in his expression; he smiled with a slow devilish meaning,
+and tossing his head with an airy gesture, lightly remarked:
+
+"You must ask some more constant lover than I. A woman who was charming
+ten years ago--Bah! what would I be likely to know about her now!"
+
+"Everything, when that woman is Jacqueline Japha," cried Mr. Sylvester,
+advancing upon him with a look that would have shaken most men, but
+which only made the eye of this one burn more eagerly. "Though you might
+easily wish to give her the slip, she is not one to forget you. If she
+is alive, you know where she is; speak then, and let the worth of one
+good action make what amends it can for a long list of evil ones."
+
+"You really want to see the woman, then; enough to pay for it, I mean?"
+
+"The reward which has been offered for news of the fate or whereabouts
+of Jacqueline Japha, still stands good," was Mr. Sylvester's reply.
+
+The excited stare with which the man received this announcement, slowly
+subsided into his former subtle look.
+
+"Well, well," said he, "we will see." The truth was, that he knew no
+more than the other where this woman was to be found. "If I happen to
+come across her in any of my wanderings, I shall know where to apply for
+means to make her welcome. But that is not what at present concerns us.
+Your nephew is losing ground with every passing minute. In a half-hour
+more his future will be decided, unless you bid me order my lawyer to
+delay the forwarding of that communication to Mr. Stuyvesant. In that
+case--"
+
+"I believe I have already made it plain to you that I have no intentions
+of interfering with your action in this matter," quoth Mr. Sylvester,
+turning slowly toward the door. "If you are determined to send your
+statement, it must go, only--" And here he turned upon the bitterly
+disappointed man with an aspect whose nobility the other was but little
+calculated to appreciate--"only when you do so, be particular to state
+that the person whose story you thus forward to a director of the
+Madison Bank, is not Bertram Sylvester, the cashier, but Edward
+Sylvester, his uncle, and the bank's president."
+
+And the stately head bowed and the tall form was about to withdraw, when
+Holt with an excited tremble that affected even his words, advanced and
+seized Mr. Sylvester by the arm.
+
+"His uncle!" cried he, "why that is what you--Great heaven!" he
+exclaimed, falling back with an expression not unmixed with awe, "you
+are the man and you have denounced yourself!" Then quickly, "Speak
+again; let me hear your voice."
+
+And Mr. Sylvester with a sad smile, repeated in a slow and meaning tone,
+"It is but one little _fuss_ more!" then as the other cringed, added a
+dignified, "Good evening, Mr. Holt," and passed swiftly across the room
+towards the door.
+
+What was it that stopped him half-way, and made him look back with such
+a startled glance at the man he had left behind him? A smell of smoke in
+the air, the faint yet unmistakable odor of burning wood, as though the
+house were on fire, or--
+
+Ha! the man himself has discerned it, is on his feet, is at the window,
+has seen what? His cry of mingled terror and dismay does not reveal. Mr.
+Sylvester hastens to his side.
+
+The sight which met his eyes, did not for the moment seem sufficient to
+account for the degree of emotion expressed by the other. To be sure,
+the lofty tenement-house which towered above them from the other side of
+the narrow yard upon which the window looked, was oozing with smoke, but
+there were no flames visible, and as yet no special manifestations of
+alarm on the part of its occupants. But in an instant, even while they
+stood there, arose the sudden and awful cry of "Fire!" and at the same
+moment they beheld the roof and casements before them, swarm with pallid
+faces, as men, women and children rushed to the first outlet that
+offered escape, only to shrink back in renewed terror from the deadly
+gulf that yawned beneath them.
+
+It was horrible, all the more that the fire seem to be somewhere in the
+basement story, possibly at the foot of the stairs, for none of the poor
+shrieking wretches before them seemed to make any effort to escape
+downwards, but rather surged up towards the top of the building, waving
+their arms as they fled, and filling the dusk with cries that drowned
+the sound of the coming engines.
+
+
+The scene appeared to madden Holt. "My boy! my boy! my boy!" rose from
+his lips in an agonized shriek; then as Mr. Sylvester gave a sudden
+start, cried out with indiscribable anguish, "He is there, my boy, my
+own little chap! A woman in that house has bewitched him, and when he is
+not with me, he is always at her side. O God, curses on my head for ever
+letting him out of my sight! Do you see him, sir? Look for him, I
+beseech you; he is lame and small; his head would barely reach to the
+top of the window-sill."
+
+"And that was your boy!" cried Mr. Sylvester. And struck by an appeal
+which in spite of his abhorrence of the man at his side, woke every
+instinct of fatherhood within him, he searched with his glance the long
+row of windows before them. But before his eye had travelled half way
+across the building, he felt the man at his side quiver with sudden
+agony, and following the direction of his glance, saw a wan, little
+countenance looking down upon them from a window almost opposite to
+where they stood.
+
+"It is my boy!" shrieked the man, and in his madness would have leaped
+from the casement, if Mr. Sylvester had not prevented him.
+
+"You will not help him so," cried the latter. "See, he is only a few
+feet above a bridge that appears to communicate with the roof of the
+next house. If he could be let down--"
+
+But the man had already precipitated himself towards the door of the
+room in which they were. "Tell him not to jump," he called back. "I am
+going next door and will reach him in a moment. Tell him to hold on till
+I come."
+
+Mr. Sylvester at once raised his voice. "Don't jump, little boy Holt. If
+there is no one there to drop you down, wait for your father. He is
+going on the bridge and will catch you."
+
+The little fellow seemed to hear, for he immediately held out his arms,
+but if he spoke, his voice was drowned in the frightful hubbub.
+Meanwhile the smoke thickened around him, and a dull ominous glare broke
+out from the midst of the building, against which his weazen little face
+looked pallid as death.
+
+"His father will be too late," groaned Mr. Sylvester, feeling himself
+somehow to blame for the child's horrible situation; then observing that
+the other occupants of the building had all disappeared towards the
+front, realized that whatever fire-escapes may have been provided, were
+doubtless in that direction, and raising his voice once more, called out
+across the yard, "Don't wait any longer, little fellow; follow the rest
+to the front; you will be burned if you stay there."
+
+But the child did not move, only held out his arms in a way to unman the
+strongest heart; and presently while Mr. Sylvester was asking himself
+what could be done, he heard his shrill piping tones rising above the
+hiss of the flames, and listening, caught the words:
+
+"I cannot get away. She is holding me, Dad. Help your little feller;
+help me, I'm so afraid of being burnt." And looking closer, Mr.
+Sylvester discerned the outlines of a woman's head and shoulders above
+the small white face.
+
+A distinct and positive fear at once seized him. Leaning out, the better
+to display his own face and figure, he called to that unknown woman to
+quit her hold and let the child go; but a discordant laugh, rising above
+the roar of the approaching flames, was his only reply. Sickened with
+apprehension, he drew back and himself made for the stairs in the wild
+idea of finding the father. But just then the mad figure of Holt
+appeared at the door, with frenzy in all his looks.
+
+"I cannot push through the crowd," cried he, "I have fought and
+struggled and shrieked, but it is all of no use. My boy is burning alive
+and I cannot reach him." A lurid flame shot at that moment from the
+building before them, as if in emphasis to his words.
+
+"He is prisoned there by a woman," cried Mr. Sylvester, pointing to the
+figure whose distorted outlines was every moment becoming more and more
+visible in the increasing glare. "See, she has him tight in her arms and
+is pressing him against the window-sill."
+
+The man with a terrible recoil, looked in the direction of his child,
+saw the little white face with its wild expression of conscious terror,
+saw the face of her who towered implacably behind it, and shrieked
+appalled.
+
+"Jacqueline!" he cried, and put his hands up before his face as if his
+eyes had fallen upon an avenging spirit.
+
+"Is that Jacqueline Japha?" asked Mr. Sylvester, dragging down the
+other's hands and pointing relentlessly towards the ominous figure in
+the window before him.
+
+"Yes, or her ghost," cried the other, shuddering under a horror that
+left him little control of his reason.
+
+"Then your boy is lost," murmured Mr. Sylvester, with a vivid
+remembrance of the words he had overheard. "She will never save her
+rival's child, never."
+
+The man looked at him with dazed eyes. "She shall save him," he cried,
+and stretching far out of the window by which he stood, he pointed to
+the bridge and called out, "Drop him, Jacqueline, don't let him burn. He
+can still reach the next house if he runs. Save my darling, save him."
+
+But the woman as if waiting for his voice, only threw back her head, and
+while a bursting flame flashed up behind her, shrieked mockingly back:
+
+"Oh I have frightened you up at last, have I? You can see me now, can
+you? You can call on Jacqueline now? The brat can make you speak, can
+he? Well, well, call away, I love to hear your voice. It is music to me
+even in the face of death."
+
+"My boy! my boy," was all he could gasp; "save the child, Jacqueline,
+only save the child!"
+
+But the harsh scornful laugh she returned, spoke little of saving. "He
+is so dear," she hissed. "I love the offspring of my rival so much! the
+child that has taken the place of my own darling, dead before ever I had
+seen its innocent eyes. Oh yes, yes, I will save it, save it as my own
+was saved. When I saw the puny infant in your arms the day you passed me
+with _her_, I swore to be its friend, don't you remember! And I am so
+much of a one that I stick by him to the death, don't you see?" And
+raising him up in her arms till his whole stunted body was visible, she
+turned away her brow and seemed to laugh in the face of the flames.
+
+The father writhed below in his agony. "Forgive," he cried, "forgive the
+past and give me back my child. It's all I have to love; it's all I've
+ever loved. Be merciful, Jacqueline, be merciful!"
+
+Her face flashed back upon him, still and white. "And what mercy have
+you ever shown to me! Fool, idiot, don't you see I have lived for this
+hour! To make you feel for once; to make you suffer for once as I have
+suffered. You love the boy! Roger Holt, I once loved you."
+
+And heedless of the rolling volume of smoke that now began to pour
+towards her, heedless even of the long tongues of hungry flame that were
+stretched out as if feeling for her from the distance behind, she stood
+immovable, gazing down upon the casement where he knelt, with an
+indescribable and awful smile upon her lips.
+
+The sight was unbearable. With an instinct of despair both men drew
+back, when suddenly they saw the woman start, unloose her clasp and drop
+the child out of her arms upon the bridge. A hissing stream of water had
+fallen upon the flames, and the shock had taken her by surprise. In a
+moment the father was himself again.
+
+"Get up, little feller, get up," he cried, "or if you cannot walk, crawl
+along the bridge to the next house. I see a fireman there; he will lift
+you in."
+
+But at that moment the flames, till now held under some control, burst
+from an adjoining window, and caught at the woodwork of the bridge. The
+father yelled in dismay.
+
+"Hurry, little feller, hurry!" he cried. "Get over towards the next
+house before it is too late."
+
+But a paralysis seemed to have seized the child; he arose, then stopped,
+and looking wildly about, shook his head. "I cannot," he cried, "I
+cannot." And the woman laughed, and with a hug of her empty arms, seemed
+to throw her taunts into the space before her.
+
+"Are you a demon?" burst from Mr. Sylvester's lips in uncontrollable
+horror. "Don't you see you can save him if you will? Jump down, then,
+and carry him across, or your father's curse will follow you to the
+world beyond."
+
+"Yes, climb down," cried the fireman, "you are lighter than I. Don't
+waste a minute, a second."
+
+"It is your own child, Jacqueline, your own child!" came from Holt's
+white lips in final desperation. "I have deceived you; your baby did not
+die; I wanted to get rid of you and I wanted to save him, so I lied to
+you. The baby did not die; he lived, and that is he you see lying
+helpless on the bridge beneath you."
+
+Not the clutch of an advancing flame could have made her shrink more
+fearfully. "It is false," she cried; "you are lying now; you want me to
+save _her_ child, and dare to say it is mine."
+
+"As God lives!" he swore, lifting his hand and turning his face to the
+sky.
+
+Her whole attitude seemed to cry, "No, no," to his assertion but slowly
+as she stood there, the conviction of its truth seemed to strike her,
+and her hair rose on her forehead and she swayed to and fro, as if the
+earth were rolling under her feet. Suddenly she gave a yell, and bounded
+from the window. Catching the child in her arms, she attempted to regain
+the refuge beyond, but the flames had not dallied at their work while
+she hesitated. The bridge was on fire and her retreat was cut off. She
+did not attempt to escape. Stopping in the centre of the rocking mass,
+she looked down as only a mother in her last agony can do, on the child
+she held folded in her arms; then as the flames caught at her floating
+garments, stooped her head and printed one wild and passionate kiss upon
+his brow. Another instant and they saw her head rise to the accusing
+heavens, then all was rush and horror, and the swaying structure fell
+before their eyes, sweeping its living freight into the courtyard
+beneath their feet.
+
+
+
+
+XLII.
+
+PAULA RELATES A STORY SHE HAS HEARD.
+
+    "None are so desolate but something dear,
+    Dearer than self, possesses or possessed."
+
+    --BYRON.
+
+
+In the centre of a long low room not far from the scene of the late
+disaster, a solitary lamp was burning. It had been lit in haste and cast
+but a feeble flame, but its light was sufficient to illuminate the sad
+and silent group that gathered under its rays.
+
+On a bench by the wall, crouched the bowed and stricken form of Roger
+Holt, his face buried in his hands, his whole attitude expressive of the
+utmost grief; at his side stood Mr. Sylvester, his tall figure looming
+sombrely in the dim light; and on the floor at their feet, lay the dead
+form of the little lame boy.
+
+But it was not upon their faces, sad and striking as they were, that the
+eyes of the few men and women scattered in the open door-way, rested
+most intently. It was upon her, the bruised, bleeding, half-dead mother,
+who kneeling above the little corpse, gazed down upon it with the
+immobility of despair, moaning in utter heedlessness of her own
+condition, "My baby, my baby, my own, own baby!"
+
+The fixedness with which she eyed the child, though the blood was
+streaming from her forehead and bathing with a still deeper red her
+burned and blistered arms, made Mr. Sylvester's sympathetic heart beat.
+Turning to the silent figure of Holt, he touched him on the arm and said
+with a gesture in her direction:
+
+"You have not deceived the woman? That is really her own child that lies
+there?"
+
+The man beside him, started, looked up with slowly comprehending eyes,
+and mechanically bowed his head. "Yes," assented he, and relapsed into
+his former heavy silence.
+
+Mr. Sylvester touched him again. "If it is hers, how came she not to
+know it? How could you manage to deceive such a woman as that?"
+
+Holt started again and muttered, "She was sick and insensible. She never
+saw the baby; I sent it away, and when she came to herself, told her it
+was dead. We had become tired of each other long before, and only needed
+the breaking of this bond to separate us. When she saw me again, it was
+with another woman at my side and an infant in my arms. The child was
+weakly and looked younger than he was. She thought it her rival's and I
+did not undeceive her." And the heavy head again fell forward, and
+nothing disturbed the sombre silence of the room but the low unvarying
+moan of the wretched mother, "My baby, my baby, my own, own baby!"
+
+Mr. Sylvester moved over to her side. "Jacqueline," said he, "the child
+is dead and you yourself are very much hurt. Won't you let these good
+women lay you on a bed, and do what they can to bind up your poor
+blistered arms?"
+
+But she heard him no more than the wind's blowing. "My baby," she
+moaned, "my own, own baby!"
+
+He drew back with a troubled air. Grief like this he could understand
+but knew not how to alleviate. He was just on the point of beckoning
+forward one of the many women clustered in the door-way, when there came
+a sound from without that made him start, and in another moment a young
+man had stepped hastily into the room, followed by a girl, who no sooner
+saw Mr. Sylvester, than she bounded forward with a sudden cry of joy and
+relief.
+
+"Bertram! Paula! What does this mean? What are you doing here?"
+
+A burst of sobs from the agitated girl was her sole reply.
+
+"Such a night! such a place!" he exclaimed, throwing his arm about Paula
+with a look that made her tremble through her tears. "Were you so
+anxious about me, little one?" he whispered. "Would not your fears let
+you rest?"
+
+"No, no; and we have had such a dreadful time since we got here. The
+house where we expected to find you, is on fire, and we thought of
+nothing else but that you had perished within it. But finally some one
+told us to come here, and--" She paused horror-stricken; her eyes had
+just fallen upon the little dead child and the moaning mother.
+
+"That is Jacqueline Japha," whispered Mr. Sylvester. "We have found her,
+only to close her eyes, I fear."
+
+"Jacqueline Japha!" Paula's hands unclosed from his arm.
+
+"She was in the large tenement house that burned first; that is her
+child whose loss she is mourning."
+
+"Jacqueline Japha!" again fell with an indescribable tone from Paula's
+lips. "And who is that?" she asked, turning and indicating the silent
+figure by the wall.
+
+"That is Roger Holt, the man who should have been her husband."
+
+"Oh, I remember him," she cried; "and her, I remember her, and the
+little child too. But," she suddenly exclaimed, "she told me then that
+she was not his mother."
+
+"And she did not know that she was; the man had deceived her."
+
+With a quick thrill Paula bounded forward. "Jacqueline Japha," she
+cried, falling with outstretched hands beside the poor creature; "thank
+God you are found at last!"
+
+But the woman was as insensible to this cry as she had been to all
+others. "My baby," she wailed, "my baby, my own, own baby!"
+
+Paula recoiled in dismay, and for a moment stood looking down with fear
+and doubt upon the fearful being before her. But in another instant a
+heavenly instinct seized her, and ignoring the mother, she stooped over
+the child and tenderly kissed it. The woman at once woke from her
+stupor. "My baby!" she cried, snatching the child up in her arms with a
+gleam of wild jealousy; "nobody shall touch it but me. I killed it and
+it is all mine now!" But in a moment she had dropped the child back into
+its place, and was going on with the same set refrain that had stirred
+her lips from the first.
+
+Paula was not to be discouraged. Laying her hand on the child's brow,
+she gently smoothed back his hair, and when she saw the old gleam
+returning to the woman's countenance, said quietly, "Are you going to
+carry it to Grotewell to be buried? Margery Hamlin is waiting for you,
+you know?"
+
+The start which shook the woman's haggard frame, encouraged her to
+proceed.
+
+"Yes; you know she has been keeping watch, and waiting for you so long!
+She is quite worn out and disheartened; fifteen years is a long time to
+hope against hope, Jacqueline."
+
+The stare of the wretched creature deepened into a fierce and maddened
+glare. "You don't know what you are talking about," cried she, and bent
+herself again over the child.
+
+Paula went on as if she had not spoken. "Any one that is loved as much
+as you are, Jacqueline, ought not to give way to despair; even if your
+child is dead, there is still some one left whom you can make supremely
+happy."
+
+"Him?" the woman's look seemed to say, as she turned and pointed with
+frightful sarcasm to the man at their back.
+
+Paula shrank and hastily shook her head. "No, no, not him, but--Let me
+tell you a story," she whispered eagerly. "In a certain country-town not
+far from here, there is a great empty house. It is dark, and cold, and
+musty. No one ever goes there but one old lady, who every night at six,
+crosses its tangled garden, unlocks its great side door, enters within
+its deserted precincts, and for an hour remains there, praying for one
+whose return she has never ceased to hope and provide for. She is
+kneeling there to-night, at this very hour, Jacqueline, and the love she
+thus manifests is greater than that of man to woman or woman to man. It
+is like that of heaven or the Christ."
+
+The woman before her rose to her feet. She did not speak, but she looked
+like a creature before whose eyes a sudden torch had been waved.
+
+"Fifteen years has she done this," Paula solemnly continues. "She
+promised, you know; and she never has forgotten her promise."
+
+With a cry the woman put out her hands. "Stop!" she cried, "stop! I
+don't believe it. No one loves like that; else there is a God and I--"
+She paused, quivered, gave one wild look about her, and then with a
+quick cry, something between a moan and a prayer, succumbed to the pain
+of her injuries, and sank down insensible by the side of her dead child.
+
+With a reverent look Paula bent over her and kissed her seared and
+bleeding forehead. "For Mrs. Hamlin's sake," she whispered, and quietly
+smoothed down the tattered clothing about the poor creature's wasted
+frame.
+
+Mr. Sylvester turned quietly upon the man who had been the cause of all
+this misery. "I charge myself with the care of that woman," said he,
+"and with the burial of your child. It shall be placed in decent ground
+with all proper religious ceremonial."
+
+"What, you will do this!" cried Holt, a flush of real feeling for a
+moment disturbing the chalk-white pallor of his cheek. "Oh sir, this is
+Christian charity; and I beg your pardon for all that I may have
+meditated against you. It was done for the child," he went on wildly;
+"to get him the bread and butter he often lacked. I didn't care so much
+for myself. I hated to see him hungry and cold and ailing; I might have
+worked, but I detest work, and--But no matter about all that; enough
+that I am done with endeavoring to extort money from you. Whatever may
+have happened in the past, you are free from my persecutions in the
+future. Henceforth you and yours can rest in peace."
+
+"That is well," cried a voice over his shoulder, and Bertram with an air
+of relief stepped hastily forward. "You must be very tired," remarked
+he, turning to his uncle. "If you will take charge of Paula, I will do
+what I can to see that this injured woman and the dead child are
+properly cared for. I am so relieved, sir, at this result," he
+whispered, with a furtive wring of his uncle's hand, "that I must
+express my joy in some way."
+
+Mr. Sylvester smiled, but in a manner that reflected but little of the
+other's satisfaction. "Thank you," said he, "I am tired and will gladly
+delegate my duties to you. I trust you to do the most you can for both
+the living and the dead. That woman for all her seeming poverty is the
+possessor of a large fortune;" he whispered; "let her be treated as
+such." And with a final word to Holt who had sunk back against the wall
+in his old attitude of silent despair, Mr. Sylvester took Paula upon his
+arm, and quietly led her out of this humble but not unkind refuge.
+
+
+
+
+XLIII.
+
+DETERMINATION.
+
+                "But alas! to make me
+    A fixed figure for the time of scorn
+    To point his slow unmoving finger at!"
+
+    --OTHELLO.
+
+    "Let me but bear your love, I'll bear your cares."
+
+    --HENRY V.
+
+
+"Paula!"
+
+They had reached home and were standing in the library.
+
+"Yes," said she, lowering her head before his gaze with a sweet and
+conscious blush.
+
+"Did you read the letter I left for you in my desk up stairs?"
+
+She put her hand to her bosom and drew forth the closely written sheet.
+"Every word," she responded, and smilingly returned it to its place.
+
+He started and his chest heaved passionately. "You have read it," he
+cried, "and yet could follow me into that den of unknown dangers at an
+hour like this, and with no other guide than Bertram?"
+
+"Yes," she answered.
+
+He drew a deep breath and his brow lost its deepest shadow. "You do not
+despise me then," he exclaimed "My sin has not utterly blotted me out of
+your regard?"
+
+The glance with which she replied seemed to fill the whole room with its
+radiance. "I am only beginning to realize the worth of the man who has
+hitherto been a mystery to me," she declared. Then as he shook his head,
+added with a serious air, "The question with all true hearts must ever
+be, not what a man has been, but what he is. He who for the sake of
+shielding the innocent from shame and sorrow, would have taken upon
+himself the onus of a past disgrace, is not unworthy a woman's
+devotion."
+
+Mr. Sylvester smiled mournfully, and stroked her hand which he had taken
+in his. "Poor little one," he murmured. "I know not whether to feel
+proud or sorry for your trust and tender devotion. It would have been a
+great and unspeakable grief to me to have lost your regard, but it might
+have been better if I had; it might have been much better for you if I
+had!"
+
+"What, why do you say that?" she asked, with a startled gleam in her
+eye. "Do you think I am so eager for ease and enjoyment, that it will be
+a burden for me to bear the pain of those I love? A past pain, too," she
+added, "that will grow less and less as the days go by and happiness
+increases."
+
+He put her back with a quick hand. "Do not make it any harder for me
+than necessary," he entreated, "Do you not see that however gentle may
+be your judgment of my deserts, we can never marry, Paula?"
+
+The eyes which were fixed on his, deepened passionately. "No," she
+whispered, "no; not if your remorse for the past is all that separates
+us. The man who has conquered himself, has won the right to conquer the
+heart of a woman. I can say no more--" She timidly held out her hand.
+
+He grasped it with a man's impetuosity and pressed it to his heart, but
+he did not retain it. "Blessings upon you, dear and noble heart!" he
+cried. "God will hear my prayers and make you happy--but not with me.
+Paula," he passionately continued, taking her in his arms and holding
+her to his breast, "it cannot be. I love you--I will not, dare not say,
+how much--but love is no excuse for wronging you. My remorse is not all
+that separates us; possible disgrace lies before me; public exposure at
+all events; I would indeed be lacking in honor were I to subject you to
+these."
+
+"But," she stammered, drawing back to look into his face, "I thought
+that was all over; that the man had promised silence; that you were
+henceforth to be relieved from his persecutions? I am sure he said so."
+
+"He did, but he forgot that my fate no longer rested upon his
+forbearance. The letter which records my admission of sin was in his
+lawyer's hands, Paula, and has already been despatched to Mr.
+Stuyvesant. Say what we will, rebel against it as we will, Cicely's
+father knows by this time that the name of Sylvester is not spotless."
+
+The cry which she uttered in her sudden pain and loss made him stoop
+over her with despairing fondness. "Hush! my darling, hush!" cried he.
+"The trial is so heavy, I need all my strength to meet it. It breaks my
+heart to see you grieve. I cannot bear it. I deserve my fate, but
+you--Oh you--what have you done that you should be overwhelmed in my
+fall!" Putting her gently away from his breast, he drew himself up and
+with forced calmness said, "I have yet to inform Mr. Stuyvesant upon
+which of the Sylvesters' should rest the shadow of his distrust.
+To-night he believes in Bertram's lack of principle, but to-morrow--"
+
+Her trembling lips echoed the word.
+
+"He shall know that the man who confessed to having done a wrong deed in
+the past, is myself, Paula."
+
+The head which had fallen on her breast, rose as at the call of a
+clarion. "And is it at the noblest moment of your life that you would
+shut me away from your side? No, no. Heaven does not send us a great and
+mighty love for trivial purposes. The simple country maid whom you have
+sometimes declared was as the bringer of good news to you, shall not
+fail you now." Then slowly and with solemn assurance, "If you go to Mr.
+Stuyvesant's to-morrow, and you will, for that is your duty, you shall
+not go alone; Paula Fairchild accompanies you."
+
+
+
+
+XLIV.
+
+IN MR. STUYVESANT'S PARLORS.
+
+    "Was I deceived, or did a sable cloud
+    Turn forth her silver lining on the night?"
+
+    --COMUS.
+
+
+"Unworthy?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Cicely stared at her father with wide-open and incredulous eyes. "I
+cannot believe it," she murmured; "no, I cannot believe it."
+
+Her father drew up a chair to her side. "My daughter," said he, with
+unusual tenderness, "I have hesitated to tell you this, fearing to wound
+you; but my discretion will allow me to keep silence no longer. Bertram
+Sylvester is not an honest man, and the sooner you make up your mind to
+forget him, the better."
+
+"Not honest?" You would scarcely have recognized Cicely's voice. Her
+father's hand trembled as he drew her back to his side.
+
+"It is a hard revelation for me to make to you, after testifying my
+approval of the young man. I sympathize with you, my child, but none the
+less I expect you to meet this disappointment bravely. A theft has been
+committed in our bank--"
+
+"You do not accuse him of theft! Oh father, father!"
+
+"No," he stammered. "I do not accuse him, but facts look very strongly
+against some one in our trust, and--"
+
+"But that is not sufficient," she cried, rising in spite of his
+detaining hand till she stood erect before him. "You surely would not
+allow any mere circumstantial evidence to stand against a character as
+unblemished as his, even if he were not the man whom your daughter--"
+
+He would not let her continue. "I admit that I should be careful how I
+breathed suspicion against a man whose record was unimpeached," he
+assented, "but Bertram Sylvester does not enjoy that position. Indeed, I
+have just received a communication which goes to show, that he once
+actually acknowledged to having perpetrated an act of questionable
+integrity. Now a man as young as he, who--"
+
+"But I cannot believe it," she moaned. "It is impossible, clearly
+impossible. How could he look me in the face with such a sin on his
+conscience! He could not, simply could not. Why, father, his brow is as
+open as the day, his glance clear and unwavering as the sunlight. It is
+some dreadful mistake. It is not Bertram of whom you are speaking!"
+
+Her father sighed. "Of whom else should it be? Come my child, do you
+want to read the communication which I received last night? Do you want
+to be convinced?"
+
+"No, no;" she cried; but quickly contradicted herself with a hurried,
+"Yes, yes, let me be made acquainted with what there is against him, if
+only that I may prove to you it is all a mistake."
+
+
+"There is no mistake," he muttered, handing her a folded paper. "This
+statement was written two years ago; I witnessed it myself, though I
+little knew against whose honor it was directed. Read it, Cicely, and
+then remember that I have lost bonds out of my box at the bank, that
+could only have been taken by some one connected with the institution."
+
+She took the paper in her hand, and eagerly read it through. Suddenly
+she started and looked up. "And you say that this was Bertram, this
+gentleman who allowed another man to accuse him of a past dishonesty?"
+
+"So the person declares who forwarded me this statement; and though he
+is a poor wretch and evidently not above making mischief, I do not know
+as we have any special reason to doubt his word."
+
+Cicely's eyes fell and she stood before her father with an air of
+indecision. "I do not think it was Bertram," she faltered, but said no
+more.
+
+"I would to God for your sake, it was not!" he exclaimed. "But this
+communication together with the loss we have sustained at the bank, has
+shaken my faith, Cicely. Young men are so easily led astray nowadays;
+especially when playing for high stakes. A man who could leave his
+profession for the sake of winning a great heiress--"
+
+"Father!"
+
+"I know he has made you think it was for love; but when the woman whom a
+young man fancies, is rich, love and ambition run too closely together
+to be easily disentangled. And now, my dear, I have said my say and
+leave you to act according to the dictates of your judgment, sure that
+it will be in a direction worthy of your name and breeding." And
+stooping for a hasty kiss, he gave her a last fond look and quietly left
+the room.
+
+And Cicely? For a moment she stood as if frozen in her place, then a
+great tremble seized her, and sinking down upon a sofa, she buried her
+face from sight, in a chaos of feeling that left her scarcely mistress
+of herself. But suddenly she started up, her face flushed, her eyes
+gleaming, her whole delicate form quivering with an emotion more akin to
+hope than despair.
+
+"I cannot doubt him," she whispered; "it were as easy to doubt my own
+soul. He is worthy if I am worthy, true if I am true; and I will not try
+to unlove him!"
+
+But soon the reaction came again, and she was about to give full sway to
+her grief and shame, when the parlor door opened--she herself was
+sitting in the extension room--and she saw Mr. Sylvester and Paula come
+in. She at once rose to her feet; but she did not advance. A thousand
+hopes and fears held her enchained where she was; besides there was
+something in the aspect of her friends, which made her feel as though a
+welcome even from her, would at that moment be an intrusion.
+
+"They have come to see father," she thought "and--"
+
+Ah what, Cicely?
+
+Paula, who was too absorbed in her own feelings to glance into the
+extension room beyond, approached Mr. Sylvester and laid her hand upon
+his arm. "Whatever comes," said she, "truth, honor and love remain."
+
+And he bowed his head and seemed to kiss her hand, and Cicely observing
+the action, grew pale and dropped her eyes, realizing as by a
+lightning's flash, both the nature of the feeling that prompted this
+unusual manifestation on his part, and the possible sorrows that lay
+before her dearest friend, if not before herself, should the secret
+suspicions she cherished in regard to Mr. Sylvester prove true. When she
+had summoned up courage to glance again in their direction, Mr.
+Stuyvesant had entered the parlor and was nervously welcoming his
+guests.
+
+Mr. Sylvester waited for no preamble. "I have come," said he, in his
+most even and determined tones, "to speak to you in regard to a
+communication from a man by the name of Holt, which I was told was to be
+sent to you last evening. Did you receive such a one?"
+
+Mr. Stuyvesant flushed, grew still more nervous in his manner and
+uttered a short, "I did," in a tone severer than he perhaps intended.
+
+"It will not be too much for me, then, to conclude, that in your present
+estimation my nephew stands committed to a past dishonesty?"
+
+"It has been one of my chief sources of regret--one of them I say,"
+repeated Mr. Stuyvesant, "that any loss of esteem on the part of your
+nephew, must necessarily reflect upon the peace if not the honor of a
+man I hold in such high regard as yourself. I assure you I feel it quite
+as a brother might, quite as a brother."
+
+Mr. Sylvester at once rose. "Mr. Stuyvesant," declared he, "my nephew is
+as honest a man as walks this city's streets. If you will accord me a
+few minutes private conversation, I think I can convince you so."
+
+"I should be very glad," replied Mr. Stuyvesant, glancing towards the
+extension-room where he had left his daughter. "I have always liked the
+young man." Then with a quick look in the other's face, "You are not
+well, Mr. Sylvester?"
+
+"Thank you, I am not ill; let us say what we have to, at once, if you
+please." And with just a glance at Paula, he followed the now somewhat
+agitated director from the room.
+
+Cicely who had started forward at their departure, glanced down the long
+parlor before her, and hastily faltered back; Paula was praying. But in
+a few moments her feelings overcame her timidity, and hurrying into her
+friend's presence, she threw her arms about her neck and pressed her
+cheek to hers. "Let us pray together," she whispered.
+
+Paula drew back and looked her friend in the face. "You know what all
+this means?" she asked.
+
+"I guess," was the low reply.
+
+Paula checked a sob and clasped Cicely to her bosom. "He loves me," she
+faltered, "and he is doing at this moment what he believes will separate
+us. He is a noble man, Cicely, noble as Bertram, though he once did--"
+She paused. "It is for him to say what, not I," she softly concluded.
+
+"Then Bertram is noble," Cicely timidly put in.
+
+"Have you ever doubted it?"
+
+"No."
+
+And hiding their blushes on each other's shoulders, the two girls sat
+breathlessly waiting, while the clock ticked away in the music-room and
+the moments came and went that determined their fate. Suddenly they both
+rose. Mr. Stuyvesant and Mr. Sylvester were descending the stairs. Mr.
+Sylvester came in first. Walking straight up to Paula, he took her in
+his arms and kissed her on the forehead.
+
+"My betrothed wife!" he whispered.
+
+With a start of incredulous joy, Paula looked up. His glance was clear
+but strangely solemn and peaceful.
+
+"He has heard all I had to say," added he; "he is a just man, but he is
+also a merciful one. Like you he declares that not what a man was, but
+what he is, determines the judgment of true men concerning him." And
+taking her on his arm, he stood waiting for Mr. Stuyvesant who now came
+in.
+
+"Where is my daughter?" were that gentleman's words, as he closed the
+door behind him.
+
+"Here, papa."
+
+
+He held out his hand, and she sprang towards him. "Cicely," said he, not
+without some tokens of emotion in his voice, "it is only right that I
+should inform you that we were all laboring under a mistake, in charging
+Mr. Bertram Sylvester with the words that were uttered in the Dey Street
+coffee-house two years ago. Mr. Sylvester has amply convinced me that
+his nephew neither was, nor could have been present there at that time.
+It must have been some other man, of similar personality."
+
+"Oh thank you, thank you!" Cicely's look seemed to say to Mr. Sylvester.
+"And he is quite freed from reproach?" she asked, with a smiling glance
+into her father's face.
+
+A hesitancy in Mr. Stuyvesant's manner, struck with a chill upon more
+than one heart in that room.
+
+"Yes," he admitted at last; "the mere fact that a mysterious robbery has
+been committed upon certain effects in the bank of which he is cashier,
+is not sufficient to awaken distrust as to his integrity, but--"
+
+At that moment the door-bell rung.
+
+"Your father would say," cried Mr. Sylvester, taking advantage of the
+momentary break, to come to the relief of his host, "that my nephew is
+too much of a gentleman to desire to press any claim he may imagine
+himself as possessing over you, while even the possibility of a shadow
+rests upon his name."
+
+"The man who stole the bonds will be found," said Cicely.
+
+And as if in echo to her words the parlor door opened, and a messenger
+from the bank stepped briskly up to Mr. Stuyvesant.
+
+"A note from Mr. Folger," said he, with a quick glance at Mr. Sylvester.
+
+Mr. Stuyvesant took the paper handed him, read it hastily through, and
+looked up with an air of some bewilderment.
+
+"I can hardly believe it possible," cried he, "but Hopgood has
+absconded."
+
+"Hopgood absconded?"
+
+"Yes; is not that the talk at the bank?" inquired Mr. Stuyvesant,
+turning to the messenger.
+
+"Yes sir. He has not been seen since yesterday afternoon when he left
+before the bank was closed for the night. His wife says she thinks he
+meant to run away, for before going, he came into the room where she
+was, kissed her and then kissed the child; besides it seems that he took
+with him some of his clothes."
+
+"Humph! and I had as much confidence in that man--"
+
+"As I have now," came from Mr. Sylvester as the door closed upon the
+messenger. "If Hopgood has run away, it was from some generous but
+mistaken idea of sacrificing himself to the safety of another whom he
+may possibly believe guilty."
+
+"No," rejoined Mr. Stuyvesant, "for here is a note from him that refutes
+that supposition. It is addressed to me and runs thus:
+
+     "DEAR SIR.--I beg your pardon and that of Mr. Sylvester for
+     leaving my duties in this abrupt manner. But I have betrayed my
+     trust and am no longer worthy of confidence. I am a wretched
+     man and find it impossible to face those who have believed in
+     my honesty and discretion. If I can bring the money back, you
+     shall see me again, but if not, be kind to my wife and little
+     one, for the sake of the three years when I served the bank
+     faithfully.
+
+     "JOHN HOPGOOD."
+
+"I don't understand it," cried Mr. Sylvester, "that looks--"
+
+"As if he knew where the money was."
+
+"I begin to hope," breathed Cicely.
+
+Her father turned and surveyed her. "This puts a new aspect on matters,"
+said he.
+
+She glanced up beaming. "Oh, will you, do you say, that you think the
+shadow of this crime has at last found the spot upon which it can
+rightfully rest?"
+
+"It would not be common sense in me to deny that it has most certainly
+shifted its position."
+
+With a radiant look at Cicely, Paula crossed to Mr. Stuyvesant's side,
+and laying her hand on his sleeve, whispered a word or two in his ear.
+He immediately glanced out of the window at the carriage standing before
+the door, then looked back at her and nodded with something like a
+smile. In another moment he stood at the front door.
+
+"Be prepared," cried Paula to Cicely.
+
+It was well she spoke, for when in an instant later Mr. Stuyvesant
+re-entered the parlor with Bertram at his side, the rapidly changing
+cheek of the gentle girl showed that the surprise, even though thus
+tempered, was almost too much for her self-possession.
+
+Mr. Stuyvesant did not wait for the inevitable embarrassment of the
+moment to betray itself in words. "Mr. Sylvester," said he, to the young
+cashier, "we have just received a piece of news from the bank, that
+throws unexpected light upon the robbery we were discussing yesterday.
+Hopgood has absconded, and acknowledges here in writing that he had
+something to do with the theft!"
+
+"Hopgood, the janitor!" The exclamation was directed not to Mr.
+Stuyvesant but to Mr. Sylvester, towards whom Bertram turned with looks
+of amazement.
+
+"Yes, it is the greatest surprise I ever received," returned that
+gentleman.
+
+"And Mr. Sylvester," continued Mr. Stuyvesant, with nervous rapidity and
+a generous attempt to speak lightly, "there is a little lady here who is
+so shaken by the news, that nothing short of a word of reassurance on
+your part will comfort her."
+
+Bertram's eye followed that of Mr. Stuyvesant, and fell upon the
+blushing cheek of Cicely. With a flushing of his own brow, he stepped
+hastily forward.
+
+"Miss Stuyvesant!" he cried, and looking down in her face, forgot
+everything else in his infinite joy and satisfaction.
+
+"Yes," announced the father with abrupt decision, "she is yours; you
+have fairly earned her."
+
+Bertram bowed his head with irrepressible emotion, and for a moment the
+silence of perfect peace if not of awe, reigned over the apartment; but
+suddenly a low, determined "No!" was heard, and Bertram turning towards
+Mr. Stuyvesant, exclaimed, "You are very good, and the joy of this
+moment atones for many an hour of grief and impatience; but I have not
+earned her yet. The fact that Hopgood admits to having had something to
+do with the robbery, does not sufficiently exonerate the officers of the
+bank from all connection with the affair, to make it safe or honorable
+in me to unqualifiedly accept the inestimable boon of your daughter's
+regard. Till the real culprit is in custody and the mystery entirely
+cleared away, my impatience must continue to curb itself. I love your
+daughter too dearly to bring her anything but the purest of reputations.
+Am I not right, Miss Stuyvesant?"
+
+She cast a glance at her father, and bowed her head. "You are right,"
+she repeated.
+
+And Mr. Stuyvesant, with a visible lightening of his whole aspect, took
+the young man by the hand, and with as much geniality as his nature
+would allow, informed him that he was at last convinced that his
+daughter had made no mistake when she expressed her trust in Bertram
+Sylvester.
+
+And in other eyes than Cicely's, shone the light of satisfied love and
+unswerving faith.
+
+
+
+
+XLV.
+
+"THE HOUR OF SIX IS SACRED."
+
+                              "Mightier far
+    Than strength of nerve or sinew, or the sway
+    Of magic potent over sun and star,
+    Is love, though oft to agony distrest,
+
+    And though its favorite seat be feeble woman's breast."
+
+    --WORDSWORTH.
+
+
+It was at the close of a winter afternoon. Paula who had returned to
+Grotewell for the few weeks preceding her marriage, sat musing in the
+window of her aunt's quaint little parlor. Her eyes were on the fields
+before her all rosy with the departing rays of the sun, but her thoughts
+were far away. They were with him she best loved--with Cicely, waiting
+in patience for the solution of the mystery of the stolen bonds; with
+Bertram, eagerly, but as yet vainly, engaged in searching for the
+vanished janitor; and last but not least, with that poor, wretched
+specimen of humanity moaning away her life in a New York hospital;--for
+the sight of the Japha house, in a walk that day, had reawakened her
+most vivid remembrances of Jacqueline. All that had ever been done and
+suffered by this forsaken creature, lay on her heart like a weight; and
+the question which had disturbed her since her return to Grotewell,
+viz., whether or not she ought to acquaint Mrs. Hamlin with the fact
+that she had seen and spoken to the object of her love and prayers,
+pressed upon her mind with an insistence that required an answer. There
+was so much to be said for and against it. Mrs. Hamlin was not well, and
+though still able to continue her vigil, showed signs of weakening, day
+by day. It might be a comfort to her to know that another's eyes had
+rested on the haggard form for whose approach she daily watched; that
+another's kiss had touched the scarred and pallid forehead she longed to
+fold against her breast; that the woman she loved and of whose fate she
+had no intimation, was living and well cared for, though her shelter was
+that of a hospital, and her prospects those of the grave.
+
+On the other hand, the awful nature of the circumstances which had
+brought her to her present condition, were such as to make any generous
+heart pause before shocking the love and trust of such a woman as Mrs.
+Hamlin, by a relation of the criminal act by which Jacqueline had slain
+her child and endangered her own existence. Better let the poor old lady
+go on hoping against hope till she sinks into her grave, than destroy
+life and hope at once by a revelation of her darling's reckless
+depravity.
+
+And yet if the poor creature in the hospital might be moved to
+repentance by some word from Mrs. Hamlin, would it not be a kindness to
+the latter to allow her, though even at the risk of her life, to
+accomplish the end for which she indeed professed to live?
+
+The mind of Paula was as yet undecided, when a child from the village
+passed the window, and seeing her sitting there, handed her a small
+package with the simple message that Mrs. Hamlin was very ill. It
+contained, as she anticipated, the great key to the Japha mansion, and
+understanding without further words, what was demanded of her, Paula
+prepared to keep the promise she had long ago made to this devoted
+woman. For though she knew the uselessness of the vigil proposed to her,
+she none the less determined to complete it. Easier to sit an hour in
+that dark old house, than to explain herself to Mrs. Hamlin. Besides,
+the time was good for prayer, and God knows the wretched object of all
+this care and anxiety, stood in need of all the petitions that might be
+raised for her.
+
+Telling her aunts that she had a call to make in the village, she glided
+hurriedly away, and ere she realized all to which she was committed,
+found herself standing in the now darkened streets, before the grim door
+of that dread and mysterious mansion. Never had it looked more
+forbidding; never had the two gruesome poplars cast a deeper shadow, or
+rustled with a more woful sound in the chill evening air. The very
+windows seemed to repel her with their darkened panes, behind which she
+could easily imagine the spirits of the dead, moving and peering. A
+chill not unlike that of terror, assailed her limbs, and it was with a
+really heroic action that she finally opened the gate and glided up the
+path made by the daily steps of her aged friend. To thrust the big key
+into the lock required another effort, but that once accomplished, she
+stilled every tumultuous beating of her heart, by crying under her
+breath, "She has done this for one whom she has not seen for fifteen
+years; shall I then hesitate, who know the real necessity of her for
+whom this hour is made sacred?"
+
+The slow swinging open of the door was like an ushering into the abode
+of ghosts, but she struck a light at once, and soon had the satisfaction
+of beholding the dismal room with its weird shadows, resolve into its
+old and well remembered aspect. The ancient cabinet and stiff hair-cloth
+sofa, Colonel Japha's chair by the table, together with all the other
+objects that had attracted her attention in her former visit, confronted
+her again with the same appearance of standing ready and waiting, which
+had previously so thrilled her. Only she was alone this time, and terror
+mingled with her awe. She scarcely dared to glance at the doors that led
+to other portions of the house. In her present mood it would seem so
+natural for them to swing open, and let upon her horrified gaze the
+stately phantom of the proud old colonel or the gentler shade of
+Jacqueline's mother. The moan of the wind in the chimney was dreadful to
+her, and the faint rumbling sounds of mice scampering in the walls, made
+her start as though a voice had spoken.
+
+But presently the noise of a sleigh careering by the house recalled her
+to herself, and remembering it was but early night-fall, she sat down in
+a chair by the door, and prepared to keep her vigil with suitable
+patience and equanimity. Suddenly she recollected the clock on the
+mantel-piece and how she had seen Mrs. Hamlin wind it, and rising up,
+she followed her example, sighing unconsciously to find how many of the
+sixty minutes had yet to tick themselves away, "Can I endure it!" she
+thought, and shuddered as she pictured to herself the dim old staircase
+behind those doors, and the empty rooms above, and the little Bible
+lying thicker than ever with dust, on the yellowed pillows of
+Jacqueline's bed.
+
+Suddenly she stood still; the noise she had just heard, was not made by
+the pattering of mice along the rafters, or even the creaking of the
+withered vines that clung against the walls! It was a human sound, a
+clicking as of the gate without, a crunching as of feet dragging slowly
+over the snow. Was Mrs. Hamlin coming after all, or--she could not
+formulate her fear; a real and palpable danger from the outside world
+had never crossed her fancy till now. What if some stranger should
+enter, some tramp, some--a step on the porch without made her hair rise
+on her forehead; she clasped her hands and stood trembling, when a
+sudden moan startled her ears, followed by the sound of a heavy fall on
+the threshold, and throwing aside all hesitation, she flung herself
+forward, and tearing open the door, saw--oh, angels that rejoice in
+heaven over one sinner that repenteth, let your voices go up in praise
+this night, for Jacqueline Japha has returned to the home of her
+fathers!
+
+She had fainted, and lay quite still on the threshold, but Paula, who
+was all energy now, soon had her in the centre of the sitting-room, and
+was applying to her such restoratives as had been provided against this
+very emergency. She was holding the poor weary head on her knee, when
+the wan eyes opened, and looking up, grew wild with a disappointment
+which Paula was quick to appreciate.
+
+"You are looking for Margery," said she. "Margery will come by-and-by;
+she is not well to-night and I am taking her place, but when she hears
+you have returned, it will take more than sickness to keep her to her
+bed. I am Paula, and I love you, too, and welcome you--oh, welcome you
+so gladly."
+
+The yearning look which had crept into the woman's bleared and faded
+eyes, deepened and softened strangely.
+
+"You are the one who told me about Margery," said she, "and bade me
+bring my baby here to be buried. I remember, though I seemed to pay no
+heed then. Night and day through all my pain, I have remembered, and as
+soon as I could walk, stole away from the hospital. It has killed me,
+but I shall at least die in my father's house."
+
+Paula stooped and kissed her. "I am going to get your bed ready," said
+she. And without any hesitation now, she opened the door that led into
+those dim inner regions that but a few minutes before had inspired her
+with such dread.
+
+She went straight to Jacqueline's room. "It must all be according to
+Mrs. Hamlin's wishes," she cried, and lit the fire on the hearth, and
+pulled back the curtains yet farther from the bed, and gave the benefit
+of her womanly touch to the various objects about her, till cheerfulness
+seemed to reign in a spot once so peopled with hideous memories. Going
+back to Jacqueline, she helped her to rise, and throwing her arm about
+her waist, led her into the hall. But here memory, ghastly accusing
+memory, stepped in, and catching the wretched woman in its grasp, shook
+her, body and soul, till her shrieks reverberated through that desolate
+house. But Paula with gentle persistence urged her on, and smiling upon
+her like an angel of peace and mercy, led her up step after step of that
+dreadful staircase, till at last she saw her safely in the room of her
+early girlhood.
+
+The sight of it seemed at first to horrify but afterwards to soothe the
+forlorn being thus brought face to face with her own past. She moved
+over to the fire and held out her two cramped hands to the blaze, as if
+she saw an altar of mercy in its welcoming glow. From these she passed
+tottering and weak to the embroidery-frame, which she looked at for a
+moment with something almost like a smile; but she hurried by the
+mirror, and scarcely glanced at a portrait of herself which hung on the
+wall over her head. To sink on the bed seemed to be her object, and
+thither Paula accompanied her. But when she came to where it stood, and
+saw the clothes turned down and the pillows heaped at the head, and the
+little Bible lying open for her in the midst, she gave a great and
+mighty sob, and flinging herself down upon her knees, wept with a
+breaking up of her whole nature, in which her sins, red though they were
+as crimson, seemed to feel the touch of the Divine love, and vanish away
+in the oblivion He prepares for all His penitent ones.
+
+When everything was prepared and Jacqueline was laid quiet in bed, Paula
+stole out and down the stairs and wended her way to Mrs. Hamlin's
+cottage. She found her sitting up, but far from well, and very feeble.
+At the first sight of Paula's face, she started erect and seem to forget
+her weakness in a moment.
+
+"What is it?" she asked; "you look as though you had been gazing on the
+faces of angels. Has--has my hope come true at last? Has Jacqueline
+returned? Oh, has my poor, lost, erring child come back?"
+
+Paula drew near and gently steadied Mrs. Hamlin's swaying form. "Yes,"
+she smiled; and with the calmness of one who has entered the gates of
+peace, whispered in low and reverent tones: "She lies in the bed that
+you spread for her, with the Bible held close to her breast."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There are moments when the world about us seems to pause; when the
+hopes, fears and experiences of all humanity appear to sway away and
+leave us standing alone in the presence of our own great hope or
+scarcely comprehended fear. Such a moment was that which saw Paula
+re-enter Jacqueline's presence with Mrs. Hamlin at her side.
+
+Leaving the latter near the door, she went towards the bed. Why did she
+recoil and glance back at Mrs. Hamlin with that startled and
+apprehensive look? The face of Jacqueline was changed--changed as only
+one presence could change it, though the eyes were clearer than when she
+left her a few minutes before, and the lips were not without the shadow
+of a smile.
+
+"She is dying," whispered Paula, coming back to Mrs. Hamlin; "dying, and
+you have waited so long!"
+
+But the look that met hers from that aged face, was not one of grief;
+and startled, she knew not why, Paula drew aside, while Mrs. Hamlin
+crossed the room and quietly knelt down by her darling's side.
+
+"Margery!"
+
+"Jacqueline!"
+
+The two cries rang through the room, then all was quiet again.
+
+"You have come back!" were the next words Paula heard. "How could I ever
+have doubted that you would!"
+
+"I have been driven back by awful suffering," was the answer; and
+another silence fell. Suddenly Jacqueline's voice was heard. "Love slew
+me, and now love has saved me!" exclaimed she. And there came no answer
+to that cry, and Paula felt the shadow of a great awe settle down upon
+her, and moving nearer to where the aged woman knelt by her darling's
+bedside, she looked in her bended face and then in the one upturned on
+the pillow, and knew that of all the hearts that but an instant before
+had beat with earth's deepest emotion in that quiet room, one alone
+throbbed on to thank God and take courage.
+
+And the fire which had been kindled to welcome the prodigal back, burned
+on; and from the hollow depths of the great room below, came the sound
+of a clock as it struck the hour, seven!
+
+
+
+
+XLVI.
+
+THE MAN CUMMINS.
+
+     Oh day and night, but this is wondrous strange."--HENRY V.
+
+     "Shut up in measureless content."--OTHELLO.
+
+
+The lights were yet shining in Mr. Stuyvesant's parlors, though the
+guests were gone, who but a short time before had assembled there to
+witness the marriage of Cicely's dear friend, Paula.
+
+At one end of the room stood Mr. Sylvester and Bertram, the former
+gazing with the eyes of a bridegroom, at the delicate white-clad figure
+of Paula, just leaving the apartment with Cicely.
+
+"I have but one cause for regret," said Mr. Sylvester as the door
+closed. "I could have wished that you and Cicely had participated in our
+joy and received the minister's benediction at the same moment as
+ourselves."
+
+"Yes," said Bertram with a short sigh. "But it will come in time. It
+cannot be but that our efforts must finally succeed. I have just had a
+new idea; that of putting the watchman on the hunt for Hopgood. They are
+old friends, and he ought to know all the other's haunts and possible
+hiding-places."
+
+"If Fanning could have helped us, he would have told us long ago. He
+knows that Hopgood is missing and that we are ready to pay well for any
+information concerning him."
+
+"But they are old cronies, and possibly Fanning is keeping quiet out of
+consideration for his friend."
+
+"No; I have had a talk with Fanning, and there was no mistaking his look
+of surprise when told the other had run away under suspicion of being
+connected with a robbery on the bank's effects. He knows no more of
+Hopgood than we do, or his wife does, or the police even. It is a
+strange mystery, and one to which I fear we shall never obtain the key.
+But don't let me discourage you; after a suitable time Mr. Stuyvesant
+will--"
+
+He paused, for that gentleman was approaching him.
+
+"There is a man outside who insists upon seeing me; says he knows there
+has just been a wedding here, but that the matter he has to communicate
+is very important, and won't bear putting off. The name on his card is
+Cummins; I am afraid I shall have to admit him, that is, if you have no
+objection?"
+
+Mr. Sylvester and Bertram at once drew back with ready acquiescence.
+They had scarcely taken their stand at the other end of the apartment,
+when the man came in. He was of robust build, round, precise and
+business-like. He had taken off his hat, but still wore his overcoat;
+his face in spite of a profusion of red whiskers and a decided pair of
+goggles, was earnest and straightforward. He walked at once up to Mr.
+Stuyvesant.
+
+"Your pardon," said he, in a quick tone. "But I hear you have been
+somewhat exercised of late over the disappearance of certain bonds from
+one of the boxes in the Madison Bank. I am a detective, and in the
+course of my duty have come upon a few facts that may help to explain
+matters."
+
+Mr. Sylvester and Bertram at once started forward; this was a topic that
+demanded their attention as well as that of the master of the house.
+
+The man cast them a quick look from behind his goggles, and seeming to
+recognize them, included them in his next question.
+
+"What do you think of the watchman, Fanning?"
+
+"Think? we don't think," uttered Mr. Stuyvesant sharply. "He has been in
+the employ of the bank for twelve years, and we know him to be honest."
+
+"Yet he is the man who stole your bonds."
+
+"Impossible!"
+
+"The very man."
+
+Mr. Sylvester stepped up to him. "Who are you, and how do you know
+this?"
+
+"I have said my name is Cummins, and I know this, because I have wormed
+myself into the man's confidence and have got the bonds, together with
+his confession, here in my pocket." And he drew out the long lost bonds,
+which he handed to their owner, with a bit of paper on which was
+in-scribed in the handwriting of the watchman, an acknowledgment to the
+effect that he, alone and unassisted, had perpetrated the robbery which
+had raised such scandal in the bank and led to the disappearance of
+Hopgood.
+
+"And the man himself?" cried Bertram, when they had all read this.
+"Where is he?"
+
+"Oh, I allowed him to escape."
+
+Mr. Sylvester frowned.
+
+"There is something about this I don't understand," said he. "How came
+you to take such an interest in this matter; and why did you let the man
+escape after acknowledging his crime?"
+
+With a quick, not undignified action, Cummins stepped back. "Gentlemen,"
+said he, "it is allowable in a detective in the course of his duty, to
+resort to means for eliciting the truth, that in any other cause and for
+any other purpose, would be denominated as unmanly, if not mean and
+contemptible. When I heard of this robbery, as I did the day after its
+perpetration, my mind flew immediately to the watchman as the possible
+culprit. I did not know that he had done the deed, and I did not see how
+he could have possessed the means of doing it, but I had been acquainted
+with him for some time, and certain expressions which I had overheard
+him use--expressions that had passed over me lightly at the time, now
+recurred to my mind with startling distinctness. 'If a man knew the
+combination of the vault door, how easily he could make himself rich
+from the contents of those boxes!' was one, I remember; and another, 'I
+have worked in the bank for twelve years and have not so much money laid
+up against a rainy day, as would furnish Mr. Sylvester in cigars for a
+month.' The fact that he had no opportunity to learn the combination,
+was the only stumbling-block in the way of my conclusions. But that
+obstacle was soon removed. In a talk with the janitor's wife--a good
+woman, sirs, but a trifle conceited--I learned that he had once had the
+very opportunity of which I speak, provided he was smart enough to
+recognize the fact. The way it came about was this. Hopgood, who always
+meant to do about the right thing, as I know, was one morning very sick,
+so sick that when the time came for him to go down and open the vaults
+for the day, he couldn't stir from his bed, or at least thought he
+couldn't. Twice had the watchman rung for him, and twice had he tried to
+get up, only to fall back again on his pillow. At last the call became
+imperative; the clerks would soon be in, and the books were not even in
+readiness for them. Calling his wife to him, he asked if she thought she
+could open the vault door provided she knew the combination. She
+returned a quite eager, 'yes,' being a naturally vain woman and moreover
+a little sore over the fact that her husband never entrusted her with
+any of his secrets. 'Then,' said he, 'listen to those three numbers that
+I give you; and turn the knob accordingly,' explaining the matter in a
+way best calculated to enlighten her as to what she had to do. She
+professed herself as understanding perfectly and went off in quite a
+nutter of satisfaction to accomplish her task. But though he did not
+know it at the time, it seems that her heart failed her when she got
+into the hall, and struck with fear lest she should forget the numbers
+before she got to the foot of the stairs, she came back, and carefully
+wrote them down on a piece of paper, armed with which she started for
+the second time to fulfil her task. The watchman was in the bank when
+she entered, and to his expressions of surprise, she answered that her
+husband was ill and that she was going to open the vaults. He offered to
+help her, but she stared at him with astonishment, and waiting till he
+had walked to the other end of the bank, proceeded to the vault door,
+and after carefully consulting the paper in her hand, was about to turn
+the knob as directed, when Hopgood himself came into the room. He was
+too anxious, he said, to keep in bed, and though he trembled at every
+step, came forward and accomplished the task himself. He did not see the
+paper in his wife's hand, nor notice her when she tore it up and threw
+the pieces in the waste-basket near-by, but the watchman may have
+observed her, and as it afterwards proved, did; and thus became
+acquainted with the combination that unlocked the outer vault doors."
+
+"Humph!" broke in Mr. Sylvester, "if this is true, why didn't Hopgood
+inform me of the matter when I questioned him so closely?"
+
+"Because he had forgotten the circumstance. He was in a fever at the
+time, and having eventually unlocked the vault himself, lost sight of
+the fact that he had previously sent his wife to do it. He went back to
+his bed after the clerks came in, and did not get up again till night.
+He may have thought the whole occurrence part of the delirium which more
+than once assailed him that day."
+
+"I remember his being sick," said Bertram; "it was two or three days
+before the robbery."
+
+"The very day before," corrected the man; "but let me tell my story in
+my own way. Having learned from Mrs. Hopgood of this opportunity which
+had been given to Fanning, I made up my mind to sift the matter. Being
+as I have said a friend of his, I didn't, want to peach on him unless he
+was guilty. To blast an honest man's reputation, is, I think, one of the
+meanest tricks of which a fellow can be guilty: but the truth I had to
+know, and in order to learn it, a deep and delicate game was necessary.
+Gentlemen, when the police have strong suspicions against a person whose
+reputation is above reproach and whose conduct affords no opportunity
+for impeachment, they set a springe for him. One of their number
+disguises himself, and making the acquaintance of this person,
+insinuates himself by slow degrees--often at the cost of months of
+effort--into his friendship and if possible into his confidence. 'Tis a
+detestable piece of business, but it is all that will serve in some
+cases, and has at least the merit of being as dangerous as it is
+detestable. This plan, I undertook with Fanning. Changing my appearance
+to suit the necessities of the case, I took board in the small house in
+Brooklyn where he puts up, and being well acquainted with his tastes,
+knew how to adapt myself to his liking. He was a busy man, and being
+obliged by his duties to turn night into day, had not much time to
+bestow upon me or any one else; but heedful of this, I managed to make
+the most of the spare moments that saw us together, and ere long we were
+very good comrades, and further on, very good friends. The day when I
+first ventured to suggest that honesty was all very well as long as it
+paid, was a memorable one to me. In that cast of the die I was either to
+win or lose the game I had undertaken. I won. After a feint or two, to
+see if I were in earnest, he fell into the net, and though he did not
+commit himself then, it was not long before he came to me, and
+deliberately requested my assistance in disposing of some bonds which he
+was smart enough to acquire, but not daring enough to attempt to sell.
+Of course the whole story came out, and I was sympathetic enough till I
+got the bonds into my hands, then--But I leave you to imagine what
+followed. Enough that I wrung this confession from him, and that in
+consideration of the doubtful game I had played upon him, let him go
+where he is by this time beyond the chance of pursuit."
+
+
+"But your duty to your superior; your oath as a member of the force?"
+
+"My superior is here!" said the man pointing to Mr. Sylvester; "an
+unconscious one I own, but still my superior; and as for my being a
+member of the force, that was true five years ago, but not to-day." And
+brushing off his whiskers with one hand and taking off his goggles with
+the other, Hopgood, the janitor, stood before them!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a radiant figure that met Cicely, when she came down stairs with
+Paula, and a joyous group that soon surrounded the now blushing and
+embarrassed janitor, with questions and remarks concerning this great
+and unexpected development of affairs. But the fervor with which Mr.
+Stuyvesant clasped Bertram's hand, and the look with which Cicely turned
+from her young lover to bestow a final kiss upon the departing bride,
+was worth all the pains and self-denial of the last few weeks--or so the
+janitor thought, who with a quicker comprehension than usual, had
+divined the situation and rejoiced in the result. But the most curious
+thing of all was to observe how, with the taking off of his goggles,
+Hopgood had relapsed into his old shrinking, easily embarrassed self.
+The man who but a few minutes before had related in their hearing a
+clear and succinct narrative, now shrank if a question was put him, and
+stammered in quite his ancient fashion, when he answered Mr. Sylvester's
+shake of the hand, by a hurried:
+
+"I am going to see my wife now, sir. She's a good woman, if a little
+flighty, and will be the last one in the future to beg me to put more
+confidence in her. Will you tell me where she is, sir?"
+
+Mr. Sylvester informed him; then added, "But look here, Hopgood, answer
+me one thing before you go. Why is it that with such talents as you
+possess, you didn't stay in the police force? You are a regular genius
+in your way, and ought not to drone away your existence as a janitor."
+
+"Ah, sir," replied the other, shaking his head, "a man who is only
+capable of assuming one disguise, isn't good for much as a professional
+detective. Goggles and red whiskers will deceive one rogue, but not
+fifty. My eyes were my bane, sir, and ultimately cost me my place. While
+I could cover them up I was all right. It not only made a man of me,
+leaving me free to talk and freer to think, but disguised me so, my best
+friends couldn't recognize me; but after awhile my goggles were too well
+known for me to be considered of much further use to the department, and
+I was obliged to send in my resignation. It is too bad, but I have no
+versatility, sir. I'm either the clumsy, stammering creature you have
+always known, or else I am the man Cummins you saw here a few minutes
+ago."
+
+"In either case an honest fellow," answered Mr. Sylvester, and allowed
+the janitor to depart.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One more scene, and this in the house which Paula is henceforth to make
+a home for herself and its once melancholy owner. They have come back
+from their wedding-journey, and are standing in their old fashion, he at
+the foot, and she half way up the stairs. Suddenly she turns and
+descends to his side.
+
+"No, I will not wait," said she. "Here, on this spot we both love so
+well, and in this the first hour of our return, I will unburden my mind
+of what I have to say. Edward, is there nothing of all the past that
+still rests upon you like a shadow? Not one little regret you could wish
+taken away?"
+
+"No," said he, enfolding her in his arms with a solemn smile. "The great
+gift which I hold is the fruit of that past, perhaps; I cannot wish it
+changed."
+
+"But the sense of obligation never fulfilled, would you not be happier
+if that were removed?"
+
+"Perhaps," he said, "but it cannot be now. I shall have to live without
+being perfectly happy."
+
+She lifted her face and her smile shone like a star. "Oh God is good,"
+she cried, "you shall not lack being perfectly happy;" and taking a
+little paper out of her pocket she put it in his hand. "We found that
+hidden in Jacqueline Japha's breast, when we went to lay her out for
+burial."
+
+It was only a line; but it made Mr. Sylvester's brow flush and his voice
+tremble.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Whatever I own, and I have been told that I am far from penniless, I
+desire to have given to the dear and disinterested girl that first told
+me of Margery Hamlin's vigil."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Paula, Paula, Paula, thou art indeed my good gift! May God make me
+worthy of your love and of this His last and most unexpected mercy!"
+
+And the look which crossed her face, was that sweet and unearthly
+radiance which speaks of perfect peace.
+
+
+
+
+PUBLICATIONS OF G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS.
+
+
+THE LEAVENWORTH CASE. By ANNA KATHERINE GREEN.
+
+     "Wilkie Collins, in his best period, never invented a more
+     ingeniously constructed plot, nor held the reader in such
+     suspense until the final _denoument_. The most blase
+     novel-reader will be unable to put aside 'The Leavenworth Case'
+     until he has read the last sentence and mastered the mystery
+     which has baffled him from the beginning."--_N. Y. Evening
+     Express._
+
+A MAN'S A MAN FOR A' THAT.
+
+     "A novel of decided excellence. * * * Contains delicate and
+     charming work. Thoroughly clever * * * Its spirit is one of
+     robust and healthy enthusiasm for manliness and
+     womanliness."--_N. Y. Evening Post._
+
+THE BRETON MILLS: A ROMANCE OF NEW ENGLAND LIFE. By CHARLES J. BELLAMY.
+
+
+     "Nothing from the pen of Mrs. Burnett was ever more intensely
+     dramatic."--_Jackson Daily Citizen._
+
+     "Looked at from a purely literary point of view it is almost
+     faultless. It shows a hand both of culture and
+     power."--_Detroit Evening News._
+
+CUPID AND THE SPHINX. By HARFORD FLEMMING.
+
+     "Its characters are skilfully drawn, its incidents well
+     conceived, the dialogues brilliant, and the story told with
+     ease and gracefulness."--_Boston Transcript._
+
+     "The suggestion of the story is extremely beautiful, and its
+     treatment graceful and enchanting throughout."--_Hartford
+     Evening Post._
+
+A STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE. By ANNA KATHERINE GREEN.
+
+     "Wilkie Collins would not need to be ashamed of the
+     construction of this story. * * * It keeps the reader's close
+     attention from first to last."--_N. Y. Evening Post._
+
+     "Shows the same skill as 'The Leavenworth Case' in the
+     management of the plot and the incidents."--_Boston
+     Transcript._
+
+THE HEART OF IT: A Romance of East and West. By WILLIAM O. STODDARD.
+
+     "Uncommonly good reading, even for that uncommonly readable
+     Series."--_Philadelphia Times._
+
+     "An American novel, dealing with a few well-chosen characters
+     and involving a striking and original plot. * * * A thoroughly
+     entertaining piece of fiction."--_Boston Traveller._
+
+UNCLE JACK'S EXECUTORS. By ANNETTE LUCILLE NOBLE.
+
+     "Comes from a writer of unusual talent. * * * Remarkable for
+     its sketches of character, its naturalness, its frequent
+     flashes of intellectual brightness, and its genuine humor. * *
+     * One of the best novels of the season and deserving of a
+     permanent place among works of genuine American fiction."--_The
+     Churchman._
+
+THE STRANDED SHIP: A STORY OF SEA AND SHORE. By L. CLARKE DAVIS.
+
+     "Full of the finest dramatic action. * * * The work of a man of
+     firm genius and exquisite delicacy of touch."--_N. Y. Evening
+     Post._
+
+NESTLENOOK. By LEONARD KIP, Author of "The Dead Marquise," "Under the
+Bells," etc.
+
+     Of "The Dead Marquise" the _Boston Globe_ writes: "The book is
+     admirable and its style almost perfect in its transparent
+     simplicity."
+
+
+
+
+THE TRANS-ATLANTIC SERIES.
+
+I. CAPTAIN FRACASSE. By THEOPHILE GAUTIER. Translated by E. M. BEAM.
+
+     Of Le Capitaine Fracasse, Henry James, Jr., writes: "In this
+     delightful work Gautier surpassed himself, and produced the
+     model of picturesque romances. * * * The great charm of the
+     book is a sort of combined geniality of feeling and coloring,
+     which leaves one in doubt whether the author is the most joyous
+     of painters or the cleverest of poets. * * * Le Capitaine
+     Fracasse ranks, in our opinion, with the first works of
+     imagination produced in our day."
+
+     "A masterpiece of literary art."--_N. Y. Nation._
+
+     "The translation is most admirable."--_Troy Whig._
+
+II. THE AMAZON. By FRANZ DINGELSTEDT. Translated by JAS. MORGAN HART.
+
+     "Full of scintillations of wit. * * * Sparkles throughout with
+     vivacity and sparkling humor."--_Leipsic Blaetter fuer Lit. Unt._
+
+     "A delightful novel, characterized by force and fire, strong
+     dramatic power, and rare skill in its analysis of human motives
+     and character."--_Philadelphia Times._
+
+MOTHER MOLLY. By FRANCES MARY PEARD.
+
+     "The book is charming; and, more than this, it is a
+     well-finished historical study of stirring
+     times."--_Philadelphia Times._
+
+     "It deserves to rank among the best English stories of the
+     year."--_Louisville Courier-Journal._
+
+THE LOST CASKET. Translated from _"La Main Coupee"_ of F. de BOISGOBEY
+by S. LEE.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Sword of Damocles, by Anna Katharine Green
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SWORD OF DAMOCLES ***
+
+***** This file should be named 33301.txt or 33301.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/3/3/3/0/33301/
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diff --git a/old/old-2024-06-09/33301-0.txt b/old/old-2024-06-09/33301-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ad245bd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/old-2024-06-09/33301-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,15576 @@
+ï»żThe Project Gutenberg eBook of The Sword of Damocles, by Anna Katharine Green
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: The Sword of Damocles
+
+Author: Anna Katharine Green
+       A Story of New York Life
+
+Release Date: July 31, 2010 [eBook #33301]
+[Most recently updated: September 22, 2023]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+Revised by Richard Tonsing.
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SWORD OF DAMOCLES ***
+
+
+
+
+                        THE SWORD OF DAMOCLES
+
+                      A STORY OF NEW YORK LIFE.
+
+
+                       BY ANNA KATHARINE GREEN
+
+    AUTHOR OF “THE LEAVENWORTH CASE,” “A STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE,” ETC.
+
+
+NEW YORK
+G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
+27 & 29 West 23D Street
+
+1881
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1881, BY G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS.
+
+
+                      TO
+                   MY FATHER
+              I DEDICATE THIS BOOK
+    AS EXPRESSING SOME OF THE PRINCIPLES OF
+            JUSTICE AND MERCY WHICH,
+         BY PRECEPT AND EXAMPLE, HE HAS
+              INSTILLED INTO MY
+                    BREAST
+             FROM EARLY CHILDHOOD.
+
+    NEW YORK, _April, 1881._
+
+
+
+     “When all else fails love saves”
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+BOOK I. TWO MEN.
+
+I.—A WANDERER
+
+II.—A DISCUSSION
+
+III.—A MYSTERIOUS SUMMONS
+
+IV.—SEARCHINGS
+
+V.—THE RUBICON
+
+VI.—A HAND CLASP
+
+VII.—MRS. SYLVESTER
+
+VIII.—SHADOWS OF THE PAST
+
+IX.—PAULA
+
+X.—THE BARRED DOOR
+
+XI.—MISS STUYVESANT
+
+XII.—MISS BELINDA MAKES CONDITIONS
+
+XIII.—THE END OF MY LADY’S PICTURE
+
+
+BOOK II. LIFE AND DEATH.
+
+XIV.—MISS BELINDA HAS A QUESTION TO DECIDE
+
+XV.—AN ADVENTURE—OR SOMETHING MORE
+
+XVI.—THE SWORD OF DAMOCLES
+
+XVII.—GRAVE AND GAY
+
+XVIII.—IN THE NIGHT WATCHES
+
+XIX.—A DAY AT THE BANK
+
+XX.—THE DREGS IN THE CUP
+
+XXI.—DEPARTURE
+
+XXII.—HOPGOOD
+
+
+BOOK III. THE JAPHA MYSTERY.
+
+XXIII.—THE POEM
+
+XXIV.—THE JAPHA MANSION
+
+XXV.—JACQUELINE
+
+XXVI.—A MAN’S JUSTICE AND A WOMAN’S MERCY
+
+XXVII.—THE LONE WATCHER
+
+XXVIII.—SUNSHINE ON THE HILLS
+
+XXIX.—MIST IN THE VALLEY
+
+
+BOOK IV. FROM A. TO Z.
+
+XXX.—MISS BELINDA PRESENTS MR. SYLVESTER WITH A CHRISTMAS GIFT
+
+XXXI.—A QUESTION
+
+XXXII.—FULL TIDE
+
+XXXIII.—TWO LETTERS
+
+XXXIV.—PAULA MAKES HER CHOICE
+
+XXXV.—THE FALLING OF THE SWORD
+
+XXXVI.—MORNING
+
+XXXVII.—THE OPINION OF A CERTAIN NOTED DETECTIVE
+
+XXXVIII.—BLUEBEARD’S CHAMBER
+
+XXXIX.—FROM A. TO Z
+
+XL.—HALF-PAST SEVEN
+
+
+BOOK V. WOMAN’S LOVE.
+
+XLI.—THE WORK OF AN HOUR
+
+XLII.—PAULA RELATES A STORY SHE HAS HEARD
+
+XLIII.—DETERMINATION
+
+XLIV.—IN MR. STUYVESANT’S PARLORS
+
+XLV.—“THE HOUR OF SIX IS SACRED!”
+
+XLVI.—THE MAN CUMMINS
+
+
+
+
+     Damocles, one of the courtiers of Dionysius, was perpetually
+     extolling with rapture that tyrant’s treasures, grandeur, the
+     number of his troops, the extent of his dominions, the
+     magnificence of his palaces, and the universal abundance of all
+     good things and enjoyments in his possession; always repeating,
+     that never man was happier than Dionysius. “Since you are of
+     that opinion,” said the tyrant to him one day, “will you taste
+     and make proof of my felicity in person?” The offer was
+     accepted with joy; Damocles was placed upon a golden couch,
+     covered with carpets richly embroidered. The side-boards were
+     loaded with vessels of gold and silver. The most beautiful
+     slaves in the most splendid habits stood around, ready to serve
+     him at the slightest signal. The most exquisite essences and
+     perfumes had not been spared. The table was spread with
+     proportionate magnificence. Damocles was all joy, and looked
+     upon himself as the happiest man in the world; when
+     unfortunately casting up his eyes, he beheld over his head the
+     point of a sword, which hung from the roof only by a single
+     horse-hair.
+
+     ROLLIN.
+
+
+
+
+     THE SWORD OF DAMOCLES.
+
+
+
+
+     BOOK I.
+
+     TWO MEN.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+A WANDERER.
+
+     “There’s no such word.”—BULWER.
+
+
+A wind was blowing through the city. Not a gentle and balmy zephyr,
+stirring the locks on gentle ladies’ foreheads and rustling the curtains
+in elegant boudoirs, but a chill and bitter gale that rushed with a
+swoop through narrow alleys and forsaken courtyards, biting the cheeks
+of the few solitary wanderers that still lingered abroad in the darkened
+streets.
+
+In front of a cathedral that reared its lofty steeple in the midst of
+the squalid houses and worse than squalid saloons of one of the
+dreariest portions of the East Side, stood the form of a woman. She had
+paused in her rush down the narrow street to listen to the music,
+perhaps, or to catch a glimpse of the light that now and then burst from
+the widely swinging doors as they opened and shut upon some tardy
+worshipper.
+
+She was tall and fearful looking; her face, when the light struck it,
+was seared and desperate; gloom and desolation were written on all the
+lines of her rigid but wasted form, and when she shuddered under the
+gale, it was with that force and abandon to which passion lends its aid,
+and in which the soul proclaims its doom.
+
+Suddenly the doors before her swung wide and the preacher’s voice was
+heard: “Love God and you will love your fellow-men. Love your fellow-men
+and you best show your love to God.”
+
+She heard, started, and the charm was broken. “Love!” she echoed with a
+horrible laugh; “there is no love in heaven or on earth!”
+
+And she swept by, and the winds followed and the darkness swallowed her
+up like a gulf.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+A DISCUSSION.
+
+     “Young men think old men fools, and old men know young men to
+     be so.”—RAY’S PROVERBS.
+
+
+“And you are actually in earnest?”
+
+“I am.”
+
+The first speaker, a fine-looking gentleman of some forty years of age,
+drummed with his fingers on the table before him and eyed the face of
+the young man who had repeated this assent so emphatically, with a
+certain close scrutiny indicative of surprise.
+
+“It is an unlooked-for move for you to make,” he remarked at length.
+“Your success as a pianist has been so decided, I confess I do not
+understand why you should desire to abandon a profession that in five
+years’ time has procured you both competence and a very enviable
+reputation—for the doubtful prospects of Wall Street, too!” he added
+with a deep and thoughtful frown that gave still further impressiveness
+to his strongly marked features.
+
+The young man with a sweep of his eye over the luxurious apartment in
+which they sat, shrugged his shoulders with that fine and nonchalant
+grace which was one of his chief characteristics.
+
+“With such a pilot as yourself, I ought to be able to steer clear of the
+shoals,” said he, a frank smile illumining a face that was rather
+interesting than handsome.
+
+The elder gentleman did not return the smile. Instead of that he
+remained gazing at the ample coal-fire that burned in the grate before
+him with a look that to the young musician was simply inexplicable. “You
+see the ship in haven,” he murmured at last; “but do not consider what
+storms it has weathered or what perils escaped. It is a voyage I would
+encourage no son of mine to undertake.”
+
+“Yet you are not the man to shrink from danger or to hesitate in a
+course you had marked out for yourself, because of the struggle it
+involved or the difficulties it presented!” the young man exclaimed
+almost involuntarily as his glance lingered with a certain sort of
+fascination on the powerful brow and steady if somewhat melancholy eye
+of his companion.
+
+“No; but danger and difficulty should not be sought, only subdued when
+encountered. If you were driven into this path, I should say, ‘God pity
+you!’ and hold you out my hand to steady you along its precipices and
+above its sudden quicksands. But you are not driven to it. Your
+profession offers you the means of an ample livelihood while your good
+heart and fair talents insure you ultimate and honorable success, both
+in the social and artistic world. For a man of twenty-five such
+prospects are not common and he must be difficult to please not to be
+satisfied with them.”
+
+“Yes,” said the other rising with a fitful movement but instantly
+sitting again; “I have nothing to complain of as the world goes,
+only—Sir,” he exclaimed with a sudden determination that lent a force
+to his features they had hitherto lacked, “you speak of being driven
+into a certain course; what do you mean by that?”
+
+“I mean,” returned the other; “forced by circumstances to enter a line
+of business to which many others, if not all others are preferable.”
+
+“You speak strongly, speculation evidently has none of your sympathy,
+notwithstanding the favorable results which have accrued to you from it.
+But excuse me, by circumstances you mean poverty, I suppose, and the
+lack of every other opening to wealth and position. You would not
+consider the desire to make a large fortune in a short space of time a
+circumstance of a sufficiently determining nature to reconcile you to my
+entering Wall Street speculation?”
+
+The elder gentleman rose, not as the other had done with a restless
+impulse quickly subsiding at the first excuse, but forcibly and with a
+feverish impatience that to appearance was somewhat out of proportion to
+the occasion. “A large fortune in a short space of time!” he reiterated,
+pausing where he had risen with an eagle glance at his companion and a
+ringing tone in his voice that bespoke a deep but hitherto suppressed
+agitation. “It is the alluring inscription above the pitfall into which
+many a noble youth has fallen; the battle-cry to a struggle that has led
+many a strong man the way of ruin; the guide-post to a life whose
+feverish days and sleepless nights offer but poor compensation for the
+sudden splendors and as sudden reverses attached to it. I had rather you
+had accounted for this sudden freak of yours by the strongest aspiration
+after power than by this cry of the merely mercenary man who in his
+desire to enjoy wealth, prefers to win it by a stroke of luck rather
+than conquer it by a life of endeavor.” He stopped. “I am aware that
+this tirade against the ladder by which I myself have risen so rapidly,
+must strike you as in ill-taste. But Bertram, I am interested in your
+welfare and am willing to incur some slight charge of inconsistency in
+order to insure it,” and here he turned upon his companion with that
+expression of extreme gentleness which lent such a peculiar charm to his
+countenance and explained perhaps the almost unlimited power he held
+over the hearts and minds of those who came within the circle of his
+influence.
+
+“You are very good, sir,” murmured his young friend, who to explain
+matters at once was in reality the nephew of this Wall Street magnate,
+though from the fact of his having taken another name on entering the
+musical profession, was not generally known as such. “No one, not even
+my father himself, could have been more considerate and kind; but I do
+not think you understand me, or rather I should say I do not think I
+have made myself perfectly intelligible to you. It is not for the sake
+of wealth itself or the eclat attending its possession that I desire an
+immediate fortune, but that by means of it I may attain another object
+dearer than wealth, and more precious than my career.”
+
+The elder gentleman turned quickly, evidently much surprised, and cast a
+sudden inquiring glance at his nephew, who blushed with a modest
+ingenuousness pleasing to see in one so well accustomed to the critical
+gaze of his fellow-men.
+
+“Yes,” said he, as if in answer to that look, “I am in love.”
+
+A deep silence for a moment pervaded the apartment, a sombre silence
+almost startling to young Mandeville, who had expected some audible
+expression to follow this announcement if only the good-natured “Pooh!
+pooh!” of the matured man of the world in the presence of ardent
+youthful enthusiasm. What could it mean? Looking up he encountered his
+uncle’s eye fixed upon him with the last expression he could have
+anticipated seeing there, namely that of actual and unmistakable alarm.
+
+“You are displeased,” Mandeville exclaimed. “You have thought me proof
+against such a passion, or perhaps you do not believe in the passion
+itself!” Then with a sudden remembrance of the notable if somewhat
+indolent loveliness of his uncle’s wife, blushed again at his unusual
+want of tact, while his eye with an involuntary impulse sought the large
+panel at their right where, in the full bloom of her first youth, the
+lady of the house smiled upon all beholders.
+
+“I do not believe in that passion influencing a man’s career,” his uncle
+replied with no apparent attention to the other’s embarrassment. “A
+woman needs be possessed of uncommon excellences to justify a man in
+leaving a path where success is certain, for one where it is not only
+doubtful but if attained must bring many a regret and heart-ache in its
+train. Beauty is not sufficient,” he went on with sterner and sterner
+significance, “though it were of an angelic order. There must be worth.”
+And here his mind’s eye if not that of his bodily sense, certainly
+followed the glance of his companion.
+
+“I believe there is worth,” the young man replied; “certainly, it is not
+her beauty that charms me. I do not even know if she _is_ beautiful,” he
+continued.
+
+
+“And you believe you love!” the elder exclaimed after another short
+pause.
+
+There was so much of bitterness in the tone in which this was uttered,
+that Mandeville forgot its incredulity. “I think I must,” returned he
+with a certain masculine naïveté not out of keeping with his general
+style of face and manner, “else I should not be here. Three weeks ago I
+was satisfied with my profession, if not enthusiastic over it; to-day I
+ask nothing but to be allowed to enter upon some business that in three
+years’ time at least will place me where I can be the fit mate of any
+woman in this land, that is not worth her millions.”
+
+“The woman for whom you have conceived this violent attachment is, then,
+above you in social position?”
+
+“Yes, sir, or so considered, which amounts to the same thing, as far as
+I am concerned.”
+
+“Bertram, I have lived longer than you and have seen much of both social
+and domestic life, and I tell you no woman is worth such a sacrifice on
+the part of a man as you propose. No woman of to-day, I should say; our
+mothers were different. The very fact that this young lady of whom you
+speak, obliges you to change your whole course of life in order to
+obtain her, ought to be sufficient to prove to you—” He stopped
+suddenly, arrested by the young man’s lifted hand. “She does not oblige
+you, then?”
+
+“Not on her own account, sir. This lily,” lifting a vase of blossoms at
+his elbow, “could not be more innocent of the necessities that govern
+the social circle it adorns, than the pure, single-minded girl to whom I
+have dedicated what is best and noblest in my manhood. It is her
+father—”
+
+“Ah, her father!”
+
+“Yes, sir,” the young man pursued, more and more astonished at the
+other’s tone. “He is a man who has a right to expect both wealth and
+position in a son-in-law. But I see I shall have to tell you my story,
+sir. It is an uncommon one and I never meant that it should pass my
+lips, but if by its relation I can win your sympathy for a pure and
+noble passion, I shall consider the sacred seal of secrecy broken in a
+good cause. But,” said he, seeing his uncle cast a short and uneasy
+glance at the door, “perhaps I am interrupting you. You expect some
+one!”
+
+
+“No,” said his uncle, “my wife is at church; I am ready to listen.”
+
+The young man gave a hurried sigh, cast one look at his companion’s
+immovable face, as if to assure himself that the narrative was
+necessary, then leaned back and in a steady business-like tone that
+softened, however, as he proceeded, began to relate as follows:
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+A MYSTERIOUS SUMMONS.
+
+    “Without unspotted, innocent within,
+    She feared no danger, for she knew no sin.”—DRYDEN.
+
+
+It was after a matinĂ©e performance at —— Hall some two weeks ago that
+I stopped to light a cigar in the small corridor leading to the back
+entrance. I was in a dissatisfied frame of mind. Something in the music
+I had been playing or the manner in which it had been received had
+touched unwonted chords in my own nature. I felt alone. I remember
+asking myself as I stood there, what it all amounted to? Who of all the
+applauding crowd would watch at my bedside through a long and harassing
+sickness, or lend their sympathy as they now yielded their praise, if
+instead of carrying off the honors of the day I had failed to do justice
+to my reputation. I was just smiling over the only exception I could
+make to this sweeping assertion, that of the pale-eyed youth you have
+sometimes observed dogging my steps, when Briggs came up to me.
+
+“There is a woman here, sir, who insists on seeing you; she has been
+waiting through half the last piece. Shall I tell her you are coming
+out?”
+
+“A woman!” exclaimed I, somewhat surprised, for my visitors are not apt
+to be of the gentler sex.
+
+“Yes sir, an old one. She seems very anxious to speak to you. I could
+not get rid of her no how.”
+
+I hurried forward to the muffled figure which he pointed out cowering
+against the wall by the door. “Well, my good woman, what do you want?” I
+asked, bending towards her in the hopes of catching a glimpse of the
+face she held partly concealed from me.
+
+“Are you Mr. Mandeville?” she inquired in a tone shaken as much by
+agitation as age.
+
+I bowed.
+
+“The one who plays upon the piano?”
+
+“The very same,” I declared.
+
+“You are not deceiving me,” she went on, looking up with a marked
+anxiety plainly visible through her veil. “I haven’t seen you play and
+couldn’t contradict you, but—”
+
+“Here!” said I calling to Briggs with a kindly look at the old woman,
+“help me on with my coat, will you?”
+
+The “Certainly, Mr. Mandeville,” with which he complied seemed to
+reassure her, and as soon as the coat was on and he was gone, she
+grasped me by the arm and drew my ear down to her mouth.
+
+“If you are Mr. Mandeville, I have a message for you. This letter,”
+slipping one into my hand, “is from a young lady, sir. She bade me give
+it to you myself. She is young and pretty,” she pursued as she saw me
+make a movement of distaste, “and a lady. We depend upon your honor,
+sir.”
+
+I acknowledge that my first impulse was to fling her back the note and
+leave the building; I was in no mood for trifling, my next to burst into
+a laugh and politely hand her to the door, my last and best, to open the
+poor little note and see for myself whether the writer was a lady or
+not. Proceeding to the door, for it was already twilight in the dim
+passage way, I tore open the envelope which was dainty enough and took
+out a sheet of closely written paper. A certain qualm of conscience
+assailed me as I saw the delicate chirography it disclosed and I was
+tempted to thrust it back and return it unread to the old woman now
+trembling in the corner. But curiosity overcame my scruples, and hastily
+unfolding the sheet I read these lines:
+
+     “I do not know if what I do is right; I am sure aunty would not
+     say it was; but aunty never thinks anything is right but going
+     to church and reading the papers to papa. I am just a little
+     girl who has heard you play, and who would think the world was
+     too beautiful, if she could hear you say to her just once, some
+     of the kind things you must speak every day to the persons who
+     know you. I do not expect very much—you must have a great many
+     friends, and you would not care for me—but the least little
+     look, if it were all my own, would make me so happy and so
+     proud I should not envy anybody in the world, unless it was
+     some of those dear friends who see you always.
+
+     “I do not come and hear you play often, for aunty thinks music
+     frivolous, but I am always hearing you no matter where I am,
+     and it makes me feel as if I were far away from everybody, in a
+     beautiful land all sunshine and flowers. But nurse says I must
+     not write so much or you will not read it, so I will stop here.
+     But if you _would_ come it would make some one happier than
+     even your beautiful music could do.”
+
+That was all; there was neither name nor date. A child’s epistle,
+written with a woman’s circumspection. With mingled sensations of doubt
+and curiosity I turned back to the old woman who stood awaiting me with
+eager anxiety.
+
+“Was this written by a child or woman?” I asked, meeting her eye with as
+much sternness as I could assume.
+
+“Don’t ask me—don’t ask me anything. I have promised to bring you if I
+could, but I cannot answer any questions.”
+
+I stepped back with an incredulous laugh. Here was evidently an
+adventure. “You will at least tell me where the young miss lives,” said
+I, “before I undertake to fulfil her request.”
+
+She shook her head. “I have a carriage at the door, sir,” said she. “All
+you have got to do is to get into it with me and we shall soon be at the
+house.”
+
+I looked from her face to the letter in my hand, and knew not what to
+think. The spirit of simplicity and ingenuousness that marked the latter
+was scarcely in keeping with this air of mystery. The woman observing my
+hesitation moved towards the door.
+
+“Will you come, sir?” she inquired. “You will not regret it. Just a
+moment’s talk with a pretty young girl—surely—”
+
+“Hush,” said I, hearing a hasty step behind me. And sure enough just
+then my intimate friend Selby came along and grasping me by the arm
+began dragging me towards the door. “You are my property,” said he.
+“I’ve promised, on my word of honor as a gentleman and a musician, to
+bring you to the Handel Club this afternoon. I was afraid you had
+escaped me, but—” Here he caught sight of the small black figure
+halting in the door-way, and paused.
+
+“Who’s this?” said he.
+
+I hesitated. For one instant the scale of my whole future destiny hung
+trembling in the balance, then the demon of curiosity got the better of
+my judgment, and with the rather unworthy consideration that I might as
+well enjoy my youth while I could, I released myself from my friend’s
+detaining hand and replied, “Some one with whom I have very particular
+business. I cannot go to the Handel Club to-day,” and darting out
+without further delay, I rejoined the old woman on the sidewalk.
+
+Without a word she drew me towards a carriage I now observed standing by
+the curbstone a few feet to the left. As I got in I remember pausing a
+moment to glance at the man on the box, but it was too dark for me to
+perceive anything but the fact that he was dressed in livery. More and
+more astonished I leaned back in my seat and endeavored to open
+conversation with my mysterious companion. But it did not work. Without
+being actually rude, she parried my questions in such a way that by the
+end of five minutes I found myself as far from any knowledge of the real
+situation of the case as when I started. I therefore desisted from any
+further attempts and turned to look out, when I made a discovery that
+for the first time awoke some vague feelings of alarm within my breast.
+This was, that the window was not covered by a curtain as I supposed,
+but by closed blinds which when I tried to raise them resisted all my
+efforts to do so.
+
+“It is very close here,” I muttered, in some sort of excuse for this
+display of uneasiness. “Cannot you give us a little air?” But my
+companion remained silent, and I felt ashamed to press the matter though
+I took advantage of the darkness to remove to a safer place a roll of
+money which I had about me.
+
+Yet I was far from being really anxious, and did not once meditate
+backing out of an adventure that was at once so piquant and romantic.
+For by this time I became conscious from the sounds about me that we had
+left the side street for one of the avenues and were then proceeding
+rapidly up town. Listening, I heard the roll of omnibuses and the jingle
+of car-bells, which informed me that we were in Broadway, no other
+avenue in the city being traversed by both these methods of conveyance.
+But after awhile the jingle ceased and presently the livelier sounds of
+constant commotion inseparable from a business thoroughfare, and we
+entered what I took to be Madison Avenue at Twenty-third Street.
+
+Instantly I made up mind to notice every turn of the carriage, that I
+might fix to some degree the locality towards which we were tending. But
+it turned but once and that after a distance of steady travelling that
+quite overthrew any calculation I was able to make at that time of the
+probable number of streets we had passed since entering the avenue.
+Having turned, it went but about half a block to the left when it
+stopped. “I shall see where I am when I get out,” thought I; but in this
+I was mistaken.
+
+First we had stopped in the middle of a block of houses built, as far as
+I could judge, all after one model. Next the fact of the front door
+being open, though I saw no one in the hall, somewhat disconcerted me,
+and I hurried across the sidewalk and up the stoop in a species of maze
+hardly to be expected from one of my naturally careless disposition. The
+next moment the door closed behind me and I found myself in a
+well-lighted hall whose quiet richness betokened it as belonging to a
+private dwelling of no mean pretensions to elegance.
+
+This was the first surprise I received.
+
+“Follow me,” said the old woman, hurrying me down the hall and into a
+small room at the end. “The young lady will be here in a moment,” and
+without lifting her veil or affording me the least glimpse of her
+features, she retired, leaving me to face the situation before me as
+best I might.
+
+It was anything but a pleasant one as it appeared to me at that moment,
+and for an instant I seriously thought of retracing my steps and leaving
+a domicile into which I had been introduced in such a mysterious manner.
+Then the quiet aspect of the room, which though sparsely furnished with
+a piano and chairs was still of an order rarely seen out of gentlemen’s
+houses, struck my imagination and reawakened my curiosity, and nerving
+myself to meet whatever interview might be accorded me, I waited. It was
+only five minutes by the small clock ticking on the mantel-piece, but it
+seemed an hour before I heard a timid step at the door, and saw it swing
+slowly open, disclosing—well, I did not stop to inquire whether it was
+a child or a woman. I merely saw the shrinking modest form, the eager
+blushing face, and bowed almost to the ground in a sudden reverence for
+the sublime innocence revealed to me. Yes, it did not take a second look
+to read that tender countenance to its last guileless page. Had she been
+a woman of twenty-five I could not have mistaken her expression of pure
+delight and timid interest, but she was only sixteen, as I afterwards
+learned, and younger in experience than in age.
+
+Closing the door behind her, she stood for a moment without speaking,
+then with a deepening of the blush which was only a child’s
+embarrassment in the presence of a stranger, looked up and murmured my
+name with a word or so of grateful acknowledgment that would have called
+forth a smile on my lips if I had not been startled by the sudden change
+that passed over her features when she met my eyes. Was it that I showed
+my surprise too plainly, or did my admiration manifest itself in my
+gaze? an admiration great as it was humble, and which was already of a
+nature such as I had never before given to girl or woman. Whatever it
+was, she no sooner met my look than she paused, trembled, and started
+back with a confused murmur, through which I plainly heard her whisper
+in a low distressed tone, “Oh, what have I done!”
+
+“Called a good friend to your side,” said I in the frank, brotherly way
+I thought most likely to reassure her. “Do not be alarmed, I am only too
+happy to meet one who evidently enjoys music so well.”
+
+But the hidden chord of womanhood had been struck in the child’s soul,
+and she could not recover herself. For an instant I thought she would
+turn and flee, and struck as I was with remorse at my reckless invasion
+of this uncontaminated temple, I could not but admire the spirited
+picture she presented as, with form half turned and face bent back, she
+stood hesitating on the point of flight.
+
+I did not try to stop her. “She shall follow her own impulse,” said I to
+myself, but I felt a vague relief that was deeper than I imagined, when
+she suddenly relinquished her strained attitude, and advancing a step or
+so began to murmur:
+
+“I did not know—I did not realize I was doing what was so very wrong.
+Young ladies do not ask gentlemen to come and see them, no matter how
+much they desire to make their acquaintance. I see it now; I did not
+before. Will you—can you forgive me?”
+
+I smiled; I could not help it. I could have taken her to my heart and
+soothed her as I would a child, but the pallor of womanhood, which had
+replaced the blush of the child, awed me and made my own words come
+hesitatingly.
+
+“Forgive you? You must forgive me! It was as wrong for me,” I went on
+with a wild idea of not mincing matters with this pure soul, “to obey
+your innocent request, as it was for you to make it. I am a man of the
+world and know its _convenances_; you are very young.”
+
+“I am sixteen,” she murmured.
+
+The abrupt little confession, implying as it did her determination not
+to accept any palliation of her conduct which it did not deserve,
+touched me strangely. “But very young for that,” I exclaimed.
+
+“So aunty says, but no one can ever say it any more,” she answered. Then
+with a sudden gush, “We shall never see each other again, and you must
+forget the motherless girl who has met you in a way for which she must
+blush through life. It is no excuse,” she pursued hurriedly, “that nurse
+thought it was all right. She always approves of everything I do or want
+to do, especially if it is anything aunt would be likely to forbid. I
+have been spoiled by nurse.”
+
+“Was nurse the woman who came for me?” I asked.
+
+She nodded her head with a quick little motion inexpressibly charming.
+“Yes, that was nurse. She said she would do it all, I need only write
+the note. She meant to give me a pleasure, but she did wrong.”
+
+“Yes,” thought I, “how wrong you little know or realize.” But I only
+said, “You must be guided by some one with more knowledge of the world
+after this. Not,” I made haste to add, struck by the misery in her child
+eyes, “that any harm has been done. You could not have appealed to the
+friendship of any one who would hold you in greater respect than I.
+Whether we meet again or not, my memory of you shall be sweet and
+sacred, I promise you that.”
+
+But she threw out her hand with a quick gesture. “No, do not remember
+me. My only happiness will lie in the thought you have forgotten.” And
+the last remnants of the child soul vanished in that hurried utterance.
+“You must go now,” she continued more calmly. “The carriage that brought
+you is at the door; I must ask you to take it back to your home.”
+
+“But,” I exclaimed with a wild and unbearable sense of sudden loss as
+she laid her hand on the knob of the door, “are we to part like this?
+Will you not at least trust me with your name before I go?”
+
+Her hand dropped from the knob as if it had been hot steel, and she
+turned towards me with a slow yearning motion that whatever it betokened
+set my heart beating violently. “You do not know it, then?” she
+inquired.
+
+“I know nothing but what this little note contains,” I replied, drawing
+her letter from my pocket.
+
+“Oh, that letter! I must have it,” she murmured; then, as I stepped
+towards her, drew back and pointing to the table said, “Lay it there,
+please.”
+
+I did so, whereupon something like a smile crossed her lips and I
+thought she was going to reward me with her name, but she only said, “I
+thank you; now you know nothing;” and almost before I realized it she
+had opened the door and stepped into the hall.
+
+As I made haste to follow her, the sound of a low, “He is a gentleman,
+he will ask no questions,” struck my ear, and looking up, I saw her just
+leaving the side of the old nurse who stood evidently awaiting me half
+down the hall. Bowing with formal ceremony, I passed her by and
+proceeded to the front door. As I did so I caught one glimpse of her
+face. It had escaped from all restraint and the expression of the eyes
+was overpowering. I subdued a wild impulse to leap back to her side, and
+stepped at once over the threshold. The nurse joined me, and together we
+went down the stoop to the street.
+
+“May I inquire where you wish to be taken?” she asked.
+
+I told her, and she gave the order to the coachman, together with a few
+words I did not hear; then stepping back she waited for me to get in.
+There was no help for it. I gave one quick look behind me, saw the front
+door close, realized how impossible it would ever be for me to recognize
+the house again, and placed my foot on the carriage step. Suddenly a
+bright idea struck me, and hastily dropping my cane I stepped back to
+pick it up. As I did so I pulled out a bit of crayon I chanced to have
+in my pocket, and as I stooped, chalked a small cross on the curbstone
+directly in front of the house, after which I recovered my cane, uttered
+some murmured word of apology, jumped into the carriage and was about to
+shut the door, when the old nurse stepped in after me and quietly closed
+it herself. By the pang that shot through my breast as the carriage
+wheels left the house, I knew that for the first time in my life, I
+_loved_.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+SEARCHINGS.
+
+     “Patience, and shuffle the cards.”—CERVANTES.
+
+
+If I had expected anything from the presence in the carriage of the
+woman who had arranged this interview, I was doomed to disappointment.
+Reticent before, she was absolutely silent now, sitting at my side like
+a grim statue or a frozen image of watchfulness, ready to awake and stop
+me if I offered to open the door or make any other move indicative of a
+determination to know where I was, or in what direction I was going.
+That her young mistress in the momentary conversation they had held
+before our departure had succeeded in giving her some idea of the shame
+with which she had felt herself overwhelmed and her present natural
+desire for secrecy, I do not doubt, but I think now, as I thought then,
+that the unusual precautions taken both at that time and before, to keep
+me in ignorance of the young lady’s identity, were due to the elderly
+woman’s own consciousness of the peril she had invoked in yielding to
+the wishes of her young and thoughtless mistress; a theory which, if
+true, argues more for the mind than the conscience of this mysterious
+woman. However, it is with facts we have to deal, and you will be more
+interested in learning what I did, than what I thought during that short
+ride in perfect darkness.
+
+The mark which I had left on the curbstone behind me sufficiently showed
+the nature of my resolve, and when we made the first turn at the end of
+the block I leaned back in my seat and laying my finger on my wrist,
+began to count the pulsations of my blood. It was the only device that
+suggested itself, by which I might afterward gather some approximate
+notion of the distance we travelled in a straight course down town. I
+had just arrived at the number seven hundred and sixty-two, and was
+inwardly congratulating myself upon this new method of reckoning
+distance, when the wheels gave a lurch and we passed over a car track.
+Instantly all my fine calculations fell to the ground. We were not in
+Madison Avenue, as I supposed; could not be, since no track crosses that
+avenue below Fifty-ninth Street, and we were proceeding on as we could
+not have done had we gained the terminus of the avenue at Twenty-third
+Street. Could it be that the carriage had not been turned around while I
+was in the house, and that we had come back by way of Fifth Avenue? I
+could not remember—in fact, the more I tried to think which way the
+horses’ heads were directed when we went into the house, the more I was
+confused. But presently I considered that wherever we were, we certainly
+had not passed over the narrow strip of smooth pavement in front of the
+Worth monument, and therefore could not have reached Twenty-third Street
+by way of Fifth Avenue. We must be up town, and that track we crossed
+must have been at Fifty-ninth Street. And soon, as if to assure me of
+this, we took a turn, quickly followed at a block’s length by another,
+after which I had no difficulty in recognizing the smooth pavement of
+the entrance to the Park or the roll down Fifth Avenue afterwards. “They
+have thought to confuse me by an extra mile or so of travel,” thought I,
+with some complacency, “but the streets of New York are too simply laid
+out to lend themselves to any such easy mode of mystification.” Yet I
+have thought since then how, with a smarter man on the box, the affair
+might have been conducted so as to have baffled the oldest citizen in
+any attempt at calculation.
+
+When we stopped in front of the Albemarle I quietly thanked the woman
+who had conducted me, and stepped to the ground. Instantly the door shut
+behind me, the carriage drove off, and I was left standing there like a
+man suddenly awakened from a dream.
+
+Entering my hotel, I ordered supper, thinking that the very practical
+occupation of eating would serve to divert my mind into its ordinary
+channels. But the dream, if dream it was, had made too vivid an
+impression to be shaken off so easily. It followed me to the hall in the
+evening and mingled with every chord I struck.
+
+I could scarcely sleep that night for thinking of the sweet child’s face
+that had blossomed into a woman’s before my eyes, and what a woman! With
+the first hint of daylight I rose, and as soon as it was in any degree
+suitable to be out, hired a cab and proceeded to the corner of
+Fifty-ninth Street and Madison Avenue, where, according to my
+calculations of the evening before, we had crossed the car track which
+had first interrupted me in that very original method of computing
+distance of which I have already spoken, a method by the way, which you
+must acknowledge is an improvement on the boy’s plan of finding his way
+back from the woods by means of the bread-crumbs he had scattered behind
+him, forgetting that the birds would eat up his crumbs and leave him
+without a clew. Bidding the driver proceed at the ordinary jog trot down
+the avenue, I laid my finger on my wrist, and counted each throb of my
+pulse till I had reached the magical number seven hundred and sixty-two.
+Then putting my head out of the window, I bade him stop. We were in the
+middle of a block, but that did not disconcert me. I had not expected to
+gain more than an approximate idea of the spot where we had first turned
+into the avenue, it being impossible to regulate the horses’ pace so as
+to tally with that taken by the span of the night before, even if the
+pulsations in my wrist were to be absolutely relied upon. Noting the
+streets between which we had paused, I bade the driver to turn down one
+and come back by the other, occupying myself in the meanwhile, in
+searching the curbstone for the small mark I had left in front of her
+door the night before. But though we drove slowly and I searched
+carefully, not a trace did I perceive of that tell-tale sign, and
+forsaking those two streets, I ordered my obedient Jehu to try the two
+outlying ones below and above. He did so, and I again consulted the
+curbstone, but with no better success. No mark or remnants of a mark was
+to be found anywhere. Nor, though we travelled through three or four
+other streets in the same way, did we come upon any clew liable to
+assist me in my search. Clean discouraged and somewhat out of temper
+with myself for my pusillanimity of the evening before in not having
+braved the anger of my companion by opening the carriage door at the
+first corner and leaping out, I commanded to be taken back to the hotel,
+where for a whole miserable day I racked my brain with devices for
+acquiring the knowledge I so much desired. The result was futile, as you
+may imagine; nor will I stop to recount the various expedients to which
+I afterwards resorted in my vain attempt to solve the mystery of this
+young girl’s identity.
+
+Enough that they all failed, even the very promising one of searching
+the various photographic establishments of the city, for the valuable
+clew which her picture would give me. And so a week passed.
+
+“It is time this mad infatuation was at an end,” said I to myself one
+morning as I sat down to write a letter. “There is no hope of my ever
+seeing her again, and I am but frittering away the best emotions of my
+life in thus indulging in a dream that is not the prelude to a reality.”
+But in spite of the wise determination thus made, I soon found my
+thoughts recurring to their old channel, and seized with sudden
+impatience at my evident weakness, took up the letter I had been writing
+and was about to read it, when to my great amazement I perceived that
+instead of inditing the usual words of a business communication, I had
+been engaged in scribbling a certain number up and down the page and
+even across the bottom where my signature should have been.
+
+“Am I a fool?” I exclaimed, and was about to tear the sheet in two, when
+glancing again at the number, which was a simple thirty-six, I asked
+myself where I had got those especial figures. Instantly there arose
+before my mind’s eye the vision of a brown-stone front with its
+vestibule and door. It was, then, the number of a house; but what house?
+a _chateau en Espagne_ or a _bona fide_ New York dwelling, which for
+some reason had unconsciously impressed itself upon my memory? I could
+not answer. There on the page was the number thirty-six, and equally
+plain in my mind was the look of the brown-stone front to which that
+number belonged—and that was all.
+
+But it was enough to awaken within me the spirit of inquiry. The few
+houses thus numbered in that quarter of the city where I had lately
+been, were not so hard to find but that a morning given to the business
+ought to satisfy me whether the vision in my mind had its basis in
+reality. Taking a cab, I rode up town and into that region of streets I
+had traversed so carefully a week before. For I was assured that if the
+impression had been made by an actual dwelling it had been done at that
+time. Following the same course I then took, I consulted the appearance
+of the various houses to which that number was assigned. The first was
+built of brick; that was not it. The next one had pillars to the
+vestibule; and that was not it. The third, to use an Irish bull, was no
+house at all, but a stable, while the fourth was an elegant structure of
+much more pretension than the plain and simple front I had in my mind or
+memory. I was about to utter a curse upon my folly and go home, when I
+remembered there was yet a street or two taken in my zig-zag course of
+the week before, which I had not yet tested. “Might as well be
+thorough,” I muttered, and bade my driver proceed down —— Street.
+
+What was there in its aspect that dimly excited me at the first glance?
+A dim remembrance, a certain ghostly assurance that we had reached the
+right spot? As we neared the number I sought, I could not suppress an
+exclamation of surprise. For there before me to its last detail, stood
+the house which involuntarily presented itself to my mind, when my eye
+first fell upon that mysterious number scribbled at the foot of the page
+I was writing.
+
+It was, then, no chimera of an overwrought brain, this vision of a
+house-front which had been haunting me, but a distinct remembrance of an
+actual dwelling seen by me in my former journey through this street. But
+why this house-front above all others; what was there in it to make such
+an impression? Looking at it I could not determine, but after we had
+passed, something, I cannot tell what, brought back another remembrance,
+trivial in itself, but yet a link in the chain that was destined sooner
+or later to lead me out of the maze into which I had stumbled. It was
+merely this; that as I rode along the streets on that memorable morning,
+searching for that mark on the curbstone from which I hoped so much, I
+had come upon a spot where the pavement had been freshly washed. With
+that unconscious action of the brain with which we are familiar, I
+looked at the sidewalk a moment, running even then with the water that
+had been cast upon it, and then gave a quick glance at the house. That
+glance, account for it as you will, took in the picture before it as the
+camera catches the impression of a likeness, and though in another
+instant I had forgotten the whole occurrence, it needed but a certain
+train of thought or perhaps a certain state of emotion to revive it
+again.
+
+A noble cause for such an act of unconscious cerebration you will say, a
+freshly washed pavement: _Le jeu ne faut pas la chandelle._ And so I
+thought too, or would have thought if I had not been so interested in
+the pursuit in which I was engaged, and if the idea had not suggested
+itself that water and a broom might obliterate chalk-marks from
+curbstones, and that the imps that preside over our mental forces would
+not indulge in such a trick at my expense unless the play _was_ worth
+the candle. At all events, from the moment I made this discovery, I
+fixed my faith on that house as the one which held the object of my
+search, and though I contented myself with merely noting the number of
+the street as we left it, I none the less determined to pursue my
+investigations, till I had learned beyond the possibility of a doubt
+whether my conjectures were not true.
+
+A perseverance worthy of a better cause you will say, but you are no
+longer twenty-five and under the influence of your first passion. I own
+I was astonished at myself and frequently paused in the pursuit I had
+undertaken, to ask if I were the same person who but a fortnight before
+laughed at the story of a man who had gone mad over the body of an
+unknown woman he had saved from a wreck only to find her dead in his
+arms.
+
+The first thing I did was to ascertain the name of the gentleman
+occupying the house I have specified. It was that of one of our
+wealthiest and most respectable bankers, a name as well known in the
+city—as your own for instance. This was somewhat disconcerting, but
+with a dogged resolution somewhat foreign to my natural disposition, I
+persevered in my investigations, and learning in the next breath that
+the gentleman alluded to was a widower with an only child, a young
+daughter of about sixteen or so, recovered my assurance, though not my
+equanimity. Seeking out my friend Farrar, who as you know is a walking
+gazette of New York society, I broached the subject of Mr.—excuse me
+if I do not mention his name; allow me to say, Preston’s domestic
+affairs, and learned that Miss Preston, “A naive little piece for so
+great an heiress,” I remember Farrar called her, had left town within a
+day or two for a visit to some friends in Baltimore. “I happen to know,”
+said he with that careless sweep of his hand at which you have so often
+laughed, “because my friend Miss Forsyth met her at the depot. She was
+intending to be gone—two weeks, I think she said. Do you know her?”
+
+That last question sprung upon me unawares, and I am afraid I blushed.
+“No,” I returned, “I have not that honor but an acquaintance of mine
+has—well—has met her and—”
+
+“I see, I see,” broke in Farrar with his most disagreeable smile. Then
+with a short laugh, meant to act as a warning, I suppose, added as he
+walked off, “I hope your friend is in fair circumstances and not
+connected with the fine arts. Music is Mr. Preston’s detestation, while
+Miss Preston though too young to be much sought after yet, will in two
+years’ time have the pick of the city at her command.”
+
+“So!” thought I to myself; “my little innocent charmer is an embryo
+aristocrat, eh? Well then, I was a greater fool than I imagined.” And I
+walked out of the hotel where I had met Farrar, with the very sensible
+conclusion to drop a subject that promised nothing but disappointment.
+
+But the fates were against me, or the good angels perhaps, and at the
+next comer I met an old acquaintance, the very opposite of Farrar in
+character, who with a long love story of his own fired, my imagination
+to such an extent that in spite of myself I turned down —— Street, and
+was proceeding to pass her house, when suddenly the thought struck me,
+“How do I know that this unapproachable daughter of one of our most
+prominent citizens is one and the same person with my dainty little
+charmer? Widowers with young daughters are not so rare in this great
+city that I need consider the question as decided, because by a half
+superstitious freak of my own I have settled upon this house as the one
+I was in the other night. My inamorata may be the offspring of a
+musician for all I know.” And inflamed at the thought of this
+possibility—I remembered the piano, you see—I gave to the winds all my
+fine resolutions and only asked how I could determine for once and all,
+whether I had ever crossed the threshold of the house before me. Some
+men would have run up the stoop, rung the bell and asked to see Mr.
+Preston on some pretended business he could easily conjure up to suit
+the occasion, but my face is too well known for me to risk any such
+attempt, besides I was too anxious to win the confidence of the young
+girl to shock her awakened sense of propriety by seeming to seek her
+where she did not wish to be found. And yet I must enter that house and
+see for myself if it was the one that held her on that memorable
+evening.
+
+Pondering the question, I looked back at the door so obstinately closed
+against my curiosity, when to my satisfaction and delight it suddenly
+opened and a man stepped out, whom I instantly recognized as a business
+agent for one of the largest piano-forte manufactories in the city. “The
+heavens smile upon my enterprise,” thought I, and waited for the man to
+come up with me. He was not only a friend of mine but largely indebted
+to me in various ways, so that I knew I had only to urge a request for
+it to be immediately granted, and that, too, without any questions or
+gossip.
+
+You will not be interested in anything but the result, which was
+somewhat out of the usual course, and may therefore shock you. But you
+must remember that I am telling you of matters which young men usually
+keep to themselves, and that whatever I did, was accomplished in a
+spirit of respect only a shade less constraining in its power than the
+love that was at once my impelling force, and my constant embarrassment.
+
+To come, then, to the point, a piano was to be set up in that house on
+that very day, Mr. Preston having yielded to the solicitations of his
+daughter for a new instrument. My friend was to be engaged in the
+transfer, and at my solicitation for leave to assist in the operation,
+gave his consent in perfect confidence as to my possessing good and
+sufficient reasons for such a remarkable request, and appointed the hour
+at which I was to meet him at the ware-rooms.
+
+Behold me, then, at half-past two that afternoon, assisting with my own
+hands in carrying a piano up the stoop of that house which, four hours
+before, I had regarded as unapproachable. Dressed in a workman’s blouse
+and with my hair well roughened under a rude cap that effectually
+disguised me, I advanced with but little fear of detection. And yet no
+sooner had I entered the house and seen at a glance that the aspect of
+the hall coincided with my rather vague remembrance of that through
+which I had been ushered a week before, than I was struck by a sudden
+sense of my situation, and experiencing that uncomfortable consciousness
+of self-betrayal, which a blush always gives a man, stumbled forward
+under my heavy burden, feeling as if a thousand eyes were fixed upon me
+and my cherished secret, instead of the two sharp but totally
+unsuspicious orbs of the elderly matron that surveyed us from the top of
+the banisters. “Be careful there, you’ll knock a hole through that glass
+door!” though a natural cry under the circumstances, struck on my ears
+with the force and mysterious power of a secret warning, and when after
+a moment of blind advance I suddenly lifted my eyes and found myself in
+the little room, which like a silhouette on a white ground, stood out in
+my memory in distinct detail as the spot where I had first heard my own
+heart beat, I own that I felt my hands slipping from my burden, and in
+another moment had disgraced my character of a workman if I had not
+caught the sudden ring of a well known voice in the hall, as nurse
+answered from above some question propounded by the elderly lady with
+the piercing eyes. As it was, I recovered myself and went through my
+duties as promptly and deftly as if my heart did not throb with memories
+that each passing hour and event only served to hallow to my
+imagination.
+
+At length the piano was duly set up and we turned to leave. Will you
+think I am too trivial in my details if I tell you that I lingered
+behind the rest and for an instant let my hand with all its
+possibilities for calling out a soul from that dead instrument, lie a
+moment on the keys over which her dainty fingers were so soon to
+traverse?
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+THE RUBICON.
+
+     “I’ll stake my life upon her faith.”—OTHELLO.
+
+
+Once convinced of the identity of my sweet young friend with the Miss
+Preston at whose feet a two year hence, the wealth and aristocracy of
+New York would be kneeling, I drew back from further effort as having
+received a damper to my presumptuous hopes that would soon effectually
+stifle them. Everything I heard about the family—and it seemed as if
+suddenly each chance acquaintance that I met had something to say about
+Mr. Preston either as a banker or a man, only served to confirm me in
+this view. “He is a money worshipper,” said one. “The bluest of blue
+Presbyterians,” declared another. “The enemy of presumption and anything
+that looks like an overweening confidence in one’s own worth or
+capabilities,” remarked a third. “A man who would beggar himself to save
+the honor of a corporation with which he was concerned,” observed a
+fourth “but who would not invite to his table the most influential man
+connected with it if that man was unable to trace his family back to the
+old Dutch settlers to which Mr. Preston’s own ancestors belonged.”
+
+This latter statement I have no doubt was exaggerated for I myself have
+seen him at dinners where half the gentlemen who lifted the wine glass
+were self-made in every sense of the term. But it showed the bent of his
+mind and it was a bent that left me entirely out of the sweep of his
+acquaintanceship much less that of his exquisite daughter, the pride of
+his soul if not the jewel of his heart.
+
+But when will a man who has seen or who flatters himself that he has
+seen in the eyes of the woman he admires, the least spark of that fire
+which is consuming his own soul, pause at an obstacle which after all
+has its basis simply in circumstances of position or will. By the time
+the two weeks of her expected absence had expired, I had settled it in
+my own mind that I would see her again and if I found the passing
+caprice of a child was likely to blossom into the steady regard of a
+woman, risk all in the attempt to win by honorable endeavor and
+persistence this bud of loveliness for my future wife.
+
+How I finally succeeded by means of my friend Farrar in being one
+evening invited to the same house as Miss Preston it is not necessary to
+state. You will believe me it was done with the utmost regard for her
+feelings and in a way that deceived Farrar himself, who if he is the
+most prying is certainly the most volatile of men. In a crowded parlor,
+then, in the midst of the flash of diamonds and the flutter of fans Miss
+Preston and I again met. When I first saw her she was engaged in
+conversation with some young companion, and I had the pleasure of
+watching for a few minutes, unobserved, the play of her ingenuous
+countenance, as she talked with her friend, or sat silently watching the
+brilliant array before her. I found her like and yet unlike the vision
+of my dreams. More blithesome in her appearance, as was not strange
+considering her party attire and the lustre of the chandelier under
+which she sat, there was still that indescribable something in her
+expression which more than the flash of her eye or the curve of her lip,
+though both were lovely to me, made her face the one woman’s face in the
+world for me; a charm which circumstances might alter, or suffering
+impair, but of which nothing save death could ever completely divest her
+and not death either, for it was the seal of her individuality, and that
+she would take with her into the skies.
+
+“If I might but advance and sit down by her side without a word of
+explanation or the interference of conventionalities how happy I should
+be,” thought I. But I knew that would not do, so I contented myself with
+my secret watch over her movements, longing for and yet dreading the
+advance of my hostess, with its inevitable introduction. Suddenly the
+piano was touched in a distant room and not till I saw the quick change
+in her face, a change hard to explain, did I recognize the selection as
+one I was in the habit of playing. _She_ had not forgotten at least, and
+thrilled by the thought and the remembrance of that surge of color which
+had swept like a flood over her cheek, I turned away, feeling as if I
+were looking on what it was for no man’s eyes to see, least of all mine.
+
+My hostess’ voice arrested me and next moment I was bowing to the ground
+before Miss Preston.
+
+I am not a boy; nor have I been without my experiences: life with its
+vicissitudes has taught me many a lesson, subjected me to many a trial,
+yet in all my career have I never known a harder moment than when I
+raised my eyes to meet hers after that lowly obeisance. That she would
+be indignant I knew, that she might even misinterpret my motives and
+probably withdraw without giving me an opportunity to speak, I felt to
+be only too probable, but that she would betray an agitation so painful
+I had not anticipated, and for an instant I felt that I had hazarded my
+life’s happiness on a cast that was going against me. But the necessity
+of saving her from remark speedily restored me to myself, and following
+the line of conduct I had previously laid out, I addressed her with the
+reserve of a stranger, and neither by word, look or manner conveyed to
+her a suggestion that we had ever met or spoken to each other before.
+She seemed to appreciate my consideration and though she was as yet too
+much unused to the ways of the world to completely hide her
+perturbation, she gradually regained a semblance of self-possession, and
+ere long was enabled to return short answers to my remarks, though her
+eyes remained studiously turned aside and never so much as ventured to
+raise themselves to the passing throng much less to my face, half turned
+away also.
+
+Presently however a change passed over her. Pressing her two little
+hands together, she drew back a step or two, speaking my name with a
+certain tone of command. Struck with apprehension, I knew not why, I
+followed her. Instantly like one repeating a lesson she spoke.
+
+“It is very good in you to talk to me as though we were the strangers
+that people believe us. I appreciate it and thank you very much. But it
+is not being just true; that is I feel as if I were not being just true,
+and as we can never be friends, would it not be better for us not to
+meet in this way any more?”
+
+“And why,” I gently asked, with a sense of struggling for my life, “can
+we never be friends?”
+
+Her answer was a deep blush; not that timid conscious appeal of the
+blood that is beating too warmly for reply, but the quick flush of
+indignant generosity forced to do despite to its own instincts.
+
+“That is a question I would rather not answer,” she murmured at length.
+“Only it is so; or I should not speak in this way.”
+
+“But,” I ventured, resolved to know on just what foundations my
+happiness was tottering, “you will at least tell me if this harsh decree
+is owing to any offence I myself may have inadvertently given. The honor
+of your acquaintance,” I went on, determined she should know just what a
+hope she was slaying, “is much too earnestly desired, for me to wilfully
+hazard its loss by saying or doing aught that could be in any way
+displeasing to you.”
+
+“You have done nothing but what was generous,” said she with increasing
+womanliness of manner, “unless it was taking advantage of my being here,
+to learn my name and gain an introduction to me after I had desired you
+to forget my very existence.”
+
+I recoiled at that, the chord of my self-respect was touched. “It was
+not here I learned your name, Miss Preston. It has been known to me for
+two weeks. At the risk of losing by your displeasure what is already
+hazarded by your prudence, I am bound to acknowledge that from the hour
+I left your father’s house that night, I have spared no effort
+compatible with my deep respect for your feelings, to ascertain who the
+young lady was that had done me such an honor, and won from me such a
+deep regard. I had not intended to tell you this,” I added, “but your
+truth has awakened mine, and whatever the result may be, you must see me
+as I am.”
+
+“You are very kind,” she replied governing with growing skill the
+trembling of her voice. “The acquaintance of a girl of sixteen is not
+worth so much trouble on the part of a man like yourself.” And blushing
+with the vague apprehension of her sex in the presence of a devotion she
+rather feels than understands, she waved her trembling little hand and
+paused irresolute, seemingly anxious to terminate the interview but as
+yet too inexperienced to know how to manage a dismissal requiring so
+much tact and judgment.
+
+I saw, comprehended her position and hesitated. She was so young, uncle,
+her prospects in life were so bright; if I left her then, in a couple of
+weeks she would forget me. What was I that I should throw the shadow of
+manhood’s deepest emotion across the paradise of her young untrammelled
+being. But the old Adam of selfishness has his say in my soul as well as
+in that of my fellow-men, and forgetting myself enough to glance at her
+half averted face, I could not remember myself sufficiently afterwards
+to forego without a struggle, all hope of some day beholding that soft
+cheek turn in confidence at my approach.
+
+“Miss Preston,” said I, “the promise of the bud atones for its folded
+leaves.” Then with a fervor I did not seek to disguise, “You say we
+cannot be friends; would your decision be the same if this were our
+first meeting?”
+
+Again that flush of outraged feeling. “I don’t know—yes I think—I fear
+it would.”
+
+I strove to help her. “There is too great a difference between Bertram
+Mandeville the pianist, and the daughter of Thaddeus Preston.”
+
+She turned and looked me gently in the eye, she did not need to speak.
+Regret, shame, longing flashed in her steady glance.
+
+“Do not answer,” said I, “I understand; I am glad it is circumstances
+that stand in the way, and not any misconception on your part as to my
+motives and deep consideration for yourself. Circumstances can be
+changed.” And satisfied with having thus dropped into the fruitful soil
+of that tender breast, the seed of a future hope, I bowed with all the
+deference at my command and softly withdrew.
+
+But not to rest. With all the earnestness with which a man sets himself
+to decide upon the momentous question of life or death, I gave myself up
+to a night of reflection, and seated in my solitary bachelor apartment,
+debated with myself as to the resolution at which I had dimly hinted in
+my parting words to Miss Preston.
+
+That I am a musician by nature, my success with the the public seems to
+indicate. That by following out the line upon which I had entered I
+would attain a certain eminence in my art, I do not doubt. But uncle,
+there are two kinds of artists in this world; those that work because
+the spirit is in them and they cannot be silent if they would, and those
+that speak from a conscientious desire to make apparent to others the
+beauty that has awakened their own admiration. The first could not give
+up his art for any cause, without the sacrifice of his soul’s life; the
+latter—well the latter could and still be a man with his whole inner
+being intact. Or to speak plainer, the first has no choice, while the
+latter has, if he has a will to exert it. Now you will say, and the
+world at large, that I belong to the former class. I have risen in ten
+years from a choir boy in Trinity Church to a position in the world of
+music that insures me a full audience wherever and whenever I have a
+mind to exert my skill as a pianist. Not a man of my years has a more
+promising outlook in my profession, if you will pardon the seeming
+egotism of the remark, and yet by the ease with which I felt I could
+give it up at the first touch of a master passion, I know that I am not
+a prophet in my art but merely an interpreter, one who can speak well
+but who has never felt the descent of the burning tongue and hence not a
+sinner against my own soul if I turn aside from the way I am walking.
+The question was, then, should I make a choice? Love, as you say, seems
+at first blush too insecure a joy, if not often too trivial a one, to
+unsettle a man in his career and change the bent of his whole after
+life; especially a love born of surprise and fed by the romance of
+distance and mystery. Had I met her in ordinary intercourse, surrounded
+by her friends and without the charm cast over her by unwonted
+circumstances, and then had felt as I did now that of all women I had
+seen, she alone would ever move the deep springs of my being, it would
+be different. But with this atmosphere of romance surrounding and
+hallowing her girl’s form till it seemed almost as ethereal and
+unearthly as that of an angel’s, was I safe in risking fame or fortune
+in an attempt to acquire what in the possession might prove as bare and
+common-place as a sweep of mountain heather stripped of its sunshine.
+Curbing every erratic beat of my heart, I summoned up her image as it
+bloomed in my fancy, and surveying it with cruel eyes, asked what was
+real and what the fruit of my own imagination. The gentle eye, the
+trembling lip, the girlish form eloquent with the promise of coming
+womanhood,—were these so rare, that beside them no other woman should
+seem to glance or smile or move? And her words! what had she said, that
+any simple-minded, modest yet loving girl might not have uttered under
+the circumstances. Surely my belief in her being the one, the best and
+the dearest was a delusion, and to no delusion was I willing to
+sacrifice my art. But straight upon that conclusion came sweeping down a
+flood of counter-reasons. If not the wonder she seemed, she was at least
+a wonder to me. If I had seen her under romantic circumstances, and
+unconsciously been influenced by them, the influence had remained and
+nothing would ever rob her form of the halo thus acquired. Whether I
+ever won her to my fireside or not, she must always remain the fairy
+figure of my dreams, and being so, the gentle eye and tender lip
+acquired a value that made them what they seemed, the exponent of love
+and happiness. And lastly if love well or illy founded was an uncertain
+joy, and the passion for a woman a poor substitute for the natural
+incentive of talent or ambition, _this_ love had within it the beginning
+of something deeper than joy, and in the passion thus cheaply
+characterized, dwelt a force and living fire that notwithstanding all I
+have hitherto achieved, has ever been lacking from my dreams of
+endeavor.
+
+As you will see, the most natural question of all did not disturb me in
+these cogitations: And that was, whether in making the sacrifice I
+proposed, I should meet with the reward I had promised myself. The
+fancies of a young girl of sixteen are not usually of a stable enough
+character to warrant a man in building upon them his whole future
+happiness, especially a young girl situated like Miss Preston in the
+midst of friends who would soon be admirers, and adulators who would
+soon be her humble slaves. But the doubt which a serious contemplation
+of this risk must have presented, was of so unnerving a character, I
+dared not admit it. _If_ I made the sacrifice, I must meet with my
+reward. I would listen to no other conclusion. Besides, something in the
+young girl herself, I cannot tell what, assured me then as it assures me
+now, that whatever virtues or graces she might lack, that of fidelity to
+a noble idea was not among them; that once convinced of the purity and
+value of the flame that had been lit in her innocent breast, nothing
+short of the unworthiness of the object that had awakened it, would ever
+serve to eliminate or extinguish it. That I was not worthy but would
+make it the business of my life to become so, was certain; that she
+would mark my endeavors and bestow upon me the sympathy they deserved, I
+was equally sure. No one would ever make such a sacrifice to her love as
+I was willing to do, and consequently in no one would I find a rival.
+
+The morning light surprised me in the midst of the struggle, nor did I
+decide the question that day. Mr. Preston might not be as determined in
+his prejudices against musicians as my friends or even his daughter had
+imagined. I resolved to see him. Taking advantage of his connection with
+the —— Club, I procured an introducer in the shape of a highly
+respected person of his own class, and went one evening to the
+Club-rooms with the full intention of making his acquaintance if
+possible. He was already there and in conversation with some business
+associates. Procuring a seat as near him as possible, I anxiously
+surveyed his countenance. It was not a reassuring one, and studied in
+this way, had the effect of dampening any hopes I may have cherished in
+the outset. He soften to the sounds of sweet strains or the voice of
+youthful passion! As soon as the granite rock to the surge of the
+useless billow. His very necktie spoke volumes. It was an old fashioned
+stock, full of the traditions of other days, while his coat, shabbier
+than any I would presume to wear, betrayed in every well-worn seam the
+pride of the aristocrat and millionaire who in his native city and
+before the eyes of his fellow magnates does not need to carry the
+evidences of his respectability upon his back.
+
+“It would be worse than folly for me to approach him on such a subject,”
+I mentally ejaculated. “If he did not stare the musician out of
+countenance he would the newly risen man.” And I came very near giving
+up the whole thing.
+
+But the genius that watches over the affairs of true love was with me
+notwithstanding the unpropitious state of my surroundings. In a few
+minutes I received my expected introduction to Mr. Preston, and I found
+that underneath the repelling austerity of his expression, was a kindly
+spark for youth, and a decided sympathy for all instances of manly
+endeavor if only it was in a direction he approved; further that my own
+personality was agreeable to him and that he was disposed to regard me
+with favor until by some chance and very natural allusion to my
+profession by the friend standing between us, he learned that I was a
+musician, when a decided change came over his countenance and he
+exclaimed in that blunt, decisive way of his that admits of no reply:
+
+“A jingler on the piano, eh? Pretty poor use for a man to put his brains
+to, I say, or even his fingers. Sorry to hear we cannot be friends.” And
+without waiting for a reply, took my introducer by the arm and drew him
+a step or so to one side. “Why didn’t you say at once he was Mandeville
+the musician,” I overheard him ask in somewhat querulous tones. “Don’t
+you know I consider the whole race of them an abomination. I would have
+more respect for my bank clerk than I would for the greatest man of them
+all, were it Rubenstein himself.” Then in a lower tone but distinctly
+and almost as if he meant me to hear, “My daughter has a leaning towards
+this same fol-de-rol and has lately requested my permission to make the
+acquaintance of some musical characters, but I soon convinced her that
+manhood under the disguise of a harlequin’s jacket could have no
+interest for her; that when a human being, man or woman has sunk to be a
+mere rattler of sweet sounds, he has reached a stage of infantile
+development that has little in common with the nervous energy and
+business force of her Dutch ancestry. And my daughter stoops to make no
+acquaintances she cannot bid sit at her father’s table.”
+
+“Your daughter is a child yet, I thought,” was ventured by his
+companion.
+
+“Miss Preston is sixteen, just the age at which my mother gave her hand
+to my respected father sixty-seven years ago.” And with this drop of
+burning lead let fall into my already agitated bosom they passed on.
+
+He would have more respect for his bank clerk! Would his bank clerk or
+what was better, a young man with means at his command, working in a
+business capacity more in consonance with the tastes he had evinced,
+have a chance of winning his daughter? I began to think he might. “The
+way grows clearer!” I exclaimed.
+
+But it was not till after another interview with him ten minutes later
+in the lobby that I finally made up my mind. He was standing quite alone
+in an obscure corner, fumbling in an awkward way with his muffler that
+had caught on the button of his coat. Seeing it, I hastened forward to
+his assistance and was rewarded by a kind enough nod to embolden me to
+say,
+
+“I have been introduced to you as a musician; would my acquaintance be
+more acceptable to you if I told you that the pursuit of art bids fair
+in my case to yield to the exigencies of business? That I purpose
+leaving the concert-room for the banker’s office and that henceforth my
+only ambition promises to be that of Wall Street?”
+
+“It most certainly would,” exclaimed he, holding out his hand with an
+unmistakable gesture of satisfaction. “You have too good a countenance
+to waste before a piano-top strumming to the smirks of women and the
+plaudits of weak-headed men. Let us see you at the desk, my lad. We are
+in want of trustworthy young men to take the place of us older ones.”
+Then politely, “Do you expect to make the change soon?”
+
+“I do,” said I.
+
+And the Rubicon was passed.
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+A HAND CLASP.
+
+    “_Fer._—Here’s my hand.
+
+    _Mir._—And mine with my heart in it.”
+
+    —TEMPEST.
+
+
+Once arrived at a settled conclusion, I put every thought of wavering
+out of my mind. Deciding that with such a friend in business circles as
+yourself, I needed no other introducer to my new life, I set apart this
+evening for a confab with you on the subject. Meanwhile it is pretty
+generally known that I make no more engagements to appear through the
+country.
+
+I have but one more incident to relate. Last Sunday in walking down
+Fifth Avenue I met her. I did not do this inadvertently. I knew her
+custom of attending Bible class and for once put myself in her way. I
+did not give her time to remonstrate.
+
+“Do not express your displeasure,” said I, “this shall never be
+repeated. I merely wish to say that I have concluded to leave a
+profession so little appreciated by those whose esteem I most desire to
+possess; that I am about entering a banker’s office where it shall be my
+ambition to rise if possible, to wealth and consequence. If I
+succeed—you shall then know what my incentive has been. But till I
+succeed or at least give such tokens of success as shall insure respect,
+silence must be my portion and patience my sole support. Only of one
+thing rest assured, that until I inform you with my own lips that the
+hope which now illumines me is gone, it will continue to burn on in my
+breast, shedding light upon a way that can never seem dark while that
+glow rests upon it.” And bowing with the ceremonious politeness our
+positions demanded, I held out my hand. “One clasp to encourage me,” I
+entreated.
+
+It seemed as if she did not comprehend. “You are going to give up music,
+and for—for—”
+
+“You?” said I. “Yes, don’t forbid me,” I implored; “it is too late.”
+
+Like a lovely image of blushing girlhood turned by a lightning flash
+into marble, she paused, pallid and breathless where she was, gazing
+upon me with eyes that burned deeper and deeper as the full
+comprehension of all that this implied gradually forced itself upon her
+mind.
+
+“You make a chaos of my little world,” she murmured at length.
+
+“No,” said I, “_your_ world is untouched. If it should never be my good
+fortune to enter it, you are not to grieve. You are free, Miss Preston,
+free as this sunshiny air we breathe; I alone am bound, and that because
+I must be whether I will or no.”
+
+Then I saw the woman I had worshipped in this young fair girl shine
+fully and fairly upon me. Drawing herself up, she looked me in the face
+and calmly laid her hand in mine. “I am young,” said she, “and do not
+know what may be right to say to one so generous and so kind. But this
+much I can promise, that whether or not I am ever able to duly reward
+you for what you undertake, I will at least make it the study of my life
+never to prove unworthy of so much trust and devotion.”
+
+And with the last lingering look natural to a parting for years, we
+separated then and there, and the crowd came between us, and the Sunday
+bells rang on, and what was so vividly real to us at the moment, became
+in remembrance more like the mist and shadow of a dream.
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+MRS. SYLVESTER.
+
+     Love is more pleasant than marriage, for the same reason that
+     romances are more amusing than history.
+
+     —CHAMFORT.
+
+     “He draweth out the thread of his verbosity, finer than the
+     staple of his argument.”
+
+     —LOVES LABOR LOST.
+
+
+Young Mandeville having finished his story, looked at his uncle. He
+found him sitting in an attitude of extreme absorption, his right arm
+stretched before him on the table, his face bent thoughtfully downwards
+and clouded with that deep melancholy that seemed its most natural
+expression, “He has not heard me,” was the young man’s first mortifying
+reflection. But catching his uncle’s eye which at that moment raised
+itself, he perceived he was mistaken and that he had rather been
+listened to only too well.
+
+“You must forgive me if I have seemed to rhapsodize,” the young man
+stammered. “You were so quiet I half forgot I had a listener and went on
+much as I would if I had been thinking aloud.”
+
+His uncle smiled and throwing off the weight of his reflections whatever
+they might be, arose and began pacing the floor. “I see you are past
+surgery,” quoth he, “any wisdom of mine would be only thrown away.”
+
+Young Mandeville was hurt. He had expected some token of approval on his
+uncle’s part, or at least some betrayal of sympathy. His looks expressed
+his disappointment.
+
+“You expected to convert me by this story,” continued the elder, pausing
+with a certain regret before his nephew; “nothing could convert me
+but—”
+
+“What?” inquired Mandeville after waiting in vain for the other to
+finish.
+
+“Something which we will never find in the whirl of New York fashionable
+life. A woman with faith to reward and soul to understand such
+unqualified trust as yours.”
+
+“But I believe Miss Preston is such a girl and will be such a woman. Her
+looks, her last words prove it.”
+
+“Nothing proves it but time and as for your belief, I have believed
+too.” Then as if fearing he had said too much, assumed his most
+business-like tone and observed, “But we will drop all that; you have
+resolved to quit music and enter Wall Street, your object money and the
+social consideration which money secures. Now, why Wall Street?”
+
+“Because I can think of no other means for attaining what I desire, in
+the space of time I would consent to keep a young lady of Miss Preston’s
+position waiting.”
+
+“Humph! and you have money, I suppose, which you propose to risk on the
+hazard?”
+
+“Some! enough to start with; a small amount to you, but sufficient if I
+am fortunate.”
+
+“And if you are not?”
+
+
+The young man opened his arms with an expressive gesture, “I am done
+for, that is all.”
+
+“Bertram,” his uncle exclaimed with a change of tone, “has it ever
+struck you that Mr. Preston might have as strong a prejudice against
+speculation as against the musical profession?”
+
+“No, that is, pardon me but I have sometimes thought that even in the
+event of success I should have to struggle against his inherited
+instincts of caste and his natural dislike of all things new, even
+wealth, but I never thought of the possibility of my arousing his
+distrust by speculating in stocks and engaging in enterprises so nearly
+in accord with his own business operations.”
+
+“Yet if I guess aright you would run greater risk of losing the support
+of his countenance by following the hazardous course you propose, than
+if you continued in the line of art that now engages you.”
+
+“Do you know—”
+
+“I know nothing, but I fear the chances, Bertram.”
+
+“Then I am already defeated and must give up my hopes of happiness.”
+
+
+A smile thin and indefinable crossed the other’s face. “No,” said he,
+“not necessarily.” And sitting down by his nephew’s side, he asked if he
+had any objections to enter a bank. “In a good capacity,” he exclaimed.
+
+“No indeed; it would be an opportunity surpassing my hopes. Do you know
+of an opening?”
+
+“Well,” said he, “under the circumstances I will let you into the secret
+of my own affairs. I have always had one ambition, and that was to be at
+the head of a bank. I have not said much about it, but for the last five
+years I have been working to this end, and to-day you see me the
+possessor of at least three-fourths of the stock of the Madison Bank. It
+has been deteriorating for some time, consequently I was enabled to buy
+it low, but now that I have got it I intend to build up the concern. I
+am able to throw business of an important nature in its way, and I dare
+prophesy that before the year is out you will see it re-established upon
+a solid and influential footing.”
+
+“I have no doubt of it, sir; you have the knack of success, any thing
+that you touch is sure to go straight.”
+
+“Unhappily yes, as far as business operations go. But no matter about
+that;—” as if the other had introduced some topic incongruous to the
+one they were considering—“the point is this. In two weeks time I shall
+be elected President of the Bank; if you will accept the position of
+assistant cashier,—the best I can offer in consideration of your total
+ignorance of all details of the business,—it is open to you—”
+
+
+“Uncle! how generous! I—”
+
+“Hush! your duties will be nominal, the present cashier is fully
+competent; but the leisure thus afforded will offer you abundant
+opportunity to make yourself acquainted with all matters connected with
+the banking system as well as with such capitalists as it would be well
+for you to know. So that when the occasion comes, I can raise you to the
+cashier’s place or make such other disposal of your talents as will best
+insure your rapid advance.”
+
+The young man’s eyes sparkled; with a sudden impetuous movement he
+jumped to his feet and grasped his uncle’s hand. “I can never thank you
+enough; you have made me your debtor for life. Now let any one ask me
+who is my father, and I will say—”
+
+“He was Edward Sylvester’s brother. But come, come, this extreme
+gratitude is unnecessary. You have always been a favorite with me,
+Bertram, and now that I have no child, you seem doubly near; it is my
+pleasure to do what I can for you. But—” and here he surveyed him with
+a wistful look, “I wish you were entering into this new line from love
+of the business rather than love of a woman. I fear for you my boy. It
+is an awful thing to stake one’s future upon a single chance and that
+chance a woman’s faith. If she should fail you after you had compassed
+your fortune, should die—well you could bear that perhaps; but if she
+turned false, and married some one else, or even married you and then—”
+
+“What?” came in silvery accents from the door, and a woman richly clad,
+her trailing velvets filling the air at once with an oppressive perfume,
+entered the room and paused before them in an attitude meant to be arch,
+but which from the massiveness of her figure and the scornful carriage
+of her head, succeeded in being simply imperious.
+
+Mr. Sylvester rose abruptly as if unpleasantly surprised. “Ona!” he
+exclaimed, hastening, however, to cover his embarassment by a courteous
+acknowledgement of her presence and a careless remark concerning the
+shortness of the services that had allowed her to return from church so
+early. “I did not hear you come in,” he observed.
+
+“No, I judge not,” she returned with a side glance at Mandeville. “But
+the services were not short, on the contrary I thought I should never
+hear the last amen. Mr. Turner’s voice is very agreeable,” she went on,
+in a rambling manner all her own, “it never interferes with your
+thoughts; not that I am considered as having any,” she interjected with
+another glance at their silent guest, “a woman in society with a
+reputation for taste in all matters connected with fashionable living,
+has no thoughts of course; business men with only one idea in their
+heads, that of making money, have more no doubt. Do you know, Edward,”
+she went on with sudden inconsequence, which was another trait of this
+amiable lady’s conversation, “that I have quite come to a conclusion in
+regard to the girl Philip Longtree is going to marry; she may be pretty,
+but she does not know how to dress. I wish you could have seen her
+to-night; she had on mauve with old gold trimmings. Now with one of her
+complexion—But I forget you haven’t seen her. Bertram, I think I shall
+give a German next month, will you come? Oh, Edward!” as if the thought
+had suddenly struck her, “Princess Louise _is_ the sixth child of Queen
+Victoria; I asked Mr. Turner to-night. By the way, I wonder if it will
+be pleasant enough to take the horses out to-morrow? Bird has been
+obliging enough to get sick just in the height of the season, Mr.
+Mandeville. There are a thousand things I have got to do and I hate
+hired horses.” And with a petulant sigh she laid her prayer-book on the
+table and with a glance in the mirror near by, began pulling off her
+gloves in the slow and graceful fashion eminently in keeping with her
+every movement.
+
+It was as if an atmosphere of worldliness had settled down upon this
+room sanctified a moment before by the utterances of a pure and noble
+love. Mr. Sylvester looked uneasy, while Bertram searched in vain for
+something to say.
+
+“I seem to have brought a blight,” she suddenly murmured in an easy tone
+somewhat at variance with the glance of half veiled suspicion which she
+darted from under her heavy lids, at first one and then the other of the
+two gentlemen before her. “No, I will not sit,” she added as her husband
+offered her a chair. “I am tired almost to death and would retire
+immediately, but I interrupted you I believe in the utterance of some
+wise saying about matrimony. It is an interesting subject and I have a
+notion to hear what one so well qualified to speak in regard to it—”
+and here she made a slow, half lazy courtesy to her husband with a look
+that might mean anything from coquetry to defiance—“has to say to a
+young man like Mr. Mandeville.”
+
+Edward Sylvester who was regarded as an autocrat among men, and who
+certainly was an acknowledged leader in any company he chose to enter,
+bowed his head before this anomalous glance with a gesture of something
+like submission.
+
+“One is not called upon to repeat every inadvertent phrase he may
+utter,” said he. “Bertram was consulting me upon certain topics and—”
+
+“You answered him in your own brilliant style,” she concluded. “What did
+you say?” she asked in another moment in a low unmoved tone which the
+final act of smoothing out her gloves on the table with hands delicate
+as white rose leaves but firm as marble, did not either hasten or
+retard.
+
+“Oh if you insist,” he returned lightly, “and are willing to bear the
+reflection my unfortunate remark seems to cast upon the sex, I was
+merely observing to my nephew, that the man who centered all his hopes
+upon a woman’s faith, was liable to disappointment. Even if he succeeded
+in marrying her there were still possibilities of his repenting any
+great sacrifice made in her behalf.”
+
+“Indeed!” and for once the delicate cheek flushed deeper than its rouge.
+“And why do you say this?” she inquired, dropping her coquettish manner
+and flashing upon them both, the haughty and implacable woman Bertram
+had always believed her to be, notwithstanding her vagaries and fashion.
+
+“Because I have seen much of life outside my own house,” her husband
+replied with undiminished courtesy; “and feel bound to warn any young
+man of his probable fate, who thinks to find nothing but roses and
+felicity beyond the gates of fashionable marriage.”
+
+“Ah then, it was on general principles you were speaking,” she remarked
+with a soft laugh that undulated through an atmosphere suddenly grown
+too heavy for easy breathing. “I did not know; wives are so little apt
+to be appreciated in this world, Mr. Mandeville, I was afraid he might
+be giving you some homely advice founded upon personal experience.” And
+she moved towards their guest with that strange smile of hers which some
+called dangerous but which he had always regarded as oppressive.
+
+She saw him drop his eyes, and smiled again, but in a different way.
+This woman, whom no one accused of anything worse than levity, hailed
+every tribute to her power, as a miser greets the glint of gold. With a
+turn of her large but elegant figure that in its slow swaying reminded
+you of some heavy tropical flower, hanging inert, intoxicated with its
+own fragrance, she dismissed at once the topic that had engaged them,
+and launched into one of her choicest streams of inconsequent talk. But
+Mandeville was in no mood to listen to trivialities, and being of a
+somewhat impatient nature, presently rose and excusing himself, took a
+hurried leave. Not so hurried however that he did not have time to
+murmur to his uncle as they walked towards the door:
+
+“You would make comparison between the girl I worship and other women in
+fashionable life. Do not I pray; she is no more like them than a star
+that shines is like a rose that blooms. My fate will not be like that of
+most men that we know, but better and higher.”
+
+And his uncle standing there in the grand hall-way, with the fresh
+splendors of unlimited wealth gleaming upon him from every side, looked
+after the young man with a sigh and repeated, “Better and higher? God in
+his merciful goodness grant it.”
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+SHADOWS OF THE PAST.
+
+     “Memory, the warder of the brain.”—MACBETH.
+
+
+It was long past midnight. The fire in the grate burned dimly, shedding
+its lingering glow on the face of the master of the house as with bowed
+head and folded hands he sat alone and brooding before its dying embers.
+
+It was a lonesome sight. The very magnificence of the spacious apartment
+with its lofty walls and glittering works of art, seemed to give an air
+of remoteness to that solitary form, bending beneath the weight of its
+reflections. From the exquisitely decorated ceiling to the turkish rugs
+scattered over the polished floor, all was elegant and luxurious, and
+what had splendors like these to do with thoughts that bent the brows
+and overshadowed the lips of man? The very lights burned deprecatingly,
+illuminating beauties upon which no eye gazed and for which no heart
+beat. The master himself seemed to feel this, for he presently rose and
+put them out, after which he seated himself as before, only if possible
+with more abandon, as if with the extinguishing of the light some eye
+had been shut whose gaze he had hitherto feared. And in truth my lady’s
+image shone fainter from its heavy panel, and the smile which had met
+with unrelenting sweetness the glare of the surrounding splendor,
+softened in the mellow glimmer of the fire-light to an etherial halo
+that left you at rest.
+
+_One, two_, THREE, the small clock sounded from the mantel and yet no
+stir took place in the sombre figure keeping watch beneath. What were
+the thoughts which could thus detain from his comfortable bed a man
+already tired with manifold cares? It would be hard to tell. The waters
+that gush at the touch of the diviner’s rod are tumultuous in their flow
+and rush hither and thither with little heed to the restraining force of
+rule and reason. But of the pictures that rose before his eyes in those
+dying embers, there were two which stood out in startling distinctness.
+Let us see if we can convey the impression of them to other eyes and
+hearts.
+
+First, the form of his mother. Ah grey-bearded men weighted with the
+cares of life and absorbed in the monotonous round of duties that to you
+are the be all and end all of existence, to whom morning means a
+jostling ride to the bank, the store or the office, and with whom night
+is but the name for a worse unrest because of its unfulfilled promises
+of slumber, what soul amongst you all is so callous to the holy memories
+of childhood, as not to thrill with something of the old time feeling of
+love and longing as the memory of that tender face with its watchful eye
+and ready smiles, comes back to you from the midst of weary years! Your
+mother!
+
+But Edward Sylvester with that black line across his life cutting past
+from present, what makes him think of his mother to-night; and the
+cottage door upon the hillside where she used to stand with eager eyes
+looking up and down the road as he came trudging home from school,
+swinging his satchel and shouting at every squirrel that started across
+the road or peeped from the branches of the grand old maples overhead!
+And the garret-chamber under the roof, the scene of many a romp with
+Elsie and Sonsie and Jack, neighbors’ children to whom the man of to-day
+would be an awe and a mystery! And the little room where he slept with
+Tom his own blue-eyed brother so soon to die of a wasting disease, but
+full of warm blood then and all alive with boyish pranks. He could
+almost hear the wild clear laugh with which the mischievous fellow
+started upon its travels, the rooster whose legs he had tied a short
+space apart with one of Sonsie’s faded ribbons, a laugh that became
+unrestrained when the poor creature in attempting to run down hill,
+rolled over and over, cutting such a figure before his late admirers,
+the hens, that even Elsie smiled in the midst of her gentle entreaties.
+And Jocko the crow, whom taming had made one of the boys! poor Jocko! is
+it nearly thirty years since you used to stalk in majesty through the
+village streets, with your neat raven coat closely buttoned across your
+breast and your genteel caw, caw, and condescending nod for old
+acquaintances? The day seems but as yesterday when you marred the stolen
+picnic up in the woods by flying off with a flock of your fellow
+black-coats, nor is it easy to realize that the circle of tow-headed
+fellows who hailed with shouts your ignominious return after a day or
+so’s experience of the vaunted pleasures of freedom, are now sharp
+featured men without a smile for youth or a thought beyond the hard cold
+dollar buried deep in their pockets.
+
+And the church up over the hills! and the long Sunday walk at mother’s
+side with the sunshine glowing on the dusty road and beating on the
+river flowing far beyond! The same road, the same river of Monday and
+Tuesday but how different it looked to the boy; almost like another
+scene, as if Sunday clothes were on the world as well as upon his
+restless little limbs. How he longed for it to be Monday though he did
+not say so; and what a different day Saturday would have been if only
+there was no long, sleepy Sunday to follow it.
+
+But the mother! She did not dread that day. Her eyes used to brighten
+when the bell began to ring from the old church steeple. Her eyes! how
+they mingled with every picture! They seemed to fill the night. What a
+sparkle they had, yet how they used to soften at his few hurried
+caresses. He was always too busy for kisses; there were the snares in
+the north woods to be looked after; the nest in the apple-tree to be
+inquired into; the skates to be ground before the river froze over; the
+nuts to be gathered and stored in that same old garret chamber under the
+eaves. But now how vividly her least look comes back to the tired man,
+from the glance of wistful sympathy with which she met his childish
+disappointments to the flash of joy that hailed his equally childish
+delights.
+
+And another scene there is in the embers to-night; a remembrance of
+later days when the mother with her love and yearning was laid low in
+the grave, and manhood had learned its first lessons of passion and
+ambition from the glance of younger eyes and the smile of riper lips.
+Not the picture of a woman, however; that was already present beside
+him, shining from its panel with an insistence that not even the putting
+out of the lights could quite quench or subdue, but of a child young,
+pure and beautiful, sitting by the river in the glow of a June sunshine,
+gazing at the hills of his boyhood’s home with a look on her face such
+as he had never before seen on that of child or woman. A simple picture
+with a simple villager’s daughter for its centre, but as he mused upon
+it to-night, the success and triumph of the last ten years faded from
+his sight like the ashes that fell at his feet, and he found himself
+questioning in vain as to what better thing he had met in all the walks
+of his busy life than that young child’s innocence and faith as they
+shone upon him that day from her soft uplifted eyes.
+
+He had been sitting the whole warm noontide at the side of her whose
+half gracious, half scornful, wholly indolent acceptance of his homage,
+he called love, and enervated by an atmosphere he was as yet too
+inexperienced to recognize as of the world, worldly, had strolled forth
+to cool his fevered brow in the fresh autumn breeze that blew up from
+the river. He was a gay-hearted youth in those days, heedless of
+everything but the passing moment; nature meant little to him; and when
+in the course of his ramble he came upon the form of a child sitting on
+the edge of the river, he remembers wondering what she saw in a sweep of
+empty water to interest her so deeply. Indeed he was about to inquire
+when she turned and he caught a glimpse of her eyes and knew at once
+without asking. Yet in those days he was anything but quick to recognize
+the presence of feeling. A face was beautiful or plain to him, not
+eloquent or expressive. But this child’s countenance was exceptional. It
+made you forget the cotton frock she wore, it made you forget yourself.
+As he gazed on it, he felt the stir of something in his breast he had
+never known before, and half dreaded to hear her speak lest the charm
+should fail or the influence be lost. Yet how could he pass on and not
+speak. Laying his hand on her head, he asked her what she was thinking
+of as she sat there all alone looking off on the river; and the wee
+thing drew in her breath and surveyed him with all her soul in her great
+black eyes before she replied, “I do not know, I never know.” Then
+looking back she dreamily added, “It makes me want to go away, miles
+away,”—and she held out her tiny arms towards the river with a longing
+gesture; “and it makes me want to cry.”
+
+And he understood or thought he did and for the first time in his life
+looked upon the river that had met his gaze from childhood, with eyes
+that saw its exceeding beauty. Ah it was an exquisite scene, a rare
+scene, mountain melting into mountain and meadow vanishing into meadow,
+till the flow of silver waters was lost in a horizon of azure mist. No
+wonder that a child without snares to set or nuts to gather, should
+pause a moment to gaze upon it, as even he in the days gone by would
+sometimes stop on Sabbath eves to snatch a kiss from his mother’s lips.
+
+“It is like a fairy land, is it not?” quoth the child looking up into
+his face with a wistful glance. “Do you know what it is that makes me
+feel so?”
+
+He smiled and sat down by her side. Somehow he felt as if a talk with
+this innocent one would restore him more than a walk on the hills. “It
+is the spirit of beauty, my child, you are moved by the loveliness of
+the scene; is it a new one to you?”
+
+“No, oh no, but I always feel the same. As if something here was hungry,
+don’t you know?” and she laid her little hand on her breast.
+
+He did not know, but he smiled upon her notwithstanding, and made her
+talk and talk till the gush of the sweet child spirit with its hidden
+longings and but half understood aspirations, bathed his whole being in
+a reviving shower, and he felt as if he had wandered into a new world
+where the languors of the tropics were unknown, and passion, if there
+was such, had the wings of an eagle instead of the siren’s voice and
+fascination.
+
+Her name was Paula, she said, and before leaving he found that she was a
+relative of the woman he loved. This was a slight shock to him. The lily
+and the cactus abloom on one stalk! How could that be? and for a moment
+he felt as if the splendors of the glorious woman paled before the
+lustre of the innocent child. But the feeling, if it was strong enough
+to be called such, soon passed. As the days swept by bringing evenings
+with light and music and whispered words beneath the vine-leaves, the
+remembrance of the pure, sweet hour beside the river, gradually faded
+till only a vague memory of that gentle uplifted face sweet with its
+childish dimples, remained to hallow now and then a passing reverie or a
+fevered dream.
+
+
+But to-night its every lineament filled his soul, vying with the
+memories of his mother in its vividness and power. O why had he not
+learned the lesson it taught. Why had he turned his back upon the high
+things of life to yield himself to a current that swept him on and on
+until the power of resistance left him and—O dwell not here wild
+thoughts! Pause not on the threshold of the one dark memory that blasts
+the soul and sears the heart in the secret hours of night. Let the dead
+past bury its dead and if one must think, let it be of the hope, which
+the remembrance of that short glimpse into a pure if infantile soul has
+given to his long darkened spirit.
+
+One, two, three, FOUR; and the fire is dead and the night has grown
+chill, but he heeds it not. He has asked himself if his life’s book is
+quite closed to the higher joys of existence? whether money getting and
+money holding is to absorb him body and soul forever; and with the
+question a great yearning seizes him to look upon that sweet child
+again, if haply in the gleam of her pure spirit, something of the noble
+and the pure that lay beneath the crust of life might be again revealed
+to his longing sight.
+
+“She must be a great girl now,” murmured he to himself, “as old as if
+not older than she whom Bertram adores so passionately, but she will
+always be a child to me, a sweet pure child whose innocence is my
+teacher and whose ignorance is my better wisdom. If anything will save
+me—”
+
+But here the shadow settled again; when it lifted, the morning ray lay
+cool and ghostly over the hearthstone.
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+PAULA.
+
+    “The stars of midnight shall be dear
+    To her; and she shall lean her ear
+    In many a secret place
+    Where rivulets dance their wayward round,
+    And beauty born of murmuring sound
+            Shall pass into her face.”
+
+    —WORDSWORTH.
+
+
+A wintry scene. Snow-piled hills stretching beyond a frozen river. On
+the bank a solitary figure tall, dark and commanding, standing with eyes
+bent sadly on a long narrow mound at his feet. It is Edward Sylvester
+and the mound is the grave of his mother.
+
+It is ten years since he stood upon that spot. In all that time no
+memories of his childhood’s home, no recollection of that lonely grave
+among the pines, had been sufficient to allure him from the city and its
+busy round of daily cares. Indeed he had always shrunk at the very name
+of the place and never of his own will alluded to it, but the reveries
+of a night had awakened a longing that was not to be appeased, and in
+the face of his wife’s cold look of astonishment and a secret dread in
+his own heart, had left his comfortable fireside, for the scenes of his
+early life and marriage, and was now standing, in the bleak December
+air, gazing down upon the stone that marked his mother’s grave.
+
+But tender as were the chords that reverberated at this sight, it was
+not to revisit this tomb he had returned to Grotewell. No, that other
+vision, the vision of young sweet appreciative life has drawn him more
+strongly than the memory of the dead. It was to search out and gaze
+again upon the innocent girl, whose eloquent eyes and lofty spirit had
+so deeply moved him in the past, that he had braved the chill of the
+Connecticut hills and incurred the displeasure of his wife.
+
+Yet when he turned away from that simple headstone and set his face
+towards the village streets it was with a sinking of the heart that
+first revealed to him the severity of the ordeal to which he had thus
+wantonly subjected himself. Not that the wintry trees and snow covered
+roofs appealed to him as strongly as the same trees and homes would have
+done in their summer aspect. The land was bright with verdure when that
+shadow fell whose gloom resting upon all the landscape, made a walk down
+this quiet road even at this remote day, a matter of such pain to him.
+But scenes that have caught the reflection of a life’s joy or a heart’s
+sorrow, lose not their power of appeal, with the leaves they shake from
+their trees, and nothing that had met the eyes of this man from the hour
+he left this spot, no, not the glance of his wife as his child fell back
+dead in his arms, had shot such a pang to his soul as the sight of that
+long street with its array of quiet homes, stretching out before him
+into the dim grey distance.
+
+But for all that he was determined to traverse it, ay to the very end,
+though his steps must pass the house whose ghostly portals were fraught
+with memories dismal as death to him. On then he proceeded, walking with
+his usual steady pace that only faltered or broke, as he met the shy
+eyes of some hurrying village maiden, speeding upon some errand down the
+snowy street, or encountered some old friend of his youth who despite
+his altered mien and commanding carriage, recognized in him the slim
+young bank cashier who had left them now ten long years ago to make a
+name and fortune in the great city.
+
+It was noon by the time he gained the heart of the village, and school
+was out and the children came rushing by with just the same shout and
+scamper with which he used to hail that hour of joyous release. How it
+carried him back to the days when those four red walls towered upon him
+with awful significance, as with books on his back and a half eaten
+apple in his pocket he crept up the walk, conscious that the bell had
+rung its last shrill note a good half hour before. He felt half tempted
+to stop and make his way through the crowd of shouting boys and dancing
+girls to that same old door again, and see for himself if the huge LATE
+which in a fit of childish revenge he had cut on its awkward panels, was
+still there to meet the eyes of tardy boys and loitering girls. But the
+wondering looks of the children unused to behold a figure so stately in
+their simple streets deterred him and he passed thoughtfully on. So
+engrossed was he by the reminiscences of Tom and Elsie which the school
+house had awakened, that he passed the ominous mansion which had been
+his dread, and the bank where he had worked, and the arbor by the side
+of the road where he had sat out the first hours of his fatal courtship,
+almost without realizing their presence, and was at the end of the
+street and in full view of the humble cottage which the little Paula had
+pointed out as her home on that day of their first acquaintance.
+
+“Good heaven! and I do not even know if she is alive,” he suddenly
+ejaculated, stopping where he was and eying the lowly walls before him
+with a quick realization of the possibilities of a great disappointment.
+“Ten years have strown many a grave on the hillside and Ona would not
+mention it if she lost every relative she had in this town. What a fool
+I have been,” thought he.
+
+But with the stern resolution which had carried him through many a
+difficulty, he prepared to advance, when he was again arrested by seeing
+the door of the house he was contemplating, suddenly open and a girlish
+figure issue forth. Could it be Paula? With eager, almost feverish
+interest he watched her approach. She was a slight young thing and came
+towards him with a rapid movement almost jaunty in its freedom. If it
+were Paula, he would know her by her eyes, but for some reason he hoped
+it was not she, not the child of his dreams.
+
+
+At a yard or two in front of him she paused astonished. This grave, tall
+figure with the melancholy brow, deep eyes and firmly compressed lips
+was an unaccustomed sight in this primitive town. Scarcely realizing
+what she did she gave a little courtesy and was proceeding on when he
+stopped her with a hurried gesture.
+
+“Is Mrs. Fairchild still living?” he asked, indicating the house she had
+just left.
+
+“Mrs. Fairchild? O no,” she returned, surveying him out of the corner of
+a very roguish pair of brown eyes, with a certain sly wonder at the
+suspense in his voice. “She has been dead as long as I can remember. Old
+Miss Abby and her sister live there now.”
+
+“And who are they?” he hurriedly asked; he could not bring himself to
+mention Paula’s name.
+
+“Why, Miss Abby and Miss Belinda,” she returned with a puzzled air.
+“Miss Abby sews and Miss Belinda teaches the school. I don’t know
+anything more about them, sir.”
+
+The courteous gentleman bowed. “And they live there quite alone?”
+
+“O no sir, Paula lives with them.”
+
+“Ah, she does;” and the young girl looking at him could not detect the
+slightest change in his haughty countenance. “Paula is Mrs. Fairchild’s
+daughter.”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“Thank you,” said he, and allowed the pretty brown-eyed miss to pass on,
+which she did with lingering footsteps and many a backward glance of the
+eye.
+
+Halting at the door of that small cottage, Edward Sylvester reasoned
+with himself.
+
+“She may be just such another fresh-looking, round-faced,
+mischievous-eyed school-girl. Spiritual children do not always make
+earnest-souled women. Let me beware what hopes I build on a foundation
+so unsubstantial.” Yet when in a moment later the door opened and a
+weazen-faced dapper, little woman appeared, all smiles and welcome, he
+owned to a sensation of dismay that sufficiently convinced him what a
+hold this hope of meeting with something exceptionally sweet and high,
+had taken upon his hitherto careless and worldly spirit.
+
+“Mr. Sylvester I am sure! I thought Ona would remember us after a while.
+Come in sir, do, my sister will be home in a few moments.” And with a
+deprecatory flutter comical enough in a woman at least seventy odd years
+old, she led her distinguished guest into a large unused room where in
+spite of his remonstrances she at once proceeded to build a fire.
+
+“It is a pleasure sir,” she said to every utterance of regret on his
+part at the trouble he was causing. And though her vocabulary was thus
+made to appear somewhat small, her sincerity was undoubted. “We have
+counted the days, Belinda and I, since we sent the last letter. It may
+seem foolish to you, sir; but Paula is growing so fast and Belinda says
+is so uncommon smart for her age that we did think that it was time Ona
+knew just what a straight we were in. Do you want to see Paula?”
+
+“Very much,” he returned, shocked and embarrassed at the position in
+which he found himself put by the reticence of his wife on the subject
+of her relations. “They think I have come in reply to a letter,” he
+mused, “and I did not even know my wife had received one.”
+
+“You will be surprised,” she exclaimed with a complacent nod as the fire
+blazed up brightly; “every one is surprised who sees her for the first
+time. Is my niece well?” And thus it was he learned the relation between
+his wife of ten years and these simple inhabitants of the little cottage
+in Grotewell.
+
+He replied as in duty bound, and presently by the use of a few dexterous
+questions succeeded in eliciting from this simple-minded old lady, the
+few facts necessary to a proper understanding of the situation. Miss
+Abby and Miss Belinda were two maiden ladies, sisters of Mrs. Fairchild
+and Ona’s mother, who on the death of the former took up their abode in
+the little cottage for the purpose of bringing up the orphan Paula. They
+had succeeded in this by dint of the utmost industry, but Paula was not
+a common child, and Belinda, who was evidently the autocrat of the
+house, had decided that she ought to have other advantages. She had
+therefore written to Mrs. Sylvester concerning the child, in the hopes
+that that lady would take enough interest in her pretty little cousin to
+send her to boarding-school; but they had received no reply till now,
+all of which was perfectly right of course, Mrs. Sylvester being
+undoubtedly occupied and Mr. Sylvester himself being better than any
+letter.
+
+“And does Paula herself know what efforts you have been making in her
+behalf,” asked Mr. Sylvester upon the receipt of this information.
+
+The little lady shook her head with vivacity. “Belinda advised me to say
+nothing,” she remarked. “The child is contented with her home and we did
+not like to raise her expectations. You will never regret anything you
+may do for her,” she went on in a hurried way with a peep now and then
+towards the door as if while enjoying a momentary freedom of speech, she
+feared an intrusion that would cut that pleasure short. “Paula is a
+grateful child and never has given us a moment of concern from the time
+she began to put pieces of patchwork together. But there is Belinda,”
+she suddenly exclaimed, rising with the little dip and jerk of her left
+shoulder that was habitual to her whenever she was amused or excited.
+“Belinda,” she cried, going to the door and speaking with great
+impressiveness, “Mr. Sylvester is in the parlor.” And almost instantly a
+tall middle aged lady entered, whose plain but powerful countenance and
+dignified demeanor, stamped her at once as belonging to a very different
+type of woman from her sister.
+
+“I am very glad to see you sir,” she exclaimed in a slow determined
+voice as dissimilar as possible from the piping tones of Miss Abby. “Is
+not Mrs. Sylvester with you?”
+
+“No,” returned he, “I have come alone; my wife is not fond of travelling
+in winter.”
+
+The slightest gleam shot from her bright keen eye. “Is she not well?”
+
+“Yes quite well, but not over strong,” he rejoined quietly.
+
+She gave him another quick look, settled some matter with herself and
+taking off her bonnet, sat down by the fire. At once her sister ceased
+in her hovering about the room and sitting also, became to all
+appearance her silent shadow.
+
+“Paula has gone up stairs to take off her bonnet,” the younger woman
+said in a straightforward manner just short of being brusque. “She is a
+very remarkable girl, Mr. Sylvester, a genius I suppose some would call
+her, a child of nature I prefer to say. Whatever there is to be learned
+in this town she has learned. And in a place where nature speaks and
+good books abound that is not inconsiderable. I have taken pride in her
+talents I acknowledge, and have endeavored to do what I could to
+cultivate them to the best advantage. There is no girl in my school who
+can write so original a composition, nor is there one with a truer heart
+or more tractable disposition.”
+
+“You have then been her teacher as well as her friend, she owes you a
+double debt of gratitude.”
+
+A look hard to understand flashed over her homely face. “I have never
+thought of debt or gratitude in connection with Paula. The only effort
+which I have ever made in her behalf which cost me anything, is this one
+which threatens me with her loss.” Then as if fearing she had said too
+much, set her firm lips still firmer and ignoring the subject of the
+child, astonished him by certain questions on the leading issues of the
+day that at once betrayed a truly virile mind.
+
+“She is a study,” thought he to himself, but meeting her on the ground
+she had taken, replied at once and to her evident satisfaction in the
+direct and simple manner that appeals the most forcibly to a strong if
+somewhat unpolished understanding, while the meek little Miss Abby
+glanced from one to the other with a humble awe more indicative of her
+appreciation for their superiority than of her comprehension of the
+subject.
+
+
+But what with Miss Belinda’s secret anxiety and Mr. Sylvester’s
+unconscious listening for a step upon the stair, the conversation, brisk
+as it had opened, gradually languished, and ere long with a sort of
+clairvoyant understanding of her sister’s wishes, Miss Abby arose and
+with her customary jerk left the room for Paula.
+
+“The child is not timid but has an unaccountable aversion to entering
+the presence of strangers alone,” Miss Belinda explained; but Mr.
+Sylvester did not hear her, for at that moment the door re-opened and
+Miss Abby stepped in with the young girl thus heralded.
+
+Edward Sylvester never forgot that moment, and indeed few men could have
+beheld the picture of extraordinary loveliness thus revealed, without a
+shock of surprise equal to the delight it inspired. She was not pretty;
+the very word was a misnomer, she was simply one of nature’s most
+exquisite and undeniable beauties. From the crown of her ebon locks to
+the sole of her dainty foot, she was perfect as the most delicate
+coloring and the utmost harmony of contour could make her. And not in
+the conventional type either. There was an individuality in her style
+that was as fresh as it was uncommon. She was at once unique and
+faultless, something that can be said of few women however beautiful or
+alluring.
+
+Mr. Sylvester had not expected this, as indeed how could he, and for a
+moment he could only gaze with a certain swelling of the heart at the
+blooming loveliness that in one instant had transformed the odd little
+parlor into a bower fit for the habitation of princes. But soon his
+natural self-possession returned, and rising with his most courteous
+bow, he greeted the blushing girl with words of simple welcome.
+
+Instantly her eyes which had been hitherto kept bent upon the floor
+flashed upward to his face and a smile full of the wonder of an unlooked
+for, almost unhoped for delight, swept radiantly over her lips, and he
+saw with deep and sudden satisfaction that the hour which had made such
+an impression upon him, had not been forgotten by her; that his voice
+had recalled what his face failed to do, and that he was recognized.
+
+“It is Mr. Sylvester, your cousin Ona’s husband,” Miss Belinda
+interposed in a matter-of-fact way, evidently attributing the emotion of
+the child to her astonishment at the imposing appearance of their guest.
+
+“And it was _you_ who married Ona!” she involuntarily murmured, blushing
+the next moment at this simple utterance of her thoughts.
+
+“Yes, dear child,” Mr. Sylvester hastened to say. “And so you remember
+me?” he presently added, smiling down upon her with a sense of new life
+that for the moment made every care and anxiety shrink into the
+background.
+
+“Yes,” she simply returned, taking the chair beside him with the
+unconscious grace of perfect self-forgetfulness. “It was the first time
+I had found any one to listen to my childish enthusiasms; it is natural
+such kindness should make its impression.”
+
+“Little Paula and I met long ago,” quoth Mr. Sylvester turning to the
+somewhat astonished Miss Belinda. “It was before my marriage and she was
+then—”
+
+“Just ten years old,” finished Paula, seeing him cast her an inquiring
+glance.
+
+“Very young for such a thoughtful little miss,” he exclaimed. “And have
+those childish enthusiasms quite departed?” he continued, smiling upon
+her with gentle encouragement. “Do you no longer find a fairy-land in
+the view up the river?”
+
+She flushed, casting a timid glance at her aunt, but meeting his eyes
+again seemed to forget everything and everybody in the inspiration which
+his presence afforded.
+
+“I fear I must acknowledge that it is more a fairy-land to me than
+ever,” she softly replied. “Knowledge does not always bring disillusion,
+and though I have learned one by one the names of the towns scattered
+along those misty banks, and though I know they are no less prosaic in
+their character than our own humdrum village, yet I cannot rid myself of
+the notion that those verdant slopes with their archway of clouds, hide
+the portals of Paradise, and that I have only to follow the birds in
+their flight up the river to find myself on the verge of a mystery, the
+banks at my feet can never disclose.”
+
+“May the gates of God’s Paradise never recede as those would do, my
+child, if like the birds you attempted to pierce them.”
+
+“Paula is a dreamer,” quoth Miss Belinda in a matter-of-fact tone, “but
+she is a good girl notwithstanding and can solve a geometrical problem
+with the best.”
+
+“And sew on the machine and make a very good pie,” timidly put in Miss
+Abby.
+
+“That is well,” laughed Mr. Sylvester, observing that the poor child’s
+head had fallen forward in maidenly shame at her aunts’ elogiums as well
+as at the length of the speech into which she had been betrayed. “It
+shows that her eyes can see what is at hand as well as what is beyond
+our reach.” Then with a touch of his usual formal manner intended to
+restore her to herself, “Do you like study, Paula?”
+
+In an instant her eyes flashed. “I more than like it; it feeds me.
+Knowledge has its vistas too,” she added with an arch look, the first he
+had seen on her hitherto serious countenance. “I can never outgrow my
+recognition of the portals it discloses or the fairy-land it opens up to
+every inquiring eye.”
+
+“Even geometry,” he ventured, more anxious to probe this fresh young
+mind than he had ever been to sound the opinions of the most notable men
+of the day.
+
+“Even geometry,” she smiled. “To be sure its portals are somewhat
+methodical in shape, allowing no scope to the fancy, but from its
+triangles and circles have been born the grandeurs of architecture, and
+upright on the threshold of its exact laws and undeviating calculations,
+I see an angel with a golden rod in his hand, measuring the heavens.”
+
+“Even a stone speaks to a poet,” said Mr. Sylvester with a glance at
+Miss Belinda.
+
+“But Paula is no poet,” returned that lady with strict and impartial
+honesty. “She has never put a line on paper to my knowledge. Have you
+child?”
+
+“No aunt, I would as soon imprison a falling sunbeam or try to catch the
+breeze that lifts my hair or kisses my cheek.”
+
+“You see,” continued Mr. Sylvester still looking at Miss Belinda.
+
+She answered with a doubtful shake of the head and an earnest glance at
+the girl as if she perceived something in that bright young soul, that
+even she had never observed before.
+
+“Have you ever been away from home?” he now asked.
+
+“Never, I know as little of the great world as a callow nestling. No, I
+should not say that, for the young bird has no Aunt Belinda to tell of
+the great cathedrals and the wonderful music she has heard and the
+glorious pictures she has seen in her visits to the city. It is almost
+as good as travelling one’s self to hear Aunt Belinda talk.”
+
+It was now the turn of the mature plain woman to blush, which she did
+under Mr. Sylvester’s searching eye.
+
+“You have then been in the habit of visiting New York?”
+
+“I have been there twice,” she returned evasively.
+
+“Since my marriage?”
+
+“Yes sir;” with a firm closing of her lips.
+
+“I did not know you were there or I should have insisted upon your
+remaining at my house.”
+
+“Thank you,” said she with a quick triumphant glance at her demure
+little shadow, who looked back in amaze and was about to speak when Miss
+Belinda proceeded. “My visits usually have been on business; I should
+not think of troubling Mrs. Sylvester.” And then he knew that his wife
+had been aware of those visits if he had not.
+
+But he refrained from testifying to his discovery. “You speak of music,”
+said he, turning gently back to Paula. “Have you a taste for it? Would
+it make you happy to hear such music as your aunt tells about?”
+
+“O yes, I can conceive nothing grander than to sit in a church whose
+every line is beauty and listen while the great organ utters its song of
+triumph or echoes in the wonderful way it does, the emotions you have
+tried to express and could not. I would give a whole week of my life on
+the hills, dear as it is, for one such hour, I think.”
+
+Mr. Sylvester smiled. “It is a rare kind of coin to offer for such a
+simple pleasure, but it may meet with its acceptance, nevertheless;” and
+in his look and in his voice there was an appearance of affectionate
+interest that completed the subjugation of the watchful Miss Belinda,
+who now became doubly assured that whatever neglect had been shown her
+by her niece was not due to that niece’s husband.
+
+Mr. Sylvester recognized the effect he had produced and hastened to
+complete it, feeling that the good opinion of Miss Belinda would be
+valuable to any man. “I have been a boy on these hills,” said he, “and
+know what it is to long for what is beyond while enjoying what is
+present. You shall hear the organ my child.” And stopped, wondering to
+himself over the new sweet interest he seemed to take in the prospect of
+pleasures which he had supposed himself to have long ago exhausted.
+
+“Hear the organ, I? why that means—O what does it mean?” she inquired,
+turning with a look of beaming hope towards her aunt.
+
+
+“You must ask Mr. Sylvester,” that uncompromising lady replied, with a
+straightforward look at the fire.
+
+And he with a smile told the blushing girl that according to his
+reading, mortals went blindfold into fairy-land; and she understood what
+he meant and was silent, whereupon he turned the conversation upon more
+common-place subjects.
+
+For how could he tell her then of the intention that had awakened in his
+breast at the first glimpse of her grand young beauty. To make her his
+child, to bequeath to her the place of the babe that had perished in his
+arms three long years before—That meant to give Ona a care if not a
+rival in his affections, and Ona shrank from care, and was not a subject
+for rivalry. And the _if_ which this implied weighed heavily on his
+heart as moment after moment flew by, and he felt again the reviving
+power of an unsullied mind and an aspiring nature.
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+THE BARRED DOOR.
+
+     “A school boy’s tale; the wonder of an hour.”—BYRON.
+
+
+“Did you know that your niece was gifted with rare beauty as well as
+talents?” asked Mr. Sylvester of Miss Belinda as a couple of hours or so
+later, they sat alone by the parlor fire, preparatory to his departure.
+
+“No, that is,” she hastily corrected herself, “I knew she was very
+pretty of course, prettier by far than any of her mates, but I did not
+suppose she was what you call a beauty, or at least would be so
+considered by a person accustomed to New York society.”
+
+“I do not know of a woman in New York who can boast of any such claims
+to transcendent loveliness. Such faces are rare outside of art, Miss
+Belinda; was Mrs. Fairchild a handsome woman?”
+
+“She was my sister and if I may say so, my favorite sister, but she was
+no more agreeable to the eye than some others of her family,” grimly
+returned the heavy browed spinster with a compression of her lips. “What
+beauty Paula has inherited came from her father. Her chief charm in my
+eyes, however, springs from her pure nature and the unselfish impulses
+of her heart.”
+
+“And in mine,” rejoined he quietly. Then with a sudden change of tone as
+he realized the necessity of saying something definite to this woman in
+regard to his intentions toward the child, he remarked, “Her great and
+unusual talents and manifest disposition to learn, demand as you say,
+superior advantages to any she can have in a small country town like
+this, fruitful as it has already been to her under your wise and
+fostering care and such shall she have; but just when and how I cannot
+say till I have seen my wife and learned what her wishes are likely to
+be in regard to the subject.”
+
+“You are very kind, sir,” returned Miss Belinda. “I have no doubt as to
+the good-will of your intentions, and the child shall be prepared at
+once for a change.”
+
+“And will _the child_,” he exclaimed with a smile as Paula re-entered
+the room, “be so kind as to give me her company in the walk I must now
+take to the cars?”
+
+“Of course,” replied her aunt before the young girl could speak, “we owe
+you that much attention I am sure.”
+
+And so it was that when he came to retrace his way through the village
+with its heavy memories, he had a guardian spirit at his side that
+robbed them of their power to sadden and oppress.
+
+“What shall I say for you to the grim, city streets when I get back?”
+inquired he as they hastened on over the snow covered road.
+
+“Say to them from me? O you may give them my greeting,” she responded
+half shyly, half confidingly. Evidently for her he was one of those rare
+persons whose presence is perfect freedom and with whom she could not
+only think her best but speak it also. “I should like to make their
+acquaintance, but indeed they would have to do well to vie in attraction
+with these white roads girded by their silver-limbed trees. The very
+rush of life must seem oppressive. So many hopes, so many fears, so many
+interests jostling you at every step! Yet the thought is exhilarating
+too; don’t you find it so?”
+
+It was the first question she had asked him and he knew not how to
+reply. Her eyes were so confiding, he could not bear to shake her faith
+in his imagined superiority. Yet what thoughts had he ever cherished in
+walking the busy streets, save those connected with his own selfish
+hopes and fears, plans and operations? “I have no doubt,” said he after
+a moment’s pause, “that I have felt this exhilaration of which you
+speak. Certainly the hurrying masses in Broadway awaken a far different
+sensation in a man, than this solitary stretch of country road.”
+
+“Yet the road has its companionships,” she murmured. “In the city one
+thinks most of men, but in the country, of God. Its very solitude
+compels you.”
+
+“Compels _you_,” he involuntarily answered. And shuddered as he said it,
+remembering days when he trod these very roads with anything but
+reverence in his heart for the Creator of the landscape before him. “Not
+every one has the inner vision, my child, to see the love and wisdom
+back of the works, or rather most men have a vision so short it does not
+reach so far. Yet I think I can understand what you mean and might even
+experience your emotions if my eyes had leisure to explore this space
+and my thoughts to rise out of their usual depressing atmosphere of care
+and anxiety. You did not think I was a busy man, he continued,”
+observing her gaze of wonder. “You thought riches brought ease; if you
+ever come to think, ‘most of men’ you will learn that the wealthy man is
+the greatest worker, for his rest comes not night or day.”
+
+She shook her head with a sudden doubt. “It is a problem,” she said,
+“which my knowledge of geometry does not help me to solve.”
+
+“No,” assented he; “and one in which even your fanciful soul would fail
+to find any poetry. But stop, Paula; isn’t this the place where I found
+you that day, and you showed me the view up the river?”
+
+“Yes, and it was on that stone I sat; it has a milk-white cushion now;
+and there is where you stood, looking so tall and grand to my childish
+eyes! The gates are of pearl now,” she said, pointing to the
+snow-covered slopes in the west. “I wish the sky had been clear to-night
+and you could have seen the effect of a rosy sunset falling over those
+domes of ice and snow.”
+
+“It would leave me less to expect when I come again,” he responded
+almost gayly. “The next time we will have the sunset, Paula.”
+
+She smiled and they hastened on, presently finding themselves in the
+village streets. Suddenly she paused. “Small towns have their mysteries
+as well as great cities,” said she; “we are not without ours, look.”
+
+He turned, followed with a glance the direction of her pointing finger
+and started in his sudden surprise. She had indicated to him the house
+whose ghostly and frowning front bore written across its grim gray
+boards, such an inscription of painful remembrance. “It is a solitary
+looking place, isn’t it?” she went on, innocent of the pain she was
+inflicting. “No one lives there or ever will, I imagine. Do you see that
+board nailed across the front door?”
+
+He forced himself to look. He did more, he fixed his eyes upon the
+desolate structure before him until the aspect of its huge unpainted
+walls with their long rows of sealed-up windows and high smokeless
+chimneys was impressed indelibly upon his mind. The large front door
+with its weird and solemn barrier was the last thing upon which his eye
+rested.
+
+“Yes,” said he, and involuntarily asked what it meant.
+
+“We do not know exactly,” she responded. “It was nailed across there by
+the men who followed Colonel Japha to the grave. Colonel Japha was the
+owner of the house,” she proceeded, too interested to observe the shadow
+which the utterance of that name had invoked upon his brow. “He was a
+peculiar man I judge, and had suffered great wrongs they say; at all
+events his life was very solitary and sad, and on his deathbed he made
+his neighbors promise him that they would carry out his body through
+that door and then seal it up against any further ingress or egress
+forever. His wishes were respected, and from that day to this no one has
+ever entered that door.”
+
+“But the house!” stammered Mr. Sylvester in anything but his usual tone,
+“surely it has not been deserted all these years!”
+
+
+“Ah,” said she, “now we come to the greatest mystery of all.” And laying
+her hand timidly on his arm, she drew his attention to the form of a
+decrepit old lady just then advancing towards them down the street “Do
+you see that aged figure?” she asked. “Every evening at this hour,
+winter and summer, stormy weather or clear, she is seen to leave her
+home up the street and come down to this forsaken dwelling, open the
+worm-eaten gate before you, cross the otherwise untrodden garden and
+enter the house by a side door which she opens with a huge key she
+carries in her pocket. For just one hour by the clock she remains there,
+and then she is seen to issue in the falling dusk, with a countenance
+whose heavy dejection is in striking contrast to the expression of hope
+with which she invariably enters. Why she makes this pilgrimage and for
+what purpose she secludes herself for a stated time each day in this
+otherwise deserted mansion, no man knows nor is it possible to
+determine, for though she is a worthy woman and approachable enough on
+all other topics, on this she is absolutely mute.”
+
+Mr. Sylvester started and surveyed the woman as she passed with an
+anxious gaze. “I know her,” he muttered; “she was a connection of—of
+the family, who inhabited this house.” He could not speak the name.
+
+“Yes, so they say, and the owner of this house, though she does not live
+here. Did you notice how she looked at me? She often does that, just as
+if she wanted to speak. But she always goes by and opens the gate as you
+see her now and takes out the big key and—”
+
+“Come away,” cried Mr. Sylvester with sudden impulse, seizing Paula by
+the hand and hurrying her down the street. “She is a walking goblin; you
+must have nothing to do with such uncanny folk.” And endeavoring to turn
+off this irresistible display of feeling by a show of pleasantry he
+laughed aloud, but in a strained and unnatural way that made her eyes
+lift in unconscious amazement.
+
+“You are infected by the atmosphere of unreality that pervades the
+spot,” said she, “I do not wonder.” And with the gentle perversity that
+sometimes affects the most thoughtful amongst us, she went on talking
+upon the unwelcome subject. “I know of some folks who invariably cross
+to the other side of the street at night, rather than go through the
+shadows of the two gaunt poplars which guard that house. Yet there has
+been no murder committed there or any great crime that I know of, unless
+the disobedience of a daughter who ran away with a man her father
+detested, could be denominated by so fearful a word.”
+
+The set gaze with which Mr. Sylvester surveyed the landscape before him
+quavered a trifle and then grew hard and cold. “And so,” said he in a
+tone meant more for himself than her, “even your innocent ears have been
+assailed by the gossip about Miss Japha.”
+
+“Gossip! I have never thought of it as gossip,” returned she, struck for
+the first time by the change in his appearance. “It all happened so long
+ago it seems more like some quaint and ancient tale than a story of one
+of our neighbors. Besides, the fact that a wilful girl ran away from the
+house of her father, with the man of her choice, is not such a dreadful
+one is it, though she never returned to its walls with her husband, and
+her father was so overwhelmed by the shock, he was never seen to smile
+again.”
+
+“No,” said he, giving her a hurried glance of relief, “I only wondered
+at the tenacity of old stories to engage the popular ear. I had supposed
+even the remembrance of Jacqueline Japha would have been lost in the
+long silence that has followed that one disobedient act.”
+
+“And so it might, were it not for that closely shut house with the
+sinister bar across its chief entrance, inviting curiosity while it
+effectually precludes all investigation. With that token ever before our
+eyes of a dead man’s implacable animosity, who can wonder that we
+sometimes ponder over the fate of her who was its object.”
+
+“And no intimations of that fate have been ever received in Grotewell.
+For all that is known to the contrary, Jacqueline Japha may have
+preceded her father to the tomb.”
+
+Paula bowed her head, amazed at the gloomy tone in which this emphatic
+assertion was made by one whose supposed ignorance she had been
+endeavoring to enlighten. “You knew her history before, then,” observed
+she, “I beg your pardon.”
+
+“And it is granted,” said he with a sudden throwing off of the shadow
+that had enveloped him. “You must not mind my sudden lapses into gloom.
+I was never a cheerful man, that is, not since I—since my early youth I
+should say. And the shadows which are short at your time of life grow
+long and chilly at mine. One thing can illumine them though, and that is
+a child’s happy smile. You are a child to me; do not deny me a smile,
+then, before I go.”
+
+“Not one nor a dozen,” cried she, giving him her hands in good-bye for
+they had arrived at the depot by this time and the sound of the
+approaching train was heard in the distance.
+
+“God bless you!” said he, clasping those hands with a father’s heartfelt
+tenderness. “God bless my little Paula and make her pillow soft till we
+meet again!” Then as the train came sweeping up the track, put on his
+brightest look and added, “If the fairy-godmother chances to visit you
+during my departure, don’t hesitate to obey her commands, if you want to
+hear the famous organ peal.”
+
+“No, no,” she cried. And with a final look and smile he stepped upon the
+train and in another moment was whirled away from that place of many
+memories and a solitary hope.
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+MISS STUYVESANT.
+
+    “She smiled; but he could see arise
+    Her soul from far adown her eyes.”
+
+    —MRS. BROWNING.
+
+
+“She is a beauty; it is only right I should forewarn you of that.”
+
+“Dark or light?”
+
+“Dark; that is her hair and eyes are almost oriental in their blackness,
+but her skin is fair, almost as dazzling as yours, Ona.”
+
+Mrs. Sylvester threw a careless glance in the long mirror before which
+she was slowly completing her toilet, and languidly smiled. But whether
+at this covert compliment to her greatest charm or at some passing fancy
+of her own, it would be difficult to decide. “The dark hair and eyes
+come from her father,” remarked she in an abstracted way while she tried
+the effect of a bunch of snow-white roses at her waist with a backward
+toss of her proud blonde head. “His mother was a Greek. ‘Tell it not in
+Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askelon,’” she exclaimed in a
+voice as nearly gay as her indolent nature would allow. For this lady of
+fashion was in one of her happiest moods. Her dress, a new one, fitted
+her to perfection and the vision mirrored in the glass before her was
+not lacking, so far as she could see in one charm that could captivate.
+“Do you think she could fasten a ribbon, or arrange a bow?” she further
+inquired. “I should like to have some one about me with a knack for
+helping a body in an emergency, if possible. Sarah is absolutely the
+destruction of any bit of ribbon she undertakes to handle. Look at that
+knot of black velvet over there for instance, wouldn’t you think a raw
+Irish girl just from the other side would have known better than to tie
+it with half the wrong side showing?”
+
+With the habit long ago acquired of glancing wherever her ivory finger
+chanced to point, the grave man of the world slowly turned his head full
+of the weightiest cares and oppressed by the burden of innumerable
+responsibilities, and surveyed the cluster of velvet bows thus
+indicated, with a mechanical knitting of the brows.
+
+“I pay Sarah twenty-five dollars a month and that is the result,” his
+wife proceeded. “Now if Paula—”
+
+“Paula is not to come here as a waiting maid,” her husband quickly
+interposed, a suspicion of color just showing itself for a moment on his
+cheek.
+
+“If Paula,” his wife went on, unheeding the interruption save by casting
+him a hurried glance over the shoulder of her own reflection in the
+glass, “had the taste in such matters of some other members of our
+family and could manage to lend me a helping hand now and then, why I
+could almost imagine I had my younger sister back with me again, who
+with her skill in making one look fit for the eyes of the world, was
+such a blessing to us in our old home.”
+
+“I have no doubt Paula could be taught to be equally efficient,” her
+husband responded, carefully restraining any further show of impatience.
+“She is bright, I am certain, and ribbon-tying is not such a very
+difficult art, is it?”
+
+“I don’t know about that; by the way Sarah succeeds I should say it was
+about on a par with the science of algebra or—what is that horrid study
+they used to threaten to inflict me with at the academy whenever I
+complained of a headache? Oh I remember—conic sections.”
+
+“Well, well,” laughed her husband, “she ought soon to to be an expert in
+it then; Paula is a famous little mathematician.”
+
+A silence followed this response; Mrs. Sylvester was fitting in her
+ear-rings. “I suppose,” said she when the operation was completed, “that
+the snow will prevent half the people from coming to-night.” It was a
+reception evening at the Sylvester mansion. “But so long as Mrs.
+Fitzgerald does not disappoint me, I do not care. What do you think of
+the setting of these diamonds?” she inquired, leaning forward to look at
+herself more closely, and slowly shaking her head till the rich gems
+sparkled like fire.
+
+“It is good,” came in short, quick tones from the lips of her husband.
+
+“Well, I don’t know, there might be a shade more of enamel on the edge
+of that ring. I shall speak to the jeweller about it to-morrow. But what
+were we talking about?” she dreamily asked, still turning her head from
+side to side before the mirror.
+
+“We were talking about adopting your cousin in the place of our child
+who is dead,” replied her husband with some severity, pausing in the
+middle of the floor which he was pacing, to honor her with a steady
+glance.
+
+“O yes! Dear me! what an awkward clasp that man has given to these rings
+after all. You will have to fasten them for me.” Then as he stepped
+forward with studied courtesy, yawned just a trifle and remarked, “No
+one could ever take the place of one’s own child of course. If Geraldine
+had lived she would have been a blonde, her eyes were blue as
+sapphires.”
+
+
+He looked in his wife’s face and his hands dropped. He thought of the
+day when those eyes, blue as sapphires indeed, flashed burning with
+death’s own fever, from the little crib in the nursery, while with this
+same cool and self-satisfied countenance, the wife and mother before him
+had swept down the broad stairs to her carriage, murmuring
+apologetically as she gathered up her train, “O you needn’t trouble
+yourself to look after her, she will do very well with Sarah.”
+
+She may have thought of it too, for the least little bit of real crimson
+found its way through the rouge on her cheek as she encountered the
+stern look of his eye, but she only turned a trifle more towards the
+glass, saying, “I forgot you do not admire the rîle of waiting maid. I
+will try and manage them myself, seeing that you have banished Sarah.”
+
+He exerted his self-control and again for the thousandth time buried
+that ghastly memory out of sight, actually forcing himself to smile as
+he gently took her hand from her ear and began deftly to fasten the
+rebellious ornaments.
+
+“You mistake,” said he, “love can ask any favor without hesitation. I do
+not object to waiting upon my own wife.”
+
+She gave him a little look which he obligingly took as a guerdon for
+this speech, and languidly held out her bracelets. As he stood clasping
+them on her arms, she quietly eyed him over from head to foot. “I don’t
+know of a man who has your figure,” said she with a certain tone of
+pride in her voice; “it is well you married a wife who does not look
+altogether inferior beside you.” Then as he bowed with mock appreciation
+of the intended compliment, added with her usual inconsequence, “I dare
+say it would give me something to interest myself in. I don’t suppose
+she has a decent thing to wear, and the fact of her being a dark beauty
+would lend quite a new impulse to my inventive faculty. Mrs. Walker has
+a daughter with black eyes, but dear me, what a guy she does make of
+her!”
+
+With a sigh Mr. Sylvester turned to the window where he stood looking
+out at the heavy flakes of snow falling with slow and fluctuating
+movement between him and the row of brown stone houses in front. Paula
+considered as a milliner’s block upon which to try the effect of
+clothes!
+
+“Even Mrs. Fitzgerald with all her taste don’t know how to dress her
+child,” proceeded his wife, with a hurried, “Be still, Cherry!” to the
+importunate bird in the cage. “Now I should take as much pride in
+dressing any one under my charge as I would myself, provided the subject
+was likely to do credit to my efforts.” And finding the bird
+incorrigible in his shrill singing, she moved over to the cage, where
+she stood balancing her white finger for the bird to peck at, with a
+pretty caressing motion of her lip, the little Geraldine of the wistful
+blue eyes, had never seen.
+
+“You are welcome to do what you please in such matters,” was her
+husband’s reply. He was thinking again of that same little Geraldine; a
+fall of snow like the present always made him think of her and her
+innocent query as to whether God threw down such big flakes to amuse
+little children. “I give you _carte blanche_,” said he with sudden
+emphasis.
+
+Mrs. Sylvester paused in her attentions to the bird to give him a sharp
+little look which might have aroused his surprise if he had been
+fortunate enough to see it. But his back was towards her, and there was
+nothing in the languidly careless tone with which she responded, to
+cause him to turn his head. “I see that you would really like to have me
+entertain the child; but—”
+
+She paused, pursing up her lips to meet the chattering bird’s caress,
+while her husband in his impatience drummed with his fingers on the
+pane.
+
+—“I must see her before I decide upon the length of her visit,”
+continued she, as weary with the sport she drew back to give herself a
+final look in the glass. “Will you please to hand me that shawl,
+Edward.”
+
+He turned with alacrity. In his relief he could have kissed the snowy
+neck held so erectly before him, as he drew around it the shawl he had
+hastily lifted from the chair at his side. But that would not have
+suited this calm and languid beauty who disliked any too overt tribute
+to her charms and saved her caresses for her bird. Besides it would look
+like gratitude, and gratitude would be misplaced towards a wife who had
+just indicated her acceptance of his offer to receive a relative of her
+own into his house.
+
+“She might as well come at once,” was her final remark, as satisfied at
+last with the lay of every ribbon she swept in finished elegance from
+the room. “Mrs. Kittredge’s reception comes off a week from Thursday,
+and I should like to see how a dark beauty with a fair skin would look
+in that new shade of heliotrope.”
+
+And so the battle was over and the victory won; for Mrs. Sylvester for
+all her seeming indifference was never known to change a decision she
+had once made. As he realized the fact, as he meditated that ere long
+this very room which had been the scene of so much frivolity and the
+witness to so many secret heart-burnings, would reëcho to the tread of
+the pure and innocent child, whose mind had flights unknown to the
+slaves of fashion, and in whose heart lay impulses of goodness that
+would satisfy the long smothered cravings of his awakened nature, he
+experienced a feeling of relenting towards the wife who had not chosen
+to thwart him in this the strongest wish of his childless manhood, and
+crossing to her dressing table, he dropped among its treasures a costly
+ring which he had been induced to purchase that day from an old friend
+who had fallen into want. “She will wear it,” murmured he to himself,
+“for its hue will make her hand look still whiter, and when I see it
+sparkle I will remember this hour and be patient.” Had he known that she
+had yielded to this wish out of a certain vague feeling of compunction
+for the disappointments she had frequently occasioned him and would
+occasion him again, he might have added a tender thought to the rich and
+costly gift with which he had just endowed her.
+
+“I expect a young cousin of mine to spend the winter with me and pursue
+her studies,” were the first words that greeted his ears as an hour or
+so later he entered the parlor where his wife was entertaining what few
+guests had been anxious enough for a sight of Mrs. Sylvester’s newly
+furnished drawing-room, to brave the now rapidly falling snow. “I hope
+that you and she will be friends.”
+
+Curious to see what sort of a companion his wife was thus somewhat
+prematurely providing for Paula, he hastily advanced towards the little
+group from which her voice had proceeded, and found himself face to face
+with a brown-haired girl whose appealing glance and somewhat infantile
+mouth were in striking contrast to the dignity with which she carried
+her small head and managed her whole somewhat petite person.
+
+“Miss Stuyvesant! my husband!” came in musical tones from his wife, and
+somewhat surprised to hear a name that but a moment before had been the
+uppermost in his mind, he bowed with courtesy and then asked if he was
+so happy as to speak to a daughter of Thaddeus Stuyvesant.
+
+“If it will give you especial pleasure I will say yes,” responded the
+little miss with a smile that irradiated her whole face. “Do you know my
+father?”
+
+
+“There are but few bankers in the city who have not that pleasure,”
+replied he with an answering look of regard. “I am especially happy to
+meet his daughter in my house to-night.”
+
+There was something in his manner of saying this and in the short
+inquiring glance which at every opportunity he cast upon her bright
+young face with its nameless charm of mingled appeal and reserve, that
+astonished his wife.
+
+“Miss Stuyvesant was in the carriage with Mrs. Fitzgerald,” said that
+lady with a certain dignity she knew well how to assume. “I am afraid if
+it had not been for that circumstance we should not have enjoyed the
+pleasure of her presence.” And with the rare tact of which she was
+certainly a mistress, as far as all social matters were concerned, she
+left the aspiring magnate of Wall Street to converse with the daughter
+of the man whom all New York bankers were expected to know, and hastened
+to join a group of ladies discussing ceramics before a huge placque of
+rarest _cloissone_.
+
+Mr. Sylvester followed her with his eyes; he had never seen her look
+more vivacious; had the hope of seeing a young face at their board
+touched some secret chord in her nature as well as his? Was she more of
+a woman than he imagined, and would she be, though in the most
+superficial of ways, a mother to Paula? Flushed with the thought, he
+turned back to the little lady at his side. She was gazing in an intent
+and thoughtful way at an engraving of Dubufe’s “Prodigal Son” that
+adorned the wall above her head. There was something in her face that
+made him ask:
+
+“Is that a favorite picture of yours?”
+
+She smiled and nodded her small and delicate head.
+
+“Yes sir, it is indeed, but I was not looking at the picture so much as
+at the face of that dark-haired girl that sits in the centre, with that
+far-away expression in her eyes. Do you see what I mean? She is like
+none of the rest. Her form is before us, but her heart and her interest
+are in some distant clime or forsaken home to which the music murmured
+at her side recalls her. She has a soul above her surroundings, that
+girl; and her face is indescribably pathetic to me. In the recesses of
+her being she carries a memory or a regret that separates her from the
+world and makes certain moments of her life almost holy.”
+
+“You look deep,” said Mr. Sylvester, gazing down upon the little lady’s
+face with strongly awakened interest. “You see more perhaps than the
+painter intended.”
+
+“No, no; possibly more than the engraving expresses, but not more than
+the artist intended. I saw the original once, when as you remember it
+was on exhibition here. I was a wee thing, but I never forgot that
+girl’s face. It spoke more than all the rest to me; perhaps because I so
+much honor reserve in one who holds in his breast a great pain or a
+great hope.”
+
+The eye that was resting upon her, softened indescribably. “You believe
+in great hopes,” said he.
+
+The little figure seemed to grow tall; and her face looked almost
+beautiful. “What would life be without them?” she answered.
+
+“True,” returned Mr. Sylvester; and entering into the conversation with
+unusual spirit, was astonished to find how young she was and yet how
+thoroughly bright and self-possessed.
+
+“Lovely girls are cropping up around me in all directions,” thought he;
+“I shall have to correct my judgment concerning our young ladies of
+fashion if I encounter many more as sensible and earnest-hearted as
+this.” And for some reason his brow grew so light and his tone so
+cheerful that the ladies were attracted from all parts of the room to
+hear what the demure Miss Stuyvesant could have to say to the grave
+master of the house, to call forth such smiles of enjoyment upon his
+usually melancholy countenance.
+
+Take it all together, the occasion though small was one of the
+pleasantest of the season, and so Mrs. Sylvester announced when the last
+carriage had driven away, and she and her husband stood in the
+brilliantly lighted library, surveying a new cabinet of rare and antique
+workmanship which had been that day installed in the place of honor
+beneath my lady’s picture.
+
+“I thought you seemed to enjoy it, Ona,” her husband remarked.
+
+“O, it was an occasion of triumph to me,” she murmured. “It is the first
+time a Stuyvesant has crossed our threshold, _mon cher_.”
+
+“Ha,” he exclaimed, turning upon her a brisk displeased look. He was
+proud and considered no man his superior in a social sense. “Do you
+acknowledge yourself a parvenue that you rejoice at the entrance of any
+one special person into your doors?”
+
+“I thought,” she replied somewhat mortified, “that you betrayed unusual
+pleasure yourself at her introduction.”
+
+“That may be; I was glad to see her here, for her father is one of the
+most influential directors in the bank of which I shortly expect to be
+made president.”
+
+The nature of this disclosure was calculated to be especially gratifying
+to her, and effectually blotted out any remembrance of the break by
+which it had been introduced. After a few hasty inquiries, followed by a
+scene of quite honest mutual congratulation, the gratified wife left her
+husband to put out the lights himself or call Samuel as he might choose,
+and glided up stairs to delight the curious Sarah with the broken
+soliloquies and inconsequent self-communings which formed another of her
+peculiar habits.
+
+As for her husband, he stood a few minutes where she left him,
+abstractedly eying the gorgeous vista that spread out before him down to
+the further mirror of the elaborate drawing-room, thinking perhaps with
+a certain degree of pride, of the swiftness with which he had risen to
+opulence and the certainty with which he had conquered position in the
+business as well as in the social world when he could speak of such a
+connection with Thaddeus Stuyvesant as a project already matured. Then
+with a hasty movement and a quick sigh which nothing in his prospects
+actual or apparent would seem to warrant, he proceeded to put out the
+lights, my lady’s picture shining with less and less importunity as the
+flickering jets disappeared, till all was dark save for the faint
+glimmer that came in from the hall, a glimmer just sufficient to show
+the outlines of the various articles of furniture scattered about—and
+could it be the tall figure of the master himself standing in the centre
+of the room with his palms pressed against his forehead in an attitude
+of sorrow or despair? Yes, or whose that wild murmur, “Is it never given
+to man to forget!” Yet no, or who is this that calm and dignified, steps
+at this moment from the threshold? It must have been a dream, a
+phantasy. _This_ is the master of the house who with sedate and regular
+step goes up flight after flight of the spiral staircase, and neither
+pauses or looks back till he reaches the top of the house where he takes
+out a key from his pocket, and opening a certain door, goes in and locks
+it behind him. It is his secret study or retreat, a room which no one is
+allowed to enter, the mystery of the house to the servants and something
+more than that to its inquisitive mistress. What he does there no man
+knows, but to-night if any one had been curious enough to listen, they
+would have heard nothing more ominous than the monotonous scratch of a
+pen. He was writing to Miss Belinda and the burden of his letter was
+that on a certain day he named, he was coming to take away Paula.
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+MISS BELINDA MAKES CONDITIONS.
+
+    “For of the soul the body form doth take,
+    For soul is form, and doth the body make.”—SPENSER.
+
+
+Miss Belinda was somewhat taken aback at the proposal of Mr. Sylvester
+to receive Paula into his own house. She had not anticipated any such
+result to her efforts; the utmost she had expected was a couple of years
+or so of instruction in some state Academy. Nor did she know whether she
+was altogether pleased at the turn affairs were taking. From all she had
+heard, her niece Ona was, to say the least, a frivolous woman, and Paula
+had a mind too noble to be subjected to the deteriorating influence of a
+shallow and puerile companionship. Then the child had great beauty; Mr.
+Sylvester who ought to be a judge in such matters had declared it so,
+and what might not the adulation of the thoughtless and the envy of the
+jealous, do towards belittling a nature as yet uncontaminated.
+
+“We ought to think twice,” she said to Miss Abby with some bitterness,
+who on the contrary never having thought once was full of the most
+childish hopes concerning a result which she considered with a certain
+secret complacency she would not have acknowledged for the world, had
+been very much furthered by her own wise recommendations to Mr.
+Sylvester in the beginning of his visit. Yet notwithstanding her doubts
+Miss Belinda allowed such preparations to be made as she considered
+necessary, and even lent her hand which was deft enough in its way, to
+the task of enlarging the child’s small wardrobe. As for Paula, the
+thought of visiting the great city with the dear friend whose image had
+stood in her mind from early childhood as the impersonation of all that
+was noble, generous and protecting, was more than joyful; it was an
+inspiration. Not that she did not cling to the affectionate if somewhat
+quaint couple who had befriended her childhood and sacrificed their
+comfort to her culture and happiness. But the chord that lies deeper
+than gratitude had been struck, and fond as were her memories of the
+dear old home, the charm of that deep “My child,” with its hint of
+fatherly affection, was more than her heart could stand; and no spot, no
+not the realms of fairy-land itself, looked so attractive to her fancy
+as that far fireside in an unknown home where she might sit with cousin
+Ona and alternately with her exert her wit to beguile the smile to his
+melancholy lips.
+
+When therefore upon the stated day, Mr. Sylvester made his second
+appearance at the little cottage in Grotewell, it was to find Paula
+radiant, Miss Abby tearfully exultant and Miss Belinda—O anomaly of
+human nature—silent and severe. Attributing this however to her very
+natural regret at parting with Paula, he entered into all the
+arrangements for their departure on the following morning without a
+suspicion of the real state of her mind, nor was he undeceived until the
+day was nearly over and they sat down to have a few minutes of social
+conversation before the early tea.
+
+They had been speaking on some local topic involving a question of right
+and wrong, and Mr. Sylvester’s ears were yet thrilling to the deep
+ringing tones with which Paula uttered the words, “I do not see how any
+man can hesitate an instant when the voice of his conscience says no. I
+should think the very sunlight would daunt him at the first step of his
+foot across the forbidden line,” when Miss Belinda suddenly spoke up and
+sending Paula out of the room on some trivial pretext, addressed Mr.
+Sylvester without reserve.
+
+“I have something to say to you, sir, before you take from my home the
+child of my care and affection.”
+
+Could he have guessed what that something was that he should turn with
+such a flush of sudden anxiety to meet her determined gaze.
+
+“The rules of our life here have been simple,” continued she in a tone
+of voice which those who knew her well recognized as belonging to her
+uncompromising moods. “To do our duty, love God and serve our neighbor.
+Paula has been brought up to reverence those rules in simplicity and
+honor; what will your gay city life with its hollow devices for pleasure
+and its loose hold on the firm principles of life, do for this innocent
+soul, Mr. Sylvester?”
+
+“The city,” he said firmly but with a troubled undertone in his voice
+that was not unnoted by the watchful woman, “is a vast caldron of
+mingled good and evil. She will hear of more wrong doing, and be within
+the reach of more self-denying virtue, than if she had remained in this
+village alone with the nature that she so much loves. The tree of
+knowledge bears two kinds of fruit, Miss Belinda; would you therefore
+hinder the child from approaching its branches?”
+
+“No, sir; I am not so weak as to keep a child in swaddling-clothes after
+the period of infancy is past, neither am I so reckless as to set her
+adrift on an unknown sea without a pilot to guide her. Your wife—” she
+paused and fixed an intent look upon the flames leaping before her. “Ona
+is my niece,” she resumed in a lower tone of voice, “and I feel entitled
+to speak with freedom concerning her. Is she such a guide as I would
+choose for a young girl just entering a new sphere in life? From all I
+have heard, I should judge she was somewhat over-devoted to this world
+and its fashions.”
+
+Mr. Sylvester flushed painfully, but seeing that any softening of the
+truth would be wholly ineffectual with this woman, replied in a candid
+tone, “Ona is the same now as she was in the days of her girlhood. If
+she loves the world too well she is not without her excuse; from her
+birth it has strewn nothing but roses in her path.”
+
+“Humph!” came from the lips of the energetic spinster. Then with a
+second stern glance at the fire, continued, “Another question, Mr.
+Sylvester. Does your wife consent to receive my niece into her house,
+for the indefinite length of time which you mention, from interest in
+the girl herself or indeed from any motive I should judge worthy of
+Paula? It is a leading question I know, but this is no time for niceties
+of speech.”
+
+“Miss Belinda,” replied he, and his voice was firm though his fingers
+slightly trembled where they rested upon the arms of his chair, “I will
+try and forget for a moment that Ona is my wife, and frankly confide to
+you that any such motive on her part, as would meet with your entire
+approval, must not be expected from a woman who has never fully
+recognized the solemn responsibilities of life. That she will be kind to
+Paula I have no doubt, that she may even learn to take an interest in
+her for her own sake, is also very possible, but that she will ever take
+your place towards her as guide or instructor, I neither anticipate nor
+would feel myself justified in leading you to.”
+
+The look which Miss Belinda cast him was anything but reassuring. “And
+yet,” said she, “you will take away my darling and give her up to an
+influence that can not be for good, or your glance would not be so
+troubled or your lip so uncertain. You would set her young feet in a
+path where the very flowers are so thick they conceal its tendency and
+obscure its dangers. Mr. Sylvester you are a man who has seen life with
+naked eyes, and must recognize its responsibilities; dare you take this
+Paula, whom you have seen, out of the atmosphere of truth and purity in
+which she has been raised, and give her over to the enervating
+influences of folly and fashion? Will you assume the risk and brave the
+consequences?”
+
+As though an electric shock had touched the nerve of his nature, Mr.
+Sylvester hastily rose and moved in a restless manner to the window. It
+was his favorite refuge in any time of sudden perplexity or doubt, and
+this was surely an occasion for both.
+
+“Miss Belinda,” he began and then paused, looking out on the hills of
+his boyhood, every one of which spoke to him at that moment with a force
+that almost sickened his heart and benumbed the faculties of his mind;
+“I recognize the love which leads you to speak in this way, and I bow
+before it, but—” here his tongue faltered again, that ready tongue
+whose quick and persuasive eloquence on public occasions had won for him
+the name of Silver-speech among his friends and admirers—“but there are
+others who love your Paula also, love her with a yearning that only the
+childless can feel or the disappointed appreciate. I had hoped—” here
+he left the window and approached her side, “to do more for Paula than
+to give her the temporal benefit of a luxurious home and such
+instruction as her extraordinary talents demand. If Ona upon seeing and
+knowing the child had found she could love her, I had intended to ask
+you to yield her to us unreservedly and forever, in short to make her my
+child in place of the daughter I have lost. But now—” with a quick
+gesture he began pacing the floor and left the sentence unfinished.
+
+Miss Belinda’s eyes which were of a light grey, wholly without beauty
+but with strange flashes of expression in them, left the fire and fell
+upon his face, and a tear of real feeling gathered beneath her lids.
+
+“I had no idea,” said he, “that you cherished any such intention as
+that. If I had I might have worded my apprehensions differently. The
+yearning feeling of which you speak, I can easily understand, also the
+strength of the determination it must take on the part of a man like
+yourself, to give up a hope of this nature. Yet—” Seeing him pause in
+his hurried pacing and open his lips as if to speak, she deferentially
+stopped.
+
+
+“Miss Belinda,” said he, in the firm and steadfast way more in keeping
+with his features than his agitated manner of a moment before, “I cannot
+give it up. The injury it would do me is greater than the harm, which
+one of Paula’s lofty nature would be apt to acquire in any atmosphere
+into which she might chance to be introduced. She is not a child, Miss
+Belinda, though we allude to her as such. The texture of those
+principles which you have instilled into her breast, is of no such weak
+material as to give way to the first petty breeze that blows. Paula’s
+house will stand, while mine—”
+
+He paused and gave way to a momentary struggle, but that over, he set
+his lips firmly together and the last vestige of irresolution vanished.
+Sitting down by her side, he turned his face upon her, and for the first
+time she realized the power which with one exception he had always
+exerted over the minds of others. “Miss Belinda,” said he, “I am going
+to give you an evidence of my trust; I am going to leave with you the
+responsibility of Paula’s future. She shall go with me, and learn, if
+she can, to love me and mine, but she shall also be under obligations to
+open her heart to you on all matters that concern her life and happiness
+in my house, and the day you see any falling off in her pure and upright
+spirit, you shall demand her return, and though it tears the heart from
+my breast, I will yield her up without question or parley as I am a
+gentleman and a Christian. Does that content you?”
+
+“It certainly ought to, sir. No one could ask more, I am sure,” returned
+the other in a voice somewhat unsteady for her.
+
+“It is opening my house to the gaze of a stranger,” said he, “for I
+desire you to command Paula to withhold nothing that seriously affects
+her; but my confidence in you is unbounded and I am sure that whatever
+you may learn in this way, will be held as sacred by you as though it
+were buried in a tomb.”
+
+“It certainly will, sir.”
+
+“As for the dearer hope which I have mentioned, time and the condition
+of things must decide for us. Meanwhile I shall strive to win a father’s
+place in her heart, if only to build myself a refuge for the days that
+are to come. You see I speak frankly, Miss Belinda; will you give me
+some token that you are not altogether dissatisfied with the result of
+this conversation?”
+
+With the straightforward if somewhat blunt action that characterized all
+her movements, she stretched out her hand, which he took with something
+more than his usual high-bred courtesy. “With you at the wheel,” said
+she, “I think I may trust my darling, even to the whirl and follies of
+such a society as I know Ona loves. A man who can so command himself,
+ought to be a safe guide to pioneer others.”
+
+And the considerate gentleman bowed; but the frank smile that hailed her
+genial clasp had somehow vanished, and from the sudden cloud that at
+that moment swept over the roseate heavens, fell a shadow that left its
+impress on his lip long after the cloud itself had departed.
+
+An hour or so had passed. The fire was burning brightly on the
+hearthstone, illumining with a steady glow the array of stuffed birds,
+worsted samplers and old-fashioned portraits with which the walls were
+adorned, but reserving its richest glow and fullest irradiation for the
+bended head of Paula, who seated on a little stool in the corner of the
+hearth, was watching the rise and fall of the flickering flames.
+
+She had packed her little trunk, had said good-bye to all her
+neighboring friends and was now sitting on the old hearthstone, musing
+upon the new life that was about to open before her. It was a happy
+musing, as the smile that vaguely dimpled her cheeks and brightened her
+eyes beneath their long lashes, amply testified. As Mr. Sylvester
+watched her from the opposite side of the hearth where he was sitting
+alone with his thoughts, he felt his heart sink with apprehension at the
+fervor of anticipation with which she evidently looked forward to the
+life in the new home. “The young wings think to gain freedom,” thought
+he, “when they are only destined to the confinement of a gilded cage.”
+
+He was so silent and looked so sad, Paula with a certain sort of
+sensitiveness to any change in the emotional atmosphere surrounding her,
+which was one of her chief characteristics, hastily looked up and
+meeting his eye fixed on her with that foreboding glance, softly arose
+and came and sat down by his side. “You look tired,” murmured she; “the
+long ride after a day of business care has been too much for you.”
+
+It was the first word of sympathy with his often over-wearied mind and
+body, that had greeted his ears for years. It made his eyes moisten.
+
+“I have been a little overworked,” said he, “for the last two months,
+but I shall soon be myself again. What were you thinking of, Paula?”
+
+“What was I thinking of?” repeated she, drawing her chair nearer to his
+in her loving confidence. “I was thinking what wonders of beauty and art
+lay in that great kernel which you call the city. I shall see lovely
+faces and noble forms. I shall wander through halls of music, the echo
+of whose songs may have come to me in the sob of the river or the sigh
+of the pines, but whose notes in all their beauty and power have never
+been heard by me even in my dreams. I shall look on great men and touch
+the garments of thoughtful women. I shall see life in its fullness as I
+have felt nature in its mightiness, and my heart will be satisfied at
+last.”
+
+Mr. Sylvester drew a deep breath and his eyes burned strangely in the
+glow of the fire-light. “You expect high things,” said he; “did you ever
+consider that the life in a great city, with its ceaseless rush and
+constant rivalries, must be often strangely petty in despite of its
+artistic and social advantages?”
+
+“All life has its petty side,” said she, with a sweet arch look. “The
+eagle that cleaves the thunder-cloud, must sometimes stop to plume its
+wings. I should be sorry to lose the small things out of existence. Even
+we in the face of that great sunset appealing to us from the west, have
+to pile up the firewood on the hearth and set the table for supper.”
+
+“But fashion, Paula,” he pursued, concealing his wonder at the maturity
+of mind evinced by this simple child of nature, “that inexorable power
+that rules the very souls of women who once step within the magic circle
+of her realm! have you never thought of her and the demands that she
+makes on the time and attention even of the worshippers of the good and
+the true?”
+
+“Yes, sometimes,” she returned with a repetition of her arch little
+smile, “when I put on a certain bonnet I have, which Aunt Abby modeled
+over from one of my grandmother’s. Fashion is a sort of obstinate
+step-dame I imagine, whom it is less trouble to obey than to oppose. I
+don’t believe I shall quarrel with Fashion if she will only promise to
+keep her hands off my soul.”
+
+“But if—” with a pause, “she asks your all, what then?”
+
+“I shall consider that I am in a country of democratic principles,” she
+laughed, “and beg to be excused from acceding to the tyrannical demands
+of any autocrat male or female.”
+
+“You have been listening to Miss Belinda,” said he; “she is also opposed
+to all and any tyrannical measures.” Then with a grave look from which
+all levity had fled, he leaned toward the young girl and gently asked,
+“Do you know that you are a very beautiful girl, Paula?”
+
+She flushed, looked at him in some surprise and slowly drooped her head.
+“I have been told I looked like my father,” said she, “and I know that
+means something very kind.”
+
+“My child,” said he, with gentle insistence, “God has given you a great
+and wonderful gift, a treasure-casket of whose worth you scarcely
+realize the value. I tell you this myself, first because I prize your
+beauty as something quite sacred and pure, and secondly because you are
+going where you will hear words of adulation, whose folly and bluntness
+will often offend your ears, unless you carry in your soul some talisman
+to counteract their effect.”
+
+“I understand,” said she, “I know what you mean. I will remember that
+the most engaging beauty is nothing without a pure mind and a good
+heart.”
+
+“And you will remember too,” continued he, “that I blessed your innocent
+head to-night, not because it is circled by the roses of a youthful and
+fresh loveliness, but because of the pure mind and good heart I see
+shining in your eyes.” And with a fond but solemn aspect he reached out
+his hand and laid it on her ebon locks.
+
+She bowed her head upon her breast. “I will never forget,” said she, and
+the fire-light fell with a softening glow on the tears that trembled
+from her eye-lashes.
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+THE END OF MY LADY’S PICTURE.
+
+     “Heaven from all creatures tides the book of Fate.”—POPE.
+
+
+Mrs. Sylvester was spending an evening at home. This was something so
+unusual for this august lady of fashion to indulge in, that she found it
+difficult not to fall asleep in the huge crimson-backed chair in which
+she had chosen to ensconce herself. Not that she had desisted from
+making every effort known to mortal woman to keep herself awake and if
+possible amused till the expected travellers should arrive. She had
+played with her bird till the spoiled pet had himself protested, ducking
+his head under his wing and proceeding without ceremony to make up his
+little feather bed, as cunning Geraldine used to call the round, fluffy
+ball into which he rolled himself at night. More than that, she had
+looked over her ornaments and taken out such articles as she thought
+could be spared for Paula, to say nothing of playing a bar or so from
+the last operatic sensation, and laboriously cutting open the leaves of
+the new magazine. But it was all of no use, and the heavy white lids
+were slowly falling, when the bell rang and Mr. Bertram Mandeville was
+announced, or rather Bertram Sylvester as he now chose to be called.
+
+It was a godsend to her as she politely informed him upon his entrance;
+and though in his secret heart he felt anything but God sent—he was not
+of a make to appreciate his uncle’s wife at her very evident value—he
+consented to remain and assist her in disposing of the evening till Mr.
+Sylvester should return.
+
+“He is going to bring a pretty girl with him,” remarked she, in a tone
+of some interest, “a cousin of mine from Grotewell. I should like to
+have you see her.”
+
+“Thank you,” replied he, his mind roaming off at the suggestion, into
+the region of a certain plain little music-room where the clock on the
+mantel ticked to the beating of his own heart. And for ten minutes Mrs.
+Sylvester had the pleasure of filling the room with a stream of easy
+talk, in which Grotewell, dark beauties, the coming Seventh Regiment
+reception, the last bit of gossip from London, and the exact situation
+of the Madison Bank formed the principal topics.
+
+To the one last mentioned, it having taken the form of a question, he
+was forced to reply; but the simple locality having been learned, she
+rambled easily on, this time indulging him with a criticism upon the
+personal appearance of certain business gentlemen who visited the house,
+ending with the somewhat startling declaration:
+
+“If Edward were not the fine appearing gentleman that he undoubtedly is,
+I should feel utterly out of place in these handsome parlors. Anything
+but to see an elegant and modern home, decorated with the costliest
+works of art, and filled with _bijouterie_ of the most exquisite
+delicacy, presided over by a plain and common-place woman or a
+bald-headed and inferior-looking man. The contrast is too vivid; works
+of the highest art do not need such a startling comparison to bring out
+their beauty. Now if Edward stood in the throne-room of a palace, he
+would somehow make it seem to others as a handsome set off to his own
+face and figure.”
+
+This was all very wife-like if somewhat unnecessary, and Bertram could
+have listened to it with pleasure, if she had not cast the frequent and
+side-long glances at the mirror, which sufficiently betrayed the fact
+that she included herself in this complacent conclusion; as indeed she
+may have considered herself justified in doing, husband and wife being
+undoubtedly of one flesh. As it was, he maintained an immovable
+countenance, though he admired his uncle as much as she did, and the
+conversation gradually languished till the white somnolent lids of the
+lady again began to show certain premonitory signs of drooping, when
+suddenly they were both aroused by the well known click of a latch-key
+in the door, and in another moment Mr. Sylvester’s voice was heard in
+the hall, saying, in tones whose cheery accents made his wife’s eyes
+open in surprise—
+
+“Welcome home, my dear.”
+
+“They have come,” murmured Mrs. Sylvester rising with a look of
+undeniable expectation. Had Paula not been a beauty she would have
+remained seated.
+
+“Yes, we have come,” was heard in hearty tones from the door-way, and
+Mr. Sylvester with a proud look which Bertram long remembered, ushered
+into their presence a young girl whose simple cloak and bonnet in no
+wise prevented Mrs. Sylvester from recognizing the somewhat uncommon
+beauty she had been led to expect.
+
+“Paula, this is your cousin Ona, and—Ah, Bertram, glad to see you—this
+is my only nephew, Mr. Sylvester.”
+
+The young girl, lost in the sudden glamour of numerous lights, shining
+upon splendors such as she may have dreamed of over the pages of
+Irving’s Alhambra, but certainly had never before seen, blushed with
+very natural embarrassment, but yet managed to bestow a pretty enough
+greeting upon the elegant woman and handsome youth, while Ona after the
+first moment of almost involuntary hesitation, took in hers the two
+trembling hands of her youthful cousin and actually kissed her cheek.
+
+“I am not given to caresses as you know,” she afterwards explained in a
+somewhat apologetic tone to her husband; “and anything like an appeal
+for one on the part of a child or an inferior, I detest; but her simple
+way of holding out her hand disarmed me, and then such a face demands a
+certain amount of homage, does it not?” And her husband in his surprise,
+was forced to acknowledge to himself, that as closely as he had studied
+his wife’s nature for ten years, there were certain crooks and turns in
+it which even he had never penetrated.
+
+“You look dazzled,” that lady exclaimed, gazing not unkindly into the
+young girl’s face; “the sudden glare of so much gas-light has bewildered
+you.”
+
+“I do not think it is that,” returned Paula with a frank and admiring
+look at the gorgeous room and the circle of pleasant faces about her.
+“Sudden lights I can bear, but I have come from a little cottage on the
+hillside and the magnificence of nature does not prepare you for the
+first sudden view of the splendors of art.”
+
+Mrs. Sylvester smiled and cast a side glance of amusement at Bertram.
+“You admire our new hangings I see,” remarked she with an indulgence of
+the other’s _nĂ€ivetĂ©_ that greatly relieved her husband.
+
+But in that instant a change had come across Paula; the simple country
+maid had assimilated herself with the surroundings, and with a sudden
+grace and dignity that were unstudied as they were charming, dropped her
+eyes from her cousin’s portrait—that for some reason seemed to shine
+with more than its usual insistence—and calmly replied, “I admire all
+beautiful color; it is my birthright as a Walton, to do so, I suppose.”
+
+Mrs. Sylvester was a Walton also and therefore smiled; but her husband,
+who had marked with inward distrust, the sudden transformation in Paula,
+now stepped forward with a word or two of remark concerning his
+appetite, a prosaic allusion that led to the rapid disappearance of the
+ladies upstairs and a short but hurried conversation between the two
+gentlemen.
+
+“I have brought you a sealed envelope from the office,” said Bertram,
+who, in accordance with his uncle’s advice, had already initiated
+himself into business by assuming the position of clerk in the office of
+the wealthy speculator.
+
+“Ah,” returned his uncle hastily opening it. “As I expected, a meeting
+has been held this day by the board of Directors of the Madison Bank, a
+vote was cast, my proxy did his duty and I am duly elected President.
+Bertram, we know what that means,” smiled he, holding out his hand with
+an affectionate warmth greatly in advance of the emotion displayed by
+him on a former occasion.
+
+“I hope so indeed,” young Bertram responded. “An increase of fortune and
+honor for you, though you seem to have both in the fullest measure
+already, and a start in the new life for me to whom fortune and honor
+mean happiness.”
+
+A smile younger and more full of hope than any he had seen on his
+uncle’s face for years, responded to this burst. “Bertram,” said he,
+“since our conversation of a couple of weeks ago something has occurred
+which somewhat alters the opinions I then expressed. If you have
+patience equal to your energy, and a self-control that will not put to
+shame your unbounded trust in women, I think I can say God-speed to your
+serious undertaking, with something like a good heart. Women are not all
+frivolous and foolish-minded; there are some jewels of simple goodness
+and faith yet left in the world.”
+
+“Thank God for your conversion,” returned his nephew smiling, “and if
+this lovely girl whom you have just introduced to me, is the cause of
+it, then thank God for her also.”
+
+His uncle bowed with a gravity almost solemn, but the ladies returning
+at this moment, he refrained from further reply. After supper, to which
+unusual meal Mr. Sylvester insisted upon his nephew remaining, the two
+gentlemen again drew apart.
+
+“If you have decided upon buying the shares I have mentioned,” said the
+former, “you had better get your money in a position to handle at once.
+I shall wish to present you to Mr. Stuyvesant to-morrow, and I should
+like to be able to mention you as a future stockholder in the bank.”
+
+“Mr. Stuyvesant!” exclaimed Bertram, ignoring the rest of the sentence.
+
+
+“Yes,” returned his uncle with a smile, “Thaddeus Stuyvesant is the next
+largest stockholder to myself in the Madison Bank, and his patronage is
+not an undesirable one.”
+
+“Indeed—I was not aware—excuse me, I should be happy,” stammered the
+young man. “As for the money, it is all in Governments and is at your
+command whenever you please.”
+
+“That is good, I’ll notify you when I’m ready for the transfer. And now
+come,” said he, with a change from his deep business tone to the lighter
+one of ordinary social converse, “forget for a half hour that you have
+discarded the name of Mandeville, and give us an aria or a sonata from
+Mendelssohn before those hands have quite lost their cunning.”
+
+“But the ladies,” inquired the youth glancing towards the drawing-room
+where Mrs. Sylvester was giving Paula her first lesson in ceramics.
+
+“Ah, it is to see how the charm will act upon my shy country lassie,
+that I request such a favor.”
+
+“Has she never heard Mendelssohn?”
+
+“Not with your interpretation.”
+
+Without further hesitation the young musician proceeded to the piano,
+which occupied a position opposite to my lady’s picture in this
+anomalous room denominated by courtesy the library. In another instant,
+a chord delicate and ringing, disturbed the silence of the long vista,
+and one of Mendelssohn’s most exquisite songs trembled in all its
+delicious harmony through these apartments of sensuous luxury.
+
+Mr. Sylvester had seated himself where he could see the distant figure
+of Paula, and leaning back in his chair, watched for the first startled
+response on her part. He was not disappointed. At the first note, he
+beheld her spirited head turn in a certain wondering surprise, followed
+presently by her whole quivering form, till he could perceive her face,
+upon which were the dawnings of a great delight, flush and pale by
+turns, until the climax of the melody being reached, she came slowly
+down the room, stretching out her hands like a child, and breathing
+heavily as if her ecstacy of joy in its impotence to adequately express
+itself, had caught an expression from pain.
+
+“O Mr. Sylvester!” was all she said as she reached that gentleman’s
+side; but Bertram Mandeville recognized the accents of an unfathomable
+appreciation in that simple exclamation, and struck into a grand old
+battle-song that had always made his own heart beat with something of
+the fire of ancient chivalry under its breastplate of modern broadcloth.
+
+“It is the voice of the thunder clouds when they marshal for battle!”
+exclaimed she at the conclusion. “I can hear the cry of a righteous
+struggle all through the sublime harmony.”
+
+“You are right; it is a war-song ancient as the time of battle-axes and
+spears,” quoth Bertram from his seat at the piano.
+
+“I thought I detected the flashing of steel,” returned she. “O what a
+world lies in those simple bits of ivory!”
+
+“Say rather in the fingers that sweep them,” uttered Mr. Sylvester. “You
+will not hear such music often.”
+
+“I am glad of that,” she cried simply, then in a quick conscious tone
+explained, “I mean that the hearing of such music makes an era in our
+life, a starting-point for thoughts that reach away into eternity; we
+could not bear such experiences often, it would confuse the spirit if
+not deaden its enjoyment. Or so it seems to me,” she added naively,
+glancing at her cousin who now came sweeping in from the further room,
+where she had been trying the effect of a change in the arrangement of
+two little pet monstrosities of Japanese ware.
+
+“What seems to you?” that lady inquired. “O, Mr. Mandeville’s playing? I
+beg pardon, Sylvester is the name by which you now wish to be addressed
+I suppose. Fine, isn’t it?” she rambled on all in the same tone while
+she cautiously hid an unfortunate gape of her rosy mouth behind the
+folds of her airy handkerchief. “Mr. Turner says the hiatus you have
+made in the musical world by leaving the concert room for the desk, can
+never be repaired,” she went on, supposedly to her nephew though she did
+not look his way, being at that instant engaged in sinking into her
+favorite chair.
+
+“I am glad,” Bertram politely returned with a frank smile, “to have
+enjoyed the approval of so cultivated a critic as Mr. Turner. I own it
+occasions me a pang now and then,” he remarked to his uncle over his
+shoulder, “to think I shall never again call up those looks of
+self-forgetful delight, which I have sometimes detected on the faces of
+certain ones in my audience.”
+
+And he relapsed without pause into a solemn anthem, the very reverse of
+the stirring tones which he had previously accorded them.
+
+“Now we are in a temple!” whispered Paula, subduing the sudden interest
+and curiosity which this young man’s last words had awakened. And the
+awe which crept over her countenance was the fittest interpretation to
+those noble sounds, which the one weary-hearted man in that room could
+have found.
+
+“I have something to tell you, Ona,” remarked Mr. Sylvester shortly
+after this, as the music being over, they all sat down for a final chat
+about the fireside. “I have received notice that the directors of the
+Madison Bank have this day elected me their president. I thought you
+might like to know it to-night.”
+
+“It is a very gratifying piece of news certainly. President of the
+Madison Bank sounds very well, does it not, Paula?”
+
+The young girl with her soul yet ringing with the grand and solemn
+harmonies of Mendelssohn and Chopin, turned at this with her brightest
+smile. “It certainly does and a little awe-inspiring too;” she added
+with her arch glance.
+
+“Your congratulations are also requested for our new assistant cashier.
+Arise, Bertram, and greet the ladies.”
+
+With a blush his young nephew arose to his feet.
+
+“What! are you going into the banking business?” queried Mrs. Sylvester.
+“Mr. Turner will be more shocked than ever: he chooses to say that
+bankers, merchants and such are the solid rock of his church, while the
+lighter fry such as artists, musicians, and let us hope he includes us
+ladies, are its minarets, and steeples. Now to make a foundation out of
+a steeple will quite overturn his methodical mind I fear.”
+
+Mr. Sylvester looked genially at his wife; she was not accustomed to
+attempt the facetious; but Paula seemed to have the power of bringing
+out unexpected lights and shadows from all with whom she came in
+contact.
+
+“A clergyman who rears his church on the basis of wealth must expect
+some overturning now and then,” laughed he.
+
+“If by means of it he turns a fresh side to the sun, it will do him no
+harm,” chimed in Paula.
+
+Seldom had there been so much simple gaiety round that fireside; the
+very atmosphere grew lighter, and the brilliance of my lady’s picture
+became less oppressive.
+
+“We ought to have a happy winter of it,” spoke up Mr. Sylvester with a
+glance around him. “Life never looked more cheerful for us all, I think;
+what do you say, Bertram my boy.”
+
+“It certainly looks promising for me.”
+
+“And for me,” murmured Paula.
+
+The complacent way with which Mrs. Sylvester smoothed out the feathers
+of her fan with her jewelled right hand,—she always carried a fan
+winter and summer, some said for the purpose of displaying those same
+jewelled fingers—was sufficient answer for her.
+
+At that moment there was a hush, when suddenly the small clock on the
+mantel-piece struck eleven, and instantly as if awaiting the signal,
+there came a rush and a heavy crash which drew every one to their feet,
+and the brilliant portrait of my lady fell from the wall, and toppling
+over the cabinet beneath, slid with the various articles of bronze and
+china thereon, almost to the very chair in which its handsome prototype
+had been sitting.
+
+It was a startling interruption and for an instant no one spoke, then
+Paula with a look towards her cousin breathed to herself rather than
+said, “Pray God it be not an omen!” And the pale countenances of the two
+gentlemen standing face to face on either side of that fallen picture,
+showed that the shadow of the same superstition had insensibly crossed
+their own minds.
+
+Mrs. Sylvester was the only one who remained unmoved. “Lift if up,”
+cried she, “and let us see if it has sustained any injury.”
+
+Instantly Bertram and her husband sprang forward, and in a moment its
+glowing surface was turned upward. Who could read the meaning of the
+look that crossed her husband’s face as he perceived that the sharp
+spear of the bronze horseman, which had been overturned in the fall, had
+penetrated the rosy countenance of the portrait and destroyed that
+importunate smile forever.
+
+“I suppose it is a judgment upon me for putting all the money you had
+allowed me for charitable purposes, into that exquisite bit of bronze,”
+observed Mrs. Sylvester, stooping above the overturned horseman with an
+expression of regret she had not chosen to bestow on her own ruined
+picture. “Ah he is less of a champion than I imagined; he has lost his
+spear in the struggle.”
+
+Paula glanced at her cousin in surprise. Was this pleasantry only a veil
+assumed by this courtly lady to hide her very natural regret over the
+more serious accident? Even her husband turned toward her with a certain
+puzzled inquiry in his troubled countenance. But her expression of
+unconcern was too natural; evidently the destruction of the picture had
+awakened but small regret in her volatile mind.
+
+“She is less vain than I thought,” was the inward comment of Paula.
+
+Ah simple child of the woods and streams, it is the extent of her vanity
+not the lack of it, that has produced this effect. She has begun to
+realize that ten years have elapsed since this picture was painted, and
+that people are beginning to say as they examine it, “Mrs. Sylvester has
+not yet lost her complexion, I see.”
+
+A break necessarily followed this disturbance, and before long Bertram
+took his leave, not without a cordial pressure from his uncle’s hand and
+a look of kindly interest from the stranger lassie, upon whose
+sympathetic and imaginative mind the hints let fall as to his former
+profession, had produced a deep impression. With his departure Mrs.
+Sylvester’s weariness returned, and ere long she led the way to her
+apartments up stairs. As Paula was hastening to follow Mr. Sylvester
+stopped her.
+
+“You will not allow this unfortunate occurrence,” he said, with a slight
+gesture towards the picture now standing with its face against the wall,
+“to mar your first sleep under my roof, will you Paula, my child?”
+
+“No, not if you say that you think Cousin Ona will not be likely to
+connect it with my appearance here.”
+
+“I do not think she will; she is not superstitious and besides does not
+seem to greatly regret the misfortune.”
+
+“Then I will forget it all and only remember the music.”
+
+“It was all you anticipated?”
+
+“It was more.”
+
+“Sometime I will tell you about the player and the sweet young girl he
+loves.”
+
+“Does he—” she paused, blushing; love was a subject upon which she had
+never yet spoken to any one.
+
+“Yes he does,” Mr. Sylvester returned smiling.
+
+“I thought there was a meaning in the music I did not quite understand.
+Good night, uncle,”—he had requested her to address him thus though he
+was in truth her cousin, “and many, many thanks.”
+
+But he stopped her again. “You think you will be happy in these rooms,”
+said he; “you love splendor.”
+
+She was not yet sufficiently acquainted with his voice to detect the
+regret underlying its kindly tone, and answered without suspicion. “I
+did not know it before, but I fear that I do. It dazzled at first, but
+now it seems as if I had reached a home towards which I had always been
+journeying. I shall dream away hours of joy before each little ornament
+that adorns your parlors. The very tiles that surround the fireplace
+will demand a week of attention at least.”
+
+She ended with a smile, but unlike formerly he did not seem to catch the
+infection. “I had rather you had cared less,” said he, but instantly
+regretted the seeming reproach, for her eyes filled with tears and the
+tones of her voice trembled as she replied,
+
+“Do you think the beauty I have seen has made me forget the kindness
+that has brought me here? I love fine and noble objects, glory of color
+and harmony of shape, but more than all these do I love a generous soul
+without a blot on its purity, or a flaw in its integrity.”
+
+She had meant to utter something that would show her appreciation of his
+goodness and the universal esteem in which he was held, but was quite
+unprepared for the start that he gave and the unmistakable deepening of
+the shadow on his sombre face. But before she could express her regret
+at the offence, whatever it was, he had recovered himself, and it was
+with a fatherly tenderness that he laid his hand upon hers while he
+said, “Such a soul may yours ever continue, my child,” and then stood
+watching her as she glided up the stairs, her charming face showing
+every now and then as she leaned on her winding way to the top, to
+bestow upon him the tender little smile she had already learned was his
+solace and delight.
+
+It was the beginning of happier days for him.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK II.
+
+LIFE AND DEATH.
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+MISS BELINDA HAS A QUESTION TO DECIDE.
+
+    “I pray you in your letters,
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate,
+    Nor set down aught in malice.”
+              —OTHELLO.
+
+
+Miss Belinda sitting before her bedroom fire on a certain windy night in
+January, presented a picture of the most profound thought. A year had
+elapsed since, with heavy heart and moistened eye, she had bidden
+good-bye to the child of her care, and beheld her drift away with her
+new friend into a strange and untried life. And now a letter had come
+from that friend, in which with the truest appreciation for the feelings
+of herself and sister, he requested their final permission to adopt
+Paula as his own child and the future occupant of his house and heart.
+
+Yes, after a year of increased comfort, Mrs. Sylvester, who would never
+have consented to receive as her own any child demanding care or
+attention, had decided it was quite a different matter to give place and
+position to a lovely girl already grown, whose beauty was sufficiently
+pronounced to do credit to the family while at the same time it was of a
+character to heighten by contrast her own very manifest attractions. So
+the letter, destined to create such a disturbance in the stern and
+powerful mind of Miss Belinda, had been written and dispatched.
+
+And indeed it was matter for the gravest reflection. To accede to this
+important request was to yield up all control over the dear young girl
+whose affection had constituted the brightness of this somewhat
+disappointed life, while to refuse an offer made with such evident love
+and anxiety, was to bring a pang of regret to a heart she hesitated to
+wound. The question of advantage which might have swayed others in their
+decision, did not in the least affect Miss Belinda. Now that Paula had
+seen the world and gained an insight into certain studies beyond the
+reach of her own attainments, any wishes in which she might have
+indulged on that score were satisfied, and mere wealth with its
+concomitant of luxuriant living, she regarded with distrust, and rather
+in the light of a stumbling-block to the great and grand end of all
+existence.
+
+Suddenly with that energy which characterized all her movements, she
+rose from her seat, and first casting a look of somewhat cautious
+inquiry at the recumbent figure of her sister, asleep in the heavy old
+fashioned bed that occupied one corner of the room, she proceeded to a
+bureau drawer and took out a small box which she unlocked on the table.
+It was full of letters; those same honest epistles, which, as empowered
+by Mr. Sylvester, she had requested Paula to send her from week to week.
+Some of them were a year old, but she read them all carefully through,
+while the clock ticked on the shelf and the wind soughed in the chimney.
+Certain passages she marked, and when she had finished the pile, she
+took up the letters again and re-read those passages. They were
+necessarily desultory in their character, but they all had, in her mind
+at least, a bearing upon the question on hand, and as such, I give them
+to my readers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+“O aunty, I have made a friend, a sweet girl friend who I have reason to
+hope will henceforth be to me as my other eye and hand. Her name is
+Stuyvesant—a name by the way that always calls up a certain complacent
+smile on Cousin Ona’s countenance—and she is the daughter of one of the
+directors of Mr. Sylvester’s bank. I met her in a rather curious way.
+For some reason Ona had expressed a wish for me to ride horseback. She
+is rather too large for the exercise herself, but thought it looked
+well, she said, to see a lady and groom ride from the front of the
+house; moreover it would keep me in color by establishing my health. So
+Mr. Sylvester who denies her nothing, promised us horses and the groom,
+and as a preparation for acquitting myself with credit, has sent me to
+one of the finest riding academies in the city. It was here I met Miss
+Stuyvesant. She is a small interesting-looking girl whose chief beauty
+lies in her expression which is certainly very charming. I was conscious
+of a calm and satisfied feeling the moment I saw her. Her eyes which are
+raised with a certain appeal to your face, are blue, while her lips that
+break into smiles only at rare moments, are rosy and delicately curved.
+In her riding-habit she looks like a child, but when dressed for the
+street she surprises you with the reserved and womanly air with which
+she carries her proud head. Altogether she is a sweet study to me,
+alluring me with her glance yet awing me by her dainty ladyhood, a
+ladyhood too unconscious to be affected and yet so completely a part of
+her whole delicate being, that you could as soon dissociate the bloom
+from the rose, as the air of highborn reserve, from this sweet scion of
+one of New York’s oldest families.
+
+“I was mounting my horse when our eyes first met, and I never shall
+forget her look of delighted surprise. Did she recognize in me the
+friend I now hope to become? Later we were introduced by Mr. Sylvester
+who had been so kind as to accompany me that day. The way in which he
+said to her, ‘This is Paula,’ proved that I was no new topic of
+conversation between them, and indeed she afterwards explained to me
+that she had been forewarned of my arrival during an afternoon call at
+his house. There was in this first interview none of the unnecessary
+gush which you have so often reprobated as childish; indeed Miss
+Stuyvesant is not a person with whom one would presume to be familiar,
+nor was it till we had met several times that any acknowledgement was
+made of the mutual interest with which we found ourselves inspired.
+Cousin Ona to whom I had naturally spoken of the little lady, wished me
+to cultivate her acquaintance more assiduously, but I knew that if I had
+excited in her the same interest she had awakened in me, this would not
+be necessary; our friendship would grow of itself and blossom without
+any hot-house forcing. And so it did. One day she came to the
+riding-school with her eyes like stars and her cheeks like the oleanders
+in your sitting-room. Her brightness was so contagious, I stepped up to
+her. But she greeted me with almost formal reserve, and mounting her
+horse, proceeded to engage in her usual exercise. I was not hurt; I
+recognized the presence of some thought or feeling which made a barrier
+around her sensitive nature, and duly respected it. Mounting my own
+horse, I rode around the ring which is the somewhat limited field of my
+present equestrian efforts, and waited. For I knew from the looks which
+she cast me every now and then, that the flower of our friendship was
+outgrowing its sheath and would soon burst into the bud of perfect
+understanding. At the end of the lesson we approached each other. I do
+not know how it was done, but we walked home together, or rather I
+accompanied her to the stoop of her house, and before we parted we had
+exchanged those words which give emphasis to a sentiment long cherished
+but now for the first time avowed. Miss Stuyvesant and I are friends,
+and I feel as though a new stream of enjoyment had opened in my breast.
+
+“The fact that I still call her by this formal title instead of her very
+pretty name of Cicely, proves the nature of the respect she inspires
+even in the breasts of her girlish associates.”
+
+“Why is it that I frequently hesitate as I go up the stairs and look
+about me with a vague feeling of apprehension? The bronze figure of
+Luxury that adorns the landing, wears no semblance of terror to the
+wildest imagination, and yet I often find myself seized by an
+inexplicable shudder as I hurry past it; and once I actually looked
+behind me with the same sensation as if some one had plucked me by the
+sleeve.
+
+“It is a folly; for recording which, I make my excuses.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+“Cousin Ona has decided that I must never wear colors. ‘Soft grays, my
+dear, dead blacks and opaque whites are all that you need to bring out
+the fine contrast of your hair and complexion; the least hint of blue or
+pink would destroy it.’ So she says and so I must believe, for who else
+has made such a study of the all important subject of dress. Behold me,
+then, arrayed for my first reception in a colorless robe of rich silk to
+which Ona after long consideration allowed me to add some ornaments of
+plain gold with which Mr. Sylvester has kindly presented me. But I think
+more of the people I am going to meet than of anything else, though I
+enjoy the home-feeling which a pretty dress gives me, as well as a
+violet does its bright blue coat.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+“I have heard a great preacher! What shall I say? At first it seems as
+if nothing could express my joy and satisfaction. The sapling that is
+shaken to its root by the winds of heaven, keeps silence I imagine. But
+O Aunty, if my smallness makes me quake, it also makes me feel. What
+gates of thought have been opened to me! What shining tracks of inquiry
+pointed out! I feel as if I had been shown a path where angels walked.
+Can it be that such words have been uttered every week of my life and I
+in ignorance of them? It is like the revelation of the ocean to
+unaccustomed eyes. Henceforth small things must seem like pebble stones
+above which stretch innumerable heavenly vistas. It is not so much that
+new things have been revealed to me as that old things have been made
+strangely eloquent. The voice of a daisy on the hill side, the breath of
+thunder in the mountain gorges, the blossoming of a child’s smile under
+its mother’s eye, the fact that golden portals are opened in every life
+for the coming and going of the messengers of God, all have been made
+real to me, real as the voice of the Saviour to his disciples as they
+walked in the fields or started back awe-stricken from the stupendous
+vision of the cross. It is a solemn thing to see one’s humble thoughts
+caught by the imagination of a great mind and carried on and up into
+regions you never realized existed.
+
+“I was so burdened with joy that I could not forbear asking Mr.
+Sylvester if he did not feel as if the whole face of the world had
+changed since we entered those holy doors. He did not respond with the
+glad ‘Yes’ for which I hoped, and though his smile was very kind, I
+could not help wondering what it was that sometimes fell between us like
+a veil.”
+
+“O Aunty, how my heart does yearn towards Mr. Sylvester at times! As I
+see him sitting with clouded brow in the midst of so much that ought to
+charm and enliven him, I ask myself if the advantages of wealth
+compensate for all this care and anxiety. But I notice he is much more
+cheerful now than when I first came. Ona says he is in danger of losing
+the air of melancholy reserve which made him look so distinguished, but
+I think we can spare a little of such doubtful distinguishment for the
+sake of the smiles with which he now and then indulges us.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+“I feel as if a hand had gripped my throat. Cousin Ona spoke to Mr.
+Sylvester this morning in a way that made my very heart stand still. And
+yet it was only a simple, ‘Follow your own judgment, Mr. Sylvester.’ But
+how she said it! Do these languid women carry venom in their tongues? I
+had always thought she was of too easy a disposition to feel anger or
+display it; but the spring of a serpent is all the deadlier for his long
+silent basking in the sun. O pardon me for making such a frightful
+allusion. But if you had seen her and heard Mr. Sylvester’s sigh as he
+turned and left the room!”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+“Mr. Bertram Sylvester has awakened my deepest interest. His uncle has
+told me his story, which alone of all the things I have heard in this
+house, I do not feel at liberty to repeat, and it has aroused in me
+strange thoughts and very peculiar emotions. He is devoted to some one
+we do not know, and the idea surrounds him in my eyes with a sort of
+halo that you would perhaps call fanciful, but which I am nevertheless
+bound to reverence. He does not know that I am acquainted with his
+story. I wish he did and would let me speak the words that rise to my
+lips whenever I see him or hear him play.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+“There are moments when I long to flee back to Grotewell. It is when
+Cousin Ona comes in from shopping with a dozen packages to be opened and
+commented upon, or when Mrs. Fitzgerald has been here or some other of
+her ultra-fashionable acquaintances. The atmosphere of the house for
+hours after either of the above occurrences is too heavy for breathing.
+I have to go away and clear my brain by a brisk walk or a look into
+KnƓdler’s or Schaus’.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+“The panel where Cousin Ona’s picture used to hang, has been filled by
+one of Meissonier’s most interesting studies; and though I never thought
+Mr. Sylvester particularly fond of the French style of art, he seems
+very well satisfied with the result. I cannot understand how Cousin Ona
+can regard the misfortune to her portrait so calmly. I think it would
+break my heart to see a husband look with complacency on any picture, no
+matter how exquisite, that took the place of my own, especially if like
+her’s, it was painted in my bridal days. I sometimes wonder if those
+days are as sacred to the memory of husband and wife as I have always
+imagined them to be.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+“Why does Cousin Ona never speak of Grotewell, and why, if by chance I
+mention the name, does she drop her eyes and a shadow cross the
+countenance of Mr. Sylvester?”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+“There is a word Mr. Sylvester uses in the most curious way; it is
+_fuss_. He calls everything a fuss that while insignificant in size or
+character has power either to irritate or please. A fly is a fuss; so is
+a dimple in a girl’s cheek or a figure that goes wrong in accounts. I
+have even heard him call a child, ‘That dear little fuss.’ Bertram
+unconsciously imitates his uncle in this peculiar mannerism and is often
+heard alluding to this or that as a _fuss of fusses_. Indeed they say
+this use of the word is a peculiarity of the Sylvester family.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+“I think from the way Mr. Sylvester spoke yesterday, that he must have
+experienced some dreadful trouble in his life. We were walking in the
+wards of a hospital—that is, Miss Stuyvesant, Mr. Sylvester and
+myself—when some one near us gave utterance to the trite expression, ‘O
+it will heal, but the scar will always remain.’ ‘That is a common
+saying,’ remarked Mr. Sylvester, ‘but how true a one no one realizes but
+he who carries the scar.’”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+“It may be imagination or simply the effect of increased appreciation on
+my part, but it does seem as if Miss Stuyvesant grew lovelier and more
+companionable each time that I meet her. She makes me think of a temple
+in which a holy lamp is burning. Her very silences are eloquent, and yet
+she is never _distraite_ but always cheerful and frequently the
+brightest of the company. But it is a brightness without glitter, a
+gentle lustre that delights you but never astonishes. I meet many sweet
+girls in the so-called heartless circles of society, but none like her.
+She is my white lily on which a moonbeam rests.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+“This house contains a mystery, as Ona is pleased to designate the room
+at the top of the house to which Mr. Sylvester withdraws when he desires
+to be alone. And indeed it is a sort of Bluebeard’s chamber, in that he
+keeps it rigidly under lock and key, allowing no one to enter it, not
+even his wife. The servants declare that no one but himself has ever
+crossed its threshold, but I can scarcely believe that. Ona has not, but
+there must surely be some trusty person to whom he allots the care of
+its furniture. Am I only proving myself to be a true member of my sex
+when I allow that I cannot hinder my own curiosity from hovering about a
+spot so religiously guarded? Yet what should we see if its doors were
+thrown open? A study surrounded with books it displeases him to see
+misplaced, or a luxurious apartment fitted with every appointment
+necessary to rest and comfort him when he comes home tired from
+business.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+“I never saw Mr. Sylvester angry till to-day. By some inadvertence he
+went down town without locking the door of his private room, and though
+he returned immediately upon missing the key from his pocket, he was
+barely in time to prevent Cousin Ona from invading the spot he has
+always kept so sacred from intrusion. I was not present and of course
+did not hear what was said, but I caught a glimpse of his face as he
+left the house, and found it quite sufficient to assure me of his
+dissatisfaction. As for Ona, she declares he pulled her back as if she
+had been daring the plague. ‘I do not expect to find five beautiful
+wives hanging up there by their necks,’ concluded she with a forced
+laugh, ‘but I shall yet see the interior of that room, if only to
+establish my prerogative as the mistress of this house.’
+
+“I do not now feel as if I wished to see it.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+“There is one thing that strikes me as peculiar in Miss Stuyvesant, and
+that is, that as much pleasure as she seems to take in my society when
+we meet, she never comes to see me in Mr. Sylvester’s house. For a long
+time I wondered over this but said nothing, but one day upon receiving a
+second invitation to visit her, I mentioned the fact as delicately as I
+could, and was quite distressed to observe how seriously she took the
+rebuke, if rebuke it could be called. ‘I cannot explain myself,’ she
+murmured in some embarrassment; ‘but Mr. Sylvester’s house is closed
+against me. You must not ask me to seek you there or expect me to do
+myself the pleasure of attending Mrs. Sylvester’s receptions. I cannot.
+Is that enough for me to say to my dearest friend?’ I hardly knew what
+to reply, but finally ventured to inquire if she was restrained by any
+fact that would make it undignified in me to seek her society and enjoy
+the pleasures she is continually offering me. And she answered with such
+a cheerful negative I was quite reassured. And so the matter is settled.
+Our friendship is to be emancipated from the bonds of etiquette and I am
+to enjoy her company whenever I can. To-morrow we are going to take our
+first ride in the park. The horses have been bought, and much to Cousin
+Ona’s satisfaction, the groom has been hired.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+“I was told something the other day, of a nature so unpleasant that I
+should not think of repeating it, if you had not expressly commanded me
+to confide to you everything that for any reason produced an effect upon
+me in my new home. My informant was Sarah, the somewhat gossiping woman
+whom Ona has about her as seamstress and maid. She said—and she had
+spoken before I could prevent her—that the way Mrs. Sylvester took on
+about her mourning at the time of little Geraldine’s death was enough to
+wear out the patience of Job. She even went so far as to tell the
+dressmaker that if she could not have her dress made to suit her she
+would not put on mourning at all! Aunty, can you wonder that Mr.
+Sylvester looks so bitterly sombre whenever mention is made of his
+child? He loved it, and its own mother could worry over the fit of a
+dress while his bereaved heart was breaking! I confess I can never feel
+the same indulgence towards what I considered the idiosyncrasies of a
+fashionable beauty again. Her smooth white skin makes me tremble; it has
+never flushed with delight over the innocent smiles of her firstborn.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+“Mr. Sylvester is very polite to Cousin Ona and seems to yield to her
+wishes in everything. But if I were she I think my heart would break
+over that very politeness. But then she is one who demands formality
+even from the persons of her household. I have never seen him stoop for
+a kiss or beheld her even so much as lay her hand on his shoulder. But I
+have observed him wait on her at moments when he was pale from weariness
+and she flushed with long twilight reclinings before her sleepy boudoir
+fire.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+“There are times when I would not exchange my present opportunities for
+any others which might be afforded me. General —— dined here to-day,
+and what a vision of a great struggle was raised up before me by his few
+simple words in regard to Gettysburg. I did not know which to admire
+most, the military bearing and vivid conversation of the great soldier,
+or the ease and dignity with which Mr. Sylvester met his remarks and
+answered each glowing sentence. General —— spoke a few words to me.
+How gentle these lion-like men can be when they stoop their tall heads
+to address little children or young women!”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+“What a noble-hearted man Mr. Sylvester is! Mr. Turner in speaking of
+him the other night, declared there is no one in his congregation who in
+a quiet way does so much for the poor. ‘He is especially interested in
+young men,’ said he, ‘and will leave his own affairs at any time to aid
+or advise them.’ I knew Mr. Sylvester was kind, but Mr. Turner’s
+enthusiasm was uncommon. He evidently admires Mr. Sylvester as much as
+every one else loves him. And he is not alone in this. Almost every day
+I hear some remark made of a nature complimentary to my benefactor’s
+character or ability. Even Mr. Stuyvesant who so seldom appears to
+notice us girls, once interrupted a conversation between Cicely and
+myself to inquire if Mr. Sylvester was quite well. ‘I thought he looked
+pale to-day,’ remarked he, in his dry but not unkindly way, and then
+added, ‘He must not get sick; he is too valuable to us.’ This was a
+great deal for Mr. Stuyvesant to say, and it caused a visible
+gratification to Mr. Sylvester when I related it to him in the evening.
+‘I had rather satisfy that man than any other I know,’ declared he. ‘He
+is of the stern old-fashioned sort, and it is an honor to any one to
+merit his approval. I did not tell him that I had also heard Mr.
+Stuyvesant observe in a conversation with some business friend of his,
+that Edward Sylvester was the only speculator he knew in whom he felt
+implicit confidence. Somehow it always gives me an uncomfortable feeling
+to hear Mr. Sylvester alluded to as a speculator. Besides since he has
+entered the Bank, he has I am told, entirely restricted himself to what
+are called legitimate operations.’”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+“Mr. Sylvester came home with a dreadful look on his face to-day. We
+were standing in the hall at the time the door opened, and he went by us
+without a nod, almost as if he did not see us. Even Ona was startled and
+stood gazing after him with an anxiety such as I had never observed in
+her before, while I was conscious of that sick feeling I have sometimes
+experienced when he came upon me suddenly from his small room above, or
+paused in the midst of the gayest talk, to ask me some question that was
+wholly irrelevant and most frequently sad.
+
+“‘He has met with some heavy loss,’ murmured his wife, glancing down the
+handsome parlors with a look such as a mother might bestow upon the face
+of a sick child. But I was sure she had not sounded his trouble, and in
+my impetuosity was about to fly to his side when we saw him pause before
+the image of Luxury that stands on the stair, look at it for a moment
+with a strange intentness, then suddenly and with a gesture of
+irrepressible passion, lift his arm as if he would fell it from its
+place. The action was so startling, Ona clutched my sleeve in terror,
+but he passed on and in another moment we heard him shut the door of his
+room.
+
+“Would he be down to dinner? that was the next question. Ona thought
+not; I did not dare to think. Nevertheless it was a great relief to me
+when I saw him enter the dining-room with that set immovable look he
+sometimes wears when Ona begins one of her long and rambling streams of
+fashionable gossip. ‘It is nothing,’ flashed from his wife’s eyes to
+mine, and she lapsed at once into her most graceful self, but she
+nevertheless hastened her meal and I was quite prepared to observe her
+follow him, as with the polite excuse of weariness, he left the table
+before desert. I could not hear what she asked him, but his answer came
+distinctly to my ears from the midst of the library to which they had
+withdrawn. ‘It is nothing in which you have an interest, Ona. Thank
+heaven you do not always know the price with which the splendors you so
+love are bought.’ And she did not cry out, ‘O never pay such a price for
+any joy of mine! Sooner than cost you so dear I would live on crusts and
+dwell in a garret.’ No, she kept silence, and when in a few minutes
+later I joined her in the library, it was to find on her usually placid
+lips, a thin cool smile that struck like ice to my heart, and made it
+impossible for me to speak.
+
+“But the hardest trial of the day was to hear Mr. Sylvester come in at
+eleven o’clock—he went out again immediately after dinner—and go up
+stairs without giving me my usual good-night. It was such a grief to me
+I could not keep still, but hurried to the foot of the stairs in the
+hopes he would yet remember me and come back. But instead of that, he no
+sooner saw me than he threw out his hand almost as if he would push me
+back, and hastened on up the whole winding flight till he reached the
+refuge of that mysterious room of his at the top of the house.
+
+“I could not go back to Ona after that—she had been to make a call
+somewhere with a young gentleman friend of hers;—yes on this very night
+had been to make a call—but I took advantage of the late hour to retire
+to my own room where for a long time I lay awake listening for his
+descending step and seeing, as in a vision, the startling picture of his
+lifted arm raised against the unconscious piece of bronze on the stair.
+Henceforth that statue will possess for me a still more dreadful
+significance.”
+
+“It is the twenty-fifth of February. Why should I feel as if I must be
+sure of the exact date before I slept?”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next extract followed close on this and was the last which Miss
+Belinda read.
+
+“Mr. Sylvester seems to have recovered from his late anxiety. He does
+not shrink from me any more with that half bitter, half sad expression
+that has so long troubled and bewildered me, but draws me to his side
+and sits listening to my talk until I feel as if I were really of some
+comfort to this great and able man. Ona does not notice the change; she
+is all absorbed in preparing for the visit to Washington, which Mr.
+Sylvester has promised her.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+Miss Belinda calmly folded up the letters and locked them again in the
+little mahogany box, after which she covered up the embers and quietly
+went to bed. But next morning a letter was despatched to Mr. Sylvester
+which ran thus:
+
+     “DEAR MR. SYLVESTER:
+
+     “For the present at least you may keep Paula with you. But I am
+     not ready to say that I think it would be for her best good to
+     be received and acknowledged as your daughter—yet. Hoping you
+     will appreciate the motives that actuate this decision,
+
+     “I remain, respectfully yours,
+
+     “BELINDA ANN WALTON.”
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+AN ADVENTURE—OR SOMETHING MORE.
+
+    “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
+     But to be young was very heaven.”—WORDSWORTH.
+
+
+     “_Oph._—What means this, my lord?
+
+     _Ham._—Marry, this is the miching mallecho; it means
+     mischief.”
+
+     —HAMLET.
+
+
+A ride in the Central Park is an every-day matter to most people. It
+signifies an indolent bowling over a smooth road all alive with the
+glitter of passing equipages, waving ribbons and fluttering plumes, and
+brightened now and then by the sight of a well known face amid the
+general rush of old and young, plain and handsome, sad and gay
+countenances that flash by you in one long and brilliant procession.
+
+But to Paula and her friend Miss Stuyvesant starting out in the early
+freshness of a fair April morning, it meant new life, reawakening joy,
+the sparkle of young leaves just loosed from the bonds of winter, the
+sweetness and promise of spring airs, and all the budding glory of a new
+year with its summer of countless roses and its autumn of incalculable
+glories. Not the twitter of a bird was lost to them, not the smile of an
+opening flower, not the welcome of a waving branch. Youth, joy, and
+innocence lived in their hearts and showed them nothing in the mirror of
+nature that was not equally young, joyous and innocent. Then they were
+alone, or sufficiently so. The stray wanderers whom they met sitting
+under the flowering trees, were equally with themselves lovers of nature
+or they would not be seated in converse with it at this early hour;
+while the laugh of little children startled from their play by the
+prance of their high-stepping horses, was only another expression of the
+sweet but unexpressed delight that breathed in all the radiant
+atmosphere.
+
+“We are two birds who have escaped thralldom and are taking our first
+flight into our natural ether,” cried Miss Stuyvesant gaily.
+
+“We are two pioneers lit by the spirit of adventure, who have left the
+cosy hearth of wintry-fires to explore the domains of the frost king,
+and lo, we have come upon a Paradise of bloom and color!” responded the
+ringing voice of Paula.
+
+“I feel as if I could mount that little white cloud we see over there,”
+continued Cicely with a quick lively wave of her whip. “I wonder how
+Dandy would enjoy an empyrean journey?”
+
+“From the haughty bend of his neck I should say he was quite satisfied
+with his present condition. But perhaps his chief pride is due to the
+mistress he carries.”
+
+“Are you attempting to vie with Mr. Williams, Paula?”
+
+Mr. Williams was the meek-eyed, fair complexioned gentleman, whose
+predilection for compliment was just then a subject of talk in
+fashionable circles.
+
+“Only so far as my admiration goes of the most charming lady I see this
+morning. But who is this?”
+
+Miss Stuyvesant looked up. “Ah, that is some one with whom there is very
+little danger of your falling in love.”
+
+Paula blushed. The gentleman approaching them upon horseback was
+conspicuous for long side whiskers of a decidedly auburn tinge.
+
+“His name is—” But she had not time to finish, for the gentleman with a
+glance of astonished delight at Paula, bowed to the speaker with a
+liveliness and grace that demanded some recognition.
+
+Instantly he drew rein. “Do I behold Miss Stuyvesant among the nymphs!”
+cried he, in those ringing pleasant tones that at once predispose you
+towards their possessor.
+
+“If you allude to my friend Miss Fairchild, you certainly do, Mr.
+Ensign,” the wicked little lady rejoined with a waiving of her usual
+ceremony that astonished Paula.
+
+Mr. Ensign bestowed upon them his most courtly bow, but the flush that
+mounted to his brow—making his face one red, as certain of his friends
+were malicious enough to observe on similar occasions—indicated that he
+had been taken a little more at his word than perhaps suited even one of
+his easy and proverbially careless temperament. “Miss Fairchild will
+understand that I am not a Harvey Williams—at least before an
+introduction,” said he with something like seriousness.
+
+But at this allusion to the gentleman whose name had been upon their
+lips but a moment before, both ladies laughed outright.
+
+“I have just been accused of attempting the rîle of that gentleman
+myself,” exclaimed Paula. “If the fresh morning air will persist in
+painting such roses on ladies’ cheeks,” continued she, with a loving
+look at her pretty companion “what can one be expected to do?”
+
+“Admire,” quoth the red bannered cavalier with a glance, however, at the
+beautiful speaker instead of the demure little Cicely at her side.
+
+Miss Stuyvesant perceived this look and a curious smile disturbed the
+corners of her rosy lips. “What a fortunate man to be able to do the
+right thing at the right time,” laughed she, gaily touching up her horse
+that was beginning to show symptoms of restlessness.
+
+“If Miss Stuyvesant will put that in the future tense and then assure us
+she has been among the prophets, I should be singularly obliged,” said
+he with a touch of his hat and a smiling look at Paula that was at once
+manly and gentle, careless and yet respectful.
+
+“Ah, life is too bright for prophesies this morning. The moment is
+enough.”
+
+“Is it Miss Fairchild?” queried Mr. Ensign looking back over his
+shoulder.
+
+She turned just a bit of her cheek towards him. “What Miss Stuyvesant
+declares to be true, that am I bound to believe,” said she, and with the
+least little ripple of a laugh, rode on.
+
+“It is a pity you have such a dislike for whiskers,” Cicely presently
+remarked with an air of great gravity.
+
+Paula gave a start and cast a glance of reproach at her companion. “I
+did not notice his whiskers after the first word or two,” said she,
+fixing her eyes on a turn of the road before them. “Such cheerfulness is
+infectious. I was merry before, but now I feel as if I had been bathed
+in sunshine.”
+
+Cicely’s eyes flashed wide with surprise and her face grew serious in
+earnest. “Mr. Ensign is a delightful companion,” observed she; “a room
+is always brighter for his entrance; and with all that, he is the only
+young man I know, who having come into a large fortune, feels any of the
+responsibilities of his position. The sunshine is the result of a good
+heart and pure living, and that is what makes it infectious, I suppose.”
+
+“Let us canter,” said Paula. And so the glad young things swept on, life
+breaking in bubbles around them and rippling away into unfathomable
+wells of feeling in one of their pure hearts at least. Suddenly a hand
+seemed to swoop from heaven and dash them both back in dismay. They had
+reached one of those places where the foot path crosses the equestrian
+and they had run over and thrown down a little child.
+
+“O heaven!” cried Paula leaping from her horse, “I had rather been
+killed myself.” The groom rode up and she bent anxiously over the child.
+
+It was a boy of some seven or eight years, whose misfortune—he was
+lame, as the little crutch fallen at his side sufficiently denoted—made
+appear much younger. He had been struck on his arm and was moaning with
+pain, but did not seem to be otherwise hurt. “Are you alone?” cried
+Paula, lifting his head on her arm and glancing hurriedly about.
+
+The little fellow raised his heavy lids and for a moment stared into her
+face with eyes so deeply blue and beautiful they almost startled her,
+then with an effort pointed down the path, saying,
+
+“Dad’s over there in the long tunnel talking to some one. Tell him I got
+hurt. I want Dad.”
+
+She gently lifted him to his feet and led him out of the road into the
+apparently deserted path where she made him sit down. “I am going to
+find his father,” said Paula to Cicely, “I will be back in a moment.”
+
+“But wait; you shall not go alone,” authoritatively exclaimed that
+little damsel, leaping in her turn to the ground. “Where does he say his
+father is?”
+
+“In the tunnel, by which I suppose he means that long passage under the
+bridge over there.”
+
+Holding up the skirts of their riding-habits in their trembling right
+hands, they hurried forward. Suddenly they both paused. A woman had
+crossed their path; a woman whom to look at but once was to remember
+with ghastly shrinking for a lifetime. She was wrapped in a long and
+ragged cloak, and her eyes, startling in their blackness, were fixed
+upon the pain-drawn countenance of the poor little hurt boy behind them,
+with a gleam whose feverish hatred and deep malignant enjoyment of his
+very evident sufferings, was like a revelation from the lowest pit to
+the two innocent-minded girls hastening forward on their errand of
+mercy.
+
+“Is he much hurt?” gasped the woman in an ineffectual effort to conceal
+the evil nature of her interest. “Do you think he will die?” with a
+shrill lingering emphasis on the last word as if she longed to roll it
+like a sweet morsel under her tongue.
+
+“Who are you?” asked Cicely, shrinking to one side with dilated eyes
+fixed on the woman’s hardened countenance and the white, too white hand
+with which she had pointed as she spoke of the child.
+
+“Are you his mother?” queried Paula, paling at the thought but keeping
+her ground with an air of unconscious authority.
+
+“His mother!” shrieked the woman, hugging herself in her long cloak and
+laughing with fiendish sarcasm: “I look like his mother, don’t I? His
+eyes—did you notice his eyes? they are just like mine, aren’t they? and
+his body, poor weazen little thing, looks as if it had drawn sustenance
+from mine, don’t it? His mother! O heaven!”
+
+Nothing like the suppressed force of this invocation seething as it was
+with the worst passions of a depraved human nature, had ever startled
+those ears before. Clasping Cicely by the hand, she called out to the
+groom behind them, “Guard that child as you would your life!” and then
+flashing upon the wretched creature before her with all the force of her
+aroused nature, she exclaimed, “If you are not his mother, move aside
+and let us pass, we are in search of assistance.”
+
+For an instant the woman stood awe-struck before this vision of maidenly
+beauty and indignation, then she laughed and cried out with shrill
+emphasis:
+
+“When next you look like that, go to your mirror, and when you see the
+image it reflects, say to yourself, ‘So once looked the woman who defied
+me in the Park!’”
+
+With a quick shudder and a feeling as if the noisome cloak of this
+degraded being had somehow been dropped upon her own fair and spotless
+shoulders, Paula clasped the hand of Cicely more tightly in her own, and
+rushed with her down the steps that led into the underground passage
+towards which they had been directed.
+
+There were but two persons in it when they entered. A short thickset man
+and another man of a slighter and more gentlemanly build. They were
+engaged in talking, and the latter was bringing down his right hand upon
+the palm of his left with a gesture almost foreign in its expressive
+energy.
+
+“I tell you,” declared he, with a voice that while low, reverberated
+through the hollow vault above him with strange intensity, “I tell you
+I’ve got my grip on a certain rich man in this city, and if you will
+only wait, you shall see strange things. I don’t know his name and I
+don’t know his face, but I do know what he has done, and a thousand
+dollars down couldn’t buy the knowledge of me.”
+
+“But if you don’t know his name and don’t know his face, how in the name
+of all that’s mischievous are you going to know your man?”
+
+“Leave that to me! If I once meet him and hear him talk, one more rich
+man goes down and one more poor devil goes up, or I’ve not the wit that
+starvation usually teaches.”
+
+The nature of these sentences together with the various manifestations
+of interest with which they were received, had for a moment deterred the
+two girls in their hurried advance, but now they put away every thought
+save that of the poor little creature awaiting his Dad, and lifting up
+her voice, Paula said,
+
+“Are either of you the father of a little lame lad—”
+
+Instantly and before she could conclude, the taller of the two, who had
+also been the chief speaker in the above conversation, turned, and she
+saw his hand begrimed though it was with dirt and dark with many a
+disgraceful trick, go to his heart in a gesture too natural to be
+anything but involuntary.
+
+“Is he hurt?” gasped he, but in how different a tone from that of the
+woman who had used the same words a few minutes before. Then seeing that
+the persons who addressed him were ladies and one of them at least a
+very beautiful one, took off his hat with an easy action, that together
+with what they had heard, proved him to be one of that most dangerous
+class among us, a gentleman who has gone thoroughly and irretrievably to
+the bad.
+
+“I am afraid he is, sir,” said Paula. “He was attempting to cross the
+road, and a horse advancing hurriedly, struck him.” She had not courage
+to say her horse in face of the white and trembling dismay that seized
+him at these words.
+
+“Where is he?” cried he. “Where’s my poor boy?” And he bounded up the
+steps, his hat still in his hand, his long unkempt locks flying, and his
+whole form expressive of the utmost alarm.
+
+“Down by the carriage road,” called out Paula, finding it impossible for
+them to keep up with such haste.
+
+“But is he much injured?” cried a smooth voice at their side.
+
+They turned; it was the short thickset man who had been the other’s
+companion in the conversation above recorded.
+
+“We trust not,” answered Cicely; “his arm received the blow, and he
+suffers very much, but we hope it is not serious;” and they hurried on.
+
+They found the father seated on the grass holding the little fellow in
+his arms. The look on his once handsome but now thoroughly corrupt and
+dissipated face, made their hearts melt within them. However wicked he
+might be—and that sly treacherous eye, that false impudent lip, that
+settling of the whole face into the mould which Vice applies to all her
+votaries, left no doubt of his complete depravity—he dearly loved his
+child, and love, no matter how it is expressed, or in what garb it
+appears, is a sacred and beautiful thing, and ennobles for the time
+being any creature who displays it.
+
+“’Twas a hard knock up, Dad,” came from the white lips of the child as
+he felt his father’s trembling hand feel up and down his arm, “but I
+guess the ‘little fellar’ can stand it.” “Little feller” was evidently
+the name by which his father was accustomed to address him.
+
+“There are no bones broken,” said the father. “To be lame and maimed too
+would be—”
+
+He did not finish, for a delicately gloved hand was here laid on his
+sleeve, and a gentle voice whispered, “Money cannot pay for an injury
+like that, but please accept this;” and Paula thrust a purse into his
+hand.
+
+He clutched it eagerly, but at her next request that he should tell her
+where he lived that they might inquire after the boy, he shook his head
+with a return of his old emphasis.
+
+
+“The haunts of bats and jackals are not for ladies.” Then as he caught
+sight of her pitiful face bending in farewell over the little urchin,
+some remembrance perhaps of the days when he had a right to stoop to the
+ear of beautiful women and walk unrebuked at their side, returned to him
+from the past, and respectfully lowering his voice, he asked her name.
+
+She gave it and he seemed to lay it away in his mind; then as the ladies
+turned to remount their horses, rose and began carrying the little
+fellow off. As he vanished in the turn of the path that led towards the
+main entrance, they perceived a tall dark figure arise from a seat in
+the distance and stand looking after him, with a leer on its face and a
+malicious hugging of itself in a long black cloak, that proclaimed her
+to be the same ominous being who had before so grievously startled them.
+
+
+
+
+XVI.
+
+THE SWORD OF DAMOCLES.
+
+    “And my imaginations are as foul
+    As Vulcan’s smithy.”
+
+    —HAMLET.
+
+    “Why, all the souls that were, were forfeit once;
+    And He that might the vantage best have took
+    Found out the remedy.”
+
+    —MEASURE FOR MEASURE.
+
+
+Mrs. Sylvester reclining on the palest of blue couches, in the slanting
+sunlight of an April afternoon, is a study for a painter. Not that such
+inspiring loveliness breathed from her person, conspicuous as it was for
+its rich and indolent grace, but because in every attitude of her large
+and well formed limbs, in every raise of the thick white lids from eyes
+whose natural brightness was obscured by the mist of aimless fancies,
+she presented such an embodiment of luxurious ease, one might almost
+imagine they were gazing upon the favorite Sultana of some eastern
+court, or, to be for once poetical as the subject demands, a full blown
+Egyptian lotos floating in hushed enjoyment on the placid waters of its
+native stream. Indeed for all the blonde character of her beauty, there
+was certainly something oriental about the physique of this favored
+child of fortune. Had the tint of her skin been richened to a magnolia
+bloom instead of reminding you of that description accorded to the
+complexion of one of Napoleon’s sisters, that it looked like white satin
+seen through pink glass, she would have passed in any Eastern market,
+for a rare specimen of Circassian beauty.
+
+But Mr. Sylvester coming home fatigued and harassed, cared little for
+Circassian beauties or Oriental odalisques. It was a welcome that he
+desired, and such refreshment as a quick eye and ready hand can bestow
+when guided by a tender and loving heart; or so thought the watchful
+Paula as she glided from her room at the sound of his step in the hall,
+and met him coming weary and disheartened from the side of Ona’s couch.
+The sight of her revived him at once.
+
+“Well, little one, what have you been doing to-day?”
+
+Instantly a shade fell over her countenance. “I hardly know how to tell
+you. It has been a day of great experiences to me. I am literally shaken
+with them. I have been wanting to talk to Ona about what I have seen and
+heard, but thought I had best wait till you came home, for I could not
+repeat the story twice.”
+
+“What! you look pale. Nothing has happened to frighten you I hope,”
+exclaimed he, leading her back to Ona’s side, who stirred a little, and
+presently deigned to take an upright position.
+
+“I do not know if it is fear or horror,” cried Paula, shuddering; “I
+have seen a fearful woman—But first I ought to tell you that I took a
+ride with Miss Stuyvesant in the Park this morning—”
+
+“Yes, and persisted in going for that lady on horseback instead of
+sending the groom after her, and all starting from the front of our
+house,” murmured Mrs. Sylvester with lazy chagrin.
+
+Paula smiled, but otherwise took no notice of this standing topic of
+disagreement.
+
+“It was a beautiful day,” she proceeded, “and we enjoyed it very much,
+but we were so unfortunate as to run over a little boy, at that place
+where the equestrian road crosses the foot path; a lame child, Mr.
+Sylvester, who could not get out of our way; poor too, with a ragged
+jacket on which seemed to make it all the worse.”
+
+Ona gave a shrug with her white shoulders, that seemed to question this.
+“Did you injure him very much?” queried she, with a show of interest;
+not sufficient however to impair her curiosity as to the cut of one of
+her nails.
+
+“I cannot say; his little arm was struck, and when I went to pick him
+up, he lay back in my lap and moaned till I thought my heart would
+break. But that was not the worst that happened. As we went hurrying up
+the walk to find the child’s father, we were met by a woman wrapped in a
+black cloak whose long and greasy folds seemed like the symbol of her
+own untold depravity. Her glance as she encountered the child writhing
+in pain at my feet, made my heart stand still. It was more than
+malignant, it was actually fiendish. ‘Is he hurt?’ she asked, and it
+seemed as if she gloated over the question; she evidently longed to hear
+that he was, longed to be told that he would die; and when I inquired if
+she was his mother, she broke into a string of laughter, that seemed to
+darken the daylight. ‘His mother! O yes, we look alike, don’t we!’ she
+exclaimed, pointing with a mocking gesture frightful to see, first at
+his eyes which were very blue and beautiful, and then at her own which
+were dark as evil thoughts could make them. I never saw anything so
+dreadful. Malignancy! and towards a little lame child! what could be
+more horrible!”
+
+Mr. Sylvester and his wife exchanged looks, then the former asked, “Did
+she follow you, Paula?”
+
+“No; after telling me that I—But I cannot repeat what she said,”
+exclaimed the young girl with a quick shudder. “Since I came home,” she
+musingly continued, “I have looked and looked at my face in the glass,
+but I cannot believe that what she declared is true. There is no
+similarity between us, could never have been any: I will not have it
+that she ever saw in all the days of her life such a picture as that in
+her glass.” And with a sudden gesture Paula started up and pointed to
+herself as she stood reflected in one of the tall mirrors with which
+Ona’s boudoir abounded.
+
+“And did she dare to make any comparison between you and her own
+degraded self?” exclaimed Mr. Sylvester, with a glance at the exquisite
+vision of pure girlhood thus doubly presented to his notice.
+
+“Yes, what I am, she was once, or so she said. And it may be true. I
+have never suffered sorrow or experienced wrong, and cannot measure
+their power to carve the human face with such lines as I beheld on that
+woman’s countenance to-day. But do not let us talk of her any more. She
+left us at last, and we found the child’s father. Mr. Sylvester,” she
+suddenly asked, “are there to be found in this city, men occupying
+honorable positions and as such highly esteemed, who like Damocles of
+old, may be said to sit under the constant terror of a falling sword in
+the shape of some possible disclosure, that if made, would ruin their
+position before the world forever?”
+
+Mr. Sylvester started as if he had been shot. “Paula!” cried he, and
+instantly was silent again. He did not look at his wife, but if he had,
+he would have perceived that even her fair skin was capable of blanching
+to a yet more startling whiteness, and that her sleepy eyes could flash
+open with something like expression in their lazy depths.
+
+“I mean,” dreamily continued Paula, absorbed in her own remembrance,
+“that if what we overheard said by the father of that child to-day is
+true, some one of our prominent men, whose life is not all it appears,
+is standing on the verge of possible exposure and shame; that a hound is
+on his track in the form of a starving man; and that sooner or later he
+will have to pay the price of an unprincipled creature’s silence, or
+fall into public discredit like some others of whom we have lately
+read.” Then as silence filled the room, she added, “It makes me tremble
+to think that a man of means and seeming honor should be placed in such
+a position, but worse still that we may know such a one and be ignorant
+of his misery and his shame.”
+
+“It is getting time for me to dress,” murmured Ona, sinking back on her
+pillow and speaking in her most languid tone of voice. “Could you not
+hasten your story a little Paula?”
+
+But Mr. Sylvester with a hurried glance at the closing eyes of his wife,
+requested on the contrary that she would explain herself more
+definitely. “Ona will pardon the delay,” said he, with a set, strained
+politeness that called up the least little quiver of suppressed sarcasm
+about the rosy infantile lips that he evidently did not consider it
+worth his while to notice.
+
+“But that is all,” said Paula. However she repeated as nearly as she
+could just what the boy’s father had said. At the conclusion Mr.
+Sylvester rose.
+
+“What kind of a looking man was he?” said that gentleman as he crossed
+to the window.
+
+“Well, as nearly as I can describe, he was tall, dark and seedy, with a
+shock of black hair and a pair of black whiskers that floated on the
+wind as he walked. He was evidently of the order of decayed gentleman,
+and his manner of talking, especially in the profuse use he made of his
+arms and hands, was decidedly foreign. Yet his speech was pure and
+without accent.”
+
+Mr. Sylvester’s face as he asked the next question was comparatively
+cheerful. “Was the other man with whom he was talking, as dark and
+foreign as himself?”
+
+“O no, he was round and jovial, a little too insinuating perhaps, in his
+way of speaking to ladies, but otherwise a a well enough appearing man.”
+
+Mr. Sylvester bowed and looked at his watch. (Why do gentlemen always
+consult their watches even in the face of the clock?) “Ona, you are
+right,” said he, “it is time you were dressing for dinner.” And
+concluding with a word or two of sympathy as to the peculiar nature of
+Paula’s adventures as he called them, he hastened from the room and
+proceeded to his little refuge above.
+
+“He has not asked me what became of the child,” thought Paula, with a
+certain pang of surprise. “I expected him to say, ‘Shall we not try and
+see the little fellow, Paula?’ if only to allow me to explain that the
+child’s father would not tell me where they lived. But the later affair
+has evidently put the child out of his head. And indeed it is only
+natural that a business man should be more interested in such a fact as
+I have related, than in the sprained arm of a wretched creature’s
+‘little feller.’” And she turned to assist Ona, who had arisen from her
+couch and was now absorbed in the intricacies of an uncommonly elaborate
+toilet.
+
+“Those men did not mention any names?” suddenly queried that lady,
+looking with an expression of careful anxiety, at the twist of her back
+hair, in the small hand-mirror she held over her shoulder.
+
+“No,” said Paula, dropping a red rose into the blonde locks she was so
+carefully arranging. “He expressly said he did not know the name of the
+person to whom he alluded. It was a strange conversation for me to
+overhear, was it not?” she remarked, happy to have interested her cousin
+in anything out of the domains of fashion.
+
+“I don’t know—certainly—of course—” returned Mrs. Sylvester with some
+incoherence. “Do you think red looks as well with this black as the
+lavender would do?” she rambled on in her lightest tone, pulling out a
+box of feathers.
+
+Paula gave her a little wistful glance of disappointment and decided in
+favor of the lavender.
+
+“I am bound to look well to-night if I never do so again,” said Ona.
+They were all going to a public reception at which a foreign lord was
+expected to be present. “How fortunate I am to have a perfect little
+hairdresser in my own family, without being obliged to send for some
+gossipy, fussy old Madame with her stories of how such and such a one
+looked when dressed for the Grand Duke’s ball, or how Mrs. So and So
+always gave her more than her price because she rolled up puffs so
+exquisitely.” And stopping to aid the deft girl in substituting the
+lavender feather for the red rose in her hair—she forgot to ask any
+more questions.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+“Ona,” remarked her husband, coming into the room on his way down to
+dinner—Mrs. Sylvester never dined when she was going to any grand
+entertainment; it made her look flushed she said—“I am not in the habit
+of troubling you about your family matters, but have you heard from your
+father of late?”
+
+Mrs. Sylvester turned from her jewel-casket and calmly surveyed his
+face. It was fixed and formal, the face he turned to his servants and
+sometimes—to his wife. “No,” said she, with a light little gesture as
+though she were speaking of the most trivial matter. “In one respect at
+least, papa is like an angel, his visits are few and far between.”
+
+Mr. Sylvester’s eye-brows drew heavily together. For a man with a smile
+of strange sweetness, he could sometimes look very forbidding. “_When_
+was he here last?” he inquired in a tone more commanding than he knew.
+
+She did not appear to resent it. “Let me see,” mused she. “When was it I
+lost my diamond ear-ring? O I remember, it was on the eve of New Year’s
+day a year ago; I recollect because I had to wear pearls with my garnet
+brocade,” she pettishly sighed. “And papa came the next week, after you
+had given me the money for a new pair. I have reason to remember _that_,
+for not a dollar did he leave me.”
+
+“Ona!” exclaimed her husband, shrinking back in uncontrollable surprise,
+while his eyes flashed inquiringly to her ears in which two noble
+diamonds were brilliantly shining.
+
+“O,” she cried, just raising one snowy hand to those sparkling
+ornaments, while a faint blush, the existence of which he had sometimes
+doubted, swept over her careless face. “I was enabled to procure them in
+time; but for a whole two months I had to go without diamonds.” She did
+not say that she had bartered her wedding jewels to make up the sum she
+needed, but he may have understood that without being told.
+
+“And that is the last time you have seen him?” He held her eyes with
+his, she could not look away.
+
+“The very last, sir; strange to say.”
+
+His glance shifted from her face and he turned with a bow towards the
+door.
+
+“May I ask,” she slowly inquired as he moved across the floor, “what is
+the reason of this sudden interest in poor papa?”
+
+“Certainly,” said he, pausing and looking back, not without some emotion
+of pity in his glance. “I am sometimes struck with a sense of the duty I
+owe you, in helping you to bear the burden of certain secret
+responsibilities which I fear may sometimes prove too heavy for you.”
+
+She gave a little rippling laugh that only sounded hollow to the image
+listening in the glass. “You choose strange times in which to be
+struck,” said she, holding up two dresses for his inspection, with a
+lift of her brows evidently meant as an inquiry as to which he thought
+the most becoming.
+
+“Conscience is the chooser, not I,” declared he, for once allowing
+himself to ignore the weighty question of dress thus propounded.
+
+His wife gave a little toss of her head and he left the room.
+
+“I should like Edward very much,” murmured she in a burst of confidence
+to her own reflection in the glass, “if only he would not bother himself
+so much about that same disagreeable conscience.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+“You look unhappy,” said Mr. Sylvester to Paula as they came from the
+dining-room. “Have the adventures of the day made such an impression
+upon you that you will not be able to enjoy the evening’s festivities?”
+
+She lifted her face and the quick smile came.
+
+“I do not like to see your brow so clouded,” continued he, smoothing his
+own to meet her searching eye. “Smiles should sit on the lips of youth,
+or else why are they so rosy.”
+
+“Would you have me smile in face of my first glimpse of wickedness,”
+asked she, but in a gentle tone that robbed her words of half their
+reproach. “You must remember that I have had but little experience with
+the world. I have lived all my life in a town of wholesome virtues, and
+while here I have been kept from contact with anything low or base. I
+have never known vice, and now all in a moment I feel as if I have been
+bathed in it.”
+
+He took her by the hand and drew her gently towards him. “Does your
+whole being recoil so from evil, my Paula? What will you do in this
+wicked world? What will you say to the sinner when you meet him—as you
+must?”
+
+“I don’t know; it’s a problem I have never been brought to consider. I
+feel as if launched on a dismal sea for which I have neither chart nor
+compass. Life was so joyous to me this morning—” a flush swept over her
+cheek but he did not notice it—“I held, or seemed to hold, a cup of
+white wine in my hand, but suddenly as I looked at it, it turned black
+and—”
+
+Ah, the outreach, the dismal breaking away of thought into the
+unfathomable, that lies in the pause of an _and_!
+
+“And do you refuse to drink a cup across which has fallen a shadow,”
+murmured Mr. Sylvester, his eyes fixed on her face, “the inevitable
+shadow of that great mass of human frailty and woe which has been
+accumulating from the foundation of the world?”
+
+“No, no, I cannot, and retain my humanity. If there is such evil in the
+world, its pressure must drive it across the path of innocence.”
+
+“And you accept the cup?”
+
+“I must; but oh, my vanished beliefs! This morning the wine of my life
+was pure and white, now it is black and befouled. What will make it
+clean again?”
+
+With a sigh Mr. Sylvester dropped her hand and turned towards the
+mantle-piece. It was April as I have said, and there was no fire in the
+grate, but he posed his foot on the fender and looked sadly down at the
+empty hearthstone.
+
+“Paula,” said he after a space of pregnant silence, “it had to come. The
+veil of the temple must be rent in every life. Evil is too near us all
+for us to tread long upon the flowers without starting up the adders
+that hide beneath them. You had to have your first look into the cells
+of darkness, and perhaps it is best you had it here and now. The deeps
+are for men’s eyes as well as the starry heavens.”
+
+“Yes, yes.”
+
+“There are some persons,” he went on slowly, “you know them, who tread
+the ways of life with their eyelids closed to everything but the strip
+of velvet lawn on which they choose to walk. Earth’s sighs and
+deep-drawn groans are nothing to them. The world may swing on in its way
+to perdition; so long as their pathway feels soft, they neither heed nor
+care. But you do not desire to be one of these, Paula! With your great
+soul and your strong heart, you would not ask to sit in a flowery maze,
+while the rest of the world went sliding on and down into wells of
+destruction, you might have made pools of healing by the touch of your
+womanly sympathy.”
+
+“No, no.”
+
+“I cannot tell you, I dare not tell you,” he went on in a strange
+pleading voice that tore at the very roots of her heart, and rung in her
+memory forever, “what evil underlies the whole strata of life! At home
+and abroad, on our hearthstones and within our offices, the mocking
+devil sits. You can scarcely walk a block, my little one, without
+encountering a man or brushing against the dress of a woman across whose
+soul the black shadow lies heavier than any words of his or hers could
+tell. What the man you saw to-day, said of one unhappy being in this
+city, is true, God help us all, of many. Dark spots are easier acquired
+than blotted out, my Paula. In business as in society, one needs to
+carry the white shield of a noble purpose or a self-forgetting love, to
+escape the dripping of the deadly upas tree that branches above all
+humanity. I have walked its ways, my darling, and I know of what I
+speak. Your white robe is spotless but—”
+
+“O there is where the pain comes in,” she cried; “there, just there, is
+where the dagger strikes. She says she was once like me. O, could any
+temptation, any suffering, any wrong or misfortune that might befall me,
+ever bring me to where she is! If it could—”
+
+“Paula!” This time his voice came authoritatively. “You are making too
+much of a frenzied woman’s impulsive exclamation. To her darkened and
+despairing eyes any young woman of a similar style of beauty would have
+called forth the same remark. It was a sign that she was not entirely
+given up to evil, that she could remember her youth. Instead of feeling
+contaminated by her words, you ought to feel, that unconsciously to
+yourself, your fresh young countenance with its innocent eyes did an
+angel’s work to-day. They made her recall what she was in the days of
+her own innocence; and who can tell what may follow such a
+recollection.”
+
+“O Mr. Sylvester,” said she, “you fill me with shame. If I could think
+that—”
+
+“You can, nothing appeals to the heart of crime like the glance of
+perfect innocence. If evil walks the world, God’s ministers walk it
+also, and none can tell in what glance of the eye or what touch of the
+hand, that ministry will speak.”
+
+It was her turn now to take his hand in hers. “O how good, how
+thoughtful you are; you have comforted me and you have taught me. I
+thank you very much.”
+
+With a look she did not perceive, he drew his hand away. “I am glad I
+have helped you, Paula; there is but one thing more to say, and this I
+would emphasize with every saddened look you have ever met in all your
+life. Great sins make great sufferers. Side by side came the two
+dreadful powers of vice and retribution into the world, and side by side
+will they keep till they sink at last into the awful deeps of the
+bottomless pit. When you turn your back on a man who has committed a
+crime, one more door shuts in his darkened spirit.”
+
+The tears were falling from Paula’s eyes now. He looked at them with
+strange wistfulness and involuntarily his hand rose to her head,
+smoothing her locks with fatherly touches. “Do not think,” said he,
+“that I would lessen by a hair’s breadth your hatred of evil. I can more
+easily bear to see the shadow upon your cup of joy than upon the banner
+of truth you carry. These eyes must lose none of their inner light in
+glancing compassionately on your fellow-men. Only remember that divinity
+itself has stooped to rescue, and let the thought make your contact with
+weary, wicked-hearted humanity a little less trying and a little more
+hopeful to you. And now, my dear, that is enough of serious talk for
+to-day. We are bound for a reception, you know, and it is time we were
+dressing. Do you want me to tell you a secret?” asked he in a light
+mysterious tone, as he saw her eyes still filling.
+
+She glanced up with sudden interest.
+
+“I know it is treason,” resumed he, “I am fully aware of the grave
+nature of my offence; but Paula I hate all public receptions, and shall
+only be able to enjoy myself to-night just so much as I see that you are
+doing so. Life has its dark portals and its bright ones. This is one
+that you must enter with your most brilliant smiles.”
+
+“And they shall not be lacking,” said she. “When a treasure-box of
+thought is given us, we do not open it and scatter its contents abroad,
+but lay it away where the heart keeps its secrets, to be opened in the
+hush of night when we are alone with our own souls and God.”
+
+He smiled and she moved towards the door. “None the less do we carry
+with us wherever we go, the remembrance of our hidden treasure,” she
+smilingly added, looking back upon him from the stair.
+
+And again as upon the first night of her entrance into the house, did he
+stand below and watch her as she softly went up, her lovely face
+flashing one moment against the dark background of the luxurious bronze,
+towering from the platform behind, then glowing with faint and fainter
+lustre, as the distance widened between them and she vanished in the
+regions above.
+
+She did not see the toss of his arm with which he threw off the burden
+that rested upon his soul.
+
+
+
+
+XVII.
+
+
+GRAVE AND GAY.
+
+     “No scandal about Queen Elizabeth I hope.”
+
+     —SHERIDAN.
+
+     “Stands Scotland where it did?”
+
+     —MACBETH.
+
+
+“Who is that talking with Miss Stuyvesant?” asked Mr. Sylvester,
+approaching his wife during one of the lulls that will fall at times
+upon vast assemblies.
+
+Mrs. Sylvester followed the direction of his glance and immediately
+responded, “O that is Mr. Ensign, one of the best _partis_ of the
+season. He evidently knows where to pay his court.”
+
+“I inquired because he has just requested me to honor him with a formal
+introduction to Paula.”
+
+“Indeed! then oblige him by all means; it would be a great match for
+her. To say nothing of his wealth, he is _haut ton_, and his red
+whiskers will not look badly beside Paula’s dark hair.”
+
+Mr. Sylvester frowned, then sighed, but in a few minutes Paula observed
+him approaching with Mr. Ensign. At once her hitherto pale cheek
+flushed, but the young gentleman did not seem to object to that, and
+after the formal introduction which he had sought was over, he exclaimed
+in his own bright ringing tones,
+
+“The fates have surely forgotten their usual rîle of unpropitiousness. I
+did not dare hope to meet you here to-night, Miss Fairchild. Was the
+ride all that your fancy painted?”
+
+“O,” said she, speaking very low and glancing around, “do not allude to
+it here. We had an adventure shortly after you parted from us.”
+
+“An adventure! and no cavalier at your side! If I could but have known!
+Was it so serious?” he inquired in a moment, seeing her look grave.
+
+“Ask Miss Stuyvesant;” said she. “I cannot talk about it any more
+to-night. Besides the music carries off one’s thoughts. It is like a
+joyous breeze that whirls away the thistle-down whether it will or no.”
+
+
+He gave her a short quick look grave enough in its way, but responded
+with his usual graceful humor, “The thistle-down is too vicious a sprite
+to be beguiled away so easily. If I were to give my opinion on the
+subject, I should say there was method in its madness. If you have been
+brought up in the country, as I suspect from your remark, you must know
+that the white floating ball is not as harmless as it would lead you to
+imagine. It is a meddlesome nobody, that’s what it is, and like some
+country gossips I know, launches forth from a pure love of mischief to
+establish his prickers in his neighbor’s field.”
+
+“_His!_ I thought it must be feminine at least to fulfill the conditions
+you mention. A male gossip, O fie! I shall never have patience with a
+thistle-ball after this.”
+
+“Well,” laughed he, “I did start with the intention of making it
+feminine, but I caught a glimpse of your eyes and lost my courage. I did
+what I could,” added he with a mirthful glance.
+
+“So do the thistles,” cried she. Then while both voices joined in a
+merry laugh, she continued, “But where have we strayed? For a moment it
+seemed as if we were on the hills at Grotewell; I could almost see the
+blue sky.”
+
+“And I,” said he, with his eyes on her face.
+
+“I am sure the brooks bubbled.”
+
+“I distinctly heard a bird singing.”
+
+“It was a whippowill.”
+
+“But my name is Clarence?”
+
+And here both being young and without a care in the world, they laughed
+again. And the crowded perfumed room seemed to freshen as with a whiff
+of mountain air.
+
+“You love the country, Miss Fairchild?”
+
+“Yes;” and her smile was the reflection of the summer-lands that arose
+before her at the word. “With the right side of my heart do I love the
+spot where nature speaks and man is dumb.”
+
+“And with the left?”
+
+“I love the place where great men congregate to face their destiny and
+control it.”
+
+“The latter is the deeper love,” said he.
+
+She nodded her head and then said, “I need both to make me happy.
+Sometimes as I walk these city streets, I feel as if my very longing to
+escape to the heart of the hills, would carry me there. I remember when
+I was a child, I was one day running through a meadow, when suddenly a
+whole flock of birds flew up from the grass and surrounded my head. I
+was not sure but what I should be caught up and carried away by the
+force of their flight; and when they rose to mid heaven, something in my
+breast seemed to follow them. So it is often with me here, only that it
+is the rush of my thoughts that threatens such a Hegira. Yet if I were
+to be transported to my native hills, I know I should long to be back
+again.”
+
+“The mountain lassie has wandered into the courts of the king. The
+perfume of palaces is not easily forgotten.”
+
+Her eye turned towards Mr. Sylvester standing near them upright and
+firm, talking to a group of attentive gentlemen every one of whom
+boasted a name of more than local celebrity. “Without a royal heart to
+govern, there would be no palace;” said she, and blushed under a sudden
+sense of the possible interpretation he might give to her words, till
+the rose in her hand looked pallid.
+
+But he had followed her glance and understood her better than she
+thought. “And Mr. Sylvester has such a heart, so a hundred good fellows
+have told me. You are fortunate to see the city from the loop-hole of
+such a home as his.”
+
+“It is more than a loop-hole,” said she.
+
+“Of that I shall never be satisfied till I see it?”
+
+And being content with the look he received, he took her on his arm and
+led her into the midst of the dancers.
+
+Meanwhile in a certain corner not far off, two gentlemen were talking.
+
+“Sylvester shows off well to-night.”
+
+“He always does. With such a figure as that, a man needs but to enter a
+room to make himself felt. But then he’s a good talker too. Ever heard
+him speak?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Fine voice, true snap, right ring. Great favorite at elections. The
+fact is, Sylvester is a remarkable man.”
+
+“Hum, ha, so I should judge.”
+
+“And so fortunate! He has never been known to run foul in a great
+operation. Put your money in his hand and whew!—your fortune is as good
+as made.”
+
+The other, a rich man, connected heavily with the mining business in
+Colorado, smiled with that bland overflow of the whole countenance which
+is sometimes seen in large men of great self-importance.
+
+“It’s a pity he’s gone out of Wall Street,” continued his companion.
+“The younger fry feel now something like a flock of sheep that has lost
+its bell-wether.”
+
+“They straggle—eh?” returned his portly friend with an increase of his
+smile that was not altogether pleasant. “So Sylvester has left Wall
+Street?”
+
+“He closed his last enterprise two weeks before accepting the Presidency
+of the Madison Bank. Stuyvesant is down on speculation, and well—It
+looks better you know; the Madison Bank is an old institution, and
+Sylvester is ambitious. There’ll be no reckless handling of funds
+_there_.”
+
+“No!” What was there in that _no_ that made the other look up? “I’m not
+acquainted with Sylvester myself. Has he much family?”
+
+“A wife—there she is, that handsome woman talking with Ditman,—and a
+daughter, niece or somebody who just now is setting all our young
+scapegraces by the ears. You can see her if you just crane your neck a
+little.”
+
+“Humph, ha, very pretty, very pretty. How much do you suppose Mrs.
+Sylvester is worth as she stands, diamonds you know, and all that?”
+
+“Well I should say some where near ten thousand; that sprig in her hair
+cost a clean five.”
+
+“So, so. They live in a handsome house I suppose?”
+
+“A regular palace, corner of Fifth Avenue and ——”
+
+“All his?”
+
+“Nobody’s else I reckon.”
+
+“Sports horses and carriage I suppose?”
+
+“Of course.”
+
+“Yacht, opera box?”
+
+“No reason why he shouldn’t.”
+
+“What is his salary?”
+
+“A nominal sum, five or ten thousand perhaps.”
+
+“Owns good share of the bank’s stock I presume?”
+
+“Enough to control it.”
+
+“Below par though?”
+
+“A trifle, going up, however.”
+
+“And _don’t_ speculate?”
+
+The way this man drawled his words was excessively disagreeable.
+
+“Not that any one knows of. He’s made his fortune and now asks only to
+enjoy it.”
+
+The man from the West strutted back and looked at his companion
+knowingly. “What do you think of my judgment, Stadler?”
+
+“None better this side of the Pacific.”
+
+“Pretty good at spying out cracks, eh?”
+
+“I wouldn’t like to undertake the puttying up that would deceive you.”
+
+“Humph! Well then, mark this. In two months from to-day you will see Mr.
+Sylvester rent his house and go south for his health, or the pretty one
+over there will marry one of the scapegraces you mention, who will lend
+the man _who don’t engage in any further ventures_, more than one or two
+hundred thousand dollars.”
+
+“Ha, you know something.”
+
+“I own mines in Colorado and I have my points.”
+
+“And Mr. Sylvester?”
+
+“Will find them too sharp for him.”
+
+And having made his joke, he yielded to the other’s apparent
+restlessness, and they sauntered off.
+
+They did not observe a pale, demure, little lady that sat near them
+abstractedly nodding her dainty head to the remarks of a pale-whiskered
+youth at her side, nor notice the emotion with which she suddenly rose
+at their departure and dismissed her chattering companion on some
+impromptu errand. It was only one of the ordinary group of dancers, a
+pretty, plainly dressed girl, but her name was Stuyvesant.
+
+Rising with a decision that gave a very attractive color to her cheeks,
+she hastily looked around. A trio of young gentlemen started towards her
+but she gave them no encouragement; her eye had detected Mr. Sylvester’s
+tall figure a few feet off and it was to him she desired to speak. But
+at her first movement in his direction, her glance encountered another
+face, and like a stream that melts into a rushing torrent, her purpose
+seemed to vanish, leaving her quivering with a new emotion of so vivid a
+character she involuntarily looked about her for a refuge.
+
+But in another instant her eyes had again sought the countenance that
+had so moved her, and finding it bent upon her own, faltered a little
+and unconsciously allowed the lilies she was carrying to drop from her
+hand. Before she realized her loss, the face before her had vanished,
+and with it something of her hesitation and alarm.
+
+With a hasty action she drew near Mr. Sylvester. “Will you lend me your
+arm for a minute?” she asked, with her usual appealing look rendered
+doubly forcible by the experience of a moment before.
+
+“Miss Stuyvesant! I am happy to see you.”
+
+Never had his face looked more cheerful she thought, never had his smile
+struck her more pleasantly.
+
+“A little talk with a little girl will not hinder you too much, will
+it?” she queried, glancing at the group of gentlemen that had shrunk
+back at her approach.
+
+“Do you call that hindrance which relieves one from listening to
+quotations of bank stock at an evening reception?”
+
+She shook her head with a confused movement, and led him up before a
+stand of flowering exotics.
+
+“I want to tell you something,” she said eagerly but with a marked
+timidity also, the tall form beside her looked so imposing for all its
+encouraging bend. “I beg your pardon if I am doing wrong, but papa
+regards you with such esteem and—Mr. Sylvester do you know a man by the
+name of Stadler?”
+
+Astonished at such a question from lips so young and dainty, he turned
+and surveyed her for a moment with quick surprise. Something in her
+aspect struck him. He answered at once and without circumlocution. “Yes,
+if you refer to that spry keen-faced man, just entering the
+supper-room.”
+
+“Do you know his companion?” she proceeded; “the portly, highly
+pompous-looking gentleman with the gold eye-glasses? Look quickly.”
+
+“No.” There was an uneasiness in his tone however that struck her
+painfully.
+
+“He is a stranger in town; has not the honor of your acquaintance he
+says, but from the questions he asked, I judge he has a great interest
+in your affairs. He spoke of being connected with mines in Colorado. I
+was sitting behind a curtain and overheard what was said.”
+
+Mr. Sylvester turned pale and regarded her attentively. “Might I be so
+bold,” he inquired after a moment, “as to ask you what that was?”
+
+“Yes, sir, certainly, but it is even harder for me to repeat than it was
+for me to hear. He inquired about your domestic concerns, your home and
+your income,” she murmured blushing; “and then said, in what I thought
+was a somewhat exulting tone, that in two months or so we should see you
+go South for your health or—Is not that enough for me to tell you, Mr.
+Sylvester?”
+
+He gave her a short stare, opened his lips as if to speak, then turned
+abruptly aside and began picking mechanically at the blossoms before
+him.
+
+“I, of course, do not know what men mean when they talk of possessing
+points. But the leer and side glance which accompanies such talk, have a
+universal language we all understand, and I felt that I must warn you of
+that man’s malice if only because papa regards you so highly.”
+
+He shrank as if touched on a sore place, but bowed and answered the
+wistful appeal of her glance with a shadow of his usual smile, then he
+turned, and looking towards the door through which the two men had
+disappeared, made a movement as if he would follow. But remembering
+himself, escorted her to a seat, saying as he did so:
+
+“You are very kind, Miss Stuyvesant; please say nothing of this to
+Paula.”
+
+She bowed and a flitting smile crossed her upturned countenance. “I am
+not much of a gossip, Mr. Sylvester, or I should have been tempted to
+have carried my information to my father instead of to you.”
+
+He understood the implied promise in this remark and gave the hand on
+his arm a quick pressure, before relinquishing her to the care of the
+pale-complexioned youth who by this time had returned to her side.
+
+In another moment Paula came up on the arm of a black-whiskered
+gentleman all shirt front and eye-glasses. “O Cicely,” she cried, (she
+called Miss Stuyvesant, Cicely now) “is it not a delightful evening?”
+
+“Are you enjoying yourself so much?” inquired that somewhat agitated
+little lady, with a glance at the countenance of her friend’s attendant.
+
+“I fear it would scarcely seem consistent in me now to say no,” returned
+the radiant girl, with a laughing glance towards the same gentleman.
+
+But when they were alone, the gentleman having departed on some of the
+innumerable errands with which ladies seem to delight in afflicting
+their attendant cavaliers at balls or receptions, she atoned for that
+glance by remarking,
+
+“I do not find the average partner that falls to one’s lot in such
+receptions all that fancy paints.” And then finding she had repeated a
+phrase of Mr. Ensign’s, blushed, though no one stood near her but
+Cicely.
+
+“Fancy’s brush would need to be dipped in but two colors to present to
+our eye the mass of them,” was Cicely’s laughing reply. “A streak of
+black for the coat, and a daub of white for the shirt front. _Voila
+tout._”
+
+“With perhaps a dash of red in some cases,” murmured a voice over their
+shoulders.
+
+They turned with hurried blushes. “Ah, Mr. Ensign,” quoth Cicely in
+unabashed gaiety, “we reserve red for the exceptions. We did not intend
+to include our acknowledged friends in our somewhat sweeping assertion.”
+
+“Ah, I see, the black streak and the white daub are a symbol of,
+‘Er—Miss Stuyvesant—very warm this evening! Have an ice, do. _I_
+always have an ice after dancing; so refreshing, you know.’”
+
+The manner in which he imitated the usual languid drawl of certain of
+the young scapegraces heretofore mentioned, was irresistible. Paula
+forgot her confusion in her mirth.
+
+“You are blessed with a capacity for playing both rîles, I perceive,”
+cried Cicely with unusual abandon. “Well, it is convenient, there is
+nothing like scope.”
+
+“Unless it is hope,” whispered Mr. Ensign so low that only Paula could
+hear.
+
+“But I warn you,” continued Cicely, with a sweet soft laugh that seemed
+to carry her heart far out into the passing throng, “that we have no
+fondness for the model beau of the period. A dish of milk makes a very
+good supper but it looks decidedly pale on the dinner table.”
+
+“Yes,” said Paula, eying the various young men that filed up and down
+before them, some pale, some dark, some handsome, some plain, but all
+smiling and dapper, if not debonair, “some men could be endured if only
+they were not _men_.”
+
+Mr. Ensign gave her a quick look, and while he laughed at the paradox,
+straightened himself like one who could be a man if the occasion called.
+She saw the action and blushed.
+
+But their conversation was soon interrupted. Mr. Sylvester was seen
+returning from the supper-room, looking decidedly anxious, and while
+Paula was ignorant of what had transpired to annoy him, her ready spirit
+caught the alarm, and she was about to rush up to him and address him,
+when one of the waiters approached, and murmuring a few words she did
+not hear, handed him a card upon which she descried nothing but a simple
+circle. Instantly a change crossed his already agitated countenance, and
+advancing to the ladies with a word or two that while seemingly
+cheerful, struck Paula as somewhat forced, excused himself with the
+information that a business friend had been so inconsiderate as to
+importune him for an interview in the hall. And with just a nod towards
+Mr. Ensign, who had drawn back at his advance, left them and disappeared
+in the crowd about the door.
+
+“I do not like these interruptions from business friends in a time of
+pleasure,” cried Paula, looking after him with anxious eyes. “Did you
+notice how agitated he seemed, Cicely? And half an hour ago he was the
+picture of calm enjoyment.”
+
+“Business is beyond our comprehension, Paula,” returned her friend
+evasively. “It is something like a neuralgic twinge, it takes a man when
+he least expects it. Have you told Mr. Ensign of our adventure?”
+
+“No, but I informed Mr. Sylvester, and he said such good, true words to
+me, Cicely. I can never forget them.”
+
+“And I told papa; but he only frowned and made some observation about
+the degeneracy of the times, and the number of scamps thrown to the top
+by the modern methods of acquiring instantaneous fortunes.”
+
+“Your papa is sometimes hard, is he not, Cicely?”
+
+With a flush Miss Stuyvesant allowed her eye to rest for a moment on the
+crowd shifting before her. “He was dug from a quarry of granite, Paula.
+He is both hard and substantial; capable of being hewn but not of being
+moulded. Of such stuff are formed monuments of enduring beauty and
+solidity. You must do papa justice.”
+
+“I do, but I sometimes have a feeling as if the granite column would
+fall and crush me, Cicely.”
+
+“You, Paula?”
+
+Before she could again reply, Mr. Sylvester returned. His face was still
+pale, but it had acquired an expression of rigidity even more alarming
+to Paula than its previous aspect of forced merriment. Lifting her by
+the hand, he drew her apart.
+
+“I shall have to leave you somewhat abruptly,” said he. “An important
+matter demands my instant attention. Bertram is somewhere here, and will
+see that you and Ona arrive home in safety. You won’t allow your
+enjoyment to be clouded by my hasty departure, will you?”
+
+“Not if it will make you anxious. But I would rather go home with you
+now. I am sure Cousin Ona would be willing.”
+
+“But I am not going home at present,” said he; and she ventured upon no
+further remonstrance.
+
+But her enjoyment was clouded; the sight of suffering or anxiety on that
+face was more than she could bear; and ere long she said good-night to
+Cicely, and accepting the arm of Mr. Ensign, who was never very far from
+her side, proceeded to search for her cousin.
+
+She found her standing in the midst of an admiring throng to whom her
+diamonds, if not her smiles, were an object of undoubted interest. She
+was in the full tide of one of her longest and most widely rambling
+speeches, and to Paula, with that stir of anxiety at her breast, was an
+image of self-satisfied complacency from which she was fain to drop her
+eyes.
+
+“Mrs. Sylvester shares the honors with her husband,” remarked Mr. Ensign
+as they drew near.
+
+“But not the trials, or the pain, or the care?” was Paula’s inward
+comment.
+
+Mrs. Sylvester was not easily wooed away from a circle in which she
+found herself creating such an impression, but at length she yielded to
+Paula’s importunities, and consented to accept young Mr. Sylvester’s
+attendance to their home. The next thing was to find Bertram. Mr. Ensign
+engaged to do this. Leaving Paula with her cousin, who may or may not
+have been pleased at this sudden addition to her circle, he sought for
+the young man who as Mr. Mandeville was not unknown to any of the
+fashionable men and women of the day. It was no easy task, nor did he
+find him readily, but at last he came upon him leaning out of a window
+and gazing at a white lily which he held in his hand. Without preamble,
+Mr. Ensign made known his errand, and Bertram at once prepared to
+accompany him back to the ladies.
+
+“By Jove! I didn’t know the fellow was so handsome!” thought the former,
+and frowned he hardly knew why. Bertram was not handsome, but then
+Clarence Ensign was plain, which Bertram certainly was not.
+
+It was to Mr. Ensign’s face however that Paula’s eyes turned as the two
+came up, and he with the ready vivacity of his natural temperament
+observed it, and took courage.
+
+“I shall soon wish to measure that loop-hole of which I have spoken,”
+said he.
+
+And the soft look in her large dark eye as she responded, “It is always
+open to friends,” filled up the measure of his cup of happiness; a cup
+which unlike hers, had not been darkened that day by the falling of
+earth’s most dismal shadows.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+IN THE NIGHT WATCHES.
+
+     “Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn?”
+
+
+     —HEN. IV.
+
+     “What doth gravity out of his bed at midnight?”
+
+     —HEN. IV.
+
+
+“It has been the most delightful evening I have ever passed,” said Mrs.
+Sylvester, as she threw aside her rich white mantle in her ample
+boudoir. “Sarah, two loops on that dolman to-morrow; do you hear? I
+thought my arms would freeze. Such an elegant gentleman as the Count de
+Frassac is! He absolutely went wild over you, Paula, but not
+understanding a word of English—O there, if that horrid little wretch
+didn’t drop his spoon on my dress after all! He swore it never touched a
+thread of it, but just look at that spot, right in the middle of a
+pleating too. Paula, your opinion in regard to the lavendar was correct.
+I heard Mrs. Forsyth Jones whisper behind my back that lavendar always
+made blondes look _fade_. Of course I needed no further evidence to
+convince me that I had entirely succeeded in eclipsing her pale-faced
+daughter. Her daughter!” and the lazy gurgle echoed softly through the
+room, “As if every white-haired girl in the city considered herself
+entitled to be called a blonde!” She stopped to listen, examining
+herself in the glass near by. “I thought I heard Edward. It was very
+provoking in him to leave us in the cavalier manner in which he did. I
+was just going to introduce him to the count, not that he would have
+esteemed it much of an honor, Edward I mean, but when one has a
+good-looking husband—Sarah, that curtain over there hangs crooked, pull
+it straight this instant. Did you try the oysters, Paula? They were
+perfection, I shall have to dismiss Lorenzo without ceremony and procure
+me a cook that can make an oyster fricassee. By the way did you
+notice—” and so on and on for five minutes additional. Presently she
+burst forth with—“I do believe I know what it is to be thoroughly
+satisfied at last. The consideration which one receives as the wife of
+the president of the Madison bank is certainly very gratifying. If I had
+known I would feel such a change in the social atmosphere, I would have
+advocated Edward’s dropping speculation long ago. Beauty and wealth may
+help one up the social ladder, but only a settled position such as he
+has now obtained, can carry you safely over the top. I feel at last as
+if we had reached the pinnacle of my ambition and had seen the ladder by
+which we mounted thrown down behind us. If I get my costume from Worth
+in time, I shall give a German next month.”
+
+Paula from her stand at the door—for some minutes she had been
+endeavoring to escape to her room—surveyed her cousin in wonder. She
+had never seen her look as she did at that moment. Any one who speaks
+from the heart, acquires a certain eloquence, and Ona for once was
+speaking from her heart. The unwonted emotion made her cheeks burn, and
+even her diamonds, ten thousand dollars worth as we have heard declared,
+were less brilliant than her eyes. Paula left her station on the
+door-sill and glided rapidly back to her side. “O Ona,” said she, “if
+you would only look like that when—” she paused, what right had she to
+venture upon giving lessons to her benefactor.
+
+“When what?” inquired the other, subsiding at once into her naturally
+languid manner. Then with a total forgetfulness of the momentary
+curiosity that had prompted the question, held out her head to the
+attendant Sarah, with a command to be relieved of her ornaments. Paula
+sighed and hastened to her room. She could not bring herself to mention
+her anxiety in regard to the still absent master of the house, to this
+lazily-smiling thoroughly satisfied woman.
+
+But none the less did she herself sit up in the moonlight, listening
+with bended head for the sound of his step on the walk beneath. She
+could not sleep while he was absent; and yet the thoughts that disturbed
+her and kept her from her virgin pillow could not have been entirely for
+him, or why those wandering smiles that ever and anon passed flitting
+over her cheek, awakening the dimples that slumbered there, until she
+looked more like a dreamy picture of delight than a wakeful vision of
+apprehension. Not entirely for him—yet when somewhere towards three
+o’clock, she heard the long delayed step upon the stoop, she started up
+with eager eyes and a nervous gesture that sufficiently betrayed how
+intense was her interest in her benefactor’s welfare and happiness. “If
+he goes to Ona’s room it is all right,” thought she; “but if he keeps on
+upstairs, I shall know that something is wrong and that he needs a
+comforter.”
+
+He did not stop at Ona’s room; and struck with alarm, Paula opened wide
+her door and was about to step out to meet him, when she caught a sight
+of his face, and started back. Here was no anxiety, that she could
+palliate! The very fact that he did not observe her slight form standing
+before him in the brilliant moonlight, proved that a woman’s look or
+touch was not what he was in search of; and shrinking sensitively to one
+side, she sat down on the edge of her dainty bed, dropping her cheek
+into her hand with a weary troubled gesture from which all the delight
+had fled and only the apprehension remained. Suddenly she started
+alertly up; he was coming down again, this time with a gliding muffled
+tread. Sliding past her door, he descended to the floor below. She could
+hear the one weak stair in the heavy staircase creak, and—What! he has
+passed Ona’s room, passed the bronze figure of Luxury on the platform
+beneath, is on his way to the front door, has opened it, shut it softly
+behind him and gone out again into the blank midnight streets. What did
+it mean? For a moment she thought she would run down and awaken Ona, but
+an involuntary remembrance of how those lazy eyes would open, stare
+peevishly and then shut again, stopped her on the threshold of her door;
+and sitting down again upon the side of her bed, she waited, this time
+with opened eyes eagerly staring before her, and quivering form that
+started at each and every sound that disturbed the silence of the great
+echoing house. At six o’clock she again rose; he had just re-entered and
+this time he stopped at Ona’s room.
+
+
+
+
+XIX.
+
+A DAY AT THE BANK.
+
+    “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,
+    Rough-hew them how we will.”
+
+    —HAMLET.
+
+
+There are days when the whole world seems to smile upon one without
+stint or reservation. Bertram Sylvester wending his way to the bank on
+the morning following the reception, was a cheerful sight to behold.
+Youth, health, hope spake in every lineament of his face and brightened
+every glance of his wide-awake eye. His new life was pleasant to him.
+Bach, Beethoven and Chopin were scarcely regretted now by the ambitious
+assistant cashier of the Madison Bank, with a friend in each of its
+directors and a something more than that in the popular president
+himself. Besides he had developed a talent for the business and was in
+the confidence of the cashier, a somewhat sickly man who more than once
+had found himself compelled to rely upon the rapidly maturing judgment
+of his young associate, in matters oftentimes of the utmost importance.
+The manner in which Bertram found himself able to respond to these
+various calls, convinced him that he had been correct in his opinion of
+his own nature, when he informed his uncle that music was his pleasure
+rather than his necessity.
+
+Entering the building by way of Pearl Street, he was about to open the
+door leading into the bank proper, when he heard a little piping voice
+at his side, and turning, confronted the janitor’s baby daughter. She
+was a sweet and interesting child, and with his usual good nature
+Bertram at once stopped to give her a kiss.
+
+“I likes you,” prattled she as he put her down again after lifting her
+up high over his head, “but I likes de oder one best.”
+
+“I hope the other one duly appreciates your preference,” laughed he, and
+was again on the point of entering the bank when he felt or thought he
+felt a hand laid on his arm. It was the janitor himself this time, a
+worthy man, greatly trusted in the bank, but possessed of such an
+extraordinary peculiarity in the way of a pair of protruding eyes, that
+his appearance was always attended by a shock.
+
+“Well, Hopgood, what is it?” cried Bertram, in his cheery tone.
+
+The janitor drew back and mercifully shifted his gaze from the young
+man’s face. “Nothing sir; did I stop you? Beg pardon,” he continued,
+half stammering, “I’m dreadful awkward sometimes.” And with a nod he
+sidled off towards his little one whom he confusedly took up in his
+arms.
+
+Now Bertram was sure the man had touched him and that, too, with a very
+eager hand, but being late that morning and consequently in somewhat of
+a hurry, he did not stop to pursue the matter. Hastening into the Bank,
+he assisted the teller in opening the safe, that being his especial
+duty, and was taking out such papers as he himself required, when he was
+surprised to catch another sight of those same extraordinary organs of
+which I have just spoken, peering upon him from the door by which he had
+previously entered. They vanished as soon as he encountered them, but
+more than once during the morning he perceived them looking upon him
+from various quarters of the bank, till he felt himself growing
+seriously annoyed, and sending for the man, asked him what he meant by
+this unusual surveillance. The janitor seemed troubled, flushed
+painfully and fixed his eyes in manifest anxiety on the cashier who,
+engaged in some search of his own, was just handling over the tin boxes
+that lined the vault before them. Not till he had seen him shove them
+back into their place and leave the spot, did he venture upon his reply.
+“I’m sure, sir, I’m very sorry if I have annoyed you, but do you think
+Mr. Sylvester will be down at the usual hour?”
+
+“I know of no reason why he should not,” returned Bertram.
+
+“I have something to say to him when he comes in,” stammered the man,
+evidently taken aback by Bertram’s look of surprise. “Will you be kind
+enough to ring the bell the first moment he seems to be at leisure? I
+don’t know as it is a matter of any importance but—” He stopped,
+evidently putting a curb upon himself. “Can I rely on you, sir?”
+
+“Yes, certainly, I will tell my uncle when he comes in that you want to
+speak to him. He will doubtless send for you at once.”
+
+The man looked embarrassed. “Excuse me, sir, but that’s just what I’d
+rather you wouldn’t do. Mr. Sylvester is always very busy and he might
+think I wished to annoy him about some matters of my own, sir, as indeed
+I have not been above doing at odd times. If you would ring when he
+comes in, that is all I ask.”
+
+Bertram thought this a strange request, but seeing the man so anxious,
+gave the required promise, and the janitor hurried off. “Curious!”
+muttered Bertram. “Can anything be wrong?” And he glanced about him with
+some curiosity as he went to his desk. But every one was at his post as
+usual and the countenances of all were equally undisturbed.
+
+It was a busy morning and in the rush of various matters Bertram forgot
+the entire occurrence. But it was presently recalled to him by hearing
+some one remark, “Mr. Sylvester is late to-day,” and looking up from
+some papers he was considering, he found it was a full hour after the
+time at which his uncle was in the habit of appearing. Just then he
+caught still another sight of the protruding eyes of Hopgood staring in
+upon him from the half-opened door at the end of the bank.
+
+“The fellow’s getting impatient,” thought he, and experienced a vague
+feeling of uneasiness.
+
+Another half hour passed. “What can have detained Mr. Sylvester?” cried
+Mr. Wheelock the cashier, hastily approaching Bertram.
+
+“There is to be an important meeting of the Directors to-day, and some
+of the gentlemen are already coming in. Mr. Sylvester is not accustomed
+to keep us waiting.”
+
+“I don’t know, I am sure,” returned Bertram, remembering with an
+accession of uneasiness, the abruptness with which his uncle had left
+the entertainment the evening before.
+
+“Shall I telegraph to the house?”
+
+“No, that is not necessary. Besides Folger says he passed him on
+Broadway this morning.”
+
+“Going down street with a valise in his hand,” that gentlemen quietly
+put in. Folger was the teller. “He was looking very pale and didn’t see
+me when I nodded.”
+
+“What time was that?” asked Bertram.
+
+“About twelve; when I went out to lunch.”
+
+A quick gasp sounded at their side, followed by a hurried cough.
+Turning, Bertram encountered for the fifth time the eyes of Hopgood. He
+had entered unperceived by the small door that separated the inner
+inclosure from the outer, and was now standing very close to them, eying
+with side-long looks the safe at their back, the faces of the gentleman
+speaking, yes, and even the countenances of the clerks, as they bent
+busily over their books.
+
+“Did you ring, sir?” asked he, catching Bertram’s look of displeasure.
+
+“No.”
+
+The man seemed to feel the rebuke implied in this short response, and
+ambled softly away. But in another moment he was stopped by Bertram.
+
+“What is the matter with you to-day, Hopgood? Can you have anything of
+real importance on your mind; anything connected with my uncle?”
+
+The janitor started, and looked almost frightened. “Be careful what you
+say,” whispered he; then with a keen look at Mr. Wheelock just then on
+the point of entering the directors’ room, he was turning to escape by
+the little door just mentioned, when it opened and Mr. Stuyvesant came
+in. With a look almost of terror the janitor recoiled, throwing himself
+as it were between the latter and the door of the safe; but recovering
+himself, surveyed the keen quiet visage of the veteran banker with a
+rolling of his great eyes absolutely painful to behold. Mr. Stuyvesant,
+who was somewhat absorbed in thought, did not appear to notice the
+agitation he had caused, and with just a hurried nod followed Mr.
+Wheelock into the Directors’ room. Instantly the janitor drew himself up
+with an air of relief, and shortly glancing at the clock which lacked a
+few minutes yet of the time fixed for the meeting, slided hastily away
+from Bertram’s detaining hand, and disappeared in the crowd without. In
+another moment Bertram saw him standing at the outer door, looking
+anxiously up and down the street.
+
+“Something _is_ wrong,” murmured Bertram. “What?” And for a moment he
+felt half tempted to return Mr. Stuyvesant’s friendly bow with a few
+words expressive of his uneasiness, but the emphasis with which Hopgood
+had murmured the words, “Be careful what you say,” unconsciously
+deterred him, and concealing his nervousness as best he might, he
+entered the Directors’ office.
+
+It was now time for the meeting to open, and the gentlemen were all
+seated around the low green baize table that occupied the centre of the
+room. Impatience was written on all their countenances. Mr. Stuyvesant
+especially was looking at the heavy gold watch in his hand, with a frown
+on his deeply wrinkled brow that did not add to its expression of
+benevolence. The empty seat at the head of the table stared upon Bertram
+uncompromisingly.
+
+“My wife gives a reception to-day,” ventured one gentleman to his
+neighbor.
+
+“And I have an engagement at five that won’t bear postponement.”
+
+“Sylvester has always been on hand before.”
+
+“We can’t proceed without him,” was the reply.
+
+Mr. Wheelock looked thoughtful.
+
+With a nod of his head towards such gentlemen as met his eye, Bertram
+hastened to a little cupboard devoted to the use of himself and uncle.
+Opening it, he looked within, took down a coat he saw hanging before
+him, and unconsciously uttered an exclamation. It was a dress-coat such
+as had been worn by Mr. Sylvester the evening before.
+
+“What does this mean! My uncle has been here!” were the words that
+sprang to his lips; but he subdued his impulse to speak, and hastily
+hanging up the coat, relocked the door. Proceeding at once to the outer
+room, he asked two or three of the clerks if they were sure Mr.
+Sylvester had not been in during the day. But they all returned an
+unequivocal “no,” and that too with a certain stare of surprise that at
+once convinced him he was betraying his agitation too plainly.
+
+“I will telegraph whether Wheelock considers it necessary or not,”
+thought he, and was moving to summon a messenger boy when he caught
+sight of Hopgood slowly making his way in from the street. He was very
+pale and walked with his eyes fixed on the ground, ominously shaking his
+great head in a way that bespoke an inner struggle of no ordinary
+nature. Bertram at once sauntered out to meet him.
+
+“Hopgood,” said he, “your evident anxiety is infectious. What has
+happened to make my uncle’s detention a matter of such apparent import?
+If you do not wish to confide in me, his nephew almost his son, speak to
+Mr. Wheelock or to one of the directors, but don’t keep anything to
+yourself which concerns his welfare or—What are you looking at?”
+
+The man was gazing as if fascinated at the keys in Bertram’s hand.
+
+“Nothing sir, nothing. You must not detain me; I have nothing to say. I
+will wait ten minutes,” he muttered to himself, glancing again at the
+clock. Suddenly he saw the various directors come filing out of the
+inner room, and darted for the second time from Bertram’s detaining
+hand.
+
+“I hope nothing has happened to Mr. Sylvester,” exclaimed one gentleman
+to another as they filed by.
+
+“If he were given to a loose ends’ sort of business it would be another
+thing.”
+
+“He looked exceedingly well at the reception last night,” exclaimed
+another; “but in these days—”
+
+Suddenly there was a hush. A telegraph boy had just entered the door and
+was asking for Mr. Bertram Sylvester.
+
+“Here I am,” said Bertram, hastily taking the envelope presented him.
+Slightly turning his back, he opened it. Instantly his face grew white
+as chalk.
+
+“Gentlemen,” said he, “you will have to excuse my uncle to-day; a great
+misfortune has occurred to him.” Then with a slow and horror-stricken
+movement, he looked about him and exclaimed, “_Mrs. Sylvester is dead_.”
+
+A confused murmur at once arose, followed by a hurried rush; but of all
+the faces that flocked out of the bank, none wore such a look of blank
+and helpless astonishment as that of Hopgood the janitor, as with
+bulging eyes and nervously working hands, he slowly wended his way to
+the foot of the stairs and there sat down gazing into vacancy.
+
+
+
+
+XX.
+
+THE DREGS IN THE CUP.
+
+     “O eloquent, just and mightie death! whom none could advise,
+     thou hast persuaded; what none hath dared, thou hast done; and
+     whom all the world hath flattered, thou only hast cast out of
+     the world and despised: thou hast drawn together all the farre
+     stretched greatnesses; all the pride, crueltie and ambition of
+     man and covered it all over with these two narrow words, _Hic
+     jacet_.”
+
+
+     —SIR WALTER RALEIGH.
+
+
+Bertram’s hurried ring at his uncle’s door was answered by Samuel the
+butler.
+
+“What is this I hear?” cried the young man, entering with considerable
+agitation, “Mrs. Sylvester dead?”
+
+“Yes sir,” returned the old and trusty servant, with something like a
+sob in his voice. “She went out riding this morning behind a pair of
+borrowed horses—and being unused to Michael’s way of driving, they ran
+away and she was thrown from the carriage and instantly killed.”
+
+“And Miss Fairchild?”
+
+“She didn’t go with her. Mrs. Sylvester was alone.”
+
+“Horrible, horrible! Where is my uncle, can I see him?”
+
+“I don’t know, sir,” the man returned with a strange look of anxiety.
+“Mr. Sylvester is feeling very bad, sir. He has shut himself up in his
+room and none of his servants dare disturb him, sir.”
+
+“I should, however, like him to know I am here. In what room shall I
+find him?”
+
+“In the little one, sir, at the top of the house. It has a curious lock
+on the door; you will know it by that.”
+
+“Very well. Please be in the hall when I come down; I may want to give
+you some orders.”
+
+The old servant bowed and Bertram hastened with hushed steps to ascend
+the stairs. At the first platform he paused. What is there in a house of
+death, of sudden death especially, that draws a veil of spectral
+unreality over each familiar object! Behind that door now inexorably
+closed before him, lay without doubt the shrouded form of her who but a
+few short hours before, had dazzled the eyes of men and made envious the
+hearts of women with her imposing beauty! No such quiet then reigned
+over the spot filled by her presence. As the vision of a dream returns,
+he saw her again in all her splendor. Never a brow in all the great hall
+shone more brightly beneath its sparkling diamonds; never a lip in the
+whole vast throng curled with more self-complacent pride, or melted into
+a more alluring smile, than that of her who now lay here, a marble image
+beneath the eye of day. It was as if a flowery field had split beneath
+the dancing foot of some laughing siren. One moment your gaze is upon
+the swaying voluptuous form, the half-shut beguiling eye, the white
+out-reaching arms upon whose satin surface a thousand loves seem
+perching; the next you stare horror-stricken upon the closing jaws of an
+awful pit, with the flash of something bright in your eyes, and the
+sense of a hideous noiseless rush in which earth and heaven appear to
+join, sink and be swallowed! Bertram felt his heart grow sick. Moving
+on, he passed the bronze image of Luxury lying half asleep on its bed of
+crumpled roses. Hideous mockery! What has luxury to do with death? She
+who was luxury itself has vanished from these halls. Shall the mute
+bronze go on smiling over its wine cup while she who was its prototype
+is carried by without a smile on the lips once so vermeil with pride and
+tropical languors!
+
+Arrived at the top of the house, Bertram knocked at the door with the
+strange lock, and uttering his own name, asked if there was anything he
+could do here or elsewhere to show his sympathy and desire to be of use
+in this great and sudden bereavement. There was no immediate reply and
+he began to fear he would be obliged to retire without seeing his uncle,
+when the door was slowly opened and Mr. Sylvester came out. Instantly
+Bertram understood the anxiety of the servant. Not only did Mr.
+Sylvester’s countenance exhibit the usual traces of grief and horror
+incident to a sudden and awful calamity, but there were visible upon it
+the tokens of another and still more unfathomable emotion, a wild and
+paralyzed look that altered the very contour of his features, and made
+his face almost like that of a stranger.
+
+“Uncle, what is it?” sprang involuntarily to his lips. But Mr. Sylvester
+betraying by a sudden backward movement an instinctive desire to escape
+scrutiny, he bethought himself, and with hasty utterance offered some
+words of consolation that sounded strangely hollow and superficial in
+that dim and silent corridor. “Is there nothing I can do for you?” he
+finally asked.
+
+“Everything is being done,” exclaimed his uncle in a strained and
+altered voice; “Robert is here.” And a silence fell over the hall, that
+Bertram dared not break.
+
+“I have help for everything but—” He did not say what, it seemed as if
+something rose up in his throat that choked him.
+
+“Bertram,” said he at last in a more natural tone, “come with me.”
+
+He led him into an adjoining room and shut the door. It was a room from
+which the sunshine had not been excluded and it seemed as if they could
+both breathe more easily.
+
+“Sit down,” said his uncle, pointing to a chair. The young man did so,
+but Mr. Sylvester remained standing. Then without preamble, “Have you
+seen her?”
+
+
+There was no grief in the question, only a quiet respect. Death clothes
+the most volatile with a garment of awe. Bertram slowly shook his head.
+“No,” said he, “I came at once up stairs.”
+
+“There is no mark on her white body, save the least little discolored
+dent here,” continued his uncle, pointing calmly to his temple. “She had
+one moment of fear while the horses ran, and then—” He gave a quick
+shudder and advancing towards Bertram, laid his hand on his nephew’s
+shoulder in such a way as to prevent him from turning his head.
+“Bertram,” said he, “I have no son. If I were to call upon you to
+perform a son’s work for me; to obey and ask no questions, would you
+comply?”
+
+“Can you ask?” sprang from the young man’s lips; “you know that you have
+only to command for me to be proud to obey. Anything you can require
+will find me ready.”
+
+The hand on his shoulder weighed heavier. “It seems a strange time to
+talk about business, Bertram, but necessity knows no law. There is a
+matter in which you can afford me great assistance if you will undertake
+to do immediately what I ask.”
+
+“Can you doubt—”
+
+“Hush, it is this. On this paper you will find a name; below it a number
+of addresses. They are all of places down town and some of them not very
+reputable I fear. What I desire is for you to seek out the man whose
+name you here see, going to these very places after him, beginning with
+the first, and continuing down the list until you find him. When you
+come upon him, he will ask you for a card. Give him one on which you
+will scrawl before his eyes, a circle, so. It is a token which he should
+instantly understand. If he does, address him with freedom and tell him
+that your employer—you need make use of no names—re-demands the papers
+made over to him this morning. If he manifests surprise or is seen to
+hesitate, tell him your orders are imperative. If he declares ruin will
+follow, inform him that you are not to be frightened by words; that your
+employer is as fully aware of the position of affairs as he. Whatever he
+says, bring the papers.”
+
+Bertram nodded his head and endeavored to rise, but his uncle’s hand
+rested upon him too heavily.
+
+“He is a small man; you need have no dread of him physically. The sooner
+you find him and acquit yourself of your task, the better I shall be
+pleased.” And then the hand lifted.
+
+On his way down stairs Bertram encountered Paula. She was standing in
+the hall and accosted him with a very trembling tone in her voice. All
+her questions were in regard to Mr. Sylvester.
+
+“Have you seen him?” she asked. “Does he speak—say anything? No one has
+heard him utter a word since he came in from down town and saw her lying
+there.”
+
+“Yes, certainly; he spoke to me; he has been giving me some commissions
+to perform. I am on my way now to attend to them.”
+
+She drew a deep breath. “O!” she cried, “would that he had a son, a
+daughter, a child, some one!”
+
+This exclamation following what had taken place above struck Bertram
+forcibly. “He has a son in me, Paula. Love as well as duty binds me to
+him. All that a child could do will I perform with pleasure. You can
+trust me for that.”
+
+She threw him a glance of searching inquiry. “His need is greater than
+it seems,” whispered she. “He was deeply troubled before this terrible
+accident occurred. I am afraid the arrow is poisoned that has made this
+dreadful wound. I cannot explain myself,” she went on hurriedly, “but if
+you indeed regard him as a father, be ready with any comfort, any help,
+that affection can bestow, or his necessities require. Let me feel that
+he has near him some stay that will not yield to pressure.”
+
+There was so much passion in this appeal that Bertram involuntarily
+bowed his head. “He has two friends,” said he, “and here is my hand that
+I will never forsake him.”
+
+“I do not need to offer mine,” she returned, “He is great and good
+enough to do without my assistance.” But nevertheless she gave her hand
+to Bertram and with a glow of her lip and eye that made her beauty,
+supreme at all times, something almost supernatural in its character.
+
+“I dared not tell him,” she whispered to herself as the front door
+closed with the dull slow thud proper to a house of mourning. “I dare
+not tell any one, but—”
+
+What lay beyond that but?
+
+When Mr. Sylvester came in at six o’clock in the morning, Paula had
+risen from the bed on which she had been sitting, but not to make
+preparation for rest, for she could not rest. The vague shadow of some
+surrounding evil or threatened catastrophe was upon her, and though she
+forced herself to change her dress for a warmer and more suitable one,
+she did not otherwise break her vigil, though the necessity for it
+seemed to be at an end. It was a midwinter morning and the sun had not
+yet risen, so being chilly as well as restless, she began to pace the
+floor, stopping now and then to glance out of the window, in the hopes
+of detecting some signs of awakening day in the blank and solemn east.
+Suddenly as she was thus consulting the horizon, a light flashed up from
+below, and looking down upon the face of the extension that ran along at
+right angles to her window, she perceived that the shades were up in
+Mrs. Sylvester’s boudoir. They had doubtless been left so the evening
+before, and Mr. Sylvester upon turning up the gas had failed to observe
+the fact. Instantly she felt her heart stand still, for the house being
+wide and the extension narrow, all that went on in that boudoir, or at
+least in that portion of it which Mr. Sylvester at present occupied, was
+easily observable from the window at which she stood; and that something
+was going on of a serious and important nature, was sufficiently evident
+from the expression of Mr. Sylvester’s countenance. He was standing with
+his face bent towards some one seated out of sight, his wife
+undoubtedly, though what could have called her from her dreams—and was
+busily engaged in talking. The subject whatever it was, absorbed him
+completely. If Paula had allowed herself the thought, she would have
+described him as pleading and that with no ordinary vehemence. But
+suddenly while she gazed half fascinated and but little realizing what
+she was doing, he started back and a fierce change swept over his face,
+a certain incredulity, that presently gave way to a glance of horror and
+repugnance, which the quick action of his out-thrown palm sufficiently
+emphasized. He was pushing something from him, but what? A suggestion or
+a remembrance? It was impossible to determine.
+
+The countenance of Mrs. Sylvester who that moment appeared in sight
+sailing across the floor in her azure wrapper, offered but little
+assistance in the way of explanation. Immovable under most
+circumstances, it was simply at this juncture a trifle more calm and
+cold than usual, presenting to Paula’s mind the thought of a white and
+icy barrier, against which the most glowing of arrows must fall chilled
+and powerless.
+
+“O for a woman’s soul to inform that breast if but for a moment!” cried
+Paula, lost in the passion of this scene, while so little understanding
+its import. When as if in mockery to this invocation, the haughty form
+upon which she was gazing started rigidly erect, while the lip acquired
+a scorn and the eye a menace that betrayed the serpent ever in hiding
+under this white rose.
+
+Paula could look no longer. This last revelation had awakened her to the
+fact that she was gazing upon a scene sacred to the husband and wife
+engaged in it. With a sense of shame she rushed to the bed and threw
+herself upon it, but the vision of what she had beheld would not leave
+her so easily. Like letters of fire upon a black ground, the panorama of
+looks and gestures to which she had just been witness, floated before
+her mind’s eye, awakening a train of thought so intense that she did not
+know which was worse, to be there in the awful dawn dreaming over this
+episode of the night, or to rise and face again the reality. The
+fascination which all forbidden sights insensibly exert over the minds
+of the best of us, finally prevailed, and she slowly crept to the window
+to catch a parting glimpse of Mr. Sylvester’s tall form hurrying blindly
+from the boudoir followed by his wife’s cold glance. The next minute the
+exposed condition of the room seemed to catch that lady’s attention, and
+with an anxious look into the dull gray morn, Mrs. Sylvester drew down
+the shades, and the episode was over.
+
+Or so Paula thought; but when she was returning up stairs after her
+solitary breakfast—Mrs. Sylvester was too tired and Mr. Sylvester too
+much engaged to eat, as the attentive Samuel informed her—the door of
+Ona’s room swung ajar, and she distinctly heard her give utterance to
+the following exclamation:
+
+“What! give up this elegant home, my horses and carriage, the friends I
+have had such difficulty in obtaining, and the position which I was born
+to adorn? I had rather die!” And Paula feeling as if she had received
+the key to the enigma of the last night’s unaccountable manifestations,
+was about to rush away to her own apartment, when the door swayed open
+again and she heard his voice respond with hard and bitter emphasis,
+
+“And it might be better that you should. But since you will probably
+live, let it be according to your mind. I have not the courage—”
+
+There the door swung to.
+
+An hour from that Mr. Sylvester left the house with a small valise in
+his hand, and Mrs. Sylvester dressed in her showiest costume, entered
+her carriage for an early shopping excursion.
+
+And so when Paula whispered to herself, “I did not dare to tell him; I
+did not dare to tell any one, but—” she thought of those terrible
+words, “Die? It might be better, perhaps, that you should!” and then
+remembered the ghastly look of immeasurable horror with which a few
+hours later, he staggered away from that awful burden, whose rigid lines
+would never again melt into mocking curves, and to whom the morning’s
+wide soaring hopes, high reaching ambitions and boundless luxuries were
+now no more than the shadows of a vanished world; life, love, longing,
+with all their demands, having dwindled to a noisome rest between four
+close planks, with darkness for its present portion and beyond—what?
+
+
+
+
+XXI.
+
+DEPARTURE.
+
+    “Forever and forever, farewell Cassius.
+    If we do meet again, why we shall smile;
+    If not, why then, this parting was well made.”
+
+    —JULIUS CÆSAR.
+
+
+Samuel had received his orders to admit Mr. Bertram Sylvester to his
+uncle’s room, at whatever hour of the day or night he chose to make his
+appearance. But evening wore away and finally the night, before his
+well-known face was seen at the door. Proceeding at once to the
+apartment occupied by Mr. Sylvester, he anxiously knocked. The door was
+opened immediately.
+
+“Ah, Bertram, I have been expecting you all night.” And from the haggard
+appearance of both men, it was evident that neither of them had slept.
+
+“I have sat down but twice since I left you, and then only in
+conveyances. I have been obliged to go to Brooklyn, to—”
+
+“But you have found him?”
+
+“Yes, I found him.”
+
+His uncle glanced inquiringly at his hands; they were empty.
+
+“I shall have to sit down,” said Bertram; his brow was very gloomy, his
+words came hesitatingly. “I had rather have knocked my head against the
+wall, than have disappointed you,” he murmured after a moment’s pause.
+“But when I did find him, it was too late.”
+
+“Too late!” The tone in which this simple phrase was uttered was
+indescribable. Bertram slowly nodded his head.
+
+“He had already disposed of all the papers, and favorably,” he said.
+
+“But—”
+
+“And not only that,” pursued Bertram. “He had issued orders by
+telegraph, that it was impossible to countermand. It was at the Forty
+Second Street depĂŽt I found him at last. He was just on the point of
+starting for the west.”
+
+“And has he gone?”
+
+“Yes sir.”
+
+Mr. Sylvester walked slowly to the window. It was raining drearily
+without, but he did not notice the falling drops or raise his eyes to
+the leaden skies.
+
+“Did you meet any one?” he asked at length. “Any one that you know, I
+mean, or who knows you?”
+
+“No one but Mr. Stuyvesant.”
+
+“Mr. Stuyvesant!”
+
+“Yes sir,” returned Bertram, dropping his eyes before his uncle’s
+astonished glance. “I was coming out of a house in Broad Street when he
+passed by and saw me, or at least I believed he saw me. There is no
+mistaking him, sir, for any one else; besides it is a custom of his I am
+told, to saunter through the down town streets after the warehouses are
+all closed for the night. He enjoys the quiet I suppose, finds food for
+reflection in the sleeping aspect of our great city.” There was gloom in
+Bertram’s tone; his uncle looked at him curiously.
+
+“What house was it from which you were coming when he passed you?”
+
+“A building where Tueller and Co. do business, shady operators in paper,
+as you know.”
+
+“And you believed he recognized you?”
+
+“I cannot be sure, sir. It was dark, but I thought I saw him look at me
+and give a slight start.”
+
+Ah, how desolate sounds the drip, drip of a ceaseless rain, when
+conversation languishes and the ear has time to listen!
+
+“I will explain to Mr. Stuyvesant when I see him, that you were in
+search of a man with whom I had pressing business,” observed Mr.
+Sylvester at last.
+
+“No,” murmured Bertram with effort, “it might emphasize the occurrence
+in his mind; let the matter drop where it is.”
+
+There was another silence, during which the drip of the rain on the
+window-ledge struck on the young man’s ears like the premonitory thud of
+falling earth upon a coffin-lid. At length his uncle turned and advanced
+rapidly towards him.
+
+“Bertram,” said he, “you have done me a favor for which I thank you.
+What you have learned in the course of its accomplishment I cannot tell.
+Enough perhaps to make you understand why I warned you from the
+dangerous path of speculation, and set your feet in a way that if
+adhered to with steadfast purpose, ought to lead you at last to a safe
+and honorable prosperity. Now—No, Bertram,” he bitterly interrupted
+himself as the other opened his lips, “I am in need of no especial
+commiseration, my affairs seem bound to prosper whether I will or
+not—now I have one more commission to give you. Miss Fairchild—” his
+voice quavered and he leaned heavily on the chair near which he was
+standing. “Have you seen her, Bertram? Is the poor child quite
+prostrated? Has this frightful occurrence made her ill, or does she bear
+up with fortitude under the shock of this sudden calamity?”
+
+“She is not ill, but her suffering is undoubted. If you could see her
+and say a few words to relieve her anxiety in regard to yourself, I
+think it would greatly comfort her. Her main thought seems to be for
+you, sir.”
+
+Mr. Sylvester frowned, raised his hand with a repelling gesture, and
+hastily opened his lips. Bertram thought he was about to utter some
+passionate phrase. But instead of that he merely remarked, “I am sorry I
+cannot see her, but it is quite impossible. You must stand between me
+and this poor child, Bertram. Tell her I send her my love; tell her that
+I am quite well; anything to solace her and make these dark days less
+dreary. If she wants a friend with her, let a messenger be sent for
+whomever she desires. I place no restrictions upon anything you choose
+to do for her comfort or happiness, but let me be spared the sight of
+any other face than yours until this is all over. After the funeral—it
+nay sound ungracious, but I am far from feeling so—I shall wish to be
+left alone for awhile. If she can be made to understand this—”
+
+“I think her instincts, sir, have already led her to divine your wishes.
+If I am not mistaken, she is even now making preparations to return to
+her relatives.”
+
+Mr. Sylvester gave a start. “What, so soon!” he murmured, and the
+sadness of his tone smote Bertram to the heart. But in another moment he
+recovered himself and shortly exclaimed, “Well! well! that is as it
+should be. You will watch over her Bertram, and see that she is kindly
+cared for. It would be a grief to me to have her go away with any more
+than the necessary regret at losing one who was always kind to _her_.”
+
+“I will look after her as after a sister,” returned Bertram. “She shall
+miss no attention which I can supply.”
+
+With a look Mr. Sylvester expressed his thanks. Then while Bertram again
+attempted to speak, he gave him a cordial pressure of the hand, and
+withdrew once more to his favorite spot.
+
+And the rain beat, beat, and it sounded more and more like the droppings
+of earth upon a nailed down coffin-lid.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The funeral was a large one. The largest some said that had ever been
+seen in that quarter of the city. If Mrs. Sylvester’s position had not
+been what it was, the sudden and awful nature of her death, would have
+been sufficient to draw together a large crowd. Among those who thus
+endeavored to show their respect was Miss Stuyvesant.
+
+“I could not join you here in your pleasures,” she whispered to Paula in
+the short interview they had upstairs, preparatory to the services, “but
+I cannot keep away in the dark hours!” And from her look and the clasp
+of her hand, Paula gained fresh courage to endure the slow pressure of
+anxiety and grief with which she was secretly burdened.
+
+Moreover she had the pleasure of introducing her beloved friend to Mr.
+Bertram Sylvester, a pleasure which she had long promised herself
+whenever the opportunity should arrive, as Miss Stuyvesant was somewhat
+of an enthusiast as regards music. She did not notice particularly then,
+but she remembered afterwards, with what a blushing cheek and beautiful
+glance the dainty young girl received his bow, and responded to his few
+respectful words of pleasure at meeting the daughter of a man whom he
+had learned to regard with so much respect.
+
+Mr. Sylvester was in a room by himself. The few glimpses obtained of him
+by his friends, convinced them all, that this trouble touched him more
+deeply than those who knew his wife intimately could have supposed. Yet
+he was calm, and already wore that fixed look of rigidity which was
+henceforth to distinguish the expression of his fine and noble features.
+
+In the ride to Greenwood he spoke little. Paula who sat in the carriage
+with him did not receive a word, though now and then his eye wandered
+towards her with an expression that drove the blood to her heart, and
+made the whole day one awful memory of incomprehensible agony and dim
+but terrible forebodings. The ways of the human soul, in its crises of
+grief or remorse were so new to her. She had passed her life beside
+rippling streams and in peaceful meadows, and now all at once, with
+shadow on shadow, the dark pictures of life settled down before her, and
+she could not walk without stumbling upon jagged rocks, deep yawning
+chasms and caves of impenetrable gloom.
+
+The sight of the grave appalled her. To lay in such a bed as that, the
+fair and delicate head that had often found the downy pillows of its
+azure couch too hard for its languid pressure. To hide in such a dismal,
+deep, dark gap, a form so white and but a little while before, so
+imposing in its splendor and so commanding in its requirements. The
+thought of heaven brought no comfort. The beauty they had known lay
+here; soulless, inert, rigid and responseless, but here. It was gifted
+with no wings with which to rise. It owned no attachment to higher
+spheres. Death had scattered the leaves of this white rose, but from all
+the boundless mirror of the outspread heavens, no recovered semblance of
+its perfected beauty, looked forth to solace Paula or assuage the misery
+of her glance into this gloomy pit. Ah, Ona, the social ladder reaches
+high, but it does not scale the regions where your poor soul could find
+comfort now.
+
+Bertram saw the white look on Paula’s face and silently offered his arm.
+But there are moments when no mortal help can aid us; instants when the
+soul stands as solitary in the universe, as the ship-wrecked mariner on
+a narrow strip of rock in a boundless sea. Life may touch, but eternity
+enfolds us; we are single before God and as such must stand or fall.
+
+Upon their return to the house, Mr. Sylvester withdrew with a few
+intimate friends to his room, and Paula, lonely beyond expression, went
+to her own empty apartment to finish packing her trunks and answer such
+notes as had arrived during her absence. For attention from outsiders
+was only too obtrusive. Many whom she had never met save in the most
+formal intercourse, flooded her now with expressions of condolence,
+which if they had not been all upon one pattern and that the most
+conventional, might have afforded her some relief. Two or three of the
+notes were precious to her and these she stowed safely away, one
+contained a deliberate offer of marriage from a wealthy old
+stock-broker; this she as deliberately burned after she had written a
+proper refusal. “He thinks I have no home,” she murmured.
+
+And had she? As she paced through the silent halls and elaborately
+furnished rooms on her way to her solitary dinner, she asked herself if
+any place would ever seem like home after this. Not that she was
+infatuated by its elegance. The lofty walls might dwindle, the gorgeous
+furniture grow dim, the works of beauty disappear, the whole towering
+structure contract to the dimensions of a simple cottage or what was
+worse, a seedy down-town house, if only the something would remain, the
+something that made return to Grotewell seem like the bending back of a
+towering stalk to the ground from which it had taken its root. “If?” she
+cried—and stopped there, her heart swelling she knew not why. Then
+again, “I thought I had found a father!” Then after a longer pause, a
+wild uncontrollable; “Bless! bless! bless!” which seemed to re-echo in
+the room long after her lingering step had left it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+“Will he let me go without a word?”
+
+It was early morning and the time had come for Paula’s departure. She
+was standing on the threshold of her room, her hands clasped, her eyes
+roving up and down the empty halls. “Will he let me go without a word?”
+
+“O Miss Paula, what do you think?” cried Sarah, creeping slowly towards
+her from the spectral recesses of a dim corner. “Jane says Mr. Sylvester
+was up all last night too. She heard him go down stairs about midnight
+and he went through all the rooms like a gliding spectre and into _her_
+room too!” she fearfully whispered; “and what he did there no one knows,
+but when he came out he locked the door, and this morning the cook heard
+him give orders to Samuel to have the trunks that were ready in Mrs.
+Sylvester’s room taken away. O Miss, do you think he can be going to
+give all those beautiful things to you?”
+
+Paula recoiled in horror. “Sarah!” said she, and could say no more. The
+vision of that tall form gliding through the desolate house at midnight,
+bending over the soulless finery of his dead wife, perhaps stowing it
+away in boxes, came with too powerful a suggestion to her mind.
+
+“Shure, I thought you would be pleased,” murmured the girl and
+disappeared again into one of the dim recesses.
+
+“Will he let me go without a word?”
+
+“Miss Paula, Mr. Bertram Sylvester is waiting at the door in a
+carriage,” came in low respectful tones to her ears, and Samuel’s face
+full of regret appeared at the top of the stairs.
+
+“I am coming,” murmured the sad-hearted girl, and with a sob which she
+could not control, she took her last look of the pretty pink chamber in
+which she had dreamed so many dreams of youthful delight, and perhaps of
+youthful sorrow also, and slowly descended the stairs. Suddenly as she
+was passing a door on the second floor, she heard a low deep cry.
+
+“Paula!”
+
+She stopped and her hand went to her heart, the reaction was so sudden.
+“Yes,” she murmured, standing still with great heart-beats of joy, or
+was it pain?
+
+The door slowly opened. “Did you think I could let you go without a
+blessing, my Paula, my little one!” came in those deep heart-tones which
+always made her tears start. And Mr. Sylvester stepped out of the
+shadows beyond and stood in the shadows at her side.
+
+“I did not know,” she murmured. “I am so young, so feeble, such a mote
+in this great atmosphere of anguish. I longed to see you, to say
+good-bye, to thank you, but—” tears stopped her words; this was a
+parting that rent her leader heart.
+
+Mr. Sylvester watched her and his deep chest rose spasmodically.
+“Paula,” said he, and there was a depth in his tone even she had never
+heard before, “are these tears for me?”
+
+With a strong effort she controlled herself, looked up and faintly
+smiled. “I am an orphan,” she gently murmured; “you have been kind and
+tender to me beyond words; I have let myself love you as a father.”
+
+A spasm crossed his features, the hand he had lifted to lay upon her
+head fell at his side, he surveyed her with eyes whose despairing
+fondness told her that her love had been more than met by this desolate
+childless man. But he did not reply as seemed natural, “Be to me then as
+a child. I can offer you no mother to guide or watch over you, but one
+parent is better than none. Henceforth you shall be known as my
+daughter.” Instead of that he shook his head mournfully, yearningly but
+irrevocably, and said, “To be your father would have been a dear
+position to occupy. I have sometimes hoped that I might be so blessed as
+to call it mine, but that is all past now. Your father I can never be.
+But I can bless you,” he murmured brokenly, “not as I did that day in
+your aunt’s little cottage, but silently and from afar as God always
+meant you should be blessed by me. Good-bye, Paula.”
+
+Then all the deeps in her great nature broke up. She did not weep, but
+she looked at him with her large dark eyes and the cry in them smote his
+heart. With a struggle that blanched his face, he kept his arms at his
+side, but his lips worked in agony, and he slowly murmured, “If after a
+time your heart loves me like this, and you are willing to bear shadow
+as well as sunshine with me, come back with your aunt and sit at my
+hearthstone, not as my child but as a dear and honored guest. I will try
+and be worthy—” He paused, “Will you come, Paula?”
+
+“Yes, yes.”
+
+“Not soon, not now,” he murmured, “God will show you when.”
+
+And with nothing but a look, without having touched her or so much as
+brushed her garments with his, he retired again into his room.
+
+
+
+
+XXII.
+
+HOPGOOD.
+
+     “Give it an understanding but no tongue.”
+
+     —HAMLET.
+
+
+Hopgood was a man who could keep a secret, but who made so much ado in
+the process that he reminded one of the placard found posted up
+somewhere out west which reads, “A treasure of gold concealed here;
+don’t dig!” Or so his wife used to say, and she ought to know, for she
+had lived with him five years, three of which he had spent in the
+detective service.
+
+“If he would only trust the wife of his bosom with whatever he’s got on
+his mind, instead of ambling around the building with his eyes rolling
+about like peas in a caldron of boiling water, one might manage to take
+some comfort in life, and not hurt anybody either. For two days now,
+ever since the wife of Mr. Sylvester died and Mr. Sylvester has been
+away from the bank, he’s acted just like a lunatic. Not that that has
+anything to do with his gettin up of nights and roamin down five pair of
+stairs to see if the watchman is up to his duty, or with his askin a
+dozen times a day if I remembers how Mr. Sylvester found him and me,
+well nigh starvin in Broad Street, and gave him the good word which got
+him into this place? O no! O no, of course not! But _something_ has, and
+while he persists in shutting out from his breast the woman he swore to
+love, honor, and cherish, that woman is not bound to bear the trials of
+life with patience. Every time he jumps out of his chair at the sound of
+Mr. Sylvester’s name, and some one is always mentionin’ it, I plumps me
+down on mine with an expression of my views regarding a kitchen stove
+that does all its drawin’ when the oven’s empty.”
+
+So spake Mrs. Hopgood to her special crony and constant visitor, Mrs.
+Kirkshaw of Water Street, pursing up a mouth that might have been
+good-natured if she had ever given it an opportunity. But Mrs. Kirkshaw
+who passed for a gossip with her neighbors, was a philosopher in the
+retirement of the domestic circle and did not believe in the blow for
+blow system.
+
+“La!” quoth she, with a smoothing out of her apron suggestive of her
+employment as laundress, “show a dog that you want his bone and you’ll
+never get it. Husbands is like that very stove you’ve been a slanderin
+of. Rattle on coal when the fire’s low and you put it out entirely; but
+be a bit patient and drop it on piece by piece, coaxing-like, and you’ll
+have a hot stove afore you know it.”
+
+Which suggestion struck Mrs. Hopgood like a revelation, and for a day
+and night she resorted to the coaxing system; the result of which was to
+send Mr. Hopgood out of the room to sit on the stairs in mortal terror,
+lest his good nature should get the better of his discretion. His little
+daughter, Constantia Maria—so named and so called from two
+grandmothers, equally exacting in their claims and equally impecunious
+as regards their resources—was his sole solace in this long vigil. Her
+pretty innocent prattle scarcely disturbed his meditation, while it
+soothed his nerves, and with no one by but this unsuspecting child, he
+could roll his great eyes to his heart’s content without fear of her
+descrying anything in them, but the love with which her own little heart
+abounded.
+
+On the morning after the funeral, however, Constantia Maria was restored
+to his wife’s arms on the plea that she did not seem quite well, and
+Hopgood went out and sat alone. In a few minutes, however, he returned,
+and ambling restlessly up and down the room, stopped before his
+persistently smiling wife and said somewhat tremulously:
+
+“If Mr. Sylvester takes a notion to come up and see Constantia Maria
+to-day, I hope you’ll take the opportunity to finish your ironing or
+whatever else it is you may have to do. I’ve noticed he seems a little
+shy with the child when you are around.”
+
+“Shy with the child when I am around! well I do declare!” exclaimed she,
+forgetting her late rîle in her somewhat natural indignation. “And what
+have I ever done to frighten Mr. Sylvester? Nothing but putting on of a
+clean apron, when he comes in and a dustin’ of the best chair for his
+use. It’s a trick of yours to get a chance of speakin’ to him alone, and
+I’ll not put up with it. As if it wasn’t bad enough to have a kettle
+with the nozzle dangling, without living with a man who has a secret he
+won’t share with his own wife and the mother of his innocent babe.”
+
+With a start the worthy man stared at her till he grew red in the face,
+probably with the effort of keeping his eyes steady for so long a time.
+“Who told you I had a secret?” said he.
+
+“Who told me?” and then she laughed, though in a somewhat hysterical
+way, and sat down in the middle of the floor and shook and shook again.
+“Hear the man!” she cried. And she told him the story of the placard out
+west and then asked him, “if he thought she didn’t remember how he used
+to act when he was a chasin’ up of a thief in the days when he was on
+the police force.”
+
+“But,” he cried, quite as pale now as he had been florid the moment
+before, “I’m not in the police force now and you are acting quite silly
+and I’ve no patience with you.” And he was making for the door,
+presumably to sit upon the stairs, when with a late repentance she
+seized him by the arm and said:
+
+“La now,” an expression she had caught from Mrs. Kirkshaw, “I didn’t
+mean nothin’ by my talk. Come back, John; Constantia Maria is not well,
+and if Mr. Sylvester comes up to see her, I’ll just slip out and leave
+you alone.”
+
+And upon that he told her she was a good wife and that if he had any
+secret from her it was only because he was a poor man. “Honesty and
+prudence are all the treasures I possess to keep us three from starving.
+Shall I part with either of them just to satisfy your curiosity?” and
+being a good woman at heart, she said “no,” though she secretly
+concluded that prudence in his case involved trust in one’s wife first,
+and disbelief in the rest of the world afterward; and took her future
+resolutions accordingly.
+
+“Well, Hopgood, you look anxious; do you want to speak to me?”
+
+The janitor eyed the changed and melancholy face of his patron, with an
+expression in which real sympathy for his trouble, struggled with the
+respectful awe which Mr. Sylvester’s presence was calculated to inspire.
+
+“If you please,” said he, speaking very low, for more or less of the
+bank employees were moving busily to and fro, “Constantia Maria is not
+well and she has been asking all day for the _dear man_, as she insists
+upon calling you, sir, with many apologies for the freedom.”
+
+Mr. Sylvester smiled with a faint far-away look in his dark eye that
+made Hopgood stare uneasily out of the window. “Sick! why then I must go
+up and see her,” he returned in a matter-of-fact way that proved his
+visits in that direction were of no uncommon occurrence. “A moment more
+and I shall be at liberty.”
+
+Hopgood bowed and renewed his stare out of the window, with an intensity
+happily spared from serious consequences to the passers-by, by the
+merciful celerity with which Mr. Sylvester procured his overcoat, put
+such papers in his pocket as he required, and joined him.
+
+“Constantia Maria, here is Mr. Sylvester come to see you.”
+
+It was a pleasure to observe how the little thing brightened in her
+mother’s arms, where but a moment before she had lain quite pale and
+still, and slipping to the ground rushed up to meet the embrace of this
+stern and melancholy-faced man. “I am so glad you have come,” she cried
+over and over again; and her little arms went round his neck, and her
+soft cheek nestled against his, with a content that made the mother’s
+eyes sparkle with pleasure, as obedient to her promise, she quietly left
+the room.
+
+And Mr. Sylvester? If any one had seen the abandon with which he yielded
+to her caresses and returned them, he would have understood why this
+child should have loved him with such extraordinary affection. He kissed
+her forehead, he kissed her cheek, and seemed never weary of smoothing
+down her bright and silky curls. She reminded him of Geraldine. She had
+the same blue eyes and caressing ways. From the day he had come upon his
+old friend Hopgood in a condition of necessity almost of want, this
+blue-eyed baby had held its small sceptre over his lonely heart, and
+unbeknown to the rest of the world, had solaced many a spare five
+minutes with her innocent prattle. The Hopgoods understood the cause of
+his predilection and were silent. It was the one thing Mrs. Hopgood
+never alluded to in her gossips with Mrs. Kirkshaw. But to-day the
+attentions of Mr. Sylvester to the little one seemed to make the janitor
+restless. He walked up and down the narrow room uneasily surveying the
+pair out of the corner of his great glassy eyes, till even Mr. Sylvester
+noticed his unusual manner and put the child down, observing with a
+sigh, “You think she is not well enough for any excitement?”
+
+“No sir, it is not that,” returned the other uneasily, with a hasty look
+around him. “The fact is, I have something to say to you, sir, about—a
+discovery—I made the other day.” His words came very slowly, and he
+looked down with great embarrassment.
+
+Mr. Sylvester frowned slightly, and drew himself up to the full height
+of his very imposing figure. “A discovery,” repeated he, “when?”
+
+“The day you paid that early visit to the bank, sir, the day Mrs.
+Sylvester died.”
+
+The frown on Mr. Sylvester’s brow grew deeper. “The day—” he began, and
+stopped.
+
+“Excuse me, sir,” exclaimed Hopgood with a burst. “I ought not to have
+mentioned it, but you asked me _when_, and I—”
+
+“What was this discovery?” inquired his superior, imperatively.
+
+“Nothing much,” murmured the other now all in a cold sweat. “But I felt
+as if I ought to tell you. You have been my benefactor, sir, I can never
+forget what you have done for me and mine. If I saw death or bereavement
+between me and any favor I could do for you, sir, I would not hesitate
+to risk them. I am no talker, sir, but I am true and I am grateful.” He
+stopped, choked, and his eyes rolled frightfully. Mr. Sylvester looked
+at him, grew a trifle pale, and put the little child away that was
+nestling up against his knee.
+
+“You have not told me what you have discovered,” said he.
+
+“Well, sir, only this.” And he took from his pocket a small roll of
+paper which he unfolded and held out in his hand. It contained a gold
+tooth-pick somewhat bent and distorted.
+
+A flush dark and ominous crept over Mr. Sylvester’s cheek. He glanced
+sternly at the trembling janitor, and uttered a short, “Well?”
+
+“I found it on the floor of the bank just after you went out the other
+morning,” the other pursued well-nigh inaudibly. “It was lying near the
+safe. As it was not there when you went in, I took it for granted it was
+yours. Am I right, sir?”
+
+The anxious tone in which this last question was uttered, the studied
+way in which the janitor kept his eyes upon the floor could not have
+been unnoticed by Mr. Sylvester, but he simply said,
+
+“I have lost mine, that may very possibly be it.”
+
+The janitor held it towards him; his eyes did not leave the floor. “The
+responsibility of my position here is sometimes felt by me to be very
+heavy,” muttered the man in a low, unmodulated tone. It was his duty in
+those days previous to the Manhattan Bank robbery, to open the vault in
+the morning, procure the books that were needed, and lay them about on
+the various desks in readiness for the clerks upon their arrival. He had
+also the charge of the boxes of the various customers of the bank who
+chose to entrust their valuables to its safe keeping; which boxes were
+kept, together with the books, in that portion of the vault to which he
+had access. “I should regret my comfortable situation here, but if it
+was necessary, I would go without a murmur, trusting that God would take
+care of my poor little lamb.”
+
+“Hopgood, what do you mean?” asked Mr. Sylvester somewhat sternly. “Who
+talks about dismissing you?”
+
+“No one,” responded the other, turning aside to attend to some trivial
+matter. “But if ever you think a younger or a fresher man would be
+preferable in my place, do not hesitate to make the change your own
+necessities or that of the Bank may seem to require.”
+
+Mr. Sylvester’s eye which was fixed upon the janitor’s face, slowly
+darkened.
+
+“There is something underlying all this,” said he, “what is it?”
+
+At once and as if he had taken his resolution, the janitor turned. “I
+beg your pardon,” said he, “I ought to have told you in the first place.
+When I opened the vaults as usual on the morning of which I speak, I
+found the boxes displaced; that was nothing if you had been to them,
+sir; but what did alarm me and make me feel as if I had held my position
+too long was to find that one of them was unlocked.”
+
+Mr. Sylvester fell back a step.
+
+“It was Mr. Stuyvesant’s box, sir, and I remember distinctly seeing him
+lock it the previous afternoon before putting it back on the shelf.”
+
+The arms which Mr. Sylvester had crossed upon his breast tightened
+spasmodically. “And it has been in that condition ever since?” asked he.
+
+The janitor shook his head. “No,” said he, taking his little girl up in
+his arms, possibly to hide his countenance. “As you did not come down
+again on that day, I took the liberty of locking it with a key of my own
+when I went to put away the books and shut the vault for the night.” And
+he quietly buried his face in his baby’s floating curls, who feeling his
+cheek against her own put up her hand and stroked it lovingly, crying in
+her caressing infantile tones,
+
+“Poor papa! poor tired papa.”
+
+Mr. Sylvester’s stern brow contracted painfully. The look with which his
+eye sought the sky without, would have made Paula’s young heart ache.
+Taking the child from her father’s clasp, he laid her on the bed. When
+he again confronted the janitor his face was like a mask.
+
+“Hopgood,” said he, “you are an honest man and a faithful one; I
+appreciate your worth and have had confidence in your judgment. Whom
+have you told of this occurrence beside myself?”
+
+“No one, sir.”
+
+“Another question; if Mr. Stuyvesant had required his box that day and
+had found it in the condition you describe, what would you have replied
+to his inquiries?”
+
+The janitor colored to the roots of his hair in an agony of shame Mr.
+Sylvester may or may not have appreciated, but replied with the
+straightforward earnestness of a man driven to bay, “I should have been
+obliged to tell him the truth sir; that whereas I had no personal
+knowledge of any one but myself, having been to the vaults since the
+evening before, I was called upon early that morning to open the outside
+door to you, sir, and that you came into the bank,” (he did not say
+looking very pale, agitated and unnatural, but he could not help
+remembering it) “and finding no one on duty but myself,—the watchman
+having gone up stairs to take his usual cup of coffee before going home
+for the day—you sent me out of the room on an errand, which delayed me
+some little time, and that when I came back I found you gone, and every
+thing as I had left it except that small pick lying on the floor.”
+
+The last words were nearly inaudible but they must have been heard by
+Mr. Sylvester, for immediately upon their utterance, the hand which
+unconsciously had kept its hold upon the tooth-pick, opened and with an
+uncontrollable gesture flung the miserable tell-tale into the stove near
+by.
+
+“Hopgood,” said the stately gentleman, coming nearer and holding him
+with his eyes till the poor man turned pale and cold as a stone, “has
+Mr. Stuyvesant had occasion to open his box since you locked it?”
+
+“Yes sir, he called for it yesterday afternoon.”
+
+“And who gave it to him?”
+
+“I sir.”
+
+“Did he appear to miss anything from it?”
+
+“No, sir.”
+
+“Do you believe, Hopgood, that there was anything missing from it?”
+
+The janitor shrank like a man subjected to the torture. He fixed his
+glance on Mr. Sylvester’s face and his own gradually lightened.
+
+“No sir!” said he at last, with a gasp that made the little one lift her
+curly head from her pillow and shake it with a slow and wistful motion
+strange to see in a child of only two years.
+
+The proud man bowed, not with the severity however that might have been
+expected; indeed his manner was strangely shadowed, and though his lip
+betrayed no uneasiness and his eye neither faltered or fell, there was a
+vague expression of awe upon his countenance, which it would take more
+than the simple understanding of the worthy but not over subtle man
+before him, to detect much less to comprehend.
+
+“You may be sure that Mr. Stuyvesant will never complain of any one
+having tampered with his effects while you are the guardian of the
+vaults,” exclaimed Mr. Sylvester in clear ringing tones. “As for his box
+being open, it is right that I should explain that it was the result of
+a mistake. I had occasion to go to a box of my own in a hurry that
+morning, and misled by the darkness and my own nervousness perhaps, took
+up his instead of my own. Not till I had opened it—with the tooth-pick,
+Hopgood, for I had been to a reception and did not have my keys with
+me—did I notice my mistake. I had intended to explain the matter to Mr.
+Stuyvesant, but you know what happened that day, and since then I have
+thought nothing of it.”
+
+The janitor’s face cleared to its natural expression. “You are very
+kind, sir, to explain yourself to me,” said he; “it was not necessary.”
+But his lightened face spoke volumes. “I have been on the police force
+and I know how to hold my tongue when it is my duty, but it is very hard
+work when the duty is on the other side. Have you any commands for me?”
+
+Mr. Sylvester shook his head, and his eye roamed over the humble
+furniture and scanty comforts of this poor man’s domicile. Hopgood
+thought he might be going to offer him some gift or guerdon, and in a
+low distressed tone spoke up:
+
+“I shall not try to ask your pardon, sir, for anything I have said.
+Honesty that is afraid to show itself, is no honesty for me. I could not
+meet your eye, knowing that I was aware of any circumstance of which you
+supposed me ignorant. What I know, you must know, as long as I remain in
+the position you were once kind enough to procure for me. And now that
+is all I believe, sir.”
+
+Mr. Sylvester dropped his eyes from the bare walls over which they had
+been restlessly wandering, and fixed them for a passing moment on the
+countenance of the man before him. Then with a grave action he lifted
+his hat from his head, and bowed with the deference he might have shown
+to one of his proudest colleagues, and without another look or word,
+quietly left the room.
+
+Hopgood in his surprise stared after him somewhat awe-struck. But when
+the door had quite closed, he caught up his child almost passionately in
+his arms, and crushing her against his breast, asked, while his eye
+roamed round the humble room that in its warmth and comfort was a palace
+to him, “Will he take the first opportunity to have me dismissed, or
+will his heart forgive the expression of my momentary doubts, for the
+sake of this poor wee one that he so tenderly fancies?”
+
+The question did not answer itself, and indeed it was one to which time
+alone could reply.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK III.
+
+THE JAPHA MYSTERY.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII.
+
+THE POEM.
+
+    “I’ve shot my arrow o’er the house
+    And hurt my brother.”
+
+    —HAMLET.
+
+
+When Miss Belinda first saw Paula, she did not, like her sister, remark
+upon the elegance of her appearance, the growth of her beauty, or the
+evidences of increased refinement in the expression of her countenance
+and the carriage of her form, but with her usual penetration noted
+simply, the sadness in her eye and the tremulous motion of her lip.
+
+“You had then become fond of your cousin?” queried she with
+characteristic bluntness.
+
+Paula not understanding the motive of this remark, questioned her with a
+look.
+
+“Young faces do not grow pale or bright eyes become troubled without a
+cause. Grief for your cousin might explain it, but if you have suffered
+from no grief—”
+
+“My cousin was very kind to me,” hurriedly interrupted Paula. “Her death
+was very sudden and very heart-rending.”
+
+“So it was;” returned Miss Belinda, “and I expected to see you look worn
+and sad but not restless and feverish. You have a living grief, Paula,
+what is it?”
+
+The young girl started and looked down. For the first time in her life
+she wished to avoid that penetrating glance. “If I have, I cannot talk
+of it,” she murmured. “I have experienced so much this past week; my
+coming away was so unexpected, that I hardly understand my own feelings,
+or realize just what it is that troubles me most. All that I know is,
+that I am very tired and so sad, it seems as if the sun would never
+shine again.”
+
+“There is then something you have not written me?” inquired the
+inexorable Miss Belinda.
+
+“The experiences of this last week could never be written,—or told,”
+returned Paula with a droop of her head. “Upon some things our better
+wisdom places a stone which only the angels can roll away. The future
+lies all open before us; do not let us disturb the past.”
+
+And Miss Belinda was forced to be content lest she should seem to be
+over anxious.
+
+Not so the various neighbors and friends to whom the lengthened sojourn
+of one of their number in an atmosphere of such wealth and splendor,
+possessed something of the charm of a forbidden romance. For months
+Paula was obliged to endure questions, that it required all her
+self-control to answer with calmness and propriety. But at length the
+most insatiable gossip amongst them was satisfied; Paula’s figure was no
+longer a novelty in their streets; curiosity languished and the young
+girl was allowed to rest.
+
+And now could those who loved her, discern that with the lapse of time
+and the daily breathings of her native air, the sad white look had faded
+from her face, leaving it a marvel of freshness and positive, if
+somewhat spiritualized, beauty. The print of deeper thoughts and holier
+yearnings was there, but no sign of blighted hopes or uncomprehended
+passions. A passing wind had blown the froth from off the cup, but had
+not disturbed the sparkle of the wine. She had looked in the face of
+grief, but had not as yet been clasped in her relentless arms. Only two
+things could vitally disturb her; a letter from Cicely, or a sudden
+meeting in the village streets with that elderly lady who haunted the
+Japha mansion. The former because it recalled a life around which her
+fancies still played with dangerous persistency, and the latter because
+it aroused vain and inexplicable conjectures as to that person’s strange
+and lingering look in her direction. Otherwise she was happy; finding in
+this simple village-life a meaning and a purpose which her short but
+passionate outlook on a broader field, had taught her, perhaps, both to
+detect and comprehend. She no longer walked solitary with nature. The
+woods, the mountains with all their varying panoply of exuberant
+verdure, had acquired a human significance. At her side went the
+memories of beloved faces, the thoughts of trusted friends. From the
+clouds looked forth a living eye, and in the sound of rustling leaf and
+singing streamlet, spake the voices of human longing and human joy.
+
+Her aunts had explained their position to Paula and she had responded by
+expressing her determination to be a teacher. But they would not hear of
+that at present, and while she waited their pleasure in the matter, she
+did what she could to assist them in their simple home-life and daily
+duties, lending her beauty to tasks that would have made the eyes of
+some of her quondam admirers open with surprise, if only they could have
+followed the action of her hands, after having once caught a glimpse of
+the face that brightened above them. And so the summer months went by
+and September came.
+
+There was to be an entertainment in the village and Paula was to assist.
+The idea had come from her aunt and was not to be rejected. In one of
+the strange incomprehensible moods which sometimes came upon her at this
+time, she had written a poem, and nothing would do but that she mast
+read it before the assembled company of neighbors and friends, that were
+to be gathered at the Squire’s house on this gala evening. She did not
+wish to do it. The sacred sense of possession passes when we uncover our
+treasure to another’s eyes, giving way to a lower feeling not to be
+courted by one of Paula’s sensitive nature. Besides she would rather
+have poured this first outburst of secret enthusiasm into other ears
+than these; but she had given her word and the ordeal must be submitted
+to. There are many who remember how she looked on that night. She had
+arrayed herself for the occasion, in the prettiest of her dresses, and
+mindful of Ona’s injunction, did not mar the effect of its soft and
+uniform gray with any hint of extraneous color. The result was that they
+saw only her beauty; and what beauty! A very old man, an early settler
+in the village, who had tottered out to enjoy a last glimpse of life
+before turning his aged face to the wall, said it made the thought of
+heaven a little more real. “I can go home and think how the angels
+look,” said he in his simple, half-childish way. And no one contradicted
+him, for there was a still light on her face that was less of earth than
+heaven, though why it should rest there to-night she least of all could
+have told, for her poem had to do with earth and its deepest passions
+and its wildest unrest. It was a clarion blast, not a dreaming rhapsody,
+that lay coiled up in the paper she held in her hand.
+
+My readers must pardon me if I give them Paula’s poem, for without it
+they would not understand its effect and consequent result. It was
+called, “The Defence of the Bride,” and was of the old ballad order. As
+she rose to read, many of the younger ones in the audience began
+cautiously to move to one side, but at the first words, young as well as
+old paused and listened where they stood, for her voice was round and
+full, and the memory of clashing spears and whirling battle-axes that
+informed the war-song which she had heard Bertram play, was with her, to
+give color to her tones and fire to her glance.
+
+THE DEFENCE OF THE BRIDE.
+
+    He was coming from the altar when the tocsin rang alarm,
+    With his fair young wife beside him, lovely in her bridal charm;
+    But he was not one to palter with a duty, or to slight
+    The trumpet-call of honor for his vantage or delight.
+
+    Turning from the bride beside him to his stern and martial train,
+    From their midst he summoned to him the brothers of Germain;
+    At the word they stepped before him, nine strong warriors brave and
+         true,
+    From the youngest to the eldest, Enguerrand to mighty Hugh.
+
+    “Sons of Germain, to your keeping do I yield my bride to-day.
+    Guard her well as you do love me; guard her well and holily.
+    Dearer than mine own soul to me, you will hold her as your life,
+    ’Gainst the guile of seeming friendship and the force of open strife.”
+
+    “We will guard her,” cried they firmly; and with just another glance
+    On the yearning and despairing in his young wife’s countenance,
+    Gallant Beaufort strode before them down the aisle and through the
+         door,
+    And a shadow came and lingered where the sunlight stood before.
+
+    Eight long months the young wife waited, watching from her bridal room
+    For the coming of her husband up the valley forest’s gloom.
+    Eight long months the sons of Germain paced the ramparts and the wall,
+    With their hands upon their halberds ready for the battle-call.
+
+    Then there came a sound of trumpets pealing up the vale below,
+    And a dozen floating banners lit the forest with their glow,
+    And the bride arose like morning when it feels the sunlight nigh,
+    And her smile was like a rainbow flashing from a misty sky.
+
+    But the eldest son of Germain lifting voice from off the wall,
+    Cried aloud, “It is a stranger’s and not Sir Beaufort’s call;
+    Have you ne’er a slighted lover or a kinsman with a heart
+    Base enough to seek his vengeance at the sharp end of the dart?”
+
+    “There is Sassard of the Mountains,” answered she without guile,
+    “While I wedded at the chancel, he stood mocking in the aisle;
+    And my maidens say he swore there that for all my plighted vow,
+    They would see me in his castle yet upon Morency’s brow.”
+
+    “It is Sassard and no other then,” her noble guardian cried;
+    “There is craft in yonder summons,” and he rung his sword beside.
+    “To the walls, ye sons of Germain! and as each would hold his life
+    From the bitter shame of falsehood, let us hold our master’s wife.”
+
+    “Can you hold her, can you shield her from the breezes that await?”
+    Cried the stinging voice of Sassard from his stand beside the gate.
+    “If you have the power to shield her from the sunlight and the wind,
+    You may shield her from stern Sassard when his falchion is untwined.”
+
+    “We can hold her, we can shield her,” leaped like fire from off the
+         wall,
+    And young Enguerrand the valiant, sprang out before them all.
+    “And if breezes bring dishonor, we will guard her from their breath,
+    Though we yield her to the keeping of the sacred arms of Death.”
+
+    And with force that never faltered, did they guard her all that day,
+    Though the strength of triple armies seemed to battle in the fray,
+    The old castle’s rugged ramparts holding firm against the foe,
+    As a goodly dyke resisteth the whelming billow’s flow.
+
+    But next morning as the sunlight rose in splendor over all,
+    Hugh the mighty, sank heart-wounded in his station on the wall,
+    At the noon the valiant Raoul of the merry eye and heart,
+    Gave his beauty and his jestings to the foeman’s jealous dart.
+
+    Gallant Maurice next sank faltering with a death wound ‘neath his hair,
+    But still fighting on till Sassard pressed across him up the stair.
+
+    Generous Clement followed after, crying as his spirit passed,
+    “Sons of Germain to the rescue, and be loyal to the last!”
+
+    Gentle Jaspar, lordly Clarence, Sessamine the doughty brand,
+    Even Henri who had yielded ne’er before to mortal hand;
+    One by one they fall and perish, while the vaunting foemen pour
+    Through the breach and up the courtway to the very turret’s door.
+
+    Enguerrand and Stephen only now were left of all that nine,
+    To protect the single stairway from the traitor’s fell design;
+    But with might as ’twere of thirty, did they wield the axe and brand,
+    Striving in their desperation the fierce onslaught to withstand.
+
+    But what man of power so godlike he can stay the billow’s wrack,
+    Or with single-handed weapon hold an hundred foemen back!
+
+    As the sun turned sadly westward, with a wild despairing cry,
+    Stephen bowed his noble forehead and sank down on earth to die.
+
+    “Ah ha!” then cried cruel Sassard with his foot upon the stair,
+    “Have I come to thee, my boaster?” and he whirled his sword in air.
+    “Thou who pratest of thy power to protect her to the death,
+    What think’st thou now of Sassard and the wind’s aspiring breath?”
+
+    “What I think let this same show you,” answered fiery Enguerrand,
+    And he poised his lofty battle-ax with sure and steady hand;
+    “Now as Heaven loveth justice, may this deathly weapon fall
+    On the murderer of my brothers and th’ undoer of us all.”
+
+    With one mighty whirl he sent it; flashing from his hand it came,
+    Like the lightning from the heavens in a whirl of awful flame,
+    And betwixt the brows of Sassard and his two false eyeballs passed,
+    And the murderer sank before it, like a tree before the blast.
+
+    “Now ye minions of a traitor if you look for vengeance, come!”
+    And his voice was like a trumpet when it clangs a victor home.
+    But a cry from far below him rose like thunder upward, “Nay!
+    Let them turn and meet the _husband_ if they hunger for the fray.”
+
+    O the yell that sprang to heaven as that voice swept up the stair,
+    And the slaughter dire that followed in another moment there!
+    From the least unto the greatest, from the henchman to the lord,
+    Not a man on all that stairway lived to sheath again his sword.
+
+    At the top that flame-bound forehead, at the base that blade of fire—
+    ’Twas the meeting of two tempests in their potency and ire.
+    Ere the moon could falter inward with its pity and its woe,
+    Beaufort saw the path before him unencumbered of the foe.
+
+    Saw his pathway unencumbered and strode up and o’er the floor,
+    Even to the very threshold of his lovely lady’s door,
+    And already in his fancy did he see the golden beam
+    Of her locks upon his shoulder and her sweet eyes’ happy gleam:
+
+
+    When behold a form upstarting from the shadows at his side.
+    That with naked sword uplifted barred the passage to his bride;
+    It was Enguerrand the dauntless, but with staring eyes and hair
+    Blowing wild about a forehead pale as snow in moonlit glare.
+
+    “Ah my master, we have held her, we have guarded her,” he said,
+    “Not a shadow of dishonor has so much as touched her head.
+    Twenty wretches lie below there with the brothers of Germain,
+    Twenty foemen of her honor that I, Enguerrand, have slain.
+
+    “But one other foe remaineth, one remaineth yet,” he cried,
+    “Which it fits this hand to punish ere you cross unto your bride.
+    It is I, Enguerrand!” shrieked he; “and as I have slain the rest,
+    So I smite this foeman also!”—and his sword plunged through his
+         breast.
+
+    O the horror of that moment! “Art thou mad my Enguerrand?”
+    Cried his master, striving wildly to withdraw the fatal brand.
+    But the stern youth smiling sadly, started back from his embrace,
+    While a flash like summer lightning, flickered direful on his face.
+
+    “Yes, a traitor worse than Sassard;” and he pointed down the stair,
+    “For my heart has dared to love her whom my hand defended there.
+    While the others fought for honor, I by passion was made strong,
+    Set your heel upon my bosom for my soul has done you wrong.
+
+    “But,” and here he swayed and faltered till his knee sank on the floor,
+    Yet in falling turned his forehead ever toward that silent door;
+    “But your warrior hand my master, may take mine without a stain,
+    For my hand has e’er been loyal, and your enemy is slain.”
+
+A short silence followed the last word, then a burst of applause
+testified to the appreciation of her audience, and Paula crept away to
+hide her blushing cheeks in the comparative darkness of a little
+vine-covered balcony that jutted out from the ante-room. What were her
+thoughts as she leaned there! In the subsidence of any great
+emotion—and Paula had felt every word she uttered—there is more or
+less of shock and tumult. She did not think, she only felt. Suddenly a
+hand was laid on her arm and a low voice whispered in her ear,
+
+“Did you write that poem yourself?”
+
+Turning, she encountered the shadowy form of a woman leaning close at
+her side and appearing in the dim light that shone on her from the lamps
+beyond, an eager image of expectancy.
+
+“Yes,” returned Paula, “why do you ask?”
+
+The woman, whoever she was, did not answer. “And you believe in such
+devotion as that!” she murmured. “You can understand a man, aye, or a
+woman either, risking happiness and fame, life and death, for the sake
+of a trust! Such things are not folly to you! You could see a heart
+spill itself drop by drop through a longer vigil than the eight months
+watching on the ramparts, and not sneer at a fidelity that could not
+falter because it had given its word? Speak; you write of faithfulness
+with a pen of fire, is your heart faithful too?”
+
+There was something in these words, spoken as they were in a tone of
+suppressed passion, that startled and aroused Paula. Leaning forward,
+she endeavored to see the face of the woman who thus forcibly addressed
+her, but the light was too dim. The outline of a brow covered by some
+close headgear was all she could detect.
+
+“You speak earnestly,” said Paula, “but that is what I like. Fidelity to
+a cause, or fidelity to a trust, demands the sympathy and admiration of
+all honest and generous hearts. If I am ever called upon to maintain
+either, I hope that my enthusiasm will not have all been expended in
+words.”
+
+“You please me,” murmured the woman, “you please me; will you come and
+see me and let me tell you a story to mate the poem you have given us
+to-night?”
+
+The trembling eagerness of her tone it would be impossible to describe.
+Paula was thrilled by it. “If you will tell me who you are,” said Paula,
+“I certainly will try and come. I should be glad to hear anything you
+have to relate to me.”
+
+“I thought every one knew who I was,” returned the woman; and drawing
+Paula back into the ante-room, she turned her face upon her. “Any one
+will tell you where Margery Hamlin lives,” said she. “Do not disappoint
+me, and do not keep me waiting long.” And with a nod and a deep strange
+smile that made her aged face almost youthful, she entered the crowd and
+disappeared from Paula’s sight.
+
+It was the woman whose nightly visits to the deserted home of the Japhas
+had once been the talk and was still the unsolved mystery of the town.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV.
+
+THE JAPHA MANSION.
+
+    “Ah what a warning for a thoughtless man,
+    Could field or grove, could any spot on earth
+    Show to his eye an image of the pangs
+    Which it has witnessed; render back an echo
+    Of the sad steps by which it hath been trod.
+
+    —WORDSWORTH.
+
+
+Unexplained actions if long continued, lose after awhile their interest
+if not their mystery. The aged lady who now for many years had been seen
+at every night-fall to leave her home, traverse the village streets,
+enter the Japha mansion, remain there an hour and then re-issue with
+tremulous steps and bowed head, had become so common a sight to the
+village eye, that even the children forgot to ask what her errand was,
+or why she held her head so hopefully when she entered, or looked so
+despondent when she came forth.
+
+But to Paula, for reasons already mentioned, this secret and persistent
+vigil in a forsaken and mysterious dwelling, was fraught with a
+significance which had never lost its power either to excite her
+curiosity or to arouse her imagination. Many a time had she gone home
+from some late encounter with the aged lady, to brood by the hour upon
+the expression of that restless eye which in its wanderings never failed
+to turn upon her own youthful face and linger there in the manner I have
+already noted. She thought of it by night, she thought of it by day. She
+felt herself drawn to that woman’s suffering heart as by invisible
+cords. To understand the feelings of this desolate being, she had even
+studied the face of that old house, until she knew it under its every
+aspect. Often in shutting her eyes at night, she would perceive as in a
+mirror a vision of its long gray front, barred door and sealed windows
+shining in the moon, save where the deep impenetrable shadows of its two
+guardian poplars lay black and dismal upon its ghostly surface. Again
+she would behold it as it reared itself dark and dripping in a blinding
+storm, its walls plastered with leaves from the immovable poplars, and
+its neglected garden lying sodden and forlorn under the flail of the
+ceaseless storm. Then its early morning face would strike her fancy. The
+slow looming of its chimney-tops against a brightening sky; the gradual
+coming out of its forsaken windows and solemn looking doors from the
+mystery of darkness into the no less mystery of day; the hint of
+roselight on its barren boards; the gleam of sunshine on its untrodden
+threshold; a sunshine as pure and sweet as if a bride stood there in her
+beauty, waiting for admission into the deserted halls beyond. All and
+everything that could tend to invest the house and its constant visitor
+with an atmosphere of awe and interest, had occurred to this young girl
+in her daily reveries and nightly dreams. It was therefore with a thrill
+deep as her expectation and vivid as her sympathy, that she recognized
+in her eager interlocutor and proposed confident, the woman about whose
+life and actions rested for her such a veil of impenetrable mystery. The
+thought moved her, excited her, and made the rest of the evening pass
+like a dream. She was anxious for the next day to come, that she might
+seek this Mrs. Hamlin in her home, and hear from her lips the tale of
+devotion that should mate her own simple but enthusiastic poem.
+
+When the next day did come, it rained, rained bitterly, persistent and
+with a steady drive from the north east, that made her going out
+impossible. The day following she was indisposed, and upon the
+succeeding afternoon, she was engaged in duties that precluded all
+thought of visiting. The next day was Sunday, and Monday had its own
+demands which she could not slight. It was therefore well nigh a week
+from the night of the entertainment, before the opportunity offered for
+which she was so anxious. Her curiosity and expectation had thus time to
+grow, and it was with a determination to allow nothing to stand in her
+way, that she set out from home in a flood of mild September sunshine,
+to visit Mrs. Hamlin. But alas, for resolutions made in a country
+village prior to the opening of a church fair! She had scarcely gone a
+dozen steps before she was accosted by one of the managers, a woman who
+neither observes your haste, nor pays any attention to your possible
+preoccupation. Do what she could, she found it impossible to escape from
+this persistent individual until she had satisfied her upon matters
+which it took a full half hour to discuss, and when at last she
+succeeded in doing so, it was only to fall into the hands of an aged
+deacon of the church, whose protecting friendship it were a sin to
+wound, while his garrulous tongue made it no ordinary trial of patience
+to stand and listen. In short the best part of the afternoon was gone
+before she found herself at the door of Mrs. Hamlin’s house. But she was
+not to be deterred by further hesitation from the pursuit of her object.
+Rapping smartly on the door, she listened. No stir came from within.
+Again she rapped and again she listened. No response came to assure her
+that her summons had been heard. Surprised at this, for she had been
+told Mrs. Hamlin was always at home during the afternoon, she glanced up
+at the church clock in plain view from the doorstep, and blushed to
+observe that it was six o’clock, the hour at which this mysterious woman
+always left her house, to accomplish her vigil at the Japha mansion.
+
+“What have I done?” thought Paula, and felt a strange thrill as she
+realized that even at that moment, the woman with the eager but restless
+eyes, was shut within the precincts of that deserted dwelling, engaged
+in prayer, perhaps wet with tears, who knows? The secret of what she did
+in that long and quiet twilight hour had never been revealed. Leaving
+the little brown house behind, Paula found herself insensibly taking the
+road to the Japha mansion. If she could not enter it and share the watch
+of the devoted woman who had promised her her confidence, she could at
+least observe if the windows were open or the blinds raised. To be sure
+she ought to be at home, but Miss Belinda was indulgent and did not
+question her comings and goings too closely. An irresistible force drew
+her down the street, and she did not hesitate to follow the lead of her
+impulse. No one accosted her now, it was the tea hour in most of these
+houses and the streets were comparatively deserted. The only house whose
+chimneys lacked the rising smoke, was the one towards which her
+footsteps were tending. She could descry it from afar. Its gaunt walls
+from which the paint had long ago faded, stared uncompromisingly upon
+her in the autumn sunshine. There was no welcome in its close shutters
+with their broken slats from which hung tangled strips of old rags—the
+remnants of some boy’s kite. The stiff and solemn poplars rose grim and
+forbidding at the gate once swung wide to the fashion and gallantry of
+proud ladies and stalwart gentlemen, but now pushed aside solely by the
+hand of a tremulous old woman, or the irreverent palm of some daring
+school-boy. From the tangled garden looked forth neither flower nor
+blossoming shrub. Beauty and grace could not thrive in this wilderness
+of decay. A dandelion would have felt itself out of place beneath the
+eye of that ghostly door, with the sinister plank nailed across it, like
+the separating line between light and darkness, right and wrong, life
+and death. What loneliness! what a monument of buried passions outliving
+death itself!
+
+Paula paused as she reached the gate; but remembering that Mrs. Hamlin
+was accustomed to enter the house by a side door, hurried around the
+corner and carefully surveyed the windows from that quarter. One of the
+shutters was open, allowing the flame of the setting sun to gild the
+panes like gold. She did not know then nor has she been able to explain
+since, what it was that came over her at the sight, but almost before
+she realized it, she had returned to the gate, opened it, threaded the
+overgrown garden, reached the door which she had so frequently beheld
+the aged woman enter and knocked.
+
+Instantly she was seized with a consciousness of what she had done, and
+frightened at her temerity, meditated an immediate escape. Drawing the
+folds of her mantle about her form and face, she prepared to fly, when
+she remembered the look of entreaty with which this woman had said on
+that night of their conversation, “Do not disappoint me! Do not keep me
+long in suspense!” and moved by a fresh impulse, turned and inflicted
+another resounding knock on the door.
+
+The result was unlooked-for and surprising. To the sound from within of
+a quick passionate cry, there came a hurried movement, followed by a
+deep silence, then another hasty stir succeeded by a longer silence,
+then a rush which seemed to bring all things with it, and the door
+opened and Mrs. Hamlin appeared before her with a countenance so pallid
+with expectancy, that Paula instinctively felt that in some unconscious
+way, she had loosened the bonds of an uncontrollable emotion, and was
+drawing back, when the woman with a quick look in her shrouded face,
+exultantly caught her hand in hers, and drawing her over the threshold,
+gasped out in a delirium of incomprehensible joy:
+
+“I knew you would come! I knew that God would not let you forget!
+Fifteen years have I waited, Jacqueline! fifteen long, tedious,
+suffering years! But they all seem like nothing now! You have come, you
+have come, and all that I ask, is that God will not let me die till I
+realize my joy!”
+
+The emotion with which she uttered these strange words was so
+overpowering, and her body seemed so weak to stand the strain, that
+Paula instinctively put forth her hand to sustain her. The action
+loosened her cloak. Instantly the eyes that had been fixed upon her with
+such delirious rapture grew blank with dismay, a frightful shudder ran
+through the woman’s aged frame; she tore at the cloak that still
+enveloped the young girl’s shoulders, and pulling it off, took one view
+of the fresh and beautiful countenance before her, and without uttering
+a word, fell back in a deep and deadly swoon upon the floor.
+
+“O what have I done?” cried Paula, flinging herself down beside that
+pale and rigid figure; but instantly remembering herself she leaped to
+her feet and looked about for some means to resuscitate the sufferer.
+There was a goblet of water on a table near by. Seizing it, she bathed
+the face and hands of the woman before her, moaning aloud in her grief
+and dismay, “Have I killed her! O what is this mystery that brings such
+a doom of anguish to this poor heart?”
+
+But from those pallid lips came no response, and feeling greatly
+alarmed, Paula was about to rush from the house for assistance, when she
+felt a tremulous pull upon her skirt, and turning, saw that the glassy
+eyes had opened at last and were now gazing upon her with mute but
+eloquent appeal.
+
+She instantly returned. “O I am so sorry,” she murmured, sinking again
+upon her knees beside the suffering woman. “I did not know, could not
+realize that my presence here would affect you so deeply. Forgive me and
+tell me what I can do to make you forget my presumption.”
+
+The woman shook her head, her lips moved and she struggled vainly to
+rise. Paula immediately lent her the aid of her strong young hand and in
+a few minutes, Mrs. Hamlin was on her feet. “O God!” were her first
+words as she sank into the chair which Paula hastily drew forward, “that
+I should taste the joy and she be still unsaved!”
+
+Seeing her so absorbed, Paula ventured to glance around her. She found
+herself in a large square room sparsely but comfortably furnished in a
+style that bespake it as the former sitting-room of the dead and buried
+Japhas. From the walls above hung a few ancient pictures. A large
+hair-cloth sofa of a heavy antique shape, confronted the eye from one
+side of the room, an equally ancient book-case from the other. The
+carpet was faded and so were the curtains, but they had once been of an
+attractive hue and pattern. Conspicuous in the midst stood a large table
+with a well-trimmed lamp upon it, and close against it an easy chair
+with an upright back. This last as well as everything else in the room,
+was in a condition of neatness that would have surprised Paula if she
+had not been acquainted with the love and devotion of this woman, who in
+her daily visits to this house, probably took every pains to keep things
+freshened and in order.
+
+Satisfied with her survey, she again directed her attention to Mrs.
+Hamlin, and started to find that person’s eyes fixed upon her own with
+an expression of deep, demanding interest.
+
+“You are looking at the shadows of things that were,” exclaimed the old
+lady in thrilling tones. “It is a fearful thought to be shut up with the
+ghost of a vanished past, is it not? That chair by your side has not
+been sat in since Colonel Japha rose from it twelve years ago to totter
+to the bed where he breathed his last. It is waiting, everything is
+waiting. I thought the end had come to-night, that the vigil was over,
+the watch finished, but God in his wisdom says, ‘No,’ and I must wait a
+little longer. Alas in a little while longer the end will be here
+indeed!”
+
+The despondency with which she uttered these last words showed where her
+thoughts were tending, and to comfort her, Paula drew up a chair and sat
+down by her side. “You were going to tell me the story of a great love
+and a great devotion. Cannot you do so now?”
+
+The woman started, glanced hastily around, and let her eyes travel to
+Paula’s face where they rested with something of their old look of
+secret longing and doubt.
+
+
+“You are the one who wrote the poem,” she murmured; “I remember.” Then
+with a sudden feverish impulse, leaned forward, and stroking back the
+waving locks from Paula’s brow, exclaimed hurriedly, “You look like her,
+you have the same dark hair and wonderful eyes, more beautiful perhaps,
+but like her, O so like her! That is why I made such a mistake.” She
+shuddered, with a quick low sob, but instantly subdued her emotion and
+taking Paula’s hand in hers continued, “You are young, my daughter;
+youth does not enjoy carrying burdens; can I, a stranger ask you to
+assist me with mine?”
+
+“You may,” returned Paula. “If it will give you any relief I will help
+you bear it willingly.”
+
+“You will! Has heaven then sent me the aid my failing spirits demand?
+Can I count on you, child? But I will ask for no promise till you have
+heard my story. To no one have I ever imparted the secret of my life,
+but from the first moment I saw your fair young face, I felt that
+through you would come my help, if help ever came to make my final
+moments easier and my last days less bitter.” And rising up, she led
+Paula to a door which she solemnly opened. “I am glad that you are
+here,” said she. “I could never have asked you to come, but since you
+have braved the dead and crossed this threshold, you must see and know
+the whole. You will understand my story better.”
+
+Taking her through a dark passage, she threw wide another door, and the
+parlors of the vanished Japhas opened before them. It was a ghostly
+vision. A weird twilight scene of clustered shadows brooding above
+articles of musty grandeur. In spite of the self-command learned by her
+late experiences, Paula recoiled, saying,
+
+“It is too sad, too lonesome!” But the woman without heeding her,
+hurried her on over the worm-eaten carpet and between the time-worn
+chairs and heavy-browed cabinets, to the hall beyond.
+
+“I have not been here, myself, for a year,” said Mrs. Hamlin, glancing
+fearfully up and down the dusky corridor. “It is not often I can brave
+the memories of this spot.” And she pointed with one hand towards the
+darkened door at its end, whose spacious if not stately panels gave no
+hint to the eye of the dread bar that crossed it like a line of doom
+upon the outside, and then turning, let her eye fall with still heavier
+significance upon the broad and imposing staircase that rose from the
+centre of the hall to the duskier and more dismal regions above.
+
+“A brave, old fashioned flight of steps is it not! But the scene of a
+curse, my child.” And unheeding Paula’s shudder, she drew her up the
+stairs.
+
+“See,” continued her panting guide as they reached a square platform
+near the top, from which some half dozen or more steps branched up on
+either side. “They do not build like this nowadays. But Colonel Japha
+believed in nothing new, and thought more of his grand old hall and
+staircase, than he did of all the rest of his house. He little dreamed
+of what a scene it would be the witness. But come, it is getting late
+and you must see her room.”
+
+It was near the top of the staircase and was fully as musty, faded and
+dismal as the rest. Yet there was an air of expectancy about it, too,
+that touched Paula deeply. From between the dingy hangings of the bed,
+looked forth a pair of downy pillows, edged with yellowed lace, and
+beneath them a neatly spread counterpane carefully turned back over
+comfortable-looking blankets, as one sees in a bed that only awaits its
+occupant; while on the ancient hearth, a pile of logs stood heaped and
+ready for the kindling match.
+
+“It is all waiting you see,” said the old lady in a trembling voice,
+“like everything else, just waiting.”
+
+There was an embroidery frame in one corner of the room, from which
+looked a piece of faded and half completed work. The needle was hanging
+from it by a thread, and a skein of green worsted hung over the top,
+Paula glanced at it inquiringly.
+
+“It is just as she left it! He never entered the room after she went and
+I would never let it be touched. It is just the same with the piano
+below. The last piece she played is still standing open on the rack. I
+loved her so, and I thought then that a few months would bring her back!
+See, here is her bible. She never used to read it, but she prized it
+because it was her mother’s. I have placed it on the pillow where she
+will see it when she comes to lay her poor tired head down to rest.” And
+with a reverent hand the aged matron drew the curtains back from the
+open bed, and disclosed the little bible lying thick with dust in the
+centre of the nearest pillow.
+
+“O who was this you loved so well? And why did she leave you?” cried
+Paula with the tears in her eyes, at sight of this humble token.
+
+The aged lady seized her hand and hurried her back into the room below.
+“I will tell you where I have waited and watched so long. Only be
+patient till I light the lamp. It is getting late and any chance
+wanderer going by and seeing all dark, might think I had forgotten my
+promise and was not here.”
+
+
+
+
+XXV.
+
+JACQUELINE.
+
+    “The cold in clime are cold in blood,
+    And love as scarce deserves the name,
+    But mine is like the lava flood
+    That burns in Etna’s breast of flame.”
+
+    —BYRON.
+
+
+
+“There are some men that have the appearance of being devoid of family
+affection, who in reality cherish it in the deepest and most passionate
+degree. Such a man was Colonel Japha. You have doubtless heard from your
+cradle what the neighbors thought of this stately, old fashioned
+gentleman. He was too handsome in his youth, too proudly reticent in his
+manhood, too self-contained and unrelenting in his age, not to be the
+talk of any town that numbered him among its inhabitants. But only from
+myself, a relative of the family and his housekeeper for years, can you
+learn with what undeviating faith and love he clung to the few upon whom
+he allowed his heart to fasten in affection. When he married Miss Carey,
+the world said, ‘He has chosen a beauty, because fine manners and a
+pretty face look well behind the Japha coffee-urn!’ But we, that is,
+this same young wife and myself, knew that in marrying her he had taken
+unto himself his other half, the one sweet woman for whom his proud
+heart could beat and before whom his stately head could bow. When she
+died, the world exclaimed, ‘He will soon fill her place!’ But I who
+watched the last look that passed between them in the valley of the
+shadow of that death, knew that the years would come and the years would
+go without seeing Colonel Japha marry again.
+
+“The little babe whom she left to his care, took all the love which he
+had left. From the moment it began to speak, he centered in its tiny
+life all the hope and all the pride of his solitary heart. And the Japha
+pride was nearly as great as the Japha heart. She was a pretty child;
+not a beauty like her mother or like you, my dear, who however so nearly
+resemble her. But for all that, pretty enough to satisfy the eyes of her
+secretly doting father, and her openly doting nurse and cousin. I say
+secretly doting father. I do not mean by that that he regarded her with
+an affection which he never displayed, but that it was his way to lavish
+his caresses at home and in the privacy of her little nursery. He never
+made a parade of anything but his pride. If he loved her, it was enough
+for her to know it. In the street and the houses of their friends, he
+was the strict, somewhat severe father, to whom her childish eyes lifted
+at first with awe, but afterwards with a quiet defiance, that when I
+first saw it, made my heart stand still with unreasoning alarm.
+
+“She was so reserved a child and yet so deeply passionate. From the
+beginning I felt that I did not understand her. I loved her; I have
+never loved any mortal as I did her—and do; but I could not follow her
+impulses or judge of her feelings by her looks.
+
+“When she grew older it was still worse. She never contradicted her
+father, or appeared in any open way to disobey his commands, or thwart
+him in his plans. Yet she always did what she pleased, and that so
+quietly, he frequently did not observe that matters had taken any other
+direction, than that which he had himself ordained. ‘It is her mother’s
+tact,’ he used to say. Alas it was something more than that; it was her
+father’s will united to the unscrupulousness of some forgotten ancestor.
+
+“But with the glamour of her eighteen years upon me, I did not recognize
+this then, any more than he. I saw her through the magic glasses of my
+own absorbing love, and tremble as I frequently would in the still scorn
+of her unfathomable passion, I never dreamed she could do anything that
+would seriously offend her father’s affection or mortify his pride. The
+truth is, that Jacqueline did not love us. Say what you will of the
+claims of kindred, and the right of every father to his childrens’
+regard, Jacqueline Japha accepted the devotion that was lavished upon
+her, but she gave none in return. She could not, perhaps. Her father was
+too cold in public and too warm in his home-bursts of affection. I was
+plain and a widow; no mate for her in age, condition or estate. She
+could neither look up to me nor lean upon me. I had been her nurse in
+childhood and though a relative, was still a dependent; what was there
+in all that to love! If her mother had lived—But we will not dwell on
+possibilities. Jacqueline had no mother and no friend that was dear
+enough to her, to teach her unwilling soul the great lesson of
+self-control and sacrifice.
+
+
+“You will say that is strange. That situated as she was, she ought to
+have found friends both dear and congenial; but that would be to declare
+that Jacqueline was like others of her age and class, whereas she was
+single and alone; a dark-browed girl, who allured the gaze of both men
+and women, but who cared but little for any one till—But wait, child. I
+shall have to speak of matters that will cause your cheeks to blush. Lay
+your head down on my knee, for I cannot bear the sight of blushes upon a
+cheek more innocent than hers.”
+
+With a gentle movement she urged Paula to sit upon a little stool at her
+feet, pressed the young girl’s head down upon her lap, and burying the
+lovely brow beneath her aged hands, went hurriedly on.
+
+“You are young, dear, and may not know what it is to love a man.
+Jacqueline was young also, but from the moment she returned home to us
+from a visit she had been making in Boston, I perceived that something
+had entered her life that was destined to make a great change in her;
+and when a few weeks later, young Robert Holt from Boston, came to pay
+his respects to her in her father’s house, I knew, or thought I did,
+what that something was. We were sitting in this room I remember, when
+the servant-girl came in, and announced that Mr. Holt was in the parlor.
+Jacqueline was lying on the sofa, and her father was in his usual chair
+by the table. At the name, Holt, the girl rose as if it had suddenly
+thundered, or the lightning had flashed. I see her now. She was dressed
+in white—though it was early fall she still clung to her summer
+dresses—her dark hair was piled high, and caught here and there with
+old-fashioned gold pins, a splendid red rose burned on her bosom, and
+another flashed crimson as blood from her folded hands.
+
+“‘Holt?’ repeated the Colonel without turning his head, ‘I know no such
+man.’
+
+“‘He said he wished to see Miss Jacqueline,’ simpered the servant.
+
+“‘Oh,’ returned the Colonel indifferently. He never showed surprise
+before the servants—and went on with his book, still without turning
+his head.
+
+“I thought if he had turned it, he would scarcely sit there reading so
+quietly; for Jacqueline who had not stirred from her alert and upright
+position, was looking at him in a way no father, least of all a father
+who loved his child as he did her, could have beheld without agitation.
+It was the glance of a tigress waiting for the sight of an inconsiderate
+move, in order to spring. It was wild unconstrainable joy, eying a
+possible check and madly defying it. I shuddered as I looked at her eye,
+and sickened as I perceived a huge drop of blood ooze from her white
+fingers, where they unconsciously clutched a thorn, and drop dark and
+disfiguring upon her virgin garments. At the indifferent exclamation of
+her father, her features relaxed, and she turned haughtily towards the
+girl, with a veiling of her secret delight that already bespoke the
+woman of the world.
+
+“‘Tell Mr. Holt that I will see him presently,’ said she, and was about
+to follow the girl from the room when I caught her by the sleeve.
+
+“‘You will have to change your dress,’ said I, and I pointed to the
+ominous blot disfiguring its otherwise spotless white.
+
+“She started and gave me a quick glance.
+
+“‘I have a skin like a spider’s web,” cried she. ‘I should never meddle
+with roses.’ But I noticed she did not toss the blossom away.
+
+“‘Who is this Mr. Holt?’ now asked the Colonel suddenly turning, the
+servant having left the room.
+
+“‘He is a gentleman I met in Boston,’ came from his daughter’s lips, in
+her usual light and easy tones. ‘He is probably passing through our town
+on his way to Providence, where I was told he did business. His call is
+no more than a formality, I presume.’ And with an indifferent little
+smile and nod, she vanished from the room, that a moment before had been
+filled with the threat of her silent passion. The Colonel gave a short
+sigh but returned undisturbed to his book.
+
+“In the course of a few minutes Jacqueline came back. She had changed
+her dress for one as summerlike as the other, but still finer and more
+elaborate. She looked elegant, imperious, but the joy had died out from
+her eyes, and in its place was another expression incomprehensible to
+me, but fully as alarming as any that had gone before. ‘Mr. Holt finds
+himself obliged to remain in town over night, and would like to pay his
+respects to you,’ said she to her father.
+
+“The Colonel immediately rose, looking very grand as he turned and
+surveyed his daughter with his clear penetrating eye.’
+
+“‘You have a lover, have you not?’ he asked, laying his hand on her bare
+and beautifully polished shoulder.
+
+“An odd little smile crossed her lip. She looked at her hands on which
+never a ring shone, and coquettishly tossed her head. ‘Let the gentleman
+speak for himself,’ said she, ‘I give no man his title until he has
+earned it.’
+
+“Her father laughed. A lover was not such a dreadful thing in his eyes
+provided he were worthy. And Jacqueline would not choose unworthily of
+course—a Japha and his daughter! ‘Well then,’ said he, ‘let us see if
+he can make good his title; Holt is not a bad name and Boston is not a
+poor place to hail from.’ And without more ado, they hurried from the
+room. But the light had all died out from her face! What did it mean?
+
+“At tea time I met the gentleman. He had evidently made his title good.
+I was not only favorably impressed with him but actually struck. Of all
+the high-bred, clear-eyed, polished and kindly gentlemen who had sat
+about the board since I first came into the family in Mrs. Japha’s
+lifetime, here was surely the finest, the handsomest and the best; and
+surprised in more ways than one, I was giving full play to my relief and
+exhilaration, when I caught sight of Jacqueline’s eye, and felt again
+the cold shudders of secret doubt and apprehension. Smile upon him as
+she would, coquet with him as she did, the flame and the glory that drew
+her like an inspiration to her feet when his name was announced, had
+fled, and left not a shadow behind. Had he failed in his expressions of
+devotion? Was he hard or cold or severe, under all that pleasant and
+charming manner? Had the hot soul of our motherless child rushed upon
+ice, and in the shock of the dreadful chill, fallen inert? No, his looks
+bespake no coldness; they dwelt upon Jacqueline’s lovely but inscrutable
+face, with honest fervor and boundless regard. He evidently loved her
+most passionately, but she—if it had not been for that first moment of
+unconscious betrayal, I should have decided that she cared for him no
+more than she did for the few others who had adored her, in the short
+space of her incomprehensible life.
+
+“The mystery was not cleared up when she came to me that night with a
+short, ‘How do you like my lover, Margery?’ I was forty years her
+senior, but she always called me Margery.
+
+“‘I think he is the finest, most agreeable man I ever met,’ said I. ‘Is
+he your lover, Jacqueline? Are you going to marry him?’
+
+“She turned about from the vase which she was denuding of its flowers,
+and gave me one of her sphinx-like looks. ‘You must ask papa,’ said she.
+‘He holds the destinies of the Japhas in his hand, does he not?’
+
+“‘Does he?’ I involuntarily whispered to myself; following the steady
+poise of her head and the assured movements of her graceful form, with a
+glance of doubt, but loving her all the same, O loving her all and ever
+the same!
+
+“‘Your father is not the man to cross you when the object of your
+affections is as worthy as this gentleman. He loved your mother too
+fondly.’
+
+“‘He did?’ She had turned quick as a flash and was looking me straight
+in the eyes.
+
+“‘I never saw such union!’ I exclaimed, vaguely remembering that her
+mother’s name had always seemed to have power to move her. ‘There was no
+parade of it before the world; but here at their own fireside, it was
+heart to heart and soul to soul. It was not love it was assimilation.’
+
+“The young girl rose upon me like a flame; her very eyes seemed to dart
+fire; her lips looked like living coals; she was almost appalling in her
+terrible beauty and superhuman passion. ‘Not love!’ she exclaimed, her
+every word falling like a burning spark, ‘not love but assimilation! Yet
+do you suppose if I told my father that my soul had found its mate; my
+heart its other half; that this, _this_ nature,’ here she struck her
+breast as she would a stone, ‘had at last found its master; that the
+wayward spirit of which you have sometimes been afraid, was become a
+part of another’s life, another’s soul, another’s hope, do you suppose
+he would listen? Hush!’ she cried, seeing me about to speak. ‘You talk
+of love, what do you know of it, what does he know of it, who saw his
+young wife die, yet himself consented to live? Is love a sitting by the
+fire with hand locked in hand while the winter winds rage and the
+droning kettle sings? Love is a going through the fire, a braving of the
+winter winds, a scattering of the soul in sparks that the night and the
+tempest lick up without putting out the germ of the eternal flame.
+Love!’ she half laughed; ‘O, it takes a soul that has never squandered
+its treasure upon every passing beggar, to know how to love! Do you see
+that star?’ It was night as I have said and we were standing near an
+open window. ‘It has lost its moorings and is falling; when it descries
+the ocean it will plunge into it; so with some natures, they soar high
+and keep their orbit well, till an invisible hand turns them from their
+course and they fall, to be swallowed up, aye swallowed up, lost and
+buried in the great sea that has awaited them so long.’
+
+
+“‘And you love—like this—’ I murmured, quailing before the power of
+her passion.
+
+“‘Would it not be strange if I did not,’ she asked in an altered voice.
+‘You say he is everything noble, handsome and attractive.’
+
+“Yes, yes,’ I murmured, ‘but—’
+
+“She did not wait to hear what lay behind that but. Picking up her
+flowers, she hastily crossed the room. ‘Did my young mother shriek from
+joy, when my father’s horses ran away with them along that deadly
+precipice at the side of the Southmore road? To lie for a few maddening
+moments on the breast of the man you love, earth reeling beneath you,
+heaven swimming above you, and then with a cry of bliss to fall heart to
+heart, down the hideous gap of some awful gulf, and be dashed into
+eternity with the cry still on your lips, that is what I call love and
+that is what I—’
+
+“She paused, turned upon me the whole splendor of her face, seemed to
+realize to what an extent her impetuosity had lifted the veil with which
+she usually shrouded her bitterly suppressed nature, and calming herself
+with a sudden quick movement, gave me a short mocking courtesy and left
+the room.
+
+“Do you wonder that for half the night I sat up brooding and alive to
+the faintest sounds!
+
+“Next day Mr. Holt called again, and a couple of weeks after—long
+enough to enable Colonel Japha to make whatever inquiries he chose as to
+his claims as a gentleman of means and position—sent a formal entreaty
+for Jacqueline’s hand. I had never seen Colonel Japha more moved. His
+admiration for the young man was hearty and sincere. From a worldly
+point of view, as well as from all higher standpoints, the match was one
+of which he could be proud; and yet to speak the word that would
+separate from him the only creature that he loved, was hard as the
+cutting off an arm or the plucking out of an eye. ‘Do you think she
+loves him?’ asked he of me with a rare condescension of which he was not
+often guilty. ‘You are a woman and ought to understand her better than
+I. Do you think she loves him?’
+
+“After the words I had heard her speak, what could I reply but, ‘Yes,
+sir; she is of a reserved nature and controls her feelings in his
+presence, but she loves him for all that, with the intensest fervor and
+passion.’
+
+“He repeated again, ‘You are a woman and you ought to know.’ And then
+called his daughter to him.
+
+“I cannot tell what passed between them, but the upshot of it was, that
+the Colonel despatched an answer to the effect that the father’s consent
+would not be lacking, provided the daughter’s could be obtained. I
+learned this from Jacqueline herself who brought me the letter to post.
+
+“‘You see then, that your father understands,’ said I.
+
+“Her rich red lip curled mockingly, but she did not reply.
+
+“Naturally Mr. Holt answered to this communication in person. Jacqueline
+received him with a fitful coquetry that evidently puzzled him, for all
+the distinguishing charm which it added to a beauty apt to be too
+reserved and statue-like. She however took his ring which blazed on her
+finger like a drop of ice on congealed snow. ‘I am engaged,’ she
+murmured as she passed by my door, ‘and to a Holt!’ The words rang long
+in my ears; why?
+
+“She desired no congratulations; she permitted nothing to be said about
+her engagement, among the neighbors. She had even taken off her ring
+which I found lying loose in one of her bureau drawers. And no one dared
+to remonstrate, not even her father, punctillious as he was in all
+matters of social etiquette. The fact is, Jacqueline was not the same
+girl she had been before she gave her promise to Mr. Holt. From the
+moment he bade her good-bye, with the remark that he was going away to
+get a golden cage for his bride, she began to reveal a change. The cold
+reserve gave way to feverish expectancy. She trod these rooms as if
+there were burning steels in the floors, she looked from the windows as
+if they were prison bars; night and day she gazed from them yet she
+never went out. The letters she received from him were barely read and
+tossed aside; it was his coming for which she hungered. Her father
+noticed her restless and eager gaze, and frequently sighed. I felt her
+strange removed manner and secretly wept. ‘If he does not amply return
+this passion,’ thought I, ‘my darling will find her life a hell!’
+
+“But he did return it; of that I felt sure. It was my only comfort.
+
+“Suddenly one day the restlessness vanished. Her beauty burst like a
+flame from smoke; she trod like a spirit that hears invisible airs. I
+watched her with amazement till she said ‘Mr. Holt comes to-night,’ then
+I thought all was explained and went smiling about my work. She came
+down in the afternoon clad as I had never seen her before. She wore one
+of her Boston dresses and she looked superb in it. From the crown of her
+head to the sole of her foot, she dazzled like a moving picture; but she
+lacked one adornment; there was no ring on her finger. ‘Jacqueline!’
+cried I, ‘you have forgotten something.’ And I pointed towards her hand.
+
+“She glanced at it, blushed a trifle as I thought, and pulled it out of
+her pocket. ‘I have it,’ said she, ‘but it is too large,’ and she thrust
+it carelessly back.
+
+“At three o’clock the train came in. Then I saw her eye flash and her
+lip burn. In a few minutes later two gentlemen appeared at the gate.
+
+“‘Mr. Holt and his brother!’ were the words I heard whispered through
+the house. But I did not need that announcement to understand Jacqueline
+at last.”
+
+
+
+
+XXVI.
+
+A MAN’S JUSTICE AND A WOMAN’S MERCY.
+
+     “Fair is foul and foul is fair.”
+
+     —MACBETH.
+
+
+“Have you ever seen a man whose instantaneous effect upon you was
+electrical; in whose expression, carriage, or manner, there was
+concealed a charm that attracted and interested you, apart from his
+actual worth and beauty? Such a one was Mr. Roger Holt, the gentleman I
+now discerned entering the gate with Jacqueline’s lover. It was not that
+he was handsome. He could not for one moment bear any comparison with
+his brother in substantial attraction, and yet when they were both in
+the room, you looked at him in preference to the other, and was vexed
+with yourself for doing so. He seemed to be the younger as he was
+certainly the smaller; yet he took the lead, even in coming up the walk.
+Why had he not taken it in the deeper and more important matter? Was it
+because he did not love her?
+
+“I was not present when Jacqueline greeted her guests and presented Mr.
+Roger Holt to her father. But later in the day I spent a half hour with
+them and saw enough to be able to satisfy myself as to the falsity of my
+last supposition. Never had I seen on a human countenance the evidences
+of a wilder passion than that which informed his features, as he sat in
+the further window of the parlor, presumably engaged in admiring the
+autumn landscape, but really occupied in casting short side-long glances
+at Jacqueline, who sat listening with a superb nonchalence, but with a
+restless gleam in her wandering eye, to the genial talk between her
+acknowledged lover and the Colonel. I half feared he would rise from his
+seat, and flinging himself before her, demand then and there an
+explanation of her engagement.
+
+“But beyond the impatience of those short burning glances, he controlled
+himself well, and it was Jacqueline who moved at last.
+
+“I saw the purpose growing in her eyes long before she stirred. The face
+which had been a mystery to me from her cradle, was in the presence of
+this man, like an open page which all might read. Its letters were
+flame, but that did not make them any less clear. I felt her swaying
+towards him, before an eyelash trembled or a quiver shook her tall form.
+He may have understood her purpose also, for his eye wandered towards
+the open piano. She rose like a queen.
+
+“‘Mr. Roger Holt is a singer,’ said she in passing her father, ‘I am
+going to ask him to give us one of the old ballads you profess to like
+so much.’
+
+“The conversation at once ceased. The Colonel who made no secret of his
+fondness for music, turned at once towards the stranger, with an
+expression of great courtesy. Instantly that gentleman rose, and meeting
+the request of his hostess with a profound bow, proceeded at once to the
+piano. ‘He will not leave it till he has spoken to her,’ thought I. Nor
+did he, for that very moment as they stood turning her music over, I
+perceived his lips move in a hurried question, to which she as briefly
+responded, whereupon he caught up a sheet of music from the pile, and
+flinging back his head with a victorious smile, began to sing.
+
+“Had I known what lay behind his words, I would have braved everything
+rather than have allowed him to utter a note in that room which had once
+rung with the carols of Jacqueline’s mother. But what could I guess of
+the possible evil underlying the natural ebullition of unrestrained
+passion that from some cause of pride or pique, had met with a strange
+inexplicable check. So I sat still, shuddering perhaps, but quiet in my
+corner; while the haunting tones of his strange and thrilling voice,
+rose and fell in the most uncanny of Scottish love songs. Nor did I do
+more than wonder with all my agitated soul, when at the conclusion
+Jacqueline came back, and pausing beside the man to whom she had given
+her troth, looked down in his beaming face and smiled with that overflow
+of delight, which she dared not bestow upon his brother.
+
+“Another little incident of that hour remains engraven upon my memory.
+She had been showing to the gentlemen a rare plant that stood in the
+front parlor window, and was dilating upon its marvels, when Mr. Robert
+Holt, her accepted lover, took in his clasp the small white hand
+wandering so invitingly among the leaves of the huge palm, and glancing
+at the finger which should have worn his ring, looked inquiringly into
+her face.
+
+“‘O,’ said she, interrupting her little speech to draw away her hand,
+‘you miss your diamond? I have it, sir. It lies very safe in my pocket;
+it is a beautiful gem, but _your ring does not fit me_.’
+
+“The way she said those words and the air with which she tossed back her
+head, must have made one heart in that room beat joyously, but it did
+not reassure me or subdue my secret apprehension.
+
+
+“‘Not fit!’ her lover responded; and begged her to allow him to try it
+on and see, but she shook her head with wilful coquetry, and turning to
+the piano, commenced singing a gay little song that was like silver
+bells, shaken by a sudden and mighty tempest.
+
+“Even the Colonel felt the change in his daughter, though he never
+guessed the cause, and came and went during the evening that followed,
+with certain odd sighs that made my heart ache with strange forebodings.
+Only her lover was unconscious, or if he felt the new and wayward force
+and fire in her manner, attributed it to his own presence and
+unspeakable devotion. Mr. Roger Holt, on the contrary, thoroughly
+understood it. Though he was strangely calm, as calm now as he had
+previously been alert and fiery, he never lost a gleam of her eye in his
+direction, or a turn of her form towards the chair where he sat. But the
+smile with which he contemplated her was not pleasant to me. It was
+informed with self-consciousness, and a certain hard triumph, that made
+it almost sinister. ‘She has given her hand to the true man,’ I mused,
+‘wherever her heart may be. But had she given it?’ I began to doubt as I
+began to muse. With that uncontrollable will of hers, she was capable of
+anything; did she intend to break with Robert, now that she had seen
+Roger? I detected no signs of it beyond the evident delight they took in
+each other’s presence. They were guilty of no further conversation of a
+secret or intimate character, and when with the striking of the clock at
+ten, Mr. Robert Holt rose to leave, his brother followed without any
+demur, even preceding him in his departure and limiting his farewell to
+a short brotherly pressure of Jacqueline’s fair hand.
+
+“But much may be conveyed in a pressure, or so I began to think as I
+heard the low laugh that rippled from Jacqueline’s lips as she turned to
+go up to her room; and if I had been her mother—
+
+“But that is not what you want to hear. Enough that I did not follow
+her, that I did not even acquaint Colonel Japha with my fears, that
+indeed I did nothing but lie awake, praying and asking what I ought to
+do. There had been so little said; there had been so little done. A
+word, a sentence between them, the interchange of a couple of songs,
+and—What else that I could communicate to another?
+
+“A week, two weeks passed, and her look of wilful happiness did not fly.
+She was flooded with notes from her accepted lover, whose handwriting I
+had learned by this time to distinguish, but not one, so far as I could
+learn, from any other source; yet her feet tripped lightly through the
+house, and her form had a rich grace in its every movement, that bespoke
+a mind settled in some deep joy or quiet determination. I felt the
+impenetrability of a secretly cherished hope, whenever I looked at her.
+If I had not known to the contrary, I should have said that her
+prospective marriage had become to her a dream of unfathomable delight.
+Whence then came this rapture? Through what communication was born this
+secret hope? I could not guess, I could only watch and wait.
+
+“Meanwhile some random guesses at the truth had been made by the
+neighbors. Jacqueline had a lover. That lover was a gentleman; but the
+Colonel was critical; he had refused his consent and the young people
+had parted. Such was the talk, begotten perhaps by the persistency with
+which Jacqueline remained in the house, and the almost severe look with
+which Colonel Japha trod the streets of his native village, which he
+soon felt would lose all their charm in the departure of his only child.
+I scarcely ventured out more than Jacqueline; for I have but little
+control over my feelings and did not know what I would do, if any one
+should closely press me with questions.
+
+“The unexpected discovery that our pretty young servant girl was in the
+habit of stealing into Jacqueline’s room late at night, was the first
+thing that startled me into asking whether or not my supposition was
+true, that Jacqueline received no messages from Mr. Robert Holt. And
+scarcely had I become certain that a clandestine correspondence was
+being carried on between them through the medium of this girl, then the
+climax came, and knowledge on my part and secrecy on hers availed no
+longer.
+
+“It was a day in October. The stoves had been put up in the house, and
+seeing Jacqueline roaming about the halls, in a renewed fit of that
+strange restlessness which had affected her the day before Mr. Roger
+Holt’s visit, I went into her room to light a fire, and make everything
+look cheerful before dusk. I found the atmosphere warm, and going to the
+stove, discovered that a fire had been already kindled there, but had
+gone out for want of fuel. I at once commenced to rake away the ashes,
+in order to make preparations for a new one, when I came upon several
+scraps of half burned paper.
+
+“Jacqueline had been burning letters. Do you blame me for picking out
+those scraps and hastening with them to another room, when I tell you
+they were written in a marked and characteristic hand that bore little
+or no resemblance to that of her accepted lover, and that the words
+which flashed first upon my eye were those ominous ones of _my wife_!
+
+“They were three in number, and while more or less discolored and
+irregular, were still legible. Think child with what a thrill of horror
+and sharp motherly anguish, I read such words as ‘Love you! I would
+press you in my arms if you were plague-stricken! The least turn of your
+head makes my blood cringe, as if a flame had touched me. I would follow
+you on my knees, if you led me round the world. Let me see Robert take
+your hand again and I will—’
+
+“‘Forget you! Do we forget the dagger that has struck us? I am another
+man since—’
+
+“‘I will have you if Robert goes mad and your father kills me. That I am
+burdened with a wife, is nothing. What is a wife that I do not—’ ‘You
+shall be my true wife, my—’
+
+“‘To-night then, be ready; I will wait for you at the gate. A little
+resolution on your part, and then—’
+
+“I could read no further. The living, burning truth had forced itself
+upon me, that Jacqueline, our darling, our pride, the soul of our life,
+stood tottering upon the brink of a gulf horrible as the mouth of hell.
+For I never doubted for an instant what her answer would be to this
+entreaty. In all her past life, God pity us, there had been no tokens of
+that immovable hold on virtue, that would save her in such an extremity
+as this. Nevertheless, to make all sure, I flew back to her room, and
+tearing open bureau drawers and closet doors, discovered that her
+prettiest things had been sent away. She was going, then, and on that
+very night! and her father did not even know she was untrue to her
+betrothed lover. The horror of the situation was too much for me; I
+faltered as I left her room, her dainty, maidenly room, and actually
+crouched against the wall like a guilty thing, as I heard the sound of
+her voice singing some maddening strain in the parlors below. What
+should I do? Appeal to her, or warn her father of the frightful peril in
+which his honor and happiness stood? Alas, any appeal to her would be
+useless. In the glare of this awful revelation I had come to a full
+comprehension of her nature. But her father was a man; he could command
+as well as entreat, could even force obedience if all other methods
+failed. To him, then, must I go; but I had rather have gone to the rack.
+He was so proud a man! Had owned to such undeviating trust in his
+daughter’s honor, as a Japha and his child! The blow would kill him; or
+daze him so, he might better have been killed. My knees shook under me,
+as I traversed the hall to his little study over the parlor, and when I
+came to the door, I rather fell against it than knocked, so great was my
+own anguish, and so deep my terror of his. He was a ready man and he
+came to the door at once, but upon seeing me, drew back as if his eye
+had fallen upon a phantom.
+
+“‘Hush!’ said I, scarcely knowing what I uttered; and going in, I closed
+the door and latched it firmly behind me. ‘I have come,’ said I in a
+voice that made him start, ‘to ask you to save your daughter. She is in
+deadly peril; she—’ a strain of her song came in at that moment from
+the staircase. She was ascending to her room. He looked at me in a doubt
+of my sanity.
+
+“‘Not physical peril,’ I stammered, ‘but _moral_. She loves madly,
+unreasonably, and with a headlong passion that laughs at every obstacle,
+a man whom neither you nor heaven can look upon with aught but
+execration. She—’
+
+“‘Mrs. Hamlin!’—How well I remember his cool, calm voice, so deliberate
+in his impressive moments, so deliberate now, when perhaps she was
+donning hat and shawl for her elopement—‘You are laboring under a great
+mistake. Instead of execrating Mr. Holt, I admire him most profoundly.
+Since the time has come for me to give up my daughter, I know of no one
+to whom I would rather surrender her.’
+
+“‘But Mr. Holt is not the man,’ I cried, half wild in my fear and
+desperation. ‘Do you remember the gentleman who came with him on his
+last visit? He called him his brother, and he is I believe, but—’
+
+“The way he turned his grand white forehead towards me at that, made
+every fibre in my being quiver. ‘Jacqueline does not love _him_!’
+exclaimed he. How sharp his voice, how changed his eye! I shrank back,
+trembling as I bowed my head, thinking of the word yet to be said.
+
+“‘But he won’t compare—’ he went on with a severe intonation. ‘Besides
+her honor is engaged. You are dealing in fancies, Mrs. Hamlin.’
+
+“I tore out of my breast the scraps of paper which had enlightened me so
+horribly, and held them towards him; then bethought myself, and drew
+back. ‘I have proof,’ said I; ‘but first I must tell you that Jacqueline
+is not as good a girl as you have thought her. She is not her mother’s
+child in the qualities of love and honor. She is destined to bring a
+great woe upon your head. In her passion for this man, she has forgotten
+your trust in her, the incorruptibility of your name, the honor of your
+house. Be strong, sir, for God is about to smite you in your tenderest
+spot.
+
+“Ah, with what pride he towered upon me! this white-haired, stately
+gentleman before whom I had hitherto held my breath in admiring awe;
+towered upon me though his face was ghostly pale and his hand trembled
+like an aspen as he held it out!
+
+“‘Give me the papers you hold there,’ cried he. ‘Either you are gone
+mad, or else—Who wrote these lines?’ he demanded, glancing down upon
+the hard, firm scrawl that blackened the bits of paper I had given him.
+
+“‘Mr. Roger Holt,’ I returned unhesitatingly. ‘I found those bits in
+Jacqueline’s stove. Her clothes have been sent away, sir,’ I continued
+as I saw his face grow fixed above the scraps he consulted. ‘Twilight is
+coming on and—Mr. Roger Holt is a married man!’
+
+“‘What!’
+
+“I never saw such a look flash from a human face as that which darted
+from his at that terrible moment. I thought he would have fallen, but he
+only dropped the papers out of his hand. ‘Heaven forgive us!’ murmured
+I, calmed by a sight of his misery, into some semblance of of
+self-control, ‘but we have never understood Jacqueline. She is not to be
+led, sir, by principles or duty. She loves this man, and love with her
+is a stormy wind, capable of sweeping her into any abyss of contumely or
+suffering. If you would save her, kill her love; the death of her lover
+would only transform her into a demon.’
+
+“He looked at me as if I had told him the world had come to an end. ‘My
+Jacqueline!’ he murmured in a low, incredulous voice of the tenderest
+yearning. ‘My Jacqueline!’
+
+“‘Oh!’ I shrieked, torn by my anguish for him and the terror of her
+escaping while we were yet talking, ‘God knows I had rather have died
+than contaminate her by such words as I have uttered. She is dear to me
+as my soul; dearer to me than my life. I have a mother’s feeling for
+her, sir. If to fling myself headlong from that window, would delay her
+feet from going down the stairs to meet her guilty lover, I would gladly
+do it. It is her danger makes me speak. O sir, realize that danger and
+hasten before she has taken the irrevocable step.’
+
+“He started like a man pricked by a sudden dart. ‘She is going—you
+believe she is going to meet him?’
+
+“‘I do,’ said I.
+
+“He gave me a terrible look and started for the door. I hurriedly picked
+up the scraps that had fallen to the floor, and rushed around by an
+inner passage-way to my own little room, hiding my head and waiting as
+for the crash of a falling avalanche. Suddenly a cry rose in the hall.
+
+“There are some sounds that lift you unconsciously to your feet. Dashing
+out of my room, I detected the face of the servant-girl whom I have
+before mentioned, looking out of her door some distance down the
+corridor. Hastening towards her, I uttered some words about her being a
+busy-body, and thrusting her inside her room, locked the door upon her.
+Then I hastened with what speed I might to the front of the house, and
+coming out upon the grand staircase, met a sight that shook me to the
+very soul. You have been up the stairs; you know how they branch off to
+left and right from the platform near the top. The left branch led in
+those days to Colonel Japha’s room, the right to the apartments occupied
+by Jacqueline and myself. Coming upon them, then, as I did from my side
+of the house, I found myself in full view of the opposite approach, and
+there on the topmost step I beheld Colonel Japha, standing in an
+attitude of awful denunciation, while half way down the staircase, I
+beheld the figure of Jacqueline, hindered in her gliding course towards
+the front door by the terrible, ‘Stop!’ whose echo had reached me in my
+room and caused me to rush quaking and horrified to this spot. I leaned
+back sick and horror-stricken against the wall. There was no mercy in
+his voice: he had awakened to a full realization of the situation and
+the pride of the Japhas had made him steel.
+
+“‘You are my child!’ he was saying. ‘I have loved you and do still; but
+proceed one step farther towards the man that awaits you at the gate,
+and the door that opens upon you, _shuts_ never to open again!’
+
+“‘Colonel!’ I exclaimed, starting forward; but he heard me no more than
+he would a fly buzzing or a bird singing.
+
+“‘I desire it to shut; I have no wish to come back!’ issued from the set
+white lips of the girl beneath us. ‘There is no such charm for me in
+this humdrum house, that I should wish to exchange life with the man I
+adore, for its droning, spiritless existence!’ And she lifted her foot
+to proceed.
+
+“‘Jacqueline!’ I shrieked, leaning forward in my turn, and holding her
+by my anguish, as I never believed she could be held by anything,
+‘Think, child, think what you do! It is not life you are going to but
+death. A man who can take a young girl from her father’s house, from her
+lover’s arms, from her mother’s grave, from the shrine of all that is
+pure and holy, to dash her into a pit of all that is corrupt, loathsome
+and deadly, is not one with whom you can _live_. You say you adore him:
+can one adore falsehood, selfishness and depravity? Does hypocrisy win
+love? Can the embraces of a serpent bring peace? Jacqueline, Jacqueline,
+you are yet pure; come back to our love and our hearts, before we die
+here in our shame at the head of the stairs, where your mother was
+carried out to her grave!’
+
+“She trembled. I saw the hand that clutched the banister loosen its
+grip; she cast one quick look behind her, and her eyes flashed upon her
+father’s face; it was set like a flint.
+
+“‘If you come back,’ cried he, leaning towards her, but not advancing a
+step from where he stood, ‘you must come back of your own free will. I
+will hold no creature prisoner in my house. I must trust you implicitly,
+or not at all. Speak then, which shall it be?’ And he raised his hand
+above his head, with a supreme and awful gesture, ‘a father’s blessing
+or a father’s curse?’
+
+“‘A father’s curse, then! since you command me to choose,’ rang out from
+her lips in a burst of uncontrollable passion. ‘I want no blessing that
+separates me from _him_!’ And she pointed towards the door with a look
+that, defiant as it was, spoke of a terrible love before which all our
+warnings and entreaties were but as empty air.
+
+“‘Curses then upon your head, slayer of a family’s honor, a father’s
+love, and a mother’s memory! Curses upon you, at home and abroad! in the
+joy of your first passion and in the agony of your last despair! May you
+live to look upon that door as the gateway to heaven, and find it shut!
+May your children, if you are cursed with them, turn in your face, as
+you are turning now in mine! May the lightning of heaven be your candle,
+and the blackness of death your daily food and your nightly drink!’ And
+with a look in which all the terrors he invoked, seemed to crash
+downward from his reeling brain upon her shrinking terror-crouched head,
+he gave one mighty gasp and fell back stricken to the floor.
+
+“‘God!’ burst from her lips, and she rushed downwards to the door like a
+creature hunted to its quarry. I saw her white face gleam marble-like in
+the fading light that came in from the chinks about the door. I saw her
+trembling hand fumbling with the knob, and rousing from my stupor,
+called down to her with all the force of a breaking heart,
+
+“‘Jacqueline, beware!’
+
+“She turned once more. There was something in my voice she could not
+withstand. ‘I do not hope to keep you,’ cried I, ‘but before you go,
+hear this. In the days to come, when the face that now beams upon you
+with such longing, shall have learned to turn from you in weariness, if
+not distaste, when hunger, cold, contumely and disease shall have
+blasted that fair brow and seared those soft cheeks, know, that although
+a father can curse, a woman who loves like a mother can forgive.’ The
+father cries, ‘Once go out of that door and it shuts upon you never to
+open!’ ‘Once come to _that_ door, say I,’ pointing in the direction of
+the house’s other entrance, ‘and if I live and if I move, it shall open
+to you, were you as defiled and wretched and forsaken as Magdalen.
+Remember! Each day at this hour will I watch for you, kneeling upon its
+threshold. In sickness or in health, in joy or in sorrow, in cold or in
+heat. The hour of six is sacred. Some one of them shall see you falling
+weeping on my breast!’
+
+“She gave me a quick stare out of her wide black eyes, then a mocking
+smile curled her lips, and murmuring a short, ‘You rave!’ opened the
+door, and rushed out into the falling dusk. With a resounding clang like
+the noise of a stone rolled upon an open grave, the great door swung to,
+and I was left alone in that desolated house with my stricken master.
+
+
+
+
+XXVII.
+
+THE LONE WATCHER.
+
+    “Hark! to the hurried question of Despair,
+    Where is my child?—and Echo answers—Where?”
+
+    —BYRON.
+
+
+“Colonel Japha recovered from his shock, but was never the same man
+again. All that was genial, affectionate and confiding in his nature,
+had been turned as by a lightning’s stroke, to all that was hard, bitter
+and suspicious. He would not allow the name of Jacqueline to be spoken
+in his presence; he would listen to no allusion made to those days when
+she was the care and perplexity, but also the light and pleasure of the
+house. Men are not like women, my child; when they turn, it is at an
+angle, the whole direction of their nature changes.
+
+“Perhaps the news that presently came to us from Boston may have had
+something to do with this. It was surely dreadful enough; Jacqueline’s
+perfidy had slain her lover. Mr. Robert Holt, the cultured, noble,
+high-souled gentleman, had been found lying dead on the floor of his
+room, a few days after the events I have just related, with a lady’s
+diamond ring in his hand and the remnants of a hastily burned letter in
+the grate before him. He had burst a blood-vessel, and had expired
+instantly.
+
+“This sudden and tragic ending of a man of energy and will, was also the
+reason, perhaps, why Grotewell never arrived at the truth of
+Jacqueline’s history. Boston was a long way from here in those days, and
+the story of her lover’s death was not generally known, while the fact
+of her elopement was. Consequently she was supposed to have fled with
+the man who had been seen to visit her most frequently; a report which
+neither the Colonel nor myself had the courage to deny.
+
+“My child, you have a brow like snow, and a cheek like roses; you know
+little of life’s sorrows and little of life’s sins. To you the skies are
+blue, the woods vernal, the air balmy; the sad looks upon men’s and
+women’s faces, tell but shallow tales of the ceaseless grinding of grief
+in their pent up souls. But you are gentle, and you have an imagination
+that goes beyond your experience; perhaps if you pause and think, you
+can understand what a tale could be told of the weeks and months and
+years that now followed, without hint or whisper of the fate of her who
+had gone out from amongst us with the brand of her father’s curse upon
+her brow. At first we hoped, yes, _he_ hoped,—I could see it in his
+eyes when there came a sudden ring at the bell,—that some sign of her
+penitence, or some proof of her existence, would come to relieve the
+torture of our fears, if not the shame of our memories. But the door
+that closed upon her on that fatal eve, had shut without an echo. While
+we vainly waited, time had ample leisure to carve the furrows of age as
+well as of suffering on the Colonel’s once smooth brow, and to change my
+daily vigil into a custom of despair, rather than of hope. Time had also
+leisure to rob us of much of our worldly goods and to make our continued
+living in this grand old house, an act that involved constant care and
+the closest economy. That we were enabled to preserve appearances to the
+day that beheld the Colonel laid low by the final stroke of his dread
+disease, was only due to the secret charity of a certain gentleman, who,
+declaring he was indebted to us, secretly supplied me with means of
+support.
+
+“But of all this you care little.
+
+“You had rather hear about the evening watch with its hopeful assurance,
+‘Yet another day and she will be here,’ to be followed so soon by the
+despairing acknowledgement, ‘Yet another day and she has not come!’ or
+of those dark hours when the Colonel lay blank and white upon his
+pillow, with his eyes fixed on the door which would never open to the
+beating of a daughter’s heart, while the gray shadow of an awful
+resolution deepened upon his immovable face. What that resolution was I
+could not know, but I feared it, when I saw what a sternness it gave to
+his eye, what a fixedness to his set and implacable lip; and when in the
+waning light of a certain December afternoon, the circle of neighbors
+about his bed gave way to the stiff and forbidding form of Mr. Phelps, I
+felt a thrill of mortal apprehension and only waited to hear the short,
+‘It shall be done,’ of the lawyer to some slowly whispered command of
+the colonel, to rise from my far off corner and stand ready to accost
+Mr. Phelps as he came from the bedside of the dying man.
+
+“‘What is it?’ I asked, rushing up to him as he issued forth into the
+hall, and seizing him by the arm, with a woman’s unreasoning
+impetuosity. ‘I have nursed his daughter on my knee; tell me, then, what
+it is he has ordered you to do in this final moment?’
+
+“Mr. Phelps for all his ungainly bearing, is not a hard-hearted man, as
+you know, and he doubtless saw the depth of the misery that made me
+forget myself. Giving me a look that was not without its touch of
+sarcasm, he replied, ‘The colonel has made me promise, to see that a
+plank is nailed across the front door of this house, after his body has
+been carried out to burial.’
+
+“A board across the front door! His anger then was implacable. The
+withering curse that had rung in my ears for ten years, was to outlive
+his death! With a horrified groan, I pressed my hands over my eyes and
+rushed back. My first glimpse of the Colonel’s face showed me that the
+end was at hand, but that fact only made more imperative my consuming
+desire to see that curse removed, even though it were done with his
+final breath. Drawing near his bedside, I leaned down, and waiting till
+his eye wandered to my face, asked him if there was nothing he wished
+amended before his strength failed. He understood me. We had not sat for
+so long, face to face across the chasm of a hideous memory, without
+knowing something of the workings of each other’s mind. Glancing up at
+his wife’s portrait which ever faced him as he lay upon his pillow, his
+mouth grew severe and he essayed to shake his head. I at once pointed to
+the portrait.
+
+“‘What will you say to her when she meets you on the borders of heaven?’
+I demanded with the courage of despair.’ She will ask, ‘Where is my
+child?’ And what will you reply?’
+
+
+“The fingers that lay upon the coverlid moved spasmodically; he eyed me
+with a steady deepening stare, awful to meet, fearful to remember. I
+went on steadily; ‘She has gone out of this house with your curse; tell
+me that if she comes back, she may be greeted with your forgiveness.’
+Still that awful stare which changed not. ‘I have watched and waited for
+her every day since her departure,’ I whispered, ‘and shall watch and
+wait for her, every day until I die. Shall a stranger’s love be greater
+than a father’s?’ This time his lips twitched and the grey shadow
+shifted, but it did not rise. ‘I had sworn to do it,’ I went on. ‘When
+you lay there at the top of the stairs, smitten down by your first
+shock, I told her, come sickness, come health, I should keep a daily
+vigil at that door of the house which your severity had not closed upon
+her; and I have kept my word till now and shall keep it to the end. What
+will you do for this miserable child of whose being you are the author?’
+
+“With indescribable anxiety I paused and watched him, for his lips were
+moving. ‘Do for her?’ he repeated.
+
+“How awful is the voice of the dying! I shivered as I listened, but drew
+near and nearer, that I might lose no word that came from his stony
+lips.
+
+“‘She will not come,’ gasped he, with an effort that raised him up in
+bed, and deepened that horrible stare, ‘but—’
+
+“Who shall say what he might have uttered if Death’s hand had delayed a
+single instant, but the inexorable shadow fell, and he never finished
+the sentence.
+
+“My child, these are frightful things for you to hear. God knows I would
+not assail your pure ears with a tale like this, if it were not for the
+help and sympathy I hope to gain from you. Sin is a hideous thing; the
+gulf it opens is wide and deep; well may it be said to swallow those who
+trust themselves above its flower-hung brink. But we who are human, owe
+something to humanity. Love stops not because of the gulf; love follows
+the sinner with wilder and more heart-breaking longing, the deeper and
+deeper he sinks into the illimitable darkness. Ten years have passed
+since we laid the Colonel away in the burying-place of all the Japhas,
+and dutiful to his last request, nailed up the front door of his
+speedily to be forsaken mansion. In all that time my watch has remained
+unbroken in this house, which by will he had left to me, but which I
+secretly hold in trust for her. The hour of six has found me at my post,
+sometimes elate with hope, sometimes depressed with repeated
+disappointments, but whether hopeful or sad, always trustful that the
+great God who Himself so loved all sinners, that He gave the life of His
+Son to rescue them, would ultimately grant me the desire of my heart.
+But the decrepitude of age is coming upon me, and each morning I leave
+my bed, with growing fear lest my infirmities will increase until they
+finally overcome my resolution. Child, if this should happen, if lying
+in my bed I should some day hear that she had come back, and failing to
+find the lamp burning and the welcome ready, had gone away again—But
+the thought is madness. I cannot bear it. A sinner, lost, degraded,
+suffering, starving, perhaps, is wandering this way. She is hardened and
+old in guilt; she has drunk the cup of life’s passions and found them
+corrupting poison; all that was lovely and pure and good has withdrawn
+from her; she stands alone, shut off by her sin, like a wild thing in a
+circle of flame. What shall touch this soul? The preacher’s voice has no
+charm for her; good men’s advice is but empty air. God’s love must be
+mirrored in human love, to strike an eye so unused to looking up. Where
+shall she find such love? It is all that can rescue her; love as great
+as her sin, as boundless as her degradation, as persistent as her
+suffering. Child—”
+
+“I know what you are going to say,” suddenly exclaimed Paula, rising up
+and confronting Mrs. Hamlin with a steady high look of determination.
+“In the day of your weakness or illness you want some one to unlock the
+door and light the lamp. You have found her!”
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII.
+
+SUNSHINE ON THE HILLS.
+
+    “If I speak to thee in Friendship’s name,
+      Thou think’st I speak too coldly;
+    If I mention Love’s devoted flame,
+      Thou say’st I speak too boldly.”
+
+
+    —MOORE.
+
+
+The story told by Mrs. Hamlin had a great effect upon Paula, not only on
+account of its own interest and the promise it had elicited from her,
+but because of the remembrances it revived of Mr. Sylvester and her life
+in New York. Any vision of evil or suffering, any experience that roused
+the affections or awakened the sensibilities, could not fail to recall
+to her mind the forcible figure of Mr. Sylvester as he stood that day by
+his own hearthstone, talking of the temptations that assail humanity;
+and any reminiscence of him must necessarily bring with it much that
+charmed and aroused. For a week, then, she felt the effect of a great
+unsettlement. Her village home appeared a prison; she longed to run,
+soar—anything to escape; the horizon was full of beckoning hands. A
+brooding melancholy settled upon her reveries; the prospect of a life
+spent in the narrow circle to which she had endeavored to re-accustom
+herself, became unendurable.
+
+Thus it is with us. We slide in a groove and seem happy, when suddenly a
+book we read, a story we hear, an experience we encounter, shakes us out
+of our content, and makes continuance in the old course a violation of
+the most demanding instincts of our nature.
+
+In the full tide of this unrest, Paula went out for a solitary walk on
+the hills. Nature can soothe if she cannot satisfy. Then the day itself
+was one to make the soul glad and the heart rejoice. As the young girl
+trod the meadows, she wondered that she could be sad. Earth and air were
+so full of splendor. Nature seemed to be in league with the angels of
+light. September stood upon the earth like a goddess of might and glory.
+Every tint of green that variegated the mountain-side, wooed the eye
+with suggestions of unfathomable beauty. A bough of scarlet flame lit
+here and there amid the verdure, served to illuminate the woods as for
+the passage of a king; and not Solomon in all his glory ever wore an
+aspect more sumptuous than the flowers that flecked the meadow and
+fringed the hardy roadside with imperial purple. A wind was blowing, a
+keen but kindly breeze, laden with sweetness and alert to awaken Æolian
+airs from the boughs of whistling beech and alder. Even the low field
+grasses seemed to partake in the general cheer, and nodded to each other
+with a witching and irresistible abandon. Had a poet been at her side,
+or any one capable of divining the hidden things of nature, what a
+commentary to all their united thoughts she would have found in the
+delicious tremble of the laughing leaves, in the restless music of the
+runaway brooks, in the lowly crickets with their single song, in the
+cloud-haunting birds with their trailing melodies, and in all the roll
+and rumble of earth’s commingled noises. Alluring as was the book of
+nature, she could not read it alone. She felt the lack of a loving hand
+to turn the page. “Is it that I am lonely!” she murmured.
+
+The thought deepened her trouble. Coming down from the hillside, she
+entered a skirting of woods that ran along by the river. Here she had
+always found peace and some of her richest treasures of thought. Through
+this opaline archway she had walked with her fancies, like Saint
+Catherine with her lily. It was sacred to all that was sweet and deep
+and pure within her. “Lonely!” she whispered; “I will not be lonely. To
+some God gives years of happy companionship; to others but a day. Shall
+one complain because it has fallen to his portion to have the lesser
+share? I will remember my one day and be glad.”
+
+“My one day!” She caught herself at the utterance and literally started
+at the suggestion it offered. There was but one person whom she had seen
+but for a day. Could she have been thinking of him?
+
+With a flush deep as the autumn leaves she carried, she was hurrying on,
+when suddenly in the opening before her, a shadow fell, and a mellow
+voice exclaimed in her ear,
+
+“Do I meet Miss Fairchild in her native woods?”
+
+It was Clarence Ensign.
+
+The surprise was very great and it took her a moment to steady herself.
+She had felt so assured that she should never see him or any other of
+her New York friends again. Had not Cicely written that he had gone
+West, soon after her own departure from New York. With a deepening of
+his voice Mr. Ensign repeated the question.
+
+At once the day seemed to acquire all it had hitherto lacked. Looking
+up, she met his eye fixed admiringly upon her, and all that was merry,
+lightsome and gay within her, leaped at once to the surface. Ignoring
+his question with smiling abandon, she exclaimed,
+
+“What shall be done to the man who delights in surprises and startles
+timid maidens without a cause?”
+
+“He shall be held in captivity by the hand of his denouncer, until he
+has sued for pardon and obtained her generous forgiveness,” returned he,
+holding out his palm.
+
+She barely touched it with her own. “I see that your repentance is
+sincere, so your pardon shall be speedy,” laughed she.
+
+“Your discrimination is at fault, I never felt more impenitent in my
+life. I am a hardened wretch, Miss Fairchild, a hardened wretch! But you
+do not ask me from what corner of the earth I have come. You take me too
+much for granted; like the chirrup of a squirrel, let me say, or the
+whistle of a bullfinch. But perhaps you think I inhabit these woods?”
+
+“No; but a day like this is so full of miracles, why should we be
+astonished at one more! I suppose you came on the train, but should not
+be surprised to hear you started, like Pluto, from the earth. Anything
+seems possible in such a sunshine.”
+
+“You are right, and I have sprung from the earth. I have been buried
+five mortal months in a law-suit out west, or else I should have been
+here before. I hope my delay has made me none the less welcome.”
+
+He was holding back a branch as he spoke, and his eyes were on a level
+with hers. She felt caught as in a net, and struggled vainly to keep
+down her color. “No,” said she, “welcome is a guest’s due, whether he
+come early or late. I should be sorry to be lacking in the duties of a
+hostess, though my drawing-room is somewhat more spacious than cosy,”
+she continued, looking around on the fields into which they had emerged,
+“and my facilities for bespeaking you welcome greater than my power to
+make you comfortable.”
+
+“Comfort is a satisfaction of the mind, rather than of the body. I am
+not _un_comfortable, Miss Fairchild.” Then as he stooped to relieve her
+of half her burden of trailing leaves and flowers, he exclaimed in a
+matter-of-fact tone, “Your aunt is a notable woman, Miss Fairchild, I
+admire her greatly.”
+
+“What!” said she, “you have been to the cottage? You have seen Aunt
+Belinda?”
+
+“Of course,” laughed he, “or how should I be here? You have been sent
+for, Miss Fairchild, and I am the humble bearer of your aunt’s commands.
+But I forget, the practical has nothing to do with such a day. I am
+supposed to have sprung from the ground, and to know by instinct, just
+in what nook you were hiding from the sunlight. Very well. I acknowledge
+that instinct is sometimes capable of going a great way.”
+
+But this time her ready answer was lacking. She was wondering what her
+aunt would think of this sudden appearance of a stranger whose name she
+had never so much as mentioned.
+
+“It is a pleasant rest to stand and look at a view like that, after a
+summer of musty labor,” said he, gazing up the river with a truly
+appreciative eye. “I do not wonder you carry the charm of the wild woods
+in your laugh and glance, if you have been brought up in the sight of
+such a view as that.”
+
+“It has been my meat and drink from childhood,” said she, and wondered
+why she wanted to say no more upon her favorite theme.
+
+“Yet you tell me you love the city?”
+
+“Too much to ever again be happy here.”
+
+It was a slip for which her cheek burned and her lids fell, the moment
+after. She had been thinking of Mr. Sylvester, and unconsciously spake
+as she might have done, if he had been at her side, instead of this
+genial-hearted young man. With a woman’s instinctive desire to retrieve
+herself, she hurriedly continued, “Life is so full and large and deep in
+a great town, if you are only happy enough to meet those who are its
+blood and brain and sinew. One misses the rush of the great wheel of
+time in a spot like this. The world moves, but we do not feel it; it is
+like the quiet sweep of the stars over our heads. But in the city, days,
+weeks and months make themselves felt. The universe jars under the feet
+of hurrying masses. The story of the world is being written on pavement,
+corridor, and dome, so that he who runs may read. One realizes he is
+alive; the unit is part of the multiple. To those who are tired, God
+gives the rest of the everlasting hills, but to those who are eager, he
+holds out the city with its innumerable opportunities and incentives.
+And I am eager,” she said. “The flower blooms on the mountain, and its
+perfume is sweet, but the chariot sings as it rushes, and the noise of
+its wheels is music in my ears.”
+
+She paused, turned her face to the breeze, and seemed to forget she was
+not alone. Clarence Ensign eyed her with astonishment; he had never
+heard her speak like this; the earnest side of her great nature had
+never been turned towards him before, and he felt himself shrink into
+insignificance in its presence. What was he that he should pluck a star
+from the heavens, to buckle on his breast! Wealth and position were a
+match for beauty great as hers, and a kind heart current coin all the
+world over, for a gentle disposition and a loving nature; but for
+this—He turned away and in his abstraction switched his foot with his
+cane.
+
+“Then it was in New York that I met Cicely,” exclaimed Paula.
+
+He shook off his broodings, turned with a manful gesture, and met her
+sweet unfathomable eye, so brilliant with enthusiasm a moment ago, but
+at this instant so softly deep and tender.
+
+“And the friendship of Miss Stuyvesant is a precious thing to you?” said
+he.
+
+“Few things are more so,” was her reply.
+
+He bit his lip and his brow grew lighter. After all, great souls
+frequently cling to those of lesser calibre, provided they are true and
+unflawed. He would not be discouraged. But his tone when he spoke had
+acquired a reverence that did not lessen its music. “You are, then, one
+of the few women who believe in friendship?”
+
+“As I believe in heaven.”
+
+Looking at her, he took off his hat. Her eye stole to his serious
+countenance. “Miss Stuyvesant is to be envied,” said he.
+
+“Are friends so rare?”
+
+“Such friends are,” said he.
+
+She gave him a bright little look. “Had you been with Miss Stuyvesant,
+and she had expressed herself as I have done, you would have said, ‘Miss
+Fairchild is to be envied,’ and you would have been nearer the truth
+than now. Cicely’s friendship is to mine what an unbroken mirror is to a
+little racing brook. It reflects but one image, while mine—” She could
+not go on. How could she explain to this stranger that Cicely’s heart
+was undivided in its regard, while hers owned allegiance to more than
+her bosom friend.
+
+“If I were with Miss Stuyvesant now,” he declared, too absorbed in his
+own ideas to notice the break in hers, “I should still say in face of
+this friendship, ‘Miss Stuyvesant is to be envied.’ I have no mind for
+more than one thought to-day,” exclaimed he, with a look that made her
+tremble.
+
+There are some men who never know in what field to stay the current of
+their impetuosity: Clarence Ensign did. He said no more than this of all
+that was seething in his mind and heart. He felt that he must prove
+himself a man, before he exercised a man’s privilege. Besides, his
+temperament was mercurial, and never remained long under the bondage of
+a severe thought, or an impressive tone of mind. He worshipped the
+lofty, but it was with tabor and cymbal and high-sounding lute. A climb
+over the stile at the foot of the hill was enough to restore him to
+himself. It was therefore with merry eyes and laughing lips that they
+approached the house and entered Miss Belinda’s presence.
+
+There are some persons whose prerogative it is to carry sunshine with
+them wherever they go. Clarence Ensign was one of these. Without an
+effort, without any display of incongruous hilarity, he always succeeded
+by the mere joyousness of his own nature, in calling forth all that was
+bright and enjoyable in others. When therefore they stepped into the
+quaint old-fashioned parlor, all prepared to receive them, Paula was not
+surprised to perceive it brighten, and her aunts’ faces grow cheerful
+and smiling. Who could meet Clarence Ensign’s laughing eye and not
+smile? What did astonish her, however, was the sight of an elegant
+basket of hot-house lowers perched on a table in the centre of the room.
+It made her pause, and cast looks of inquiry at the demure countenance
+of Miss Abby, and the quietly satisfied expression of her more
+thoughtful aunt.
+
+“A remembrance from the city!” said Mr. Ensign gracefully. “I thought it
+might help to recall some happy hours to you.”
+
+With a swelling of the heart which she could not understand, she leaned
+over the ample cluster of roses and heliotrope. She felt as though she
+could embrace them; they were more than flowers, they were the visible
+emblem of all she had missed, and for which she had longed these many
+months.
+
+“I seem to receive the whole in the part,” said she.
+
+He may or may not have understood her, but he saw she was gratified, and
+that was sufficient. The afternoon flew by on wings of light. Miss
+Belinda, who was not accustomed to holidays, but who thoroughly
+appreciated them when they came, entered into the conversation with
+zest; while Miss Abby’s unconscious expressions of pleasure were too
+_naĂŻve_ not to add to, rather than detract from the general enjoyment.
+The twilight, with its good-bye, came all too soon.
+
+“I have a request to make before I go,” said Mr. Ensign. He was standing
+alone with Paula in the embrasure of the window, a few moments before
+his departure. “When we see a flower nodding on a ledge above our heads,
+we long for it; I have heard you talk of friendship, and a great desire
+has seized me. Miss Fairchild will you be my friend?”
+
+She gave him a startled glance that, however, soon settled into a mellow
+radiant look of sympathy and pleasure.
+
+“That is asking for something which if I hesitate to accord, it is
+because the word, ‘friend,’ carries with it so much,” said she, with a
+sweet seriousness that disarmed her words of any latent sting they might
+otherwise have contained.
+
+“I know it,” he replied, “and I am very bold to ask it upon so slight an
+acquaintance; but life is short and real treasure is so scarce. You will
+not deny me, Miss Fairchild?” Then seeing her look down, hastily
+continued, “I have acquaintances by the score—friends who style
+themselves thus, by the dozen, but no _friend_. I want one; I want you
+for that one. Will you be it? I shall be jealous though, I warn you,” he
+went on, with a cropping out of his mirthful nature; “I shall not be
+pleased to observe the circle widened indefinitely. I shall want my own
+place and no one else in my place.”
+
+“No one else can fill the place once given to a friend. Each one has his
+own niche.”
+
+“And I am to have mine?” His look was firm, his eye steadfast.
+
+“Yes,” she breathed.
+
+With a proud stooping of his head, he took her hand and kissed it. The
+action became him; he was tall and well made, and gallantry induced by
+feeling, sat well upon him. In spite of herself, she thought of old-time
+stories of the Norse chivalry; he stood so radiant and bent so low.
+
+
+“I shall prize my friend at her queenly value,” said he; and without
+more ado, uttered his farewell and took his departure.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+“Paula!”
+
+The young girl started from a reverie which had held her for a long time
+enchained at that fast darkening window, and hastily looking up,
+perceived her Aunt Belinda standing before her, with her eye fixed upon
+her face, with a kind but searching glance.
+
+“Yes, aunt.”
+
+“You have not told me who this Mr. Ensign is. In all the letters you
+wrote me you did not mention his name, I think.”
+
+“No, aunt. The fact is, I did not meet him until a few days before I
+left, and then only for an evening, you might say.”
+
+“Indeed! that one evening seems to have made its impression. Tell me
+something about him, Paula.”
+
+“His own countenance speaks for him better than I can, aunt. He is good
+and he is kind; an honest young man, who need fear the eye of no one. He
+is wealthy, I am informed, and the son of highly respected parents. He
+was first presented to me by Miss Stuyvesant, whose friend he is,
+afterwards by Mr. Sylvester. His coming here was a surprise to me.”
+
+Miss Belinda’s firm mouth, which had expanded at this dutiful response,
+twitched with a certain amused expression over this last announcement.
+Eying her niece with unrelenting inquiry, she pursued, “You have not
+been happy for the last few weeks, Paula. Our life seems narrow to you;
+you long to fly away to larger fields and more expansive skies.”
+
+With a guilty droop of her head, Paula stole her hand into that of her
+aunt’s.
+
+“I do not wonder,” continued Miss Belinda, still watching the flushing
+cheek and slightly troubled mouth of the lovely girl before her. “I once
+breathed other air myself, and know well what charms lie beyond these
+mountains. In giving you up for awhile, I gave you up forever, I fear.”
+
+“No, no,” whispered the young girl, “I am always yours wherever I go.
+Not that I am going away,” she hastily murmured.
+
+Her aunt smiled and gently stroked her niece’s hand. “When the time
+comes, I shall bid you God speed, Paula. I am no ogress to tie my dove’s
+wings to her nest. Love and the home it provides are the natural lot of
+women. None feel it more than those who have missed both.”
+
+“Aunt!” Paula was shocked and perplexed. A breaking wave full of doubts
+and possibilities, seemed to dash over her at this suggestion.
+
+“Young men of judgment and principle do not come so many miles to see a
+youthful maiden, without a purpose,” continued her aunt inexorably. “You
+know that, do you not, Paula?”
+
+“Yes; but the purpose may differ in different cases,” returned the young
+girl hurriedly. “I would not like to believe that Mr. Ensign came here
+with the one you give him credit for—not yet. You trouble me, aunt,”
+pursued she, glancing tremulously about. “It is like opening a great
+door flooded with sunshine, upon eyes scarcely strong enough to bear the
+glimmer sifting through its cracks. I feel humiliated and—” She did not
+finish, perhaps her thought itself was incomplete.
+
+“If a light comes sifting through the cracks, I am satisfied,” said her
+aunt in a lighter tone than common. And she kissed her niece, and went
+smiling out of the room, murmuring to herself,
+
+“I have been over-fearful; everything is coming right.”
+
+There are moments when life’s great mystery overpowers us; when the
+riddle of the soul flaunts itself before us unexplained, and we can do
+no more than stand and take the rush of the tide that comes sweeping
+down upon us. Paula was not the girl she was before she went to New
+York. Love was no longer a dreamy possibility, a hazy blending of the
+unknown and the fancied; its tale had been too often breathed in her
+ear, its reality made too often apparent to her eye. But love to which
+she could listen, was as new and fresh and strange, as a world into
+which her foot had never ventured. That her aunt should point to a
+certain masculine form, no matter how attractive or interesting, and
+say, “Love and home are the lot of women,” made her blood rush back on
+her heart, like a stream from which a dam has been ruthlessly wrenched
+away. It was too wild, too sudden; a friend’s name was so much easier to
+speak, or to contemplate. She did not know what to do with her own
+heart, made to speak thus before its time; its beatings choked her;
+everything choked her; this was a worse imprisonment than the other.
+Looking round, her eye fell upon the flowers. Ah, was not their language
+expressive enough, without this new suggestion? They seemed to lose
+something in this very gain. She liked them less she thought, and yet
+her feet drew near, and near, and nearer, to where they stood, exhaling
+their very souls out in delicious perfume. “I am too young!” came from
+Paula’s lips. “I will not think of it!” quickly followed. Yet the smile
+with which she bent over the fragrant blossoms, had an ethereal beauty
+in it, which was not all unmixed with the
+
+    “Light that never was on land or sea,
+    The consecration and the poet’s dream.”
+
+“He has asked to be my friend,” murmured she, as she slowly turned away.
+“It is enough; it must be enough.” But the blossom she had stolen from
+the midst of the fragrant collection, seemed to whisper a merry nay, as
+it nodded against her hand, and afterwards gushed out its sweet life on
+her pure young breast.
+
+
+
+
+XXIX.
+
+MIST IN THE VALLEY.
+
+     “The true beginning of our end.”
+
+     —MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM.
+
+
+Mr. Ensign was not slow in developing his ideas of friendship. Though he
+did not venture upon repeating his visit too soon, scarcely a week
+passed without bringing to Paula a letter or some other testimonial of
+his increasing devotion. The blindest eye could not fail to remark
+whither he was tending. Even Paula was forced to acknowledge to herself
+that she was on the verge of a flowery incline, that sooner or later
+would bring her up breathless against the dread alternative of a decided
+yes or no. Friendship is a wide portal, and sometimes admits love; had
+it served her traitorously in this?
+
+Her aunt who watched her with secret but lynx-eyed scrutiny, saw no
+reason to alter the first judgment of that mysterious, “It is all coming
+right,” with which she viewed the first symptoms of Paula’s girlish
+appreciation of her lover. If eyes and lips could speak, Paula was
+happy. The mournful shadows which of late had flitted with more or less
+persistency over her face, had vanished in a living smile, which if not
+deep, was cloudlessly radiant; and her voice when not used in speech,
+was rippling away in song, as glad as a finch’s on the mountain side.
+
+Miss Belinda was therefore very much astonished when one day Paula burst
+into her presence, and flinging herself down on her knees, threw her
+arms about her waist, crying,
+
+“Take me away, dear aunt, I cannot, dare not stay here another day.”
+
+“Paula, what do you mean?” exclaimed Miss Belinda, holding her back and
+endeavoring to look into her face. But the young girl gently resisted.
+
+“I have just had a letter from Cicely,” she returned in a low and
+muffled voice. “She has seen Mr. Sylvester, and says he looks both wan
+and ill. He told her, too, that he was lonely, and I know what that
+means; he wants his child. The time has come for me to go back. He said
+it would, and that I would know when it came. Take me, aunt, take me to
+Mr. Sylvester.”
+
+Miss Belinda, to whom self-control was one of the cardinal virtues,
+leaned back in her chair and contemplated the eager, tear-stained face
+that was now raised to hers, with silent scrutiny. “Paula,” said she at
+last, “is that your only reason for desiring to return to New York?”
+
+A flush, delicate as it was fleeting, swept over the dew of Paula’s
+cheek. She rose to her feet and met her aunt’s eye, with a look of
+gentle dignity. “No,” said she, “I wish to test myself. Birds that are
+prisoned will caress any hand that offers them freedom. I wish to see if
+the lure holds good when my wings are in mid-heaven.”
+
+There was a dreamy cadence to her voice as she uttered that last phrase,
+that startled her aunt. “Paula,” exclaimed she, “Paula, don’t you know
+your own heart?”
+
+“Who does?” returned Paula; then in a sudden rush of emotion threw
+herself once more at her aunt’s side, saying, “It is in order to know
+it, that I ask you to take me away.”
+
+And Miss Belinda, as she smoothed back her darling’s locks, was obliged
+to acknowledge to herself, that time has a way of opening, in the stream
+of life, unforeseen channels to whose current we perforce must yield, or
+else hopelessly strand upon the shoals.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK IV.
+
+FROM A. TO Z.
+
+
+
+
+XXX.
+
+MISS BELINDA PRESENTS MR. SYLVESTER WITH A CHRISTMAS GIFT.
+
+     “For, O; for, O the hobby horse is forgot.”
+
+     —HAMLET.
+
+
+It was a clear winter evening. Mr. Sylvester sat in his library, musing
+before a bright coal fire, whose superabundant heat and blaze seemed to
+make the loneliness of the great empty room more apparent. He had just
+said to himself that it was Christmas eve, and that he, of all men in
+the world, had the least reason to realize it, when the door-bell rang.
+He was expecting Bertram, whose advancement to the position of cashier
+in place of Mr. Wheelock, now thoroughly broken down in health, had that
+day been fully determined upon in a late meeting of the Board of
+Directors. He therefore did not disturb himself. It was consequently a
+startling surprise, when a deep, pleasant voice uttered from the
+threshold of the door, “I have brought you a Christmas present;” and
+looking up, he saw Miss Belinda standing before him, with Paula at her
+side.
+
+“My child!” was his involuntary exclamation, and before the young girl
+knew it, she was folded against his breast with a passionate fervor that
+more than words, convinced her of the depth of the sacrifice which had
+held them separate for so long. “My darling! my little Paula!”
+
+She felt her heart stand still. Gently disengaging herself, she looked
+in his face. She found it thin and wan, but lit by such a pleasure she
+could not keep back her smile. “You are glad, then, of your little
+Christmas present?” said she.
+
+He smiled and shook his head; he had no words with which to express a
+joy like this.
+
+Miss Belinda meanwhile stood with a set expression on her face, that, to
+one who did not know her, would immediately have proclaimed her to be an
+ogress of the very worst type. Not a glance did she give to the unusual
+splendor about her, not a wavering of her eye betokened that she was in
+any way conscious that she had just stepped from the threshold of a very
+humble cottage, into a home little short of a palace in size and the
+splendor of its appointments. All her attention was concentrated on the
+two faces before her.
+
+“The ride on the cars has made Paula feverish,” cried she, in sharp
+clear tones that rang with unexpected brusqueness through the curtained
+alcoves of that lordly apartment.
+
+They both started at this sudden introduction of the prosaic into the
+hush of their happy meeting, but remembering themselves, drew Miss
+Belinda forward to the fire and made her welcome in this house of many
+memories.
+
+It was a strange moment to Paula when she first turned to go up those
+stairs, down which she had come in such grief eight months or more ago.
+She found herself lingering on its well-remembered steps, and the first
+sight of the rich bronze image at the top, struck her with a sense of
+the old-time pleasure, that was not unlinked with the old-time dread.
+But the aspect of her little room calmed her. It was just as she had
+left it; not an article had been changed. “It is as if I had gone out
+one door and come in another,” she whispered. All the months that had
+intervened seemed to float away. She felt this even more when upon again
+descending, she found Bertram in the library. His frank and interesting
+face had always been pleasant to her, but in the joy of her return it
+shone upon her with almost the attraction of a brother’s. “I am at home
+again,” she kept whispering to herself, “I am at home.”
+
+Miss Belinda was engrossed in conversation with Bertram, so that Paula
+was left free to take her old place by Mr. Sylvester’s side, where she
+sat with such an aspect of contentment, that her beauty was half
+forgotten in her happiness.
+
+“You remembered me, then, sometimes in the little cottage in Grotewell?”
+asked he, after a silent contemplation of her countenance. “I was not
+forgotten when you left the city streets?”
+
+She answered with a bright little shake of her head, but she was
+inwardly wondering as she looked at his strong and picturesque face,
+with its nobly carved features and melancholy smile, if he had been
+absent from her thoughts for so much as a moment, in all these dreary
+months of separation.
+
+“I did not believe you would forget,” he gently pursued, “but I scarcely
+dared hope you would lighten my fireside with your face again. It is
+such a dismal one, and youth is so linked to brightness.”
+
+The flush that crossed her cheek, startled him into sudden silence. She
+recovered herself and slowly shook her head. “It is not a dismal one to
+me. I always feel brighter and better when I sit beside it. I have
+missed your counsel,” she said; “brightness is nothing without depth.”
+
+His eyes which had been fixed on her face, turned slowly away. He seemed
+to hold an instant’s communion with himself; suddenly he said, “And
+depth is worse than nothing, without it mirrors the skies. It is not
+from shadowed pools, such bright young lips should drink, but from the
+waves of an inexhaustible sea, smote upon by all the winds and sunshine
+of heaven.”
+
+In another moment, however, he was all cheerfulness. “You have brought
+me a Christmas present,” cried he, “and we must make it a Christmas
+holiday indeed. Here is the beginning:” and with one of his old grave
+smiles, he handed Bertram a little note which had been awaiting him on
+the library table. “But Paula and Miss Belinda must have their pleasure
+too. Paula, are you too tired for a ride down town? I will show you New
+York on a Christmas eve,” continued he to Miss Walton, seeing that
+Paula’s attention was absorbed by the expression of sudden and moving
+surprise which had visited Bertram’s face, upon the perusal of his note.
+“It is a stirring sight. Nothing more cheering can be found the wide
+world over, for those who have a home and children to make happy.”
+
+“I certainly should enjoy a glimpse of holiday cheer,” assented Miss
+Belinda. And Paula recalled to herself by the sound of her aunt’s voice,
+gayly re-echoed her assertion.
+
+So Samuel was despatched for a carriage, and in a few minutes they were
+all riding down Fifth Avenue, _en route_ for Tiffany’s, Macy’s, and any
+other store that might offer special attractions. It was a happy
+company. As they rolled along, Paula felt her heart grow lighter and
+lighter, Mr. Sylvester was almost gay, while even Aunt Belinda
+condescended to be merry. Bertram alone was silent, but as Paula caught
+short glimpses of his face, while speeding past some illuminated corner,
+she felt that it was that silence which is “the perfectest herald of
+joy.”
+
+“I shall make you get out and mix with the crowd,” said Mr. Sylvester.
+“I want you to feel the throb of the great heart of the city on such a
+night as this. It is as if all men were brothers—or fathers, I should
+say. People that ordinarily pass each other without a sign, nod and
+smile with pleasing recognition of the evening’s cheer. Grave and
+reverend seigniors, are not ashamed to be seen carrying packages by the
+dozen. Indeed, he who is most laden is considered the best fellow, and
+he who is so unfortunate as to show nothing but empty arms, feels shy if
+not ashamed; a condition of mind into which I shall soon fall myself, if
+we do not presently reach our destination.”
+
+Paula never forgot that night. As from the midst of our common-place
+memories, some one hour stands out distinct and strange, like a sweet
+foreigner in a crowd of village faces, so to Paula, this ride through
+the lighted streets, with the ensuing rush from store to store, piloted
+by Bertram and Miss Belinda, and protected by Mr. Sylvester, was her one
+weird glimpse into the Arabian Nights’ country. Why, she could not have
+told; why, she did not stop to think. She had been to all these places
+before, but never with such a heart as this—never, never with such an
+overflowing heart as this.
+
+“I have washed away my reproach,” cried Mr. Sylvester, coming out to the
+carriage with his arms full of bundles. “Aunt Belinda is to blame for
+this; she set the example, you see.” And with a merry laugh, he tossed
+one thing after another into Paula’s lap, reserving only one small
+package for himself. “I scarcely know what I have bought,” said he. “I
+shall be as much surprised as any one, when you come to undo the
+bundles. ‘A pretty thing,’ was all I waited to hear from the shop
+girls.”
+
+“There is a small printing press for one thing,” cried Paula merrily. “I
+saw the man at Holton’s eye you with a certain sort of shrewd humor, and
+hastily do it up. You paid for it; probably thinking it one of the
+‘pretty things.’ We shall have to make it over to Bertram, as being the
+only one amongst us who by any stretch of imagination can be said to be
+near enough the age of boyhood to enjoy it.”
+
+“I do not know about that,” cried Bertram, with a ringing infectious
+laugh, “my imagination has been luring me into believing that I am not
+the only boy in this crowd.”
+
+And so they went on, toying with their new-found joy as with a
+plaything, and hard would it have been to tell in which of those voices
+rang the deeper contentment.
+
+The opening of the packages on the library-table afforded another season
+of merriment. Such treasures as came to light! A roll of black silk,
+which could only have been meant for Miss Belinda. A casket of fretted
+silver, just large enough to hold Paula’s gloves; a scarf-ring, to which
+no one but Bertram could lay claim; a bundle of confections, a pair of
+diamond-studded bracelets, a scarf of delicate lace, articles for the
+desk, and knick-knacks for the toilet table, and last, but not least, in
+weight at least, the honest little printing-press.
+
+“Oh, I never dreamed of this,” said Paula, “when we chose Christmas eve
+for our journey.”
+
+“Nor would you have done right to stay away if you had,” returned Mr.
+Sylvester gayly.
+
+But when the sport was all over, and Paula stood alone with Mr.
+Sylvester in the library, awaiting his last good-night, the deeper
+influences of this holy time made themselves felt, and it was with an
+air of gentle seriousness, he told her that it had been a happy
+Christmas eve to him.
+
+“And to me,” returned Paula. “Bertram too, seemed very happy. Would it
+be too inquisitive in me to ask what good news the little note
+contained, to work such wonders?”
+
+A smile such as was seldom seen on Mr. Sylvester’s face of late, flashed
+brightly over it. “It was only a card of invitation to dinner,” said he,
+“but it came from Mr. Stuyvesant, and that to Bertram means a great
+deal.”
+
+The surprise in Paula’s eyes made him smile again. “Will it be a great
+shock to you, if I tell you that the name of the woman for whom Bertram
+made the sacrifice of his art, was Cicely Stuyvesant?”
+
+“Cicely? my Cicely?” Her astonishment was great, but it was also happy.
+“Oh, I never dreamed—ah, now I see,” she went on naively. “That is the
+reason she refrained from coming to this house; she was afraid of
+meeting _him_. But to think I should never have guessed it, and she my
+dearest friend! Oh, I am very happy; I admire Bertram so much, and it is
+such a beautiful secret. And Mr. Stuyvesant has invited him to his
+house! I do not wonder you felt like making the evening a gala one. Mr.
+Stuyvesant would not do that if he were not learning to appreciate
+Bertram.”
+
+“No; there is method in all that Mr. Stuyvesant does. More than that, if
+I am not mistaken, he has known this beautiful secret, as you call it,
+from the first, and would be the last to receive Bertram as a guest to
+his table, if he did not mean him the best and truest encouragement.”
+
+“I believe you are right,” said Paula. “I remember now that one day when
+I was spending the afternoon with Cicely, he came into the room where I
+was, and finding me for the moment alone, sat down, and in his quaint
+old-fashioned manner asked me in the most abrupt way what I thought of
+Bertram Sylvester. I was surprised, but told him I considered him one of
+the noblest young men I knew, adding that if a fine mind, a kind heart,
+and a pure life were open to regard, Bertram had the right to claim the
+esteem of all his friends and associates. The old gentleman looked at me
+somewhat curiously, but nodded his head as if pleased, and merely
+remarking, ‘It is not necessary to mention we had this conversation, my
+dear,’ got up and proceeded slowly from the room. I thought it was
+simply a not unnatural curiosity concerning a young man with whom he had
+more or less business connection; but now I perceive it had a deeper
+significance.”
+
+“He could scarcely have found a more zealous little advocate for Bertram
+if he had hunted the city over. Bertram may be more obliged to you than
+he knows. He has been very patient, but the day of his happiness is
+approaching.”
+
+“And Cicely’s! I feel as if I could scarcely wait to see her with this
+new hope in her eyes. She has kept me without the door of her suspense,
+but she must let me across the threshold of her happiness.”
+
+The look with which Mr. Sylvester eyed the fair girl’s radiant face
+deepened. “Paula,” said be, “can you leave these new thoughts for a
+moment to hear a request I have to make?”
+
+She at once turned to him with her most self-forgetful smile.
+
+“I have been making myself a little present,” pursued he, slowly taking
+out of his pocket the single package he had reserved from the rest.
+“Open it, dear.”
+
+With fingers that unconsciously trembled, she hastily undid the package.
+A little box rolled out. Taking off its cover, she took out a plain gold
+locket of the style usually worn by gentlemen on their watch-chains.
+“Fasten it on for me,” said he.
+
+Wondering at his tone which was almost solemn, she quietly did his
+bidding. But when she essayed to lift her head upon the completion of
+her task, he gently laid his hand upon her brow and so stood for a
+moment without a word.
+
+“What is it?” she asked, with a sudden indrawing of her breath. “What
+moves you so, Mr. Sylvester?”
+
+“I have just taken a vow,” said he.
+
+She started back agitated and trembling.
+
+“I had reason to,” he murmured, “pray at nights when you go to bed, that
+I may be able to keep it.”
+
+“What?” sprang to her lips; but she restrained herself and only allowed
+her glance to speak.
+
+“Will you do it, Paula?”
+
+“Yes, oh yes!” Her whole heart seemed to rush out in the phrase. She
+drew back as at the opening of a door in an unexpected spot. Her eye had
+something of fear in it and something of secret desperation too. He
+watched her with a gaze that strangely faltered.
+
+“A woman’s prayers are a man’s best safeguard,” murmured he. “He must be
+a wretch who does not feel himself surrounded by a sacred halo, while he
+knows that pure lips are breathing his name in love and trust before the
+throne of the Most High.”
+
+“I will pray for you as for myself,” she whispered, and endeavored to
+meet his eyes. But her head drooped and she did not speak as she would
+have done a few months before; and when a few instants later they parted
+in their old fashion at the foot of the stairs, she did not turn to give
+him the accustomed smile and nod with which she used to mount the
+stairs, spiral by spiral, and disappear in her little room above. Yet he
+did not grieve at the change, but stood looking up the way she had gone,
+like a man before whom some vision of unexpected promise had opened.
+
+
+
+
+XXXI.
+
+A QUESTION.
+
+     “Think on thy sins.”—OTHELLO.
+
+
+The next morning when Mr. Sylvester came down to breakfast, he found on
+the library-table an exquisite casket, similar to the one he had given
+Paula the night before, but larger, and filled with flowers of the most
+delicious odor.
+
+“For Miss Fairchild,” explained Samuel, who was at that moment passing
+through the room.
+
+With a pang of jealous surprise, that, however, failed to betray itself
+in his steadily composed countenance, Mr. Sylvester advanced to the side
+of the table, and lifted up the card that hung attached to the beautiful
+present. The name he read there seemed to startle him; he moved away,
+and took up his paper with a dark flush on his brow, that had not
+disappeared when Miss Belinda entered the room.
+
+“Humph!” was her immediate exclamation, as her eye rested upon the
+conspicuous offering in the centre of the apartment. But instantly
+remembering herself, advanced with a cheerful good-morning, which
+however did not prevent her eyes from wandering with no small
+satisfaction towards this fresh evidence of Mr. Ensign’s assiduous
+regard.
+
+“Paula is remembered by others than ourselves,” remarked Mr. Sylvester,
+probably observing her glance.
+
+“Yes; she has a very attentive suitor in Mr. Ensign,” returned Miss
+Belinda shortly. “A pleasant appearing young man,” she ejaculated next
+moment; “worthy in many respects of success, I should say.”
+
+“Has he—do you mean to say that he has visited you in Grotewell?” asked
+Mr. Sylvester, his eye upon the paper in his hand.
+
+“Certainly; a few more interviews will settle it.”
+
+The paper rustled in Mr. Sylvester’s grasp, but his voice was composed
+if not formal, as he observed, “She regards his attentions then with
+favor?”
+
+“She wears his flowers in her bosom, and brightens like a flower herself
+when he is seen to approach. If allowed to go her way unhindered, I have
+but little doubt as to how it will end. Mr. Ensign is not handsome, but
+I am told that he has every other qualification likely to make a gentle
+creature like Paula happy.”
+
+“He is a good fellow,” exclaimed Mr. Sylvester under his breath.
+
+“And goodness is the first essential in the character of the man who is
+to marry Paula,” inexorably observed Miss Belinda. “An open, cheerful
+disposition, a clear conscience and a past with no dark pages in its
+history, must mark him who is to link unto his fate our pure and
+sensitive Paula. Is it not so, Mr. Sylvester?”
+
+The advertisements in that morning’s _Tribune_ must have been unusually
+interesting, judging from the difficulty which Mr. Sylvester experienced
+in withdrawing his eyes from them. “The man whom Paula marries,” said he
+at last, “can neither be too good, too kind, or too pure. Nor shall any
+other than a good, kind, and pure man possess her,” he added in a tone
+that while low, effectually hushed even the slow-to-be-intimidated Miss
+Belinda. In another moment Paula entered.
+
+Oh, the morning freshness of some faces! Like the singing of birds in a
+prison, is the sound and sight of a lovely maiden coming into the grim,
+gray atmosphere of a winter breakfast room. Paula was exceptionally
+gifted with this auroral cheer which starts the day so brightly. At
+sight of her face Mr. Sylvester dropped his paper, and even Miss Belinda
+straightened herself more energetically. “Merry Christmas,” cried her
+sweet young voice, and immediately the whole day seemed to grow glad
+with promise and gaysome with ringing sleigh-bells. “It’s snowing, did
+you know it? A world of life is in the air; the flakes dance as they
+come down, like dervishes in a frenzy. It was all we lacked to make the
+day complete; now we have everything.”
+
+“Yes,” said Miss Belinda, with a significant glance at the table,
+“everything.”
+
+Paula followed her glance, saw the silver box with its wealth of
+blossoms, and faltered back with a quick look at Mr. Sylvester’s grave
+and watchful countenance.
+
+“Mr. Ensign seems to be possessed of clairvoyance,” observed Miss
+Belinda easily. “How he could know that you were to be in town to-day, I
+cannot imagine.”
+
+“I wrote him in my last letter that in all probability I should spend
+the holidays with Mr. Sylvester,” explained Paula simply, but with a
+slow and deepening flush, that left the roses she contemplated nothing
+of which to boast. “I did so, because he proposed to visit Grotewell on
+Christmas.”
+
+There was a short silence in the room, then Mr. Sylvester rose, and
+remarking with polite composure, “It is a very pretty remembrance,” led
+the way into the dining-room. Paula with a slow drooping of her head
+quickly followed, while Miss Belinda brought up the rear, with the look
+of a successful diplomat.
+
+A meal in the Sylvester mansion was always a formal affair, but this was
+more than formal. A vague oppression seemed to fill the air; an
+oppression which Miss Belinda’s stirring conversation found it
+impossible to dissipate. In compliance to Mr. Sylvester’s request, she
+sat at the head of the table, and was the only one who seemed able to
+eat anything. For one thing she had never seen Ona in that post of
+honor, but Paula and Mr. Sylvester could not forget the graceful form
+that once occupied that seat. The first meal above a grave, no matter
+how long it has been dug, must ever seem weighted with more or less
+unreality.
+
+Besides, with Paula there was a vague unsettled feeling, as if some
+delicate inner balance had been too rudely shaken. She longed to fly
+away and think, and she was obliged to sit still and talk.
+
+The end of the meal was a relief to all parties. Miss Belinda went up
+stairs, thoughtfully shaking her firm head; Mr. Sylvester sat down again
+to his paper, and Paula advanced towards the dainty gift that awaited
+her inspection on the library table. But half way to it she paused. A
+strange shyness had seized her. With Mr. Sylvester sitting there, she
+dared not approach this delicate testimonial of another’s affection. She
+did not know as she wished to. Her eyes stole in hesitation to the
+floor. Suddenly Mr. Sylvester spoke:
+
+“Why do you not look at your pretty present, Paula?”
+
+She started, gave him a quick glance, and advanced hurriedly towards the
+table; but scarcely had she reached it when she paused, turned and
+hastened over to his side. He was still reading, or appearing to read,
+but she saw his hand tremble where it grasped the sheet, though his face
+with its clear cut profile, shone calm and cold against the dark
+background of the wall beyond.
+
+“I do not care to look at it now,” said she, with a hurried interlacing
+of her restless fingers.
+
+He turned towards her and a quick thrill passed over his countenance.
+“Sit down, Paula,” said he, “I want to talk to you.”
+
+She obeyed as might an automaton. Was it the tone of his voice that
+chilled her, or the studied aspect of his fixed and solemn countenance?
+He did not speak at once, but when he did, there was no faltering in his
+voice, that was lower than common, but deep, like still waters that have
+run into dark channels far from the light of day.
+
+“Paula, I want to ask you a question. What would you think of a man
+that, with deliberate selfishness, went into the king’s garden, and
+plucking up by the roots the most beautiful flower he could find there,
+carried it into a dungeon to pant out its exquisite life amid chill and
+darkness?”
+
+“I should think,” replied she, after the first startled moment of
+silence, “that the man did well, if by its one breath of sweetness, the
+flower could comfort the heart of him who sat in the dungeon.”
+
+The glance with which Mr. Sylvester regarded her, suddenly faltered; he
+turned with quickness towards the fire. “A moment’s joy is, then, excuse
+for a murder,” exclaimed he. “God and the angels would not agree with
+you, Paula.”
+
+There was a quivering in his tone, made all the more apparent by its
+studied self-possession of a moment before. She trembled where she sat,
+and opened her lips to speak, but closed them again, awed by his steady
+and abstracted gaze, now fixed before him in gloomy reverie. A moment
+passed. The clock ticking away on the mantel-piece seemed to echo the
+inevitable “Forever! never!” of Longfellow’s old song. Neither of them
+moved. At length, in a low and trembling voice, Paula spoke:
+
+“Is it murder, when the flower loves the dark of the dungeon more than
+it does the light of day?”
+
+With a subdued but passionate cry he rose hastily to his feet. “Yes,”
+said he, and drew back as if he could not bear the sight of her face or
+the glance of her eye. “Sunshine is the breath of flowers; sweet wooing
+gales, their natural atmosphere. He who meddles with a treasure so
+choice does it at his peril.” Then as she hurriedly rose in turn,
+softened his whole tone, and assuming his usual air of kindly
+fatherhood, asked her in the most natural way in the world, what he
+could do to make her happy that day.
+
+“Nothing,” replied she, with a droop of her head; “I think I will go and
+see Cicely.”
+
+A short sigh escaped him. “The carriage shall be ready for you,” said
+he. “I hope your friend’s happiness will overflow into your own gentle
+bosom, and make the day a very pleasant one. God bless your young sweet
+heart, my Paula!”
+
+Her breast heaved, her large, dark, mellow eyes flashed with one quick
+glance towards his face, then she drew back, and in another moment left
+his side and quietly glided from the room. His very life seemed to go
+with her, yet he did not stir; but he sighed deeply when, upon turning
+towards the library-table, he found that she had carried away with her
+the silent testimonial of another and more fortunate man’s love and
+devotion.
+
+
+
+
+XXXII.
+
+FULL TIDE.
+
+     “A skirmish of wit between them.”
+
+     —MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.
+
+
+Man thinks he is strong, and lays his foundations, raises his walls, and
+dreams of his completed turrets, without reckoning the force of the
+gales or the insidious inundating of the waters that may bring low the
+mounting structure before its time. When with a firm hand, Mr. Sylvester
+thrust back from his heart the one delight which of all the world could
+afford, seemed to him at that moment the dearest and the best, he
+thought the struggle was over and the victory won. It had not even
+commenced. He was made startlingly alive to this fact at the very next
+interview he had with Paula. She had just come from Miss Stuyvesant, and
+the reflection of her friend’s scarcely comprehended joy was on her
+countenance, together with a look he could not comprehend, but which
+stirred and haunted him, until he felt forced to ask if she had seen any
+other of her old friends, in the short visit she had paid.
+
+“Yes,” said she, with a distressed blush. “Mr. Ensign was unexpectedly
+there.”
+
+It is comparatively easy to restrain your own hand from snatching at a
+treasure you greatly covet, but it is much more difficult to behold
+another and a lesser one grasp and carry it away before your eyes. He
+succeeded in hiding the shadow that oppressed him, but he was
+constrained to recognize the sharpness of the conflict that was about to
+be waged in the recesses of his own breast. A conflict, because he knew
+that a lift of his finger, or a glance of his eye would decide the
+matter then, while in a week, perhaps, the glamour of a young sunshiny
+love, would have worked its inevitable result, and the happiness that
+had so unexpectedly startled upon him in his monotonous and sombre path,
+would have wandered forever out of his reach. How did he meet its
+unexpected rush. Sternly at first, but with greater and greater wavering
+as the days went by, each one revealing fresh beauties of character and
+deeper springs of feeling in the enchanting girl thus brought in all her
+varied charm before his eyes. Why should he not be happy? If there were
+dark pages in his life, had they not long ago been closed and sealed,
+and was not the future bright with promise? A man of his years was not
+through with life. He felt at times as he gazed upon her face with its
+indescribable power of awakening far-reaching thoughts and feelings in
+callous breasts long unused to the holy influence of either, that he had
+just begun to live; that the golden country, with its enticing vistas,
+lay all before him, and that the youth, which he had missed, had somehow
+returned to his prime, fresh with more than its usual enthusiasm and
+bright with more than its wonted hopes and projects. With this glorious
+woman at his side, life would be new indeed, and if new why not pure and
+sweet and noble? What was there to hinder him from making the existence
+of this sweet soul a walking amongst gentle duties, satisfied dreams and
+holy aspirations? A past remorse? Why the gates could be closed on that!
+A strain of innate weakness for the world’s good opinion and applause?
+Ah! with love in his life such a weakness must disappear; besides had he
+not taken a vow on her dear head, that ought to hedge him about as with
+angel’s wings in the hour of temptation? Men with his experience do not
+invoke the protection of innocence to guard a degraded soul. Why, then,
+all this hesitation? A great boon was being offered to him after years
+of loneliness and immeasurable longing; was it not the will of heaven,
+that he should meet and enjoy this unexpected grace? He dared to stop
+and ask, and once daring to ask, the insidious waters found their way
+beneath the foundations of his resolution, and the lofty structure he
+had reared in such self-confidence, began to tremble where it stood,
+though as yet it betrayed no visible sign of weakness.
+
+Meanwhile, society with its innumerable demands, had drawn the beautiful
+young girl within its controlling grasp. She must go here, she must go
+there; she must lend her talents to this, her beauty to that. Before she
+had decided whether she ought to remain in the city a week, two had
+flown by, and in all this time Mr. Ensign had been ever at her side,
+brightening in her own despite, hours which might else have been sad,
+and surrounding her difficult path with proofs of his silent and wary
+devotion. A golden net seemed to be closing around her, and, though as
+yet, she had given no token of a special recognition of her position,
+Miss Belinda betrayed by the uniform complacence of her demeanor, that
+she for one regarded the matter as effectually settled.
+
+The success which Bertram had met in his first visit at Mr.
+Stuyvesant’s, was not the least agitating factor in this fortnight’s
+secret history. He was too much a part of the home life at Mr.
+Sylvester’s, not to make the lightest thrill of his frank and sensitive
+nature felt by all who invaded its precincts. And he was in a state of
+repressed expectancy at this time, that unconsciously created an
+atmosphere about him of vague but restless excitement. The hearts of all
+who encountered his look of concentrated delight, must unconsciously
+beat with his. A strain sweeter than his old-time music was in his
+voice. When he played upon the piano, which was but seldom, it was as if
+he breathed out his soul before the holy images. When he walked, he
+seemed to tread on air. His every glance was a question as to whether
+this great joy, for which he had so long and patiently waited, was to be
+his? Love, living and apotheosized, appeared to blaze before them, and
+no one can look on love without feeling somewhere in his soul the stir
+of those deep waters, whose pulsing throb even in the darkness of
+midnight, proves that we are the children of God.
+
+Cicely was uncommunicative, but her face, when Paula beheld it, was like
+the glowing countenance of some sculptured saint, from which the veil is
+slowly being withdrawn.
+
+Suddenly there came an evening when the force of the spell that held all
+these various hearts enchained gave way. It was the night of a private
+entertainment of great elegance, to be held at the house of a friend of
+Miss Stuyvesant. Bertram had received formal permission from the father
+of Cicely, to act as his daughter’s escort, and the fact had transformed
+him from a hopeful dreamer, into a man determined to speak and know his
+fate at once. Paula was engaged to take part in the entertainment, and
+the sight of her daintily-decked figure leaving the house with Mr.
+Ensign, was the last drop in the slowly gathering tide that was secretly
+swelling in Mr. Sylvester’s breast; and it was with a sudden outrush of
+his whole determined nature that he stepped upstairs, dressed himself in
+evening attire, and deliberately followed them to the place where they
+were going. “The wealth of the Indies is slipping from my grasp,” was
+his passionate exclamation, as he rode through the lighted streets. “I
+cannot see it go; if she can care more for me than for this sleek,
+merry-hearted young fellow, she shall. I know that my love is to his,
+what the mighty ocean is to a placid lake, and with such love one ought
+to be panoplied as with resisting steel.”
+
+A stream of light and music met him, as he went up the stoop of the
+house that held his treasure. It seemed to intoxicate him. Glow, melody
+and perfume, were so many expressions of Paula. His friends, of whom
+there were many present, received him with tokens of respect, not
+unmingled with surprise. It was the first time he had been seen in
+public since his wife’s death, and they could not but remark upon the
+cheerfulness of his bearing, and the almost exalted expression of his
+proud and restless eye. Had Paula accompanied him, they might have
+understood his emotion, but with the beautiful girl under the care of
+one of the most eligible gentlemen in town, what could have happened to
+Mr. Sylvester to make his once melancholy countenance blazon like a star
+amid this joyous and merrily-laughing throng. He did not enlighten them,
+but moved from group to group, searching for Paula. Suddenly the thought
+flashed upon him, “Is it only an hour or so since I smiled upon her in
+my own hall, and shook my head when she asked me with a quick, pleading
+look, to come with them to this very spot?” It seemed days, since that
+time. The rush of these new thoughts, the final making up of this
+slowly-maturing purpose, the sudden allowing of his heart to regard her
+as a woman to be won, had carried the past away as by the sweep of a
+mountain torrent. He could not believe he had ever known a moment of
+hesitancy, ever looked at her as a father, ever bid her go on her way
+and leave the prisoner to his fate. He must always have felt like this;
+such momentum could not have been gathered in an hour; she must know
+that he loved her wildly, deeply, sacredly, wholly, with the fibre of
+his mind, his body and his soul; that to call her his in life and in
+death, was the one demanding passion of his existence, making the past a
+dream, and the future—ah, he dared not question that! He must behold
+her face before he could even speculate upon the realities lying behind
+fate’s down-drawn curtain.
+
+Meanwhile fair faces and lovely forms flitted before him, carrying his
+glance along in their train, but only because youth was a symbol of
+Paula. If these fresh young girls could smile and look back upon him,
+with that lingering glance which his presence ever invoked, why not she
+who was not only sweet, tender, and lovely, but gifted with a nature
+that responded to the deep things of life, and the stern passions of
+potent humanity. Could a merry laugh lure her while he stood by? Was the
+sunshine the natural atmosphere of this flower, that had bloomed under
+his eye so sweetly and shed out its innocent fragrance, at the approach
+of his solemn-pacing foot? He began to mirror before his mind’s eye the
+startled look of happy wonder with which she would greet his impassioned
+glance, when released from whatever duties might be now pressing upon
+her; she wandered into these rooms, to find him awaiting her, when
+suddenly there was a stir in the throng, a pleased and excited rush, and
+the large curtain which he had vaguely noticed hanging at one end of the
+room, uplifted and—was it Paula? this coy, brilliant, saucy-eyed
+Florentine maiden, stepping out from a bower of greenery, with finger on
+her lip, and a backward glance of saucy defiance that seemed to people
+the verdant walks behind her with gallant cavaliers, eager to follow
+upon her footsteps? Yes; he could not be mistaken; there was but one
+face like that in the world. It was Paula, but Paula with youth’s
+merriest glamour upon her, a glamour that had caught its radiant light
+from other thoughts than those in which he had been engaged. He bowed
+his head, and a shudder went through him like that which precedes the
+falling knife of the executioner. Even the applause that greeted the
+revelation of so much loveliness and alluring charm, passed over him
+like a dream. He was battling with his first recognition of the
+possibility of his being too late. Suddenly her voice was heard.
+
+She was speaking aloud to herself, this Florentine maiden who had
+outstripped her lover in the garden, but the tone was the same he had
+heard beside his own hearthstone, and the archness that accompanied it
+had frequently met and encouraged some cheerful expression of his own.
+These are the words she uttered. Listen with him to the _naĂŻve_, half
+tender, half pettish voice, and mark with his eyes the alternate lights
+and shadows that flit across her cheek as she broodingly murmurs:
+
+     He is certainly a most notable gallant. His “Good day, lady!”
+     and his “Good even to you!” are flavored with the cream of
+     perfectest courtesy. But gallantry while it sits well upon a
+     man, does not make him one, any more than a feather makes the
+     cap it adorns. For a Tuscan he hath also a certain comeliness,
+     but then I have ever sworn, in good faith too, that I would not
+     marry a Tuscan, were he the best made man in Italy. Then there
+     is his glance, which proclaims to all men’s understandings that
+     he loves me, which same seems overbold; but then his smile!
+
+     Well, for a smile it certainly does credit to his wit, but one
+     cannot live upon smiles; though if one could, one might consent
+     to make a trial of his—and starve belike for her pains. (_She
+     drops her cheek into her hand and stands musing._)
+
+Mr. Sylvester drew a deep breath and let his eyes fall, when suddenly a
+hum ran through the audience about him, and looking quickly up, he
+beheld Mr. Ensign dressed in full cavalier costume, standing behind the
+musing maiden with a half merry, half tender gleam upon his face, that
+made the thickly beating heart of his rival shrink as if clutched in an
+iron vise. What followed, he heard as we do the words of a sentence read
+to us from the judge’s seat. The cavalier spoke first and a thousand
+dancing colors seemed to flash in the merry banter that followed.
+
+     _Martino._—She muses, and on no other than myself, as I am
+     ready to swear by that coy and tremulous glance. I will move
+     her to avow it. (_Advances._) Fair lady, greeting! A kiss for
+     your sweet thoughts.
+
+     _Nita._ (_With a start_).—A kiss, Signior Martino? You must
+     acknowledge that were but a sorry exchange for thoughts like
+     mine, so if it please you, I will keep my thoughts and you your
+     kiss; and lest it should seem ungracious in me to give nothing
+     upon your asking, I will bestow upon you my most choice good
+     day, and so leave you to your meditations. (_Curtseys and is
+     about to depart._)
+
+     _Martino._—You have the true generosity, lady; you give away
+     what it costs you the dearest to part from. Nay, rumple not
+     your lip; it is the truth for all your pretty poutings!
+     Convince me it is not.
+
+     _Nita._—Your pardon, but that would take words, and words
+     would take time, and time given to one of your persuasion would
+     refute all my arguments on the face of them. (_Still
+     retreating._)
+
+     _Martino._—Well, lady, since it is your pleasure to be
+     consistent, rather than happy, adieu. Had you stayed but as
+     long as the bee pauses on an oleander blossom, you would have
+     heard—
+
+     _Nita._—Buzzing, signior?
+
+     _Martino._—Yes, if by that word you would denominate vows of
+     constancy and devotion. For I do greatly love you, and would
+     tell you so.
+
+     _Nita._—And for that you expect me to linger! as though vows
+     were new to my ears, and words of love as strange to my
+     understanding as tropical birds to the eyes of a Norseman.
+
+     _Martino._—If you do love me, you will linger.
+
+     _Nita._—Yet if I do, (_Slowly advancing_) be assured it is
+     from some other motive than love.
+
+     _Martino._—So it be not from hate I am contented.
+
+
+     _Nita._—To be contented with little, proves you a man of much
+     virtue.
+
+     _Martino._—When I have you, I am contented with much.
+
+     _Nita._—That _when_ is a wise insertion, signior; it saves you
+     from shame and me from anger.—Hark! some one calls.
+
+     _Martino._—None other but the wind; it is a kindly breeze, and
+     grieves to hear how harsh a pretty maiden can be to the lover
+     who adores her.
+
+     _Nita._—Please your worship, I do not own a lover.
+
+     _Martino._—Then mend your poverty, and accept one.
+
+     _Nita._—I am no beggar to accept of alms.
+
+     _Martino._—In this case, he who offers is the beggar.
+
+     _Nita._—I am too young to wear a jewel of so much pretension.
+
+     _Martino._—Time is a cure for youth, and marriage a happy
+     speeder of time.
+
+     _Nita._—But youth needs no cure, and if marriage speedeth
+     time, I’ll live a maid and die one. The days run swift enough
+     without goading, Signior Martino.
+
+     _Martino._—But lady—
+
+     _Nita._.—Nay, your tongue will outstrip time, if you put not a
+     curb upon it. In faith, signior, I would not seem rude, but if
+     in your courtesy you would consent to woo some other maiden
+     to-day, why I would strive and bear it.
+
+     _Martino._—When I stoop to woo any other lady than thee, the
+     moon shall hide its face from the earth, and shine upon it no
+     more.
+
+     _Nita._—Your thoughts are daring in their flight to-day.
+
+     _Martino._—They are in search of your love.
+
+     _Nita._—Alack, your wings will fail.
+
+     _Martino._—Ay, when they reach their goal.
+
+     _Nita._—Dost think to reach it?
+
+     _Martino._—Shall I not, lady?
+
+     _Nita._—’Tis hard to believe it possible, yet who can tell?
+     You are not so handsome, signior, that one would die for you.
+
+     _Martino._—No, lady; but what goes to make other men’s faces
+     fair, goes to make my heart great. The virtue of my manhood
+     rests in the fact that I love you.
+
+     _Nita._—Faith! so in some others. ’Tis the common fault of the
+     gallants, I find. If that is all—
+
+     _Martino._—But I will always love you, even unto death.
+
+     _Nita._—I doubt it not, so death come soon enough.
+
+     _Martino._ (_Taps his poiniard with his hand._)—Would you
+     have it come now, and so prove me true to my word?
+
+     _Nita._ (_Demurely_).—I am no judge, to utter the doom that
+     your presumption merits.
+
+     _Martino._—Your looks speak doom, and your sweet lips hide a
+     sword keener than that of justice.
+
+     _Nita._—Have you tried them, signior, that you speak so
+     knowingly concerning them? (_Retreating._) Your words,
+     methinks, are somewhat like your kisses, all breath and no
+     substance.
+
+     _Martino._—Lady! sweet one! (_Follows her._)
+
+     _Nita._—Nay, I am gone. (_Exit._)
+
+     _Martino._—I were of the fools’ fold, did I fail to follow at
+     a beck so gentle. (_Exit._)
+
+That was not all, but it was all that Mr. Sylvester heard. Hastily
+retreating, he went out into the corridor and ere long found himself in
+the conservatory. He felt shaken; felt that he could not face all this
+unmoved. He knew he had been gazing at a play; that because this
+Florentine maiden looked at her lover with coyness, gentleness,
+tenderness perhaps, it did not follow that she, his Paula, loved the
+real man behind this dashing cavalier. But the possibility was there,
+and in his present frame of mind could not be encountered without pain.
+He dared not stay where men’s eyes could follow him, or women’s delicate
+glances note the heaving of his chest. He had in the last three hours
+given himself over so completely to hope. He realized it now though he
+would not have believed it before. With man’s usual egotism he had felt
+that it was only necessary for him to come to a decision, to behold all
+else fall out according to his mind. He had forgotten for the nonce the
+power of a youthful lover, eager to serve, ready to wait, careful to
+press his way at every advantage. He could have cursed himself for the
+folly of his delay, as he strode up and down among the flowering shrubs
+in the solitude which the attractions of the play created. “Fool! fool!”
+he muttered between his teeth, “to halt on the threshold of Paradise
+till the door closed in my face, when a step would have carried me
+where—” He grew dizzy as he contemplated. The goal looks never so fair
+as when just within reach of a rival’s hand.
+
+A vigorous clapping, followed by a low gush of music, woke him at last
+to the realization that the little drama had terminated. With a hasty
+movement he was about to return to the parlors, when he heard the low
+murmur of voices, and on looking up, saw a youthful couple advancing
+into the conservatory, whom at first glance he recognized for Bertram
+and Miss Stuyvesant. They were absorbed in each other, and believing
+themselves alone, came on without fear, presenting such a picture of
+love and deep, unspeakable joy, that Mr. Sylvester paused and gazed upon
+them as upon the sudden embodiment of a cherished vision of his own
+imaginings. Bertram was speaking ordinary words no doubt, words suited
+to the occasion and the time, but his voice was attuned to the beatings
+of his long repressed heart, while the bend of his proud young head and
+the glance of his yearning eye were more eloquent than speech, of the
+leaning of his whole nature in love and protection towards the dainty,
+flushing creature at his side. It was a sight to make old hearts young
+and a less happy lover sick with envy. In spite of his gratification at
+his nephew’s success, Mr. Sylvester’s brow contracted, and it was with
+difficulty he could subdue himself into the appearance of calm
+benevolence necessary to pass them with propriety. Had it been Paula and
+Mr. Ensign!
+
+He did not know how it was that he managed to find her at last. But just
+as he was beginning to realize that wisdom demanded his departure from
+this scene, he suddenly came upon her sitting with her face turned
+toward the crowd and waiting—for whom? He had never seen her look so
+beautiful, possibly because he had never before allowed himself to gaze
+upon her with a lover’s eyes. She had exchanged her piquant Roman
+costume for the pearl gray satin in which Ona had delighted to array
+her, and its rich substance and delicate neutral tint harmonized well
+with the amber brocade of the curtain against which she sat.
+
+Power, passion and purity breathed in her look, and lent enchantment to
+her form. She was poetry’s unique jewel, and at this moment, thought
+rather than merriment sat upon her lips, and haunted her somewhat
+tremulous smiles. He approached her as a priest to his shrine, but once
+at her side, once in view of her first startled blush, stooped
+passionately, and forgetting everything but the suspense at his heart,
+asked with a look and tone such as he had never before bestowed upon
+her, if the play which he had seen that evening had been real, or only
+the baseless fabric of a dream.
+
+She understood him and drew back with a look almost of awe, shaking her
+head and replying in a startled way, “I do not know, I dare not say, I
+scarcely have taken time to think.”
+
+“Then take it,” he murmured in a voice that shook her body and soul,
+“for _I_ must know, if _he_ does not.” And without venturing another
+word, or supplying by look or gesture any explanation of his unexpected
+appearance, or as equally unexpected departure, he bowed before her as
+if she had been a queen instead of the child he had been wont in other
+days to regard her, and speedily left her side.
+
+But he had not taken two steps before he paused. Mr. Ensign was
+approaching.
+
+“Mr. Sylvester! you are worse than the old woman of the tale, who
+declaring she would not, that nothing could ever induce her to—_did_.”
+
+“You utter a deeper truth than you realize,” returned that gentleman,
+with a grave emphasis meant rather for her ears than his. “It is the
+curse of mortals to overrate their strength in the face of great
+temptations. I am no exception to the rule.” And with a second bow that
+included this apparently triumphant lover within its dignified sweep, he
+calmly proceeded upon his way, and in a few moments had left the house.
+
+Mr. Ensign, who for all his careless disposition, was quick to recognize
+depths in others, stared after his commanding figure until he had
+disappeared, then turned and looked at Paula. Why did his heart sink,
+and the lights and joy and promise of the evening seem to turn dark and
+shrivel to nothing before his eyes!
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII.
+
+TWO LETTERS.
+
+    “I have no other but a woman’s reason,
+    I think him so, because I think him so.”
+
+    —TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA.
+
+
+A woman who has submitted to the undivided attentions of a gentleman for
+any length of time, feels herself more or less bound to him, whether any
+special words of devotion have passed between them or not, particularly
+if from sensitiveness of nature, she has manifested any pleasure in his
+society. Paula therefore felt as if her wings had been caught in a
+snare, when Mr. Ensign upon leaving her that evening, put a small note
+in her hand, saying that he would do himself the pleasure of calling for
+his reply the next day. She did not need to open it. She knew
+intuitively the manly honest words with which he would be likely to
+offer his heart and life for her acceptance; yet she did open it almost
+as soon as she reached her room, sitting down in her outside wraps for
+the purpose. She was not disappointed. Every line was earnest, ardent,
+and respectful. A true love and a happy cheerful home awaited her
+if—the stupendous meaning latent in an _if_!
+
+With folded hands lying across the white page, with glance fixed on the
+fire always kept burning brightly in the grate, she sat querying her own
+soul and the awful future. He was such a charming companion; life had
+flashed and glimmered with a thousand lights and colors since she knew
+him; his very laugh made her want to sing. With him she would move in
+sunshiny paths, open to the regard of all the world, giving and
+receiving good. Life would need no veils and love no check. A placid
+stream would bear her on through fields of smiling verdure. Dread hopes,
+strange fears, uneasy doubts and vague unrests, would not disturb the
+heart that rested its faith upon his frank and manly bosom. A breeze
+blew through his life that would sweep all such evils from the path of
+her who walked in trust and love by his side. In trust and love; ah!
+that was it. She trusted him, but did she love him? At one time she had
+been convinced that she did, else these past few weeks would have owned
+a different history. He came upon her so brightly amid her gloom; filled
+her days with such genial thoughts, and drew the surface of her soul so
+unconsciously after him. It was like a zephyr sweeping over the sea;
+every billow that leaps to follow seems to own the power of that passing
+wind. But could she think so now, since she had found that the mere
+voice and look of another man had power to awaken depths such as she
+could not name and scarcely as yet had been able to recognize? that
+though the billows might flow under the genial smile of her young lover,
+the tide rose only at the call of a deeper voice and a more imposing
+presence?
+
+She was a thinking spirit and recoiled from yielding too readily to any
+passing impulse. Love was a sacrament in her eyes; something entirely
+too precious to be accepted in counterfeit. She must know the secret of
+her inclinations, must weigh the influence that swayed her, for once
+given over to earth’s sublimest passion, she felt that it would have
+power to sweep her on to an eternity of bliss or suffering.
+
+She therefore forced herself to probe deep into the past, and pitilessly
+asked her conscience, what her emotions had been in reference to Mr.
+Sylvester before she positively knew that love for her as a woman had
+taken the place of his former fatherly regard. Her blushing cheek seemed
+to answer for her. Right or wrong, her life had never been complete away
+from his presence. She was lonesome and unsatisfied. When Mr. Ensign
+came she thought her previous unrest was explained, but the letter from
+Cicely describing Mr. Sylvester as sick and sorrowful, had withdrawn the
+veil from the delusion, and though it had settled again with Mr.
+Sylvester’s studied refusal to accept her devotion, was by this
+evening’s betrayal utterly wrenched away and trampled into oblivion. By
+every wild throb of her heart at the sound of his voice in her ear, by
+every out-reaching of her soul to enter into his every mood, by the deep
+sensation of rest she felt in his presence, and the uneasy longing that
+absorbed her in his absence, she knew that she loved Mr. Sylvester as
+she never could his younger, blither, and perhaps nobler rival. Each
+word spoken by him lay treasured in her heart of hearts. When she
+thought of manly beauty, his face and figure started upon her from the
+surrounding shadows, making all romance possible and poetry the truest
+expression of the human soul. While she lived, he must ever seem the man
+of men to charm the eye, affect the heart, and move the soul. Yet she
+hesitated. Why?
+
+There is nothing so hard to acknowledge to ourselves as the presence of
+a blemish in the character of those we love and long to revere. It was
+like giving herself to the rack to drag from its hiding-place and
+confront in all its hideous deformity, the doubt which, unconfessed
+perhaps, had of late mingled with her great reverence and admiring
+affection for this not easily to be comprehended man. But in this
+momentous hour she had power to do it. Conscience and self-respect
+demanded that the image before which she was ready to bow with such
+abandon, should be worthy her worship. She was not one who could carry
+offerings to a clouded shrine. She must see the glory shining from
+between the cherubim. “I must worship with my spirit as well as with my
+body, and how can I do that if there is a spot on his manhood, or a
+false note in his heart. If I did but know the secret of his past; why
+the prisoner sits in the dungeon! He is gentle, he is kindly, he loves
+goodness and strives to lead me in the paths of purity and wisdom, and
+yet something that is not good or pure clings to him, which he has never
+been able to shake loose. I perceive it in his melancholy glance; I
+catch its accents in his uneven tones; it rises upon me from his most
+thoughtful words, and makes his taking of a vow fearfully and warningly
+significant. Yet how much he is honored by his fellow-men, and with what
+reliance they look up to him for guidance and support. If I only knew
+the secrets of his heart!” thought she.
+
+It was a trembling scale that hung balancing in that young girl’s hand
+that night. On one side, frankness, cheerfulness, manly worth, honest
+devotion, and a home with every adjunct of peace and prosperity; on the
+other, love, gratitude, longing, admiration, and a dark shadow
+enveloping all, called doubt. The scale would not adjust itself. It tore
+her heart to turn from Mr. Sylvester, it troubled her conscience to
+dismiss the thought of Mr. Ensign. The question was yet undecided when
+she rose and began putting away her ornaments for the night.
+
+What was there on her dressing-table that made her pause with such a
+start, and cast that look of half beseeching inquiry at her own image in
+the glass? Only another envelope with her name written upon it. But the
+way in which she took it in her hand, and the half guilty air with which
+she stole back with it to the fire, would have satisfied any looker-on I
+imagine, that conscience or no conscience, debate or no debate, the
+writer of these lines had gained a hold upon her heart, which no other
+could dispute.
+
+It was a compactly written note and ran thus:
+
+     “A man is not always responsible for what he does in moments of
+     great suspense or agitation. But if, upon reflection, he finds
+     that he has spoken harshly or acted unwisely, it is his duty to
+     remedy his fault; and therefore it is that I write you this
+     little note. Paula, I love you; not as I once did, with a
+     fatherly longing and a protective delight, but passionately,
+     yearningly, and entirely, with the whole force of my somewhat
+     disappointed life; as a man loves for whom the world has
+     dissolved leaving but one creature in it, and that a woman. I
+     showed you this too plainly to-night. I have no right to
+     startle or intimidate your sweet soul into any relation that
+     might hereafter curb or dissatisfy you; if you can love me
+     freely, with no back-lookings to any younger lover left behind,
+     know that naught you could bestow, can ever equal the world of
+     love and feeling which I long to lavish upon you from my heart
+     of hearts. But if another has already won upon your affections
+     too much for you to give an undivided response to my appeal,
+     then by all the purity and innocence of your nature, forget I
+     have ever marred the past or disturbed the present by any word
+     warmer than that of a father.
+
+     “I shall not meet you at breakfast and possibly not at dinner
+     to-morrow, but when evening comes I shall look for my soul’s
+     dearer and better half, or my childless manhood’s nearest and
+     most cherished friend, as God pleaseth and your own heart and
+     conscience shall decree.
+
+     “EDWARD SYLVESTER.”
+
+Miss Belinda was very much surprised to be awakened early the next
+morning, by a pair of loving arms clasped yearningly about her neck.
+
+Looking up, she descried Paula kneeling beside her bed in the faint
+morning light, her cheeks burning, and her eyelids drooping; and
+guessing perhaps how it was, started up from her recumbent position with
+an energy strongly suggestive of the charger, that smells the battle
+afar off.
+
+“What has happened?” she asked. “You look as if you had not slept a
+wink.”
+
+For reply Paula pulled aside the curtain at the head of her bed, and
+slipped into her hand Mr. Ensign’s letter. Miss Belinda read it
+conscientiously through, with many grunts of approval, and having
+finished it, laid it down with a significant nod, after which she turned
+and surveyed Paula with keen but cautious scrutiny. “And you don’t know
+what answer to give,” she asked.
+
+“I should,” said Paula, “if—Oh aunt, you know what stands in my way! I
+have seen it in your eyes for some time. There is some one else—”
+
+“But he has not spoken?” vigorously ejaculated her aunt.
+
+Without answering, Paula put into her hand, with a slow reluctance she
+had not manifested before, a second little note, and then hid her head
+amid the bedclothes, waiting with quickly beating heart for what her
+aunt might say.
+
+She did not seem in haste to speak, but when she did, her words came
+with a quick sigh that echoed very drearily in the young girl’s anxious
+ears. “You have been placed by this in a somewhat painful position. I
+sympathize with you, my child. It is very hard to give denial to a
+benefactor.”
+
+Paula’s head drew nearer to her aunt’s breast, her arms crept round her
+neck. “But must I?” she breathed.
+
+Miss Belinda knitted her brows with great force, and stared severely at
+the wall opposite. “I am sorry there is any question about it,” she
+replied.
+
+Paula started up and looked at her with sudden determination. “Aunt,”
+said she, “what is your objection to Mr. Sylvester?”
+
+Miss Belinda shook her head, and pushing the girl gently away, hurriedly
+arose and began dressing with great rapidity. Not until she was entirely
+prepared for breakfast did she draw Paula to her, and prepare to answer
+her question.
+
+“My objection to him is, that I do not thoroughly understand him. I am
+afraid of the skeleton in the closet, Paula. I never feel at ease when I
+am with him, much as I admire his conversation and appreciate the
+undoubtedly noble instincts of his heart. His brow is not open enough to
+satisfy an eye which has accustomed itself to the study of human
+nature.”
+
+
+“He has had many sorrows!” Paula faintly exclaimed, stricken by this
+echo of her own doubts.
+
+“Yes,” returned her aunt, “and sorrow bows the head and darkens the eye,
+but it does not make the glance wavering or its expression mysterious.”
+
+“Some sorrows might,” urged Paula tremulously, arguing as much with her
+own doubts as with those of her aunt. “His have been of no ordinary
+nature. I have never told you, aunt, but there were circumstances
+attending Cousin Ona’s death that made it especially harrowing. He had a
+stormy interview with her the very morning she was killed; words passed
+between them, and he left her with a look that was almost desperate.
+When he next saw her, she lay lifeless and inert before him. I sometimes
+think that the shadow that fell upon him at that hour will never pass
+away.”
+
+“Do you know what was the subject of their disagreement?” asked Miss
+Belinda anxiously.
+
+“No, but I have reason to believe it had something to do with business
+affairs, as nothing else could ever arouse Cousin Ona into being at all
+disagreeable.”
+
+“I don’t like that phrase, _business affairs_; like charity, it covers
+entirely too much. Have you never had any doubts yourself about Mr.
+Sylvester?”
+
+“Ah, you touch me to the quick, aunt. I may have had my doubts, but when
+I look back on the past, I cannot see as they have any very substantial
+foundation. Supposing, aunt, that he has been merely unfortunate, and I
+should live to find that I had discarded one whose heart was darkened by
+nothing but sorrow? I should never forgive myself, nor could life yield
+me any recompense that would make amends for a sacrifice so
+unnecessary.”
+
+“You love him, then, very dearly, Paula?”
+
+A sudden light fell on the young girl’s face. “Hearts cannot tell their
+love,” said she, “but since I received this letter from him, it has
+seemed as if my life hung balancing on the question, as to whether he is
+worthy of a woman’s homage. If he is not, I would give my life to have
+him so. The world is only dear to me now as it holds him.”
+
+Miss Belinda picked up Mr. Ensign’s letter with trembling fingers. “I
+thought you were safe when the younger man came to woo,” said she.
+“Girls, as a rule, prefer what is bright to what is sombre, and Mr.
+Ensign is truly a very agreeable as well as worthy young man.”
+
+“Yes, aunt, and he came very near stealing my heart as he undoubtedly
+did my fancy, but a stronger hand snatched it away, and now I do not
+know what to do or how to act, so as to awaken in the future no remorse
+or vain regrets.”
+
+Miss Belinda opened the letters again and consulted their contents in a
+matter-of-fact way. “Mr. Ensign proposes to come this afternoon for his
+answer, while Mr. Sylvester defers seeing you till evening. What if I
+seek Mr. Sylvester this morning and have a little conversation with him,
+which shall determine, for once and all, the question which so troubles
+us? Would you not find it easier to meet Mr. Ensign when he comes?”
+
+“You talk to Mr. Sylvester, and upon such a topic! Oh, I could not bear
+that. Pardon me, aunt, but I think I am more jealous of his feelings
+than of my own. If his secret can be learned in a half-hour’s talk, it
+must be listened to by no one but myself. And I believe it can,” she
+murmured reverently; “he is so tender of me he would never let me go
+blindfold into any path, concerning which I had once expressed anxiety.
+If I ask him whether there is any good reason before God or man why I
+should not give him my entire faith and homage, he will answer honestly,
+though it be the destruction of his hopes to do so?”
+
+“Have you such trust as that in his uprightness as a lover, and the
+guardian of your happiness?”
+
+“Have not you, aunt?”
+
+And Miss Belinda remembering his words on the occasion of his first
+proposal to adopt Paula, was forced to acknowledge that she had.
+
+So without further preliminaries, it was agreed upon that Paula should
+refrain from making a final decision until she had eased her heart by an
+interview with Mr. Sylvester.
+
+“Meantime, you can request Mr. Ensign to wait another day for his
+answer,” said Miss Belinda.
+
+But Paula with a look of astonishment shook her head. “Is it you who
+would counsel me to such a piece of coquetry as that?” said she. “No,
+dear aunt, my heart is not with Mr. Ensign, as you know, and it is
+impossible for me to encourage him. If Mr. Sylvester should prove
+unworthy of my affection, I must bear, as best I may, the loss which
+must accrue; but till he does, let me not dishonor my womanhood by
+allowing hope to enter, even for a passing moment, the breast of his
+rival.”
+
+Miss Belinda blushed, and drew her niece fondly towards her. “You are
+right,” said she, “and my great desire for your happiness has led me
+into error. Honesty is the noblest adjunct of all true love, and must
+never be sacrificed to considerations of selfish expediency. The refusal
+which you contemplate bestowing upon Mr. Ensign, must be forwarded to
+him at once.”
+
+And with a final embrace, in which Miss Belinda allowed herself to let
+fall some few natural tears of disappointment, she dismissed the young
+girl to her task.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV.
+
+PAULA MAKES HER CHOICE.
+
+                    “Good fortune then,
+    To make me bless’t or cursed’st among men.”
+
+    —MERCHANT OF VENICE.
+
+
+It was evening in the Sylvester mansion. Mr. Sylvester who, according to
+his understanding with Paula, had been absent from his home all day, had
+just come in and now stood in his library waiting for the coming
+footfall that should decide whether the future held for him any promise
+of joy.
+
+He had never looked more worthy of a woman’s regard than he did that
+night. A matter that had been troubling him for some time had just been
+satisfactorily disposed of, and not a shadow, so far as he knew, lay
+upon his business outlook. This naturally brightened his cheek and lent
+a light to his eye. Then, hope is no mean beautifier, and this he
+possessed notwithstanding the disparity of years between himself and
+Paula. It was not, however, of sufficiently assured a nature to prevent
+him from starting at every sound from above, and flushing with quite a
+disagreeable sense of betrayal when the door opened and Bertram entered
+the room, instead of the gentle and exquisite being he had expected.
+
+“Uncle, I am so full of happiness, I had to stop and bestow a portion of
+it upon you. Do you think any one could mistake the nature of Miss
+Stuyvesant’s feelings, who saw her last night?”
+
+“Hardly,” was the smiling reply. “At all events I have not felt like
+wasting much but pleasant sympathy upon you. Your pathway to happiness
+looks secure, my boy.”
+
+His nephew gave him a wistful glance, but hid his thought whatever it
+was. “I am going to see her to-night,” remarked he. “I am afraid my love
+is something like a torrent that has once burst its barrier; it cannot
+rest until it has worked its channel and won its rightful repose.”
+
+“That is something the way with all love,” returned his uncle. “It may
+be dallied with while asleep, but once aroused, better meet a lion in
+his fury or a tempest in its rush. Are you going to test your hope,
+to-night?”
+
+The young man flushed. “I cannot say.” But in another moment gayly
+added, “I only know that I am prepared for any emergency.”
+
+“Well, my boy, I wish you God-speed. If ever a man has won a right to
+happiness, you are that man; and you shall enjoy it too, if any word or
+action of mine can serve to advance it.”
+
+“Thank you!” replied Bertram, and with a bright look around the
+apartment, prepared to take his leave. “When I come back,” he remarked,
+with a touch of that manly _naĂŻvetĂ©_ to which I have before alluded, “I
+hope I shall not find you alone.”
+
+Ignoring this wish which was re-echoed somewhat too deeply within his
+own breast for light expression, Mr. Sylvester accompanied his nephew to
+the front door.
+
+“Let us see what kind of a night it is,” observed he, stepping out upon
+the stoop. “It is going to rain.”
+
+“So it is,” returned Bertram, with a quick glance overhead; “but I shall
+not let such a little fuss as that deter me from fulfilling my
+engagement.” And bestowing a hasty nod upon his uncle, he bounded down
+the step.
+
+Instantly a man who was loitering along the walk in front of the house,
+stopped, as if struck by these simple words, turned, gave Bertram a
+quick look, and then with a sly glance back at the open door where Mr.
+Sylvester still stood gazing at the lowering heavens, set himself
+cautiously to follow him.
+
+Mr. Sylvester, who was too much pre-occupied to observe this suspicious
+action, remained for a moment contemplating the sky; then with an
+aimless glance down the avenue, during which his eye undoubtedly fell
+upon Bertram and the creeping shadow of a man behind him, closed the
+door and returned to the library.
+
+The sight of another’s joy has the tendency to either unduly depress the
+spirits or greatly to elate them. When Paula came into the room a few
+minutes later, it was to find Mr. Sylvester awaiting her with an
+expression that was almost radiant. It made her duty seem doubly hard,
+and she came forward with the slow step of one who goes to meet or carry
+doom. He saw, and instantly the light died out of his face, leaving it
+one blank of despair. But controlling himself, he took her cold hand in
+his, and looking down upon her with a tender but veiled regard, asked in
+those low and tremulous tones that exerted such an influence upon her:
+
+“Do I see before me my affectionate and much to be cherished child, or
+that still dearer object of love and worship, which it shall be the
+delight of my life to render truly and deeply happy?”
+
+“You see,” returned she, after a moment of silent emotion, “a girl
+without father or brother to advise her; who loves, or believes she
+does, a great and noble man, but who is smitten with fear also, she
+cannot tell why, and trembles to take a step to which no loving and
+devoted friend has set the seal of his approval.”
+
+The clasp with which Mr. Sylvester held her hand in his, tightened for
+an instant with irrepressible emotion, then slowly unloosed. Drawing
+back, he surveyed her with eyes that slowly filled with a bitter
+comprehension of her meaning.
+
+“You are the only man,” continued she, with a glance of humble entreaty,
+“that has ever stood to me for a moment in the light of a relation. You
+_have_ been a father to me in days gone by, and to you it therefore
+seems most natural for me to appeal when a question comes up that either
+puzzles or distresses me. Mr. Sylvester, you have offered me your love
+and the refuge of your home; if you say that in your judgment the
+counsel of all true friends would be for me to accept this love, then my
+hand is yours and with it my heart; a heart that only hesitates because
+it would fain be sure it has the smile of heaven upon its every
+prompting.”
+
+“Paula!”
+
+The voice was so strange she looked up to see if it really was Mr.
+Sylvester who spoke. He had sunk back into a chair and had covered his
+face with his hands. With a cry she moved towards him, but he motioned
+her back.
+
+“Condemned to be my own executioner!” he muttered. “Placed on the rack
+and bid to turn the wheel that shall wrench my own sinews! My God, ’tis
+hard!”
+
+She did not hear the words, but she saw the action. Slowly the blood
+left her cheek, and her hand fell upon her swelling breast with a
+despairing gesture that would have smitten Miss Belinda to the heart,
+could she have seen it. “I have asked too much,” she whispered.
+
+With a start Mr. Sylvester rose. “Paula,” said he, in a stern and
+different tone, “is this fear of which you speak, the offspring of your
+own instincts, or has it been engendered in your breast by the words of
+another?”
+
+“My Aunt Belinda is in my confidence, if it is she to whom you allude,”
+rejoined she, meeting his glance fully and bravely. “But from no lips
+but yours could any words proceed capable of affecting my estimate of
+you as the one best qualified to make me happy.”
+
+“Then it is my words alone that have awakened this doubt, this
+apprehension?”
+
+“I have not spoken of doubt,” said she, but her eyelids fell.
+
+“No, thank God!” he passionately exclaimed. “And yet you feel it,” he
+went on more composedly. “I have studied your face too long and closely
+not to understand it.”
+
+She put out her hands in appeal, but for once it passed unheeded.
+
+“Paula,” said he, “you must tell me just what that doubt is; I must know
+what is passing in your mind. You say you love me—” he paused, and a
+tremble shook him from head to foot, but he went inexorably on—“it is
+more than I had a right to expect, and God knows I am grateful for the
+precious and inestimable boon, far as it is above my deserts; but while
+loving me, you hesitate to give me your hand. Why? What is the name of
+the doubt that disturbs that pure breast and affects your choice? Tell
+me, I must know.”
+
+“You ask me to dissect my own heart!” she cried, quivering under the
+torture of his glance; “how can I? What do I know of its secret springs
+or the terrors that disturb its even beatings? I cannot name my fear; it
+has no name, or if it has—Oh, sir!” she cried in a burst of passionate
+longing, “your life has been one of sorrow and disappointment; grief has
+touched you close, and you might well be the melancholy and sombre man
+that all behold. I do not shrink from grief; say that the only shadow
+that lies across your dungeon-door is that cast by the great and
+heart-rending sorrows of your life, and without question and without
+fear I enter that dungeon with you—”
+
+The hand he raised stopped her. “Paula,” cried he, “do you believe in
+repentance?”
+
+The words struck her like a blow. Falling slowly back, she looked at him
+for an instant, then her head sank on her breast.
+
+“I know what your hatred of sin is,” continued he. “I have seen your
+whole form tremble at the thought of evil. Is your belief in the
+redeeming power of God as great as your recoil from the wrong that makes
+that redemption necessary?”
+
+Quickly her head raised, a light fell on her brow, and her lips moved in
+a vain effort to utter what her eyes unconsciously expressed.
+
+“Paula, I would be unworthy the name of a man, if with the consciousness
+of possessing a dark and evil nature, I strove by use of any hypocrisy
+or specious pretense at goodness, to lure to my side one so
+exceptionally pure, beautiful and high-minded. The ravening wolf and the
+innocent lamb would be nothing to it. Neither would I for an instant be
+esteemed worthy of your regard, if in this hour of my wooing there
+remained in my life the shadow of any latent wrong that might hereafter
+rise up and overwhelm you. Whatever of wrong has ever been committed by
+me—and it is my punishment that I must acknowledge before your pure
+eyes that my soul is not spotless—was done in the past, and is known
+only to my own heart and the God who I reverently trust has long ago
+pardoned me. The shadow is that of remorse, not of fear, and the evil,
+one against my own soul, rather than against the life or fortunes of
+other men. Paula, such sins can be forgiven if one has a mind to
+comprehend the temptations that beset men in their early struggles. I
+have never forgiven myself, but—” He paused, looked at her for an
+instant, his hand clenched over his heart, his whole noble form shaken
+by struggle, then said—“forgiveness implies no promise, Paula; you
+shall never link yourself to a man who has been obliged to bow his head
+in shame before you, but by the mercy that informs that dear glance and
+trembling lip, do you think you can ever grow to forgive me?”
+
+“Oh,” she cried, with a burst of sobs, violent as her grief and shame,
+“God be merciful to me, as I am merciful to those who repent of their
+sins and do good and not evil all the remaining days of their life.”
+
+“I thought you would _forgive_ me,” murmured he, looking down upon her,
+as the miser eyes the gold that has slipped from his paralyzed hand.
+“Him whom the hard-hearted sinner and the hypocrite despise, God’s
+dearest lambs regard with mercy. I learned to revere God before I knew
+you, Paula, but I learned to love Him in the light of your gentleness
+and your trust. Rise up now and let me wipe away your tears—my
+daughter.”
+
+She sprang up as if stung. “No, no,” she cried, “not that; I cannot bear
+that yet. I must think, I must know what all this means,” and she laid
+her hand upon her heart. “God surely does not give so much love for
+one’s undoing; if I were not destined to comfort a life so saddened, He
+would have bequeathed me more pity and less—” The lifted head fell, the
+word she would have uttered, stirred her bosom, but not her lips.
+
+It was a trial to his strength, but his firm man’s heart did not waver.
+“You do comfort me,” said he; “from early morning to late night your
+presence is my healing and my help, and will always be so, whatever may
+befal. A daughter can do much, my Paula.”
+
+She took a step back towards the door, her eyes, dark with unfathomable
+impulses, flashing on him through the tears that hung thickly on her
+lashes.
+
+“Is it for your own sake or for mine, that you make use of that word?”
+said she.
+
+He summoned up his courage, met that searching glance with all its wild,
+bewildering beauty, and responded, “Can you ask, Paula?”
+
+With a lift of her head that gave an almost queenly stateliness to her
+form, she advanced a step, and drawing a crumpled paper from her pocket,
+said, “When I went to my room last night, it was to read _two_ letters,
+one from yourself, and one from Mr. Ensign. This is his, and a manly and
+noble letter it is too; but hearts have right to hearts, and I was
+obliged to refuse his petition.” And with a reverent but inexorable
+hand, she dropped the letter on the burning coals of the grate at their
+side, and softly turned to leave the room.
+
+“Paula!” With a bound the stern and hitherto forcibly repressed man,
+leaped to her side. “My darling! my life!” and with a wild,
+uncontrollable impulse, he caught her for one breathless moment to his
+heart; then as suddenly released her, and laying his hand in reverence
+on her brow, said softly, “Now go and pray, little one; and when you are
+quite calm, an hour hence or a week hence whichever it may be, come and
+tell me my fate as God and the angels reveal it to you.” And he smiled,
+and she saw his smile, and went out of the room softly, as one who
+treadeth upon holy ground.
+
+Mr. Sylvester was considered by his friends and admirers as a proud man.
+If a vote had been cast among those who knew him best, as from what
+especial passion common to humanity he would soonest recoil, it would
+have been unanimously pronounced shame, and his own hand would have
+emphasized the judgment of his fellows. But shame which is open to the
+gaze of the whole world, differs from that which is sacred to the eyes
+of one human being, and that the one who lies nearest the heart.
+
+As Paula’s retreating footsteps died away on the stairs, and he awoke to
+the full consciousness that his secret was shared by her whose love was
+his life, and whose good opinion had been his incentive and his pride,
+his first sensation was one of unmitigated anguish, but his next,
+strange to say, that of a restful relief. He had cast aside the cloak he
+had hugged so closely to his breast these many years, and displayed to
+her shrinking gaze the fox that was gnawing at his vitals; and Spartan
+though he was, the dew that had filled her loving eyes was balm to him.
+And not only that; he had won claim to the title of true man. Her
+regard, if regard it remained, was no longer an airy fabric built upon a
+plausible seeming, but a firm structure with knowledge for its
+foundation. “I shall not live to whisper, ‘If she knew my whole life,
+would she love me so well?’”
+
+His first marriage had been so wholly uncongenial and devoid of
+sympathy, that his greatest longing in connection with a fresh contract,
+was to enjoy the full happiness of perfect union and mutual trust; and
+though he could never have summoned up courage to take her into his
+confidence, unsolicited, now that it had been done he would not have it
+undone, no, not if by the doing he had lost her confidence and
+affection.
+
+But something told him he had not lost it. That out of the darkness and
+the shock of this very discovery, a new and deeper love would spring,
+which having its birth in human frailty and human repentance, would gain
+in the actual what it lost in the ideal, bringing to his weary,
+suffering and yearning man’s nature, the honest help of a strong and
+loving sympathy, growing trust, and sweetest because wisest
+encouragement.
+
+It was therefore, with a growing sense of deep unfathomable comfort, and
+a reverent thankfulness for the mercies of God, that he sat by the fire
+idly watching the rise and fall of the golden flames above the
+fluttering ashes of his rival’s letter, and dreaming with a hallowing
+sense of his unworthiness, upon the possible bliss of coming days.
+Happiness in its truest and most serene sense was so new to him, it
+affected him like the presence of something strangely commanding. He was
+awe-struck before it, and unconsciously bowed his head at its
+contemplation. Only his eyes betrayed the peace that comes with all
+great joy, his eyes and perhaps the faint, almost unearthly smile that
+flitted across his mouth, disturbing its firm line and making his face
+for all its inevitable expression of melancholy, one that his mother
+would have loved to look upon. “Paula!” came now and then in a reverent,
+yearning accent from between his lips, and once a low, “Thank God!”
+which showed that he was praying.
+
+Suddenly he rose; a more human mood had set in, and he felt the
+necessity of assuring himself that it was really he upon whom the dreary
+past had closed, and a future of such possible brightness opened. He
+walked about the room, surveying the rich articles within it, as the
+possible belongings of the beautiful woman he adored; he stood and
+pictured her as coming into the door as his wife, and before he realized
+what he was doing, had planned certain changes he would make in his home
+to adapt it to the wants of her young and growing mind, when with a
+strange suddenness, the door upon which he was gazing flew back, and
+Bertram Sylvester entered just as he had come from the street. He looked
+so haggard, so wild, so little the picture of himself as he ventured
+forth a couple of hours before, that Mr. Sylvester started, and
+forgetting his happiness in his alarm, asked in a tone of dismay:
+
+“What has happened? Has Miss Stuyvesant—”
+
+Bertram’s hand went up as if his uncle had touched him upon a festering
+wound. “Don’t!” gasped he, and advancing to the table, sat down and
+buried his face for a moment in his arms, then rose, and summoning up a
+certain manly dignity that became him well, met Mr. Sylvester’s eye with
+forced calmness, and inquired:
+
+“Did you know there was a thief in our bank, Uncle Edward?”
+
+
+
+
+XXXV.
+
+THE FALLING OF THE SWORD.
+
+                      “Foul deeds will rise,
+    Though all the world o’erwhelm them, to men’s eyes.”—HAMLET.
+
+
+
+Mr. Sylvester towered on his nephew with an expression such as few men
+had ever seen even on his powerful and commanding face.
+
+“What do you mean?” asked he, and his voice rang like a clarion through
+the room.
+
+Bertram trembled and for a moment stood aghast, the ready flush bathing
+his brow with burning crimson. “I mean,” stammered he, with difficulty
+recovering himself, “that when Mr. Stuyvesant came to open his private
+box in the bank to-day, that he not only found its lock had been
+tampered with, but that money and valuables to the amount of some twelve
+hundred dollars were missing from among its contents.”
+
+“What?”
+
+The expression which had made Mr. Sylvester’s brow so terrible had
+vanished, but his wonder remained.
+
+“It is impossible,” he declared. “Our vaults are too well watched for
+any such thing to occur. He has made some mistake; a robbery of that
+nature could not take place without detection.”
+
+“It would seem not, and yet the fact remains. Mr. Stuyvesant himself
+informed me of it, to-night. He is not a careless man, nor reckless in
+his statements. Some one has robbed the bank and it remains with us to
+find out who.”
+
+Mr. Sylvester, who had been standing all this while, sat down like a man
+dazed, the wild lost look on Bertram’s face daunting him with a fearful
+premonition. “There are but four men who have access to the vault where
+the boxes are kept,” said he: then quickly, “Why did Mr. Stuyvesant wait
+till to-night to speak to you? Why did he not notify us at once of a
+loss so important for us to know?”
+
+The flush on Bertram’s brow slowly subsided, giving way to a steady
+pallor. “He waited to be sure,” said he. “He had a memorandum at home
+which he desired to consult; he was not ready to make any rash
+statement: he is a thinking man and more considerate than many of his
+friends are apt to imagine. If the lock had not been found open he would
+have thought with you that he had made some mistake; if he had not
+missed from the box some of its contents, he would have considered the
+condition of the lock the result of some oversight on his own part or of
+some mistake on the part of another, but the two facts together were
+damning and could force upon him but one conclusion. Uncle,” said he,
+with a straightforward look into Mr. Sylvester’s countenance, “Mr.
+Stuyvesant knows as well as we do who are the men who have access to the
+vaults. As you say, the opening of a box during business hours and the
+abstracting from it of papers or valuables by any one who has not such
+access, would be impossible. Only Hopgood, you and myself, and possibly
+Folger, could find either time or opportunity for such a piece of work;
+while after business hours, the same four, minus Folger who contents
+himself with knowing the combination of the inner safe, could open the
+vaults even in case of an emergency. Now of the four named, two are
+above suspicion. I might almost say three, for Hopgood is not a man it
+is easy to mistrust. One alone, then, of all the men whom Mr. Stuyvesant
+is in the habit of meeting at the Bank, is open to a doubt. A young man,
+uncle, whose rising has been rapid, whose hopes have been lofty, whose
+life may or may not be known to himself as pure, but which in the eyes
+of a matured man of the world might easily be questioned, just because
+its hopes are so lofty and its means for attaining them so limited.”
+
+“Bertram!” sprang from Mr. Sylvester’s white lips.
+
+But the young man raised his hand with almost a commanding gesture.
+“Hush,” said he, “no sympathy or surprise. Facts like these have to be
+met with silent endurance, as we walk up to the mouth of the cannon we
+cannot evade, or bare our breast to the thrust of the bayonet gleaming
+before our eyes.—I would not have you think,” he somewhat hurriedly
+pursued, “that Mr. Stuyvesant insinuated anything of the kind, but his
+daughter was not present in the parlor, and—” A sigh, almost a gasp
+finished the sentence.
+
+“Bertram!” again exclaimed his uncle, this time with some authority in
+his voice. “The shock of this discovery has unnerved you. You act like a
+man capable of being suspected. That is simply preposterous. One half
+hour’s conversation with Mr. Stuyvesant on my part will convince him, if
+he needs convincing, which I do not believe, that whoever is unworthy of
+trust in our bank, you are not the man.”
+
+Bertram raised his head with a gleam of hope, but instantly dropped it
+again with a despairing gesture that made his uncle frown.
+
+“I did not know that you were inclined to be so pusillanimous,” cried
+Mr. Sylvester; “and in presence of a foe so unsubstantial as this you
+have conjured up almost out of nothing. If the bank has been robbed, it
+cannot be difficult to find the thief. I will order in detectives
+to-morrow. We will hold a board of inquiry, and the culprit shall be
+unmasked; that is, if he is one of the employees of the bank, which it
+is very hard to believe.”
+
+“Very, and which, if true, would make it unadvisable in us to give the
+alarm that any public measures taken could not fail to do.”
+
+“The inquiry shall be private, and the detectives, men who can be
+trusted to keep their business secret.”
+
+
+“How can any inquiry be private? Uncle, we are treading on delicate
+ground, and have a task before us requiring great tact and discretion.
+If the safe had only been assaulted, or there were any evidences of
+burglary to be seen! But we surely should have heard of it from some one
+of the men, if anything unusual had been observed. Hopgood would have
+spoken at least.”
+
+“Yes, Hopgood would have spoken.”
+
+The tone in which this was uttered made Bertram look up. “You agree with
+me, then, that Hopgood is absolutely to be relied upon?”
+
+“Absolutely.” A faint flush on Mr. Sylvester’s face lent force to this
+statement.
+
+“He could not be beguiled or forced by another man to reveal the
+combination, or to relax his watch over the vaults entrusted to his
+keeping?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“He is alone with the vaults where the boxes are kept for an hour or two
+in the early morning!”
+
+“Yes, and has been for three years. Hopgood is honesty itself.”
+
+“And so are Folger and Jessup and Watson,” exclaimed Bertram
+emphatically.
+
+“Yes,” his uncle admitted, with equal emphasis.
+
+“It is a mystery,” Bertram declared; “and one I fear that will undo me.”
+
+“Nonsense!” broke forth somewhat impatiently from Mr. Sylvester’s lips;
+“there is no reason at this time for any such conclusion. If there is a
+thief in the bank he can be found; if the robbery was committed by an
+outsider, he may still be discovered. If he is not, if the mystery rests
+forever unexplained, you have your character, Bertram, a character as
+spotless as that of any of your fellows, whom we regard as above
+suspicion. A man is not going to be condemned by such a judge of human
+nature as Mr. Stuyvesant, just because a mysterious crime has been
+committed, to which the circumstances of his position alone render it
+possible for him to be party. You might as well say that Jessup and
+Folger and Watson—yes, or myself, would in that case lose his
+confidence. They are in the bank, and are constantly in the habit of
+going to the vaults.”
+
+“None of those gentlemen want to marry his daughter,” murmured Bertram.
+“It is not the director I fear, but the father. I have so little to
+bring her. Only my character and my devotion.”
+
+“Well, well, pluck up courage, my boy. I have hopes yet that the whole
+matter can be referred to some mistake easily explainable when once it
+is discovered. Mistakes, even amongst the honest and the judicious, are
+not so uncommon as one is apt to imagine. I, myself, have known of one
+which if providence had not interfered, might have led to doubts
+seemingly as inconsistent as yours. To-morrow we will consider the
+question at length. To-night—Well, Bertram, what is it?”
+
+The young man started and dropped his eyes, which during the last words
+of his uncle had been fixed upon his face with strange and penetrating
+inquiry. “Nothing,” said he, “that is, nothing more;” and rose as if to
+leave.
+
+But Mr. Sylvester put out his hand and stopped him. “There _is_
+something,” said he. “I have seen it in your face ever since you entered
+this room. What is it?”
+
+The young man drew a deep breath and leaned back in his chair. Mr.
+Sylvester watched him with growing pallor. “You are right,” murmured his
+nephew at last; “there is something more, and it is only justice that
+you should hear it. I have had two adventures to-night; one quite apart
+from my conversation with Mr. Stuyvesant. Heaven that watches above us,
+has seen fit to accumulate difficulties in my path, and this last,
+perhaps, is the least explainable and the hardest to encounter.”
+
+“What do you allude to?” cried his uncle, imperatively; “I have had an
+evening of too much agitation to endure suspense with equanimity.
+Explain yourself.”
+
+“It will not take long,” said the other; “a few words will reveal to you
+the position in which I stand. Let me relate it in the form of a
+narrative. You know what a dark portion of the block that is in which
+Mr. Stuyvesant’s house is situated. A man might hide in any of the areas
+along there, without being observed by you unless he made some sound to
+attract your attention. I was, therefore, more alarmed than surprised
+when, shortly after leaving Mr. Stuyvesant’s dwelling, I felt a hand
+laid on my shoulder, and turning, beheld a dark figure at my side, of an
+appearance calculated to arouse any man’s apprehension. He was tall,
+unkempt, with profuse beard, and eyes that glared even in the darkness
+of his surroundings, with a feverish intensity. ‘You are Mr. Sylvester,’
+said he, with a look of a wild animal ready to pounce upon his prey.
+‘Yes,’ said I, involuntarily stepping back, ‘I am Mr. Sylvester.’ ‘I
+want to speak to you,’ exclaimed he, with a rush of words as though a
+stream had broken loose; ‘now, at once, on business that concerns you.
+Will you listen?’
+
+“I thought of the only business that seemed to concern me then, and
+starting still farther back, surveyed him with surprise. ‘I don’t know
+you,’ said I; ‘what business can you have with me?’ ‘Will you step into
+some place where it is warm and find out?’ he asked, shivering in his
+thin cloak, but not abating a jot of his eagerness. ‘Go on before me,’
+said I, ‘and we will see.’ He complied at once, and in this way we
+reached Beale’s Coffee-Room, where we went in. ‘Now,’ said I, ‘out with
+what you have to say and be quick about it. I have no time to listen to
+nonsense and no heart to attend to it.’ His eye brightened; he did not
+cast a glance at the smoking victuals about him, though I knew he was
+hungry as a dog. ‘It is no nonsense,’ said he, ‘that I have to
+communicate to you.’ And then I saw he had once been a gentleman. ‘For
+two years and a half have I been searching for you,’ he went on, ‘in
+order that I might recall to your mind a little incident. You remember
+the afternoon of February, the twenty-fifth, two years ago?’
+
+“‘No,’ said I, in great surprise, for his whole countenance was flushed
+with expectancy. ‘What was there about that day that I should remember
+it?’ He smiled and bent his face nearer to mine. ‘Don’t you recollect a
+little conversation you had in a small eating-house in Dey Street, with
+a gentleman of a high-sounding voice to whom you were obliged
+continually to say ‘hush!’’” I stared at the man, as you may believe,
+with some notion of his being a wandering lunatic. ‘I have never taken a
+meal in any eating-house in Dey Street,’ I declared, motioning to a
+waiter to approach us. The man observing it, turned swiftly upon me. ‘Do
+you think I care for any such petty _fuss_ as that?’ asked he,
+indicating the rather slightly built man I had called to my rescue,
+while he covertly studied my face to observe the effect of his words.
+
+“I started. I could not help it; this use of an expression almost
+peculiar to myself, assured me that the man knew me better than I
+supposed. Involuntarily I waved the waiter back and turned upon the man
+with an inquiring look.
+
+“‘I thought you might consider it worth your while to listen,’ said he,
+smiling with the air of one who has or thinks he has a grip upon you.
+Then suddenly, ‘You are a rich man, are you not? a proud man and an
+honored one. You hold a position of trust and are considered worthy of
+it; how would you like men to know that you once committed a mean and
+dirty trick; that those white hands that have the handling of such large
+funds at present, have in days gone by been known to dip into such funds
+a little too deeply; that, in short, you, Bertram Sylvester, cashier of
+the Madison Bank, and looking forward to no one knows what future honors
+and emoluments, have been in a position better suited to a felon’s cell
+than the trusted agent of a great and wealthy corporation?’
+
+“I did not collar him; I was too dumb-stricken for any such display of
+indignation. I simply stared, feeling somewhat alarmed as I remembered
+my late interview with Mr. Stuyvesant, and considered the possibility of
+a plot being formed against me. He smiled again at the effect he had
+produced, and drew me into a corner of the room where we sat down. ‘I am
+going to tell you a story,’ said he, ‘just to show you what a good
+memory I have. One day, a year and more ago, I sauntered into an
+eating-house on Dey Street. I have not always been what you see me now,
+though to tell you the truth, I was but little better off at the time of
+which I speak, except that I did have a dime or so in my pocket, and
+could buy a meal of victuals—if I wished.’ And his eyes roamed for the
+first time to the tables stretching out before him down the room. ‘The
+proprietor was an acquaintance of mine, and finding I was sleepy as well
+as hungry, let me go into a certain dark pantry, where I curled up amid
+all sorts of old rubbish and went to sleep. I was awakened by the sound
+of voices talking very earnestly. The closet in which I was hidden was a
+temporary affair built up of loose boards, and the talk of a couple of
+men seated against it was easy enough to be heard. Do you want to know
+what that conversation was?’
+
+“My curiosity was roused by this time and I said yes. If this was a plot
+to extort money from me, it was undeniably better for me to know upon
+just what foundations it rested. I thought the man looked surprised, but
+with an aplomb difficult to believe assumed, he went on to say, ‘The
+voices gave me my only means of judging of the age, character, or
+position of the men conversing, but I have a quick ear, and my memory is
+never at fault. From the slow, broken, nervously anxious tone of one of
+the men, I made up my mind that he was elderly, hard up, and not over
+scrupulous; the other voice was that of a gentleman, musical and yet
+pronounced, and not easily forgotten, as you see, sir. The first words I
+heard aroused me and convinced me it was worth while to listen. They
+were uttered by the gentleman.’ ‘You come to me with such a dirty piece
+of business! What right have you to suppose I would hearken to you for
+an instant!’ ‘The right,’ returned the other, ‘of knowing you have not
+been above doing dirty work in your life time.’ The partition creaked at
+that, as though one of the two had started forward, but I didn’t hear
+any reply made to this strange accusation. ‘Do you think,’ the same
+voice went on, ‘that I do not know where the five thousand dollars came
+from which you gave me for that first speculation? I knew it when I took
+it, and if I hadn’t been sure the operation would turn out fortunately,
+you would never have been the man you are to-day. It came out of funds
+entrusted to you, and was not the gift of a relative as you would have
+made me believe.’ ‘Good heaven!’ exclaimed the other, after a silence
+that was very expressive just then and there, ‘and you let me—’ ‘Oh we
+won’t go into that,’ interrupted the less cultivated voice. ‘All you
+wanted was a start, to make you the successful man you have since
+become. I never worried much about morals, and I don’t worry about them
+now, only when you say you won’t do a thing likely to make my fortune,
+just because it is not entirely free from reproach, I say, remember what
+I know about you, and don’t talk virtue to me.’
+
+“‘I am rightly punished,’ came from the other, in a tone that proved him
+to be a man more ready to do a wrong thing than to face the accusation
+of it. ‘If I ever did what you suppose, the repentance that has
+embittered all my success, and the position in which you have this day
+placed me, is surely an ample atonement.’ ‘Will you do what I request?’
+inquired the other, giving little heed to this expression of misery, of
+which I on the contrary took special heed. ‘No,’ was the energetic
+reply; ‘because I am not spotless it is no sign that I will wade into
+filth. I will give you money as I have done scores of times before, but
+I will lend my hand to no scheme which is likely to throw discredit on
+me or mine. Were you not connected to me in the way in which you are—’
+‘You would pursue the scheme,’ interrupted the other; ‘it is because you
+know that I cannot talk, that you dare repudiate it. Well I will go to
+one—’ ‘You shall not,’ came in short quick tones, just such tones as
+you used to me, sir, when we first entered this room. ‘You shall leave
+the country before you do anything more, or say anything more, to
+compromise me or yourself. I may have done wrong in my day, but that is
+no reason why I should suffer for it at your hands, tempter of youth,
+and deceiver of your own flesh and blood! _You_ shall never bring back
+those days to me again; they are buried, and have been stamped out of
+sight by many an honest dealing since, and many as I trust before God,
+good and sterling action. I have long since begun a new life; a life of
+honor, and pure, if successful, dealing. Not only my own happiness, but
+that of one who should be considered by you, depends upon my maintaining
+that life to the end, unshadowed by unholy remembrances, and unharrassed
+by any such proffers as you have presumed to make to me here to-day. If
+you want a few thousand dollars to leave the country, say so, but never
+again presume to offend my ears, or those of any one else we may know,
+with any such words as you have made use of to-day.’ And the spiritless
+creature subsided, sir, and said no more to that rich, honored, and
+successful man who was so sensitive to even the imputation of guilt.
+
+“But I am not spiritless and just where he dropped the affair, I took it
+up. ‘Here is a chance for me to turn an honest penny,’ thought I, and
+with a deliberation little to be expected of me, perhaps, set myself to
+spot that man and make the most out of the matter I could. Unfortunately
+I lost the opportunity of seeing his face. I was too anxious to catch
+every word they uttered, to quit my place of concealment till their
+conversation was concluded, and then I was too late to be sure which of
+the many men leaving the building before me was the one I was after. The
+waiters were too busy to talk, and the proprietor himself had taken no
+notice. Happily as I have before said, I never forget voices; moreover
+one of the two speakers had made use of a phrase peculiar enough to
+serve as a clue to his identity. It was in answer to some parting threat
+of the older man, and will remind you of an expression uttered by
+yourself an hour or so ago. ‘Do you suppose I will let such a little
+fuss as that deter me?’ It was the cue to his speech, by which I
+intended to hunt out my man from amongst the rich, the trusted and the
+influential persons of this city, and when found, to hold him.’
+
+“‘And you think you have done this?’ said I, too conscious of the
+possible net about my feet to be simply angry. ‘I know it,’ said he;
+‘every word you have uttered since we have been here has made me more
+and more certain of the fact. I could swear to your voice, and as to
+your use of that tell-tale word, it was not till I thought to inquire of
+a certain wide-awake fellow down town, who amongst our business men were
+in the habit of using that expression, and was told Mr. Sylvester of the
+Madison Bank, that I was enabled to track you. I know I have got my hand
+on my man at last and—’ He looked down at his thread-bare coat and
+around at the tables with their smoking dishes, and left me to draw my
+own conclusion.
+
+“Uncle, there are crises in life which no former experience teaches you
+how to meet. I had arrived at such a one. Perhaps you can understand me
+when I say I was well nigh appalled. Denial of what was imputed to me
+might be wisdom and might not. I felt the coil of a deadly serpent about
+me, and knew not whether it was best to struggle or to simply submit.
+The man noted the effect he had made and complacently folded his arms.
+He was of a nervous organization and possessed an eye like a hungry
+wolf, but he could wait. ‘This is a pretty story,’ said I at last, and I
+reject it altogether. ‘I am an honest man and have always been so; you
+will have to give up your hopes of making anything out of me.’ ‘Then you
+are willing,’ said he, ‘that I should repeat this story to one of the
+directors of your bank, whom I know?’
+
+“I looked at him; he returned my gaze with a cold nonchalence more
+suggestive of a deep laid purpose, than even his previous glance of
+feverish determination. I immediately let my eye run over his scanty
+clothing and loose flowing hair and beard. ‘Yes,’ said I, with as much
+sarcasm as I knew how to assume, ‘if you dare risk the consequences, I
+think I may.’ He at once drew himself up. ‘You think,’ said he, ‘that
+you have a common-place adventurer to deal with; that my appearance is
+going to testify in your favor; that you have but to deny any accusation
+which such a hungry-looking, tattered wretch as I, may make, and that I
+shall be ignominiously kicked out of the presence into which I have
+forced myself; that in short I have been building my castle in the air.
+Mr. Sylvester, I am a poor devil but I am no fool. When I left Dey
+Street on the twenty-fifth of February two years ago, it was with a
+sealed paper in my pocket, in which was inscribed all that I had heard
+on that day. This I took to a lawyer’s office, and not being, as I have
+before said, quite as impecunious in those days as at present, succeeded
+in getting the lawyer, whom I took care should be a most respectable
+man, to draw up a paper to the effect that I had entrusted him with this
+statement—of whose contents he however knew nothing—on such a day and
+hour, to which paper a gentleman then present, consented at my
+respectful solicitation to affix his name as witness, which gentleman,
+strange to say, has since proved to be a director of the bank of which
+you are the present cashier, and consequently the very man of all others
+best adapted to open the paper whose seal you profess to be so willing
+to see broken.’
+
+“‘His name!’ It was all that I could say. ‘Stuyvesant,’ cried the man,
+fixing me with his eye in which I in vain sought for some signs of
+secret doubt or unconscious wavering. I rose; the position in which I
+found myself was too overwhelming for instant decision. I needed time
+for reflection, possibly advice—from you. A resolution to brave the
+devil must be founded on something more solid than impulse, to hold its
+own unmoved. I only stopped to utter one final word and ask one leading
+question. ‘You are a smart man,’ said I, ‘and you are also a villain.
+Your smartness would give you food and drink, if you exercised it in a
+manner worthy of a man, but your villainy if persisted in, will
+eventually rob you of both, and bring you to the prison’s cell or the
+hangman’s gallows. As for myself, I persist in saying that I am now and
+always have been an honest man, whatever you may have overheard or find
+yourself capable of swearing to. Yet a lie is an inconvenient thing to
+have uttered against you at any time, and I may want to see you again;
+if I do, where shall I find you?’ He thrust his hand into his pocket and
+drew out a small slip of folded paper, which he passed to me with a bow
+that Chesterfield would have admired. ‘You will find it written within,’
+said he ‘I shall look for you any time to-morrow, up to seven o’clock.
+At that hour the lawyer of whom I have spoken, sends the statement which
+he has in his possession to Mr. Stuyvesant.’ I nodded my assent, and he
+moved slowly towards the door. As he did so, his eyes fell upon a roll
+of bread lying on a counter. I at once stepped forward and bought it.
+Vile as he was, and deadly as was the snare he contemplated drawing
+about me, I could not see that wolfish look of hunger, and not offer him
+something to ease it. He took the loaf from my hands and bit greedily
+into it but suddenly paused, and shook his head with a look like
+self-reproach, and thrusting the loaf under his arm, turned towards the
+door with the quick action of one escaping. Instantly, and before he was
+out of sight or hearing, I drew the attention of the proprietor to him.
+‘Do you see that man?’ I asked. ‘He has been attempting a system of
+blackmail upon me.’ And satisfied with thus having provided a witness
+able of identifying the man, in case of an emergency, I left the
+building.
+
+“And now you know it all,” concluded he; and the silence that followed
+the utterance of those simple words, was a silence that could be felt.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+“Bertram?”
+
+The young man started from his fixed position, and his eyes slowly
+traversed toward his uncle.
+
+“Have you that slip of paper which the man gave you before departing?”
+
+“Yes,” said he.
+
+“Let me have it, if you please.”
+
+The young man with an agitated look, plunged his hand into his pocket,
+drew out the small note and laid it on the table between them. Mr.
+Sylvester let it lie, and again there was a silence.
+
+“If this had happened at any other time,” Bertram pursued, “one could
+afford to let the man have his say; but now, just as this other mystery
+has come up—”
+
+“I don’t believe in submitting to blackmail,” came from his uncle in
+short, quick tones.
+
+Bertram gave a start. “You then advise me to leave him alone?” asked he,
+with unmistakable emotion.
+
+His uncle dropped the hand which till now he had held before his face,
+and hastily confronted his nephew. “You will have enough to do to attend
+to the other matter without bestowing any time or attention upon this.
+The man that robbed Mr. Stuyvesant’s box, can be found and must. It is
+the one indispensable business to which I now delegate you. No amount of
+money and no amount of diligence is to be spared. I rely on you to carry
+the affair to a successful termination. Will you undertake the task?”
+
+“Can you ask?” murmured the young man, with a shocked look at his
+uncle’s changed expression.
+
+“As to this other matter, we will let it rest for to-night. To-morrow’s
+revelations may be more favorable than we expect. At all events let us
+try and get a little rest now; I am sure we are both in a condition to
+need it.”
+
+Bertram rose. “I am at your command,” said he, and moved to go. Suddenly
+he turned, and the two men stood face to face. “I have no wish,” pursued
+he, “to be relieved of my burden at the expense of any one else. If it
+is to be borne by any one, let it be carried by him who is young and
+stalwart enough to sustain it.” And his hand went out involuntarily
+towards his uncle.
+
+Mr. Sylvester took that hand and eyed his nephew long and earnestly.
+Bertram thought he was going to speak, and nerved himself to meet with
+fortitude whatever might be said. But the lips which Mr. Sylvester had
+opened, closed firmly, and contenting himself with a mere wring of his
+nephew’s hand, he allowed him to go. The slip of paper remained upon the
+table unopened.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That night as Paula lay slumbering on her pillow, a sound passed through
+the house. It was like a quick irrepressible cry of desolation, and the
+poor child hearing it, started, thinking her name had been called. But
+when she listened, all was still, and believing she had dreamed, she
+turned her face upon her pillow, and softly murmuring the name that was
+dearest to her in all the world, fell again into a peaceful sleep.
+
+But he whose voice had uttered that cry in the dreary emptiness of the
+great parlors below, slept not.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVI.
+
+MORNING.
+
+    “Two maidens by one fountain’s joyous brink,
+    And one was sad and one had cause for sadness.”
+
+
+Cicely Stuyvesant waiting for her father at the foot of the stairs, on
+the morning after these occurrences, was a pretty and a touching
+spectacle. She had not slept very well the night before, and her brow
+showed signs of trouble and so did her trembling lips. She held in her
+hand a letter which she twirled about with very unsteady fingers. The
+morning was bright, but she did not seem to observe it; the air was
+fresh, but it did not seem to invigorate her. A rose-leaf of care lay on
+the tremulous waters of her soul, and her sensitive nature thrilled
+under it.
+
+“Why does he not come?” she whispered, looking again at the letter’s
+inscription.
+
+It was in Mr. Sylvester’s handwriting, and ought not to have occasioned
+her any uneasiness, but her father had intimated a wish the night
+before, that she should not come down into the parlor if Bertram called,
+and—Her thoughts paused there, but she was anxious about the letter and
+wished her father would hasten.
+
+Let us look at the little lady. She had been so bright and lovesome
+yesterday at this time. Never a maiden in all this great city of ours
+had shown a sweeter or more etherial smile. At once radiant and
+reserved, she flashed on the eye and trembled from the grasp like some
+dainty tropical creature as yet unused to our stranger clime. Her father
+had surveyed her with satisfaction, and her lover—oh, that we were all
+young again to experience that leap of the heart with which youth meets
+and recognizes the sweet perfections of the woman it adores! But a mist
+had obscured the radiance of her aspect, and she looks very sad as she
+stands in her father’s hall this morning, leaning her cheek against the
+banister, and thinking of the night when three years ago, she lingered
+in that very spot, and watched the form of the young musician go by her
+and disappear in the darkness of the night, as she then thought forever.
+Joy had come to her by such slow steps and after such long waiting. Hope
+had burst upon her so brilliantly, and with such a speedy promise of
+culmination. She thrilled as she thought how short a time ago it was,
+since she leaned upon Bertram’s arm and dropped her eyes before his
+gaze.
+
+The appearance of her father at length aroused her. Flushing slightly,
+she held the letter towards him.
+
+“A letter for you, papa. I thought you might like to read it before you
+went out.”
+
+Mr. Stuyvesant, who for an hour or more had been frowning over his
+morning paper with a steady pertinacity that left more than the usual
+amount of wrinkles upon his brow, started at the wistful tone of this
+announcement from his daughter’s lips, and taking the letter from her
+hand, stepped into the parlor to peruse it. It was, as the handwriting
+declared, from Mr. Sylvester, and ran thus:
+
+     “DEAR MR. STUYVESANT:
+
+     “I have heard of your loss and am astounded. Though the Bank is
+     not liable for any accident to trusts of this nature, both
+     Bertram and myself are determined to make every effort
+     possible, to detect and punish the man who either through our
+     negligence, or by means of the opportunities afforded him under
+     our present system of management, has been able to commit this
+     robbery upon your effects. We therefore request that you will
+     meet us at the bank this morning at as early an hour as
+     practicable, there to assist us in making such inquiries and
+     instituting such measures, as may be considered necessary to
+     the immediate attainment of the object desired.
+
+     “Respectfully yours,
+
+     “EDWARD SYLVESTER.”
+
+“Is it anything serious?” asked his daughter, coming into the parlor and
+looking up into his face with a strange wistfulness he could not fail to
+remark.
+
+Mr. Stuyvesant gave her a quick glance, shook his head with some
+nervousness and hastily pocketed the epistle. “Business,” mumbled he,
+“business.” And ignoring the sigh that escaped her lips, began to make
+his preparations for going at once down town.
+
+He was always an awkward man at such matters, and it was her habit to
+afford him what assistance she could. This she now did, lending her hand
+to help him on with his overcoat, rising on tip-toe to tie his muffler,
+and bending her bright head to see that his galoshes were properly
+fastened; her charming face with its far-away look, shining strangely
+sweet in the dim hall, in contrast with his severe and antiquated
+countenance.
+
+He watched her carefully but with seeming indifference till all was done
+and he stood ready to depart, then in an awkward enough way—he was not
+accustomed to bestow endearments—drew her to him and kissed her on the
+forehead; after which he turned about and departed without a word to
+season or explain this unwonted manifestation of tenderness.
+
+A kiss was an unusual occurrence in that confiding but undemonstrative
+household, and the little maiden trembled. “Something is wrong,” she
+murmured half to herself, half to the dim vista of the lonely parlor,
+where but a night or so ago had stood the beloved form of him, who, bury
+the thought as she would, had become, if indeed he had not always been,
+the beginning and the ending of all her maidenly dreams: “what? what?”
+And her young heart swelled painfully as she realized like many a woman
+before her, that whatever might be her doubts, fears, anguish or
+suspense, nothing remained for her but silence and a tedious waiting for
+others to recognize her misery and speak.
+
+Meanwhile how was it with her dearest friend and confident, Paula? The
+morning, as I have already declared, was bright and exceptionally
+beautiful. Sunshine filled the air and freshness invigorated the breeze.
+Cicely was blind to it all, but as Paula looked from her window
+preparatory to going below, a close observer might have perceived that
+the serenity of the cloudless sky was reflected in her beaming eyes,
+that peace brooded above her soul and ruled her tender spirit. She had
+held a long conversation with Miss Belinda, she had prayed, she had
+slept and she had risen with a confirmed love in her heart for the man
+who was at once the admiration of her eyes and the well-spring of her
+deepest thoughts and wildest longings. “I will show him so plainly what
+the angels have told me,” whispered she, “that he will have no need to
+ask.” And she wound her long locks into the coil that she knew he best
+liked and fixed a rose at her throat, and so with a smile on her lip
+went softly down stairs. O the timid eager step of maidenhood when
+drawing toward the shrine of all it adores! Could those halls and lofty
+corridors have whispered their secret, what a story they would have told
+of beating heart and tremulous glance, eager longings, and maidenly
+shrinkings, as the lovely form, swaying with a thousand hopes and fears,
+glided from landing to landing, carrying with it love and joy and peace.
+And trust! As she neared the bronze image that had always awakened such
+vague feelings of repugnance on her part, and found its terrors gone and
+its smile assuring, she realized that her breast held nothing but faith
+in him, who may have sinned in his youth, but who had repented in his
+manhood, and now stood clear and noble in her eyes. The assurance was
+too sweet, the flood of feeling too overwhelming. With a quick glance
+around her, she stopped and flung her arms about the hitherto repellant
+bronze, pressing her young breast against the cold metal with a fervor
+that ought to have hallowed its sensuous mould forever. Then she hurried
+down.
+
+Her first glance into the dining-room brought her a disappointment. Mr.
+Sylvester had already breakfasted and gone; only Aunt Belinda sat at the
+table. With a slightly troubled brow, Paula advanced to her own place at
+the board.
+
+“Mr. Sylvester has urgent business on hand to-day,” quoth her aunt. “I
+met him going out just as I came down.”
+
+Her look lingered on Paula as she said this, and if it had not been for
+the servants, she would doubtless have given utterance to some further
+expression on the matter, for she had been greatly struck by Mr.
+Sylvester’s appearance and the sad, firm, almost lofty expression of his
+eye, as it met hers in their hurried conversation.
+
+“He is a very busy man,” returned Paula simply, and was silent, struck
+by some secret dread she could not have explained. Suddenly she rose;
+she had found an envelope beneath her plate, addressed to herself. It
+was bulky and evidently contained a key. Hastening behind the curtains
+of the window, she opened it. The key was to that secret study of his at
+the top of the house, which no one but himself had ever been seen to
+enter, and the words that enwrapped it were these:
+
+     “If I send you no word to the contrary, and if I do not come
+     back by seven o’clock this evening, go to the room of which
+     this is the key, open my desk, and read what I have prepared
+     for your eyes.
+
+     “E. S.”
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXVII.
+
+THE OPINION OF A CERTAIN NOTED DETECTIVE.
+
+                            “But still there clung
+    One hope, like a keen sword on starting threads uphung.”
+
+    —REVOLT OF ISLAM.
+
+    “Facts are stubborn things.”—ELLIOTT.
+
+
+Meanwhile Mr. Stuyvesant hasted on his way down town and ere long made
+his appearance at the bank. He found Mr. Sylvester and Bertram seated in
+the directors’ room, with a portly smooth-faced man whose appearance was
+at once strange and vaguely familiar.
+
+“A detective, sir,” explained Mr. Sylvester rising with forced
+composure; “a man upon whose judgment I have been told we may rely. Mr.
+Gryce, Mr. Stuyvesant.”
+
+The latter gentleman nodded, cast a glance around the room, during which
+his eye rested for a moment on Bertram’s somewhat pale countenance, and
+nervously took a seat.
+
+“A mysterious piece of business, this,” came from the detective’s lips
+in an easy tone, calculated to relieve the tension of embarrassment into
+which the entrance of Mr. Stuyvesant seemed to have thrown all parties.
+“What were the numbers of the bonds found missing, if you please?”
+
+Mr. Stuyvesant told him.
+
+“You are positively assured these bonds were all in the box when you
+last locked it?”
+
+“I am.”
+
+“When was that, sir? On what day and at what hour of the day, if you
+please?”
+
+“Tuesday, at about three o’clock, I should say.”
+
+“The box was locked by you? There is no doubt about that fact?”
+
+“None in the least.”
+
+“Where were you standing at the time?”
+
+“In front of the vault door. I had taken out the box myself as I am in
+the habit of doing, and had stepped there to put it back.”
+
+“Was any one near you then?”
+
+“Yes. The cashier was at his desk and the teller had occasion to go to
+the safe while I stood there. I do not remember seeing any one else in
+my immediate vicinity.”
+
+“Do you remember ever going to the vaults and not finding some one near
+you at the time or at least in full view of your movements?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“I have informed Mr. Gryce,” interposed Mr. Sylvester, with a ring in
+his deep voice that made Mr. Stuyvesant start, “that our chief desire at
+present is to have his judgment upon the all important question, as to
+whether this theft was committed by a stranger, or one in the employ and
+consequently in the confidence of the bank.”
+
+Mr. Stuyvesant bowed, every wrinkle in his face manifesting itself with
+startling distinctness as he slowly moved his eyes and fixed them on the
+inscrutable countenance of the detective.
+
+“You agree then with these gentlemen,” continued the latter, who had a
+way of seeming more interested in everything and everybody present than
+the person he was addressing, “that it would be difficult if not
+impossible for any one unconnected with the bank, to approach the vaults
+during business hours and abstract anything from them without
+detection?”
+
+“And do these gentleman both assert that?” queried Mr. Stuyvesant, with
+a sharp look from uncle to nephew.
+
+“I believe they do,” replied the detective, as both the gentlemen bowed,
+Bertram with an uncontrollable quiver of his lip, and Mr. Sylvester with
+a deepening of the lines about his mouth, which may or may not have been
+noticed by this man who appeared to observe nothing.
+
+“I should be loth to conclude that the robbery was committed by any one
+but a stranger,” remarked Mr. Stuyvesant; “but if these gentlemen concur
+in the statement you have just made, I am bound to acknowledge that I do
+not myself see how the theft could have been perpetrated by an outsider.
+Had the box itself been missing, it would be different. I remember my
+old friend Mr. A—, the president of the police department, telling me
+of a case where a box containing securities to the amount of two hundred
+thousand dollars, was abstracted in full daylight from the vaults of one
+of our largest banks; an act requiring such daring, the directors for a
+long time refused to believe it possible, until a detective one day
+showed them another box of theirs which he had succeeded in abstracting
+in the same way.[1] But the vaults in that instance were in a less
+conspicuous portion of the bank than ours, besides to approach an open
+vault, snatch a box from it and escape, is a much simpler matter than to
+remain long enough to open a box and choose from its contents such
+papers as appeared most marketable. If a regular thief could do such a
+thing, it does not seem probable that he would. Nevertheless the most
+acute judgment is often at fault in these matters, and I do not pretend
+to have formed an opinion.”
+
+[Footnote 1: A fact.]
+
+The detective who had listened to these words with marked attention,
+bowed his concurrence and asked if the bonds mentioned by Mr. Stuyvesant
+were all that had been found missing from the bank. If any of the other
+boxes had been opened, or if the contents of the safe itself had ever
+been tampered with.
+
+“The contents of the safe are all correct,” came in deep tones from Mr.
+Sylvester. “Mr. Folger, my nephew and myself went through them this
+morning. As for the boxes I cannot say, many of them belong to persons
+travelling; some of them have been left here by trustees of estates,
+consequently often lie for weeks in the vaults untouched. If however any
+of them have been opened, we ought to be able to see it. Would you like
+an examination made of their condition?”
+
+The detective nodded.
+
+Mr. Sylvester at once turned to Mr. Stuyvesant. “May I ask you to
+mention what officer of the bank you would like to have go to the
+vaults?”
+
+That gentleman started, looked uneasily about, but meeting Bertram’s
+eye, nervously dropped his own and muttered the name of Folger.
+
+Mr. Sylvester suppressed a sigh, sent for the paying-teller, and
+informed him of their wishes. He at once proceeded to the vaults. While
+he was gone, Mr. Gryce took the opportunity to make the following
+remark.
+
+“Gentlemen,” said he, “let us understand ourselves. What you want of me,
+is to tell you whether this robbery has been committed by a stranger or
+by some one in your employ. Now to decide this question it is necessary
+for me to ask first, whether you have ever had reason to doubt the
+honesty of any person connected with the bank?”
+
+“No,” came from Mr. Sylvester with sharp and shrill distinctness. “Since
+I have had the honor of conducting the affairs of this institution, I
+have made it my business to observe and note the bearing and character
+of each and every man employed under me, and I believe them all to be
+honest.”
+
+The glance of the detective while it did not perceptibly move from the
+large screen drawn across the room at the back of Mr. Sylvester, seemed
+to request the opinions of the other two gentlemen on this point.
+
+Bertram observing it, subdued the rapid beatings of his heart and spoke
+with like distinctness. “I have been in the bank the same length of time
+as my uncle,” said he, “and most heartily endorse his good opinion of
+the various persons in our employ.”
+
+“And Mr. Stuyvesant?” the immovable glance seemed to say.
+
+“Men are honest in my opinion till they are proved otherwise,” came in
+short stern accents from the director’s lips.
+
+The detective drew back in his chair as if he considered that point
+decided, and yet Bertram’s eye which had clouded at Mr. Stuyvesant’s too
+abrupt assertion, did not clear again as might have been expected.
+
+“There is one more question I desire to settle,” continued the
+detective, “and that is, whether this robbery could have been
+perpetrated after business hours, by some one in collusion with the
+person who is here left in charge?”
+
+“No;” again came from Mr. Sylvester, with impartial justice. “The
+watchman—who by the way has been in the bank for twelve years—could
+not help a man to find entrance to the vaults. His simple duty is to
+watch over the bank and give alarm in case of fire or burglary. It would
+necessitate a knowledge of the combination by which the vault doors are
+opened, to do what you suggest, and that is possessed by but three
+persons in the bank.”
+
+“And those are?”
+
+“The cashier, the janitor, and myself.”
+
+He endeavored to speak calmly and without any betrayal of the effort it
+caused him to utter those simple words, but a detective’s ear is nice
+and it is doubtful if he perfectly succeeded.
+
+Mr. Gryce however limited himself to a muttered, humph! and a long and
+thoughtful look at a spot on the green baize of the table before which
+he sat.
+
+“The janitor lives in the building, I suppose?”
+
+“Yes, and is, as I am sure Mr. Stuyvesant will second me in asserting,
+honesty to the back-bone.”
+
+“Janitors always are,” observed the detective; then shortly, “How long
+has _he_ been with you?”
+
+“Three years.”
+
+Another “humph!” and an increased interest in the ink spot.
+
+“That is not long, considering the responsibility of his position.”
+
+“He was on the police force before he came to us,” remarked Mr.
+Sylvester.
+
+Mr. Gryce looked as if that was not much of a recommendation.
+
+“As for the short time he has been with us,” resumed the other, “he came
+into the bank the same winter as my nephew and myself, and has found the
+time sufficient to earn the respect of all who know him.”
+
+The detective bowed, seemingly awed by the dignity with which the last
+statement had been uttered; but any one who knew him well, would have
+perceived that the film of uncertainty which had hitherto dimmed the
+brightness of his regard was gone, as if in the other’s impressive
+manner, if not in the suggestion his words had unconsciously offered,
+the detective had received an answer to some question which had been
+puzzling him, or laid his hand upon some clue which had till now eluded
+his grasp. The inquiries which he made haste to pursue, betrayed,
+however, but little of the tendency of his thoughts.
+
+“The janitor, you say, knows the combination by which the vault doors
+are opened?”
+
+“The _vault doors_,” emphasized Mr. Sylvester. “The safe is another
+matter; that stands inside the vault and is locked by a triple
+combination which as a whole is not known to any one man in this
+building, not even to myself.”
+
+“But the boxes are not kept in the safe?”
+
+“No, they are piled up with the books in the vaults at the side of the
+safe, as you can see for yourself, if you choose to join Mr. Folger.”
+
+“Not necessary. The janitor, then, is the only man besides yourselves,
+who under any circumstances or for any reason, could get at those boxes
+after business hours?”
+
+“He is.”
+
+“One question more. Who is the man to attend to those boxes? I mean to
+ask, which of the men in your employ is expected to procure a box out of
+the vaults when it is called for, and put it back in its place when its
+owner is through with it?”
+
+“Hopgood usually does that business, the janitor of whom we have just
+been speaking. When he is upstairs or out of the way, any one else whom
+it may be convenient to call.”
+
+“The janitor, then, has free access to the boxes at all times, night and
+day?”
+
+“In one sense, yes, in another, no. Should he unlock the vaults at
+night, the watchman would report upon his proceedings.”
+
+“But there must be time between the closing and opening of the bank,
+when the janitor is alone with the vaults?”
+
+“There is a space of two hours after seven in the morning, when he is
+likely to be the sole one in charge. The watchman goes home, and Hopgood
+employs himself in sweeping out the bank and preparing it for the
+business of the day.”
+
+“Are the watchman and the janitor on good terms with one another?”
+
+“Very, I believe.”
+
+The detective looked thoughtful. “I should like to see this Hopgood,”
+said he.
+
+But just then the door opened and Mr. Folger came in, looking somewhat
+pale and disturbed. “We are in a difficulty,” cried he, stepping up to
+the table where they sat. “I have found two of the boxes unlocked; that
+belonging to Hicks, Saltzer and Co., and another with the name of
+Harrington upon it. The former has been wrenched apart, the latter
+opened with some sort of instrument. Would you like to see them, sir?”
+This to Mr. Sylvester.
+
+With a start that gentleman rose, and as suddenly reseated himself.
+“Yes,” returned he, carefully avoiding his nephew’s eye; “bring them
+in.”
+
+“Hicks, Saltzer and Co., is a foreign house,” remarked Mr. Stuyvesant to
+the detective, “and do not send for their box once a fortnight, as I
+have heard Mr. Sylvester declare. Mr. Harrington is on an exploring
+expedition and is at present in South America.” Then in lower tones,
+whose sternness was not unmixed with gloom, “The thief seems to have
+known what boxes to go to.”
+
+Bertram flushed and made some passing rejoinder; Mr. Sylvester and the
+detective alone remained silent.
+
+The boxes being brought in, Mr. Gryce opened them without ceremony.
+Several papers met his eye in both, but as no one but the owners could
+know their rightful contents, it was of course impossible for him to
+determine whether anything had been stolen from them or not.
+
+
+“Send for the New York agent of Hicks, Saltzer and Co.,” came from Mr.
+Sylvester, in short, business-like command.
+
+Bertram at once rose. “I will see to it,” said he. His agitation was too
+great for suppression, the expression of Mr. Stuyvesant’s eye, that in
+its restlessness wandered in every direction but his own, troubled him
+beyond endurance. With a hasty move he left the room. The cold eye of
+the detective followed him.
+
+“Looks bad,” came in laconic tones from the paying teller.
+
+“I had hoped the affair begun and ended with my individual loss,”
+muttered Mr. Stuyvesant under his breath.
+
+The stately president and the inscrutable detective still maintained
+their silence.
+
+Suddenly the latter moved. Turning towards Mr. Sylvester, he requested
+him to step with him to the window. “I want to have a look at your
+several employees,” whispered he, as they thus withdrew. “I want to see
+them without being seen by them. If you can manage to have them come in
+here one by one upon some pretext or other, I can so arrange that screen
+under the mantel-piece, that it shall not only hide me, but give me a
+very good view of their faces in the mirror overhead.”
+
+“There will be no difficulty about summoning the men,” said Mr.
+Sylvester.
+
+“And you consent to the scheme?”
+
+“Certainly, if you think anything is to be gained by it.”
+
+“I am sure that nothing will be lost. And sir, let the cashier be
+present if you please; and sir,” squeezing his watch chain with a
+complacent air, as the other dropped his eyes, “talk to them about
+anything that you please, only let it be of a nature that will
+necessitate a sentence or more in reply. I judge a man as much by his
+voice as his expression.”
+
+Mr. Sylvester bowed, and without losing his self-command, though the
+short allusion to Bertram had greatly startled him, turned back to the
+table where Mr. Folger was still standing in conversation with the
+director.
+
+“I will not detain you longer,” said he to the paying teller. “Your
+discretion will prevent you from speaking of this matter, I trust.” Then
+as the other bowed, added carelessly, “I have something to say to
+Jessup; will you see that he steps here for a moment?”
+
+Mr. Folger again nodded and left the room. Instantly Mr. Gryce bustled
+forward, and pulling the screen into the position he thought best
+calculated to answer his requirements, slid rapidly behind it. Mr.
+Stuyvesant looked up in surprise.
+
+“I am going to interview the clerks for Mr. Gryce’s benefit,” exclaimed
+Mr. Sylvester. “Will you in the meantime look over the morning paper?”
+
+“Thank you,” returned the other, edging nervously to one side, “my
+note-book will do just as well,” and sitting down at the remote end of
+the table, he took out a book from his pocket, above which he bent with
+very well simulated preoccupation. Mr. Sylvester called in Bertram and
+then seated himself with a hopeless and unexpectant look, which he for
+the moment forgot would be reflected in the mirror before him, and so
+carried to the eye of the watchful detective. In another instant Jessup
+entered.
+
+What was said in the short interview that followed, is unimportant. Mr.
+Jessup, the third teller, was one of those clear eyed, straightforward
+appearing men whose countenance is its own guarantee. It was not
+necessary to detain him or make him speak. The next man to come in was
+Watson, and after he had gone, two or three of the clerks, and later the
+receiving teller and one of the runners. All stopped long enough to
+insure Mr. Gryce a good view of their faces, and from each and all did
+Mr. Sylvester succeed in eliciting more or less conversation in response
+to the questions he chose to put.
+
+With the disappearance of the last mentioned individual, Mr. Gryce
+peeped from behind the screen. “A set of as honest-looking men as I wish
+to see!” uttered he with a frank cordiality that was scarcely reflected
+in the anxious countenances about him. “No sly-boots among them; how
+about the janitor, Hopgood?”
+
+“He shall be summoned at once, if you desire it,” said Mr. Sylvester, “I
+have only delayed calling him that I might have leisure to interrogate
+him with reference to his duties, and this very theft. That is if you
+judge it advisable in me to tamper with the subject unassisted?”
+
+“Your nephew can help you if necessary,” replied the imperturbable
+detective. “I should like to hear what the man, Hopgood, has to say for
+himself,” and he glided back into his old position.
+
+But Mr. Sylvester had scarcely reached out his hand to ring the bell by
+which he usually summoned the janitor, when the agent of Hicks, Saltzer
+& Co. came in. It was an interruption that demanded instant attention.
+Saluting the gentleman with his usual proud reserve, he drew his
+attention to the box lying upon the table.
+
+
+“This is yours, I believe, sir,” said he. “It was found in our vaults
+this morning in the condition in which you now behold it, and we are
+anxious to know if its contents are all correct.”
+
+“They have been handled,” returned the agent, after a careful survey of
+the various papers that filled the box, “but nothing appears to be
+missing.”
+
+Three persons at least in that room breathed more easily.
+
+“But the truth is,” the gentleman continued, with a half smile towards
+the silent President of the bank, “there was nothing in this box that
+would have been of much use to any other parties than ourselves. If
+there had been a bond or so here, I doubt if we should have come off so
+fortunately, eh? The lock has evidently been wrenched open, and that is
+certainly a pretty sure sign that something is not right hereabouts.”
+
+“Something is decidedly wrong,” came from Mr. Sylvester sternly; “but
+through whose fault we do not as yet know.” And with a few words
+expressive of his relief at finding the other had sustained no material
+loss, he allowed the agent to depart.
+
+He had no sooner left the room than Mr. Stuyvesant rose. “Are you going
+to question Hopgood now?” queried he, nervously pocketing his note-book.
+
+“Yes sir, if you have no objections.”
+
+The director fidgeted with his chair and finally moved towards the door.
+“I think you will get along better with him alone,” said he. “He is a
+man who very easily gets embarrassed, and has a way of acting as if he
+were afraid of me. I will just step outside while you talk to him.”
+
+But Mr. Sylvester with a sudden dark flush on his brow, hastily stopped
+him. “I beg you will not,” said he, with a quick realization of what
+Hopgood might be led to say in the forthcoming interview, if he were not
+restrained by the presence of the director. “Hopgood is not so afraid of
+you that he will not answer every question that is put to him with
+straightforward frankness.” And he pushed up a chair, with a smile that
+Mr. Stuyvesant evidently found himself unable to resist. The screen
+trembled slightly, but none of them noticed it; Mr. Sylvester at once
+rang for Hopgood.
+
+He came in panting with his hurried descent from the fifth story, his
+face flushed and his eyes rolling, but without any of the secret
+perturbation Bertram had observed in them on a former occasion. “He
+cannot help us,” was the thought that darkened the young man’s brow as
+his eyes left the janitor, and faltering towards his uncle, fell upon
+the table before him.
+
+Everything was reflected in the mirror.
+
+“Well, Hopgood, I have a few questions to put to you this morning,” said
+Mr. Sylvester in a restrained, but not unkindly tone.
+
+The worthy man bowed, bestowed a salutatory roll of his eyes on Mr.
+Stuyvesant, and stood deferentially waiting.
+
+“No, he cannot help us,” was again Bertram’s thought, and again his eyes
+faltered to his uncle’s face, and again fell anxiously before him.
+
+“It has not been my habit to trouble you with inquiries about your
+management of matters under your charge,” continued Mr. Sylvester,
+stopping till the janitor’s wandering eyes settled upon his own. “Your
+conduct has always been exemplary, and your attention to duty
+satisfactory; but I would like to ask you to-day if you have observed
+anything amiss with the vaults of late? anything wrong about the boxes
+kept there? anything in short, that excited your suspicion or caused you
+to ask yourself if everything was as it should be?”
+
+The janitor’s ruddy face grew pale, and his eye fell with startled
+inquiry on Mr. Harrington’s box that still occupied the centre of the
+table. “No, sir,” he emphatically replied, “has anything—”
+
+But Mr. Sylvester did not wait to be questioned. “You have attended to
+your duties as promptly and conscientiously as usual; you have allowed
+no one to go to the vaults day or night, who had no business there? You
+have not relaxed your accustomed vigilance, or left the bank alone at
+any time during the hours it is under your charge?”
+
+“No sir, not for a minute, sir; that is—” He stopped and his eye
+wandered towards Mr. Stuyvesant. “Never for a minute, sir,” he went on,
+“without I knew some one was in the bank, who was capable of looking
+after it.”
+
+“The watchman has been at his post every night up to the usual hour?”
+
+“Yes sir.”
+
+“There has been no carelessness in closing the vault doors after the
+departure of the clerks?”
+
+“No sir.”
+
+“And no trouble,” he continued, with a shade more of dignity, possibly
+because Hopgood’s tell-tale face was beginning to show signs of anxious
+confusion, “and no trouble in opening them at the proper time each
+morning?”
+
+“No sir.”
+
+
+“One question more—”
+
+But here Bertram was called out, and in the momentary stir occasioned by
+his departure, Hopgood allowed himself to glance at the box before him
+more intently than he had hitherto presumed to do. He saw it was
+unlocked, and his hands began to tremble. Mr. Sylvester’s voice recalled
+him to himself.
+
+“You are a faithful man,” said that gentleman, continuing his speech of
+a minute before, “and as such we are ready to acknowledge you; but the
+most conscientious amongst us are sometimes led into indiscretions. Now
+have you ever through carelessness or by means of any inadvertence,
+revealed to any one in or out of the bank, the particular combination by
+which the lock of the vault-door is at present opened?”
+
+“No sir, indeed no; I am much too anxious, and feel my own
+responsibility entirely too much, not to preserve so important a secret
+with the utmost care and jealousy.”
+
+Mr. Sylvester’s voice, careful as he was to modulate it, showed a secret
+discouragement. “The vaults then as far as you know, are safe when once
+they are closed for the night?”
+
+“Yes sir.” The janitor’s face expressed a slight degree of wonder, but
+his voice was emphatic.
+
+Mr. Sylvester’s eye travelled in the direction of the screen. “Very
+well,” said he; and paused to reflect.
+
+In the interim the door opened for a second time. “A gentleman to see
+Mr. Stuyvesant,” said a voice.
+
+
+With an air of relief the director hastily rose, and before Mr.
+Sylvester had realized his position, left the room and closed the door
+behind him. A knell seemed to ring its note in Mr. Sylvester’s breast.
+The janitor, released as he supposed from all constraint, stepped
+hastily forward.
+
+“That box has been found unlocked,” he cried with a wave of his hand
+towards the table; “some one has been to the vaults, and I—Oh, sir,” he
+hurriedly exclaimed, disregarding in his agitation the stern and
+forbidding look which Mr. Sylvester in his secret despair had made haste
+to assume, “you did not want me to say anything about the time you came
+down so early in the morning, and I went out and left you alone in the
+bank, and you went to the vaults and opened Mr. Stuyvesant’s box by
+mistake, with a tooth-pick as you remember?”
+
+The mirror that looked down upon that pair, showed one very white face
+at that moment, but the screen that had trembled a moment before, stood
+strangely still in the silence.
+
+“No,” came at length from Mr. Sylvester, with a composure that
+astonished himself. “I was not questioning you about matters of a year
+agone. But you might have told that incident if you pleased; it was very
+easily explainable.”
+
+“Yes sir, I know, and I beg pardon for alluding to it, but I was so
+taken aback, sir, by your questions; I wanted to tell the exact truth,
+and I did not want to say anything that would hurt you with Mr.
+Stuyvesant; that is if I could help it. I hope I did right, sir,” he
+blundered on, conscious he was uttering words he might better have kept
+to himself, but too embarrassed to know how to emerge from the
+difficulty into which his mingled zeal and anxiety had betrayed him. “I
+was never a good hand at answering questions, and if any thing really
+serious has happened, I shall wish you had taken me at my word and
+dismissed me immediately after that affair. Constantia Maria would have
+been a little worse off perhaps, but I should not be on hand to answer
+questions, and—”
+
+“Hopgood!”
+
+The man started, eyed Mr. Sylvester’s white but powerfully controlled
+countenance, seemed struck with something he saw there, and was silent.
+
+“You make too much now, as you made too much then of a matter that
+having its sole ground in a mistake, is, as I say, easily explainable.
+This affair which has come up now, is not so clear. Three of the boxes
+have been opened, and from one certain valuables have been taken. Can
+you give me any information that will assist us in our search after the
+culprit?”
+
+“No sir.” The tone was quite humble, Hopgood drew back unconsciously
+towards the door.
+
+“As for the mistake of a year ago to which you have seen proper to
+allude, I shall myself take pains to inform Mr. Stuyvesant of it, since
+it has made such an impression upon you that it trammels your honesty
+and makes you consider it at all necessary to be anxious about it at
+this time.”
+
+And Hopgood unused to sarcasm from those lips, drew himself together,
+and with one more agitated look at the box on the table, sidled
+awkwardly from the room. Mr. Sylvester at once advanced to the screen
+which he hastily pushed aside. “Well, sir,” said he, meeting the
+detective’s wavering eye and forcing him to return his look, “you have
+now seen the various employees of the bank and heard most of them
+converse. Is there anything more you would like to inquire into before
+giving us the opinion I requested?”
+
+“No sir,” said the detective, coming forward, but very slowly and
+somewhat hesitatingly for him. “I think I am ready to say—”
+
+Here the door opened, and Mr. Stuyvesant returned. The detective drew a
+breath of relief and repeated his words with a business-like assurance.
+“I think I am ready to say, that from the nature of the theft and the
+mysterious manner in which it has been perpetrated, suspicion
+undoubtedly points to some one connected with the bank. That is all that
+you require of me to-day?” he added, with a bow of some formality in the
+direction of Mr. Sylvester.
+
+“Yes,” was the short reply. But in an instant a change passed over the
+stately form of the speaker. Advancing to Mr. Gryce, he confronted him
+with a countenance almost majestic in its severity, and somewhat
+severely remarked, “This is a serious charge to bring against men whose
+countenances you yourself have denominated as honest. Are we to believe
+you have fully considered the question, and realize the importance of
+what you say?”
+
+“Mr. Sylvester,” replied the detective, with great self-possession and
+some dignity, “a man who is brought every day of his life into positions
+where the least turning of a hair will sink a man or save him, learns to
+weigh his words, before he speaks even in such informal inquiries as
+these.”
+
+Mr. Sylvester bowed and turned towards Mr. Stuyvesant. “Is there any
+further action you would like to have taken in regard to this matter
+to-day?” he asked, without a tremble in his voice.
+
+With a glance at the half open box of the absent Mr. Harrington, the
+agitated director slowly shook his head. “We must have time to think,”
+said he.
+
+Mr. Gryce at once took up his hat. “If the charge implied in my opinion
+strikes you, gentlemen, as serious, you must at least acknowledge that
+your own judgment does not greatly differ from mine, or why such
+unnecessary agitation in regard to a loss so petty, by a gentleman worth
+as we are told his millions.” And with this passing shot, to which
+neither of his auditors responded, he made his final obeisance and
+calmly left the room.
+
+Mr. Sylvester and Mr. Stuyvesant slowly confronted one another.
+
+“The man speaks the truth,” said the former. “You at least suspect some
+one in the bank, Mr. Stuyvesant?”
+
+“I have no wish to,” hastily returned the other, “but facts—”
+
+“Would facts of this nature have any weight with you against the
+unspotted character of a man never known by you to meditate, much less
+commit a dishonest action?”
+
+“No; yet facts are facts, and if it is proved that some one in our
+employ has perpetrated a theft, the mind will unconsciously ask who, and
+remain uneasy till it is satisfied.”
+
+“And if it never is?”
+
+“It will always ask who, I suppose.”
+
+Mr. Sylvester drew back. “The matter shall be pushed,” said he; “you
+shall be satisfied. Surveillance over each man employed in this
+institution ought sooner or later to elicit the truth. The police shall
+take it in charge.”
+
+Mr. Stuyvesant looked uneasy. “I suppose it is only justice,” murmured
+he, “but it is a scandal I would have been glad to avoid.”
+
+“And I, but circumstances admit of no other course. The innocent must
+not suffer for the guilty, even so far as an unfounded suspicion would
+lead.”
+
+“No, no, of course not.” And the director bustled about after his
+overcoat and hat.
+
+Mr. Sylvester watched him with growing sadness. “Mr. Stuyvesant,” said
+he, as the latter stood before him ready for the street, “we have always
+been on terms of friendship, and nothing but the most pleasant relations
+have ever existed between us. Will you pardon me if I ask you to give me
+your hand in good-day?”
+
+The director paused, looked a trifle astonished, but held out his hand
+not only with cordiality but very evident affection.
+
+“Good day,” cried he, “good-day.”
+
+Mr. Sylvester pressed that hand, and then with a dignified bow, allowed
+the director to depart. It was his last effort at composure. When the
+door closed, his head sank on his hands, and life with all its hopes and
+honors, love and happiness, seemed to die within him.
+
+He was interrupted at length by Bertram. “Well, uncle?” asked the young
+man with unrestrained emotion.
+
+“The theft has been committed by some one in this bank; so the detective
+gives out, and so we are called upon to believe. _Who_ the man is who
+has caused us all this misery, neither he, nor you, nor I, nor any one,
+is likely to very soon determine. Meantime—”
+
+“Well?” cried Bertram anxiously, after a moment of suspense.
+
+“Meantime, courage!” his uncle resumed with forced cheerfulness.
+
+But as he was leaving the bank he came up to Bertram, and laying his
+hand on his shoulder, quietly said:
+
+“I want you to go immediately to my house upon leaving here. I may not
+be back till midnight, and Miss Fairchild may need the comfort of your
+presence. Will you do it, Bertram?”
+
+“Uncle! I—”
+
+“Hush! you will comfort me best by doing what I ask. May I rely upon
+you?”
+
+“Always.”
+
+“That is enough.”
+
+And with just a final look, the two gentlemen parted, and the shadow
+which had rested all day upon the bank, deepened over Bertram’s head
+like a pall.
+
+It was not lifted by the sight of Hopgood stealing a few minutes later
+towards the door by which his uncle had departed, his face pale, and his
+eyes fixed in a stare, that bespoke some deep and moving determination.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVIII.
+
+BLUE-BEARD’S CHAMBER.
+
+                   “Present fears
+    Are less than horrible imaginings.”
+     —MACBETH.
+
+
+Clarence Ensign was not surprised at the refusal he received from Paula.
+He had realized from the first that the love of this beautiful woman
+would be difficult to obtain, even if no rival with more powerful
+inducements than his own, should chance to cross his path. She was one
+who could be won to give friendship, consideration, and sympathy without
+stint; but from the very fact that she could so easily be induced to
+grant these, he foresaw the improbability, or at least the difficulty of
+enticing her to yield more. A woman whose hand warms towards the other
+sex in ready friendship, is the last to succumb to the entreaties of
+love. The circle of her sympathies is so large, the man must do well,
+who of all his sex, pierces to the sacred centre. The appearance of Mr.
+Sylvester on the scene, settled his fate, or so he believed; but he was
+too much in earnest to yield his hopes without another effort; so upon
+the afternoon of this eventful day, he called upon Paula.
+
+The first glimpse he obtained of her countenance, convinced him that he
+was indeed too late. Not for him that anxious pallor, giving way to a
+rosy tinge at the least sound in the streets without. Not for him that
+wandering glance, burning with questions to which nothing seemed able to
+grant reply. The very smile with which she greeted him, was a blow; it
+was so forgetful of the motive that had brought him there.
+
+“Miss Fairchild,” he stammered, with a generous impulse to save her
+unnecessary pain, “you have rejected my offer and settled my doom; but
+let me believe that I have not lost your regard, or that hold upon your
+friendship which it has hitherto been my pleasure to enjoy.”
+
+She woke at once to a realization of his position. “Oh Mr. Ensign,” she
+murmured, “can you doubt my regard or the truth of my friendship? It is
+for me to doubt; I have caused you such pain, and as you may think, so
+ruthlessly and with such lack of consideration. I have been peculiarly
+placed,” she blushingly proceeded. “A woman does not always know her own
+heart, or if she does, sometimes hesitates to yield to its secret
+impulses. I have led you astray these last few weeks, but I first went
+astray myself. The real path in which I ought to tread, was only last
+night revealed to me. I can say no more, Mr. Ensign.”
+
+“Nor is it necessary,” replied he. “You have chosen the better path, and
+the better man. May life abound in joys for you, Miss Fairchild.”
+
+She drew herself up and her hand went involuntarily to her heart. “It is
+not joy I seek,” said she, “but—”
+
+“What?” He looked at her face lit with that heavenly gleam that visited
+it in rare moments of deepest emotion, and wondered.
+
+“Joy is in seeing the one you love happy,” cried she; “earth holds none
+that is sweeter or higher.”
+
+“Then may that be yours,” he murmured, manfully subduing the jealous
+pang natural under the circumstances. And taking the hand she held out
+to him, he kissed it with greater reverence and truer affection than
+when, in the first joyous hours of their intercourse, he carried it so
+gallantly to his lips.
+
+And she—oh, difference of time and feeling—did not remember as of
+yore, the noble days of chivalry, though he was in this moment, so much
+more than ever the true knight and the reproachless cavalier.
+
+For Paula’s heart was heavy. Fears too unsubstantial to be met and
+vanquished, had haunted her steps all day. The short note which Mr.
+Sylvester had written her, lay like lead upon her bosom. She longed for
+the hours to fly, yet dreaded to hear the clock tick out the moments
+that possibly were destined to bring her untold suffering and
+disappointment. A revelation awaiting her in Mr. Sylvester’s desk up
+stairs? That meant separation and farewell; for words of promise and
+devotion can be spoken, and the heart that hopes, does not limit time to
+hours.
+
+With Bertram’s entrance, her fears took absolute shape. Mr. Sylvester
+was not coming home to dinner. Thenceforward till seven o’clock, she sat
+with her hand on her heart, waiting. At the stroke of the clock, she
+rose, and procuring a candle from her room, went slowly up stairs.
+“Watch for me,” she had said to Aunt Belinda, “for I fear I shall need
+your care when I come down.”
+
+What is there about a mystery however trivial, that thrills the heart
+with vague expectancy at the least lift of the concealing curtain! As
+Paula paused before the door, which never to her knowledge had opened to
+the passage of any other form than that of Mr. Sylvester, she was
+conscious of an agitation wholly distinct from that which had hitherto
+afflicted her. All the past curiosity of Ona concerning this room,
+together with her devices for satisfying that curiosity, recurred to
+Paula with startling distinctness. It was as if the white hand of that
+dead wife had thrust itself forth from the shadows to pull her back. The
+candle trembled in her grasp, and she unconsciously recoiled. But the
+next moment the thought of Mr. Sylvester struck warmth and determination
+through her being, and hastily thrusting the key into the lock, she
+pushed open the door and stepped across the threshold.
+
+Her first movement was that of surprise. In all her dreams of the
+possible appearance of this room, she had never imagined it to be like
+this. Plain, rude and homely, its high walls unornamented, its floor
+uncovered, its furniture limited to a plain desk and two or three rather
+uncomfortable-looking chairs, it struck upon her fancy with the same
+sense of incongruity, as might the sight of a low-eaved cottage in the
+midst of stately palaces and lordly pleasure-grounds. Setting down her
+candle, she folded her hands to still their tremblings, and slowly
+looked around her. This was the spot, then, to which he was accustomed
+to flee when oppressed by any care or harassed by any difficulty; this
+cold, bare, uninviting apartment with its forbidding aspect unsoftened
+by the tokens of a woman’s care or presence! To this room, humbler than
+any in her aunt’s home in Grotewell, he had brought all his griefs, from
+the day his baby lay dead in the rooms below, to that awful hour which
+saw the wife and mother brought into his doors and laid a cold and
+pulseless form in the midst of his gorgeous parlors! Here he had met his
+own higher impulses face to face, and wrestled with them through the
+watches of the night! In this wilderness of seeming poverty, he had
+dreamed, perhaps, his first fond dream of her as a woman, and signed
+perhaps his final renunciation of her as the future companion of his
+life! What did it mean? Why a spot of so much desolation in the midst of
+so much that was lordly and luxurious? Her fears might give her a
+possible interpretation, but she would not listen to fears. Only his
+words should instruct her. Going to the desk, she opened it. A sealed
+envelope addressed to herself, immediately met her eyes. Taking it out
+with a slow and reverent touch, she began to read the long and closely
+written letter which it contained.
+
+And the little candle burned on, shedding its rays over her bended head
+and upon the dismal walls about her, with a persistency that seemed to
+bring out, as in letters of fire, the hidden history of long ago, with
+its vanished days and its forgotten midnights.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIX.
+
+FROM A. TO Z.
+
+     “A naked human heart.”—YOUNG.
+
+
+“My Beloved Child:
+
+“So may I call you in this the final hour of our separation, but never
+again, dear one, never again. When I said to you, just twenty-four hours
+ago, that my sin was buried and my future was clear, I spake as men
+speak who forget the justice of God and dream only of his mercy. An
+hour’s time convinced me that an evil deed once perpetrated by a man, is
+never buried so that its ghost will not rise. Do as we will, repent as
+we may, the shadowy phantom of a stained and unrighteous youth is never
+laid; nor is a man justified in believing it so, till death has closed
+his eyes, and fame written its epitaph upon his tomb.
+
+“Paula, I am at this hour wandering in search of the being who holds the
+secret of my life and who will to-morrow blazon it before all the world.
+It is with no hope I seek him. God has not brought me to this pass, to
+release me at last, from shame and disgrace. Suffering and the loss of
+all my sad heart cherished, wait at my gates. Only one boon remains, and
+that is, your sympathy and the consolation of your regard. These, though
+bestowed as friends bestow them, are very precious to me; I cannot see
+them go, and that they may not, I tell you the full story of my life.
+
+“My youth was happy—my early youth, I mean. Bertram’s father was a dear
+brother to me, and my mother a watchful guardian and a tender friend. At
+fifteen, I entered a bank, the small bank in Grotewell, which you ought
+to remember. From the lowest position in it, I gradually worked my way
+up till I occupied the cashier’s place; and was just congratulating
+myself upon my prospects, when Ona Delafield returned from
+boarding-school, a young lady.
+
+“Paula, there is a fascination, which some men who have known nothing
+deeper and higher, call love. I, who in those days had cherished but few
+thoughts beyond the ordinary reach of a narrow and somewhat selfish
+business mind, imagined that the well-spring of all romance had bubbled
+up within me, when my eyes first fell upon this regal blonde, with her
+sleepy, inscrutable eyes and bewildering smile. Ulysses within sound of
+the siren’s voice, was nothing to it. He had been warned of his danger
+and had only his own curiosity to combat, while I was not even aware of
+my peril, and floated within reach of this woman’s power, without making
+an effort to escape. She was so subtle in her influence, Paula; so
+careless in the very exercise of her sovereignty. She never seemed to
+command; yet men and women obeyed her. Peculiarities which mar the
+matron, are often graces in a young, unmarried girl, whose thoughts are
+a mystery, and whose emotions an untried field. I believed I had found
+the queen of all beauty and when in an unguarded hour she betrayed her
+first appreciation of my devotion, I seemed to burst into a Paradise of
+delights, where every step I took, only the more intoxicated and
+bewildered me. My first realization of the sensuous and earthly
+character of my happiness came with the glimpse of your child-face on
+that never-to-be-forgotten day when we met beside the river. Like a star
+seen above the glare of a conflagration, the pure spirit that informed
+your glance, flashed on my burning soul, and for a moment I knew that in
+you budded the kind of woman-nature which it befitted a man to seek;
+that in the hands of such a one as you would make, should he trust his
+honor and bequeath his happiness. But when did a lover ever break the
+bonds that imprisoned his fancy, at the inspiration of a passing voice.
+I went back to Ona and forgot the child by the river.
+
+“Paula, I have no time to utter regrets. This is a hard plain tale which
+I have to relate; but if you love me still—if, as I have sometimes
+imagined, you have always loved me—think what my life had been if I had
+heeded the warning which God vouchsafed me on that day, and contrast it
+with what it is, and what it must be.
+
+“I went back to Ona, then, and the hold which she had upon me from the
+first, took form and shape. As well as she could love any one, she loved
+me, and though she had offers from one or two more advantageous sources,
+she finally decided that she would risk the future and accept me, if her
+father consented to the alliance. You who are the niece of the man of
+whom I must now speak, may or may not know what that meant. I doubt if
+you do; he left Grotewell while you were a child, and any gossip
+concerning him must ever fall short of the real truth. Enough, then,
+that it meant, if Jacob Delafield could see in my future any promises of
+success sufficient to warrant him in accepting me as his son-in-law, no
+woman living ought to hesitate to trust me with her hand. He was the
+Squire of the town, and as such entitled to respect, but he was also
+something more, as you will presently discover. His answer to my plea
+was:
+
+“‘Well, how much money have you to show?’
+
+“Now I had none. My salary as cashier of a small country bank was not
+large, and my brother’s prolonged sickness and subsequent death,
+together with my own somewhat luxurious habits, had utterly exhausted
+it. I told him so, but added that I had, somewhere up among the hills,
+an old maiden aunt who had promised me five thousand dollars at her
+death; and that as she was very ill at that time—hopelessly so, her
+neighbors thought—in a few weeks I should doubtless be able to satisfy
+him with the sight of a sum sufficient to start us in housekeeping, if
+no more.
+
+“He nodded at this, but gave me no distinct reply. ‘Let us wait,’ said
+he.
+
+“But youth is not inclined to wait. I considered my cause as good as
+won, and began to make all my preparations accordingly. With a feverish
+impatience which is no sign of true love, I watched the days go by, and
+waited for, if I did not anticipate, the death which I fondly imagined
+would make all clear. At last it came, and I went again into Mr.
+Delafield’s presence.
+
+“‘My aunt has just died,’ I announced, and stood waiting for the short,
+concise,
+
+“‘Go ahead, then, my boy!’ which I certainly expected.
+
+“Instead of that, he gave me a queer inexplicable smile, and merely
+said, ‘I want to see the greenbacks, my lad. No color so good as green,
+not even the black upon white of ‘I promise to pay.’
+
+“I went back to my desk in the bank, chagrined. Ona had told me a few
+days before that she was tired of waiting, that the young doctor from
+the next town was very assiduous in his attentions, and as there was no
+question as to his ability to support a wife, why—she did not finish
+her sentence, but the toss of her head and her careless tone at parting,
+were enough to inflame the jealousy of a less easily aroused nature than
+mine. I felt that I was in hourly danger of losing her, and all because
+I could not satisfy her father with a sight of the few thousands which
+were so soon to be mine.
+
+“The reading of my aunt’s will, which confirmed my hopes, did not
+greatly improve matters. ‘I want to see the money,’ the old gentleman
+repeated; and I was forced to wait the action of the law and the
+settlement of the estate. It took longer than even he foresaw. Weeks
+went by and my poor little five thousand seemed as far from my control
+as on the day the will was read. There was some trouble, I was not told
+what, that made it seem improbable that I should reap the benefit of my
+legacy for some time. Meanwhile Ona accepted the attentions of the young
+doctor, and my chances of winning her, dwindled rapidly day by day. I
+became morbidly eager and insanely jealous. Instead of pursuing my
+advantage—for I undoubtedly possessed one in her own secret inclination
+towards me—I stood off, and let my rival work his way into her
+affections unhindered. I was too sore to interrupt his play, as I called
+it, and too afraid of myself to actually confront him in her presence.
+But the sight of them riding together one day, was more than I could
+endure even in my spirit of unresistance. ‘He shall not have her,’ I
+cried, and cast about in my mind how to bring my own matters into such
+shape as to satisfy her father and so win her own consent to my suit. My
+first thought was to borrow the money, but that was impracticable in a
+town where each man’s affairs are known to his neighbor. My next was to
+hurry up the settlement of the estate by appeal to my lawyer. The result
+of the latter course was a letter of many promises, in the midst of
+which a great temptation assailed me.
+
+“Colonel Japha, of whose history you have heard more or less true
+accounts, was at that time living in the old mansion you took such pains
+to point out to me in that walk we took together in Grotewell. He had
+suffered a great anguish in the flight and degradation of his only
+daughter, and though the real facts connected with her departure were
+not known in the village, he was so overcome with shame, and so
+shattered in health, he lived in the utmost seclusion, opening his doors
+to but few visitors, among whom I, for some unexplained reason, was one.
+He used to say he liked me and saw in me the makings of a considerable
+man; and I, because he was Colonel Japha and a strong spirit, returned
+his appreciation, and spent many of my bitter and unhappy hours in his
+presence. It was upon one of these occasions the temptation came to
+which I have just alluded.
+
+
+“I had been talking about his health and the advisability of his taking
+a journey, when he suddenly rose and said, ‘Come with me to my study.’
+
+“I of course went. The first thing I saw upon entering was a trunk
+locked and strapped. ‘I am going to Europe to-morrow,’ said he, ‘to be
+gone six months.’
+
+“I was astonished, for in that town no one presumed to do anything of
+importance without consulting his neighbors; but I merely bowed my
+congratulations, and waited for him to speak, for I saw he had something
+on his mind that he wished to say. At last it came out. He had a
+daughter, he said, a daughter who had disgraced him and whom he had
+forbidden his house. She was not worthy of his consideration, yet he
+could not help but remember her, and while he never desired to see her
+enter his doors, it was not his wish that she should suffer want. He had
+a little money which he had laid by and which he wished to put into my
+hands for her use, provided anything should happen to him during his
+absence. ‘She is a wanderer now,’ he cried, ‘but she may one day come
+back, and then if I am dead and gone, you may give it to her.’ I was not
+to enter it in the bank under his name, but regard it as a personal
+trust to be used only under such circumstances as he mentioned.
+
+“The joy with which I listened to this proposal amounted almost to
+ecstacy when he went to his desk and brought out five one thousand
+dollar bills and laid them in my hand. ‘It is not much,’ said he, ‘but
+it will save her from worse degradation if she chooses to avail herself
+of it.’
+
+“Not much; oh no, not much, but just the sum that would raise me out of
+the pit of despondency into which I had fallen, and give me my bride, a
+chance in the world, and last, but not least, revenge on the rival I had
+now learned to hate. I was obliged to give the colonel a paper
+acknowledging the trust, but that was no hindrance. I did not mean to
+use the money, only to show it; and long before the colonel could
+return, my own five thousand would be in my hands—and so, and so, and
+so, as the devil reasons and young infatuated ears listen.
+
+“Colonel Japha thought I was an honest man, nor did I consider myself
+otherwise at that time. It was a chance for clever action; a bit of
+opportune luck that it would be madness to discard. On the day the
+vessel sailed which carried Colonel Japha out of the country, I went to
+Mr. Delafield and showed him the five crisp bank notes that represented
+as it were by proxy, the fortune I so speedily expected to inherit. ‘You
+have wanted to see five thousand dollars in my hand,’ said I; ‘there
+they are.’
+
+“His look of amazement was peculiar and ought to have given me warning;
+but I was blinded by my infatuation and thought it no more than the
+natural surprise incident to the occasion. ‘I have been made to wait a
+long time for your consent to my suit,’ said I; ‘may I hope that you
+will now give me leave to press my claims upon your daughter?’
+
+“He did not answer at once, but smiled, eying meanwhile the notes in my
+hand with a fascinated gaze which instinctively warned me to return them
+to my pocket. But I no sooner made a move indicative of that resolve,
+than he thrust out his cold slim hand and prevented me. ‘Let me see
+them,’ cried he.
+
+“There was no reason for me to refuse so simple a request to one in Mr.
+Delafield’s position, and though I had rather he had not asked for the
+notes, I handed them over. He at once seemed to grow taller. ‘So this is
+your start off in life,’ exclaimed he.
+
+“I bowed, and he let his eyes roam for a moment to my face. ‘Many a man
+would be glad of worse,’ smiled he; then suavely, ‘you shall have my
+daughter, sir.’
+
+“I must have turned white in my relief, for he threw his head back and
+laughed in a low unmusical way that at any other time would have
+affected me unpleasantly. But my only thought then, was to get the money
+back and rush with my new hopes into the room from which came the low
+ceaseless hum of his daughter’s voice. But at the first movement of my
+hand towards him, he assumed a mysterious air, and closing his fingers
+over the notes, said:
+
+“‘These are yours, to do what you wish with, I suppose?’
+
+“I may have blushed, but if I did, he took no notice. ‘What I wish to do
+with them,’ returned I, ‘is to shut them up in the bank for the present,
+at least till Ona is my wife.’
+
+“‘Oh no, no, no, you do not,’ came in easy, almost wheedling tones from
+the man before me. ‘You want to put them where they will double
+themselves in two months.’ And before I could realize to what he was
+tempting me, he had me down before his desk, showing me letters,
+documents, etc., of a certain scheme into which if a man should put a
+dollar to-day, it would ‘come out three and no mistake, before the year
+was out. It is a chance in a thousand,’ said he; ‘if I had half a
+million I would invest it in this enterprise to-day. If you will listen
+to me and put your money in there, you will be a rich man before ten
+years have passed over your head.’
+
+“I was dazzled. I knew enough of such matters to see that it was neither
+a hoax nor a chimera. He did have a good thing, and if the five thousand
+dollars had been my own—But I soon came to consider the question
+without that conditional. He was so specious in his manner of putting
+the affair before me, so masterful in the way he held on to the money,
+he gave me no time to think. ‘Say the word,’ cried he, ‘and in two
+months I bring you back ten thousand for your five. Only two months,’ he
+repeated, and then slowly, ‘Ona was born for luxury.’
+
+“Paula, you cannot realize what that temptation was. To amass wealth had
+never been my ambition before, but now everything seemed to urge it upon
+me. Dreams of unimagined luxury came to my mind as these words were
+uttered. A vision of Ona clad in garments worthy of her beauty floated
+before my eyes; the humble home I had hitherto pictured for myself,
+broadened and towered away into a palace; I beheld myself honored and
+accepted as the nabob of the town. I caught a glimpse of a new paradise,
+and hesitated to shut down the gate upon it. ‘I will think of it,’ said
+I, and went into the other room to speak to Ona.
+
+“Ah, if some angel had met me on the threshold! If my mother’s spirit or
+the thought of your dear face could have risen before me then and
+stopped me! Dizzy, intoxicated with love and ambition, I crossed the
+room to where she sat reeling off a skein of blue silk with hands that
+were whiter than alabaster. Kneeling down by her side, I caught those
+fair hands in mine.
+
+“‘Ona,’ I cried, ‘will you marry me? Your father has given his consent,
+and we shall be very happy.’
+
+“She bestowed upon me a little pout, and half mockingly, half earnestly
+inquired, ‘What kind of a house are you going to put me in? I cannot
+live in a cottage.’
+
+“‘I will put you in a palace,’ I whispered, ‘if you will only say that
+you will be mine.’
+
+“‘A palace! Oh, I don’t expect palaces; a house like the Japhas’ would
+do. Not but what I should feel at home in a palace,’ she added, lifting
+her lordly head and looking beautiful enough to grace a sceptre. Then,
+archly for her, ‘And papa has given his consent?’
+
+“‘Yes,’ I ardently cried.
+
+“‘Then Dr. Burton might as well go,’ she answered. ‘I will trust my
+father’s judgment, and take the palace—when it comes.’
+
+“After that, it was impossible to disappoint her.
+
+“Paula, in stating all this, I have purposely confined myself to
+relating bare facts. You must see us as we were. The glamour which an
+unreasoning passion casts over even a dishonest act, if performed for
+the sake of winning a beautiful woman, is no excuse in my own soul for
+the evil to which I succumbed that day, nor shall it seem so to you.
+Bare, hard, stern, the fact confronts me from the past, that at the
+first call of temptation I fell; and with this blot on my character, you
+will have to consider me—unhappy being that I am!
+
+“I did not realize then, however, all that I had done. The operation
+entered into by Mr. Delafield prospered, and in two months I had, as he
+predicted, ten thousand dollars instead of five, in my possession.
+Besides, I had just married Ona, and for awhile life was a dream of
+delight and luxury. But there came a day when I awoke to an insight of
+the peril I had escaped by a mere chance of the die. The money which I
+had expected from my aunt’s will, turned out to be amongst certain funds
+that had been risked in speculation by some agent during her sickness,
+and irrecoverably lost. The expression of her good-will was all that
+ever came to me of the legacy upon which I had so confidently relied.
+
+“I was sitting with my young wife in the pretty parlor of our new home,
+when the letter came from my lawyer announcing this fact, and I never
+can make you understand what effect it had upon me. The very walls
+seemed to shrivel up into the dimensions of a prison’s cell; the face
+that only an hour before had possessed every conceivable charm for me,
+shone on my changed vision with the allurement, but also with the
+unreality of a will-o’-the-wisp. All that might have happened if the
+luck, instead of being in my favor, had turned against me, crushed like
+a thunderbolt upon my head, and I rose up and left the presence of my
+young wife, with the knowledge at my heart that I was no more nor less
+than a thief in the eyes of God, if not in that of my fellow-men; a base
+thief, who if he did not meet his fit punishment, was only saved from it
+by fortuitous circumstances and the ignorance of those he had been so
+near despoiling.
+
+“The bitterness of that hour never passed away. The streets in which I
+had been raised, the house which had been the scene of my temptation,
+Mr. Delafield’s face, and my own home, all became unendurable to me. I
+felt as if each man I met must know what I had done; and secret as the
+transaction had been, it was long before I could enter the bank without
+a tremor of apprehension lest I should hear from some quarter, that my
+services there would no longer be required. The only comfort I received
+was in the thought that Ona did not know at what a cost her hand had
+been obtained. I was still under the glamour of her languid smiles and
+countless graces, and was fain to believe that notwithstanding a certain
+unresponsiveness and coldness in her nature, her love would yet prove a
+compensation for the remorse that I secretly suffered.
+
+“My distaste for Grotewell culminated. It was too small for me. The
+money I had acquired through the use of my neighbor’s funds burned in my
+pocket. I determined to move to New York, and with the few thousands I
+possessed, venture upon other speculations. But this time in all
+honesty. Yes, I swore it before God and my own soul, that never again
+would I run a risk similar to that from which I had just escaped. I
+would profit by the money I had acquired, oh yes, but henceforth all my
+operations should be legitimate and honorable. My wife, who was fast
+developing a taste for ease and splendor, seconded my plans with
+something like fervor, while Mr. Delafield actually went so far as to
+urge my departure. ‘You are bound to make a rich man,’ said he ‘and must
+go where great fortunes are to be secured.’ He never asked me what
+became of the five thousand dollars I returned to Colonel Japha upon his
+arrival from Europe.
+
+“So I came to New York.
+
+“Paula, the man who loses at the outset of a doubtful game, is
+fortunate. I did not lose, I won. As if in that first dishonest deed of
+mine I had summoned to my side the aid of evil influences, each and
+every operation into which I entered prospered. It seemed as if I could
+not make a mistake; money flowed towards me from all quarters; power
+followed, and I found myself one of the most successful and one of the
+most unhappy men in New York. There are some things of which a man
+cannot write even to the one dear heart he most cherishes and adores.
+You have lived in my home, and will acquit me from saying much about her
+who, with all her faults and her omissions, was ever kind to you. But
+some things I must repeat in order to make intelligible to you the
+change which gradually took place within me as the years advanced.
+Beauty, while it wins the lover, can never of itself hold the heart of a
+husband who possesses aspirations beyond that which passion supplies.
+Reckless, worldly and narrow-minded as I had been before the commission
+of that deed which embittered my life, I had become by the very shock
+that followed the realization of my wrong-doing, a hungry-hearted,
+eager-minded and melancholy-spirited man, asking but one boon in
+recompense for my secret remorse, and that was domestic happiness and
+the sympathetic affection of wife and children. Woman, according to my
+belief, was born to be chiefly and above all, the consoler. What a man
+missed in the outside world, he was to find treasured at home. What a
+man lacked in his own nature, he was to discover in the delicate and
+sublimated one of his wife. Beautiful dream, which my life was not
+destined to see realized!
+
+“The birth of my only child was my first great consolation. With the
+opening of her blue eyes upon my face, a well-spring deep as my
+unfathomable longing, bubbled up within my breast. Alas, that very
+consolation brought a hideous grief; the mother did not love her child;
+and another strand of the regard with which I still endeavored to
+surround the wife of my youth, parted and floated away out of sight. To
+take my little one in my arms, to feel her delicate cheek press
+yearningly to mine, to behold her sweet infantile soul develop itself
+before my eyes, and yet to realize that that soul would never know the
+guidance or sympathy of a mother, was to me at once rapture and anguish.
+I sometimes forgot to follow up a fortunate speculation, in my
+indulgence of these feelings. I was passionately the father as I might
+have been passionately the husband and the friend. Geraldine died; how
+and with what attendant circumstances of pain and regret, I will not,
+dare not state. The blow struck to the core of my being. I stood shaken
+before God. The past, with its one grim remembrance—a remembrance that
+in the tide of business successes and the engrossing affection which had
+of late absorbed me, had been well-nigh swamped from sight—rose before
+me like an accusing spirit. I had sinned, and I had been punished; I had
+sown, and I had reaped.
+
+“More than that, I was sinning still. My very enjoyment of the position
+I had so doubtfully acquired, was unworthy of me. My very wealth was a
+disgrace. Had it not all been built upon another man’s means? Could the
+very house I lived in be said to be my own, while a Japha existed in
+want? In the eyes of the world, perhaps, yes; in my own eyes, no. I
+became morbid on the subject. I asked myself what I could do to escape
+the sense of obligation that overwhelmed me. The few sums with which I
+had been secretly enabled to provide Colonel Japha during the final days
+of his ruined and impoverished life, were not sufficient. I desired to
+wipe out the past by some large and munificent return. Had the colonel
+been living, I should have gone to him, told him my tale and offered him
+the half of my fortune; but his death cut off all hopes of my righting
+myself in that way. Only his daughter remained, the poor, lost,
+reprobated being, whom he was willing to curse, but whom he could not
+bear to believe suffering. I determined that the debt due to my own
+peace of mind should be paid to her. But how? Where was I to find this
+wanderer? How was I to let her know that a comfortable living awaited
+her if she would only return to her friends and home? Consulting with a
+business associate, he advised me to advertise. I did so, but without
+success. I next resorted to the detectives, but all without avail.
+Jacqueline Japha was not to be found.
+
+“But I did not relinquish my resolve. Deliberately investing a hundred
+thousand dollars in Government bonds, I put them aside for her. They
+were to be no longer mine. I gave them to her and to her heirs as
+completely and irrevocably, I believed, as if I had laid them in her
+hand and seen her depart with them. I even inserted them as a legacy to
+her in my will. It was a clear and definite arrangement between me and
+my own soul; and after I had made it and given orders to my lawyer in
+Grotewell to acquaint me if he ever received the least news of
+Jacqueline Japha, I slept in peace.
+
+“Of the years that followed I have small need to speak. They were the
+years that preceded your coming, my Paula, and their story is best told
+by what I was when we met again, and you made me know the sweet things
+of life by entering into my home. Woman as a thoughtful, tender,
+elevated being had been so long unknown to me! The beauty of the
+feminine soul with its faith fixed upon high ideals, was one before
+which I had ever been ready to bow. All that I had missed in my youth,
+all that had failed me in my maturing manhood, seemed to flow back upon
+me like a river. I bathed in the sunshine of your pure spirit and
+imagined that the evil days were over and peace come at last.
+
+“A rude and bitter shock awoke me. Ona’s father, who had followed us to
+New York, and of whose somewhat checkered career during the past few
+years, I have purposely forborne to speak, had not been above appealing
+to us for assistance at such times as his frequently unfortunate
+investments left him in a state of necessity. These appeals were usually
+made to Ona, and in a quiet way; but one day he met me on the street—it
+was during the second winter you spent in my home—and dragging me into
+a restaurant down town, began a long tale, to the effect that he wanted
+a few thousands from me to put into a certain investment, which if
+somewhat shady in its character, was very promising as to its results;
+and gave as a reason why he applied to me for the money, that he knew I
+had not been above doing a wrongful act once, in order to compass my
+ends, and therefore would not be liable to hesitate now.
+
+“It was the thunderbolt of my life. My sin was not then buried. It had
+been known to this man from the start. With an insight for which I had
+never given him credit, he had read my countenance in the days of my
+early temptation, and guessed, if he did not know, where the five
+thousand dollars came from with which I began my career as speculator.
+Worse than that, he had led me on to the act by which he now sought to
+hold me. Having been the secret agent in losing my aunt’s money, he knew
+at the time that I was cherishing empty hopes as regarded a legacy from
+her, yet he let me dally with my expectations, and ensnare myself with
+his daughter’s fascinations, till driven mad by disappointment and
+longing, I was ready to resort to any means to gain my purpose. It was a
+frightful revelation to come to me in days when, if I were not a
+thoroughly honest man, I had at least acquired a deep and ineradicable
+dread of dishonor. Answering him I know not how, but in a way that while
+it repudiated his proposition, unfortunately acknowledged the truth of
+the suppositions upon which it was founded, I left him and went home, a
+crushed and disheartened man. Life which had been so long in acquiring
+cheerful hues, was sunk again in darkness; and for days I could not bear
+the sight of your innocent face, or the sound of your pure voice, or the
+tokens of your tender and unsuspecting presence in my home. But soon the
+very natural thought came to comfort me, that the sin I so deplored was
+as much dead now, as it was before I learned the fact of this man’s
+knowledge of it. That having repented and put it away, I was as free to
+accept your gentle offices and the regard of all true men, as ever I had
+been; and beguiled by this plausible consideration, I turned again to my
+one visible source of consolation, and in the diversion it offered, let
+the remembrance of this last bitter experience pass slowly from my mind.
+The fact that Mr. Delafield left town shortly after his interview with
+me, and smitten by shame perhaps, forbore to acquaint us with his
+whereabouts or afflict us with his letters, may have aided me in this
+strange forgetfulness.
+
+“But other and sharper trials were in store; trials that were to test me
+as a man, and as it proved, find me lacking just where I thought I was
+strongest. Paula, that saying of the Bible, ‘Let him that thinketh he
+standeth take heed lest he fall,’ might have been written over the door
+of my house on that day, ten months ago, when we two stood by the
+hearthstone and talked of the temptations that beset humanity, and the
+charity we should show to such as succumb to them. Before the day had
+waned, my own hour had come; and not all the experience of my life, not
+all the resolves, hopes, fears of my later years, not even the
+remembrance of your sweet trust and your natural recoil from evil, were
+sufficient to save me. The blow came so suddenly! the call for action
+was so peremptory! One moment I stood before the world, rich, powerful,
+honored, and beloved; the next, I saw myself threatened with a loss that
+undermined my whole position, and with it the very consideration that
+made me what I was. But I must explain.
+
+“When I entered the Madison Bank as President, I gave up in deference to
+the wishes of Mr. Stuyvesant all open speculation in Wall Street. But a
+wife and home such as I then had, are not to be supported on any petty
+income; and when shortly after your entrance into my home, the
+opportunity presented itself of investing in a particularly promising
+silver mine out West, I could not resist the temptation; regarding the
+affair as legitimate, and the hazard, if such it were, one that I was
+amply able to bear. But like most enterprises of the kind, one dollar
+drew another after it, and I soon found that to make available what I
+had already invested, I was obliged to add to it more and more of my
+available funds, until—to make myself as intelligible to you as I
+can—it had absorbed not only all that had remained to me after my
+somewhat liberal purchase of the Madison Bank stock, but all I could
+raise on a pledge of the stock itself. But there was nothing in this to
+alarm me. I had a man at the mine devoted to my interests; and as the
+present yield was excellent, and the future of more promise still, I
+went on my way with no special anxiety. But who can trust a silver mine?
+At the very point where we expected the greatest result, the vein
+suddenly gave out, and nothing prevented the stock from falling utterly
+flat on the market, but the discretion of my agent, who kept the fact a
+secret, while he quietly went about getting another portion of the mine
+into working order. He was fast succeeding in this, and affairs were
+looking daily more promising, when suddenly an intimation received by me
+in a bit of conversation casually overheard at that reception we
+attended together, convinced me that the secret was transpiring, and
+that if great care were not taken, we should be swamped before we could
+get things into working trim again. Filled with this anxiety, I was
+about to leave the building, in order to telegraph to my agent, when to
+my great surprise the card of that very person was brought in to me,
+together with a request for an immediate interview. You remember it,
+Paula, and how I went out to see him; but what you did not know then,
+and what I find some difficulty in relating now, is that his message to
+me was one of total ruin unless I could manage to give into his hand,
+for immediate use, the sum of a hundred thousand dollars.
+
+“The facts making this demand necessary were not what you may have been
+led to expect. They had little or nothing to do with the new operations,
+which were progressing successfully and with every promise of an
+immediate return, but arose entirely out of a law-suit then in the hands
+of a Colorado judge for decision, and which, though it involved
+well-nigh the whole interest of the mine, had never till this hour given
+me the least uneasiness, my lawyers having always assured me of my
+ultimate success. But it seems that notwithstanding all this, the
+decision was to be rendered in favor of the other party. My agent, who
+was a man to be trusted in these matters, averred that five days before,
+he had learned from most authentic sources what the decision was likely
+to be. That the judge’s opinion had been seen—he did not tell me how,
+he dared not, nor did I presume to question, but I have since learned
+that not only had the copyist employed by the judge turned traitor, but
+that my own agent had been anything but scrupulous in the use he had
+made of a willing and corruptible instrument—and that if I wanted to
+save myself and the others connected with me from total and irremediable
+loss, I must compromise with the other parties at once, who not being
+advised of the true state of affairs, and having but little faith in
+their own case, had long ago expressed their willingness to accept the
+sum of a hundred thousand dollars as a final settlement of the
+controversy. My agent, if none too nice in his ideas of right and wrong,
+was, as I have intimated, not the man to make a mistake; and when to my
+question as to how long a time he would give me to look around among my
+friends and raise the required sum, he replied, ‘Ten hours and no more,’
+I realized my position, and the urgent necessity for immediate action.
+
+“The remainder of the night is a dream to me. There was but one source
+from which I could hope in the present condition of my affairs, to
+procure a hundred thousand dollars; and that was from the box where I
+had stowed away the bonds destined for the use of the Japha heirs. To
+borrow was impossible, even if I had been in possession of proper
+securities to give. I was considered as having relinquished speculation
+and dared not risk the friendship of Mr. Stuyvesant by a public betrayal
+of my necessity. The Japha bonds or my own fortune must go, and it only
+remained with me to determine which.
+
+“Paula, nothing but the ingrained principle of a lifetime, the habit of
+doing the honest thing without thought or hesitation, saves a man at an
+hour like that. Strong as I believed myself to be in the determination
+never again to flaw my manhood by the least action unworthy of my
+position as the guardian of trusts, earnest as I was in my recoil from
+evil, and sincere as I may have been in my admiration of and desire for
+the good, I no sooner saw myself tottering between ruin and a compromise
+with conscience, than I hesitated—hesitated with you under my roof, and
+with the words we had been speaking still ringing in my ears. Ona’s
+influence, for all the trials of our married life, was still too strong
+upon me. To think of her as deprived of the splendor which was her life,
+daunted my very soul. I dared not contemplate a future in which she must
+stand denuded of everything which made existence dear to her; yet how
+could I do the evil thing I contemplated, even to save her and preserve
+my own position! For—and you must understand this—I regarded any
+appropriation of these funds I had delegated to the use of the Japhas,
+as a fresh and veritable abuse of trust. They were not mine. I had given
+them away. Unknown to any one but my own soul and God, I had deeded them
+to a special purpose, and to risk them as I now proposed doing, was an
+act that carried me back to the days of my former delinquency, and made
+the repentance of the last few years the merest mockery. What if I might
+recover them hereafter and restore them to their place; the chances in
+favor of their utter loss were also possible, and honesty deals not with
+chances. I suffered so, I had a momentary temptation towards suicide;
+but suddenly, in the midst of the struggle, came the thought that
+perhaps in my estimate of Ona I had committed a gross injustice, that
+while she loved splendor seemingly more than any woman I had ever known,
+she might be as far from wishing me to retain her in it at the price of
+my own self-respect, as the most honest-hearted wife in the world; and
+struck by the hope, I left my agent at a hotel and hurried home through
+the early morning to her side. She Was asleep, of course, but I wakened
+her. It was dark and she had a right to be fretful, but when I whispered
+in her ear, ‘Get up and listen to me, for our fortune is at stake,’ she
+at once rose and having risen, was her clearest, coldest, most
+implacable self. Paula, I told her my story, my whole story as I have
+told it to you here. I dropped no thread, I smoothed over no offence.
+Torturing as it was to my pride, I laid bare my soul before her, and
+then in a burst of appeal such as I hope never to be obliged to make use
+of again, asked her as she was a woman and a wife, to save me in this
+hour of my temptation.
+
+“Paula, she refused. More than that, she expressed the bitterest scorn
+of my mawkish conscientiousness, as she called it. That I should
+consider myself as owing anything to the detestable wretch who was the
+only representative of the Japhas, was bad enough, but that I should go
+on treasuring the money that would save us, was disgraceful if not
+worse, and betrayed a weakness of mind for which she had never given me
+credit.
+
+“‘But Ona,’ I cried, ‘if it is a weakness of mind, it is also an
+equivalent to my consciousness of right living. Would you have me
+sacrifice that?’
+
+“‘I would have you sacrifice anything necessary to preserve us in our
+position,’ said she; and I stood aghast before an unscrupulousness
+greater than any I had hitherto been called upon to face.
+
+“‘Ona,’ repeated I, for her look was cold, ‘do you realize what I have
+been telling you? Most wives would shudder when informed that their
+husbands had perpetrated a dishonest act in order to win them.’
+
+“A thin strange smile heralded her reply. ‘Most wives would,’ returned
+she, ‘but most wives are ignorant. Did you suppose I did not know what
+it cost you to marry me? Papa took care I should miss no knowledge that
+might be useful to me.’
+
+“‘And you married me knowing what I had done!’ exclaimed I, with
+incredulous dismay.
+
+“‘I married you, knowing you were too clever, or believing you to be too
+clever, to run such a risk again.’
+
+“I can say no more concerning that hour. With a horror for this woman
+such as I had never before experienced for living creature, I rushed out
+of her presence, loathing the air she breathed, yet resolved to do her
+bidding. Can you understand a man hating a woman, yet obeying her;
+despising her, yet yielding? I cannot, _now_, but that day there seemed
+no alternative. Either I must kill myself or follow her wishes. I chose
+to do the latter, forgetting that God can kill, and that, too, whom and
+when He pleases.
+
+
+“Going down to the bank, I procured the bonds from my box in the safe. I
+felt like a thief, and the manner in which it was done was unwittingly
+suggestive of crime, but with that and the position in which I have
+since found myself placed by this very action, I need not cumber my
+present narrative. Handing the bonds to my agent with orders to sell
+them to the best advantage, I took a short walk to quiet my nerves and
+realize what I had done, and then went home.
+
+“Paula, had God in his righteous anger seen fit to strike me down that
+day, it would have been no more than my due and aroused in me, perhaps,
+no more than a natural repentence. But when I saw her for whose sake I
+had ostensibly committed this fresh abuse of trust, lying cold and dead
+before me, the sword of the Almighty pierced me to the soul, and I fell
+prostrate beneath a remorse to which any regret I had hitherto
+experienced, was as the playing of a child with shadows. Had I by the
+losing of my right arm been able to recall my action, I would have done
+it; indeed I made an effort to recover myself; had my agent followed up
+with an order to return me the bonds I had given him, but it was too
+late, the compromise had already been effected by telegraph and the
+money was out of our hands. The deed was done and I had made myself
+unworthy of your presence and your smile at the very hour when both
+would have been inestimable to me. You remember those days; remember our
+farewell. Let me believe you do not blame me now for what must have
+seemed harsh and unnecessary to you then.
+
+
+“There is but little more to write, but in that little is compressed the
+passion, longing, hope and despair of a lifetime. When I told you as I
+did a few hours ago that my sin was dead and its consequences at an end,
+I repeat that I fully and truly believed it. The hundred thousand
+dollars I had sent West, had been used to advantage, and only day before
+yesterday I was enabled to sell out my share in the mine, for a large
+sum that leaves me free and unembarrassed, to make the fortune of more
+than one Japha, should God ever see fit to send them across my pathway.
+More than that, Mr. Delafield, of whose discretion I had sometimes had
+my fears, was dead, having perished of a fever some months before in San
+Francisco; and of all men living, there were none as I believed, who
+knew anything to the discredit of my name. I was clear, or so I thought,
+in fortune and in fame; and being so, dreamed of taking to my empty and
+yearning arms, the loveliest and the purest of mortal women. But God
+watched over you and prevented an act whose consequences might have been
+so cruel. In an hour, Paula, in an hour, I had learned that the foul
+thing was not dead, that a witness had picked up the words I had allowed
+to fall in my interview with my father-in-law in the restaurant two
+years before; an unscrupulous witness who had been on my track ever
+since, and who now in his eagerness for a victim, had by mistake laid
+his clutch upon our Bertram. Yes, owing to the similarity of our voices
+and the fact that we both make use of a certain tell-tale word, this
+patient and upright nephew of mine stands at this moment under the
+charge of having acknowledged in the hearing of this person, to the
+committal of an act of dishonesty in the past. A foolish charge you will
+say, and one easily refuted. Alas, a fresh act of dishonesty lately
+perpetrated in the bank, complicates matters. A theft has been committed
+on some of Mr. Stuyvesant’s effects, and that, too, under circumstances
+that involuntarily arouse suspicion against some one of the bank
+officials; and Bertram, if not sustained in his reputation, must suffer
+from the doubts which naturally have arisen in Mr. Stuyvesant’s breast.
+The story which this man could tell, must of course shake the faith of
+any one in the reputation of him against whom it is directed, and the
+man intends to repeat his story, and that, too, in the very ears of him
+upon whose favor Bertram depends for his life’s happiness and the
+winning of the woman he adores. I adore you, Paula, but I cannot clasp
+you to my heart across another sin. If the detectives whom we shall call
+in to-morrow, cannot exonerate those connected with the bank from the
+theft lately committed there—and the fact that you have been allowed to
+read this letter, prove they have not—I must do what I can to relieve
+Bertram from his painful position, by taking upon myself the onus of
+that past transgression which of right belongs to my account; and this
+once done, let the result be for good or ill, any bond between you and
+me is cut loose forever. I have not learned to love at this late hour,
+to wrong the precious thing I cherish. Death as it is to me to say
+good-bye to the one last gleam of heavenly light that has shot across my
+darkened way, it must be done, dear heart, if only to hold myself worthy
+of the tender and generous love you have designed to bestow upon me.
+Bertram, who is all generosity, may guess but does not know, what I am
+about to do. Go down to him, dear; tell him that at this very moment,
+perhaps, I am clearing his name before the wretch who has so ruthlessly
+fastened his fang upon him; that his love and Cicely’s shall prosper, as
+he has been loyal, and she trusting, all these years of effort and
+probation; that I give him my blessing, and that if we do not meet
+again, I delegate to him the trust of which I so poorly acquitted
+myself. But before you go, stop a moment and in this room, which has
+always symbolized to my eyes the poverty which was my rightful due,
+kneel and pray for my soul; for if God grants me the wish of my heart,
+he will strike me with sudden death after I have taken upon myself the
+disgrace of my past offences. Life without love can be borne, but life
+without honor never. To come and go amongst my fellow-men with a shadow
+on the fame they have always believed spotless! Do not ask me to attempt
+it! Pray for my soul, but pray too, that I may perish in some quick and
+sudden way before ever your dear eyes rest upon my face again.
+
+“And now, as though this were to be the end, let me take my last
+farewell of you. I have loved you, Paula, loved you with my heart, my
+mind and my soul. You have been my angel of inspiration and the source
+of all my comfort. I kneel before you in gratitude, and I stand above
+you in blessing. May every pang I suffer this hour, redound to you in
+some sweet happiness hereafter. I do not quarrel with my fate, I only
+ask God to spare you from its shadow. And He will. Love will flow back
+upon your young life, and in regions where our eye now fails to pierce,
+you will taste every joy which your generous heart once thought to
+bestow on
+
+     “EDWARD SYLVESTER.”
+
+
+
+
+XL.
+
+HALF-PAST SEVEN.
+
+     “I would it were midnight, Hal, and all well.”
+
+     —HENRY IV.
+
+
+The library was dim; Bertram, who had felt the oppressive influence of
+the great empty room, had turned down the lights, and was now engaged in
+pacing the floor, with restless and uneven steps, asking himself a
+hundred questions, and wishing with all the power of his soul, that Mr.
+Sylvester would return, and by his appearance cut short a suspense that
+was fast becoming unendurable.
+
+He had just returned from his third visit to the front door, when the
+curtain between him and the hall was gently raised, and Paula glided in
+and stood before him. She was dressed for the street, and her face where
+the light touched it, shone like marble upon which has fallen the glare
+of a lifted torch.
+
+“Paula!” burst from the young man’s lips in surprise.
+
+“Hush!” said she, her voice quavering with an emotion that put to
+defiance all conventionalities, “I want you to take me to the place
+where Mr. Sylvester is gone. He is in danger; I know it, I feel it. I
+dare not leave him any longer alone. I might be able to save him if—if
+he meditates anything that—” she did not try to say what, but drew
+nearer to Bertram and repeated her request. “You will take me, won’t
+you?”
+
+He eyed her with amazement, and a shudder seized his own strong frame.
+“No,” cried he, “I cannot take you; you do not know what you ask; but I
+will go myself if you apprehend anything serious. I remember where it
+is. I studied the address too closely, to readily forget it.”
+
+“You shall not go without me,” returned Paula with steady decision. “If
+the danger is what I fear, no one else can save him. I must go,” she
+added, with passionate importunity as she saw him still looking
+doubtful. “Darkness and peril are nothing to me in comparison with his
+safety. He holds my life in his hand,” she softly whispered, “and what
+will not one do for his life!” Then quickly, “If you go without me I
+shall follow with Aunt Belinda. Nothing shall keep me in the house
+to-night.”
+
+He felt the uselessness of further objection, yet he ventured to say,
+“The place where he has gone is one of the worst in the city; a spot
+which men hesitate to enter after dark. You don’t know what you ask in
+begging me to take you there.”
+
+“I do, I realize everything.”
+
+With a sudden awe of the great love which he thus beheld embodied before
+him, Bertram bowed his head and moved towards the door. “I may consider
+it wise to obtain the guidance of a policeman through the quarter into
+which we are about to venture. Will you object to that?”
+
+“No,” was her quick reply, “I object to nothing but delay.”
+
+And with a last look about the room, as if some sensation of farewell
+were stirring in her breast, she laid her hand on Bertram’s arm, and
+together they hurried away into the night.
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK V.
+
+WOMAN’S LOVE.
+
+
+
+
+XLI.
+
+THE WORK OF AN HOUR.
+
+         “Base is the slave that pays.”
+                                —HENRY V.
+
+    “Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned,
+    Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.”
+                                         —CONGREVE.
+
+
+Mr. Sylvester upon leaving the bank, had taken his usual route up town.
+But after an aimless walk of a few blocks, he suddenly paused, and with
+a quiet look about him, drew from his pocket the small slip of paper
+which Bertram had laid on his table the night before, and hurriedly
+consulted its contents. Instantly an irrepressible exclamation escaped
+him, and he turned his face to the heavens with the look of one who
+recognizes the just providence of God. The name which he had just read,
+was that of the old lover of Jacqueline Japha, Roger Holt, and the
+address given, was 63 Baxter Street.
+
+Twilight comes with different aspects to the broad avenues of the rich,
+and the narrow alleys of the poor. In the reeking slums of Baxter
+Street, poetry would have had to search long for the purple glamour that
+makes day’s dying hour fair in open fields and perfumed chambers. Even
+the last dazzling gleam of the sun could awaken no sparkle from the
+bleared windows of the hideous tenement houses that reared their blank
+and disfigured walls toward the west. The chill of the night blast and
+the quick dread that follows in the steps of coming darkness, were all
+that could enter these regions, unless it was the stealthy shades of
+vice and disease.
+
+Mr. Sylvester standing before the darkest and most threatening of the
+many dark and threatening houses that cumbered the street, was a sight
+to draw more than one head from the neighboring windows. Had it been
+earlier, he would have found himself surrounded by a dozen ragged and
+importunate children; had it been later, he would have run the risk of
+being garroted by some skulking assassin; as it was, he stood there
+unmolested, eying the structure that held within its gloomy recesses the
+once handsome and captivating lover of Jacqueline Japha. He was not the
+only man who would have hesitated before entering there. Low and
+insignificant as the building appeared—and its two stories certainly
+looked dwarfish enough in comparison with the two lofty tenement houses
+that pressed it upon either side—there was something in its quiet,
+almost uninhabited aspect that awakened a vague apprehension of lurking
+danger. A face at a window would have been a relief; even the sight of a
+customer in the noisome groggery that occupied the ground floor. From
+the dwellings about, came the hum of voices and now and then the sound
+of a shrill laugh or a smothered cry, but from this house came nothing,
+unless it was the slow ooze of a stream of half-melted snow that found
+its way from under the broken-down door-way to the gutter beyond.
+
+Stepping bravely forward, Mr. Sylvester entered the open door. A flight
+of bare and rickety steps met his eye. Ascending them, he found himself
+in a hall which must have been poorly lighted at any time, but which at
+this late hour was almost dark. It was not very encouraging, but
+pressing on, he stopped at a door and was about to knock, when his eyes
+becoming accustomed to the darkness, he detected standing at the foot of
+the stairs leading to the story above, the tall and silent figure of a
+woman. It was no common apparition. Like a sentinel at his post, or a
+spy on the outskirts of the enemy’s camp, she stood drawn up against the
+wall, her whole wasted form quivering with eagerness or some other
+secret passion; darkness on her brow and uncertainty on her lip. She was
+listening, or waiting, or both, and that with an entire absorption that
+prevented her from heeding the approach of a stranger’s step. Struck by
+so sinister a presence in a place so dark and desolate, Mr. Sylvester
+unconsciously drew back. As he did so, the woman thrilled and looked up,
+but not at him. A lame child’s hesitating and uneven step was heard
+crossing the floor above, and it was towards it she turned, and for it
+she composed her whole form into a strange but evil calmness.
+
+“Ah, he let you come then!” Mr. Sylvester heard her exclaim in a low
+smothered tone, whose attempted lightness did not hide the malevolent
+nature of her interest.
+
+“Yes,” came back in the clear and confiding tones of childhood. “I told
+him you loved me and gave me candy-balls, and he let me come.”
+
+A laugh quick and soon smothered, disturbed the surrounding gloom. “You
+told him I loved you! Well, that is good; I do love you; love you as I
+do my own eyes that I could crush, crush, for ever having lingered on
+the face of my betrayer!”
+
+The last phrase was muttered, and did not seem to convey any impression
+to the child. “Hold out your arms and catch me,” cried he; “I am going
+to jump.”
+
+She appeared to comply; for he gave a little ringing laugh that was
+startlingly clear and fresh.
+
+“He asked me what your name was,” babbled he, as he nestled in her arms.
+“He is always asking what your name is; Dad forgets, Dad does; or else
+it’s because he’s never seen you.”
+
+“And what did you tell him?” she asked, ignoring the last remark with an
+echo of her sarcastic laugh.
+
+“Mrs. Smith, of course.”
+
+She threw back her head and her whole form acquired an aspect that made
+Mr. Sylvester shudder. “That’s good,” she cried, “Mrs. Smith by all
+means.” Then with a sudden lowering of her face to his—“Mrs. Smith is
+good to you, isn’t she; lets you sit by her fire when she has any, and
+gives you peanuts to eat and sometimes spares you a penny!”
+
+“Yes, yes,” the boy cried.
+
+“Come then,” she said, “let’s go home.”
+
+She put him down on the floor, and gave him his little crutch. Her
+manner was not unkind, and yet Mr. Sylvester trembled as he saw the
+child about to follow her.
+
+“Didn’t you ever have any little boys?” the child suddenly asked.
+
+The woman shrank as if a burning steel had been plunged against her
+breast. Looking down on the frightened child, she hissed out from
+between her teeth, “Did he tell you to ask me that? Did he dare—” She
+stopped and pressed her arms against her swelling heart as if she would
+smother its very beats. “Oh no, of course he didn’t tell you; what does
+he know or care about Mrs. Smith!” Then with a quick gasp and a wild
+look into the space before her, “My child dead, and her child alive and
+beloved! What wonder that I hate earth and defy heaven!”
+
+She caught the boy by the hand and drew him quickly away. “You will be
+good to me,” he cried, frightened by her manner yet evidently fascinated
+too, perhaps on account of the faint sparks of kindness that alternated
+with gusts of passion he did not understand. “You won’t hurt me; you’ll
+let me sit by the fire and get warm?”
+
+“Yes, yes.”
+
+“And eat a bit of bread with butter on it?”
+
+“Yes, yes.”
+
+“Then I’ll go.”
+
+She drew him down the hall. “Why do you like to have me come to your
+house?” he prattled away.
+
+She turned on him with a look which unfortunately Mr. Sylvester could
+not see. “Because your eyes are so blue and your skin is so white; they
+make me remember her!”
+
+“And who is _her_?”
+
+She laughed and seemed to hug herself in her rage and bitterness. “Your
+mother!” she cried, and in speaking it, she came upon Mr. Sylvester.
+
+He at once put out his hand.
+
+“I don’t know who you are,” said he, “but I do not think you had better
+take the child out to-night. From what you say, his father is evidently
+upstairs; if you will give the boy to me, I will take him back and leave
+him where he belongs.”
+
+“You will?” The slow intensity of her tone was indescribable. “Know that
+I don’t bear interference from strangers.” And catching up the child,
+she rushed by him like a flash. “You are probably one of those
+missionaries who go stealing about unasked into respectable persons’
+rooms,” she called back. “If by any chance you wander into his, tell him
+his child is in good hands, do you hear, in good hands!” And with a
+final burst of her hideous laugh, she dashed down the stairs and was
+gone.
+
+Mr. Sylvester stood shocked and undecided. His fatherly heart urged him
+to search at once for the parent of this lame boy, and warn him of the
+possible results of entrusting his child to a woman with so little
+command over herself. But upon taking out his watch and finding it later
+by a good half-hour than he expected, he was so struck with the
+necessity of completing his errand, that he forgot everything else in
+his anxiety to confront Holt. Knocking at the first door he came to, he
+waited. A quick snarl and a surprised, “Come in!” announced that he had
+scared up some sort of a living being, but whether man or woman he found
+it impossible to tell, even after the door opened and the creature,
+whoever it was, rose upon him from a pile of rags scattered in one
+corner.
+
+“I want Mr. Holt; can you tell me where to find him?”
+
+“Upstairs,” was the only reply he received, as the creature settled down
+again upon its heap of tattered clothing.
+
+Fain to be content with this, he went up another flight and opened
+another door. He was more successful this time; one glance of his eye
+assured him that the man he was in search of, sat before him. He had
+never seen Mr. Holt; but the regular if vitiated features of the person
+upon whom he now intruded, his lank but not ungraceful form, and free if
+not airy manners, were not so common among the denizens of this
+unwholesome quarter, that there could be any doubt as to his being the
+accomplished but degenerate individual whose once attractive air had
+stolen the heart of Colonel Japha’s daughter.
+
+He was sitting in front of a small pine table, and when Mr. Sylvester’s
+eyes first fell upon him, was engaged in watching with a somewhat
+sinister smile, the final twirl of a solitary nickle which he had set
+spinning on the board before him. But at the sound of a step at the
+door, a lightning change passed over his countenance, and rising with a
+quick anticipatory “Ah!” he turned with hasty action to meet the
+intruder. A second exclamation and a still more hasty recoil were the
+result. This was not the face or the form of him whom he had expected.
+
+“Mr. Holt, I believe?” inquired Mr. Sylvester, advancing with his most
+dignified mien.
+
+The other bowed, but in a doubtful way that for a moment robbed him of
+his usual air of impudent self-assertion.
+
+“Then I have business with you,” continued Mr. Sylvester, laying the
+man’s own card down on the table before him. “My name is Sylvester,” he
+proceeded, with a calmness that surprised himself; “and I am the uncle
+of the young man upon—whom you are at present presuming to levy
+blackmail.”
+
+The assurance which for a moment had deserted the countenance of the
+other, returned with a flash. “His uncle!” reĂ«choed he, with a low
+anomalous bow; “then it is from you I may expect the not unreasonable
+sum which I demand as the price of my attentions to your nephew’s
+interest. Very good, I am not particular from what quarter it comes, so
+that it does come and that before the clock has struck the hour which I
+have set as the limit of my forbearance.”
+
+“Which is seven o’clock, I believe?”
+
+“Which is seven o’clock.”
+
+Mr. Sylvester folded his arms and sternly eyed the man before him. “You
+still adhere to your intention, then, of forwarding to Mr. Stuyvesant at
+that hour, the sealed communication now in the hands of your lawyer?”
+
+The smile with which the other responded was like the glint of a partly
+sheathed dagger. “My lawyer has already received his instructions.
+Nothing but an immediate countermand on my part, will prevent the
+communication of which you speak, from going to Mr. Stuyvesant at seven
+o’clock.”
+
+The sigh which rose in Mr. Sylvester’s breast did not disturb the severe
+immobility of his lip. “Have you ever considered the possibility,” said
+he, “of the man whom you overheard talking in the restaurant in Dey
+Street two years ago, not being Mr. Bertram Sylvester of the Madison
+Bank?”
+
+“No,” returned the other, with a short, sharp, and wholly undisturbed
+laugh, “I do not think I ever have.”
+
+
+“Will you give me credit, then, for speaking with reason, when I declare
+to you that the man you overheard talking in the manner you profess to
+describe in your communication, was not Mr. Bertram Sylvester?”
+
+A shrug of the shoulders, highly foreign and suggestive, was the other’s
+answer. “It was Mr. Sylvester or it was the devil,” proclaimed he—“with
+all deference to your reason, my good sir; or why are you here?” he
+keenly added.
+
+Mr. Sylvester did not reply. With a sarcastic twitch of his lips the man
+took up the nickle with which he had been amusing himself when the
+former came in, and set it spinning again upon the table. “It is
+half-past six,” remarked he. “It will take me a good half hour to go to
+my lawyer.”
+
+Mr. Sylvester made a final effort. “If you could be convinced,” said he,
+“that you have got your grasp upon the wrong man, would you still
+persist in the course upon which you seem determined?”
+
+With a dexterous sleight-of-hand movement, the man picked up the
+whirling nickle and laid it flat on the table before him. “A fellow
+whose whole fortune is represented by a coin like that”—tapping the
+piece significantly—“is not as easily convinced as a man of your means,
+perhaps. But if I should be brought to own that I had made a mistake in
+my man, I should still feel myself justified in proceeding against him,
+since my very accusation of him seems to be enough to arouse such
+interest on the part of his friends.”
+
+“Wretch!” leaped to Mr. Sylvester’s lips, but he did not speak it. “His
+friends,” declared he, “have most certainly a great interest in his
+reputation and his happiness; but they never will pay any thing upon
+coercion to preserve the one or to insure the other.”
+
+“They won’t!” And for the first time Roger Holt slightly quavered.
+
+“A man’s honor and happiness are much, and he will struggle long before
+he will consent to part from them. But a citizen of a great town like
+this, owes something to his fellows, and submitting to blackmail is but
+a poor precedent to set. You will have to proceed as you will, Mr. Holt;
+neither my nephew nor myself, have any money to give you.”
+
+The glare in the man’s eyes was like that of an aroused tiger. “Do you
+mean to say,” cried he, “that you will not give from your abundance, a
+paltry thousand dollars to save one of your blood from a suspicion that
+will never leave him, _never leave him_ to the end of his miserable
+days?”
+
+“I mean to say that not one cent will pass from me to you in payment of
+a silence, which as a gentleman, you ought to feel it incumbent upon you
+to preserve unasked, if only to prove to your fellow-men that you have
+not entirely lost all the instincts of the caste to which you once
+belonged. Not that I look for anything so disinterested from you,” he
+went on. “A man who could enter the home of a respectable gentleman, and
+under cover of a brotherly regard, lure into degradation and despair,
+the woman who was at once its ornament and pride, cannot be expected to
+practice the virtues of ordinary manhood, much less those of a gentleman
+and a Christian. He is a wretch, who, whatever his breeding or
+antecedents, is open to nothing but execration and contempt.”
+
+With an oath and a quick backward spring, Roger Holt cried out, “Who are
+you, and by what right do you come here to reproach me with a matter
+dead and buried, by heaven, a dozen years ago?”
+
+“The right of one who, though a stranger, knows well what you are and
+what you have done. Colonel Japha himself is dead, but the avenger of
+his honor yet lives! Roger Holt, _where is Jacqueline Japha_?”
+
+The force with which this was uttered, seemed to confound the man. For a
+moment he stood silent, his eye upon his guest, then a subtle change
+took place in his expression; he smiled with a slow devilish meaning,
+and tossing his head with an airy gesture, lightly remarked:
+
+“You must ask some more constant lover than I. A woman who was charming
+ten years ago—Bah! what would I be likely to know about her now!”
+
+“Everything, when that woman is Jacqueline Japha,” cried Mr. Sylvester,
+advancing upon him with a look that would have shaken most men, but
+which only made the eye of this one burn more eagerly. “Though you might
+easily wish to give her the slip, she is not one to forget you. If she
+is alive, you know where she is; speak then, and let the worth of one
+good action make what amends it can for a long list of evil ones.”
+
+“You really want to see the woman, then; enough to pay for it, I mean?”
+
+“The reward which has been offered for news of the fate or whereabouts
+of Jacqueline Japha, still stands good,” was Mr. Sylvester’s reply.
+
+The excited stare with which the man received this announcement, slowly
+subsided into his former subtle look.
+
+“Well, well,” said he, “we will see.” The truth was, that he knew no
+more than the other where this woman was to be found. “If I happen to
+come across her in any of my wanderings, I shall know where to apply for
+means to make her welcome. But that is not what at present concerns us.
+Your nephew is losing ground with every passing minute. In a half-hour
+more his future will be decided, unless you bid me order my lawyer to
+delay the forwarding of that communication to Mr. Stuyvesant. In that
+case—”
+
+“I believe I have already made it plain to you that I have no intentions
+of interfering with your action in this matter,” quoth Mr. Sylvester,
+turning slowly toward the door. “If you are determined to send your
+statement, it must go, only—” And here he turned upon the bitterly
+disappointed man with an aspect whose nobility the other was but little
+calculated to appreciate—“only when you do so, be particular to state
+that the person whose story you thus forward to a director of the
+Madison Bank, is not Bertram Sylvester, the cashier, but Edward
+Sylvester, his uncle, and the bank’s president.”
+
+And the stately head bowed and the tall form was about to withdraw, when
+Holt with an excited tremble that affected even his words, advanced and
+seized Mr. Sylvester by the arm.
+
+“His uncle!” cried he, “why that is what you—Great heaven!” he
+exclaimed, falling back with an expression not unmixed with awe, “you
+are the man and you have denounced yourself!” Then quickly, “Speak
+again; let me hear your voice.”
+
+And Mr. Sylvester with a sad smile, repeated in a slow and meaning tone,
+“It is but one little _fuss_ more!” then as the other cringed, added a
+dignified, “Good evening, Mr. Holt,” and passed swiftly across the room
+towards the door.
+
+What was it that stopped him half-way, and made him look back with such
+a startled glance at the man he had left behind him? A smell of smoke in
+the air, the faint yet unmistakable odor of burning wood, as though the
+house were on fire, or—
+
+Ha! the man himself has discerned it, is on his feet, is at the window,
+has seen what? His cry of mingled terror and dismay does not reveal. Mr.
+Sylvester hastens to his side.
+
+The sight which met his eyes, did not for the moment seem sufficient to
+account for the degree of emotion expressed by the other. To be sure,
+the lofty tenement-house which towered above them from the other side of
+the narrow yard upon which the window looked, was oozing with smoke, but
+there were no flames visible, and as yet no special manifestations of
+alarm on the part of its occupants. But in an instant, even while they
+stood there, arose the sudden and awful cry of “Fire!” and at the same
+moment they beheld the roof and casements before them, swarm with pallid
+faces, as men, women and children rushed to the first outlet that
+offered escape, only to shrink back in renewed terror from the deadly
+gulf that yawned beneath them.
+
+It was horrible, all the more that the fire seem to be somewhere in the
+basement story, possibly at the foot of the stairs, for none of the poor
+shrieking wretches before them seemed to make any effort to escape
+downwards, but rather surged up towards the top of the building, waving
+their arms as they fled, and filling the dusk with cries that drowned
+the sound of the coming engines.
+
+
+The scene appeared to madden Holt. “My boy! my boy! my boy!” rose from
+his lips in an agonized shriek; then as Mr. Sylvester gave a sudden
+start, cried out with indiscribable anguish, “He is there, my boy, my
+own little chap! A woman in that house has bewitched him, and when he is
+not with me, he is always at her side. O God, curses on my head for ever
+letting him out of my sight! Do you see him, sir? Look for him, I
+beseech you; he is lame and small; his head would barely reach to the
+top of the window-sill.”
+
+“And that was your boy!” cried Mr. Sylvester. And struck by an appeal
+which in spite of his abhorrence of the man at his side, woke every
+instinct of fatherhood within him, he searched with his glance the long
+row of windows before them. But before his eye had travelled half way
+across the building, he felt the man at his side quiver with sudden
+agony, and following the direction of his glance, saw a wan, little
+countenance looking down upon them from a window almost opposite to
+where they stood.
+
+“It is my boy!” shrieked the man, and in his madness would have leaped
+from the casement, if Mr. Sylvester had not prevented him.
+
+“You will not help him so,” cried the latter. “See, he is only a few
+feet above a bridge that appears to communicate with the roof of the
+next house. If he could be let down—”
+
+But the man had already precipitated himself towards the door of the
+room in which they were. “Tell him not to jump,” he called back. “I am
+going next door and will reach him in a moment. Tell him to hold on till
+I come.”
+
+Mr. Sylvester at once raised his voice. “Don’t jump, little boy Holt. If
+there is no one there to drop you down, wait for your father. He is
+going on the bridge and will catch you.”
+
+The little fellow seemed to hear, for he immediately held out his arms,
+but if he spoke, his voice was drowned in the frightful hubbub.
+Meanwhile the smoke thickened around him, and a dull ominous glare broke
+out from the midst of the building, against which his weazen little face
+looked pallid as death.
+
+“His father will be too late,” groaned Mr. Sylvester, feeling himself
+somehow to blame for the child’s horrible situation; then observing that
+the other occupants of the building had all disappeared towards the
+front, realized that whatever fire-escapes may have been provided, were
+doubtless in that direction, and raising his voice once more, called out
+across the yard, “Don’t wait any longer, little fellow; follow the rest
+to the front; you will be burned if you stay there.”
+
+But the child did not move, only held out his arms in a way to unman the
+strongest heart; and presently while Mr. Sylvester was asking himself
+what could be done, he heard his shrill piping tones rising above the
+hiss of the flames, and listening, caught the words:
+
+“I cannot get away. She is holding me, Dad. Help your little feller;
+help me, I’m so afraid of being burnt.” And looking closer, Mr.
+Sylvester discerned the outlines of a woman’s head and shoulders above
+the small white face.
+
+A distinct and positive fear at once seized him. Leaning out, the better
+to display his own face and figure, he called to that unknown woman to
+quit her hold and let the child go; but a discordant laugh, rising above
+the roar of the approaching flames, was his only reply. Sickened with
+apprehension, he drew back and himself made for the stairs in the wild
+idea of finding the father. But just then the mad figure of Holt
+appeared at the door, with frenzy in all his looks.
+
+“I cannot push through the crowd,” cried he, “I have fought and
+struggled and shrieked, but it is all of no use. My boy is burning alive
+and I cannot reach him.” A lurid flame shot at that moment from the
+building before them, as if in emphasis to his words.
+
+“He is prisoned there by a woman,” cried Mr. Sylvester, pointing to the
+figure whose distorted outlines was every moment becoming more and more
+visible in the increasing glare. “See, she has him tight in her arms and
+is pressing him against the window-sill.”
+
+The man with a terrible recoil, looked in the direction of his child,
+saw the little white face with its wild expression of conscious terror,
+saw the face of her who towered implacably behind it, and shrieked
+appalled.
+
+“Jacqueline!” he cried, and put his hands up before his face as if his
+eyes had fallen upon an avenging spirit.
+
+“Is that Jacqueline Japha?” asked Mr. Sylvester, dragging down the
+other’s hands and pointing relentlessly towards the ominous figure in
+the window before him.
+
+“Yes, or her ghost,” cried the other, shuddering under a horror that
+left him little control of his reason.
+
+“Then your boy is lost,” murmured Mr. Sylvester, with a vivid
+remembrance of the words he had overheard. “She will never save her
+rival’s child, never.”
+
+The man looked at him with dazed eyes. “She shall save him,” he cried,
+and stretching far out of the window by which he stood, he pointed to
+the bridge and called out, “Drop him, Jacqueline, don’t let him burn. He
+can still reach the next house if he runs. Save my darling, save him.”
+
+But the woman as if waiting for his voice, only threw back her head, and
+while a bursting flame flashed up behind her, shrieked mockingly back:
+
+“Oh I have frightened you up at last, have I? You can see me now, can
+you? You can call on Jacqueline now? The brat can make you speak, can
+he? Well, well, call away, I love to hear your voice. It is music to me
+even in the face of death.”
+
+“My boy! my boy,” was all he could gasp; “save the child, Jacqueline,
+only save the child!”
+
+But the harsh scornful laugh she returned, spoke little of saving. “He
+is so dear,” she hissed. “I love the offspring of my rival so much! the
+child that has taken the place of my own darling, dead before ever I had
+seen its innocent eyes. Oh yes, yes, I will save it, save it as my own
+was saved. When I saw the puny infant in your arms the day you passed me
+with _her_, I swore to be its friend, don’t you remember! And I am so
+much of a one that I stick by him to the death, don’t you see?” And
+raising him up in her arms till his whole stunted body was visible, she
+turned away her brow and seemed to laugh in the face of the flames.
+
+The father writhed below in his agony. “Forgive,” he cried, “forgive the
+past and give me back my child. It’s all I have to love; it’s all I’ve
+ever loved. Be merciful, Jacqueline, be merciful!”
+
+Her face flashed back upon him, still and white. “And what mercy have
+you ever shown to me! Fool, idiot, don’t you see I have lived for this
+hour! To make you feel for once; to make you suffer for once as I have
+suffered. You love the boy! Roger Holt, I once loved you.”
+
+And heedless of the rolling volume of smoke that now began to pour
+towards her, heedless even of the long tongues of hungry flame that were
+stretched out as if feeling for her from the distance behind, she stood
+immovable, gazing down upon the casement where he knelt, with an
+indescribable and awful smile upon her lips.
+
+The sight was unbearable. With an instinct of despair both men drew
+back, when suddenly they saw the woman start, unloose her clasp and drop
+the child out of her arms upon the bridge. A hissing stream of water had
+fallen upon the flames, and the shock had taken her by surprise. In a
+moment the father was himself again.
+
+“Get up, little feller, get up,” he cried, “or if you cannot walk, crawl
+along the bridge to the next house. I see a fireman there; he will lift
+you in.”
+
+But at that moment the flames, till now held under some control, burst
+from an adjoining window, and caught at the woodwork of the bridge. The
+father yelled in dismay.
+
+“Hurry, little feller, hurry!” he cried. “Get over towards the next
+house before it is too late.”
+
+But a paralysis seemed to have seized the child; he arose, then stopped,
+and looking wildly about, shook his head. “I cannot,” he cried, “I
+cannot.” And the woman laughed, and with a hug of her empty arms, seemed
+to throw her taunts into the space before her.
+
+“Are you a demon?” burst from Mr. Sylvester’s lips in uncontrollable
+horror. “Don’t you see you can save him if you will? Jump down, then,
+and carry him across, or your father’s curse will follow you to the
+world beyond.”
+
+“Yes, climb down,” cried the fireman, “you are lighter than I. Don’t
+waste a minute, a second.”
+
+“It is your own child, Jacqueline, your own child!” came from Holt’s
+white lips in final desperation. “I have deceived you; your baby did not
+die; I wanted to get rid of you and I wanted to save him, so I lied to
+you. The baby did not die; he lived, and that is he you see lying
+helpless on the bridge beneath you.”
+
+Not the clutch of an advancing flame could have made her shrink more
+fearfully. “It is false,” she cried; “you are lying now; you want me to
+save _her_ child, and dare to say it is mine.”
+
+“As God lives!” he swore, lifting his hand and turning his face to the
+sky.
+
+Her whole attitude seemed to cry, “No, no,” to his assertion but slowly
+as she stood there, the conviction of its truth seemed to strike her,
+and her hair rose on her forehead and she swayed to and fro, as if the
+earth were rolling under her feet. Suddenly she gave a yell, and bounded
+from the window. Catching the child in her arms, she attempted to regain
+the refuge beyond, but the flames had not dallied at their work while
+she hesitated. The bridge was on fire and her retreat was cut off. She
+did not attempt to escape. Stopping in the centre of the rocking mass,
+she looked down as only a mother in her last agony can do, on the child
+she held folded in her arms; then as the flames caught at her floating
+garments, stooped her head and printed one wild and passionate kiss upon
+his brow. Another instant and they saw her head rise to the accusing
+heavens, then all was rush and horror, and the swaying structure fell
+before their eyes, sweeping its living freight into the courtyard
+beneath their feet.
+
+
+
+
+XLII.
+
+PAULA RELATES A STORY SHE HAS HEARD.
+
+    “None are so desolate but something dear,
+    Dearer than self, possesses or possessed.”
+
+    —BYRON.
+
+
+In the centre of a long low room not far from the scene of the late
+disaster, a solitary lamp was burning. It had been lit in haste and cast
+but a feeble flame, but its light was sufficient to illuminate the sad
+and silent group that gathered under its rays.
+
+On a bench by the wall, crouched the bowed and stricken form of Roger
+Holt, his face buried in his hands, his whole attitude expressive of the
+utmost grief; at his side stood Mr. Sylvester, his tall figure looming
+sombrely in the dim light; and on the floor at their feet, lay the dead
+form of the little lame boy.
+
+But it was not upon their faces, sad and striking as they were, that the
+eyes of the few men and women scattered in the open door-way, rested
+most intently. It was upon her, the bruised, bleeding, half-dead mother,
+who kneeling above the little corpse, gazed down upon it with the
+immobility of despair, moaning in utter heedlessness of her own
+condition, “My baby, my baby, my own, own baby!”
+
+The fixedness with which she eyed the child, though the blood was
+streaming from her forehead and bathing with a still deeper red her
+burned and blistered arms, made Mr. Sylvester’s sympathetic heart beat.
+Turning to the silent figure of Holt, he touched him on the arm and said
+with a gesture in her direction:
+
+“You have not deceived the woman? That is really her own child that lies
+there?”
+
+The man beside him, started, looked up with slowly comprehending eyes,
+and mechanically bowed his head. “Yes,” assented he, and relapsed into
+his former heavy silence.
+
+Mr. Sylvester touched him again. “If it is hers, how came she not to
+know it? How could you manage to deceive such a woman as that?”
+
+Holt started again and muttered, “She was sick and insensible. She never
+saw the baby; I sent it away, and when she came to herself, told her it
+was dead. We had become tired of each other long before, and only needed
+the breaking of this bond to separate us. When she saw me again, it was
+with another woman at my side and an infant in my arms. The child was
+weakly and looked younger than he was. She thought it her rival’s and I
+did not undeceive her.” And the heavy head again fell forward, and
+nothing disturbed the sombre silence of the room but the low unvarying
+moan of the wretched mother, “My baby, my baby, my own, own baby!”
+
+Mr. Sylvester moved over to her side. “Jacqueline,” said he, “the child
+is dead and you yourself are very much hurt. Won’t you let these good
+women lay you on a bed, and do what they can to bind up your poor
+blistered arms?”
+
+But she heard him no more than the wind’s blowing. “My baby,” she
+moaned, “my own, own baby!”
+
+He drew back with a troubled air. Grief like this he could understand
+but knew not how to alleviate. He was just on the point of beckoning
+forward one of the many women clustered in the door-way, when there came
+a sound from without that made him start, and in another moment a young
+man had stepped hastily into the room, followed by a girl, who no sooner
+saw Mr. Sylvester, than she bounded forward with a sudden cry of joy and
+relief.
+
+“Bertram! Paula! What does this mean? What are you doing here?”
+
+A burst of sobs from the agitated girl was her sole reply.
+
+“Such a night! such a place!” he exclaimed, throwing his arm about Paula
+with a look that made her tremble through her tears. “Were you so
+anxious about me, little one?” he whispered. “Would not your fears let
+you rest?”
+
+“No, no; and we have had such a dreadful time since we got here. The
+house where we expected to find you, is on fire, and we thought of
+nothing else but that you had perished within it. But finally some one
+told us to come here, and—” She paused horror-stricken; her eyes had
+just fallen upon the little dead child and the moaning mother.
+
+“That is Jacqueline Japha,” whispered Mr. Sylvester. “We have found her,
+only to close her eyes, I fear.”
+
+“Jacqueline Japha!” Paula’s hands unclosed from his arm.
+
+“She was in the large tenement house that burned first; that is her
+child whose loss she is mourning.”
+
+“Jacqueline Japha!” again fell with an indescribable tone from Paula’s
+lips. “And who is that?” she asked, turning and indicating the silent
+figure by the wall.
+
+“That is Roger Holt, the man who should have been her husband.”
+
+“Oh, I remember him,” she cried; “and her, I remember her, and the
+little child too. But,” she suddenly exclaimed, “she told me then that
+she was not his mother.”
+
+“And she did not know that she was; the man had deceived her.”
+
+With a quick thrill Paula bounded forward. “Jacqueline Japha,” she
+cried, falling with outstretched hands beside the poor creature; “thank
+God you are found at last!”
+
+But the woman was as insensible to this cry as she had been to all
+others. “My baby,” she wailed, “my baby, my own, own baby!”
+
+Paula recoiled in dismay, and for a moment stood looking down with fear
+and doubt upon the fearful being before her. But in another instant a
+heavenly instinct seized her, and ignoring the mother, she stooped over
+the child and tenderly kissed it. The woman at once woke from her
+stupor. “My baby!” she cried, snatching the child up in her arms with a
+gleam of wild jealousy; “nobody shall touch it but me. I killed it and
+it is all mine now!” But in a moment she had dropped the child back into
+its place, and was going on with the same set refrain that had stirred
+her lips from the first.
+
+Paula was not to be discouraged. Laying her hand on the child’s brow,
+she gently smoothed back his hair, and when she saw the old gleam
+returning to the woman’s countenance, said quietly, “Are you going to
+carry it to Grotewell to be buried? Margery Hamlin is waiting for you,
+you know?”
+
+The start which shook the woman’s haggard frame, encouraged her to
+proceed.
+
+“Yes; you know she has been keeping watch, and waiting for you so long!
+She is quite worn out and disheartened; fifteen years is a long time to
+hope against hope, Jacqueline.”
+
+The stare of the wretched creature deepened into a fierce and maddened
+glare. “You don’t know what you are talking about,” cried she, and bent
+herself again over the child.
+
+Paula went on as if she had not spoken. “Any one that is loved as much
+as you are, Jacqueline, ought not to give way to despair; even if your
+child is dead, there is still some one left whom you can make supremely
+happy.”
+
+“Him?” the woman’s look seemed to say, as she turned and pointed with
+frightful sarcasm to the man at their back.
+
+Paula shrank and hastily shook her head. “No, no, not him, but—Let me
+tell you a story,” she whispered eagerly. “In a certain country-town not
+far from here, there is a great empty house. It is dark, and cold, and
+musty. No one ever goes there but one old lady, who every night at six,
+crosses its tangled garden, unlocks its great side door, enters within
+its deserted precincts, and for an hour remains there, praying for one
+whose return she has never ceased to hope and provide for. She is
+kneeling there to-night, at this very hour, Jacqueline, and the love she
+thus manifests is greater than that of man to woman or woman to man. It
+is like that of heaven or the Christ.”
+
+The woman before her rose to her feet. She did not speak, but she looked
+like a creature before whose eyes a sudden torch had been waved.
+
+“Fifteen years has she done this,” Paula solemnly continues. “She
+promised, you know; and she never has forgotten her promise.”
+
+With a cry the woman put out her hands. “Stop!” she cried, “stop! I
+don’t believe it. No one loves like that; else there is a God and I—”
+She paused, quivered, gave one wild look about her, and then with a
+quick cry, something between a moan and a prayer, succumbed to the pain
+of her injuries, and sank down insensible by the side of her dead child.
+
+With a reverent look Paula bent over her and kissed her seared and
+bleeding forehead. “For Mrs. Hamlin’s sake,” she whispered, and quietly
+smoothed down the tattered clothing about the poor creature’s wasted
+frame.
+
+Mr. Sylvester turned quietly upon the man who had been the cause of all
+this misery. “I charge myself with the care of that woman,” said he,
+“and with the burial of your child. It shall be placed in decent ground
+with all proper religious ceremonial.”
+
+“What, you will do this!” cried Holt, a flush of real feeling for a
+moment disturbing the chalk-white pallor of his cheek. “Oh sir, this is
+Christian charity; and I beg your pardon for all that I may have
+meditated against you. It was done for the child,” he went on wildly;
+“to get him the bread and butter he often lacked. I didn’t care so much
+for myself. I hated to see him hungry and cold and ailing; I might have
+worked, but I detest work, and—But no matter about all that; enough
+that I am done with endeavoring to extort money from you. Whatever may
+have happened in the past, you are free from my persecutions in the
+future. Henceforth you and yours can rest in peace.”
+
+“That is well,” cried a voice over his shoulder, and Bertram with an air
+of relief stepped hastily forward. “You must be very tired,” remarked
+he, turning to his uncle. “If you will take charge of Paula, I will do
+what I can to see that this injured woman and the dead child are
+properly cared for. I am so relieved, sir, at this result,” he
+whispered, with a furtive wring of his uncle’s hand, “that I must
+express my joy in some way.”
+
+Mr. Sylvester smiled, but in a manner that reflected but little of the
+other’s satisfaction. “Thank you,” said he, “I am tired and will gladly
+delegate my duties to you. I trust you to do the most you can for both
+the living and the dead. That woman for all her seeming poverty is the
+possessor of a large fortune;” he whispered; “let her be treated as
+such.” And with a final word to Holt who had sunk back against the wall
+in his old attitude of silent despair, Mr. Sylvester took Paula upon his
+arm, and quietly led her out of this humble but not unkind refuge.
+
+
+
+
+XLIII.
+
+DETERMINATION.
+
+                “But alas! to make me
+    A fixed figure for the time of scorn
+    To point his slow unmoving finger at!”
+
+    —OTHELLO.
+
+    “Let me but bear your love, I’ll bear your cares.”
+
+    —HENRY V.
+
+
+“Paula!”
+
+They had reached home and were standing in the library.
+
+“Yes,” said she, lowering her head before his gaze with a sweet and
+conscious blush.
+
+“Did you read the letter I left for you in my desk up stairs?”
+
+She put her hand to her bosom and drew forth the closely written sheet.
+“Every word,” she responded, and smilingly returned it to its place.
+
+He started and his chest heaved passionately. “You have read it,” he
+cried, “and yet could follow me into that den of unknown dangers at an
+hour like this, and with no other guide than Bertram?”
+
+“Yes,” she answered.
+
+He drew a deep breath and his brow lost its deepest shadow. “You do not
+despise me then,” he exclaimed “My sin has not utterly blotted me out of
+your regard?”
+
+The glance with which she replied seemed to fill the whole room with its
+radiance. “I am only beginning to realize the worth of the man who has
+hitherto been a mystery to me,” she declared. Then as he shook his head,
+added with a serious air, “The question with all true hearts must ever
+be, not what a man has been, but what he is. He who for the sake of
+shielding the innocent from shame and sorrow, would have taken upon
+himself the onus of a past disgrace, is not unworthy a woman’s
+devotion.”
+
+Mr. Sylvester smiled mournfully, and stroked her hand which he had taken
+in his. “Poor little one,” he murmured. “I know not whether to feel
+proud or sorry for your trust and tender devotion. It would have been a
+great and unspeakable grief to me to have lost your regard, but it might
+have been better if I had; it might have been much better for you if I
+had!”
+
+“What, why do you say that?” she asked, with a startled gleam in her
+eye. “Do you think I am so eager for ease and enjoyment, that it will be
+a burden for me to bear the pain of those I love? A past pain, too,” she
+added, “that will grow less and less as the days go by and happiness
+increases.”
+
+He put her back with a quick hand. “Do not make it any harder for me
+than necessary,” he entreated, “Do you not see that however gentle may
+be your judgment of my deserts, we can never marry, Paula?”
+
+The eyes which were fixed on his, deepened passionately. “No,” she
+whispered, “no; not if your remorse for the past is all that separates
+us. The man who has conquered himself, has won the right to conquer the
+heart of a woman. I can say no more—” She timidly held out her hand.
+
+He grasped it with a man’s impetuosity and pressed it to his heart, but
+he did not retain it. “Blessings upon you, dear and noble heart!” he
+cried. “God will hear my prayers and make you happy—but not with me.
+Paula,” he passionately continued, taking her in his arms and holding
+her to his breast, “it cannot be. I love you—I will not, dare not say,
+how much—but love is no excuse for wronging you. My remorse is not all
+that separates us; possible disgrace lies before me; public exposure at
+all events; I would indeed be lacking in honor were I to subject you to
+these.”
+
+“But,” she stammered, drawing back to look into his face, “I thought
+that was all over; that the man had promised silence; that you were
+henceforth to be relieved from his persecutions? I am sure he said so.”
+
+“He did, but he forgot that my fate no longer rested upon his
+forbearance. The letter which records my admission of sin was in his
+lawyer’s hands, Paula, and has already been despatched to Mr.
+Stuyvesant. Say what we will, rebel against it as we will, Cicely’s
+father knows by this time that the name of Sylvester is not spotless.”
+
+The cry which she uttered in her sudden pain and loss made him stoop
+over her with despairing fondness. “Hush! my darling, hush!” cried he.
+“The trial is so heavy, I need all my strength to meet it. It breaks my
+heart to see you grieve. I cannot bear it. I deserve my fate, but
+you—Oh you—what have you done that you should be overwhelmed in my
+fall!” Putting her gently away from his breast, he drew himself up and
+with forced calmness said, “I have yet to inform Mr. Stuyvesant upon
+which of the Sylvesters’ should rest the shadow of his distrust.
+To-night he believes in Bertram’s lack of principle, but to-morrow—”
+
+Her trembling lips echoed the word.
+
+“He shall know that the man who confessed to having done a wrong deed in
+the past, is myself, Paula.”
+
+The head which had fallen on her breast, rose as at the call of a
+clarion. “And is it at the noblest moment of your life that you would
+shut me away from your side? No, no. Heaven does not send us a great and
+mighty love for trivial purposes. The simple country maid whom you have
+sometimes declared was as the bringer of good news to you, shall not
+fail you now.” Then slowly and with solemn assurance, “If you go to Mr.
+Stuyvesant’s to-morrow, and you will, for that is your duty, you shall
+not go alone; Paula Fairchild accompanies you.”
+
+
+
+
+XLIV.
+
+IN MR. STUYVESANT’S PARLORS.
+
+    “Was I deceived, or did a sable cloud
+    Turn forth her silver lining on the night?”
+
+    —COMUS.
+
+
+“Unworthy?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+Cicely stared at her father with wide-open and incredulous eyes. “I
+cannot believe it,” she murmured; “no, I cannot believe it.”
+
+Her father drew up a chair to her side. “My daughter,” said he, with
+unusual tenderness, “I have hesitated to tell you this, fearing to wound
+you; but my discretion will allow me to keep silence no longer. Bertram
+Sylvester is not an honest man, and the sooner you make up your mind to
+forget him, the better.”
+
+“Not honest?” You would scarcely have recognized Cicely’s voice. Her
+father’s hand trembled as he drew her back to his side.
+
+“It is a hard revelation for me to make to you, after testifying my
+approval of the young man. I sympathize with you, my child, but none the
+less I expect you to meet this disappointment bravely. A theft has been
+committed in our bank—”
+
+“You do not accuse him of theft! Oh father, father!”
+
+“No,” he stammered. “I do not accuse him, but facts look very strongly
+against some one in our trust, and—”
+
+“But that is not sufficient,” she cried, rising in spite of his
+detaining hand till she stood erect before him. “You surely would not
+allow any mere circumstantial evidence to stand against a character as
+unblemished as his, even if he were not the man whom your daughter—”
+
+He would not let her continue. “I admit that I should be careful how I
+breathed suspicion against a man whose record was unimpeached,” he
+assented, “but Bertram Sylvester does not enjoy that position. Indeed, I
+have just received a communication which goes to show, that he once
+actually acknowledged to having perpetrated an act of questionable
+integrity. Now a man as young as he, who—”
+
+“But I cannot believe it,” she moaned. “It is impossible, clearly
+impossible. How could he look me in the face with such a sin on his
+conscience! He could not, simply could not. Why, father, his brow is as
+open as the day, his glance clear and unwavering as the sunlight. It is
+some dreadful mistake. It is not Bertram of whom you are speaking!”
+
+Her father sighed. “Of whom else should it be? Come my child, do you
+want to read the communication which I received last night? Do you want
+to be convinced?”
+
+“No, no;” she cried; but quickly contradicted herself with a hurried,
+“Yes, yes, let me be made acquainted with what there is against him, if
+only that I may prove to you it is all a mistake.”
+
+
+“There is no mistake,” he muttered, handing her a folded paper. “This
+statement was written two years ago; I witnessed it myself, though I
+little knew against whose honor it was directed. Read it, Cicely, and
+then remember that I have lost bonds out of my box at the bank, that
+could only have been taken by some one connected with the institution.”
+
+She took the paper in her hand, and eagerly read it through. Suddenly
+she started and looked up. “And you say that this was Bertram, this
+gentleman who allowed another man to accuse him of a past dishonesty?”
+
+“So the person declares who forwarded me this statement; and though he
+is a poor wretch and evidently not above making mischief, I do not know
+as we have any special reason to doubt his word.”
+
+Cicely’s eyes fell and she stood before her father with an air of
+indecision. “I do not think it was Bertram,” she faltered, but said no
+more.
+
+“I would to God for your sake, it was not!” he exclaimed. “But this
+communication together with the loss we have sustained at the bank, has
+shaken my faith, Cicely. Young men are so easily led astray nowadays;
+especially when playing for high stakes. A man who could leave his
+profession for the sake of winning a great heiress—”
+
+“Father!”
+
+“I know he has made you think it was for love; but when the woman whom a
+young man fancies, is rich, love and ambition run too closely together
+to be easily disentangled. And now, my dear, I have said my say and
+leave you to act according to the dictates of your judgment, sure that
+it will be in a direction worthy of your name and breeding.” And
+stooping for a hasty kiss, he gave her a last fond look and quietly left
+the room.
+
+And Cicely? For a moment she stood as if frozen in her place, then a
+great tremble seized her, and sinking down upon a sofa, she buried her
+face from sight, in a chaos of feeling that left her scarcely mistress
+of herself. But suddenly she started up, her face flushed, her eyes
+gleaming, her whole delicate form quivering with an emotion more akin to
+hope than despair.
+
+“I cannot doubt him,” she whispered; “it were as easy to doubt my own
+soul. He is worthy if I am worthy, true if I am true; and I will not try
+to unlove him!”
+
+But soon the reaction came again, and she was about to give full sway to
+her grief and shame, when the parlor door opened—she herself was
+sitting in the extension room—and she saw Mr. Sylvester and Paula come
+in. She at once rose to her feet; but she did not advance. A thousand
+hopes and fears held her enchained where she was; besides there was
+something in the aspect of her friends, which made her feel as though a
+welcome even from her, would at that moment be an intrusion.
+
+“They have come to see father,” she thought “and—”
+
+Ah what, Cicely?
+
+Paula, who was too absorbed in her own feelings to glance into the
+extension room beyond, approached Mr. Sylvester and laid her hand upon
+his arm. “Whatever comes,” said she, “truth, honor and love remain.”
+
+And he bowed his head and seemed to kiss her hand, and Cicely observing
+the action, grew pale and dropped her eyes, realizing as by a
+lightning’s flash, both the nature of the feeling that prompted this
+unusual manifestation on his part, and the possible sorrows that lay
+before her dearest friend, if not before herself, should the secret
+suspicions she cherished in regard to Mr. Sylvester prove true. When she
+had summoned up courage to glance again in their direction, Mr.
+Stuyvesant had entered the parlor and was nervously welcoming his
+guests.
+
+Mr. Sylvester waited for no preamble. “I have come,” said he, in his
+most even and determined tones, “to speak to you in regard to a
+communication from a man by the name of Holt, which I was told was to be
+sent to you last evening. Did you receive such a one?”
+
+Mr. Stuyvesant flushed, grew still more nervous in his manner and
+uttered a short, “I did,” in a tone severer than he perhaps intended.
+
+“It will not be too much for me, then, to conclude, that in your present
+estimation my nephew stands committed to a past dishonesty?”
+
+“It has been one of my chief sources of regret—one of them I say,”
+repeated Mr. Stuyvesant, “that any loss of esteem on the part of your
+nephew, must necessarily reflect upon the peace if not the honor of a
+man I hold in such high regard as yourself. I assure you I feel it quite
+as a brother might, quite as a brother.”
+
+Mr. Sylvester at once rose. “Mr. Stuyvesant,” declared he, “my nephew is
+as honest a man as walks this city’s streets. If you will accord me a
+few minutes private conversation, I think I can convince you so.”
+
+“I should be very glad,” replied Mr. Stuyvesant, glancing towards the
+extension-room where he had left his daughter. “I have always liked the
+young man.” Then with a quick look in the other’s face, “You are not
+well, Mr. Sylvester?”
+
+“Thank you, I am not ill; let us say what we have to, at once, if you
+please.” And with just a glance at Paula, he followed the now somewhat
+agitated director from the room.
+
+Cicely who had started forward at their departure, glanced down the long
+parlor before her, and hastily faltered back; Paula was praying. But in
+a few moments her feelings overcame her timidity, and hurrying into her
+friend’s presence, she threw her arms about her neck and pressed her
+cheek to hers. “Let us pray together,” she whispered.
+
+Paula drew back and looked her friend in the face. “You know what all
+this means?” she asked.
+
+“I guess,” was the low reply.
+
+Paula checked a sob and clasped Cicely to her bosom. “He loves me,” she
+faltered, “and he is doing at this moment what he believes will separate
+us. He is a noble man, Cicely, noble as Bertram, though he once did—”
+She paused. “It is for him to say what, not I,” she softly concluded.
+
+“Then Bertram is noble,” Cicely timidly put in.
+
+“Have you ever doubted it?”
+
+“No.”
+
+And hiding their blushes on each other’s shoulders, the two girls sat
+breathlessly waiting, while the clock ticked away in the music-room and
+the moments came and went that determined their fate. Suddenly they both
+rose. Mr. Stuyvesant and Mr. Sylvester were descending the stairs. Mr.
+Sylvester came in first. Walking straight up to Paula, he took her in
+his arms and kissed her on the forehead.
+
+“My betrothed wife!” he whispered.
+
+With a start of incredulous joy, Paula looked up. His glance was clear
+but strangely solemn and peaceful.
+
+“He has heard all I had to say,” added he; “he is a just man, but he is
+also a merciful one. Like you he declares that not what a man was, but
+what he is, determines the judgment of true men concerning him.” And
+taking her on his arm, he stood waiting for Mr. Stuyvesant who now came
+in.
+
+“Where is my daughter?” were that gentleman’s words, as he closed the
+door behind him.
+
+“Here, papa.”
+
+
+He held out his hand, and she sprang towards him. “Cicely,” said he, not
+without some tokens of emotion in his voice, “it is only right that I
+should inform you that we were all laboring under a mistake, in charging
+Mr. Bertram Sylvester with the words that were uttered in the Dey Street
+coffee-house two years ago. Mr. Sylvester has amply convinced me that
+his nephew neither was, nor could have been present there at that time.
+It must have been some other man, of similar personality.”
+
+“Oh thank you, thank you!” Cicely’s look seemed to say to Mr. Sylvester.
+“And he is quite freed from reproach?” she asked, with a smiling glance
+into her father’s face.
+
+A hesitancy in Mr. Stuyvesant’s manner, struck with a chill upon more
+than one heart in that room.
+
+“Yes,” he admitted at last; “the mere fact that a mysterious robbery has
+been committed upon certain effects in the bank of which he is cashier,
+is not sufficient to awaken distrust as to his integrity, but—”
+
+At that moment the door-bell rung.
+
+“Your father would say,” cried Mr. Sylvester, taking advantage of the
+momentary break, to come to the relief of his host, “that my nephew is
+too much of a gentleman to desire to press any claim he may imagine
+himself as possessing over you, while even the possibility of a shadow
+rests upon his name.”
+
+“The man who stole the bonds will be found,” said Cicely.
+
+And as if in echo to her words the parlor door opened, and a messenger
+from the bank stepped briskly up to Mr. Stuyvesant.
+
+“A note from Mr. Folger,” said he, with a quick glance at Mr. Sylvester.
+
+Mr. Stuyvesant took the paper handed him, read it hastily through, and
+looked up with an air of some bewilderment.
+
+“I can hardly believe it possible,” cried he, “but Hopgood has
+absconded.”
+
+“Hopgood absconded?”
+
+“Yes; is not that the talk at the bank?” inquired Mr. Stuyvesant,
+turning to the messenger.
+
+“Yes sir. He has not been seen since yesterday afternoon when he left
+before the bank was closed for the night. His wife says she thinks he
+meant to run away, for before going, he came into the room where she
+was, kissed her and then kissed the child; besides it seems that he took
+with him some of his clothes.”
+
+“Humph! and I had as much confidence in that man—”
+
+“As I have now,” came from Mr. Sylvester as the door closed upon the
+messenger. “If Hopgood has run away, it was from some generous but
+mistaken idea of sacrificing himself to the safety of another whom he
+may possibly believe guilty.”
+
+“No,” rejoined Mr. Stuyvesant, “for here is a note from him that refutes
+that supposition. It is addressed to me and runs thus:
+
+     “DEAR SIR.—I beg your pardon and that of Mr. Sylvester for
+     leaving my duties in this abrupt manner. But I have betrayed my
+     trust and am no longer worthy of confidence. I am a wretched
+     man and find it impossible to face those who have believed in
+     my honesty and discretion. If I can bring the money back, you
+     shall see me again, but if not, be kind to my wife and little
+     one, for the sake of the three years when I served the bank
+     faithfully.
+
+     “JOHN HOPGOOD.”
+
+“I don’t understand it,” cried Mr. Sylvester, “that looks—”
+
+“As if he knew where the money was.”
+
+“I begin to hope,” breathed Cicely.
+
+Her father turned and surveyed her. “This puts a new aspect on matters,”
+said he.
+
+She glanced up beaming. “Oh, will you, do you say, that you think the
+shadow of this crime has at last found the spot upon which it can
+rightfully rest?”
+
+“It would not be common sense in me to deny that it has most certainly
+shifted its position.”
+
+With a radiant look at Cicely, Paula crossed to Mr. Stuyvesant’s side,
+and laying her hand on his sleeve, whispered a word or two in his ear.
+He immediately glanced out of the window at the carriage standing before
+the door, then looked back at her and nodded with something like a
+smile. In another moment he stood at the front door.
+
+“Be prepared,” cried Paula to Cicely.
+
+It was well she spoke, for when in an instant later Mr. Stuyvesant
+re-entered the parlor with Bertram at his side, the rapidly changing
+cheek of the gentle girl showed that the surprise, even though thus
+tempered, was almost too much for her self-possession.
+
+Mr. Stuyvesant did not wait for the inevitable embarrassment of the
+moment to betray itself in words. “Mr. Sylvester,” said he, to the young
+cashier, “we have just received a piece of news from the bank, that
+throws unexpected light upon the robbery we were discussing yesterday.
+Hopgood has absconded, and acknowledges here in writing that he had
+something to do with the theft!”
+
+“Hopgood, the janitor!” The exclamation was directed not to Mr.
+Stuyvesant but to Mr. Sylvester, towards whom Bertram turned with looks
+of amazement.
+
+“Yes, it is the greatest surprise I ever received,” returned that
+gentleman.
+
+“And Mr. Sylvester,” continued Mr. Stuyvesant, with nervous rapidity and
+a generous attempt to speak lightly, “there is a little lady here who is
+so shaken by the news, that nothing short of a word of reassurance on
+your part will comfort her.”
+
+Bertram’s eye followed that of Mr. Stuyvesant, and fell upon the
+blushing cheek of Cicely. With a flushing of his own brow, he stepped
+hastily forward.
+
+“Miss Stuyvesant!” he cried, and looking down in her face, forgot
+everything else in his infinite joy and satisfaction.
+
+“Yes,” announced the father with abrupt decision, “she is yours; you
+have fairly earned her.”
+
+Bertram bowed his head with irrepressible emotion, and for a moment the
+silence of perfect peace if not of awe, reigned over the apartment; but
+suddenly a low, determined “No!” was heard, and Bertram turning towards
+Mr. Stuyvesant, exclaimed, “You are very good, and the joy of this
+moment atones for many an hour of grief and impatience; but I have not
+earned her yet. The fact that Hopgood admits to having had something to
+do with the robbery, does not sufficiently exonerate the officers of the
+bank from all connection with the affair, to make it safe or honorable
+in me to unqualifiedly accept the inestimable boon of your daughter’s
+regard. Till the real culprit is in custody and the mystery entirely
+cleared away, my impatience must continue to curb itself. I love your
+daughter too dearly to bring her anything but the purest of reputations.
+Am I not right, Miss Stuyvesant?”
+
+She cast a glance at her father, and bowed her head. “You are right,”
+she repeated.
+
+And Mr. Stuyvesant, with a visible lightening of his whole aspect, took
+the young man by the hand, and with as much geniality as his nature
+would allow, informed him that he was at last convinced that his
+daughter had made no mistake when she expressed her trust in Bertram
+Sylvester.
+
+And in other eyes than Cicely’s, shone the light of satisfied love and
+unswerving faith.
+
+
+
+
+XLV.
+
+“THE HOUR OF SIX IS SACRED.”
+
+                              “Mightier far
+    Than strength of nerve or sinew, or the sway
+    Of magic potent over sun and star,
+    Is love, though oft to agony distrest,
+    And though its favorite seat be feeble woman’s breast.”
+
+    —WORDSWORTH.
+
+
+It was at the close of a winter afternoon. Paula who had returned to
+Grotewell for the few weeks preceding her marriage, sat musing in the
+window of her aunt’s quaint little parlor. Her eyes were on the fields
+before her all rosy with the departing rays of the sun, but her thoughts
+were far away. They were with him she best loved—with Cicely, waiting
+in patience for the solution of the mystery of the stolen bonds; with
+Bertram, eagerly, but as yet vainly, engaged in searching for the
+vanished janitor; and last but not least, with that poor, wretched
+specimen of humanity moaning away her life in a New York hospital;—for
+the sight of the Japha house, in a walk that day, had reawakened her
+most vivid remembrances of Jacqueline. All that had ever been done and
+suffered by this forsaken creature, lay on her heart like a weight; and
+the question which had disturbed her since her return to Grotewell,
+viz., whether or not she ought to acquaint Mrs. Hamlin with the fact
+that she had seen and spoken to the object of her love and prayers,
+pressed upon her mind with an insistence that required an answer. There
+was so much to be said for and against it. Mrs. Hamlin was not well, and
+though still able to continue her vigil, showed signs of weakening, day
+by day. It might be a comfort to her to know that another’s eyes had
+rested on the haggard form for whose approach she daily watched; that
+another’s kiss had touched the scarred and pallid forehead she longed to
+fold against her breast; that the woman she loved and of whose fate she
+had no intimation, was living and well cared for, though her shelter was
+that of a hospital, and her prospects those of the grave.
+
+On the other hand, the awful nature of the circumstances which had
+brought her to her present condition, were such as to make any generous
+heart pause before shocking the love and trust of such a woman as Mrs.
+Hamlin, by a relation of the criminal act by which Jacqueline had slain
+her child and endangered her own existence. Better let the poor old lady
+go on hoping against hope till she sinks into her grave, than destroy
+life and hope at once by a revelation of her darling’s reckless
+depravity.
+
+And yet if the poor creature in the hospital might be moved to
+repentance by some word from Mrs. Hamlin, would it not be a kindness to
+the latter to allow her, though even at the risk of her life, to
+accomplish the end for which she indeed professed to live?
+
+The mind of Paula was as yet undecided, when a child from the village
+passed the window, and seeing her sitting there, handed her a small
+package with the simple message that Mrs. Hamlin was very ill. It
+contained, as she anticipated, the great key to the Japha mansion, and
+understanding without further words, what was demanded of her, Paula
+prepared to keep the promise she had long ago made to this devoted
+woman. For though she knew the uselessness of the vigil proposed to her,
+she none the less determined to complete it. Easier to sit an hour in
+that dark old house, than to explain herself to Mrs. Hamlin. Besides,
+the time was good for prayer, and God knows the wretched object of all
+this care and anxiety, stood in need of all the petitions that might be
+raised for her.
+
+Telling her aunts that she had a call to make in the village, she glided
+hurriedly away, and ere she realized all to which she was committed,
+found herself standing in the now darkened streets, before the grim door
+of that dread and mysterious mansion. Never had it looked more
+forbidding; never had the two gruesome poplars cast a deeper shadow, or
+rustled with a more woful sound in the chill evening air. The very
+windows seemed to repel her with their darkened panes, behind which she
+could easily imagine the spirits of the dead, moving and peering. A
+chill not unlike that of terror, assailed her limbs, and it was with a
+really heroic action that she finally opened the gate and glided up the
+path made by the daily steps of her aged friend. To thrust the big key
+into the lock required another effort, but that once accomplished, she
+stilled every tumultuous beating of her heart, by crying under her
+breath, “She has done this for one whom she has not seen for fifteen
+years; shall I then hesitate, who know the real necessity of her for
+whom this hour is made sacred?”
+
+The slow swinging open of the door was like an ushering into the abode
+of ghosts, but she struck a light at once, and soon had the satisfaction
+of beholding the dismal room with its weird shadows, resolve into its
+old and well remembered aspect. The ancient cabinet and stiff hair-cloth
+sofa, Colonel Japha’s chair by the table, together with all the other
+objects that had attracted her attention in her former visit, confronted
+her again with the same appearance of standing ready and waiting, which
+had previously so thrilled her. Only she was alone this time, and terror
+mingled with her awe. She scarcely dared to glance at the doors that led
+to other portions of the house. In her present mood it would seem so
+natural for them to swing open, and let upon her horrified gaze the
+stately phantom of the proud old colonel or the gentler shade of
+Jacqueline’s mother. The moan of the wind in the chimney was dreadful to
+her, and the faint rumbling sounds of mice scampering in the walls, made
+her start as though a voice had spoken.
+
+But presently the noise of a sleigh careering by the house recalled her
+to herself, and remembering it was but early night-fall, she sat down in
+a chair by the door, and prepared to keep her vigil with suitable
+patience and equanimity. Suddenly she recollected the clock on the
+mantel-piece and how she had seen Mrs. Hamlin wind it, and rising up,
+she followed her example, sighing unconsciously to find how many of the
+sixty minutes had yet to tick themselves away, “Can I endure it!” she
+thought, and shuddered as she pictured to herself the dim old staircase
+behind those doors, and the empty rooms above, and the little Bible
+lying thicker than ever with dust, on the yellowed pillows of
+Jacqueline’s bed.
+
+Suddenly she stood still; the noise she had just heard, was not made by
+the pattering of mice along the rafters, or even the creaking of the
+withered vines that clung against the walls! It was a human sound, a
+clicking as of the gate without, a crunching as of feet dragging slowly
+over the snow. Was Mrs. Hamlin coming after all, or—she could not
+formulate her fear; a real and palpable danger from the outside world
+had never crossed her fancy till now. What if some stranger should
+enter, some tramp, some—a step on the porch without made her hair rise
+on her forehead; she clasped her hands and stood trembling, when a
+sudden moan startled her ears, followed by the sound of a heavy fall on
+the threshold, and throwing aside all hesitation, she flung herself
+forward, and tearing open the door, saw—oh, angels that rejoice in
+heaven over one sinner that repenteth, let your voices go up in praise
+this night, for Jacqueline Japha has returned to the home of her
+fathers!
+
+She had fainted, and lay quite still on the threshold, but Paula, who
+was all energy now, soon had her in the centre of the sitting-room, and
+was applying to her such restoratives as had been provided against this
+very emergency. She was holding the poor weary head on her knee, when
+the wan eyes opened, and looking up, grew wild with a disappointment
+which Paula was quick to appreciate.
+
+“You are looking for Margery,” said she. “Margery will come by-and-by;
+she is not well to-night and I am taking her place, but when she hears
+you have returned, it will take more than sickness to keep her to her
+bed. I am Paula, and I love you, too, and welcome you—oh, welcome you
+so gladly.”
+
+The yearning look which had crept into the woman’s bleared and faded
+eyes, deepened and softened strangely.
+
+“You are the one who told me about Margery,” said she, “and bade me
+bring my baby here to be buried. I remember, though I seemed to pay no
+heed then. Night and day through all my pain, I have remembered, and as
+soon as I could walk, stole away from the hospital. It has killed me,
+but I shall at least die in my father’s house.”
+
+Paula stooped and kissed her. “I am going to get your bed ready,” said
+she. And without any hesitation now, she opened the door that led into
+those dim inner regions that but a few minutes before had inspired her
+with such dread.
+
+She went straight to Jacqueline’s room. “It must all be according to
+Mrs. Hamlin’s wishes,” she cried, and lit the fire on the hearth, and
+pulled back the curtains yet farther from the bed, and gave the benefit
+of her womanly touch to the various objects about her, till cheerfulness
+seemed to reign in a spot once so peopled with hideous memories. Going
+back to Jacqueline, she helped her to rise, and throwing her arm about
+her waist, led her into the hall. But here memory, ghastly accusing
+memory, stepped in, and catching the wretched woman in its grasp, shook
+her, body and soul, till her shrieks reverberated through that desolate
+house. But Paula with gentle persistence urged her on, and smiling upon
+her like an angel of peace and mercy, led her up step after step of that
+dreadful staircase, till at last she saw her safely in the room of her
+early girlhood.
+
+The sight of it seemed at first to horrify but afterwards to soothe the
+forlorn being thus brought face to face with her own past. She moved
+over to the fire and held out her two cramped hands to the blaze, as if
+she saw an altar of mercy in its welcoming glow. From these she passed
+tottering and weak to the embroidery-frame, which she looked at for a
+moment with something almost like a smile; but she hurried by the
+mirror, and scarcely glanced at a portrait of herself which hung on the
+wall over her head. To sink on the bed seemed to be her object, and
+thither Paula accompanied her. But when she came to where it stood, and
+saw the clothes turned down and the pillows heaped at the head, and the
+little Bible lying open for her in the midst, she gave a great and
+mighty sob, and flinging herself down upon her knees, wept with a
+breaking up of her whole nature, in which her sins, red though they were
+as crimson, seemed to feel the touch of the Divine love, and vanish away
+in the oblivion He prepares for all His penitent ones.
+
+When everything was prepared and Jacqueline was laid quiet in bed, Paula
+stole out and down the stairs and wended her way to Mrs. Hamlin’s
+cottage. She found her sitting up, but far from well, and very feeble.
+At the first sight of Paula’s face, she started erect and seem to forget
+her weakness in a moment.
+
+“What is it?” she asked; “you look as though you had been gazing on the
+faces of angels. Has—has my hope come true at last? Has Jacqueline
+returned? Oh, has my poor, lost, erring child come back?”
+
+Paula drew near and gently steadied Mrs. Hamlin’s swaying form. “Yes,”
+she smiled; and with the calmness of one who has entered the gates of
+peace, whispered in low and reverent tones: “She lies in the bed that
+you spread for her, with the Bible held close to her breast.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There are moments when the world about us seems to pause; when the
+hopes, fears and experiences of all humanity appear to sway away and
+leave us standing alone in the presence of our own great hope or
+scarcely comprehended fear. Such a moment was that which saw Paula
+re-enter Jacqueline’s presence with Mrs. Hamlin at her side.
+
+Leaving the latter near the door, she went towards the bed. Why did she
+recoil and glance back at Mrs. Hamlin with that startled and
+apprehensive look? The face of Jacqueline was changed—changed as only
+one presence could change it, though the eyes were clearer than when she
+left her a few minutes before, and the lips were not without the shadow
+of a smile.
+
+“She is dying,” whispered Paula, coming back to Mrs. Hamlin; “dying, and
+you have waited so long!”
+
+But the look that met hers from that aged face, was not one of grief;
+and startled, she knew not why, Paula drew aside, while Mrs. Hamlin
+crossed the room and quietly knelt down by her darling’s side.
+
+“Margery!”
+
+“Jacqueline!”
+
+The two cries rang through the room, then all was quiet again.
+
+“You have come back!” were the next words Paula heard. “How could I ever
+have doubted that you would!”
+
+“I have been driven back by awful suffering,” was the answer; and
+another silence fell. Suddenly Jacqueline’s voice was heard. “Love slew
+me, and now love has saved me!” exclaimed she. And there came no answer
+to that cry, and Paula felt the shadow of a great awe settle down upon
+her, and moving nearer to where the aged woman knelt by her darling’s
+bedside, she looked in her bended face and then in the one upturned on
+the pillow, and knew that of all the hearts that but an instant before
+had beat with earth’s deepest emotion in that quiet room, one alone
+throbbed on to thank God and take courage.
+
+And the fire which had been kindled to welcome the prodigal back, burned
+on; and from the hollow depths of the great room below, came the sound
+of a clock as it struck the hour, seven!
+
+
+
+
+XLVI.
+
+THE MAN CUMMINS.
+
+     “Oh day and night, but this is wondrous strange.”—HENRY V.
+
+     “Shut up in measureless content.”—OTHELLO.
+
+
+The lights were yet shining in Mr. Stuyvesant’s parlors, though the
+guests were gone, who but a short time before had assembled there to
+witness the marriage of Cicely’s dear friend, Paula.
+
+At one end of the room stood Mr. Sylvester and Bertram, the former
+gazing with the eyes of a bridegroom, at the delicate white-clad figure
+of Paula, just leaving the apartment with Cicely.
+
+“I have but one cause for regret,” said Mr. Sylvester as the door
+closed. “I could have wished that you and Cicely had participated in our
+joy and received the minister’s benediction at the same moment as
+ourselves.”
+
+“Yes,” said Bertram with a short sigh. “But it will come in time. It
+cannot be but that our efforts must finally succeed. I have just had a
+new idea; that of putting the watchman on the hunt for Hopgood. They are
+old friends, and he ought to know all the other’s haunts and possible
+hiding-places.”
+
+“If Fanning could have helped us, he would have told us long ago. He
+knows that Hopgood is missing and that we are ready to pay well for any
+information concerning him.”
+
+“But they are old cronies, and possibly Fanning is keeping quiet out of
+consideration for his friend.”
+
+“No; I have had a talk with Fanning, and there was no mistaking his look
+of surprise when told the other had run away under suspicion of being
+connected with a robbery on the bank’s effects. He knows no more of
+Hopgood than we do, or his wife does, or the police even. It is a
+strange mystery, and one to which I fear we shall never obtain the key.
+But don’t let me discourage you; after a suitable time Mr. Stuyvesant
+will—”
+
+He paused, for that gentleman was approaching him.
+
+“There is a man outside who insists upon seeing me; says he knows there
+has just been a wedding here, but that the matter he has to communicate
+is very important, and won’t bear putting off. The name on his card is
+Cummins; I am afraid I shall have to admit him, that is, if you have no
+objection?”
+
+Mr. Sylvester and Bertram at once drew back with ready acquiescence.
+They had scarcely taken their stand at the other end of the apartment,
+when the man came in. He was of robust build, round, precise and
+business-like. He had taken off his hat, but still wore his overcoat;
+his face in spite of a profusion of red whiskers and a decided pair of
+goggles, was earnest and straightforward. He walked at once up to Mr.
+Stuyvesant.
+
+“Your pardon,” said he, in a quick tone. “But I hear you have been
+somewhat exercised of late over the disappearance of certain bonds from
+one of the boxes in the Madison Bank. I am a detective, and in the
+course of my duty have come upon a few facts that may help to explain
+matters.”
+
+Mr. Sylvester and Bertram at once started forward; this was a topic that
+demanded their attention as well as that of the master of the house.
+
+The man cast them a quick look from behind his goggles, and seeming to
+recognize them, included them in his next question.
+
+“What do you think of the watchman, Fanning?”
+
+“Think? we don’t think,” uttered Mr. Stuyvesant sharply. “He has been in
+the employ of the bank for twelve years, and we know him to be honest.”
+
+“Yet he is the man who stole your bonds.”
+
+“Impossible!”
+
+“The very man.”
+
+Mr. Sylvester stepped up to him. “Who are you, and how do you know
+this?”
+
+“I have said my name is Cummins, and I know this, because I have wormed
+myself into the man’s confidence and have got the bonds, together with
+his confession, here in my pocket.” And he drew out the long lost bonds,
+which he handed to their owner, with a bit of paper on which was
+in-scribed in the handwriting of the watchman, an acknowledgment to the
+effect that he, alone and unassisted, had perpetrated the robbery which
+had raised such scandal in the bank and led to the disappearance of
+Hopgood.
+
+“And the man himself?” cried Bertram, when they had all read this.
+“Where is he?”
+
+“Oh, I allowed him to escape.”
+
+Mr. Sylvester frowned.
+
+“There is something about this I don’t understand,” said he. “How came
+you to take such an interest in this matter; and why did you let the man
+escape after acknowledging his crime?”
+
+With a quick, not undignified action, Cummins stepped back. “Gentlemen,”
+said he, “it is allowable in a detective in the course of his duty, to
+resort to means for eliciting the truth, that in any other cause and for
+any other purpose, would be denominated as unmanly, if not mean and
+contemptible. When I heard of this robbery, as I did the day after its
+perpetration, my mind flew immediately to the watchman as the possible
+culprit. I did not know that he had done the deed, and I did not see how
+he could have possessed the means of doing it, but I had been acquainted
+with him for some time, and certain expressions which I had overheard
+him use—expressions that had passed over me lightly at the time, now
+recurred to my mind with startling distinctness. ‘If a man knew the
+combination of the vault door, how easily he could make himself rich
+from the contents of those boxes!’ was one, I remember; and another, ‘I
+have worked in the bank for twelve years and have not so much money laid
+up against a rainy day, as would furnish Mr. Sylvester in cigars for a
+month.’ The fact that he had no opportunity to learn the combination,
+was the only stumbling-block in the way of my conclusions. But that
+obstacle was soon removed. In a talk with the janitor’s wife—a good
+woman, sirs, but a trifle conceited—I learned that he had once had the
+very opportunity of which I speak, provided he was smart enough to
+recognize the fact. The way it came about was this. Hopgood, who always
+meant to do about the right thing, as I know, was one morning very sick,
+so sick that when the time came for him to go down and open the vaults
+for the day, he couldn’t stir from his bed, or at least thought he
+couldn’t. Twice had the watchman rung for him, and twice had he tried to
+get up, only to fall back again on his pillow. At last the call became
+imperative; the clerks would soon be in, and the books were not even in
+readiness for them. Calling his wife to him, he asked if she thought she
+could open the vault door provided she knew the combination. She
+returned a quite eager, ‘yes,’ being a naturally vain woman and moreover
+a little sore over the fact that her husband never entrusted her with
+any of his secrets. ‘Then,’ said he, ‘listen to those three numbers that
+I give you; and turn the knob accordingly,’ explaining the matter in a
+way best calculated to enlighten her as to what she had to do. She
+professed herself as understanding perfectly and went off in quite a
+flutter of satisfaction to accomplish her task. But though he did not
+know it at the time, it seems that her heart failed her when she got
+into the hall, and struck with fear lest she should forget the numbers
+before she got to the foot of the stairs, she came back, and carefully
+wrote them down on a piece of paper, armed with which she started for
+the second time to fulfil her task. The watchman was in the bank when
+she entered, and to his expressions of surprise, she answered that her
+husband was ill and that she was going to open the vaults. He offered to
+help her, but she stared at him with astonishment, and waiting till he
+had walked to the other end of the bank, proceeded to the vault door,
+and after carefully consulting the paper in her hand, was about to turn
+the knob as directed, when Hopgood himself came into the room. He was
+too anxious, he said, to keep in bed, and though he trembled at every
+step, came forward and accomplished the task himself. He did not see the
+paper in his wife’s hand, nor notice her when she tore it up and threw
+the pieces in the waste-basket near-by, but the watchman may have
+observed her, and as it afterwards proved, did; and thus became
+acquainted with the combination that unlocked the outer vault doors.”
+
+“Humph!” broke in Mr. Sylvester, “if this is true, why didn’t Hopgood
+inform me of the matter when I questioned him so closely?”
+
+“Because he had forgotten the circumstance. He was in a fever at the
+time, and having eventually unlocked the vault himself, lost sight of
+the fact that he had previously sent his wife to do it. He went back to
+his bed after the clerks came in, and did not get up again till night.
+He may have thought the whole occurrence part of the delirium which more
+than once assailed him that day.”
+
+“I remember his being sick,” said Bertram; “it was two or three days
+before the robbery.”
+
+“The very day before,” corrected the man; “but let me tell my story in
+my own way. Having learned from Mrs. Hopgood of this opportunity which
+had been given to Fanning, I made up my mind to sift the matter. Being
+as I have said a friend of his, I didn’t, want to peach on him unless he
+was guilty. To blast an honest man’s reputation, is, I think, one of the
+meanest tricks of which a fellow can be guilty: but the truth I had to
+know, and in order to learn it, a deep and delicate game was necessary.
+Gentlemen, when the police have strong suspicions against a person whose
+reputation is above reproach and whose conduct affords no opportunity
+for impeachment, they set a springe for him. One of their number
+disguises himself, and making the acquaintance of this person,
+insinuates himself by slow degrees—often at the cost of months of
+effort—into his friendship and if possible into his confidence. ’Tis a
+detestable piece of business, but it is all that will serve in some
+cases, and has at least the merit of being as dangerous as it is
+detestable. This plan, I undertook with Fanning. Changing my appearance
+to suit the necessities of the case, I took board in the small house in
+Brooklyn where he puts up, and being well acquainted with his tastes,
+knew how to adapt myself to his liking. He was a busy man, and being
+obliged by his duties to turn night into day, had not much time to
+bestow upon me or any one else; but heedful of this, I managed to make
+the most of the spare moments that saw us together, and ere long we were
+very good comrades, and further on, very good friends. The day when I
+first ventured to suggest that honesty was all very well as long as it
+paid, was a memorable one to me. In that cast of the die I was either to
+win or lose the game I had undertaken. I won. After a feint or two, to
+see if I were in earnest, he fell into the net, and though he did not
+commit himself then, it was not long before he came to me, and
+deliberately requested my assistance in disposing of some bonds which he
+was smart enough to acquire, but not daring enough to attempt to sell.
+Of course the whole story came out, and I was sympathetic enough till I
+got the bonds into my hands, then—But I leave you to imagine what
+followed. Enough that I wrung this confession from him, and that in
+consideration of the doubtful game I had played upon him, let him go
+where he is by this time beyond the chance of pursuit.”
+
+
+“But your duty to your superior; your oath as a member of the force?”
+
+“My superior is here!” said the man pointing to Mr. Sylvester; “an
+unconscious one I own, but still my superior; and as for my being a
+member of the force, that was true five years ago, but not to-day.” And
+brushing off his whiskers with one hand and taking off his goggles with
+the other, Hopgood, the janitor, stood before them!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a radiant figure that met Cicely, when she came down stairs with
+Paula, and a joyous group that soon surrounded the now blushing and
+embarrassed janitor, with questions and remarks concerning this great
+and unexpected development of affairs. But the fervor with which Mr.
+Stuyvesant clasped Bertram’s hand, and the look with which Cicely turned
+from her young lover to bestow a final kiss upon the departing bride,
+was worth all the pains and self-denial of the last few weeks—or so the
+janitor thought, who with a quicker comprehension than usual, had
+divined the situation and rejoiced in the result. But the most curious
+thing of all was to observe how, with the taking off of his goggles,
+Hopgood had relapsed into his old shrinking, easily embarrassed self.
+The man who but a few minutes before had related in their hearing a
+clear and succinct narrative, now shrank if a question was put him, and
+stammered in quite his ancient fashion, when he answered Mr. Sylvester’s
+shake of the hand, by a hurried:
+
+“I am going to see my wife now, sir. She’s a good woman, if a little
+flighty, and will be the last one in the future to beg me to put more
+confidence in her. Will you tell me where she is, sir?”
+
+Mr. Sylvester informed him; then added, “But look here, Hopgood, answer
+me one thing before you go. Why is it that with such talents as you
+possess, you didn’t stay in the police force? You are a regular genius
+in your way, and ought not to drone away your existence as a janitor.”
+
+“Ah, sir,” replied the other, shaking his head, “a man who is only
+capable of assuming one disguise, isn’t good for much as a professional
+detective. Goggles and red whiskers will deceive one rogue, but not
+fifty. My eyes were my bane, sir, and ultimately cost me my place. While
+I could cover them up I was all right. It not only made a man of me,
+leaving me free to talk and freer to think, but disguised me so, my best
+friends couldn’t recognize me; but after awhile my goggles were too well
+known for me to be considered of much further use to the department, and
+I was obliged to send in my resignation. It is too bad, but I have no
+versatility, sir. I’m either the clumsy, stammering creature you have
+always known, or else I am the man Cummins you saw here a few minutes
+ago.”
+
+“In either case an honest fellow,” answered Mr. Sylvester, and allowed
+the janitor to depart.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One more scene, and this in the house which Paula is henceforth to make
+a home for herself and its once melancholy owner. They have come back
+from their wedding-journey, and are standing in their old fashion, he at
+the foot, and she half way up the stairs. Suddenly she turns and
+descends to his side.
+
+“No, I will not wait,” said she. “Here, on this spot we both love so
+well, and in this the first hour of our return, I will unburden my mind
+of what I have to say. Edward, is there nothing of all the past that
+still rests upon you like a shadow? Not one little regret you could wish
+taken away?”
+
+“No,” said he, enfolding her in his arms with a solemn smile. “The great
+gift which I hold is the fruit of that past, perhaps; I cannot wish it
+changed.”
+
+“But the sense of obligation never fulfilled, would you not be happier
+if that were removed?”
+
+“Perhaps,” he said, “but it cannot be now. I shall have to live without
+being perfectly happy.”
+
+She lifted her face and her smile shone like a star. “Oh God is good,”
+she cried, “you shall not lack being perfectly happy;” and taking a
+little paper out of her pocket she put it in his hand. “We found that
+hidden in Jacqueline Japha’s breast, when we went to lay her out for
+burial.”
+
+It was only a line; but it made Mr. Sylvester’s brow flush and his voice
+tremble.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+“Whatever I own, and I have been told that I am far from penniless, I
+desire to have given to the dear and disinterested girl that first told
+me of Margery Hamlin’s vigil.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+“Paula, Paula, Paula, thou art indeed my good gift! May God make me
+worthy of your love and of this His last and most unexpected mercy!”
+
+And the look which crossed her face, was that sweet and unearthly
+radiance which speaks of perfect peace.
+
+
+
+
+PUBLICATIONS OF G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS.
+
+
+THE LEAVENWORTH CASE. By ANNA KATHERINE GREEN.
+
+     “Wilkie Collins, in his best period, never invented a more
+     ingeniously constructed plot, nor held the reader in such
+     suspense until the final _denoûment_. The most blasé
+     novel-reader will be unable to put aside ‘The Leavenworth Case’
+     until he has read the last sentence and mastered the mystery
+     which has baffled him from the beginning.”—_N. Y. Evening
+     Express._
+
+A MAN’S A MAN FOR A’ THAT.
+
+     “A novel of decided excellence. * * * Contains delicate and
+     charming work. Thoroughly clever * * * Its spirit is one of
+     robust and healthy enthusiasm for manliness and
+     womanliness.”—_N. Y. Evening Post._
+
+THE BRETON MILLS: A ROMANCE OF NEW ENGLAND LIFE. By CHARLES J. BELLAMY.
+
+
+     “Nothing from the pen of Mrs. Burnett was ever more intensely
+     dramatic.”—_Jackson Daily Citizen._
+
+     “Looked at from a purely literary point of view it is almost
+     faultless. It shows a hand both of culture and
+     power.”—_Detroit Evening News._
+
+CUPID AND THE SPHINX. By HARFORD FLEMMING.
+
+     “Its characters are skilfully drawn, its incidents well
+     conceived, the dialogues brilliant, and the story told with
+     ease and gracefulness.”—_Boston Transcript._
+
+     “The suggestion of the story is extremely beautiful, and its
+     treatment graceful and enchanting throughout.”—_Hartford
+     Evening Post._
+
+A STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE. By ANNA KATHERINE GREEN.
+
+     “Wilkie Collins would not need to be ashamed of the
+     construction of this story. * * * It keeps the reader’s close
+     attention from first to last.”—_N. Y. Evening Post._
+
+     “Shows the same skill as ‘The Leavenworth Case’ in the
+     management of the plot and the incidents.”—_Boston
+     Transcript._
+
+THE HEART OF IT: A Romance of East and West. By WILLIAM O. STODDARD.
+
+     “Uncommonly good reading, even for that uncommonly readable
+     Series.”—_Philadelphia Times._
+
+     “An American novel, dealing with a few well-chosen characters
+     and involving a striking and original plot. * * * A thoroughly
+     entertaining piece of fiction.”—_Boston Traveller._
+
+UNCLE JACK’S EXECUTORS. By ANNETTE LUCILLE NOBLE.
+
+     “Comes from a writer of unusual talent. * * * Remarkable for
+     its sketches of character, its naturalness, its frequent
+     flashes of intellectual brightness, and its genuine humor. * *
+     * One of the best novels of the season and deserving of a
+     permanent place among works of genuine American fiction.”—_The
+     Churchman._
+
+THE STRANDED SHIP: A STORY OF SEA AND SHORE. By L. CLARKE DAVIS.
+
+     “Full of the finest dramatic action. * * * The work of a man of
+     firm genius and exquisite delicacy of touch.”—_N. Y. Evening
+     Post._
+
+NESTLENOOK. By LEONARD KIP, Author of “The Dead Marquise,” “Under the
+Bells,” etc.
+
+     Of “The Dead Marquise” the _Boston Globe_ writes: “The book is
+     admirable and its style almost perfect in its transparent
+     simplicity.”
+
+
+
+
+THE TRANS-ATLANTIC SERIES.
+
+I. CAPTAIN FRACASSE. By THEOPHILE GAUTIER. Translated by E. M. BEAM.
+
+     Of Le Capitaine Fracasse, Henry James, Jr., writes: “In this
+     delightful work Gautier surpassed himself, and produced the
+     model of picturesque romances. * * * The great charm of the
+     book is a sort of combined geniality of feeling and coloring,
+     which leaves one in doubt whether the author is the most joyous
+     of painters or the cleverest of poets. * * * Le Capitaine
+     Fracasse ranks, in our opinion, with the first works of
+     imagination produced in our day.”
+
+     “A masterpiece of literary art.”—_N. Y. Nation._
+
+     “The translation is most admirable.”—_Troy Whig._
+
+II. THE AMAZON. By FRANZ DINGELSTEDT. Translated by JAS. MORGAN HART.
+
+     “Full of scintillations of wit. * * * Sparkles throughout with
+     vivacity and sparkling humor.”—_Leipsic BlĂ€tter fĂŒr Lit. Unt._
+
+     “A delightful novel, characterized by force and fire, strong
+     dramatic power, and rare skill in its analysis of human motives
+     and character.”—_Philadelphia Times._
+
+MOTHER MOLLY. By FRANCES MARY PEARD.
+
+     “The book is charming; and, more than this, it is a
+     well-finished historical study of stirring
+     times.”—_Philadelphia Times._
+
+     “It deserves to rank among the best English stories of the
+     year.”—_Louisville Courier-Journal._
+
+THE LOST CASKET. Translated from _“La Main CoupĂ©e”_ of F. de BOISGOBEY
+by S. LEE.
+
+
+
+
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+<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold;'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Sword Of Damocles, by Anna Katharine Green</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
+at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you
+are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the
+country where you are located before using this eBook.
+</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The Sword Of Damocles<br>A Story of New York Life</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Anna Katharine Green</div>
+<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Release Date: July 31, 2010 [eBook #33301]<br>
+[Most recently updated: September 22, 2023]</div>
+<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div>
+<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+<br>Revised by Richard Tonsing.</div>
+<div style='margin-top:2em;margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SWORD OF DAMOCLES ***</div>
+
+
+
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" alt="">
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+
+<h1>THE SWORD OF DAMOCLES<br>
+<span class='ph3'>A STORY OF NEW YORK LIFE.</span></h1>
+
+<div class='ph2'>BY ANNA KATHARINE GREEN</div>
+
+<div class='ph4'>AUTHOR OF “THE LEAVENWORTH CASE,” “A STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE,” ETC.</div>
+
+
+<div class='ph4'>NEW YORK<br>
+G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS<br>
+27 &amp; 29 West 23D Street</div>
+
+<div class='ph4'>1881</div>
+
+<div class='ph4'><span class="smcap">Copyright, 1881, by G. P. Putnam’s Sons.</span></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+
+<div class='ph4'>TO<br>
+MY FATHER<br>
+I DEDICATE THIS BOOK<br>
+AS EXPRESSING SOME OF THE PRINCIPLES OF<br>
+JUSTICE AND MERCY WHICH,<br>
+BY PRECEPT AND EXAMPLE, HE HAS<br>
+INSTILLED INTO MY<br>
+BREAST<br>
+FROM EARLY CHILDHOOD.</div>
+
+<div class='ph4'><span class="smcap">New York</span>, <i>April, 1881.</i></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+
+<div class='ph4'>“When all else fails love saves”</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<div class='chapter'><h2>CONTENTS.</h2></div>
+
+
+
+<!-- Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. -->
+<p>
+<a href="#BOOK_I">BOOK I. TWO MEN.</a><br><br>
+<a href="#I">I.—<span class="smcap">A Wanderer</span></a><br>
+<a href="#II">II.—<span class="smcap">A Discussion</span></a><br>
+<a href="#III">III.—<span class="smcap">A Mysterious Summons</span></a><br>
+<a href="#IV">IV.—<span class="smcap">Searchings</span></a><br>
+<a href="#V">V.—<span class="smcap">The Rubicon</span></a><br>
+<a href="#VI">VI.—<span class="smcap">A Hand Clasp</span></a><br>
+<a href="#VII">VII.—<span class="smcap">Mrs. Sylvester</span></a><br>
+<a href="#VIII">VIII.—<span class="smcap">Shadows of the Past</span></a><br>
+<a href="#IX">IX.—<span class="smcap">Paula</span></a><br>
+<a href="#X">X.—<span class="smcap">The Barred Door</span></a><br>
+<a href="#XI">XI.—<span class="smcap">Miss Stuyvesant</span></a><br>
+<a href="#XII">XII.—<span class="smcap">Miss Belinda Makes Conditions</span></a><br>
+<a href="#XIII">XIII.—<span class="smcap">The End of My Lady’s Picture</span></a><br><br>
+<a href="#BOOK_II">BOOK II. LIFE AND DEATH.</a><br><br>
+<a href="#XIV">XIV.—<span class="smcap">Miss Belinda has a Question to Decide</span></a><br>
+<a href="#XV">XV.—<span class="smcap">An Adventure—or Something More</span></a><br>
+<a href="#XVI">XVI.—<span class="smcap">The Sword of Damocles</span></a><br>
+<a href="#XVII">XVII.—<span class="smcap">Grave and Gay</span></a><br>
+<a href="#XVIII">XVIII.—<span class="smcap">In the Night Watches</span></a><br>
+<a href="#XIX">XIX.—<span class="smcap">A Day at the Bank</span></a><br>
+<a href="#XX">XX.—<span class="smcap">The Dregs in the Cup</span></a><br>
+<a href="#XXI">XXI.—<span class="smcap">Departure</span></a><br>
+<a href="#XXII">XXII.—<span class="smcap">Hopgood</span></a><br><br>
+<a href="#BOOK_III">BOOK III. THE JAPHA MYSTERY.</a><br><br>
+<a href="#XXIII">XXIII.—<span class="smcap">The Poem</span></a><br>
+<a href="#XXIV">XXIV.—<span class="smcap">The Japha Mansion</span></a><br>
+<a href="#XXV">XXV.—<span class="smcap">Jacqueline</span></a><br>
+<a href="#XXVI">XXVI.—<span class="smcap">A Man’s Justice and a Woman’s Mercy</span></a><br>
+<a href="#XXVII">XXVII.—<span class="smcap">The Lone Watcher</span></a><br>
+<a href="#XXVIII">XXVIII.—<span class="smcap">Sunshine on the Hills</span></a><br>
+<a href="#XXIX">XXIX.—<span class="smcap">Mist in the Valley</span></a><br><br>
+<a href="#BOOK_IV">BOOK IV. FROM A. TO Z.</a><br><br>
+<a href="#XXX">XXX.—<span class="smcap">Miss Belinda Presents Mr. Sylvester with a Christmas Gift</span></a><br>
+<a href="#XXXI">XXXI.—<span class="smcap">A Question</span></a><br>
+<a href="#XXXII">XXXII.—<span class="smcap">Full Tide</span></a><br>
+<a href="#XXXIII">XXXIII.—<span class="smcap">Two Letters</span></a><br>
+<a href="#XXXIV">XXXIV.—<span class="smcap">Paula Makes her Choice</span></a><br>
+<a href="#XXXV">XXXV.—<span class="smcap">The Falling of the Sword</span></a><br>
+<a href="#XXXVI">XXXVI.—<span class="smcap">Morning</span></a><br>
+<a href="#XXXVII">XXXVII.—<span class="smcap">The Opinion of a Certain Noted Detective</span></a><br>
+<a href="#XXXVIII">XXXVIII.—<span class="smcap">Bluebeard’s Chamber</span></a><br>
+<a href="#XXXIX">XXXIX.—<span class="smcap">From A. to Z</span></a><br>
+<a href="#XL">XL.—<span class="smcap">Half-past Seven</span></a><br><br>
+<a href="#BOOK_V">BOOK V. WOMAN’S LOVE.</a><br><br>
+<a href="#XLI">XLI.—<span class="smcap">The Work of an Hour</span></a><br>
+<a href="#XLII">XLII.—<span class="smcap">Paula Relates a Story She has Heard</span></a><br>
+<a href="#XLIII">XLIII.—<span class="smcap">Determination</span></a><br>
+<a href="#XLIV">XLIV.—<span class="smcap">In Mr. Stuyvesant’s Parlors</span></a><br>
+<a href="#XLV">XLV.—“<span class="smcap">The Hour of Six is Sacred!</span>”</a><br>
+<a href="#XLVI">XLVI.—<span class="smcap">The Man Cummins</span></a><br><br>
+</p>
+<!-- End Autogenerated TOC. -->
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<blockquote><p>Damocles, one of the courtiers of Dionysius, was perpetually
+extolling with rapture that tyrant’s treasures, grandeur, the
+number of his troops, the extent of his dominions, the
+magnificence of his palaces, and the universal abundance of all
+good things and enjoyments in his possession; always repeating,
+that never man was happier than Dionysius. “Since you are of
+that opinion,” said the tyrant to him one day, “will you taste
+and make proof of my felicity in person?” The offer was
+accepted with joy; Damocles was placed upon a golden couch,
+covered with carpets richly embroidered. The side-boards were
+loaded with vessels of gold and silver. The most beautiful
+slaves in the most splendid habits stood around, ready to serve
+him at the slightest signal. The most exquisite essences and
+perfumes had not been spared. The table was spread with
+proportionate magnificence. Damocles was all joy, and looked
+upon himself as the happiest man in the world; when
+unfortunately casting up his eyes, he beheld over his head the
+point of a sword, which hung from the roof only by a single
+horse-hair.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Rollin.</span></p></blockquote>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<div class='chapter'><div class='ph2'>THE SWORD OF DAMOCLES.</div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<div class='chapter'><h2><a id="BOOK_I"></a>BOOK I.</h2></div>
+
+<div class='ph3'>TWO MEN.</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<div class='chapter'><h3><a id="I"></a>I.</h3></div>
+
+<div class='ph4'>A WANDERER.</div>
+
+<blockquote><p>“There’s no such word.”—<span class="smcap">BULWER.</span></p></blockquote>
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+
+
+<p>A wind was blowing through the city. Not a gentle and balmy zephyr,
+stirring the locks on gentle ladies’ foreheads and rustling the curtains
+in elegant boudoirs, but a chill and bitter gale that rushed with a
+swoop through narrow alleys and forsaken courtyards, biting the cheeks
+of the few solitary wanderers that still lingered abroad in the darkened
+streets.</p>
+
+<p>In front of a cathedral that reared its lofty steeple in the midst of
+the squalid houses and worse than squalid saloons of one of the
+dreariest portions of the East Side, stood the form of a woman. She had
+paused in her rush down the narrow street to listen to the music,
+perhaps, or to catch a glimpse of the light that now and then burst from
+the widely swinging doors as they opened and shut upon some tardy
+worshipper.</p>
+
+<p>She was tall and fearful looking; her face, when the light struck it,
+was seared and desperate; gloom and desolation were written on all the
+lines of her rigid but wasted form, and when she shuddered under the
+gale, it was with that force and abandon to which passion lends its aid,
+and in which the soul proclaims its doom.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly the doors before her swung wide and the preacher’s voice was
+heard: “Love God and you will love your fellow-men. Love your fellow-men
+and you best show your love to God.”</p>
+
+<p>She heard, started, and the charm was broken. “Love!” she echoed with a
+horrible laugh; “there is no love in heaven or on earth!”</p>
+
+<p>And she swept by, and the winds followed and the darkness swallowed her
+up like a gulf.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<div class='chapter'><h3><a id="II"></a>II.</h3></div>
+
+<div class='ph4'>A DISCUSSION.</div>
+
+<blockquote><p>“Young men think old men fools, and old men know young men to
+be so.”—<span class="smcap">Ray’s Proverbs.</span></p></blockquote>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+
+<p>“And you are actually in earnest?”</p>
+
+<p>“I am.”</p>
+
+<p>The first speaker, a fine-looking gentleman of some forty years of age,
+drummed with his fingers on the table before him and eyed the face of
+the young man who had repeated this assent so emphatically, with a
+certain close scrutiny indicative of surprise.</p>
+
+<p>“It is an unlooked-for move for you to make,” he remarked at length.
+“Your success as a pianist has been so decided, I confess I do not
+understand why you should desire to abandon a profession that in five
+years’ time has procured you both competence and a very enviable
+reputation—for the doubtful prospects of Wall Street, too!” he added
+with a deep and thoughtful frown that gave still further impressiveness
+to his strongly marked features.</p>
+
+<p>The young man with a sweep of his eye over the luxurious apartment in
+which they sat, shrugged his shoulders with that fine and nonchalant
+grace which was one of his chief characteristics.</p>
+
+<p>“With such a pilot as yourself, I ought to be able to steer clear of the
+shoals,” said he, a frank smile illumining a face that was rather
+interesting than handsome.</p>
+
+<p>The elder gentleman did not return the smile. Instead of that he
+remained gazing at the ample coal-fire that burned in the grate before
+him with a look that to the young musician was simply inexplicable. “You
+see the ship in haven,” he murmured at last; “but do not consider what
+storms it has weathered or what perils escaped. It is a voyage I would
+encourage no son of mine to undertake.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yet you are not the man to shrink from danger or to hesitate in a
+course you had marked out for yourself, because of the struggle it
+involved or the difficulties it presented!” the young man exclaimed
+almost involuntarily as his glance lingered with a certain sort of
+fascination on the powerful brow and steady if somewhat melancholy eye
+of his companion.</p>
+
+<p>“No; but danger and difficulty should not be sought, only subdued when
+encountered. If you were driven into this path, I should say, ‘God pity
+you!’ and hold you out my hand to steady you along its precipices and
+above its sudden quicksands. But you are not driven to it. Your
+profession offers you the means of an ample livelihood while your good
+heart and fair talents insure you ultimate and honorable success, both
+in the social and artistic world. For a man of twenty-five such
+prospects are not common and he must be difficult to please not to be
+satisfied with them.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” said the other rising with a fitful movement but instantly
+sitting again; “I have nothing to complain of as the world goes,
+only—Sir,” he exclaimed with a sudden determination that lent a force
+to his features they had hitherto lacked, “you speak of being driven
+into a certain course; what do you mean by that?”</p>
+
+<p>“I mean,” returned the other; “forced by circumstances to enter a line
+of business to which many others, if not all others are preferable.”</p>
+
+<p>“You speak strongly, speculation evidently has none of your sympathy,
+notwithstanding the favorable results which have accrued to you from it.
+But excuse me, by circumstances you mean poverty, I suppose, and the
+lack of every other opening to wealth and position. You would not
+consider the desire to make a large fortune in a short space of time a
+circumstance of a sufficiently determining nature to reconcile you to my
+entering Wall Street speculation?”</p>
+
+<p>The elder gentleman rose, not as the other had done with a restless
+impulse quickly subsiding at the first excuse, but forcibly and with a
+feverish impatience that to appearance was somewhat out of proportion to
+the occasion. “A large fortune in a short space of time!” he reiterated,
+pausing where he had risen with an eagle glance at his companion and a
+ringing tone in his voice that bespoke a deep but hitherto suppressed
+agitation. “It is the alluring inscription above the pitfall into which
+many a noble youth has fallen; the battle-cry to a struggle that has led
+many a strong man the way of ruin; the guide-post to a life whose
+feverish days and sleepless nights offer but poor compensation for the
+sudden splendors and as sudden reverses attached to it. I had rather you
+had accounted for this sudden freak of yours by the strongest aspiration
+after power than by this cry of the merely mercenary man who in his
+desire to enjoy wealth, prefers to win it by a stroke of luck rather
+than conquer it by a life of endeavor.” He stopped. “I am aware that
+this tirade against the ladder by which I myself have risen so rapidly,
+must strike you as in ill-taste. But Bertram, I am interested in your
+welfare and am willing to incur some slight charge of inconsistency in
+order to insure it,” and here he turned upon his companion with that
+expression of extreme gentleness which lent such a peculiar charm to his
+countenance and explained perhaps the almost unlimited power he held
+over the hearts and minds of those who came within the circle of his
+influence.</p>
+
+<p>“You are very good, sir,” murmured his young friend, who to explain
+matters at once was in reality the nephew of this Wall Street magnate,
+though from the fact of his having taken another name on entering the
+musical profession, was not generally known as such. “No one, not even
+my father himself, could have been more considerate and kind; but I do
+not think you understand me, or rather I should say I do not think I
+have made myself perfectly intelligible to you. It is not for the sake
+of wealth itself or the eclat attending its possession that I desire an
+immediate fortune, but that by means of it I may attain another object
+dearer than wealth, and more precious than my career.”</p>
+
+<p>The elder gentleman turned quickly, evidently much surprised, and cast a
+sudden inquiring glance at his nephew, who blushed with a modest
+ingenuousness pleasing to see in one so well accustomed to the critical
+gaze of his fellow-men.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” said he, as if in answer to that look, “I am in love.”</p>
+
+<p>A deep silence for a moment pervaded the apartment, a sombre silence
+almost startling to young Mandeville, who had expected some audible
+expression to follow this announcement if only the good-natured “Pooh!
+pooh!” of the matured man of the world in the presence of ardent
+youthful enthusiasm. What could it mean? Looking up he encountered his
+uncle’s eye fixed upon him with the last expression he could have
+anticipated seeing there, namely that of actual and unmistakable alarm.</p>
+
+<p>“You are displeased,” Mandeville exclaimed. “You have thought me proof
+against such a passion, or perhaps you do not believe in the passion
+itself!” Then with a sudden remembrance of the notable if somewhat
+indolent loveliness of his uncle’s wife, blushed again at his unusual
+want of tact, while his eye with an involuntary impulse sought the large
+panel at their right where, in the full bloom of her first youth, the
+lady of the house smiled upon all beholders.</p>
+
+<p>“I do not believe in that passion influencing a man’s career,” his uncle
+replied with no apparent attention to the other’s embarrassment. “A
+woman needs be possessed of uncommon excellences to justify a man in
+leaving a path where success is certain, for one where it is not only
+doubtful but if attained must bring many a regret and heart-ache in its
+train. Beauty is not sufficient,” he went on with sterner and sterner
+significance, “though it were of an angelic order. There must be worth.”
+And here his mind’s eye if not that of his bodily sense, certainly
+followed the glance of his companion.</p>
+
+<p>“I believe there is worth,” the young man replied; “certainly, it is not
+her beauty that charms me. I do not even know if she <i>is</i> beautiful,” he
+continued.</p>
+
+<p>“And you believe you love!” the elder exclaimed after another short
+pause.</p>
+
+<p>There was so much of bitterness in the tone in which this was uttered,
+that Mandeville forgot its incredulity. “I think I must,” returned he
+with a certain masculine naïveté not out of keeping with his general
+style of face and manner, “else I should not be here. Three weeks ago I
+was satisfied with my profession, if not enthusiastic over it; to-day I
+ask nothing but to be allowed to enter upon some business that in three
+years’ time at least will place me where I can be the fit mate of any
+woman in this land, that is not worth her millions.”</p>
+
+<p>“The woman for whom you have conceived this violent attachment is, then,
+above you in social position?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, sir, or so considered, which amounts to the same thing, as far as
+I am concerned.”</p>
+
+<p>“Bertram, I have lived longer than you and have seen much of both social
+and domestic life, and I tell you no woman is worth such a sacrifice on
+the part of a man as you propose. No woman of to-day, I should say; our
+mothers were different. The very fact that this young lady of whom you
+speak, obliges you to change your whole course of life in order to
+obtain her, ought to be sufficient to prove to you—” He stopped
+suddenly, arrested by the young man’s lifted hand. “She does not oblige
+you, then?”</p>
+
+<p>“Not on her own account, sir. This lily,” lifting a vase of blossoms at
+his elbow, “could not be more innocent of the necessities that govern
+the social circle it adorns, than the pure, single-minded girl to whom I
+have dedicated what is best and noblest in my manhood. It is her
+father—”</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, her father!”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, sir,” the young man pursued, more and more astonished at the
+other’s tone. “He is a man who has a right to expect both wealth and
+position in a son-in-law. But I see I shall have to tell you my story,
+sir. It is an uncommon one and I never meant that it should pass my
+lips, but if by its relation I can win your sympathy for a pure and
+noble passion, I shall consider the sacred seal of secrecy broken in a
+good cause. But,” said he, seeing his uncle cast a short and uneasy
+glance at the door, “perhaps I am interrupting you. You expect some
+one!”</p>
+
+
+<p>“No,” said his uncle, “my wife is at church; I am ready to listen.”</p>
+
+<p>The young man gave a hurried sigh, cast one look at his companion’s
+immovable face, as if to assure himself that the narrative was
+necessary, then leaned back and in a steady business-like tone that
+softened, however, as he proceeded, began to relate as follows:</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<div class='chapter'><h3><a id="III"></a>III.</h3></div>
+
+<div class='ph4'>A MYSTERIOUS SUMMONS.</div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Without unspotted, innocent within,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">She feared no danger, for she knew no sin.”—<span class="smcap">Dryden.</span><br></span>
+</div></div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+
+<p>It was after a matinĂ©e performance at —— Hall some two weeks ago that
+I stopped to light a cigar in the small corridor leading to the back
+entrance. I was in a dissatisfied frame of mind. Something in the music
+I had been playing or the manner in which it had been received had
+touched unwonted chords in my own nature. I felt alone. I remember
+asking myself as I stood there, what it all amounted to? Who of all the
+applauding crowd would watch at my bedside through a long and harassing
+sickness, or lend their sympathy as they now yielded their praise, if
+instead of carrying off the honors of the day I had failed to do justice
+to my reputation. I was just smiling over the only exception I could
+make to this sweeping assertion, that of the pale-eyed youth you have
+sometimes observed dogging my steps, when Briggs came up to me.</p>
+
+<p>“There is a woman here, sir, who insists on seeing you; she has been
+waiting through half the last piece. Shall I tell her you are coming
+out?”</p>
+
+<p>“A woman!” exclaimed I, somewhat surprised, for my visitors are not apt
+to be of the gentler sex.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes sir, an old one. She seems very anxious to speak to you. I could
+not get rid of her no how.”</p>
+
+<p>I hurried forward to the muffled figure which he pointed out cowering
+against the wall by the door. “Well, my good woman, what do you want?” I
+asked, bending towards her in the hopes of catching a glimpse of the
+face she held partly concealed from me.</p>
+
+<p>“Are you Mr. Mandeville?” she inquired in a tone shaken as much by
+agitation as age.</p>
+
+<p>I bowed.</p>
+
+<p>“The one who plays upon the piano?”</p>
+
+<p>“The very same,” I declared.</p>
+
+<p>“You are not deceiving me,” she went on, looking up with a marked
+anxiety plainly visible through her veil. “I haven’t seen you play and
+couldn’t contradict you, but—”</p>
+
+<p>“Here!” said I calling to Briggs with a kindly look at the old woman,
+“help me on with my coat, will you?”</p>
+
+<p>The “Certainly, Mr. Mandeville,” with which he complied seemed to
+reassure her, and as soon as the coat was on and he was gone, she
+grasped me by the arm and drew my ear down to her mouth.</p>
+
+<p>“If you are Mr. Mandeville, I have a message for you. This letter,”
+slipping one into my hand, “is from a young lady, sir. She bade me give
+it to you myself. She is young and pretty,” she pursued as she saw me
+make a movement of distaste, “and a lady. We depend upon your honor,
+sir.”</p>
+
+<p>I acknowledge that my first impulse was to fling her back the note and
+leave the building; I was in no mood for trifling, my next to burst into
+a laugh and politely hand her to the door, my last and best, to open the
+poor little note and see for myself whether the writer was a lady or
+not. Proceeding to the door, for it was already twilight in the dim
+passage way, I tore open the envelope which was dainty enough and took
+out a sheet of closely written paper. A certain qualm of conscience
+assailed me as I saw the delicate chirography it disclosed and I was
+tempted to thrust it back and return it unread to the old woman now
+trembling in the corner. But curiosity overcame my scruples, and hastily
+unfolding the sheet I read these lines:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>“I do not know if what I do is right; I am sure aunty would not
+say it was; but aunty never thinks anything is right but going
+to church and reading the papers to papa. I am just a little
+girl who has heard you play, and who would think the world was
+too beautiful, if she could hear you say to her just once, some
+of the kind things you must speak every day to the persons who
+know you. I do not expect very much—you must have a great many
+friends, and you would not care for me—but the least little
+look, if it were all my own, would make me so happy and so
+proud I should not envy anybody in the world, unless it was
+some of those dear friends who see you always.</p>
+
+<p>“I do not come and hear you play often, for aunty thinks music
+frivolous, but I am always hearing you no matter where I am,
+and it makes me feel as if I were far away from everybody, in a
+beautiful land all sunshine and flowers. But nurse says I must
+not write so much or you will not read it, so I will stop here.
+But if you <i>would</i> come it would make some one happier than
+even your beautiful music could do.”</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>That was all; there was neither name nor date. A child’s epistle,
+written with a woman’s circumspection. With mingled sensations of doubt
+and curiosity I turned back to the old woman who stood awaiting me with
+eager anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>“Was this written by a child or woman?” I asked, meeting her eye with as
+much sternness as I could assume.</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t ask me—don’t ask me anything. I have promised to bring you if I
+could, but I cannot answer any questions.”</p>
+
+<p>I stepped back with an incredulous laugh. Here was evidently an
+adventure. “You will at least tell me where the young miss lives,” said
+I, “before I undertake to fulfil her request.”</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head. “I have a carriage at the door, sir,” said she. “All
+you have got to do is to get into it with me and we shall soon be at the
+house.”</p>
+
+<p>I looked from her face to the letter in my hand, and knew not what to
+think. The spirit of simplicity and ingenuousness that marked the latter
+was scarcely in keeping with this air of mystery. The woman observing my
+hesitation moved towards the door.</p>
+
+<p>“Will you come, sir?” she inquired. “You will not regret it. Just a
+moment’s talk with a pretty young girl—surely—”</p>
+
+<p>“Hush,” said I, hearing a hasty step behind me. And sure enough just
+then my intimate friend Selby came along and grasping me by the arm
+began dragging me towards the door. “You are my property,” said he.
+“I’ve promised, on my word of honor as a gentleman and a musician, to
+bring you to the Handel Club this afternoon. I was afraid you had
+escaped me, but—” Here he caught sight of the small black figure
+halting in the door-way, and paused.</p>
+
+<p>“Who’s this?” said he.</p>
+
+<p>I hesitated. For one instant the scale of my whole future destiny hung
+trembling in the balance, then the demon of curiosity got the better of
+my judgment, and with the rather unworthy consideration that I might as
+well enjoy my youth while I could, I released myself from my friend’s
+detaining hand and replied, “Some one with whom I have very particular
+business. I cannot go to the Handel Club to-day,” and darting out
+without further delay, I rejoined the old woman on the sidewalk.</p>
+
+<p>Without a word she drew me towards a carriage I now observed standing by
+the curbstone a few feet to the left. As I got in I remember pausing a
+moment to glance at the man on the box, but it was too dark for me to
+perceive anything but the fact that he was dressed in livery. More and
+more astonished I leaned back in my seat and endeavored to open
+conversation with my mysterious companion. But it did not work. Without
+being actually rude, she parried my questions in such a way that by the
+end of five minutes I found myself as far from any knowledge of the real
+situation of the case as when I started. I therefore desisted from any
+further attempts and turned to look out, when I made a discovery that
+for the first time awoke some vague feelings of alarm within my breast.
+This was, that the window was not covered by a curtain as I supposed,
+but by closed blinds which when I tried to raise them resisted all my
+efforts to do so.</p>
+
+<p>“It is very close here,” I muttered, in some sort of excuse for this
+display of uneasiness. “Cannot you give us a little air?” But my
+companion remained silent, and I felt ashamed to press the matter though
+I took advantage of the darkness to remove to a safer place a roll of
+money which I had about me.</p>
+
+<p>Yet I was far from being really anxious, and did not once meditate
+backing out of an adventure that was at once so piquant and romantic.
+For by this time I became conscious from the sounds about me that we had
+left the side street for one of the avenues and were then proceeding
+rapidly up town. Listening, I heard the roll of omnibuses and the jingle
+of car-bells, which informed me that we were in Broadway, no other
+avenue in the city being traversed by both these methods of conveyance.
+But after awhile the jingle ceased and presently the livelier sounds of
+constant commotion inseparable from a business thoroughfare, and we
+entered what I took to be Madison Avenue at Twenty-third Street.</p>
+
+<p>Instantly I made up mind to notice every turn of the carriage, that I
+might fix to some degree the locality towards which we were tending. But
+it turned but once and that after a distance of steady travelling that
+quite overthrew any calculation I was able to make at that time of the
+probable number of streets we had passed since entering the avenue.
+Having turned, it went but about half a block to the left when it
+stopped. “I shall see where I am when I get out,” thought I; but in this
+I was mistaken.</p>
+
+<p>First we had stopped in the middle of a block of houses built, as far as
+I could judge, all after one model. Next the fact of the front door
+being open, though I saw no one in the hall, somewhat disconcerted me,
+and I hurried across the sidewalk and up the stoop in a species of maze
+hardly to be expected from one of my naturally careless disposition. The
+next moment the door closed behind me and I found myself in a
+well-lighted hall whose quiet richness betokened it as belonging to a
+private dwelling of no mean pretensions to elegance.</p>
+
+<p>This was the first surprise I received.</p>
+
+<p>“Follow me,” said the old woman, hurrying me down the hall and into a
+small room at the end. “The young lady will be here in a moment,” and
+without lifting her veil or affording me the least glimpse of her
+features, she retired, leaving me to face the situation before me as
+best I might.</p>
+
+<p>It was anything but a pleasant one as it appeared to me at that moment,
+and for an instant I seriously thought of retracing my steps and leaving
+a domicile into which I had been introduced in such a mysterious manner.
+Then the quiet aspect of the room, which though sparsely furnished with
+a piano and chairs was still of an order rarely seen out of gentlemen’s
+houses, struck my imagination and reawakened my curiosity, and nerving
+myself to meet whatever interview might be accorded me, I waited. It was
+only five minutes by the small clock ticking on the mantel-piece, but it
+seemed an hour before I heard a timid step at the door, and saw it swing
+slowly open, disclosing—well, I did not stop to inquire whether it was
+a child or a woman. I merely saw the shrinking modest form, the eager
+blushing face, and bowed almost to the ground in a sudden reverence for
+the sublime innocence revealed to me. Yes, it did not take a second look
+to read that tender countenance to its last guileless page. Had she been
+a woman of twenty-five I could not have mistaken her expression of pure
+delight and timid interest, but she was only sixteen, as I afterwards
+learned, and younger in experience than in age.</p>
+
+<p>Closing the door behind her, she stood for a moment without speaking,
+then with a deepening of the blush which was only a child’s
+embarrassment in the presence of a stranger, looked up and murmured my
+name with a word or so of grateful acknowledgment that would have called
+forth a smile on my lips if I had not been startled by the sudden change
+that passed over her features when she met my eyes. Was it that I showed
+my surprise too plainly, or did my admiration manifest itself in my
+gaze? an admiration great as it was humble, and which was already of a
+nature such as I had never before given to girl or woman. Whatever it
+was, she no sooner met my look than she paused, trembled, and started
+back with a confused murmur, through which I plainly heard her whisper
+in a low distressed tone, “Oh, what have I done!”</p>
+
+<p>“Called a good friend to your side,” said I in the frank, brotherly way
+I thought most likely to reassure her. “Do not be alarmed, I am only too
+happy to meet one who evidently enjoys music so well.”</p>
+
+<p>But the hidden chord of womanhood had been struck in the child’s soul,
+and she could not recover herself. For an instant I thought she would
+turn and flee, and struck as I was with remorse at my reckless invasion
+of this uncontaminated temple, I could not but admire the spirited
+picture she presented as, with form half turned and face bent back, she
+stood hesitating on the point of flight.</p>
+
+<p>I did not try to stop her. “She shall follow her own impulse,” said I to
+myself, but I felt a vague relief that was deeper than I imagined, when
+she suddenly relinquished her strained attitude, and advancing a step or
+so began to murmur:</p>
+
+<p>“I did not know—I did not realize I was doing what was so very wrong.
+Young ladies do not ask gentlemen to come and see them, no matter how
+much they desire to make their acquaintance. I see it now; I did not
+before. Will you—can you forgive me?”</p>
+
+<p>I smiled; I could not help it. I could have taken her to my heart and
+soothed her as I would a child, but the pallor of womanhood, which had
+replaced the blush of the child, awed me and made my own words come
+hesitatingly.</p>
+
+<p>“Forgive you? You must forgive me! It was as wrong for me,” I went on
+with a wild idea of not mincing matters with this pure soul, “to obey
+your innocent request, as it was for you to make it. I am a man of the
+world and know its <i>convenances</i>; you are very young.”</p>
+
+<p>“I am sixteen,” she murmured.</p>
+
+<p>The abrupt little confession, implying as it did her determination not
+to accept any palliation of her conduct which it did not deserve,
+touched me strangely. “But very young for that,” I exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>“So aunty says, but no one can ever say it any more,” she answered. Then
+with a sudden gush, “We shall never see each other again, and you must
+forget the motherless girl who has met you in a way for which she must
+blush through life. It is no excuse,” she pursued hurriedly, “that nurse
+thought it was all right. She always approves of everything I do or want
+to do, especially if it is anything aunt would be likely to forbid. I
+have been spoiled by nurse.”</p>
+
+<p>“Was nurse the woman who came for me?” I asked.</p>
+
+<p>She nodded her head with a quick little motion inexpressibly charming.
+“Yes, that was nurse. She said she would do it all, I need only write
+the note. She meant to give me a pleasure, but she did wrong.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” thought I, “how wrong you little know or realize.” But I only
+said, “You must be guided by some one with more knowledge of the world
+after this. Not,” I made haste to add, struck by the misery in her child
+eyes, “that any harm has been done. You could not have appealed to the
+friendship of any one who would hold you in greater respect than I.
+Whether we meet again or not, my memory of you shall be sweet and
+sacred, I promise you that.”</p>
+
+<p>But she threw out her hand with a quick gesture. “No, do not remember
+me. My only happiness will lie in the thought you have forgotten.” And
+the last remnants of the child soul vanished in that hurried utterance.
+“You must go now,” she continued more calmly. “The carriage that brought
+you is at the door; I must ask you to take it back to your home.”</p>
+
+<p>“But,” I exclaimed with a wild and unbearable sense of sudden loss as
+she laid her hand on the knob of the door, “are we to part like this?
+Will you not at least trust me with your name before I go?”</p>
+
+<p>Her hand dropped from the knob as if it had been hot steel, and she
+turned towards me with a slow yearning motion that whatever it betokened
+set my heart beating violently. “You do not know it, then?” she
+inquired.</p>
+
+<p>“I know nothing but what this little note contains,” I replied, drawing
+her letter from my pocket.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, that letter! I must have it,” she murmured; then, as I stepped
+towards her, drew back and pointing to the table said, “Lay it there,
+please.”</p>
+
+<p>I did so, whereupon something like a smile crossed her lips and I
+thought she was going to reward me with her name, but she only said, “I
+thank you; now you know nothing;” and almost before I realized it she
+had opened the door and stepped into the hall.</p>
+
+<p>As I made haste to follow her, the sound of a low, “He is a gentleman,
+he will ask no questions,” struck my ear, and looking up, I saw her just
+leaving the side of the old nurse who stood evidently awaiting me half
+down the hall. Bowing with formal ceremony, I passed her by and
+proceeded to the front door. As I did so I caught one glimpse of her
+face. It had escaped from all restraint and the expression of the eyes
+was overpowering. I subdued a wild impulse to leap back to her side, and
+stepped at once over the threshold. The nurse joined me, and together we
+went down the stoop to the street.</p>
+
+<p>“May I inquire where you wish to be taken?” she asked.</p>
+
+<p>I told her, and she gave the order to the coachman, together with a few
+words I did not hear; then stepping back she waited for me to get in.
+There was no help for it. I gave one quick look behind me, saw the front
+door close, realized how impossible it would ever be for me to recognize
+the house again, and placed my foot on the carriage step. Suddenly a
+bright idea struck me, and hastily dropping my cane I stepped back to
+pick it up. As I did so I pulled out a bit of crayon I chanced to have
+in my pocket, and as I stooped, chalked a small cross on the curbstone
+directly in front of the house, after which I recovered my cane, uttered
+some murmured word of apology, jumped into the carriage and was about to
+shut the door, when the old nurse stepped in after me and quietly closed
+it herself. By the pang that shot through my breast as the carriage
+wheels left the house, I knew that for the first time in my life, I
+<i>loved</i>.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<div class='chapter'><h3><a id="IV"></a>IV.</h3></div>
+
+<div class='ph4'>SEARCHINGS.</div>
+
+<blockquote><p>“Patience, and shuffle the cards.”—<span class="smcap">Cervantes.</span></p></blockquote>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<p>If I had expected anything from the presence in the carriage of the
+woman who had arranged this interview, I was doomed to disappointment.
+Reticent before, she was absolutely silent now, sitting at my side like
+a grim statue or a frozen image of watchfulness, ready to awake and stop
+me if I offered to open the door or make any other move indicative of a
+determination to know where I was, or in what direction I was going.
+That her young mistress in the momentary conversation they had held
+before our departure had succeeded in giving her some idea of the shame
+with which she had felt herself overwhelmed and her present natural
+desire for secrecy, I do not doubt, but I think now, as I thought then,
+that the unusual precautions taken both at that time and before, to keep
+me in ignorance of the young lady’s identity, were due to the elderly
+woman’s own consciousness of the peril she had invoked in yielding to
+the wishes of her young and thoughtless mistress; a theory which, if
+true, argues more for the mind than the conscience of this mysterious
+woman. However, it is with facts we have to deal, and you will be more
+interested in learning what I did, than what I thought during that short
+ride in perfect darkness.</p>
+
+<p>The mark which I had left on the curbstone behind me sufficiently showed
+the nature of my resolve, and when we made the first turn at the end of
+the block I leaned back in my seat and laying my finger on my wrist,
+began to count the pulsations of my blood. It was the only device that
+suggested itself, by which I might afterward gather some approximate
+notion of the distance we travelled in a straight course down town. I
+had just arrived at the number seven hundred and sixty-two, and was
+inwardly congratulating myself upon this new method of reckoning
+distance, when the wheels gave a lurch and we passed over a car track.
+Instantly all my fine calculations fell to the ground. We were not in
+Madison Avenue, as I supposed; could not be, since no track crosses that
+avenue below Fifty-ninth Street, and we were proceeding on as we could
+not have done had we gained the terminus of the avenue at Twenty-third
+Street. Could it be that the carriage had not been turned around while I
+was in the house, and that we had come back by way of Fifth Avenue? I
+could not remember—in fact, the more I tried to think which way the
+horses’ heads were directed when we went into the house, the more I was
+confused. But presently I considered that wherever we were, we certainly
+had not passed over the narrow strip of smooth pavement in front of the
+Worth monument, and therefore could not have reached Twenty-third Street
+by way of Fifth Avenue. We must be up town, and that track we crossed
+must have been at Fifty-ninth Street. And soon, as if to assure me of
+this, we took a turn, quickly followed at a block’s length by another,
+after which I had no difficulty in recognizing the smooth pavement of
+the entrance to the Park or the roll down Fifth Avenue afterwards. “They
+have thought to confuse me by an extra mile or so of travel,” thought I,
+with some complacency, “but the streets of New York are too simply laid
+out to lend themselves to any such easy mode of mystification.” Yet I
+have thought since then how, with a smarter man on the box, the affair
+might have been conducted so as to have baffled the oldest citizen in
+any attempt at calculation.</p>
+
+<p>When we stopped in front of the Albemarle I quietly thanked the woman
+who had conducted me, and stepped to the ground. Instantly the door shut
+behind me, the carriage drove off, and I was left standing there like a
+man suddenly awakened from a dream.</p>
+
+<p>Entering my hotel, I ordered supper, thinking that the very practical
+occupation of eating would serve to divert my mind into its ordinary
+channels. But the dream, if dream it was, had made too vivid an
+impression to be shaken off so easily. It followed me to the hall in the
+evening and mingled with every chord I struck.</p>
+
+<p>I could scarcely sleep that night for thinking of the sweet child’s face
+that had blossomed into a woman’s before my eyes, and what a woman! With
+the first hint of daylight I rose, and as soon as it was in any degree
+suitable to be out, hired a cab and proceeded to the corner of
+Fifty-ninth Street and Madison Avenue, where, according to my
+calculations of the evening before, we had crossed the car track which
+had first interrupted me in that very original method of computing
+distance of which I have already spoken, a method by the way, which you
+must acknowledge is an improvement on the boy’s plan of finding his way
+back from the woods by means of the bread-crumbs he had scattered behind
+him, forgetting that the birds would eat up his crumbs and leave him
+without a clew. Bidding the driver proceed at the ordinary jog trot down
+the avenue, I laid my finger on my wrist, and counted each throb of my
+pulse till I had reached the magical number seven hundred and sixty-two.
+Then putting my head out of the window, I bade him stop. We were in the
+middle of a block, but that did not disconcert me. I had not expected to
+gain more than an approximate idea of the spot where we had first turned
+into the avenue, it being impossible to regulate the horses’ pace so as
+to tally with that taken by the span of the night before, even if the
+pulsations in my wrist were to be absolutely relied upon. Noting the
+streets between which we had paused, I bade the driver to turn down one
+and come back by the other, occupying myself in the meanwhile, in
+searching the curbstone for the small mark I had left in front of her
+door the night before. But though we drove slowly and I searched
+carefully, not a trace did I perceive of that tell-tale sign, and
+forsaking those two streets, I ordered my obedient Jehu to try the two
+outlying ones below and above. He did so, and I again consulted the
+curbstone, but with no better success. No mark or remnants of a mark was
+to be found anywhere. Nor, though we travelled through three or four
+other streets in the same way, did we come upon any clew liable to
+assist me in my search. Clean discouraged and somewhat out of temper
+with myself for my pusillanimity of the evening before in not having
+braved the anger of my companion by opening the carriage door at the
+first corner and leaping out, I commanded to be taken back to the hotel,
+where for a whole miserable day I racked my brain with devices for
+acquiring the knowledge I so much desired. The result was futile, as you
+may imagine; nor will I stop to recount the various expedients to which
+I afterwards resorted in my vain attempt to solve the mystery of this
+young girl’s identity.</p>
+
+<p>Enough that they all failed, even the very promising one of searching
+the various photographic establishments of the city, for the valuable
+clew which her picture would give me. And so a week passed.</p>
+
+<p>“It is time this mad infatuation was at an end,” said I to myself one
+morning as I sat down to write a letter. “There is no hope of my ever
+seeing her again, and I am but frittering away the best emotions of my
+life in thus indulging in a dream that is not the prelude to a reality.”
+But in spite of the wise determination thus made, I soon found my
+thoughts recurring to their old channel, and seized with sudden
+impatience at my evident weakness, took up the letter I had been writing
+and was about to read it, when to my great amazement I perceived that
+instead of inditing the usual words of a business communication, I had
+been engaged in scribbling a certain number up and down the page and
+even across the bottom where my signature should have been.</p>
+
+<p>“Am I a fool?” I exclaimed, and was about to tear the sheet in two, when
+glancing again at the number, which was a simple thirty-six, I asked
+myself where I had got those especial figures. Instantly there arose
+before my mind’s eye the vision of a brown-stone front with its
+vestibule and door. It was, then, the number of a house; but what house?
+a <i>chateau en Espagne</i> or a <i>bona fide</i> New York dwelling, which for
+some reason had unconsciously impressed itself upon my memory? I could
+not answer. There on the page was the number thirty-six, and equally
+plain in my mind was the look of the brown-stone front to which that
+number belonged—and that was all.</p>
+
+<p>But it was enough to awaken within me the spirit of inquiry. The few
+houses thus numbered in that quarter of the city where I had lately
+been, were not so hard to find but that a morning given to the business
+ought to satisfy me whether the vision in my mind had its basis in
+reality. Taking a cab, I rode up town and into that region of streets I
+had traversed so carefully a week before. For I was assured that if the
+impression had been made by an actual dwelling it had been done at that
+time. Following the same course I then took, I consulted the appearance
+of the various houses to which that number was assigned. The first was
+built of brick; that was not it. The next one had pillars to the
+vestibule; and that was not it. The third, to use an Irish bull, was no
+house at all, but a stable, while the fourth was an elegant structure of
+much more pretension than the plain and simple front I had in my mind or
+memory. I was about to utter a curse upon my folly and go home, when I
+remembered there was yet a street or two taken in my zig-zag course of
+the week before, which I had not yet tested. “Might as well be
+thorough,” I muttered, and bade my driver proceed down —— Street.</p>
+
+<p>What was there in its aspect that dimly excited me at the first glance?
+A dim remembrance, a certain ghostly assurance that we had reached the
+right spot? As we neared the number I sought, I could not suppress an
+exclamation of surprise. For there before me to its last detail, stood
+the house which involuntarily presented itself to my mind, when my eye
+first fell upon that mysterious number scribbled at the foot of the page
+I was writing.</p>
+
+<p>It was, then, no chimera of an overwrought brain, this vision of a
+house-front which had been haunting me, but a distinct remembrance of an
+actual dwelling seen by me in my former journey through this street. But
+why this house-front above all others; what was there in it to make such
+an impression? Looking at it I could not determine, but after we had
+passed, something, I cannot tell what, brought back another remembrance,
+trivial in itself, but yet a link in the chain that was destined sooner
+or later to lead me out of the maze into which I had stumbled. It was
+merely this; that as I rode along the streets on that memorable morning,
+searching for that mark on the curbstone from which I hoped so much, I
+had come upon a spot where the pavement had been freshly washed. With
+that unconscious action of the brain with which we are familiar, I
+looked at the sidewalk a moment, running even then with the water that
+had been cast upon it, and then gave a quick glance at the house. That
+glance, account for it as you will, took in the picture before it as the
+camera catches the impression of a likeness, and though in another
+instant I had forgotten the whole occurrence, it needed but a certain
+train of thought or perhaps a certain state of emotion to revive it
+again.</p>
+
+<p>A noble cause for such an act of unconscious cerebration you will say, a
+freshly washed pavement: <i>Le jeu ne faut pas la chandelle.</i> And so I
+thought too, or would have thought if I had not been so interested in
+the pursuit in which I was engaged, and if the idea had not suggested
+itself that water and a broom might obliterate chalk-marks from
+curbstones, and that the imps that preside over our mental forces would
+not indulge in such a trick at my expense unless the play <i>was</i> worth
+the candle. At all events, from the moment I made this discovery, I
+fixed my faith on that house as the one which held the object of my
+search, and though I contented myself with merely noting the number of
+the street as we left it, I none the less determined to pursue my
+investigations, till I had learned beyond the possibility of a doubt
+whether my conjectures were not true.</p>
+
+<p>A perseverance worthy of a better cause you will say, but you are no
+longer twenty-five and under the influence of your first passion. I own
+I was astonished at myself and frequently paused in the pursuit I had
+undertaken, to ask if I were the same person who but a fortnight before
+laughed at the story of a man who had gone mad over the body of an
+unknown woman he had saved from a wreck only to find her dead in his
+arms.</p>
+
+<p>The first thing I did was to ascertain the name of the gentleman
+occupying the house I have specified. It was that of one of our
+wealthiest and most respectable bankers, a name as well known in the
+city—as your own for instance. This was somewhat disconcerting, but
+with a dogged resolution somewhat foreign to my natural disposition, I
+persevered in my investigations, and learning in the next breath that
+the gentleman alluded to was a widower with an only child, a young
+daughter of about sixteen or so, recovered my assurance, though not my
+equanimity. Seeking out my friend Farrar, who as you know is a walking
+gazette of New York society, I broached the subject of Mr.—excuse me
+if I do not mention his name; allow me to say, Preston’s domestic
+affairs, and learned that Miss Preston, “A naive little piece for so
+great an heiress,” I remember Farrar called her, had left town within a
+day or two for a visit to some friends in Baltimore. “I happen to know,”
+said he with that careless sweep of his hand at which you have so often
+laughed, “because my friend Miss Forsyth met her at the depot. She was
+intending to be gone—two weeks, I think she said. Do you know her?”</p>
+
+<p>That last question sprung upon me unawares, and I am afraid I blushed.
+“No,” I returned, “I have not that honor but an acquaintance of mine
+has—well—has met her and—”</p>
+
+<p>“I see, I see,” broke in Farrar with his most disagreeable smile. Then
+with a short laugh, meant to act as a warning, I suppose, added as he
+walked off, “I hope your friend is in fair circumstances and not
+connected with the fine arts. Music is Mr. Preston’s detestation, while
+Miss Preston though too young to be much sought after yet, will in two
+years’ time have the pick of the city at her command.”</p>
+
+<p>“So!” thought I to myself; “my little innocent charmer is an embryo
+aristocrat, eh? Well then, I was a greater fool than I imagined.” And I
+walked out of the hotel where I had met Farrar, with the very sensible
+conclusion to drop a subject that promised nothing but disappointment.</p>
+
+<p>But the fates were against me, or the good angels perhaps, and at the
+next comer I met an old acquaintance, the very opposite of Farrar in
+character, who with a long love story of his own fired, my imagination
+to such an extent that in spite of myself I turned down —— Street, and
+was proceeding to pass her house, when suddenly the thought struck me,
+“How do I know that this unapproachable daughter of one of our most
+prominent citizens is one and the same person with my dainty little
+charmer? Widowers with young daughters are not so rare in this great
+city that I need consider the question as decided, because by a half
+superstitious freak of my own I have settled upon this house as the one
+I was in the other night. My inamorata may be the offspring of a
+musician for all I know.” And inflamed at the thought of this
+possibility—I remembered the piano, you see—I gave to the winds all my
+fine resolutions and only asked how I could determine for once and all,
+whether I had ever crossed the threshold of the house before me. Some
+men would have run up the stoop, rung the bell and asked to see Mr.
+Preston on some pretended business he could easily conjure up to suit
+the occasion, but my face is too well known for me to risk any such
+attempt, besides I was too anxious to win the confidence of the young
+girl to shock her awakened sense of propriety by seeming to seek her
+where she did not wish to be found. And yet I must enter that house and
+see for myself if it was the one that held her on that memorable
+evening.</p>
+
+<p>Pondering the question, I looked back at the door so obstinately closed
+against my curiosity, when to my satisfaction and delight it suddenly
+opened and a man stepped out, whom I instantly recognized as a business
+agent for one of the largest piano-forte manufactories in the city. “The
+heavens smile upon my enterprise,” thought I, and waited for the man to
+come up with me. He was not only a friend of mine but largely indebted
+to me in various ways, so that I knew I had only to urge a request for
+it to be immediately granted, and that, too, without any questions or
+gossip.</p>
+
+<p>You will not be interested in anything but the result, which was
+somewhat out of the usual course, and may therefore shock you. But you
+must remember that I am telling you of matters which young men usually
+keep to themselves, and that whatever I did, was accomplished in a
+spirit of respect only a shade less constraining in its power than the
+love that was at once my impelling force, and my constant embarrassment.</p>
+
+<p>To come, then, to the point, a piano was to be set up in that house on
+that very day, Mr. Preston having yielded to the solicitations of his
+daughter for a new instrument. My friend was to be engaged in the
+transfer, and at my solicitation for leave to assist in the operation,
+gave his consent in perfect confidence as to my possessing good and
+sufficient reasons for such a remarkable request, and appointed the hour
+at which I was to meet him at the ware-rooms.</p>
+
+<p>Behold me, then, at half-past two that afternoon, assisting with my own
+hands in carrying a piano up the stoop of that house which, four hours
+before, I had regarded as unapproachable. Dressed in a workman’s blouse
+and with my hair well roughened under a rude cap that effectually
+disguised me, I advanced with but little fear of detection. And yet no
+sooner had I entered the house and seen at a glance that the aspect of
+the hall coincided with my rather vague remembrance of that through
+which I had been ushered a week before, than I was struck by a sudden
+sense of my situation, and experiencing that uncomfortable consciousness
+of self-betrayal, which a blush always gives a man, stumbled forward
+under my heavy burden, feeling as if a thousand eyes were fixed upon me
+and my cherished secret, instead of the two sharp but totally
+unsuspicious orbs of the elderly matron that surveyed us from the top of
+the banisters. “Be careful there, you’ll knock a hole through that glass
+door!” though a natural cry under the circumstances, struck on my ears
+with the force and mysterious power of a secret warning, and when after
+a moment of blind advance I suddenly lifted my eyes and found myself in
+the little room, which like a silhouette on a white ground, stood out in
+my memory in distinct detail as the spot where I had first heard my own
+heart beat, I own that I felt my hands slipping from my burden, and in
+another moment had disgraced my character of a workman if I had not
+caught the sudden ring of a well known voice in the hall, as nurse
+answered from above some question propounded by the elderly lady with
+the piercing eyes. As it was, I recovered myself and went through my
+duties as promptly and deftly as if my heart did not throb with memories
+that each passing hour and event only served to hallow to my
+imagination.</p>
+
+<p>At length the piano was duly set up and we turned to leave. Will you
+think I am too trivial in my details if I tell you that I lingered
+behind the rest and for an instant let my hand with all its
+possibilities for calling out a soul from that dead instrument, lie a
+moment on the keys over which her dainty fingers were so soon to
+traverse?</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<div class='chapter'><h3><a id="V"></a>V.</h3></div>
+
+<div class='ph4'>THE RUBICON.</div>
+
+<blockquote><p>“I’ll stake my life upon her faith.”—<span class="smcap">Othello.</span></p></blockquote>
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+
+<p>Once convinced of the identity of my sweet young friend with the Miss
+Preston at whose feet a two year hence, the wealth and aristocracy of
+New York would be kneeling, I drew back from further effort as having
+received a damper to my presumptuous hopes that would soon effectually
+stifle them. Everything I heard about the family—and it seemed as if
+suddenly each chance acquaintance that I met had something to say about
+Mr. Preston either as a banker or a man, only served to confirm me in
+this view. “He is a money worshipper,” said one. “The bluest of blue
+Presbyterians,” declared another. “The enemy of presumption and anything
+that looks like an overweening confidence in one’s own worth or
+capabilities,” remarked a third. “A man who would beggar himself to save
+the honor of a corporation with which he was concerned,” observed a
+fourth “but who would not invite to his table the most influential man
+connected with it if that man was unable to trace his family back to the
+old Dutch settlers to which Mr. Preston’s own ancestors belonged.”</p>
+
+<p>This latter statement I have no doubt was exaggerated for I myself have
+seen him at dinners where half the gentlemen who lifted the wine glass
+were self-made in every sense of the term. But it showed the bent of his
+mind and it was a bent that left me entirely out of the sweep of his
+acquaintanceship much less that of his exquisite daughter, the pride of
+his soul if not the jewel of his heart.</p>
+
+<p>But when will a man who has seen or who flatters himself that he has
+seen in the eyes of the woman he admires, the least spark of that fire
+which is consuming his own soul, pause at an obstacle which after all
+has its basis simply in circumstances of position or will. By the time
+the two weeks of her expected absence had expired, I had settled it in
+my own mind that I would see her again and if I found the passing
+caprice of a child was likely to blossom into the steady regard of a
+woman, risk all in the attempt to win by honorable endeavor and
+persistence this bud of loveliness for my future wife.</p>
+
+<p>How I finally succeeded by means of my friend Farrar in being one
+evening invited to the same house as Miss Preston it is not necessary to
+state. You will believe me it was done with the utmost regard for her
+feelings and in a way that deceived Farrar himself, who if he is the
+most prying is certainly the most volatile of men. In a crowded parlor,
+then, in the midst of the flash of diamonds and the flutter of fans Miss
+Preston and I again met. When I first saw her she was engaged in
+conversation with some young companion, and I had the pleasure of
+watching for a few minutes, unobserved, the play of her ingenuous
+countenance, as she talked with her friend, or sat silently watching the
+brilliant array before her. I found her like and yet unlike the vision
+of my dreams. More blithesome in her appearance, as was not strange
+considering her party attire and the lustre of the chandelier under
+which she sat, there was still that indescribable something in her
+expression which more than the flash of her eye or the curve of her lip,
+though both were lovely to me, made her face the one woman’s face in the
+world for me; a charm which circumstances might alter, or suffering
+impair, but of which nothing save death could ever completely divest her
+and not death either, for it was the seal of her individuality, and that
+she would take with her into the skies.</p>
+
+<p>“If I might but advance and sit down by her side without a word of
+explanation or the interference of conventionalities how happy I should
+be,” thought I. But I knew that would not do, so I contented myself with
+my secret watch over her movements, longing for and yet dreading the
+advance of my hostess, with its inevitable introduction. Suddenly the
+piano was touched in a distant room and not till I saw the quick change
+in her face, a change hard to explain, did I recognize the selection as
+one I was in the habit of playing. <i>She</i> had not forgotten at least, and
+thrilled by the thought and the remembrance of that surge of color which
+had swept like a flood over her cheek, I turned away, feeling as if I
+were looking on what it was for no man’s eyes to see, least of all mine.</p>
+
+<p>My hostess’ voice arrested me and next moment I was bowing to the ground
+before Miss Preston.</p>
+
+<p>I am not a boy; nor have I been without my experiences: life with its
+vicissitudes has taught me many a lesson, subjected me to many a trial,
+yet in all my career have I never known a harder moment than when I
+raised my eyes to meet hers after that lowly obeisance. That she would
+be indignant I knew, that she might even misinterpret my motives and
+probably withdraw without giving me an opportunity to speak, I felt to
+be only too probable, but that she would betray an agitation so painful
+I had not anticipated, and for an instant I felt that I had hazarded my
+life’s happiness on a cast that was going against me. But the necessity
+of saving her from remark speedily restored me to myself, and following
+the line of conduct I had previously laid out, I addressed her with the
+reserve of a stranger, and neither by word, look or manner conveyed to
+her a suggestion that we had ever met or spoken to each other before.
+She seemed to appreciate my consideration and though she was as yet too
+much unused to the ways of the world to completely hide her
+perturbation, she gradually regained a semblance of self-possession, and
+ere long was enabled to return short answers to my remarks, though her
+eyes remained studiously turned aside and never so much as ventured to
+raise themselves to the passing throng much less to my face, half turned
+away also.</p>
+
+<p>Presently however a change passed over her. Pressing her two little
+hands together, she drew back a step or two, speaking my name with a
+certain tone of command. Struck with apprehension, I knew not why, I
+followed her. Instantly like one repeating a lesson she spoke.</p>
+
+<p>“It is very good in you to talk to me as though we were the strangers
+that people believe us. I appreciate it and thank you very much. But it
+is not being just true; that is I feel as if I were not being just true,
+and as we can never be friends, would it not be better for us not to
+meet in this way any more?”</p>
+
+<p>“And why,” I gently asked, with a sense of struggling for my life, “can
+we never be friends?”</p>
+
+<p>Her answer was a deep blush; not that timid conscious appeal of the
+blood that is beating too warmly for reply, but the quick flush of
+indignant generosity forced to do despite to its own instincts.</p>
+
+<p>“That is a question I would rather not answer,” she murmured at length.
+“Only it is so; or I should not speak in this way.”</p>
+
+<p>“But,” I ventured, resolved to know on just what foundations my
+happiness was tottering, “you will at least tell me if this harsh decree
+is owing to any offence I myself may have inadvertently given. The honor
+of your acquaintance,” I went on, determined she should know just what a
+hope she was slaying, “is much too earnestly desired, for me to wilfully
+hazard its loss by saying or doing aught that could be in any way
+displeasing to you.”</p>
+
+<p>“You have done nothing but what was generous,” said she with increasing
+womanliness of manner, “unless it was taking advantage of my being here,
+to learn my name and gain an introduction to me after I had desired you
+to forget my very existence.”</p>
+
+<p>I recoiled at that, the chord of my self-respect was touched. “It was
+not here I learned your name, Miss Preston. It has been known to me for
+two weeks. At the risk of losing by your displeasure what is already
+hazarded by your prudence, I am bound to acknowledge that from the hour
+I left your father’s house that night, I have spared no effort
+compatible with my deep respect for your feelings, to ascertain who the
+young lady was that had done me such an honor, and won from me such a
+deep regard. I had not intended to tell you this,” I added, “but your
+truth has awakened mine, and whatever the result may be, you must see me
+as I am.”</p>
+
+<p>“You are very kind,” she replied governing with growing skill the
+trembling of her voice. “The acquaintance of a girl of sixteen is not
+worth so much trouble on the part of a man like yourself.” And blushing
+with the vague apprehension of her sex in the presence of a devotion she
+rather feels than understands, she waved her trembling little hand and
+paused irresolute, seemingly anxious to terminate the interview but as
+yet too inexperienced to know how to manage a dismissal requiring so
+much tact and judgment.</p>
+
+<p>I saw, comprehended her position and hesitated. She was so young, uncle,
+her prospects in life were so bright; if I left her then, in a couple of
+weeks she would forget me. What was I that I should throw the shadow of
+manhood’s deepest emotion across the paradise of her young untrammelled
+being. But the old Adam of selfishness has his say in my soul as well as
+in that of my fellow-men, and forgetting myself enough to glance at her
+half averted face, I could not remember myself sufficiently afterwards
+to forego without a struggle, all hope of some day beholding that soft
+cheek turn in confidence at my approach.</p>
+
+<p>“Miss Preston,” said I, “the promise of the bud atones for its folded
+leaves.” Then with a fervor I did not seek to disguise, “You say we
+cannot be friends; would your decision be the same if this were our
+first meeting?”</p>
+
+<p>Again that flush of outraged feeling. “I don’t know—yes I think—I fear
+it would.”</p>
+
+<p>I strove to help her. “There is too great a difference between Bertram
+Mandeville the pianist, and the daughter of Thaddeus Preston.”</p>
+
+<p>She turned and looked me gently in the eye, she did not need to speak.
+Regret, shame, longing flashed in her steady glance.</p>
+
+<p>“Do not answer,” said I, “I understand; I am glad it is circumstances
+that stand in the way, and not any misconception on your part as to my
+motives and deep consideration for yourself. Circumstances can be
+changed.” And satisfied with having thus dropped into the fruitful soil
+of that tender breast, the seed of a future hope, I bowed with all the
+deference at my command and softly withdrew.</p>
+
+<p>But not to rest. With all the earnestness with which a man sets himself
+to decide upon the momentous question of life or death, I gave myself up
+to a night of reflection, and seated in my solitary bachelor apartment,
+debated with myself as to the resolution at which I had dimly hinted in
+my parting words to Miss Preston.</p>
+
+<p>That I am a musician by nature, my success with the the public seems to
+indicate. That by following out the line upon which I had entered I
+would attain a certain eminence in my art, I do not doubt. But uncle,
+there are two kinds of artists in this world; those that work because
+the spirit is in them and they cannot be silent if they would, and those
+that speak from a conscientious desire to make apparent to others the
+beauty that has awakened their own admiration. The first could not give
+up his art for any cause, without the sacrifice of his soul’s life; the
+latter—well the latter could and still be a man with his whole inner
+being intact. Or to speak plainer, the first has no choice, while the
+latter has, if he has a will to exert it. Now you will say, and the
+world at large, that I belong to the former class. I have risen in ten
+years from a choir boy in Trinity Church to a position in the world of
+music that insures me a full audience wherever and whenever I have a
+mind to exert my skill as a pianist. Not a man of my years has a more
+promising outlook in my profession, if you will pardon the seeming
+egotism of the remark, and yet by the ease with which I felt I could
+give it up at the first touch of a master passion, I know that I am not
+a prophet in my art but merely an interpreter, one who can speak well
+but who has never felt the descent of the burning tongue and hence not a
+sinner against my own soul if I turn aside from the way I am walking.
+The question was, then, should I make a choice? Love, as you say, seems
+at first blush too insecure a joy, if not often too trivial a one, to
+unsettle a man in his career and change the bent of his whole after
+life; especially a love born of surprise and fed by the romance of
+distance and mystery. Had I met her in ordinary intercourse, surrounded
+by her friends and without the charm cast over her by unwonted
+circumstances, and then had felt as I did now that of all women I had
+seen, she alone would ever move the deep springs of my being, it would
+be different. But with this atmosphere of romance surrounding and
+hallowing her girl’s form till it seemed almost as ethereal and
+unearthly as that of an angel’s, was I safe in risking fame or fortune
+in an attempt to acquire what in the possession might prove as bare and
+common-place as a sweep of mountain heather stripped of its sunshine.
+Curbing every erratic beat of my heart, I summoned up her image as it
+bloomed in my fancy, and surveying it with cruel eyes, asked what was
+real and what the fruit of my own imagination. The gentle eye, the
+trembling lip, the girlish form eloquent with the promise of coming
+womanhood,—were these so rare, that beside them no other woman should
+seem to glance or smile or move? And her words! what had she said, that
+any simple-minded, modest yet loving girl might not have uttered under
+the circumstances. Surely my belief in her being the one, the best and
+the dearest was a delusion, and to no delusion was I willing to
+sacrifice my art. But straight upon that conclusion came sweeping down a
+flood of counter-reasons. If not the wonder she seemed, she was at least
+a wonder to me. If I had seen her under romantic circumstances, and
+unconsciously been influenced by them, the influence had remained and
+nothing would ever rob her form of the halo thus acquired. Whether I
+ever won her to my fireside or not, she must always remain the fairy
+figure of my dreams, and being so, the gentle eye and tender lip
+acquired a value that made them what they seemed, the exponent of love
+and happiness. And lastly if love well or illy founded was an uncertain
+joy, and the passion for a woman a poor substitute for the natural
+incentive of talent or ambition, <i>this</i> love had within it the beginning
+of something deeper than joy, and in the passion thus cheaply
+characterized, dwelt a force and living fire that notwithstanding all I
+have hitherto achieved, has ever been lacking from my dreams of
+endeavor.</p>
+
+<p>As you will see, the most natural question of all did not disturb me in
+these cogitations: And that was, whether in making the sacrifice I
+proposed, I should meet with the reward I had promised myself. The
+fancies of a young girl of sixteen are not usually of a stable enough
+character to warrant a man in building upon them his whole future
+happiness, especially a young girl situated like Miss Preston in the
+midst of friends who would soon be admirers, and adulators who would
+soon be her humble slaves. But the doubt which a serious contemplation
+of this risk must have presented, was of so unnerving a character, I
+dared not admit it. <i>If</i> I made the sacrifice, I must meet with my
+reward. I would listen to no other conclusion. Besides, something in the
+young girl herself, I cannot tell what, assured me then as it assures me
+now, that whatever virtues or graces she might lack, that of fidelity to
+a noble idea was not among them; that once convinced of the purity and
+value of the flame that had been lit in her innocent breast, nothing
+short of the unworthiness of the object that had awakened it, would ever
+serve to eliminate or extinguish it. That I was not worthy but would
+make it the business of my life to become so, was certain; that she
+would mark my endeavors and bestow upon me the sympathy they deserved, I
+was equally sure. No one would ever make such a sacrifice to her love as
+I was willing to do, and consequently in no one would I find a rival.</p>
+
+<p>The morning light surprised me in the midst of the struggle, nor did I
+decide the question that day. Mr. Preston might not be as determined in
+his prejudices against musicians as my friends or even his daughter had
+imagined. I resolved to see him. Taking advantage of his connection with
+the —— Club, I procured an introducer in the shape of a highly
+respected person of his own class, and went one evening to the
+Club-rooms with the full intention of making his acquaintance if
+possible. He was already there and in conversation with some business
+associates. Procuring a seat as near him as possible, I anxiously
+surveyed his countenance. It was not a reassuring one, and studied in
+this way, had the effect of dampening any hopes I may have cherished in
+the outset. He soften to the sounds of sweet strains or the voice of
+youthful passion! As soon as the granite rock to the surge of the
+useless billow. His very necktie spoke volumes. It was an old fashioned
+stock, full of the traditions of other days, while his coat, shabbier
+than any I would presume to wear, betrayed in every well-worn seam the
+pride of the aristocrat and millionaire who in his native city and
+before the eyes of his fellow magnates does not need to carry the
+evidences of his respectability upon his back.</p>
+
+<p>“It would be worse than folly for me to approach him on such a subject,”
+I mentally ejaculated. “If he did not stare the musician out of
+countenance he would the newly risen man.” And I came very near giving
+up the whole thing.</p>
+
+<p>But the genius that watches over the affairs of true love was with me
+notwithstanding the unpropitious state of my surroundings. In a few
+minutes I received my expected introduction to Mr. Preston, and I found
+that underneath the repelling austerity of his expression, was a kindly
+spark for youth, and a decided sympathy for all instances of manly
+endeavor if only it was in a direction he approved; further that my own
+personality was agreeable to him and that he was disposed to regard me
+with favor until by some chance and very natural allusion to my
+profession by the friend standing between us, he learned that I was a
+musician, when a decided change came over his countenance and he
+exclaimed in that blunt, decisive way of his that admits of no reply:</p>
+
+<p>“A jingler on the piano, eh? Pretty poor use for a man to put his brains
+to, I say, or even his fingers. Sorry to hear we cannot be friends.” And
+without waiting for a reply, took my introducer by the arm and drew him
+a step or so to one side. “Why didn’t you say at once he was Mandeville
+the musician,” I overheard him ask in somewhat querulous tones. “Don’t
+you know I consider the whole race of them an abomination. I would have
+more respect for my bank clerk than I would for the greatest man of them
+all, were it Rubenstein himself.” Then in a lower tone but distinctly
+and almost as if he meant me to hear, “My daughter has a leaning towards
+this same fol-de-rol and has lately requested my permission to make the
+acquaintance of some musical characters, but I soon convinced her that
+manhood under the disguise of a harlequin’s jacket could have no
+interest for her; that when a human being, man or woman has sunk to be a
+mere rattler of sweet sounds, he has reached a stage of infantile
+development that has little in common with the nervous energy and
+business force of her Dutch ancestry. And my daughter stoops to make no
+acquaintances she cannot bid sit at her father’s table.”</p>
+
+<p>“Your daughter is a child yet, I thought,” was ventured by his
+companion.</p>
+
+<p>“Miss Preston is sixteen, just the age at which my mother gave her hand
+to my respected father sixty-seven years ago.” And with this drop of
+burning lead let fall into my already agitated bosom they passed on.</p>
+
+<p>He would have more respect for his bank clerk! Would his bank clerk or
+what was better, a young man with means at his command, working in a
+business capacity more in consonance with the tastes he had evinced,
+have a chance of winning his daughter? I began to think he might. “The
+way grows clearer!” I exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>But it was not till after another interview with him ten minutes later
+in the lobby that I finally made up my mind. He was standing quite alone
+in an obscure corner, fumbling in an awkward way with his muffler that
+had caught on the button of his coat. Seeing it, I hastened forward to
+his assistance and was rewarded by a kind enough nod to embolden me to
+say,</p>
+
+<p>“I have been introduced to you as a musician; would my acquaintance be
+more acceptable to you if I told you that the pursuit of art bids fair
+in my case to yield to the exigencies of business? That I purpose
+leaving the concert-room for the banker’s office and that henceforth my
+only ambition promises to be that of Wall Street?”</p>
+
+<p>“It most certainly would,” exclaimed he, holding out his hand with an
+unmistakable gesture of satisfaction. “You have too good a countenance
+to waste before a piano-top strumming to the smirks of women and the
+plaudits of weak-headed men. Let us see you at the desk, my lad. We are
+in want of trustworthy young men to take the place of us older ones.”
+Then politely, “Do you expect to make the change soon?”</p>
+
+<p>“I do,” said I.</p>
+
+<p>And the Rubicon was passed.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<div class='chapter'><h3><a id="VI"></a>VI.</h3></div>
+
+<div class='ph4'>A HAND CLASP.</div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“<i>Fer.</i>—Here’s my hand.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>Mir.</i>—And mine with my heart in it.”—<span class="smcap">Tempest.</span><br></span>
+</div></div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+
+<p>Once arrived at a settled conclusion, I put every thought of wavering
+out of my mind. Deciding that with such a friend in business circles as
+yourself, I needed no other introducer to my new life, I set apart this
+evening for a confab with you on the subject. Meanwhile it is pretty
+generally known that I make no more engagements to appear through the
+country.</p>
+
+<p>I have but one more incident to relate. Last Sunday in walking down
+Fifth Avenue I met her. I did not do this inadvertently. I knew her
+custom of attending Bible class and for once put myself in her way. I
+did not give her time to remonstrate.</p>
+
+<p>“Do not express your displeasure,” said I, “this shall never be
+repeated. I merely wish to say that I have concluded to leave a
+profession so little appreciated by those whose esteem I most desire to
+possess; that I am about entering a banker’s office where it shall be my
+ambition to rise if possible, to wealth and consequence. If I
+succeed—you shall then know what my incentive has been. But till I
+succeed or at least give such tokens of success as shall insure respect,
+silence must be my portion and patience my sole support. Only of one
+thing rest assured, that until I inform you with my own lips that the
+hope which now illumines me is gone, it will continue to burn on in my
+breast, shedding light upon a way that can never seem dark while that
+glow rests upon it.” And bowing with the ceremonious politeness our
+positions demanded, I held out my hand. “One clasp to encourage me,” I
+entreated.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed as if she did not comprehend. “You are going to give up music,
+and for—for—”</p>
+
+<p>“You?” said I. “Yes, don’t forbid me,” I implored; “it is too late.”</p>
+
+<p>Like a lovely image of blushing girlhood turned by a lightning flash
+into marble, she paused, pallid and breathless where she was, gazing
+upon me with eyes that burned deeper and deeper as the full
+comprehension of all that this implied gradually forced itself upon her
+mind.</p>
+
+<p>“You make a chaos of my little world,” she murmured at length.</p>
+
+<p>“No,” said I, “<i>your</i> world is untouched. If it should never be my good
+fortune to enter it, you are not to grieve. You are free, Miss Preston,
+free as this sunshiny air we breathe; I alone am bound, and that because
+I must be whether I will or no.”</p>
+
+<p>Then I saw the woman I had worshipped in this young fair girl shine
+fully and fairly upon me. Drawing herself up, she looked me in the face
+and calmly laid her hand in mine. “I am young,” said she, “and do not
+know what may be right to say to one so generous and so kind. But this
+much I can promise, that whether or not I am ever able to duly reward
+you for what you undertake, I will at least make it the study of my life
+never to prove unworthy of so much trust and devotion.”</p>
+
+<p>And with the last lingering look natural to a parting for years, we
+separated then and there, and the crowd came between us, and the Sunday
+bells rang on, and what was so vividly real to us at the moment, became
+in remembrance more like the mist and shadow of a dream.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<div class='chapter'><h3><a id="VII"></a>VII.</h3></div>
+
+<div class='ph4'>MRS. SYLVESTER.</div>
+
+<blockquote><p>Love is more pleasant than marriage, for the same reason that
+romances are more amusing than history.—<span class="smcap">Chamfort.</span></p>
+
+<p>“He draweth out the thread of his verbosity, finer than the
+staple of his argument.”—<span class="smcap">Loves Labor Lost.</span></p></blockquote>
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+
+<p>Young Mandeville having finished his story, looked at his uncle. He
+found him sitting in an attitude of extreme absorption, his right arm
+stretched before him on the table, his face bent thoughtfully downwards
+and clouded with that deep melancholy that seemed its most natural
+expression, “He has not heard me,” was the young man’s first mortifying
+reflection. But catching his uncle’s eye which at that moment raised
+itself, he perceived he was mistaken and that he had rather been
+listened to only too well.</p>
+
+<p>“You must forgive me if I have seemed to rhapsodize,” the young man
+stammered. “You were so quiet I half forgot I had a listener and went on
+much as I would if I had been thinking aloud.”</p>
+
+<p>His uncle smiled and throwing off the weight of his reflections whatever
+they might be, arose and began pacing the floor. “I see you are past
+surgery,” quoth he, “any wisdom of mine would be only thrown away.”</p>
+
+<p>Young Mandeville was hurt. He had expected some token of approval on his
+uncle’s part, or at least some betrayal of sympathy. His looks expressed
+his disappointment.</p>
+
+<p>“You expected to convert me by this story,” continued the elder, pausing
+with a certain regret before his nephew; “nothing could convert me
+but—”</p>
+
+<p>“What?” inquired Mandeville after waiting in vain for the other to
+finish.</p>
+
+<p>“Something which we will never find in the whirl of New York fashionable
+life. A woman with faith to reward and soul to understand such
+unqualified trust as yours.”</p>
+
+<p>“But I believe Miss Preston is such a girl and will be such a woman. Her
+looks, her last words prove it.”</p>
+
+<p>“Nothing proves it but time and as for your belief, I have believed
+too.” Then as if fearing he had said too much, assumed his most
+business-like tone and observed, “But we will drop all that; you have
+resolved to quit music and enter Wall Street, your object money and the
+social consideration which money secures. Now, why Wall Street?”</p>
+
+<p>“Because I can think of no other means for attaining what I desire, in
+the space of time I would consent to keep a young lady of Miss Preston’s
+position waiting.”</p>
+
+<p>“Humph! and you have money, I suppose, which you propose to risk on the
+hazard?”</p>
+
+<p>“Some! enough to start with; a small amount to you, but sufficient if I
+am fortunate.”</p>
+
+<p>“And if you are not?”</p>
+
+<p>The young man opened his arms with an expressive gesture, “I am done
+for, that is all.”</p>
+
+<p>“Bertram,” his uncle exclaimed with a change of tone, “has it ever
+struck you that Mr. Preston might have as strong a prejudice against
+speculation as against the musical profession?”</p>
+
+<p>“No, that is, pardon me but I have sometimes thought that even in the
+event of success I should have to struggle against his inherited
+instincts of caste and his natural dislike of all things new, even
+wealth, but I never thought of the possibility of my arousing his
+distrust by speculating in stocks and engaging in enterprises so nearly
+in accord with his own business operations.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yet if I guess aright you would run greater risk of losing the support
+of his countenance by following the hazardous course you propose, than
+if you continued in the line of art that now engages you.”</p>
+
+<p>“Do you know—”</p>
+
+<p>“I know nothing, but I fear the chances, Bertram.”</p>
+
+<p>“Then I am already defeated and must give up my hopes of happiness.”</p>
+
+<p>A smile thin and indefinable crossed the other’s face. “No,” said he,
+“not necessarily.” And sitting down by his nephew’s side, he asked if he
+had any objections to enter a bank. “In a good capacity,” he exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>“No indeed; it would be an opportunity surpassing my hopes. Do you know
+of an opening?”</p>
+
+<p>“Well,” said he, “under the circumstances I will let you into the secret
+of my own affairs. I have always had one ambition, and that was to be at
+the head of a bank. I have not said much about it, but for the last five
+years I have been working to this end, and to-day you see me the
+possessor of at least three-fourths of the stock of the Madison Bank. It
+has been deteriorating for some time, consequently I was enabled to buy
+it low, but now that I have got it I intend to build up the concern. I
+am able to throw business of an important nature in its way, and I dare
+prophesy that before the year is out you will see it re-established upon
+a solid and influential footing.”</p>
+
+<p>“I have no doubt of it, sir; you have the knack of success, any thing
+that you touch is sure to go straight.”</p>
+
+<p>“Unhappily yes, as far as business operations go. But no matter about
+that;—” as if the other had introduced some topic incongruous to the
+one they were considering—“the point is this. In two weeks time I shall
+be elected President of the Bank; if you will accept the position of
+assistant cashier,—the best I can offer in consideration of your total
+ignorance of all details of the business,—it is open to you—”</p>
+
+<p>“Uncle! how generous! I—”</p>
+
+<p>“Hush! your duties will be nominal, the present cashier is fully
+competent; but the leisure thus afforded will offer you abundant
+opportunity to make yourself acquainted with all matters connected with
+the banking system as well as with such capitalists as it would be well
+for you to know. So that when the occasion comes, I can raise you to the
+cashier’s place or make such other disposal of your talents as will best
+insure your rapid advance.”</p>
+
+<p>The young man’s eyes sparkled; with a sudden impetuous movement he
+jumped to his feet and grasped his uncle’s hand. “I can never thank you
+enough; you have made me your debtor for life. Now let any one ask me
+who is my father, and I will say—”</p>
+
+<p>“He was Edward Sylvester’s brother. But come, come, this extreme
+gratitude is unnecessary. You have always been a favorite with me,
+Bertram, and now that I have no child, you seem doubly near; it is my
+pleasure to do what I can for you. But—” and here he surveyed him with
+a wistful look, “I wish you were entering into this new line from love
+of the business rather than love of a woman. I fear for you my boy. It
+is an awful thing to stake one’s future upon a single chance and that
+chance a woman’s faith. If she should fail you after you had compassed
+your fortune, should die—well you could bear that perhaps; but if she
+turned false, and married some one else, or even married you and then—”</p>
+
+<p>“What?” came in silvery accents from the door, and a woman richly clad,
+her trailing velvets filling the air at once with an oppressive perfume,
+entered the room and paused before them in an attitude meant to be arch,
+but which from the massiveness of her figure and the scornful carriage
+of her head, succeeded in being simply imperious.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester rose abruptly as if unpleasantly surprised. “Ona!” he
+exclaimed, hastening, however, to cover his embarassment by a courteous
+acknowledgement of her presence and a careless remark concerning the
+shortness of the services that had allowed her to return from church so
+early. “I did not hear you come in,” he observed.</p>
+
+<p>“No, I judge not,” she returned with a side glance at Mandeville. “But
+the services were not short, on the contrary I thought I should never
+hear the last amen. Mr. Turner’s voice is very agreeable,” she went on,
+in a rambling manner all her own, “it never interferes with your
+thoughts; not that I am considered as having any,” she interjected with
+another glance at their silent guest, “a woman in society with a
+reputation for taste in all matters connected with fashionable living,
+has no thoughts of course; business men with only one idea in their
+heads, that of making money, have more no doubt. Do you know, Edward,”
+she went on with sudden inconsequence, which was another trait of this
+amiable lady’s conversation, “that I have quite come to a conclusion in
+regard to the girl Philip Longtree is going to marry; she may be pretty,
+but she does not know how to dress. I wish you could have seen her
+to-night; she had on mauve with old gold trimmings. Now with one of her
+complexion—But I forget you haven’t seen her. Bertram, I think I shall
+give a German next month, will you come? Oh, Edward!” as if the thought
+had suddenly struck her, “Princess Louise <i>is</i> the sixth child of Queen
+Victoria; I asked Mr. Turner to-night. By the way, I wonder if it will
+be pleasant enough to take the horses out to-morrow? Bird has been
+obliging enough to get sick just in the height of the season, Mr.
+Mandeville. There are a thousand things I have got to do and I hate
+hired horses.” And with a petulant sigh she laid her prayer-book on the
+table and with a glance in the mirror near by, began pulling off her
+gloves in the slow and graceful fashion eminently in keeping with her
+every movement.</p>
+
+<p>It was as if an atmosphere of worldliness had settled down upon this
+room sanctified a moment before by the utterances of a pure and noble
+love. Mr. Sylvester looked uneasy, while Bertram searched in vain for
+something to say.</p>
+
+<p>“I seem to have brought a blight,” she suddenly murmured in an easy tone
+somewhat at variance with the glance of half veiled suspicion which she
+darted from under her heavy lids, at first one and then the other of the
+two gentlemen before her. “No, I will not sit,” she added as her husband
+offered her a chair. “I am tired almost to death and would retire
+immediately, but I interrupted you I believe in the utterance of some
+wise saying about matrimony. It is an interesting subject and I have a
+notion to hear what one so well qualified to speak in regard to it—”
+and here she made a slow, half lazy courtesy to her husband with a look
+that might mean anything from coquetry to defiance—“has to say to a
+young man like Mr. Mandeville.”</p>
+
+<p>Edward Sylvester who was regarded as an autocrat among men, and who
+certainly was an acknowledged leader in any company he chose to enter,
+bowed his head before this anomalous glance with a gesture of something
+like submission.</p>
+
+<p>“One is not called upon to repeat every inadvertent phrase he may
+utter,” said he. “Bertram was consulting me upon certain topics and—”</p>
+
+<p>“You answered him in your own brilliant style,” she concluded. “What did
+you say?” she asked in another moment in a low unmoved tone which the
+final act of smoothing out her gloves on the table with hands delicate
+as white rose leaves but firm as marble, did not either hasten or
+retard.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh if you insist,” he returned lightly, “and are willing to bear the
+reflection my unfortunate remark seems to cast upon the sex, I was
+merely observing to my nephew, that the man who centered all his hopes
+upon a woman’s faith, was liable to disappointment. Even if he succeeded
+in marrying her there were still possibilities of his repenting any
+great sacrifice made in her behalf.”</p>
+
+<p>“Indeed!” and for once the delicate cheek flushed deeper than its rouge.
+“And why do you say this?” she inquired, dropping her coquettish manner
+and flashing upon them both, the haughty and implacable woman Bertram
+had always believed her to be, notwithstanding her vagaries and fashion.</p>
+
+<p>“Because I have seen much of life outside my own house,” her husband
+replied with undiminished courtesy; “and feel bound to warn any young
+man of his probable fate, who thinks to find nothing but roses and
+felicity beyond the gates of fashionable marriage.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ah then, it was on general principles you were speaking,” she remarked
+with a soft laugh that undulated through an atmosphere suddenly grown
+too heavy for easy breathing. “I did not know; wives are so little apt
+to be appreciated in this world, Mr. Mandeville, I was afraid he might
+be giving you some homely advice founded upon personal experience.” And
+she moved towards their guest with that strange smile of hers which some
+called dangerous but which he had always regarded as oppressive.</p>
+
+<p>She saw him drop his eyes, and smiled again, but in a different way.
+This woman, whom no one accused of anything worse than levity, hailed
+every tribute to her power, as a miser greets the glint of gold. With a
+turn of her large but elegant figure that in its slow swaying reminded
+you of some heavy tropical flower, hanging inert, intoxicated with its
+own fragrance, she dismissed at once the topic that had engaged them,
+and launched into one of her choicest streams of inconsequent talk. But
+Mandeville was in no mood to listen to trivialities, and being of a
+somewhat impatient nature, presently rose and excusing himself, took a
+hurried leave. Not so hurried however that he did not have time to
+murmur to his uncle as they walked towards the door:</p>
+
+<p>“You would make comparison between the girl I worship and other women in
+fashionable life. Do not I pray; she is no more like them than a star
+that shines is like a rose that blooms. My fate will not be like that of
+most men that we know, but better and higher.”</p>
+
+<p>And his uncle standing there in the grand hall-way, with the fresh
+splendors of unlimited wealth gleaming upon him from every side, looked
+after the young man with a sigh and repeated, “Better and higher? God in
+his merciful goodness grant it.”</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<div class='chapter'><h3><a id="VIII"></a>VIII.</h3></div>
+
+<div class='ph4'>SHADOWS OF THE PAST.</div>
+
+<blockquote><p>“Memory, the warder of the brain.”—<span class="smcap">Macbeth.</span></p></blockquote>
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+
+<p>It was long past midnight. The fire in the grate burned dimly, shedding
+its lingering glow on the face of the master of the house as with bowed
+head and folded hands he sat alone and brooding before its dying embers.</p>
+
+<p>It was a lonesome sight. The very magnificence of the spacious apartment
+with its lofty walls and glittering works of art, seemed to give an air
+of remoteness to that solitary form, bending beneath the weight of its
+reflections. From the exquisitely decorated ceiling to the turkish rugs
+scattered over the polished floor, all was elegant and luxurious, and
+what had splendors like these to do with thoughts that bent the brows
+and overshadowed the lips of man? The very lights burned deprecatingly,
+illuminating beauties upon which no eye gazed and for which no heart
+beat. The master himself seemed to feel this, for he presently rose and
+put them out, after which he seated himself as before, only if possible
+with more abandon, as if with the extinguishing of the light some eye
+had been shut whose gaze he had hitherto feared. And in truth my lady’s
+image shone fainter from its heavy panel, and the smile which had met
+with unrelenting sweetness the glare of the surrounding splendor,
+softened in the mellow glimmer of the fire-light to an etherial halo
+that left you at rest.</p>
+
+<p><i>One, two</i>, THREE, the small clock sounded from the mantel and yet no
+stir took place in the sombre figure keeping watch beneath. What were
+the thoughts which could thus detain from his comfortable bed a man
+already tired with manifold cares? It would be hard to tell. The waters
+that gush at the touch of the diviner’s rod are tumultuous in their flow
+and rush hither and thither with little heed to the restraining force of
+rule and reason. But of the pictures that rose before his eyes in those
+dying embers, there were two which stood out in startling distinctness.
+Let us see if we can convey the impression of them to other eyes and
+hearts.</p>
+
+<p>First, the form of his mother. Ah grey-bearded men weighted with the
+cares of life and absorbed in the monotonous round of duties that to you
+are the be all and end all of existence, to whom morning means a
+jostling ride to the bank, the store or the office, and with whom night
+is but the name for a worse unrest because of its unfulfilled promises
+of slumber, what soul amongst you all is so callous to the holy memories
+of childhood, as not to thrill with something of the old time feeling of
+love and longing as the memory of that tender face with its watchful eye
+and ready smiles, comes back to you from the midst of weary years! Your
+mother!</p>
+
+<p>But Edward Sylvester with that black line across his life cutting past
+from present, what makes him think of his mother to-night; and the
+cottage door upon the hillside where she used to stand with eager eyes
+looking up and down the road as he came trudging home from school,
+swinging his satchel and shouting at every squirrel that started across
+the road or peeped from the branches of the grand old maples overhead!
+And the garret-chamber under the roof, the scene of many a romp with
+Elsie and Sonsie and Jack, neighbors’ children to whom the man of to-day
+would be an awe and a mystery! And the little room where he slept with
+Tom his own blue-eyed brother so soon to die of a wasting disease, but
+full of warm blood then and all alive with boyish pranks. He could
+almost hear the wild clear laugh with which the mischievous fellow
+started upon its travels, the rooster whose legs he had tied a short
+space apart with one of Sonsie’s faded ribbons, a laugh that became
+unrestrained when the poor creature in attempting to run down hill,
+rolled over and over, cutting such a figure before his late admirers,
+the hens, that even Elsie smiled in the midst of her gentle entreaties.
+And Jocko the crow, whom taming had made one of the boys! poor Jocko! is
+it nearly thirty years since you used to stalk in majesty through the
+village streets, with your neat raven coat closely buttoned across your
+breast and your genteel caw, caw, and condescending nod for old
+acquaintances? The day seems but as yesterday when you marred the stolen
+picnic up in the woods by flying off with a flock of your fellow
+black-coats, nor is it easy to realize that the circle of tow-headed
+fellows who hailed with shouts your ignominious return after a day or
+so’s experience of the vaunted pleasures of freedom, are now sharp
+featured men without a smile for youth or a thought beyond the hard cold
+dollar buried deep in their pockets.</p>
+
+<p>And the church up over the hills! and the long Sunday walk at mother’s
+side with the sunshine glowing on the dusty road and beating on the
+river flowing far beyond! The same road, the same river of Monday and
+Tuesday but how different it looked to the boy; almost like another
+scene, as if Sunday clothes were on the world as well as upon his
+restless little limbs. How he longed for it to be Monday though he did
+not say so; and what a different day Saturday would have been if only
+there was no long, sleepy Sunday to follow it.</p>
+
+<p>But the mother! She did not dread that day. Her eyes used to brighten
+when the bell began to ring from the old church steeple. Her eyes! how
+they mingled with every picture! They seemed to fill the night. What a
+sparkle they had, yet how they used to soften at his few hurried
+caresses. He was always too busy for kisses; there were the snares in
+the north woods to be looked after; the nest in the apple-tree to be
+inquired into; the skates to be ground before the river froze over; the
+nuts to be gathered and stored in that same old garret chamber under the
+eaves. But now how vividly her least look comes back to the tired man,
+from the glance of wistful sympathy with which she met his childish
+disappointments to the flash of joy that hailed his equally childish
+delights.</p>
+
+<p>And another scene there is in the embers to-night; a remembrance of
+later days when the mother with her love and yearning was laid low in
+the grave, and manhood had learned its first lessons of passion and
+ambition from the glance of younger eyes and the smile of riper lips.
+Not the picture of a woman, however; that was already present beside
+him, shining from its panel with an insistence that not even the putting
+out of the lights could quite quench or subdue, but of a child young,
+pure and beautiful, sitting by the river in the glow of a June sunshine,
+gazing at the hills of his boyhood’s home with a look on her face such
+as he had never before seen on that of child or woman. A simple picture
+with a simple villager’s daughter for its centre, but as he mused upon
+it to-night, the success and triumph of the last ten years faded from
+his sight like the ashes that fell at his feet, and he found himself
+questioning in vain as to what better thing he had met in all the walks
+of his busy life than that young child’s innocence and faith as they
+shone upon him that day from her soft uplifted eyes.</p>
+
+<p>He had been sitting the whole warm noontide at the side of her whose
+half gracious, half scornful, wholly indolent acceptance of his homage,
+he called love, and enervated by an atmosphere he was as yet too
+inexperienced to recognize as of the world, worldly, had strolled forth
+to cool his fevered brow in the fresh autumn breeze that blew up from
+the river. He was a gay-hearted youth in those days, heedless of
+everything but the passing moment; nature meant little to him; and when
+in the course of his ramble he came upon the form of a child sitting on
+the edge of the river, he remembers wondering what she saw in a sweep of
+empty water to interest her so deeply. Indeed he was about to inquire
+when she turned and he caught a glimpse of her eyes and knew at once
+without asking. Yet in those days he was anything but quick to recognize
+the presence of feeling. A face was beautiful or plain to him, not
+eloquent or expressive. But this child’s countenance was exceptional. It
+made you forget the cotton frock she wore, it made you forget yourself.
+As he gazed on it, he felt the stir of something in his breast he had
+never known before, and half dreaded to hear her speak lest the charm
+should fail or the influence be lost. Yet how could he pass on and not
+speak. Laying his hand on her head, he asked her what she was thinking
+of as she sat there all alone looking off on the river; and the wee
+thing drew in her breath and surveyed him with all her soul in her great
+black eyes before she replied, “I do not know, I never know.” Then
+looking back she dreamily added, “It makes me want to go away, miles
+away,”—and she held out her tiny arms towards the river with a longing
+gesture; “and it makes me want to cry.”</p>
+
+<p>And he understood or thought he did and for the first time in his life
+looked upon the river that had met his gaze from childhood, with eyes
+that saw its exceeding beauty. Ah it was an exquisite scene, a rare
+scene, mountain melting into mountain and meadow vanishing into meadow,
+till the flow of silver waters was lost in a horizon of azure mist. No
+wonder that a child without snares to set or nuts to gather, should
+pause a moment to gaze upon it, as even he in the days gone by would
+sometimes stop on Sabbath eves to snatch a kiss from his mother’s lips.</p>
+
+<p>“It is like a fairy land, is it not?” quoth the child looking up into
+his face with a wistful glance. “Do you know what it is that makes me
+feel so?”</p>
+
+
+<p>He smiled and sat down by her side. Somehow he felt as if a talk with
+this innocent one would restore him more than a walk on the hills. “It
+is the spirit of beauty, my child, you are moved by the loveliness of
+the scene; is it a new one to you?”</p>
+
+<p>“No, oh no, but I always feel the same. As if something here was hungry,
+don’t you know?” and she laid her little hand on her breast.</p>
+
+<p>He did not know, but he smiled upon her notwithstanding, and made her
+talk and talk till the gush of the sweet child spirit with its hidden
+longings and but half understood aspirations, bathed his whole being in
+a reviving shower, and he felt as if he had wandered into a new world
+where the languors of the tropics were unknown, and passion, if there
+was such, had the wings of an eagle instead of the siren’s voice and
+fascination.</p>
+
+<p>Her name was Paula, she said, and before leaving he found that she was a
+relative of the woman he loved. This was a slight shock to him. The lily
+and the cactus abloom on one stalk! How could that be? and for a moment
+he felt as if the splendors of the glorious woman paled before the
+lustre of the innocent child. But the feeling, if it was strong enough
+to be called such, soon passed. As the days swept by bringing evenings
+with light and music and whispered words beneath the vine-leaves, the
+remembrance of the pure, sweet hour beside the river, gradually faded
+till only a vague memory of that gentle uplifted face sweet with its
+childish dimples, remained to hallow now and then a passing reverie or a
+fevered dream.</p>
+
+<p>But to-night its every lineament filled his soul, vying with the
+memories of his mother in its vividness and power. O why had he not
+learned the lesson it taught. Why had he turned his back upon the high
+things of life to yield himself to a current that swept him on and on
+until the power of resistance left him and—O dwell not here wild
+thoughts! Pause not on the threshold of the one dark memory that blasts
+the soul and sears the heart in the secret hours of night. Let the dead
+past bury its dead and if one must think, let it be of the hope, which
+the remembrance of that short glimpse into a pure if infantile soul has
+given to his long darkened spirit.</p>
+
+<p>One, two, three, FOUR; and the fire is dead and the night has grown
+chill, but he heeds it not. He has asked himself if his life’s book is
+quite closed to the higher joys of existence? whether money getting and
+money holding is to absorb him body and soul forever; and with the
+question a great yearning seizes him to look upon that sweet child
+again, if haply in the gleam of her pure spirit, something of the noble
+and the pure that lay beneath the crust of life might be again revealed
+to his longing sight.</p>
+
+<p>“She must be a great girl now,” murmured he to himself, “as old as if
+not older than she whom Bertram adores so passionately, but she will
+always be a child to me, a sweet pure child whose innocence is my
+teacher and whose ignorance is my better wisdom. If anything will save
+me—”</p>
+
+<p>But here the shadow settled again; when it lifted, the morning ray lay
+cool and ghostly over the hearthstone.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<div class='chapter'><h3><a id="IX"></a>IX.</h3></div>
+
+<div class='ph4'>PAULA.</div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“The stars of midnight shall be dear<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To her; and she shall lean her ear<br></span>
+<span class="i0">In many a secret place<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Where rivulets dance their wayward round,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And beauty born of murmuring sound<br></span>
+<span class="i4">Shall pass into her face.”—<span class="smcap">Wordsworth.</span><br></span>
+</div></div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+
+<p>A wintry scene. Snow-piled hills stretching beyond a frozen river. On
+the bank a solitary figure tall, dark and commanding, standing with eyes
+bent sadly on a long narrow mound at his feet. It is Edward Sylvester
+and the mound is the grave of his mother.</p>
+
+<p>It is ten years since he stood upon that spot. In all that time no
+memories of his childhood’s home, no recollection of that lonely grave
+among the pines, had been sufficient to allure him from the city and its
+busy round of daily cares. Indeed he had always shrunk at the very name
+of the place and never of his own will alluded to it, but the reveries
+of a night had awakened a longing that was not to be appeased, and in
+the face of his wife’s cold look of astonishment and a secret dread in
+his own heart, had left his comfortable fireside, for the scenes of his
+early life and marriage, and was now standing, in the bleak December
+air, gazing down upon the stone that marked his mother’s grave.</p>
+
+<p>But tender as were the chords that reverberated at this sight, it was
+not to revisit this tomb he had returned to Grotewell. No, that other
+vision, the vision of young sweet appreciative life has drawn him more
+strongly than the memory of the dead. It was to search out and gaze
+again upon the innocent girl, whose eloquent eyes and lofty spirit had
+so deeply moved him in the past, that he had braved the chill of the
+Connecticut hills and incurred the displeasure of his wife.</p>
+
+<p>Yet when he turned away from that simple headstone and set his face
+towards the village streets it was with a sinking of the heart that
+first revealed to him the severity of the ordeal to which he had thus
+wantonly subjected himself. Not that the wintry trees and snow covered
+roofs appealed to him as strongly as the same trees and homes would have
+done in their summer aspect. The land was bright with verdure when that
+shadow fell whose gloom resting upon all the landscape, made a walk down
+this quiet road even at this remote day, a matter of such pain to him.
+But scenes that have caught the reflection of a life’s joy or a heart’s
+sorrow, lose not their power of appeal, with the leaves they shake from
+their trees, and nothing that had met the eyes of this man from the hour
+he left this spot, no, not the glance of his wife as his child fell back
+dead in his arms, had shot such a pang to his soul as the sight of that
+long street with its array of quiet homes, stretching out before him
+into the dim grey distance.</p>
+
+<p>But for all that he was determined to traverse it, ay to the very end,
+though his steps must pass the house whose ghostly portals were fraught
+with memories dismal as death to him. On then he proceeded, walking with
+his usual steady pace that only faltered or broke, as he met the shy
+eyes of some hurrying village maiden, speeding upon some errand down the
+snowy street, or encountered some old friend of his youth who despite
+his altered mien and commanding carriage, recognized in him the slim
+young bank cashier who had left them now ten long years ago to make a
+name and fortune in the great city.</p>
+
+<p>It was noon by the time he gained the heart of the village, and school
+was out and the children came rushing by with just the same shout and
+scamper with which he used to hail that hour of joyous release. How it
+carried him back to the days when those four red walls towered upon him
+with awful significance, as with books on his back and a half eaten
+apple in his pocket he crept up the walk, conscious that the bell had
+rung its last shrill note a good half hour before. He felt half tempted
+to stop and make his way through the crowd of shouting boys and dancing
+girls to that same old door again, and see for himself if the huge LATE
+which in a fit of childish revenge he had cut on its awkward panels, was
+still there to meet the eyes of tardy boys and loitering girls. But the
+wondering looks of the children unused to behold a figure so stately in
+their simple streets deterred him and he passed thoughtfully on. So
+engrossed was he by the reminiscences of Tom and Elsie which the school
+house had awakened, that he passed the ominous mansion which had been
+his dread, and the bank where he had worked, and the arbor by the side
+of the road where he had sat out the first hours of his fatal courtship,
+almost without realizing their presence, and was at the end of the
+street and in full view of the humble cottage which the little Paula had
+pointed out as her home on that day of their first acquaintance.</p>
+
+<p>“Good heaven! and I do not even know if she is alive,” he suddenly
+ejaculated, stopping where he was and eying the lowly walls before him
+with a quick realization of the possibilities of a great disappointment.
+“Ten years have strown many a grave on the hillside and Ona would not
+mention it if she lost every relative she had in this town. What a fool
+I have been,” thought he.</p>
+
+<p>But with the stern resolution which had carried him through many a
+difficulty, he prepared to advance, when he was again arrested by seeing
+the door of the house he was contemplating, suddenly open and a girlish
+figure issue forth. Could it be Paula? With eager, almost feverish
+interest he watched her approach. She was a slight young thing and came
+towards him with a rapid movement almost jaunty in its freedom. If it
+were Paula, he would know her by her eyes, but for some reason he hoped
+it was not she, not the child of his dreams.</p>
+
+<p>At a yard or two in front of him she paused astonished. This grave, tall
+figure with the melancholy brow, deep eyes and firmly compressed lips
+was an unaccustomed sight in this primitive town. Scarcely realizing
+what she did she gave a little courtesy and was proceeding on when he
+stopped her with a hurried gesture.</p>
+
+<p>“Is Mrs. Fairchild still living?” he asked, indicating the house she had
+just left.</p>
+
+<p>“Mrs. Fairchild? O no,” she returned, surveying him out of the corner of
+a very roguish pair of brown eyes, with a certain sly wonder at the
+suspense in his voice. “She has been dead as long as I can remember. Old
+Miss Abby and her sister live there now.”</p>
+
+<p>“And who are they?” he hurriedly asked; he could not bring himself to
+mention Paula’s name.</p>
+
+
+<p>“Why, Miss Abby and Miss Belinda,” she returned with a puzzled air.
+“Miss Abby sews and Miss Belinda teaches the school. I don’t know
+anything more about them, sir.”</p>
+
+<p>The courteous gentleman bowed. “And they live there quite alone?”</p>
+
+<p>“O no sir, Paula lives with them.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, she does;” and the young girl looking at him could not detect the
+slightest change in his haughty countenance. “Paula is Mrs. Fairchild’s
+daughter.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, sir.”</p>
+
+<p>“Thank you,” said he, and allowed the pretty brown-eyed miss to pass on,
+which she did with lingering footsteps and many a backward glance of the
+eye.</p>
+
+<p>Halting at the door of that small cottage, Edward Sylvester reasoned
+with himself.</p>
+
+<p>“She may be just such another fresh-looking, round-faced,
+mischievous-eyed school-girl. Spiritual children do not always make
+earnest-souled women. Let me beware what hopes I build on a foundation
+so unsubstantial.” Yet when in a moment later the door opened and a
+weazen-faced dapper, little woman appeared, all smiles and welcome, he
+owned to a sensation of dismay that sufficiently convinced him what a
+hold this hope of meeting with something exceptionally sweet and high,
+had taken upon his hitherto careless and worldly spirit.</p>
+
+<p>“Mr. Sylvester I am sure! I thought Ona would remember us after a while.
+Come in sir, do, my sister will be home in a few moments.” And with a
+deprecatory flutter comical enough in a woman at least seventy odd years
+old, she led her distinguished guest into a large unused room where in
+spite of his remonstrances she at once proceeded to build a fire.</p>
+
+<p>“It is a pleasure sir,” she said to every utterance of regret on his
+part at the trouble he was causing. And though her vocabulary was thus
+made to appear somewhat small, her sincerity was undoubted. “We have
+counted the days, Belinda and I, since we sent the last letter. It may
+seem foolish to you, sir; but Paula is growing so fast and Belinda says
+is so uncommon smart for her age that we did think that it was time Ona
+knew just what a straight we were in. Do you want to see Paula?”</p>
+
+<p>“Very much,” he returned, shocked and embarrassed at the position in
+which he found himself put by the reticence of his wife on the subject
+of her relations. “They think I have come in reply to a letter,” he
+mused, “and I did not even know my wife had received one.”</p>
+
+<p>“You will be surprised,” she exclaimed with a complacent nod as the fire
+blazed up brightly; “every one is surprised who sees her for the first
+time. Is my niece well?” And thus it was he learned the relation between
+his wife of ten years and these simple inhabitants of the little cottage
+in Grotewell.</p>
+
+<p>He replied as in duty bound, and presently by the use of a few dexterous
+questions succeeded in eliciting from this simple-minded old lady, the
+few facts necessary to a proper understanding of the situation. Miss
+Abby and Miss Belinda were two maiden ladies, sisters of Mrs. Fairchild
+and Ona’s mother, who on the death of the former took up their abode in
+the little cottage for the purpose of bringing up the orphan Paula. They
+had succeeded in this by dint of the utmost industry, but Paula was not
+a common child, and Belinda, who was evidently the autocrat of the
+house, had decided that she ought to have other advantages. She had
+therefore written to Mrs. Sylvester concerning the child, in the hopes
+that that lady would take enough interest in her pretty little cousin to
+send her to boarding-school; but they had received no reply till now,
+all of which was perfectly right of course, Mrs. Sylvester being
+undoubtedly occupied and Mr. Sylvester himself being better than any
+letter.</p>
+
+<p>“And does Paula herself know what efforts you have been making in her
+behalf,” asked Mr. Sylvester upon the receipt of this information.</p>
+
+<p>The little lady shook her head with vivacity. “Belinda advised me to say
+nothing,” she remarked. “The child is contented with her home and we did
+not like to raise her expectations. You will never regret anything you
+may do for her,” she went on in a hurried way with a peep now and then
+towards the door as if while enjoying a momentary freedom of speech, she
+feared an intrusion that would cut that pleasure short. “Paula is a
+grateful child and never has given us a moment of concern from the time
+she began to put pieces of patchwork together. But there is Belinda,”
+she suddenly exclaimed, rising with the little dip and jerk of her left
+shoulder that was habitual to her whenever she was amused or excited.
+“Belinda,” she cried, going to the door and speaking with great
+impressiveness, “Mr. Sylvester is in the parlor.” And almost instantly a
+tall middle aged lady entered, whose plain but powerful countenance and
+dignified demeanor, stamped her at once as belonging to a very different
+type of woman from her sister.</p>
+
+<p>“I am very glad to see you sir,” she exclaimed in a slow determined
+voice as dissimilar as possible from the piping tones of Miss Abby. “Is
+not Mrs. Sylvester with you?”</p>
+
+<p>“No,” returned he, “I have come alone; my wife is not fond of travelling
+in winter.”</p>
+
+<p>The slightest gleam shot from her bright keen eye. “Is she not well?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes quite well, but not over strong,” he rejoined quietly.</p>
+
+<p>She gave him another quick look, settled some matter with herself and
+taking off her bonnet, sat down by the fire. At once her sister ceased
+in her hovering about the room and sitting also, became to all
+appearance her silent shadow.</p>
+
+<p>“Paula has gone up stairs to take off her bonnet,” the younger woman
+said in a straightforward manner just short of being brusque. “She is a
+very remarkable girl, Mr. Sylvester, a genius I suppose some would call
+her, a child of nature I prefer to say. Whatever there is to be learned
+in this town she has learned. And in a place where nature speaks and
+good books abound that is not inconsiderable. I have taken pride in her
+talents I acknowledge, and have endeavored to do what I could to
+cultivate them to the best advantage. There is no girl in my school who
+can write so original a composition, nor is there one with a truer heart
+or more tractable disposition.”</p>
+
+<p>“You have then been her teacher as well as her friend, she owes you a
+double debt of gratitude.”</p>
+
+<p>A look hard to understand flashed over her homely face. “I have never
+thought of debt or gratitude in connection with Paula. The only effort
+which I have ever made in her behalf which cost me anything, is this one
+which threatens me with her loss.” Then as if fearing she had said too
+much, set her firm lips still firmer and ignoring the subject of the
+child, astonished him by certain questions on the leading issues of the
+day that at once betrayed a truly virile mind.</p>
+
+<p>“She is a study,” thought he to himself, but meeting her on the ground
+she had taken, replied at once and to her evident satisfaction in the
+direct and simple manner that appeals the most forcibly to a strong if
+somewhat unpolished understanding, while the meek little Miss Abby
+glanced from one to the other with a humble awe more indicative of her
+appreciation for their superiority than of her comprehension of the
+subject.</p>
+
+<p>But what with Miss Belinda’s secret anxiety and Mr. Sylvester’s
+unconscious listening for a step upon the stair, the conversation, brisk
+as it had opened, gradually languished, and ere long with a sort of
+clairvoyant understanding of her sister’s wishes, Miss Abby arose and
+with her customary jerk left the room for Paula.</p>
+
+<p>“The child is not timid but has an unaccountable aversion to entering
+the presence of strangers alone,” Miss Belinda explained; but Mr.
+Sylvester did not hear her, for at that moment the door re-opened and
+Miss Abby stepped in with the young girl thus heralded.</p>
+
+<p>Edward Sylvester never forgot that moment, and indeed few men could have
+beheld the picture of extraordinary loveliness thus revealed, without a
+shock of surprise equal to the delight it inspired. She was not pretty;
+the very word was a misnomer, she was simply one of nature’s most
+exquisite and undeniable beauties. From the crown of her ebon locks to
+the sole of her dainty foot, she was perfect as the most delicate
+coloring and the utmost harmony of contour could make her. And not in
+the conventional type either. There was an individuality in her style
+that was as fresh as it was uncommon. She was at once unique and
+faultless, something that can be said of few women however beautiful or
+alluring.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester had not expected this, as indeed how could he, and for a
+moment he could only gaze with a certain swelling of the heart at the
+blooming loveliness that in one instant had transformed the odd little
+parlor into a bower fit for the habitation of princes. But soon his
+natural self-possession returned, and rising with his most courteous
+bow, he greeted the blushing girl with words of simple welcome.</p>
+
+<p>Instantly her eyes which had been hitherto kept bent upon the floor
+flashed upward to his face and a smile full of the wonder of an unlooked
+for, almost unhoped for delight, swept radiantly over her lips, and he
+saw with deep and sudden satisfaction that the hour which had made such
+an impression upon him, had not been forgotten by her; that his voice
+had recalled what his face failed to do, and that he was recognized.</p>
+
+<p>“It is Mr. Sylvester, your cousin Ona’s husband,” Miss Belinda
+interposed in a matter-of-fact way, evidently attributing the emotion of
+the child to her astonishment at the imposing appearance of their guest.</p>
+
+<p>“And it was <i>you</i> who married Ona!” she involuntarily murmured, blushing
+the next moment at this simple utterance of her thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, dear child,” Mr. Sylvester hastened to say. “And so you remember
+me?” he presently added, smiling down upon her with a sense of new life
+that for the moment made every care and anxiety shrink into the
+background.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” she simply returned, taking the chair beside him with the
+unconscious grace of perfect self-forgetfulness. “It was the first time
+I had found any one to listen to my childish enthusiasms; it is natural
+such kindness should make its impression.”</p>
+
+<p>“Little Paula and I met long ago,” quoth Mr. Sylvester turning to the
+somewhat astonished Miss Belinda. “It was before my marriage and she was
+then—”</p>
+
+<p>“Just ten years old,” finished Paula, seeing him cast her an inquiring
+glance.</p>
+
+<p>“Very young for such a thoughtful little miss,” he exclaimed. “And have
+those childish enthusiasms quite departed?” he continued, smiling upon
+her with gentle encouragement. “Do you no longer find a fairy-land in
+the view up the river?”</p>
+
+<p>She flushed, casting a timid glance at her aunt, but meeting his eyes
+again seemed to forget everything and everybody in the inspiration which
+his presence afforded.</p>
+
+<p>“I fear I must acknowledge that it is more a fairy-land to me than
+ever,” she softly replied. “Knowledge does not always bring disillusion,
+and though I have learned one by one the names of the towns scattered
+along those misty banks, and though I know they are no less prosaic in
+their character than our own humdrum village, yet I cannot rid myself of
+the notion that those verdant slopes with their archway of clouds, hide
+the portals of Paradise, and that I have only to follow the birds in
+their flight up the river to find myself on the verge of a mystery, the
+banks at my feet can never disclose.”</p>
+
+<p>“May the gates of God’s Paradise never recede as those would do, my
+child, if like the birds you attempted to pierce them.”</p>
+
+<p>“Paula is a dreamer,” quoth Miss Belinda in a matter-of-fact tone, “but
+she is a good girl notwithstanding and can solve a geometrical problem
+with the best.”</p>
+
+<p>“And sew on the machine and make a very good pie,” timidly put in Miss
+Abby.</p>
+
+<p>“That is well,” laughed Mr. Sylvester, observing that the poor child’s
+head had fallen forward in maidenly shame at her aunts’ elogiums as well
+as at the length of the speech into which she had been betrayed. “It
+shows that her eyes can see what is at hand as well as what is beyond
+our reach.” Then with a touch of his usual formal manner intended to
+restore her to herself, “Do you like study, Paula?”</p>
+
+<p>In an instant her eyes flashed. “I more than like it; it feeds me.
+Knowledge has its vistas too,” she added with an arch look, the first he
+had seen on her hitherto serious countenance. “I can never outgrow my
+recognition of the portals it discloses or the fairy-land it opens up to
+every inquiring eye.”</p>
+
+<p>“Even geometry,” he ventured, more anxious to probe this fresh young
+mind than he had ever been to sound the opinions of the most notable men
+of the day.</p>
+
+<p>“Even geometry,” she smiled. “To be sure its portals are somewhat
+methodical in shape, allowing no scope to the fancy, but from its
+triangles and circles have been born the grandeurs of architecture, and
+upright on the threshold of its exact laws and undeviating calculations,
+I see an angel with a golden rod in his hand, measuring the heavens.”</p>
+
+<p>“Even a stone speaks to a poet,” said Mr. Sylvester with a glance at
+Miss Belinda.</p>
+
+<p>“But Paula is no poet,” returned that lady with strict and impartial
+honesty. “She has never put a line on paper to my knowledge. Have you
+child?”</p>
+
+<p>“No aunt, I would as soon imprison a falling sunbeam or try to catch the
+breeze that lifts my hair or kisses my cheek.”</p>
+
+<p>“You see,” continued Mr. Sylvester still looking at Miss Belinda.</p>
+
+<p>She answered with a doubtful shake of the head and an earnest glance at
+the girl as if she perceived something in that bright young soul, that
+even she had never observed before.</p>
+
+<p>“Have you ever been away from home?” he now asked.</p>
+
+<p>“Never, I know as little of the great world as a callow nestling. No, I
+should not say that, for the young bird has no Aunt Belinda to tell of
+the great cathedrals and the wonderful music she has heard and the
+glorious pictures she has seen in her visits to the city. It is almost
+as good as travelling one’s self to hear Aunt Belinda talk.”</p>
+
+<p>It was now the turn of the mature plain woman to blush, which she did
+under Mr. Sylvester’s searching eye.</p>
+
+<p>“You have then been in the habit of visiting New York?”</p>
+
+<p>“I have been there twice,” she returned evasively.</p>
+
+<p>“Since my marriage?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes sir;” with a firm closing of her lips.</p>
+
+<p>“I did not know you were there or I should have insisted upon your
+remaining at my house.”</p>
+
+<p>“Thank you,” said she with a quick triumphant glance at her demure
+little shadow, who looked back in amaze and was about to speak when Miss
+Belinda proceeded. “My visits usually have been on business; I should
+not think of troubling Mrs. Sylvester.” And then he knew that his wife
+had been aware of those visits if he had not.</p>
+
+<p>But he refrained from testifying to his discovery. “You speak of music,”
+said he, turning gently back to Paula. “Have you a taste for it? Would
+it make you happy to hear such music as your aunt tells about?”</p>
+
+<p>“O yes, I can conceive nothing grander than to sit in a church whose
+every line is beauty and listen while the great organ utters its song of
+triumph or echoes in the wonderful way it does, the emotions you have
+tried to express and could not. I would give a whole week of my life on
+the hills, dear as it is, for one such hour, I think.”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester smiled. “It is a rare kind of coin to offer for such a
+simple pleasure, but it may meet with its acceptance, nevertheless;” and
+in his look and in his voice there was an appearance of affectionate
+interest that completed the subjugation of the watchful Miss Belinda,
+who now became doubly assured that whatever neglect had been shown her
+by her niece was not due to that niece’s husband.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester recognized the effect he had produced and hastened to
+complete it, feeling that the good opinion of Miss Belinda would be
+valuable to any man. “I have been a boy on these hills,” said he, “and
+know what it is to long for what is beyond while enjoying what is
+present. You shall hear the organ my child.” And stopped, wondering to
+himself over the new sweet interest he seemed to take in the prospect of
+pleasures which he had supposed himself to have long ago exhausted.</p>
+
+<p>“Hear the organ, I? why that means—O what does it mean?” she inquired,
+turning with a look of beaming hope towards her aunt.</p>
+
+<p>“You must ask Mr. Sylvester,” that uncompromising lady replied, with a
+straightforward look at the fire.</p>
+
+<p>And he with a smile told the blushing girl that according to his
+reading, mortals went blindfold into fairy-land; and she understood what
+he meant and was silent, whereupon he turned the conversation upon more
+common-place subjects.</p>
+
+<p>For how could he tell her then of the intention that had awakened in his
+breast at the first glimpse of her grand young beauty. To make her his
+child, to bequeath to her the place of the babe that had perished in his
+arms three long years before—That meant to give Ona a care if not a
+rival in his affections, and Ona shrank from care, and was not a subject
+for rivalry. And the <i>if</i> which this implied weighed heavily on his
+heart as moment after moment flew by, and he felt again the reviving
+power of an unsullied mind and an aspiring nature.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<div class='chapter'><h3><a id="X"></a>X.</h3></div>
+
+<div class='ph4'>THE BARRED DOOR.</div>
+
+<blockquote><p>“A school boy’s tale; the wonder of an hour.”—<span class="smcap">Byron.</span></p></blockquote>
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+
+<p>“Did you know that your niece was gifted with rare beauty as well as
+talents?” asked Mr. Sylvester of Miss Belinda as a couple of hours or so
+later, they sat alone by the parlor fire, preparatory to his departure.</p>
+
+<p>“No, that is,” she hastily corrected herself, “I knew she was very
+pretty of course, prettier by far than any of her mates, but I did not
+suppose she was what you call a beauty, or at least would be so
+considered by a person accustomed to New York society.”</p>
+
+<p>“I do not know of a woman in New York who can boast of any such claims
+to transcendent loveliness. Such faces are rare outside of art, Miss
+Belinda; was Mrs. Fairchild a handsome woman?”</p>
+
+<p>“She was my sister and if I may say so, my favorite sister, but she was
+no more agreeable to the eye than some others of her family,” grimly
+returned the heavy browed spinster with a compression of her lips. “What
+beauty Paula has inherited came from her father. Her chief charm in my
+eyes, however, springs from her pure nature and the unselfish impulses
+of her heart.”</p>
+
+<p>“And in mine,” rejoined he quietly. Then with a sudden change of tone as
+he realized the necessity of saying something definite to this woman in
+regard to his intentions toward the child, he remarked, “Her great and
+unusual talents and manifest disposition to learn, demand as you say,
+superior advantages to any she can have in a small country town like
+this, fruitful as it has already been to her under your wise and
+fostering care and such shall she have; but just when and how I cannot
+say till I have seen my wife and learned what her wishes are likely to
+be in regard to the subject.”</p>
+
+<p>“You are very kind, sir,” returned Miss Belinda. “I have no doubt as to
+the good-will of your intentions, and the child shall be prepared at
+once for a change.”</p>
+
+<p>“And will <i>the child</i>,” he exclaimed with a smile as Paula re-entered
+the room, “be so kind as to give me her company in the walk I must now
+take to the cars?”</p>
+
+<p>“Of course,” replied her aunt before the young girl could speak, “we owe
+you that much attention I am sure.”</p>
+
+<p>And so it was that when he came to retrace his way through the village
+with its heavy memories, he had a guardian spirit at his side that
+robbed them of their power to sadden and oppress.</p>
+
+<p>“What shall I say for you to the grim, city streets when I get back?”
+inquired he as they hastened on over the snow covered road.</p>
+
+<p>“Say to them from me? O you may give them my greeting,” she responded
+half shyly, half confidingly. Evidently for her he was one of those rare
+persons whose presence is perfect freedom and with whom she could not
+only think her best but speak it also. “I should like to make their
+acquaintance, but indeed they would have to do well to vie in attraction
+with these white roads girded by their silver-limbed trees. The very
+rush of life must seem oppressive. So many hopes, so many fears, so many
+interests jostling you at every step! Yet the thought is exhilarating
+too; don’t you find it so?”</p>
+
+<p>It was the first question she had asked him and he knew not how to
+reply. Her eyes were so confiding, he could not bear to shake her faith
+in his imagined superiority. Yet what thoughts had he ever cherished in
+walking the busy streets, save those connected with his own selfish
+hopes and fears, plans and operations? “I have no doubt,” said he after
+a moment’s pause, “that I have felt this exhilaration of which you
+speak. Certainly the hurrying masses in Broadway awaken a far different
+sensation in a man, than this solitary stretch of country road.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yet the road has its companionships,” she murmured. “In the city one
+thinks most of men, but in the country, of God. Its very solitude
+compels you.”</p>
+
+<p>“Compels <i>you</i>,” he involuntarily answered. And shuddered as he said it,
+remembering days when he trod these very roads with anything but
+reverence in his heart for the Creator of the landscape before him. “Not
+every one has the inner vision, my child, to see the love and wisdom
+back of the works, or rather most men have a vision so short it does not
+reach so far. Yet I think I can understand what you mean and might even
+experience your emotions if my eyes had leisure to explore this space
+and my thoughts to rise out of their usual depressing atmosphere of care
+and anxiety. You did not think I was a busy man, he continued,”
+observing her gaze of wonder. “You thought riches brought ease; if you
+ever come to think, ‘most of men’ you will learn that the wealthy man is
+the greatest worker, for his rest comes not night or day.”</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head with a sudden doubt. “It is a problem,” she said,
+“which my knowledge of geometry does not help me to solve.”</p>
+
+<p>“No,” assented he; “and one in which even your fanciful soul would fail
+to find any poetry. But stop, Paula; isn’t this the place where I found
+you that day, and you showed me the view up the river?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, and it was on that stone I sat; it has a milk-white cushion now;
+and there is where you stood, looking so tall and grand to my childish
+eyes! The gates are of pearl now,” she said, pointing to the
+snow-covered slopes in the west. “I wish the sky had been clear to-night
+and you could have seen the effect of a rosy sunset falling over those
+domes of ice and snow.”</p>
+
+<p>“It would leave me less to expect when I come again,” he responded
+almost gayly. “The next time we will have the sunset, Paula.”</p>
+
+<p>She smiled and they hastened on, presently finding themselves in the
+village streets. Suddenly she paused. “Small towns have their mysteries
+as well as great cities,” said she; “we are not without ours, look.”</p>
+
+<p>He turned, followed with a glance the direction of her pointing finger
+and started in his sudden surprise. She had indicated to him the house
+whose ghostly and frowning front bore written across its grim gray
+boards, such an inscription of painful remembrance. “It is a solitary
+looking place, isn’t it?” she went on, innocent of the pain she was
+inflicting. “No one lives there or ever will, I imagine. Do you see that
+board nailed across the front door?”</p>
+
+<p>He forced himself to look. He did more, he fixed his eyes upon the
+desolate structure before him until the aspect of its huge unpainted
+walls with their long rows of sealed-up windows and high smokeless
+chimneys was impressed indelibly upon his mind. The large front door
+with its weird and solemn barrier was the last thing upon which his eye
+rested.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” said he, and involuntarily asked what it meant.</p>
+
+<p>“We do not know exactly,” she responded. “It was nailed across there by
+the men who followed Colonel Japha to the grave. Colonel Japha was the
+owner of the house,” she proceeded, too interested to observe the shadow
+which the utterance of that name had invoked upon his brow. “He was a
+peculiar man I judge, and had suffered great wrongs they say; at all
+events his life was very solitary and sad, and on his deathbed he made
+his neighbors promise him that they would carry out his body through
+that door and then seal it up against any further ingress or egress
+forever. His wishes were respected, and from that day to this no one has
+ever entered that door.”</p>
+
+<p>“But the house!” stammered Mr. Sylvester in anything but his usual tone,
+“surely it has not been deserted all these years!”</p>
+
+<p>“Ah,” said she, “now we come to the greatest mystery of all.” And laying
+her hand timidly on his arm, she drew his attention to the form of a
+decrepit old lady just then advancing towards them down the street “Do
+you see that aged figure?” she asked. “Every evening at this hour,
+winter and summer, stormy weather or clear, she is seen to leave her
+home up the street and come down to this forsaken dwelling, open the
+worm-eaten gate before you, cross the otherwise untrodden garden and
+enter the house by a side door which she opens with a huge key she
+carries in her pocket. For just one hour by the clock she remains there,
+and then she is seen to issue in the falling dusk, with a countenance
+whose heavy dejection is in striking contrast to the expression of hope
+with which she invariably enters. Why she makes this pilgrimage and for
+what purpose she secludes herself for a stated time each day in this
+otherwise deserted mansion, no man knows nor is it possible to
+determine, for though she is a worthy woman and approachable enough on
+all other topics, on this she is absolutely mute.”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester started and surveyed the woman as she passed with an
+anxious gaze. “I know her,” he muttered; “she was a connection of—of
+the family, who inhabited this house.” He could not speak the name.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, so they say, and the owner of this house, though she does not live
+here. Did you notice how she looked at me? She often does that, just as
+if she wanted to speak. But she always goes by and opens the gate as you
+see her now and takes out the big key and—”</p>
+
+<p>“Come away,” cried Mr. Sylvester with sudden impulse, seizing Paula by
+the hand and hurrying her down the street. “She is a walking goblin; you
+must have nothing to do with such uncanny folk.” And endeavoring to turn
+off this irresistible display of feeling by a show of pleasantry he
+laughed aloud, but in a strained and unnatural way that made her eyes
+lift in unconscious amazement.</p>
+
+<p>“You are infected by the atmosphere of unreality that pervades the
+spot,” said she, “I do not wonder.” And with the gentle perversity that
+sometimes affects the most thoughtful amongst us, she went on talking
+upon the unwelcome subject. “I know of some folks who invariably cross
+to the other side of the street at night, rather than go through the
+shadows of the two gaunt poplars which guard that house. Yet there has
+been no murder committed there or any great crime that I know of, unless
+the disobedience of a daughter who ran away with a man her father
+detested, could be denominated by so fearful a word.”</p>
+
+<p>The set gaze with which Mr. Sylvester surveyed the landscape before him
+quavered a trifle and then grew hard and cold. “And so,” said he in a
+tone meant more for himself than her, “even your innocent ears have been
+assailed by the gossip about Miss Japha.”</p>
+
+<p>“Gossip! I have never thought of it as gossip,” returned she, struck for
+the first time by the change in his appearance. “It all happened so long
+ago it seems more like some quaint and ancient tale than a story of one
+of our neighbors. Besides, the fact that a wilful girl ran away from the
+house of her father, with the man of her choice, is not such a dreadful
+one is it, though she never returned to its walls with her husband, and
+her father was so overwhelmed by the shock, he was never seen to smile
+again.”</p>
+
+<p>“No,” said he, giving her a hurried glance of relief, “I only wondered
+at the tenacity of old stories to engage the popular ear. I had supposed
+even the remembrance of Jacqueline Japha would have been lost in the
+long silence that has followed that one disobedient act.”</p>
+
+<p>“And so it might, were it not for that closely shut house with the
+sinister bar across its chief entrance, inviting curiosity while it
+effectually precludes all investigation. With that token ever before our
+eyes of a dead man’s implacable animosity, who can wonder that we
+sometimes ponder over the fate of her who was its object.”</p>
+
+<p>“And no intimations of that fate have been ever received in Grotewell.
+For all that is known to the contrary, Jacqueline Japha may have
+preceded her father to the tomb.”</p>
+
+<p>Paula bowed her head, amazed at the gloomy tone in which this emphatic
+assertion was made by one whose supposed ignorance she had been
+endeavoring to enlighten. “You knew her history before, then,” observed
+she, “I beg your pardon.”</p>
+
+<p>“And it is granted,” said he with a sudden throwing off of the shadow
+that had enveloped him. “You must not mind my sudden lapses into gloom.
+I was never a cheerful man, that is, not since I—since my early youth I
+should say. And the shadows which are short at your time of life grow
+long and chilly at mine. One thing can illumine them though, and that is
+a child’s happy smile. You are a child to me; do not deny me a smile,
+then, before I go.”</p>
+
+<p>“Not one nor a dozen,” cried she, giving him her hands in good-bye for
+they had arrived at the depot by this time and the sound of the
+approaching train was heard in the distance.</p>
+
+<p>“God bless you!” said he, clasping those hands with a father’s heartfelt
+tenderness. “God bless my little Paula and make her pillow soft till we
+meet again!” Then as the train came sweeping up the track, put on his
+brightest look and added, “If the fairy-godmother chances to visit you
+during my departure, don’t hesitate to obey her commands, if you want to
+hear the famous organ peal.”</p>
+
+<p>“No, no,” she cried. And with a final look and smile he stepped upon the
+train and in another moment was whirled away from that place of many
+memories and a solitary hope.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<div class='chapter'><h3><a id="XI"></a>XI.</h3></div>
+
+<div class='ph4'>MISS STUYVESANT.</div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“She smiled; but he could see arise<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Her soul from far adown her eyes.”—<span class="smcap">Mrs. Browning.</span><br></span>
+</div></div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+
+<p>“She is a beauty; it is only right I should forewarn you of that.”</p>
+
+<p>“Dark or light?”</p>
+
+<p>“Dark; that is her hair and eyes are almost oriental in their blackness,
+but her skin is fair, almost as dazzling as yours, Ona.”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sylvester threw a careless glance in the long mirror before which
+she was slowly completing her toilet, and languidly smiled. But whether
+at this covert compliment to her greatest charm or at some passing fancy
+of her own, it would be difficult to decide. “The dark hair and eyes
+come from her father,” remarked she in an abstracted way while she tried
+the effect of a bunch of snow-white roses at her waist with a backward
+toss of her proud blonde head. “His mother was a Greek. ‘Tell it not in
+Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askelon,’” she exclaimed in a
+voice as nearly gay as her indolent nature would allow. For this lady of
+fashion was in one of her happiest moods. Her dress, a new one, fitted
+her to perfection and the vision mirrored in the glass before her was
+not lacking, so far as she could see in one charm that could captivate.
+“Do you think she could fasten a ribbon, or arrange a bow?” she further
+inquired. “I should like to have some one about me with a knack for
+helping a body in an emergency, if possible. Sarah is absolutely the
+destruction of any bit of ribbon she undertakes to handle. Look at that
+knot of black velvet over there for instance, wouldn’t you think a raw
+Irish girl just from the other side would have known better than to tie
+it with half the wrong side showing?”</p>
+
+<p>With the habit long ago acquired of glancing wherever her ivory finger
+chanced to point, the grave man of the world slowly turned his head full
+of the weightiest cares and oppressed by the burden of innumerable
+responsibilities, and surveyed the cluster of velvet bows thus
+indicated, with a mechanical knitting of the brows.</p>
+
+<p>“I pay Sarah twenty-five dollars a month and that is the result,” his
+wife proceeded. “Now if Paula—”</p>
+
+<p>“Paula is not to come here as a waiting maid,” her husband quickly
+interposed, a suspicion of color just showing itself for a moment on his
+cheek.</p>
+
+<p>“If Paula,” his wife went on, unheeding the interruption save by casting
+him a hurried glance over the shoulder of her own reflection in the
+glass, “had the taste in such matters of some other members of our
+family and could manage to lend me a helping hand now and then, why I
+could almost imagine I had my younger sister back with me again, who
+with her skill in making one look fit for the eyes of the world, was
+such a blessing to us in our old home.”</p>
+
+<p>“I have no doubt Paula could be taught to be equally efficient,” her
+husband responded, carefully restraining any further show of impatience.
+“She is bright, I am certain, and ribbon-tying is not such a very
+difficult art, is it?”</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t know about that; by the way Sarah succeeds I should say it was
+about on a par with the science of algebra or—what is that horrid study
+they used to threaten to inflict me with at the academy whenever I
+complained of a headache? Oh I remember—conic sections.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, well,” laughed her husband, “she ought soon to to be an expert in
+it then; Paula is a famous little mathematician.”</p>
+
+<p>A silence followed this response; Mrs. Sylvester was fitting in her
+ear-rings. “I suppose,” said she when the operation was completed, “that
+the snow will prevent half the people from coming to-night.” It was a
+reception evening at the Sylvester mansion. “But so long as Mrs.
+Fitzgerald does not disappoint me, I do not care. What do you think of
+the setting of these diamonds?” she inquired, leaning forward to look at
+herself more closely, and slowly shaking her head till the rich gems
+sparkled like fire.</p>
+
+<p>“It is good,” came in short, quick tones from the lips of her husband.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, I don’t know, there might be a shade more of enamel on the edge
+of that ring. I shall speak to the jeweller about it to-morrow. But what
+were we talking about?” she dreamily asked, still turning her head from
+side to side before the mirror.</p>
+
+<p>“We were talking about adopting your cousin in the place of our child
+who is dead,” replied her husband with some severity, pausing in the
+middle of the floor which he was pacing, to honor her with a steady
+glance.</p>
+
+<p>“O yes! Dear me! what an awkward clasp that man has given to these rings
+after all. You will have to fasten them for me.” Then as he stepped
+forward with studied courtesy, yawned just a trifle and remarked, “No
+one could ever take the place of one’s own child of course. If Geraldine
+had lived she would have been a blonde, her eyes were blue as
+sapphires.”</p>
+
+<p>He looked in his wife’s face and his hands dropped. He thought of the
+day when those eyes, blue as sapphires indeed, flashed burning with
+death’s own fever, from the little crib in the nursery, while with this
+same cool and self-satisfied countenance, the wife and mother before him
+had swept down the broad stairs to her carriage, murmuring
+apologetically as she gathered up her train, “O you needn’t trouble
+yourself to look after her, she will do very well with Sarah.”</p>
+
+<p>She may have thought of it too, for the least little bit of real crimson
+found its way through the rouge on her cheek as she encountered the
+stern look of his eye, but she only turned a trifle more towards the
+glass, saying, “I forgot you do not admire the rîle of waiting maid. I
+will try and manage them myself, seeing that you have banished Sarah.”</p>
+
+<p>He exerted his self-control and again for the thousandth time buried
+that ghastly memory out of sight, actually forcing himself to smile as
+he gently took her hand from her ear and began deftly to fasten the
+rebellious ornaments.</p>
+
+<p>“You mistake,” said he, “love can ask any favor without hesitation. I do
+not object to waiting upon my own wife.”</p>
+
+<p>She gave him a little look which he obligingly took as a guerdon for
+this speech, and languidly held out her bracelets. As he stood clasping
+them on her arms, she quietly eyed him over from head to foot. “I don’t
+know of a man who has your figure,” said she with a certain tone of
+pride in her voice; “it is well you married a wife who does not look
+altogether inferior beside you.” Then as he bowed with mock appreciation
+of the intended compliment, added with her usual inconsequence, “I dare
+say it would give me something to interest myself in. I don’t suppose
+she has a decent thing to wear, and the fact of her being a dark beauty
+would lend quite a new impulse to my inventive faculty. Mrs. Walker has
+a daughter with black eyes, but dear me, what a guy she does make of
+her!”</p>
+
+<p>With a sigh Mr. Sylvester turned to the window where he stood looking
+out at the heavy flakes of snow falling with slow and fluctuating
+movement between him and the row of brown stone houses in front. Paula
+considered as a milliner’s block upon which to try the effect of
+clothes!</p>
+
+<p>“Even Mrs. Fitzgerald with all her taste don’t know how to dress her
+child,” proceeded his wife, with a hurried, “Be still, Cherry!” to the
+importunate bird in the cage. “Now I should take as much pride in
+dressing any one under my charge as I would myself, provided the subject
+was likely to do credit to my efforts.” And finding the bird
+incorrigible in his shrill singing, she moved over to the cage, where
+she stood balancing her white finger for the bird to peck at, with a
+pretty caressing motion of her lip, the little Geraldine of the wistful
+blue eyes, had never seen.</p>
+
+<p>“You are welcome to do what you please in such matters,” was her
+husband’s reply. He was thinking again of that same little Geraldine; a
+fall of snow like the present always made him think of her and her
+innocent query as to whether God threw down such big flakes to amuse
+little children. “I give you <i>carte blanche</i>,” said he with sudden
+emphasis.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sylvester paused in her attentions to the bird to give him a sharp
+little look which might have aroused his surprise if he had been
+fortunate enough to see it. But his back was towards her, and there was
+nothing in the languidly careless tone with which she responded, to
+cause him to turn his head. “I see that you would really like to have me
+entertain the child; but—”</p>
+
+<p>She paused, pursing up her lips to meet the chattering bird’s caress,
+while her husband in his impatience drummed with his fingers on the
+pane.</p>
+
+<p>—“I must see her before I decide upon the length of her visit,”
+continued she, as weary with the sport she drew back to give herself a
+final look in the glass. “Will you please to hand me that shawl,
+Edward.”</p>
+
+<p>He turned with alacrity. In his relief he could have kissed the snowy
+neck held so erectly before him, as he drew around it the shawl he had
+hastily lifted from the chair at his side. But that would not have
+suited this calm and languid beauty who disliked any too overt tribute
+to her charms and saved her caresses for her bird. Besides it would look
+like gratitude, and gratitude would be misplaced towards a wife who had
+just indicated her acceptance of his offer to receive a relative of her
+own into his house.</p>
+
+<p>“She might as well come at once,” was her final remark, as satisfied at
+last with the lay of every ribbon she swept in finished elegance from
+the room. “Mrs. Kittredge’s reception comes off a week from Thursday,
+and I should like to see how a dark beauty with a fair skin would look
+in that new shade of heliotrope.”</p>
+
+<p>And so the battle was over and the victory won; for Mrs. Sylvester for
+all her seeming indifference was never known to change a decision she
+had once made. As he realized the fact, as he meditated that ere long
+this very room which had been the scene of so much frivolity and the
+witness to so many secret heart-burnings, would reëcho to the tread of
+the pure and innocent child, whose mind had flights unknown to the
+slaves of fashion, and in whose heart lay impulses of goodness that
+would satisfy the long smothered cravings of his awakened nature, he
+experienced a feeling of relenting towards the wife who had not chosen
+to thwart him in this the strongest wish of his childless manhood, and
+crossing to her dressing table, he dropped among its treasures a costly
+ring which he had been induced to purchase that day from an old friend
+who had fallen into want. “She will wear it,” murmured he to himself,
+“for its hue will make her hand look still whiter, and when I see it
+sparkle I will remember this hour and be patient.” Had he known that she
+had yielded to this wish out of a certain vague feeling of compunction
+for the disappointments she had frequently occasioned him and would
+occasion him again, he might have added a tender thought to the rich and
+costly gift with which he had just endowed her.</p>
+
+<p>“I expect a young cousin of mine to spend the winter with me and pursue
+her studies,” were the first words that greeted his ears as an hour or
+so later he entered the parlor where his wife was entertaining what few
+guests had been anxious enough for a sight of Mrs. Sylvester’s newly
+furnished drawing-room, to brave the now rapidly falling snow. “I hope
+that you and she will be friends.”</p>
+
+<p>Curious to see what sort of a companion his wife was thus somewhat
+prematurely providing for Paula, he hastily advanced towards the little
+group from which her voice had proceeded, and found himself face to face
+with a brown-haired girl whose appealing glance and somewhat infantile
+mouth were in striking contrast to the dignity with which she carried
+her small head and managed her whole somewhat petite person.</p>
+
+<p>“Miss Stuyvesant! my husband!” came in musical tones from his wife, and
+somewhat surprised to hear a name that but a moment before had been the
+uppermost in his mind, he bowed with courtesy and then asked if he was
+so happy as to speak to a daughter of Thaddeus Stuyvesant.</p>
+
+<p>“If it will give you especial pleasure I will say yes,” responded the
+little miss with a smile that irradiated her whole face. “Do you know my
+father?”</p>
+
+<p>“There are but few bankers in the city who have not that pleasure,”
+replied he with an answering look of regard. “I am especially happy to
+meet his daughter in my house to-night.”</p>
+
+<p>There was something in his manner of saying this and in the short
+inquiring glance which at every opportunity he cast upon her bright
+young face with its nameless charm of mingled appeal and reserve, that
+astonished his wife.</p>
+
+<p>“Miss Stuyvesant was in the carriage with Mrs. Fitzgerald,” said that
+lady with a certain dignity she knew well how to assume. “I am afraid if
+it had not been for that circumstance we should not have enjoyed the
+pleasure of her presence.” And with the rare tact of which she was
+certainly a mistress, as far as all social matters were concerned, she
+left the aspiring magnate of Wall Street to converse with the daughter
+of the man whom all New York bankers were expected to know, and hastened
+to join a group of ladies discussing ceramics before a huge placque of
+rarest <i>cloissone</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester followed her with his eyes; he had never seen her look
+more vivacious; had the hope of seeing a young face at their board
+touched some secret chord in her nature as well as his? Was she more of
+a woman than he imagined, and would she be, though in the most
+superficial of ways, a mother to Paula? Flushed with the thought, he
+turned back to the little lady at his side. She was gazing in an intent
+and thoughtful way at an engraving of Dubufe’s “Prodigal Son” that
+adorned the wall above her head. There was something in her face that
+made him ask:</p>
+
+<p>“Is that a favorite picture of yours?”</p>
+
+<p>She smiled and nodded her small and delicate head.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes sir, it is indeed, but I was not looking at the picture so much as
+at the face of that dark-haired girl that sits in the centre, with that
+far-away expression in her eyes. Do you see what I mean? She is like
+none of the rest. Her form is before us, but her heart and her interest
+are in some distant clime or forsaken home to which the music murmured
+at her side recalls her. She has a soul above her surroundings, that
+girl; and her face is indescribably pathetic to me. In the recesses of
+her being she carries a memory or a regret that separates her from the
+world and makes certain moments of her life almost holy.”</p>
+
+<p>“You look deep,” said Mr. Sylvester, gazing down upon the little lady’s
+face with strongly awakened interest. “You see more perhaps than the
+painter intended.”</p>
+
+<p>“No, no; possibly more than the engraving expresses, but not more than
+the artist intended. I saw the original once, when as you remember it
+was on exhibition here. I was a wee thing, but I never forgot that
+girl’s face. It spoke more than all the rest to me; perhaps because I so
+much honor reserve in one who holds in his breast a great pain or a
+great hope.”</p>
+
+<p>The eye that was resting upon her, softened indescribably. “You believe
+in great hopes,” said he.</p>
+
+<p>The little figure seemed to grow tall; and her face looked almost
+beautiful. “What would life be without them?” she answered.</p>
+
+<p>“True,” returned Mr. Sylvester; and entering into the conversation with
+unusual spirit, was astonished to find how young she was and yet how
+thoroughly bright and self-possessed.</p>
+
+<p>“Lovely girls are cropping up around me in all directions,” thought he;
+“I shall have to correct my judgment concerning our young ladies of
+fashion if I encounter many more as sensible and earnest-hearted as
+this.” And for some reason his brow grew so light and his tone so
+cheerful that the ladies were attracted from all parts of the room to
+hear what the demure Miss Stuyvesant could have to say to the grave
+master of the house, to call forth such smiles of enjoyment upon his
+usually melancholy countenance.</p>
+
+<p>Take it all together, the occasion though small was one of the
+pleasantest of the season, and so Mrs. Sylvester announced when the last
+carriage had driven away, and she and her husband stood in the
+brilliantly lighted library, surveying a new cabinet of rare and antique
+workmanship which had been that day installed in the place of honor
+beneath my lady’s picture.</p>
+
+<p>“I thought you seemed to enjoy it, Ona,” her husband remarked.</p>
+
+<p>“O, it was an occasion of triumph to me,” she murmured. “It is the first
+time a Stuyvesant has crossed our threshold, <i>mon cher</i>.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ha,” he exclaimed, turning upon her a brisk displeased look. He was
+proud and considered no man his superior in a social sense. “Do you
+acknowledge yourself a parvenue that you rejoice at the entrance of any
+one special person into your doors?”</p>
+
+<p>“I thought,” she replied somewhat mortified, “that you betrayed unusual
+pleasure yourself at her introduction.”</p>
+
+<p>“That may be; I was glad to see her here, for her father is one of the
+most influential directors in the bank of which I shortly expect to be
+made president.”</p>
+
+<p>The nature of this disclosure was calculated to be especially gratifying
+to her, and effectually blotted out any remembrance of the break by
+which it had been introduced. After a few hasty inquiries, followed by a
+scene of quite honest mutual congratulation, the gratified wife left her
+husband to put out the lights himself or call Samuel as he might choose,
+and glided up stairs to delight the curious Sarah with the broken
+soliloquies and inconsequent self-communings which formed another of her
+peculiar habits.</p>
+
+<p>As for her husband, he stood a few minutes where she left him,
+abstractedly eying the gorgeous vista that spread out before him down to
+the further mirror of the elaborate drawing-room, thinking perhaps with
+a certain degree of pride, of the swiftness with which he had risen to
+opulence and the certainty with which he had conquered position in the
+business as well as in the social world when he could speak of such a
+connection with Thaddeus Stuyvesant as a project already matured. Then
+with a hasty movement and a quick sigh which nothing in his prospects
+actual or apparent would seem to warrant, he proceeded to put out the
+lights, my lady’s picture shining with less and less importunity as the
+flickering jets disappeared, till all was dark save for the faint
+glimmer that came in from the hall, a glimmer just sufficient to show
+the outlines of the various articles of furniture scattered about—and
+could it be the tall figure of the master himself standing in the centre
+of the room with his palms pressed against his forehead in an attitude
+of sorrow or despair? Yes, or whose that wild murmur, “Is it never given
+to man to forget!” Yet no, or who is this that calm and dignified, steps
+at this moment from the threshold? It must have been a dream, a
+phantasy. <i>This</i> is the master of the house who with sedate and regular
+step goes up flight after flight of the spiral staircase, and neither
+pauses or looks back till he reaches the top of the house where he takes
+out a key from his pocket, and opening a certain door, goes in and locks
+it behind him. It is his secret study or retreat, a room which no one is
+allowed to enter, the mystery of the house to the servants and something
+more than that to its inquisitive mistress. What he does there no man
+knows, but to-night if any one had been curious enough to listen, they
+would have heard nothing more ominous than the monotonous scratch of a
+pen. He was writing to Miss Belinda and the burden of his letter was
+that on a certain day he named, he was coming to take away Paula.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<div class='chapter'><h3><a id="XII"></a>XII.</h3></div>
+
+<div class='ph4'>MISS BELINDA MAKES CONDITIONS.</div>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">“For of the soul the body form doth take,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For soul is form, and doth the body make.”—<span class="smcap">Spenser.</span></span>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+
+<p>Miss Belinda was somewhat taken aback at the proposal of Mr. Sylvester
+to receive Paula into his own house. She had not anticipated any such
+result to her efforts; the utmost she had expected was a couple of years
+or so of instruction in some state Academy. Nor did she know whether she
+was altogether pleased at the turn affairs were taking. From all she had
+heard, her niece Ona was, to say the least, a frivolous woman, and Paula
+had a mind too noble to be subjected to the deteriorating influence of a
+shallow and puerile companionship. Then the child had great beauty; Mr.
+Sylvester who ought to be a judge in such matters had declared it so,
+and what might not the adulation of the thoughtless and the envy of the
+jealous, do towards belittling a nature as yet uncontaminated.</p>
+
+<p>“We ought to think twice,” she said to Miss Abby with some bitterness,
+who on the contrary never having thought once was full of the most
+childish hopes concerning a result which she considered with a certain
+secret complacency she would not have acknowledged for the world, had
+been very much furthered by her own wise recommendations to Mr.
+Sylvester in the beginning of his visit. Yet notwithstanding her doubts
+Miss Belinda allowed such preparations to be made as she considered
+necessary, and even lent her hand which was deft enough in its way, to
+the task of enlarging the child’s small wardrobe. As for Paula, the
+thought of visiting the great city with the dear friend whose image had
+stood in her mind from early childhood as the impersonation of all that
+was noble, generous and protecting, was more than joyful; it was an
+inspiration. Not that she did not cling to the affectionate if somewhat
+quaint couple who had befriended her childhood and sacrificed their
+comfort to her culture and happiness. But the chord that lies deeper
+than gratitude had been struck, and fond as were her memories of the
+dear old home, the charm of that deep “My child,” with its hint of
+fatherly affection, was more than her heart could stand; and no spot, no
+not the realms of fairy-land itself, looked so attractive to her fancy
+as that far fireside in an unknown home where she might sit with cousin
+Ona and alternately with her exert her wit to beguile the smile to his
+melancholy lips.</p>
+
+<p>When therefore upon the stated day, Mr. Sylvester made his second
+appearance at the little cottage in Grotewell, it was to find Paula
+radiant, Miss Abby tearfully exultant and Miss Belinda—O anomaly of
+human nature—silent and severe. Attributing this however to her very
+natural regret at parting with Paula, he entered into all the
+arrangements for their departure on the following morning without a
+suspicion of the real state of her mind, nor was he undeceived until the
+day was nearly over and they sat down to have a few minutes of social
+conversation before the early tea.</p>
+
+<p>They had been speaking on some local topic involving a question of right
+and wrong, and Mr. Sylvester’s ears were yet thrilling to the deep
+ringing tones with which Paula uttered the words, “I do not see how any
+man can hesitate an instant when the voice of his conscience says no. I
+should think the very sunlight would daunt him at the first step of his
+foot across the forbidden line,” when Miss Belinda suddenly spoke up and
+sending Paula out of the room on some trivial pretext, addressed Mr.
+Sylvester without reserve.</p>
+
+<p>“I have something to say to you, sir, before you take from my home the
+child of my care and affection.”</p>
+
+<p>Could he have guessed what that something was that he should turn with
+such a flush of sudden anxiety to meet her determined gaze.</p>
+
+<p>“The rules of our life here have been simple,” continued she in a tone
+of voice which those who knew her well recognized as belonging to her
+uncompromising moods. “To do our duty, love God and serve our neighbor.
+Paula has been brought up to reverence those rules in simplicity and
+honor; what will your gay city life with its hollow devices for pleasure
+and its loose hold on the firm principles of life, do for this innocent
+soul, Mr. Sylvester?”</p>
+
+<p>“The city,” he said firmly but with a troubled undertone in his voice
+that was not unnoted by the watchful woman, “is a vast caldron of
+mingled good and evil. She will hear of more wrong doing, and be within
+the reach of more self-denying virtue, than if she had remained in this
+village alone with the nature that she so much loves. The tree of
+knowledge bears two kinds of fruit, Miss Belinda; would you therefore
+hinder the child from approaching its branches?”</p>
+
+<p>“No, sir; I am not so weak as to keep a child in swaddling-clothes after
+the period of infancy is past, neither am I so reckless as to set her
+adrift on an unknown sea without a pilot to guide her. Your wife—” she
+paused and fixed an intent look upon the flames leaping before her. “Ona
+is my niece,” she resumed in a lower tone of voice, “and I feel entitled
+to speak with freedom concerning her. Is she such a guide as I would
+choose for a young girl just entering a new sphere in life? From all I
+have heard, I should judge she was somewhat over-devoted to this world
+and its fashions.”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester flushed painfully, but seeing that any softening of the
+truth would be wholly ineffectual with this woman, replied in a candid
+tone, “Ona is the same now as she was in the days of her girlhood. If
+she loves the world too well she is not without her excuse; from her
+birth it has strewn nothing but roses in her path.”</p>
+
+<p>“Humph!” came from the lips of the energetic spinster. Then with a
+second stern glance at the fire, continued, “Another question, Mr.
+Sylvester. Does your wife consent to receive my niece into her house,
+for the indefinite length of time which you mention, from interest in
+the girl herself or indeed from any motive I should judge worthy of
+Paula? It is a leading question I know, but this is no time for niceties
+of speech.”</p>
+
+<p>“Miss Belinda,” replied he, and his voice was firm though his fingers
+slightly trembled where they rested upon the arms of his chair, “I will
+try and forget for a moment that Ona is my wife, and frankly confide to
+you that any such motive on her part, as would meet with your entire
+approval, must not be expected from a woman who has never fully
+recognized the solemn responsibilities of life. That she will be kind to
+Paula I have no doubt, that she may even learn to take an interest in
+her for her own sake, is also very possible, but that she will ever take
+your place towards her as guide or instructor, I neither anticipate nor
+would feel myself justified in leading you to.”</p>
+
+<p>The look which Miss Belinda cast him was anything but reassuring. “And
+yet,” said she, “you will take away my darling and give her up to an
+influence that can not be for good, or your glance would not be so
+troubled or your lip so uncertain. You would set her young feet in a
+path where the very flowers are so thick they conceal its tendency and
+obscure its dangers. Mr. Sylvester you are a man who has seen life with
+naked eyes, and must recognize its responsibilities; dare you take this
+Paula, whom you have seen, out of the atmosphere of truth and purity in
+which she has been raised, and give her over to the enervating
+influences of folly and fashion? Will you assume the risk and brave the
+consequences?”</p>
+
+<p>As though an electric shock had touched the nerve of his nature, Mr.
+Sylvester hastily rose and moved in a restless manner to the window. It
+was his favorite refuge in any time of sudden perplexity or doubt, and
+this was surely an occasion for both.</p>
+
+<p>“Miss Belinda,” he began and then paused, looking out on the hills of
+his boyhood, every one of which spoke to him at that moment with a force
+that almost sickened his heart and benumbed the faculties of his mind;
+“I recognize the love which leads you to speak in this way, and I bow
+before it, but—” here his tongue faltered again, that ready tongue
+whose quick and persuasive eloquence on public occasions had won for him
+the name of Silver-speech among his friends and admirers—“but there are
+others who love your Paula also, love her with a yearning that only the
+childless can feel or the disappointed appreciate. I had hoped—” here
+he left the window and approached her side, “to do more for Paula than
+to give her the temporal benefit of a luxurious home and such
+instruction as her extraordinary talents demand. If Ona upon seeing and
+knowing the child had found she could love her, I had intended to ask
+you to yield her to us unreservedly and forever, in short to make her my
+child in place of the daughter I have lost. But now—” with a quick
+gesture he began pacing the floor and left the sentence unfinished.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Belinda’s eyes which were of a light grey, wholly without beauty
+but with strange flashes of expression in them, left the fire and fell
+upon his face, and a tear of real feeling gathered beneath her lids.</p>
+
+<p>“I had no idea,” said he, “that you cherished any such intention as
+that. If I had I might have worded my apprehensions differently. The
+yearning feeling of which you speak, I can easily understand, also the
+strength of the determination it must take on the part of a man like
+yourself, to give up a hope of this nature. Yet—” Seeing him pause in
+his hurried pacing and open his lips as if to speak, she deferentially
+stopped.</p>
+
+<p>“Miss Belinda,” said he, in the firm and steadfast way more in keeping
+with his features than his agitated manner of a moment before, “I cannot
+give it up. The injury it would do me is greater than the harm, which
+one of Paula’s lofty nature would be apt to acquire in any atmosphere
+into which she might chance to be introduced. She is not a child, Miss
+Belinda, though we allude to her as such. The texture of those
+principles which you have instilled into her breast, is of no such weak
+material as to give way to the first petty breeze that blows. Paula’s
+house will stand, while mine—”</p>
+
+<p>He paused and gave way to a momentary struggle, but that over, he set
+his lips firmly together and the last vestige of irresolution vanished.
+Sitting down by her side, he turned his face upon her, and for the first
+time she realized the power which with one exception he had always
+exerted over the minds of others. “Miss Belinda,” said he, “I am going
+to give you an evidence of my trust; I am going to leave with you the
+responsibility of Paula’s future. She shall go with me, and learn, if
+she can, to love me and mine, but she shall also be under obligations to
+open her heart to you on all matters that concern her life and happiness
+in my house, and the day you see any falling off in her pure and upright
+spirit, you shall demand her return, and though it tears the heart from
+my breast, I will yield her up without question or parley as I am a
+gentleman and a Christian. Does that content you?”</p>
+
+<p>“It certainly ought to, sir. No one could ask more, I am sure,” returned
+the other in a voice somewhat unsteady for her.</p>
+
+<p>“It is opening my house to the gaze of a stranger,” said he, “for I
+desire you to command Paula to withhold nothing that seriously affects
+her; but my confidence in you is unbounded and I am sure that whatever
+you may learn in this way, will be held as sacred by you as though it
+were buried in a tomb.”</p>
+
+<p>“It certainly will, sir.”</p>
+
+<p>“As for the dearer hope which I have mentioned, time and the condition
+of things must decide for us. Meanwhile I shall strive to win a father’s
+place in her heart, if only to build myself a refuge for the days that
+are to come. You see I speak frankly, Miss Belinda; will you give me
+some token that you are not altogether dissatisfied with the result of
+this conversation?”</p>
+
+<p>With the straightforward if somewhat blunt action that characterized all
+her movements, she stretched out her hand, which he took with something
+more than his usual high-bred courtesy. “With you at the wheel,” said
+she, “I think I may trust my darling, even to the whirl and follies of
+such a society as I know Ona loves. A man who can so command himself,
+ought to be a safe guide to pioneer others.”</p>
+
+<p>And the considerate gentleman bowed; but the frank smile that hailed her
+genial clasp had somehow vanished, and from the sudden cloud that at
+that moment swept over the roseate heavens, fell a shadow that left its
+impress on his lip long after the cloud itself had departed.</p>
+
+<p>An hour or so had passed. The fire was burning brightly on the
+hearthstone, illumining with a steady glow the array of stuffed birds,
+worsted samplers and old-fashioned portraits with which the walls were
+adorned, but reserving its richest glow and fullest irradiation for the
+bended head of Paula, who seated on a little stool in the corner of the
+hearth, was watching the rise and fall of the flickering flames.</p>
+
+<p>She had packed her little trunk, had said good-bye to all her
+neighboring friends and was now sitting on the old hearthstone, musing
+upon the new life that was about to open before her. It was a happy
+musing, as the smile that vaguely dimpled her cheeks and brightened her
+eyes beneath their long lashes, amply testified. As Mr. Sylvester
+watched her from the opposite side of the hearth where he was sitting
+alone with his thoughts, he felt his heart sink with apprehension at the
+fervor of anticipation with which she evidently looked forward to the
+life in the new home. “The young wings think to gain freedom,” thought
+he, “when they are only destined to the confinement of a gilded cage.”</p>
+
+<p>He was so silent and looked so sad, Paula with a certain sort of
+sensitiveness to any change in the emotional atmosphere surrounding her,
+which was one of her chief characteristics, hastily looked up and
+meeting his eye fixed on her with that foreboding glance, softly arose
+and came and sat down by his side. “You look tired,” murmured she; “the
+long ride after a day of business care has been too much for you.”</p>
+
+
+<p>It was the first word of sympathy with his often over-wearied mind and
+body, that had greeted his ears for years. It made his eyes moisten.</p>
+
+<p>“I have been a little overworked,” said he, “for the last two months,
+but I shall soon be myself again. What were you thinking of, Paula?”</p>
+
+<p>“What was I thinking of?” repeated she, drawing her chair nearer to his
+in her loving confidence. “I was thinking what wonders of beauty and art
+lay in that great kernel which you call the city. I shall see lovely
+faces and noble forms. I shall wander through halls of music, the echo
+of whose songs may have come to me in the sob of the river or the sigh
+of the pines, but whose notes in all their beauty and power have never
+been heard by me even in my dreams. I shall look on great men and touch
+the garments of thoughtful women. I shall see life in its fullness as I
+have felt nature in its mightiness, and my heart will be satisfied at
+last.”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester drew a deep breath and his eyes burned strangely in the
+glow of the fire-light. “You expect high things,” said he; “did you ever
+consider that the life in a great city, with its ceaseless rush and
+constant rivalries, must be often strangely petty in despite of its
+artistic and social advantages?”</p>
+
+<p>“All life has its petty side,” said she, with a sweet arch look. “The
+eagle that cleaves the thunder-cloud, must sometimes stop to plume its
+wings. I should be sorry to lose the small things out of existence. Even
+we in the face of that great sunset appealing to us from the west, have
+to pile up the firewood on the hearth and set the table for supper.”</p>
+
+<p>“But fashion, Paula,” he pursued, concealing his wonder at the maturity
+of mind evinced by this simple child of nature, “that inexorable power
+that rules the very souls of women who once step within the magic circle
+of her realm! have you never thought of her and the demands that she
+makes on the time and attention even of the worshippers of the good and
+the true?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, sometimes,” she returned with a repetition of her arch little
+smile, “when I put on a certain bonnet I have, which Aunt Abby modeled
+over from one of my grandmother’s. Fashion is a sort of obstinate
+step-dame I imagine, whom it is less trouble to obey than to oppose. I
+don’t believe I shall quarrel with Fashion if she will only promise to
+keep her hands off my soul.”</p>
+
+<p>“But if—” with a pause, “she asks your all, what then?”</p>
+
+<p>“I shall consider that I am in a country of democratic principles,” she
+laughed, “and beg to be excused from acceding to the tyrannical demands
+of any autocrat male or female.”</p>
+
+<p>“You have been listening to Miss Belinda,” said he; “she is also opposed
+to all and any tyrannical measures.” Then with a grave look from which
+all levity had fled, he leaned toward the young girl and gently asked,
+“Do you know that you are a very beautiful girl, Paula?”</p>
+
+<p>She flushed, looked at him in some surprise and slowly drooped her head.
+“I have been told I looked like my father,” said she, “and I know that
+means something very kind.”</p>
+
+<p>“My child,” said he, with gentle insistence, “God has given you a great
+and wonderful gift, a treasure-casket of whose worth you scarcely
+realize the value. I tell you this myself, first because I prize your
+beauty as something quite sacred and pure, and secondly because you are
+going where you will hear words of adulation, whose folly and bluntness
+will often offend your ears, unless you carry in your soul some talisman
+to counteract their effect.”</p>
+
+<p>“I understand,” said she, “I know what you mean. I will remember that
+the most engaging beauty is nothing without a pure mind and a good
+heart.”</p>
+
+<p>“And you will remember too,” continued he, “that I blessed your innocent
+head to-night, not because it is circled by the roses of a youthful and
+fresh loveliness, but because of the pure mind and good heart I see
+shining in your eyes.” And with a fond but solemn aspect he reached out
+his hand and laid it on her ebon locks.</p>
+
+<p>She bowed her head upon her breast. “I will never forget,” said she, and
+the fire-light fell with a softening glow on the tears that trembled
+from her eye-lashes.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<div class='chapter'><h3><a id="XIII"></a>XIII.</h3></div>
+
+<div class='ph4'>THE END OF MY LADY’S PICTURE.</div>
+
+<blockquote><p>“Heaven from all creatures tides the book of Fate.”—<span class="smcap">Pope.</span></p></blockquote>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<p>Mrs. Sylvester was spending an evening at home. This was something so
+unusual for this august lady of fashion to indulge in, that she found it
+difficult not to fall asleep in the huge crimson-backed chair in which
+she had chosen to ensconce herself. Not that she had desisted from
+making every effort known to mortal woman to keep herself awake and if
+possible amused till the expected travellers should arrive. She had
+played with her bird till the spoiled pet had himself protested, ducking
+his head under his wing and proceeding without ceremony to make up his
+little feather bed, as cunning Geraldine used to call the round, fluffy
+ball into which he rolled himself at night. More than that, she had
+looked over her ornaments and taken out such articles as she thought
+could be spared for Paula, to say nothing of playing a bar or so from
+the last operatic sensation, and laboriously cutting open the leaves of
+the new magazine. But it was all of no use, and the heavy white lids
+were slowly falling, when the bell rang and Mr. Bertram Mandeville was
+announced, or rather Bertram Sylvester as he now chose to be called.</p>
+
+<p>It was a godsend to her as she politely informed him upon his entrance;
+and though in his secret heart he felt anything but God sent—he was not
+of a make to appreciate his uncle’s wife at her very evident value—he
+consented to remain and assist her in disposing of the evening till Mr.
+Sylvester should return.</p>
+
+<p>“He is going to bring a pretty girl with him,” remarked she, in a tone
+of some interest, “a cousin of mine from Grotewell. I should like to
+have you see her.”</p>
+
+<p>“Thank you,” replied he, his mind roaming off at the suggestion, into
+the region of a certain plain little music-room where the clock on the
+mantel ticked to the beating of his own heart. And for ten minutes Mrs.
+Sylvester had the pleasure of filling the room with a stream of easy
+talk, in which Grotewell, dark beauties, the coming Seventh Regiment
+reception, the last bit of gossip from London, and the exact situation
+of the Madison Bank formed the principal topics.</p>
+
+<p>To the one last mentioned, it having taken the form of a question, he
+was forced to reply; but the simple locality having been learned, she
+rambled easily on, this time indulging him with a criticism upon the
+personal appearance of certain business gentlemen who visited the house,
+ending with the somewhat startling declaration:</p>
+
+<p>“If Edward were not the fine appearing gentleman that he undoubtedly is,
+I should feel utterly out of place in these handsome parlors. Anything
+but to see an elegant and modern home, decorated with the costliest
+works of art, and filled with <i>bijouterie</i> of the most exquisite
+delicacy, presided over by a plain and common-place woman or a
+bald-headed and inferior-looking man. The contrast is too vivid; works
+of the highest art do not need such a startling comparison to bring out
+their beauty. Now if Edward stood in the throne-room of a palace, he
+would somehow make it seem to others as a handsome set off to his own
+face and figure.”</p>
+
+<p>This was all very wife-like if somewhat unnecessary, and Bertram could
+have listened to it with pleasure, if she had not cast the frequent and
+side-long glances at the mirror, which sufficiently betrayed the fact
+that she included herself in this complacent conclusion; as indeed she
+may have considered herself justified in doing, husband and wife being
+undoubtedly of one flesh. As it was, he maintained an immovable
+countenance, though he admired his uncle as much as she did, and the
+conversation gradually languished till the white somnolent lids of the
+lady again began to show certain premonitory signs of drooping, when
+suddenly they were both aroused by the well known click of a latch-key
+in the door, and in another moment Mr. Sylvester’s voice was heard in
+the hall, saying, in tones whose cheery accents made his wife’s eyes
+open in surprise—</p>
+
+<p>“Welcome home, my dear.”</p>
+
+<p>“They have come,” murmured Mrs. Sylvester rising with a look of
+undeniable expectation. Had Paula not been a beauty she would have
+remained seated.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, we have come,” was heard in hearty tones from the door-way, and
+Mr. Sylvester with a proud look which Bertram long remembered, ushered
+into their presence a young girl whose simple cloak and bonnet in no
+wise prevented Mrs. Sylvester from recognizing the somewhat uncommon
+beauty she had been led to expect.</p>
+
+<p>“Paula, this is your cousin Ona, and—Ah, Bertram, glad to see you—this
+is my only nephew, Mr. Sylvester.”</p>
+
+<p>The young girl, lost in the sudden glamour of numerous lights, shining
+upon splendors such as she may have dreamed of over the pages of
+Irving’s Alhambra, but certainly had never before seen, blushed with
+very natural embarrassment, but yet managed to bestow a pretty enough
+greeting upon the elegant woman and handsome youth, while Ona after the
+first moment of almost involuntary hesitation, took in hers the two
+trembling hands of her youthful cousin and actually kissed her cheek.</p>
+
+<p>“I am not given to caresses as you know,” she afterwards explained in a
+somewhat apologetic tone to her husband; “and anything like an appeal
+for one on the part of a child or an inferior, I detest; but her simple
+way of holding out her hand disarmed me, and then such a face demands a
+certain amount of homage, does it not?” And her husband in his surprise,
+was forced to acknowledge to himself, that as closely as he had studied
+his wife’s nature for ten years, there were certain crooks and turns in
+it which even he had never penetrated.</p>
+
+<p>“You look dazzled,” that lady exclaimed, gazing not unkindly into the
+young girl’s face; “the sudden glare of so much gas-light has bewildered
+you.”</p>
+
+<p>“I do not think it is that,” returned Paula with a frank and admiring
+look at the gorgeous room and the circle of pleasant faces about her.
+“Sudden lights I can bear, but I have come from a little cottage on the
+hillside and the magnificence of nature does not prepare you for the
+first sudden view of the splendors of art.”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sylvester smiled and cast a side glance of amusement at Bertram.
+“You admire our new hangings I see,” remarked she with an indulgence of
+the other’s <i>nĂ€ivetĂ©</i> that greatly relieved her husband.</p>
+
+<p>But in that instant a change had come across Paula; the simple country
+maid had assimilated herself with the surroundings, and with a sudden
+grace and dignity that were unstudied as they were charming, dropped her
+eyes from her cousin’s portrait—that for some reason seemed to shine
+with more than its usual insistence—and calmly replied, “I admire all
+beautiful color; it is my birthright as a Walton, to do so, I suppose.”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sylvester was a Walton also and therefore smiled; but her husband,
+who had marked with inward distrust, the sudden transformation in Paula,
+now stepped forward with a word or two of remark concerning his
+appetite, a prosaic allusion that led to the rapid disappearance of the
+ladies upstairs and a short but hurried conversation between the two
+gentlemen.</p>
+
+<p>“I have brought you a sealed envelope from the office,” said Bertram,
+who, in accordance with his uncle’s advice, had already initiated
+himself into business by assuming the position of clerk in the office of
+the wealthy speculator.</p>
+
+<p>“Ah,” returned his uncle hastily opening it. “As I expected, a meeting
+has been held this day by the board of Directors of the Madison Bank, a
+vote was cast, my proxy did his duty and I am duly elected President.
+Bertram, we know what that means,” smiled he, holding out his hand with
+an affectionate warmth greatly in advance of the emotion displayed by
+him on a former occasion.</p>
+
+<p>“I hope so indeed,” young Bertram responded. “An increase of fortune and
+honor for you, though you seem to have both in the fullest measure
+already, and a start in the new life for me to whom fortune and honor
+mean happiness.”</p>
+
+<p>A smile younger and more full of hope than any he had seen on his
+uncle’s face for years, responded to this burst. “Bertram,” said he,
+“since our conversation of a couple of weeks ago something has occurred
+which somewhat alters the opinions I then expressed. If you have
+patience equal to your energy, and a self-control that will not put to
+shame your unbounded trust in women, I think I can say God-speed to your
+serious undertaking, with something like a good heart. Women are not all
+frivolous and foolish-minded; there are some jewels of simple goodness
+and faith yet left in the world.”</p>
+
+<p>“Thank God for your conversion,” returned his nephew smiling, “and if
+this lovely girl whom you have just introduced to me, is the cause of
+it, then thank God for her also.”</p>
+
+<p>His uncle bowed with a gravity almost solemn, but the ladies returning
+at this moment, he refrained from further reply. After supper, to which
+unusual meal Mr. Sylvester insisted upon his nephew remaining, the two
+gentlemen again drew apart.</p>
+
+<p>“If you have decided upon buying the shares I have mentioned,” said the
+former, “you had better get your money in a position to handle at once.
+I shall wish to present you to Mr. Stuyvesant to-morrow, and I should
+like to be able to mention you as a future stockholder in the bank.”</p>
+
+<p>“Mr. Stuyvesant!” exclaimed Bertram, ignoring the rest of the sentence.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” returned his uncle with a smile, “Thaddeus Stuyvesant is the next
+largest stockholder to myself in the Madison Bank, and his patronage is
+not an undesirable one.”</p>
+
+<p>“Indeed—I was not aware—excuse me, I should be happy,” stammered the
+young man. “As for the money, it is all in Governments and is at your
+command whenever you please.”</p>
+
+<p>“That is good, I’ll notify you when I’m ready for the transfer. And now
+come,” said he, with a change from his deep business tone to the lighter
+one of ordinary social converse, “forget for a half hour that you have
+discarded the name of Mandeville, and give us an aria or a sonata from
+Mendelssohn before those hands have quite lost their cunning.”</p>
+
+<p>“But the ladies,” inquired the youth glancing towards the drawing-room
+where Mrs. Sylvester was giving Paula her first lesson in ceramics.</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, it is to see how the charm will act upon my shy country lassie,
+that I request such a favor.”</p>
+
+<p>“Has she never heard Mendelssohn?”</p>
+
+<p>“Not with your interpretation.”</p>
+
+<p>Without further hesitation the young musician proceeded to the piano,
+which occupied a position opposite to my lady’s picture in this
+anomalous room denominated by courtesy the library. In another instant,
+a chord delicate and ringing, disturbed the silence of the long vista,
+and one of Mendelssohn’s most exquisite songs trembled in all its
+delicious harmony through these apartments of sensuous luxury.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester had seated himself where he could see the distant figure
+of Paula, and leaning back in his chair, watched for the first startled
+response on her part. He was not disappointed. At the first note, he
+beheld her spirited head turn in a certain wondering surprise, followed
+presently by her whole quivering form, till he could perceive her face,
+upon which were the dawnings of a great delight, flush and pale by
+turns, until the climax of the melody being reached, she came slowly
+down the room, stretching out her hands like a child, and breathing
+heavily as if her ecstacy of joy in its impotence to adequately express
+itself, had caught an expression from pain.</p>
+
+<p>“O Mr. Sylvester!” was all she said as she reached that gentleman’s
+side; but Bertram Mandeville recognized the accents of an unfathomable
+appreciation in that simple exclamation, and struck into a grand old
+battle-song that had always made his own heart beat with something of
+the fire of ancient chivalry under its breastplate of modern broadcloth.</p>
+
+<p>“It is the voice of the thunder clouds when they marshal for battle!”
+exclaimed she at the conclusion. “I can hear the cry of a righteous
+struggle all through the sublime harmony.”</p>
+
+<p>“You are right; it is a war-song ancient as the time of battle-axes and
+spears,” quoth Bertram from his seat at the piano.</p>
+
+<p>“I thought I detected the flashing of steel,” returned she. “O what a
+world lies in those simple bits of ivory!”</p>
+
+<p>“Say rather in the fingers that sweep them,” uttered Mr. Sylvester. “You
+will not hear such music often.”</p>
+
+<p>“I am glad of that,” she cried simply, then in a quick conscious tone
+explained, “I mean that the hearing of such music makes an era in our
+life, a starting-point for thoughts that reach away into eternity; we
+could not bear such experiences often, it would confuse the spirit if
+not deaden its enjoyment. Or so it seems to me,” she added naively,
+glancing at her cousin who now came sweeping in from the further room,
+where she had been trying the effect of a change in the arrangement of
+two little pet monstrosities of Japanese ware.</p>
+
+<p>“What seems to you?” that lady inquired. “O, Mr. Mandeville’s playing? I
+beg pardon, Sylvester is the name by which you now wish to be addressed
+I suppose. Fine, isn’t it?” she rambled on all in the same tone while
+she cautiously hid an unfortunate gape of her rosy mouth behind the
+folds of her airy handkerchief. “Mr. Turner says the hiatus you have
+made in the musical world by leaving the concert room for the desk, can
+never be repaired,” she went on, supposedly to her nephew though she did
+not look his way, being at that instant engaged in sinking into her
+favorite chair.</p>
+
+<p>“I am glad,” Bertram politely returned with a frank smile, “to have
+enjoyed the approval of so cultivated a critic as Mr. Turner. I own it
+occasions me a pang now and then,” he remarked to his uncle over his
+shoulder, “to think I shall never again call up those looks of
+self-forgetful delight, which I have sometimes detected on the faces of
+certain ones in my audience.”</p>
+
+<p>And he relapsed without pause into a solemn anthem, the very reverse of
+the stirring tones which he had previously accorded them.</p>
+
+<p>“Now we are in a temple!” whispered Paula, subduing the sudden interest
+and curiosity which this young man’s last words had awakened. And the
+awe which crept over her countenance was the fittest interpretation to
+those noble sounds, which the one weary-hearted man in that room could
+have found.</p>
+
+<p>“I have something to tell you, Ona,” remarked Mr. Sylvester shortly
+after this, as the music being over, they all sat down for a final chat
+about the fireside. “I have received notice that the directors of the
+Madison Bank have this day elected me their president. I thought you
+might like to know it to-night.”</p>
+
+<p>“It is a very gratifying piece of news certainly. President of the
+Madison Bank sounds very well, does it not, Paula?”</p>
+
+<p>The young girl with her soul yet ringing with the grand and solemn
+harmonies of Mendelssohn and Chopin, turned at this with her brightest
+smile. “It certainly does and a little awe-inspiring too;” she added
+with her arch glance.</p>
+
+<p>“Your congratulations are also requested for our new assistant cashier.
+Arise, Bertram, and greet the ladies.”</p>
+
+<p>With a blush his young nephew arose to his feet.</p>
+
+<p>“What! are you going into the banking business?” queried Mrs. Sylvester.
+“Mr. Turner will be more shocked than ever: he chooses to say that
+bankers, merchants and such are the solid rock of his church, while the
+lighter fry such as artists, musicians, and let us hope he includes us
+ladies, are its minarets, and steeples. Now to make a foundation out of
+a steeple will quite overturn his methodical mind I fear.”</p>
+
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester looked genially at his wife; she was not accustomed to
+attempt the facetious; but Paula seemed to have the power of bringing
+out unexpected lights and shadows from all with whom she came in
+contact.</p>
+
+<p>“A clergyman who rears his church on the basis of wealth must expect
+some overturning now and then,” laughed he.</p>
+
+<p>“If by means of it he turns a fresh side to the sun, it will do him no
+harm,” chimed in Paula.</p>
+
+<p>Seldom had there been so much simple gaiety round that fireside; the
+very atmosphere grew lighter, and the brilliance of my lady’s picture
+became less oppressive.</p>
+
+<p>“We ought to have a happy winter of it,” spoke up Mr. Sylvester with a
+glance around him. “Life never looked more cheerful for us all, I think;
+what do you say, Bertram my boy.”</p>
+
+<p>“It certainly looks promising for me.”</p>
+
+<p>“And for me,” murmured Paula.</p>
+
+<p>The complacent way with which Mrs. Sylvester smoothed out the feathers
+of her fan with her jewelled right hand,—she always carried a fan
+winter and summer, some said for the purpose of displaying those same
+jewelled fingers—was sufficient answer for her.</p>
+
+<p>At that moment there was a hush, when suddenly the small clock on the
+mantel-piece struck eleven, and instantly as if awaiting the signal,
+there came a rush and a heavy crash which drew every one to their feet,
+and the brilliant portrait of my lady fell from the wall, and toppling
+over the cabinet beneath, slid with the various articles of bronze and
+china thereon, almost to the very chair in which its handsome prototype
+had been sitting.</p>
+
+<p>It was a startling interruption and for an instant no one spoke, then
+Paula with a look towards her cousin breathed to herself rather than
+said, “Pray God it be not an omen!” And the pale countenances of the two
+gentlemen standing face to face on either side of that fallen picture,
+showed that the shadow of the same superstition had insensibly crossed
+their own minds.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sylvester was the only one who remained unmoved. “Lift if up,”
+cried she, “and let us see if it has sustained any injury.”</p>
+
+<p>Instantly Bertram and her husband sprang forward, and in a moment its
+glowing surface was turned upward. Who could read the meaning of the
+look that crossed her husband’s face as he perceived that the sharp
+spear of the bronze horseman, which had been overturned in the fall, had
+penetrated the rosy countenance of the portrait and destroyed that
+importunate smile forever.</p>
+
+<p>“I suppose it is a judgment upon me for putting all the money you had
+allowed me for charitable purposes, into that exquisite bit of bronze,”
+observed Mrs. Sylvester, stooping above the overturned horseman with an
+expression of regret she had not chosen to bestow on her own ruined
+picture. “Ah he is less of a champion than I imagined; he has lost his
+spear in the struggle.”</p>
+
+<p>Paula glanced at her cousin in surprise. Was this pleasantry only a veil
+assumed by this courtly lady to hide her very natural regret over the
+more serious accident? Even her husband turned toward her with a certain
+puzzled inquiry in his troubled countenance. But her expression of
+unconcern was too natural; evidently the destruction of the picture had
+awakened but small regret in her volatile mind.</p>
+
+<p>“She is less vain than I thought,” was the inward comment of Paula.</p>
+
+<p>Ah simple child of the woods and streams, it is the extent of her vanity
+not the lack of it, that has produced this effect. She has begun to
+realize that ten years have elapsed since this picture was painted, and
+that people are beginning to say as they examine it, “Mrs. Sylvester has
+not yet lost her complexion, I see.”</p>
+
+<p>A break necessarily followed this disturbance, and before long Bertram
+took his leave, not without a cordial pressure from his uncle’s hand and
+a look of kindly interest from the stranger lassie, upon whose
+sympathetic and imaginative mind the hints let fall as to his former
+profession, had produced a deep impression. With his departure Mrs.
+Sylvester’s weariness returned, and ere long she led the way to her
+apartments up stairs. As Paula was hastening to follow Mr. Sylvester
+stopped her.</p>
+
+<p>“You will not allow this unfortunate occurrence,” he said, with a slight
+gesture towards the picture now standing with its face against the wall,
+“to mar your first sleep under my roof, will you Paula, my child?”</p>
+
+<p>“No, not if you say that you think Cousin Ona will not be likely to
+connect it with my appearance here.”</p>
+
+<p>“I do not think she will; she is not superstitious and besides does not
+seem to greatly regret the misfortune.”</p>
+
+<p>“Then I will forget it all and only remember the music.”</p>
+
+<p>“It was all you anticipated?”</p>
+
+<p>“It was more.”</p>
+
+<p>“Sometime I will tell you about the player and the sweet young girl he
+loves.”</p>
+
+<p>“Does he—” she paused, blushing; love was a subject upon which she had
+never yet spoken to any one.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes he does,” Mr. Sylvester returned smiling.</p>
+
+<p>“I thought there was a meaning in the music I did not quite understand.
+Good night, uncle,”—he had requested her to address him thus though he
+was in truth her cousin, “and many, many thanks.”</p>
+
+<p>But he stopped her again. “You think you will be happy in these rooms,”
+said he; “you love splendor.”</p>
+
+<p>She was not yet sufficiently acquainted with his voice to detect the
+regret underlying its kindly tone, and answered without suspicion. “I
+did not know it before, but I fear that I do. It dazzled at first, but
+now it seems as if I had reached a home towards which I had always been
+journeying. I shall dream away hours of joy before each little ornament
+that adorns your parlors. The very tiles that surround the fireplace
+will demand a week of attention at least.”</p>
+
+<p>She ended with a smile, but unlike formerly he did not seem to catch the
+infection. “I had rather you had cared less,” said he, but instantly
+regretted the seeming reproach, for her eyes filled with tears and the
+tones of her voice trembled as she replied,</p>
+
+<p>“Do you think the beauty I have seen has made me forget the kindness
+that has brought me here? I love fine and noble objects, glory of color
+and harmony of shape, but more than all these do I love a generous soul
+without a blot on its purity, or a flaw in its integrity.”</p>
+
+<p>She had meant to utter something that would show her appreciation of his
+goodness and the universal esteem in which he was held, but was quite
+unprepared for the start that he gave and the unmistakable deepening of
+the shadow on his sombre face. But before she could express her regret
+at the offence, whatever it was, he had recovered himself, and it was
+with a fatherly tenderness that he laid his hand upon hers while he
+said, “Such a soul may yours ever continue, my child,” and then stood
+watching her as she glided up the stairs, her charming face showing
+every now and then as she leaned on her winding way to the top, to
+bestow upon him the tender little smile she had already learned was his
+solace and delight.</p>
+
+<p>It was the beginning of happier days for him.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<div class='chapter'><h2><a id="BOOK_II"></a>BOOK II.</h2></div>
+
+<div class='ph3'>LIFE AND DEATH.</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<div class='chapter'><h3><a id="XIV"></a>XIV.</h3></div>
+
+<div class='ph4'>MISS BELINDA HAS A QUESTION TO DECIDE.</div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">“I pray you in your letters,<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor set down aught in malice.”—<span class="smcap">Othello.</span><br></span>
+</div></div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+
+<p>Miss Belinda sitting before her bedroom fire on a certain windy night in
+January, presented a picture of the most profound thought. A year had
+elapsed since, with heavy heart and moistened eye, she had bidden
+good-bye to the child of her care, and beheld her drift away with her
+new friend into a strange and untried life. And now a letter had come
+from that friend, in which with the truest appreciation for the feelings
+of herself and sister, he requested their final permission to adopt
+Paula as his own child and the future occupant of his house and heart.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, after a year of increased comfort, Mrs. Sylvester, who would never
+have consented to receive as her own any child demanding care or
+attention, had decided it was quite a different matter to give place and
+position to a lovely girl already grown, whose beauty was sufficiently
+pronounced to do credit to the family while at the same time it was of a
+character to heighten by contrast her own very manifest attractions. So
+the letter, destined to create such a disturbance in the stern and
+powerful mind of Miss Belinda, had been written and dispatched.</p>
+
+<p>And indeed it was matter for the gravest reflection. To accede to this
+important request was to yield up all control over the dear young girl
+whose affection had constituted the brightness of this somewhat
+disappointed life, while to refuse an offer made with such evident love
+and anxiety, was to bring a pang of regret to a heart she hesitated to
+wound. The question of advantage which might have swayed others in their
+decision, did not in the least affect Miss Belinda. Now that Paula had
+seen the world and gained an insight into certain studies beyond the
+reach of her own attainments, any wishes in which she might have
+indulged on that score were satisfied, and mere wealth with its
+concomitant of luxuriant living, she regarded with distrust, and rather
+in the light of a stumbling-block to the great and grand end of all
+existence.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly with that energy which characterized all her movements, she
+rose from her seat, and first casting a look of somewhat cautious
+inquiry at the recumbent figure of her sister, asleep in the heavy old
+fashioned bed that occupied one corner of the room, she proceeded to a
+bureau drawer and took out a small box which she unlocked on the table.
+It was full of letters; those same honest epistles, which, as empowered
+by Mr. Sylvester, she had requested Paula to send her from week to week.
+Some of them were a year old, but she read them all carefully through,
+while the clock ticked on the shelf and the wind soughed in the chimney.
+Certain passages she marked, and when she had finished the pile, she
+took up the letters again and re-read those passages. They were
+necessarily desultory in their character, but they all had, in her mind
+at least, a bearing upon the question on hand, and as such, I give them
+to my readers.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<p>“O aunty, I have made a friend, a sweet girl friend who I have reason to
+hope will henceforth be to me as my other eye and hand. Her name is
+Stuyvesant—a name by the way that always calls up a certain complacent
+smile on Cousin Ona’s countenance—and she is the daughter of one of the
+directors of Mr. Sylvester’s bank. I met her in a rather curious way.
+For some reason Ona had expressed a wish for me to ride horseback. She
+is rather too large for the exercise herself, but thought it looked
+well, she said, to see a lady and groom ride from the front of the
+house; moreover it would keep me in color by establishing my health. So
+Mr. Sylvester who denies her nothing, promised us horses and the groom,
+and as a preparation for acquitting myself with credit, has sent me to
+one of the finest riding academies in the city. It was here I met Miss
+Stuyvesant. She is a small interesting-looking girl whose chief beauty
+lies in her expression which is certainly very charming. I was conscious
+of a calm and satisfied feeling the moment I saw her. Her eyes which are
+raised with a certain appeal to your face, are blue, while her lips that
+break into smiles only at rare moments, are rosy and delicately curved.
+In her riding-habit she looks like a child, but when dressed for the
+street she surprises you with the reserved and womanly air with which
+she carries her proud head. Altogether she is a sweet study to me,
+alluring me with her glance yet awing me by her dainty ladyhood, a
+ladyhood too unconscious to be affected and yet so completely a part of
+her whole delicate being, that you could as soon dissociate the bloom
+from the rose, as the air of highborn reserve, from this sweet scion of
+one of New York’s oldest families.</p>
+
+<p>“I was mounting my horse when our eyes first met, and I never shall
+forget her look of delighted surprise. Did she recognize in me the
+friend I now hope to become? Later we were introduced by Mr. Sylvester
+who had been so kind as to accompany me that day. The way in which he
+said to her, ‘This is Paula,’ proved that I was no new topic of
+conversation between them, and indeed she afterwards explained to me
+that she had been forewarned of my arrival during an afternoon call at
+his house. There was in this first interview none of the unnecessary
+gush which you have so often reprobated as childish; indeed Miss
+Stuyvesant is not a person with whom one would presume to be familiar,
+nor was it till we had met several times that any acknowledgement was
+made of the mutual interest with which we found ourselves inspired.
+Cousin Ona to whom I had naturally spoken of the little lady, wished me
+to cultivate her acquaintance more assiduously, but I knew that if I had
+excited in her the same interest she had awakened in me, this would not
+be necessary; our friendship would grow of itself and blossom without
+any hot-house forcing. And so it did. One day she came to the
+riding-school with her eyes like stars and her cheeks like the oleanders
+in your sitting-room. Her brightness was so contagious, I stepped up to
+her. But she greeted me with almost formal reserve, and mounting her
+horse, proceeded to engage in her usual exercise. I was not hurt; I
+recognized the presence of some thought or feeling which made a barrier
+around her sensitive nature, and duly respected it. Mounting my own
+horse, I rode around the ring which is the somewhat limited field of my
+present equestrian efforts, and waited. For I knew from the looks which
+she cast me every now and then, that the flower of our friendship was
+outgrowing its sheath and would soon burst into the bud of perfect
+understanding. At the end of the lesson we approached each other. I do
+not know how it was done, but we walked home together, or rather I
+accompanied her to the stoop of her house, and before we parted we had
+exchanged those words which give emphasis to a sentiment long cherished
+but now for the first time avowed. Miss Stuyvesant and I are friends,
+and I feel as though a new stream of enjoyment had opened in my breast.</p>
+
+<p>“The fact that I still call her by this formal title instead of her very
+pretty name of Cicely, proves the nature of the respect she inspires
+even in the breasts of her girlish associates.”</p>
+
+<p>“Why is it that I frequently hesitate as I go up the stairs and look
+about me with a vague feeling of apprehension? The bronze figure of
+Luxury that adorns the landing, wears no semblance of terror to the
+wildest imagination, and yet I often find myself seized by an
+inexplicable shudder as I hurry past it; and once I actually looked
+behind me with the same sensation as if some one had plucked me by the
+sleeve.</p>
+
+<p>“It is a folly; for recording which, I make my excuses.”</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<p>“Cousin Ona has decided that I must never wear colors. ‘Soft grays, my
+dear, dead blacks and opaque whites are all that you need to bring out
+the fine contrast of your hair and complexion; the least hint of blue or
+pink would destroy it.’ So she says and so I must believe, for who else
+has made such a study of the all important subject of dress. Behold me,
+then, arrayed for my first reception in a colorless robe of rich silk to
+which Ona after long consideration allowed me to add some ornaments of
+plain gold with which Mr. Sylvester has kindly presented me. But I think
+more of the people I am going to meet than of anything else, though I
+enjoy the home-feeling which a pretty dress gives me, as well as a
+violet does its bright blue coat.”</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<p>“I have heard a great preacher! What shall I say? At first it seems as
+if nothing could express my joy and satisfaction. The sapling that is
+shaken to its root by the winds of heaven, keeps silence I imagine. But
+O Aunty, if my smallness makes me quake, it also makes me feel. What
+gates of thought have been opened to me! What shining tracks of inquiry
+pointed out! I feel as if I had been shown a path where angels walked.
+Can it be that such words have been uttered every week of my life and I
+in ignorance of them? It is like the revelation of the ocean to
+unaccustomed eyes. Henceforth small things must seem like pebble stones
+above which stretch innumerable heavenly vistas. It is not so much that
+new things have been revealed to me as that old things have been made
+strangely eloquent. The voice of a daisy on the hill side, the breath of
+thunder in the mountain gorges, the blossoming of a child’s smile under
+its mother’s eye, the fact that golden portals are opened in every life
+for the coming and going of the messengers of God, all have been made
+real to me, real as the voice of the Saviour to his disciples as they
+walked in the fields or started back awe-stricken from the stupendous
+vision of the cross. It is a solemn thing to see one’s humble thoughts
+caught by the imagination of a great mind and carried on and up into
+regions you never realized existed.</p>
+
+<p>“I was so burdened with joy that I could not forbear asking Mr.
+Sylvester if he did not feel as if the whole face of the world had
+changed since we entered those holy doors. He did not respond with the
+glad ‘Yes’ for which I hoped, and though his smile was very kind, I
+could not help wondering what it was that sometimes fell between us like
+a veil.”</p>
+
+<p>“O Aunty, how my heart does yearn towards Mr. Sylvester at times! As I
+see him sitting with clouded brow in the midst of so much that ought to
+charm and enliven him, I ask myself if the advantages of wealth
+compensate for all this care and anxiety. But I notice he is much more
+cheerful now than when I first came. Ona says he is in danger of losing
+the air of melancholy reserve which made him look so distinguished, but
+I think we can spare a little of such doubtful distinguishment for the
+sake of the smiles with which he now and then indulges us.”</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<p>“I feel as if a hand had gripped my throat. Cousin Ona spoke to Mr.
+Sylvester this morning in a way that made my very heart stand still. And
+yet it was only a simple, ‘Follow your own judgment, Mr. Sylvester.’ But
+how she said it! Do these languid women carry venom in their tongues? I
+had always thought she was of too easy a disposition to feel anger or
+display it; but the spring of a serpent is all the deadlier for his long
+silent basking in the sun. O pardon me for making such a frightful
+allusion. But if you had seen her and heard Mr. Sylvester’s sigh as he
+turned and left the room!”</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<p>“Mr. Bertram Sylvester has awakened my deepest interest. His uncle has
+told me his story, which alone of all the things I have heard in this
+house, I do not feel at liberty to repeat, and it has aroused in me
+strange thoughts and very peculiar emotions. He is devoted to some one
+we do not know, and the idea surrounds him in my eyes with a sort of
+halo that you would perhaps call fanciful, but which I am nevertheless
+bound to reverence. He does not know that I am acquainted with his
+story. I wish he did and would let me speak the words that rise to my
+lips whenever I see him or hear him play.”</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<p>“There are moments when I long to flee back to Grotewell. It is when
+Cousin Ona comes in from shopping with a dozen packages to be opened and
+commented upon, or when Mrs. Fitzgerald has been here or some other of
+her ultra-fashionable acquaintances. The atmosphere of the house for
+hours after either of the above occurrences is too heavy for breathing.
+I have to go away and clear my brain by a brisk walk or a look into
+KnƓdler’s or Schaus’.”</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<p>“The panel where Cousin Ona’s picture used to hang, has been filled by
+one of Meissonier’s most interesting studies; and though I never thought
+Mr. Sylvester particularly fond of the French style of art, he seems
+very well satisfied with the result. I cannot understand how Cousin Ona
+can regard the misfortune to her portrait so calmly. I think it would
+break my heart to see a husband look with complacency on any picture, no
+matter how exquisite, that took the place of my own, especially if like
+her’s, it was painted in my bridal days. I sometimes wonder if those
+days are as sacred to the memory of husband and wife as I have always
+imagined them to be.”</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<p>“Why does Cousin Ona never speak of Grotewell, and why, if by chance I
+mention the name, does she drop her eyes and a shadow cross the
+countenance of Mr. Sylvester?”</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<p>“There is a word Mr. Sylvester uses in the most curious way; it is
+<i>fuss</i>. He calls everything a fuss that while insignificant in size or
+character has power either to irritate or please. A fly is a fuss; so is
+a dimple in a girl’s cheek or a figure that goes wrong in accounts. I
+have even heard him call a child, ‘That dear little fuss.’ Bertram
+unconsciously imitates his uncle in this peculiar mannerism and is often
+heard alluding to this or that as a <i>fuss of fusses</i>. Indeed they say
+this use of the word is a peculiarity of the Sylvester family.”</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<p>“I think from the way Mr. Sylvester spoke yesterday, that he must have
+experienced some dreadful trouble in his life. We were walking in the
+wards of a hospital—that is, Miss Stuyvesant, Mr. Sylvester and
+myself—when some one near us gave utterance to the trite expression, ‘O
+it will heal, but the scar will always remain.’ ‘That is a common
+saying,’ remarked Mr. Sylvester, ‘but how true a one no one realizes but
+he who carries the scar.’”</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<p>“It may be imagination or simply the effect of increased appreciation on
+my part, but it does seem as if Miss Stuyvesant grew lovelier and more
+companionable each time that I meet her. She makes me think of a temple
+in which a holy lamp is burning. Her very silences are eloquent, and yet
+she is never <i>distraite</i> but always cheerful and frequently the
+brightest of the company. But it is a brightness without glitter, a
+gentle lustre that delights you but never astonishes. I meet many sweet
+girls in the so-called heartless circles of society, but none like her.
+She is my white lily on which a moonbeam rests.”</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<p>“This house contains a mystery, as Ona is pleased to designate the room
+at the top of the house to which Mr. Sylvester withdraws when he desires
+to be alone. And indeed it is a sort of Bluebeard’s chamber, in that he
+keeps it rigidly under lock and key, allowing no one to enter it, not
+even his wife. The servants declare that no one but himself has ever
+crossed its threshold, but I can scarcely believe that. Ona has not, but
+there must surely be some trusty person to whom he allots the care of
+its furniture. Am I only proving myself to be a true member of my sex
+when I allow that I cannot hinder my own curiosity from hovering about a
+spot so religiously guarded? Yet what should we see if its doors were
+thrown open? A study surrounded with books it displeases him to see
+misplaced, or a luxurious apartment fitted with every appointment
+necessary to rest and comfort him when he comes home tired from
+business.”</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<p>“I never saw Mr. Sylvester angry till to-day. By some inadvertence he
+went down town without locking the door of his private room, and though
+he returned immediately upon missing the key from his pocket, he was
+barely in time to prevent Cousin Ona from invading the spot he has
+always kept so sacred from intrusion. I was not present and of course
+did not hear what was said, but I caught a glimpse of his face as he
+left the house, and found it quite sufficient to assure me of his
+dissatisfaction. As for Ona, she declares he pulled her back as if she
+had been daring the plague. ‘I do not expect to find five beautiful
+wives hanging up there by their necks,’ concluded she with a forced
+laugh, ‘but I shall yet see the interior of that room, if only to
+establish my prerogative as the mistress of this house.’</p>
+
+<p>“I do not now feel as if I wished to see it.”</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<p>“There is one thing that strikes me as peculiar in Miss Stuyvesant, and
+that is, that as much pleasure as she seems to take in my society when
+we meet, she never comes to see me in Mr. Sylvester’s house. For a long
+time I wondered over this but said nothing, but one day upon receiving a
+second invitation to visit her, I mentioned the fact as delicately as I
+could, and was quite distressed to observe how seriously she took the
+rebuke, if rebuke it could be called. ‘I cannot explain myself,’ she
+murmured in some embarrassment; ‘but Mr. Sylvester’s house is closed
+against me. You must not ask me to seek you there or expect me to do
+myself the pleasure of attending Mrs. Sylvester’s receptions. I cannot.
+Is that enough for me to say to my dearest friend?’ I hardly knew what
+to reply, but finally ventured to inquire if she was restrained by any
+fact that would make it undignified in me to seek her society and enjoy
+the pleasures she is continually offering me. And she answered with such
+a cheerful negative I was quite reassured. And so the matter is settled.
+Our friendship is to be emancipated from the bonds of etiquette and I am
+to enjoy her company whenever I can. To-morrow we are going to take our
+first ride in the park. The horses have been bought, and much to Cousin
+Ona’s satisfaction, the groom has been hired.”</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<p>“I was told something the other day, of a nature so unpleasant that I
+should not think of repeating it, if you had not expressly commanded me
+to confide to you everything that for any reason produced an effect upon
+me in my new home. My informant was Sarah, the somewhat gossiping woman
+whom Ona has about her as seamstress and maid. She said—and she had
+spoken before I could prevent her—that the way Mrs. Sylvester took on
+about her mourning at the time of little Geraldine’s death was enough to
+wear out the patience of Job. She even went so far as to tell the
+dressmaker that if she could not have her dress made to suit her she
+would not put on mourning at all! Aunty, can you wonder that Mr.
+Sylvester looks so bitterly sombre whenever mention is made of his
+child? He loved it, and its own mother could worry over the fit of a
+dress while his bereaved heart was breaking! I confess I can never feel
+the same indulgence towards what I considered the idiosyncrasies of a
+fashionable beauty again. Her smooth white skin makes me tremble; it has
+never flushed with delight over the innocent smiles of her firstborn.”</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<p>“Mr. Sylvester is very polite to Cousin Ona and seems to yield to her
+wishes in everything. But if I were she I think my heart would break
+over that very politeness. But then she is one who demands formality
+even from the persons of her household. I have never seen him stoop for
+a kiss or beheld her even so much as lay her hand on his shoulder. But I
+have observed him wait on her at moments when he was pale from weariness
+and she flushed with long twilight reclinings before her sleepy boudoir
+fire.”</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<p>“There are times when I would not exchange my present opportunities for
+any others which might be afforded me. General —— dined here to-day,
+and what a vision of a great struggle was raised up before me by his few
+simple words in regard to Gettysburg. I did not know which to admire
+most, the military bearing and vivid conversation of the great soldier,
+or the ease and dignity with which Mr. Sylvester met his remarks and
+answered each glowing sentence. General —— spoke a few words to me.
+How gentle these lion-like men can be when they stoop their tall heads
+to address little children or young women!”</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+
+<p>“What a noble-hearted man Mr. Sylvester is! Mr. Turner in speaking of
+him the other night, declared there is no one in his congregation who in
+a quiet way does so much for the poor. ‘He is especially interested in
+young men,’ said he, ‘and will leave his own affairs at any time to aid
+or advise them.’ I knew Mr. Sylvester was kind, but Mr. Turner’s
+enthusiasm was uncommon. He evidently admires Mr. Sylvester as much as
+every one else loves him. And he is not alone in this. Almost every day
+I hear some remark made of a nature complimentary to my benefactor’s
+character or ability. Even Mr. Stuyvesant who so seldom appears to
+notice us girls, once interrupted a conversation between Cicely and
+myself to inquire if Mr. Sylvester was quite well. ‘I thought he looked
+pale to-day,’ remarked he, in his dry but not unkindly way, and then
+added, ‘He must not get sick; he is too valuable to us.’ This was a
+great deal for Mr. Stuyvesant to say, and it caused a visible
+gratification to Mr. Sylvester when I related it to him in the evening.
+‘I had rather satisfy that man than any other I know,’ declared he. ‘He
+is of the stern old-fashioned sort, and it is an honor to any one to
+merit his approval. I did not tell him that I had also heard Mr.
+Stuyvesant observe in a conversation with some business friend of his,
+that Edward Sylvester was the only speculator he knew in whom he felt
+implicit confidence. Somehow it always gives me an uncomfortable feeling
+to hear Mr. Sylvester alluded to as a speculator. Besides since he has
+entered the Bank, he has I am told, entirely restricted himself to what
+are called legitimate operations.’”</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<p>“Mr. Sylvester came home with a dreadful look on his face to-day. We
+were standing in the hall at the time the door opened, and he went by us
+without a nod, almost as if he did not see us. Even Ona was startled and
+stood gazing after him with an anxiety such as I had never observed in
+her before, while I was conscious of that sick feeling I have sometimes
+experienced when he came upon me suddenly from his small room above, or
+paused in the midst of the gayest talk, to ask me some question that was
+wholly irrelevant and most frequently sad.</p>
+
+<p>“‘He has met with some heavy loss,’ murmured his wife, glancing down the
+handsome parlors with a look such as a mother might bestow upon the face
+of a sick child. But I was sure she had not sounded his trouble, and in
+my impetuosity was about to fly to his side when we saw him pause before
+the image of Luxury that stands on the stair, look at it for a moment
+with a strange intentness, then suddenly and with a gesture of
+irrepressible passion, lift his arm as if he would fell it from its
+place. The action was so startling, Ona clutched my sleeve in terror,
+but he passed on and in another moment we heard him shut the door of his
+room.</p>
+
+<p>“Would he be down to dinner? that was the next question. Ona thought
+not; I did not dare to think. Nevertheless it was a great relief to me
+when I saw him enter the dining-room with that set immovable look he
+sometimes wears when Ona begins one of her long and rambling streams of
+fashionable gossip. ‘It is nothing,’ flashed from his wife’s eyes to
+mine, and she lapsed at once into her most graceful self, but she
+nevertheless hastened her meal and I was quite prepared to observe her
+follow him, as with the polite excuse of weariness, he left the table
+before desert. I could not hear what she asked him, but his answer came
+distinctly to my ears from the midst of the library to which they had
+withdrawn. ‘It is nothing in which you have an interest, Ona. Thank
+heaven you do not always know the price with which the splendors you so
+love are bought.’ And she did not cry out, ‘O never pay such a price for
+any joy of mine! Sooner than cost you so dear I would live on crusts and
+dwell in a garret.’ No, she kept silence, and when in a few minutes
+later I joined her in the library, it was to find on her usually placid
+lips, a thin cool smile that struck like ice to my heart, and made it
+impossible for me to speak.</p>
+
+<p>“But the hardest trial of the day was to hear Mr. Sylvester come in at
+eleven o’clock—he went out again immediately after dinner—and go up
+stairs without giving me my usual good-night. It was such a grief to me
+I could not keep still, but hurried to the foot of the stairs in the
+hopes he would yet remember me and come back. But instead of that, he no
+sooner saw me than he threw out his hand almost as if he would push me
+back, and hastened on up the whole winding flight till he reached the
+refuge of that mysterious room of his at the top of the house.</p>
+
+<p>“I could not go back to Ona after that—she had been to make a call
+somewhere with a young gentleman friend of hers;—yes on this very night
+had been to make a call—but I took advantage of the late hour to retire
+to my own room where for a long time I lay awake listening for his
+descending step and seeing, as in a vision, the startling picture of his
+lifted arm raised against the unconscious piece of bronze on the stair.
+Henceforth that statue will possess for me a still more dreadful
+significance.”</p>
+
+<p>“It is the twenty-fifth of February. Why should I feel as if I must be
+sure of the exact date before I slept?”</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<p>The next extract followed close on this and was the last which Miss
+Belinda read.</p>
+
+<p>“Mr. Sylvester seems to have recovered from his late anxiety. He does
+not shrink from me any more with that half bitter, half sad expression
+that has so long troubled and bewildered me, but draws me to his side
+and sits listening to my talk until I feel as if I were really of some
+comfort to this great and able man. Ona does not notice the change; she
+is all absorbed in preparing for the visit to Washington, which Mr.
+Sylvester has promised her.”</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<p>Miss Belinda calmly folded up the letters and locked them again in the
+little mahogany box, after which she covered up the embers and quietly
+went to bed. But next morning a letter was despatched to Mr. Sylvester
+which ran thus:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>“<span class="smcap">Dear Mr. Sylvester</span>:</p>
+
+<p>“For the present at least you may keep Paula with you. But I am
+not ready to say that I think it would be for her best good to
+be received and acknowledged as your daughter—yet. Hoping you
+will appreciate the motives that actuate this decision,</p>
+
+<p>“I remain, respectfully yours,</p>
+
+<p>“<span class="smcap">Belinda Ann Walton</span>.”</p></blockquote>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<div class='chapter'><h3><a id="XV"></a>XV.</h3></div>
+
+<div class='ph4'>AN ADVENTURE—OR SOMETHING MORE.</div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,<br></span>
+<span class="i1">But to be young was very heaven.”—<span class="smcap">Wordsworth.</span><br></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<blockquote><p>“<i>Oph.</i>—What means this, my lord?</p>
+
+<p><i>Ham.</i>—Marry, this is the miching mallecho; it means
+mischief.”—<span class="smcap">Hamlet.</span></p></blockquote>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<p>A ride in the Central Park is an every-day matter to most people. It
+signifies an indolent bowling over a smooth road all alive with the
+glitter of passing equipages, waving ribbons and fluttering plumes, and
+brightened now and then by the sight of a well known face amid the
+general rush of old and young, plain and handsome, sad and gay
+countenances that flash by you in one long and brilliant procession.</p>
+
+<p>But to Paula and her friend Miss Stuyvesant starting out in the early
+freshness of a fair April morning, it meant new life, reawakening joy,
+the sparkle of young leaves just loosed from the bonds of winter, the
+sweetness and promise of spring airs, and all the budding glory of a new
+year with its summer of countless roses and its autumn of incalculable
+glories. Not the twitter of a bird was lost to them, not the smile of an
+opening flower, not the welcome of a waving branch. Youth, joy, and
+innocence lived in their hearts and showed them nothing in the mirror of
+nature that was not equally young, joyous and innocent. Then they were
+alone, or sufficiently so. The stray wanderers whom they met sitting
+under the flowering trees, were equally with themselves lovers of nature
+or they would not be seated in converse with it at this early hour;
+while the laugh of little children startled from their play by the
+prance of their high-stepping horses, was only another expression of the
+sweet but unexpressed delight that breathed in all the radiant
+atmosphere.</p>
+
+<p>“We are two birds who have escaped thralldom and are taking our first
+flight into our natural ether,” cried Miss Stuyvesant gaily.</p>
+
+<p>“We are two pioneers lit by the spirit of adventure, who have left the
+cosy hearth of wintry-fires to explore the domains of the frost king,
+and lo, we have come upon a Paradise of bloom and color!” responded the
+ringing voice of Paula.</p>
+
+<p>“I feel as if I could mount that little white cloud we see over there,”
+continued Cicely with a quick lively wave of her whip. “I wonder how
+Dandy would enjoy an empyrean journey?”</p>
+
+<p>“From the haughty bend of his neck I should say he was quite satisfied
+with his present condition. But perhaps his chief pride is due to the
+mistress he carries.”</p>
+
+<p>“Are you attempting to vie with Mr. Williams, Paula?”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Williams was the meek-eyed, fair complexioned gentleman, whose
+predilection for compliment was just then a subject of talk in
+fashionable circles.</p>
+
+<p>“Only so far as my admiration goes of the most charming lady I see this
+morning. But who is this?”</p>
+
+<p>Miss Stuyvesant looked up. “Ah, that is some one with whom there is very
+little danger of your falling in love.”</p>
+
+<p>Paula blushed. The gentleman approaching them upon horseback was
+conspicuous for long side whiskers of a decidedly auburn tinge.</p>
+
+<p>“His name is—” But she had not time to finish, for the gentleman with a
+glance of astonished delight at Paula, bowed to the speaker with a
+liveliness and grace that demanded some recognition.</p>
+
+<p>Instantly he drew rein. “Do I behold Miss Stuyvesant among the nymphs!”
+cried he, in those ringing pleasant tones that at once predispose you
+towards their possessor.</p>
+
+<p>“If you allude to my friend Miss Fairchild, you certainly do, Mr.
+Ensign,” the wicked little lady rejoined with a waiving of her usual
+ceremony that astonished Paula.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Ensign bestowed upon them his most courtly bow, but the flush that
+mounted to his brow—making his face one red, as certain of his friends
+were malicious enough to observe on similar occasions—indicated that he
+had been taken a little more at his word than perhaps suited even one of
+his easy and proverbially careless temperament. “Miss Fairchild will
+understand that I am not a Harvey Williams—at least before an
+introduction,” said he with something like seriousness.</p>
+
+<p>But at this allusion to the gentleman whose name had been upon their
+lips but a moment before, both ladies laughed outright.</p>
+
+<p>“I have just been accused of attempting the rîle of that gentleman
+myself,” exclaimed Paula. “If the fresh morning air will persist in
+painting such roses on ladies’ cheeks,” continued she, with a loving
+look at her pretty companion “what can one be expected to do?”</p>
+
+<p>“Admire,” quoth the red bannered cavalier with a glance, however, at the
+beautiful speaker instead of the demure little Cicely at her side.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Stuyvesant perceived this look and a curious smile disturbed the
+corners of her rosy lips. “What a fortunate man to be able to do the
+right thing at the right time,” laughed she, gaily touching up her horse
+that was beginning to show symptoms of restlessness.</p>
+
+<p>“If Miss Stuyvesant will put that in the future tense and then assure us
+she has been among the prophets, I should be singularly obliged,” said
+he with a touch of his hat and a smiling look at Paula that was at once
+manly and gentle, careless and yet respectful.</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, life is too bright for prophesies this morning. The moment is
+enough.”</p>
+
+<p>“Is it Miss Fairchild?” queried Mr. Ensign looking back over his
+shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>She turned just a bit of her cheek towards him. “What Miss Stuyvesant
+declares to be true, that am I bound to believe,” said she, and with the
+least little ripple of a laugh, rode on.</p>
+
+<p>“It is a pity you have such a dislike for whiskers,” Cicely presently
+remarked with an air of great gravity.</p>
+
+<p>Paula gave a start and cast a glance of reproach at her companion. “I
+did not notice his whiskers after the first word or two,” said she,
+fixing her eyes on a turn of the road before them. “Such cheerfulness is
+infectious. I was merry before, but now I feel as if I had been bathed
+in sunshine.”</p>
+
+<p>Cicely’s eyes flashed wide with surprise and her face grew serious in
+earnest. “Mr. Ensign is a delightful companion,” observed she; “a room
+is always brighter for his entrance; and with all that, he is the only
+young man I know, who having come into a large fortune, feels any of the
+responsibilities of his position. The sunshine is the result of a good
+heart and pure living, and that is what makes it infectious, I suppose.”</p>
+
+<p>“Let us canter,” said Paula. And so the glad young things swept on, life
+breaking in bubbles around them and rippling away into unfathomable
+wells of feeling in one of their pure hearts at least. Suddenly a hand
+seemed to swoop from heaven and dash them both back in dismay. They had
+reached one of those places where the foot path crosses the equestrian
+and they had run over and thrown down a little child.</p>
+
+<p>“O heaven!” cried Paula leaping from her horse, “I had rather been
+killed myself.” The groom rode up and she bent anxiously over the child.</p>
+
+<p>It was a boy of some seven or eight years, whose misfortune—he was
+lame, as the little crutch fallen at his side sufficiently denoted—made
+appear much younger. He had been struck on his arm and was moaning with
+pain, but did not seem to be otherwise hurt. “Are you alone?” cried
+Paula, lifting his head on her arm and glancing hurriedly about.</p>
+
+<p>The little fellow raised his heavy lids and for a moment stared into her
+face with eyes so deeply blue and beautiful they almost startled her,
+then with an effort pointed down the path, saying,</p>
+
+<p>“Dad’s over there in the long tunnel talking to some one. Tell him I got
+hurt. I want Dad.”</p>
+
+<p>She gently lifted him to his feet and led him out of the road into the
+apparently deserted path where she made him sit down. “I am going to
+find his father,” said Paula to Cicely, “I will be back in a moment.”</p>
+
+<p>“But wait; you shall not go alone,” authoritatively exclaimed that
+little damsel, leaping in her turn to the ground. “Where does he say his
+father is?”</p>
+
+<p>“In the tunnel, by which I suppose he means that long passage under the
+bridge over there.”</p>
+
+<p>Holding up the skirts of their riding-habits in their trembling right
+hands, they hurried forward. Suddenly they both paused. A woman had
+crossed their path; a woman whom to look at but once was to remember
+with ghastly shrinking for a lifetime. She was wrapped in a long and
+ragged cloak, and her eyes, startling in their blackness, were fixed
+upon the pain-drawn countenance of the poor little hurt boy behind them,
+with a gleam whose feverish hatred and deep malignant enjoyment of his
+very evident sufferings, was like a revelation from the lowest pit to
+the two innocent-minded girls hastening forward on their errand of
+mercy.</p>
+
+<p>“Is he much hurt?” gasped the woman in an ineffectual effort to conceal
+the evil nature of her interest. “Do you think he will die?” with a
+shrill lingering emphasis on the last word as if she longed to roll it
+like a sweet morsel under her tongue.</p>
+
+<p>“Who are you?” asked Cicely, shrinking to one side with dilated eyes
+fixed on the woman’s hardened countenance and the white, too white hand
+with which she had pointed as she spoke of the child.</p>
+
+<p>“Are you his mother?” queried Paula, paling at the thought but keeping
+her ground with an air of unconscious authority.</p>
+
+<p>“His mother!” shrieked the woman, hugging herself in her long cloak and
+laughing with fiendish sarcasm: “I look like his mother, don’t I? His
+eyes—did you notice his eyes? they are just like mine, aren’t they? and
+his body, poor weazen little thing, looks as if it had drawn sustenance
+from mine, don’t it? His mother! O heaven!”</p>
+
+<p>Nothing like the suppressed force of this invocation seething as it was
+with the worst passions of a depraved human nature, had ever startled
+those ears before. Clasping Cicely by the hand, she called out to the
+groom behind them, “Guard that child as you would your life!” and then
+flashing upon the wretched creature before her with all the force of her
+aroused nature, she exclaimed, “If you are not his mother, move aside
+and let us pass, we are in search of assistance.”</p>
+
+<p>For an instant the woman stood awe-struck before this vision of maidenly
+beauty and indignation, then she laughed and cried out with shrill
+emphasis:</p>
+
+<p>“When next you look like that, go to your mirror, and when you see the
+image it reflects, say to yourself, ‘So once looked the woman who defied
+me in the Park!’”</p>
+
+<p>With a quick shudder and a feeling as if the noisome cloak of this
+degraded being had somehow been dropped upon her own fair and spotless
+shoulders, Paula clasped the hand of Cicely more tightly in her own, and
+rushed with her down the steps that led into the underground passage
+towards which they had been directed.</p>
+
+<p>There were but two persons in it when they entered. A short thickset man
+and another man of a slighter and more gentlemanly build. They were
+engaged in talking, and the latter was bringing down his right hand upon
+the palm of his left with a gesture almost foreign in its expressive
+energy.</p>
+
+<p>“I tell you,” declared he, with a voice that while low, reverberated
+through the hollow vault above him with strange intensity, “I tell you
+I’ve got my grip on a certain rich man in this city, and if you will
+only wait, you shall see strange things. I don’t know his name and I
+don’t know his face, but I do know what he has done, and a thousand
+dollars down couldn’t buy the knowledge of me.”</p>
+
+<p>“But if you don’t know his name and don’t know his face, how in the name
+of all that’s mischievous are you going to know your man?”</p>
+
+<p>“Leave that to me! If I once meet him and hear him talk, one more rich
+man goes down and one more poor devil goes up, or I’ve not the wit that
+starvation usually teaches.”</p>
+
+<p>The nature of these sentences together with the various manifestations
+of interest with which they were received, had for a moment deterred the
+two girls in their hurried advance, but now they put away every thought
+save that of the poor little creature awaiting his Dad, and lifting up
+her voice, Paula said,</p>
+
+<p>“Are either of you the father of a little lame lad—”</p>
+
+<p>Instantly and before she could conclude, the taller of the two, who had
+also been the chief speaker in the above conversation, turned, and she
+saw his hand begrimed though it was with dirt and dark with many a
+disgraceful trick, go to his heart in a gesture too natural to be
+anything but involuntary.</p>
+
+<p>“Is he hurt?” gasped he, but in how different a tone from that of the
+woman who had used the same words a few minutes before. Then seeing that
+the persons who addressed him were ladies and one of them at least a
+very beautiful one, took off his hat with an easy action, that together
+with what they had heard, proved him to be one of that most dangerous
+class among us, a gentleman who has gone thoroughly and irretrievably to
+the bad.</p>
+
+<p>“I am afraid he is, sir,” said Paula. “He was attempting to cross the
+road, and a horse advancing hurriedly, struck him.” She had not courage
+to say her horse in face of the white and trembling dismay that seized
+him at these words.</p>
+
+<p>“Where is he?” cried he. “Where’s my poor boy?” And he bounded up the
+steps, his hat still in his hand, his long unkempt locks flying, and his
+whole form expressive of the utmost alarm.</p>
+
+<p>“Down by the carriage road,” called out Paula, finding it impossible for
+them to keep up with such haste.</p>
+
+<p>“But is he much injured?” cried a smooth voice at their side.</p>
+
+<p>They turned; it was the short thickset man who had been the other’s
+companion in the conversation above recorded.</p>
+
+<p>“We trust not,” answered Cicely; “his arm received the blow, and he
+suffers very much, but we hope it is not serious;” and they hurried on.</p>
+
+<p>They found the father seated on the grass holding the little fellow in
+his arms. The look on his once handsome but now thoroughly corrupt and
+dissipated face, made their hearts melt within them. However wicked he
+might be—and that sly treacherous eye, that false impudent lip, that
+settling of the whole face into the mould which Vice applies to all her
+votaries, left no doubt of his complete depravity—he dearly loved his
+child, and love, no matter how it is expressed, or in what garb it
+appears, is a sacred and beautiful thing, and ennobles for the time
+being any creature who displays it.</p>
+
+<p>“’Twas a hard knock up, Dad,” came from the white lips of the child as
+he felt his father’s trembling hand feel up and down his arm, “but I
+guess the ‘little fellar’ can stand it.” “Little feller” was evidently
+the name by which his father was accustomed to address him.</p>
+
+<p>“There are no bones broken,” said the father. “To be lame and maimed too
+would be—”</p>
+
+<p>He did not finish, for a delicately gloved hand was here laid on his
+sleeve, and a gentle voice whispered, “Money cannot pay for an injury
+like that, but please accept this;” and Paula thrust a purse into his
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>He clutched it eagerly, but at her next request that he should tell her
+where he lived that they might inquire after the boy, he shook his head
+with a return of his old emphasis.</p>
+
+<p>“The haunts of bats and jackals are not for ladies.” Then as he caught
+sight of her pitiful face bending in farewell over the little urchin,
+some remembrance perhaps of the days when he had a right to stoop to the
+ear of beautiful women and walk unrebuked at their side, returned to him
+from the past, and respectfully lowering his voice, he asked her name.</p>
+
+<p>She gave it and he seemed to lay it away in his mind; then as the ladies
+turned to remount their horses, rose and began carrying the little
+fellow off. As he vanished in the turn of the path that led towards the
+main entrance, they perceived a tall dark figure arise from a seat in
+the distance and stand looking after him, with a leer on its face and a
+malicious hugging of itself in a long black cloak, that proclaimed her
+to be the same ominous being who had before so grievously startled them.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<div class='chapter'><h3><a id="XVI"></a>XVI.</h3></div>
+
+<div class='ph4'>THE SWORD OF DAMOCLES.</div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“And my imaginations are as foul<br></span>
+<span class="i0">As Vulcan’s smithy.”—<span class="smcap">Hamlet</span>.<br></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Why, all the souls that were, were forfeit once;<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And He that might the vantage best have took<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Found out the remedy.”—<span class="smcap">Measure for Measure</span>.<br></span>
+</div></div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+
+<p>Mrs. Sylvester reclining on the palest of blue couches, in the slanting
+sunlight of an April afternoon, is a study for a painter. Not that such
+inspiring loveliness breathed from her person, conspicuous as it was for
+its rich and indolent grace, but because in every attitude of her large
+and well formed limbs, in every raise of the thick white lids from eyes
+whose natural brightness was obscured by the mist of aimless fancies,
+she presented such an embodiment of luxurious ease, one might almost
+imagine they were gazing upon the favorite Sultana of some eastern
+court, or, to be for once poetical as the subject demands, a full blown
+Egyptian lotos floating in hushed enjoyment on the placid waters of its
+native stream. Indeed for all the blonde character of her beauty, there
+was certainly something oriental about the physique of this favored
+child of fortune. Had the tint of her skin been richened to a magnolia
+bloom instead of reminding you of that description accorded to the
+complexion of one of Napoleon’s sisters, that it looked like white satin
+seen through pink glass, she would have passed in any Eastern market,
+for a rare specimen of Circassian beauty.</p>
+
+<p>But Mr. Sylvester coming home fatigued and harassed, cared little for
+Circassian beauties or Oriental odalisques. It was a welcome that he
+desired, and such refreshment as a quick eye and ready hand can bestow
+when guided by a tender and loving heart; or so thought the watchful
+Paula as she glided from her room at the sound of his step in the hall,
+and met him coming weary and disheartened from the side of Ona’s couch.
+The sight of her revived him at once.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, little one, what have you been doing to-day?”</p>
+
+<p>Instantly a shade fell over her countenance. “I hardly know how to tell
+you. It has been a day of great experiences to me. I am literally shaken
+with them. I have been wanting to talk to Ona about what I have seen and
+heard, but thought I had best wait till you came home, for I could not
+repeat the story twice.”</p>
+
+<p>“What! you look pale. Nothing has happened to frighten you I hope,”
+exclaimed he, leading her back to Ona’s side, who stirred a little, and
+presently deigned to take an upright position.</p>
+
+<p>“I do not know if it is fear or horror,” cried Paula, shuddering; “I
+have seen a fearful woman—But first I ought to tell you that I took a
+ride with Miss Stuyvesant in the Park this morning—”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, and persisted in going for that lady on horseback instead of
+sending the groom after her, and all starting from the front of our
+house,” murmured Mrs. Sylvester with lazy chagrin.</p>
+
+<p>Paula smiled, but otherwise took no notice of this standing topic of
+disagreement.</p>
+
+<p>“It was a beautiful day,” she proceeded, “and we enjoyed it very much,
+but we were so unfortunate as to run over a little boy, at that place
+where the equestrian road crosses the foot path; a lame child, Mr.
+Sylvester, who could not get out of our way; poor too, with a ragged
+jacket on which seemed to make it all the worse.”</p>
+
+<p>Ona gave a shrug with her white shoulders, that seemed to question this.
+“Did you injure him very much?” queried she, with a show of interest;
+not sufficient however to impair her curiosity as to the cut of one of
+her nails.</p>
+
+<p>“I cannot say; his little arm was struck, and when I went to pick him
+up, he lay back in my lap and moaned till I thought my heart would
+break. But that was not the worst that happened. As we went hurrying up
+the walk to find the child’s father, we were met by a woman wrapped in a
+black cloak whose long and greasy folds seemed like the symbol of her
+own untold depravity. Her glance as she encountered the child writhing
+in pain at my feet, made my heart stand still. It was more than
+malignant, it was actually fiendish. ‘Is he hurt?’ she asked, and it
+seemed as if she gloated over the question; she evidently longed to hear
+that he was, longed to be told that he would die; and when I inquired if
+she was his mother, she broke into a string of laughter, that seemed to
+darken the daylight. ‘His mother! O yes, we look alike, don’t we!’ she
+exclaimed, pointing with a mocking gesture frightful to see, first at
+his eyes which were very blue and beautiful, and then at her own which
+were dark as evil thoughts could make them. I never saw anything so
+dreadful. Malignancy! and towards a little lame child! what could be
+more horrible!”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester and his wife exchanged looks, then the former asked, “Did
+she follow you, Paula?”</p>
+
+<p>“No; after telling me that I—But I cannot repeat what she said,”
+exclaimed the young girl with a quick shudder. “Since I came home,” she
+musingly continued, “I have looked and looked at my face in the glass,
+but I cannot believe that what she declared is true. There is no
+similarity between us, could never have been any: I will not have it
+that she ever saw in all the days of her life such a picture as that in
+her glass.” And with a sudden gesture Paula started up and pointed to
+herself as she stood reflected in one of the tall mirrors with which
+Ona’s boudoir abounded.</p>
+
+<p>“And did she dare to make any comparison between you and her own
+degraded self?” exclaimed Mr. Sylvester, with a glance at the exquisite
+vision of pure girlhood thus doubly presented to his notice.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, what I am, she was once, or so she said. And it may be true. I
+have never suffered sorrow or experienced wrong, and cannot measure
+their power to carve the human face with such lines as I beheld on that
+woman’s countenance to-day. But do not let us talk of her any more. She
+left us at last, and we found the child’s father. Mr. Sylvester,” she
+suddenly asked, “are there to be found in this city, men occupying
+honorable positions and as such highly esteemed, who like Damocles of
+old, may be said to sit under the constant terror of a falling sword in
+the shape of some possible disclosure, that if made, would ruin their
+position before the world forever?”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester started as if he had been shot. “Paula!” cried he, and
+instantly was silent again. He did not look at his wife, but if he had,
+he would have perceived that even her fair skin was capable of blanching
+to a yet more startling whiteness, and that her sleepy eyes could flash
+open with something like expression in their lazy depths.</p>
+
+<p>“I mean,” dreamily continued Paula, absorbed in her own remembrance,
+“that if what we overheard said by the father of that child to-day is
+true, some one of our prominent men, whose life is not all it appears,
+is standing on the verge of possible exposure and shame; that a hound is
+on his track in the form of a starving man; and that sooner or later he
+will have to pay the price of an unprincipled creature’s silence, or
+fall into public discredit like some others of whom we have lately
+read.” Then as silence filled the room, she added, “It makes me tremble
+to think that a man of means and seeming honor should be placed in such
+a position, but worse still that we may know such a one and be ignorant
+of his misery and his shame.”</p>
+
+<p>“It is getting time for me to dress,” murmured Ona, sinking back on her
+pillow and speaking in her most languid tone of voice. “Could you not
+hasten your story a little Paula?”</p>
+
+<p>But Mr. Sylvester with a hurried glance at the closing eyes of his wife,
+requested on the contrary that she would explain herself more
+definitely. “Ona will pardon the delay,” said he, with a set, strained
+politeness that called up the least little quiver of suppressed sarcasm
+about the rosy infantile lips that he evidently did not consider it
+worth his while to notice.</p>
+
+<p>“But that is all,” said Paula. However she repeated as nearly as she
+could just what the boy’s father had said. At the conclusion Mr.
+Sylvester rose.</p>
+
+<p>“What kind of a looking man was he?” said that gentleman as he crossed
+to the window.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, as nearly as I can describe, he was tall, dark and seedy, with a
+shock of black hair and a pair of black whiskers that floated on the
+wind as he walked. He was evidently of the order of decayed gentleman,
+and his manner of talking, especially in the profuse use he made of his
+arms and hands, was decidedly foreign. Yet his speech was pure and
+without accent.”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester’s face as he asked the next question was comparatively
+cheerful. “Was the other man with whom he was talking, as dark and
+foreign as himself?”</p>
+
+<p>“O no, he was round and jovial, a little too insinuating perhaps, in his
+way of speaking to ladies, but otherwise a a well enough appearing man.”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester bowed and looked at his watch. (Why do gentlemen always
+consult their watches even in the face of the clock?) “Ona, you are
+right,” said he, “it is time you were dressing for dinner.” And
+concluding with a word or two of sympathy as to the peculiar nature of
+Paula’s adventures as he called them, he hastened from the room and
+proceeded to his little refuge above.</p>
+
+<p>“He has not asked me what became of the child,” thought Paula, with a
+certain pang of surprise. “I expected him to say, ‘Shall we not try and
+see the little fellow, Paula?’ if only to allow me to explain that the
+child’s father would not tell me where they lived. But the later affair
+has evidently put the child out of his head. And indeed it is only
+natural that a business man should be more interested in such a fact as
+I have related, than in the sprained arm of a wretched creature’s
+‘little feller.’” And she turned to assist Ona, who had arisen from her
+couch and was now absorbed in the intricacies of an uncommonly elaborate
+toilet.</p>
+
+<p>“Those men did not mention any names?” suddenly queried that lady,
+looking with an expression of careful anxiety, at the twist of her back
+hair, in the small hand-mirror she held over her shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>“No,” said Paula, dropping a red rose into the blonde locks she was so
+carefully arranging. “He expressly said he did not know the name of the
+person to whom he alluded. It was a strange conversation for me to
+overhear, was it not?” she remarked, happy to have interested her cousin
+in anything out of the domains of fashion.</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t know—certainly—of course—” returned Mrs. Sylvester with some
+incoherence. “Do you think red looks as well with this black as the
+lavender would do?” she rambled on in her lightest tone, pulling out a
+box of feathers.</p>
+
+<p>Paula gave her a little wistful glance of disappointment and decided in
+favor of the lavender.</p>
+
+<p>“I am bound to look well to-night if I never do so again,” said Ona.
+They were all going to a public reception at which a foreign lord was
+expected to be present. “How fortunate I am to have a perfect little
+hairdresser in my own family, without being obliged to send for some
+gossipy, fussy old Madame with her stories of how such and such a one
+looked when dressed for the Grand Duke’s ball, or how Mrs. So and So
+always gave her more than her price because she rolled up puffs so
+exquisitely.” And stopping to aid the deft girl in substituting the
+lavender feather for the red rose in her hair—she forgot to ask any
+more questions.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<p>“Ona,” remarked her husband, coming into the room on his way down to
+dinner—Mrs. Sylvester never dined when she was going to any grand
+entertainment; it made her look flushed she said—“I am not in the habit
+of troubling you about your family matters, but have you heard from your
+father of late?”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sylvester turned from her jewel-casket and calmly surveyed his
+face. It was fixed and formal, the face he turned to his servants and
+sometimes—to his wife. “No,” said she, with a light little gesture as
+though she were speaking of the most trivial matter. “In one respect at
+least, papa is like an angel, his visits are few and far between.”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester’s eye-brows drew heavily together. For a man with a smile
+of strange sweetness, he could sometimes look very forbidding. “<i>When</i>
+was he here last?” he inquired in a tone more commanding than he knew.</p>
+
+<p>She did not appear to resent it. “Let me see,” mused she. “When was it I
+lost my diamond ear-ring? O I remember, it was on the eve of New Year’s
+day a year ago; I recollect because I had to wear pearls with my garnet
+brocade,” she pettishly sighed. “And papa came the next week, after you
+had given me the money for a new pair. I have reason to remember <i>that</i>,
+for not a dollar did he leave me.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ona!” exclaimed her husband, shrinking back in uncontrollable surprise,
+while his eyes flashed inquiringly to her ears in which two noble
+diamonds were brilliantly shining.</p>
+
+<p>“O,” she cried, just raising one snowy hand to those sparkling
+ornaments, while a faint blush, the existence of which he had sometimes
+doubted, swept over her careless face. “I was enabled to procure them in
+time; but for a whole two months I had to go without diamonds.” She did
+not say that she had bartered her wedding jewels to make up the sum she
+needed, but he may have understood that without being told.</p>
+
+<p>“And that is the last time you have seen him?” He held her eyes with
+his, she could not look away.</p>
+
+<p>“The very last, sir; strange to say.”</p>
+
+<p>His glance shifted from her face and he turned with a bow towards the
+door.</p>
+
+<p>“May I ask,” she slowly inquired as he moved across the floor, “what is
+the reason of this sudden interest in poor papa?”</p>
+
+<p>“Certainly,” said he, pausing and looking back, not without some emotion
+of pity in his glance. “I am sometimes struck with a sense of the duty I
+owe you, in helping you to bear the burden of certain secret
+responsibilities which I fear may sometimes prove too heavy for you.”</p>
+
+<p>She gave a little rippling laugh that only sounded hollow to the image
+listening in the glass. “You choose strange times in which to be
+struck,” said she, holding up two dresses for his inspection, with a
+lift of her brows evidently meant as an inquiry as to which he thought
+the most becoming.</p>
+
+<p>“Conscience is the chooser, not I,” declared he, for once allowing
+himself to ignore the weighty question of dress thus propounded.</p>
+
+<p>His wife gave a little toss of her head and he left the room.</p>
+
+<p>“I should like Edward very much,” murmured she in a burst of confidence
+to her own reflection in the glass, “if only he would not bother himself
+so much about that same disagreeable conscience.”</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<p>“You look unhappy,” said Mr. Sylvester to Paula as they came from the
+dining-room. “Have the adventures of the day made such an impression
+upon you that you will not be able to enjoy the evening’s festivities?”</p>
+
+<p>She lifted her face and the quick smile came.</p>
+
+<p>“I do not like to see your brow so clouded,” continued he, smoothing his
+own to meet her searching eye. “Smiles should sit on the lips of youth,
+or else why are they so rosy.”</p>
+
+<p>“Would you have me smile in face of my first glimpse of wickedness,”
+asked she, but in a gentle tone that robbed her words of half their
+reproach. “You must remember that I have had but little experience with
+the world. I have lived all my life in a town of wholesome virtues, and
+while here I have been kept from contact with anything low or base. I
+have never known vice, and now all in a moment I feel as if I have been
+bathed in it.”</p>
+
+<p>He took her by the hand and drew her gently towards him. “Does your
+whole being recoil so from evil, my Paula? What will you do in this
+wicked world? What will you say to the sinner when you meet him—as you
+must?”</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t know; it’s a problem I have never been brought to consider. I
+feel as if launched on a dismal sea for which I have neither chart nor
+compass. Life was so joyous to me this morning—” a flush swept over her
+cheek but he did not notice it—“I held, or seemed to hold, a cup of
+white wine in my hand, but suddenly as I looked at it, it turned black
+and—”</p>
+
+<p>Ah, the outreach, the dismal breaking away of thought into the
+unfathomable, that lies in the pause of an <i>and</i>!</p>
+
+<p>“And do you refuse to drink a cup across which has fallen a shadow,”
+murmured Mr. Sylvester, his eyes fixed on her face, “the inevitable
+shadow of that great mass of human frailty and woe which has been
+accumulating from the foundation of the world?”</p>
+
+<p>“No, no, I cannot, and retain my humanity. If there is such evil in the
+world, its pressure must drive it across the path of innocence.”</p>
+
+<p>“And you accept the cup?”</p>
+
+<p>“I must; but oh, my vanished beliefs! This morning the wine of my life
+was pure and white, now it is black and befouled. What will make it
+clean again?”</p>
+
+<p>With a sigh Mr. Sylvester dropped her hand and turned towards the
+mantle-piece. It was April as I have said, and there was no fire in the
+grate, but he posed his foot on the fender and looked sadly down at the
+empty hearthstone.</p>
+
+<p>“Paula,” said he after a space of pregnant silence, “it had to come. The
+veil of the temple must be rent in every life. Evil is too near us all
+for us to tread long upon the flowers without starting up the adders
+that hide beneath them. You had to have your first look into the cells
+of darkness, and perhaps it is best you had it here and now. The deeps
+are for men’s eyes as well as the starry heavens.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, yes.”</p>
+
+<p>“There are some persons,” he went on slowly, “you know them, who tread
+the ways of life with their eyelids closed to everything but the strip
+of velvet lawn on which they choose to walk. Earth’s sighs and
+deep-drawn groans are nothing to them. The world may swing on in its way
+to perdition; so long as their pathway feels soft, they neither heed nor
+care. But you do not desire to be one of these, Paula! With your great
+soul and your strong heart, you would not ask to sit in a flowery maze,
+while the rest of the world went sliding on and down into wells of
+destruction, you might have made pools of healing by the touch of your
+womanly sympathy.”</p>
+
+<p>“No, no.”</p>
+
+<p>“I cannot tell you, I dare not tell you,” he went on in a strange
+pleading voice that tore at the very roots of her heart, and rung in her
+memory forever, “what evil underlies the whole strata of life! At home
+and abroad, on our hearthstones and within our offices, the mocking
+devil sits. You can scarcely walk a block, my little one, without
+encountering a man or brushing against the dress of a woman across whose
+soul the black shadow lies heavier than any words of his or hers could
+tell. What the man you saw to-day, said of one unhappy being in this
+city, is true, God help us all, of many. Dark spots are easier acquired
+than blotted out, my Paula. In business as in society, one needs to
+carry the white shield of a noble purpose or a self-forgetting love, to
+escape the dripping of the deadly upas tree that branches above all
+humanity. I have walked its ways, my darling, and I know of what I
+speak. Your white robe is spotless but—”</p>
+
+<p>“O there is where the pain comes in,” she cried; “there, just there, is
+where the dagger strikes. She says she was once like me. O, could any
+temptation, any suffering, any wrong or misfortune that might befall me,
+ever bring me to where she is! If it could—”</p>
+
+<p>“Paula!” This time his voice came authoritatively. “You are making too
+much of a frenzied woman’s impulsive exclamation. To her darkened and
+despairing eyes any young woman of a similar style of beauty would have
+called forth the same remark. It was a sign that she was not entirely
+given up to evil, that she could remember her youth. Instead of feeling
+contaminated by her words, you ought to feel, that unconsciously to
+yourself, your fresh young countenance with its innocent eyes did an
+angel’s work to-day. They made her recall what she was in the days of
+her own innocence; and who can tell what may follow such a
+recollection.”</p>
+
+<p>“O Mr. Sylvester,” said she, “you fill me with shame. If I could think
+that—”</p>
+
+<p>“You can, nothing appeals to the heart of crime like the glance of
+perfect innocence. If evil walks the world, God’s ministers walk it
+also, and none can tell in what glance of the eye or what touch of the
+hand, that ministry will speak.”</p>
+
+<p>It was her turn now to take his hand in hers. “O how good, how
+thoughtful you are; you have comforted me and you have taught me. I
+thank you very much.”</p>
+
+<p>With a look she did not perceive, he drew his hand away. “I am glad I
+have helped you, Paula; there is but one thing more to say, and this I
+would emphasize with every saddened look you have ever met in all your
+life. Great sins make great sufferers. Side by side came the two
+dreadful powers of vice and retribution into the world, and side by side
+will they keep till they sink at last into the awful deeps of the
+bottomless pit. When you turn your back on a man who has committed a
+crime, one more door shuts in his darkened spirit.”</p>
+
+<p>The tears were falling from Paula’s eyes now. He looked at them with
+strange wistfulness and involuntarily his hand rose to her head,
+smoothing her locks with fatherly touches. “Do not think,” said he,
+“that I would lessen by a hair’s breadth your hatred of evil. I can more
+easily bear to see the shadow upon your cup of joy than upon the banner
+of truth you carry. These eyes must lose none of their inner light in
+glancing compassionately on your fellow-men. Only remember that divinity
+itself has stooped to rescue, and let the thought make your contact with
+weary, wicked-hearted humanity a little less trying and a little more
+hopeful to you. And now, my dear, that is enough of serious talk for
+to-day. We are bound for a reception, you know, and it is time we were
+dressing. Do you want me to tell you a secret?” asked he in a light
+mysterious tone, as he saw her eyes still filling.</p>
+
+<p>She glanced up with sudden interest.</p>
+
+<p>“I know it is treason,” resumed he, “I am fully aware of the grave
+nature of my offence; but Paula I hate all public receptions, and shall
+only be able to enjoy myself to-night just so much as I see that you are
+doing so. Life has its dark portals and its bright ones. This is one
+that you must enter with your most brilliant smiles.”</p>
+
+<p>“And they shall not be lacking,” said she. “When a treasure-box of
+thought is given us, we do not open it and scatter its contents abroad,
+but lay it away where the heart keeps its secrets, to be opened in the
+hush of night when we are alone with our own souls and God.”</p>
+
+<p>He smiled and she moved towards the door. “None the less do we carry
+with us wherever we go, the remembrance of our hidden treasure,” she
+smilingly added, looking back upon him from the stair.</p>
+
+<p>And again as upon the first night of her entrance into the house, did he
+stand below and watch her as she softly went up, her lovely face
+flashing one moment against the dark background of the luxurious bronze,
+towering from the platform behind, then glowing with faint and fainter
+lustre, as the distance widened between them and she vanished in the
+regions above.</p>
+
+<p>She did not see the toss of his arm with which he threw off the burden
+that rested upon his soul.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<div class='chapter'><h3><a id="XVII"></a>XVII.</h3></div>
+
+<div class='ph4'>GRAVE AND GAY.</div>
+
+<blockquote><p>“No scandal about Queen Elizabeth I hope.”—<span class="smcap">Sheridan.</span></p>
+
+<p>“Stands Scotland where it did?”—<span class="smcap">Macbeth.</span></p></blockquote>
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+
+
+<p>“Who is that talking with Miss Stuyvesant?” asked Mr. Sylvester,
+approaching his wife during one of the lulls that will fall at times
+upon vast assemblies.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sylvester followed the direction of his glance and immediately
+responded, “O that is Mr. Ensign, one of the best <i>partis</i> of the
+season. He evidently knows where to pay his court.”</p>
+
+<p>“I inquired because he has just requested me to honor him with a formal
+introduction to Paula.”</p>
+
+<p>“Indeed! then oblige him by all means; it would be a great match for
+her. To say nothing of his wealth, he is <i>haut ton</i>, and his red
+whiskers will not look badly beside Paula’s dark hair.”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester frowned, then sighed, but in a few minutes Paula observed
+him approaching with Mr. Ensign. At once her hitherto pale cheek
+flushed, but the young gentleman did not seem to object to that, and
+after the formal introduction which he had sought was over, he exclaimed
+in his own bright ringing tones,</p>
+
+<p>“The fates have surely forgotten their usual rîle of unpropitiousness. I
+did not dare hope to meet you here to-night, Miss Fairchild. Was the
+ride all that your fancy painted?”</p>
+
+<p>“O,” said she, speaking very low and glancing around, “do not allude to
+it here. We had an adventure shortly after you parted from us.”</p>
+
+<p>“An adventure! and no cavalier at your side! If I could but have known!
+Was it so serious?” he inquired in a moment, seeing her look grave.</p>
+
+<p>“Ask Miss Stuyvesant;” said she. “I cannot talk about it any more
+to-night. Besides the music carries off one’s thoughts. It is like a
+joyous breeze that whirls away the thistle-down whether it will or no.”</p>
+
+<p>He gave her a short quick look grave enough in its way, but responded
+with his usual graceful humor, “The thistle-down is too vicious a sprite
+to be beguiled away so easily. If I were to give my opinion on the
+subject, I should say there was method in its madness. If you have been
+brought up in the country, as I suspect from your remark, you must know
+that the white floating ball is not as harmless as it would lead you to
+imagine. It is a meddlesome nobody, that’s what it is, and like some
+country gossips I know, launches forth from a pure love of mischief to
+establish his prickers in his neighbor’s field.”</p>
+
+<p>“<i>His!</i> I thought it must be feminine at least to fulfill the conditions
+you mention. A male gossip, O fie! I shall never have patience with a
+thistle-ball after this.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well,” laughed he, “I did start with the intention of making it
+feminine, but I caught a glimpse of your eyes and lost my courage. I did
+what I could,” added he with a mirthful glance.</p>
+
+<p>“So do the thistles,” cried she. Then while both voices joined in a
+merry laugh, she continued, “But where have we strayed? For a moment it
+seemed as if we were on the hills at Grotewell; I could almost see the
+blue sky.”</p>
+
+<p>“And I,” said he, with his eyes on her face.</p>
+
+<p>“I am sure the brooks bubbled.”</p>
+
+<p>“I distinctly heard a bird singing.”</p>
+
+<p>“It was a whippowill.”</p>
+
+<p>“But my name is Clarence?”</p>
+
+<p>And here both being young and without a care in the world, they laughed
+again. And the crowded perfumed room seemed to freshen as with a whiff
+of mountain air.</p>
+
+
+<p>“You love the country, Miss Fairchild?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes;” and her smile was the reflection of the summer-lands that arose
+before her at the word. “With the right side of my heart do I love the
+spot where nature speaks and man is dumb.”</p>
+
+<p>“And with the left?”</p>
+
+<p>“I love the place where great men congregate to face their destiny and
+control it.”</p>
+
+<p>“The latter is the deeper love,” said he.</p>
+
+<p>She nodded her head and then said, “I need both to make me happy.
+Sometimes as I walk these city streets, I feel as if my very longing to
+escape to the heart of the hills, would carry me there. I remember when
+I was a child, I was one day running through a meadow, when suddenly a
+whole flock of birds flew up from the grass and surrounded my head. I
+was not sure but what I should be caught up and carried away by the
+force of their flight; and when they rose to mid heaven, something in my
+breast seemed to follow them. So it is often with me here, only that it
+is the rush of my thoughts that threatens such a Hegira. Yet if I were
+to be transported to my native hills, I know I should long to be back
+again.”</p>
+
+<p>“The mountain lassie has wandered into the courts of the king. The
+perfume of palaces is not easily forgotten.”</p>
+
+<p>Her eye turned towards Mr. Sylvester standing near them upright and
+firm, talking to a group of attentive gentlemen every one of whom
+boasted a name of more than local celebrity. “Without a royal heart to
+govern, there would be no palace;” said she, and blushed under a sudden
+sense of the possible interpretation he might give to her words, till
+the rose in her hand looked pallid.</p>
+
+<p>But he had followed her glance and understood her better than she
+thought. “And Mr. Sylvester has such a heart, so a hundred good fellows
+have told me. You are fortunate to see the city from the loop-hole of
+such a home as his.”</p>
+
+<p>“It is more than a loop-hole,” said she.</p>
+
+<p>“Of that I shall never be satisfied till I see it?”</p>
+
+<p>And being content with the look he received, he took her on his arm and
+led her into the midst of the dancers.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile in a certain corner not far off, two gentlemen were talking.</p>
+
+<p>“Sylvester shows off well to-night.”</p>
+
+<p>“He always does. With such a figure as that, a man needs but to enter a
+room to make himself felt. But then he’s a good talker too. Ever heard
+him speak?”</p>
+
+<p>“No.”</p>
+
+<p>“Fine voice, true snap, right ring. Great favorite at elections. The
+fact is, Sylvester is a remarkable man.”</p>
+
+<p>“Hum, ha, so I should judge.”</p>
+
+<p>“And so fortunate! He has never been known to run foul in a great
+operation. Put your money in his hand and whew!—your fortune is as good
+as made.”</p>
+
+<p>The other, a rich man, connected heavily with the mining business in
+Colorado, smiled with that bland overflow of the whole countenance which
+is sometimes seen in large men of great self-importance.</p>
+
+<p>“It’s a pity he’s gone out of Wall Street,” continued his companion.
+“The younger fry feel now something like a flock of sheep that has lost
+its bell-wether.”</p>
+
+<p>“They straggle—eh?” returned his portly friend with an increase of his
+smile that was not altogether pleasant. “So Sylvester has left Wall
+Street?”</p>
+
+<p>“He closed his last enterprise two weeks before accepting the Presidency
+of the Madison Bank. Stuyvesant is down on speculation, and well—It
+looks better you know; the Madison Bank is an old institution, and
+Sylvester is ambitious. There’ll be no reckless handling of funds
+<i>there</i>.”</p>
+
+<p>“No!” What was there in that <i>no</i> that made the other look up? “I’m not
+acquainted with Sylvester myself. Has he much family?”</p>
+
+<p>“A wife—there she is, that handsome woman talking with Ditman,—and a
+daughter, niece or somebody who just now is setting all our young
+scapegraces by the ears. You can see her if you just crane your neck a
+little.”</p>
+
+<p>“Humph, ha, very pretty, very pretty. How much do you suppose Mrs.
+Sylvester is worth as she stands, diamonds you know, and all that?”</p>
+
+<p>“Well I should say some where near ten thousand; that sprig in her hair
+cost a clean five.”</p>
+
+<p>“So, so. They live in a handsome house I suppose?”</p>
+
+<p>“A regular palace, corner of Fifth Avenue and ——”</p>
+
+<p>“All his?”</p>
+
+<p>“Nobody’s else I reckon.”</p>
+
+<p>“Sports horses and carriage I suppose?”</p>
+
+<p>“Of course.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yacht, opera box?”</p>
+
+<p>“No reason why he shouldn’t.”</p>
+
+<p>“What is his salary?”</p>
+
+<p>“A nominal sum, five or ten thousand perhaps.”</p>
+
+<p>“Owns good share of the bank’s stock I presume?”</p>
+
+<p>“Enough to control it.”</p>
+
+<p>“Below par though?”</p>
+
+<p>“A trifle, going up, however.”</p>
+
+<p>“And <i>don’t</i> speculate?”</p>
+
+<p>The way this man drawled his words was excessively disagreeable.</p>
+
+<p>“Not that any one knows of. He’s made his fortune and now asks only to
+enjoy it.”</p>
+
+<p>The man from the West strutted back and looked at his companion
+knowingly. “What do you think of my judgment, Stadler?”</p>
+
+<p>“None better this side of the Pacific.”</p>
+
+<p>“Pretty good at spying out cracks, eh?”</p>
+
+<p>“I wouldn’t like to undertake the puttying up that would deceive you.”</p>
+
+<p>“Humph! Well then, mark this. In two months from to-day you will see Mr.
+Sylvester rent his house and go south for his health, or the pretty one
+over there will marry one of the scapegraces you mention, who will lend
+the man <i>who don’t engage in any further ventures</i>, more than one or two
+hundred thousand dollars.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ha, you know something.”</p>
+
+
+<p>“I own mines in Colorado and I have my points.”</p>
+
+<p>“And Mr. Sylvester?”</p>
+
+<p>“Will find them too sharp for him.”</p>
+
+<p>And having made his joke, he yielded to the other’s apparent
+restlessness, and they sauntered off.</p>
+
+<p>They did not observe a pale, demure, little lady that sat near them
+abstractedly nodding her dainty head to the remarks of a pale-whiskered
+youth at her side, nor notice the emotion with which she suddenly rose
+at their departure and dismissed her chattering companion on some
+impromptu errand. It was only one of the ordinary group of dancers, a
+pretty, plainly dressed girl, but her name was Stuyvesant.</p>
+
+<p>Rising with a decision that gave a very attractive color to her cheeks,
+she hastily looked around. A trio of young gentlemen started towards her
+but she gave them no encouragement; her eye had detected Mr. Sylvester’s
+tall figure a few feet off and it was to him she desired to speak. But
+at her first movement in his direction, her glance encountered another
+face, and like a stream that melts into a rushing torrent, her purpose
+seemed to vanish, leaving her quivering with a new emotion of so vivid a
+character she involuntarily looked about her for a refuge.</p>
+
+<p>But in another instant her eyes had again sought the countenance that
+had so moved her, and finding it bent upon her own, faltered a little
+and unconsciously allowed the lilies she was carrying to drop from her
+hand. Before she realized her loss, the face before her had vanished,
+and with it something of her hesitation and alarm.</p>
+
+<p>With a hasty action she drew near Mr. Sylvester. “Will you lend me your
+arm for a minute?” she asked, with her usual appealing look rendered
+doubly forcible by the experience of a moment before.</p>
+
+<p>“Miss Stuyvesant! I am happy to see you.”</p>
+
+<p>Never had his face looked more cheerful she thought, never had his smile
+struck her more pleasantly.</p>
+
+<p>“A little talk with a little girl will not hinder you too much, will
+it?” she queried, glancing at the group of gentlemen that had shrunk
+back at her approach.</p>
+
+<p>“Do you call that hindrance which relieves one from listening to
+quotations of bank stock at an evening reception?”</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head with a confused movement, and led him up before a
+stand of flowering exotics.</p>
+
+<p>“I want to tell you something,” she said eagerly but with a marked
+timidity also, the tall form beside her looked so imposing for all its
+encouraging bend. “I beg your pardon if I am doing wrong, but papa
+regards you with such esteem and—Mr. Sylvester do you know a man by the
+name of Stadler?”</p>
+
+<p>Astonished at such a question from lips so young and dainty, he turned
+and surveyed her for a moment with quick surprise. Something in her
+aspect struck him. He answered at once and without circumlocution. “Yes,
+if you refer to that spry keen-faced man, just entering the
+supper-room.”</p>
+
+<p>“Do you know his companion?” she proceeded; “the portly, highly
+pompous-looking gentleman with the gold eye-glasses? Look quickly.”</p>
+
+<p>“No.” There was an uneasiness in his tone however that struck her
+painfully.</p>
+
+<p>“He is a stranger in town; has not the honor of your acquaintance he
+says, but from the questions he asked, I judge he has a great interest
+in your affairs. He spoke of being connected with mines in Colorado. I
+was sitting behind a curtain and overheard what was said.”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester turned pale and regarded her attentively. “Might I be so
+bold,” he inquired after a moment, “as to ask you what that was?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, sir, certainly, but it is even harder for me to repeat than it was
+for me to hear. He inquired about your domestic concerns, your home and
+your income,” she murmured blushing; “and then said, in what I thought
+was a somewhat exulting tone, that in two months or so we should see you
+go South for your health or—Is not that enough for me to tell you, Mr.
+Sylvester?”</p>
+
+<p>He gave her a short stare, opened his lips as if to speak, then turned
+abruptly aside and began picking mechanically at the blossoms before
+him.</p>
+
+<p>“I, of course, do not know what men mean when they talk of possessing
+points. But the leer and side glance which accompanies such talk, have a
+universal language we all understand, and I felt that I must warn you of
+that man’s malice if only because papa regards you so highly.”</p>
+
+<p>He shrank as if touched on a sore place, but bowed and answered the
+wistful appeal of her glance with a shadow of his usual smile, then he
+turned, and looking towards the door through which the two men had
+disappeared, made a movement as if he would follow. But remembering
+himself, escorted her to a seat, saying as he did so:</p>
+
+<p>“You are very kind, Miss Stuyvesant; please say nothing of this to
+Paula.”</p>
+
+<p>She bowed and a flitting smile crossed her upturned countenance. “I am
+not much of a gossip, Mr. Sylvester, or I should have been tempted to
+have carried my information to my father instead of to you.”</p>
+
+<p>He understood the implied promise in this remark and gave the hand on
+his arm a quick pressure, before relinquishing her to the care of the
+pale-complexioned youth who by this time had returned to her side.</p>
+
+<p>In another moment Paula came up on the arm of a black-whiskered
+gentleman all shirt front and eye-glasses. “O Cicely,” she cried, (she
+called Miss Stuyvesant, Cicely now) “is it not a delightful evening?”</p>
+
+<p>“Are you enjoying yourself so much?” inquired that somewhat agitated
+little lady, with a glance at the countenance of her friend’s attendant.</p>
+
+<p>“I fear it would scarcely seem consistent in me now to say no,” returned
+the radiant girl, with a laughing glance towards the same gentleman.</p>
+
+<p>But when they were alone, the gentleman having departed on some of the
+innumerable errands with which ladies seem to delight in afflicting
+their attendant cavaliers at balls or receptions, she atoned for that
+glance by remarking,</p>
+
+<p>“I do not find the average partner that falls to one’s lot in such
+receptions all that fancy paints.” And then finding she had repeated a
+phrase of Mr. Ensign’s, blushed, though no one stood near her but
+Cicely.</p>
+
+<p>“Fancy’s brush would need to be dipped in but two colors to present to
+our eye the mass of them,” was Cicely’s laughing reply. “A streak of
+black for the coat, and a daub of white for the shirt front. <i>Voila
+tout.</i>”</p>
+
+<p>“With perhaps a dash of red in some cases,” murmured a voice over their
+shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>They turned with hurried blushes. “Ah, Mr. Ensign,” quoth Cicely in
+unabashed gaiety, “we reserve red for the exceptions. We did not intend
+to include our acknowledged friends in our somewhat sweeping assertion.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, I see, the black streak and the white daub are a symbol of,
+‘Er—Miss Stuyvesant—very warm this evening! Have an ice, do. <i>I</i>
+always have an ice after dancing; so refreshing, you know.’”</p>
+
+<p>The manner in which he imitated the usual languid drawl of certain of
+the young scapegraces heretofore mentioned, was irresistible. Paula
+forgot her confusion in her mirth.</p>
+
+<p>“You are blessed with a capacity for playing both rîles, I perceive,”
+cried Cicely with unusual abandon. “Well, it is convenient, there is
+nothing like scope.”</p>
+
+<p>“Unless it is hope,” whispered Mr. Ensign so low that only Paula could
+hear.</p>
+
+<p>“But I warn you,” continued Cicely, with a sweet soft laugh that seemed
+to carry her heart far out into the passing throng, “that we have no
+fondness for the model beau of the period. A dish of milk makes a very
+good supper but it looks decidedly pale on the dinner table.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” said Paula, eying the various young men that filed up and down
+before them, some pale, some dark, some handsome, some plain, but all
+smiling and dapper, if not debonair, “some men could be endured if only
+they were not <i>men</i>.”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Ensign gave her a quick look, and while he laughed at the paradox,
+straightened himself like one who could be a man if the occasion called.
+She saw the action and blushed.</p>
+
+<p>But their conversation was soon interrupted. Mr. Sylvester was seen
+returning from the supper-room, looking decidedly anxious, and while
+Paula was ignorant of what had transpired to annoy him, her ready spirit
+caught the alarm, and she was about to rush up to him and address him,
+when one of the waiters approached, and murmuring a few words she did
+not hear, handed him a card upon which she descried nothing but a simple
+circle. Instantly a change crossed his already agitated countenance, and
+advancing to the ladies with a word or two that while seemingly
+cheerful, struck Paula as somewhat forced, excused himself with the
+information that a business friend had been so inconsiderate as to
+importune him for an interview in the hall. And with just a nod towards
+Mr. Ensign, who had drawn back at his advance, left them and disappeared
+in the crowd about the door.</p>
+
+<p>“I do not like these interruptions from business friends in a time of
+pleasure,” cried Paula, looking after him with anxious eyes. “Did you
+notice how agitated he seemed, Cicely? And half an hour ago he was the
+picture of calm enjoyment.”</p>
+
+<p>“Business is beyond our comprehension, Paula,” returned her friend
+evasively. “It is something like a neuralgic twinge, it takes a man when
+he least expects it. Have you told Mr. Ensign of our adventure?”</p>
+
+<p>“No, but I informed Mr. Sylvester, and he said such good, true words to
+me, Cicely. I can never forget them.”</p>
+
+<p>“And I told papa; but he only frowned and made some observation about
+the degeneracy of the times, and the number of scamps thrown to the top
+by the modern methods of acquiring instantaneous fortunes.”</p>
+
+<p>“Your papa is sometimes hard, is he not, Cicely?”</p>
+
+<p>With a flush Miss Stuyvesant allowed her eye to rest for a moment on the
+crowd shifting before her. “He was dug from a quarry of granite, Paula.
+He is both hard and substantial; capable of being hewn but not of being
+moulded. Of such stuff are formed monuments of enduring beauty and
+solidity. You must do papa justice.”</p>
+
+<p>“I do, but I sometimes have a feeling as if the granite column would
+fall and crush me, Cicely.”</p>
+
+<p>“You, Paula?”</p>
+
+<p>Before she could again reply, Mr. Sylvester returned. His face was still
+pale, but it had acquired an expression of rigidity even more alarming
+to Paula than its previous aspect of forced merriment. Lifting her by
+the hand, he drew her apart.</p>
+
+<p>“I shall have to leave you somewhat abruptly,” said he. “An important
+matter demands my instant attention. Bertram is somewhere here, and will
+see that you and Ona arrive home in safety. You won’t allow your
+enjoyment to be clouded by my hasty departure, will you?”</p>
+
+<p>“Not if it will make you anxious. But I would rather go home with you
+now. I am sure Cousin Ona would be willing.”</p>
+
+<p>“But I am not going home at present,” said he; and she ventured upon no
+further remonstrance.</p>
+
+<p>But her enjoyment was clouded; the sight of suffering or anxiety on that
+face was more than she could bear; and ere long she said good-night to
+Cicely, and accepting the arm of Mr. Ensign, who was never very far from
+her side, proceeded to search for her cousin.</p>
+
+<p>She found her standing in the midst of an admiring throng to whom her
+diamonds, if not her smiles, were an object of undoubted interest. She
+was in the full tide of one of her longest and most widely rambling
+speeches, and to Paula, with that stir of anxiety at her breast, was an
+image of self-satisfied complacency from which she was fain to drop her
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>“Mrs. Sylvester shares the honors with her husband,” remarked Mr. Ensign
+as they drew near.</p>
+
+<p>“But not the trials, or the pain, or the care?” was Paula’s inward
+comment.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sylvester was not easily wooed away from a circle in which she
+found herself creating such an impression, but at length she yielded to
+Paula’s importunities, and consented to accept young Mr. Sylvester’s
+attendance to their home. The next thing was to find Bertram. Mr. Ensign
+engaged to do this. Leaving Paula with her cousin, who may or may not
+have been pleased at this sudden addition to her circle, he sought for
+the young man who as Mr. Mandeville was not unknown to any of the
+fashionable men and women of the day. It was no easy task, nor did he
+find him readily, but at last he came upon him leaning out of a window
+and gazing at a white lily which he held in his hand. Without preamble,
+Mr. Ensign made known his errand, and Bertram at once prepared to
+accompany him back to the ladies.</p>
+
+<p>“By Jove! I didn’t know the fellow was so handsome!” thought the former,
+and frowned he hardly knew why. Bertram was not handsome, but then
+Clarence Ensign was plain, which Bertram certainly was not.</p>
+
+<p>It was to Mr. Ensign’s face however that Paula’s eyes turned as the two
+came up, and he with the ready vivacity of his natural temperament
+observed it, and took courage.</p>
+
+<p>“I shall soon wish to measure that loop-hole of which I have spoken,”
+said he.</p>
+
+<p>And the soft look in her large dark eye as she responded, “It is always
+open to friends,” filled up the measure of his cup of happiness; a cup
+which unlike hers, had not been darkened that day by the falling of
+earth’s most dismal shadows.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<div class='chapter'><h3><a id="XVIII"></a>XVIII.</h3></div>
+
+<div class='ph4'>IN THE NIGHT WATCHES.</div>
+
+<blockquote><p>“Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn?”—<span class="smcap">Hen. iv.</span></p>
+
+<p>“What doth gravity out of his bed at midnight?”—<span class="smcap">Hen. iv.</span></p></blockquote>
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+
+<p>“It has been the most delightful evening I have ever passed,” said Mrs.
+Sylvester, as she threw aside her rich white mantle in her ample
+boudoir. “Sarah, two loops on that dolman to-morrow; do you hear? I
+thought my arms would freeze. Such an elegant gentleman as the Count de
+Frassac is! He absolutely went wild over you, Paula, but not
+understanding a word of English—O there, if that horrid little wretch
+didn’t drop his spoon on my dress after all! He swore it never touched a
+thread of it, but just look at that spot, right in the middle of a
+pleating too. Paula, your opinion in regard to the lavendar was correct.
+I heard Mrs. Forsyth Jones whisper behind my back that lavendar always
+made blondes look <i>fade</i>. Of course I needed no further evidence to
+convince me that I had entirely succeeded in eclipsing her pale-faced
+daughter. Her daughter!” and the lazy gurgle echoed softly through the
+room, “As if every white-haired girl in the city considered herself
+entitled to be called a blonde!” She stopped to listen, examining
+herself in the glass near by. “I thought I heard Edward. It was very
+provoking in him to leave us in the cavalier manner in which he did. I
+was just going to introduce him to the count, not that he would have
+esteemed it much of an honor, Edward I mean, but when one has a
+good-looking husband—Sarah, that curtain over there hangs crooked, pull
+it straight this instant. Did you try the oysters, Paula? They were
+perfection, I shall have to dismiss Lorenzo without ceremony and procure
+me a cook that can make an oyster fricassee. By the way did you
+notice—” and so on and on for five minutes additional. Presently she
+burst forth with—“I do believe I know what it is to be thoroughly
+satisfied at last. The consideration which one receives as the wife of
+the president of the Madison bank is certainly very gratifying. If I had
+known I would feel such a change in the social atmosphere, I would have
+advocated Edward’s dropping speculation long ago. Beauty and wealth may
+help one up the social ladder, but only a settled position such as he
+has now obtained, can carry you safely over the top. I feel at last as
+if we had reached the pinnacle of my ambition and had seen the ladder by
+which we mounted thrown down behind us. If I get my costume from Worth
+in time, I shall give a German next month.”</p>
+
+<p>Paula from her stand at the door—for some minutes she had been
+endeavoring to escape to her room—surveyed her cousin in wonder. She
+had never seen her look as she did at that moment. Any one who speaks
+from the heart, acquires a certain eloquence, and Ona for once was
+speaking from her heart. The unwonted emotion made her cheeks burn, and
+even her diamonds, ten thousand dollars worth as we have heard declared,
+were less brilliant than her eyes. Paula left her station on the
+door-sill and glided rapidly back to her side. “O Ona,” said she, “if
+you would only look like that when—” she paused, what right had she to
+venture upon giving lessons to her benefactor.</p>
+
+<p>“When what?” inquired the other, subsiding at once into her naturally
+languid manner. Then with a total forgetfulness of the momentary
+curiosity that had prompted the question, held out her head to the
+attendant Sarah, with a command to be relieved of her ornaments. Paula
+sighed and hastened to her room. She could not bring herself to mention
+her anxiety in regard to the still absent master of the house, to this
+lazily-smiling thoroughly satisfied woman.</p>
+
+<p>But none the less did she herself sit up in the moonlight, listening
+with bended head for the sound of his step on the walk beneath. She
+could not sleep while he was absent; and yet the thoughts that disturbed
+her and kept her from her virgin pillow could not have been entirely for
+him, or why those wandering smiles that ever and anon passed flitting
+over her cheek, awakening the dimples that slumbered there, until she
+looked more like a dreamy picture of delight than a wakeful vision of
+apprehension. Not entirely for him—yet when somewhere towards three
+o’clock, she heard the long delayed step upon the stoop, she started up
+with eager eyes and a nervous gesture that sufficiently betrayed how
+intense was her interest in her benefactor’s welfare and happiness. “If
+he goes to Ona’s room it is all right,” thought she; “but if he keeps on
+upstairs, I shall know that something is wrong and that he needs a
+comforter.”</p>
+
+<p>He did not stop at Ona’s room; and struck with alarm, Paula opened wide
+her door and was about to step out to meet him, when she caught a sight
+of his face, and started back. Here was no anxiety, that she could
+palliate! The very fact that he did not observe her slight form standing
+before him in the brilliant moonlight, proved that a woman’s look or
+touch was not what he was in search of; and shrinking sensitively to one
+side, she sat down on the edge of her dainty bed, dropping her cheek
+into her hand with a weary troubled gesture from which all the delight
+had fled and only the apprehension remained. Suddenly she started
+alertly up; he was coming down again, this time with a gliding muffled
+tread. Sliding past her door, he descended to the floor below. She could
+hear the one weak stair in the heavy staircase creak, and—What! he has
+passed Ona’s room, passed the bronze figure of Luxury on the platform
+beneath, is on his way to the front door, has opened it, shut it softly
+behind him and gone out again into the blank midnight streets. What did
+it mean? For a moment she thought she would run down and awaken Ona, but
+an involuntary remembrance of how those lazy eyes would open, stare
+peevishly and then shut again, stopped her on the threshold of her door;
+and sitting down again upon the side of her bed, she waited, this time
+with opened eyes eagerly staring before her, and quivering form that
+started at each and every sound that disturbed the silence of the great
+echoing house. At six o’clock she again rose; he had just re-entered and
+this time he stopped at Ona’s room.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<div class='chapter'><h3><a id="XIX"></a>XIX.</h3></div>
+
+<div class='ph4'>A DAY AT THE BANK.</div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Rough-hew them how we will.”—<span class="smcap">Hamlet.</span><br></span>
+</div></div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+
+<p>There are days when the whole world seems to smile upon one without
+stint or reservation. Bertram Sylvester wending his way to the bank on
+the morning following the reception, was a cheerful sight to behold.
+Youth, health, hope spake in every lineament of his face and brightened
+every glance of his wide-awake eye. His new life was pleasant to him.
+Bach, Beethoven and Chopin were scarcely regretted now by the ambitious
+assistant cashier of the Madison Bank, with a friend in each of its
+directors and a something more than that in the popular president
+himself. Besides he had developed a talent for the business and was in
+the confidence of the cashier, a somewhat sickly man who more than once
+had found himself compelled to rely upon the rapidly maturing judgment
+of his young associate, in matters oftentimes of the utmost importance.
+The manner in which Bertram found himself able to respond to these
+various calls, convinced him that he had been correct in his opinion of
+his own nature, when he informed his uncle that music was his pleasure
+rather than his necessity.</p>
+
+<p>Entering the building by way of Pearl Street, he was about to open the
+door leading into the bank proper, when he heard a little piping voice
+at his side, and turning, confronted the janitor’s baby daughter. She
+was a sweet and interesting child, and with his usual good nature
+Bertram at once stopped to give her a kiss.</p>
+
+<p>“I likes you,” prattled she as he put her down again after lifting her
+up high over his head, “but I likes de oder one best.”</p>
+
+<p>“I hope the other one duly appreciates your preference,” laughed he, and
+was again on the point of entering the bank when he felt or thought he
+felt a hand laid on his arm. It was the janitor himself this time, a
+worthy man, greatly trusted in the bank, but possessed of such an
+extraordinary peculiarity in the way of a pair of protruding eyes, that
+his appearance was always attended by a shock.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, Hopgood, what is it?” cried Bertram, in his cheery tone.</p>
+
+<p>The janitor drew back and mercifully shifted his gaze from the young
+man’s face. “Nothing sir; did I stop you? Beg pardon,” he continued,
+half stammering, “I’m dreadful awkward sometimes.” And with a nod he
+sidled off towards his little one whom he confusedly took up in his
+arms.</p>
+
+<p>Now Bertram was sure the man had touched him and that, too, with a very
+eager hand, but being late that morning and consequently in somewhat of
+a hurry, he did not stop to pursue the matter. Hastening into the Bank,
+he assisted the teller in opening the safe, that being his especial
+duty, and was taking out such papers as he himself required, when he was
+surprised to catch another sight of those same extraordinary organs of
+which I have just spoken, peering upon him from the door by which he had
+previously entered. They vanished as soon as he encountered them, but
+more than once during the morning he perceived them looking upon him
+from various quarters of the bank, till he felt himself growing
+seriously annoyed, and sending for the man, asked him what he meant by
+this unusual surveillance. The janitor seemed troubled, flushed
+painfully and fixed his eyes in manifest anxiety on the cashier who,
+engaged in some search of his own, was just handling over the tin boxes
+that lined the vault before them. Not till he had seen him shove them
+back into their place and leave the spot, did he venture upon his reply.
+“I’m sure, sir, I’m very sorry if I have annoyed you, but do you think
+Mr. Sylvester will be down at the usual hour?”</p>
+
+<p>“I know of no reason why he should not,” returned Bertram.</p>
+
+<p>“I have something to say to him when he comes in,” stammered the man,
+evidently taken aback by Bertram’s look of surprise. “Will you be kind
+enough to ring the bell the first moment he seems to be at leisure? I
+don’t know as it is a matter of any importance but—” He stopped,
+evidently putting a curb upon himself. “Can I rely on you, sir?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, certainly, I will tell my uncle when he comes in that you want to
+speak to him. He will doubtless send for you at once.”</p>
+
+<p>The man looked embarrassed. “Excuse me, sir, but that’s just what I’d
+rather you wouldn’t do. Mr. Sylvester is always very busy and he might
+think I wished to annoy him about some matters of my own, sir, as indeed
+I have not been above doing at odd times. If you would ring when he
+comes in, that is all I ask.”</p>
+
+<p>Bertram thought this a strange request, but seeing the man so anxious,
+gave the required promise, and the janitor hurried off. “Curious!”
+muttered Bertram. “Can anything be wrong?” And he glanced about him with
+some curiosity as he went to his desk. But every one was at his post as
+usual and the countenances of all were equally undisturbed.</p>
+
+<p>It was a busy morning and in the rush of various matters Bertram forgot
+the entire occurrence. But it was presently recalled to him by hearing
+some one remark, “Mr. Sylvester is late to-day,” and looking up from
+some papers he was considering, he found it was a full hour after the
+time at which his uncle was in the habit of appearing. Just then he
+caught still another sight of the protruding eyes of Hopgood staring in
+upon him from the half-opened door at the end of the bank.</p>
+
+<p>“The fellow’s getting impatient,” thought he, and experienced a vague
+feeling of uneasiness.</p>
+
+<p>Another half hour passed. “What can have detained Mr. Sylvester?” cried
+Mr. Wheelock the cashier, hastily approaching Bertram.</p>
+
+<p>“There is to be an important meeting of the Directors to-day, and some
+of the gentlemen are already coming in. Mr. Sylvester is not accustomed
+to keep us waiting.”</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t know, I am sure,” returned Bertram, remembering with an
+accession of uneasiness, the abruptness with which his uncle had left
+the entertainment the evening before.</p>
+
+<p>“Shall I telegraph to the house?”</p>
+
+<p>“No, that is not necessary. Besides Folger says he passed him on
+Broadway this morning.”</p>
+
+<p>“Going down street with a valise in his hand,” that gentlemen quietly
+put in. Folger was the teller. “He was looking very pale and didn’t see
+me when I nodded.”</p>
+
+<p>“What time was that?” asked Bertram.</p>
+
+<p>“About twelve; when I went out to lunch.”</p>
+
+<p>A quick gasp sounded at their side, followed by a hurried cough.
+Turning, Bertram encountered for the fifth time the eyes of Hopgood. He
+had entered unperceived by the small door that separated the inner
+inclosure from the outer, and was now standing very close to them, eying
+with side-long looks the safe at their back, the faces of the gentleman
+speaking, yes, and even the countenances of the clerks, as they bent
+busily over their books.</p>
+
+
+<p>“Did you ring, sir?” asked he, catching Bertram’s look of displeasure.</p>
+
+<p>“No.”</p>
+
+<p>The man seemed to feel the rebuke implied in this short response, and
+ambled softly away. But in another moment he was stopped by Bertram.</p>
+
+<p>“What is the matter with you to-day, Hopgood? Can you have anything of
+real importance on your mind; anything connected with my uncle?”</p>
+
+<p>The janitor started, and looked almost frightened. “Be careful what you
+say,” whispered he; then with a keen look at Mr. Wheelock just then on
+the point of entering the directors’ room, he was turning to escape by
+the little door just mentioned, when it opened and Mr. Stuyvesant came
+in. With a look almost of terror the janitor recoiled, throwing himself
+as it were between the latter and the door of the safe; but recovering
+himself, surveyed the keen quiet visage of the veteran banker with a
+rolling of his great eyes absolutely painful to behold. Mr. Stuyvesant,
+who was somewhat absorbed in thought, did not appear to notice the
+agitation he had caused, and with just a hurried nod followed Mr.
+Wheelock into the Directors’ room. Instantly the janitor drew himself up
+with an air of relief, and shortly glancing at the clock which lacked a
+few minutes yet of the time fixed for the meeting, slided hastily away
+from Bertram’s detaining hand, and disappeared in the crowd without. In
+another moment Bertram saw him standing at the outer door, looking
+anxiously up and down the street.</p>
+
+<p>“Something <i>is</i> wrong,” murmured Bertram. “What?” And for a moment he
+felt half tempted to return Mr. Stuyvesant’s friendly bow with a few
+words expressive of his uneasiness, but the emphasis with which Hopgood
+had murmured the words, “Be careful what you say,” unconsciously
+deterred him, and concealing his nervousness as best he might, he
+entered the Directors’ office.</p>
+
+<p>It was now time for the meeting to open, and the gentlemen were all
+seated around the low green baize table that occupied the centre of the
+room. Impatience was written on all their countenances. Mr. Stuyvesant
+especially was looking at the heavy gold watch in his hand, with a frown
+on his deeply wrinkled brow that did not add to its expression of
+benevolence. The empty seat at the head of the table stared upon Bertram
+uncompromisingly.</p>
+
+<p>“My wife gives a reception to-day,” ventured one gentleman to his
+neighbor.</p>
+
+<p>“And I have an engagement at five that won’t bear postponement.”</p>
+
+<p>“Sylvester has always been on hand before.”</p>
+
+<p>“We can’t proceed without him,” was the reply.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Wheelock looked thoughtful.</p>
+
+<p>With a nod of his head towards such gentlemen as met his eye, Bertram
+hastened to a little cupboard devoted to the use of himself and uncle.
+Opening it, he looked within, took down a coat he saw hanging before
+him, and unconsciously uttered an exclamation. It was a dress-coat such
+as had been worn by Mr. Sylvester the evening before.</p>
+
+<p>“What does this mean! My uncle has been here!” were the words that
+sprang to his lips; but he subdued his impulse to speak, and hastily
+hanging up the coat, relocked the door. Proceeding at once to the outer
+room, he asked two or three of the clerks if they were sure Mr.
+Sylvester had not been in during the day. But they all returned an
+unequivocal “no,” and that too with a certain stare of surprise that at
+once convinced him he was betraying his agitation too plainly.</p>
+
+<p>“I will telegraph whether Wheelock considers it necessary or not,”
+thought he, and was moving to summon a messenger boy when he caught
+sight of Hopgood slowly making his way in from the street. He was very
+pale and walked with his eyes fixed on the ground, ominously shaking his
+great head in a way that bespoke an inner struggle of no ordinary
+nature. Bertram at once sauntered out to meet him.</p>
+
+<p>“Hopgood,” said he, “your evident anxiety is infectious. What has
+happened to make my uncle’s detention a matter of such apparent import?
+If you do not wish to confide in me, his nephew almost his son, speak to
+Mr. Wheelock or to one of the directors, but don’t keep anything to
+yourself which concerns his welfare or—What are you looking at?”</p>
+
+<p>The man was gazing as if fascinated at the keys in Bertram’s hand.</p>
+
+<p>“Nothing sir, nothing. You must not detain me; I have nothing to say. I
+will wait ten minutes,” he muttered to himself, glancing again at the
+clock. Suddenly he saw the various directors come filing out of the
+inner room, and darted for the second time from Bertram’s detaining
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>“I hope nothing has happened to Mr. Sylvester,” exclaimed one gentleman
+to another as they filed by.</p>
+
+<p>“If he were given to a loose ends’ sort of business it would be another
+thing.”</p>
+
+<p>“He looked exceedingly well at the reception last night,” exclaimed
+another; “but in these days—”</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly there was a hush. A telegraph boy had just entered the door and
+was asking for Mr. Bertram Sylvester.</p>
+
+<p>“Here I am,” said Bertram, hastily taking the envelope presented him.
+Slightly turning his back, he opened it. Instantly his face grew white
+as chalk.</p>
+
+<p>“Gentlemen,” said he, “you will have to excuse my uncle to-day; a great
+misfortune has occurred to him.” Then with a slow and horror-stricken
+movement, he looked about him and exclaimed, “<i>Mrs. Sylvester is dead</i>.”</p>
+
+<p>A confused murmur at once arose, followed by a hurried rush; but of all
+the faces that flocked out of the bank, none wore such a look of blank
+and helpless astonishment as that of Hopgood the janitor, as with
+bulging eyes and nervously working hands, he slowly wended his way to
+the foot of the stairs and there sat down gazing into vacancy.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<div class='chapter'><h3><a id="XX"></a>XX.</h3></div>
+
+<div class='ph4'>THE DREGS IN THE CUP.</div>
+
+<blockquote><p>“O eloquent, just and mightie death! whom none could advise,
+thou hast persuaded; what none hath dared, thou hast done; and
+whom all the world hath flattered, thou only hast cast out of
+the world and despised: thou hast drawn together all the farre
+stretched greatnesses; all the pride, crueltie and ambition of
+man and covered it all over with these two narrow words, <i>Hic
+jacet</i>.”—<span class="smcap">Sir Walter Raleigh.</span></p></blockquote>
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+
+<p>Bertram’s hurried ring at his uncle’s door was answered by Samuel the
+butler.</p>
+
+<p>“What is this I hear?” cried the young man, entering with considerable
+agitation, “Mrs. Sylvester dead?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes sir,” returned the old and trusty servant, with something like a
+sob in his voice. “She went out riding this morning behind a pair of
+borrowed horses—and being unused to Michael’s way of driving, they ran
+away and she was thrown from the carriage and instantly killed.”</p>
+
+<p>“And Miss Fairchild?”</p>
+
+<p>“She didn’t go with her. Mrs. Sylvester was alone.”</p>
+
+<p>“Horrible, horrible! Where is my uncle, can I see him?”</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t know, sir,” the man returned with a strange look of anxiety.
+“Mr. Sylvester is feeling very bad, sir. He has shut himself up in his
+room and none of his servants dare disturb him, sir.”</p>
+
+<p>“I should, however, like him to know I am here. In what room shall I
+find him?”</p>
+
+<p>“In the little one, sir, at the top of the house. It has a curious lock
+on the door; you will know it by that.”</p>
+
+<p>“Very well. Please be in the hall when I come down; I may want to give
+you some orders.”</p>
+
+<p>The old servant bowed and Bertram hastened with hushed steps to ascend
+the stairs. At the first platform he paused. What is there in a house of
+death, of sudden death especially, that draws a veil of spectral
+unreality over each familiar object! Behind that door now inexorably
+closed before him, lay without doubt the shrouded form of her who but a
+few short hours before, had dazzled the eyes of men and made envious the
+hearts of women with her imposing beauty! No such quiet then reigned
+over the spot filled by her presence. As the vision of a dream returns,
+he saw her again in all her splendor. Never a brow in all the great hall
+shone more brightly beneath its sparkling diamonds; never a lip in the
+whole vast throng curled with more self-complacent pride, or melted into
+a more alluring smile, than that of her who now lay here, a marble image
+beneath the eye of day. It was as if a flowery field had split beneath
+the dancing foot of some laughing siren. One moment your gaze is upon
+the swaying voluptuous form, the half-shut beguiling eye, the white
+out-reaching arms upon whose satin surface a thousand loves seem
+perching; the next you stare horror-stricken upon the closing jaws of an
+awful pit, with the flash of something bright in your eyes, and the
+sense of a hideous noiseless rush in which earth and heaven appear to
+join, sink and be swallowed! Bertram felt his heart grow sick. Moving
+on, he passed the bronze image of Luxury lying half asleep on its bed of
+crumpled roses. Hideous mockery! What has luxury to do with death? She
+who was luxury itself has vanished from these halls. Shall the mute
+bronze go on smiling over its wine cup while she who was its prototype
+is carried by without a smile on the lips once so vermeil with pride and
+tropical languors!</p>
+
+<p>Arrived at the top of the house, Bertram knocked at the door with the
+strange lock, and uttering his own name, asked if there was anything he
+could do here or elsewhere to show his sympathy and desire to be of use
+in this great and sudden bereavement. There was no immediate reply and
+he began to fear he would be obliged to retire without seeing his uncle,
+when the door was slowly opened and Mr. Sylvester came out. Instantly
+Bertram understood the anxiety of the servant. Not only did Mr.
+Sylvester’s countenance exhibit the usual traces of grief and horror
+incident to a sudden and awful calamity, but there were visible upon it
+the tokens of another and still more unfathomable emotion, a wild and
+paralyzed look that altered the very contour of his features, and made
+his face almost like that of a stranger.</p>
+
+<p>“Uncle, what is it?” sprang involuntarily to his lips. But Mr. Sylvester
+betraying by a sudden backward movement an instinctive desire to escape
+scrutiny, he bethought himself, and with hasty utterance offered some
+words of consolation that sounded strangely hollow and superficial in
+that dim and silent corridor. “Is there nothing I can do for you?” he
+finally asked.</p>
+
+<p>“Everything is being done,” exclaimed his uncle in a strained and
+altered voice; “Robert is here.” And a silence fell over the hall, that
+Bertram dared not break.</p>
+
+<p>“I have help for everything but—” He did not say what, it seemed as if
+something rose up in his throat that choked him.</p>
+
+<p>“Bertram,” said he at last in a more natural tone, “come with me.”</p>
+
+<p>He led him into an adjoining room and shut the door. It was a room from
+which the sunshine had not been excluded and it seemed as if they could
+both breathe more easily.</p>
+
+<p>“Sit down,” said his uncle, pointing to a chair. The young man did so,
+but Mr. Sylvester remained standing. Then without preamble, “Have you
+seen her?”</p>
+
+<p>There was no grief in the question, only a quiet respect. Death clothes
+the most volatile with a garment of awe. Bertram slowly shook his head.
+“No,” said he, “I came at once up stairs.”</p>
+
+<p>“There is no mark on her white body, save the least little discolored
+dent here,” continued his uncle, pointing calmly to his temple. “She had
+one moment of fear while the horses ran, and then—” He gave a quick
+shudder and advancing towards Bertram, laid his hand on his nephew’s
+shoulder in such a way as to prevent him from turning his head.
+“Bertram,” said he, “I have no son. If I were to call upon you to
+perform a son’s work for me; to obey and ask no questions, would you
+comply?”</p>
+
+<p>“Can you ask?” sprang from the young man’s lips; “you know that you have
+only to command for me to be proud to obey. Anything you can require
+will find me ready.”</p>
+
+<p>The hand on his shoulder weighed heavier. “It seems a strange time to
+talk about business, Bertram, but necessity knows no law. There is a
+matter in which you can afford me great assistance if you will undertake
+to do immediately what I ask.”</p>
+
+<p>“Can you doubt—”</p>
+
+<p>“Hush, it is this. On this paper you will find a name; below it a number
+of addresses. They are all of places down town and some of them not very
+reputable I fear. What I desire is for you to seek out the man whose
+name you here see, going to these very places after him, beginning with
+the first, and continuing down the list until you find him. When you
+come upon him, he will ask you for a card. Give him one on which you
+will scrawl before his eyes, a circle, so. It is a token which he should
+instantly understand. If he does, address him with freedom and tell him
+that your employer—you need make use of no names—re-demands the papers
+made over to him this morning. If he manifests surprise or is seen to
+hesitate, tell him your orders are imperative. If he declares ruin will
+follow, inform him that you are not to be frightened by words; that your
+employer is as fully aware of the position of affairs as he. Whatever he
+says, bring the papers.”</p>
+
+<p>Bertram nodded his head and endeavored to rise, but his uncle’s hand
+rested upon him too heavily.</p>
+
+<p>“He is a small man; you need have no dread of him physically. The sooner
+you find him and acquit yourself of your task, the better I shall be
+pleased.” And then the hand lifted.</p>
+
+<p>On his way down stairs Bertram encountered Paula. She was standing in
+the hall and accosted him with a very trembling tone in her voice. All
+her questions were in regard to Mr. Sylvester.</p>
+
+<p>“Have you seen him?” she asked. “Does he speak—say anything? No one has
+heard him utter a word since he came in from down town and saw her lying
+there.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, certainly; he spoke to me; he has been giving me some commissions
+to perform. I am on my way now to attend to them.”</p>
+
+<p>She drew a deep breath. “O!” she cried, “would that he had a son, a
+daughter, a child, some one!”</p>
+
+<p>This exclamation following what had taken place above struck Bertram
+forcibly. “He has a son in me, Paula. Love as well as duty binds me to
+him. All that a child could do will I perform with pleasure. You can
+trust me for that.”</p>
+
+<p>She threw him a glance of searching inquiry. “His need is greater than
+it seems,” whispered she. “He was deeply troubled before this terrible
+accident occurred. I am afraid the arrow is poisoned that has made this
+dreadful wound. I cannot explain myself,” she went on hurriedly, “but if
+you indeed regard him as a father, be ready with any comfort, any help,
+that affection can bestow, or his necessities require. Let me feel that
+he has near him some stay that will not yield to pressure.”</p>
+
+<p>There was so much passion in this appeal that Bertram involuntarily
+bowed his head. “He has two friends,” said he, “and here is my hand that
+I will never forsake him.”</p>
+
+<p>“I do not need to offer mine,” she returned, “He is great and good
+enough to do without my assistance.” But nevertheless she gave her hand
+to Bertram and with a glow of her lip and eye that made her beauty,
+supreme at all times, something almost supernatural in its character.</p>
+
+<p>“I dared not tell him,” she whispered to herself as the front door
+closed with the dull slow thud proper to a house of mourning. “I dare
+not tell any one, but—”</p>
+
+<p>What lay beyond that but?</p>
+
+<p>When Mr. Sylvester came in at six o’clock in the morning, Paula had
+risen from the bed on which she had been sitting, but not to make
+preparation for rest, for she could not rest. The vague shadow of some
+surrounding evil or threatened catastrophe was upon her, and though she
+forced herself to change her dress for a warmer and more suitable one,
+she did not otherwise break her vigil, though the necessity for it
+seemed to be at an end. It was a midwinter morning and the sun had not
+yet risen, so being chilly as well as restless, she began to pace the
+floor, stopping now and then to glance out of the window, in the hopes
+of detecting some signs of awakening day in the blank and solemn east.
+Suddenly as she was thus consulting the horizon, a light flashed up from
+below, and looking down upon the face of the extension that ran along at
+right angles to her window, she perceived that the shades were up in
+Mrs. Sylvester’s boudoir. They had doubtless been left so the evening
+before, and Mr. Sylvester upon turning up the gas had failed to observe
+the fact. Instantly she felt her heart stand still, for the house being
+wide and the extension narrow, all that went on in that boudoir, or at
+least in that portion of it which Mr. Sylvester at present occupied, was
+easily observable from the window at which she stood; and that something
+was going on of a serious and important nature, was sufficiently evident
+from the expression of Mr. Sylvester’s countenance. He was standing with
+his face bent towards some one seated out of sight, his wife
+undoubtedly, though what could have called her from her dreams—and was
+busily engaged in talking. The subject whatever it was, absorbed him
+completely. If Paula had allowed herself the thought, she would have
+described him as pleading and that with no ordinary vehemence. But
+suddenly while she gazed half fascinated and but little realizing what
+she was doing, he started back and a fierce change swept over his face,
+a certain incredulity, that presently gave way to a glance of horror and
+repugnance, which the quick action of his out-thrown palm sufficiently
+emphasized. He was pushing something from him, but what? A suggestion or
+a remembrance? It was impossible to determine.</p>
+
+<p>The countenance of Mrs. Sylvester who that moment appeared in sight
+sailing across the floor in her azure wrapper, offered but little
+assistance in the way of explanation. Immovable under most
+circumstances, it was simply at this juncture a trifle more calm and
+cold than usual, presenting to Paula’s mind the thought of a white and
+icy barrier, against which the most glowing of arrows must fall chilled
+and powerless.</p>
+
+<p>“O for a woman’s soul to inform that breast if but for a moment!” cried
+Paula, lost in the passion of this scene, while so little understanding
+its import. When as if in mockery to this invocation, the haughty form
+upon which she was gazing started rigidly erect, while the lip acquired
+a scorn and the eye a menace that betrayed the serpent ever in hiding
+under this white rose.</p>
+
+<p>Paula could look no longer. This last revelation had awakened her to the
+fact that she was gazing upon a scene sacred to the husband and wife
+engaged in it. With a sense of shame she rushed to the bed and threw
+herself upon it, but the vision of what she had beheld would not leave
+her so easily. Like letters of fire upon a black ground, the panorama of
+looks and gestures to which she had just been witness, floated before
+her mind’s eye, awakening a train of thought so intense that she did not
+know which was worse, to be there in the awful dawn dreaming over this
+episode of the night, or to rise and face again the reality. The
+fascination which all forbidden sights insensibly exert over the minds
+of the best of us, finally prevailed, and she slowly crept to the window
+to catch a parting glimpse of Mr. Sylvester’s tall form hurrying blindly
+from the boudoir followed by his wife’s cold glance. The next minute the
+exposed condition of the room seemed to catch that lady’s attention, and
+with an anxious look into the dull gray morn, Mrs. Sylvester drew down
+the shades, and the episode was over.</p>
+
+<p>Or so Paula thought; but when she was returning up stairs after her
+solitary breakfast—Mrs. Sylvester was too tired and Mr. Sylvester too
+much engaged to eat, as the attentive Samuel informed her—the door of
+Ona’s room swung ajar, and she distinctly heard her give utterance to
+the following exclamation:</p>
+
+<p>“What! give up this elegant home, my horses and carriage, the friends I
+have had such difficulty in obtaining, and the position which I was born
+to adorn? I had rather die!” And Paula feeling as if she had received
+the key to the enigma of the last night’s unaccountable manifestations,
+was about to rush away to her own apartment, when the door swayed open
+again and she heard his voice respond with hard and bitter emphasis,</p>
+
+<p>“And it might be better that you should. But since you will probably
+live, let it be according to your mind. I have not the courage—”</p>
+
+<p>There the door swung to.</p>
+
+<p>An hour from that Mr. Sylvester left the house with a small valise in
+his hand, and Mrs. Sylvester dressed in her showiest costume, entered
+her carriage for an early shopping excursion.</p>
+
+<p>And so when Paula whispered to herself, “I did not dare to tell him; I
+did not dare to tell any one, but—” she thought of those terrible
+words, “Die? It might be better, perhaps, that you should!” and then
+remembered the ghastly look of immeasurable horror with which a few
+hours later, he staggered away from that awful burden, whose rigid lines
+would never again melt into mocking curves, and to whom the morning’s
+wide soaring hopes, high reaching ambitions and boundless luxuries were
+now no more than the shadows of a vanished world; life, love, longing,
+with all their demands, having dwindled to a noisome rest between four
+close planks, with darkness for its present portion and beyond—what?</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<div class='chapter'><h3><a id="XXI"></a>XXI.</h3></div>
+
+<div class='ph4'>DEPARTURE.</div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Forever and forever, farewell Cassius.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">If we do meet again, why we shall smile;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">If not, why then, this parting was well made.”—<span class="smcap">Julius César.</span><br></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<p>Samuel had received his orders to admit Mr. Bertram Sylvester to his
+uncle’s room, at whatever hour of the day or night he chose to make his
+appearance. But evening wore away and finally the night, before his
+well-known face was seen at the door. Proceeding at once to the
+apartment occupied by Mr. Sylvester, he anxiously knocked. The door was
+opened immediately.</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, Bertram, I have been expecting you all night.” And from the haggard
+appearance of both men, it was evident that neither of them had slept.</p>
+
+<p>“I have sat down but twice since I left you, and then only in
+conveyances. I have been obliged to go to Brooklyn, to—”</p>
+
+<p>“But you have found him?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, I found him.”</p>
+
+<p>His uncle glanced inquiringly at his hands; they were empty.</p>
+
+<p>“I shall have to sit down,” said Bertram; his brow was very gloomy, his
+words came hesitatingly. “I had rather have knocked my head against the
+wall, than have disappointed you,” he murmured after a moment’s pause.
+“But when I did find him, it was too late.”</p>
+
+<p>“Too late!” The tone in which this simple phrase was uttered was
+indescribable. Bertram slowly nodded his head.</p>
+
+<p>“He had already disposed of all the papers, and favorably,” he said.</p>
+
+<p>“But—”</p>
+
+<p>“And not only that,” pursued Bertram. “He had issued orders by
+telegraph, that it was impossible to countermand. It was at the Forty
+Second Street depĂŽt I found him at last. He was just on the point of
+starting for the west.”</p>
+
+<p>“And has he gone?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes sir.”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester walked slowly to the window. It was raining drearily
+without, but he did not notice the falling drops or raise his eyes to
+the leaden skies.</p>
+
+<p>“Did you meet any one?” he asked at length. “Any one that you know, I
+mean, or who knows you?”</p>
+
+<p>“No one but Mr. Stuyvesant.”</p>
+
+<p>“Mr. Stuyvesant!”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes sir,” returned Bertram, dropping his eyes before his uncle’s
+astonished glance. “I was coming out of a house in Broad Street when he
+passed by and saw me, or at least I believed he saw me. There is no
+mistaking him, sir, for any one else; besides it is a custom of his I am
+told, to saunter through the down town streets after the warehouses are
+all closed for the night. He enjoys the quiet I suppose, finds food for
+reflection in the sleeping aspect of our great city.” There was gloom in
+Bertram’s tone; his uncle looked at him curiously.</p>
+
+<p>“What house was it from which you were coming when he passed you?”</p>
+
+<p>“A building where Tueller and Co. do business, shady operators in paper,
+as you know.”</p>
+
+<p>“And you believed he recognized you?”</p>
+
+<p>“I cannot be sure, sir. It was dark, but I thought I saw him look at me
+and give a slight start.”</p>
+
+<p>Ah, how desolate sounds the drip, drip of a ceaseless rain, when
+conversation languishes and the ear has time to listen!</p>
+
+<p>“I will explain to Mr. Stuyvesant when I see him, that you were in
+search of a man with whom I had pressing business,” observed Mr.
+Sylvester at last.</p>
+
+<p>“No,” murmured Bertram with effort, “it might emphasize the occurrence
+in his mind; let the matter drop where it is.”</p>
+
+<p>There was another silence, during which the drip of the rain on the
+window-ledge struck on the young man’s ears like the premonitory thud of
+falling earth upon a coffin-lid. At length his uncle turned and advanced
+rapidly towards him.</p>
+
+<p>“Bertram,” said he, “you have done me a favor for which I thank you.
+What you have learned in the course of its accomplishment I cannot tell.
+Enough perhaps to make you understand why I warned you from the
+dangerous path of speculation, and set your feet in a way that if
+adhered to with steadfast purpose, ought to lead you at last to a safe
+and honorable prosperity. Now—No, Bertram,” he bitterly interrupted
+himself as the other opened his lips, “I am in need of no especial
+commiseration, my affairs seem bound to prosper whether I will or
+not—now I have one more commission to give you. Miss Fairchild—” his
+voice quavered and he leaned heavily on the chair near which he was
+standing. “Have you seen her, Bertram? Is the poor child quite
+prostrated? Has this frightful occurrence made her ill, or does she bear
+up with fortitude under the shock of this sudden calamity?”</p>
+
+<p>“She is not ill, but her suffering is undoubted. If you could see her
+and say a few words to relieve her anxiety in regard to yourself, I
+think it would greatly comfort her. Her main thought seems to be for
+you, sir.”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester frowned, raised his hand with a repelling gesture, and
+hastily opened his lips. Bertram thought he was about to utter some
+passionate phrase. But instead of that he merely remarked, “I am sorry I
+cannot see her, but it is quite impossible. You must stand between me
+and this poor child, Bertram. Tell her I send her my love; tell her that
+I am quite well; anything to solace her and make these dark days less
+dreary. If she wants a friend with her, let a messenger be sent for
+whomever she desires. I place no restrictions upon anything you choose
+to do for her comfort or happiness, but let me be spared the sight of
+any other face than yours until this is all over. After the funeral—it
+nay sound ungracious, but I am far from feeling so—I shall wish to be
+left alone for awhile. If she can be made to understand this—”</p>
+
+<p>“I think her instincts, sir, have already led her to divine your wishes.
+If I am not mistaken, she is even now making preparations to return to
+her relatives.”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester gave a start. “What, so soon!” he murmured, and the
+sadness of his tone smote Bertram to the heart. But in another moment he
+recovered himself and shortly exclaimed, “Well! well! that is as it
+should be. You will watch over her Bertram, and see that she is kindly
+cared for. It would be a grief to me to have her go away with any more
+than the necessary regret at losing one who was always kind to <i>her</i>.”</p>
+
+<p>“I will look after her as after a sister,” returned Bertram. “She shall
+miss no attention which I can supply.”</p>
+
+<p>With a look Mr. Sylvester expressed his thanks. Then while Bertram again
+attempted to speak, he gave him a cordial pressure of the hand, and
+withdrew once more to his favorite spot.</p>
+
+<p>And the rain beat, beat, and it sounded more and more like the droppings
+of earth upon a nailed down coffin-lid.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<p>The funeral was a large one. The largest some said that had ever been
+seen in that quarter of the city. If Mrs. Sylvester’s position had not
+been what it was, the sudden and awful nature of her death, would have
+been sufficient to draw together a large crowd. Among those who thus
+endeavored to show their respect was Miss Stuyvesant.</p>
+
+<p>“I could not join you here in your pleasures,” she whispered to Paula in
+the short interview they had upstairs, preparatory to the services, “but
+I cannot keep away in the dark hours!” And from her look and the clasp
+of her hand, Paula gained fresh courage to endure the slow pressure of
+anxiety and grief with which she was secretly burdened.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover she had the pleasure of introducing her beloved friend to Mr.
+Bertram Sylvester, a pleasure which she had long promised herself
+whenever the opportunity should arrive, as Miss Stuyvesant was somewhat
+of an enthusiast as regards music. She did not notice particularly then,
+but she remembered afterwards, with what a blushing cheek and beautiful
+glance the dainty young girl received his bow, and responded to his few
+respectful words of pleasure at meeting the daughter of a man whom he
+had learned to regard with so much respect.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester was in a room by himself. The few glimpses obtained of him
+by his friends, convinced them all, that this trouble touched him more
+deeply than those who knew his wife intimately could have supposed. Yet
+he was calm, and already wore that fixed look of rigidity which was
+henceforth to distinguish the expression of his fine and noble features.</p>
+
+<p>In the ride to Greenwood he spoke little. Paula who sat in the carriage
+with him did not receive a word, though now and then his eye wandered
+towards her with an expression that drove the blood to her heart, and
+made the whole day one awful memory of incomprehensible agony and dim
+but terrible forebodings. The ways of the human soul, in its crises of
+grief or remorse were so new to her. She had passed her life beside
+rippling streams and in peaceful meadows, and now all at once, with
+shadow on shadow, the dark pictures of life settled down before her, and
+she could not walk without stumbling upon jagged rocks, deep yawning
+chasms and caves of impenetrable gloom.</p>
+
+<p>The sight of the grave appalled her. To lay in such a bed as that, the
+fair and delicate head that had often found the downy pillows of its
+azure couch too hard for its languid pressure. To hide in such a dismal,
+deep, dark gap, a form so white and but a little while before, so
+imposing in its splendor and so commanding in its requirements. The
+thought of heaven brought no comfort. The beauty they had known lay
+here; soulless, inert, rigid and responseless, but here. It was gifted
+with no wings with which to rise. It owned no attachment to higher
+spheres. Death had scattered the leaves of this white rose, but from all
+the boundless mirror of the outspread heavens, no recovered semblance of
+its perfected beauty, looked forth to solace Paula or assuage the misery
+of her glance into this gloomy pit. Ah, Ona, the social ladder reaches
+high, but it does not scale the regions where your poor soul could find
+comfort now.</p>
+
+<p>Bertram saw the white look on Paula’s face and silently offered his arm.
+But there are moments when no mortal help can aid us; instants when the
+soul stands as solitary in the universe, as the ship-wrecked mariner on
+a narrow strip of rock in a boundless sea. Life may touch, but eternity
+enfolds us; we are single before God and as such must stand or fall.</p>
+
+<p>Upon their return to the house, Mr. Sylvester withdrew with a few
+intimate friends to his room, and Paula, lonely beyond expression, went
+to her own empty apartment to finish packing her trunks and answer such
+notes as had arrived during her absence. For attention from outsiders
+was only too obtrusive. Many whom she had never met save in the most
+formal intercourse, flooded her now with expressions of condolence,
+which if they had not been all upon one pattern and that the most
+conventional, might have afforded her some relief. Two or three of the
+notes were precious to her and these she stowed safely away, one
+contained a deliberate offer of marriage from a wealthy old
+stock-broker; this she as deliberately burned after she had written a
+proper refusal. “He thinks I have no home,” she murmured.</p>
+
+<p>And had she? As she paced through the silent halls and elaborately
+furnished rooms on her way to her solitary dinner, she asked herself if
+any place would ever seem like home after this. Not that she was
+infatuated by its elegance. The lofty walls might dwindle, the gorgeous
+furniture grow dim, the works of beauty disappear, the whole towering
+structure contract to the dimensions of a simple cottage or what was
+worse, a seedy down-town house, if only the something would remain, the
+something that made return to Grotewell seem like the bending back of a
+towering stalk to the ground from which it had taken its root. “If?” she
+cried—and stopped there, her heart swelling she knew not why. Then
+again, “I thought I had found a father!” Then after a longer pause, a
+wild uncontrollable; “Bless! bless! bless!” which seemed to re-echo in
+the room long after her lingering step had left it.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<p>“Will he let me go without a word?”</p>
+
+<p>It was early morning and the time had come for Paula’s departure. She
+was standing on the threshold of her room, her hands clasped, her eyes
+roving up and down the empty halls. “Will he let me go without a word?”</p>
+
+<p>“O Miss Paula, what do you think?” cried Sarah, creeping slowly towards
+her from the spectral recesses of a dim corner. “Jane says Mr. Sylvester
+was up all last night too. She heard him go down stairs about midnight
+and he went through all the rooms like a gliding spectre and into <i>her</i>
+room too!” she fearfully whispered; “and what he did there no one knows,
+but when he came out he locked the door, and this morning the cook heard
+him give orders to Samuel to have the trunks that were ready in Mrs.
+Sylvester’s room taken away. O Miss, do you think he can be going to
+give all those beautiful things to you?”</p>
+
+<p>Paula recoiled in horror. “Sarah!” said she, and could say no more. The
+vision of that tall form gliding through the desolate house at midnight,
+bending over the soulless finery of his dead wife, perhaps stowing it
+away in boxes, came with too powerful a suggestion to her mind.</p>
+
+<p>“Shure, I thought you would be pleased,” murmured the girl and
+disappeared again into one of the dim recesses.</p>
+
+<p>“Will he let me go without a word?”</p>
+
+<p>“Miss Paula, Mr. Bertram Sylvester is waiting at the door in a
+carriage,” came in low respectful tones to her ears, and Samuel’s face
+full of regret appeared at the top of the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>“I am coming,” murmured the sad-hearted girl, and with a sob which she
+could not control, she took her last look of the pretty pink chamber in
+which she had dreamed so many dreams of youthful delight, and perhaps of
+youthful sorrow also, and slowly descended the stairs. Suddenly as she
+was passing a door on the second floor, she heard a low deep cry.</p>
+
+<p>“Paula!”</p>
+
+<p>She stopped and her hand went to her heart, the reaction was so sudden.
+“Yes,” she murmured, standing still with great heart-beats of joy, or
+was it pain?</p>
+
+<p>The door slowly opened. “Did you think I could let you go without a
+blessing, my Paula, my little one!” came in those deep heart-tones which
+always made her tears start. And Mr. Sylvester stepped out of the
+shadows beyond and stood in the shadows at her side.</p>
+
+<p>“I did not know,” she murmured. “I am so young, so feeble, such a mote
+in this great atmosphere of anguish. I longed to see you, to say
+good-bye, to thank you, but—” tears stopped her words; this was a
+parting that rent her leader heart.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester watched her and his deep chest rose spasmodically.
+“Paula,” said he, and there was a depth in his tone even she had never
+heard before, “are these tears for me?”</p>
+
+<p>With a strong effort she controlled herself, looked up and faintly
+smiled. “I am an orphan,” she gently murmured; “you have been kind and
+tender to me beyond words; I have let myself love you as a father.”</p>
+
+<p>A spasm crossed his features, the hand he had lifted to lay upon her
+head fell at his side, he surveyed her with eyes whose despairing
+fondness told her that her love had been more than met by this desolate
+childless man. But he did not reply as seemed natural, “Be to me then as
+a child. I can offer you no mother to guide or watch over you, but one
+parent is better than none. Henceforth you shall be known as my
+daughter.” Instead of that he shook his head mournfully, yearningly but
+irrevocably, and said, “To be your father would have been a dear
+position to occupy. I have sometimes hoped that I might be so blessed as
+to call it mine, but that is all past now. Your father I can never be.
+But I can bless you,” he murmured brokenly, “not as I did that day in
+your aunt’s little cottage, but silently and from afar as God always
+meant you should be blessed by me. Good-bye, Paula.”</p>
+
+<p>Then all the deeps in her great nature broke up. She did not weep, but
+she looked at him with her large dark eyes and the cry in them smote his
+heart. With a struggle that blanched his face, he kept his arms at his
+side, but his lips worked in agony, and he slowly murmured, “If after a
+time your heart loves me like this, and you are willing to bear shadow
+as well as sunshine with me, come back with your aunt and sit at my
+hearthstone, not as my child but as a dear and honored guest. I will try
+and be worthy—” He paused, “Will you come, Paula?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, yes.”</p>
+
+<p>“Not soon, not now,” he murmured, “God will show you when.”</p>
+
+<p>And with nothing but a look, without having touched her or so much as
+brushed her garments with his, he retired again into his room.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<div class='chapter'><h3><a id="XXII"></a>XXII.</h3></div>
+
+<div class='ph4'>HOPGOOD.</div>
+
+<blockquote><p>“Give it an understanding but no tongue.”—<span class="smcap">Hamlet.</span></p></blockquote>
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+
+<p>Hopgood was a man who could keep a secret, but who made so much ado in
+the process that he reminded one of the placard found posted up
+somewhere out west which reads, “A treasure of gold concealed here;
+don’t dig!” Or so his wife used to say, and she ought to know, for she
+had lived with him five years, three of which he had spent in the
+detective service.</p>
+
+<p>“If he would only trust the wife of his bosom with whatever he’s got on
+his mind, instead of ambling around the building with his eyes rolling
+about like peas in a caldron of boiling water, one might manage to take
+some comfort in life, and not hurt anybody either. For two days now,
+ever since the wife of Mr. Sylvester died and Mr. Sylvester has been
+away from the bank, he’s acted just like a lunatic. Not that that has
+anything to do with his gettin up of nights and roamin down five pair of
+stairs to see if the watchman is up to his duty, or with his askin a
+dozen times a day if I remembers how Mr. Sylvester found him and me,
+well nigh starvin in Broad Street, and gave him the good word which got
+him into this place? O no! O no, of course not! But <i>something</i> has, and
+while he persists in shutting out from his breast the woman he swore to
+love, honor, and cherish, that woman is not bound to bear the trials of
+life with patience. Every time he jumps out of his chair at the sound of
+Mr. Sylvester’s name, and some one is always mentionin’ it, I plumps me
+down on mine with an expression of my views regarding a kitchen stove
+that does all its drawin’ when the oven’s empty.”</p>
+
+<p>So spake Mrs. Hopgood to her special crony and constant visitor, Mrs.
+Kirkshaw of Water Street, pursing up a mouth that might have been
+good-natured if she had ever given it an opportunity. But Mrs. Kirkshaw
+who passed for a gossip with her neighbors, was a philosopher in the
+retirement of the domestic circle and did not believe in the blow for
+blow system.</p>
+
+<p>“La!” quoth she, with a smoothing out of her apron suggestive of her
+employment as laundress, “show a dog that you want his bone and you’ll
+never get it. Husbands is like that very stove you’ve been a slanderin
+of. Rattle on coal when the fire’s low and you put it out entirely; but
+be a bit patient and drop it on piece by piece, coaxing-like, and you’ll
+have a hot stove afore you know it.”</p>
+
+<p>Which suggestion struck Mrs. Hopgood like a revelation, and for a day
+and night she resorted to the coaxing system; the result of which was to
+send Mr. Hopgood out of the room to sit on the stairs in mortal terror,
+lest his good nature should get the better of his discretion. His little
+daughter, Constantia Maria—so named and so called from two
+grandmothers, equally exacting in their claims and equally impecunious
+as regards their resources—was his sole solace in this long vigil. Her
+pretty innocent prattle scarcely disturbed his meditation, while it
+soothed his nerves, and with no one by but this unsuspecting child, he
+could roll his great eyes to his heart’s content without fear of her
+descrying anything in them, but the love with which her own little heart
+abounded.</p>
+
+<p>On the morning after the funeral, however, Constantia Maria was restored
+to his wife’s arms on the plea that she did not seem quite well, and
+Hopgood went out and sat alone. In a few minutes, however, he returned,
+and ambling restlessly up and down the room, stopped before his
+persistently smiling wife and said somewhat tremulously:</p>
+
+<p>“If Mr. Sylvester takes a notion to come up and see Constantia Maria
+to-day, I hope you’ll take the opportunity to finish your ironing or
+whatever else it is you may have to do. I’ve noticed he seems a little
+shy with the child when you are around.”</p>
+
+<p>“Shy with the child when I am around! well I do declare!” exclaimed she,
+forgetting her late rîle in her somewhat natural indignation. “And what
+have I ever done to frighten Mr. Sylvester? Nothing but putting on of a
+clean apron, when he comes in and a dustin’ of the best chair for his
+use. It’s a trick of yours to get a chance of speakin’ to him alone, and
+I’ll not put up with it. As if it wasn’t bad enough to have a kettle
+with the nozzle dangling, without living with a man who has a secret he
+won’t share with his own wife and the mother of his innocent babe.”</p>
+
+<p>With a start the worthy man stared at her till he grew red in the face,
+probably with the effort of keeping his eyes steady for so long a time.
+“Who told you I had a secret?” said he.</p>
+
+<p>“Who told me?” and then she laughed, though in a somewhat hysterical
+way, and sat down in the middle of the floor and shook and shook again.
+“Hear the man!” she cried. And she told him the story of the placard out
+west and then asked him, “if he thought she didn’t remember how he used
+to act when he was a chasin’ up of a thief in the days when he was on
+the police force.”</p>
+
+<p>“But,” he cried, quite as pale now as he had been florid the moment
+before, “I’m not in the police force now and you are acting quite silly
+and I’ve no patience with you.” And he was making for the door,
+presumably to sit upon the stairs, when with a late repentance she
+seized him by the arm and said:</p>
+
+<p>“La now,” an expression she had caught from Mrs. Kirkshaw, “I didn’t
+mean nothin’ by my talk. Come back, John; Constantia Maria is not well,
+and if Mr. Sylvester comes up to see her, I’ll just slip out and leave
+you alone.”</p>
+
+<p>And upon that he told her she was a good wife and that if he had any
+secret from her it was only because he was a poor man. “Honesty and
+prudence are all the treasures I possess to keep us three from starving.
+Shall I part with either of them just to satisfy your curiosity?” and
+being a good woman at heart, she said “no,” though she secretly
+concluded that prudence in his case involved trust in one’s wife first,
+and disbelief in the rest of the world afterward; and took her future
+resolutions accordingly.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, Hopgood, you look anxious; do you want to speak to me?”</p>
+
+<p>The janitor eyed the changed and melancholy face of his patron, with an
+expression in which real sympathy for his trouble, struggled with the
+respectful awe which Mr. Sylvester’s presence was calculated to inspire.</p>
+
+<p>“If you please,” said he, speaking very low, for more or less of the
+bank employees were moving busily to and fro, “Constantia Maria is not
+well and she has been asking all day for the <i>dear man</i>, as she insists
+upon calling you, sir, with many apologies for the freedom.”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester smiled with a faint far-away look in his dark eye that
+made Hopgood stare uneasily out of the window. “Sick! why then I must go
+up and see her,” he returned in a matter-of-fact way that proved his
+visits in that direction were of no uncommon occurrence. “A moment more
+and I shall be at liberty.”</p>
+
+<p>Hopgood bowed and renewed his stare out of the window, with an intensity
+happily spared from serious consequences to the passers-by, by the
+merciful celerity with which Mr. Sylvester procured his overcoat, put
+such papers in his pocket as he required, and joined him.</p>
+
+<p>“Constantia Maria, here is Mr. Sylvester come to see you.”</p>
+
+<p>It was a pleasure to observe how the little thing brightened in her
+mother’s arms, where but a moment before she had lain quite pale and
+still, and slipping to the ground rushed up to meet the embrace of this
+stern and melancholy-faced man. “I am so glad you have come,” she cried
+over and over again; and her little arms went round his neck, and her
+soft cheek nestled against his, with a content that made the mother’s
+eyes sparkle with pleasure, as obedient to her promise, she quietly left
+the room.</p>
+
+<p>And Mr. Sylvester? If any one had seen the abandon with which he yielded
+to her caresses and returned them, he would have understood why this
+child should have loved him with such extraordinary affection. He kissed
+her forehead, he kissed her cheek, and seemed never weary of smoothing
+down her bright and silky curls. She reminded him of Geraldine. She had
+the same blue eyes and caressing ways. From the day he had come upon his
+old friend Hopgood in a condition of necessity almost of want, this
+blue-eyed baby had held its small sceptre over his lonely heart, and
+unbeknown to the rest of the world, had solaced many a spare five
+minutes with her innocent prattle. The Hopgoods understood the cause of
+his predilection and were silent. It was the one thing Mrs. Hopgood
+never alluded to in her gossips with Mrs. Kirkshaw. But to-day the
+attentions of Mr. Sylvester to the little one seemed to make the janitor
+restless. He walked up and down the narrow room uneasily surveying the
+pair out of the corner of his great glassy eyes, till even Mr. Sylvester
+noticed his unusual manner and put the child down, observing with a
+sigh, “You think she is not well enough for any excitement?”</p>
+
+<p>“No sir, it is not that,” returned the other uneasily, with a hasty look
+around him. “The fact is, I have something to say to you, sir, about—a
+discovery—I made the other day.” His words came very slowly, and he
+looked down with great embarrassment.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester frowned slightly, and drew himself up to the full height
+of his very imposing figure. “A discovery,” repeated he, “when?”</p>
+
+<p>“The day you paid that early visit to the bank, sir, the day Mrs.
+Sylvester died.”</p>
+
+<p>The frown on Mr. Sylvester’s brow grew deeper. “The day—” he began, and
+stopped.</p>
+
+<p>“Excuse me, sir,” exclaimed Hopgood with a burst. “I ought not to have
+mentioned it, but you asked me <i>when</i>, and I—”</p>
+
+<p>“What was this discovery?” inquired his superior, imperatively.</p>
+
+<p>“Nothing much,” murmured the other now all in a cold sweat. “But I felt
+as if I ought to tell you. You have been my benefactor, sir, I can never
+forget what you have done for me and mine. If I saw death or bereavement
+between me and any favor I could do for you, sir, I would not hesitate
+to risk them. I am no talker, sir, but I am true and I am grateful.” He
+stopped, choked, and his eyes rolled frightfully. Mr. Sylvester looked
+at him, grew a trifle pale, and put the little child away that was
+nestling up against his knee.</p>
+
+<p>“You have not told me what you have discovered,” said he.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, sir, only this.” And he took from his pocket a small roll of
+paper which he unfolded and held out in his hand. It contained a gold
+tooth-pick somewhat bent and distorted.</p>
+
+<p>A flush dark and ominous crept over Mr. Sylvester’s cheek. He glanced
+sternly at the trembling janitor, and uttered a short, “Well?”</p>
+
+<p>“I found it on the floor of the bank just after you went out the other
+morning,” the other pursued well-nigh inaudibly. “It was lying near the
+safe. As it was not there when you went in, I took it for granted it was
+yours. Am I right, sir?”</p>
+
+<p>The anxious tone in which this last question was uttered, the studied
+way in which the janitor kept his eyes upon the floor could not have
+been unnoticed by Mr. Sylvester, but he simply said,</p>
+
+<p>“I have lost mine, that may very possibly be it.”</p>
+
+<p>The janitor held it towards him; his eyes did not leave the floor. “The
+responsibility of my position here is sometimes felt by me to be very
+heavy,” muttered the man in a low, unmodulated tone. It was his duty in
+those days previous to the Manhattan Bank robbery, to open the vault in
+the morning, procure the books that were needed, and lay them about on
+the various desks in readiness for the clerks upon their arrival. He had
+also the charge of the boxes of the various customers of the bank who
+chose to entrust their valuables to its safe keeping; which boxes were
+kept, together with the books, in that portion of the vault to which he
+had access. “I should regret my comfortable situation here, but if it
+was necessary, I would go without a murmur, trusting that God would take
+care of my poor little lamb.”</p>
+
+<p>“Hopgood, what do you mean?” asked Mr. Sylvester somewhat sternly. “Who
+talks about dismissing you?”</p>
+
+<p>“No one,” responded the other, turning aside to attend to some trivial
+matter. “But if ever you think a younger or a fresher man would be
+preferable in my place, do not hesitate to make the change your own
+necessities or that of the Bank may seem to require.”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester’s eye which was fixed upon the janitor’s face, slowly
+darkened.</p>
+
+<p>“There is something underlying all this,” said he, “what is it?”</p>
+
+<p>At once and as if he had taken his resolution, the janitor turned. “I
+beg your pardon,” said he, “I ought to have told you in the first place.
+When I opened the vaults as usual on the morning of which I speak, I
+found the boxes displaced; that was nothing if you had been to them,
+sir; but what did alarm me and make me feel as if I had held my position
+too long was to find that one of them was unlocked.”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester fell back a step.</p>
+
+<p>“It was Mr. Stuyvesant’s box, sir, and I remember distinctly seeing him
+lock it the previous afternoon before putting it back on the shelf.”</p>
+
+<p>The arms which Mr. Sylvester had crossed upon his breast tightened
+spasmodically. “And it has been in that condition ever since?” asked he.</p>
+
+<p>The janitor shook his head. “No,” said he, taking his little girl up in
+his arms, possibly to hide his countenance. “As you did not come down
+again on that day, I took the liberty of locking it with a key of my own
+when I went to put away the books and shut the vault for the night.” And
+he quietly buried his face in his baby’s floating curls, who feeling his
+cheek against her own put up her hand and stroked it lovingly, crying in
+her caressing infantile tones,</p>
+
+<p>“Poor papa! poor tired papa.”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester’s stern brow contracted painfully. The look with which his
+eye sought the sky without, would have made Paula’s young heart ache.
+Taking the child from her father’s clasp, he laid her on the bed. When
+he again confronted the janitor his face was like a mask.</p>
+
+<p>“Hopgood,” said he, “you are an honest man and a faithful one; I
+appreciate your worth and have had confidence in your judgment. Whom
+have you told of this occurrence beside myself?”</p>
+
+<p>“No one, sir.”</p>
+
+<p>“Another question; if Mr. Stuyvesant had required his box that day and
+had found it in the condition you describe, what would you have replied
+to his inquiries?”</p>
+
+<p>The janitor colored to the roots of his hair in an agony of shame Mr.
+Sylvester may or may not have appreciated, but replied with the
+straightforward earnestness of a man driven to bay, “I should have been
+obliged to tell him the truth sir; that whereas I had no personal
+knowledge of any one but myself, having been to the vaults since the
+evening before, I was called upon early that morning to open the outside
+door to you, sir, and that you came into the bank,” (he did not say
+looking very pale, agitated and unnatural, but he could not help
+remembering it) “and finding no one on duty but myself,—the watchman
+having gone up stairs to take his usual cup of coffee before going home
+for the day—you sent me out of the room on an errand, which delayed me
+some little time, and that when I came back I found you gone, and every
+thing as I had left it except that small pick lying on the floor.”</p>
+
+<p>The last words were nearly inaudible but they must have been heard by
+Mr. Sylvester, for immediately upon their utterance, the hand which
+unconsciously had kept its hold upon the tooth-pick, opened and with an
+uncontrollable gesture flung the miserable tell-tale into the stove near
+by.</p>
+
+<p>“Hopgood,” said the stately gentleman, coming nearer and holding him
+with his eyes till the poor man turned pale and cold as a stone, “has
+Mr. Stuyvesant had occasion to open his box since you locked it?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes sir, he called for it yesterday afternoon.”</p>
+
+<p>“And who gave it to him?”</p>
+
+<p>“I sir.”</p>
+
+<p>“Did he appear to miss anything from it?”</p>
+
+<p>“No, sir.”</p>
+
+<p>“Do you believe, Hopgood, that there was anything missing from it?”</p>
+
+<p>The janitor shrank like a man subjected to the torture. He fixed his
+glance on Mr. Sylvester’s face and his own gradually lightened.</p>
+
+<p>“No sir!” said he at last, with a gasp that made the little one lift her
+curly head from her pillow and shake it with a slow and wistful motion
+strange to see in a child of only two years.</p>
+
+<p>The proud man bowed, not with the severity however that might have been
+expected; indeed his manner was strangely shadowed, and though his lip
+betrayed no uneasiness and his eye neither faltered or fell, there was a
+vague expression of awe upon his countenance, which it would take more
+than the simple understanding of the worthy but not over subtle man
+before him, to detect much less to comprehend.</p>
+
+<p>“You may be sure that Mr. Stuyvesant will never complain of any one
+having tampered with his effects while you are the guardian of the
+vaults,” exclaimed Mr. Sylvester in clear ringing tones. “As for his box
+being open, it is right that I should explain that it was the result of
+a mistake. I had occasion to go to a box of my own in a hurry that
+morning, and misled by the darkness and my own nervousness perhaps, took
+up his instead of my own. Not till I had opened it—with the tooth-pick,
+Hopgood, for I had been to a reception and did not have my keys with
+me—did I notice my mistake. I had intended to explain the matter to Mr.
+Stuyvesant, but you know what happened that day, and since then I have
+thought nothing of it.”</p>
+
+<p>The janitor’s face cleared to its natural expression. “You are very
+kind, sir, to explain yourself to me,” said he; “it was not necessary.”
+But his lightened face spoke volumes. “I have been on the police force
+and I know how to hold my tongue when it is my duty, but it is very hard
+work when the duty is on the other side. Have you any commands for me?”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester shook his head, and his eye roamed over the humble
+furniture and scanty comforts of this poor man’s domicile. Hopgood
+thought he might be going to offer him some gift or guerdon, and in a
+low distressed tone spoke up:</p>
+
+<p>“I shall not try to ask your pardon, sir, for anything I have said.
+Honesty that is afraid to show itself, is no honesty for me. I could not
+meet your eye, knowing that I was aware of any circumstance of which you
+supposed me ignorant. What I know, you must know, as long as I remain in
+the position you were once kind enough to procure for me. And now that
+is all I believe, sir.”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester dropped his eyes from the bare walls over which they had
+been restlessly wandering, and fixed them for a passing moment on the
+countenance of the man before him. Then with a grave action he lifted
+his hat from his head, and bowed with the deference he might have shown
+to one of his proudest colleagues, and without another look or word,
+quietly left the room.</p>
+
+<p>Hopgood in his surprise stared after him somewhat awe-struck. But when
+the door had quite closed, he caught up his child almost passionately in
+his arms, and crushing her against his breast, asked, while his eye
+roamed round the humble room that in its warmth and comfort was a palace
+to him, “Will he take the first opportunity to have me dismissed, or
+will his heart forgive the expression of my momentary doubts, for the
+sake of this poor wee one that he so tenderly fancies?”</p>
+
+<p>The question did not answer itself, and indeed it was one to which time
+alone could reply.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<div class='chapter'><h2><a id="BOOK_III"></a>BOOK III.</h2></div>
+
+<div class='ph3'>THE JAPHA MYSTERY.</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<div class='chapter'><h3><a id="XXIII"></a>XXIII.</h3></div>
+
+<div class='ph4'>THE POEM.</div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“I’ve shot my arrow o’er the house<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And hurt my brother.”—<span class="smcap">Hamlet.</span><br></span>
+</div></div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+
+<p>When Miss Belinda first saw Paula, she did not, like her sister, remark
+upon the elegance of her appearance, the growth of her beauty, or the
+evidences of increased refinement in the expression of her countenance
+and the carriage of her form, but with her usual penetration noted
+simply, the sadness in her eye and the tremulous motion of her lip.</p>
+
+<p>“You had then become fond of your cousin?” queried she with
+characteristic bluntness.</p>
+
+<p>Paula not understanding the motive of this remark, questioned her with a
+look.</p>
+
+<p>“Young faces do not grow pale or bright eyes become troubled without a
+cause. Grief for your cousin might explain it, but if you have suffered
+from no grief—”</p>
+
+<p>“My cousin was very kind to me,” hurriedly interrupted Paula. “Her death
+was very sudden and very heart-rending.”</p>
+
+<p>“So it was;” returned Miss Belinda, “and I expected to see you look worn
+and sad but not restless and feverish. You have a living grief, Paula,
+what is it?”</p>
+
+<p>The young girl started and looked down. For the first time in her life
+she wished to avoid that penetrating glance. “If I have, I cannot talk
+of it,” she murmured. “I have experienced so much this past week; my
+coming away was so unexpected, that I hardly understand my own feelings,
+or realize just what it is that troubles me most. All that I know is,
+that I am very tired and so sad, it seems as if the sun would never
+shine again.”</p>
+
+<p>“There is then something you have not written me?” inquired the
+inexorable Miss Belinda.</p>
+
+<p>“The experiences of this last week could never be written,—or told,”
+returned Paula with a droop of her head. “Upon some things our better
+wisdom places a stone which only the angels can roll away. The future
+lies all open before us; do not let us disturb the past.”</p>
+
+<p>And Miss Belinda was forced to be content lest she should seem to be
+over anxious.</p>
+
+<p>Not so the various neighbors and friends to whom the lengthened sojourn
+of one of their number in an atmosphere of such wealth and splendor,
+possessed something of the charm of a forbidden romance. For months
+Paula was obliged to endure questions, that it required all her
+self-control to answer with calmness and propriety. But at length the
+most insatiable gossip amongst them was satisfied; Paula’s figure was no
+longer a novelty in their streets; curiosity languished and the young
+girl was allowed to rest.</p>
+
+<p>And now could those who loved her, discern that with the lapse of time
+and the daily breathings of her native air, the sad white look had faded
+from her face, leaving it a marvel of freshness and positive, if
+somewhat spiritualized, beauty. The print of deeper thoughts and holier
+yearnings was there, but no sign of blighted hopes or uncomprehended
+passions. A passing wind had blown the froth from off the cup, but had
+not disturbed the sparkle of the wine. She had looked in the face of
+grief, but had not as yet been clasped in her relentless arms. Only two
+things could vitally disturb her; a letter from Cicely, or a sudden
+meeting in the village streets with that elderly lady who haunted the
+Japha mansion. The former because it recalled a life around which her
+fancies still played with dangerous persistency, and the latter because
+it aroused vain and inexplicable conjectures as to that person’s strange
+and lingering look in her direction. Otherwise she was happy; finding in
+this simple village-life a meaning and a purpose which her short but
+passionate outlook on a broader field, had taught her, perhaps, both to
+detect and comprehend. She no longer walked solitary with nature. The
+woods, the mountains with all their varying panoply of exuberant
+verdure, had acquired a human significance. At her side went the
+memories of beloved faces, the thoughts of trusted friends. From the
+clouds looked forth a living eye, and in the sound of rustling leaf and
+singing streamlet, spake the voices of human longing and human joy.</p>
+
+<p>Her aunts had explained their position to Paula and she had responded by
+expressing her determination to be a teacher. But they would not hear of
+that at present, and while she waited their pleasure in the matter, she
+did what she could to assist them in their simple home-life and daily
+duties, lending her beauty to tasks that would have made the eyes of
+some of her quondam admirers open with surprise, if only they could have
+followed the action of her hands, after having once caught a glimpse of
+the face that brightened above them. And so the summer months went by
+and September came.</p>
+
+<p>There was to be an entertainment in the village and Paula was to assist.
+The idea had come from her aunt and was not to be rejected. In one of
+the strange incomprehensible moods which sometimes came upon her at this
+time, she had written a poem, and nothing would do but that she mast
+read it before the assembled company of neighbors and friends, that were
+to be gathered at the Squire’s house on this gala evening. She did not
+wish to do it. The sacred sense of possession passes when we uncover our
+treasure to another’s eyes, giving way to a lower feeling not to be
+courted by one of Paula’s sensitive nature. Besides she would rather
+have poured this first outburst of secret enthusiasm into other ears
+than these; but she had given her word and the ordeal must be submitted
+to. There are many who remember how she looked on that night. She had
+arrayed herself for the occasion, in the prettiest of her dresses, and
+mindful of Ona’s injunction, did not mar the effect of its soft and
+uniform gray with any hint of extraneous color. The result was that they
+saw only her beauty; and what beauty! A very old man, an early settler
+in the village, who had tottered out to enjoy a last glimpse of life
+before turning his aged face to the wall, said it made the thought of
+heaven a little more real. “I can go home and think how the angels
+look,” said he in his simple, half-childish way. And no one contradicted
+him, for there was a still light on her face that was less of earth than
+heaven, though why it should rest there to-night she least of all could
+have told, for her poem had to do with earth and its deepest passions
+and its wildest unrest. It was a clarion blast, not a dreaming rhapsody,
+that lay coiled up in the paper she held in her hand.</p>
+
+<p>My readers must pardon me if I give them Paula’s poem, for without it
+they would not understand its effect and consequent result. It was
+called, “The Defence of the Bride,” and was of the old ballad order. As
+she rose to read, many of the younger ones in the audience began
+cautiously to move to one side, but at the first words, young as well as
+old paused and listened where they stood, for her voice was round and
+full, and the memory of clashing spears and whirling battle-axes that
+informed the war-song which she had heard Bertram play, was with her, to
+give color to her tones and fire to her glance.</p>
+
+<div class='ph4'>THE DEFENCE OF THE BRIDE.</div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He was coming from the altar when the tocsin rang alarm,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">With his fair young wife beside him, lovely in her bridal charm;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But he was not one to palter with a duty, or to slight<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The trumpet-call of honor for his vantage or delight.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Turning from the bride beside him to his stern and martial train,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">From their midst he summoned to him the brothers of Germain;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">At the word they stepped before him, nine strong warriors brave and true,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">From the youngest to the eldest, Enguerrand to mighty Hugh.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Sons of Germain, to your keeping do I yield my bride to-day.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Guard her well as you do love me; guard her well and holily.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Dearer than mine own soul to me, you will hold her as your life,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">’Gainst the guile of seeming friendship and the force of open strife.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“We will guard her,” cried they firmly; and with just another glance<br></span>
+<span class="i0">On the yearning and despairing in his young wife’s countenance,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Gallant Beaufort strode before them down the aisle and through the door,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And a shadow came and lingered where the sunlight stood before.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Eight long months the young wife waited, watching from her bridal room<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For the coming of her husband up the valley forest’s gloom.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Eight long months the sons of Germain paced the ramparts and the wall,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">With their hands upon their halberds ready for the battle-call.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then there came a sound of trumpets pealing up the vale below,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And a dozen floating banners lit the forest with their glow,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the bride arose like morning when it feels the sunlight nigh,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And her smile was like a rainbow flashing from a misty sky.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But the eldest son of Germain lifting voice from off the wall,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Cried aloud, “It is a stranger’s and not Sir Beaufort’s call;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Have you ne’er a slighted lover or a kinsman with a heart<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Base enough to seek his vengeance at the sharp end of the dart?”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“There is Sassard of the Mountains,” answered she without guile,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“While I wedded at the chancel, he stood mocking in the aisle;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And my maidens say he swore there that for all my plighted vow,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">They would see me in his castle yet upon Morency’s brow.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“It is Sassard and no other then,” her noble guardian cried;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“There is craft in yonder summons,” and he rung his sword beside.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“To the walls, ye sons of Germain! and as each would hold his life<br></span>
+<span class="i0">From the bitter shame of falsehood, let us hold our master’s wife.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Can you hold her, can you shield her from the breezes that await?”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Cried the stinging voice of Sassard from his stand beside the gate.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“If you have the power to shield her from the sunlight and the wind,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">You may shield her from stern Sassard when his falchion is untwined.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“We can hold her, we can shield her,” leaped like fire from off the wall,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And young Enguerrand the valiant, sprang out before them all.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“And if breezes bring dishonor, we will guard her from their breath,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Though we yield her to the keeping of the sacred arms of Death.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And with force that never faltered, did they guard her all that day,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Though the strength of triple armies seemed to battle in the fray,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The old castle’s rugged ramparts holding firm against the foe,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">As a goodly dyke resisteth the whelming billow’s flow.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But next morning as the sunlight rose in splendor over all,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Hugh the mighty, sank heart-wounded in his station on the wall,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">At the noon the valiant Raoul of the merry eye and heart,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Gave his beauty and his jestings to the foeman’s jealous dart.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Gallant Maurice next sank faltering with a death wound ‘neath his hair,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But still fighting on till Sassard pressed across him up the stair.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Generous Clement followed after, crying as his spirit passed,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Sons of Germain to the rescue, and be loyal to the last!”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Gentle Jaspar, lordly Clarence, Sessamine the doughty brand,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Even Henri who had yielded ne’er before to mortal hand;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">One by one they fall and perish, while the vaunting foemen pour<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Through the breach and up the courtway to the very turret’s door.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Enguerrand and Stephen only now were left of all that nine,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To protect the single stairway from the traitor’s fell design;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But with might as ’twere of thirty, did they wield the axe and brand,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Striving in their desperation the fierce onslaught to withstand.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But what man of power so godlike he can stay the billow’s wrack,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Or with single-handed weapon hold an hundred foemen back!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">As the sun turned sadly westward, with a wild despairing cry,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Stephen bowed his noble forehead and sank down on earth to die.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Ah ha!” then cried cruel Sassard with his foot upon the stair,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Have I come to thee, my boaster?” and he whirled his sword in air.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Thou who pratest of thy power to protect her to the death,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">What think’st thou now of Sassard and the wind’s aspiring breath?”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“What I think let this same show you,” answered fiery Enguerrand,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And he poised his lofty battle-ax with sure and steady hand;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Now as Heaven loveth justice, may this deathly weapon fall<br></span>
+<span class="i0">On the murderer of my brothers and th’ undoer of us all.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">With one mighty whirl he sent it; flashing from his hand it came,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Like the lightning from the heavens in a whirl of awful flame,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And betwixt the brows of Sassard and his two false eyeballs passed,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the murderer sank before it, like a tree before the blast.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Now ye minions of a traitor if you look for vengeance, come!”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And his voice was like a trumpet when it clangs a victor home.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But a cry from far below him rose like thunder upward, “Nay!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Let them turn and meet the <i>husband</i> if they hunger for the fray.”<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O the yell that sprang to heaven as that voice swept up the stair,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And the slaughter dire that followed in another moment there!<br></span>
+<span class="i0">From the least unto the greatest, from the henchman to the lord,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Not a man on all that stairway lived to sheath again his sword.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">At the top that flame-bound forehead, at the base that blade of fire—<br></span>
+<span class="i0">’Twas the meeting of two tempests in their potency and ire.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Ere the moon could falter inward with its pity and its woe,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Beaufort saw the path before him unencumbered of the foe.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Saw his pathway unencumbered and strode up and o’er the floor,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Even to the very threshold of his lovely lady’s door,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And already in his fancy did he see the golden beam<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Of her locks upon his shoulder and her sweet eyes’ happy gleam:<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When behold a form upstarting from the shadows at his side.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That with naked sword uplifted barred the passage to his bride;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">It was Enguerrand the dauntless, but with staring eyes and hair<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Blowing wild about a forehead pale as snow in moonlit glare.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Ah my master, we have held her, we have guarded her,” he said,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Not a shadow of dishonor has so much as touched her head.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Twenty wretches lie below there with the brothers of Germain,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Twenty foemen of her honor that I, Enguerrand, have slain.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“But one other foe remaineth, one remaineth yet,” he cried,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“Which it fits this hand to punish ere you cross unto your bride.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">It is I, Enguerrand!” shrieked he; “and as I have slain the rest,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">So I smite this foeman also!”—and his sword plunged through his breast.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O the horror of that moment! “Art thou mad my Enguerrand?”<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Cried his master, striving wildly to withdraw the fatal brand.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But the stern youth smiling sadly, started back from his embrace,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">While a flash like summer lightning, flickered direful on his face.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Yes, a traitor worse than Sassard;” and he pointed down the stair,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“For my heart has dared to love her whom my hand defended there.<br></span>
+<span class="i0">While the others fought for honor, I by passion was made strong,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Set your heel upon my bosom for my soul has done you wrong.<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“But,” and here he swayed and faltered till his knee sank on the floor,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet in falling turned his forehead ever toward that silent door;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">“But your warrior hand my master, may take mine without a stain,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">For my hand has e’er been loyal, and your enemy is slain.”<br></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>A short silence followed the last word, then a burst of applause
+testified to the appreciation of her audience, and Paula crept away to
+hide her blushing cheeks in the comparative darkness of a little
+vine-covered balcony that jutted out from the ante-room. What were her
+thoughts as she leaned there! In the subsidence of any great
+emotion—and Paula had felt every word she uttered—there is more or
+less of shock and tumult. She did not think, she only felt. Suddenly a
+hand was laid on her arm and a low voice whispered in her ear,</p>
+
+<p>“Did you write that poem yourself?”</p>
+
+<p>Turning, she encountered the shadowy form of a woman leaning close at
+her side and appearing in the dim light that shone on her from the lamps
+beyond, an eager image of expectancy.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” returned Paula, “why do you ask?”</p>
+
+<p>The woman, whoever she was, did not answer. “And you believe in such
+devotion as that!” she murmured. “You can understand a man, aye, or a
+woman either, risking happiness and fame, life and death, for the sake
+of a trust! Such things are not folly to you! You could see a heart
+spill itself drop by drop through a longer vigil than the eight months
+watching on the ramparts, and not sneer at a fidelity that could not
+falter because it had given its word? Speak; you write of faithfulness
+with a pen of fire, is your heart faithful too?”</p>
+
+<p>There was something in these words, spoken as they were in a tone of
+suppressed passion, that startled and aroused Paula. Leaning forward,
+she endeavored to see the face of the woman who thus forcibly addressed
+her, but the light was too dim. The outline of a brow covered by some
+close headgear was all she could detect.</p>
+
+<p>“You speak earnestly,” said Paula, “but that is what I like. Fidelity to
+a cause, or fidelity to a trust, demands the sympathy and admiration of
+all honest and generous hearts. If I am ever called upon to maintain
+either, I hope that my enthusiasm will not have all been expended in
+words.”</p>
+
+<p>“You please me,” murmured the woman, “you please me; will you come and
+see me and let me tell you a story to mate the poem you have given us
+to-night?”</p>
+
+<p>The trembling eagerness of her tone it would be impossible to describe.
+Paula was thrilled by it. “If you will tell me who you are,” said Paula,
+“I certainly will try and come. I should be glad to hear anything you
+have to relate to me.”</p>
+
+<p>“I thought every one knew who I was,” returned the woman; and drawing
+Paula back into the ante-room, she turned her face upon her. “Any one
+will tell you where Margery Hamlin lives,” said she. “Do not disappoint
+me, and do not keep me waiting long.” And with a nod and a deep strange
+smile that made her aged face almost youthful, she entered the crowd and
+disappeared from Paula’s sight.</p>
+
+<p>It was the woman whose nightly visits to the deserted home of the Japhas
+had once been the talk and was still the unsolved mystery of the town.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<div class='chapter'><h3><a id="XXIV"></a>XXIV.</h3></div>
+
+<div class='ph4'>THE JAPHA MANSION.</div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Ah what a warning for a thoughtless man,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Could field or grove, could any spot on earth<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Show to his eye an image of the pangs<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Which it has witnessed; render back an echo<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Of the sad steps by which it hath been trod.—<span class="smcap">Wordsworth.</span><br></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<p>Unexplained actions if long continued, lose after awhile their interest
+if not their mystery. The aged lady who now for many years had been seen
+at every night-fall to leave her home, traverse the village streets,
+enter the Japha mansion, remain there an hour and then re-issue with
+tremulous steps and bowed head, had become so common a sight to the
+village eye, that even the children forgot to ask what her errand was,
+or why she held her head so hopefully when she entered, or looked so
+despondent when she came forth.</p>
+
+<p>But to Paula, for reasons already mentioned, this secret and persistent
+vigil in a forsaken and mysterious dwelling, was fraught with a
+significance which had never lost its power either to excite her
+curiosity or to arouse her imagination. Many a time had she gone home
+from some late encounter with the aged lady, to brood by the hour upon
+the expression of that restless eye which in its wanderings never failed
+to turn upon her own youthful face and linger there in the manner I have
+already noted. She thought of it by night, she thought of it by day. She
+felt herself drawn to that woman’s suffering heart as by invisible
+cords. To understand the feelings of this desolate being, she had even
+studied the face of that old house, until she knew it under its every
+aspect. Often in shutting her eyes at night, she would perceive as in a
+mirror a vision of its long gray front, barred door and sealed windows
+shining in the moon, save where the deep impenetrable shadows of its two
+guardian poplars lay black and dismal upon its ghostly surface. Again
+she would behold it as it reared itself dark and dripping in a blinding
+storm, its walls plastered with leaves from the immovable poplars, and
+its neglected garden lying sodden and forlorn under the flail of the
+ceaseless storm. Then its early morning face would strike her fancy. The
+slow looming of its chimney-tops against a brightening sky; the gradual
+coming out of its forsaken windows and solemn looking doors from the
+mystery of darkness into the no less mystery of day; the hint of
+roselight on its barren boards; the gleam of sunshine on its untrodden
+threshold; a sunshine as pure and sweet as if a bride stood there in her
+beauty, waiting for admission into the deserted halls beyond. All and
+everything that could tend to invest the house and its constant visitor
+with an atmosphere of awe and interest, had occurred to this young girl
+in her daily reveries and nightly dreams. It was therefore with a thrill
+deep as her expectation and vivid as her sympathy, that she recognized
+in her eager interlocutor and proposed confident, the woman about whose
+life and actions rested for her such a veil of impenetrable mystery. The
+thought moved her, excited her, and made the rest of the evening pass
+like a dream. She was anxious for the next day to come, that she might
+seek this Mrs. Hamlin in her home, and hear from her lips the tale of
+devotion that should mate her own simple but enthusiastic poem.</p>
+
+<p>When the next day did come, it rained, rained bitterly, persistent and
+with a steady drive from the north east, that made her going out
+impossible. The day following she was indisposed, and upon the
+succeeding afternoon, she was engaged in duties that precluded all
+thought of visiting. The next day was Sunday, and Monday had its own
+demands which she could not slight. It was therefore well nigh a week
+from the night of the entertainment, before the opportunity offered for
+which she was so anxious. Her curiosity and expectation had thus time to
+grow, and it was with a determination to allow nothing to stand in her
+way, that she set out from home in a flood of mild September sunshine,
+to visit Mrs. Hamlin. But alas, for resolutions made in a country
+village prior to the opening of a church fair! She had scarcely gone a
+dozen steps before she was accosted by one of the managers, a woman who
+neither observes your haste, nor pays any attention to your possible
+preoccupation. Do what she could, she found it impossible to escape from
+this persistent individual until she had satisfied her upon matters
+which it took a full half hour to discuss, and when at last she
+succeeded in doing so, it was only to fall into the hands of an aged
+deacon of the church, whose protecting friendship it were a sin to
+wound, while his garrulous tongue made it no ordinary trial of patience
+to stand and listen. In short the best part of the afternoon was gone
+before she found herself at the door of Mrs. Hamlin’s house. But she was
+not to be deterred by further hesitation from the pursuit of her object.
+Rapping smartly on the door, she listened. No stir came from within.
+Again she rapped and again she listened. No response came to assure her
+that her summons had been heard. Surprised at this, for she had been
+told Mrs. Hamlin was always at home during the afternoon, she glanced up
+at the church clock in plain view from the doorstep, and blushed to
+observe that it was six o’clock, the hour at which this mysterious woman
+always left her house, to accomplish her vigil at the Japha mansion.</p>
+
+<p>“What have I done?” thought Paula, and felt a strange thrill as she
+realized that even at that moment, the woman with the eager but restless
+eyes, was shut within the precincts of that deserted dwelling, engaged
+in prayer, perhaps wet with tears, who knows? The secret of what she did
+in that long and quiet twilight hour had never been revealed. Leaving
+the little brown house behind, Paula found herself insensibly taking the
+road to the Japha mansion. If she could not enter it and share the watch
+of the devoted woman who had promised her her confidence, she could at
+least observe if the windows were open or the blinds raised. To be sure
+she ought to be at home, but Miss Belinda was indulgent and did not
+question her comings and goings too closely. An irresistible force drew
+her down the street, and she did not hesitate to follow the lead of her
+impulse. No one accosted her now, it was the tea hour in most of these
+houses and the streets were comparatively deserted. The only house whose
+chimneys lacked the rising smoke, was the one towards which her
+footsteps were tending. She could descry it from afar. Its gaunt walls
+from which the paint had long ago faded, stared uncompromisingly upon
+her in the autumn sunshine. There was no welcome in its close shutters
+with their broken slats from which hung tangled strips of old rags—the
+remnants of some boy’s kite. The stiff and solemn poplars rose grim and
+forbidding at the gate once swung wide to the fashion and gallantry of
+proud ladies and stalwart gentlemen, but now pushed aside solely by the
+hand of a tremulous old woman, or the irreverent palm of some daring
+school-boy. From the tangled garden looked forth neither flower nor
+blossoming shrub. Beauty and grace could not thrive in this wilderness
+of decay. A dandelion would have felt itself out of place beneath the
+eye of that ghostly door, with the sinister plank nailed across it, like
+the separating line between light and darkness, right and wrong, life
+and death. What loneliness! what a monument of buried passions outliving
+death itself!</p>
+
+<p>Paula paused as she reached the gate; but remembering that Mrs. Hamlin
+was accustomed to enter the house by a side door, hurried around the
+corner and carefully surveyed the windows from that quarter. One of the
+shutters was open, allowing the flame of the setting sun to gild the
+panes like gold. She did not know then nor has she been able to explain
+since, what it was that came over her at the sight, but almost before
+she realized it, she had returned to the gate, opened it, threaded the
+overgrown garden, reached the door which she had so frequently beheld
+the aged woman enter and knocked.</p>
+
+<p>Instantly she was seized with a consciousness of what she had done, and
+frightened at her temerity, meditated an immediate escape. Drawing the
+folds of her mantle about her form and face, she prepared to fly, when
+she remembered the look of entreaty with which this woman had said on
+that night of their conversation, “Do not disappoint me! Do not keep me
+long in suspense!” and moved by a fresh impulse, turned and inflicted
+another resounding knock on the door.</p>
+
+<p>The result was unlooked-for and surprising. To the sound from within of
+a quick passionate cry, there came a hurried movement, followed by a
+deep silence, then another hasty stir succeeded by a longer silence,
+then a rush which seemed to bring all things with it, and the door
+opened and Mrs. Hamlin appeared before her with a countenance so pallid
+with expectancy, that Paula instinctively felt that in some unconscious
+way, she had loosened the bonds of an uncontrollable emotion, and was
+drawing back, when the woman with a quick look in her shrouded face,
+exultantly caught her hand in hers, and drawing her over the threshold,
+gasped out in a delirium of incomprehensible joy:</p>
+
+<p>“I knew you would come! I knew that God would not let you forget!
+Fifteen years have I waited, Jacqueline! fifteen long, tedious,
+suffering years! But they all seem like nothing now! You have come, you
+have come, and all that I ask, is that God will not let me die till I
+realize my joy!”</p>
+
+<p>The emotion with which she uttered these strange words was so
+overpowering, and her body seemed so weak to stand the strain, that
+Paula instinctively put forth her hand to sustain her. The action
+loosened her cloak. Instantly the eyes that had been fixed upon her with
+such delirious rapture grew blank with dismay, a frightful shudder ran
+through the woman’s aged frame; she tore at the cloak that still
+enveloped the young girl’s shoulders, and pulling it off, took one view
+of the fresh and beautiful countenance before her, and without uttering
+a word, fell back in a deep and deadly swoon upon the floor.</p>
+
+<p>“O what have I done?” cried Paula, flinging herself down beside that
+pale and rigid figure; but instantly remembering herself she leaped to
+her feet and looked about for some means to resuscitate the sufferer.
+There was a goblet of water on a table near by. Seizing it, she bathed
+the face and hands of the woman before her, moaning aloud in her grief
+and dismay, “Have I killed her! O what is this mystery that brings such
+a doom of anguish to this poor heart?”</p>
+
+<p>But from those pallid lips came no response, and feeling greatly
+alarmed, Paula was about to rush from the house for assistance, when she
+felt a tremulous pull upon her skirt, and turning, saw that the glassy
+eyes had opened at last and were now gazing upon her with mute but
+eloquent appeal.</p>
+
+<p>She instantly returned. “O I am so sorry,” she murmured, sinking again
+upon her knees beside the suffering woman. “I did not know, could not
+realize that my presence here would affect you so deeply. Forgive me and
+tell me what I can do to make you forget my presumption.”</p>
+
+<p>The woman shook her head, her lips moved and she struggled vainly to
+rise. Paula immediately lent her the aid of her strong young hand and in
+a few minutes, Mrs. Hamlin was on her feet. “O God!” were her first
+words as she sank into the chair which Paula hastily drew forward, “that
+I should taste the joy and she be still unsaved!”</p>
+
+<p>Seeing her so absorbed, Paula ventured to glance around her. She found
+herself in a large square room sparsely but comfortably furnished in a
+style that bespake it as the former sitting-room of the dead and buried
+Japhas. From the walls above hung a few ancient pictures. A large
+hair-cloth sofa of a heavy antique shape, confronted the eye from one
+side of the room, an equally ancient book-case from the other. The
+carpet was faded and so were the curtains, but they had once been of an
+attractive hue and pattern. Conspicuous in the midst stood a large table
+with a well-trimmed lamp upon it, and close against it an easy chair
+with an upright back. This last as well as everything else in the room,
+was in a condition of neatness that would have surprised Paula if she
+had not been acquainted with the love and devotion of this woman, who in
+her daily visits to this house, probably took every pains to keep things
+freshened and in order.</p>
+
+<p>Satisfied with her survey, she again directed her attention to Mrs.
+Hamlin, and started to find that person’s eyes fixed upon her own with
+an expression of deep, demanding interest.</p>
+
+<p>“You are looking at the shadows of things that were,” exclaimed the old
+lady in thrilling tones. “It is a fearful thought to be shut up with the
+ghost of a vanished past, is it not? That chair by your side has not
+been sat in since Colonel Japha rose from it twelve years ago to totter
+to the bed where he breathed his last. It is waiting, everything is
+waiting. I thought the end had come to-night, that the vigil was over,
+the watch finished, but God in his wisdom says, ‘No,’ and I must wait a
+little longer. Alas in a little while longer the end will be here
+indeed!”</p>
+
+<p>The despondency with which she uttered these last words showed where her
+thoughts were tending, and to comfort her, Paula drew up a chair and sat
+down by her side. “You were going to tell me the story of a great love
+and a great devotion. Cannot you do so now?”</p>
+
+<p>The woman started, glanced hastily around, and let her eyes travel to
+Paula’s face where they rested with something of their old look of
+secret longing and doubt.</p>
+
+<p>“You are the one who wrote the poem,” she murmured; “I remember.” Then
+with a sudden feverish impulse, leaned forward, and stroking back the
+waving locks from Paula’s brow, exclaimed hurriedly, “You look like her,
+you have the same dark hair and wonderful eyes, more beautiful perhaps,
+but like her, O so like her! That is why I made such a mistake.” She
+shuddered, with a quick low sob, but instantly subdued her emotion and
+taking Paula’s hand in hers continued, “You are young, my daughter;
+youth does not enjoy carrying burdens; can I, a stranger ask you to
+assist me with mine?”</p>
+
+<p>“You may,” returned Paula. “If it will give you any relief I will help
+you bear it willingly.”</p>
+
+<p>“You will! Has heaven then sent me the aid my failing spirits demand?
+Can I count on you, child? But I will ask for no promise till you have
+heard my story. To no one have I ever imparted the secret of my life,
+but from the first moment I saw your fair young face, I felt that
+through you would come my help, if help ever came to make my final
+moments easier and my last days less bitter.” And rising up, she led
+Paula to a door which she solemnly opened. “I am glad that you are
+here,” said she. “I could never have asked you to come, but since you
+have braved the dead and crossed this threshold, you must see and know
+the whole. You will understand my story better.”</p>
+
+<p>Taking her through a dark passage, she threw wide another door, and the
+parlors of the vanished Japhas opened before them. It was a ghostly
+vision. A weird twilight scene of clustered shadows brooding above
+articles of musty grandeur. In spite of the self-command learned by her
+late experiences, Paula recoiled, saying,</p>
+
+<p>“It is too sad, too lonesome!” But the woman without heeding her,
+hurried her on over the worm-eaten carpet and between the time-worn
+chairs and heavy-browed cabinets, to the hall beyond.</p>
+
+<p>“I have not been here, myself, for a year,” said Mrs. Hamlin, glancing
+fearfully up and down the dusky corridor. “It is not often I can brave
+the memories of this spot.” And she pointed with one hand towards the
+darkened door at its end, whose spacious if not stately panels gave no
+hint to the eye of the dread bar that crossed it like a line of doom
+upon the outside, and then turning, let her eye fall with still heavier
+significance upon the broad and imposing staircase that rose from the
+centre of the hall to the duskier and more dismal regions above.</p>
+
+<p>“A brave, old fashioned flight of steps is it not! But the scene of a
+curse, my child.” And unheeding Paula’s shudder, she drew her up the
+stairs.</p>
+
+<p>“See,” continued her panting guide as they reached a square platform
+near the top, from which some half dozen or more steps branched up on
+either side. “They do not build like this nowadays. But Colonel Japha
+believed in nothing new, and thought more of his grand old hall and
+staircase, than he did of all the rest of his house. He little dreamed
+of what a scene it would be the witness. But come, it is getting late
+and you must see her room.”</p>
+
+<p>It was near the top of the staircase and was fully as musty, faded and
+dismal as the rest. Yet there was an air of expectancy about it, too,
+that touched Paula deeply. From between the dingy hangings of the bed,
+looked forth a pair of downy pillows, edged with yellowed lace, and
+beneath them a neatly spread counterpane carefully turned back over
+comfortable-looking blankets, as one sees in a bed that only awaits its
+occupant; while on the ancient hearth, a pile of logs stood heaped and
+ready for the kindling match.</p>
+
+<p>“It is all waiting you see,” said the old lady in a trembling voice,
+“like everything else, just waiting.”</p>
+
+<p>There was an embroidery frame in one corner of the room, from which
+looked a piece of faded and half completed work. The needle was hanging
+from it by a thread, and a skein of green worsted hung over the top,
+Paula glanced at it inquiringly.</p>
+
+<p>“It is just as she left it! He never entered the room after she went and
+I would never let it be touched. It is just the same with the piano
+below. The last piece she played is still standing open on the rack. I
+loved her so, and I thought then that a few months would bring her back!
+See, here is her bible. She never used to read it, but she prized it
+because it was her mother’s. I have placed it on the pillow where she
+will see it when she comes to lay her poor tired head down to rest.” And
+with a reverent hand the aged matron drew the curtains back from the
+open bed, and disclosed the little bible lying thick with dust in the
+centre of the nearest pillow.</p>
+
+<p>“O who was this you loved so well? And why did she leave you?” cried
+Paula with the tears in her eyes, at sight of this humble token.</p>
+
+<p>The aged lady seized her hand and hurried her back into the room below.
+“I will tell you where I have waited and watched so long. Only be
+patient till I light the lamp. It is getting late and any chance
+wanderer going by and seeing all dark, might think I had forgotten my
+promise and was not here.”</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<div class='chapter'><h3><a id="XXV"></a>XXV.</h3></div>
+
+<div class='ph4'>JACQUELINE.</div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“The cold in clime are cold in blood,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And love as scarce deserves the name,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">But mine is like the lava flood<br></span>
+<span class="i0">That burns in Etna’s breast of flame.”—<span class="smcap">Byron.</span><br></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<p>“There are some men that have the appearance of being devoid of family
+affection, who in reality cherish it in the deepest and most passionate
+degree. Such a man was Colonel Japha. You have doubtless heard from your
+cradle what the neighbors thought of this stately, old fashioned
+gentleman. He was too handsome in his youth, too proudly reticent in his
+manhood, too self-contained and unrelenting in his age, not to be the
+talk of any town that numbered him among its inhabitants. But only from
+myself, a relative of the family and his housekeeper for years, can you
+learn with what undeviating faith and love he clung to the few upon whom
+he allowed his heart to fasten in affection. When he married Miss Carey,
+the world said, ‘He has chosen a beauty, because fine manners and a
+pretty face look well behind the Japha coffee-urn!’ But we, that is,
+this same young wife and myself, knew that in marrying her he had taken
+unto himself his other half, the one sweet woman for whom his proud
+heart could beat and before whom his stately head could bow. When she
+died, the world exclaimed, ‘He will soon fill her place!’ But I who
+watched the last look that passed between them in the valley of the
+shadow of that death, knew that the years would come and the years would
+go without seeing Colonel Japha marry again.</p>
+
+<p>“The little babe whom she left to his care, took all the love which he
+had left. From the moment it began to speak, he centered in its tiny
+life all the hope and all the pride of his solitary heart. And the Japha
+pride was nearly as great as the Japha heart. She was a pretty child;
+not a beauty like her mother or like you, my dear, who however so nearly
+resemble her. But for all that, pretty enough to satisfy the eyes of her
+secretly doting father, and her openly doting nurse and cousin. I say
+secretly doting father. I do not mean by that that he regarded her with
+an affection which he never displayed, but that it was his way to lavish
+his caresses at home and in the privacy of her little nursery. He never
+made a parade of anything but his pride. If he loved her, it was enough
+for her to know it. In the street and the houses of their friends, he
+was the strict, somewhat severe father, to whom her childish eyes lifted
+at first with awe, but afterwards with a quiet defiance, that when I
+first saw it, made my heart stand still with unreasoning alarm.</p>
+
+<p>“She was so reserved a child and yet so deeply passionate. From the
+beginning I felt that I did not understand her. I loved her; I have
+never loved any mortal as I did her—and do; but I could not follow her
+impulses or judge of her feelings by her looks.</p>
+
+<p>“When she grew older it was still worse. She never contradicted her
+father, or appeared in any open way to disobey his commands, or thwart
+him in his plans. Yet she always did what she pleased, and that so
+quietly, he frequently did not observe that matters had taken any other
+direction, than that which he had himself ordained. ‘It is her mother’s
+tact,’ he used to say. Alas it was something more than that; it was her
+father’s will united to the unscrupulousness of some forgotten ancestor.</p>
+
+<p>“But with the glamour of her eighteen years upon me, I did not recognize
+this then, any more than he. I saw her through the magic glasses of my
+own absorbing love, and tremble as I frequently would in the still scorn
+of her unfathomable passion, I never dreamed she could do anything that
+would seriously offend her father’s affection or mortify his pride. The
+truth is, that Jacqueline did not love us. Say what you will of the
+claims of kindred, and the right of every father to his childrens’
+regard, Jacqueline Japha accepted the devotion that was lavished upon
+her, but she gave none in return. She could not, perhaps. Her father was
+too cold in public and too warm in his home-bursts of affection. I was
+plain and a widow; no mate for her in age, condition or estate. She
+could neither look up to me nor lean upon me. I had been her nurse in
+childhood and though a relative, was still a dependent; what was there
+in all that to love! If her mother had lived—But we will not dwell on
+possibilities. Jacqueline had no mother and no friend that was dear
+enough to her, to teach her unwilling soul the great lesson of
+self-control and sacrifice.</p>
+
+<p>“You will say that is strange. That situated as she was, she ought to
+have found friends both dear and congenial; but that would be to declare
+that Jacqueline was like others of her age and class, whereas she was
+single and alone; a dark-browed girl, who allured the gaze of both men
+and women, but who cared but little for any one till—But wait, child. I
+shall have to speak of matters that will cause your cheeks to blush. Lay
+your head down on my knee, for I cannot bear the sight of blushes upon a
+cheek more innocent than hers.”</p>
+
+<p>With a gentle movement she urged Paula to sit upon a little stool at her
+feet, pressed the young girl’s head down upon her lap, and burying the
+lovely brow beneath her aged hands, went hurriedly on.</p>
+
+<p>“You are young, dear, and may not know what it is to love a man.
+Jacqueline was young also, but from the moment she returned home to us
+from a visit she had been making in Boston, I perceived that something
+had entered her life that was destined to make a great change in her;
+and when a few weeks later, young Robert Holt from Boston, came to pay
+his respects to her in her father’s house, I knew, or thought I did,
+what that something was. We were sitting in this room I remember, when
+the servant-girl came in, and announced that Mr. Holt was in the parlor.
+Jacqueline was lying on the sofa, and her father was in his usual chair
+by the table. At the name, Holt, the girl rose as if it had suddenly
+thundered, or the lightning had flashed. I see her now. She was dressed
+in white—though it was early fall she still clung to her summer
+dresses—her dark hair was piled high, and caught here and there with
+old-fashioned gold pins, a splendid red rose burned on her bosom, and
+another flashed crimson as blood from her folded hands.</p>
+
+<p>“‘Holt?’ repeated the Colonel without turning his head, ‘I know no such
+man.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘He said he wished to see Miss Jacqueline,’ simpered the servant.</p>
+
+<p>“‘Oh,’ returned the Colonel indifferently. He never showed surprise
+before the servants—and went on with his book, still without turning
+his head.</p>
+
+<p>“I thought if he had turned it, he would scarcely sit there reading so
+quietly; for Jacqueline who had not stirred from her alert and upright
+position, was looking at him in a way no father, least of all a father
+who loved his child as he did her, could have beheld without agitation.
+It was the glance of a tigress waiting for the sight of an inconsiderate
+move, in order to spring. It was wild unconstrainable joy, eying a
+possible check and madly defying it. I shuddered as I looked at her eye,
+and sickened as I perceived a huge drop of blood ooze from her white
+fingers, where they unconsciously clutched a thorn, and drop dark and
+disfiguring upon her virgin garments. At the indifferent exclamation of
+her father, her features relaxed, and she turned haughtily towards the
+girl, with a veiling of her secret delight that already bespoke the
+woman of the world.</p>
+
+<p>“‘Tell Mr. Holt that I will see him presently,’ said she, and was about
+to follow the girl from the room when I caught her by the sleeve.</p>
+
+<p>“‘You will have to change your dress,’ said I, and I pointed to the
+ominous blot disfiguring its otherwise spotless white.</p>
+
+<p>“She started and gave me a quick glance.</p>
+
+<p>“‘I have a skin like a spider’s web,” cried she. ‘I should never meddle
+with roses.’ But I noticed she did not toss the blossom away.</p>
+
+<p>“‘Who is this Mr. Holt?’ now asked the Colonel suddenly turning, the
+servant having left the room.</p>
+
+<p>“‘He is a gentleman I met in Boston,’ came from his daughter’s lips, in
+her usual light and easy tones. ‘He is probably passing through our town
+on his way to Providence, where I was told he did business. His call is
+no more than a formality, I presume.’ And with an indifferent little
+smile and nod, she vanished from the room, that a moment before had been
+filled with the threat of her silent passion. The Colonel gave a short
+sigh but returned undisturbed to his book.</p>
+
+<p>“In the course of a few minutes Jacqueline came back. She had changed
+her dress for one as summerlike as the other, but still finer and more
+elaborate. She looked elegant, imperious, but the joy had died out from
+her eyes, and in its place was another expression incomprehensible to
+me, but fully as alarming as any that had gone before. ‘Mr. Holt finds
+himself obliged to remain in town over night, and would like to pay his
+respects to you,’ said she to her father.</p>
+
+<p>“The Colonel immediately rose, looking very grand as he turned and
+surveyed his daughter with his clear penetrating eye.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘You have a lover, have you not?’ he asked, laying his hand on her bare
+and beautifully polished shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>“An odd little smile crossed her lip. She looked at her hands on which
+never a ring shone, and coquettishly tossed her head. ‘Let the gentleman
+speak for himself,’ said she, ‘I give no man his title until he has
+earned it.’</p>
+
+<p>“Her father laughed. A lover was not such a dreadful thing in his eyes
+provided he were worthy. And Jacqueline would not choose unworthily of
+course—a Japha and his daughter! ‘Well then,’ said he, ‘let us see if
+he can make good his title; Holt is not a bad name and Boston is not a
+poor place to hail from.’ And without more ado, they hurried from the
+room. But the light had all died out from her face! What did it mean?</p>
+
+<p>“At tea time I met the gentleman. He had evidently made his title good.
+I was not only favorably impressed with him but actually struck. Of all
+the high-bred, clear-eyed, polished and kindly gentlemen who had sat
+about the board since I first came into the family in Mrs. Japha’s
+lifetime, here was surely the finest, the handsomest and the best; and
+surprised in more ways than one, I was giving full play to my relief and
+exhilaration, when I caught sight of Jacqueline’s eye, and felt again
+the cold shudders of secret doubt and apprehension. Smile upon him as
+she would, coquet with him as she did, the flame and the glory that drew
+her like an inspiration to her feet when his name was announced, had
+fled, and left not a shadow behind. Had he failed in his expressions of
+devotion? Was he hard or cold or severe, under all that pleasant and
+charming manner? Had the hot soul of our motherless child rushed upon
+ice, and in the shock of the dreadful chill, fallen inert? No, his looks
+bespake no coldness; they dwelt upon Jacqueline’s lovely but inscrutable
+face, with honest fervor and boundless regard. He evidently loved her
+most passionately, but she—if it had not been for that first moment of
+unconscious betrayal, I should have decided that she cared for him no
+more than she did for the few others who had adored her, in the short
+space of her incomprehensible life.</p>
+
+<p>“The mystery was not cleared up when she came to me that night with a
+short, ‘How do you like my lover, Margery?’ I was forty years her
+senior, but she always called me Margery.</p>
+
+<p>“‘I think he is the finest, most agreeable man I ever met,’ said I. ‘Is
+he your lover, Jacqueline? Are you going to marry him?’</p>
+
+<p>“She turned about from the vase which she was denuding of its flowers,
+and gave me one of her sphinx-like looks. ‘You must ask papa,’ said she.
+‘He holds the destinies of the Japhas in his hand, does he not?’</p>
+
+<p>“‘Does he?’ I involuntarily whispered to myself; following the steady
+poise of her head and the assured movements of her graceful form, with a
+glance of doubt, but loving her all the same, O loving her all and ever
+the same!</p>
+
+<p>“‘Your father is not the man to cross you when the object of your
+affections is as worthy as this gentleman. He loved your mother too
+fondly.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘He did?’ She had turned quick as a flash and was looking me straight
+in the eyes.</p>
+
+<p>“‘I never saw such union!’ I exclaimed, vaguely remembering that her
+mother’s name had always seemed to have power to move her. ‘There was no
+parade of it before the world; but here at their own fireside, it was
+heart to heart and soul to soul. It was not love it was assimilation.’</p>
+
+<p>“The young girl rose upon me like a flame; her very eyes seemed to dart
+fire; her lips looked like living coals; she was almost appalling in her
+terrible beauty and superhuman passion. ‘Not love!’ she exclaimed, her
+every word falling like a burning spark, ‘not love but assimilation! Yet
+do you suppose if I told my father that my soul had found its mate; my
+heart its other half; that this, <i>this</i> nature,’ here she struck her
+breast as she would a stone, ‘had at last found its master; that the
+wayward spirit of which you have sometimes been afraid, was become a
+part of another’s life, another’s soul, another’s hope, do you suppose
+he would listen? Hush!’ she cried, seeing me about to speak. ‘You talk
+of love, what do you know of it, what does he know of it, who saw his
+young wife die, yet himself consented to live? Is love a sitting by the
+fire with hand locked in hand while the winter winds rage and the
+droning kettle sings? Love is a going through the fire, a braving of the
+winter winds, a scattering of the soul in sparks that the night and the
+tempest lick up without putting out the germ of the eternal flame.
+Love!’ she half laughed; ‘O, it takes a soul that has never squandered
+its treasure upon every passing beggar, to know how to love! Do you see
+that star?’ It was night as I have said and we were standing near an
+open window. ‘It has lost its moorings and is falling; when it descries
+the ocean it will plunge into it; so with some natures, they soar high
+and keep their orbit well, till an invisible hand turns them from their
+course and they fall, to be swallowed up, aye swallowed up, lost and
+buried in the great sea that has awaited them so long.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘And you love—like this—’ I murmured, quailing before the power of
+her passion.</p>
+
+<p>“‘Would it not be strange if I did not,’ she asked in an altered voice.
+‘You say he is everything noble, handsome and attractive.’</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, yes,’ I murmured, ‘but—’</p>
+
+<p>“She did not wait to hear what lay behind that but. Picking up her
+flowers, she hastily crossed the room. ‘Did my young mother shriek from
+joy, when my father’s horses ran away with them along that deadly
+precipice at the side of the Southmore road? To lie for a few maddening
+moments on the breast of the man you love, earth reeling beneath you,
+heaven swimming above you, and then with a cry of bliss to fall heart to
+heart, down the hideous gap of some awful gulf, and be dashed into
+eternity with the cry still on your lips, that is what I call love and
+that is what I—’</p>
+
+<p>“She paused, turned upon me the whole splendor of her face, seemed to
+realize to what an extent her impetuosity had lifted the veil with which
+she usually shrouded her bitterly suppressed nature, and calming herself
+with a sudden quick movement, gave me a short mocking courtesy and left
+the room.</p>
+
+<p>“Do you wonder that for half the night I sat up brooding and alive to
+the faintest sounds!</p>
+
+<p>“Next day Mr. Holt called again, and a couple of weeks after—long
+enough to enable Colonel Japha to make whatever inquiries he chose as to
+his claims as a gentleman of means and position—sent a formal entreaty
+for Jacqueline’s hand. I had never seen Colonel Japha more moved. His
+admiration for the young man was hearty and sincere. From a worldly
+point of view, as well as from all higher standpoints, the match was one
+of which he could be proud; and yet to speak the word that would
+separate from him the only creature that he loved, was hard as the
+cutting off an arm or the plucking out of an eye. ‘Do you think she
+loves him?’ asked he of me with a rare condescension of which he was not
+often guilty. ‘You are a woman and ought to understand her better than
+I. Do you think she loves him?’</p>
+
+<p>“After the words I had heard her speak, what could I reply but, ‘Yes,
+sir; she is of a reserved nature and controls her feelings in his
+presence, but she loves him for all that, with the intensest fervor and
+passion.’</p>
+
+<p>“He repeated again, ‘You are a woman and you ought to know.’ And then
+called his daughter to him.</p>
+
+<p>“I cannot tell what passed between them, but the upshot of it was, that
+the Colonel despatched an answer to the effect that the father’s consent
+would not be lacking, provided the daughter’s could be obtained. I
+learned this from Jacqueline herself who brought me the letter to post.</p>
+
+<p>“‘You see then, that your father understands,’ said I.</p>
+
+<p>“Her rich red lip curled mockingly, but she did not reply.</p>
+
+<p>“Naturally Mr. Holt answered to this communication in person. Jacqueline
+received him with a fitful coquetry that evidently puzzled him, for all
+the distinguishing charm which it added to a beauty apt to be too
+reserved and statue-like. She however took his ring which blazed on her
+finger like a drop of ice on congealed snow. ‘I am engaged,’ she
+murmured as she passed by my door, ‘and to a Holt!’ The words rang long
+in my ears; why?</p>
+
+<p>“She desired no congratulations; she permitted nothing to be said about
+her engagement, among the neighbors. She had even taken off her ring
+which I found lying loose in one of her bureau drawers. And no one dared
+to remonstrate, not even her father, punctillious as he was in all
+matters of social etiquette. The fact is, Jacqueline was not the same
+girl she had been before she gave her promise to Mr. Holt. From the
+moment he bade her good-bye, with the remark that he was going away to
+get a golden cage for his bride, she began to reveal a change. The cold
+reserve gave way to feverish expectancy. She trod these rooms as if
+there were burning steels in the floors, she looked from the windows as
+if they were prison bars; night and day she gazed from them yet she
+never went out. The letters she received from him were barely read and
+tossed aside; it was his coming for which she hungered. Her father
+noticed her restless and eager gaze, and frequently sighed. I felt her
+strange removed manner and secretly wept. ‘If he does not amply return
+this passion,’ thought I, ‘my darling will find her life a hell!’</p>
+
+<p>“But he did return it; of that I felt sure. It was my only comfort.</p>
+
+<p>“Suddenly one day the restlessness vanished. Her beauty burst like a
+flame from smoke; she trod like a spirit that hears invisible airs. I
+watched her with amazement till she said ‘Mr. Holt comes to-night,’ then
+I thought all was explained and went smiling about my work. She came
+down in the afternoon clad as I had never seen her before. She wore one
+of her Boston dresses and she looked superb in it. From the crown of her
+head to the sole of her foot, she dazzled like a moving picture; but she
+lacked one adornment; there was no ring on her finger. ‘Jacqueline!’
+cried I, ‘you have forgotten something.’ And I pointed towards her hand.</p>
+
+<p>“She glanced at it, blushed a trifle as I thought, and pulled it out of
+her pocket. ‘I have it,’ said she, ‘but it is too large,’ and she thrust
+it carelessly back.</p>
+
+<p>“At three o’clock the train came in. Then I saw her eye flash and her
+lip burn. In a few minutes later two gentlemen appeared at the gate.</p>
+
+<p>“‘Mr. Holt and his brother!’ were the words I heard whispered through
+the house. But I did not need that announcement to understand Jacqueline
+at last.”</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<div class='chapter'><h3><a id="XXVI"></a>XXVI.</h3></div>
+
+<div class='ph4'>A MAN’S JUSTICE AND A WOMAN’S MERCY.</div>
+
+<blockquote><p>“Fair is foul and foul is fair.”—<span class="smcap">Macbeth.</span></p></blockquote>
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+
+<p>“Have you ever seen a man whose instantaneous effect upon you was
+electrical; in whose expression, carriage, or manner, there was
+concealed a charm that attracted and interested you, apart from his
+actual worth and beauty? Such a one was Mr. Roger Holt, the gentleman I
+now discerned entering the gate with Jacqueline’s lover. It was not that
+he was handsome. He could not for one moment bear any comparison with
+his brother in substantial attraction, and yet when they were both in
+the room, you looked at him in preference to the other, and was vexed
+with yourself for doing so. He seemed to be the younger as he was
+certainly the smaller; yet he took the lead, even in coming up the walk.
+Why had he not taken it in the deeper and more important matter? Was it
+because he did not love her?</p>
+
+<p>“I was not present when Jacqueline greeted her guests and presented Mr.
+Roger Holt to her father. But later in the day I spent a half hour with
+them and saw enough to be able to satisfy myself as to the falsity of my
+last supposition. Never had I seen on a human countenance the evidences
+of a wilder passion than that which informed his features, as he sat in
+the further window of the parlor, presumably engaged in admiring the
+autumn landscape, but really occupied in casting short side-long glances
+at Jacqueline, who sat listening with a superb nonchalence, but with a
+restless gleam in her wandering eye, to the genial talk between her
+acknowledged lover and the Colonel. I half feared he would rise from his
+seat, and flinging himself before her, demand then and there an
+explanation of her engagement.</p>
+
+<p>“But beyond the impatience of those short burning glances, he controlled
+himself well, and it was Jacqueline who moved at last.</p>
+
+<p>“I saw the purpose growing in her eyes long before she stirred. The face
+which had been a mystery to me from her cradle, was in the presence of
+this man, like an open page which all might read. Its letters were
+flame, but that did not make them any less clear. I felt her swaying
+towards him, before an eyelash trembled or a quiver shook her tall form.</p>
+
+<p>He may have understood her purpose also, for his eye wandered towards
+the open piano. She rose like a queen.</p>
+
+<p>“‘Mr. Roger Holt is a singer,’ said she in passing her father, ‘I am
+going to ask him to give us one of the old ballads you profess to like
+so much.’</p>
+
+<p>“The conversation at once ceased. The Colonel who made no secret of his
+fondness for music, turned at once towards the stranger, with an
+expression of great courtesy. Instantly that gentleman rose, and meeting
+the request of his hostess with a profound bow, proceeded at once to the
+piano. ‘He will not leave it till he has spoken to her,’ thought I. Nor
+did he, for that very moment as they stood turning her music over, I
+perceived his lips move in a hurried question, to which she as briefly
+responded, whereupon he caught up a sheet of music from the pile, and
+flinging back his head with a victorious smile, began to sing.</p>
+
+<p>“Had I known what lay behind his words, I would have braved everything
+rather than have allowed him to utter a note in that room which had once
+rung with the carols of Jacqueline’s mother. But what could I guess of
+the possible evil underlying the natural ebullition of unrestrained
+passion that from some cause of pride or pique, had met with a strange
+inexplicable check. So I sat still, shuddering perhaps, but quiet in my
+corner; while the haunting tones of his strange and thrilling voice,
+rose and fell in the most uncanny of Scottish love songs. Nor did I do
+more than wonder with all my agitated soul, when at the conclusion
+Jacqueline came back, and pausing beside the man to whom she had given
+her troth, looked down in his beaming face and smiled with that overflow
+of delight, which she dared not bestow upon his brother.</p>
+
+<p>“Another little incident of that hour remains engraven upon my memory.
+She had been showing to the gentlemen a rare plant that stood in the
+front parlor window, and was dilating upon its marvels, when Mr. Robert
+Holt, her accepted lover, took in his clasp the small white hand
+wandering so invitingly among the leaves of the huge palm, and glancing
+at the finger which should have worn his ring, looked inquiringly into
+her face.</p>
+
+<p>“‘O,’ said she, interrupting her little speech to draw away her hand,
+‘you miss your diamond? I have it, sir. It lies very safe in my pocket;
+it is a beautiful gem, but <i>your ring does not fit me</i>.’</p>
+
+<p>“The way she said those words and the air with which she tossed back her
+head, must have made one heart in that room beat joyously, but it did
+not reassure me or subdue my secret apprehension.</p>
+
+<p>“‘Not fit!’ her lover responded; and begged her to allow him to try it
+on and see, but she shook her head with wilful coquetry, and turning to
+the piano, commenced singing a gay little song that was like silver
+bells, shaken by a sudden and mighty tempest.</p>
+
+<p>“Even the Colonel felt the change in his daughter, though he never
+guessed the cause, and came and went during the evening that followed,
+with certain odd sighs that made my heart ache with strange forebodings.
+Only her lover was unconscious, or if he felt the new and wayward force
+and fire in her manner, attributed it to his own presence and
+unspeakable devotion. Mr. Roger Holt, on the contrary, thoroughly
+understood it. Though he was strangely calm, as calm now as he had
+previously been alert and fiery, he never lost a gleam of her eye in his
+direction, or a turn of her form towards the chair where he sat. But the
+smile with which he contemplated her was not pleasant to me. It was
+informed with self-consciousness, and a certain hard triumph, that made
+it almost sinister. ‘She has given her hand to the true man,’ I mused,
+‘wherever her heart may be. But had she given it?’ I began to doubt as I
+began to muse. With that uncontrollable will of hers, she was capable of
+anything; did she intend to break with Robert, now that she had seen
+Roger? I detected no signs of it beyond the evident delight they took in
+each other’s presence. They were guilty of no further conversation of a
+secret or intimate character, and when with the striking of the clock at
+ten, Mr. Robert Holt rose to leave, his brother followed without any
+demur, even preceding him in his departure and limiting his farewell to
+a short brotherly pressure of Jacqueline’s fair hand.</p>
+
+<p>“But much may be conveyed in a pressure, or so I began to think as I
+heard the low laugh that rippled from Jacqueline’s lips as she turned to
+go up to her room; and if I had been her mother—</p>
+
+<p>“But that is not what you want to hear. Enough that I did not follow
+her, that I did not even acquaint Colonel Japha with my fears, that
+indeed I did nothing but lie awake, praying and asking what I ought to
+do. There had been so little said; there had been so little done. A
+word, a sentence between them, the interchange of a couple of songs,
+and—What else that I could communicate to another?</p>
+
+<p>“A week, two weeks passed, and her look of wilful happiness did not fly.
+She was flooded with notes from her accepted lover, whose handwriting I
+had learned by this time to distinguish, but not one, so far as I could
+learn, from any other source; yet her feet tripped lightly through the
+house, and her form had a rich grace in its every movement, that bespoke
+a mind settled in some deep joy or quiet determination. I felt the
+impenetrability of a secretly cherished hope, whenever I looked at her.
+If I had not known to the contrary, I should have said that her
+prospective marriage had become to her a dream of unfathomable delight.
+Whence then came this rapture? Through what communication was born this
+secret hope? I could not guess, I could only watch and wait.</p>
+
+<p>“Meanwhile some random guesses at the truth had been made by the
+neighbors. Jacqueline had a lover. That lover was a gentleman; but the
+Colonel was critical; he had refused his consent and the young people
+had parted. Such was the talk, begotten perhaps by the persistency with
+which Jacqueline remained in the house, and the almost severe look with
+which Colonel Japha trod the streets of his native village, which he
+soon felt would lose all their charm in the departure of his only child.
+I scarcely ventured out more than Jacqueline; for I have but little
+control over my feelings and did not know what I would do, if any one
+should closely press me with questions.</p>
+
+<p>“The unexpected discovery that our pretty young servant girl was in the
+habit of stealing into Jacqueline’s room late at night, was the first
+thing that startled me into asking whether or not my supposition was
+true, that Jacqueline received no messages from Mr. Robert Holt. And
+scarcely had I become certain that a clandestine correspondence was
+being carried on between them through the medium of this girl, then the
+climax came, and knowledge on my part and secrecy on hers availed no
+longer.</p>
+
+<p>“It was a day in October. The stoves had been put up in the house, and
+seeing Jacqueline roaming about the halls, in a renewed fit of that
+strange restlessness which had affected her the day before Mr. Roger
+Holt’s visit, I went into her room to light a fire, and make everything
+look cheerful before dusk. I found the atmosphere warm, and going to the
+stove, discovered that a fire had been already kindled there, but had
+gone out for want of fuel. I at once commenced to rake away the ashes,
+in order to make preparations for a new one, when I came upon several
+scraps of half burned paper.</p>
+
+<p>“Jacqueline had been burning letters. Do you blame me for picking out
+those scraps and hastening with them to another room, when I tell you
+they were written in a marked and characteristic hand that bore little
+or no resemblance to that of her accepted lover, and that the words
+which flashed first upon my eye were those ominous ones of <i>my wife</i>!</p>
+
+<p>“They were three in number, and while more or less discolored and
+irregular, were still legible. Think child with what a thrill of horror
+and sharp motherly anguish, I read such words as ‘Love you! I would
+press you in my arms if you were plague-stricken! The least turn of your
+head makes my blood cringe, as if a flame had touched me. I would follow
+you on my knees, if you led me round the world. Let me see Robert take
+your hand again and I will—’</p>
+
+<p>“‘Forget you! Do we forget the dagger that has struck us? I am another
+man since—’</p>
+
+<p>“‘I will have you if Robert goes mad and your father kills me. That I am
+burdened with a wife, is nothing. What is a wife that I do not—’ ‘You
+shall be my true wife, my—’</p>
+
+<p>“‘To-night then, be ready; I will wait for you at the gate. A little
+resolution on your part, and then—’</p>
+
+<p>“I could read no further. The living, burning truth had forced itself
+upon me, that Jacqueline, our darling, our pride, the soul of our life,
+stood tottering upon the brink of a gulf horrible as the mouth of hell.
+For I never doubted for an instant what her answer would be to this
+entreaty. In all her past life, God pity us, there had been no tokens of
+that immovable hold on virtue, that would save her in such an extremity
+as this. Nevertheless, to make all sure, I flew back to her room, and
+tearing open bureau drawers and closet doors, discovered that her
+prettiest things had been sent away. She was going, then, and on that
+very night! and her father did not even know she was untrue to her
+betrothed lover. The horror of the situation was too much for me; I
+faltered as I left her room, her dainty, maidenly room, and actually
+crouched against the wall like a guilty thing, as I heard the sound of
+her voice singing some maddening strain in the parlors below. What
+should I do? Appeal to her, or warn her father of the frightful peril in
+which his honor and happiness stood? Alas, any appeal to her would be
+useless. In the glare of this awful revelation I had come to a full
+comprehension of her nature. But her father was a man; he could command
+as well as entreat, could even force obedience if all other methods
+failed. To him, then, must I go; but I had rather have gone to the rack.
+He was so proud a man! Had owned to such undeviating trust in his
+daughter’s honor, as a Japha and his child! The blow would kill him; or
+daze him so, he might better have been killed. My knees shook under me,
+as I traversed the hall to his little study over the parlor, and when I
+came to the door, I rather fell against it than knocked, so great was my
+own anguish, and so deep my terror of his. He was a ready man and he
+came to the door at once, but upon seeing me, drew back as if his eye
+had fallen upon a phantom.</p>
+
+<p>“‘Hush!’ said I, scarcely knowing what I uttered; and going in, I closed
+the door and latched it firmly behind me. ‘I have come,’ said I in a
+voice that made him start, ‘to ask you to save your daughter. She is in
+deadly peril; she—’ a strain of her song came in at that moment from
+the staircase. She was ascending to her room. He looked at me in a doubt
+of my sanity.</p>
+
+<p>“‘Not physical peril,’ I stammered, ‘but <i>moral</i>. She loves madly,
+unreasonably, and with a headlong passion that laughs at every obstacle,
+a man whom neither you nor heaven can look upon with aught but
+execration. She—’</p>
+
+<p>“‘Mrs. Hamlin!’—How well I remember his cool, calm voice, so deliberate
+in his impressive moments, so deliberate now, when perhaps she was
+donning hat and shawl for her elopement—‘You are laboring under a great
+mistake. Instead of execrating Mr. Holt, I admire him most profoundly.
+Since the time has come for me to give up my daughter, I know of no one
+to whom I would rather surrender her.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘But Mr. Holt is not the man,’ I cried, half wild in my fear and
+desperation. ‘Do you remember the gentleman who came with him on his
+last visit? He called him his brother, and he is I believe, but—’</p>
+
+<p>“The way he turned his grand white forehead towards me at that, made
+every fibre in my being quiver. ‘Jacqueline does not love <i>him</i>!’
+exclaimed he. How sharp his voice, how changed his eye! I shrank back,
+trembling as I bowed my head, thinking of the word yet to be said.</p>
+
+<p>“‘But he won’t compare—’ he went on with a severe intonation. ‘Besides
+her honor is engaged. You are dealing in fancies, Mrs. Hamlin.’</p>
+
+<p>“I tore out of my breast the scraps of paper which had enlightened me so
+horribly, and held them towards him; then bethought myself, and drew
+back. ‘I have proof,’ said I; ‘but first I must tell you that Jacqueline
+is not as good a girl as you have thought her. She is not her mother’s
+child in the qualities of love and honor. She is destined to bring a
+great woe upon your head. In her passion for this man, she has forgotten
+your trust in her, the incorruptibility of your name, the honor of your
+house. Be strong, sir, for God is about to smite you in your tenderest
+spot.</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, with what pride he towered upon me! this white-haired, stately
+gentleman before whom I had hitherto held my breath in admiring awe;
+towered upon me though his face was ghostly pale and his hand trembled
+like an aspen as he held it out!</p>
+
+<p>“‘Give me the papers you hold there,’ cried he. ‘Either you are gone
+mad, or else—Who wrote these lines?’ he demanded, glancing down upon
+the hard, firm scrawl that blackened the bits of paper I had given him.</p>
+
+<p>“‘Mr. Roger Holt,’ I returned unhesitatingly. ‘I found those bits in
+Jacqueline’s stove. Her clothes have been sent away, sir,’ I continued
+as I saw his face grow fixed above the scraps he consulted. ‘Twilight is
+coming on and—Mr. Roger Holt is a married man!’</p>
+
+<p>“‘What!’</p>
+
+<p>“I never saw such a look flash from a human face as that which darted
+from his at that terrible moment. I thought he would have fallen, but he
+only dropped the papers out of his hand. ‘Heaven forgive us!’ murmured
+I, calmed by a sight of his misery, into some semblance of of
+self-control, ‘but we have never understood Jacqueline. She is not to be
+led, sir, by principles or duty. She loves this man, and love with her
+is a stormy wind, capable of sweeping her into any abyss of contumely or
+suffering. If you would save her, kill her love; the death of her lover
+would only transform her into a demon.’</p>
+
+<p>“He looked at me as if I had told him the world had come to an end. ‘My
+Jacqueline!’ he murmured in a low, incredulous voice of the tenderest
+yearning. ‘My Jacqueline!’</p>
+
+<p>“‘Oh!’ I shrieked, torn by my anguish for him and the terror of her
+escaping while we were yet talking, ‘God knows I had rather have died
+than contaminate her by such words as I have uttered. She is dear to me
+as my soul; dearer to me than my life. I have a mother’s feeling for
+her, sir. If to fling myself headlong from that window, would delay her
+feet from going down the stairs to meet her guilty lover, I would gladly
+do it. It is her danger makes me speak. O sir, realize that danger and
+hasten before she has taken the irrevocable step.’</p>
+
+<p>“He started like a man pricked by a sudden dart. ‘She is going—you
+believe she is going to meet him?’</p>
+
+
+<p>“‘I do,’ said I.</p>
+
+<p>“He gave me a terrible look and started for the door. I hurriedly picked
+up the scraps that had fallen to the floor, and rushed around by an
+inner passage-way to my own little room, hiding my head and waiting as
+for the crash of a falling avalanche. Suddenly a cry rose in the hall.</p>
+
+<p>“There are some sounds that lift you unconsciously to your feet. Dashing
+out of my room, I detected the face of the servant-girl whom I have
+before mentioned, looking out of her door some distance down the
+corridor. Hastening towards her, I uttered some words about her being a
+busy-body, and thrusting her inside her room, locked the door upon her.
+Then I hastened with what speed I might to the front of the house, and
+coming out upon the grand staircase, met a sight that shook me to the
+very soul. You have been up the stairs; you know how they branch off to
+left and right from the platform near the top. The left branch led in
+those days to Colonel Japha’s room, the right to the apartments occupied
+by Jacqueline and myself. Coming upon them, then, as I did from my side
+of the house, I found myself in full view of the opposite approach, and
+there on the topmost step I beheld Colonel Japha, standing in an
+attitude of awful denunciation, while half way down the staircase, I
+beheld the figure of Jacqueline, hindered in her gliding course towards
+the front door by the terrible, ‘Stop!’ whose echo had reached me in my
+room and caused me to rush quaking and horrified to this spot. I leaned
+back sick and horror-stricken against the wall. There was no mercy in
+his voice: he had awakened to a full realization of the situation and
+the pride of the Japhas had made him steel.</p>
+
+<p>“‘You are my child!’ he was saying. ‘I have loved you and do still; but
+proceed one step farther towards the man that awaits you at the gate,
+and the door that opens upon you, <i>shuts</i> never to open again!’</p>
+
+<p>“‘Colonel!’ I exclaimed, starting forward; but he heard me no more than
+he would a fly buzzing or a bird singing.</p>
+
+<p>“‘I desire it to shut; I have no wish to come back!’ issued from the set
+white lips of the girl beneath us. ‘There is no such charm for me in
+this humdrum house, that I should wish to exchange life with the man I
+adore, for its droning, spiritless existence!’ And she lifted her foot
+to proceed.</p>
+
+<p>“‘Jacqueline!’ I shrieked, leaning forward in my turn, and holding her
+by my anguish, as I never believed she could be held by anything,
+‘Think, child, think what you do! It is not life you are going to but
+death. A man who can take a young girl from her father’s house, from her
+lover’s arms, from her mother’s grave, from the shrine of all that is
+pure and holy, to dash her into a pit of all that is corrupt, loathsome
+and deadly, is not one with whom you can <i>live</i>. You say you adore him:
+can one adore falsehood, selfishness and depravity? Does hypocrisy win
+love? Can the embraces of a serpent bring peace? Jacqueline, Jacqueline,
+you are yet pure; come back to our love and our hearts, before we die
+here in our shame at the head of the stairs, where your mother was
+carried out to her grave!’</p>
+
+<p>“She trembled. I saw the hand that clutched the banister loosen its
+grip; she cast one quick look behind her, and her eyes flashed upon her
+father’s face; it was set like a flint.</p>
+
+<p>“‘If you come back,’ cried he, leaning towards her, but not advancing a
+step from where he stood, ‘you must come back of your own free will. I
+will hold no creature prisoner in my house. I must trust you implicitly,
+or not at all. Speak then, which shall it be?’ And he raised his hand
+above his head, with a supreme and awful gesture, ‘a father’s blessing
+or a father’s curse?’</p>
+
+<p>“‘A father’s curse, then! since you command me to choose,’ rang out from
+her lips in a burst of uncontrollable passion. ‘I want no blessing that
+separates me from <i>him</i>!’ And she pointed towards the door with a look
+that, defiant as it was, spoke of a terrible love before which all our
+warnings and entreaties were but as empty air.</p>
+
+<p>“‘Curses then upon your head, slayer of a family’s honor, a father’s
+love, and a mother’s memory! Curses upon you, at home and abroad! in the
+joy of your first passion and in the agony of your last despair! May you
+live to look upon that door as the gateway to heaven, and find it shut!
+May your children, if you are cursed with them, turn in your face, as
+you are turning now in mine! May the lightning of heaven be your candle,
+and the blackness of death your daily food and your nightly drink!’ And
+with a look in which all the terrors he invoked, seemed to crash
+downward from his reeling brain upon her shrinking terror-crouched head,
+he gave one mighty gasp and fell back stricken to the floor.</p>
+
+<p>“‘God!’ burst from her lips, and she rushed downwards to the door like a
+creature hunted to its quarry. I saw her white face gleam marble-like in
+the fading light that came in from the chinks about the door. I saw her
+trembling hand fumbling with the knob, and rousing from my stupor,
+called down to her with all the force of a breaking heart,</p>
+
+<p>“‘Jacqueline, beware!’</p>
+
+<p>“She turned once more. There was something in my voice she could not
+withstand. ‘I do not hope to keep you,’ cried I, ‘but before you go,
+hear this. In the days to come, when the face that now beams upon you
+with such longing, shall have learned to turn from you in weariness, if
+not distaste, when hunger, cold, contumely and disease shall have
+blasted that fair brow and seared those soft cheeks, know, that although
+a father can curse, a woman who loves like a mother can forgive.’ The
+father cries, ‘Once go out of that door and it shuts upon you never to
+open!’ ‘Once come to <i>that</i> door, say I,’ pointing in the direction of
+the house’s other entrance, ‘and if I live and if I move, it shall open
+to you, were you as defiled and wretched and forsaken as Magdalen.
+Remember! Each day at this hour will I watch for you, kneeling upon its
+threshold. In sickness or in health, in joy or in sorrow, in cold or in
+heat. The hour of six is sacred. Some one of them shall see you falling
+weeping on my breast!’</p>
+
+<p>“She gave me a quick stare out of her wide black eyes, then a mocking
+smile curled her lips, and murmuring a short, ‘You rave!’ opened the
+door, and rushed out into the falling dusk. With a resounding clang like
+the noise of a stone rolled upon an open grave, the great door swung to,
+and I was left alone in that desolated house with my stricken master.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<div class='chapter'><h3><a id="XXVII"></a>XXVII.</h3></div>
+
+<div class='ph4'>THE LONE WATCHER.</div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Hark! to the hurried question of Despair,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Where is my child?—and Echo answers—Where?”—<span class="smcap">Byron.</span><br></span>
+</div></div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+
+<p>“Colonel Japha recovered from his shock, but was never the same man
+again. All that was genial, affectionate and confiding in his nature,
+had been turned as by a lightning’s stroke, to all that was hard, bitter
+and suspicious. He would not allow the name of Jacqueline to be spoken
+in his presence; he would listen to no allusion made to those days when
+she was the care and perplexity, but also the light and pleasure of the
+house. Men are not like women, my child; when they turn, it is at an
+angle, the whole direction of their nature changes.</p>
+
+<p>“Perhaps the news that presently came to us from Boston may have had
+something to do with this. It was surely dreadful enough; Jacqueline’s
+perfidy had slain her lover. Mr. Robert Holt, the cultured, noble,
+high-souled gentleman, had been found lying dead on the floor of his
+room, a few days after the events I have just related, with a lady’s
+diamond ring in his hand and the remnants of a hastily burned letter in
+the grate before him. He had burst a blood-vessel, and had expired
+instantly.</p>
+
+<p>“This sudden and tragic ending of a man of energy and will, was also the
+reason, perhaps, why Grotewell never arrived at the truth of
+Jacqueline’s history. Boston was a long way from here in those days, and
+the story of her lover’s death was not generally known, while the fact
+of her elopement was. Consequently she was supposed to have fled with
+the man who had been seen to visit her most frequently; a report which
+neither the Colonel nor myself had the courage to deny.</p>
+
+<p>“My child, you have a brow like snow, and a cheek like roses; you know
+little of life’s sorrows and little of life’s sins. To you the skies are
+blue, the woods vernal, the air balmy; the sad looks upon men’s and
+women’s faces, tell but shallow tales of the ceaseless grinding of grief
+in their pent up souls. But you are gentle, and you have an imagination
+that goes beyond your experience; perhaps if you pause and think, you
+can understand what a tale could be told of the weeks and months and
+years that now followed, without hint or whisper of the fate of her who
+had gone out from amongst us with the brand of her father’s curse upon
+her brow. At first we hoped, yes, <i>he</i> hoped,—I could see it in his
+eyes when there came a sudden ring at the bell,—that some sign of her
+penitence, or some proof of her existence, would come to relieve the
+torture of our fears, if not the shame of our memories. But the door
+that closed upon her on that fatal eve, had shut without an echo. While
+we vainly waited, time had ample leisure to carve the furrows of age as
+well as of suffering on the Colonel’s once smooth brow, and to change my
+daily vigil into a custom of despair, rather than of hope. Time had also
+leisure to rob us of much of our worldly goods and to make our continued
+living in this grand old house, an act that involved constant care and
+the closest economy. That we were enabled to preserve appearances to the
+day that beheld the Colonel laid low by the final stroke of his dread
+disease, was only due to the secret charity of a certain gentleman, who,
+declaring he was indebted to us, secretly supplied me with means of
+support.</p>
+
+<p>“But of all this you care little.</p>
+
+<p>“You had rather hear about the evening watch with its hopeful assurance,
+‘Yet another day and she will be here,’ to be followed so soon by the
+despairing acknowledgement, ‘Yet another day and she has not come!’ or
+of those dark hours when the Colonel lay blank and white upon his
+pillow, with his eyes fixed on the door which would never open to the
+beating of a daughter’s heart, while the gray shadow of an awful
+resolution deepened upon his immovable face. What that resolution was I
+could not know, but I feared it, when I saw what a sternness it gave to
+his eye, what a fixedness to his set and implacable lip; and when in the
+waning light of a certain December afternoon, the circle of neighbors
+about his bed gave way to the stiff and forbidding form of Mr. Phelps, I
+felt a thrill of mortal apprehension and only waited to hear the short,
+‘It shall be done,’ of the lawyer to some slowly whispered command of
+the colonel, to rise from my far off corner and stand ready to accost
+Mr. Phelps as he came from the bedside of the dying man.</p>
+
+<p>“‘What is it?’ I asked, rushing up to him as he issued forth into the
+hall, and seizing him by the arm, with a woman’s unreasoning
+impetuosity. ‘I have nursed his daughter on my knee; tell me, then, what
+it is he has ordered you to do in this final moment?’</p>
+
+<p>“Mr. Phelps for all his ungainly bearing, is not a hard-hearted man, as
+you know, and he doubtless saw the depth of the misery that made me
+forget myself. Giving me a look that was not without its touch of
+sarcasm, he replied, ‘The colonel has made me promise, to see that a
+plank is nailed across the front door of this house, after his body has
+been carried out to burial.’</p>
+
+<p>“A board across the front door! His anger then was implacable. The
+withering curse that had rung in my ears for ten years, was to outlive
+his death! With a horrified groan, I pressed my hands over my eyes and
+rushed back. My first glimpse of the Colonel’s face showed me that the
+end was at hand, but that fact only made more imperative my consuming
+desire to see that curse removed, even though it were done with his
+final breath. Drawing near his bedside, I leaned down, and waiting till
+his eye wandered to my face, asked him if there was nothing he wished
+amended before his strength failed. He understood me. We had not sat for
+so long, face to face across the chasm of a hideous memory, without
+knowing something of the workings of each other’s mind. Glancing up at
+his wife’s portrait which ever faced him as he lay upon his pillow, his
+mouth grew severe and he essayed to shake his head. I at once pointed to
+the portrait.</p>
+
+<p>“‘What will you say to her when she meets you on the borders of heaven?’
+I demanded with the courage of despair.’ She will ask, ‘Where is my
+child?’ And what will you reply?’</p>
+
+<p>“The fingers that lay upon the coverlid moved spasmodically; he eyed me
+with a steady deepening stare, awful to meet, fearful to remember. I
+went on steadily; ‘She has gone out of this house with your curse; tell
+me that if she comes back, she may be greeted with your forgiveness.’
+Still that awful stare which changed not. ‘I have watched and waited for
+her every day since her departure,’ I whispered, ‘and shall watch and
+wait for her, every day until I die. Shall a stranger’s love be greater
+than a father’s?’ This time his lips twitched and the grey shadow
+shifted, but it did not rise. ‘I had sworn to do it,’ I went on. ‘When
+you lay there at the top of the stairs, smitten down by your first
+shock, I told her, come sickness, come health, I should keep a daily
+vigil at that door of the house which your severity had not closed upon
+her; and I have kept my word till now and shall keep it to the end. What
+will you do for this miserable child of whose being you are the author?’</p>
+
+<p>“With indescribable anxiety I paused and watched him, for his lips were
+moving. ‘Do for her?’ he repeated.</p>
+
+<p>“How awful is the voice of the dying! I shivered as I listened, but drew
+near and nearer, that I might lose no word that came from his stony
+lips.</p>
+
+<p>“‘She will not come,’ gasped he, with an effort that raised him up in
+bed, and deepened that horrible stare, ‘but—’</p>
+
+<p>“Who shall say what he might have uttered if Death’s hand had delayed a
+single instant, but the inexorable shadow fell, and he never finished
+the sentence.</p>
+
+<p>“My child, these are frightful things for you to hear. God knows I would
+not assail your pure ears with a tale like this, if it were not for the
+help and sympathy I hope to gain from you. Sin is a hideous thing; the
+gulf it opens is wide and deep; well may it be said to swallow those who
+trust themselves above its flower-hung brink. But we who are human, owe
+something to humanity. Love stops not because of the gulf; love follows
+the sinner with wilder and more heart-breaking longing, the deeper and
+deeper he sinks into the illimitable darkness. Ten years have passed
+since we laid the Colonel away in the burying-place of all the Japhas,
+and dutiful to his last request, nailed up the front door of his
+speedily to be forsaken mansion. In all that time my watch has remained
+unbroken in this house, which by will he had left to me, but which I
+secretly hold in trust for her. The hour of six has found me at my post,
+sometimes elate with hope, sometimes depressed with repeated
+disappointments, but whether hopeful or sad, always trustful that the
+great God who Himself so loved all sinners, that He gave the life of His
+Son to rescue them, would ultimately grant me the desire of my heart.
+But the decrepitude of age is coming upon me, and each morning I leave
+my bed, with growing fear lest my infirmities will increase until they
+finally overcome my resolution. Child, if this should happen, if lying
+in my bed I should some day hear that she had come back, and failing to
+find the lamp burning and the welcome ready, had gone away again—But
+the thought is madness. I cannot bear it. A sinner, lost, degraded,
+suffering, starving, perhaps, is wandering this way. She is hardened and
+old in guilt; she has drunk the cup of life’s passions and found them
+corrupting poison; all that was lovely and pure and good has withdrawn
+from her; she stands alone, shut off by her sin, like a wild thing in a
+circle of flame. What shall touch this soul? The preacher’s voice has no
+charm for her; good men’s advice is but empty air. God’s love must be
+mirrored in human love, to strike an eye so unused to looking up. Where
+shall she find such love? It is all that can rescue her; love as great
+as her sin, as boundless as her degradation, as persistent as her
+suffering. Child—”</p>
+
+<p>“I know what you are going to say,” suddenly exclaimed Paula, rising up
+and confronting Mrs. Hamlin with a steady high look of determination.
+“In the day of your weakness or illness you want some one to unlock the
+door and light the lamp. You have found her!”</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<div class='chapter'><h3><a id="XXVIII"></a>XXVIII.</h3></div>
+
+<div class='ph4'>SUNSHINE ON THE HILLS.</div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“If I speak to thee in Friendship’s name,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Thou think’st I speak too coldly;<br></span>
+<span class="i0">If I mention Love’s devoted flame,<br></span>
+<span class="i2">Thou say’st I speak too boldly.”—<span class="smcap">Moore.</span><br></span>
+</div></div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+
+<p>The story told by Mrs. Hamlin had a great effect upon Paula, not only on
+account of its own interest and the promise it had elicited from her,
+but because of the remembrances it revived of Mr. Sylvester and her life
+in New York. Any vision of evil or suffering, any experience that roused
+the affections or awakened the sensibilities, could not fail to recall
+to her mind the forcible figure of Mr. Sylvester as he stood that day by
+his own hearthstone, talking of the temptations that assail humanity;
+and any reminiscence of him must necessarily bring with it much that
+charmed and aroused. For a week, then, she felt the effect of a great
+unsettlement. Her village home appeared a prison; she longed to run,
+soar—anything to escape; the horizon was full of beckoning hands. A
+brooding melancholy settled upon her reveries; the prospect of a life
+spent in the narrow circle to which she had endeavored to re-accustom
+herself, became unendurable.</p>
+
+<p>Thus it is with us. We slide in a groove and seem happy, when suddenly a
+book we read, a story we hear, an experience we encounter, shakes us out
+of our content, and makes continuance in the old course a violation of
+the most demanding instincts of our nature.</p>
+
+<p>In the full tide of this unrest, Paula went out for a solitary walk on
+the hills. Nature can soothe if she cannot satisfy. Then the day itself
+was one to make the soul glad and the heart rejoice. As the young girl
+trod the meadows, she wondered that she could be sad. Earth and air were
+so full of splendor. Nature seemed to be in league with the angels of
+light. September stood upon the earth like a goddess of might and glory.
+Every tint of green that variegated the mountain-side, wooed the eye
+with suggestions of unfathomable beauty. A bough of scarlet flame lit
+here and there amid the verdure, served to illuminate the woods as for
+the passage of a king; and not Solomon in all his glory ever wore an
+aspect more sumptuous than the flowers that flecked the meadow and
+fringed the hardy roadside with imperial purple. A wind was blowing, a
+keen but kindly breeze, laden with sweetness and alert to awaken Æolian
+airs from the boughs of whistling beech and alder. Even the low field
+grasses seemed to partake in the general cheer, and nodded to each other
+with a witching and irresistible abandon. Had a poet been at her side,
+or any one capable of divining the hidden things of nature, what a
+commentary to all their united thoughts she would have found in the
+delicious tremble of the laughing leaves, in the restless music of the
+runaway brooks, in the lowly crickets with their single song, in the
+cloud-haunting birds with their trailing melodies, and in all the roll
+and rumble of earth’s commingled noises. Alluring as was the book of
+nature, she could not read it alone. She felt the lack of a loving hand
+to turn the page. “Is it that I am lonely!” she murmured.</p>
+
+<p>The thought deepened her trouble. Coming down from the hillside, she
+entered a skirting of woods that ran along by the river. Here she had
+always found peace and some of her richest treasures of thought. Through
+this opaline archway she had walked with her fancies, like Saint
+Catherine with her lily. It was sacred to all that was sweet and deep
+and pure within her. “Lonely!” she whispered; “I will not be lonely. To
+some God gives years of happy companionship; to others but a day. Shall
+one complain because it has fallen to his portion to have the lesser
+share? I will remember my one day and be glad.”</p>
+
+<p>“My one day!” She caught herself at the utterance and literally started
+at the suggestion it offered. There was but one person whom she had seen
+but for a day. Could she have been thinking of him?</p>
+
+<p>With a flush deep as the autumn leaves she carried, she was hurrying on,
+when suddenly in the opening before her, a shadow fell, and a mellow
+voice exclaimed in her ear,</p>
+
+<p>“Do I meet Miss Fairchild in her native woods?”</p>
+
+<p>It was Clarence Ensign.</p>
+
+<p>The surprise was very great and it took her a moment to steady herself.
+She had felt so assured that she should never see him or any other of
+her New York friends again. Had not Cicely written that he had gone
+West, soon after her own departure from New York. With a deepening of
+his voice Mr. Ensign repeated the question.</p>
+
+<p>At once the day seemed to acquire all it had hitherto lacked. Looking
+up, she met his eye fixed admiringly upon her, and all that was merry,
+lightsome and gay within her, leaped at once to the surface. Ignoring
+his question with smiling abandon, she exclaimed,</p>
+
+<p>“What shall be done to the man who delights in surprises and startles
+timid maidens without a cause?”</p>
+
+<p>“He shall be held in captivity by the hand of his denouncer, until he
+has sued for pardon and obtained her generous forgiveness,” returned he,
+holding out his palm.</p>
+
+<p>She barely touched it with her own. “I see that your repentance is
+sincere, so your pardon shall be speedy,” laughed she.</p>
+
+<p>“Your discrimination is at fault, I never felt more impenitent in my
+life. I am a hardened wretch, Miss Fairchild, a hardened wretch! But you
+do not ask me from what corner of the earth I have come. You take me too
+much for granted; like the chirrup of a squirrel, let me say, or the
+whistle of a bullfinch. But perhaps you think I inhabit these woods?”</p>
+
+<p>“No; but a day like this is so full of miracles, why should we be
+astonished at one more! I suppose you came on the train, but should not
+be surprised to hear you started, like Pluto, from the earth. Anything
+seems possible in such a sunshine.”</p>
+
+<p>“You are right, and I have sprung from the earth. I have been buried
+five mortal months in a law-suit out west, or else I should have been
+here before. I hope my delay has made me none the less welcome.”</p>
+
+<p>He was holding back a branch as he spoke, and his eyes were on a level
+with hers. She felt caught as in a net, and struggled vainly to keep
+down her color. “No,” said she, “welcome is a guest’s due, whether he
+come early or late. I should be sorry to be lacking in the duties of a
+hostess, though my drawing-room is somewhat more spacious than cosy,”
+she continued, looking around on the fields into which they had emerged,
+“and my facilities for bespeaking you welcome greater than my power to
+make you comfortable.”</p>
+
+<p>“Comfort is a satisfaction of the mind, rather than of the body. I am
+not <i>un</i>comfortable, Miss Fairchild.” Then as he stooped to relieve her
+of half her burden of trailing leaves and flowers, he exclaimed in a
+matter-of-fact tone, “Your aunt is a notable woman, Miss Fairchild, I
+admire her greatly.”</p>
+
+<p>“What!” said she, “you have been to the cottage? You have seen Aunt
+Belinda?”</p>
+
+<p>“Of course,” laughed he, “or how should I be here? You have been sent
+for, Miss Fairchild, and I am the humble bearer of your aunt’s commands.
+But I forget, the practical has nothing to do with such a day. I am
+supposed to have sprung from the ground, and to know by instinct, just
+in what nook you were hiding from the sunlight. Very well. I acknowledge
+that instinct is sometimes capable of going a great way.”</p>
+
+<p>But this time her ready answer was lacking. She was wondering what her
+aunt would think of this sudden appearance of a stranger whose name she
+had never so much as mentioned.</p>
+
+<p>“It is a pleasant rest to stand and look at a view like that, after a
+summer of musty labor,” said he, gazing up the river with a truly
+appreciative eye. “I do not wonder you carry the charm of the wild woods
+in your laugh and glance, if you have been brought up in the sight of
+such a view as that.”</p>
+
+<p>“It has been my meat and drink from childhood,” said she, and wondered
+why she wanted to say no more upon her favorite theme.</p>
+
+<p>“Yet you tell me you love the city?”</p>
+
+<p>“Too much to ever again be happy here.”</p>
+
+<p>It was a slip for which her cheek burned and her lids fell, the moment
+after. She had been thinking of Mr. Sylvester, and unconsciously spake
+as she might have done, if he had been at her side, instead of this
+genial-hearted young man. With a woman’s instinctive desire to retrieve
+herself, she hurriedly continued, “Life is so full and large and deep in
+a great town, if you are only happy enough to meet those who are its
+blood and brain and sinew. One misses the rush of the great wheel of
+time in a spot like this. The world moves, but we do not feel it; it is
+like the quiet sweep of the stars over our heads. But in the city, days,
+weeks and months make themselves felt. The universe jars under the feet
+of hurrying masses. The story of the world is being written on pavement,
+corridor, and dome, so that he who runs may read. One realizes he is
+alive; the unit is part of the multiple. To those who are tired, God
+gives the rest of the everlasting hills, but to those who are eager, he
+holds out the city with its innumerable opportunities and incentives.
+And I am eager,” she said. “The flower blooms on the mountain, and its
+perfume is sweet, but the chariot sings as it rushes, and the noise of
+its wheels is music in my ears.”</p>
+
+<p>She paused, turned her face to the breeze, and seemed to forget she was
+not alone. Clarence Ensign eyed her with astonishment; he had never
+heard her speak like this; the earnest side of her great nature had
+never been turned towards him before, and he felt himself shrink into
+insignificance in its presence. What was he that he should pluck a star
+from the heavens, to buckle on his breast! Wealth and position were a
+match for beauty great as hers, and a kind heart current coin all the
+world over, for a gentle disposition and a loving nature; but for
+this—He turned away and in his abstraction switched his foot with his
+cane.</p>
+
+<p>“Then it was in New York that I met Cicely,” exclaimed Paula.</p>
+
+<p>He shook off his broodings, turned with a manful gesture, and met her
+sweet unfathomable eye, so brilliant with enthusiasm a moment ago, but
+at this instant so softly deep and tender.</p>
+
+<p>“And the friendship of Miss Stuyvesant is a precious thing to you?” said
+he.</p>
+
+<p>“Few things are more so,” was her reply.</p>
+
+<p>He bit his lip and his brow grew lighter. After all, great souls
+frequently cling to those of lesser calibre, provided they are true and
+unflawed. He would not be discouraged. But his tone when he spoke had
+acquired a reverence that did not lessen its music. “You are, then, one
+of the few women who believe in friendship?”</p>
+
+<p>“As I believe in heaven.”</p>
+
+<p>Looking at her, he took off his hat. Her eye stole to his serious
+countenance. “Miss Stuyvesant is to be envied,” said he.</p>
+
+<p>“Are friends so rare?”</p>
+
+<p>“Such friends are,” said he.</p>
+
+<p>She gave him a bright little look. “Had you been with Miss Stuyvesant,
+and she had expressed herself as I have done, you would have said, ‘Miss
+Fairchild is to be envied,’ and you would have been nearer the truth
+than now. Cicely’s friendship is to mine what an unbroken mirror is to a
+little racing brook. It reflects but one image, while mine—” She could
+not go on. How could she explain to this stranger that Cicely’s heart
+was undivided in its regard, while hers owned allegiance to more than
+her bosom friend.</p>
+
+<p>“If I were with Miss Stuyvesant now,” he declared, too absorbed in his
+own ideas to notice the break in hers, “I should still say in face of
+this friendship, ‘Miss Stuyvesant is to be envied.’ I have no mind for
+more than one thought to-day,” exclaimed he, with a look that made her
+tremble.</p>
+
+<p>There are some men who never know in what field to stay the current of
+their impetuosity: Clarence Ensign did. He said no more than this of all
+that was seething in his mind and heart. He felt that he must prove
+himself a man, before he exercised a man’s privilege. Besides, his
+temperament was mercurial, and never remained long under the bondage of
+a severe thought, or an impressive tone of mind. He worshipped the
+lofty, but it was with tabor and cymbal and high-sounding lute. A climb
+over the stile at the foot of the hill was enough to restore him to
+himself. It was therefore with merry eyes and laughing lips that they
+approached the house and entered Miss Belinda’s presence.</p>
+
+<p>There are some persons whose prerogative it is to carry sunshine with
+them wherever they go. Clarence Ensign was one of these. Without an
+effort, without any display of incongruous hilarity, he always succeeded
+by the mere joyousness of his own nature, in calling forth all that was
+bright and enjoyable in others. When therefore they stepped into the
+quaint old-fashioned parlor, all prepared to receive them, Paula was not
+surprised to perceive it brighten, and her aunts’ faces grow cheerful
+and smiling. Who could meet Clarence Ensign’s laughing eye and not
+smile? What did astonish her, however, was the sight of an elegant
+basket of hot-house lowers perched on a table in the centre of the room.
+It made her pause, and cast looks of inquiry at the demure countenance
+of Miss Abby, and the quietly satisfied expression of her more
+thoughtful aunt.</p>
+
+<p>“A remembrance from the city!” said Mr. Ensign gracefully. “I thought it
+might help to recall some happy hours to you.”</p>
+
+<p>With a swelling of the heart which she could not understand, she leaned
+over the ample cluster of roses and heliotrope. She felt as though she
+could embrace them; they were more than flowers, they were the visible
+emblem of all she had missed, and for which she had longed these many
+months.</p>
+
+<p>“I seem to receive the whole in the part,” said she.</p>
+
+<p>He may or may not have understood her, but he saw she was gratified, and
+that was sufficient. The afternoon flew by on wings of light. Miss
+Belinda, who was not accustomed to holidays, but who thoroughly
+appreciated them when they came, entered into the conversation with
+zest; while Miss Abby’s unconscious expressions of pleasure were too
+<i>naĂŻve</i> not to add to, rather than detract from the general enjoyment.
+The twilight, with its good-bye, came all too soon.</p>
+
+<p>“I have a request to make before I go,” said Mr. Ensign. He was standing
+alone with Paula in the embrasure of the window, a few moments before
+his departure. “When we see a flower nodding on a ledge above our heads,
+we long for it; I have heard you talk of friendship, and a great desire
+has seized me. Miss Fairchild will you be my friend?”</p>
+
+<p>She gave him a startled glance that, however, soon settled into a mellow
+radiant look of sympathy and pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>“That is asking for something which if I hesitate to accord, it is
+because the word, ‘friend,’ carries with it so much,” said she, with a
+sweet seriousness that disarmed her words of any latent sting they might
+otherwise have contained.</p>
+
+<p>“I know it,” he replied, “and I am very bold to ask it upon so slight an
+acquaintance; but life is short and real treasure is so scarce. You will
+not deny me, Miss Fairchild?” Then seeing her look down, hastily
+continued, “I have acquaintances by the score—friends who style
+themselves thus, by the dozen, but no <i>friend</i>. I want one; I want you
+for that one. Will you be it? I shall be jealous though, I warn you,” he
+went on, with a cropping out of his mirthful nature; “I shall not be
+pleased to observe the circle widened indefinitely. I shall want my own
+place and no one else in my place.”</p>
+
+<p>“No one else can fill the place once given to a friend. Each one has his
+own niche.”</p>
+
+<p>“And I am to have mine?” His look was firm, his eye steadfast.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” she breathed.</p>
+
+<p>With a proud stooping of his head, he took her hand and kissed it. The
+action became him; he was tall and well made, and gallantry induced by
+feeling, sat well upon him. In spite of herself, she thought of old-time
+stories of the Norse chivalry; he stood so radiant and bent so low.</p>
+
+<p>“I shall prize my friend at her queenly value,” said he; and without
+more ado, uttered his farewell and took his departure.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<p>“Paula!”</p>
+
+<p>The young girl started from a reverie which had held her for a long time
+enchained at that fast darkening window, and hastily looking up,
+perceived her Aunt Belinda standing before her, with her eye fixed upon
+her face, with a kind but searching glance.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, aunt.”</p>
+
+<p>“You have not told me who this Mr. Ensign is. In all the letters you
+wrote me you did not mention his name, I think.”</p>
+
+<p>“No, aunt. The fact is, I did not meet him until a few days before I
+left, and then only for an evening, you might say.”</p>
+
+<p>“Indeed! that one evening seems to have made its impression. Tell me
+something about him, Paula.”</p>
+
+<p>“His own countenance speaks for him better than I can, aunt. He is good
+and he is kind; an honest young man, who need fear the eye of no one. He
+is wealthy, I am informed, and the son of highly respected parents. He
+was first presented to me by Miss Stuyvesant, whose friend he is,
+afterwards by Mr. Sylvester. His coming here was a surprise to me.”</p>
+
+<p>Miss Belinda’s firm mouth, which had expanded at this dutiful response,
+twitched with a certain amused expression over this last announcement.
+Eying her niece with unrelenting inquiry, she pursued, “You have not
+been happy for the last few weeks, Paula. Our life seems narrow to you;
+you long to fly away to larger fields and more expansive skies.”</p>
+
+<p>With a guilty droop of her head, Paula stole her hand into that of her
+aunt’s.</p>
+
+<p>“I do not wonder,” continued Miss Belinda, still watching the flushing
+cheek and slightly troubled mouth of the lovely girl before her. “I once
+breathed other air myself, and know well what charms lie beyond these
+mountains. In giving you up for awhile, I gave you up forever, I fear.”</p>
+
+<p>“No, no,” whispered the young girl, “I am always yours wherever I go.
+Not that I am going away,” she hastily murmured.</p>
+
+<p>Her aunt smiled and gently stroked her niece’s hand. “When the time
+comes, I shall bid you God speed, Paula. I am no ogress to tie my dove’s
+wings to her nest. Love and the home it provides are the natural lot of
+women. None feel it more than those who have missed both.”</p>
+
+<p>“Aunt!” Paula was shocked and perplexed. A breaking wave full of doubts
+and possibilities, seemed to dash over her at this suggestion.</p>
+
+<p>“Young men of judgment and principle do not come so many miles to see a
+youthful maiden, without a purpose,” continued her aunt inexorably. “You
+know that, do you not, Paula?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes; but the purpose may differ in different cases,” returned the young
+girl hurriedly. “I would not like to believe that Mr. Ensign came here
+with the one you give him credit for—not yet. You trouble me, aunt,”
+pursued she, glancing tremulously about. “It is like opening a great
+door flooded with sunshine, upon eyes scarcely strong enough to bear the
+glimmer sifting through its cracks. I feel humiliated and—” She did not
+finish, perhaps her thought itself was incomplete.</p>
+
+<p>“If a light comes sifting through the cracks, I am satisfied,” said her
+aunt in a lighter tone than common. And she kissed her niece, and went
+smiling out of the room, murmuring to herself,</p>
+
+<p>“I have been over-fearful; everything is coming right.”</p>
+
+<p>There are moments when life’s great mystery overpowers us; when the
+riddle of the soul flaunts itself before us unexplained, and we can do
+no more than stand and take the rush of the tide that comes sweeping
+down upon us. Paula was not the girl she was before she went to New
+York. Love was no longer a dreamy possibility, a hazy blending of the
+unknown and the fancied; its tale had been too often breathed in her
+ear, its reality made too often apparent to her eye. But love to which
+she could listen, was as new and fresh and strange, as a world into
+which her foot had never ventured. That her aunt should point to a
+certain masculine form, no matter how attractive or interesting, and
+say, “Love and home are the lot of women,” made her blood rush back on
+her heart, like a stream from which a dam has been ruthlessly wrenched
+away. It was too wild, too sudden; a friend’s name was so much easier to
+speak, or to contemplate. She did not know what to do with her own
+heart, made to speak thus before its time; its beatings choked her;
+everything choked her; this was a worse imprisonment than the other.
+Looking round, her eye fell upon the flowers. Ah, was not their language
+expressive enough, without this new suggestion? They seemed to lose
+something in this very gain. She liked them less she thought, and yet
+her feet drew near, and near, and nearer, to where they stood, exhaling
+their very souls out in delicious perfume. “I am too young!” came from
+Paula’s lips. “I will not think of it!” quickly followed. Yet the smile
+with which she bent over the fragrant blossoms, had an ethereal beauty
+in it, which was not all unmixed with the</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Light that never was on land or sea,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">The consecration and the poet’s dream.”<br></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>“He has asked to be my friend,” murmured she, as she slowly turned away.
+“It is enough; it must be enough.” But the blossom she had stolen from
+the midst of the fragrant collection, seemed to whisper a merry nay, as
+it nodded against her hand, and afterwards gushed out its sweet life on
+her pure young breast.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<div class='chapter'><h3><a id="XXIX"></a>XXIX.</h3></div>
+
+<div class='ph4'>MIST IN THE VALLEY.</div>
+
+<blockquote><p>“The true beginning of our end.”—<span class="smcap">Midsummer Night’s Dream.</span></p></blockquote>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<p>Mr. Ensign was not slow in developing his ideas of friendship. Though he
+did not venture upon repeating his visit too soon, scarcely a week
+passed without bringing to Paula a letter or some other testimonial of
+his increasing devotion. The blindest eye could not fail to remark
+whither he was tending. Even Paula was forced to acknowledge to herself
+that she was on the verge of a flowery incline, that sooner or later
+would bring her up breathless against the dread alternative of a decided
+yes or no. Friendship is a wide portal, and sometimes admits love; had
+it served her traitorously in this?</p>
+
+<p>Her aunt who watched her with secret but lynx-eyed scrutiny, saw no
+reason to alter the first judgment of that mysterious, “It is all coming
+right,” with which she viewed the first symptoms of Paula’s girlish
+appreciation of her lover. If eyes and lips could speak, Paula was
+happy. The mournful shadows which of late had flitted with more or less
+persistency over her face, had vanished in a living smile, which if not
+deep, was cloudlessly radiant; and her voice when not used in speech,
+was rippling away in song, as glad as a finch’s on the mountain side.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Belinda was therefore very much astonished when one day Paula burst
+into her presence, and flinging herself down on her knees, threw her
+arms about her waist, crying,</p>
+
+<p>“Take me away, dear aunt, I cannot, dare not stay here another day.”</p>
+
+<p>“Paula, what do you mean?” exclaimed Miss Belinda, holding her back and
+endeavoring to look into her face. But the young girl gently resisted.</p>
+
+<p>“I have just had a letter from Cicely,” she returned in a low and
+muffled voice. “She has seen Mr. Sylvester, and says he looks both wan
+and ill. He told her, too, that he was lonely, and I know what that
+means; he wants his child. The time has come for me to go back. He said
+it would, and that I would know when it came. Take me, aunt, take me to
+Mr. Sylvester.”</p>
+
+<p>Miss Belinda, to whom self-control was one of the cardinal virtues,
+leaned back in her chair and contemplated the eager, tear-stained face
+that was now raised to hers, with silent scrutiny. “Paula,” said she at
+last, “is that your only reason for desiring to return to New York?”</p>
+
+<p>A flush, delicate as it was fleeting, swept over the dew of Paula’s
+cheek. She rose to her feet and met her aunt’s eye, with a look of
+gentle dignity. “No,” said she, “I wish to test myself. Birds that are
+prisoned will caress any hand that offers them freedom. I wish to see if
+the lure holds good when my wings are in mid-heaven.”</p>
+
+<p>There was a dreamy cadence to her voice as she uttered that last phrase,
+that startled her aunt. “Paula,” exclaimed she, “Paula, don’t you know
+your own heart?”</p>
+
+<p>“Who does?” returned Paula; then in a sudden rush of emotion threw
+herself once more at her aunt’s side, saying, “It is in order to know
+it, that I ask you to take me away.”</p>
+
+<p>And Miss Belinda, as she smoothed back her darling’s locks, was obliged
+to acknowledge to herself, that time has a way of opening, in the stream
+of life, unforeseen channels to whose current we perforce must yield, or
+else hopelessly strand upon the shoals.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<div class='chapter'><h2><a id="BOOK_IV"></a>BOOK IV.</h2></div>
+
+<div class='ph3'>FROM A. TO Z.</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<div class='chapter'><h3><a id="XXX"></a>XXX.</h3></div>
+
+<div class='ph4'>MISS BELINDA PRESENTS MR. SYLVESTER WITH A CHRISTMAS GIFT.</div>
+
+<blockquote><p>“For, O; for, O the hobby horse is forgot.”—<span class="smcap">Hamlet.</span></p>
+</blockquote>
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+
+<p>It was a clear winter evening. Mr. Sylvester sat in his library, musing
+before a bright coal fire, whose superabundant heat and blaze seemed to
+make the loneliness of the great empty room more apparent. He had just
+said to himself that it was Christmas eve, and that he, of all men in
+the world, had the least reason to realize it, when the door-bell rang.
+He was expecting Bertram, whose advancement to the position of cashier
+in place of Mr. Wheelock, now thoroughly broken down in health, had that
+day been fully determined upon in a late meeting of the Board of
+Directors. He therefore did not disturb himself. It was consequently a
+startling surprise, when a deep, pleasant voice uttered from the
+threshold of the door, “I have brought you a Christmas present;” and
+looking up, he saw Miss Belinda standing before him, with Paula at her
+side.</p>
+
+<p>“My child!” was his involuntary exclamation, and before the young girl
+knew it, she was folded against his breast with a passionate fervor that
+more than words, convinced her of the depth of the sacrifice which had
+held them separate for so long. “My darling! my little Paula!”</p>
+
+<p>She felt her heart stand still. Gently disengaging herself, she looked
+in his face. She found it thin and wan, but lit by such a pleasure she
+could not keep back her smile. “You are glad, then, of your little
+Christmas present?” said she.</p>
+
+<p>He smiled and shook his head; he had no words with which to express a
+joy like this.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Belinda meanwhile stood with a set expression on her face, that, to
+one who did not know her, would immediately have proclaimed her to be an
+ogress of the very worst type. Not a glance did she give to the unusual
+splendor about her, not a wavering of her eye betokened that she was in
+any way conscious that she had just stepped from the threshold of a very
+humble cottage, into a home little short of a palace in size and the
+splendor of its appointments. All her attention was concentrated on the
+two faces before her.</p>
+
+<p>“The ride on the cars has made Paula feverish,” cried she, in sharp
+clear tones that rang with unexpected brusqueness through the curtained
+alcoves of that lordly apartment.</p>
+
+<p>They both started at this sudden introduction of the prosaic into the
+hush of their happy meeting, but remembering themselves, drew Miss
+Belinda forward to the fire and made her welcome in this house of many
+memories.</p>
+
+<p>It was a strange moment to Paula when she first turned to go up those
+stairs, down which she had come in such grief eight months or more ago.
+She found herself lingering on its well-remembered steps, and the first
+sight of the rich bronze image at the top, struck her with a sense of
+the old-time pleasure, that was not unlinked with the old-time dread.
+But the aspect of her little room calmed her. It was just as she had
+left it; not an article had been changed. “It is as if I had gone out
+one door and come in another,” she whispered. All the months that had
+intervened seemed to float away. She felt this even more when upon again
+descending, she found Bertram in the library. His frank and interesting
+face had always been pleasant to her, but in the joy of her return it
+shone upon her with almost the attraction of a brother’s. “I am at home
+again,” she kept whispering to herself, “I am at home.”</p>
+
+<p>Miss Belinda was engrossed in conversation with Bertram, so that Paula
+was left free to take her old place by Mr. Sylvester’s side, where she
+sat with such an aspect of contentment, that her beauty was half
+forgotten in her happiness.</p>
+
+<p>“You remembered me, then, sometimes in the little cottage in Grotewell?”
+asked he, after a silent contemplation of her countenance. “I was not
+forgotten when you left the city streets?”</p>
+
+<p>She answered with a bright little shake of her head, but she was
+inwardly wondering as she looked at his strong and picturesque face,
+with its nobly carved features and melancholy smile, if he had been
+absent from her thoughts for so much as a moment, in all these dreary
+months of separation.</p>
+
+<p>“I did not believe you would forget,” he gently pursued, “but I scarcely
+dared hope you would lighten my fireside with your face again. It is
+such a dismal one, and youth is so linked to brightness.”</p>
+
+<p>The flush that crossed her cheek, startled him into sudden silence. She
+recovered herself and slowly shook her head. “It is not a dismal one to
+me. I always feel brighter and better when I sit beside it. I have
+missed your counsel,” she said; “brightness is nothing without depth.”</p>
+
+<p>His eyes which had been fixed on her face, turned slowly away. He seemed
+to hold an instant’s communion with himself; suddenly he said, “And
+depth is worse than nothing, without it mirrors the skies. It is not
+from shadowed pools, such bright young lips should drink, but from the
+waves of an inexhaustible sea, smote upon by all the winds and sunshine
+of heaven.”</p>
+
+<p>In another moment, however, he was all cheerfulness. “You have brought
+me a Christmas present,” cried he, “and we must make it a Christmas
+holiday indeed. Here is the beginning:” and with one of his old grave
+smiles, he handed Bertram a little note which had been awaiting him on
+the library table. “But Paula and Miss Belinda must have their pleasure
+too. Paula, are you too tired for a ride down town? I will show you New
+York on a Christmas eve,” continued he to Miss Walton, seeing that
+Paula’s attention was absorbed by the expression of sudden and moving
+surprise which had visited Bertram’s face, upon the perusal of his note.
+“It is a stirring sight. Nothing more cheering can be found the wide
+world over, for those who have a home and children to make happy.”</p>
+
+<p>“I certainly should enjoy a glimpse of holiday cheer,” assented Miss
+Belinda. And Paula recalled to herself by the sound of her aunt’s voice,
+gayly re-echoed her assertion.</p>
+
+<p>So Samuel was despatched for a carriage, and in a few minutes they were
+all riding down Fifth Avenue, <i>en route</i> for Tiffany’s, Macy’s, and any
+other store that might offer special attractions. It was a happy
+company. As they rolled along, Paula felt her heart grow lighter and
+lighter, Mr. Sylvester was almost gay, while even Aunt Belinda
+condescended to be merry. Bertram alone was silent, but as Paula caught
+short glimpses of his face, while speeding past some illuminated corner,
+she felt that it was that silence which is “the perfectest herald of
+joy.”</p>
+
+<p>“I shall make you get out and mix with the crowd,” said Mr. Sylvester.
+“I want you to feel the throb of the great heart of the city on such a
+night as this. It is as if all men were brothers—or fathers, I should
+say. People that ordinarily pass each other without a sign, nod and
+smile with pleasing recognition of the evening’s cheer. Grave and
+reverend seigniors, are not ashamed to be seen carrying packages by the
+dozen. Indeed, he who is most laden is considered the best fellow, and
+he who is so unfortunate as to show nothing but empty arms, feels shy if
+not ashamed; a condition of mind into which I shall soon fall myself, if
+we do not presently reach our destination.”</p>
+
+<p>Paula never forgot that night. As from the midst of our common-place
+memories, some one hour stands out distinct and strange, like a sweet
+foreigner in a crowd of village faces, so to Paula, this ride through
+the lighted streets, with the ensuing rush from store to store, piloted
+by Bertram and Miss Belinda, and protected by Mr. Sylvester, was her one
+weird glimpse into the Arabian Nights’ country. Why, she could not have
+told; why, she did not stop to think. She had been to all these places
+before, but never with such a heart as this—never, never with such an
+overflowing heart as this.</p>
+
+<p>“I have washed away my reproach,” cried Mr. Sylvester, coming out to the
+carriage with his arms full of bundles. “Aunt Belinda is to blame for
+this; she set the example, you see.” And with a merry laugh, he tossed
+one thing after another into Paula’s lap, reserving only one small
+package for himself. “I scarcely know what I have bought,” said he. “I
+shall be as much surprised as any one, when you come to undo the
+bundles. ‘A pretty thing,’ was all I waited to hear from the shop
+girls.”</p>
+
+<p>“There is a small printing press for one thing,” cried Paula merrily. “I
+saw the man at Holton’s eye you with a certain sort of shrewd humor, and
+hastily do it up. You paid for it; probably thinking it one of the
+‘pretty things.’ We shall have to make it over to Bertram, as being the
+only one amongst us who by any stretch of imagination can be said to be
+near enough the age of boyhood to enjoy it.”</p>
+
+<p>“I do not know about that,” cried Bertram, with a ringing infectious
+laugh, “my imagination has been luring me into believing that I am not
+the only boy in this crowd.”</p>
+
+<p>And so they went on, toying with their new-found joy as with a
+plaything, and hard would it have been to tell in which of those voices
+rang the deeper contentment.</p>
+
+<p>The opening of the packages on the library-table afforded another season
+of merriment. Such treasures as came to light! A roll of black silk,
+which could only have been meant for Miss Belinda. A casket of fretted
+silver, just large enough to hold Paula’s gloves; a scarf-ring, to which
+no one but Bertram could lay claim; a bundle of confections, a pair of
+diamond-studded bracelets, a scarf of delicate lace, articles for the
+desk, and knick-knacks for the toilet table, and last, but not least, in
+weight at least, the honest little printing-press.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, I never dreamed of this,” said Paula, “when we chose Christmas eve
+for our journey.”</p>
+
+<p>“Nor would you have done right to stay away if you had,” returned Mr.
+Sylvester gayly.</p>
+
+<p>But when the sport was all over, and Paula stood alone with Mr.
+Sylvester in the library, awaiting his last good-night, the deeper
+influences of this holy time made themselves felt, and it was with an
+air of gentle seriousness, he told her that it had been a happy
+Christmas eve to him.</p>
+
+<p>“And to me,” returned Paula. “Bertram too, seemed very happy. Would it
+be too inquisitive in me to ask what good news the little note
+contained, to work such wonders?”</p>
+
+<p>A smile such as was seldom seen on Mr. Sylvester’s face of late, flashed
+brightly over it. “It was only a card of invitation to dinner,” said he,
+“but it came from Mr. Stuyvesant, and that to Bertram means a great
+deal.”</p>
+
+<p>The surprise in Paula’s eyes made him smile again. “Will it be a great
+shock to you, if I tell you that the name of the woman for whom Bertram
+made the sacrifice of his art, was Cicely Stuyvesant?”</p>
+
+<p>“Cicely? my Cicely?” Her astonishment was great, but it was also happy.
+“Oh, I never dreamed—ah, now I see,” she went on naively. “That is the
+reason she refrained from coming to this house; she was afraid of
+meeting <i>him</i>. But to think I should never have guessed it, and she my
+dearest friend! Oh, I am very happy; I admire Bertram so much, and it is
+such a beautiful secret. And Mr. Stuyvesant has invited him to his
+house! I do not wonder you felt like making the evening a gala one. Mr.
+Stuyvesant would not do that if he were not learning to appreciate
+Bertram.”</p>
+
+<p>“No; there is method in all that Mr. Stuyvesant does. More than that, if
+I am not mistaken, he has known this beautiful secret, as you call it,
+from the first, and would be the last to receive Bertram as a guest to
+his table, if he did not mean him the best and truest encouragement.”</p>
+
+<p>“I believe you are right,” said Paula. “I remember now that one day when
+I was spending the afternoon with Cicely, he came into the room where I
+was, and finding me for the moment alone, sat down, and in his quaint
+old-fashioned manner asked me in the most abrupt way what I thought of
+Bertram Sylvester. I was surprised, but told him I considered him one of
+the noblest young men I knew, adding that if a fine mind, a kind heart,
+and a pure life were open to regard, Bertram had the right to claim the
+esteem of all his friends and associates. The old gentleman looked at me
+somewhat curiously, but nodded his head as if pleased, and merely
+remarking, ‘It is not necessary to mention we had this conversation, my
+dear,’ got up and proceeded slowly from the room. I thought it was
+simply a not unnatural curiosity concerning a young man with whom he had
+more or less business connection; but now I perceive it had a deeper
+significance.”</p>
+
+<p>“He could scarcely have found a more zealous little advocate for Bertram
+if he had hunted the city over. Bertram may be more obliged to you than
+he knows. He has been very patient, but the day of his happiness is
+approaching.”</p>
+
+<p>“And Cicely’s! I feel as if I could scarcely wait to see her with this
+new hope in her eyes. She has kept me without the door of her suspense,
+but she must let me across the threshold of her happiness.”</p>
+
+<p>The look with which Mr. Sylvester eyed the fair girl’s radiant face
+deepened. “Paula,” said be, “can you leave these new thoughts for a
+moment to hear a request I have to make?”</p>
+
+<p>She at once turned to him with her most self-forgetful smile.</p>
+
+<p>“I have been making myself a little present,” pursued he, slowly taking
+out of his pocket the single package he had reserved from the rest.
+“Open it, dear.”</p>
+
+<p>With fingers that unconsciously trembled, she hastily undid the package.
+A little box rolled out. Taking off its cover, she took out a plain gold
+locket of the style usually worn by gentlemen on their watch-chains.
+“Fasten it on for me,” said he.</p>
+
+<p>Wondering at his tone which was almost solemn, she quietly did his
+bidding. But when she essayed to lift her head upon the completion of
+her task, he gently laid his hand upon her brow and so stood for a
+moment without a word.</p>
+
+<p>“What is it?” she asked, with a sudden indrawing of her breath. “What
+moves you so, Mr. Sylvester?”</p>
+
+<p>“I have just taken a vow,” said he.</p>
+
+<p>She started back agitated and trembling.</p>
+
+<p>“I had reason to,” he murmured, “pray at nights when you go to bed, that
+I may be able to keep it.”</p>
+
+<p>“What?” sprang to her lips; but she restrained herself and only allowed
+her glance to speak.</p>
+
+<p>“Will you do it, Paula?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, oh yes!” Her whole heart seemed to rush out in the phrase. She
+drew back as at the opening of a door in an unexpected spot. Her eye had
+something of fear in it and something of secret desperation too. He
+watched her with a gaze that strangely faltered.</p>
+
+<p>“A woman’s prayers are a man’s best safeguard,” murmured he. “He must be
+a wretch who does not feel himself surrounded by a sacred halo, while he
+knows that pure lips are breathing his name in love and trust before the
+throne of the Most High.”</p>
+
+<p>“I will pray for you as for myself,” she whispered, and endeavored to
+meet his eyes. But her head drooped and she did not speak as she would
+have done a few months before; and when a few instants later they parted
+in their old fashion at the foot of the stairs, she did not turn to give
+him the accustomed smile and nod with which she used to mount the
+stairs, spiral by spiral, and disappear in her little room above. Yet he
+did not grieve at the change, but stood looking up the way she had gone,
+like a man before whom some vision of unexpected promise had opened.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<div class='chapter'><h3><a id="XXXI"></a>XXXI.</h3></div>
+
+<div class='ph4'>A QUESTION.</div>
+
+<blockquote><p>“Think on thy sins.”—<span class="smcap">Othello.</span></p></blockquote>
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+
+<p>The next morning when Mr. Sylvester came down to breakfast, he found on
+the library-table an exquisite casket, similar to the one he had given
+Paula the night before, but larger, and filled with flowers of the most
+delicious odor.</p>
+
+<p>“For Miss Fairchild,” explained Samuel, who was at that moment passing
+through the room.</p>
+
+<p>With a pang of jealous surprise, that, however, failed to betray itself
+in his steadily composed countenance, Mr. Sylvester advanced to the side
+of the table, and lifted up the card that hung attached to the beautiful
+present. The name he read there seemed to startle him; he moved away,
+and took up his paper with a dark flush on his brow, that had not
+disappeared when Miss Belinda entered the room.</p>
+
+<p>“Humph!” was her immediate exclamation, as her eye rested upon the
+conspicuous offering in the centre of the apartment. But instantly
+remembering herself, advanced with a cheerful good-morning, which
+however did not prevent her eyes from wandering with no small
+satisfaction towards this fresh evidence of Mr. Ensign’s assiduous
+regard.</p>
+
+<p>“Paula is remembered by others than ourselves,” remarked Mr. Sylvester,
+probably observing her glance.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes; she has a very attentive suitor in Mr. Ensign,” returned Miss
+Belinda shortly. “A pleasant appearing young man,” she ejaculated next
+moment; “worthy in many respects of success, I should say.”</p>
+
+<p>“Has he—do you mean to say that he has visited you in Grotewell?” asked
+Mr. Sylvester, his eye upon the paper in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>“Certainly; a few more interviews will settle it.”</p>
+
+<p>The paper rustled in Mr. Sylvester’s grasp, but his voice was composed
+if not formal, as he observed, “She regards his attentions then with
+favor?”</p>
+
+<p>“She wears his flowers in her bosom, and brightens like a flower herself
+when he is seen to approach. If allowed to go her way unhindered, I have
+but little doubt as to how it will end. Mr. Ensign is not handsome, but
+I am told that he has every other qualification likely to make a gentle
+creature like Paula happy.”</p>
+
+<p>“He is a good fellow,” exclaimed Mr. Sylvester under his breath.</p>
+
+<p>“And goodness is the first essential in the character of the man who is
+to marry Paula,” inexorably observed Miss Belinda. “An open, cheerful
+disposition, a clear conscience and a past with no dark pages in its
+history, must mark him who is to link unto his fate our pure and
+sensitive Paula. Is it not so, Mr. Sylvester?”</p>
+
+<p>The advertisements in that morning’s <i>Tribune</i> must have been unusually
+interesting, judging from the difficulty which Mr. Sylvester experienced
+in withdrawing his eyes from them. “The man whom Paula marries,” said he
+at last, “can neither be too good, too kind, or too pure. Nor shall any
+other than a good, kind, and pure man possess her,” he added in a tone
+that while low, effectually hushed even the slow-to-be-intimidated Miss
+Belinda. In another moment Paula entered.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, the morning freshness of some faces! Like the singing of birds in a
+prison, is the sound and sight of a lovely maiden coming into the grim,
+gray atmosphere of a winter breakfast room. Paula was exceptionally
+gifted with this auroral cheer which starts the day so brightly. At
+sight of her face Mr. Sylvester dropped his paper, and even Miss Belinda
+straightened herself more energetically. “Merry Christmas,” cried her
+sweet young voice, and immediately the whole day seemed to grow glad
+with promise and gaysome with ringing sleigh-bells. “It’s snowing, did
+you know it? A world of life is in the air; the flakes dance as they
+come down, like dervishes in a frenzy. It was all we lacked to make the
+day complete; now we have everything.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” said Miss Belinda, with a significant glance at the table,
+“everything.”</p>
+
+<p>Paula followed her glance, saw the silver box with its wealth of
+blossoms, and faltered back with a quick look at Mr. Sylvester’s grave
+and watchful countenance.</p>
+
+<p>“Mr. Ensign seems to be possessed of clairvoyance,” observed Miss
+Belinda easily. “How he could know that you were to be in town to-day, I
+cannot imagine.”</p>
+
+<p>“I wrote him in my last letter that in all probability I should spend
+the holidays with Mr. Sylvester,” explained Paula simply, but with a
+slow and deepening flush, that left the roses she contemplated nothing
+of which to boast. “I did so, because he proposed to visit Grotewell on
+Christmas.”</p>
+
+<p>There was a short silence in the room, then Mr. Sylvester rose, and
+remarking with polite composure, “It is a very pretty remembrance,” led
+the way into the dining-room. Paula with a slow drooping of her head
+quickly followed, while Miss Belinda brought up the rear, with the look
+of a successful diplomat.</p>
+
+<p>A meal in the Sylvester mansion was always a formal affair, but this was
+more than formal. A vague oppression seemed to fill the air; an
+oppression which Miss Belinda’s stirring conversation found it
+impossible to dissipate. In compliance to Mr. Sylvester’s request, she
+sat at the head of the table, and was the only one who seemed able to
+eat anything. For one thing she had never seen Ona in that post of
+honor, but Paula and Mr. Sylvester could not forget the graceful form
+that once occupied that seat. The first meal above a grave, no matter
+how long it has been dug, must ever seem weighted with more or less
+unreality.</p>
+
+<p>Besides, with Paula there was a vague unsettled feeling, as if some
+delicate inner balance had been too rudely shaken. She longed to fly
+away and think, and she was obliged to sit still and talk.</p>
+
+<p>The end of the meal was a relief to all parties. Miss Belinda went up
+stairs, thoughtfully shaking her firm head; Mr. Sylvester sat down again
+to his paper, and Paula advanced towards the dainty gift that awaited
+her inspection on the library table. But half way to it she paused. A
+strange shyness had seized her. With Mr. Sylvester sitting there, she
+dared not approach this delicate testimonial of another’s affection. She
+did not know as she wished to. Her eyes stole in hesitation to the
+floor. Suddenly Mr. Sylvester spoke:</p>
+
+<p>“Why do you not look at your pretty present, Paula?”</p>
+
+<p>She started, gave him a quick glance, and advanced hurriedly towards the
+table; but scarcely had she reached it when she paused, turned and
+hastened over to his side. He was still reading, or appearing to read,
+but she saw his hand tremble where it grasped the sheet, though his face
+with its clear cut profile, shone calm and cold against the dark
+background of the wall beyond.</p>
+
+<p>“I do not care to look at it now,” said she, with a hurried interlacing
+of her restless fingers.</p>
+
+<p>He turned towards her and a quick thrill passed over his countenance.
+“Sit down, Paula,” said he, “I want to talk to you.”</p>
+
+<p>She obeyed as might an automaton. Was it the tone of his voice that
+chilled her, or the studied aspect of his fixed and solemn countenance?
+He did not speak at once, but when he did, there was no faltering in his
+voice, that was lower than common, but deep, like still waters that have
+run into dark channels far from the light of day.</p>
+
+<p>“Paula, I want to ask you a question. What would you think of a man
+that, with deliberate selfishness, went into the king’s garden, and
+plucking up by the roots the most beautiful flower he could find there,
+carried it into a dungeon to pant out its exquisite life amid chill and
+darkness?”</p>
+
+<p>“I should think,” replied she, after the first startled moment of
+silence, “that the man did well, if by its one breath of sweetness, the
+flower could comfort the heart of him who sat in the dungeon.”</p>
+
+<p>The glance with which Mr. Sylvester regarded her, suddenly faltered; he
+turned with quickness towards the fire. “A moment’s joy is, then, excuse
+for a murder,” exclaimed he. “God and the angels would not agree with
+you, Paula.”</p>
+
+<p>There was a quivering in his tone, made all the more apparent by its
+studied self-possession of a moment before. She trembled where she sat,
+and opened her lips to speak, but closed them again, awed by his steady
+and abstracted gaze, now fixed before him in gloomy reverie. A moment
+passed. The clock ticking away on the mantel-piece seemed to echo the
+inevitable “Forever! never!” of Longfellow’s old song. Neither of them
+moved. At length, in a low and trembling voice, Paula spoke:</p>
+
+<p>“Is it murder, when the flower loves the dark of the dungeon more than
+it does the light of day?”</p>
+
+<p>With a subdued but passionate cry he rose hastily to his feet. “Yes,”
+said he, and drew back as if he could not bear the sight of her face or
+the glance of her eye. “Sunshine is the breath of flowers; sweet wooing
+gales, their natural atmosphere. He who meddles with a treasure so
+choice does it at his peril.” Then as she hurriedly rose in turn,
+softened his whole tone, and assuming his usual air of kindly
+fatherhood, asked her in the most natural way in the world, what he
+could do to make her happy that day.</p>
+
+<p>“Nothing,” replied she, with a droop of her head; “I think I will go and
+see Cicely.”</p>
+
+<p>A short sigh escaped him. “The carriage shall be ready for you,” said
+he. “I hope your friend’s happiness will overflow into your own gentle
+bosom, and make the day a very pleasant one. God bless your young sweet
+heart, my Paula!”</p>
+
+<p>Her breast heaved, her large, dark, mellow eyes flashed with one quick
+glance towards his face, then she drew back, and in another moment left
+his side and quietly glided from the room. His very life seemed to go
+with her, yet he did not stir; but he sighed deeply when, upon turning
+towards the library-table, he found that she had carried away with her
+the silent testimonial of another and more fortunate man’s love and
+devotion.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<div class='chapter'><h3><a id="XXXII"></a>XXXII.</h3></div>
+
+<div class='ph4'>FULL TIDE.</div>
+
+<blockquote><p>“A skirmish of wit between them.”—<span class="smcap">Much Ado About Nothing.</span></p></blockquote>
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+
+<p>Man thinks he is strong, and lays his foundations, raises his walls, and
+dreams of his completed turrets, without reckoning the force of the
+gales or the insidious inundating of the waters that may bring low the
+mounting structure before its time. When with a firm hand, Mr. Sylvester
+thrust back from his heart the one delight which of all the world could
+afford, seemed to him at that moment the dearest and the best, he
+thought the struggle was over and the victory won. It had not even
+commenced. He was made startlingly alive to this fact at the very next
+interview he had with Paula. She had just come from Miss Stuyvesant, and
+the reflection of her friend’s scarcely comprehended joy was on her
+countenance, together with a look he could not comprehend, but which
+stirred and haunted him, until he felt forced to ask if she had seen any
+other of her old friends, in the short visit she had paid.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” said she, with a distressed blush. “Mr. Ensign was unexpectedly
+there.”</p>
+
+<p>It is comparatively easy to restrain your own hand from snatching at a
+treasure you greatly covet, but it is much more difficult to behold
+another and a lesser one grasp and carry it away before your eyes. He
+succeeded in hiding the shadow that oppressed him, but he was
+constrained to recognize the sharpness of the conflict that was about to
+be waged in the recesses of his own breast. A conflict, because he knew
+that a lift of his finger, or a glance of his eye would decide the
+matter then, while in a week, perhaps, the glamour of a young sunshiny
+love, would have worked its inevitable result, and the happiness that
+had so unexpectedly startled upon him in his monotonous and sombre path,
+would have wandered forever out of his reach. How did he meet its
+unexpected rush. Sternly at first, but with greater and greater wavering
+as the days went by, each one revealing fresh beauties of character and
+deeper springs of feeling in the enchanting girl thus brought in all her
+varied charm before his eyes. Why should he not be happy? If there were
+dark pages in his life, had they not long ago been closed and sealed,
+and was not the future bright with promise? A man of his years was not
+through with life. He felt at times as he gazed upon her face with its
+indescribable power of awakening far-reaching thoughts and feelings in
+callous breasts long unused to the holy influence of either, that he had
+just begun to live; that the golden country, with its enticing vistas,
+lay all before him, and that the youth, which he had missed, had somehow
+returned to his prime, fresh with more than its usual enthusiasm and
+bright with more than its wonted hopes and projects. With this glorious
+woman at his side, life would be new indeed, and if new why not pure and
+sweet and noble? What was there to hinder him from making the existence
+of this sweet soul a walking amongst gentle duties, satisfied dreams and
+holy aspirations? A past remorse? Why the gates could be closed on that!
+A strain of innate weakness for the world’s good opinion and applause?
+Ah! with love in his life such a weakness must disappear; besides had he
+not taken a vow on her dear head, that ought to hedge him about as with
+angel’s wings in the hour of temptation? Men with his experience do not
+invoke the protection of innocence to guard a degraded soul. Why, then,
+all this hesitation? A great boon was being offered to him after years
+of loneliness and immeasurable longing; was it not the will of heaven,
+that he should meet and enjoy this unexpected grace? He dared to stop
+and ask, and once daring to ask, the insidious waters found their way
+beneath the foundations of his resolution, and the lofty structure he
+had reared in such self-confidence, began to tremble where it stood,
+though as yet it betrayed no visible sign of weakness.</p>
+
+
+<p>Meanwhile, society with its innumerable demands, had drawn the beautiful
+young girl within its controlling grasp. She must go here, she must go
+there; she must lend her talents to this, her beauty to that. Before she
+had decided whether she ought to remain in the city a week, two had
+flown by, and in all this time Mr. Ensign had been ever at her side,
+brightening in her own despite, hours which might else have been sad,
+and surrounding her difficult path with proofs of his silent and wary
+devotion. A golden net seemed to be closing around her, and, though as
+yet, she had given no token of a special recognition of her position,
+Miss Belinda betrayed by the uniform complacence of her demeanor, that
+she for one regarded the matter as effectually settled.</p>
+
+<p>The success which Bertram had met in his first visit at Mr.
+Stuyvesant’s, was not the least agitating factor in this fortnight’s
+secret history. He was too much a part of the home life at Mr.
+Sylvester’s, not to make the lightest thrill of his frank and sensitive
+nature felt by all who invaded its precincts. And he was in a state of
+repressed expectancy at this time, that unconsciously created an
+atmosphere about him of vague but restless excitement. The hearts of all
+who encountered his look of concentrated delight, must unconsciously
+beat with his. A strain sweeter than his old-time music was in his
+voice. When he played upon the piano, which was but seldom, it was as if
+he breathed out his soul before the holy images. When he walked, he
+seemed to tread on air. His every glance was a question as to whether
+this great joy, for which he had so long and patiently waited, was to be
+his? Love, living and apotheosized, appeared to blaze before them, and
+no one can look on love without feeling somewhere in his soul the stir
+of those deep waters, whose pulsing throb even in the darkness of
+midnight, proves that we are the children of God.</p>
+
+<p>Cicely was uncommunicative, but her face, when Paula beheld it, was like
+the glowing countenance of some sculptured saint, from which the veil is
+slowly being withdrawn.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly there came an evening when the force of the spell that held all
+these various hearts enchained gave way. It was the night of a private
+entertainment of great elegance, to be held at the house of a friend of
+Miss Stuyvesant. Bertram had received formal permission from the father
+of Cicely, to act as his daughter’s escort, and the fact had transformed
+him from a hopeful dreamer, into a man determined to speak and know his
+fate at once. Paula was engaged to take part in the entertainment, and
+the sight of her daintily-decked figure leaving the house with Mr.
+Ensign, was the last drop in the slowly gathering tide that was secretly
+swelling in Mr. Sylvester’s breast; and it was with a sudden outrush of
+his whole determined nature that he stepped upstairs, dressed himself in
+evening attire, and deliberately followed them to the place where they
+were going. “The wealth of the Indies is slipping from my grasp,” was
+his passionate exclamation, as he rode through the lighted streets. “I
+cannot see it go; if she can care more for me than for this sleek,
+merry-hearted young fellow, she shall. I know that my love is to his,
+what the mighty ocean is to a placid lake, and with such love one ought
+to be panoplied as with resisting steel.”</p>
+
+<p>A stream of light and music met him, as he went up the stoop of the
+house that held his treasure. It seemed to intoxicate him. Glow, melody
+and perfume, were so many expressions of Paula. His friends, of whom
+there were many present, received him with tokens of respect, not
+unmingled with surprise. It was the first time he had been seen in
+public since his wife’s death, and they could not but remark upon the
+cheerfulness of his bearing, and the almost exalted expression of his
+proud and restless eye. Had Paula accompanied him, they might have
+understood his emotion, but with the beautiful girl under the care of
+one of the most eligible gentlemen in town, what could have happened to
+Mr. Sylvester to make his once melancholy countenance blazon like a star
+amid this joyous and merrily-laughing throng. He did not enlighten them,
+but moved from group to group, searching for Paula. Suddenly the thought
+flashed upon him, “Is it only an hour or so since I smiled upon her in
+my own hall, and shook my head when she asked me with a quick, pleading
+look, to come with them to this very spot?” It seemed days, since that
+time. The rush of these new thoughts, the final making up of this
+slowly-maturing purpose, the sudden allowing of his heart to regard her
+as a woman to be won, had carried the past away as by the sweep of a
+mountain torrent. He could not believe he had ever known a moment of
+hesitancy, ever looked at her as a father, ever bid her go on her way
+and leave the prisoner to his fate. He must always have felt like this;
+such momentum could not have been gathered in an hour; she must know
+that he loved her wildly, deeply, sacredly, wholly, with the fibre of
+his mind, his body and his soul; that to call her his in life and in
+death, was the one demanding passion of his existence, making the past a
+dream, and the future—ah, he dared not question that! He must behold
+her face before he could even speculate upon the realities lying behind
+fate’s down-drawn curtain.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile fair faces and lovely forms flitted before him, carrying his
+glance along in their train, but only because youth was a symbol of
+Paula. If these fresh young girls could smile and look back upon him,
+with that lingering glance which his presence ever invoked, why not she
+who was not only sweet, tender, and lovely, but gifted with a nature
+that responded to the deep things of life, and the stern passions of
+potent humanity. Could a merry laugh lure her while he stood by? Was the
+sunshine the natural atmosphere of this flower, that had bloomed under
+his eye so sweetly and shed out its innocent fragrance, at the approach
+of his solemn-pacing foot? He began to mirror before his mind’s eye the
+startled look of happy wonder with which she would greet his impassioned
+glance, when released from whatever duties might be now pressing upon
+her; she wandered into these rooms, to find him awaiting her, when
+suddenly there was a stir in the throng, a pleased and excited rush, and
+the large curtain which he had vaguely noticed hanging at one end of the
+room, uplifted and—was it Paula? this coy, brilliant, saucy-eyed
+Florentine maiden, stepping out from a bower of greenery, with finger on
+her lip, and a backward glance of saucy defiance that seemed to people
+the verdant walks behind her with gallant cavaliers, eager to follow
+upon her footsteps? Yes; he could not be mistaken; there was but one
+face like that in the world. It was Paula, but Paula with youth’s
+merriest glamour upon her, a glamour that had caught its radiant light
+from other thoughts than those in which he had been engaged. He bowed
+his head, and a shudder went through him like that which precedes the
+falling knife of the executioner. Even the applause that greeted the
+revelation of so much loveliness and alluring charm, passed over him
+like a dream. He was battling with his first recognition of the
+possibility of his being too late. Suddenly her voice was heard.</p>
+
+<p>She was speaking aloud to herself, this Florentine maiden who had
+outstripped her lover in the garden, but the tone was the same he had
+heard beside his own hearthstone, and the archness that accompanied it
+had frequently met and encouraged some cheerful expression of his own.
+These are the words she uttered. Listen with him to the <i>naĂŻve</i>, half
+tender, half pettish voice, and mark with his eyes the alternate lights
+and shadows that flit across her cheek as she broodingly murmurs:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>He is certainly a most notable gallant. His “Good day, lady!”
+and his “Good even to you!” are flavored with the cream of
+perfectest courtesy. But gallantry while it sits well upon a
+man, does not make him one, any more than a feather makes the
+cap it adorns. For a Tuscan he hath also a certain comeliness,
+but then I have ever sworn, in good faith too, that I would not
+marry a Tuscan, were he the best made man in Italy. Then there
+is his glance, which proclaims to all men’s understandings that
+he loves me, which same seems overbold; but then his smile!</p>
+
+<p>Well, for a smile it certainly does credit to his wit, but one
+cannot live upon smiles; though if one could, one might consent
+to make a trial of his—and starve belike for her pains. (<i>She
+drops her cheek into her hand and stands musing.</i>)</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester drew a deep breath and let his eyes fall, when suddenly a
+hum ran through the audience about him, and looking quickly up, he
+beheld Mr. Ensign dressed in full cavalier costume, standing behind the
+musing maiden with a half merry, half tender gleam upon his face, that
+made the thickly beating heart of his rival shrink as if clutched in an
+iron vise. What followed, he heard as we do the words of a sentence read
+to us from the judge’s seat. The cavalier spoke first and a thousand
+dancing colors seemed to flash in the merry banter that followed.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p><i>Martino.</i>—She muses, and on no other than myself, as I am
+ready to swear by that coy and tremulous glance. I will move
+her to avow it. (<i>Advances.</i>) Fair lady, greeting! A kiss for
+your sweet thoughts.</p>
+
+<p><i>Nita.</i> (<i>With a start</i>).—A kiss, Signior Martino? You must
+acknowledge that were but a sorry exchange for thoughts like
+mine, so if it please you, I will keep my thoughts and you your
+kiss; and lest it should seem ungracious in me to give nothing
+upon your asking, I will bestow upon you my most choice good
+day, and so leave you to your meditations. (<i>Curtseys and is
+about to depart.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><i>Martino.</i>—You have the true generosity, lady; you give away
+what it costs you the dearest to part from. Nay, rumple not
+your lip; it is the truth for all your pretty poutings!
+Convince me it is not.</p>
+
+<p><i>Nita.</i>—Your pardon, but that would take words, and words
+would take time, and time given to one of your persuasion would
+refute all my arguments on the face of them. (<i>Still
+retreating.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><i>Martino.</i>—Well, lady, since it is your pleasure to be
+consistent, rather than happy, adieu. Had you stayed but as
+long as the bee pauses on an oleander blossom, you would have
+heard—</p>
+
+<p><i>Nita.</i>—Buzzing, signior?</p>
+
+<p><i>Martino.</i>—Yes, if by that word you would denominate vows of
+constancy and devotion. For I do greatly love you, and would
+tell you so.</p>
+
+<p><i>Nita.</i>—And for that you expect me to linger! as though vows
+were new to my ears, and words of love as strange to my
+understanding as tropical birds to the eyes of a Norseman.</p>
+
+<p><i>Martino.</i>—If you do love me, you will linger.</p>
+
+<p><i>Nita.</i>—Yet if I do, (<i>Slowly advancing</i>) be assured it is
+from some other motive than love.</p>
+
+<p><i>Martino.</i>—So it be not from hate I am contented.</p>
+
+<p><i>Nita.</i>—To be contented with little, proves you a man of much
+virtue.</p>
+
+<p><i>Martino.</i>—When I have you, I am contented with much.</p>
+
+<p><i>Nita.</i>—That <i>when</i> is a wise insertion, signior; it saves you
+from shame and me from anger.—Hark! some one calls.</p>
+
+<p><i>Martino.</i>—None other but the wind; it is a kindly breeze, and
+grieves to hear how harsh a pretty maiden can be to the lover
+who adores her.</p>
+
+<p><i>Nita.</i>—Please your worship, I do not own a lover.</p>
+
+<p><i>Martino.</i>—Then mend your poverty, and accept one.</p>
+
+<p><i>Nita.</i>—I am no beggar to accept of alms.</p>
+
+
+<p><i>Martino.</i>—In this case, he who offers is the beggar.</p>
+
+<p><i>Nita.</i>—I am too young to wear a jewel of so much pretension.</p>
+
+<p><i>Martino.</i>—Time is a cure for youth, and marriage a happy
+speeder of time.</p>
+
+<p><i>Nita.</i>—But youth needs no cure, and if marriage speedeth
+time, I’ll live a maid and die one. The days run swift enough
+without goading, Signior Martino.</p>
+
+<p><i>Martino.</i>—But lady—</p>
+
+<p><i>Nita.</i>.—Nay, your tongue will outstrip time, if you put not a
+curb upon it. In faith, signior, I would not seem rude, but if
+in your courtesy you would consent to woo some other maiden
+to-day, why I would strive and bear it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Martino.</i>—When I stoop to woo any other lady than thee, the
+moon shall hide its face from the earth, and shine upon it no
+more.</p>
+
+<p><i>Nita.</i>—Your thoughts are daring in their flight to-day.</p>
+
+<p><i>Martino.</i>—They are in search of your love.</p>
+
+<p><i>Nita.</i>—Alack, your wings will fail.</p>
+
+<p><i>Martino.</i>—Ay, when they reach their goal.</p>
+
+<p><i>Nita.</i>—Dost think to reach it?</p>
+
+<p><i>Martino.</i>—Shall I not, lady?</p>
+
+<p><i>Nita.</i>—’Tis hard to believe it possible, yet who can tell?
+You are not so handsome, signior, that one would die for you.</p>
+
+<p><i>Martino.</i>—No, lady; but what goes to make other men’s faces
+fair, goes to make my heart great. The virtue of my manhood
+rests in the fact that I love you.</p>
+
+<p><i>Nita.</i>—Faith! so in some others. ’Tis the common fault of the
+gallants, I find. If that is all—</p>
+
+<p><i>Martino.</i>—But I will always love you, even unto death.</p>
+
+<p><i>Nita.</i>—I doubt it not, so death come soon enough.</p>
+
+<p><i>Martino.</i> (<i>Taps his poiniard with his hand.</i>)—Would you
+have it come now, and so prove me true to my word?</p>
+
+<p><i>Nita.</i> (<i>Demurely</i>).—I am no judge, to utter the doom that
+your presumption merits.</p>
+
+<p><i>Martino.</i>—Your looks speak doom, and your sweet lips hide a
+sword keener than that of justice.</p>
+
+<p><i>Nita.</i>—Have you tried them, signior, that you speak so
+knowingly concerning them? (<i>Retreating.</i>) Your words,
+methinks, are somewhat like your kisses, all breath and no
+substance.</p>
+
+<p><i>Martino.</i>—Lady! sweet one! (<i>Follows her.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><i>Nita.</i>—Nay, I am gone. (<i>Exit.</i>)</p>
+
+<p><i>Martino.</i>—I were of the fools’ fold, did I fail to follow at
+a beck so gentle. (<i>Exit.</i>)</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>That was not all, but it was all that Mr. Sylvester heard. Hastily
+retreating, he went out into the corridor and ere long found himself in
+the conservatory. He felt shaken; felt that he could not face all this
+unmoved. He knew he had been gazing at a play; that because this
+Florentine maiden looked at her lover with coyness, gentleness,
+tenderness perhaps, it did not follow that she, his Paula, loved the
+real man behind this dashing cavalier. But the possibility was there,
+and in his present frame of mind could not be encountered without pain.
+He dared not stay where men’s eyes could follow him, or women’s delicate
+glances note the heaving of his chest. He had in the last three hours
+given himself over so completely to hope. He realized it now though he
+would not have believed it before. With man’s usual egotism he had felt
+that it was only necessary for him to come to a decision, to behold all
+else fall out according to his mind. He had forgotten for the nonce the
+power of a youthful lover, eager to serve, ready to wait, careful to
+press his way at every advantage. He could have cursed himself for the
+folly of his delay, as he strode up and down among the flowering shrubs
+in the solitude which the attractions of the play created. “Fool! fool!”
+he muttered between his teeth, “to halt on the threshold of Paradise
+till the door closed in my face, when a step would have carried me
+where—” He grew dizzy as he contemplated. The goal looks never so fair
+as when just within reach of a rival’s hand.</p>
+
+<p>A vigorous clapping, followed by a low gush of music, woke him at last
+to the realization that the little drama had terminated. With a hasty
+movement he was about to return to the parlors, when he heard the low
+murmur of voices, and on looking up, saw a youthful couple advancing
+into the conservatory, whom at first glance he recognized for Bertram
+and Miss Stuyvesant. They were absorbed in each other, and believing
+themselves alone, came on without fear, presenting such a picture of
+love and deep, unspeakable joy, that Mr. Sylvester paused and gazed upon
+them as upon the sudden embodiment of a cherished vision of his own
+imaginings. Bertram was speaking ordinary words no doubt, words suited
+to the occasion and the time, but his voice was attuned to the beatings
+of his long repressed heart, while the bend of his proud young head and
+the glance of his yearning eye were more eloquent than speech, of the
+leaning of his whole nature in love and protection towards the dainty,
+flushing creature at his side. It was a sight to make old hearts young
+and a less happy lover sick with envy. In spite of his gratification at
+his nephew’s success, Mr. Sylvester’s brow contracted, and it was with
+difficulty he could subdue himself into the appearance of calm
+benevolence necessary to pass them with propriety. Had it been Paula and
+Mr. Ensign!</p>
+
+<p>He did not know how it was that he managed to find her at last. But just
+as he was beginning to realize that wisdom demanded his departure from
+this scene, he suddenly came upon her sitting with her face turned
+toward the crowd and waiting—for whom? He had never seen her look so
+beautiful, possibly because he had never before allowed himself to gaze
+upon her with a lover’s eyes. She had exchanged her piquant Roman
+costume for the pearl gray satin in which Ona had delighted to array
+her, and its rich substance and delicate neutral tint harmonized well
+with the amber brocade of the curtain against which she sat.</p>
+
+<p>Power, passion and purity breathed in her look, and lent enchantment to
+her form. She was poetry’s unique jewel, and at this moment, thought
+rather than merriment sat upon her lips, and haunted her somewhat
+tremulous smiles. He approached her as a priest to his shrine, but once
+at her side, once in view of her first startled blush, stooped
+passionately, and forgetting everything but the suspense at his heart,
+asked with a look and tone such as he had never before bestowed upon
+her, if the play which he had seen that evening had been real, or only
+the baseless fabric of a dream.</p>
+
+<p>She understood him and drew back with a look almost of awe, shaking her
+head and replying in a startled way, “I do not know, I dare not say, I
+scarcely have taken time to think.”</p>
+
+<p>“Then take it,” he murmured in a voice that shook her body and soul,
+“for <i>I</i> must know, if <i>he</i> does not.” And without venturing another
+word, or supplying by look or gesture any explanation of his unexpected
+appearance, or as equally unexpected departure, he bowed before her as
+if she had been a queen instead of the child he had been wont in other
+days to regard her, and speedily left her side.</p>
+
+<p>But he had not taken two steps before he paused. Mr. Ensign was
+approaching.</p>
+
+<p>“Mr. Sylvester! you are worse than the old woman of the tale, who
+declaring she would not, that nothing could ever induce her to—<i>did</i>.”</p>
+
+<p>“You utter a deeper truth than you realize,” returned that gentleman,
+with a grave emphasis meant rather for her ears than his. “It is the
+curse of mortals to overrate their strength in the face of great
+temptations. I am no exception to the rule.” And with a second bow that
+included this apparently triumphant lover within its dignified sweep, he
+calmly proceeded upon his way, and in a few moments had left the house.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Ensign, who for all his careless disposition, was quick to recognize
+depths in others, stared after his commanding figure until he had
+disappeared, then turned and looked at Paula. Why did his heart sink,
+and the lights and joy and promise of the evening seem to turn dark and
+shrivel to nothing before his eyes!</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<div class='chapter'><h3><a id="XXXIII"></a>XXXIII.</h3></div>
+
+<div class='ph4'>TWO LETTERS.</div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“I have no other but a woman’s reason,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">I think him so, because I think him so.”—<span class="smcap">Two Gentlemen of Verona.</span><br></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<p>A woman who has submitted to the undivided attentions of a gentleman for
+any length of time, feels herself more or less bound to him, whether any
+special words of devotion have passed between them or not, particularly
+if from sensitiveness of nature, she has manifested any pleasure in his
+society. Paula therefore felt as if her wings had been caught in a
+snare, when Mr. Ensign upon leaving her that evening, put a small note
+in her hand, saying that he would do himself the pleasure of calling for
+his reply the next day. She did not need to open it. She knew
+intuitively the manly honest words with which he would be likely to
+offer his heart and life for her acceptance; yet she did open it almost
+as soon as she reached her room, sitting down in her outside wraps for
+the purpose. She was not disappointed. Every line was earnest, ardent,
+and respectful. A true love and a happy cheerful home awaited her
+if—the stupendous meaning latent in an <i>if</i>!</p>
+
+<p>With folded hands lying across the white page, with glance fixed on the
+fire always kept burning brightly in the grate, she sat querying her own
+soul and the awful future. He was such a charming companion; life had
+flashed and glimmered with a thousand lights and colors since she knew
+him; his very laugh made her want to sing. With him she would move in
+sunshiny paths, open to the regard of all the world, giving and
+receiving good. Life would need no veils and love no check. A placid
+stream would bear her on through fields of smiling verdure. Dread hopes,
+strange fears, uneasy doubts and vague unrests, would not disturb the
+heart that rested its faith upon his frank and manly bosom. A breeze
+blew through his life that would sweep all such evils from the path of
+her who walked in trust and love by his side. In trust and love; ah!
+that was it. She trusted him, but did she love him? At one time she had
+been convinced that she did, else these past few weeks would have owned
+a different history. He came upon her so brightly amid her gloom; filled
+her days with such genial thoughts, and drew the surface of her soul so
+unconsciously after him. It was like a zephyr sweeping over the sea;
+every billow that leaps to follow seems to own the power of that passing
+wind. But could she think so now, since she had found that the mere
+voice and look of another man had power to awaken depths such as she
+could not name and scarcely as yet had been able to recognize? that
+though the billows might flow under the genial smile of her young lover,
+the tide rose only at the call of a deeper voice and a more imposing
+presence?</p>
+
+<p>She was a thinking spirit and recoiled from yielding too readily to any
+passing impulse. Love was a sacrament in her eyes; something entirely
+too precious to be accepted in counterfeit. She must know the secret of
+her inclinations, must weigh the influence that swayed her, for once
+given over to earth’s sublimest passion, she felt that it would have
+power to sweep her on to an eternity of bliss or suffering.</p>
+
+<p>She therefore forced herself to probe deep into the past, and pitilessly
+asked her conscience, what her emotions had been in reference to Mr.
+Sylvester before she positively knew that love for her as a woman had
+taken the place of his former fatherly regard. Her blushing cheek seemed
+to answer for her. Right or wrong, her life had never been complete away
+from his presence. She was lonesome and unsatisfied. When Mr. Ensign
+came she thought her previous unrest was explained, but the letter from
+Cicely describing Mr. Sylvester as sick and sorrowful, had withdrawn the
+veil from the delusion, and though it had settled again with Mr.
+Sylvester’s studied refusal to accept her devotion, was by this
+evening’s betrayal utterly wrenched away and trampled into oblivion. By
+every wild throb of her heart at the sound of his voice in her ear, by
+every out-reaching of her soul to enter into his every mood, by the deep
+sensation of rest she felt in his presence, and the uneasy longing that
+absorbed her in his absence, she knew that she loved Mr. Sylvester as
+she never could his younger, blither, and perhaps nobler rival. Each
+word spoken by him lay treasured in her heart of hearts. When she
+thought of manly beauty, his face and figure started upon her from the
+surrounding shadows, making all romance possible and poetry the truest
+expression of the human soul. While she lived, he must ever seem the man
+of men to charm the eye, affect the heart, and move the soul. Yet she
+hesitated. Why?</p>
+
+
+<p>There is nothing so hard to acknowledge to ourselves as the presence of
+a blemish in the character of those we love and long to revere. It was
+like giving herself to the rack to drag from its hiding-place and
+confront in all its hideous deformity, the doubt which, unconfessed
+perhaps, had of late mingled with her great reverence and admiring
+affection for this not easily to be comprehended man. But in this
+momentous hour she had power to do it. Conscience and self-respect
+demanded that the image before which she was ready to bow with such
+abandon, should be worthy her worship. She was not one who could carry
+offerings to a clouded shrine. She must see the glory shining from
+between the cherubim. “I must worship with my spirit as well as with my
+body, and how can I do that if there is a spot on his manhood, or a
+false note in his heart. If I did but know the secret of his past; why
+the prisoner sits in the dungeon! He is gentle, he is kindly, he loves
+goodness and strives to lead me in the paths of purity and wisdom, and
+yet something that is not good or pure clings to him, which he has never
+been able to shake loose. I perceive it in his melancholy glance; I
+catch its accents in his uneven tones; it rises upon me from his most
+thoughtful words, and makes his taking of a vow fearfully and warningly
+significant. Yet how much he is honored by his fellow-men, and with what
+reliance they look up to him for guidance and support. If I only knew
+the secrets of his heart!” thought she.</p>
+
+<p>It was a trembling scale that hung balancing in that young girl’s hand
+that night. On one side, frankness, cheerfulness, manly worth, honest
+devotion, and a home with every adjunct of peace and prosperity; on the
+other, love, gratitude, longing, admiration, and a dark shadow
+enveloping all, called doubt. The scale would not adjust itself. It tore
+her heart to turn from Mr. Sylvester, it troubled her conscience to
+dismiss the thought of Mr. Ensign. The question was yet undecided when
+she rose and began putting away her ornaments for the night.</p>
+
+<p>What was there on her dressing-table that made her pause with such a
+start, and cast that look of half beseeching inquiry at her own image in
+the glass? Only another envelope with her name written upon it. But the
+way in which she took it in her hand, and the half guilty air with which
+she stole back with it to the fire, would have satisfied any looker-on I
+imagine, that conscience or no conscience, debate or no debate, the
+writer of these lines had gained a hold upon her heart, which no other
+could dispute.</p>
+
+<p>It was a compactly written note and ran thus:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>“A man is not always responsible for what he does in moments of
+great suspense or agitation. But if, upon reflection, he finds
+that he has spoken harshly or acted unwisely, it is his duty to
+remedy his fault; and therefore it is that I write you this
+little note. Paula, I love you; not as I once did, with a
+fatherly longing and a protective delight, but passionately,
+yearningly, and entirely, with the whole force of my somewhat
+disappointed life; as a man loves for whom the world has
+dissolved leaving but one creature in it, and that a woman. I
+showed you this too plainly to-night. I have no right to
+startle or intimidate your sweet soul into any relation that
+might hereafter curb or dissatisfy you; if you can love me
+freely, with no back-lookings to any younger lover left behind,
+know that naught you could bestow, can ever equal the world of
+love and feeling which I long to lavish upon you from my heart
+of hearts. But if another has already won upon your affections
+too much for you to give an undivided response to my appeal,
+then by all the purity and innocence of your nature, forget I
+have ever marred the past or disturbed the present by any word
+warmer than that of a father.</p>
+
+<p>“I shall not meet you at breakfast and possibly not at dinner
+to-morrow, but when evening comes I shall look for my soul’s
+dearer and better half, or my childless manhood’s nearest and
+most cherished friend, as God pleaseth and your own heart and
+conscience shall decree.</p>
+
+<p>“<span class="smcap">Edward Sylvester.</span>”</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Miss Belinda was very much surprised to be awakened early the next
+morning, by a pair of loving arms clasped yearningly about her neck.</p>
+
+<p>Looking up, she descried Paula kneeling beside her bed in the faint
+morning light, her cheeks burning, and her eyelids drooping; and
+guessing perhaps how it was, started up from her recumbent position with
+an energy strongly suggestive of the charger, that smells the battle
+afar off.</p>
+
+<p>“What has happened?” she asked. “You look as if you had not slept a
+wink.”</p>
+
+<p>For reply Paula pulled aside the curtain at the head of her bed, and
+slipped into her hand Mr. Ensign’s letter. Miss Belinda read it
+conscientiously through, with many grunts of approval, and having
+finished it, laid it down with a significant nod, after which she turned
+and surveyed Paula with keen but cautious scrutiny. “And you don’t know
+what answer to give,” she asked.</p>
+
+<p>“I should,” said Paula, “if—Oh aunt, you know what stands in my way! I
+have seen it in your eyes for some time. There is some one else—”</p>
+
+<p>“But he has not spoken?” vigorously ejaculated her aunt.</p>
+
+<p>Without answering, Paula put into her hand, with a slow reluctance she
+had not manifested before, a second little note, and then hid her head
+amid the bedclothes, waiting with quickly beating heart for what her
+aunt might say.</p>
+
+<p>She did not seem in haste to speak, but when she did, her words came
+with a quick sigh that echoed very drearily in the young girl’s anxious
+ears. “You have been placed by this in a somewhat painful position. I
+sympathize with you, my child. It is very hard to give denial to a
+benefactor.”</p>
+
+<p>Paula’s head drew nearer to her aunt’s breast, her arms crept round her
+neck. “But must I?” she breathed.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Belinda knitted her brows with great force, and stared severely at
+the wall opposite. “I am sorry there is any question about it,” she
+replied.</p>
+
+<p>Paula started up and looked at her with sudden determination. “Aunt,”
+said she, “what is your objection to Mr. Sylvester?”</p>
+
+<p>Miss Belinda shook her head, and pushing the girl gently away, hurriedly
+arose and began dressing with great rapidity. Not until she was entirely
+prepared for breakfast did she draw Paula to her, and prepare to answer
+her question.</p>
+
+<p>“My objection to him is, that I do not thoroughly understand him. I am
+afraid of the skeleton in the closet, Paula. I never feel at ease when I
+am with him, much as I admire his conversation and appreciate the
+undoubtedly noble instincts of his heart. His brow is not open enough to
+satisfy an eye which has accustomed itself to the study of human
+nature.”</p>
+
+<p>“He has had many sorrows!” Paula faintly exclaimed, stricken by this
+echo of her own doubts.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” returned her aunt, “and sorrow bows the head and darkens the eye,
+but it does not make the glance wavering or its expression mysterious.”</p>
+
+<p>“Some sorrows might,” urged Paula tremulously, arguing as much with her
+own doubts as with those of her aunt. “His have been of no ordinary
+nature. I have never told you, aunt, but there were circumstances
+attending Cousin Ona’s death that made it especially harrowing. He had a
+stormy interview with her the very morning she was killed; words passed
+between them, and he left her with a look that was almost desperate.
+When he next saw her, she lay lifeless and inert before him. I sometimes
+think that the shadow that fell upon him at that hour will never pass
+away.”</p>
+
+<p>“Do you know what was the subject of their disagreement?” asked Miss
+Belinda anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>“No, but I have reason to believe it had something to do with business
+affairs, as nothing else could ever arouse Cousin Ona into being at all
+disagreeable.”</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t like that phrase, <i>business affairs</i>; like charity, it covers
+entirely too much. Have you never had any doubts yourself about Mr.
+Sylvester?”</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, you touch me to the quick, aunt. I may have had my doubts, but when
+I look back on the past, I cannot see as they have any very substantial
+foundation. Supposing, aunt, that he has been merely unfortunate, and I
+should live to find that I had discarded one whose heart was darkened by
+nothing but sorrow? I should never forgive myself, nor could life yield
+me any recompense that would make amends for a sacrifice so
+unnecessary.”</p>
+
+<p>“You love him, then, very dearly, Paula?”</p>
+
+<p>A sudden light fell on the young girl’s face. “Hearts cannot tell their
+love,” said she, “but since I received this letter from him, it has
+seemed as if my life hung balancing on the question, as to whether he is
+worthy of a woman’s homage. If he is not, I would give my life to have
+him so. The world is only dear to me now as it holds him.”</p>
+
+<p>Miss Belinda picked up Mr. Ensign’s letter with trembling fingers. “I
+thought you were safe when the younger man came to woo,” said she.
+“Girls, as a rule, prefer what is bright to what is sombre, and Mr.
+Ensign is truly a very agreeable as well as worthy young man.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, aunt, and he came very near stealing my heart as he undoubtedly
+did my fancy, but a stronger hand snatched it away, and now I do not
+know what to do or how to act, so as to awaken in the future no remorse
+or vain regrets.”</p>
+
+<p>Miss Belinda opened the letters again and consulted their contents in a
+matter-of-fact way. “Mr. Ensign proposes to come this afternoon for his
+answer, while Mr. Sylvester defers seeing you till evening. What if I
+seek Mr. Sylvester this morning and have a little conversation with him,
+which shall determine, for once and all, the question which so troubles
+us? Would you not find it easier to meet Mr. Ensign when he comes?”</p>
+
+<p>“You talk to Mr. Sylvester, and upon such a topic! Oh, I could not bear
+that. Pardon me, aunt, but I think I am more jealous of his feelings
+than of my own. If his secret can be learned in a half-hour’s talk, it
+must be listened to by no one but myself. And I believe it can,” she
+murmured reverently; “he is so tender of me he would never let me go
+blindfold into any path, concerning which I had once expressed anxiety.
+If I ask him whether there is any good reason before God or man why I
+should not give him my entire faith and homage, he will answer honestly,
+though it be the destruction of his hopes to do so?”</p>
+
+<p>“Have you such trust as that in his uprightness as a lover, and the
+guardian of your happiness?”</p>
+
+<p>“Have not you, aunt?”</p>
+
+<p>And Miss Belinda remembering his words on the occasion of his first
+proposal to adopt Paula, was forced to acknowledge that she had.</p>
+
+<p>So without further preliminaries, it was agreed upon that Paula should
+refrain from making a final decision until she had eased her heart by an
+interview with Mr. Sylvester.</p>
+
+<p>“Meantime, you can request Mr. Ensign to wait another day for his
+answer,” said Miss Belinda.</p>
+
+<p>But Paula with a look of astonishment shook her head. “Is it you who
+would counsel me to such a piece of coquetry as that?” said she. “No,
+dear aunt, my heart is not with Mr. Ensign, as you know, and it is
+impossible for me to encourage him. If Mr. Sylvester should prove
+unworthy of my affection, I must bear, as best I may, the loss which
+must accrue; but till he does, let me not dishonor my womanhood by
+allowing hope to enter, even for a passing moment, the breast of his
+rival.”</p>
+
+<p>Miss Belinda blushed, and drew her niece fondly towards her. “You are
+right,” said she, “and my great desire for your happiness has led me
+into error. Honesty is the noblest adjunct of all true love, and must
+never be sacrificed to considerations of selfish expediency. The refusal
+which you contemplate bestowing upon Mr. Ensign, must be forwarded to
+him at once.”</p>
+
+<p>And with a final embrace, in which Miss Belinda allowed herself to let
+fall some few natural tears of disappointment, she dismissed the young
+girl to her task.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<div class='chapter'><h3><a id="XXXIV"></a>XXXIV.</h3></div>
+
+<div class='ph4'>PAULA MAKES HER CHOICE.</div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">“Good fortune then,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To make me bless’t or cursed’st among men.”—<span class="smcap">Merchant of Venice.</span><br></span>
+</div></div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+
+<p>It was evening in the Sylvester mansion. Mr. Sylvester who, according to
+his understanding with Paula, had been absent from his home all day, had
+just come in and now stood in his library waiting for the coming
+footfall that should decide whether the future held for him any promise
+of joy.</p>
+
+<p>He had never looked more worthy of a woman’s regard than he did that
+night. A matter that had been troubling him for some time had just been
+satisfactorily disposed of, and not a shadow, so far as he knew, lay
+upon his business outlook. This naturally brightened his cheek and lent
+a light to his eye. Then, hope is no mean beautifier, and this he
+possessed notwithstanding the disparity of years between himself and
+Paula. It was not, however, of sufficiently assured a nature to prevent
+him from starting at every sound from above, and flushing with quite a
+disagreeable sense of betrayal when the door opened and Bertram entered
+the room, instead of the gentle and exquisite being he had expected.</p>
+
+<p>“Uncle, I am so full of happiness, I had to stop and bestow a portion of
+it upon you. Do you think any one could mistake the nature of Miss
+Stuyvesant’s feelings, who saw her last night?”</p>
+
+<p>“Hardly,” was the smiling reply. “At all events I have not felt like
+wasting much but pleasant sympathy upon you. Your pathway to happiness
+looks secure, my boy.”</p>
+
+<p>His nephew gave him a wistful glance, but hid his thought whatever it
+was. “I am going to see her to-night,” remarked he. “I am afraid my love
+is something like a torrent that has once burst its barrier; it cannot
+rest until it has worked its channel and won its rightful repose.”</p>
+
+<p>“That is something the way with all love,” returned his uncle. “It may
+be dallied with while asleep, but once aroused, better meet a lion in
+his fury or a tempest in its rush. Are you going to test your hope,
+to-night?”</p>
+
+<p>The young man flushed. “I cannot say.” But in another moment gayly
+added, “I only know that I am prepared for any emergency.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, my boy, I wish you God-speed. If ever a man has won a right to
+happiness, you are that man; and you shall enjoy it too, if any word or
+action of mine can serve to advance it.”</p>
+
+<p>“Thank you!” replied Bertram, and with a bright look around the
+apartment, prepared to take his leave. “When I come back,” he remarked,
+with a touch of that manly <i>naĂŻvetĂ©</i> to which I have before alluded, “I
+hope I shall not find you alone.”</p>
+
+<p>Ignoring this wish which was re-echoed somewhat too deeply within his
+own breast for light expression, Mr. Sylvester accompanied his nephew to
+the front door.</p>
+
+<p>“Let us see what kind of a night it is,” observed he, stepping out upon
+the stoop. “It is going to rain.”</p>
+
+<p>“So it is,” returned Bertram, with a quick glance overhead; “but I shall
+not let such a little fuss as that deter me from fulfilling my
+engagement.” And bestowing a hasty nod upon his uncle, he bounded down
+the step.</p>
+
+<p>Instantly a man who was loitering along the walk in front of the house,
+stopped, as if struck by these simple words, turned, gave Bertram a
+quick look, and then with a sly glance back at the open door where Mr.
+Sylvester still stood gazing at the lowering heavens, set himself
+cautiously to follow him.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester, who was too much pre-occupied to observe this suspicious
+action, remained for a moment contemplating the sky; then with an
+aimless glance down the avenue, during which his eye undoubtedly fell
+upon Bertram and the creeping shadow of a man behind him, closed the
+door and returned to the library.</p>
+
+<p>The sight of another’s joy has the tendency to either unduly depress the
+spirits or greatly to elate them. When Paula came into the room a few
+minutes later, it was to find Mr. Sylvester awaiting her with an
+expression that was almost radiant. It made her duty seem doubly hard,
+and she came forward with the slow step of one who goes to meet or carry
+doom. He saw, and instantly the light died out of his face, leaving it
+one blank of despair. But controlling himself, he took her cold hand in
+his, and looking down upon her with a tender but veiled regard, asked in
+those low and tremulous tones that exerted such an influence upon her:</p>
+
+<p>“Do I see before me my affectionate and much to be cherished child, or
+that still dearer object of love and worship, which it shall be the
+delight of my life to render truly and deeply happy?”</p>
+
+<p>“You see,” returned she, after a moment of silent emotion, “a girl
+without father or brother to advise her; who loves, or believes she
+does, a great and noble man, but who is smitten with fear also, she
+cannot tell why, and trembles to take a step to which no loving and
+devoted friend has set the seal of his approval.”</p>
+
+<p>The clasp with which Mr. Sylvester held her hand in his, tightened for
+an instant with irrepressible emotion, then slowly unloosed. Drawing
+back, he surveyed her with eyes that slowly filled with a bitter
+comprehension of her meaning.</p>
+
+<p>“You are the only man,” continued she, with a glance of humble entreaty,
+“that has ever stood to me for a moment in the light of a relation. You
+<i>have</i> been a father to me in days gone by, and to you it therefore
+seems most natural for me to appeal when a question comes up that either
+puzzles or distresses me. Mr. Sylvester, you have offered me your love
+and the refuge of your home; if you say that in your judgment the
+counsel of all true friends would be for me to accept this love, then my
+hand is yours and with it my heart; a heart that only hesitates because
+it would fain be sure it has the smile of heaven upon its every
+prompting.”</p>
+
+<p>“Paula!”</p>
+
+<p>The voice was so strange she looked up to see if it really was Mr.
+Sylvester who spoke. He had sunk back into a chair and had covered his
+face with his hands. With a cry she moved towards him, but he motioned
+her back.</p>
+
+<p>“Condemned to be my own executioner!” he muttered. “Placed on the rack
+and bid to turn the wheel that shall wrench my own sinews! My God, ’tis
+hard!”</p>
+
+<p>She did not hear the words, but she saw the action. Slowly the blood
+left her cheek, and her hand fell upon her swelling breast with a
+despairing gesture that would have smitten Miss Belinda to the heart,
+could she have seen it. “I have asked too much,” she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>With a start Mr. Sylvester rose. “Paula,” said he, in a stern and
+different tone, “is this fear of which you speak, the offspring of your
+own instincts, or has it been engendered in your breast by the words of
+another?”</p>
+
+<p>“My Aunt Belinda is in my confidence, if it is she to whom you allude,”
+rejoined she, meeting his glance fully and bravely. “But from no lips
+but yours could any words proceed capable of affecting my estimate of
+you as the one best qualified to make me happy.”</p>
+
+<p>“Then it is my words alone that have awakened this doubt, this
+apprehension?”</p>
+
+<p>“I have not spoken of doubt,” said she, but her eyelids fell.</p>
+
+<p>“No, thank God!” he passionately exclaimed. “And yet you feel it,” he
+went on more composedly. “I have studied your face too long and closely
+not to understand it.”</p>
+
+<p>She put out her hands in appeal, but for once it passed unheeded.</p>
+
+<p>“Paula,” said he, “you must tell me just what that doubt is; I must know
+what is passing in your mind. You say you love me—” he paused, and a
+tremble shook him from head to foot, but he went inexorably on—“it is
+more than I had a right to expect, and God knows I am grateful for the
+precious and inestimable boon, far as it is above my deserts; but while
+loving me, you hesitate to give me your hand. Why? What is the name of
+the doubt that disturbs that pure breast and affects your choice? Tell
+me, I must know.”</p>
+
+<p>“You ask me to dissect my own heart!” she cried, quivering under the
+torture of his glance; “how can I? What do I know of its secret springs
+or the terrors that disturb its even beatings? I cannot name my fear; it
+has no name, or if it has—Oh, sir!” she cried in a burst of passionate
+longing, “your life has been one of sorrow and disappointment; grief has
+touched you close, and you might well be the melancholy and sombre man
+that all behold. I do not shrink from grief; say that the only shadow
+that lies across your dungeon-door is that cast by the great and
+heart-rending sorrows of your life, and without question and without
+fear I enter that dungeon with you—”</p>
+
+<p>The hand he raised stopped her. “Paula,” cried he, “do you believe in
+repentance?”</p>
+
+<p>The words struck her like a blow. Falling slowly back, she looked at him
+for an instant, then her head sank on her breast.</p>
+
+<p>“I know what your hatred of sin is,” continued he. “I have seen your
+whole form tremble at the thought of evil. Is your belief in the
+redeeming power of God as great as your recoil from the wrong that makes
+that redemption necessary?”</p>
+
+<p>Quickly her head raised, a light fell on her brow, and her lips moved in
+a vain effort to utter what her eyes unconsciously expressed.</p>
+
+<p>“Paula, I would be unworthy the name of a man, if with the consciousness
+of possessing a dark and evil nature, I strove by use of any hypocrisy
+or specious pretense at goodness, to lure to my side one so
+exceptionally pure, beautiful and high-minded. The ravening wolf and the
+innocent lamb would be nothing to it. Neither would I for an instant be
+esteemed worthy of your regard, if in this hour of my wooing there
+remained in my life the shadow of any latent wrong that might hereafter
+rise up and overwhelm you. Whatever of wrong has ever been committed by
+me—and it is my punishment that I must acknowledge before your pure
+eyes that my soul is not spotless—was done in the past, and is known
+only to my own heart and the God who I reverently trust has long ago
+pardoned me. The shadow is that of remorse, not of fear, and the evil,
+one against my own soul, rather than against the life or fortunes of
+other men. Paula, such sins can be forgiven if one has a mind to
+comprehend the temptations that beset men in their early struggles. I
+have never forgiven myself, but—” He paused, looked at her for an
+instant, his hand clenched over his heart, his whole noble form shaken
+by struggle, then said—“forgiveness implies no promise, Paula; you
+shall never link yourself to a man who has been obliged to bow his head
+in shame before you, but by the mercy that informs that dear glance and
+trembling lip, do you think you can ever grow to forgive me?”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh,” she cried, with a burst of sobs, violent as her grief and shame,
+“God be merciful to me, as I am merciful to those who repent of their
+sins and do good and not evil all the remaining days of their life.”</p>
+
+<p>“I thought you would <i>forgive</i> me,” murmured he, looking down upon her,
+as the miser eyes the gold that has slipped from his paralyzed hand.
+“Him whom the hard-hearted sinner and the hypocrite despise, God’s
+dearest lambs regard with mercy. I learned to revere God before I knew
+you, Paula, but I learned to love Him in the light of your gentleness
+and your trust. Rise up now and let me wipe away your tears—my
+daughter.”</p>
+
+<p>She sprang up as if stung. “No, no,” she cried, “not that; I cannot bear
+that yet. I must think, I must know what all this means,” and she laid
+her hand upon her heart. “God surely does not give so much love for
+one’s undoing; if I were not destined to comfort a life so saddened, He
+would have bequeathed me more pity and less—” The lifted head fell, the
+word she would have uttered, stirred her bosom, but not her lips.</p>
+
+<p>It was a trial to his strength, but his firm man’s heart did not waver.
+“You do comfort me,” said he; “from early morning to late night your
+presence is my healing and my help, and will always be so, whatever may
+befal. A daughter can do much, my Paula.”</p>
+
+<p>She took a step back towards the door, her eyes, dark with unfathomable
+impulses, flashing on him through the tears that hung thickly on her
+lashes.</p>
+
+<p>“Is it for your own sake or for mine, that you make use of that word?”
+said she.</p>
+
+<p>He summoned up his courage, met that searching glance with all its wild,
+bewildering beauty, and responded, “Can you ask, Paula?”</p>
+
+<p>With a lift of her head that gave an almost queenly stateliness to her
+form, she advanced a step, and drawing a crumpled paper from her pocket,
+said, “When I went to my room last night, it was to read <i>two</i> letters,
+one from yourself, and one from Mr. Ensign. This is his, and a manly and
+noble letter it is too; but hearts have right to hearts, and I was
+obliged to refuse his petition.” And with a reverent but inexorable
+hand, she dropped the letter on the burning coals of the grate at their
+side, and softly turned to leave the room.</p>
+
+<p>“Paula!” With a bound the stern and hitherto forcibly repressed man,
+leaped to her side. “My darling! my life!” and with a wild,
+uncontrollable impulse, he caught her for one breathless moment to his
+heart; then as suddenly released her, and laying his hand in reverence
+on her brow, said softly, “Now go and pray, little one; and when you are
+quite calm, an hour hence or a week hence whichever it may be, come and
+tell me my fate as God and the angels reveal it to you.” And he smiled,
+and she saw his smile, and went out of the room softly, as one who
+treadeth upon holy ground.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester was considered by his friends and admirers as a proud man.
+If a vote had been cast among those who knew him best, as from what
+especial passion common to humanity he would soonest recoil, it would
+have been unanimously pronounced shame, and his own hand would have
+emphasized the judgment of his fellows. But shame which is open to the
+gaze of the whole world, differs from that which is sacred to the eyes
+of one human being, and that the one who lies nearest the heart.</p>
+
+<p>As Paula’s retreating footsteps died away on the stairs, and he awoke to
+the full consciousness that his secret was shared by her whose love was
+his life, and whose good opinion had been his incentive and his pride,
+his first sensation was one of unmitigated anguish, but his next,
+strange to say, that of a restful relief. He had cast aside the cloak he
+had hugged so closely to his breast these many years, and displayed to
+her shrinking gaze the fox that was gnawing at his vitals; and Spartan
+though he was, the dew that had filled her loving eyes was balm to him.
+And not only that; he had won claim to the title of true man. Her
+regard, if regard it remained, was no longer an airy fabric built upon a
+plausible seeming, but a firm structure with knowledge for its
+foundation. “I shall not live to whisper, ‘If she knew my whole life,
+would she love me so well?’”</p>
+
+<p>His first marriage had been so wholly uncongenial and devoid of
+sympathy, that his greatest longing in connection with a fresh contract,
+was to enjoy the full happiness of perfect union and mutual trust; and
+though he could never have summoned up courage to take her into his
+confidence, unsolicited, now that it had been done he would not have it
+undone, no, not if by the doing he had lost her confidence and
+affection.</p>
+
+<p>But something told him he had not lost it. That out of the darkness and
+the shock of this very discovery, a new and deeper love would spring,
+which having its birth in human frailty and human repentance, would gain
+in the actual what it lost in the ideal, bringing to his weary,
+suffering and yearning man’s nature, the honest help of a strong and
+loving sympathy, growing trust, and sweetest because wisest
+encouragement.</p>
+
+<p>It was therefore, with a growing sense of deep unfathomable comfort, and
+a reverent thankfulness for the mercies of God, that he sat by the fire
+idly watching the rise and fall of the golden flames above the
+fluttering ashes of his rival’s letter, and dreaming with a hallowing
+sense of his unworthiness, upon the possible bliss of coming days.
+Happiness in its truest and most serene sense was so new to him, it
+affected him like the presence of something strangely commanding. He was
+awe-struck before it, and unconsciously bowed his head at its
+contemplation. Only his eyes betrayed the peace that comes with all
+great joy, his eyes and perhaps the faint, almost unearthly smile that
+flitted across his mouth, disturbing its firm line and making his face
+for all its inevitable expression of melancholy, one that his mother
+would have loved to look upon. “Paula!” came now and then in a reverent,
+yearning accent from between his lips, and once a low, “Thank God!”
+which showed that he was praying.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly he rose; a more human mood had set in, and he felt the
+necessity of assuring himself that it was really he upon whom the dreary
+past had closed, and a future of such possible brightness opened. He
+walked about the room, surveying the rich articles within it, as the
+possible belongings of the beautiful woman he adored; he stood and
+pictured her as coming into the door as his wife, and before he realized
+what he was doing, had planned certain changes he would make in his home
+to adapt it to the wants of her young and growing mind, when with a
+strange suddenness, the door upon which he was gazing flew back, and
+Bertram Sylvester entered just as he had come from the street. He looked
+so haggard, so wild, so little the picture of himself as he ventured
+forth a couple of hours before, that Mr. Sylvester started, and
+forgetting his happiness in his alarm, asked in a tone of dismay:</p>
+
+<p>“What has happened? Has Miss Stuyvesant—”</p>
+
+<p>Bertram’s hand went up as if his uncle had touched him upon a festering
+wound. “Don’t!” gasped he, and advancing to the table, sat down and
+buried his face for a moment in his arms, then rose, and summoning up a
+certain manly dignity that became him well, met Mr. Sylvester’s eye with
+forced calmness, and inquired:</p>
+
+<p>“Did you know there was a thief in our bank, Uncle Edward?”</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<div class='chapter'><h3><a id="XXXV"></a>XXXV.</h3></div>
+
+<div class='ph4'>THE FALLING OF THE SWORD.</div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">“Foul deeds will rise,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Though all the world o’erwhelm them, to men’s eyes.”—<span class="smcap">Hamlet.</span><br></span>
+</div></div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester towered on his nephew with an expression such as few men
+had ever seen even on his powerful and commanding face.</p>
+
+<p>“What do you mean?” asked he, and his voice rang like a clarion through
+the room.</p>
+
+<p>Bertram trembled and for a moment stood aghast, the ready flush bathing
+his brow with burning crimson. “I mean,” stammered he, with difficulty
+recovering himself, “that when Mr. Stuyvesant came to open his private
+box in the bank to-day, that he not only found its lock had been
+tampered with, but that money and valuables to the amount of some twelve
+hundred dollars were missing from among its contents.”</p>
+
+<p>“What?”</p>
+
+<p>The expression which had made Mr. Sylvester’s brow so terrible had
+vanished, but his wonder remained.</p>
+
+<p>“It is impossible,” he declared. “Our vaults are too well watched for
+any such thing to occur. He has made some mistake; a robbery of that
+nature could not take place without detection.”</p>
+
+<p>“It would seem not, and yet the fact remains. Mr. Stuyvesant himself
+informed me of it, to-night. He is not a careless man, nor reckless in
+his statements. Some one has robbed the bank and it remains with us to
+find out who.”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester, who had been standing all this while, sat down like a man
+dazed, the wild lost look on Bertram’s face daunting him with a fearful
+premonition. “There are but four men who have access to the vault where
+the boxes are kept,” said he: then quickly, “Why did Mr. Stuyvesant wait
+till to-night to speak to you? Why did he not notify us at once of a
+loss so important for us to know?”</p>
+
+<p>The flush on Bertram’s brow slowly subsided, giving way to a steady
+pallor. “He waited to be sure,” said he. “He had a memorandum at home
+which he desired to consult; he was not ready to make any rash
+statement: he is a thinking man and more considerate than many of his
+friends are apt to imagine. If the lock had not been found open he would
+have thought with you that he had made some mistake; if he had not
+missed from the box some of its contents, he would have considered the
+condition of the lock the result of some oversight on his own part or of
+some mistake on the part of another, but the two facts together were
+damning and could force upon him but one conclusion. Uncle,” said he,
+with a straightforward look into Mr. Sylvester’s countenance, “Mr.
+Stuyvesant knows as well as we do who are the men who have access to the
+vaults. As you say, the opening of a box during business hours and the
+abstracting from it of papers or valuables by any one who has not such
+access, would be impossible. Only Hopgood, you and myself, and possibly
+Folger, could find either time or opportunity for such a piece of work;
+while after business hours, the same four, minus Folger who contents
+himself with knowing the combination of the inner safe, could open the
+vaults even in case of an emergency. Now of the four named, two are
+above suspicion. I might almost say three, for Hopgood is not a man it
+is easy to mistrust. One alone, then, of all the men whom Mr. Stuyvesant
+is in the habit of meeting at the Bank, is open to a doubt. A young man,
+uncle, whose rising has been rapid, whose hopes have been lofty, whose
+life may or may not be known to himself as pure, but which in the eyes
+of a matured man of the world might easily be questioned, just because
+its hopes are so lofty and its means for attaining them so limited.”</p>
+
+<p>“Bertram!” sprang from Mr. Sylvester’s white lips.</p>
+
+<p>But the young man raised his hand with almost a commanding gesture.
+“Hush,” said he, “no sympathy or surprise. Facts like these have to be
+met with silent endurance, as we walk up to the mouth of the cannon we
+cannot evade, or bare our breast to the thrust of the bayonet gleaming
+before our eyes.—I would not have you think,” he somewhat hurriedly
+pursued, “that Mr. Stuyvesant insinuated anything of the kind, but his
+daughter was not present in the parlor, and—” A sigh, almost a gasp
+finished the sentence.</p>
+
+<p>“Bertram!” again exclaimed his uncle, this time with some authority in
+his voice. “The shock of this discovery has unnerved you. You act like a
+man capable of being suspected. That is simply preposterous. One half
+hour’s conversation with Mr. Stuyvesant on my part will convince him, if
+he needs convincing, which I do not believe, that whoever is unworthy of
+trust in our bank, you are not the man.”</p>
+
+<p>Bertram raised his head with a gleam of hope, but instantly dropped it
+again with a despairing gesture that made his uncle frown.</p>
+
+<p>“I did not know that you were inclined to be so pusillanimous,” cried
+Mr. Sylvester; “and in presence of a foe so unsubstantial as this you
+have conjured up almost out of nothing. If the bank has been robbed, it
+cannot be difficult to find the thief. I will order in detectives
+to-morrow. We will hold a board of inquiry, and the culprit shall be
+unmasked; that is, if he is one of the employees of the bank, which it
+is very hard to believe.”</p>
+
+<p>“Very, and which, if true, would make it unadvisable in us to give the
+alarm that any public measures taken could not fail to do.”</p>
+
+<p>“The inquiry shall be private, and the detectives, men who can be
+trusted to keep their business secret.”</p>
+
+<p>“How can any inquiry be private? Uncle, we are treading on delicate
+ground, and have a task before us requiring great tact and discretion.
+If the safe had only been assaulted, or there were any evidences of
+burglary to be seen! But we surely should have heard of it from some one
+of the men, if anything unusual had been observed. Hopgood would have
+spoken at least.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, Hopgood would have spoken.”</p>
+
+<p>The tone in which this was uttered made Bertram look up. “You agree with
+me, then, that Hopgood is absolutely to be relied upon?”</p>
+
+<p>“Absolutely.” A faint flush on Mr. Sylvester’s face lent force to this
+statement.</p>
+
+<p>“He could not be beguiled or forced by another man to reveal the
+combination, or to relax his watch over the vaults entrusted to his
+keeping?”</p>
+
+<p>“No.”</p>
+
+<p>“He is alone with the vaults where the boxes are kept for an hour or two
+in the early morning!”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, and has been for three years. Hopgood is honesty itself.”</p>
+
+<p>“And so are Folger and Jessup and Watson,” exclaimed Bertram
+emphatically.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” his uncle admitted, with equal emphasis.</p>
+
+<p>“It is a mystery,” Bertram declared; “and one I fear that will undo me.”</p>
+
+<p>“Nonsense!” broke forth somewhat impatiently from Mr. Sylvester’s lips;
+“there is no reason at this time for any such conclusion. If there is a
+thief in the bank he can be found; if the robbery was committed by an
+outsider, he may still be discovered. If he is not, if the mystery rests
+forever unexplained, you have your character, Bertram, a character as
+spotless as that of any of your fellows, whom we regard as above
+suspicion. A man is not going to be condemned by such a judge of human
+nature as Mr. Stuyvesant, just because a mysterious crime has been
+committed, to which the circumstances of his position alone render it
+possible for him to be party. You might as well say that Jessup and
+Folger and Watson—yes, or myself, would in that case lose his
+confidence. They are in the bank, and are constantly in the habit of
+going to the vaults.”</p>
+
+<p>“None of those gentlemen want to marry his daughter,” murmured Bertram.
+“It is not the director I fear, but the father. I have so little to
+bring her. Only my character and my devotion.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, well, pluck up courage, my boy. I have hopes yet that the whole
+matter can be referred to some mistake easily explainable when once it
+is discovered. Mistakes, even amongst the honest and the judicious, are
+not so uncommon as one is apt to imagine. I, myself, have known of one
+which if providence had not interfered, might have led to doubts
+seemingly as inconsistent as yours. To-morrow we will consider the
+question at length. To-night—Well, Bertram, what is it?”</p>
+
+<p>The young man started and dropped his eyes, which during the last words
+of his uncle had been fixed upon his face with strange and penetrating
+inquiry. “Nothing,” said he, “that is, nothing more;” and rose as if to
+leave.</p>
+
+<p>But Mr. Sylvester put out his hand and stopped him. “There <i>is</i>
+something,” said he. “I have seen it in your face ever since you entered
+this room. What is it?”</p>
+
+<p>The young man drew a deep breath and leaned back in his chair. Mr.
+Sylvester watched him with growing pallor. “You are right,” murmured his
+nephew at last; “there is something more, and it is only justice that
+you should hear it. I have had two adventures to-night; one quite apart
+from my conversation with Mr. Stuyvesant. Heaven that watches above us,
+has seen fit to accumulate difficulties in my path, and this last,
+perhaps, is the least explainable and the hardest to encounter.”</p>
+
+<p>“What do you allude to?” cried his uncle, imperatively; “I have had an
+evening of too much agitation to endure suspense with equanimity.
+Explain yourself.”</p>
+
+<p>“It will not take long,” said the other; “a few words will reveal to you
+the position in which I stand. Let me relate it in the form of a
+narrative. You know what a dark portion of the block that is in which
+Mr. Stuyvesant’s house is situated. A man might hide in any of the areas
+along there, without being observed by you unless he made some sound to
+attract your attention. I was, therefore, more alarmed than surprised
+when, shortly after leaving Mr. Stuyvesant’s dwelling, I felt a hand
+laid on my shoulder, and turning, beheld a dark figure at my side, of an
+appearance calculated to arouse any man’s apprehension. He was tall,
+unkempt, with profuse beard, and eyes that glared even in the darkness
+of his surroundings, with a feverish intensity. ‘You are Mr. Sylvester,’
+said he, with a look of a wild animal ready to pounce upon his prey.
+‘Yes,’ said I, involuntarily stepping back, ‘I am Mr. Sylvester.’ ‘I
+want to speak to you,’ exclaimed he, with a rush of words as though a
+stream had broken loose; ‘now, at once, on business that concerns you.
+Will you listen?’</p>
+
+<p>“I thought of the only business that seemed to concern me then, and
+starting still farther back, surveyed him with surprise. ‘I don’t know
+you,’ said I; ‘what business can you have with me?’ ‘Will you step into
+some place where it is warm and find out?’ he asked, shivering in his
+thin cloak, but not abating a jot of his eagerness. ‘Go on before me,’
+said I, ‘and we will see.’ He complied at once, and in this way we
+reached Beale’s Coffee-Room, where we went in. ‘Now,’ said I, ‘out with
+what you have to say and be quick about it. I have no time to listen to
+nonsense and no heart to attend to it.’ His eye brightened; he did not
+cast a glance at the smoking victuals about him, though I knew he was
+hungry as a dog. ‘It is no nonsense,’ said he, ‘that I have to
+communicate to you.’ And then I saw he had once been a gentleman. ‘For
+two years and a half have I been searching for you,’ he went on, ‘in
+order that I might recall to your mind a little incident. You remember
+the afternoon of February, the twenty-fifth, two years ago?’</p>
+
+<p>“‘No,’ said I, in great surprise, for his whole countenance was flushed
+with expectancy. ‘What was there about that day that I should remember
+it?’ He smiled and bent his face nearer to mine. ‘Don’t you recollect a
+little conversation you had in a small eating-house in Dey Street, with
+a gentleman of a high-sounding voice to whom you were obliged
+continually to say ‘hush!’’” I stared at the man, as you may believe,
+with some notion of his being a wandering lunatic. ‘I have never taken a
+meal in any eating-house in Dey Street,’ I declared, motioning to a
+waiter to approach us. The man observing it, turned swiftly upon me. ‘Do
+you think I care for any such petty <i>fuss</i> as that?’ asked he,
+indicating the rather slightly built man I had called to my rescue,
+while he covertly studied my face to observe the effect of his words.</p>
+
+<p>“I started. I could not help it; this use of an expression almost
+peculiar to myself, assured me that the man knew me better than I
+supposed. Involuntarily I waved the waiter back and turned upon the man
+with an inquiring look.</p>
+
+<p>“‘I thought you might consider it worth your while to listen,’ said he,
+smiling with the air of one who has or thinks he has a grip upon you.
+Then suddenly, ‘You are a rich man, are you not? a proud man and an
+honored one. You hold a position of trust and are considered worthy of
+it; how would you like men to know that you once committed a mean and
+dirty trick; that those white hands that have the handling of such large
+funds at present, have in days gone by been known to dip into such funds
+a little too deeply; that, in short, you, Bertram Sylvester, cashier of
+the Madison Bank, and looking forward to no one knows what future honors
+and emoluments, have been in a position better suited to a felon’s cell
+than the trusted agent of a great and wealthy corporation?’</p>
+
+<p>“I did not collar him; I was too dumb-stricken for any such display of
+indignation. I simply stared, feeling somewhat alarmed as I remembered
+my late interview with Mr. Stuyvesant, and considered the possibility of
+a plot being formed against me. He smiled again at the effect he had
+produced, and drew me into a corner of the room where we sat down. ‘I am
+going to tell you a story,’ said he, ‘just to show you what a good
+memory I have. One day, a year and more ago, I sauntered into an
+eating-house on Dey Street. I have not always been what you see me now,
+though to tell you the truth, I was but little better off at the time of
+which I speak, except that I did have a dime or so in my pocket, and
+could buy a meal of victuals—if I wished.’ And his eyes roamed for the
+first time to the tables stretching out before him down the room. ‘The
+proprietor was an acquaintance of mine, and finding I was sleepy as well
+as hungry, let me go into a certain dark pantry, where I curled up amid
+all sorts of old rubbish and went to sleep. I was awakened by the sound
+of voices talking very earnestly. The closet in which I was hidden was a
+temporary affair built up of loose boards, and the talk of a couple of
+men seated against it was easy enough to be heard. Do you want to know
+what that conversation was?’</p>
+
+<p>“My curiosity was roused by this time and I said yes. If this was a plot
+to extort money from me, it was undeniably better for me to know upon
+just what foundations it rested. I thought the man looked surprised, but
+with an aplomb difficult to believe assumed, he went on to say, ‘The
+voices gave me my only means of judging of the age, character, or
+position of the men conversing, but I have a quick ear, and my memory is
+never at fault. From the slow, broken, nervously anxious tone of one of
+the men, I made up my mind that he was elderly, hard up, and not over
+scrupulous; the other voice was that of a gentleman, musical and yet
+pronounced, and not easily forgotten, as you see, sir. The first words I
+heard aroused me and convinced me it was worth while to listen. They
+were uttered by the gentleman.’ ‘You come to me with such a dirty piece
+of business! What right have you to suppose I would hearken to you for
+an instant!’ ‘The right,’ returned the other, ‘of knowing you have not
+been above doing dirty work in your life time.’ The partition creaked at
+that, as though one of the two had started forward, but I didn’t hear
+any reply made to this strange accusation. ‘Do you think,’ the same
+voice went on, ‘that I do not know where the five thousand dollars came
+from which you gave me for that first speculation? I knew it when I took
+it, and if I hadn’t been sure the operation would turn out fortunately,
+you would never have been the man you are to-day. It came out of funds
+entrusted to you, and was not the gift of a relative as you would have
+made me believe.’ ‘Good heaven!’ exclaimed the other, after a silence
+that was very expressive just then and there, ‘and you let me—’ ‘Oh we
+won’t go into that,’ interrupted the less cultivated voice. ‘All you
+wanted was a start, to make you the successful man you have since
+become. I never worried much about morals, and I don’t worry about them
+now, only when you say you won’t do a thing likely to make my fortune,
+just because it is not entirely free from reproach, I say, remember what
+I know about you, and don’t talk virtue to me.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘I am rightly punished,’ came from the other, in a tone that proved him
+to be a man more ready to do a wrong thing than to face the accusation
+of it. ‘If I ever did what you suppose, the repentance that has
+embittered all my success, and the position in which you have this day
+placed me, is surely an ample atonement.’ ‘Will you do what I request?’
+inquired the other, giving little heed to this expression of misery, of
+which I on the contrary took special heed. ‘No,’ was the energetic
+reply; ‘because I am not spotless it is no sign that I will wade into
+filth. I will give you money as I have done scores of times before, but
+I will lend my hand to no scheme which is likely to throw discredit on
+me or mine. Were you not connected to me in the way in which you are—’
+‘You would pursue the scheme,’ interrupted the other; ‘it is because you
+know that I cannot talk, that you dare repudiate it. Well I will go to
+one—’ ‘You shall not,’ came in short quick tones, just such tones as
+you used to me, sir, when we first entered this room. ‘You shall leave
+the country before you do anything more, or say anything more, to
+compromise me or yourself. I may have done wrong in my day, but that is
+no reason why I should suffer for it at your hands, tempter of youth,
+and deceiver of your own flesh and blood! <i>You</i> shall never bring back
+those days to me again; they are buried, and have been stamped out of
+sight by many an honest dealing since, and many as I trust before God,
+good and sterling action. I have long since begun a new life; a life of
+honor, and pure, if successful, dealing. Not only my own happiness, but
+that of one who should be considered by you, depends upon my maintaining
+that life to the end, unshadowed by unholy remembrances, and unharrassed
+by any such proffers as you have presumed to make to me here to-day. If
+you want a few thousand dollars to leave the country, say so, but never
+again presume to offend my ears, or those of any one else we may know,
+with any such words as you have made use of to-day.’ And the spiritless
+creature subsided, sir, and said no more to that rich, honored, and
+successful man who was so sensitive to even the imputation of guilt.</p>
+
+<p>“But I am not spiritless and just where he dropped the affair, I took it
+up. ‘Here is a chance for me to turn an honest penny,’ thought I, and
+with a deliberation little to be expected of me, perhaps, set myself to
+spot that man and make the most out of the matter I could. Unfortunately
+I lost the opportunity of seeing his face. I was too anxious to catch
+every word they uttered, to quit my place of concealment till their
+conversation was concluded, and then I was too late to be sure which of
+the many men leaving the building before me was the one I was after. The
+waiters were too busy to talk, and the proprietor himself had taken no
+notice. Happily as I have before said, I never forget voices; moreover
+one of the two speakers had made use of a phrase peculiar enough to
+serve as a clue to his identity. It was in answer to some parting threat
+of the older man, and will remind you of an expression uttered by
+yourself an hour or so ago. ‘Do you suppose I will let such a little
+fuss as that deter me?’ It was the cue to his speech, by which I
+intended to hunt out my man from amongst the rich, the trusted and the
+influential persons of this city, and when found, to hold him.’</p>
+
+
+<p>“‘And you think you have done this?’ said I, too conscious of the
+possible net about my feet to be simply angry. ‘I know it,’ said he;
+‘every word you have uttered since we have been here has made me more
+and more certain of the fact. I could swear to your voice, and as to
+your use of that tell-tale word, it was not till I thought to inquire of
+a certain wide-awake fellow down town, who amongst our business men were
+in the habit of using that expression, and was told Mr. Sylvester of the
+Madison Bank, that I was enabled to track you. I know I have got my hand
+on my man at last and—’ He looked down at his thread-bare coat and
+around at the tables with their smoking dishes, and left me to draw my
+own conclusion.</p>
+
+<p>“Uncle, there are crises in life which no former experience teaches you
+how to meet. I had arrived at such a one. Perhaps you can understand me
+when I say I was well nigh appalled. Denial of what was imputed to me
+might be wisdom and might not. I felt the coil of a deadly serpent about
+me, and knew not whether it was best to struggle or to simply submit.
+The man noted the effect he had made and complacently folded his arms.
+He was of a nervous organization and possessed an eye like a hungry
+wolf, but he could wait. ‘This is a pretty story,’ said I at last, and I
+reject it altogether. ‘I am an honest man and have always been so; you
+will have to give up your hopes of making anything out of me.’ ‘Then you
+are willing,’ said he, ‘that I should repeat this story to one of the
+directors of your bank, whom I know?’</p>
+
+<p>“I looked at him; he returned my gaze with a cold nonchalence more
+suggestive of a deep laid purpose, than even his previous glance of
+feverish determination. I immediately let my eye run over his scanty
+clothing and loose flowing hair and beard. ‘Yes,’ said I, with as much
+sarcasm as I knew how to assume, ‘if you dare risk the consequences, I
+think I may.’ He at once drew himself up. ‘You think,’ said he, ‘that
+you have a common-place adventurer to deal with; that my appearance is
+going to testify in your favor; that you have but to deny any accusation
+which such a hungry-looking, tattered wretch as I, may make, and that I
+shall be ignominiously kicked out of the presence into which I have
+forced myself; that in short I have been building my castle in the air.
+Mr. Sylvester, I am a poor devil but I am no fool. When I left Dey
+Street on the twenty-fifth of February two years ago, it was with a
+sealed paper in my pocket, in which was inscribed all that I had heard
+on that day. This I took to a lawyer’s office, and not being, as I have
+before said, quite as impecunious in those days as at present, succeeded
+in getting the lawyer, whom I took care should be a most respectable
+man, to draw up a paper to the effect that I had entrusted him with this
+statement—of whose contents he however knew nothing—on such a day and
+hour, to which paper a gentleman then present, consented at my
+respectful solicitation to affix his name as witness, which gentleman,
+strange to say, has since proved to be a director of the bank of which
+you are the present cashier, and consequently the very man of all others
+best adapted to open the paper whose seal you profess to be so willing
+to see broken.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘His name!’ It was all that I could say. ‘Stuyvesant,’ cried the man,
+fixing me with his eye in which I in vain sought for some signs of
+secret doubt or unconscious wavering. I rose; the position in which I
+found myself was too overwhelming for instant decision. I needed time
+for reflection, possibly advice—from you. A resolution to brave the
+devil must be founded on something more solid than impulse, to hold its
+own unmoved. I only stopped to utter one final word and ask one leading
+question. ‘You are a smart man,’ said I, ‘and you are also a villain.
+Your smartness would give you food and drink, if you exercised it in a
+manner worthy of a man, but your villainy if persisted in, will
+eventually rob you of both, and bring you to the prison’s cell or the
+hangman’s gallows. As for myself, I persist in saying that I am now and
+always have been an honest man, whatever you may have overheard or find
+yourself capable of swearing to. Yet a lie is an inconvenient thing to
+have uttered against you at any time, and I may want to see you again;
+if I do, where shall I find you?’ He thrust his hand into his pocket and
+drew out a small slip of folded paper, which he passed to me with a bow
+that Chesterfield would have admired. ‘You will find it written within,’
+said he ‘I shall look for you any time to-morrow, up to seven o’clock.
+At that hour the lawyer of whom I have spoken, sends the statement which
+he has in his possession to Mr. Stuyvesant.’ I nodded my assent, and he
+moved slowly towards the door. As he did so, his eyes fell upon a roll
+of bread lying on a counter. I at once stepped forward and bought it.
+Vile as he was, and deadly as was the snare he contemplated drawing
+about me, I could not see that wolfish look of hunger, and not offer him
+something to ease it. He took the loaf from my hands and bit greedily
+into it but suddenly paused, and shook his head with a look like
+self-reproach, and thrusting the loaf under his arm, turned towards the
+door with the quick action of one escaping. Instantly, and before he was
+out of sight or hearing, I drew the attention of the proprietor to him.
+‘Do you see that man?’ I asked. ‘He has been attempting a system of
+blackmail upon me.’ And satisfied with thus having provided a witness
+able of identifying the man, in case of an emergency, I left the
+building.</p>
+
+<p>“And now you know it all,” concluded he; and the silence that followed
+the utterance of those simple words, was a silence that could be felt.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<p>“Bertram?”</p>
+
+<p>The young man started from his fixed position, and his eyes slowly
+traversed toward his uncle.</p>
+
+<p>“Have you that slip of paper which the man gave you before departing?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” said he.</p>
+
+<p>“Let me have it, if you please.”</p>
+
+<p>The young man with an agitated look, plunged his hand into his pocket,
+drew out the small note and laid it on the table between them. Mr.
+Sylvester let it lie, and again there was a silence.</p>
+
+<p>“If this had happened at any other time,” Bertram pursued, “one could
+afford to let the man have his say; but now, just as this other mystery
+has come up—”</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t believe in submitting to blackmail,” came from his uncle in
+short, quick tones.</p>
+
+<p>Bertram gave a start. “You then advise me to leave him alone?” asked he,
+with unmistakable emotion.</p>
+
+<p>His uncle dropped the hand which till now he had held before his face,
+and hastily confronted his nephew. “You will have enough to do to attend
+to the other matter without bestowing any time or attention upon this.
+The man that robbed Mr. Stuyvesant’s box, can be found and must. It is
+the one indispensable business to which I now delegate you. No amount of
+money and no amount of diligence is to be spared. I rely on you to carry
+the affair to a successful termination. Will you undertake the task?”</p>
+
+<p>“Can you ask?” murmured the young man, with a shocked look at his
+uncle’s changed expression.</p>
+
+<p>“As to this other matter, we will let it rest for to-night. To-morrow’s
+revelations may be more favorable than we expect. At all events let us
+try and get a little rest now; I am sure we are both in a condition to
+need it.”</p>
+
+<p>Bertram rose. “I am at your command,” said he, and moved to go. Suddenly
+he turned, and the two men stood face to face. “I have no wish,” pursued
+he, “to be relieved of my burden at the expense of any one else. If it
+is to be borne by any one, let it be carried by him who is young and
+stalwart enough to sustain it.” And his hand went out involuntarily
+towards his uncle.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester took that hand and eyed his nephew long and earnestly.
+Bertram thought he was going to speak, and nerved himself to meet with
+fortitude whatever might be said. But the lips which Mr. Sylvester had
+opened, closed firmly, and contenting himself with a mere wring of his
+nephew’s hand, he allowed him to go. The slip of paper remained upon the
+table unopened.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<p>That night as Paula lay slumbering on her pillow, a sound passed through
+the house. It was like a quick irrepressible cry of desolation, and the
+poor child hearing it, started, thinking her name had been called. But
+when she listened, all was still, and believing she had dreamed, she
+turned her face upon her pillow, and softly murmuring the name that was
+dearest to her in all the world, fell again into a peaceful sleep.</p>
+
+<p>But he whose voice had uttered that cry in the dreary emptiness of the
+great parlors below, slept not.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<div class='chapter'><h3><a id="XXXVI"></a>XXXVI.</h3></div>
+
+<div class='ph4'>MORNING.</div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Two maidens by one fountain’s joyous brink,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">And one was sad and one had cause for sadness.”<br></span>
+</div></div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+
+<p>Cicely Stuyvesant waiting for her father at the foot of the stairs, on
+the morning after these occurrences, was a pretty and a touching
+spectacle. She had not slept very well the night before, and her brow
+showed signs of trouble and so did her trembling lips. She held in her
+hand a letter which she twirled about with very unsteady fingers. The
+morning was bright, but she did not seem to observe it; the air was
+fresh, but it did not seem to invigorate her. A rose-leaf of care lay on
+the tremulous waters of her soul, and her sensitive nature thrilled
+under it.</p>
+
+<p>“Why does he not come?” she whispered, looking again at the letter’s
+inscription.</p>
+
+<p>It was in Mr. Sylvester’s handwriting, and ought not to have occasioned
+her any uneasiness, but her father had intimated a wish the night
+before, that she should not come down into the parlor if Bertram called,
+and—Her thoughts paused there, but she was anxious about the letter and
+wished her father would hasten.</p>
+
+<p>Let us look at the little lady. She had been so bright and lovesome
+yesterday at this time. Never a maiden in all this great city of ours
+had shown a sweeter or more etherial smile. At once radiant and
+reserved, she flashed on the eye and trembled from the grasp like some
+dainty tropical creature as yet unused to our stranger clime. Her father
+had surveyed her with satisfaction, and her lover—oh, that we were all
+young again to experience that leap of the heart with which youth meets
+and recognizes the sweet perfections of the woman it adores! But a mist
+had obscured the radiance of her aspect, and she looks very sad as she
+stands in her father’s hall this morning, leaning her cheek against the
+banister, and thinking of the night when three years ago, she lingered
+in that very spot, and watched the form of the young musician go by her
+and disappear in the darkness of the night, as she then thought forever.
+Joy had come to her by such slow steps and after such long waiting. Hope
+had burst upon her so brilliantly, and with such a speedy promise of
+culmination. She thrilled as she thought how short a time ago it was,
+since she leaned upon Bertram’s arm and dropped her eyes before his
+gaze.</p>
+
+<p>The appearance of her father at length aroused her. Flushing slightly,
+she held the letter towards him.</p>
+
+<p>“A letter for you, papa. I thought you might like to read it before you
+went out.”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Stuyvesant, who for an hour or more had been frowning over his
+morning paper with a steady pertinacity that left more than the usual
+amount of wrinkles upon his brow, started at the wistful tone of this
+announcement from his daughter’s lips, and taking the letter from her
+hand, stepped into the parlor to peruse it. It was, as the handwriting
+declared, from Mr. Sylvester, and ran thus:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>“<span class="smcap">Dear Mr. Stuyvesant</span>:</p>
+
+<p>“I have heard of your loss and am astounded. Though the Bank is
+not liable for any accident to trusts of this nature, both
+Bertram and myself are determined to make every effort
+possible, to detect and punish the man who either through our
+negligence, or by means of the opportunities afforded him under
+our present system of management, has been able to commit this
+robbery upon your effects. We therefore request that you will
+meet us at the bank this morning at as early an hour as
+practicable, there to assist us in making such inquiries and
+instituting such measures, as may be considered necessary to
+the immediate attainment of the object desired.</p>
+
+<p>“Respectfully yours,</p>
+
+<p>“<span class="smcap">Edward Sylvester</span>.”</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>“Is it anything serious?” asked his daughter, coming into the parlor and
+looking up into his face with a strange wistfulness he could not fail to
+remark.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Stuyvesant gave her a quick glance, shook his head with some
+nervousness and hastily pocketed the epistle. “Business,” mumbled he,
+“business.” And ignoring the sigh that escaped her lips, began to make
+his preparations for going at once down town.</p>
+
+<p>He was always an awkward man at such matters, and it was her habit to
+afford him what assistance she could. This she now did, lending her hand
+to help him on with his overcoat, rising on tip-toe to tie his muffler,
+and bending her bright head to see that his galoshes were properly
+fastened; her charming face with its far-away look, shining strangely
+sweet in the dim hall, in contrast with his severe and antiquated
+countenance.</p>
+
+<p>He watched her carefully but with seeming indifference till all was done
+and he stood ready to depart, then in an awkward enough way—he was not
+accustomed to bestow endearments—drew her to him and kissed her on the
+forehead; after which he turned about and departed without a word to
+season or explain this unwonted manifestation of tenderness.</p>
+
+<p>A kiss was an unusual occurrence in that confiding but undemonstrative
+household, and the little maiden trembled. “Something is wrong,” she
+murmured half to herself, half to the dim vista of the lonely parlor,
+where but a night or so ago had stood the beloved form of him, who, bury
+the thought as she would, had become, if indeed he had not always been,
+the beginning and the ending of all her maidenly dreams: “what? what?”
+And her young heart swelled painfully as she realized like many a woman
+before her, that whatever might be her doubts, fears, anguish or
+suspense, nothing remained for her but silence and a tedious waiting for
+others to recognize her misery and speak.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile how was it with her dearest friend and confident, Paula? The
+morning, as I have already declared, was bright and exceptionally
+beautiful. Sunshine filled the air and freshness invigorated the breeze.
+Cicely was blind to it all, but as Paula looked from her window
+preparatory to going below, a close observer might have perceived that
+the serenity of the cloudless sky was reflected in her beaming eyes,
+that peace brooded above her soul and ruled her tender spirit. She had
+held a long conversation with Miss Belinda, she had prayed, she had
+slept and she had risen with a confirmed love in her heart for the man
+who was at once the admiration of her eyes and the well-spring of her
+deepest thoughts and wildest longings. “I will show him so plainly what
+the angels have told me,” whispered she, “that he will have no need to
+ask.” And she wound her long locks into the coil that she knew he best
+liked and fixed a rose at her throat, and so with a smile on her lip
+went softly down stairs. O the timid eager step of maidenhood when
+drawing toward the shrine of all it adores! Could those halls and lofty
+corridors have whispered their secret, what a story they would have told
+of beating heart and tremulous glance, eager longings, and maidenly
+shrinkings, as the lovely form, swaying with a thousand hopes and fears,
+glided from landing to landing, carrying with it love and joy and peace.
+And trust! As she neared the bronze image that had always awakened such
+vague feelings of repugnance on her part, and found its terrors gone and
+its smile assuring, she realized that her breast held nothing but faith
+in him, who may have sinned in his youth, but who had repented in his
+manhood, and now stood clear and noble in her eyes. The assurance was
+too sweet, the flood of feeling too overwhelming. With a quick glance
+around her, she stopped and flung her arms about the hitherto repellant
+bronze, pressing her young breast against the cold metal with a fervor
+that ought to have hallowed its sensuous mould forever. Then she hurried
+down.</p>
+
+<p>Her first glance into the dining-room brought her a disappointment. Mr.
+Sylvester had already breakfasted and gone; only Aunt Belinda sat at the
+table. With a slightly troubled brow, Paula advanced to her own place at
+the board.</p>
+
+<p>“Mr. Sylvester has urgent business on hand to-day,” quoth her aunt. “I
+met him going out just as I came down.”</p>
+
+<p>Her look lingered on Paula as she said this, and if it had not been for
+the servants, she would doubtless have given utterance to some further
+expression on the matter, for she had been greatly struck by Mr.
+Sylvester’s appearance and the sad, firm, almost lofty expression of his
+eye, as it met hers in their hurried conversation.</p>
+
+<p>“He is a very busy man,” returned Paula simply, and was silent, struck
+by some secret dread she could not have explained. Suddenly she rose;
+she had found an envelope beneath her plate, addressed to herself. It
+was bulky and evidently contained a key. Hastening behind the curtains
+of the window, she opened it. The key was to that secret study of his at
+the top of the house, which no one but himself had ever been seen to
+enter, and the words that enwrapped it were these:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>“If I send you no word to the contrary, and if I do not come
+back by seven o’clock this evening, go to the room of which
+this is the key, open my desk, and read what I have prepared
+for your eyes.</p>
+
+<p>“E. S.”</p></blockquote>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<div class='chapter'><h3><a id="XXXVII"></a>XXXVII.</h3></div>
+
+<div class='ph4'>THE OPINION OF A CERTAIN NOTED DETECTIVE.</div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i12">“But still there clung<br></span>
+<span class="i0">One hope, like a keen sword on starting threads uphung.”—<span class="smcap">Revolt of Islam.</span><br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Facts are stubborn things.”—<span class="smcap">Elliott.</span><br></span>
+</div></div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+
+<p>Meanwhile Mr. Stuyvesant hasted on his way down town and ere long made
+his appearance at the bank. He found Mr. Sylvester and Bertram seated in
+the directors’ room, with a portly smooth-faced man whose appearance was
+at once strange and vaguely familiar.</p>
+
+<p>“A detective, sir,” explained Mr. Sylvester rising with forced
+composure; “a man upon whose judgment I have been told we may rely. Mr.
+Gryce, Mr. Stuyvesant.”</p>
+
+<p>The latter gentleman nodded, cast a glance around the room, during which
+his eye rested for a moment on Bertram’s somewhat pale countenance, and
+nervously took a seat.</p>
+
+<p>“A mysterious piece of business, this,” came from the detective’s lips
+in an easy tone, calculated to relieve the tension of embarrassment into
+which the entrance of Mr. Stuyvesant seemed to have thrown all parties.
+“What were the numbers of the bonds found missing, if you please?”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Stuyvesant told him.</p>
+
+<p>“You are positively assured these bonds were all in the box when you
+last locked it?”</p>
+
+<p>“I am.”</p>
+
+<p>“When was that, sir? On what day and at what hour of the day, if you
+please?”</p>
+
+<p>“Tuesday, at about three o’clock, I should say.”</p>
+
+<p>“The box was locked by you? There is no doubt about that fact?”</p>
+
+<p>“None in the least.”</p>
+
+<p>“Where were you standing at the time?”</p>
+
+<p>“In front of the vault door. I had taken out the box myself as I am in
+the habit of doing, and had stepped there to put it back.”</p>
+
+<p>“Was any one near you then?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes. The cashier was at his desk and the teller had occasion to go to
+the safe while I stood there. I do not remember seeing any one else in
+my immediate vicinity.”</p>
+
+<p>“Do you remember ever going to the vaults and not finding some one near
+you at the time or at least in full view of your movements?”</p>
+
+<p>“No.”</p>
+
+<p>“I have informed Mr. Gryce,” interposed Mr. Sylvester, with a ring in
+his deep voice that made Mr. Stuyvesant start, “that our chief desire at
+present is to have his judgment upon the all important question, as to
+whether this theft was committed by a stranger, or one in the employ and
+consequently in the confidence of the bank.”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Stuyvesant bowed, every wrinkle in his face manifesting itself with
+startling distinctness as he slowly moved his eyes and fixed them on the
+inscrutable countenance of the detective.</p>
+
+<p>“You agree then with these gentlemen,” continued the latter, who had a
+way of seeming more interested in everything and everybody present than
+the person he was addressing, “that it would be difficult if not
+impossible for any one unconnected with the bank, to approach the vaults
+during business hours and abstract anything from them without
+detection?”</p>
+
+<p>“And do these gentleman both assert that?” queried Mr. Stuyvesant, with
+a sharp look from uncle to nephew.</p>
+
+<p>“I believe they do,” replied the detective, as both the gentlemen bowed,
+Bertram with an uncontrollable quiver of his lip, and Mr. Sylvester with
+a deepening of the lines about his mouth, which may or may not have been
+noticed by this man who appeared to observe nothing.</p>
+
+<p>“I should be loth to conclude that the robbery was committed by any one
+but a stranger,” remarked Mr. Stuyvesant; “but if these gentlemen concur
+in the statement you have just made, I am bound to acknowledge that I do
+not myself see how the theft could have been perpetrated by an outsider.
+Had the box itself been missing, it would be different. I remember my
+old friend Mr. A—, the president of the police department, telling me
+of a case where a box containing securities to the amount of two hundred
+thousand dollars, was abstracted in full daylight from the vaults of one
+of our largest banks; an act requiring such daring, the directors for a
+long time refused to believe it possible, until a detective one day
+showed them another box of theirs which he had succeeded in abstracting
+in the same way.<a id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> But the vaults in that instance were in a less
+conspicuous portion of the bank than ours, besides to approach an open
+vault, snatch a box from it and escape, is a much simpler matter than to
+remain long enough to open a box and choose from its contents such
+papers as appeared most marketable. If a regular thief could do such a
+thing, it does not seem probable that he would. Nevertheless the most
+acute judgment is often at fault in these matters, and I do not pretend
+to have formed an opinion.”</p>
+
+<p>The detective who had listened to these words with marked attention,
+bowed his concurrence and asked if the bonds mentioned by Mr. Stuyvesant
+were all that had been found missing from the bank. If any of the other
+boxes had been opened, or if the contents of the safe itself had ever
+been tampered with.</p>
+
+<p>“The contents of the safe are all correct,” came in deep tones from Mr.
+Sylvester. “Mr. Folger, my nephew and myself went through them this
+morning. As for the boxes I cannot say, many of them belong to persons
+travelling; some of them have been left here by trustees of estates,
+consequently often lie for weeks in the vaults untouched. If however any
+of them have been opened, we ought to be able to see it. Would you like
+an examination made of their condition?”</p>
+
+<p>The detective nodded.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester at once turned to Mr. Stuyvesant. “May I ask you to
+mention what officer of the bank you would like to have go to the
+vaults?”</p>
+
+<p>That gentleman started, looked uneasily about, but meeting Bertram’s
+eye, nervously dropped his own and muttered the name of Folger.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester suppressed a sigh, sent for the paying-teller, and
+informed him of their wishes. He at once proceeded to the vaults. While
+he was gone, Mr. Gryce took the opportunity to make the following
+remark.</p>
+
+<p>“Gentlemen,” said he, “let us understand ourselves. What you want of me,
+is to tell you whether this robbery has been committed by a stranger or
+by some one in your employ. Now to decide this question it is necessary
+for me to ask first, whether you have ever had reason to doubt the
+honesty of any person connected with the bank?”</p>
+
+<p>“No,” came from Mr. Sylvester with sharp and shrill distinctness. “Since
+I have had the honor of conducting the affairs of this institution, I
+have made it my business to observe and note the bearing and character
+of each and every man employed under me, and I believe them all to be honest.”</p>
+
+<p>The glance of the detective while it did not perceptibly move from the
+large screen drawn across the room at the back of Mr. Sylvester, seemed
+to request the opinions of the other two gentlemen on this point.</p>
+
+<p>Bertram observing it, subdued the rapid beatings of his heart and spoke
+with like distinctness. “I have been in the bank the same length of time
+as my uncle,” said he, “and most heartily endorse his good opinion of
+the various persons in our employ.”</p>
+
+<p>“And Mr. Stuyvesant?” the immovable glance seemed to say.</p>
+
+<p>“Men are honest in my opinion till they are proved otherwise,” came in
+short stern accents from the director’s lips.</p>
+
+<p>The detective drew back in his chair as if he considered that point
+decided, and yet Bertram’s eye which had clouded at Mr. Stuyvesant’s too
+abrupt assertion, did not clear again as might have been expected.</p>
+
+<p>“There is one more question I desire to settle,” continued the
+detective, “and that is, whether this robbery could have been
+perpetrated after business hours, by some one in collusion with the
+person who is here left in charge?”</p>
+
+<p>“No;” again came from Mr. Sylvester, with impartial justice. “The
+watchman—who by the way has been in the bank for twelve years—could
+not help a man to find entrance to the vaults. His simple duty is to
+watch over the bank and give alarm in case of fire or burglary. It would
+necessitate a knowledge of the combination by which the vault doors are
+opened, to do what you suggest, and that is possessed by but three
+persons in the bank.”</p>
+
+<p>“And those are?”</p>
+
+<p>“The cashier, the janitor, and myself.”</p>
+
+<p>He endeavored to speak calmly and without any betrayal of the effort it
+caused him to utter those simple words, but a detective’s ear is nice
+and it is doubtful if he perfectly succeeded.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Gryce however limited himself to a muttered, humph! and a long and
+thoughtful look at a spot on the green baize of the table before which
+he sat.</p>
+
+<p>“The janitor lives in the building, I suppose?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, and is, as I am sure Mr. Stuyvesant will second me in asserting,
+honesty to the back-bone.”</p>
+
+<p>“Janitors always are,” observed the detective; then shortly, “How long
+has <i>he</i> been with you?”</p>
+
+<p>“Three years.”</p>
+
+<p>Another “humph!” and an increased interest in the ink spot.</p>
+
+<p>“That is not long, considering the responsibility of his position.”</p>
+
+<p>“He was on the police force before he came to us,” remarked Mr.
+Sylvester.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Gryce looked as if that was not much of a recommendation.</p>
+
+<p>“As for the short time he has been with us,” resumed the other, “he came
+into the bank the same winter as my nephew and myself, and has found the
+time sufficient to earn the respect of all who know him.”</p>
+
+<p>The detective bowed, seemingly awed by the dignity with which the last
+statement had been uttered; but any one who knew him well, would have
+perceived that the film of uncertainty which had hitherto dimmed the
+brightness of his regard was gone, as if in the other’s impressive
+manner, if not in the suggestion his words had unconsciously offered,
+the detective had received an answer to some question which had been
+puzzling him, or laid his hand upon some clue which had till now eluded
+his grasp. The inquiries which he made haste to pursue, betrayed,
+however, but little of the tendency of his thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>“The janitor, you say, knows the combination by which the vault doors
+are opened?”</p>
+
+<p>“The <i>vault doors</i>,” emphasized Mr. Sylvester. “The safe is another
+matter; that stands inside the vault and is locked by a triple
+combination which as a whole is not known to any one man in this
+building, not even to myself.”</p>
+
+<p>“But the boxes are not kept in the safe?”</p>
+
+<p>“No, they are piled up with the books in the vaults at the side of the
+safe, as you can see for yourself, if you choose to join Mr. Folger.”</p>
+
+<p>“Not necessary. The janitor, then, is the only man besides yourselves,
+who under any circumstances or for any reason, could get at those boxes
+after business hours?”</p>
+
+<p>“He is.”</p>
+
+<p>“One question more. Who is the man to attend to those boxes? I mean to
+ask, which of the men in your employ is expected to procure a box out of
+the vaults when it is called for, and put it back in its place when its
+owner is through with it?”</p>
+
+<p>“Hopgood usually does that business, the janitor of whom we have just
+been speaking. When he is upstairs or out of the way, any one else whom
+it may be convenient to call.”</p>
+
+<p>“The janitor, then, has free access to the boxes at all times, night and
+day?”</p>
+
+<p>“In one sense, yes, in another, no. Should he unlock the vaults at
+night, the watchman would report upon his proceedings.”</p>
+
+<p>“But there must be time between the closing and opening of the bank,
+when the janitor is alone with the vaults?”</p>
+
+<p>“There is a space of two hours after seven in the morning, when he is
+likely to be the sole one in charge. The watchman goes home, and Hopgood
+employs himself in sweeping out the bank and preparing it for the
+business of the day.”</p>
+
+<p>“Are the watchman and the janitor on good terms with one another?”</p>
+
+<p>“Very, I believe.”</p>
+
+<p>The detective looked thoughtful. “I should like to see this Hopgood,”
+said he.</p>
+
+<p>But just then the door opened and Mr. Folger came in, looking somewhat
+pale and disturbed. “We are in a difficulty,” cried he, stepping up to
+the table where they sat. “I have found two of the boxes unlocked; that
+belonging to Hicks, Saltzer and Co., and another with the name of
+Harrington upon it. The former has been wrenched apart, the latter
+opened with some sort of instrument. Would you like to see them, sir?”
+This to Mr. Sylvester.</p>
+
+<p>With a start that gentleman rose, and as suddenly reseated himself.
+“Yes,” returned he, carefully avoiding his nephew’s eye; “bring them
+in.”</p>
+
+<p>“Hicks, Saltzer and Co., is a foreign house,” remarked Mr. Stuyvesant to
+the detective, “and do not send for their box once a fortnight, as I
+have heard Mr. Sylvester declare. Mr. Harrington is on an exploring
+expedition and is at present in South America.” Then in lower tones,
+whose sternness was not unmixed with gloom, “The thief seems to have
+known what boxes to go to.”</p>
+
+<p>Bertram flushed and made some passing rejoinder; Mr. Sylvester and the
+detective alone remained silent.</p>
+
+<p>The boxes being brought in, Mr. Gryce opened them without ceremony.
+Several papers met his eye in both, but as no one but the owners could
+know their rightful contents, it was of course impossible for him to
+determine whether anything had been stolen from them or not.</p>
+
+<p>“Send for the New York agent of Hicks, Saltzer and Co.,” came from Mr.
+Sylvester, in short, business-like command.</p>
+
+<p>Bertram at once rose. “I will see to it,” said he. His agitation was too
+great for suppression, the expression of Mr. Stuyvesant’s eye, that in
+its restlessness wandered in every direction but his own, troubled him
+beyond endurance. With a hasty move he left the room. The cold eye of
+the detective followed him.</p>
+
+<p>“Looks bad,” came in laconic tones from the paying teller.</p>
+
+<p>“I had hoped the affair begun and ended with my individual loss,”
+muttered Mr. Stuyvesant under his breath.</p>
+
+<p>The stately president and the inscrutable detective still maintained
+their silence.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly the latter moved. Turning towards Mr. Sylvester, he requested
+him to step with him to the window. “I want to have a look at your
+several employees,” whispered he, as they thus withdrew. “I want to see
+them without being seen by them. If you can manage to have them come in
+here one by one upon some pretext or other, I can so arrange that screen
+under the mantel-piece, that it shall not only hide me, but give me a
+very good view of their faces in the mirror overhead.”</p>
+
+<p>“There will be no difficulty about summoning the men,” said Mr.
+Sylvester.</p>
+
+<p>“And you consent to the scheme?”</p>
+
+<p>“Certainly, if you think anything is to be gained by it.”</p>
+
+<p>“I am sure that nothing will be lost. And sir, let the cashier be
+present if you please; and sir,” squeezing his watch chain with a
+complacent air, as the other dropped his eyes, “talk to them about
+anything that you please, only let it be of a nature that will
+necessitate a sentence or more in reply. I judge a man as much by his
+voice as his expression.”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester bowed, and without losing his self-command, though the
+short allusion to Bertram had greatly startled him, turned back to the
+table where Mr. Folger was still standing in conversation with the
+director.</p>
+
+<p>“I will not detain you longer,” said he to the paying teller. “Your
+discretion will prevent you from speaking of this matter, I trust.” Then
+as the other bowed, added carelessly, “I have something to say to
+Jessup; will you see that he steps here for a moment?”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Folger again nodded and left the room. Instantly Mr. Gryce bustled
+forward, and pulling the screen into the position he thought best
+calculated to answer his requirements, slid rapidly behind it. Mr.
+Stuyvesant looked up in surprise.</p>
+
+<p>“I am going to interview the clerks for Mr. Gryce’s benefit,” exclaimed
+Mr. Sylvester. “Will you in the meantime look over the morning paper?”</p>
+
+<p>“Thank you,” returned the other, edging nervously to one side, “my
+note-book will do just as well,” and sitting down at the remote end of
+the table, he took out a book from his pocket, above which he bent with
+very well simulated preoccupation. Mr. Sylvester called in Bertram and
+then seated himself with a hopeless and unexpectant look, which he for
+the moment forgot would be reflected in the mirror before him, and so
+carried to the eye of the watchful detective. In another instant Jessup
+entered.</p>
+
+<p>What was said in the short interview that followed, is unimportant. Mr.
+Jessup, the third teller, was one of those clear eyed, straightforward
+appearing men whose countenance is its own guarantee. It was not
+necessary to detain him or make him speak. The next man to come in was
+Watson, and after he had gone, two or three of the clerks, and later the
+receiving teller and one of the runners. All stopped long enough to
+insure Mr. Gryce a good view of their faces, and from each and all did
+Mr. Sylvester succeed in eliciting more or less conversation in response
+to the questions he chose to put.</p>
+
+<p>With the disappearance of the last mentioned individual, Mr. Gryce
+peeped from behind the screen. “A set of as honest-looking men as I wish
+to see!” uttered he with a frank cordiality that was scarcely reflected
+in the anxious countenances about him. “No sly-boots among them; how
+about the janitor, Hopgood?”</p>
+
+<p>“He shall be summoned at once, if you desire it,” said Mr. Sylvester, “I
+have only delayed calling him that I might have leisure to interrogate
+him with reference to his duties, and this very theft. That is if you
+judge it advisable in me to tamper with the subject unassisted?”</p>
+
+<p>“Your nephew can help you if necessary,” replied the imperturbable
+detective. “I should like to hear what the man, Hopgood, has to say for
+himself,” and he glided back into his old position.</p>
+
+<p>But Mr. Sylvester had scarcely reached out his hand to ring the bell by
+which he usually summoned the janitor, when the agent of Hicks, Saltzer
+&amp; Co. came in. It was an interruption that demanded instant attention.
+Saluting the gentleman with his usual proud reserve, he drew his
+attention to the box lying upon the table.</p>
+
+<p>“This is yours, I believe, sir,” said he. “It was found in our vaults
+this morning in the condition in which you now behold it, and we are
+anxious to know if its contents are all correct.”</p>
+
+<p>“They have been handled,” returned the agent, after a careful survey of
+the various papers that filled the box, “but nothing appears to be
+missing.”</p>
+
+<p>Three persons at least in that room breathed more easily.</p>
+
+<p>“But the truth is,” the gentleman continued, with a half smile towards
+the silent President of the bank, “there was nothing in this box that
+would have been of much use to any other parties than ourselves. If
+there had been a bond or so here, I doubt if we should have come off so
+fortunately, eh? The lock has evidently been wrenched open, and that is
+certainly a pretty sure sign that something is not right hereabouts.”</p>
+
+<p>“Something is decidedly wrong,” came from Mr. Sylvester sternly; “but
+through whose fault we do not as yet know.” And with a few words
+expressive of his relief at finding the other had sustained no material
+loss, he allowed the agent to depart.</p>
+
+<p>He had no sooner left the room than Mr. Stuyvesant rose. “Are you going
+to question Hopgood now?” queried he, nervously pocketing his note-book.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes sir, if you have no objections.”</p>
+
+<p>The director fidgeted with his chair and finally moved towards the door.</p>
+
+<p>“I think you will get along better with him alone,” said he. “He is a
+man who very easily gets embarrassed, and has a way of acting as if he
+were afraid of me. I will just step outside while you talk to him.”</p>
+
+<p>But Mr. Sylvester with a sudden dark flush on his brow, hastily stopped
+him. “I beg you will not,” said he, with a quick realization of what
+Hopgood might be led to say in the forthcoming interview, if he were not
+restrained by the presence of the director. “Hopgood is not so afraid of
+you that he will not answer every question that is put to him with
+straightforward frankness.” And he pushed up a chair, with a smile that
+Mr. Stuyvesant evidently found himself unable to resist. The screen
+trembled slightly, but none of them noticed it; Mr. Sylvester at once
+rang for Hopgood.</p>
+
+<p>He came in panting with his hurried descent from the fifth story, his
+face flushed and his eyes rolling, but without any of the secret
+perturbation Bertram had observed in them on a former occasion. “He
+cannot help us,” was the thought that darkened the young man’s brow as
+his eyes left the janitor, and faltering towards his uncle, fell upon
+the table before him.</p>
+
+<p>Everything was reflected in the mirror.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, Hopgood, I have a few questions to put to you this morning,” said
+Mr. Sylvester in a restrained, but not unkindly tone.</p>
+
+<p>The worthy man bowed, bestowed a salutatory roll of his eyes on Mr.
+Stuyvesant, and stood deferentially waiting.</p>
+
+<p>“No, he cannot help us,” was again Bertram’s thought, and again his eyes
+faltered to his uncle’s face, and again fell anxiously before him.</p>
+
+<p>“It has not been my habit to trouble you with inquiries about your
+management of matters under your charge,” continued Mr. Sylvester,
+stopping till the janitor’s wandering eyes settled upon his own. “Your
+conduct has always been exemplary, and your attention to duty
+satisfactory; but I would like to ask you to-day if you have observed
+anything amiss with the vaults of late? anything wrong about the boxes
+kept there? anything in short, that excited your suspicion or caused you
+to ask yourself if everything was as it should be?”</p>
+
+<p>The janitor’s ruddy face grew pale, and his eye fell with startled
+inquiry on Mr. Harrington’s box that still occupied the centre of the
+table. “No, sir,” he emphatically replied, “has anything—”</p>
+
+<p>But Mr. Sylvester did not wait to be questioned. “You have attended to
+your duties as promptly and conscientiously as usual; you have allowed
+no one to go to the vaults day or night, who had no business there? You
+have not relaxed your accustomed vigilance, or left the bank alone at
+any time during the hours it is under your charge?”</p>
+
+<p>“No sir, not for a minute, sir; that is—” He stopped and his eye
+wandered towards Mr. Stuyvesant. “Never for a minute, sir,” he went on,
+“without I knew some one was in the bank, who was capable of looking
+after it.”</p>
+
+<p>“The watchman has been at his post every night up to the usual hour?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes sir.”</p>
+
+<p>“There has been no carelessness in closing the vault doors after the
+departure of the clerks?”</p>
+
+<p>“No sir.”</p>
+
+<p>“And no trouble,” he continued, with a shade more of dignity, possibly
+because Hopgood’s tell-tale face was beginning to show signs of anxious
+confusion, “and no trouble in opening them at the proper time each
+morning?”</p>
+
+<p>“No sir.”</p>
+
+<p>“One question more—”</p>
+
+<p>But here Bertram was called out, and in the momentary stir occasioned by
+his departure, Hopgood allowed himself to glance at the box before him
+more intently than he had hitherto presumed to do. He saw it was
+unlocked, and his hands began to tremble. Mr. Sylvester’s voice recalled
+him to himself.</p>
+
+<p>“You are a faithful man,” said that gentleman, continuing his speech of
+a minute before, “and as such we are ready to acknowledge you; but the
+most conscientious amongst us are sometimes led into indiscretions. Now
+have you ever through carelessness or by means of any inadvertence,
+revealed to any one in or out of the bank, the particular combination by
+which the lock of the vault-door is at present opened?”</p>
+
+<p>“No sir, indeed no; I am much too anxious, and feel my own
+responsibility entirely too much, not to preserve so important a secret
+with the utmost care and jealousy.”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester’s voice, careful as he was to modulate it, showed a secret
+discouragement. “The vaults then as far as you know, are safe when once
+they are closed for the night?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes sir.” The janitor’s face expressed a slight degree of wonder, but
+his voice was emphatic.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester’s eye travelled in the direction of the screen. “Very
+well,” said he; and paused to reflect.</p>
+
+<p>In the interim the door opened for a second time. “A gentleman to see
+Mr. Stuyvesant,” said a voice.</p>
+
+<p>With an air of relief the director hastily rose, and before Mr.
+Sylvester had realized his position, left the room and closed the door
+behind him. A knell seemed to ring its note in Mr. Sylvester’s breast.
+The janitor, released as he supposed from all constraint, stepped
+hastily forward.</p>
+
+<p>“That box has been found unlocked,” he cried with a wave of his hand
+towards the table; “some one has been to the vaults, and I—Oh, sir,” he
+hurriedly exclaimed, disregarding in his agitation the stern and
+forbidding look which Mr. Sylvester in his secret despair had made haste
+to assume, “you did not want me to say anything about the time you came
+down so early in the morning, and I went out and left you alone in the
+bank, and you went to the vaults and opened Mr. Stuyvesant’s box by
+mistake, with a tooth-pick as you remember?”</p>
+
+<p>The mirror that looked down upon that pair, showed one very white face
+at that moment, but the screen that had trembled a moment before, stood
+strangely still in the silence.</p>
+
+<p>“No,” came at length from Mr. Sylvester, with a composure that
+astonished himself. “I was not questioning you about matters of a year
+agone. But you might have told that incident if you pleased; it was very
+easily explainable.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes sir, I know, and I beg pardon for alluding to it, but I was so
+taken aback, sir, by your questions; I wanted to tell the exact truth,
+and I did not want to say anything that would hurt you with Mr.
+Stuyvesant; that is if I could help it. I hope I did right, sir,” he
+blundered on, conscious he was uttering words he might better have kept
+to himself, but too embarrassed to know how to emerge from the
+difficulty into which his mingled zeal and anxiety had betrayed him. “I
+was never a good hand at answering questions, and if any thing really
+serious has happened, I shall wish you had taken me at my word and
+dismissed me immediately after that affair. Constantia Maria would have
+been a little worse off perhaps, but I should not be on hand to answer
+questions, and—”</p>
+
+<p>“Hopgood!”</p>
+
+<p>The man started, eyed Mr. Sylvester’s white but powerfully controlled
+countenance, seemed struck with something he saw there, and was silent.</p>
+
+<p>“You make too much now, as you made too much then of a matter that
+having its sole ground in a mistake, is, as I say, easily explainable.
+This affair which has come up now, is not so clear. Three of the boxes
+have been opened, and from one certain valuables have been taken. Can
+you give me any information that will assist us in our search after the
+culprit?”</p>
+
+<p>“No sir.” The tone was quite humble, Hopgood drew back unconsciously
+towards the door.</p>
+
+<p>“As for the mistake of a year ago to which you have seen proper to
+allude, I shall myself take pains to inform Mr. Stuyvesant of it, since
+it has made such an impression upon you that it trammels your honesty
+and makes you consider it at all necessary to be anxious about it at
+this time.”</p>
+
+<p>And Hopgood unused to sarcasm from those lips, drew himself together,
+and with one more agitated look at the box on the table, sidled
+awkwardly from the room. Mr. Sylvester at once advanced to the screen
+which he hastily pushed aside. “Well, sir,” said he, meeting the
+detective’s wavering eye and forcing him to return his look, “you have
+now seen the various employees of the bank and heard most of them
+converse. Is there anything more you would like to inquire into before
+giving us the opinion I requested?”</p>
+
+<p>“No sir,” said the detective, coming forward, but very slowly and
+somewhat hesitatingly for him. “I think I am ready to say—”</p>
+
+<p>Here the door opened, and Mr. Stuyvesant returned. The detective drew a
+breath of relief and repeated his words with a business-like assurance.
+“I think I am ready to say, that from the nature of the theft and the
+mysterious manner in which it has been perpetrated, suspicion
+undoubtedly points to some one connected with the bank. That is all that
+you require of me to-day?” he added, with a bow of some formality in the
+direction of Mr. Sylvester.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” was the short reply. But in an instant a change passed over the
+stately form of the speaker. Advancing to Mr. Gryce, he confronted him
+with a countenance almost majestic in its severity, and somewhat
+severely remarked, “This is a serious charge to bring against men whose
+countenances you yourself have denominated as honest. Are we to believe
+you have fully considered the question, and realize the importance of
+what you say?”</p>
+
+<p>“Mr. Sylvester,” replied the detective, with great self-possession and
+some dignity, “a man who is brought every day of his life into positions
+where the least turning of a hair will sink a man or save him, learns to
+weigh his words, before he speaks even in such informal inquiries as
+these.”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester bowed and turned towards Mr. Stuyvesant. “Is there any
+further action you would like to have taken in regard to this matter
+to-day?” he asked, without a tremble in his voice.</p>
+
+<p>With a glance at the half open box of the absent Mr. Harrington, the
+agitated director slowly shook his head. “We must have time to think,”
+said he.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Gryce at once took up his hat. “If the charge implied in my opinion
+strikes you, gentlemen, as serious, you must at least acknowledge that
+your own judgment does not greatly differ from mine, or why such
+unnecessary agitation in regard to a loss so petty, by a gentleman worth
+as we are told his millions.” And with this passing shot, to which
+neither of his auditors responded, he made his final obeisance and
+calmly left the room.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester and Mr. Stuyvesant slowly confronted one another.</p>
+
+<p>“The man speaks the truth,” said the former. “You at least suspect some
+one in the bank, Mr. Stuyvesant?”</p>
+
+<p>“I have no wish to,” hastily returned the other, “but facts—”</p>
+
+<p>“Would facts of this nature have any weight with you against the
+unspotted character of a man never known by you to meditate, much less
+commit a dishonest action?”</p>
+
+<p>“No; yet facts are facts, and if it is proved that some one in our
+employ has perpetrated a theft, the mind will unconsciously ask who, and
+remain uneasy till it is satisfied.”</p>
+
+<p>“And if it never is?”</p>
+
+<p>“It will always ask who, I suppose.”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester drew back. “The matter shall be pushed,” said he; “you
+shall be satisfied. Surveillance over each man employed in this
+institution ought sooner or later to elicit the truth. The police shall
+take it in charge.”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Stuyvesant looked uneasy. “I suppose it is only justice,” murmured
+he, “but it is a scandal I would have been glad to avoid.”</p>
+
+<p>“And I, but circumstances admit of no other course. The innocent must
+not suffer for the guilty, even so far as an unfounded suspicion would
+lead.”</p>
+
+<p>“No, no, of course not.” And the director bustled about after his
+overcoat and hat.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester watched him with growing sadness. “Mr. Stuyvesant,” said
+he, as the latter stood before him ready for the street, “we have always
+been on terms of friendship, and nothing but the most pleasant relations
+have ever existed between us. Will you pardon me if I ask you to give me
+your hand in good-day?”</p>
+
+<p>The director paused, looked a trifle astonished, but held out his hand
+not only with cordiality but very evident affection.</p>
+
+<p>“Good day,” cried he, “good-day.”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester pressed that hand, and then with a dignified bow, allowed
+the director to depart. It was his last effort at composure. When the
+door closed, his head sank on his hands, and life with all its hopes and
+honors, love and happiness, seemed to die within him.</p>
+
+<p>He was interrupted at length by Bertram. “Well, uncle?” asked the young
+man with unrestrained emotion.</p>
+
+<p>“The theft has been committed by some one in this bank; so the detective
+gives out, and so we are called upon to believe. <i>Who</i> the man is who
+has caused us all this misery, neither he, nor you, nor I, nor any one,
+is likely to very soon determine. Meantime—”</p>
+
+<p>“Well?” cried Bertram anxiously, after a moment of suspense.</p>
+
+<p>“Meantime, courage!” his uncle resumed with forced cheerfulness.</p>
+
+<p>But as he was leaving the bank he came up to Bertram, and laying his
+hand on his shoulder, quietly said:</p>
+
+<p>“I want you to go immediately to my house upon leaving here. I may not
+be back till midnight, and Miss Fairchild may need the comfort of your
+presence. Will you do it, Bertram?”</p>
+
+<p>“Uncle! I—”</p>
+
+<p>“Hush! you will comfort me best by doing what I ask. May I rely upon
+you?”</p>
+
+<p>“Always.”</p>
+
+<p>“That is enough.”</p>
+
+<p>And with just a final look, the two gentlemen parted, and the shadow
+which had rested all day upon the bank, deepened over Bertram’s head
+like a pall.</p>
+
+<p>It was not lifted by the sight of Hopgood stealing a few minutes later
+towards the door by which his uncle had departed, his face pale, and his
+eyes fixed in a stare, that bespoke some deep and moving determination.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<div class='chapter'><h3><a id="XXXVIII"></a>XXXVIII.</h3></div>
+
+<div class='ph4'>BLUE-BEARD’S CHAMBER.</div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">“Present fears<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Are less than horrible imaginings.”—<span class="smcap">Macbeth</span>.<br></span>
+</div></div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+
+<p>Clarence Ensign was not surprised at the refusal he received from Paula.
+He had realized from the first that the love of this beautiful woman
+would be difficult to obtain, even if no rival with more powerful
+inducements than his own, should chance to cross his path. She was one
+who could be won to give friendship, consideration, and sympathy without
+stint; but from the very fact that she could so easily be induced to
+grant these, he foresaw the improbability, or at least the difficulty of
+enticing her to yield more. A woman whose hand warms towards the other
+sex in ready friendship, is the last to succumb to the entreaties of
+love. The circle of her sympathies is so large, the man must do well,
+who of all his sex, pierces to the sacred centre. The appearance of Mr.
+Sylvester on the scene, settled his fate, or so he believed; but he was
+too much in earnest to yield his hopes without another effort; so upon
+the afternoon of this eventful day, he called upon Paula.</p>
+
+<p>The first glimpse he obtained of her countenance, convinced him that he
+was indeed too late. Not for him that anxious pallor, giving way to a
+rosy tinge at the least sound in the streets without. Not for him that
+wandering glance, burning with questions to which nothing seemed able to
+grant reply. The very smile with which she greeted him, was a blow; it
+was so forgetful of the motive that had brought him there.</p>
+
+<p>“Miss Fairchild,” he stammered, with a generous impulse to save her
+unnecessary pain, “you have rejected my offer and settled my doom; but
+let me believe that I have not lost your regard, or that hold upon your
+friendship which it has hitherto been my pleasure to enjoy.”</p>
+
+<p>She woke at once to a realization of his position. “Oh Mr. Ensign,” she
+murmured, “can you doubt my regard or the truth of my friendship? It is
+for me to doubt; I have caused you such pain, and as you may think, so
+ruthlessly and with such lack of consideration. I have been peculiarly
+placed,” she blushingly proceeded. “A woman does not always know her own
+heart, or if she does, sometimes hesitates to yield to its secret
+impulses. I have led you astray these last few weeks, but I first went
+astray myself. The real path in which I ought to tread, was only last
+night revealed to me. I can say no more, Mr. Ensign.”</p>
+
+<p>“Nor is it necessary,” replied he. “You have chosen the better path, and
+the better man. May life abound in joys for you, Miss Fairchild.”</p>
+
+<p>She drew herself up and her hand went involuntarily to her heart. “It is
+not joy I seek,” said she, “but—”</p>
+
+<p>“What?” He looked at her face lit with that heavenly gleam that visited
+it in rare moments of deepest emotion, and wondered.</p>
+
+<p>“Joy is in seeing the one you love happy,” cried she; “earth holds none
+that is sweeter or higher.”</p>
+
+<p>“Then may that be yours,” he murmured, manfully subduing the jealous
+pang natural under the circumstances. And taking the hand she held out
+to him, he kissed it with greater reverence and truer affection than
+when, in the first joyous hours of their intercourse, he carried it so
+gallantly to his lips.</p>
+
+<p>And she—oh, difference of time and feeling—did not remember as of
+yore, the noble days of chivalry, though he was in this moment, so much
+more than ever the true knight and the reproachless cavalier.</p>
+
+<p>For Paula’s heart was heavy. Fears too unsubstantial to be met and
+vanquished, had haunted her steps all day. The short note which Mr.
+Sylvester had written her, lay like lead upon her bosom. She longed for
+the hours to fly, yet dreaded to hear the clock tick out the moments
+that possibly were destined to bring her untold suffering and
+disappointment. A revelation awaiting her in Mr. Sylvester’s desk up
+stairs? That meant separation and farewell; for words of promise and
+devotion can be spoken, and the heart that hopes, does not limit time to
+hours.</p>
+
+<p>With Bertram’s entrance, her fears took absolute shape. Mr. Sylvester
+was not coming home to dinner. Thenceforward till seven o’clock, she sat
+with her hand on her heart, waiting. At the stroke of the clock, she
+rose, and procuring a candle from her room, went slowly up stairs.
+“Watch for me,” she had said to Aunt Belinda, “for I fear I shall need
+your care when I come down.”</p>
+
+<p>What is there about a mystery however trivial, that thrills the heart
+with vague expectancy at the least lift of the concealing curtain! As
+Paula paused before the door, which never to her knowledge had opened to
+the passage of any other form than that of Mr. Sylvester, she was
+conscious of an agitation wholly distinct from that which had hitherto
+afflicted her. All the past curiosity of Ona concerning this room,
+together with her devices for satisfying that curiosity, recurred to
+Paula with startling distinctness. It was as if the white hand of that
+dead wife had thrust itself forth from the shadows to pull her back. The
+candle trembled in her grasp, and she unconsciously recoiled. But the
+next moment the thought of Mr. Sylvester struck warmth and determination
+through her being, and hastily thrusting the key into the lock, she
+pushed open the door and stepped across the threshold.</p>
+
+<p>Her first movement was that of surprise. In all her dreams of the
+possible appearance of this room, she had never imagined it to be like
+this. Plain, rude and homely, its high walls unornamented, its floor
+uncovered, its furniture limited to a plain desk and two or three rather
+uncomfortable-looking chairs, it struck upon her fancy with the same
+sense of incongruity, as might the sight of a low-eaved cottage in the
+midst of stately palaces and lordly pleasure-grounds. Setting down her
+candle, she folded her hands to still their tremblings, and slowly
+looked around her. This was the spot, then, to which he was accustomed
+to flee when oppressed by any care or harassed by any difficulty; this
+cold, bare, uninviting apartment with its forbidding aspect unsoftened
+by the tokens of a woman’s care or presence! To this room, humbler than
+any in her aunt’s home in Grotewell, he had brought all his griefs, from
+the day his baby lay dead in the rooms below, to that awful hour which
+saw the wife and mother brought into his doors and laid a cold and
+pulseless form in the midst of his gorgeous parlors! Here he had met his
+own higher impulses face to face, and wrestled with them through the
+watches of the night! In this wilderness of seeming poverty, he had
+dreamed, perhaps, his first fond dream of her as a woman, and signed
+perhaps his final renunciation of her as the future companion of his
+life! What did it mean? Why a spot of so much desolation in the midst of
+so much that was lordly and luxurious? Her fears might give her a
+possible interpretation, but she would not listen to fears. Only his
+words should instruct her. Going to the desk, she opened it. A sealed
+envelope addressed to herself, immediately met her eyes. Taking it out
+with a slow and reverent touch, she began to read the long and closely
+written letter which it contained.</p>
+
+<p>And the little candle burned on, shedding its rays over her bended head
+and upon the dismal walls about her, with a persistency that seemed to
+bring out, as in letters of fire, the hidden history of long ago, with
+its vanished days and its forgotten midnights.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<div class='chapter'><h3><a id="XXXIX"></a>XXXIX.</h3></div>
+
+<div class='ph4'>FROM A. TO Z.</div>
+
+<blockquote><p>“A naked human heart.”—<span class="smcap">Young.</span></p></blockquote>
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+
+<p>“My Beloved Child:</p>
+
+<p>“So may I call you in this the final hour of our separation, but never
+again, dear one, never again. When I said to you, just twenty-four hours
+ago, that my sin was buried and my future was clear, I spake as men
+speak who forget the justice of God and dream only of his mercy. An
+hour’s time convinced me that an evil deed once perpetrated by a man, is
+never buried so that its ghost will not rise. Do as we will, repent as
+we may, the shadowy phantom of a stained and unrighteous youth is never
+laid; nor is a man justified in believing it so, till death has closed
+his eyes, and fame written its epitaph upon his tomb.</p>
+
+<p>“Paula, I am at this hour wandering in search of the being who holds the
+secret of my life and who will to-morrow blazon it before all the world.
+It is with no hope I seek him. God has not brought me to this pass, to
+release me at last, from shame and disgrace. Suffering and the loss of
+all my sad heart cherished, wait at my gates. Only one boon remains, and
+that is, your sympathy and the consolation of your regard. These, though
+bestowed as friends bestow them, are very precious to me; I cannot see
+them go, and that they may not, I tell you the full story of my life.</p>
+
+<p>“My youth was happy—my early youth, I mean. Bertram’s father was a dear
+brother to me, and my mother a watchful guardian and a tender friend. At
+fifteen, I entered a bank, the small bank in Grotewell, which you ought
+to remember. From the lowest position in it, I gradually worked my way
+up till I occupied the cashier’s place; and was just congratulating
+myself upon my prospects, when Ona Delafield returned from
+boarding-school, a young lady.</p>
+
+<p>“Paula, there is a fascination, which some men who have known nothing
+deeper and higher, call love. I, who in those days had cherished but few
+thoughts beyond the ordinary reach of a narrow and somewhat selfish
+business mind, imagined that the well-spring of all romance had bubbled
+up within me, when my eyes first fell upon this regal blonde, with her
+sleepy, inscrutable eyes and bewildering smile. Ulysses within sound of
+the siren’s voice, was nothing to it. He had been warned of his danger
+and had only his own curiosity to combat, while I was not even aware of
+my peril, and floated within reach of this woman’s power, without making
+an effort to escape. She was so subtle in her influence, Paula; so
+careless in the very exercise of her sovereignty. She never seemed to
+command; yet men and women obeyed her. Peculiarities which mar the
+matron, are often graces in a young, unmarried girl, whose thoughts are
+a mystery, and whose emotions an untried field. I believed I had found
+the queen of all beauty and when in an unguarded hour she betrayed her
+first appreciation of my devotion, I seemed to burst into a Paradise of
+delights, where every step I took, only the more intoxicated and
+bewildered me. My first realization of the sensuous and earthly
+character of my happiness came with the glimpse of your child-face on
+that never-to-be-forgotten day when we met beside the river. Like a star
+seen above the glare of a conflagration, the pure spirit that informed
+your glance, flashed on my burning soul, and for a moment I knew that in
+you budded the kind of woman-nature which it befitted a man to seek;
+that in the hands of such a one as you would make, should he trust his
+honor and bequeath his happiness. But when did a lover ever break the
+bonds that imprisoned his fancy, at the inspiration of a passing voice.
+I went back to Ona and forgot the child by the river.</p>
+
+<p>“Paula, I have no time to utter regrets. This is a hard plain tale which
+I have to relate; but if you love me still—if, as I have sometimes
+imagined, you have always loved me—think what my life had been if I had
+heeded the warning which God vouchsafed me on that day, and contrast it
+with what it is, and what it must be.</p>
+
+<p>“I went back to Ona, then, and the hold which she had upon me from the
+first, took form and shape. As well as she could love any one, she loved
+me, and though she had offers from one or two more advantageous sources,
+she finally decided that she would risk the future and accept me, if her
+father consented to the alliance. You who are the niece of the man of
+whom I must now speak, may or may not know what that meant. I doubt if
+you do; he left Grotewell while you were a child, and any gossip
+concerning him must ever fall short of the real truth. Enough, then,
+that it meant, if Jacob Delafield could see in my future any promises of
+success sufficient to warrant him in accepting me as his son-in-law, no
+woman living ought to hesitate to trust me with her hand. He was the
+Squire of the town, and as such entitled to respect, but he was also
+something more, as you will presently discover. His answer to my plea
+was:</p>
+
+<p>“‘Well, how much money have you to show?’</p>
+
+<p>“Now I had none. My salary as cashier of a small country bank was not
+large, and my brother’s prolonged sickness and subsequent death,
+together with my own somewhat luxurious habits, had utterly exhausted
+it. I told him so, but added that I had, somewhere up among the hills,
+an old maiden aunt who had promised me five thousand dollars at her
+death; and that as she was very ill at that time—hopelessly so, her
+neighbors thought—in a few weeks I should doubtless be able to satisfy
+him with the sight of a sum sufficient to start us in housekeeping, if
+no more.</p>
+
+<p>“He nodded at this, but gave me no distinct reply. ‘Let us wait,’ said
+he.</p>
+
+<p>“But youth is not inclined to wait. I considered my cause as good as
+won, and began to make all my preparations accordingly. With a feverish
+impatience which is no sign of true love, I watched the days go by, and
+waited for, if I did not anticipate, the death which I fondly imagined
+would make all clear. At last it came, and I went again into Mr.
+Delafield’s presence.</p>
+
+<p>“‘My aunt has just died,’ I announced, and stood waiting for the short,
+concise,</p>
+
+<p>“‘Go ahead, then, my boy!’ which I certainly expected.</p>
+
+<p>“Instead of that, he gave me a queer inexplicable smile, and merely
+said, ‘I want to see the greenbacks, my lad. No color so good as green,
+not even the black upon white of ‘I promise to pay.’</p>
+
+<p>“I went back to my desk in the bank, chagrined. Ona had told me a few
+days before that she was tired of waiting, that the young doctor from
+the next town was very assiduous in his attentions, and as there was no
+question as to his ability to support a wife, why—she did not finish
+her sentence, but the toss of her head and her careless tone at parting,
+were enough to inflame the jealousy of a less easily aroused nature than
+mine. I felt that I was in hourly danger of losing her, and all because
+I could not satisfy her father with a sight of the few thousands which
+were so soon to be mine.</p>
+
+<p>“The reading of my aunt’s will, which confirmed my hopes, did not
+greatly improve matters. ‘I want to see the money,’ the old gentleman
+repeated; and I was forced to wait the action of the law and the
+settlement of the estate. It took longer than even he foresaw. Weeks
+went by and my poor little five thousand seemed as far from my control
+as on the day the will was read. There was some trouble, I was not told
+what, that made it seem improbable that I should reap the benefit of my
+legacy for some time. Meanwhile Ona accepted the attentions of the young
+doctor, and my chances of winning her, dwindled rapidly day by day. I
+became morbidly eager and insanely jealous. Instead of pursuing my
+advantage—for I undoubtedly possessed one in her own secret inclination
+towards me—I stood off, and let my rival work his way into her
+affections unhindered. I was too sore to interrupt his play, as I called
+it, and too afraid of myself to actually confront him in her presence.
+But the sight of them riding together one day, was more than I could
+endure even in my spirit of unresistance. ‘He shall not have her,’ I
+cried, and cast about in my mind how to bring my own matters into such
+shape as to satisfy her father and so win her own consent to my suit. My
+first thought was to borrow the money, but that was impracticable in a
+town where each man’s affairs are known to his neighbor. My next was to
+hurry up the settlement of the estate by appeal to my lawyer. The result
+of the latter course was a letter of many promises, in the midst of
+which a great temptation assailed me.</p>
+
+<p>“Colonel Japha, of whose history you have heard more or less true
+accounts, was at that time living in the old mansion you took such pains
+to point out to me in that walk we took together in Grotewell. He had
+suffered a great anguish in the flight and degradation of his only
+daughter, and though the real facts connected with her departure were
+not known in the village, he was so overcome with shame, and so
+shattered in health, he lived in the utmost seclusion, opening his doors
+to but few visitors, among whom I, for some unexplained reason, was one.
+He used to say he liked me and saw in me the makings of a considerable
+man; and I, because he was Colonel Japha and a strong spirit, returned
+his appreciation, and spent many of my bitter and unhappy hours in his
+presence. It was upon one of these occasions the temptation came to
+which I have just alluded.</p>
+
+<p>“I had been talking about his health and the advisability of his taking
+a journey, when he suddenly rose and said, ‘Come with me to my study.’</p>
+
+<p>“I of course went. The first thing I saw upon entering was a trunk
+locked and strapped. ‘I am going to Europe to-morrow,’ said he, ‘to be
+gone six months.’</p>
+
+<p>“I was astonished, for in that town no one presumed to do anything of
+importance without consulting his neighbors; but I merely bowed my
+congratulations, and waited for him to speak, for I saw he had something
+on his mind that he wished to say. At last it came out. He had a
+daughter, he said, a daughter who had disgraced him and whom he had
+forbidden his house. She was not worthy of his consideration, yet he
+could not help but remember her, and while he never desired to see her
+enter his doors, it was not his wish that she should suffer want. He had
+a little money which he had laid by and which he wished to put into my
+hands for her use, provided anything should happen to him during his
+absence. ‘She is a wanderer now,’ he cried, ‘but she may one day come
+back, and then if I am dead and gone, you may give it to her.’ I was not
+to enter it in the bank under his name, but regard it as a personal
+trust to be used only under such circumstances as he mentioned.</p>
+
+<p>“The joy with which I listened to this proposal amounted almost to
+ecstacy when he went to his desk and brought out five one thousand
+dollar bills and laid them in my hand. ‘It is not much,’ said he, ‘but
+it will save her from worse degradation if she chooses to avail herself
+of it.’</p>
+
+<p>“Not much; oh no, not much, but just the sum that would raise me out of
+the pit of despondency into which I had fallen, and give me my bride, a
+chance in the world, and last, but not least, revenge on the rival I had
+now learned to hate. I was obliged to give the colonel a paper
+acknowledging the trust, but that was no hindrance. I did not mean to
+use the money, only to show it; and long before the colonel could
+return, my own five thousand would be in my hands—and so, and so, and
+so, as the devil reasons and young infatuated ears listen.</p>
+
+<p>“Colonel Japha thought I was an honest man, nor did I consider myself
+otherwise at that time. It was a chance for clever action; a bit of
+opportune luck that it would be madness to discard. On the day the
+vessel sailed which carried Colonel Japha out of the country, I went to
+Mr. Delafield and showed him the five crisp bank notes that represented
+as it were by proxy, the fortune I so speedily expected to inherit. ‘You
+have wanted to see five thousand dollars in my hand,’ said I; ‘there
+they are.’</p>
+
+<p>“His look of amazement was peculiar and ought to have given me warning;
+but I was blinded by my infatuation and thought it no more than the
+natural surprise incident to the occasion. ‘I have been made to wait a
+long time for your consent to my suit,’ said I; ‘may I hope that you
+will now give me leave to press my claims upon your daughter?’</p>
+
+<p>“He did not answer at once, but smiled, eying meanwhile the notes in my
+hand with a fascinated gaze which instinctively warned me to return them
+to my pocket. But I no sooner made a move indicative of that resolve,
+than he thrust out his cold slim hand and prevented me. ‘Let me see them,’ cried he.</p>
+
+<p>“There was no reason for me to refuse so simple a request to one in Mr.
+Delafield’s position, and though I had rather he had not asked for the
+notes, I handed them over. He at once seemed to grow taller. ‘So this is
+your start off in life,’ exclaimed he.</p>
+
+<p>“I bowed, and he let his eyes roam for a moment to my face. ‘Many a man
+would be glad of worse,’ smiled he; then suavely, ‘you shall have my
+daughter, sir.’</p>
+
+<p>“I must have turned white in my relief, for he threw his head back and
+laughed in a low unmusical way that at any other time would have
+affected me unpleasantly. But my only thought then, was to get the money
+back and rush with my new hopes into the room from which came the low
+ceaseless hum of his daughter’s voice. But at the first movement of my
+hand towards him, he assumed a mysterious air, and closing his fingers
+over the notes, said:</p>
+
+<p>“‘These are yours, to do what you wish with, I suppose?’</p>
+
+<p>“I may have blushed, but if I did, he took no notice. ‘What I wish to do
+with them,’ returned I, ‘is to shut them up in the bank for the present,
+at least till Ona is my wife.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘Oh no, no, no, you do not,’ came in easy, almost wheedling tones from
+the man before me. ‘You want to put them where they will double
+themselves in two months.’ And before I could realize to what he was
+tempting me, he had me down before his desk, showing me letters,
+documents, etc., of a certain scheme into which if a man should put a
+dollar to-day, it would ‘come out three and no mistake, before the year
+was out. It is a chance in a thousand,’ said he; ‘if I had half a
+million I would invest it in this enterprise to-day. If you will listen
+to me and put your money in there, you will be a rich man before ten
+years have passed over your head.’</p>
+
+<p>“I was dazzled. I knew enough of such matters to see that it was neither
+a hoax nor a chimera. He did have a good thing, and if the five thousand
+dollars had been my own—But I soon came to consider the question
+without that conditional. He was so specious in his manner of putting
+the affair before me, so masterful in the way he held on to the money,
+he gave me no time to think. ‘Say the word,’ cried he, ‘and in two
+months I bring you back ten thousand for your five. Only two months,’ he
+repeated, and then slowly, ‘Ona was born for luxury.’</p>
+
+<p>“Paula, you cannot realize what that temptation was. To amass wealth had
+never been my ambition before, but now everything seemed to urge it upon
+me. Dreams of unimagined luxury came to my mind as these words were
+uttered. A vision of Ona clad in garments worthy of her beauty floated
+before my eyes; the humble home I had hitherto pictured for myself,
+broadened and towered away into a palace; I beheld myself honored and
+accepted as the nabob of the town. I caught a glimpse of a new paradise,
+and hesitated to shut down the gate upon it. ‘I will think of it,’ said
+I, and went into the other room to speak to Ona.</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, if some angel had met me on the threshold! If my mother’s spirit or
+the thought of your dear face could have risen before me then and
+stopped me! Dizzy, intoxicated with love and ambition, I crossed the
+room to where she sat reeling off a skein of blue silk with hands that
+were whiter than alabaster. Kneeling down by her side, I caught those
+fair hands in mine.</p>
+
+<p>“‘Ona,’ I cried, ‘will you marry me? Your father has given his consent,
+and we shall be very happy.’</p>
+
+<p>“She bestowed upon me a little pout, and half mockingly, half earnestly
+inquired, ‘What kind of a house are you going to put me in? I cannot
+live in a cottage.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘I will put you in a palace,’ I whispered, ‘if you will only say that
+you will be mine.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘A palace! Oh, I don’t expect palaces; a house like the Japhas’ would
+do. Not but what I should feel at home in a palace,’ she added, lifting
+her lordly head and looking beautiful enough to grace a sceptre. Then,
+archly for her, ‘And papa has given his consent?’</p>
+
+<p>“‘Yes,’ I ardently cried.</p>
+
+<p>“‘Then Dr. Burton might as well go,’ she answered. ‘I will trust my
+father’s judgment, and take the palace—when it comes.’</p>
+
+<p>“After that, it was impossible to disappoint her.</p>
+
+<p>“Paula, in stating all this, I have purposely confined myself to
+relating bare facts. You must see us as we were. The glamour which an
+unreasoning passion casts over even a dishonest act, if performed for
+the sake of winning a beautiful woman, is no excuse in my own soul for
+the evil to which I succumbed that day, nor shall it seem so to you.
+Bare, hard, stern, the fact confronts me from the past, that at the
+first call of temptation I fell; and with this blot on my character, you
+will have to consider me—unhappy being that I am!</p>
+
+<p>“I did not realize then, however, all that I had done. The operation
+entered into by Mr. Delafield prospered, and in two months I had, as he
+predicted, ten thousand dollars instead of five, in my possession.
+Besides, I had just married Ona, and for awhile life was a dream of
+delight and luxury. But there came a day when I awoke to an insight of
+the peril I had escaped by a mere chance of the die. The money which I
+had expected from my aunt’s will, turned out to be amongst certain funds
+that had been risked in speculation by some agent during her sickness,
+and irrecoverably lost. The expression of her good-will was all that
+ever came to me of the legacy upon which I had so confidently relied.</p>
+
+<p>“I was sitting with my young wife in the pretty parlor of our new home,
+when the letter came from my lawyer announcing this fact, and I never
+can make you understand what effect it had upon me. The very walls
+seemed to shrivel up into the dimensions of a prison’s cell; the face
+that only an hour before had possessed every conceivable charm for me,
+shone on my changed vision with the allurement, but also with the
+unreality of a will-o’-the-wisp. All that might have happened if the
+luck, instead of being in my favor, had turned against me, crushed like
+a thunderbolt upon my head, and I rose up and left the presence of my
+young wife, with the knowledge at my heart that I was no more nor less
+than a thief in the eyes of God, if not in that of my fellow-men; a base
+thief, who if he did not meet his fit punishment, was only saved from it
+by fortuitous circumstances and the ignorance of those he had been so
+near despoiling.</p>
+
+<p>“The bitterness of that hour never passed away. The streets in which I
+had been raised, the house which had been the scene of my temptation,
+Mr. Delafield’s face, and my own home, all became unendurable to me. I
+felt as if each man I met must know what I had done; and secret as the
+transaction had been, it was long before I could enter the bank without
+a tremor of apprehension lest I should hear from some quarter, that my
+services there would no longer be required. The only comfort I received
+was in the thought that Ona did not know at what a cost her hand had
+been obtained. I was still under the glamour of her languid smiles and
+countless graces, and was fain to believe that notwithstanding a certain
+unresponsiveness and coldness in her nature, her love would yet prove a
+compensation for the remorse that I secretly suffered.</p>
+
+<p>“My distaste for Grotewell culminated. It was too small for me. The
+money I had acquired through the use of my neighbor’s funds burned in my
+pocket. I determined to move to New York, and with the few thousands I
+possessed, venture upon other speculations. But this time in all
+honesty. Yes, I swore it before God and my own soul, that never again
+would I run a risk similar to that from which I had just escaped. I
+would profit by the money I had acquired, oh yes, but henceforth all my
+operations should be legitimate and honorable. My wife, who was fast
+developing a taste for ease and splendor, seconded my plans with
+something like fervor, while Mr. Delafield actually went so far as to
+urge my departure. ‘You are bound to make a rich man,’ said he ‘and must
+go where great fortunes are to be secured.’ He never asked me what
+became of the five thousand dollars I returned to Colonel Japha upon his
+arrival from Europe.</p>
+
+<p>“So I came to New York.</p>
+
+<p>“Paula, the man who loses at the outset of a doubtful game, is
+fortunate. I did not lose, I won. As if in that first dishonest deed of
+mine I had summoned to my side the aid of evil influences, each and
+every operation into which I entered prospered. It seemed as if I could
+not make a mistake; money flowed towards me from all quarters; power
+followed, and I found myself one of the most successful and one of the
+most unhappy men in New York. There are some things of which a man
+cannot write even to the one dear heart he most cherishes and adores.
+You have lived in my home, and will acquit me from saying much about her
+who, with all her faults and her omissions, was ever kind to you. But
+some things I must repeat in order to make intelligible to you the
+change which gradually took place within me as the years advanced.
+Beauty, while it wins the lover, can never of itself hold the heart of a
+husband who possesses aspirations beyond that which passion supplies.
+Reckless, worldly and narrow-minded as I had been before the commission
+of that deed which embittered my life, I had become by the very shock
+that followed the realization of my wrong-doing, a hungry-hearted,
+eager-minded and melancholy-spirited man, asking but one boon in
+recompense for my secret remorse, and that was domestic happiness and
+the sympathetic affection of wife and children. Woman, according to my
+belief, was born to be chiefly and above all, the consoler. What a man
+missed in the outside world, he was to find treasured at home. What a
+man lacked in his own nature, he was to discover in the delicate and
+sublimated one of his wife. Beautiful dream, which my life was not
+destined to see realized!</p>
+
+<p>“The birth of my only child was my first great consolation. With the
+opening of her blue eyes upon my face, a well-spring deep as my
+unfathomable longing, bubbled up within my breast. Alas, that very
+consolation brought a hideous grief; the mother did not love her child;
+and another strand of the regard with which I still endeavored to
+surround the wife of my youth, parted and floated away out of sight. To
+take my little one in my arms, to feel her delicate cheek press
+yearningly to mine, to behold her sweet infantile soul develop itself
+before my eyes, and yet to realize that that soul would never know the
+guidance or sympathy of a mother, was to me at once rapture and anguish.
+I sometimes forgot to follow up a fortunate speculation, in my
+indulgence of these feelings. I was passionately the father as I might
+have been passionately the husband and the friend. Geraldine died; how
+and with what attendant circumstances of pain and regret, I will not,
+dare not state. The blow struck to the core of my being. I stood shaken
+before God. The past, with its one grim remembrance—a remembrance that
+in the tide of business successes and the engrossing affection which had
+of late absorbed me, had been well-nigh swamped from sight—rose before
+me like an accusing spirit. I had sinned, and I had been punished; I had
+sown, and I had reaped.</p>
+
+<p>“More than that, I was sinning still. My very enjoyment of the position
+I had so doubtfully acquired, was unworthy of me. My very wealth was a
+disgrace. Had it not all been built upon another man’s means? Could the
+very house I lived in be said to be my own, while a Japha existed in
+want? In the eyes of the world, perhaps, yes; in my own eyes, no. I
+became morbid on the subject. I asked myself what I could do to escape
+the sense of obligation that overwhelmed me. The few sums with which I
+had been secretly enabled to provide Colonel Japha during the final days
+of his ruined and impoverished life, were not sufficient. I desired to
+wipe out the past by some large and munificent return. Had the colonel
+been living, I should have gone to him, told him my tale and offered him
+the half of my fortune; but his death cut off all hopes of my righting
+myself in that way. Only his daughter remained, the poor, lost,
+reprobated being, whom he was willing to curse, but whom he could not
+bear to believe suffering. I determined that the debt due to my own
+peace of mind should be paid to her. But how? Where was I to find this
+wanderer? How was I to let her know that a comfortable living awaited
+her if she would only return to her friends and home? Consulting with a
+business associate, he advised me to advertise. I did so, but without
+success. I next resorted to the detectives, but all without avail.
+Jacqueline Japha was not to be found.</p>
+
+<p>“But I did not relinquish my resolve. Deliberately investing a hundred
+thousand dollars in Government bonds, I put them aside for her. They
+were to be no longer mine. I gave them to her and to her heirs as
+completely and irrevocably, I believed, as if I had laid them in her
+hand and seen her depart with them. I even inserted them as a legacy to
+her in my will. It was a clear and definite arrangement between me and
+my own soul; and after I had made it and given orders to my lawyer in
+Grotewell to acquaint me if he ever received the least news of
+Jacqueline Japha, I slept in peace.</p>
+
+<p>“Of the years that followed I have small need to speak. They were the
+years that preceded your coming, my Paula, and their story is best told
+by what I was when we met again, and you made me know the sweet things
+of life by entering into my home. Woman as a thoughtful, tender,
+elevated being had been so long unknown to me! The beauty of the
+feminine soul with its faith fixed upon high ideals, was one before
+which I had ever been ready to bow. All that I had missed in my youth,
+all that had failed me in my maturing manhood, seemed to flow back upon
+me like a river. I bathed in the sunshine of your pure spirit and
+imagined that the evil days were over and peace come at last.</p>
+
+<p>“A rude and bitter shock awoke me. Ona’s father, who had followed us to
+New York, and of whose somewhat checkered career during the past few
+years, I have purposely forborne to speak, had not been above appealing
+to us for assistance at such times as his frequently unfortunate
+investments left him in a state of necessity. These appeals were usually
+made to Ona, and in a quiet way; but one day he met me on the street—it
+was during the second winter you spent in my home—and dragging me into
+a restaurant down town, began a long tale, to the effect that he wanted
+a few thousands from me to put into a certain investment, which if
+somewhat shady in its character, was very promising as to its results;
+and gave as a reason why he applied to me for the money, that he knew I
+had not been above doing a wrongful act once, in order to compass my
+ends, and therefore would not be liable to hesitate now.</p>
+
+<p>“It was the thunderbolt of my life. My sin was not then buried. It had
+been known to this man from the start. With an insight for which I had
+never given him credit, he had read my countenance in the days of my
+early temptation, and guessed, if he did not know, where the five
+thousand dollars came from with which I began my career as speculator.
+Worse than that, he had led me on to the act by which he now sought to
+hold me. Having been the secret agent in losing my aunt’s money, he knew
+at the time that I was cherishing empty hopes as regarded a legacy from
+her, yet he let me dally with my expectations, and ensnare myself with
+his daughter’s fascinations, till driven mad by disappointment and
+longing, I was ready to resort to any means to gain my purpose. It was a
+frightful revelation to come to me in days when, if I were not a
+thoroughly honest man, I had at least acquired a deep and ineradicable
+dread of dishonor. Answering him I know not how, but in a way that while
+it repudiated his proposition, unfortunately acknowledged the truth of
+the suppositions upon which it was founded, I left him and went home, a
+crushed and disheartened man. Life which had been so long in acquiring
+cheerful hues, was sunk again in darkness; and for days I could not bear
+the sight of your innocent face, or the sound of your pure voice, or the
+tokens of your tender and unsuspecting presence in my home. But soon the
+very natural thought came to comfort me, that the sin I so deplored was
+as much dead now, as it was before I learned the fact of this man’s
+knowledge of it. That having repented and put it away, I was as free to
+accept your gentle offices and the regard of all true men, as ever I had
+been; and beguiled by this plausible consideration, I turned again to my
+one visible source of consolation, and in the diversion it offered, let
+the remembrance of this last bitter experience pass slowly from my mind.
+The fact that Mr. Delafield left town shortly after his interview with
+me, and smitten by shame perhaps, forbore to acquaint us with his
+whereabouts or afflict us with his letters, may have aided me in this
+strange forgetfulness.</p>
+
+<p>“But other and sharper trials were in store; trials that were to test me
+as a man, and as it proved, find me lacking just where I thought I was
+strongest. Paula, that saying of the Bible, ‘Let him that thinketh he
+standeth take heed lest he fall,’ might have been written over the door
+of my house on that day, ten months ago, when we two stood by the
+hearthstone and talked of the temptations that beset humanity, and the
+charity we should show to such as succumb to them. Before the day had
+waned, my own hour had come; and not all the experience of my life, not
+all the resolves, hopes, fears of my later years, not even the
+remembrance of your sweet trust and your natural recoil from evil, were
+sufficient to save me. The blow came so suddenly! the call for action
+was so peremptory! One moment I stood before the world, rich, powerful,
+honored, and beloved; the next, I saw myself threatened with a loss that
+undermined my whole position, and with it the very consideration that
+made me what I was. But I must explain.</p>
+
+<p>“When I entered the Madison Bank as President, I gave up in deference to
+the wishes of Mr. Stuyvesant all open speculation in Wall Street. But a
+wife and home such as I then had, are not to be supported on any petty
+income; and when shortly after your entrance into my home, the
+opportunity presented itself of investing in a particularly promising
+silver mine out West, I could not resist the temptation; regarding the
+affair as legitimate, and the hazard, if such it were, one that I was
+amply able to bear. But like most enterprises of the kind, one dollar
+drew another after it, and I soon found that to make available what I
+had already invested, I was obliged to add to it more and more of my
+available funds, until—to make myself as intelligible to you as I
+can—it had absorbed not only all that had remained to me after my
+somewhat liberal purchase of the Madison Bank stock, but all I could
+raise on a pledge of the stock itself. But there was nothing in this to
+alarm me. I had a man at the mine devoted to my interests; and as the
+present yield was excellent, and the future of more promise still, I
+went on my way with no special anxiety. But who can trust a silver mine?
+At the very point where we expected the greatest result, the vein
+suddenly gave out, and nothing prevented the stock from falling utterly
+flat on the market, but the discretion of my agent, who kept the fact a
+secret, while he quietly went about getting another portion of the mine
+into working order. He was fast succeeding in this, and affairs were
+looking daily more promising, when suddenly an intimation received by me
+in a bit of conversation casually overheard at that reception we
+attended together, convinced me that the secret was transpiring, and
+that if great care were not taken, we should be swamped before we could
+get things into working trim again. Filled with this anxiety, I was
+about to leave the building, in order to telegraph to my agent, when to
+my great surprise the card of that very person was brought in to me,
+together with a request for an immediate interview. You remember it,
+Paula, and how I went out to see him; but what you did not know then,
+and what I find some difficulty in relating now, is that his message to
+me was one of total ruin unless I could manage to give into his hand,
+for immediate use, the sum of a hundred thousand dollars.</p>
+
+<p>“The facts making this demand necessary were not what you may have been
+led to expect. They had little or nothing to do with the new operations,
+which were progressing successfully and with every promise of an
+immediate return, but arose entirely out of a law-suit then in the hands
+of a Colorado judge for decision, and which, though it involved
+well-nigh the whole interest of the mine, had never till this hour given
+me the least uneasiness, my lawyers having always assured me of my
+ultimate success. But it seems that notwithstanding all this, the
+decision was to be rendered in favor of the other party. My agent, who
+was a man to be trusted in these matters, averred that five days before,
+he had learned from most authentic sources what the decision was likely
+to be. That the judge’s opinion had been seen—he did not tell me how,
+he dared not, nor did I presume to question, but I have since learned
+that not only had the copyist employed by the judge turned traitor, but
+that my own agent had been anything but scrupulous in the use he had
+made of a willing and corruptible instrument—and that if I wanted to
+save myself and the others connected with me from total and irremediable
+loss, I must compromise with the other parties at once, who not being
+advised of the true state of affairs, and having but little faith in
+their own case, had long ago expressed their willingness to accept the
+sum of a hundred thousand dollars as a final settlement of the
+controversy. My agent, if none too nice in his ideas of right and wrong,
+was, as I have intimated, not the man to make a mistake; and when to my
+question as to how long a time he would give me to look around among my
+friends and raise the required sum, he replied, ‘Ten hours and no more,’
+I realized my position, and the urgent necessity for immediate action.</p>
+
+<p>“The remainder of the night is a dream to me. There was but one source
+from which I could hope in the present condition of my affairs, to
+procure a hundred thousand dollars; and that was from the box where I
+had stowed away the bonds destined for the use of the Japha heirs. To
+borrow was impossible, even if I had been in possession of proper
+securities to give. I was considered as having relinquished speculation
+and dared not risk the friendship of Mr. Stuyvesant by a public betrayal
+of my necessity. The Japha bonds or my own fortune must go, and it only
+remained with me to determine which.</p>
+
+<p>“Paula, nothing but the ingrained principle of a lifetime, the habit of
+doing the honest thing without thought or hesitation, saves a man at an
+hour like that. Strong as I believed myself to be in the determination
+never again to flaw my manhood by the least action unworthy of my
+position as the guardian of trusts, earnest as I was in my recoil from
+evil, and sincere as I may have been in my admiration of and desire for
+the good, I no sooner saw myself tottering between ruin and a compromise
+with conscience, than I hesitated—hesitated with you under my roof, and
+with the words we had been speaking still ringing in my ears. Ona’s
+influence, for all the trials of our married life, was still too strong
+upon me. To think of her as deprived of the splendor which was her life,
+daunted my very soul. I dared not contemplate a future in which she must
+stand denuded of everything which made existence dear to her; yet how
+could I do the evil thing I contemplated, even to save her and preserve
+my own position! For—and you must understand this—I regarded any
+appropriation of these funds I had delegated to the use of the Japhas,
+as a fresh and veritable abuse of trust. They were not mine. I had given
+them away. Unknown to any one but my own soul and God, I had deeded them
+to a special purpose, and to risk them as I now proposed doing, was an
+act that carried me back to the days of my former delinquency, and made
+the repentance of the last few years the merest mockery. What if I might
+recover them hereafter and restore them to their place; the chances in
+favor of their utter loss were also possible, and honesty deals not with
+chances. I suffered so, I had a momentary temptation towards suicide;
+but suddenly, in the midst of the struggle, came the thought that
+perhaps in my estimate of Ona I had committed a gross injustice, that
+while she loved splendor seemingly more than any woman I had ever known,
+she might be as far from wishing me to retain her in it at the price of
+my own self-respect, as the most honest-hearted wife in the world; and
+struck by the hope, I left my agent at a hotel and hurried home through
+the early morning to her side. She Was asleep, of course, but I wakened
+her. It was dark and she had a right to be fretful, but when I whispered
+in her ear, ‘Get up and listen to me, for our fortune is at stake,’ she
+at once rose and having risen, was her clearest, coldest, most
+implacable self. Paula, I told her my story, my whole story as I have
+told it to you here. I dropped no thread, I smoothed over no offence.
+Torturing as it was to my pride, I laid bare my soul before her, and
+then in a burst of appeal such as I hope never to be obliged to make use
+of again, asked her as she was a woman and a wife, to save me in this
+hour of my temptation.</p>
+
+<p>“Paula, she refused. More than that, she expressed the bitterest scorn
+of my mawkish conscientiousness, as she called it. That I should
+consider myself as owing anything to the detestable wretch who was the
+only representative of the Japhas, was bad enough, but that I should go
+on treasuring the money that would save us, was disgraceful if not
+worse, and betrayed a weakness of mind for which she had never given me
+credit.</p>
+
+<p>“‘But Ona,’ I cried, ‘if it is a weakness of mind, it is also an
+equivalent to my consciousness of right living. Would you have me
+sacrifice that?’</p>
+
+<p>“‘I would have you sacrifice anything necessary to preserve us in our
+position,’ said she; and I stood aghast before an unscrupulousness
+greater than any I had hitherto been called upon to face.</p>
+
+<p>“‘Ona,’ repeated I, for her look was cold, ‘do you realize what I have
+been telling you? Most wives would shudder when informed that their
+husbands had perpetrated a dishonest act in order to win them.’</p>
+
+<p>“A thin strange smile heralded her reply. ‘Most wives would,’ returned
+she, ‘but most wives are ignorant. Did you suppose I did not know what
+it cost you to marry me? Papa took care I should miss no knowledge that
+might be useful to me.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘And you married me knowing what I had done!’ exclaimed I, with
+incredulous dismay.</p>
+
+<p>“‘I married you, knowing you were too clever, or believing you to be too
+clever, to run such a risk again.’</p>
+
+<p>“I can say no more concerning that hour. With a horror for this woman
+such as I had never before experienced for living creature, I rushed out
+of her presence, loathing the air she breathed, yet resolved to do her
+bidding. Can you understand a man hating a woman, yet obeying her;
+despising her, yet yielding? I cannot, <i>now</i>, but that day there seemed
+no alternative. Either I must kill myself or follow her wishes. I chose
+to do the latter, forgetting that God can kill, and that, too, whom and
+when He pleases.</p>
+
+<p>“Going down to the bank, I procured the bonds from my box in the safe. I
+felt like a thief, and the manner in which it was done was unwittingly
+suggestive of crime, but with that and the position in which I have
+since found myself placed by this very action, I need not cumber my
+present narrative. Handing the bonds to my agent with orders to sell
+them to the best advantage, I took a short walk to quiet my nerves and
+realize what I had done, and then went home.</p>
+
+<p>“Paula, had God in his righteous anger seen fit to strike me down that
+day, it would have been no more than my due and aroused in me, perhaps,
+no more than a natural repentence. But when I saw her for whose sake I
+had ostensibly committed this fresh abuse of trust, lying cold and dead
+before me, the sword of the Almighty pierced me to the soul, and I fell
+prostrate beneath a remorse to which any regret I had hitherto
+experienced, was as the playing of a child with shadows. Had I by the
+losing of my right arm been able to recall my action, I would have done
+it; indeed I made an effort to recover myself; had my agent followed up
+with an order to return me the bonds I had given him, but it was too
+late, the compromise had already been effected by telegraph and the
+money was out of our hands. The deed was done and I had made myself
+unworthy of your presence and your smile at the very hour when both
+would have been inestimable to me. You remember those days; remember our
+farewell. Let me believe you do not blame me now for what must have
+seemed harsh and unnecessary to you then.</p>
+
+<p>“There is but little more to write, but in that little is compressed the
+passion, longing, hope and despair of a lifetime. When I told you as I
+did a few hours ago that my sin was dead and its consequences at an end,
+I repeat that I fully and truly believed it. The hundred thousand
+dollars I had sent West, had been used to advantage, and only day before
+yesterday I was enabled to sell out my share in the mine, for a large
+sum that leaves me free and unembarrassed, to make the fortune of more
+than one Japha, should God ever see fit to send them across my pathway.
+More than that, Mr. Delafield, of whose discretion I had sometimes had
+my fears, was dead, having perished of a fever some months before in San
+Francisco; and of all men living, there were none as I believed, who
+knew anything to the discredit of my name. I was clear, or so I thought,
+in fortune and in fame; and being so, dreamed of taking to my empty and
+yearning arms, the loveliest and the purest of mortal women. But God
+watched over you and prevented an act whose consequences might have been
+so cruel. In an hour, Paula, in an hour, I had learned that the foul
+thing was not dead, that a witness had picked up the words I had allowed
+to fall in my interview with my father-in-law in the restaurant two
+years before; an unscrupulous witness who had been on my track ever
+since, and who now in his eagerness for a victim, had by mistake laid
+his clutch upon our Bertram. Yes, owing to the similarity of our voices
+and the fact that we both make use of a certain tell-tale word, this
+patient and upright nephew of mine stands at this moment under the
+charge of having acknowledged in the hearing of this person, to the
+committal of an act of dishonesty in the past. A foolish charge you will
+say, and one easily refuted. Alas, a fresh act of dishonesty lately
+perpetrated in the bank, complicates matters. A theft has been committed
+on some of Mr. Stuyvesant’s effects, and that, too, under circumstances
+that involuntarily arouse suspicion against some one of the bank
+officials; and Bertram, if not sustained in his reputation, must suffer
+from the doubts which naturally have arisen in Mr. Stuyvesant’s breast.
+The story which this man could tell, must of course shake the faith of
+any one in the reputation of him against whom it is directed, and the
+man intends to repeat his story, and that, too, in the very ears of him
+upon whose favor Bertram depends for his life’s happiness and the
+winning of the woman he adores. I adore you, Paula, but I cannot clasp
+you to my heart across another sin. If the detectives whom we shall call
+in to-morrow, cannot exonerate those connected with the bank from the
+theft lately committed there—and the fact that you have been allowed to
+read this letter, prove they have not—I must do what I can to relieve
+Bertram from his painful position, by taking upon myself the onus of
+that past transgression which of right belongs to my account; and this
+once done, let the result be for good or ill, any bond between you and
+me is cut loose forever. I have not learned to love at this late hour,
+to wrong the precious thing I cherish. Death as it is to me to say
+good-bye to the one last gleam of heavenly light that has shot across my
+darkened way, it must be done, dear heart, if only to hold myself worthy
+of the tender and generous love you have designed to bestow upon me.
+Bertram, who is all generosity, may guess but does not know, what I am
+about to do. Go down to him, dear; tell him that at this very moment,
+perhaps, I am clearing his name before the wretch who has so ruthlessly
+fastened his fang upon him; that his love and Cicely’s shall prosper, as
+he has been loyal, and she trusting, all these years of effort and
+probation; that I give him my blessing, and that if we do not meet
+again, I delegate to him the trust of which I so poorly acquitted
+myself. But before you go, stop a moment and in this room, which has
+always symbolized to my eyes the poverty which was my rightful due,
+kneel and pray for my soul; for if God grants me the wish of my heart,
+he will strike me with sudden death after I have taken upon myself the
+disgrace of my past offences. Life without love can be borne, but life
+without honor never. To come and go amongst my fellow-men with a shadow
+on the fame they have always believed spotless! Do not ask me to attempt
+it! Pray for my soul, but pray too, that I may perish in some quick and
+sudden way before ever your dear eyes rest upon my face again.</p>
+
+<p>“And now, as though this were to be the end, let me take my last
+farewell of you. I have loved you, Paula, loved you with my heart, my
+mind and my soul. You have been my angel of inspiration and the source
+of all my comfort. I kneel before you in gratitude, and I stand above
+you in blessing. May every pang I suffer this hour, redound to you in
+some sweet happiness hereafter. I do not quarrel with my fate, I only
+ask God to spare you from its shadow. And He will. Love will flow back
+upon your young life, and in regions where our eye now fails to pierce,
+you will taste every joy which your generous heart once thought to
+bestow on</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>“<span class="smcap">Edward Sylvester.</span>”</p></blockquote>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<div class='chapter'><h3><a id="XL"></a>XL.</h3></div>
+
+<div class='ph4'>HALF-PAST SEVEN.</div>
+
+<blockquote><p>“I would it were midnight, Hal, and all well.”—<span class="smcap">Henry IV.</span></p></blockquote>
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+
+<p>The library was dim; Bertram, who had felt the oppressive influence of
+the great empty room, had turned down the lights, and was now engaged in
+pacing the floor, with restless and uneven steps, asking himself a
+hundred questions, and wishing with all the power of his soul, that Mr.
+Sylvester would return, and by his appearance cut short a suspense that
+was fast becoming unendurable.</p>
+
+<p>He had just returned from his third visit to the front door, when the
+curtain between him and the hall was gently raised, and Paula glided in
+and stood before him. She was dressed for the street, and her face where
+the light touched it, shone like marble upon which has fallen the glare
+of a lifted torch.</p>
+
+<p>“Paula!” burst from the young man’s lips in surprise.</p>
+
+<p>“Hush!” said she, her voice quavering with an emotion that put to
+defiance all conventionalities, “I want you to take me to the place
+where Mr. Sylvester is gone. He is in danger; I know it, I feel it. I
+dare not leave him any longer alone. I might be able to save him if—if
+he meditates anything that—” she did not try to say what, but drew
+nearer to Bertram and repeated her request. “You will take me, won’t
+you?”</p>
+
+<p>He eyed her with amazement, and a shudder seized his own strong frame.
+“No,” cried he, “I cannot take you; you do not know what you ask; but I
+will go myself if you apprehend anything serious. I remember where it
+is. I studied the address too closely, to readily forget it.”</p>
+
+<p>“You shall not go without me,” returned Paula with steady decision. “If
+the danger is what I fear, no one else can save him. I must go,” she
+added, with passionate importunity as she saw him still looking
+doubtful. “Darkness and peril are nothing to me in comparison with his
+safety. He holds my life in his hand,” she softly whispered, “and what
+will not one do for his life!” Then quickly, “If you go without me I
+shall follow with Aunt Belinda. Nothing shall keep me in the house
+to-night.”</p>
+
+<p>He felt the uselessness of further objection, yet he ventured to say,
+“The place where he has gone is one of the worst in the city; a spot
+which men hesitate to enter after dark. You don’t know what you ask in
+begging me to take you there.”</p>
+
+<p>“I do, I realize everything.”</p>
+
+<p>With a sudden awe of the great love which he thus beheld embodied before
+him, Bertram bowed his head and moved towards the door. “I may consider
+it wise to obtain the guidance of a policeman through the quarter into
+which we are about to venture. Will you object to that?”</p>
+
+<p>“No,” was her quick reply, “I object to nothing but delay.”</p>
+
+<p>And with a last look about the room, as if some sensation of farewell
+were stirring in her breast, she laid her hand on Bertram’s arm, and
+together they hurried away into the night.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<div class='chapter'><h2><a id="BOOK_V"></a>BOOK V.</h2></div>
+
+<div class='ph3'>WOMAN’S LOVE.</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<div class='chapter'><h3><a id="XLI"></a>XLI.</h3></div>
+
+<div class='ph4'>THE WORK OF AN HOUR.</div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">“Base is the slave that pays.”—<span class="smcap">Henry V.</span><br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.”—<span class="smcap">Congreve.</span><br></span>
+</div></div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester upon leaving the bank, had taken his usual route up town.
+But after an aimless walk of a few blocks, he suddenly paused, and with
+a quiet look about him, drew from his pocket the small slip of paper
+which Bertram had laid on his table the night before, and hurriedly
+consulted its contents. Instantly an irrepressible exclamation escaped
+him, and he turned his face to the heavens with the look of one who
+recognizes the just providence of God. The name which he had just read,
+was that of the old lover of Jacqueline Japha, Roger Holt, and the
+address given, was 63 Baxter Street.</p>
+
+<p>Twilight comes with different aspects to the broad avenues of the rich,
+and the narrow alleys of the poor. In the reeking slums of Baxter
+Street, poetry would have had to search long for the purple glamour that
+makes day’s dying hour fair in open fields and perfumed chambers. Even
+the last dazzling gleam of the sun could awaken no sparkle from the
+bleared windows of the hideous tenement houses that reared their blank
+and disfigured walls toward the west. The chill of the night blast and
+the quick dread that follows in the steps of coming darkness, were all
+that could enter these regions, unless it was the stealthy shades of
+vice and disease.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester standing before the darkest and most threatening of the
+many dark and threatening houses that cumbered the street, was a sight
+to draw more than one head from the neighboring windows. Had it been
+earlier, he would have found himself surrounded by a dozen ragged and
+importunate children; had it been later, he would have run the risk of
+being garroted by some skulking assassin; as it was, he stood there
+unmolested, eying the structure that held within its gloomy recesses the
+once handsome and captivating lover of Jacqueline Japha. He was not the
+only man who would have hesitated before entering there. Low and
+insignificant as the building appeared—and its two stories certainly
+looked dwarfish enough in comparison with the two lofty tenement houses
+that pressed it upon either side—there was something in its quiet,
+almost uninhabited aspect that awakened a vague apprehension of lurking
+danger. A face at a window would have been a relief; even the sight of a
+customer in the noisome groggery that occupied the ground floor. From
+the dwellings about, came the hum of voices and now and then the sound
+of a shrill laugh or a smothered cry, but from this house came nothing,
+unless it was the slow ooze of a stream of half-melted snow that found
+its way from under the broken-down door-way to the gutter beyond.</p>
+
+<p>Stepping bravely forward, Mr. Sylvester entered the open door. A flight
+of bare and rickety steps met his eye. Ascending them, he found himself
+in a hall which must have been poorly lighted at any time, but which at
+this late hour was almost dark. It was not very encouraging, but
+pressing on, he stopped at a door and was about to knock, when his eyes
+becoming accustomed to the darkness, he detected standing at the foot of
+the stairs leading to the story above, the tall and silent figure of a
+woman. It was no common apparition. Like a sentinel at his post, or a
+spy on the outskirts of the enemy’s camp, she stood drawn up against the
+wall, her whole wasted form quivering with eagerness or some other
+secret passion; darkness on her brow and uncertainty on her lip. She was
+listening, or waiting, or both, and that with an entire absorption that
+prevented her from heeding the approach of a stranger’s step. Struck by
+so sinister a presence in a place so dark and desolate, Mr. Sylvester
+unconsciously drew back. As he did so, the woman thrilled and looked up,
+but not at him. A lame child’s hesitating and uneven step was heard
+crossing the floor above, and it was towards it she turned, and for it
+she composed her whole form into a strange but evil calmness.</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, he let you come then!” Mr. Sylvester heard her exclaim in a low
+smothered tone, whose attempted lightness did not hide the malevolent
+nature of her interest.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” came back in the clear and confiding tones of childhood. “I told
+him you loved me and gave me candy-balls, and he let me come.”</p>
+
+<p>A laugh quick and soon smothered, disturbed the surrounding gloom. “You
+told him I loved you! Well, that is good; I do love you; love you as I
+do my own eyes that I could crush, crush, for ever having lingered on
+the face of my betrayer!”</p>
+
+<p>The last phrase was muttered, and did not seem to convey any impression
+to the child. “Hold out your arms and catch me,” cried he; “I am going
+to jump.”</p>
+
+<p>She appeared to comply; for he gave a little ringing laugh that was
+startlingly clear and fresh.</p>
+
+<p>“He asked me what your name was,” babbled he, as he nestled in her arms.
+“He is always asking what your name is; Dad forgets, Dad does; or else
+it’s because he’s never seen you.”</p>
+
+<p>“And what did you tell him?” she asked, ignoring the last remark with an
+echo of her sarcastic laugh.</p>
+
+<p>“Mrs. Smith, of course.”</p>
+
+<p>She threw back her head and her whole form acquired an aspect that made
+Mr. Sylvester shudder. “That’s good,” she cried, “Mrs. Smith by all
+means.” Then with a sudden lowering of her face to his—“Mrs. Smith is
+good to you, isn’t she; lets you sit by her fire when she has any, and
+gives you peanuts to eat and sometimes spares you a penny!”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, yes,” the boy cried.</p>
+
+<p>“Come then,” she said, “let’s go home.”</p>
+
+<p>She put him down on the floor, and gave him his little crutch. Her
+manner was not unkind, and yet Mr. Sylvester trembled as he saw the
+child about to follow her.</p>
+
+<p>“Didn’t you ever have any little boys?” the child suddenly asked.</p>
+
+<p>The woman shrank as if a burning steel had been plunged against her
+breast. Looking down on the frightened child, she hissed out from
+between her teeth, “Did he tell you to ask me that? Did he dare—” She
+stopped and pressed her arms against her swelling heart as if she would
+smother its very beats. “Oh no, of course he didn’t tell you; what does
+he know or care about Mrs. Smith!” Then with a quick gasp and a wild
+look into the space before her, “My child dead, and her child alive and
+beloved! What wonder that I hate earth and defy heaven!”</p>
+
+<p>She caught the boy by the hand and drew him quickly away. “You will be
+good to me,” he cried, frightened by her manner yet evidently fascinated
+too, perhaps on account of the faint sparks of kindness that alternated
+with gusts of passion he did not understand. “You won’t hurt me; you’ll
+let me sit by the fire and get warm?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, yes.”</p>
+
+<p>“And eat a bit of bread with butter on it?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, yes.”</p>
+
+<p>“Then I’ll go.”</p>
+
+<p>She drew him down the hall. “Why do you like to have me come to your
+house?” he prattled away.</p>
+
+<p>She turned on him with a look which unfortunately Mr. Sylvester could
+not see. “Because your eyes are so blue and your skin is so white; they
+make me remember her!”</p>
+
+<p>“And who is <i>her</i>?”</p>
+
+<p>She laughed and seemed to hug herself in her rage and bitterness. “Your
+mother!” she cried, and in speaking it, she came upon Mr. Sylvester.</p>
+
+<p>He at once put out his hand.</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t know who you are,” said he, “but I do not think you had better
+take the child out to-night. From what you say, his father is evidently
+upstairs; if you will give the boy to me, I will take him back and leave
+him where he belongs.”</p>
+
+<p>“You will?” The slow intensity of her tone was indescribable. “Know that
+I don’t bear interference from strangers.” And catching up the child,
+she rushed by him like a flash. “You are probably one of those
+missionaries who go stealing about unasked into respectable persons’
+rooms,” she called back. “If by any chance you wander into his, tell him
+his child is in good hands, do you hear, in good hands!” And with a
+final burst of her hideous laugh, she dashed down the stairs and was
+gone.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester stood shocked and undecided. His fatherly heart urged him
+to search at once for the parent of this lame boy, and warn him of the
+possible results of entrusting his child to a woman with so little
+command over herself. But upon taking out his watch and finding it later
+by a good half-hour than he expected, he was so struck with the
+necessity of completing his errand, that he forgot everything else in
+his anxiety to confront Holt. Knocking at the first door he came to, he
+waited. A quick snarl and a surprised, “Come in!” announced that he had
+scared up some sort of a living being, but whether man or woman he found
+it impossible to tell, even after the door opened and the creature,
+whoever it was, rose upon him from a pile of rags scattered in one
+corner.</p>
+
+<p>“I want Mr. Holt; can you tell me where to find him?”</p>
+
+<p>“Upstairs,” was the only reply he received, as the creature settled down
+again upon its heap of tattered clothing.</p>
+
+<p>Fain to be content with this, he went up another flight and opened
+another door. He was more successful this time; one glance of his eye
+assured him that the man he was in search of, sat before him. He had
+never seen Mr. Holt; but the regular if vitiated features of the person
+upon whom he now intruded, his lank but not ungraceful form, and free if
+not airy manners, were not so common among the denizens of this
+unwholesome quarter, that there could be any doubt as to his being the
+accomplished but degenerate individual whose once attractive air had
+stolen the heart of Colonel Japha’s daughter.</p>
+
+<p>He was sitting in front of a small pine table, and when Mr. Sylvester’s
+eyes first fell upon him, was engaged in watching with a somewhat
+sinister smile, the final twirl of a solitary nickle which he had set
+spinning on the board before him. But at the sound of a step at the
+door, a lightning change passed over his countenance, and rising with a
+quick anticipatory “Ah!” he turned with hasty action to meet the
+intruder. A second exclamation and a still more hasty recoil were the
+result. This was not the face or the form of him whom he had expected.</p>
+
+<p>“Mr. Holt, I believe?” inquired Mr. Sylvester, advancing with his most
+dignified mien.</p>
+
+<p>The other bowed, but in a doubtful way that for a moment robbed him of
+his usual air of impudent self-assertion.</p>
+
+<p>“Then I have business with you,” continued Mr. Sylvester, laying the
+man’s own card down on the table before him. “My name is Sylvester,” he
+proceeded, with a calmness that surprised himself; “and I am the uncle
+of the young man upon—whom you are at present presuming to levy
+blackmail.”</p>
+
+<p>The assurance which for a moment had deserted the countenance of the
+other, returned with a flash. “His uncle!” reĂ«choed he, with a low
+anomalous bow; “then it is from you I may expect the not unreasonable
+sum which I demand as the price of my attentions to your nephew’s
+interest. Very good, I am not particular from what quarter it comes, so
+that it does come and that before the clock has struck the hour which I
+have set as the limit of my forbearance.”</p>
+
+<p>“Which is seven o’clock, I believe?”</p>
+
+<p>“Which is seven o’clock.”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester folded his arms and sternly eyed the man before him. “You
+still adhere to your intention, then, of forwarding to Mr. Stuyvesant at
+that hour, the sealed communication now in the hands of your lawyer?”</p>
+
+<p>The smile with which the other responded was like the glint of a partly
+sheathed dagger. “My lawyer has already received his instructions.
+Nothing but an immediate countermand on my part, will prevent the
+communication of which you speak, from going to Mr. Stuyvesant at seven
+o’clock.”</p>
+
+<p>The sigh which rose in Mr. Sylvester’s breast did not disturb the severe
+immobility of his lip. “Have you ever considered the possibility,” said
+he, “of the man whom you overheard talking in the restaurant in Dey
+Street two years ago, not being Mr. Bertram Sylvester of the Madison
+Bank?”</p>
+
+<p>“No,” returned the other, with a short, sharp, and wholly undisturbed
+laugh, “I do not think I ever have.”</p>
+
+<p>“Will you give me credit, then, for speaking with reason, when I declare
+to you that the man you overheard talking in the manner you profess to
+describe in your communication, was not Mr. Bertram Sylvester?”</p>
+
+<p>A shrug of the shoulders, highly foreign and suggestive, was the other’s
+answer. “It was Mr. Sylvester or it was the devil,” proclaimed he—“with
+all deference to your reason, my good sir; or why are you here?” he
+keenly added.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester did not reply. With a sarcastic twitch of his lips the man
+took up the nickle with which he had been amusing himself when the
+former came in, and set it spinning again upon the table. “It is
+half-past six,” remarked he. “It will take me a good half hour to go to
+my lawyer.”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester made a final effort. “If you could be convinced,” said he,
+“that you have got your grasp upon the wrong man, would you still
+persist in the course upon which you seem determined?”</p>
+
+<p>With a dexterous sleight-of-hand movement, the man picked up the
+whirling nickle and laid it flat on the table before him. “A fellow
+whose whole fortune is represented by a coin like that”—tapping the
+piece significantly—“is not as easily convinced as a man of your means,
+perhaps. But if I should be brought to own that I had made a mistake in
+my man, I should still feel myself justified in proceeding against him,
+since my very accusation of him seems to be enough to arouse such
+interest on the part of his friends.”</p>
+
+<p>“Wretch!” leaped to Mr. Sylvester’s lips, but he did not speak it. “His
+friends,” declared he, “have most certainly a great interest in his
+reputation and his happiness; but they never will pay any thing upon
+coercion to preserve the one or to insure the other.”</p>
+
+<p>“They won’t!” And for the first time Roger Holt slightly quavered.</p>
+
+<p>“A man’s honor and happiness are much, and he will struggle long before
+he will consent to part from them. But a citizen of a great town like
+this, owes something to his fellows, and submitting to blackmail is but
+a poor precedent to set. You will have to proceed as you will, Mr. Holt;
+neither my nephew nor myself, have any money to give you.”</p>
+
+<p>The glare in the man’s eyes was like that of an aroused tiger. “Do you
+mean to say,” cried he, “that you will not give from your abundance, a
+paltry thousand dollars to save one of your blood from a suspicion that
+will never leave him, <i>never leave him</i> to the end of his miserable
+days?”</p>
+
+<p>“I mean to say that not one cent will pass from me to you in payment of
+a silence, which as a gentleman, you ought to feel it incumbent upon you
+to preserve unasked, if only to prove to your fellow-men that you have
+not entirely lost all the instincts of the caste to which you once
+belonged. Not that I look for anything so disinterested from you,” he
+went on. “A man who could enter the home of a respectable gentleman, and
+under cover of a brotherly regard, lure into degradation and despair,
+the woman who was at once its ornament and pride, cannot be expected to
+practice the virtues of ordinary manhood, much less those of a gentleman
+and a Christian. He is a wretch, who, whatever his breeding or
+antecedents, is open to nothing but execration and contempt.”</p>
+
+<p>With an oath and a quick backward spring, Roger Holt cried out, “Who are
+you, and by what right do you come here to reproach me with a matter
+dead and buried, by heaven, a dozen years ago?”</p>
+
+<p>“The right of one who, though a stranger, knows well what you are and
+what you have done. Colonel Japha himself is dead, but the avenger of
+his honor yet lives! Roger Holt, <i>where is Jacqueline Japha</i>?”</p>
+
+<p>The force with which this was uttered, seemed to confound the man. For a
+moment he stood silent, his eye upon his guest, then a subtle change
+took place in his expression; he smiled with a slow devilish meaning,
+and tossing his head with an airy gesture, lightly remarked:</p>
+
+<p>“You must ask some more constant lover than I. A woman who was charming
+ten years ago—Bah! what would I be likely to know about her now!”</p>
+
+<p>“Everything, when that woman is Jacqueline Japha,” cried Mr. Sylvester,
+advancing upon him with a look that would have shaken most men, but
+which only made the eye of this one burn more eagerly. “Though you might
+easily wish to give her the slip, she is not one to forget you. If she
+is alive, you know where she is; speak then, and let the worth of one
+good action make what amends it can for a long list of evil ones.”</p>
+
+<p>“You really want to see the woman, then; enough to pay for it, I mean?”</p>
+
+<p>“The reward which has been offered for news of the fate or whereabouts
+of Jacqueline Japha, still stands good,” was Mr. Sylvester’s reply.</p>
+
+<p>The excited stare with which the man received this announcement, slowly
+subsided into his former subtle look.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, well,” said he, “we will see.” The truth was, that he knew no
+more than the other where this woman was to be found. “If I happen to
+come across her in any of my wanderings, I shall know where to apply for
+means to make her welcome. But that is not what at present concerns us.
+Your nephew is losing ground with every passing minute. In a half-hour
+more his future will be decided, unless you bid me order my lawyer to
+delay the forwarding of that communication to Mr. Stuyvesant. In that
+case—”</p>
+
+<p>“I believe I have already made it plain to you that I have no intentions
+of interfering with your action in this matter,” quoth Mr. Sylvester,
+turning slowly toward the door. “If you are determined to send your
+statement, it must go, only—” And here he turned upon the bitterly
+disappointed man with an aspect whose nobility the other was but little
+calculated to appreciate—“only when you do so, be particular to state
+that the person whose story you thus forward to a director of the
+Madison Bank, is not Bertram Sylvester, the cashier, but Edward
+Sylvester, his uncle, and the bank’s president.”</p>
+
+<p>And the stately head bowed and the tall form was about to withdraw, when
+Holt with an excited tremble that affected even his words, advanced and
+seized Mr. Sylvester by the arm.</p>
+
+<p>“His uncle!” cried he, “why that is what you—Great heaven!” he
+exclaimed, falling back with an expression not unmixed with awe, “you
+are the man and you have denounced yourself!” Then quickly, “Speak
+again; let me hear your voice.”</p>
+
+<p>And Mr. Sylvester with a sad smile, repeated in a slow and meaning tone,
+“It is but one little <i>fuss</i> more!” then as the other cringed, added a
+dignified, “Good evening, Mr. Holt,” and passed swiftly across the room
+towards the door.</p>
+
+<p>What was it that stopped him half-way, and made him look back with such
+a startled glance at the man he had left behind him? A smell of smoke in
+the air, the faint yet unmistakable odor of burning wood, as though the
+house were on fire, or—</p>
+
+<p>Ha! the man himself has discerned it, is on his feet, is at the window,
+has seen what? His cry of mingled terror and dismay does not reveal. Mr.
+Sylvester hastens to his side.</p>
+
+<p>The sight which met his eyes, did not for the moment seem sufficient to
+account for the degree of emotion expressed by the other. To be sure,
+the lofty tenement-house which towered above them from the other side of
+the narrow yard upon which the window looked, was oozing with smoke, but
+there were no flames visible, and as yet no special manifestations of
+alarm on the part of its occupants. But in an instant, even while they
+stood there, arose the sudden and awful cry of “Fire!” and at the same
+moment they beheld the roof and casements before them, swarm with pallid
+faces, as men, women and children rushed to the first outlet that
+offered escape, only to shrink back in renewed terror from the deadly
+gulf that yawned beneath them.</p>
+
+<p>It was horrible, all the more that the fire seem to be somewhere in the
+basement story, possibly at the foot of the stairs, for none of the poor
+shrieking wretches before them seemed to make any effort to escape
+downwards, but rather surged up towards the top of the building, waving
+their arms as they fled, and filling the dusk with cries that drowned
+the sound of the coming engines.</p>
+
+<p>The scene appeared to madden Holt. “My boy! my boy! my boy!” rose from
+his lips in an agonized shriek; then as Mr. Sylvester gave a sudden
+start, cried out with indiscribable anguish, “He is there, my boy, my
+own little chap! A woman in that house has bewitched him, and when he is
+not with me, he is always at her side. O God, curses on my head for ever
+letting him out of my sight! Do you see him, sir? Look for him, I
+beseech you; he is lame and small; his head would barely reach to the
+top of the window-sill.”</p>
+
+<p>“And that was your boy!” cried Mr. Sylvester. And struck by an appeal
+which in spite of his abhorrence of the man at his side, woke every
+instinct of fatherhood within him, he searched with his glance the long
+row of windows before them. But before his eye had travelled half way
+across the building, he felt the man at his side quiver with sudden
+agony, and following the direction of his glance, saw a wan, little
+countenance looking down upon them from a window almost opposite to
+where they stood.</p>
+
+<p>“It is my boy!” shrieked the man, and in his madness would have leaped
+from the casement, if Mr. Sylvester had not prevented him.</p>
+
+<p>“You will not help him so,” cried the latter. “See, he is only a few
+feet above a bridge that appears to communicate with the roof of the
+next house. If he could be let down—”</p>
+
+<p>But the man had already precipitated himself towards the door of the
+room in which they were. “Tell him not to jump,” he called back. “I am
+going next door and will reach him in a moment. Tell him to hold on till
+I come.”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester at once raised his voice. “Don’t jump, little boy Holt. If
+there is no one there to drop you down, wait for your father. He is
+going on the bridge and will catch you.”</p>
+
+<p>The little fellow seemed to hear, for he immediately held out his arms,
+but if he spoke, his voice was drowned in the frightful hubbub.
+Meanwhile the smoke thickened around him, and a dull ominous glare broke
+out from the midst of the building, against which his weazen little face
+looked pallid as death.</p>
+
+<p>“His father will be too late,” groaned Mr. Sylvester, feeling himself
+somehow to blame for the child’s horrible situation; then observing that
+the other occupants of the building had all disappeared towards the
+front, realized that whatever fire-escapes may have been provided, were
+doubtless in that direction, and raising his voice once more, called out
+across the yard, “Don’t wait any longer, little fellow; follow the rest
+to the front; you will be burned if you stay there.”</p>
+
+<p>But the child did not move, only held out his arms in a way to unman the
+strongest heart; and presently while Mr. Sylvester was asking himself
+what could be done, he heard his shrill piping tones rising above the
+hiss of the flames, and listening, caught the words:</p>
+
+<p>“I cannot get away. She is holding me, Dad. Help your little feller;
+help me, I’m so afraid of being burnt.” And looking closer, Mr.
+Sylvester discerned the outlines of a woman’s head and shoulders above
+the small white face.</p>
+
+<p>A distinct and positive fear at once seized him. Leaning out, the better
+to display his own face and figure, he called to that unknown woman to
+quit her hold and let the child go; but a discordant laugh, rising above
+the roar of the approaching flames, was his only reply. Sickened with
+apprehension, he drew back and himself made for the stairs in the wild
+idea of finding the father. But just then the mad figure of Holt
+appeared at the door, with frenzy in all his looks.</p>
+
+<p>“I cannot push through the crowd,” cried he, “I have fought and
+struggled and shrieked, but it is all of no use. My boy is burning alive
+and I cannot reach him.” A lurid flame shot at that moment from the
+building before them, as if in emphasis to his words.</p>
+
+<p>“He is prisoned there by a woman,” cried Mr. Sylvester, pointing to the
+figure whose distorted outlines was every moment becoming more and more
+visible in the increasing glare. “See, she has him tight in her arms and
+is pressing him against the window-sill.”</p>
+
+<p>The man with a terrible recoil, looked in the direction of his child,
+saw the little white face with its wild expression of conscious terror,
+saw the face of her who towered implacably behind it, and shrieked
+appalled.</p>
+
+<p>“Jacqueline!” he cried, and put his hands up before his face as if his
+eyes had fallen upon an avenging spirit.</p>
+
+<p>“Is that Jacqueline Japha?” asked Mr. Sylvester, dragging down the
+other’s hands and pointing relentlessly towards the ominous figure in
+the window before him.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, or her ghost,” cried the other, shuddering under a horror that
+left him little control of his reason.</p>
+
+<p>“Then your boy is lost,” murmured Mr. Sylvester, with a vivid
+remembrance of the words he had overheard. “She will never save her
+rival’s child, never.”</p>
+
+<p>The man looked at him with dazed eyes. “She shall save him,” he cried,
+and stretching far out of the window by which he stood, he pointed to
+the bridge and called out, “Drop him, Jacqueline, don’t let him burn. He
+can still reach the next house if he runs. Save my darling, save him.”</p>
+
+<p>But the woman as if waiting for his voice, only threw back her head, and
+while a bursting flame flashed up behind her, shrieked mockingly back:</p>
+
+<p>“Oh I have frightened you up at last, have I? You can see me now, can
+you? You can call on Jacqueline now? The brat can make you speak, can
+he? Well, well, call away, I love to hear your voice. It is music to me
+even in the face of death.”</p>
+
+<p>“My boy! my boy,” was all he could gasp; “save the child, Jacqueline,
+only save the child!”</p>
+
+<p>But the harsh scornful laugh she returned, spoke little of saving. “He
+is so dear,” she hissed. “I love the offspring of my rival so much! the
+child that has taken the place of my own darling, dead before ever I had
+seen its innocent eyes. Oh yes, yes, I will save it, save it as my own
+was saved. When I saw the puny infant in your arms the day you passed me
+with <i>her</i>, I swore to be its friend, don’t you remember! And I am so
+much of a one that I stick by him to the death, don’t you see?” And
+raising him up in her arms till his whole stunted body was visible, she
+turned away her brow and seemed to laugh in the face of the flames.</p>
+
+<p>The father writhed below in his agony. “Forgive,” he cried, “forgive the
+past and give me back my child. It’s all I have to love; it’s all I’ve
+ever loved. Be merciful, Jacqueline, be merciful!”</p>
+
+<p>Her face flashed back upon him, still and white. “And what mercy have
+you ever shown to me! Fool, idiot, don’t you see I have lived for this
+hour! To make you feel for once; to make you suffer for once as I have
+suffered. You love the boy! Roger Holt, I once loved you.”</p>
+
+<p>And heedless of the rolling volume of smoke that now began to pour
+towards her, heedless even of the long tongues of hungry flame that were
+stretched out as if feeling for her from the distance behind, she stood
+immovable, gazing down upon the casement where he knelt, with an
+indescribable and awful smile upon her lips.</p>
+
+<p>The sight was unbearable. With an instinct of despair both men drew
+back, when suddenly they saw the woman start, unloose her clasp and drop
+the child out of her arms upon the bridge. A hissing stream of water had
+fallen upon the flames, and the shock had taken her by surprise. In a
+moment the father was himself again.</p>
+
+<p>“Get up, little feller, get up,” he cried, “or if you cannot walk, crawl
+along the bridge to the next house. I see a fireman there; he will lift
+you in.”</p>
+
+<p>But at that moment the flames, till now held under some control, burst
+from an adjoining window, and caught at the woodwork of the bridge. The
+father yelled in dismay.</p>
+
+<p>“Hurry, little feller, hurry!” he cried. “Get over towards the next
+house before it is too late.”</p>
+
+<p>But a paralysis seemed to have seized the child; he arose, then stopped,
+and looking wildly about, shook his head. “I cannot,” he cried, “I
+cannot.” And the woman laughed, and with a hug of her empty arms, seemed
+to throw her taunts into the space before her.</p>
+
+<p>“Are you a demon?” burst from Mr. Sylvester’s lips in uncontrollable
+horror. “Don’t you see you can save him if you will? Jump down, then,
+and carry him across, or your father’s curse will follow you to the
+world beyond.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, climb down,” cried the fireman, “you are lighter than I. Don’t
+waste a minute, a second.”</p>
+
+<p>“It is your own child, Jacqueline, your own child!” came from Holt’s
+white lips in final desperation. “I have deceived you; your baby did not
+die; I wanted to get rid of you and I wanted to save him, so I lied to
+you. The baby did not die; he lived, and that is he you see lying
+helpless on the bridge beneath you.”</p>
+
+<p>Not the clutch of an advancing flame could have made her shrink more
+fearfully. “It is false,” she cried; “you are lying now; you want me to
+save <i>her</i> child, and dare to say it is mine.”</p>
+
+<p>“As God lives!” he swore, lifting his hand and turning his face to the
+sky.</p>
+
+<p>Her whole attitude seemed to cry, “No, no,” to his assertion but slowly
+as she stood there, the conviction of its truth seemed to strike her,
+and her hair rose on her forehead and she swayed to and fro, as if the
+earth were rolling under her feet. Suddenly she gave a yell, and bounded
+from the window. Catching the child in her arms, she attempted to regain
+the refuge beyond, but the flames had not dallied at their work while
+she hesitated. The bridge was on fire and her retreat was cut off. She
+did not attempt to escape. Stopping in the centre of the rocking mass,
+she looked down as only a mother in her last agony can do, on the child
+she held folded in her arms; then as the flames caught at her floating
+garments, stooped her head and printed one wild and passionate kiss upon
+his brow. Another instant and they saw her head rise to the accusing
+heavens, then all was rush and horror, and the swaying structure fell
+before their eyes, sweeping its living freight into the courtyard
+beneath their feet.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<div class='chapter'><h3><a id="XLII"></a>XLII.</h3></div>
+
+<div class='ph4'>PAULA RELATES A STORY SHE HAS HEARD.</div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“None are so desolate but something dear,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Dearer than self, possesses or possessed.”—<span class="smcap">Byron.</span><br></span>
+</div></div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+
+<p>In the centre of a long low room not far from the scene of the late
+disaster, a solitary lamp was burning. It had been lit in haste and cast
+but a feeble flame, but its light was sufficient to illuminate the sad
+and silent group that gathered under its rays.</p>
+
+<p>On a bench by the wall, crouched the bowed and stricken form of Roger
+Holt, his face buried in his hands, his whole attitude expressive of the
+utmost grief; at his side stood Mr. Sylvester, his tall figure looming
+sombrely in the dim light; and on the floor at their feet, lay the dead
+form of the little lame boy.</p>
+
+<p>But it was not upon their faces, sad and striking as they were, that the
+eyes of the few men and women scattered in the open door-way, rested
+most intently. It was upon her, the bruised, bleeding, half-dead mother,
+who kneeling above the little corpse, gazed down upon it with the
+immobility of despair, moaning in utter heedlessness of her own
+condition, “My baby, my baby, my own, own baby!”</p>
+
+<p>The fixedness with which she eyed the child, though the blood was
+streaming from her forehead and bathing with a still deeper red her
+burned and blistered arms, made Mr. Sylvester’s sympathetic heart beat.
+Turning to the silent figure of Holt, he touched him on the arm and said
+with a gesture in her direction:</p>
+
+<p>“You have not deceived the woman? That is really her own child that lies
+there?”</p>
+
+<p>The man beside him, started, looked up with slowly comprehending eyes,
+and mechanically bowed his head. “Yes,” assented he, and relapsed into
+his former heavy silence.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester touched him again. “If it is hers, how came she not to
+know it? How could you manage to deceive such a woman as that?”</p>
+
+<p>Holt started again and muttered, “She was sick and insensible. She never
+saw the baby; I sent it away, and when she came to herself, told her it
+was dead. We had become tired of each other long before, and only needed
+the breaking of this bond to separate us. When she saw me again, it was
+with another woman at my side and an infant in my arms. The child was
+weakly and looked younger than he was. She thought it her rival’s and I
+did not undeceive her.” And the heavy head again fell forward, and
+nothing disturbed the sombre silence of the room but the low unvarying
+moan of the wretched mother, “My baby, my baby, my own, own baby!”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester moved over to her side. “Jacqueline,” said he, “the child
+is dead and you yourself are very much hurt. Won’t you let these good
+women lay you on a bed, and do what they can to bind up your poor
+blistered arms?”</p>
+
+<p>But she heard him no more than the wind’s blowing. “My baby,” she
+moaned, “my own, own baby!”</p>
+
+<p>He drew back with a troubled air. Grief like this he could understand
+but knew not how to alleviate. He was just on the point of beckoning
+forward one of the many women clustered in the door-way, when there came
+a sound from without that made him start, and in another moment a young
+man had stepped hastily into the room, followed by a girl, who no sooner
+saw Mr. Sylvester, than she bounded forward with a sudden cry of joy and
+relief.</p>
+
+<p>“Bertram! Paula! What does this mean? What are you doing here?”</p>
+
+<p>A burst of sobs from the agitated girl was her sole reply.</p>
+
+<p>“Such a night! such a place!” he exclaimed, throwing his arm about Paula
+with a look that made her tremble through her tears. “Were you so
+anxious about me, little one?” he whispered. “Would not your fears let
+you rest?”</p>
+
+<p>“No, no; and we have had such a dreadful time since we got here. The
+house where we expected to find you, is on fire, and we thought of
+nothing else but that you had perished within it. But finally some one
+told us to come here, and—” She paused horror-stricken; her eyes had
+just fallen upon the little dead child and the moaning mother.</p>
+
+<p>“That is Jacqueline Japha,” whispered Mr. Sylvester. “We have found her,
+only to close her eyes, I fear.”</p>
+
+<p>“Jacqueline Japha!” Paula’s hands unclosed from his arm.</p>
+
+<p>“She was in the large tenement house that burned first; that is her
+child whose loss she is mourning.”</p>
+
+<p>“Jacqueline Japha!” again fell with an indescribable tone from Paula’s
+lips. “And who is that?” she asked, turning and indicating the silent
+figure by the wall.</p>
+
+<p>“That is Roger Holt, the man who should have been her husband.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, I remember him,” she cried; “and her, I remember her, and the
+little child too. But,” she suddenly exclaimed, “she told me then that
+she was not his mother.”</p>
+
+<p>“And she did not know that she was; the man had deceived her.”</p>
+
+<p>With a quick thrill Paula bounded forward. “Jacqueline Japha,” she
+cried, falling with outstretched hands beside the poor creature; “thank
+God you are found at last!”</p>
+
+<p>But the woman was as insensible to this cry as she had been to all
+others. “My baby,” she wailed, “my baby, my own, own baby!”</p>
+
+<p>Paula recoiled in dismay, and for a moment stood looking down with fear
+and doubt upon the fearful being before her. But in another instant a
+heavenly instinct seized her, and ignoring the mother, she stooped over
+the child and tenderly kissed it. The woman at once woke from her
+stupor. “My baby!” she cried, snatching the child up in her arms with a
+gleam of wild jealousy; “nobody shall touch it but me. I killed it and
+it is all mine now!” But in a moment she had dropped the child back into
+its place, and was going on with the same set refrain that had stirred
+her lips from the first.</p>
+
+<p>Paula was not to be discouraged. Laying her hand on the child’s brow,
+she gently smoothed back his hair, and when she saw the old gleam
+returning to the woman’s countenance, said quietly, “Are you going to
+carry it to Grotewell to be buried? Margery Hamlin is waiting for you,
+you know?”</p>
+
+<p>The start which shook the woman’s haggard frame, encouraged her to
+proceed.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes; you know she has been keeping watch, and waiting for you so long!
+She is quite worn out and disheartened; fifteen years is a long time to
+hope against hope, Jacqueline.”</p>
+
+<p>The stare of the wretched creature deepened into a fierce and maddened
+glare. “You don’t know what you are talking about,” cried she, and bent
+herself again over the child.</p>
+
+<p>Paula went on as if she had not spoken. “Any one that is loved as much
+as you are, Jacqueline, ought not to give way to despair; even if your
+child is dead, there is still some one left whom you can make supremely
+happy.”</p>
+
+<p>“Him?” the woman’s look seemed to say, as she turned and pointed with
+frightful sarcasm to the man at their back.</p>
+
+<p>Paula shrank and hastily shook her head. “No, no, not him, but—Let me
+tell you a story,” she whispered eagerly. “In a certain country-town not
+far from here, there is a great empty house. It is dark, and cold, and
+musty. No one ever goes there but one old lady, who every night at six,
+crosses its tangled garden, unlocks its great side door, enters within
+its deserted precincts, and for an hour remains there, praying for one
+whose return she has never ceased to hope and provide for. She is
+kneeling there to-night, at this very hour, Jacqueline, and the love she
+thus manifests is greater than that of man to woman or woman to man. It
+is like that of heaven or the Christ.”</p>
+
+<p>The woman before her rose to her feet. She did not speak, but she looked
+like a creature before whose eyes a sudden torch had been waved.</p>
+
+<p>“Fifteen years has she done this,” Paula solemnly continues. “She
+promised, you know; and she never has forgotten her promise.”</p>
+
+<p>With a cry the woman put out her hands. “Stop!” she cried, “stop! I
+don’t believe it. No one loves like that; else there is a God and I—”
+She paused, quivered, gave one wild look about her, and then with a
+quick cry, something between a moan and a prayer, succumbed to the pain
+of her injuries, and sank down insensible by the side of her dead child.</p>
+
+<p>With a reverent look Paula bent over her and kissed her seared and
+bleeding forehead. “For Mrs. Hamlin’s sake,” she whispered, and quietly
+smoothed down the tattered clothing about the poor creature’s wasted
+frame.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester turned quietly upon the man who had been the cause of all
+this misery. “I charge myself with the care of that woman,” said he,
+“and with the burial of your child. It shall be placed in decent ground
+with all proper religious ceremonial.”</p>
+
+<p>“What, you will do this!” cried Holt, a flush of real feeling for a
+moment disturbing the chalk-white pallor of his cheek. “Oh sir, this is
+Christian charity; and I beg your pardon for all that I may have
+meditated against you. It was done for the child,” he went on wildly;
+“to get him the bread and butter he often lacked. I didn’t care so much
+for myself. I hated to see him hungry and cold and ailing; I might have
+worked, but I detest work, and—But no matter about all that; enough
+that I am done with endeavoring to extort money from you. Whatever may
+have happened in the past, you are free from my persecutions in the
+future. Henceforth you and yours can rest in peace.”</p>
+
+<p>“That is well,” cried a voice over his shoulder, and Bertram with an air
+of relief stepped hastily forward. “You must be very tired,” remarked
+he, turning to his uncle. “If you will take charge of Paula, I will do
+what I can to see that this injured woman and the dead child are
+properly cared for. I am so relieved, sir, at this result,” he
+whispered, with a furtive wring of his uncle’s hand, “that I must
+express my joy in some way.”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester smiled, but in a manner that reflected but little of the
+other’s satisfaction. “Thank you,” said he, “I am tired and will gladly
+delegate my duties to you. I trust you to do the most you can for both
+the living and the dead. That woman for all her seeming poverty is the
+possessor of a large fortune;” he whispered; “let her be treated as
+such.” And with a final word to Holt who had sunk back against the wall
+in his old attitude of silent despair, Mr. Sylvester took Paula upon his
+arm, and quietly led her out of this humble but not unkind refuge.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<div class='chapter'><h3><a id="XLIII"></a>XLIII.</h3></div>
+
+<div class='ph4'>DETERMINATION.</div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">“But alas! to make me<br></span>
+<span class="i0">A fixed figure for the time of scorn<br></span>
+<span class="i0">To point his slow unmoving finger at!”—<span class="smcap">Othello.</span><br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Let me but bear your love, I’ll bear your cares.”—<span class="smcap">Henry V.</span><br></span>
+</div></div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+
+<p>“Paula!”</p>
+
+<p>They had reached home and were standing in the library.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” said she, lowering her head before his gaze with a sweet and
+conscious blush.</p>
+
+<p>“Did you read the letter I left for you in my desk up stairs?”</p>
+
+<p>She put her hand to her bosom and drew forth the closely written sheet.
+“Every word,” she responded, and smilingly returned it to its place.</p>
+
+<p>He started and his chest heaved passionately. “You have read it,” he
+cried, “and yet could follow me into that den of unknown dangers at an
+hour like this, and with no other guide than Bertram?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” she answered.</p>
+
+<p>He drew a deep breath and his brow lost its deepest shadow. “You do not
+despise me then,” he exclaimed “My sin has not utterly blotted me out of
+your regard?”</p>
+
+<p>The glance with which she replied seemed to fill the whole room with its
+radiance. “I am only beginning to realize the worth of the man who has
+hitherto been a mystery to me,” she declared. Then as he shook his head,
+added with a serious air, “The question with all true hearts must ever
+be, not what a man has been, but what he is. He who for the sake of
+shielding the innocent from shame and sorrow, would have taken upon
+himself the onus of a past disgrace, is not unworthy a woman’s
+devotion.”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester smiled mournfully, and stroked her hand which he had taken
+in his. “Poor little one,” he murmured. “I know not whether to feel
+proud or sorry for your trust and tender devotion. It would have been a
+great and unspeakable grief to me to have lost your regard, but it might
+have been better if I had; it might have been much better for you if I
+had!”</p>
+
+<p>“What, why do you say that?” she asked, with a startled gleam in her
+eye. “Do you think I am so eager for ease and enjoyment, that it will be
+a burden for me to bear the pain of those I love? A past pain, too,” she
+added, “that will grow less and less as the days go by and happiness
+increases.”</p>
+
+<p>He put her back with a quick hand. “Do not make it any harder for me
+than necessary,” he entreated, “Do you not see that however gentle may
+be your judgment of my deserts, we can never marry, Paula?”</p>
+
+<p>The eyes which were fixed on his, deepened passionately. “No,” she
+whispered, “no; not if your remorse for the past is all that separates
+us. The man who has conquered himself, has won the right to conquer the
+heart of a woman. I can say no more—” She timidly held out her hand.</p>
+
+<p>He grasped it with a man’s impetuosity and pressed it to his heart, but
+he did not retain it. “Blessings upon you, dear and noble heart!” he
+cried. “God will hear my prayers and make you happy—but not with me.
+Paula,” he passionately continued, taking her in his arms and holding
+her to his breast, “it cannot be. I love you—I will not, dare not say,
+how much—but love is no excuse for wronging you. My remorse is not all
+that separates us; possible disgrace lies before me; public exposure at
+all events; I would indeed be lacking in honor were I to subject you to
+these.”</p>
+
+<p>“But,” she stammered, drawing back to look into his face, “I thought
+that was all over; that the man had promised silence; that you were
+henceforth to be relieved from his persecutions? I am sure he said so.”</p>
+
+<p>“He did, but he forgot that my fate no longer rested upon his
+forbearance. The letter which records my admission of sin was in his
+lawyer’s hands, Paula, and has already been despatched to Mr.
+Stuyvesant. Say what we will, rebel against it as we will, Cicely’s
+father knows by this time that the name of Sylvester is not spotless.”</p>
+
+<p>The cry which she uttered in her sudden pain and loss made him stoop
+over her with despairing fondness. “Hush! my darling, hush!” cried he.
+“The trial is so heavy, I need all my strength to meet it. It breaks my
+heart to see you grieve. I cannot bear it. I deserve my fate, but
+you—Oh you—what have you done that you should be overwhelmed in my
+fall!” Putting her gently away from his breast, he drew himself up and
+with forced calmness said, “I have yet to inform Mr. Stuyvesant upon
+which of the Sylvesters’ should rest the shadow of his distrust.
+To-night he believes in Bertram’s lack of principle, but to-morrow—”</p>
+
+<p>Her trembling lips echoed the word.</p>
+
+<p>“He shall know that the man who confessed to having done a wrong deed in
+the past, is myself, Paula.”</p>
+
+<p>The head which had fallen on her breast, rose as at the call of a
+clarion. “And is it at the noblest moment of your life that you would
+shut me away from your side? No, no. Heaven does not send us a great and
+mighty love for trivial purposes. The simple country maid whom you have
+sometimes declared was as the bringer of good news to you, shall not
+fail you now.” Then slowly and with solemn assurance, “If you go to Mr.
+Stuyvesant’s to-morrow, and you will, for that is your duty, you shall
+not go alone; Paula Fairchild accompanies you.”</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<div class='chapter'><h3><a id="XLIV"></a>XLIV.</h3></div>
+
+<div class='ph4'>IN MR. STUYVESANT’S PARLORS.</div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Was I deceived, or did a sable cloud<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Turn forth her silver lining on the night?”—<span class="smcap">Comus.</span><br></span>
+</div></div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+
+<p>“Unworthy?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes.”</p>
+
+<p>Cicely stared at her father with wide-open and incredulous eyes. “I
+cannot believe it,” she murmured; “no, I cannot believe it.”</p>
+
+<p>Her father drew up a chair to her side. “My daughter,” said he, with
+unusual tenderness, “I have hesitated to tell you this, fearing to wound
+you; but my discretion will allow me to keep silence no longer. Bertram
+Sylvester is not an honest man, and the sooner you make up your mind to
+forget him, the better.”</p>
+
+<p>“Not honest?” You would scarcely have recognized Cicely’s voice. Her
+father’s hand trembled as he drew her back to his side.</p>
+
+<p>“It is a hard revelation for me to make to you, after testifying my
+approval of the young man. I sympathize with you, my child, but none the
+less I expect you to meet this disappointment bravely. A theft has been
+committed in our bank—”</p>
+
+<p>“You do not accuse him of theft! Oh father, father!”</p>
+
+<p>“No,” he stammered. “I do not accuse him, but facts look very strongly
+against some one in our trust, and—”</p>
+
+<p>“But that is not sufficient,” she cried, rising in spite of his
+detaining hand till she stood erect before him. “You surely would not
+allow any mere circumstantial evidence to stand against a character as
+unblemished as his, even if he were not the man whom your daughter—”</p>
+
+<p>He would not let her continue. “I admit that I should be careful how I
+breathed suspicion against a man whose record was unimpeached,” he
+assented, “but Bertram Sylvester does not enjoy that position. Indeed, I
+have just received a communication which goes to show, that he once
+actually acknowledged to having perpetrated an act of questionable
+integrity. Now a man as young as he, who—”</p>
+
+<p>“But I cannot believe it,” she moaned. “It is impossible, clearly
+impossible. How could he look me in the face with such a sin on his
+conscience! He could not, simply could not. Why, father, his brow is as
+open as the day, his glance clear and unwavering as the sunlight. It is
+some dreadful mistake. It is not Bertram of whom you are speaking!”</p>
+
+<p>Her father sighed. “Of whom else should it be? Come my child, do you
+want to read the communication which I received last night? Do you want
+to be convinced?”</p>
+
+<p>“No, no;” she cried; but quickly contradicted herself with a hurried,
+“Yes, yes, let me be made acquainted with what there is against him, if
+only that I may prove to you it is all a mistake.”</p>
+
+<p>“There is no mistake,” he muttered, handing her a folded paper. “This
+statement was written two years ago; I witnessed it myself, though I
+little knew against whose honor it was directed. Read it, Cicely, and
+then remember that I have lost bonds out of my box at the bank, that
+could only have been taken by some one connected with the institution.”</p>
+
+<p>She took the paper in her hand, and eagerly read it through. Suddenly
+she started and looked up. “And you say that this was Bertram, this
+gentleman who allowed another man to accuse him of a past dishonesty?”</p>
+
+<p>“So the person declares who forwarded me this statement; and though he
+is a poor wretch and evidently not above making mischief, I do not know
+as we have any special reason to doubt his word.”</p>
+
+<p>Cicely’s eyes fell and she stood before her father with an air of
+indecision. “I do not think it was Bertram,” she faltered, but said no
+more.</p>
+
+<p>“I would to God for your sake, it was not!” he exclaimed. “But this
+communication together with the loss we have sustained at the bank, has
+shaken my faith, Cicely. Young men are so easily led astray nowadays;
+especially when playing for high stakes. A man who could leave his
+profession for the sake of winning a great heiress—”</p>
+
+<p>“Father!”</p>
+
+<p>“I know he has made you think it was for love; but when the woman whom a
+young man fancies, is rich, love and ambition run too closely together
+to be easily disentangled. And now, my dear, I have said my say and
+leave you to act according to the dictates of your judgment, sure that
+it will be in a direction worthy of your name and breeding.” And
+stooping for a hasty kiss, he gave her a last fond look and quietly left
+the room.</p>
+
+<p>And Cicely? For a moment she stood as if frozen in her place, then a
+great tremble seized her, and sinking down upon a sofa, she buried her
+face from sight, in a chaos of feeling that left her scarcely mistress
+of herself. But suddenly she started up, her face flushed, her eyes
+gleaming, her whole delicate form quivering with an emotion more akin to
+hope than despair.</p>
+
+<p>“I cannot doubt him,” she whispered; “it were as easy to doubt my own
+soul. He is worthy if I am worthy, true if I am true; and I will not try
+to unlove him!”</p>
+
+<p>But soon the reaction came again, and she was about to give full sway to
+her grief and shame, when the parlor door opened—she herself was
+sitting in the extension room—and she saw Mr. Sylvester and Paula come
+in. She at once rose to her feet; but she did not advance. A thousand
+hopes and fears held her enchained where she was; besides there was
+something in the aspect of her friends, which made her feel as though a
+welcome even from her, would at that moment be an intrusion.</p>
+
+<p>“They have come to see father,” she thought “and—”</p>
+
+<p>Ah what, Cicely?</p>
+
+<p>Paula, who was too absorbed in her own feelings to glance into the
+extension room beyond, approached Mr. Sylvester and laid her hand upon
+his arm. “Whatever comes,” said she, “truth, honor and love remain.”</p>
+
+<p>And he bowed his head and seemed to kiss her hand, and Cicely observing
+the action, grew pale and dropped her eyes, realizing as by a
+lightning’s flash, both the nature of the feeling that prompted this
+unusual manifestation on his part, and the possible sorrows that lay
+before her dearest friend, if not before herself, should the secret
+suspicions she cherished in regard to Mr. Sylvester prove true. When she
+had summoned up courage to glance again in their direction, Mr.
+Stuyvesant had entered the parlor and was nervously welcoming his
+guests.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester waited for no preamble. “I have come,” said he, in his
+most even and determined tones, “to speak to you in regard to a
+communication from a man by the name of Holt, which I was told was to be
+sent to you last evening. Did you receive such a one?”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Stuyvesant flushed, grew still more nervous in his manner and
+uttered a short, “I did,” in a tone severer than he perhaps intended.</p>
+
+<p>“It will not be too much for me, then, to conclude, that in your present
+estimation my nephew stands committed to a past dishonesty?”</p>
+
+<p>“It has been one of my chief sources of regret—one of them I say,”
+repeated Mr. Stuyvesant, “that any loss of esteem on the part of your
+nephew, must necessarily reflect upon the peace if not the honor of a
+man I hold in such high regard as yourself. I assure you I feel it quite
+as a brother might, quite as a brother.”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester at once rose. “Mr. Stuyvesant,” declared he, “my nephew is
+as honest a man as walks this city’s streets. If you will accord me a
+few minutes private conversation, I think I can convince you so.”</p>
+
+<p>“I should be very glad,” replied Mr. Stuyvesant, glancing towards the
+extension-room where he had left his daughter. “I have always liked the
+young man.” Then with a quick look in the other’s face, “You are not
+well, Mr. Sylvester?”</p>
+
+<p>“Thank you, I am not ill; let us say what we have to, at once, if you
+please.” And with just a glance at Paula, he followed the now somewhat
+agitated director from the room.</p>
+
+<p>Cicely who had started forward at their departure, glanced down the long
+parlor before her, and hastily faltered back; Paula was praying. But in
+a few moments her feelings overcame her timidity, and hurrying into her
+friend’s presence, she threw her arms about her neck and pressed her
+cheek to hers. “Let us pray together,” she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>Paula drew back and looked her friend in the face. “You know what all
+this means?” she asked.</p>
+
+<p>“I guess,” was the low reply.</p>
+
+<p>Paula checked a sob and clasped Cicely to her bosom. “He loves me,” she
+faltered, “and he is doing at this moment what he believes will separate
+us. He is a noble man, Cicely, noble as Bertram, though he once did—”
+She paused. “It is for him to say what, not I,” she softly concluded.</p>
+
+<p>“Then Bertram is noble,” Cicely timidly put in.</p>
+
+<p>“Have you ever doubted it?”</p>
+
+<p>“No.”</p>
+
+<p>And hiding their blushes on each other’s shoulders, the two girls sat
+breathlessly waiting, while the clock ticked away in the music-room and
+the moments came and went that determined their fate. Suddenly they both
+rose. Mr. Stuyvesant and Mr. Sylvester were descending the stairs. Mr.
+Sylvester came in first. Walking straight up to Paula, he took her in
+his arms and kissed her on the forehead.</p>
+
+<p>“My betrothed wife!” he whispered.</p>
+
+<p>With a start of incredulous joy, Paula looked up. His glance was clear
+but strangely solemn and peaceful.</p>
+
+<p>“He has heard all I had to say,” added he; “he is a just man, but he is
+also a merciful one. Like you he declares that not what a man was, but
+what he is, determines the judgment of true men concerning him.” And
+taking her on his arm, he stood waiting for Mr. Stuyvesant who now came
+in.</p>
+
+<p>“Where is my daughter?” were that gentleman’s words, as he closed the
+door behind him.</p>
+
+<p>“Here, papa.”</p>
+
+<p>He held out his hand, and she sprang towards him. “Cicely,” said he, not
+without some tokens of emotion in his voice, “it is only right that I
+should inform you that we were all laboring under a mistake, in charging
+Mr. Bertram Sylvester with the words that were uttered in the Dey Street
+coffee-house two years ago. Mr. Sylvester has amply convinced me that
+his nephew neither was, nor could have been present there at that time.
+It must have been some other man, of similar personality.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh thank you, thank you!” Cicely’s look seemed to say to Mr. Sylvester.
+“And he is quite freed from reproach?” she asked, with a smiling glance
+into her father’s face.</p>
+
+<p>A hesitancy in Mr. Stuyvesant’s manner, struck with a chill upon more
+than one heart in that room.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” he admitted at last; “the mere fact that a mysterious robbery has
+been committed upon certain effects in the bank of which he is cashier,
+is not sufficient to awaken distrust as to his integrity, but—”</p>
+
+
+<p>At that moment the door-bell rung.</p>
+
+<p>“Your father would say,” cried Mr. Sylvester, taking advantage of the
+momentary break, to come to the relief of his host, “that my nephew is
+too much of a gentleman to desire to press any claim he may imagine
+himself as possessing over you, while even the possibility of a shadow
+rests upon his name.”</p>
+
+<p>“The man who stole the bonds will be found,” said Cicely.</p>
+
+<p>And as if in echo to her words the parlor door opened, and a messenger
+from the bank stepped briskly up to Mr. Stuyvesant.</p>
+
+<p>“A note from Mr. Folger,” said he, with a quick glance at Mr. Sylvester.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Stuyvesant took the paper handed him, read it hastily through, and
+looked up with an air of some bewilderment.</p>
+
+<p>“I can hardly believe it possible,” cried he, “but Hopgood has
+absconded.”</p>
+
+<p>“Hopgood absconded?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes; is not that the talk at the bank?” inquired Mr. Stuyvesant,
+turning to the messenger.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes sir. He has not been seen since yesterday afternoon when he left
+before the bank was closed for the night. His wife says she thinks he
+meant to run away, for before going, he came into the room where she
+was, kissed her and then kissed the child; besides it seems that he took
+with him some of his clothes.”</p>
+
+<p>“Humph! and I had as much confidence in that man—”</p>
+
+<p>“As I have now,” came from Mr. Sylvester as the door closed upon the
+messenger. “If Hopgood has run away, it was from some generous but
+mistaken idea of sacrificing himself to the safety of another whom he
+may possibly believe guilty.”</p>
+
+<p>“No,” rejoined Mr. Stuyvesant, “for here is a note from him that refutes
+that supposition. It is addressed to me and runs thus:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>“<span class="smcap">Dear Sir.</span>—I beg your pardon and that of Mr. Sylvester for
+leaving my duties in this abrupt manner. But I have betrayed my
+trust and am no longer worthy of confidence. I am a wretched
+man and find it impossible to face those who have believed in
+my honesty and discretion. If I can bring the money back, you
+shall see me again, but if not, be kind to my wife and little
+one, for the sake of the three years when I served the bank
+faithfully.</p>
+
+<p>“<span class="smcap">John Hopgood.</span>”</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>“I don’t understand it,” cried Mr. Sylvester, “that looks—”</p>
+
+<p>“As if he knew where the money was.”</p>
+
+<p>“I begin to hope,” breathed Cicely.</p>
+
+<p>Her father turned and surveyed her. “This puts a new aspect on matters,”
+said he.</p>
+
+<p>She glanced up beaming. “Oh, will you, do you say, that you think the
+shadow of this crime has at last found the spot upon which it can
+rightfully rest?”</p>
+
+<p>“It would not be common sense in me to deny that it has most certainly
+shifted its position.”</p>
+
+<p>With a radiant look at Cicely, Paula crossed to Mr. Stuyvesant’s side,
+and laying her hand on his sleeve, whispered a word or two in his ear.
+He immediately glanced out of the window at the carriage standing before
+the door, then looked back at her and nodded with something like a
+smile. In another moment he stood at the front door.</p>
+
+<p>“Be prepared,” cried Paula to Cicely.</p>
+
+<p>It was well she spoke, for when in an instant later Mr. Stuyvesant
+re-entered the parlor with Bertram at his side, the rapidly changing
+cheek of the gentle girl showed that the surprise, even though thus
+tempered, was almost too much for her self-possession.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Stuyvesant did not wait for the inevitable embarrassment of the
+moment to betray itself in words. “Mr. Sylvester,” said he, to the young
+cashier, “we have just received a piece of news from the bank, that
+throws unexpected light upon the robbery we were discussing yesterday.
+Hopgood has absconded, and acknowledges here in writing that he had
+something to do with the theft!”</p>
+
+<p>“Hopgood, the janitor!” The exclamation was directed not to Mr.
+Stuyvesant but to Mr. Sylvester, towards whom Bertram turned with looks
+of amazement.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, it is the greatest surprise I ever received,” returned that
+gentleman.</p>
+
+<p>“And Mr. Sylvester,” continued Mr. Stuyvesant, with nervous rapidity and
+a generous attempt to speak lightly, “there is a little lady here who is
+so shaken by the news, that nothing short of a word of reassurance on
+your part will comfort her.”</p>
+
+<p>Bertram’s eye followed that of Mr. Stuyvesant, and fell upon the
+blushing cheek of Cicely. With a flushing of his own brow, he stepped
+hastily forward.</p>
+
+<p>“Miss Stuyvesant!” he cried, and looking down in her face, forgot
+everything else in his infinite joy and satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” announced the father with abrupt decision, “she is yours; you
+have fairly earned her.”</p>
+
+<p>Bertram bowed his head with irrepressible emotion, and for a moment the
+silence of perfect peace if not of awe, reigned over the apartment; but
+suddenly a low, determined “No!” was heard, and Bertram turning towards
+Mr. Stuyvesant, exclaimed, “You are very good, and the joy of this
+moment atones for many an hour of grief and impatience; but I have not
+earned her yet. The fact that Hopgood admits to having had something to
+do with the robbery, does not sufficiently exonerate the officers of the
+bank from all connection with the affair, to make it safe or honorable
+in me to unqualifiedly accept the inestimable boon of your daughter’s
+regard. Till the real culprit is in custody and the mystery entirely
+cleared away, my impatience must continue to curb itself. I love your
+daughter too dearly to bring her anything but the purest of reputations.
+Am I not right, Miss Stuyvesant?”</p>
+
+<p>She cast a glance at her father, and bowed her head. “You are right,”
+she repeated.</p>
+
+<p>And Mr. Stuyvesant, with a visible lightening of his whole aspect, took
+the young man by the hand, and with as much geniality as his nature
+would allow, informed him that he was at last convinced that his
+daughter had made no mistake when she expressed her trust in Bertram
+Sylvester.</p>
+
+<p>And in other eyes than Cicely’s, shone the light of satisfied love and
+unswerving faith.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<div class='chapter'><h3><a id="XLV"></a>XLV.</h3></div>
+
+<div class='ph4'>“THE HOUR OF SIX IS SACRED.”</div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">“Mightier far<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Than strength of nerve or sinew, or the sway<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Of magic potent over sun and star,<br></span>
+<span class="i0">Is love, though oft to agony distrest,<br></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And though its favorite seat be feeble woman’s breast.”—<span class="smcap">Wordsworth.</span><br></span>
+</div></div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+
+<p>It was at the close of a winter afternoon. Paula who had returned to
+Grotewell for the few weeks preceding her marriage, sat musing in the
+window of her aunt’s quaint little parlor. Her eyes were on the fields
+before her all rosy with the departing rays of the sun, but her thoughts
+were far away. They were with him she best loved—with Cicely, waiting
+in patience for the solution of the mystery of the stolen bonds; with
+Bertram, eagerly, but as yet vainly, engaged in searching for the
+vanished janitor; and last but not least, with that poor, wretched
+specimen of humanity moaning away her life in a New York hospital;—for
+the sight of the Japha house, in a walk that day, had reawakened her
+most vivid remembrances of Jacqueline. All that had ever been done and
+suffered by this forsaken creature, lay on her heart like a weight; and
+the question which had disturbed her since her return to Grotewell,
+viz., whether or not she ought to acquaint Mrs. Hamlin with the fact
+that she had seen and spoken to the object of her love and prayers,
+pressed upon her mind with an insistence that required an answer. There
+was so much to be said for and against it. Mrs. Hamlin was not well, and
+though still able to continue her vigil, showed signs of weakening, day
+by day. It might be a comfort to her to know that another’s eyes had
+rested on the haggard form for whose approach she daily watched; that
+another’s kiss had touched the scarred and pallid forehead she longed to
+fold against her breast; that the woman she loved and of whose fate she
+had no intimation, was living and well cared for, though her shelter was
+that of a hospital, and her prospects those of the grave.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, the awful nature of the circumstances which had
+brought her to her present condition, were such as to make any generous
+heart pause before shocking the love and trust of such a woman as Mrs.
+Hamlin, by a relation of the criminal act by which Jacqueline had slain
+her child and endangered her own existence. Better let the poor old lady
+go on hoping against hope till she sinks into her grave, than destroy
+life and hope at once by a revelation of her darling’s reckless
+depravity.</p>
+
+<p>And yet if the poor creature in the hospital might be moved to
+repentance by some word from Mrs. Hamlin, would it not be a kindness to
+the latter to allow her, though even at the risk of her life, to
+accomplish the end for which she indeed professed to live?</p>
+
+<p>The mind of Paula was as yet undecided, when a child from the village
+passed the window, and seeing her sitting there, handed her a small
+package with the simple message that Mrs. Hamlin was very ill. It
+contained, as she anticipated, the great key to the Japha mansion, and
+understanding without further words, what was demanded of her, Paula
+prepared to keep the promise she had long ago made to this devoted
+woman. For though she knew the uselessness of the vigil proposed to her,
+she none the less determined to complete it. Easier to sit an hour in
+that dark old house, than to explain herself to Mrs. Hamlin. Besides,
+the time was good for prayer, and God knows the wretched object of all
+this care and anxiety, stood in need of all the petitions that might be
+raised for her.</p>
+
+<p>Telling her aunts that she had a call to make in the village, she glided
+hurriedly away, and ere she realized all to which she was committed,
+found herself standing in the now darkened streets, before the grim door
+of that dread and mysterious mansion. Never had it looked more
+forbidding; never had the two gruesome poplars cast a deeper shadow, or
+rustled with a more woful sound in the chill evening air. The very
+windows seemed to repel her with their darkened panes, behind which she
+could easily imagine the spirits of the dead, moving and peering. A
+chill not unlike that of terror, assailed her limbs, and it was with a
+really heroic action that she finally opened the gate and glided up the
+path made by the daily steps of her aged friend. To thrust the big key
+into the lock required another effort, but that once accomplished, she
+stilled every tumultuous beating of her heart, by crying under her
+breath, “She has done this for one whom she has not seen for fifteen
+years; shall I then hesitate, who know the real necessity of her for
+whom this hour is made sacred?”</p>
+
+<p>The slow swinging open of the door was like an ushering into the abode
+of ghosts, but she struck a light at once, and soon had the satisfaction
+of beholding the dismal room with its weird shadows, resolve into its
+old and well remembered aspect. The ancient cabinet and stiff hair-cloth
+sofa, Colonel Japha’s chair by the table, together with all the other
+objects that had attracted her attention in her former visit, confronted
+her again with the same appearance of standing ready and waiting, which
+had previously so thrilled her. Only she was alone this time, and terror
+mingled with her awe. She scarcely dared to glance at the doors that led
+to other portions of the house. In her present mood it would seem so
+natural for them to swing open, and let upon her horrified gaze the
+stately phantom of the proud old colonel or the gentler shade of
+Jacqueline’s mother. The moan of the wind in the chimney was dreadful to
+her, and the faint rumbling sounds of mice scampering in the walls, made
+her start as though a voice had spoken.</p>
+
+<p>But presently the noise of a sleigh careering by the house recalled her
+to herself, and remembering it was but early night-fall, she sat down in
+a chair by the door, and prepared to keep her vigil with suitable
+patience and equanimity. Suddenly she recollected the clock on the
+mantel-piece and how she had seen Mrs. Hamlin wind it, and rising up,
+she followed her example, sighing unconsciously to find how many of the
+sixty minutes had yet to tick themselves away, “Can I endure it!” she
+thought, and shuddered as she pictured to herself the dim old staircase
+behind those doors, and the empty rooms above, and the little Bible
+lying thicker than ever with dust, on the yellowed pillows of
+Jacqueline’s bed.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she stood still; the noise she had just heard, was not made by
+the pattering of mice along the rafters, or even the creaking of the
+withered vines that clung against the walls! It was a human sound, a
+clicking as of the gate without, a crunching as of feet dragging slowly
+over the snow. Was Mrs. Hamlin coming after all, or—she could not
+formulate her fear; a real and palpable danger from the outside world
+had never crossed her fancy till now. What if some stranger should
+enter, some tramp, some—a step on the porch without made her hair rise
+on her forehead; she clasped her hands and stood trembling, when a
+sudden moan startled her ears, followed by the sound of a heavy fall on
+the threshold, and throwing aside all hesitation, she flung herself
+forward, and tearing open the door, saw—oh, angels that rejoice in
+heaven over one sinner that repenteth, let your voices go up in praise
+this night, for Jacqueline Japha has returned to the home of her
+fathers!</p>
+
+<p>She had fainted, and lay quite still on the threshold, but Paula, who
+was all energy now, soon had her in the centre of the sitting-room, and
+was applying to her such restoratives as had been provided against this
+very emergency. She was holding the poor weary head on her knee, when
+the wan eyes opened, and looking up, grew wild with a disappointment
+which Paula was quick to appreciate.</p>
+
+<p>“You are looking for Margery,” said she. “Margery will come by-and-by;
+she is not well to-night and I am taking her place, but when she hears
+you have returned, it will take more than sickness to keep her to her
+bed. I am Paula, and I love you, too, and welcome you—oh, welcome you
+so gladly.”</p>
+
+<p>The yearning look which had crept into the woman’s bleared and faded
+eyes, deepened and softened strangely.</p>
+
+<p>“You are the one who told me about Margery,” said she, “and bade me
+bring my baby here to be buried. I remember, though I seemed to pay no
+heed then. Night and day through all my pain, I have remembered, and as
+soon as I could walk, stole away from the hospital. It has killed me,
+but I shall at least die in my father’s house.”</p>
+
+<p>Paula stooped and kissed her. “I am going to get your bed ready,” said
+she. And without any hesitation now, she opened the door that led into
+those dim inner regions that but a few minutes before had inspired her
+with such dread.</p>
+
+<p>She went straight to Jacqueline’s room. “It must all be according to
+Mrs. Hamlin’s wishes,” she cried, and lit the fire on the hearth, and
+pulled back the curtains yet farther from the bed, and gave the benefit
+of her womanly touch to the various objects about her, till cheerfulness
+seemed to reign in a spot once so peopled with hideous memories. Going
+back to Jacqueline, she helped her to rise, and throwing her arm about
+her waist, led her into the hall. But here memory, ghastly accusing
+memory, stepped in, and catching the wretched woman in its grasp, shook
+her, body and soul, till her shrieks reverberated through that desolate
+house. But Paula with gentle persistence urged her on, and smiling upon
+her like an angel of peace and mercy, led her up step after step of that
+dreadful staircase, till at last she saw her safely in the room of her
+early girlhood.</p>
+
+<p>The sight of it seemed at first to horrify but afterwards to soothe the
+forlorn being thus brought face to face with her own past. She moved
+over to the fire and held out her two cramped hands to the blaze, as if
+she saw an altar of mercy in its welcoming glow. From these she passed
+tottering and weak to the embroidery-frame, which she looked at for a
+moment with something almost like a smile; but she hurried by the
+mirror, and scarcely glanced at a portrait of herself which hung on the
+wall over her head. To sink on the bed seemed to be her object, and
+thither Paula accompanied her. But when she came to where it stood, and
+saw the clothes turned down and the pillows heaped at the head, and the
+little Bible lying open for her in the midst, she gave a great and
+mighty sob, and flinging herself down upon her knees, wept with a
+breaking up of her whole nature, in which her sins, red though they were
+as crimson, seemed to feel the touch of the Divine love, and vanish away
+in the oblivion He prepares for all His penitent ones.</p>
+
+<p>When everything was prepared and Jacqueline was laid quiet in bed, Paula
+stole out and down the stairs and wended her way to Mrs. Hamlin’s
+cottage. She found her sitting up, but far from well, and very feeble.
+At the first sight of Paula’s face, she started erect and seem to forget
+her weakness in a moment.</p>
+
+<p>“What is it?” she asked; “you look as though you had been gazing on the
+faces of angels. Has—has my hope come true at last? Has Jacqueline
+returned? Oh, has my poor, lost, erring child come back?”</p>
+
+<p>Paula drew near and gently steadied Mrs. Hamlin’s swaying form. “Yes,”
+she smiled; and with the calmness of one who has entered the gates of
+peace, whispered in low and reverent tones: “She lies in the bed that
+you spread for her, with the Bible held close to her breast.”</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<p>There are moments when the world about us seems to pause; when the
+hopes, fears and experiences of all humanity appear to sway away and
+leave us standing alone in the presence of our own great hope or
+scarcely comprehended fear. Such a moment was that which saw Paula
+re-enter Jacqueline’s presence with Mrs. Hamlin at her side.</p>
+
+<p>Leaving the latter near the door, she went towards the bed. Why did she
+recoil and glance back at Mrs. Hamlin with that startled and
+apprehensive look? The face of Jacqueline was changed—changed as only
+one presence could change it, though the eyes were clearer than when she
+left her a few minutes before, and the lips were not without the shadow
+of a smile.</p>
+
+<p>“She is dying,” whispered Paula, coming back to Mrs. Hamlin; “dying, and
+you have waited so long!”</p>
+
+<p>But the look that met hers from that aged face, was not one of grief;
+and startled, she knew not why, Paula drew aside, while Mrs. Hamlin
+crossed the room and quietly knelt down by her darling’s side.</p>
+
+<p>“Margery!”</p>
+
+<p>“Jacqueline!”</p>
+
+<p>The two cries rang through the room, then all was quiet again.</p>
+
+<p>“You have come back!” were the next words Paula heard. “How could I ever
+have doubted that you would!”</p>
+
+<p>“I have been driven back by awful suffering,” was the answer; and
+another silence fell. Suddenly Jacqueline’s voice was heard. “Love slew
+me, and now love has saved me!” exclaimed she. And there came no answer
+to that cry, and Paula felt the shadow of a great awe settle down upon
+her, and moving nearer to where the aged woman knelt by her darling’s
+bedside, she looked in her bended face and then in the one upturned on
+the pillow, and knew that of all the hearts that but an instant before
+had beat with earth’s deepest emotion in that quiet room, one alone
+throbbed on to thank God and take courage.</p>
+
+<p>And the fire which had been kindled to welcome the prodigal back, burned
+on; and from the hollow depths of the great room below, came the sound
+of a clock as it struck the hour, seven!</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<div class='chapter'><h3><a id="XLVI"></a>XLVI.</h3></div>
+
+<div class='ph4'>THE MAN CUMMINS.</div>
+
+<blockquote><p>“Oh day and night, but this is wondrous strange.”—<span class="smcap">Henry V.</span></p>
+
+<p>“Shut up in measureless content.”—<span class="smcap">Othello.</span></p></blockquote>
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+
+<p>The lights were yet shining in Mr. Stuyvesant’s parlors, though the
+guests were gone, who but a short time before had assembled there to
+witness the marriage of Cicely’s dear friend, Paula.</p>
+
+<p>At one end of the room stood Mr. Sylvester and Bertram, the former
+gazing with the eyes of a bridegroom, at the delicate white-clad figure
+of Paula, just leaving the apartment with Cicely.</p>
+
+<p>“I have but one cause for regret,” said Mr. Sylvester as the door
+closed. “I could have wished that you and Cicely had participated in our
+joy and received the minister’s benediction at the same moment as
+ourselves.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” said Bertram with a short sigh. “But it will come in time. It
+cannot be but that our efforts must finally succeed. I have just had a
+new idea; that of putting the watchman on the hunt for Hopgood. They are
+old friends, and he ought to know all the other’s haunts and possible
+hiding-places.”</p>
+
+<p>“If Fanning could have helped us, he would have told us long ago. He
+knows that Hopgood is missing and that we are ready to pay well for any
+information concerning him.”</p>
+
+<p>“But they are old cronies, and possibly Fanning is keeping quiet out of
+consideration for his friend.”</p>
+
+<p>“No; I have had a talk with Fanning, and there was no mistaking his look
+of surprise when told the other had run away under suspicion of being
+connected with a robbery on the bank’s effects. He knows no more of
+Hopgood than we do, or his wife does, or the police even. It is a
+strange mystery, and one to which I fear we shall never obtain the key.
+But don’t let me discourage you; after a suitable time Mr. Stuyvesant
+will—”</p>
+
+<p>He paused, for that gentleman was approaching him.</p>
+
+<p>“There is a man outside who insists upon seeing me; says he knows there
+has just been a wedding here, but that the matter he has to communicate
+is very important, and won’t bear putting off. The name on his card is
+Cummins; I am afraid I shall have to admit him, that is, if you have no
+objection?”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester and Bertram at once drew back with ready acquiescence.
+They had scarcely taken their stand at the other end of the apartment,
+when the man came in. He was of robust build, round, precise and
+business-like. He had taken off his hat, but still wore his overcoat;
+his face in spite of a profusion of red whiskers and a decided pair of
+goggles, was earnest and straightforward. He walked at once up to Mr.
+Stuyvesant.</p>
+
+<p>“Your pardon,” said he, in a quick tone. “But I hear you have been
+somewhat exercised of late over the disappearance of certain bonds from
+one of the boxes in the Madison Bank. I am a detective, and in the
+course of my duty have come upon a few facts that may help to explain
+matters.”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester and Bertram at once started forward; this was a topic that
+demanded their attention as well as that of the master of the house.</p>
+
+<p>The man cast them a quick look from behind his goggles, and seeming to
+recognize them, included them in his next question.</p>
+
+<p>“What do you think of the watchman, Fanning?”</p>
+
+<p>“Think? we don’t think,” uttered Mr. Stuyvesant sharply. “He has been in
+the employ of the bank for twelve years, and we know him to be honest.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yet he is the man who stole your bonds.”</p>
+
+<p>“Impossible!”</p>
+
+<p>“The very man.”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester stepped up to him. “Who are you, and how do you know
+this?”</p>
+
+<p>“I have said my name is Cummins, and I know this, because I have wormed
+myself into the man’s confidence and have got the bonds, together with
+his confession, here in my pocket.” And he drew out the long lost bonds,
+which he handed to their owner, with a bit of paper on which was
+in-scribed in the handwriting of the watchman, an acknowledgment to the
+effect that he, alone and unassisted, had perpetrated the robbery which
+had raised such scandal in the bank and led to the disappearance of
+Hopgood.</p>
+
+<p>“And the man himself?” cried Bertram, when they had all read this.
+“Where is he?”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, I allowed him to escape.”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester frowned.</p>
+
+<p>“There is something about this I don’t understand,” said he. “How came
+you to take such an interest in this matter; and why did you let the man
+escape after acknowledging his crime?”</p>
+
+<p>With a quick, not undignified action, Cummins stepped back. “Gentlemen,”
+said he, “it is allowable in a detective in the course of his duty, to
+resort to means for eliciting the truth, that in any other cause and for
+any other purpose, would be denominated as unmanly, if not mean and
+contemptible. When I heard of this robbery, as I did the day after its
+perpetration, my mind flew immediately to the watchman as the possible
+culprit. I did not know that he had done the deed, and I did not see how
+he could have possessed the means of doing it, but I had been acquainted
+with him for some time, and certain expressions which I had overheard
+him use—expressions that had passed over me lightly at the time, now
+recurred to my mind with startling distinctness. ‘If a man knew the
+combination of the vault door, how easily he could make himself rich
+from the contents of those boxes!’ was one, I remember; and another, ‘I
+have worked in the bank for twelve years and have not so much money laid
+up against a rainy day, as would furnish Mr. Sylvester in cigars for a
+month.’ The fact that he had no opportunity to learn the combination,
+was the only stumbling-block in the way of my conclusions. But that
+obstacle was soon removed. In a talk with the janitor’s wife—a good
+woman, sirs, but a trifle conceited—I learned that he had once had the
+very opportunity of which I speak, provided he was smart enough to
+recognize the fact. The way it came about was this. Hopgood, who always
+meant to do about the right thing, as I know, was one morning very sick,
+so sick that when the time came for him to go down and open the vaults
+for the day, he couldn’t stir from his bed, or at least thought he
+couldn’t. Twice had the watchman rung for him, and twice had he tried to
+get up, only to fall back again on his pillow. At last the call became
+imperative; the clerks would soon be in, and the books were not even in
+readiness for them. Calling his wife to him, he asked if she thought she
+could open the vault door provided she knew the combination. She
+returned a quite eager, ‘yes,’ being a naturally vain woman and moreover
+a little sore over the fact that her husband never entrusted her with
+any of his secrets. ‘Then,’ said he, ‘listen to those three numbers that
+I give you; and turn the knob accordingly,’ explaining the matter in a
+way best calculated to enlighten her as to what she had to do. She
+professed herself as understanding perfectly and went off in quite a
+flutter of satisfaction to accomplish her task. But though he did not
+know it at the time, it seems that her heart failed her when she got
+into the hall, and struck with fear lest she should forget the numbers
+before she got to the foot of the stairs, she came back, and carefully
+wrote them down on a piece of paper, armed with which she started for
+the second time to fulfil her task. The watchman was in the bank when
+she entered, and to his expressions of surprise, she answered that her
+husband was ill and that she was going to open the vaults. He offered to
+help her, but she stared at him with astonishment, and waiting till he
+had walked to the other end of the bank, proceeded to the vault door,
+and after carefully consulting the paper in her hand, was about to turn
+the knob as directed, when Hopgood himself came into the room. He was
+too anxious, he said, to keep in bed, and though he trembled at every
+step, came forward and accomplished the task himself. He did not see the
+paper in his wife’s hand, nor notice her when she tore it up and threw
+the pieces in the waste-basket near-by, but the watchman may have
+observed her, and as it afterwards proved, did; and thus became
+acquainted with the combination that unlocked the outer vault doors.”</p>
+
+<p>“Humph!” broke in Mr. Sylvester, “if this is true, why didn’t Hopgood
+inform me of the matter when I questioned him so closely?”</p>
+
+<p>“Because he had forgotten the circumstance. He was in a fever at the
+time, and having eventually unlocked the vault himself, lost sight of
+the fact that he had previously sent his wife to do it. He went back to
+his bed after the clerks came in, and did not get up again till night.
+He may have thought the whole occurrence part of the delirium which more
+than once assailed him that day.”</p>
+
+<p>“I remember his being sick,” said Bertram; “it was two or three days
+before the robbery.”</p>
+
+<p>“The very day before,” corrected the man; “but let me tell my story in
+my own way. Having learned from Mrs. Hopgood of this opportunity which
+had been given to Fanning, I made up my mind to sift the matter. Being
+as I have said a friend of his, I didn’t, want to peach on him unless he
+was guilty. To blast an honest man’s reputation, is, I think, one of the
+meanest tricks of which a fellow can be guilty: but the truth I had to
+know, and in order to learn it, a deep and delicate game was necessary.
+Gentlemen, when the police have strong suspicions against a person whose
+reputation is above reproach and whose conduct affords no opportunity
+for impeachment, they set a springe for him. One of their number
+disguises himself, and making the acquaintance of this person,
+insinuates himself by slow degrees—often at the cost of months of
+effort—into his friendship and if possible into his confidence. ’Tis a
+detestable piece of business, but it is all that will serve in some
+cases, and has at least the merit of being as dangerous as it is
+detestable. This plan, I undertook with Fanning. Changing my appearance
+to suit the necessities of the case, I took board in the small house in
+Brooklyn where he puts up, and being well acquainted with his tastes,
+knew how to adapt myself to his liking. He was a busy man, and being
+obliged by his duties to turn night into day, had not much time to
+bestow upon me or any one else; but heedful of this, I managed to make
+the most of the spare moments that saw us together, and ere long we were
+very good comrades, and further on, very good friends. The day when I
+first ventured to suggest that honesty was all very well as long as it
+paid, was a memorable one to me. In that cast of the die I was either to
+win or lose the game I had undertaken. I won. After a feint or two, to
+see if I were in earnest, he fell into the net, and though he did not
+commit himself then, it was not long before he came to me, and
+deliberately requested my assistance in disposing of some bonds which he
+was smart enough to acquire, but not daring enough to attempt to sell.
+Of course the whole story came out, and I was sympathetic enough till I
+got the bonds into my hands, then—But I leave you to imagine what
+followed. Enough that I wrung this confession from him, and that in
+consideration of the doubtful game I had played upon him, let him go
+where he is by this time beyond the chance of pursuit.”</p>
+
+<p>“But your duty to your superior; your oath as a member of the force?”</p>
+
+<p>“My superior is here!” said the man pointing to Mr. Sylvester; “an
+unconscious one I own, but still my superior; and as for my being a
+member of the force, that was true five years ago, but not to-day.” And
+brushing off his whiskers with one hand and taking off his goggles with
+the other, Hopgood, the janitor, stood before them!</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<p>It was a radiant figure that met Cicely, when she came down stairs with
+Paula, and a joyous group that soon surrounded the now blushing and
+embarrassed janitor, with questions and remarks concerning this great
+and unexpected development of affairs. But the fervor with which Mr.
+Stuyvesant clasped Bertram’s hand, and the look with which Cicely turned
+from her young lover to bestow a final kiss upon the departing bride,
+was worth all the pains and self-denial of the last few weeks—or so the
+janitor thought, who with a quicker comprehension than usual, had
+divined the situation and rejoiced in the result. But the most curious
+thing of all was to observe how, with the taking off of his goggles,
+Hopgood had relapsed into his old shrinking, easily embarrassed self.
+The man who but a few minutes before had related in their hearing a
+clear and succinct narrative, now shrank if a question was put him, and
+stammered in quite his ancient fashion, when he answered Mr. Sylvester’s
+shake of the hand, by a hurried:</p>
+
+<p>“I am going to see my wife now, sir. She’s a good woman, if a little
+flighty, and will be the last one in the future to beg me to put more
+confidence in her. Will you tell me where she is, sir?”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sylvester informed him; then added, “But look here, Hopgood, answer
+me one thing before you go. Why is it that with such talents as you
+possess, you didn’t stay in the police force? You are a regular genius
+in your way, and ought not to drone away your existence as a janitor.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, sir,” replied the other, shaking his head, “a man who is only
+capable of assuming one disguise, isn’t good for much as a professional
+detective. Goggles and red whiskers will deceive one rogue, but not
+fifty. My eyes were my bane, sir, and ultimately cost me my place. While
+I could cover them up I was all right. It not only made a man of me,
+leaving me free to talk and freer to think, but disguised me so, my best
+friends couldn’t recognize me; but after awhile my goggles were too well
+known for me to be considered of much further use to the department, and
+I was obliged to send in my resignation. It is too bad, but I have no
+versatility, sir. I’m either the clumsy, stammering creature you have
+always known, or else I am the man Cummins you saw here a few minutes
+ago.”</p>
+
+<p>“In either case an honest fellow,” answered Mr. Sylvester, and allowed
+the janitor to depart.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<p>One more scene, and this in the house which Paula is henceforth to make
+a home for herself and its once melancholy owner. They have come back
+from their wedding-journey, and are standing in their old fashion, he at
+the foot, and she half way up the stairs. Suddenly she turns and
+descends to his side.</p>
+
+<p>“No, I will not wait,” said she. “Here, on this spot we both love so
+well, and in this the first hour of our return, I will unburden my mind
+of what I have to say. Edward, is there nothing of all the past that
+still rests upon you like a shadow? Not one little regret you could wish
+taken away?”</p>
+
+<p>“No,” said he, enfolding her in his arms with a solemn smile. “The great
+gift which I hold is the fruit of that past, perhaps; I cannot wish it
+changed.”</p>
+
+<p>“But the sense of obligation never fulfilled, would you not be happier
+if that were removed?”</p>
+
+<p>“Perhaps,” he said, “but it cannot be now. I shall have to live without
+being perfectly happy.”</p>
+
+<p>She lifted her face and her smile shone like a star. “Oh God is good,”
+she cried, “you shall not lack being perfectly happy;” and taking a
+little paper out of her pocket she put it in his hand. “We found that
+hidden in Jacqueline Japha’s breast, when we went to lay her out for
+burial.”</p>
+
+<p>It was only a line; but it made Mr. Sylvester’s brow flush and his voice
+tremble.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<p>“Whatever I own, and I have been told that I am far from penniless, I
+desire to have given to the dear and disinterested girl that first told
+me of Margery Hamlin’s vigil.”</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<p>“Paula, Paula, Paula, thou art indeed my good gift! May God make me
+worthy of your love and of this His last and most unexpected mercy!”</p>
+
+<p>And the look which crossed her face, was that sweet and unearthly
+radiance which speaks of perfect peace.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> A fact.</p></div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<div class='chapter ph2'><a id="PUBLICATIONS_OF_G_P_PUTNAMS_SONS"></a>PUBLICATIONS OF G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS.</div>
+
+
+<div class='ph3'>THE LEAVENWORTH CASE. By <span class="smcap">Anna Katherine Green.</span></div>
+
+<blockquote><p>“Wilkie Collins, in his best period, never invented a more
+ingeniously constructed plot, nor held the reader in such
+suspense until the final <i>denoûment</i>. The most blasé
+novel-reader will be unable to put aside ‘The Leavenworth Case’
+until he has read the last sentence and mastered the mystery
+which has baffled him from the beginning.”—<i>N. Y. Evening
+Express.</i></p></blockquote>
+
+<div class='ph3'>A MAN’S A MAN FOR A’ THAT.</div>
+
+<blockquote><p>“A novel of decided excellence. * * * Contains delicate and
+charming work. Thoroughly clever * * * Its spirit is one of
+robust and healthy enthusiasm for manliness and
+womanliness.”—<i>N. Y. Evening Post.</i></p></blockquote>
+
+<div class='ph3'>THE BRETON MILLS: <span class="smcap">A Romance of New England Life.</span> By <span class="smcap">Charles J. Bellamy</span>.</div>
+
+
+<blockquote><p>“Nothing from the pen of Mrs. Burnett was ever more intensely
+dramatic.”—<i>Jackson Daily Citizen.</i></p>
+
+<p>“Looked at from a purely literary point of view it is almost
+faultless. It shows a hand both of culture and
+power.”—<i>Detroit Evening News.</i></p></blockquote>
+
+<div class='ph3'>CUPID AND THE SPHINX. By <span class="smcap">Harford Flemming</span>.</div>
+
+<blockquote><p>“Its characters are skilfully drawn, its incidents well
+conceived, the dialogues brilliant, and the story told with
+ease and gracefulness.”—<i>Boston Transcript.</i></p>
+
+<p>“The suggestion of the story is extremely beautiful, and its
+treatment graceful and enchanting throughout.”—<i>Hartford
+Evening Post.</i></p></blockquote>
+
+<div class='ph3'>A STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE. By <span class="smcap">Anna Katherine Green</span>.</div>
+
+<blockquote><p>“Wilkie Collins would not need to be ashamed of the
+construction of this story. * * * It keeps the reader’s close
+attention from first to last.”—<i>N. Y. Evening Post.</i></p>
+
+
+<p>“Shows the same skill as ‘The Leavenworth Case’ in the
+management of the plot and the incidents.”—<i>Boston
+Transcript.</i></p></blockquote>
+
+<div class='ph3'>THE HEART OF IT: A Romance of East and West. By <span class="smcap">William O. Stoddard</span>.</div>
+
+<blockquote><p>“Uncommonly good reading, even for that uncommonly readable
+Series.”—<i>Philadelphia Times.</i></p>
+
+<p>“An American novel, dealing with a few well-chosen characters
+and involving a striking and original plot. * * * A thoroughly
+entertaining piece of fiction.”—<i>Boston Traveller.</i></p></blockquote>
+
+<div class='ph3'>UNCLE JACK’S EXECUTORS. By <span class="smcap">Annette Lucille Noble</span>.</div>
+
+<blockquote><p>“Comes from a writer of unusual talent. * * * Remarkable for
+its sketches of character, its naturalness, its frequent
+flashes of intellectual brightness, and its genuine humor. * *
+* One of the best novels of the season and deserving of a
+permanent place among works of genuine American fiction.”—<i>The
+Churchman.</i></p></blockquote>
+
+<div class='ph3'>THE STRANDED SHIP: <span class="smcap">A Story of Sea and Shore</span>. By <span class="smcap">L. Clarke Davis</span>.</div>
+
+<blockquote><p>“Full of the finest dramatic action. * * * The work of a man of
+firm genius and exquisite delicacy of touch.”—<i>N. Y. Evening
+Post.</i></p></blockquote>
+
+<div class='ph3'>NESTLENOOK. By <span class="smcap">Leonard Kip</span>, Author of “The Dead Marquise,” “Under the
+Bells,” etc.</div>
+
+<blockquote><p>Of “The Dead Marquise” the <i>Boston Globe</i> writes: “The book is
+admirable and its style almost perfect in its transparent
+simplicity.”</p></blockquote>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;">
+
+<div class='ph3'>THE TRANS-ATLANTIC SERIES.</div>
+
+<div class='ph3'>I. CAPTAIN FRACASSE. By <span class="smcap">Theophile Gautier</span>. Translated by <span class="smcap">E. M. Beam</span>.</div>
+
+<blockquote><p>Of Le Capitaine Fracasse, Henry James, Jr., writes: “In this
+delightful work Gautier surpassed himself, and produced the
+model of picturesque romances. * * * The great charm of the
+book is a sort of combined geniality of feeling and coloring,
+which leaves one in doubt whether the author is the most joyous
+of painters or the cleverest of poets. * * * Le Capitaine
+Fracasse ranks, in our opinion, with the first works of
+imagination produced in our day.”</p>
+
+<p>“A masterpiece of literary art.”—<i>N. Y. Nation.</i></p>
+
+<p>“The translation is most admirable.”—<i>Troy Whig.</i></p></blockquote>
+
+<div class='ph3'>II. THE AMAZON. By <span class="smcap">Franz Dingelstedt</span>. Translated by <span class="smcap">Jas. Morgan Hart</span>.</div>
+
+<blockquote><p>“Full of scintillations of wit. * * * Sparkles throughout with
+vivacity and sparkling humor.”—<i>Leipsic BlĂ€tter fĂŒr Lit. Unt.</i></p>
+
+<p>“A delightful novel, characterized by force and fire, strong
+dramatic power, and rare skill in its analysis of human motives
+and character.”—<i>Philadelphia Times.</i></p></blockquote>
+
+<div class='ph3'>MOTHER MOLLY. By <span class="smcap">Frances Mary Peard</span>.</div>
+
+<blockquote><p>“The book is charming; and, more than this, it is a
+well-finished historical study of stirring
+times.”—<i>Philadelphia Times.</i></p>
+
+<p>“It deserves to rank among the best English stories of the
+year.”—<i>Louisville Courier-Journal.</i></p></blockquote>
+
+<div class='ph3'>THE LOST CASKET. Translated from <i>“La Main CoupĂ©e”</i> of <span class="smcap">F. de Boisgobey</span>
+by <span class="smcap">S. Lee</span>.</div>
+
+
+
+
+<div style='display:block;margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SWORD OF DAMOCLES ***</div>
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