my father was laid
away, Felix" (with what effort he uttered that name!) "Felix came to New
York, and I was left to wander about without settled hopes or any
definite promise of means upon which to base a future or start a career.
While wandering, I came upon the town where my father had lived in early
youth, and, hunting up his old friends, I met in the house of one who
had come over from Scotland with my father a young lady" (how his voice
shook, and with what a poignant accent he uttered that beloved name) "in
whom I speedily became interested to the point of wishing to marry her.
But I had no money, no business, no home to give her, and, as I was fain
to acknowledge, no prospects. Still I could not give up the hope of
making her my wife. So I wrote to my brother, Felix Cadwalader, or,
rather, Felix Adams, as he preferred to be called in later years for
family reasons entirely disconnected with the matter of his sudden
demise, and, telling him I had become interested in a young girl of good
family and some wealth, asked him to settle upon me a certain sum which
would enable me to marry her with some feeling of self-respect. My only
answer was a repetition of the vague promise he had thrown out before.
But youth is hopeful, even to daring, and I decided to make her mine
without further parley, in the hope that her beauty and endearing
qualities would win from him, at first view, the definite concession he
had so persistently denied me.

"This I did, and the fault with which I have most to reproach myself is
that I entered into this alliance without taking her or her father into
my confidence. They thought me well off, possibly rich, and while Mr.
Poindexter is a man of means, I am sure, if he had known I had nothing
but the clothes I wore and the merest trifle in the way of pocket money,
he would have cried halt to the marriage, for he is a very ambitious man
and considers his daughter well worth a millionaire's devotion--as she
is.

"Felix (you must pardon me if I show no affection for my brother--he was
a very strange man) was notified of my marriage, but did not choose to
witness it, neither did he choose to prohibit it; so it was conducted
quietly, with strangers for witnesses, in a hotel parlor. Then, with
vague hopes, as well as certain vague fears, I prepared to take my young
bride into the presence of my brother, who, hardened as he was by years
of bachelorhood, could not be so entirely impervious to feminine