Bertram suppressed with effort a cry of anger, and covered his face with his hands. "He is lost," he muttered to himself, "lost beyond redemption, for he founds his hopes on De Neufville, and he knows nothing of his unfortunate fate."
* * * * *
CHAPTER VII.
CONFESSIONS.
Bertram raised his head again, Gotzkowsky was standing near him, looking brightly and lovingly into his sorrowful, twitching face. It was now Gotzkowsky who had to console Bertram, and, smiling quietly and gently, he told him of the hopes which still remained to him.
"De Neufville may return," he said. "He has only gone to the opening of the bank at Amsterdam, and if he succeeds in collecting the necessary sum there, and returns with it as rapidly as possible to Berlin, I am saved."
"But if he does not come?" asked Bertram with a trembling voice, fixing his sad looks penetratingly on Gotzkowsky.
"Then I am irretrievably lost," answered Gotzkowsky, in a loud, firm voice.
Bertram stepped quickly up to him, and threw himself in his arms, folding him to his breast as if to protect him against all the danger which threatened him. "You must be saved!" cried he, eagerly; "it is not possible that you should fall. You have never deserved such a misfortune."
"For that very reason I fear that I must suffer it. If I deserved this disgrace, perhaps it never would have happened to me. The world is so fashioned, that what we deserve of good or evil never happens to us."