XXXIX

sensuous and earthly character of my happiness came with the glimpse of your child-face on that never-to-be-forgotten day when we met beside the river. Like a star seen above the glare of a conflagration, the pure spirit that informed your glance, flashed on my burning soul, and for a moment I knew that in you budded the kind of woman-nature which it befitted a man to seek; that in the hands of such a one as you would make, should he trust his honor and bequeath his happiness. But when did a lover ever break the bonds that imprisoned his fancy, at the inspiration of a passing voice. I went back to Ona and forgot the child by the river. > > “Paula, I have no time to utter regrets. This is a hard plain tale which I have to relate; but if you love me still⁠—if, as I have sometimes imagined, you have always loved me⁠—think what my life had been if I had heeded the warning which God vouchsafed me on that day, and contrast it with what it is, and what it must be. > > “I went back to Ona, then, and the hold which she had upon me from the first, took form and shape. As well as she could love anyone, she loved me, and though she had offers from one or two more advantageous sources, she finally decided that she would risk the future and accept me, if her father consented to the alliance. You who are the niece of the man of whom I must now speak, may or may not know what that meant. I doubt if you do; he left Grotewell while you were a child, and any gossip concerning him must ever fall short of the real truth. Enough, then, that it meant, if Jacob Delafield could see in my future any promises of success sufficient to warrant him in accepting me as his son-in-law, no woman