Mr. Van Kuren was there, and his sister, whom the children always addressed as “Aunt Emma,” and who, on account of her delicate health, seldom ventured far away from 329home. It must have been business of importance that brought her from the great hotel, in which they were staying, to this mansion above the Harlem river, on such a cold and tempestuous night. Another guest, a portly, grey-haired, smooth-shaven man of judicial aspect, was the lawyer, who had been summoned by Mr. Dexter, in order to draw up a new will. Neither of the Van Kuren children were present, Harry having been sent away on a short trip with his tutor, while Laura had remained at the hotel in the care of her English governess.
On a table, which had been drawn up closely to Mr. Dexter’s lounge, was an open letter, which each member of the company had carefully scrutinized in turn, and with many expressions of indignation and distrust. It was the letter which the money-lender had written and sent from his office at Eldridge Street, and which had been so cruelly planned to excite and distress the kindly old gentleman, that not only his lawyer, but his intimate friends, the Van Kurens, had been hastily summoned. The doctor fearing that the shock might prove serious, if not fatal, to the venerable patient.
“I am inclined to think, on the whole,” 330said Mr. Van Kuren, after he had examined the money-lender’s letter for the twentieth time, “that there is not a word of truth in what he says, and that this has been written simply in the hope of bringing about a reconciliation with you. You know what my opinion of your nephew is and always has been. I told you when we talked the matter over in Paris that he was not a man to be trusted, and I was not at all surprised to learn that he had been running his little pawnshop down on the east side, and, I have no doubt, swindling every one of the unfortunates who are compelled by their necessities to deal with him. If I were you, I would throw this letter into the fire, and dismiss all thought of the matter from my mind. Don’t you agree with me, sir?” he added, turning to the kindly lawyer, who had been an attentive listener to his words.
“No, Horace,” said Mr. Dexter, “I am inclined to think that there is some truth in what my nephew—rascal that he is—has hinted at, and that brings me to speak of a conversation that I had with your daughter Laura at the time that we were so much together in Paris. I did not mention this before, because she regarded it as a secret, and, 331I suppose, did not care to have her interest in the matter known.”
Both Mr. Van Kuren and his sister smiled broadly at the thought that Laura, whom they regarded as a volatile and rather foolish young girl, should have been able to give their old friend any important or reliable information on a subject of vital importance to him, and Miss Van Kuren rejoined: “I wouldn’t pay too much attention to my niece, if I were you, for she has, like most children of her age, some very romantic and silly notions.”
“But I assure you,” exclaimed Mr. Dexter, earnestly, “that what she told me on this occasion made quite an impression on me—an impression which has been growing stronger and stronger ever since. It was in Paris, one morning when I called at your apartment, and there was no one there but Miss Laura. She intimated that she had something of importance to say to me, and when I encouraged her to go on she told me a story about a young boy of her acquaintance who, having come up to see me on an errand, recognized, or fancied that he recognized, the house and grounds as something that he had seen in his earliest childhood.
332“She gave me his address, and I actually wrote him a letter asking him to give me such information as he could about his family, but I never received any reply, for it was not long afterwards that I left Paris for Switzerland and Italy, and subsequently sailed for New York. It is just possible, therefore, that his letter may be at this very moment following me about the continent of Europe. I was rather inclined to believe that there was some grain of truth in the story, because I remembered the young lad myself quite distinctly, and he had a pleasant, bright, open face, and did not seem to be the sort of a boy who would invent a piece of pure fiction and try to palm it off as the truth.”
“Who was the boy? Do you recall his name?” said Mr. Van Kuren.
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