You remember those days; remember our
farewell. Let me believe you do not blame me now for what must have
seemed harsh and unnecessary to you then.

"There is but little more to write, but in that little is compressed the
passion, longing, hope and despair of a lifetime. When I told you as I
did a few hours ago that my sin was dead and its consequences at an end,
I repeat that I fully and truly believed it. The hundred thousand
dollars I had sent West, had been used to advantage, and only day before
yesterday I was enabled to sell out my share in the mine, for a large
sum that leaves me free and unembarrassed, to make the fortune of more
than one Japha, should God ever see fit to send them across my pathway.
More than that, Mr. Delafield, of whose discretion I had sometimes had
my fears, was dead, having perished of a fever some months before in San
Francisco; and of all men living, there were none as I believed, who
knew anything to the discredit of my name. I was clear, or so I thought,
in fortune and in fame; and being so, dreamed of taking to my empty and
yearning arms, the loveliest and the purest of mortal women. But God
watched over you and prevented an act whose consequences might have been
so cruel. In an hour, Paula, in an hour, I had learned that the foul
thing was not dead, that a witness had picked up the words I had allowed
to fall in my interview with my father-in-law in the restaurant two
years before; an unscrupulous witness who had been on my track ever
since, and who now in his eagerness for a victim, had by mistake laid
his clutch upon our Bertram. Yes, owing to the similarity of our voices
and the fact that we both make use of a certain tell-tale word, this
patient and upright nephew of mine stands at this moment under the
charge of having acknowledged in the hearing of this person, to the
committal of an act of dishonesty in the past. A foolish charge you will
say, and one easily refuted. Alas, a fresh act of dishonesty lately
perpetrated in the bank, complicates matters. A theft has been committed
on some of Mr. Stuyvesant's effects, and that, too, under circumstances
that involuntarily arouse suspicion against some one of the bank
officials; and Bertram, if not sustained in his reputation, must suffer
from the doubts which naturally have arisen in Mr. Stuyvesant's breast.
The story which this man could tell, must of course shake the faith of
any one in the reputation of him against whom it is di