me, for I have not power to raise my voice."

"I notice, signor, that you are very pale. Are you ill?"

"My emotion has its origin in something worse than illness. Day before
yesterday Signor Turchi asserted in your presence that Geronimo had lost a
considerable sum at play, and that he had fled the country to escape my
just indignation. Great as was my confidence in Turchi, I could not credit
the truth of this revelation. I determined to seek in my nephew's accounts
the marks of his ingratitude, or rather the proofs of his innocence. I
passed a portion of the night in calculating over and over again; for the
invariable result was so frightful that my mind and heart refused to
accept the evidence of my senses. The sum lost in gambling by my nephew is
incredible."

"What!" exclaimed Mr. Van de Werve, "then the Signor Turchi was not
mistaken in his suspicions?"

"Ten thousand crowns!" said Deodati sighing.

"Ten thousand crowns!" replied Mr. Van de Werve. "Impossible! That is a
fortune of itself."

"And yet it is true. There is a deficit of ten thousand crowns in the
money vault of the house, and there are exactly ten thousand crowns
unaccounted for on the books. Not a line, not a mark refers in any manner
to the employment or destination of this sum. Evidently it must have been
used otherwise than in the business transactions of the house, and as
Geronimo himself told the Signor Turchi that he had lost a considerable
amount at play, I am forced in spite of myself to admit the painful truth.
Ten thousand crowns! Can neither virtue nor fidelity be found upon earth?
A child whom I treated as my own son, whom I loved with blind affection,
and over whose welfare I would have watched as long as I lived. And this
is the return for all my love! Ah! signor, this ingratitude is like a
dagger in my heart."

Mr. Van de Werve gazed abstractedly as if in deep thought. Then he said,
seriously:

"You are truly unhappy, signor, and I commiserate your sorrow. How can it
be possible? All is deceit and perfidy. Geronimo seemed the soul of virtue
and loyalty; he lived with so much economy and conducted himself so
honorably, that to those who knew him not he might have appeared either a
poor man or a precocious miser. And this tranquil, modest, prudent young
man loses at the gaming-table ten thousand crowns, the property of his
benefactor! His laudable course of conduct was but a base hypocrisy!"

"And nevertheless," murmured the o