He would not let her continue. “I admit that I should be careful how I breathed suspicion against a man whose record was unimpeached,” he assented, “but Bertram Sylvester does not enjoy that position. Indeed, I have just received a communication which goes to show, that he once actually acknowledged to having perpetrated an act of questionable integrity. Now a man as young as he, who—”
“But I cannot believe it,” she moaned. “It is impossible, clearly impossible. How could he look me in the face with such a sin on his conscience! He could not, simply could not. Why, father, his brow is as open as the day, his glance clear and unwavering as the sunlight. It is some dreadful mistake. It is not Bertram of whom you are speaking!”
Her father sighed. “Of whom else should it be? Come my child, do you want to read the communication which I received last night? Do you want to be convinced?”
“No, no;” she cried; but quickly contradicted herself with a hurried, “Yes, yes, let me be made acquainted with what there is against him, if only that I may prove to you it is all a mistake.”
“There is no mistake,” he muttered, handing her a folded paper. “This statement was written two years ago; I witnessed it myself, though I little knew against whose honor it was directed. Read it, Cicely, and then remember that I have lost bonds out of my box at the bank, that could only have been taken by someone connected with the institution.”
She took the paper in her hand, and eagerly read it through. Suddenly she started and looked up. “And you say that this was Bertram, this gentleman who allowed another man to accuse him of a past dishonesty?”
“So the person declares who forwarded me this statement; and though he is a poor wretch and evidently not above making mischief, I do not know as we have any special reason to doubt his word.”
Cicely’s eyes fell and she stood before her father with an air of indecision. “I do not think it was Bertram,” she faltered, but said no more.
“I would to God for your sake, it was not!” he exclaimed. “But this communication together with the loss we have sustained at the bank, has shaken my faith, Cicely. Young men are so easily led astray nowadays; especially when playing for high stakes. A man who could leave his profession for the sake of winning a great heiress—”
“Father!”
“I know he has made you think it was for love; but when the woman whom a young man fancies, is rich, love and ambition run too closely together to be easily disentangled. And now, my dear, I have said my say and leave you to act according to the dictates of your judgment, sure that it will be in a direction worthy of your name and breeding.” And stooping for a hasty kiss, he gave her a last fond look and quietly left the room.
And Cicely? For a moment she stood as if frozen in her place, then a great tremble seized her, and sinking down upon a sofa, she buried her face from sight, in a chaos of feeling that left her scarcely mistress of herself. But suddenly she started up, her face flushed, her eyes gleaming, her whole delicate form quivering with an emotion more akin to hope than despair.
“I cannot doubt him,” she whispered; “it were as easy to doubt my own soul. He is worthy if I am worthy, true if I am true; and I will not try to unlove him!”
But soon the reaction came again, and she was about to give full sway to her grief and shame, when the parlor door opened—she herself was sitting in the extension room—and she saw Mr. Sylvester and Paula come in. She at once rose to her feet; but she did not advance. A thousand hopes and fears held her enchained where she was; besides there was something in the aspect of her friends, which made her feel as though a welcome even from her, would at that moment be an intrusion.
“They have come to see father,” she thought “and—”
Ah what, Cicely?
Paula, who was too absorbed in her own feelings to glance into the extension room beyond, approached Mr. Sylvester and laid her hand upon his arm. “Whatever comes,” said she, “truth, honor and love remain.”
And he bowed his head and seemed to kiss her hand, and Cicely observing the action, grew pale and dropped her eyes, realizing as by a lightning’s flash, both the nature of the feeling that prompted this unusual manifestation on his part, and the possible sorrows that lay before her dearest friend, if not before herself, should the secret suspicions she cherished in regard to Mr. Sylvester prove true. When she had summoned up courage to glance again in their direction, Mr. Stuyvesant had entered the parlor and was nervously welcoming his guests.
Mr. Sylvester waited for no preamble. “I have come,” said he, in his most even and determined tones, “to speak to you in regard to a communication from a man by the name of Holt, which I was told was to be sent to you last evening. Did you receive such a one?”
Mr. Stuyvesant flushed, grew still more nervous in his manner and uttered a short, “I did,” in a tone severer than he perhaps intended.
“It will not be too much for me, then, to conclude, that in your present estimation my nephew stands committed to a past dishonesty?”
“It has been one of my chief sources of regret—one of them I say,” repeated Mr. Stuyvesant, “that any loss of esteem on the part of your nephew, must necessarily reflect upon the peace if not the honor of a man I hold in such high regard as yourself. I assure you I feel
