Bertram saw the white look on Paula’s face and silently offered his arm. But there are moments when no mortal help can aid us; instants when the soul stands as solitary in the universe, as the shipwrecked mariner on a narrow strip of rock in a boundless sea. Life may touch, but eternity enfolds us; we are single before God and as such must stand or fall.
Upon their return to the house, Mr. Sylvester withdrew with a few intimate friends to his room, and Paula, lonely beyond expression, went to her own empty apartment to finish packing her trunks and answer such notes as had arrived during her absence. For attention from outsiders was only too obtrusive. Many whom she had never met save in the most formal intercourse, flooded her now with expressions of condolence, which if they had not been all upon one pattern and that the most conventional, might have afforded her some relief. Two or three of the notes were precious to her and these she stowed safely away, one contained a deliberate offer of marriage from a wealthy old stockbroker; this she as deliberately burned after she had written a proper refusal. “He thinks I have no home,” she murmured.
And had she? As she paced through the silent halls and elaborately furnished rooms on her way to her solitary dinner, she asked herself if any place would ever seem like home after this. Not that she was infatuated by its elegance. The lofty walls might dwindle, the gorgeous furniture grow dim, the works of beauty disappear, the whole towering structure contract to the dimensions of a simple cottage or what was worse, a seedy downtown house, if only the something would remain, the something that made return to Grotewell seem like the bending back of a towering stalk to the ground from which it had taken its root. “If?” she cried—and stopped there, her heart swelling she knew not why. Then again, “I thought I had found a father!” Then after a longer pause, a wild uncontrollable; “Bless! bless! bless!” which seemed to reecho in the room long after her lingering step had left it.
“Will he let me go without a word?”
It was early morning and the time had come for Paula’s departure. She was standing on the threshold of her room, her hands clasped, her eyes roving up and down the empty halls. “Will he let me go without a word?”
“O Miss Paula, what do you think?” cried Sarah, creeping slowly towards her from the spectral recesses of a dim corner. “Jane says Mr. Sylvester was up all last night too. She heard him go downstairs about midnight and he went through all the rooms like a gliding spectre and into her room too!” she fearfully whispered; “and what he did there no one knows, but when he came out he locked the door, and this morning the cook heard him give orders to Samuel to have the trunks that were ready in Mrs. Sylvester’s room taken away. O Miss, do you think he can be going to give all those beautiful things to you?”
Paula recoiled in horror. “Sarah!” said she, and could say no more. The vision of that tall form gliding through the desolate house at midnight, bending over the soulless finery of his dead wife, perhaps stowing it away in boxes, came with too powerful a suggestion to her mind.
“Shure, I thought you would be pleased,” murmured the girl and disappeared again into one of the dim recesses.
“Will he let me go without a word?”
“Miss Paula, Mr. Bertram Sylvester is waiting at the door in a carriage,” came in low respectful tones to her ears, and Samuel’s face full of regret appeared at the top of the stairs.
“I am coming,” murmured the sad-hearted girl, and with a sob which she could not control, she took her last look of the pretty pink chamber in which she had dreamed so many dreams of youthful delight, and perhaps of youthful sorrow also, and slowly descended the stairs. Suddenly as she was passing a door on the second floor, she heard a low deep cry.
“Paula!”
She stopped and her hand went to her heart, the reaction was so sudden. “Yes,” she murmured, standing still with great heartbeats of joy, or was it pain?
The door slowly opened. “Did you think I could let you go without a blessing, my Paula, my little one!” came in those deep heart-tones which always made her tears start. And Mr. Sylvester stepped out of the shadows beyond and stood in the shadows at her side.
“I did not know,” she murmured. “I am so young, so feeble, such a mote in this great atmosphere of anguish. I longed to see you, to say goodbye, to thank you, but—” tears stopped her words; this was a parting that rent her tender heart.
Mr. Sylvester watched her and his deep chest rose spasmodically. “Paula,” said he, and there was a depth in his tone even she had never heard before, “are these tears for me?”
With a strong effort she controlled herself, looked up and faintly smiled. “I am an orphan,” she gently murmured; “you have been kind and tender to me beyond words; I have let myself love you as a father.”
A spasm crossed his features, the hand he had lifted to lay upon her head fell at his side, he surveyed her with eyes whose despairing fondness told her that her love had been more than met by this desolate childless man. But he did not reply as seemed natural, “Be to me then as a child. I can offer you no mother to guide or watch over you, but one parent is better than none. Henceforth you shall be known as my daughter.” Instead of that he shook his head mournfully, yearningly but irrevocably, and said, “To be your father would have been a dear position to occupy. I have sometimes hoped
