But alas! these white dreams faded; in the end I was ready to execute the orders of Betelnut Jack; and that which decided me was surely the weakest thought of all. Somehow, I had in my thoughts put down the coming German maiden as beautiful; Betelnut Jack had said her age was twenty-three, which helped me to this thought of girlish loveliness. Thus, my imaginings worked in favor of the girl. But next the thought fell blackly that she would some day--probably a near day--love some man unknown and marry him. Possibly this lover she already knew; perhaps he was here and she on her way to meet him! This will sound like jest; it will earn derision from healthful, balanced spirits; and yet I tell but the truth. I experienced a vague, resentful jealousy, hated this imagined lover of a girl I’d never met, and waxed contemptuous of aught of leniency towards one or both. I would do as Betelnut Jack ordered; I would go down to quarantine on the morrow; and I would find the diamonds. It was late in the afternoon when with a woman assistant, I boarded the “Wolfgang” in the Narrows. My aged German was readily picked up; his daughter was with him. And her beauty was as I’d painted on the canvas of my thoughts. Yet when I beheld the loveliness which should have melted me, I recalled that lover to whose arms she might be coming and was hardened beyond recall. I told the inspectress to take her into her private room and find the diamonds. With that, I turned my back and strolled to the forward deck. Even at that distance I heard the shriek of the girl when her treasure was discovered. “There will be less for the lover!” I thought. When my woman assistant--accomplice might be the truer term--joined me, she had the jewels. They were in a long eel-skin receptacle, sewed tightly, and had been secreted in the girl’s hair as described by Betelnut Jack. I took the gems, and buttoning them in my coat, told my aide--who with a feminine fashion of bitterness seemed exultant over having deprived another of her gew-gaws--to arrest the girl, hold her until the boat docked, frighten her with tales of fetters and dungeons and clanging bars, and at the last to lose her on the wharf. It would be nine o’clock of the night by then, and murk dark; this loss of her prisoner would seem to come honestly about. If I were making a romance, rather than bending to a relation of cold, gray, hard, untender facts, I would at this crisis defy Betelnut Jack, rescue the beautiful girl, restore her jewels, love her, win her, wed her, and with her true, dear arms about me, live happy ever after. As it was, however, I did nothing of that good sort. My aide obeyed directions in a mood at once thorough, blithe, and spiteful, and never more did I set eyes on the half-blind father or the tearful, pretty, poor victim of our diamond hunting. Lost in the crush and bustle of the wharf, they were never found, never looked for, and never rendered themselves.