made. He had never intended to claim this money as his
own, and invested it now, holding himself as the trustee. This done, he
threw himself upon the world, quite alone.

During fifteen years he had asserted the honorable manhood that had
sprung out of his erring youth. That fearful tragedy had sickened him
with deception, and with all ambition which did not spring out of his
own honest exertions. He went forth, with all his energies on the alert,
and his intellect free from the suspicions that had for a time
enthralled it. He had craved riches, and hoped to obtain them through
Rachael's marriage. This had been a temptation. He had ambition still,
but it took a far more noble direction. With wealth he would gather
knowledge; with both, mental force and moral power.

He went. Men saw him in the gold mines of California, in Australia, and
among the traders of India and Japan. Then he came back to New York, and
was honorably known upon the exchange. Then came a yearning wish to see
his sister, the only relative he had on earth; and we find him at the
gate of Oakhurst Park, just as Lady Clara dashed through it, as bright a
vision of joyous, happy girlhood as ever crossed the path of any man.

That moment I think that Hepworth Closs fell in love with the girl. If
so, it was absolutely his first love. The boyish and most unprincipled
passion he had felt for that murdered lady had no similitude with the
feelings that possessed him now. It was a wicked, insane desire,
springing out of his perverted youth--a feeling that he would have
shuddered to have recognized as love, in these, his better days.

Yes, it is certain Closs loved the girl at first sight, but was
unconscious of it, as the nest is when a dove settles down to its
brooding.

As for the girl, she had seen but few men in her life calculated to
disturb the repose of a creature so gifted and rich in imagination. At
first Hepworth had seemed rather an old person to her, notwithstanding
the gloss of his black hair, and the smooth whiteness of his forehead.
With a trust in this, which gradually betrayed her, she accepted him
frankly as a relative, and in less than three weeks, grew restless as a
bird. She wondered what had made the world all at once so gloriously
beautiful, and why it was so difficult for her to keep the tears out of
her eyes when the soft purple evening came down, and divided the day
which had been spent with him, from the night, when she could only h