"I notice, signor, that you are very pale. Are you ill?"
"My emotion has its origin in something worse than illness. Day before yesterday Signor Turchi asserted in your presence that Geronimo had lost a considerable sum at play, and that he had fled the country to escape my just indignation. Great as was my confidence in Turchi, I could not credit the truth of this revelation. I determined to seek in my nephew's accounts the marks of his ingratitude, or rather the proofs of his innocence. I passed a portion of the night in calculating over and over again; for the invariable result was so frightful that my mind and heart refused to accept the evidence of my senses. The sum lost in gambling by my nephew is incredible."
"What!" exclaimed Mr. Van de Werve, "then the Signor Turchi was not mistaken in his suspicions?"
"Ten thousand crowns!" said Deodati sighing.
"Ten thousand crowns!" replied Mr. Van de Werve. "Impossible! That is a fortune of itself."
"And yet it is true. There is a deficit of ten thousand crowns in the money vault of the house, and there are exactly ten thousand crowns unaccounted for on the books. Not a line, not a mark refers in any manner to the employment or destination of this sum. Evidently it must have been used otherwise than in the business transactions of the house, and as Geronimo himself told the Signor Turchi that he had lost a considerable amount at play, I am forced in spite of myself to admit the painful truth. Ten thousand crowns! Can neither virtue nor fidelity be found upon earth? A child whom I treated as my own son, whom I loved with blind affection, and over whose welfare I would have watched as long as I lived. And this is the return for all my love! Ah! signor, this ingratitude is like a dagger in my heart."
Mr. Van de Werve gazed abstractedly as if in deep thought. Then he said, seriously:
"You are truly unhappy, signor, and I commiserate your sorrow. How can it be possible? All is deceit and perfidy. Geronimo seemed the soul of virtue and loyalty; he lived with so much economy and conducted himself so honorably, that to those who knew him not he might have appeared either a poor man or a precocious miser. And this tranquil, modest, prudent young man loses at the gaming-table ten thousand crowns, the property of his benefactor! His laudable course of conduct was but a base hypocrisy!"
"And nevertheless," murmured the old Deodati, "my unfortunate nephew had a pure and loving heart! Might not his blindness have been the effect of one solitary and momentary error? Perhaps so. Man sometimes meets fatal temptations which attract him irresistibly, but to which he yields only once in his life."
"Why then did he fly, and thus acknowledge his guilt? No, signor, no excuse can palliate such misdeeds. I burn with indignation at the thought that such signal favors have met with such cold and base ingratitude. The idea of your affliction restrains me from speaking of the outrage done my daughter. Fortunately, the reputation and social position of my family is such as to screen it from the consequences of such an act. But, signor, I hope you will agree with me that there can no longer be a question of an alliance between my daughter and your nephew. He may return and obtain your pardon, but that will not change my determination. From this day forward the Signor Geronimo is as a stranger whom we have never known."