“I was dazzled. I knew enough of such matters to see that it was neither a hoax nor a chimera. He did have a good thing, and if the five thousand dollars had been my own—But I soon came to consider the question without that conditional. He was so specious in his manner of putting the affair before me, so masterful in the way he held on to the money, he gave me no time to think. ‘Say the word,’ cried he, ‘and in two months I bring you back ten thousand for your five. Only two months,’ he repeated, and then slowly, ‘Ona was born for luxury.’
“Paula, you cannot realize what that temptation was. To amass wealth had never been my ambition before, but now everything seemed to urge it upon me. Dreams of unimagined luxury came to my mind as these words were uttered. A vision of Ona clad in garments worthy of her beauty floated before my eyes; the humble home I had hitherto pictured for myself, broadened and towered away into a palace; I beheld myself honored and accepted as the nabob of the town. I caught a glimpse of a new paradise, and hesitated to shut down the gate upon it. ‘I will think of it,’ said I, and went into the other room to speak to Ona.
“Ah, if some angel had met me on the threshold! If my mother’s spirit or the thought of your dear face could have risen before me then and stopped me! Dizzy, intoxicated with love and ambition, I crossed the room to where she sat reeling off a skein of blue silk with hands that were whiter than alabaster. Kneeling down by her side, I caught those fair hands in mine.
“ ‘Ona,’ I cried, ‘will you marry me? Your father has given his consent, and we shall be very happy.’
“She bestowed upon me a little pout, and half mockingly, half earnestly inquired, ‘What kind of a house are you going to put me in? I cannot live in a cottage.’
“ ‘I will put you in a palace,’ I whispered, ‘if you will only say that you will be mine.’
“ ‘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 goodwill 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
