take their brother's place
in their mother's heart. Nay, more, one day Eli openly proclaimed that,
Gerard being lost, and probably dead, he had provided by will for little
Gerard, and also for Margaret, his poor son's widow.

At this the look that passed between the black sheep was a caution to
traitors. Cornelis had it on his lips to say. Gerard was most likely
alive, But he saw his mother looking at him, and checked himself in
time.

Ghysbrecht Van Swieten, the other partner in that lie, was now a failing
man. He saw the period fast approaching when all his wealth would drop
from his body, and his misdeeds cling to his soul.

Too intelligent to deceive himself entirely, he had never been free
from gusts of remorse. In taking Gerard's letter to Margaret he had
compounded. "I cannot give up land and money," said his giant Avarice.
"I will cause her no unnecessary pain," said his dwarf Conscience.

So, after first tampering with the seal, and finding there was not a
syllable about the deed, he took it to her with his own hand; and made a
merit of it to himself: a set-off; and on a scale not uncommon where the
self-accuser is the judge.

The birth of Margaret's child surprised and shocked him, and put his
treacherous act in a new light. Should his letter take effect he should
cause the dishonour of her who was the daughter of one friend, the
granddaughter of another, and whose land he was keeping from her too.

These thoughts preying on him at that period of life when the strength
of body decays, and the memory of old friends revives, filled him with
gloomy horrors. Yet he was afraid to confess. For the cure was an honest
man, and would have made him disgorge. And with him Avarice was an
ingrained habit, Penitence only a sentiment.

Matters were thus when, one day, returning from the town hall to his own
house, he found a woman waiting for him in the vestibule, with a child
in her arms. She was veiled, and so, concluding she had something to
be ashamed of, he addressed her magisterially, On this she let down her
veil and looked him full in the face.

It was Margaret Brandt.

Her sudden appearance and manner startled him, and he could not conceal
his confusion.

"Where is my Gerard?" cried she, her bosom heaving. "Is he alive?"

"For aught I know," stammered Ghysbrecht. "I hope so, for your sake.
Prithee come into this room. The servants!"

"Not a step," said Margaret, and she took him by the shoulder, and he