would have told
of beating heart and tremulous glance, eager longings, and maidenly
shrinkings, as the lovely form, swaying with a thousand hopes and fears,
glided from landing to landing, carrying with it love and joy and peace.
And trust! As she neared the bronze image that had always awakened such
vague feelings of repugnance on her part, and found its terrors gone and
its smile assuring, she realized that her breast held nothing but faith
in him, who may have sinned in his youth, but who had repented in his
manhood, and now stood clear and noble in her eyes. The assurance was
too sweet, the flood of feeling too overwhelming. With a quick glance
around her, she stopped and flung her arms about the hitherto repellant
bronze, pressing her young breast against the cold metal with a fervor
that ought to have hallowed its sensuous mould forever. Then she hurried
down.

Her first glance into the dining-room brought her a disappointment. Mr.
Sylvester had already breakfasted and gone; only Aunt Belinda sat at the
table. With a slightly troubled brow, Paula advanced to her own place at
the board.

"Mr. Sylvester has urgent business on hand to-day," quoth her aunt. "I
met him going out just as I came down."

Her look lingered on Paula as she said this, and if it had not been for
the servants, she would doubtless have given utterance to some further
expression on the matter, for she had been greatly struck by Mr.
Sylvester's appearance and the sad, firm, almost lofty expression of his
eye, as it met hers in their hurried conversation.

"He is a very busy man," returned Paula simply, and was silent, struck
by some secret dread she could not have explained. Suddenly she rose;
she had found an envelope beneath her plate, addressed to herself. It
was bulky and evidently contained a key. Hastening behind the curtains
of the window, she opened it. The key was to that secret study of his at
the top of the house, which no one but himself had ever been seen to
enter, and the words that enwrapped it were these:

"If I send you no word to the contrary, and if I do not come
back by seven o'clock this evening, go to the room of which
this is the key, open my desk, and read what I have prepared
for your eyes.

"E. S."

XXXVII.

THE OPINION OF A CERTAIN NOTED DETECTIVE.

"But still there clung
One hope, like a keen sword on starting threads uphung."

--REVOLT