great joy, his eyes and perhaps the faint, almost unearthly smile that
flitted across his mouth, disturbing its firm line and making his face
for all its inevitable expression of melancholy, one that his mother
would have loved to look upon. "Paula!" came now and then in a reverent,
yearning accent from between his lips, and once a low, "Thank God!"
which showed that he was praying.

Suddenly he rose; a more human mood had set in, and he felt the
necessity of assuring himself that it was really he upon whom the dreary
past had closed, and a future of such possible brightness opened. He
walked about the room, surveying the rich articles within it, as the
possible belongings of the beautiful woman he adored; he stood and
pictured her as coming into the door as his wife, and before he realized
what he was doing, had planned certain changes he would make in his home
to adapt it to the wants of her young and growing mind, when with a
strange suddenness, the door upon which he was gazing flew back, and
Bertram Sylvester entered just as he had come from the street. He looked
so haggard, so wild, so little the picture of himself as he ventured
forth a couple of hours before, that Mr. Sylvester started, and
forgetting his happiness in his alarm, asked in a tone of dismay:

"What has happened? Has Miss Stuyvesant--"

Bertram's hand went up as if his uncle had touched him upon a festering
wound. "Don't!" gasped he, and advancing to the table, sat down and
buried his face for a moment in his arms, then rose, and summoning up a
certain manly dignity that became him well, met Mr. Sylvester's eye with
forced calmness, and inquired:

"Did you know there was a thief in our bank, Uncle Edward?"

XXXV.

THE FALLING OF THE SWORD.

"Foul deeds will rise,
Though all the world o'erwhelm them, to men's eyes."--HAMLET.

Mr. Sylvester towered on his nephew with an expression such as few men
had ever seen even on his powerful and commanding face.

"What do you mean?" asked he, and his voice rang like a clarion through
the room.

Bertram trembled and for a moment stood aghast, the ready flush bathing
his brow with burning crimson. "I mean," stammered he, with difficulty
recovering himself, "that when Mr. Stuyvesant came to open his private
box in the bank to-day, that he not only found its lock had been
tampered with, but that money and valuables to the amount of some twelve
hundred dollars were mis