when I pointed out the discrepancy between the two sets of figures, but he made no protestations of innocence, nor did he show me the front of an honest man when I asked if he expected me to believe that the wallet had held only two thousand and over when Mr. Orr handed it over to him.  On the contrary he seemed to shrink into himself like a person whose life has been suddenly blasted, and replying that he would expect me to believe nothing except his extreme contrition at the abuse of confidence of which he had been guilty, begged me to wait till to-morrow before taking any active steps in the matter.  I replied that I would show him that much consideration if he would immediately drop all pretensions to your hand.  This put him in a bad way; but he left, as you see, with just a simple injunction to you to seek from me an explanation of his strange departure.  Does that look like innocence or does it look like guilt?”

I found my tongue at this and passionately cried:  “James Zabel’s life, as I have known it, shows him to be an honest man.  If he has done what you suggest, given you but a portion of the money entrusted to him and altered the figures in the memorandum to suit the amount he brought you, then there is a discrepancy between this act and all the other acts of his life which I find it more difficult to reconcile than you did the two sets of figures in Mr. Orr’s handwriting.  Father, I must hear from his own lips a confirmation of your suspicions before I will credit them.”

And this is why I write you so minute an account of what passed between my father and myself last night.  If his account of the matter is a correct one, and you have nothing to add to it in way of explanation, then the return of this letter will be token enough that my father has been just in his accusations and that the bond between us must be broken.  But if—­O James, if you are the true man I consider you, and all that I have heard is a fabrication or mistake, then come to me at once; do not delay, but come at once, and the sight of your face at the gate will be enough to establish your innocence in my eyes.

Agatha.  The letter that followed this was very short: 

Dear James: 

The package of letters has been received.  God help me to bear this shock to all my hopes and the death of all my girlish beliefs.  I am not angry.  Only those who have something left to hold on to in life can be angry.

My father tells me he has received a packet too.  It contained five thousand dollars in ten five-hundred-dollar notes.  James!  James! was not my love enough, that you should want my father’s money too?

I have begged my father, and he has promised me, to keep the cause of this rupture secret.  No one shall know from either of us that James Zabel has any flaw in his nature.

 The next letter was dated some months later.  It is to Philemon: 

Dear philemon: