faint, almost unearthly smile that flitted across his mouth, disturbing its firm line and making his face for all its inevitable expression of melancholy, one that his mother would have loved to look upon. “Paula!” came now and then in a reverent, yearning accent from between his lips, and once a low, “Thank God!” which showed that he was praying.
Suddenly he rose; a more human mood had set in, and he felt the necessity of assuring himself that it was really he upon whom the dreary past had closed, and a future of such possible brightness opened. He walked about the room, surveying the rich articles within it, as the possible belongings of the beautiful woman he adored; he stood and pictured her as coming into the door as his wife, and before he realized what he was doing, had planned certain changes he would make in his home to adapt it to the wants of her young and growing mind, when with a strange suddenness, the door upon which he was gazing flew back, and Bertram Sylvester entered just as he had come from the street. He looked so haggard, so wild, so little the picture of himself as he ventured forth a couple of hours before, that Mr. Sylvester started, and forgetting his happiness in his alarm, asked in a tone of dismay:
“What has happened? Has Miss Stuyvesant—”
Bertram’s hand went up as if his uncle had touched him upon a festering wound. “Don’t!” gasped he, and advancing to the table, sat down and buried his face for a moment in his arms, then rose, and summoning up a certain manly dignity that became him well, met Mr. Sylvester’s eye with forced calmness, and inquired:
“Did you know there was a thief in our bank, Uncle Edward?”