urveyed her with eyes whose despairing
fondness told her that her love had been more than met by this desolate
childless man. But he did not reply as seemed natural, "Be to me then as
a child. I can offer you no mother to guide or watch over you, but one
parent is better than none. Henceforth you shall be known as my
daughter." Instead of that he shook his head mournfully, yearningly but
irrevocably, and said, "To be your father would have been a dear
position to occupy. I have sometimes hoped that I might be so blessed as
to call it mine, but that is all past now. Your father I can never be.
But I can bless you," he murmured brokenly, "not as I did that day in
your aunt's little cottage, but silently and from afar as God always
meant you should be blessed by me. Good-bye, Paula."

Then all the deeps in her great nature broke up. She did not weep, but
she looked at him with her large dark eyes and the cry in them smote his
heart. With a struggle that blanched his face, he kept his arms at his
side, but his lips worked in agony, and he slowly murmured, "If after a
time your heart loves me like this, and you are willing to bear shadow
as well as sunshine with me, come back with your aunt and sit at my
hearthstone, not as my child but as a dear and honored guest. I will try
and be worthy--" He paused, "Will you come, Paula?"

"Yes, yes."

"Not soon, not now," he murmured, "God will show you when."

And with nothing but a look, without having touched her or so much as
brushed her garments with his, he retired again into his room.

XXII.

HOPGOOD.

"Give it an understanding but no tongue."

--HAMLET.

Hopgood was a man who could keep a secret, but who made so much ado in
the process that he reminded one of the placard found posted up
somewhere out west which reads, "A treasure of gold concealed here;
don't dig!" Or so his wife used to say, and she ought to know, for she
had lived with him five years, three of which he had spent in the
detective service.

"If he would only trust the wife of his bosom with whatever he's got on
his mind, instead of ambling around the building with his eyes rolling
about like peas in a caldron of boiling water, one might manage to take
some comfort in life, and not hurt anybody either. For two days now,
ever since the wife of Mr. Sylvester died and Mr. Sylvester has been
away from the bank, he's acted just like a lunatic. Not that that has
anything to do with his g