"Because Paul Lisimon, the man whose boyhood has been spent beneath this roof, whose education has been shared with you, who has ever been treated as a son, rather than as a dependent, that man is a thief!" Had Camillia been unprepared for this accusation, the blow might, for a moment, have paralyzed her. But she had heard all from Paul's own lips, and she was prepared for the worst. "He is no thief!" she exclaimed, proudly; "were he that, he would not have come hither to seek for sympathy from Camillia Moraquitos." "Deluded girl, he has been discovered in an act of daring robbery--robbery which is most contemptible, being allied to treachery of the basest nature. He was trusted, and he betrayed his trust." The lip of the Spanish girl curled with unutterable scorn. "Trusted!" she exclaimed, "trusted, did you say! Father, I ask you, by all your knowledge of mankind, by your faith in Nature's surest index, the human countenance, is that the man to trust any living creature?" She pointed to Silas Craig as she spoke, and the lawyer quailed beneath her flashing glance. For a moment he shrank back abashed and powerless to reply to the Spanish girl's disdainful words, then recovering himself with an effort, he said, with an assumed air of meekness: "Donna Camillia is pleased to be severe. We lawyers are certainly not over-trusting in our fellowmen--we are too often deceived; but I thought I might safely trust the protege of Don Juan Moraquitos. I did not think to find him a thief." "Liar!" cried Paul Lisimon. "Dastard! You know I am no thief. You know the base plot which has been planned by you--from what motive I know not--for my destruction. Now that all is past, I can see the base scheme from the very first. Your pretended confidence; your desire that I should remain alone in your office to receive a sum of money which you might have as well received yourself; your trusting me with the key--of which, you say, you have no duplicate; your simulated friendship, and your affected surprise this morning upon missing the casket containing the money; all these are so many links in the chain of infamy which you have woven around me; but through all I defy you. The money was taken from your office by no common robber; it was removed either by you, or by an agent in your employ." "The inner office has but one door," answered Silas Craig, "you possessed the only key of that door--nay, more, the mulatto boy, Marcus, slept in the clerk's office, and must have heard anybody who attempted to enter the inner chamber. Heaven knows," ejaculated Silas, sanctimoniously, "how much grief I feel at the discovery of such baseness in the adopted son of my most respected client; but guilt such as yours must not, for the benefit of society, go unpunished." Paul Lisimon turned from him with a gesture of loathing, and addressed himself to Don Juan.