"The woman was an accomplished cheat, and led you on very adroitly. Your
mistake was in advancing the money for the stones; if you had brought
these things to me first, you would have saved yourself this loss. But
of course she never would have allowed that; her game was to get the
money from you, and she worked you finely for it."

Mr. Cutler groaned in spirit as he realized it all, and how he had tied
his own hands by what he had written on the card that he had given to the
wily woman.

He kept this portion of the transaction to himself, however; he could not
confess how foolishly weak he had been. Surely his infatuation for the
beautiful widow had led him beyond all bounds of common sense and good
judgment; but he had no one but himself to blame, and he must bear his
loss as best he could. His lost faith in womanhood was the heaviest part
of it.

"I sincerely regret having put you to so much trouble, Mr. Arnold," he
courteously remarked, as he closed the jewel-case and put it out of
sight, "and as a favor, I would ask that you regard this matter as
strictly confidential. I have been miserably fooled, and met with a
heavy loss, but I do not wish all Chicago to ring with the story."

"You may trust me, and accept my assurance that I am sincerely sorry for
you," the jeweler returned, in a tone of sympathy, and now entirely
convinced of the honesty of the young man. "And let me tell you,"
he added, "for your personal benefit, while examining those crescents
yesterday, I put a private mark on the back of the settings with a
steel-pointed instrument; it was like this"--making a cipher on a card