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