d, "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