“‘A palace! Oh, I don’t expect palaces; a house like the Japhas’ would do. Not but what I should feel at home in a palace,’ she added, lifting her lordly head and looking beautiful enough to grace a sceptre. Then, archly for her, ‘And papa has given his consent?’
“‘Yes,’ I ardently cried.
“‘Then Dr. Burton might as well go,’ she answered. ‘I will trust my father’s judgment, and take the palace—when it comes.’
“After that, it was impossible to disappoint her.
“Paula, in stating all this, I have purposely confined myself to relating bare facts. You must see us as we were. The glamour which an unreasoning passion casts over even a dishonest act, if performed for the sake of winning a beautiful woman, is no excuse in my own soul for the evil to which I succumbed that day, nor shall it seem so to you. Bare, hard, stern, the fact confronts me from the past, that at the first call of temptation I fell; and with this blot on my character, you will have to consider me—unhappy being that I am!
“I did not realize then, however, all that I had done. The operation entered into by Mr. Delafield prospered, and in two months I had, as he predicted, ten thousand dollars instead of five, in my possession. Besides, I had just married Ona, and for awhile life was a dream of delight and luxury. But there came a day when I awoke to an insight of the peril I had escaped by a mere chance of the die. The money which I had expected from my aunt’s will, turned out to be amongst certain funds that had been risked in speculation by some agent during her sickness, and irrecoverably lost. The expression of her good-will was all that ever came to me of the legacy upon which I had so confidently relied.
“I was sitting with my young wife in the pretty parlor of our new home, when the letter came from my lawyer announcing this fact, and I never can make you understand what effect it had upon me. The very walls seemed to shrivel up into the dimensions of a prison’s cell; the face that only an hour before had possessed every conceivable charm for me, shone on my changed vision with the allurement, but also with the unreality of a will-o’-the-wisp. All that might have happened if the luck, instead of being in my favor, had turned against me, crushed like a thunderbolt upon my head, and I rose up and left the presence of my young wife, with the knowledge at my heart that I was no more nor less than a thief in the eyes of God, if not in that of my fellow-men; a base thief, who if he did not meet his fit punishment, was only saved from it by fortuitous circumstances and the ignorance of those he had been so near despoiling.
“The bitterness of that hour never passed away. The streets in which I had been raised, the house which had been the scene of my temptation, Mr. Delafield’s face, and my own home, all became unendurable to me. I felt as if each man I met must know what I had done; and secret as the transaction had been, it was long before I could enter the bank without a tremor of apprehension lest I should hear from some quarter, that my services there would no longer be required. The only comfort I received was in the thought that Ona did not know at what a cost her hand had been obtained. I was still under the glamour of her languid smiles and countless graces, and was fain to believe that notwithstanding a certain unresponsiveness and coldness in her nature, her love would yet prove a compensation for the remorse that I secretly suffered.
“My distaste for Grotewell culminated. It was too small for me. The money I had acquired through the use of my neighbor’s funds burned in my pocket. I determined to move to New York, and with the few thousands I possessed, venture upon other speculations. But this time in all honesty. Yes, I swore it before God and my own soul, that never again would I run a risk similar to that from which I had just escaped. I would profit by the money I had acquired, oh yes, but henceforth all my operations should be legitimate and honorable. My wife, who was fast developing a taste for ease and splendor, seconded my plans with something like fervor, while Mr. Delafield actually went so far as to urge my departure. ‘You are bound to make a rich man,’ said he ‘and must go where great fortunes are to be secured.’ He never asked me what became of the five thousand dollars I returned to Colonel Japha upon his arrival from Europe.
“So I came to New York.