"Give it
me!" said I. She put it in my hand; I ran forward to the head of the
stairs, which Koerner was just ascending, dashed the cake in his face,
and then rushed back to my own room, whence neither threats nor coaxing
availed to draw me forth for the rest of the day.
I never saw Juliet again. She and her husband departed on their
wedding-trip that afternoon; it was to take them as far as Germany, for
Koerner said that he wished to visit his father and mother, who were
still alive, before settling down permanently in Liverpool. Whether
they really did so was never discovered. But, about a fortnight later,
a dreadful fact came to light. Koerner--the grave and reticent Koerner,
whom everybody trusted and thought so highly of--was a thief, and he
had gone off with more than half my father's property in his pocket.
The blow almost destroyed my father, and my stepmother, too, for that
matter, for at first it seemed as though Juliet must have been privy to
the crime. This, however, turned out not to have been the case. Her
fate must have been all the more terrible on that account; but no news
of either of them ever came back to us, and my father would never take
any measures to bring Koerner to justice.
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