“What is the use of this mystery with me,” I thought, “when I alone am concerned?  Why not reveal to me at once the secret of the spring and the lock, as I only am to be the beneficiary of all this gold?  The man’s cunning is short-sighted.  Suppose he were to die suddenly, how does he know that I would ever be the wiser or the better of these deposits?  Years hence, when the house was crumbling to decay, some stranger might be enriched by this concealed gold, for aught he knows, which is legitimately mine.  Evelyn, too, is in complete ignorance of this hidden chest, I am convinced, and, as far as I am concerned, will probably remain so.  After all, does Bainrothe mistrust her honesty or mine?  Good Heavens! what a mole the man is by nature, how darkly, deeply underhand, even in his responsibility!  And there are two long years yet, nay more to wait, before I can openly defy him and put him away forever.  Loathing him as I do, patience, patience!  Rome was not built in a day.  I shall still prevail.”

Months after this occurrence, months that passed swiftly because monotonously to me, for by events alone we are told we measure time, I was roused one night from my early slumber by the sound of bitter weeping in Evelyn’s chamber.  I had left her engaged over accounts with Mr. Bainrothe, having withdrawn rather than spend a long, lonely evening in the parlor, somewhat indisposed as I felt.

I rose from my bed and went to her precipitately.  I found her indulging in a passionate burst of grief, almost choking with sobs of hysterical indignation.

“All gone—­all gone!” she exclaimed, wildly, as I entered the room.  “Your estate—­mine—­Mabel’s—­all swept away with one fell swoop, Miriam!  The Bank of Pennsylvania has failed; it is discovered that Mr. Biddle has proved defaulter, and we are ruined!”

“I will never believe it, Evelyn!” I exclaimed, vehemently, “until he tells me so with his own lips.  This is one of Mr. Bainrothe’s fictions; he is trying to wake us up a little, that is all.  Mr. Biddle is the Bayard of bankers—­’sans peur et sans reproche.’  As to that bank, did not my father believe it to be as indestructible as the United States, the government itself?  Nay, did not Bainrothe himself do all he could to convince him of it, and induce him to invest in its stocks?  The wily fox had his motive, no doubt, but it surely could not have been our ruin!  Our own fortunes are too intimately involved in his prosperity for this.  Besides, why have not the newspapers told us of this?”

All this time Evelyn was sobbing convulsively, and what I have told continuously here was said by me in a far more fragmentary way between her bursts of grief.  She ceased now, and looked up, with some effort at calmness.

“The newspapers have been discussing it for months past, all but Mr. Biddle’s organ, and that alone was permitted to enter our doors.  Mr. Bainrothe acknowledges this now.  Have you not noticed the irregularity of our Washington papers?”