al culprit is in custody and the mystery entirely
cleared away, my impatience must continue to curb itself. I love your
daughter too dearly to bring her anything but the purest of reputations.
Am I not right, Miss Stuyvesant?"

She cast a glance at her father, and bowed her head. "You are right,"
she repeated.

And Mr. Stuyvesant, with a visible lightening of his whole aspect, took
the young man by the hand, and with as much geniality as his nature
would allow, informed him that he was at last convinced that his
daughter had made no mistake when she expressed her trust in Bertram
Sylvester.

And in other eyes than Cicely's, shone the light of satisfied love and
unswerving faith.

XLV.

"THE HOUR OF SIX IS SACRED."

"Mightier far
Than strength of nerve or sinew, or the sway
Of magic potent over sun and star,
Is love, though oft to agony distrest,

And though its favorite seat be feeble woman's breast."

--WORDSWORTH.

It was at the close of a winter afternoon. Paula who had returned to
Grotewell for the few weeks preceding her marriage, sat musing in the
window of her aunt's quaint little parlor. Her eyes were on the fields
before her all rosy with the departing rays of the sun, but her thoughts
were far away. They were with him she best loved--with Cicely, waiting
in patience for the solution of the mystery of the stolen bonds; with
Bertram, eagerly, but as yet vainly, engaged in searching for the
vanished janitor; and last but not least, with that poor, wretched
specimen of humanity moaning away her life in a New York hospital;--for
the sight of the Japha house, in a walk that day, had reawakened her
most vivid remembrances of Jacqueline. All that had ever been done and
suffered by this forsaken creature, lay on her heart like a weight; and
the question which had disturbed her since her return to Grotewell,
viz., whether or not she ought to acquaint Mrs. Hamlin with the fact
that she had seen and spoken to the object of her love and prayers,
pressed upon her mind with an insistence that required an answer. There
was so much to be said for and against it. Mrs. Hamlin was not well, and
though still able to continue her vigil, showed signs of weakening, day
by day. It might be a comfort to her to know that another's eyes had
rested on the haggard form for whose approach she daily watched; that
another's kiss had touched the scarred and pallid forehead