trust in one's wife first,
and disbelief in the rest of the world afterward; and took her future
resolutions accordingly.

"Well, Hopgood, you look anxious; do you want to speak to me?"

The janitor eyed the changed and melancholy face of his patron, with an
expression in which real sympathy for his trouble, struggled with the
respectful awe which Mr. Sylvester's presence was calculated to inspire.

"If you please," said he, speaking very low, for more or less of the
bank employees were moving busily to and fro, "Constantia Maria is not
well and she has been asking all day for the _dear man_, as she insists
upon calling you, sir, with many apologies for the freedom."

Mr. Sylvester smiled with a faint far-away look in his dark eye that
made Hopgood stare uneasily out of the window. "Sick! why then I must go
up and see her," he returned in a matter-of-fact way that proved his
visits in that direction were of no uncommon occurrence. "A moment more
and I shall be at liberty."

Hopgood bowed and renewed his stare out of the window, with an intensity
happily spared from serious consequences to the passers-by, by the
merciful celerity with which Mr. Sylvester procured his overcoat, put
such papers in his pocket as he required, and joined him.

"Constantia Maria, here is Mr. Sylvester come to see you."

It was a pleasure to observe how the little thing brightened in her
mother's arms, where but a moment before she had lain quite pale and
still, and slipping to the ground rushed up to meet the embrace of this
stern and melancholy-faced man. "I am so glad you have come," she cried
over and over again; and her little arms went round his neck, and her
soft cheek nestled against his, with a content that made the mother's
eyes sparkle with pleasure, as obedient to her promise, she quietly left
the room.

And Mr. Sylvester? If any one had seen the abandon with which he yielded
to her caresses and returned them, he would have understood why this
child should have loved him with such extraordinary affection. He kissed
her forehead, he kissed her cheek, and seemed never weary of smoothing
down her bright and silky curls. She reminded him of Geraldine. She had
the same blue eyes and caressing ways. From the day he had come upon his
old friend Hopgood in a condition of necessity almost of want, this
blue-eyed baby had held its small sceptre over his lonely heart, and
unbeknown to the rest of the world, had solaced many a spare fi