CHAPTER XIII.

GREAT CHANGES.

OTTO's resolution to leave Dilburg for a short time had ripened during his long meditation in Beckley Wood.

temptible being who has not been born and bred on the banks of the Amstel.

In the evening he sauntered through Kalver Street along the well-lighted shops. You will hardly believe it, but so it was, that when he returned to his hotel he had not yet forgotten Celine; ergo, he came to His reason had been so far victorious the conclusion the very same evening that that he had admitted the truth of those the suppression of his passionate love for words of Celine's, "You and I are not her was an impossibility. Had he not suited to each other." But the victory done all that was possible? Had he not could not be completed in Dilburg, where fled from the temptation of seeing her the vicinity of Beckley was in itself a great again? Could he help it if his heart would temptation, which might any day prove not be forced to resign his most ardent stronger than his will. wish? Was it not through the influence Thus he set out on his journey with the of his reason that he was here in Amsterbest intentions, if not indeed to forget Ce-dam, where he felt more miserable and line, at least to overcome his love, yet at lonely than he had ever been before? the same time secretly promising himself Should he not return? Should he not to return and again make an effort to win speak once more to Celine, and at least her favor, should he find it impossible to try again to make himself agreeable to drive her image from his heart. her?

For my part, I really believe that Otto He smiled as he thought of the proverb went away for a simple acquit de conscience, which says that "Cologne and Aix were though possibly he set off the more not built in a day," and towards noon on hurriedly with a view to a more speedy re- the following day he was back in Dilburg. turn, but if this were so, I can assure you A few moments after he had entered the that he acted in good faith; that he took room he rang the bell with such unusual his place to Amsterdam, purposely choos- violence that Mrs. Geele rushed up-stairs ing a town where he knew no one; that in alarm. She found Otto, red in the face, on arriving at Amsterdam he in all good holding an open letter in his hand, while faith shut himself up in a room at the he asked in a hurried voice, "When was 'Pays Bas," and sat there the whole of this letter brought here?" a long evening, solely with the object of forgetting Celine Arnold.

66

A clever advocate was Otto Welters. This could not be denied, but in the suit between his heart and his reason, he did not show more penetration than most of us would have done in a similar case.

"I cannot tell you, sir; I did not take it in."

"Then send up at once the person who did take it in."

Mrs. Geele stared at Otto with surprise. He had never spoken to her in so rude and unfriendly a tone before, and this, too, after a few days' absence, which she thought might at least have given occasion for a friendly greeting.

No one

Here Otto stayed for a whole day; he walked through the bustling crowded streets and along the fine canal, paid a visit to Artis, or "the Artis,” as I fear he called But the worst was yet to come. it; the Amsterdammers recognized him in the house either knew or chose to know as "a stranger," meaning by the term anything about the letter. Mietje thought stranger, in its fullest sense, that con- that Pietje, Naatje that Kaatje, and Hendrik

that Hein had taken in the letter, whilst where a large fire on the hearth, and the the mutual accusations of the whole family last rays of the setting sun, seen through almost descended to the olive branch, the closed curtains, shed a light so faint which, for the moment, was in Mrs. Geele's

arms.

and flickering that a few moments passed before Otto recognized, in the two motionless forms by the fireside, Mr. Arnold and

Dying or dead?" he again asked himself, as he distinguished the altered countenance of the sick man, who lay on a sofa moved near the fire. Coming nearer, he

"It was too bad of him, but Mr. Otto had actually stamped with his foot," so his daughter. Mrs. Geele often afterwards stated; "and "" he, too, such a quiet well-mannered gentleman, who never gave trouble to any one. The mystery of Otto's strange behavior will never be unveiled to the respectable also saw Celine sitting on a stool close to Mrs. Geele, but for ourselves, who are privi- the sofa, her hands clasped in that of her leged to take a peep at the letter itself, the father, and gazing on his face with an exmatter is easily explained. pression of dull despair.

"Otto, my father is dying. He wishes For Heaven's sake come as

to see you.
quickly as possible.

"CELINE."

On the hearth-rug at her feet Cæsar was lying, and when Otto entered he lifted up his shaggy head from her lap and greeted him with a friendly motion of his tail. Celine also turned her eyes towards Otto, Think of Otto's sensations on reading as he stood hesitating what to do or say, these lines of Celine's and on finding it and gazing in silence at the countenance of impossible to ascertain when they were the invalid, who lay on his back with his written.

Perhaps the very evening of his departure, and if so, then all must long since be over. Celine would have looked for him in vain, and she must have been alone in the fearful hours by the death-bed of her father, whose wish to speak to Otto must then have been unfulfilled, and all through his own unpardonable fault in going off on that foolish journey to Amsterdam. These thoughts weighed like lead upon his heart, as he hurried out of the house to go to Beckley.

eyes closed; but when Otto approached the couch, she raised herself half up, and bending over her father, she said in a soft tender tone, such as a mother would use to a sick child:

""

'Father, dear, Otto is come at last. He is here. You wished to see him once more, did you not ?”

A faint color came into the worn sallow face of the invalid at Celine's words, whilst his dark eyes, now so large and hollow, were raised with a searching look.

A glance from Celine brought Otto to her side. She rose from her seat and placed his hand in her father's, and Otto, deeply affected, seated himself beside the sofa.

He held his breath as he entered the gate and saw that the shutters of the house were not closed. Thank Heaven, if he were late, he was not too late. Yet already the stillness of death reigned in the house when "I have only just received Celine's Otto entered it. The old servant answered note," he said, in an agitated voice, adhis hurried questions in a whisper, and dressing his words partly to the sick man they both crept softly up-stairs to the room where the dying man lay.

"Is he dying, or is he dead?" thought Otto, as he noiselessly entered the room,

and partly to Celine, who was now standing on the other side of the sofa. "I have been out of town for a day or two. Can I do anything for you, Mr. Arnold ?"

He

With the help of Otto and Celine, the said in her ordinary clear, sonorous voice: sick man raised himself up a little. Father, would it give you ease of had whispered to them to do this, but mind if you left me as the engaged wife of when he began to speak again, it was with Otto Welters?" a clear though weak voice.

'No one can do anything for me, Welters-man proposes and God disposes. My time is come, and my work is not finished. It has all been wrong, and all has failed."

He covered his face with his thin, wasted hands, heaving deep sighs, which bore witness to his mental distress.

"Can it ever be wrong to dedicate one's best powers to a work which one is thoroughly convinced is good?" said Otto, consoling him.

The face of the dying man lightened up, and his eyes wandered inquiringly from Celine to Otto, who, at these unexpected words, had started up from his chair with a look of pleased surprise. Then the sick man whispered :

"That, more than anything, would make me happy, my child; oh, so happy!"

"Then, be it so," said Celine, firmly, though, at these words, all color forsook her cheeks and reaching out her hand over the sofa to Otto, she gave him an indescribable look, at the same time sad and proud, triumphant and despairing.

"No, no! indeed." Mr. Arnold now spoke with difficulty, and in broken sen- When she felt the cordial pressure of tences. "The tool is broken, but the Otto's hand, as he held her cold trembling Creator lives. Truth shall have its way fingers, she slowly bent down her head when the time comes. But it was wrong and imprinted a kiss on her father's foreto sacrifice my daughter's interests to this head, and he gazed with a happy expreswork; it was wrong to keep her separated sion in his eyes on their hands clasped in from the world; I was blinded. By my each other. fault she is now alone, without friends, without knowledge of the world-alone and helpless."

He spoke these words in a despairing tone, and with a voice which became weaker and weaker every moment.

"Be patient with my dear child, Welters," he said, in a hardly audible whisper; and the long deep sigh which followed left Celine Arnold an orphan.

Five days later, we find Otto again in "I have already told you before, Mr. one of the down-stairs rooms at Beckley— Arnold, that I will be all that I can to the parlor where he had so often sat in Celine," said Otto, taking the hand of the pleasant conversation with the man to dying man in his own; "let me repeat it whom he had that morning paid the last to you once more. As long as I live she tribute of respect as a friend and chief shall find in me every support."

mourner.

During all these five days he had not. once seen Celine.

Here Otto's assurances were suddenly interrupted by Celine. Whilst her father was speaking these words of self-reproach, On that evening, when they were standshe had knelt down by his side and covered ing together by the death-bed, he had withis hand with ardent kisses. When he fell nessed a burst of grief so wild and passionback exhausted, and Otto began to speak, ate that he could not think of it afterwards she suddenly rose up from her kneeling without a shudder. It was as if, with her posture and gazed at Otto with a strange, father's last breath, Celine had lost all fixed look. Then she bent over the sick self-command. man, and with unnatural calmness she

Otto still saw her form bent over the

couch; he still heard her bitter self-re-down Celine's pale cheeks, but, forcing proaches, the wild words of imprecation herself evidently with a great effort to be with which she accused herself of having calm, she said gently, "Don't be disbeen a bad daughter to the best of fathers, pleased with me, Otto, that I have not who had loved her so tenderly; he still received you all these days. I could notsaw her as she covered with warm kisses indeed I could not." There was an overthe cold face of the dead; and when her whelming sorrow in the tone in which she feelings at last found relief in an over- said this. She seemed for a moment to whelming flood of tears, Otto had himself find it necessary to collect her strength succeeded, with gentle authority, in taking before she could go on. "I owe you her away from the chamber of death.

much gratitude, but I have not been in a state to care for anything."

But since that evening he had not seen her again, although he had passed day "Celine," said Otto, interrupting her, after day at Beckley, engaged in carrying and taking a chair near her, "do not out the instructions which had been left to speak of gratitude; that word distresses him by the deceased in a sealed packet, me. The little I have been able to do for and which had kept him entirely occupied you, and for him whom I mourn with you, every day with pressing business. is not worth mentioning; but I have Every day he had made efforts to see longed to speak to you, because I wish Celine, but every day she had excused there should be a perfect understanding as herself, and, however much this might in- to the relation in which we stand to each convenience him, he was too busy to think other." much about it; but now that the funeral A deep blush colored Celine's cheek; was over, his feelings began to assert them- she turned away from Otto, and by this selves, and he had just sunk into a melan- sudden movement her hair, falling over choly mood, full of bitter thoughts, when the servant brought the message which he had been waiting for so many days-that Celine was expecting him.

her face, concealed her from his gaze. He saw with a painful sensation this, perhaps, involuntary motion, but it strengthened him in what he had determined to say.

"I believe I understand what made you fear to meet me, Celine, but you are mistaken if you think that I will take advantage of what your goodness of heart made you say in order to lighten the anxious cares of a dying man. I honor you for it. I once had the boldness to say I loved you, and I will only add that I love you now more than ever, if that be possible; but my love is not so selfish that I place my happiness above yours. And I must,

Whatever feelings had been uppermost in Otto's mind, it is certain that his warm heart overflowed with love and compassion when he found her so altered, so pale and fallen away, sitting in an arm-chair drawn near the fire. Pale and fallen away, and yet so beautiful in a white morning gown, carelessly put on, with all the richness of her black luxuriant hair, which, hanging loose, concealed her form as in a dark veil. When Otto entered, she spoke a few gentle Malay words to the Javenese maid who therefore, tell you that I am fully prepared stood beside her, and who retired with her work into the farthest window-seat, while Celine put out her hand to Otto with a mournful smile.

At the first moment they were both too much affected to speak; hot tears flowed

to regard as unsaid the words that you then spoke, if you wish it so. Say so, Celine, and for your sake I will so far conquer myself, that you shall never perceive that I have anything more than the affection of a brother for you-and as a brother I will

stand by you and help you in all your brave, honest expression, she said in a difficulties." decided tone: "No, Otto; the man that She did not permit him to speak further; I could love, for whom my whole nature she had already turned her face again to- could deny itself, and for whose sake I wards him, and she now raised her dark could become what a wife should be, gentle, eyelashes, which drooped over her eyes, obedient, and submissive, that man must and, speaking in a voice of deep emotion, be a different man from you; but I will she said: say also that such a man I have never vet "You are good and generous in all met, and if I do not love you, Otto, as I things, Otto, but you are mistaken if you could love, at least there is no one whom think that I have not let you come to me I love more than you. Is that enough for sooner, because I repent of the promise I you? will you take me with all my faults made you. No, Otto, that is not so. Now and shortcomings? will you help me to he is dead, I have no one in the world overcome the devil within me?—then I who loves me but yourself. When I re- will thankfully accept your hand as that fused your first offer, I did so principally of my only friend in my solitary and forfor your sake, because I know myself better saken condition." than you know me, Otto." There came She held out her hand to him, and Otto over Celine a nervous excitement when she did not hesitate a moment in taking it. thus spoke; her cheeks colored up, her All the passions which had so long slumeyes, which were still moist, began to bered within him, which his reason had sparkle. She was indescribably beautiful often and often endeavored to suppress, as she sat by Otto, and she made an in- woke up with redoubled force at the effaceable impression on him for his whole prospect of the fulfilment of that ardent life. wish which his heart had so long cherished. In after years, in altered circumstances, Kneeling by Celine's chair, and covering she stood always before his mind just as he her hand with kisses, he spoke in halfhad seen her at this moment, as his best broken, unconnected words of his happiand happiest recollection of her. "When ness and gratitude and of his love, which we were last in the wood together, Otto," was content with the assurance that she Celine continued," when our conversation was not disinclined towards him, and at on religion showed us how much we least loved no one better than himself. differed in opinion, I said to you that I believed in two powers, God and the Devil. I believe this, Otto, because I find from day to day the conflict of two powers in my inmost heart, but I also believe that with me the Devil is the strongest power, and that, with all my good intentions, I am hist Dilburg had not only devoured but divictim; therefore, I do not believe that I gested the news, the wonderful news, that can make any man happy, unless I so Otto Welters, whom every one supposed to loved him as I feel that I am capable of have been engaged to Mary van Stein, loving." was going to be married to the daughter of

CHAPTER XIV.

THE HAPPIEST DAY IN OTTO'S LIFE.

THREE months had elapsed since the last-mentioned events.

"And that love, Celine, cannot I hope the late mysterious resident at Beckley. to win ?"

For a moment only she looked down, then, raising her eyes towards him with a

That this news had given rise to much gossip among the Dilburgers it is superfluous to state. If I were to write down all