d 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
direct