rom some quarter, that my
services there would no longer be required. The only comfort I received
was in the thought that Ona did not know at what a cost her hand had
been obtained. I was still under the glamour of her languid smiles and
countless graces, and was fain to believe that notwithstanding a certain
unresponsiveness and coldness in her nature, her love would yet prove a
compensation for the remorse that I secretly suffered.

"My distaste for Grotewell culminated. It was too small for me. The
money I had acquired through the use of my neighbor's funds burned in my
pocket. I determined to move to New York, and with the few thousands I
possessed, venture upon other speculations. But this time in all
honesty. Yes, I swore it before God and my own soul, that never again
would I run a risk similar to that from which I had just escaped. I
would profit by the money I had acquired, oh yes, but henceforth all my
operations should be legitimate and honorable. My wife, who was fast
developing a taste for ease and splendor, seconded my plans with
something like fervor, while Mr. Delafield actually went so far as to
urge my departure. 'You are bound to make a rich man,' said he 'and must
go where great fortunes are to be secured.' He never asked me what
became of the five thousand dollars I returned to Colonel Japha upon his
arrival from Europe.

"So I came to New York.

"Paula, the man who loses at the outset of a doubtful game, is
fortunate. I did not lose, I won. As if in that first dishonest deed of
mine I had summoned to my side the aid of evil influences, each and
every operation into which I entered prospered. It seemed as if I could
not make a mistake; money flowed towards me from all quarters; power
followed, and I found myself one of the most successful and one of the
most unhappy men in New York. There are some things of which a man
cannot write even to the one dear heart he most cherishes and adores.
You have lived in my home, and will acquit me from saying much about her
who, with all her faults and her omissions, was ever kind to you. But
some things I must repeat in order to make intelligible to you the
change which gradually took place within me as the years advanced.
Beauty, while it wins the lover, can never of itself hold the heart of a
husband who possesses aspirations beyond that which passion supplies.
Reckless, worldly and narrow-minded as I had been before the commission
of that deed which embitte