“My God! my God! I am a miserable wretch! I have dared to suspect my darlings—the only ones I love upon earth!”
And, stretching out his arms, he flung them round the neck of his wife and children as sobbing, he cried: “Oh, my dearest ones, can you ever forgive me?”
Standing thus, the four formed a group which would have charmed a sculptor; but which must have filled with rapture the heart of any true friend of man. The wife, the daughters, overwhelmed the man, who a moment before had so brutally treated them, with kisses and caresses. Oh, they could so well place themselves in his position—they could so well understand why he had been blinded by passion!
“Was I not right?” said Matilda, “when I feared that the parcel boded us no good.”
“But do tell me, Meidema,” asked his wife, “what can have happened that has so terribly unnerved you?”
“That beastly Chinaman,” he cried, “actually declared in the Resident’s presence that he had given you not five but fifteen thousand guilders.”
“Good God, how infamous!” exclaimed Mrs. Meidema.
“Infamous, yes most infamous! but what can one expect from a wretched speculator in opium? Such a fellow as that is capable of any infamy.”
“But,” asked the anxious mother, “may not all this do you a deal of harm?” She had some little insight into the intrigues carried on in Dutch India.
“Yes,” sighed Meidema, “no doubt it will. If I had to do with honest people, it would not trouble me much; but now!—However, I must see what I can do. My carriage is still at the door—I am off straight to the Resident.”