Let us, who are mortal and fallible, be wary how we condemn one whose head was rendered giddy by his very pinnacle of power!  Peace be his!

I have diverged so widely from my subject—­a most bitter and revolting one to me, eventually—­that I will not return to it just now; nor, indeed, do I even in thought revert to it with any thing like patience or pardon.  There are some things, paradoxical as this may seem, we must forget, in order to forgive.

I am lingering too long on this period of my story, uneventful as it is just yet, and circumscribed as I am in space; but, as the boldest rider draws rein with a beating heart beside the dark abyss over which he must fling his horse, or perish, so I pause here, on the threshold of despair, and take breath for a flying leap—­for I shall clear it, reader, believe me!

It will be remembered that, at my father’s death, half of my means were invested in the stocks of the Bank of Pennsylvania; and that his directions were that, as the different loans he had made became due, they should, one after the other, be drawn in and invested in like manner by Mr. Bainrothe.

No details of my business had ever been discussed before me, nor had I any insight into the periods at which these loans were due, or how the money was cared for when paid in by my father’s executors, of whom, to my regret, Mr. Gerald Stanbury had refused to be one.

One thing alone I had heard them say, and it was said, I doubt not, expressly for my hearing.  All debts should be paid in gold, as, according to law, this was the only legal tender.  Paper, however excellent, should never be received in discharge of any liability of my estate, since it might render the executors responsible to me, to depart a hair’s-breadth from the very letter of the law, which enjoined specie payment.

“But why not receive bank stocks instead?” I had ventured to suggest, a little indignantly, “seeing all moneys are to be immediately reinvested in that form.  Pennsylvania Bank stocks, I mean.”

“You know nothing about the matter, Miriam,” Evelyn had remarked, with some asperity.  “Had your father deemed you capable of conducting your own affairs, he would not have appointed us to manage and direct them during your minority.  No sinecure, I assure you!”

But Mr. Bainrothe had only laughed, and turned away tapping his boot with his rattan cane, amused, it appeared to me, by my sister’s assumption of importance, and, probably, as well by her entire ignorance of his true motive in exacting gold, of which secret spring of action she, knowing nothing, still tried to make so profound a mystery.

Yet he flattered Evelyn very much, I saw, on her business qualifications, and her insight into financial matters, of which abilities, indeed, she was more proud than of her accomplishments, or even beauty.

The last she took as a matter of course; but it was something new and unexpected to her to be considered sagacious and strong-minded, and very gratifying to her arrogant and exacting spirit—­ever alive to the delight of controlling the affairs of others, as well as her own—­to have the reins of government given apparently into her hands.