I
had been secretly enabled to provide Colonel Japha during the final days
of his ruined and impoverished life, were not sufficient. I desired to
wipe out the past by some large and munificent return. Had the colonel
been living, I should have gone to him, told him my tale and offered him
the half of my fortune; but his death cut off all hopes of my righting
myself in that way. Only his daughter remained, the poor, lost,
reprobated being, whom he was willing to curse, but whom he could not
bear to believe suffering. I determined that the debt due to my own
peace of mind should be paid to her. But how? Where was I to find this
wanderer? How was I to let her know that a comfortable living awaited
her if she would only return to her friends and home? Consulting with a
business associate, he advised me to advertise. I did so, but without
success. I next resorted to the detectives, but all without avail.
Jacqueline Japha was not to be found.

"But I did not relinquish my resolve. Deliberately investing a hundred
thousand dollars in Government bonds, I put them aside for her. They
were to be no longer mine. I gave them to her and to her heirs as
completely and irrevocably, I believed, as if I had laid them in her
hand and seen her depart with them. I even inserted them as a legacy to
her in my will. It was a clear and definite arrangement between me and
my own soul; and after I had made it and given orders to my lawyer in
Grotewell to acquaint me if he ever received the least news of
Jacqueline Japha, I slept in peace.

"Of the years that followed I have small need to speak. They were the
years that preceded your coming, my Paula, and their story is best told
by what I was when we met again, and you made me know the sweet things
of life by entering into my home. Woman as a thoughtful, tender,
elevated being had been so long unknown to me! The beauty of the
feminine soul with its faith fixed upon high ideals, was one before
which I had ever been ready to bow. All that I had missed in my youth,
all that had failed me in my maturing manhood, seemed to flow back upon
me like a river. I bathed in the sunshine of your pure spirit and
imagined that the evil days were over and peace come at last.

"A rude and bitter shock awoke me. Ona's father, who had followed us to
New York, and of whose somewhat checkered career during the past few
years, I have purposely forborne to speak, had not been above appealing
to us for assistance at