her heart when
he made his slow, precise explanation. The fact was, he said, that the
business transactions between her father and himself, consequent upon
the defalcation of her brother Eustace, had never been closed, in all
these seventeen years. (Edith Dolph trembled.) It was known at the time
that the property transferred by her father rather more than covered the
amount of her brother's--peculation. But her father's extreme
sensitiveness had led him to avoid a precise adjustment, and as the
property transferred was subject to certain long leases, he, Mr. Van
Riper, had thought it best to wait until the property was sold and the
account closed, to settle the matter with Mr. Dolph. This had lately
been done, and Mr. Van Riper found that, deducting charges, and interest
on his money at seven per cent., he had made by the transaction six
thousand three hundred and seventy dollars. This sum, he thought,
properly belonged to Mr. Dolph. And if Miss Dolph would take the counsel
of an old friend of her father's, she would leave the sum in charge of
the house of Abram Van Riper's Son. The house would invest it at ten per
cent.--he stopped and looked at Edith, but she only answered him with
innocent eyes of attention--and would pay her six hundred and
thirty-seven dollars annually in quarterly payments. It might be of
assistance to Mr. Dolph in his present situation.

It was of assistance. They lived on it, father and daughter, with such
aid as Decorative Art--just introduced to this country--gave in
semi-remunerative employment for her deft fingers.

Abram Van Riper, when he left the weeping, grateful girl, marched out
into the street, turned his face toward what was once Greenwich Village,
and said to his soul:

"I think that will balance any obligation my father may have put himself
under in buying that State Street house too cheap. Now then, old
gentleman, you can lie easy in your grave. The Van Ripers ain't beholden
to the Dolphs, that's sure."

* * * * *

A few years ago--shall we say as many as ten?--there were two small
rooms up in a quiet street in Harlem, tenanted by an old gentleman and a
young gentlewoman; and in the front room, which was the young woman's
room by night, but a sort of parlor or sitting-room in the daytime, the
old gentleman stood up, four times a year, to have his collar pulled up,
and his necktie set right, and his coat dusted off by a pair of small
white hand