Chapter 9…

Chapter 9

"Sing it again, dear. I know you are tired, but I want to hear that song just once more. Somehow it seems to bring up thoughts of--of things that might have been." The Beaubien's voice sank to a whisper as she finished.

Carmen laughed happily and prepared to repeat the weird lament which had so fascinated the Reverend Doctor Jurges a few days before.

"I--I don't know why that song affects me so," mused the Beaubien, when the girl had finished and returned to the seat beside her. Then, abruptly: "I wish you could play the pipe-organ out in the hall. I put twelve thousand dollars into it, and I can't even play five-finger exercises on it."

"Twelve thousand dollars!" exclaimed Carmen, drawing a long breath, while her eyes dilated.

The woman laughed. "Would that buy your beloved Simití?" she asked. "Well, you poor, unsophisticated girl, suppose we just go down there and buy the whole town. It would at least give me an interest in life. Do you think I could stand the heat there? But tell me more about it. How did you live, and what did you do? And who is this Josè? And are you really descended from the old Incas?"

They were alone in the darkened music room, and the soft-stepping, liveried butler had just set the tea table before them, At one end of the long room a cheery fire snapped and crackled in the huge fireplace, tempering the sharpness of the early spring day and casting a ruddy glow upon the tapestried walls and polished floor in front, where dozed the Beaubien's two "babies," Japanese and Pekingese spaniels of registered pedigree and fabulous value. Among the heavy beams of the lofty ceiling grotesque shadows danced and flickered, while over the costly rugs and rare skins on the floor below subdued lights played in animated pantomime. Behind the magnificent grand piano a beautifully wrought harp reflected a golden radiance into the room. Everything in the woman's environment was softened into the same degree of voluptuousness which characterized her and the life of sybaritic ease which she affected.

From the moment Carmen entered the house she had been charmed, fascinated, overpowered by the display of exhaustless wealth and the rich taste exhibited in its harmonious manifestation. The Hawley-Crowles home had seemed to her the epitome of material elegance and comfort, far exceeding the most fantastic concepts of her childish imagination, when she had listened enraptured to Padre Josè's compelling stories of the great world beyond Simití. But the gorgeous web of this social spider made even the Hawley-Crowles mansion suffer in comparison.

"And yet," said the amused Beaubien, when Carmen could no longer restrain her wonder and admiration, "this is but a shed beside the new Ames house, going up on Fifth Avenue. I presume he will put not less than ten millions into it before it is finished."

"Ten millions! In just a house!" Carmen dared not attempt to grasp the complex significance of such an expenditure.

"Why, is that such a huge amount, child?" asked the Beaubien, as accustomed to think in eight figures as in two. "But, I forget that you are from the jungle. Yet, who would imagine it?" she mused, gazing with undisguised admiration at the beautiful, animated girl before her.

Silence then fell upon them both. Carmen was struggling with the deluge of new impressions; and the woman fastened her eyes upon her as if she would have them bore deep into the soul of whose rarity she was becoming slowly aware. What thoughts coursed through the mind of the Beaubien as she sat studying the girl through the tempered light, we may not know. What she saw in Carmen that attracted her, she herself might not have told. Had she, too, this ultra-mondaine, this creature of gold and tinsel, felt the spell of the girl's great innocence and purity of thought, her righteousness? Or did she see in her something that she herself might once have been--something that all her gold, and all the wealth of Ormus or of Ind could never buy?

"What have you got," she suddenly, almost rudely, exclaimed, "that I haven't?" And then the banality of the question struck her, and she laughed harshly.

"Why," said Carmen, looking up quickly and beaming upon the woman, "you have everything! Oh, what more could you wish?"

"You," returned the woman quickly, though she knew not why she said it. And yet, memory was busy uncovering those bitter days when, in the first agony of marital disappointment, she had, with hot, streaming tears, implored heaven to give her a child. But the gift had been denied; and her heart had shrunk and grown heavily calloused.

Then she spoke more gently, and there was that in her voice which stirred the girl's quick sympathy. "Yes, you have youth, and beauty. They are mine no longer. But I could part with them, gladly, if only there were anything left."

Carmen instantly rose and went swiftly to her. Forgetful of caste, decorum, convention, everything but the boundless love which she felt for all mankind, she put her arms about the worldly woman's neck and kissed her.

For a moment the Beaubien sat in speechless surprise. It was the only manifestation of selfless love that had ever come into her sordid experience. Was it possible that this was spontaneous? that it was an act of real sympathy, and not a clever ruse to win her from behind the mask of affection? Her own kisses, she knew, were bestowed only for favors. Alas! they drew not many now, although time was when a single one might win a brooch or a string of pearls.

The girl herself quickly met the woman's groping thought. "I'm in the world to show what love will do," she murmured; "and I love you." Had she not thus solved every problem from earliest childhood?

The Beaubien melted. Not even a heart of stone could withstand the solvent power of such love. Her head dropped upon her breast, and she wept.

"Don't cry," said Carmen, tenderly caressing the bepowdered cheek. "Why, we are all God's children; we all have one another; you have me, and I have you; and God means us all to be happy."

The Beaubien looked up, wondering. Her variegated life included no such tender experience as this. She had long since ceased to shed aught but tears of anger. But now--

She clutched the girl to her and kissed her eagerly; then gently motioned her back to her chair. "Don't mind it," she smiled, with swimming eyes, and a shade of embarrassment. "I don't know of anything that would help me as much as a good cry. If I could have had a daughter like you, I should--but never mind now." She tried to laugh, as she wiped her eyes.

Then an idea seemed to flash through her jaded brain, and she became suddenly animated. "Why--listen," she said; "don't you want to learn the pipe-organ? Will you come here and take lessons? I will pay for them; I will engage the best teacher in New York; and you shall take two or three a week, and use the big organ out in the hall. Will you?"

Carmen's heart gave a great leap. "Oh!" she exclaimed, her eyes dancing. "But I must ask Mrs. Reed, you know."

"I'll do it myself," returned the woman with growing enthusiasm. "William," she directed, when the butler responded to her summons, "get Mrs. Hawley-Crowles on the wire at once. But who is coming, I wonder?" glancing through the window at an automobile that had drawn up at her door. "Humph!" a look of vexation mantling her face, "the Right Reverend Monsignor Lafelle. Well," turning to Carmen, "I suppose I'll have to send you home now, dear. But tell Mrs. Hawley-Crowles that I shall call for you to-morrow afternoon, and that I shall speak to her at that time about your music lessons. William, take Monsignor into the morning room, and then tell Henri to bring the car to the porte-cochère for Miss Carmen. Good-bye, dear," kissing the bright, upturned face of the waiting girl. "I wish I could--but, well, don't forget that I'm coming for you to-morrow."

That afternoon Mrs. Hawley-Crowles directed her French tailor to cable to Paris for advance styles. Twenty-four hours later she hastened with outstretched arms to greet the Beaubien, waiting in the reception room. Oh, yes, they had heard often of each other; and now were so pleased to meet! New York was such a whirlpool, and it was so difficult to form desirable friendships. Yes, the Beaubien had known the late-lamented Hawley-Crowles; but, dear! dear! that was years and years ago, before he had married, and when they were both young and foolish. And--

"My dear Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, chance enabled him and me to be mutually helpful at a time when I was in sore need of a friend; and the debt of gratitude is not yours to me, but mine to your kind husband."

Mrs. Hawley-Crowles could have hugged her on the spot. What cared she that her husband's always unsavory name had been linked with this woman's? She had married the roistering blade for his bank account only. Any other male whose wealth ran into seven figures would have done as well, or better.

And Carmen? Bless you, no! To be sure, Mrs. Hawley-Crowles gratefully accepted the use of the organ and the Beaubien mansion for the girl; but she herself insisted upon bearing the expense of the lessons. Carmen had wonderful musical talent. Together, she and the Beaubien, they would foster and develop it. Moreover, though of course this must follow later, she intended to give the girl every social advantage befitting her beauty, her talents, and her station.

And then, when the Beaubien, who knew to a second just how long to stay, had departed, taking Carmen with her, Mrs. Hawley-Crowles turned to her sister with her face flushed with anger. "Did you see that?" she exclaimed, while hot tears suffused her eyes. "The hussy went away actually laughing at me! What do you suppose she's got up her sleeve? But, let me tell you, she'll not fool me! I'll slap that arrogant Ames woman yet; and then, when I've done that, I'll give the Beaubien something to think about besides the way she did up poor old Jim!"

* * * * *

There was now but one cloud that cast its dark shadow across the full splendor of Carmen's happiness, the silence that shrouded Simití. But Harris was preparing to return to Colombia, and his trip promised a solution of the mystery of her unanswered letters. For weeks Carmen had struggled to teach him Spanish, with but small measure of success. The gift of tongues was not his. "You'll have to go back with me and act as interpreter," he said one day, when they were alone in the Hawley-Crowles parlor. Then a curious light came into his eyes, and he blurted, "Will you?"

But the girl turned the question aside with a laugh, though she knew not from what depths it had sprung. Harris shrugged his broad shoulders and sighed. He had not a hundred dollars to his name.

Yet he had prospects, not the least of which was the interest he shared with Reed in La Libertad. For, despite the disturbed state of affairs in Colombia, Simití stock had sold rapidly, under the sedulous care of Ketchim and his loyal aids, and a sufficient fund had been accumulated to warrant the inauguration of development work on the mine. A few years hence Harris should be rich from that source alone.

Reed was still in California, although the alluring literature which Ketchim was scattering broadcast bore his name as consulting engineer to the Simití Development Company. His wife had continued her temporary abode in the Hawley-Crowles mansion, while awaiting with what fortitude she could command the passing of her still vigorous father, and the results of her defiant sister's assaults upon the Ames set.

Carmen's days were crowded full. The wonderful organ in the Beaubien mansion had cast a spell of enchantment over her soul, and daily she sat before it, uncovering new marvels and losing herself deeper and deeper in its infinite mysteries. Her progress was commensurate with her consecration, and brought exclamations of astonishment to the lips of her now devoted Beaubien. Hour after hour the latter would sit in the twilight of the great hall, with her eyes fastened upon the absorbed girl, and her leaden soul slowly, painfully struggling to lift itself above the murk and dross in which it had lain buried for long, meaningless years. They now talked but little, this strange woman and the equally strange girl. Their communion was no longer of the lips. It was the silent yearning of a dry, desolate heart, striving to open itself to the love which the girl was sending far and wide in the quenchless hope that it might meet just such a need. For Carmen dwelt in the spirit, and she instinctively accepted her splendid material environment as the gift, not of man, but of the great divine Mind, which had led her into this new world that she might be a channel for the expression of its love to the erring children of mortals.

She came and went quietly, and yet with as much confidence as if the house belonged to her. At first the Beaubien smiled indulgently. And then her smile became a laugh of eager joy as she daily greeted her radiant visitor, whose entrance into the great, dark house was always followed by a flood of sunshine, and whose departure marked the setting in of night to the heart-hungry woman. In the first days of their association the Beaubien could turn easily from the beautiful girl to the group of cold, scheming men of the world who filled her evenings and sat about her board. But as days melted into weeks, she became dimly conscious of an effort attaching to the transition; and the hour at length arrived when she fully realized that she was facing the most momentous decision that had ever been evolved by her worldly mode of living. But that was a matter of slow development through many months.

Meantime, Mrs. Hawley-Crowles trod the clouds. A week after Carmen began the study of the organ she boldly ventured to accompany her one day to the Beaubien citadel. She was graciously received, and departed with the Beaubien's promise to return the call. Thereupon she set about revising her own social list, and dropped several names which she now felt could serve her no longer. Her week-end at Newport, just prior to her visit to the Elwin school, had marked the close of the gay season in the city, and New York had entered fully upon its summer siesta. Even the theaters and concert halls were closed, and the metropolis was nodding its weary head dully and sinking into somnolence. It was exactly what Mrs. Hawley-Crowles desired. The summer interim would give her time to further her plans and prepare the girl for her social début in the early winter. "And Milady Ames will be mentioned in the papers next day as assisting at the function--the cat!" she muttered savagely, as she laid aside her revised list of social desirables.

But in preparing Carmen that summer for her subsequent entry into polite society Mrs. Hawley-Crowles soon realized that she had assumed a task of generous proportions. In the first place, despite all efforts, the girl could not be brought to a proper sense of money values. Her eyes were ever gaping in astonishment at what Mrs. Hawley-Crowles and her sister regarded as the most moderate of expenditures, and it was only when the Beaubien herself mildly hinted to them that ingenuousness was one of the girl's greatest social assets, that they learned to smile indulgently at her wonder, even while inwardly pitying her dense ignorance and lack of sophistication.

A second source of trial to her guardians was her delicate sense of honor; and it was this that one day nearly sufficed to wreck their standing with the fashionable Mrs. Gannette of Riverside Drive, a pompous, bepowdered, curled and scented dame, anaemic of mind, but tremendously aristocratic, and of scarcely inferior social dignity to that of the envied Mrs. Ames. For, when Mrs. Gannette moved into the neighborhood where dwelt the ambitious Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, the latter was taken by a mutual acquaintance to call upon her, and was immediately received into the worldly old lady's good graces. And it so happened that, after the gay season had closed that summer, Mrs. Gannette invited Mrs. Hawley-Crowles and her sister to an informal afternoon of bridge, and especially requested that they bring their young ward, whose beauty and wonderful story were, through the discreet maneuvers of her guardians, beginning to be talked about. For some weeks previously Mrs. Hawley-Crowles had been inducting Carmen into the mysteries of the game; but with indifferent success, for the girl's thoughts invariably were elsewhere engaged. On this particular afternoon Carmen was lost in contemplation of the gorgeous dress, the lavish display of jewelry, and the general inanity of conversation; and her score was pitiably low. The following morning, to her great astonishment, she received a bill from the practical Mrs. Gannette for ten dollars to cover her losses at the game. For a long time the bewildered girl mused over it. Then she called the chauffeur and despatched him to the Gannette mansion with the money necessary to meet the gambling debt, and three dollars additional to pay for the refreshments she had eaten, accompanying it with a polite little note of explanation.

The result was an explosion that nearly lifted the asphalt from the Drive; and Carmen, covered with tears and confusion, was given to understand by the irate Mrs. Hawley-Crowles that her conduct was as reprehensible as if she had attacked the eminent Mrs. Gannette with an axe. Whereupon the sorrowing Carmen packed her effects and prepared to depart from the presence of Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, to the terrified consternation of the latter, who alternately prostrated herself before the girl and the offended Mrs. Gannette, and at length, after many days of perspiring effort and voluminous explanation, succeeded in restoring peace.

When the Beaubien, who had become the girl's confidante, learned the story, she laughed till her sides ached. And then her lips set, and her face grew terribly hard, and she muttered, "Fools!" But she smiled again as she gathered the penitent girl in her arms, and kissed her.

"You will learn many things, dearie, before you are through with New York. And," she added, her brow again clouding, "you will be through with it--some day!"

That evening she repeated the story at her table, and Gannette, who happened to be present, swore between roars of laughter that he would use it as a club over his wife, should she ever again trap him in any of his numerous indiscretions.

Again, the girl's odd views of life and its meaning which, despite her efforts, she could not refrain from voicing now and then, caused the worldly Mrs. Hawley-Crowles much consternation. Carmen tried desperately to be discreet. Even Harris advised her to listen much, but say little; and she strove hard to obey. But she would forget and hurl the newspapers from her with exclamations of horror over their red-inked depictions of mortal frailty--she would flatly refuse to discuss crime or disease--and she would comment disparagingly at too frequent intervals on the littleness of human aims and the emptiness of the peacock-life which she saw manifested about her. "I don't understand--I can't," she would say, when she was alone with the Beaubien. "Why, with the wonderful opportunities which you rich people have, how can you--oh, how can you toss them aside for the frivolities and littleness that you all seem to be striving for! It seems to me you must be mad--loco! And I know you are, for you are simply mesmerized!"

Then the Beaubien would smile knowingly and take her in her arms. "We shall see," she would often say, "we shall see." But she would offer no further comment.

Thus the summer months sped swiftly past, with Carmen ever looking and listening, receiving, sifting, in, but not of, the new world into which she had been cast. In a sense her existence was as narrowly routined as ever it had been in Simití, for her days were spent at the great organ, with frequent rides in the automobile through the parks and boulevards for variation; and her evenings were jealously guarded by Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, whose policy was to keep the girl in seclusion until the advent of her formal introduction to the world of fashionable society, when her associates would be selected only from the narrow circle of moneyed or titled people with whom alone she might mingle. To permit her to form promiscuous acquaintances now might prove fatal to the scheming woman's cherished plans, and was a risk that could not be entertained. And Carmen, suppressing her wonder, and striving incessantly to curb her ready tongue, accepted her environment as the unreal expression of the human mind, and submitted--and waited.

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Chapter 10

The chill blasts had begun to swoop down from the frozen North, and summer had gathered her dainty robes about her and fled shivering before them. Mrs. Hawley-Crowles stood at a window and gazed with unseeing eyes at the withered leaves tossing in the wind.

Carmen's sixteenth birthday was past by some months; the gay season was at hand; and the day was speeding toward her which she had set for the girl's formal début. Already, through informal calls and gatherings, she had made her charming and submissive ward known to most of her own city acquaintances and the members of her particular set. The fresh, beautiful girl's winning personality; her frank, ingenuous manner; her evident sincerity and her naïve remarks, which now only gave hints of her radical views, had opened every heart wide to her, and before the advent of the social season her wonderful story was on everybody's tongue. There remained now only the part which the woman had planned for the Beaubien, but which, thus far, she had found neither the courage nor the opportunity to suggest to that influential woman. Gazing out into the deserted street, she stamped her ample foot in sheer vexation. The Beaubien had absorbed Carmen; had been politely affable to her and her sister; had called twice during the summer; and had said nothing. But what was there for her to say? The hint must come from the other side; and Mrs. Hawley-Crowles could have wept with chagrin as she reflected gloomily on her own timorous spirit.

But as she stood in dejection before the window a vague idea flitted into her brain, and she clutched at it desperately. Carmen had spoken of the frequent calls of a certain Monsignor Lafelle at the Beaubien mansion, although the girl had never met him. Now why did he go there? "Humph!" muttered Mrs. Hawley-Crowles. "Old Gaspard de Beaubien was a French Catholic."

But what had that to do with Carmen? Nothing--except--why, to be sure, the girl came from a Catholic country, and therefore was a Catholic! Mrs. Hawley-Crowles chuckled. That was worth developing a little further. "Let us see," she reflected, "Kathleen Ames is coming out this winter, too. Just about Carmen's age. Candidate for her mother's social position, of course. Now the Ames family are all Presbyterians. The Reverend Darius Borwell, D.D., L.L.D., and any other D. that will keep him glued to his ten-thousand-dollar salary, hooked them early in the game. Now suppose--suppose Lafelle should tell the Beaubien that--that there's--no, that won't do! But suppose I tell him that here's a chance for him to back a Catholic against a Protestant for the highest social honors in New York--Carmen versus Kathleen--what would he say? Humph! I'm just as good a Catholic as Protestant. Jim was Irish--clear through. And Catholic, Methodist, or Hard-shell Baptist, as suited his needs. He played 'em all. Suppose I should tip it off to Lafelle that I'm smitten with the pious intention of donating an altar to Holy Saints Cathedral in memory of my late, unlamented consort--what then? It's worth considering, anyway. Yes, it's not a bad idea at all."

And thus it was that a few days later Mrs. Hawley-Crowles timed it so carefully that she chanced to call on the Beaubien with Carmen shortly after Monsignor Lafelle's car had pulled up at the same door. It was the merest accident, too, that Carmen led her puffing guardian directly into the morning room, where sat the Beaubien and Monsignor in earnest conversation. Mrs. Hawley-Crowles would have retired at once, stammering apologies, and reprimanding Carmen for her assumption of liberties in another's house; but the Beaubien was grace and cordiality itself, and she insisted on retaining her three callers and making them mutually acquainted.

With the ice thus broken, Mrs. Hawley-Crowles found it easy to take the contemplated plunge. Therefore she smiled triumphantly when, a week later, Monsignor Lafelle alighted at her own door, in response to a summons on matters pertaining to the Church.

"But, Madam," replied the holy man, after carefully listening to her announcement, "I can only refer the matter to the Bishop. I am not connected with this diocese. I am traveling almost constantly. But I shall be most pleased to lay it before him, with my endorsement."

"As you say, Monsignor," sweetly responded the gracious Mrs. Hawley-Crowles. "I sought your advice because I had met you through my dear friend, Madam Beaubien."

"It has been a great pleasure to know you and to be of service to you, Madam," said Monsignor, rising to depart. "But," he added with a tender smile, "a pleasure that would be enhanced were you to become one of us."

Mrs. Hawley-Crowles knew that at last the time had come. "A moment, please, Monsignor," she said, her heart beating quickly. "There is another matter. Please be seated. It concerns my ward, the young girl whom you met at Madam Beaubien's."

"Ah, indeed!" said the man, resuming his seat. "A beautiful girl."

"Yes!" returned Mrs. Hawley-Crowles enthusiastically. "And just budding into still more beautiful womanhood." She stopped and reflected a moment. Then she threw herself precipitately into her topic, as if she feared further delay would result in the evaporation of her boldness. "Monsignor, it is, as you say, unfortunate that I profess no religious convictions; and yet, as I have told you, I find that as the years pass I lean ever more strongly toward your Church. Now you will pardon me when I say that I am sure it is the avowed intention to make America dominantly Catholic that brings you to this country to work toward that end--is it not so?"

The man's handsome face lighted up pleasantly, but he did not reply. The woman went on without waiting.

"Now, Monsignor, I am going to be terribly frank; and if you disapprove of what I suggest, we will both forget that the matter was ever under discussion. To begin with, I heartily endorse your missionary efforts in this godless country of ours. Nothing but the strong arm of the Catholic Church, it seems to me, can check our headlong plunge into ruin. But, Monsignor, you do not always work where your labors are most needed. You may control political--"

"My dear lady," interrupted the man, holding up a hand and shaking his head in gentle demurral, "the Catholic Church is not in politics."

"But it is in society--or should be!" said the woman earnestly. "And if the Catholic Church is to be supreme in America it must work from the top down, as well as from the lower levels upward. At present our wealthiest, most influential social set is absolutely domineered by a Protestant--and under the influence of a Presbyterian minister at that! Why do you permit it?"

Monsignor Lafelle's eyes twinkled, as he listened politely. But he only stroked the white hair that crowned his shapely head, and waited.

"Monsignor," continued the now thoroughly heated Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, "why do not the women of your Church constitute our society leaders? Why do you not recognize the desirability of forcing your people into every avenue of human activity? And would you resent a suggestion from me as to how in one instance this might be accomplished?"

"Certainly not, Madam," replied Monsignor, with an expression of wonder on his face. "Pray proceed."

"You are laughing at me, I do believe!" she exclaimed, catching the glint in his gray eyes.

"Pardon me, dear lady, I really am deeply interested. Please go on."

"Well, at any rate I have your promise to forget this conversation if you do not approve of it," she said quizzically.

He nodded his head to inspire her confidence; and she continued:

"Very well, now to the point. My ward, the little Inca princess, is coming out shortly. I want her to have the entrée into the very best society, into the most fashionable and exclusive set, as befitting her rank." She stopped and awaited the effect of her words.

Monsignor studied her for a moment, and then broke into a genial laugh. "There is nothing reprehensible in your wish, Madam," he said. "Our social system, however imperfect, nevertheless exists, and--dominant Catholic influence might improve it. I am quite sure it would."

"Good!" exclaimed Mrs. Hawley-Crowles. "Then will you help me?"

"Why, I really see nothing that I can do," he replied slowly.

Mrs. Hawley-Crowles was becoming exasperated with his apparent dullness. "You can do much," she retorted in a tone tinctured with impatience. "Since I have made you my Father Confessor to-day, I am going to tell you that I intend to start a social war that will rip this city wide open. It is going to be war in which Catholic is pitted against Protestant. Now, which side is your Church on?"

For a moment her blunt question startled him, and he stared at her uncomprehendingly; but he quickly recovered his poise and replied calmly, "Neither, Madam; it remains quite neutral."

"What!" she exclaimed. "Aren't you interested?"

"Pardon me if I say it; not at all."

"Oh!" she murmured, her eagerness subsiding. "Then I've made an awful mistake!"

"No," he amended gently, "you have made a good friend. And, as such, I again urge you first to respect the leaning which you mentioned a moment ago and become actively affiliated with our Church here in New York. Both you and the young lady. Will you not consider it?"

"Certainly I will consider it," she responded, brightening with hope. "And I will go so far as to say that I have long had it in mind."

"Then, Madam, when that is accomplished, we may discuss the less important matter of your ward's entrance into society--is it not so?"

Mrs. Hawley-Crowles rose, completely discomfited. "But the girl, Monsignor, is already a Catholic--comes from a Catholic country. It is she whom I am pitting against the Protestant."

"And you will efface yourself?" he queried with a peculiar smile.

"You are cruel," she retorted, affecting an air of injured innocence as she stood before him with downcast eyes. "But--if you--"

"Madam," said Monsignor, "plainly, what is it that you wish me to do?"

The sudden propounding of the question drew an equally sudden but less thoughtful response.

"Tell the Beau--Madam Beaubien that you wish my ward to be received into the best society, and for the reasons I have given you. That's all."

"And is my influence with Madam Beaubien, and hers with the members of fashionable society, sufficient to effect that?" he asked, an odd look coming into his eyes.

"She has but to say the word to J. Wilton Ames, and his wife will receive us both," said the woman, carried away by her eagerness. "And that means strong Catholic influence in New York's most aristocratic set!"

"Ah!"

"Monsignor," continued the woman eagerly, "will your Church receive an altar from me in memory of my late husband?"

He reflected a moment. Then, slowly, and in a low, earnest tone, "It would receive such a gift from one of the faith. When may we expect you to become a communicant?"

The woman paled, and her heart suddenly chilled. She had wondered how far she might go with this clever churchman, and now she knew that she had gone too far. But to retract--to have him relate this conversation and her retraction to the Beaubien--were fatal! She had set her trap--and walked into it. She groped blindly for an answer. Then, raising her eyes and meeting his searching glance, she murmured feebly, "Whenever you say, Monsignor."

When the man had departed, which he did immediately, the plotting woman threw herself upon the davenport and wept with rage. "Belle," she wailed, as her wondering sister entered the room, "I'm going to join the Catholic Church! But I'd go through Sheol to beat that Ames outfit!"

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Chapter 11

MONSIGNOR LAFELLE made another afternoon call on the Beaubien a few days later. That lady, fresh from her bath, scented, powdered, and charming in a loose, flowing Mandarin robe, received him graciously.

"But I can give you only a moment, Monsignor," she said, waving him to a chair, while she stooped and tenderly took up the two spaniels. "I have a dinner to-night, and so shall not listen unless you have something fresh and really worth while to offer."

"My dear Madam," said he, bowing low before he sank into the great leather armchair, "you are charming, and the Church is justly proud of you."

"Tut, tut, my friend," she returned, knitting her brows. "That may be fresh, I admit, but not worth listening to. And if you persist in that vein I shall be obliged to have William set you into the street."

"I can not apologize for voicing the truth, dear Madam," he replied, as his eyes roved admiringly over her comely figure. "The Church has never ceased to claim you, however far you may have wandered from her. But I will be brief. I am leaving for Canada shortly on a mission of some importance. May I not take with me the consoling assurance that you have at last heard and yielded to the call of the tender Mother, who has never ceased to yearn for her beautiful, wayward daughter?"

The Beaubien smiled indulgently. "There," she said gently, "I thought that was it. No, Monsignor, no," shaking her head. "When only a wild, thoughtless girl I became a Catholic in order that I might marry Gaspard de Beaubien. The priest urged; and I--poof! what cared I? But the past eighteen years have confirmed me in some views; and one is that I shall gain nothing, either here or hereafter, by renewing my allegiance to the Church of Rome."

Monsignor sighed, and stroked his abundant white hair. Yet his sigh bore a hope. "I learned this morning," he said musingly, "that my recent labors with the Dowager Duchess of Altern in England have not been vain. She has become a communicant of Holy Church."

"What!" exclaimed the Beaubien. "The Duchess of Altern--sister of Mrs. J. Wilton Ames? Why, she was a high Anglican--"

"Only a degree below the true Church, Madam. Her action is but anticipatory of a sweeping return of the entire Anglican Church to the true fold. And I learn further," he went on, "that the Duchess will spend the winter in New York with her sister. Which means, of course, an unusually gay season here, does it not?"

The Beaubien quickly recovered from her astonishment. "Well, Monsignor," she laughed, "for once you really are interesting. What else have you to divulge? That Mrs. Ames herself will be the next convert? Or perhaps J. Wilton?"

"No--at least, not yet. But one of your most intimate friends will become a communicant of Holy Saints next Sunday."

"One of my most intimate friends!" The Beaubien set the spaniels down on the floor. "Now, my dear Monsignor, you are positively refreshing. Who is he?"

The man laughed softly. "Am I not right when I insist that you have wandered far, dear Madam? It is not 'he,' but 'she,' your dear friend, Mrs. Hawley-Crowles."

The Beaubien's mouth opened wide and she sat suddenly upright and gazed blankly at her raconteur. The man went on, apparently oblivious of the effect his information had produced. "Her beautiful ward, who is to make her bow to society this winter, is one of us by birth."

"Then you have been at work on Mrs. Hawley-Crowles and her ward, have you?" said the Beaubien severely, and there was a threatening note in her voice.

"Why," returned Monsignor easily, "the lady sent for me to express her desire to become affiliated with the Church. We do not seek her. And I have had no conversation with the girl, I assure you."

The Beaubien reflected. Then:

"Will you tell me why, Monsignor, Mrs. Hawley-Crowles takes this unusual step?"

"Unusual! Is it unusual, Madam, for a woman who has seen much of the world to turn from it to the solace and promise of the Church?"

The Beaubien laughed sharply. "For women like Mrs. Hawley-Crowles it is, decidedly. What was her price, Monsignor?"

"Madam! You astonish me!"

"Monsignor, I do not. I know Mrs. Hawley-Crowles. And by this time you do, too. She is the last woman in the world to turn from it."

"But the question you have just propounded reflects seriously upon both the Church and me--"

"Bah!" interjected the Beaubien, her eyes flashing. "Wait," she commanded imperiously, as he rose. "I have a few things to say to you, since this is to be your last call."

"Madam, not the last, I hope. For I shall not cease to plead the cause of the Church to you--"

"Surely, Monsignor, that is your business. You are welcome in my house at any time, and particularly when you have such delightful scraps of gossip as these which you have brought to-day. But, a word before you go, lest you become indiscreet on your return. Play Mrs. Hawley-Crowles to any extent you wish, but let her ward alone--absolutely! She is not for you."

The cold, even tone in which the woman said this left no doubt in the man's mind of her meaning. She was not trifling with him now, he knew. In her low-voiced words he found no trace of banter, of sophistry, nor of aught that he might in any wise misinterpret.

"Now, Monsignor, I have some influence in New York, as you may possibly know. Will you admit that I can do much for or against you? Drop your mask, therefore, and tell me frankly just what has induced Mrs. Hawley-Crowles to unite with your Church."

The man knew he was pitting his own against a master mind. He hesitated and weighed well his words before replying. "Madam," said he at length, with a note of reproach, "you misjudge the lady, the Church, and me, its humble servant. The latter require no defense. As for Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, I speak truly when I say that doubtless she has been greatly influenced by love for her late husband."

"What!" The Beaubien half rose from her chair. "Jim Crowles--that raw, Irish boob, who was holding down a job on the police force until Ames found he could make a convenient tool of him! The man who was Gannette's cat's-paw in the Fall River franchise steal! Now, Monsignor, would you have me believe you devoid of all sense?"

"But," ejaculated the man, now becoming exasperated, and for the moment so losing his self-control as to make wretched use of his facts, "she is erecting an altar in Holy Saints as a memorial to him!"

"Heavens above!" The Beaubien sank back limp.

Monsignor Lafelle again made as if to rise. He felt that he was guilty of a miserable faux pas. "Madam, I regret that I must be leaving. But the hour--"

"Stay, Monsignor!" The Beaubien roused up and laid a detaining hand upon his arm. "Our versatile friend, what other projects has she in hand? What is she planning for her young ward?"

"Why, really, I can not say--beyond the fact that the girl is to be introduced to society this winter."

"Humph! Going to make a try for the Ames set?"

"That, I believe, Madam, would be useless without your aid."

"Did Mrs. Hawley-Crowles say so, Monsignor?" demanded the woman, leaning forward eagerly.

"Why, I believe I am not abusing her confidence when I say that she intimated as much," he said, watching her closely and sparring now with better judgment. "She mentioned Mrs. Ames as New York's fashionable society leader--"

"There is no such position as leader in New York society, Monsignor," interrupted the Beaubien coldly. "There are sets and cliques, and Mrs. Ames happens to be prominent in the one which at present foolishly imagines it constitutes the upper stratum. Rot! And Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, with nothing but a tarnished name and a large bank account to recommend her, now wishes to break into that clique and attain social leadership, does she? How decidedly interesting!"

Then the woman's eyes narrowed and grew hard. Leaning closer to the churchman, she rested the tip of her finger on his knee. "So, Monsignor," she said, with cold precision, "this is Mrs. Hawley-Crowles's method of renouncing the world, is it? Sublime! And she would use both you and me, eh? And you are her ambassador at the court of the Beaubien? Very well, then, she shall use us. But you and I will first make this compact, my dear Monsignor: Mrs. Hawley-Crowles shall be taken into the so-called 'Ames set,' and you shall cease importuning me to return to your Church, and what is more, shall promise to have no conversation on church matters with her ward, the young girl. If you do not agree to this, Monsignor, I shall set in motion forces that will make your return to New York quite undesirable." When she concluded, she looked long and steadily into his eyes.

Monsignor got slowly to his feet. "Madam!" he exclaimed in a hoarse whisper, "my astonishment--"

"There," she said calmly, as she rose and took his hand, "please omit the dramatics, Monsignor. And now you must go, for to-night I entertain, and I have already given you more time than I intended. But, Monsignor, do you in future work with or against me? Are we to be friends or enemies?"

"Why, Madam," he replied quickly, "we could never be the latter!"

"And you always respect the wishes of a friend, especially if she is a lady, do you not?"

"Always, Madam," he returned after a moment's hesitation, as he bowed low over her hand.

"Then, good-bye. And, Monsignor," she added, when he reached the door, "I shall be pleased to attend the dedication of the Hawley-Crowles altar."

When Monsignor's car glided away from her door the Beaubien's face grew dark, and her eyes drew to narrow slits. "So," she reflected, as she entered the elevator to mount to her dressing room, "that is her game, is it? The poor, fat simpleton has no interest in either the girl or myself, other than to use us as stepping-stones. She forgets that a stone sometimes turns under the foot. Fool!"

She entered her room and rang for her maid. Turning to the pier glass, she threw on the electric light and scrutinized her features narrowly. "It's going," she murmured, "fast! God, how I hate those gray hairs! Oh, what a farce life is--what a howling, mocking farce! I hate it! I hate everything--everybody! No--that little girl--if it is possible for me to love, I love her."

She sank into an easy chair. "I wonder what it is she does to me. I'm hypnotized, I guess. Anyhow, I'm different when I'm with her. And to think that Hawley-Crowles would sacrifice the child--humph! But, if the girl is made of the right stuff--and I know she is--she will stand up under it and be stronger for the experience. She has got something that will make her stand! I once asked her what she had that I didn't, and now I know--it is her religion, the religion that Borwell and Lafelle and the whole kit of preachers and priests would corrupt if they had half a chance! Very well, we'll see what it does under the test. If it saves her, then I want it myself. But, as for that little pin-headed Hawley-Crowles, she's already signed her own death-warrant. She shall get into the Ames set, yes. And I will use her, oh, beautifully! to pay off certain old scores against Madam Ames--and then I'll crush her like a dried leaf, the fat fool!"

The Beaubien's position was, to say the least, peculiar, and one which required infinite tact on her part to protect. It was for that reason that the decorum which prevailed at her dinners was so rigidly observed, and that, whatever the moral status of the man who sat at her board, his conduct was required to be above reproach, on penalty of immediate ejection from the circle of financial pirates, captains of commercial jugglery, and political intriguers who made these feasts opportunities for outlining their predatory campaigns against that most anomalous of creatures, the common citizen.

It was about this table, at whose head always sat the richly gowned Beaubien, that the inner circle of financial kings had gathered almost nightly for years to rig the market, determine the price of wheat or cotton, and develop mendacious schemes of stock-jobbery whose golden harvests they could calculate almost to a dollar before launching. As the wealth of this clique of financial manipulators swelled beyond all bounds, so increased their power, until at last it could be justly said that, when Ames began to dominate the Stock Exchange, the Beaubien practically controlled Wall Street--and, therefore, in a sense, Washington itself. But always with a tenure of control dubiously dependent upon the caprices of the men who continued to pay homage to her personal charm and keen, powerful intellect.

At the time of which we speak her power was at its zenith, and she could with equal impunity decapitate the wealthiest, most aristocratic society dame, or force the door of the most exclusive set for any protégée who might have been kept long years knocking in vain, or whose family name, perchance, headed a list of indictments for gross peculations. At these unicameral meetings, held in the great, dark, mahogany-wainscoted dining room of the Beaubien mansion, where a single lamp of priceless workmanship threw a flood of light upon the sumptuous table beneath and left the rest of the closely guarded room shrouded in Stygian darkness, plans were laid and decrees adopted which seated judges, silenced clergymen, elected senators, and influenced presidents. There a muck-raking, hostile press was muffled. There business opposition was crushed and competition throttled. There tax rates were determined and tariff schedules formulated. There public opinion was disrupted, character assassinated, and the death-warrant of every threatening reformer drawn and signed. In a word, there Mammon, in the rôle of business, organized and unorganized, legitimate and piratical, sat enthroned, with wires leading into every mart of the world, and into every avenue of human endeavor, be it social, political, commercial, or religious. These wires were gathered together into the hands of one man, the directing genius of the group, J. Wilton Ames. Over him lay the shadow of the Beaubien.

An hour after the departure of Monsignor Lafelle the Beaubien, like a radiant sun, descended to the library to greet her assembled guests. Some moments later the heavy doors of the great dining room swung noiselessly open, and the lady proceeded unescorted to her position at the head of the table. At her signal the half dozen men sat down, and the butler immediately entered, followed by two serving men with the cocktails and the first course. The chair at the far end of the table, opposite the Beaubien, remained unoccupied.

"Ames is late to-night," observed the girthy Gannette, glancing toward the vacant seat, and clumsily attempting to tuck his napkin into his collar.

The Beaubien looked sharply at him. "Were you at the club this afternoon, Mr. Gannette?" she inquired coldly.

Gannette straightened up and became rigid. Pulling the napkin down hastily, he replied in a thick voice, "Just a little game of bridge--some old friends--back from Europe--"

The Beaubien turned to the butler. "William, Mr. Gannette is not drinking wine this evening." The butler bowed and removed the glasses from that gentleman's place.

Gannette turned to expostulate. "Now, Lucile--" he began peevishly. The Beaubien held up a hand. Gannette glowered and sank down in his chair like a swollen toad.

"May be Ames is trying to break into the C. and R. directors' meeting," suggested Weston, himself a director in a dozen companies, and a bank president besides. A general laugh followed the remark.

"They tell me," said Fitch, "that for once Ames has been outwitted, and that by a little bucket-shop broker named Ketchim."

"How's that?" queried Kane, Board of Trade plunger, and the most mettlesome speculator of the group.

"Why," explained Weston, "some months ago Ames tried to reach Ed. Stolz through Ketchim, the old man's nephew, and get control of C. and R. But friend nephew dropped the portcullis just as Ames was dashing across the drawbridge, and J. Wilton found himself outside, looking through the bars. First time I've ever known that to happen. Now the boys have got hold of it on 'Change, and Ames has been getting it from every quarter."

"Long time leaking out, seems to me," remarked Kane. "But what's Ames going to do about it?"

"Nothing, I guess," returned Weston. "He seems to have dropped the matter."

"I think you will find yourself mistaken," put in the Beaubien evenly.

"Why?" queried Fitch, as all eyes turned upon the woman. "Have you inside information?"

"None whatever," she replied. "But Mr. Ames always gets what he goes after, and he will secure control of C. and R. eventually."

"I don't believe it!" vigorously asserted Murdock, who had been an interested listener. "He will never oust Stolz."

"I have one thousand dollars that says he will," said the Beaubien, calmly regarding the speaker. "William, my checkbook, please."

Murdock seemed taken back for the moment; but lost no time recovering his poise. Drawing out his own book he wrote a check in the Beaubien's name for the amount and sent it down the table to her.

"Mr. Fitch will hold the stakes," said the woman, handing him the two slips of paper. "And we will set a time limit of eighteen months."

"By the way," remarked Peele, the only one of the group who had taken no part in the preceding conversation, "I see by the evening paper that there's been another accident in the Avon mills. Fellow named Marcus caught in a machine and crushed all out of shape. That's the third one down there this month. They'll force Ames to equip his mills with safety devices if this keeps up."

"Not while the yellow metal has any influence upon the Legislature," returned the Beaubien with a knowing smile. "But," she added more seriously, "that is not where the danger lies. The real source of apprehension is in the possibility of a strike. And if war breaks out among those Hungarians down there it will cost him more than to equip all his mills now with safety devices."

Gannette, who had been sulking in his chair, roused up. "Speaking of war," he growled, "has Ames, or any of you fellows, got a finger in the muddle in South America? I've got interests down there--concessions and the like--and by--!" He wandered off into incoherent mutterings.

The Beaubien gave a sharp command to the butler. "William, Mr. Gannette is leaving now. You will escort him to the door."

"Now look here, Lucile!" cried Gannette, his apoplectic face becoming more deeply purple, and his blear eyes leering angrily upon the calm woman. "I ain't a-goin' to stand this! What have I done? I'm as sober as any one here, an'--" William took the heavy man gently by the arm and persuaded him to his feet. The other guests suppressed their smiles and remained discreetly quiet.

"But--my car--!" sputtered Gannette.

"Have Henri take him to his club, William," said the Beaubien, rising. "Good night, Mr. Gannette. We will expect you Wednesday evening, and we trust that we will not have to accept your excuses again."

Gannette was led soddenly out. The Beaubien quietly resumed her seat. It was the second time the man had been dismissed from her table, and the guests marveled that it did not mean the final loss of her favor. But she remained inscrutable; and the conversation quickly drifted into new channels. A few moments later William returned and made a quiet announcement:

"Mr. Ames."

A huge presence emerged from the darkness into the light. The Beaubien immediately rose and advanced to greet the newcomer. "What is it?" she whispered, taking his hand.

The man smiled down into her upturned, anxious face. His only reply was a reassuring pressure of her hand. But she comprehended, and her face brightened.

"Gentlemen," remarked Ames, taking the vacant chair, "the President's message is out. I have been going over it with Hood--which accounts for my tardiness," he added, nodding pleasantly to the Beaubien. "Quoting from our chief executive's long list of innocent platitudes, I may say that 'private monopoly is criminally unjust, wholly indefensible, and not to be tolerated in a Republic founded upon the premise of equal rights to all mankind.'"

"Certainly not!" concurred Weston, holding up his glass and gazing admiringly at the rich color of the wine.

The others laughed. "Quite my sentiments, too," murmured Fitch, rolling his eyes upward and attempting with poor success to assume a beatific expression.

"Furthermore," continued Ames, with mock gravity, "the interlocking of corporation directorates must be prohibited by law; power must be conferred upon the Interstate Commerce Commission to superintend the financial management of railroads; holding-companies must cease to exist; and corrective policies must be shaped, whereby so-called 'trusts' will be regulated and rendered innocuous. Are we agreed?"

"We are," said they all, in one voice.

"Carried," concluded Ames in a solemn tone. Then a burst of laughter rose from the table; and even the inscrutable William smiled behind his hand.

"But, seriously," said Weston, when the laughter had ceased, "I believe we've got a President now who's going to do something, don't you?"

"I do not," replied Ames emphatically. "As long as the human mind remains as it is there is nothing to fear, though Congress legislate itself blue in the face. Reform is not to be made like a garment and forced upon the people from the outside. It is a growth from within. Restrictive measures have not as yet, in all the history of civilization, reformed a single criminal."

"What does Hood say?" asked Murdock.

"That we are puncture-proof," replied Ames with a light laugh.

"But what about your indictment in that cotton deal? Is Hood going to find you law-proof there?"

"The case is settled," said Ames easily. "I went into court this morning and plead guilty to the indictment for conspiring to corner the cotton market two years ago. I admitted that I violated the Sherman law. The judge promptly fined me three thousand dollars, for which I immediately wrote a check, leaving me still the winner by some two million seven hundred thousand dollars on the deal, to say nothing of compound interest on the three thousand for the past two years. You see the beneficent effect of legislation, do you not?"

"By George, Ames, you certainly were stingy not to let us in on that!" exclaimed Kane.

"Cotton belongs to me, gentlemen," replied Ames simply. "You will have to keep out."

"Well," remarked Fitch, glancing about the table, "suppose we get down to the business of the evening--if agreeable to our hostess," bowing in the direction of the Beaubien.

The latter nodded her approval of the suggestion. "Has any one anything new to offer?" she said.

Some moments of silence followed. Then Ames spoke. "There is a little matter," he began, "that I have been revolving for some days. Perhaps it may interest you. It concerns the Albany post road. It occurred to me some time ago that a franchise for a trolley line on that road could be secured and ultimately sold for a round figure to the wealthy residents whose estates lie along it, and who would give a million dollars rather than have a line built there. After some preliminary examination I got Hood to draft a bill providing for the building of the road, and submitted it to Jacobson, Commissioner of Highways. He reported that it would be the means of destroying the post road. I convinced him, on the other hand, that it would be the means of lining his purse with fifty thousand dollars. So he very naturally gave it his endorsement. I then got in consultation with Senator Gossitch, and had him arrange a meeting with the Governor, in Albany. I think," he concluded, "that about five hundred thousand dollars will grease the wheels all 'round. I've got the Governor on the hip in that Southern Mexican deal, and he is at present eating out of my hand. I'll lay this project on the table now, and you can take it up if you so desire."

"The scheme seems all right," commented Weston, after a short meditation. "But the profits are not especially large. What else have you?"

"Well, a net profit of half a million to split up among us would at least provide for a yachting party next summer," remarked Ames sententiously. "And no work connected with it--in fact, the work has been done. I shall want an additional five per cent for handling it."

An animated discussion followed; and then Fitch offered a motion that the group definitely take up the project. The Beaubien put the vote, and it was carried without dissent.

"What about that potato scheme you were figuring on, Ames?" asked Fitch at this juncture. "Anything ever come of it?"

Ames's eyes twinkled. "I didn't get much encouragement from my friends," he replied. "A perfectly feasible scheme, too."

"I don't believe it," put in Weston emphatically. "It never could be put through."

"I have one million dollars that says it could," returned Ames calmly. "Will you cover it?"

Weston threw up his hands in token of surrender. "Not I!" he exclaimed, scurrying for cover.

Ames laughed. "Well," he said, "suppose we look into the scheme and see if we don't want to handle it. It simply calls for a little thought and work. The profits would be tremendous. Shall I explain?" He stopped and glanced at the Beaubien for approval. She nodded, and he went on:

"I have lately been investigating the subject of various food supplies other than wheat and corn as possible bases for speculation, and my attention has been drawn strongly to a very humble one, potatoes."

A general laugh followed this announcement. But Ames continued unperturbed:

"I find that in some sections of the West potatoes are so plentiful at times that they bring but twenty cents a bushel. My investigations have covered a period of several months, and now I have in my possession a large map of the United States with the potato sections, prices, freight rates and all other necessary data indicated. The results are interesting. My idea is to send agents into all these sections next summer before the potatoes are turned up, and contract for the entire crop at twenty-five cents a bushel. The agents will pay the farmers cash, and agree to assume all expenses of digging, packing, shipping, and so forth, allowing the farmer to take what he needs for his own consumption. Needless to say, the potatoes will not be removed from the fields, but will be allowed to rot in the ground. Those that do reach the market will sell for a dollar and a half in New York and Chicago."

"In other words," added Fitch, "you are simply figuring to corner the market for the humble tuber, eh?"

"Precisely," said Ames.

"But--you say you have all the necessary data now?"

"All, even to the selection of a few of my agents. I can control freight rates for what we may wish to ship. The rest of the crop will be left to rot. The farmers will jump at such a bargain. And the consumers will pay our price for what they must have."

"Very pretty," mused Murdock. "And how much do you figure we shall need to round the corner?"

"A million, cash in hand," replied Ames.

"Is this anything that the women can mix into?" asked Fitch suddenly. "You know they forced us to dump tons of our cold-storage stuff onto the market two years ago."

"That was when I controlled wheat," said Ames, "and was all tied up. But this is a wholly different proposition. It will be done so quietly and thoroughly that it will all be over and the profits pocketed before the women wake up to what we're doing. In this case there will be nothing to store. And potatoes exposed in the field rot quickly, you know."

The rest of the group seemed to study the idea for some moments. Then the practical Murdock inquired of Ames if he would agree to handle the project, provided they took it up.

"Yes," assented Ames, "on a five per cent basis. And I am ready to put agents in the field to-morrow."

"Then, Madam Beaubien," said Fitch, "I move that we adopt the plan as set forth by Mr. Ames, and commission him to handle it, calling upon us equally for whatever funds he may need."

A further brief discussion ensued; and then the resolution was unanimously adopted.

"Say, Ames," queried Weston, with a glint of mischief in his eyes, "will any of these potatoes be shipped over the C. and R.?" A laugh went up around the table, in which Ames himself joined. "Yes," he said, "potatoes and cotton will both go over that road next summer, and I shall fix the rebates."

"How about your friend Ketchim?" suggested Fitch, with a wink at Murdock.

Ames's mouth set grimly, and the smile left his face. "Ketchim is going to Sing Sing for that little deal," he returned in a low, cold tone, so cold that even the Beaubien could not repress a little shudder. "I had him on Molino, but he trumped up a new company which absorbed Molino and satisfied everybody, so I am blocked for the present. But, mark me, I shall strip him of every dollar, and then put him behind the bars before I've finished!"

And no one sought to refute the man, for they knew he spoke truth.

At midnight, while the cathedral chimes in the great hall clock were sending their trembling message through the dark house, the Beaubien rose, and the dinner was concluded. A few moments later the guests were spinning in their cars to their various homes or clubs--all but Ames. As he was preparing to leave, the Beaubien laid a hand on his arm. "Wait a moment, Wilton," she said. "I have something important to discuss with you." She led him into the morning room, where a fire was blazing cheerily in the grate, and drew up a chair before it for him, then nestled on the floor at his feet.

"I sent Gannette home this evening," she began, by way of introduction. "He was drunk. I would drop him entirely, only you said--"

"We need him," interrupted Ames. "Hold him a while longer."

"I'll soil my hands by doing it; but it is for you. Now tell me," she went on eagerly, "what about Colombia? Have you any further news from Wenceslas?"

"A cable to-day. Everything's all right. Don't worry. The Church is with the Government, and they will win--although your money may be tied up for a few years. Still, you can't lose in the end."

The woman sat for some moments gazing into the fire. Then:

"Lafelle was here again to-day."

"Hold him, too," said Ames quickly. "Looks as if I had made you a sort of holding company, doesn't it?" he added, with a chuckle. "But we shall have good use for these fellows."

"He gave me some very interesting news," she said; and then went on to relate the conversation in detail. Ames laughed loudly as he listened. "And now, Wilton," said the Beaubien, a determined look coming into her face, "you have always said that you never forgave me for making you let Jim Crowles off, when you had him by the throat. Well, I'm going to give you a chance to get more than even. Jim's fat widow is after your wife's scalp. I intend that she shall lose her own in the chase. I've got my plans all laid, and I want your wife to meet the lovely Mrs. Hawley-Crowles at the Fitch's next Thursday afternoon. It will be just a formal call--mutual introductions--and, later, an invitation from Mrs. Ames to Mrs. Hawley-Crowles. Meantime, I want you to get Mrs. Hawley-Crowles involved in a financial way, and shear her of every penny! Do you understand?"

Ames looked at her quizzically. Then he broke into another sharp laugh. "My dear," said he, taking her hand, "you are charming this evening. Added years only make you more beautiful."

"Nonsense, Will!" she deprecated, although the smile she gave him attested her pleasure in the compliment. "Well," she continued briskly, "if I'm so beautiful, you can't help loving me; and if you love me, you will do what I ask."

He playfully pinched her cheek. "Why, poor old Jim Crowles! Really, I've long since forgotten him. Do you realize that that was more than ten years ago?"

"Please don't mention years, dear," she murmured, shuddering a little. "Tell me, what can we do to teach this fat hussy a lesson?"

"Well," he suggested, laughing, "we might get Ketchim after her, to sell her a wad of his worthless stocks; then when he goes down, as he is going one of these days, we will hope that it will leave her on the rocks of financial ruin, eh?"

"What's Ketchim promoting?" she asked. "I know nothing about him."

"Why, among other innocent novelties, a scheme bearing the sonorous title of Simití Development Company, I am told by my brokers."

"Simití! Why--I've heard Carmen mention that name. I wonder--"

"Well, and who is Carmen?" he asked with a show of real interest.

"My little friend--the one and only honest person I've ever dealt with, excepting, of course, present company."

"The amendment is accepted. And now where does this Carmen enter the game?"

"Why, she's--surely you know about her!"

"If I did I should not ask." "Well, she is a little Colombian--"

"Colombian!"

"Yes. They say she's an Inca princess. Came up with the engineers who went down there for Ketchim to examine the Molino properties. She lived all her life in a town called Simití until she came up here."

Ames leaned over and looked steadily into the fire. "Never heard of the place," he murmured dreamily.

"Well," said the Beaubien eagerly, "she's a--a wonderful child! I'm different when I'm with her."

He roused from his meditations and smiled down at the woman. "Then I'd advise you not to be with her much, for I prefer you as you are."

They sat some minutes in silence. Then the woman looked up at her companion. "What are you thinking about so seriously?" she asked.

The man started; then drew himself up and gave a little nervous laugh. "Of you," he replied evasively, "always."

She reached up and slapped his cheek tenderly. "You were dreaming of your awful business deals," she said. "What have you in hand now?--besides the revolution in Colombia, your mines, your mills, your banks, your railroads and trolley lines, your wheat and potato corners, your land concessions and cattle schemes, and--well, that's a start, at least," she finished, pausing for breath.

"Another big deal," he said abruptly.

"Wheat, again?"

"No, cotton. I'm buying every bale I can find, in Europe, Asia, and the States."

"But, Will, you've been caught in cotton before, you know. And I don't believe you can get away with it again. Unless--"

"That's it--unless," he interrupted. "And that's just the part I have taken care of. It's a matter of tariff. The cotton schedule will go through as I have it outlined. I practically own the Commission. They don't dare refuse to pass the measure. Cotton is low now. In a few months the tariff on cotton products will be up. The new tariff-wall sends the price of raw stuff soaring. I profit, coming and going. I was beaten on the last deal simply because of faulty weather prognostications. I made a bad guess. This time the weather doesn't figure. I'll let you in, if you wish. But these other fellows have got to stay out."

"I haven't a penny to invest, Will," she replied mournfully. "You got me so terribly involved in this Colombian revolution."

"Oh, well," he returned easily, "I'll lend you what you need, any amount. And you can give me your advice and suggestions from time to time. As for your Colombian investments, haven't I guaranteed them, practically?"

"Not in writing," she said, looking up at him with a twinkle in her eyes.

"Bah! Well, do you want that?"

"No, certainly not," she returned, giving him a glance of admiration. "But, to return, Mrs. Hawley-Crowles is going to be received into your wife's set, and you are going to give her a good financial whipping?"

"Certainly, if you wish it. I'm yours to command. Mrs. Hawley-Crowles shall go to the poor-house, if you say the word. But now, my dear, have William order my car. And, let me see, Mrs. Ames is to meet Mrs. Hawley-Crowles at Fitch's? Just a chance call, I take it."

"Yes, dear," murmured the Beaubien, reaching up and kissing him; "next Thursday at three. Good night. Call me on the 'phone to-morrow."

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Chapter 12

The Ames building, a block from the Stock Exchange, was originally only five stories in height. But as the Ames interests grew, floor after floor was added, until, on the day that Mrs. Hawley-Crowles pointed it out to Carmen from the window of her limousine, it had reached, tower and all, a height of twenty-five stories, and was increasing at an average rate of two additional a year. It was not its size that aroused interest, overtopped as it was by many others, but its uniqueness; for, though a hive of humming industry, it did not house a single business that was not either owned outright or controlled by J. Wilton Ames, from the lowly cigar stands in the marble corridors to the great banking house of Ames and Company on the second floor. The haberdashers, the shoe-shining booths, the soda fountains, and the great commercial enterprises that dwelt about them, each and all acknowledged fealty and paid homage to the man who brooded over them in his magnificent offices on the twenty-fifth floor in the tower above.

It was not by any consensus of opinion among the financiers of New York that Ames had assumed leadership, but by sheer force of what was doubtless the most dominant character developed in recent years by those peculiar forces which have produced the American multimillionaire. "Mental dynamite!" was Weston's characterization of the man. "And," he once added, when, despite his anger, he could not but admire Ames's tactical blocking of his piratical move, which the former's keen foresight had perceived threatened danger at Washington, "it is not by any tacit agreement that we accept him, but because he knows ten tricks to our one, that's all."

To look at the man, now in his forty-fifth year, meant, generally, an expression of admiration for his unusual physique, and a wholly erroneous appraisal of his character. His build was that of a gladiator. He stood six-feet-four in height, with Herculean shoulders and arms, and a pair of legs that suggested nothing so much as the great pillars which supported the facade of the Ames building. Those arms and legs, and those great back-muscles, had sent his college shell to victory every year that he had sat in the boat. They had won every game on the gridiron in which he had participated as the greatest "center" the college ever developed. For baseball he was a bit too massive, much to his own disappointment, but the honors he failed to secure there he won in the field events, and in the surreptitiously staged boxing and wrestling bouts when, hidden away in the cellar of some secret society hall, he would crush his opponents with an ease and a peculiar glint of satisfaction in his gray eyes that was grimly prophetic of days to come. His mental attitude toward contests for superiority of whatever nature did not differ essentially from that of the Roman gladiators: he entered them to win. If he fell, well and good; he expected "thumbs down." If he won, his opponent need look for no exhibition of generosity on his part. When his man lay prone before him, he stooped and cut his throat. And he would have loathed the one who forbore to do likewise with himself.

In scholarship he might have won a place, had not the physical side of his nature been so predominant, and his remarkable muscular strength so great a prize to the various athletic coaches and directors. Ames was first an animal; there was no stimulus as yet sufficiently strong to arouse his latent spirituality. And yet his intellect was keen; and to those studies to which he was by nature or inheritance especially attracted, economics, banking, and all branches of finance, he brought a power of concentration that was as stupendous as his physical strength. His mental make-up was peculiar, in that it was the epitome of energy--manifested at first only in brute force--and in that it was wholly deficient in the sense of fear. Because of this his daring was phenomenal.

Immediately upon leaving college Ames became associated with his father in the already great banking house of Ames and Company. But the animality of his nature soon found the confinement irksome; his father's greater conservatism hampered his now rapidly expanding spirit of commercialism; and after a few years in the banking house he withdrew and set up for himself. The father, while lacking the boy's fearlessness, had long since recognized dominant qualities in him which he himself did not possess, and he therefore confidently acquiesced in his son's desire, and, in addition, gave him carte blanche in the matter of funds for his speculative enterprises.

Four years later J. Wilton Ames, rich in his own name, already becoming recognized as a power in the world of finance, with diversified enterprises which reached into almost every country of the globe, hastened home from a foreign land in response to a message announcing the sudden death of his father. The devolving of his parent's vast fortune upon himself--he was the sole heir--then necessitated his permanent location in New York. And so, reluctantly giving up his travels, he gathered his agents and lieutenants about him, concentrating his interests as much as possible in the Ames building, and settled down to the enjoyment of expanding his huge fortune. A few months later he married, and the union amalgamated the proud old Essex stock of Ames, whose forbears fought under the Conqueror and were written in the Doomsday Book, to the wealthy and aristocratic Van Heyse branch of old Amsterdam. To this union were born a son and a daughter, twins.

The interval between his graduation from college and the death of his father was all but unknown to the cronies of his subsequent years in New York. Though he had spent much of it in the metropolis, he had been self-centered and absorbed, even lonely, while laying his plans and developing the schemes which resulted in financial preëminence. With unlimited money at his disposal, he was unhampered in the choice of his business clientele, and he formed it from every quarter of the globe. Much of his time had been spent abroad, and he had become as well known on the Paris bourse and the exchanges of Europe as in his native land. Confident and successful from the outset; without any trace of pride or touch of hauteur in his nature; as wholly lacking in ethical development and in generosity as he was in fear; gradually becoming more sociable and companionable, although still reticent of certain periods of his past; his cunning and brutality increasing with years; and his business sagacity and keen strategy becoming the talk of the Street; with no need to raise his eyes beyond the low plane of his material endeavors; he pursued his business partly for the pleasure the game afforded him, partly for the power which his accumulations bestowed upon him, and mostly because it served as an adequate outlet for his tremendous, almost superhuman, driving energy. If he betrayed and debauched ideals, it was because he was utterly incapable of rising to them, nor felt the stimulus to make the attempt. If he achieved no noble purpose, it was because when he glanced at the mass of humanity about him he looked through the lenses of self. His glance fell always first upon J. Wilton Ames--and he never looked beyond. The world had been created for him; the cosmos but expressed his Ego.

On the morning after his conversation with the Beaubien regarding the social aspirations of Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, the financier sat at his rich mahogany desk on the top floor of the Ames building in earnest discussion with his lawyer, Alonzo Hood. The top floor of the tower was divided into eight rooms. Two of these constituted Ames's inner sanctum; one was Hood's private office; and the rest were devoted to clerks and stenographers. A telegrapher occupied an alcove adjoining Hood's room, and handled confidential messages over private wires to the principal cities in the country. A private telephone connected Ames's desk with the Beaubien mansion. Private lines ran to the Stock Exchange and to various other points throughout the city. The telegraph and telephone companies gave his messages preference over all others. At a word he would be placed in almost instant communication with New Orleans, San Francisco, London, Berlin, or Cairo. Private lines and speaking tubes ran to every room or floor of the building where a company, firm, or individual was doing business. At the office of the Telegraph Service up-town he maintained messengers who carried none but his own despatches. In the railroad yards his private car stood always in readiness; and in the harbor his yacht was kept constantly under steam. A motor car stood ever in waiting in the street below, close to the shaft of a private automatic elevator, which ran through the building for his use alone. This elevator also penetrated the restaurant in the basement of the building, where a private room and a special waiter were always at the man's disposal. A private room and special attendant were maintained in the Turkish baths adjoining, and he had his own personal suite and valet at his favorite club up-town.

This morning he was at his desk, as usual, at eight o'clock. Before him lay the various daily reports from his mines, his mills, his railroads, and his bank. These disposed of, there followed a quick survey of the day's appointments, arranged for him by his chief secretary. Then he summoned Hood. As the latter entered, Ames was absorbed in the legend of the stock ticker.

"C. and R. closed yesterday at twenty-six," he commented. Then, swinging back in his chair, "What's Stolz doing?"

"For one thing, he has made Miss Fagin his private stenographer," replied Hood.

Ames chuckled. "Now we will begin to get real information," he remarked. "Tell Miss Fagin you will give her fifty dollars a week from now on; but she is to deliver to you a carbon copy of every letter she writes for Stolz. And I want those copies on my desk every morning when I come down. Hood," he continued, abruptly turning the conversation, "what have you dug up about Ketchim's new company?"

"Very little, sir," replied Hood with a trace of embarrassment. "His lawyer is a fledgeling named Cass, young, but wise enough not to talk. I called on him yesterday afternoon to have a little chat about the old Molino company, representing that I was speaking for certain stockholders. But he told me to bring the stockholders in and he would talk with them personally."

Ames laughed, while the lawyer grinned sheepishly. "Is that the sort of service you are rendering for a hundred-thousand-dollar salary?" he bantered. "Hood, I'm ashamed of you!"

"I can't blame you; I am ashamed of myself," replied the lawyer.

"Well," continued Ames good-naturedly, "leave Ketchim to me. I've got three men now buying small amounts of stock in his various companies. I'll call for receiverships pretty soon, and we will see this time that he doesn't refund the money. Now about other matters: the Albany post trolley deal is to go through. Also the potato scheme. Work up the details and let me have them at once. Have you got the senate bill drawn for Gossitch?"

"It will be ready this afternoon. As it stands now, the repealing section gives any city the right to grant saloon licenses of indefinite length, instead of for one year."

"That's the idea. We want the bill so drawn that it will become practically impossible to revoke a license."

"As it now reads," said Hood, "it makes a saloon license assignable. That creates a property right that can hardly be revoked."

"Just so," returned Ames. "As I figure, it will create a value of some twenty millions for those who own saloons in New York. A tidy sum!"

"That means for the brewers."

"And distillers, yes. And if the United States ever reaches the point where it will have to buy the saloons in order to wipe them out, it will face a very handsome little expenditure."

"But, Mr. Ames, a very large part of the stock of American brewing companies is owned in Europe. How are you--"

"Nominally, it is. But for two years, and more, I have been quietly gathering in brewing stock from abroad, and to-day I have some ten millions in my own control, from actual purchases, options, and so forth. I'm going to organize a holding company, when the time arrives, and I figure that within the next year or so we will practically control the production of beer and spirituous liquors in the United States and Europe. The formation of that company will be a task worthy of your genius, Hood."

"It will be a pleasure to undertake it," replied Hood with animation. "By the way, Mr. Ames, I got in touch with Senator Mall last evening at the club, and he assures me that the senate committee have so changed the phraseology of the tariff bill on cotton products that the clause you wish retained will be continued with its meaning unaltered. In fact, the discrimination which the hosiery interests desire will be fully observed. Your suggestion as to an ad valorem duty of fifty per cent on hose valued at less than sixty-five cents a dozen pairs is exceptionally clever, in view of the fact that there are none of less than that value."

Ames laughed again. "Triumphant Republicanism," he commented. "And right in the face of the President's message. Wire Mall that I will be in Washington Thursday evening to advise with him further about it. And you will go with me. Hood, we've got a fight on in regard to the President's idea of granting permission in private suits to use judgments and facts brought out and entered in government suits against combinations. That idea has got to be killed! And the regulation of security issues of railroads--preposterous! Why, the President's crazy! If Mall and Gossitch and Wells don't oppose that in the Senate, I'll see that they are up before the lunacy commission--and I have some influence with that body!"

"There is nothing to fear, I think," replied Hood reassuringly. "An important piece of business legislation like that will hardly go through this session. And then we will have time to prepare to frustrate it. The suggestion to place the New York Stock Exchange under government supervision is a much more serious matter, I think."

"See here, Hood," said Ames, leaning forward and laying a hand upon that gentleman's knee, "when that happens, we'll have either a Socialist president or a Catholic in the White House, with Rome twitching the string. Then I shall move to my Venezuelan estates, take the vow of poverty, and turn monk."

"Which reminds me again that by your continued relations with Rome you are doing much to promote just that state of affairs," returned the lawyer sententiously.

"Undoubtedly," said Ames. "But I find the Catholic Church convenient--indeed, necessary--for the promotion of certain plans. And so I use it. The Colombian revolution, for example. But I shall abruptly sever my relations with that institution some day--when I am through with it. At present I am milking the Church to the extent of a brimming pail every year; and as long as the udder is full and accessible I shall continue to tap it. I tapped the Presbyterian Church, through Borwell, last year, if you remember."

Willett, chief secretary to Ames, entered at that moment with the morning mail, opened and sorted, and replies written to letters of such nature as he could attend to without suggestions from his chief.

"By the way," remarked Hood when he saw the letters, "I had word from Collins this morning that he had secured a signed statement from that fellow Marcus, who was crushed in the Avon mills yesterday. Marcus accepted the medical services of our physicians, and died in our hospital. Just before he went off, his wife accepted a settlement of one hundred dollars. Looked big to her, I guess, and was a bird in the hand. So that matter's settled."

"That reminds me," said Ames, looking up from his mail; "we are going to close the mills earlier this year on account of the cotton shortage."

Hood gave a low whistle. "That spells trouble, in capital letters!" he commented. "Four thousand hands idle for three months, I suppose. By George! we just escaped disaster last year, you remember."

"It will be more than three months this time," commented Ames with a knowing look. Then--"Hood, I verily believe you are a coward."

"Well, Mr. Ames," replied the latter slowly, "I certainly would hesitate to do some of the things you do. Yet you seem to get away with them."

"Perk up, Hood," laughed Ames. "I've got real work for you as soon as I get control of C. and R. I'm going to put you in as president, at a salary of one hundred thousand per annum. Then you are going to buy the road for me for about two million dollars, and I'll reorganize and sell to the stockholders for five millions, still retaining control. The road is only a scrap heap, but its control is the first step toward the amalgamation of the trolley interests of New England. Laws are going to be violated, Hood, both in actual letter and in spirit. But that's your end of the business. It's up to you to get around the Interstate Commerce Commission in any way you can, and buttress this little monopoly against competition and reform-infected legislatures. I don't care what it costs."

"What about Crabbe?" asked Hood dubiously.

"We'll send Crabbe to the Senate," Ames coolly replied.

"You seem to forget that senators are now elected by the people, Mr. Ames."

"I forget nothing, sir. The people are New York City, Buffalo, and Albany. Tammany is New York. And Tammany at present is in my pocket. Buffalo and Albany can be swept by the Catholic vote. And I have that in the upper right hand drawer of my private file. The 'people' will therefore elect to the Senate the man I choose. In fact, I prefer direct election of senators over the former method, for the people are greater fools en masse than any State Legislature that ever assembled."

He took up another letter from the pile on his desk and glanced through it. "From Borwell," he commented. "Protests against the way you nullified the Glaze-Bassett red-light injunction bill. Pretty clever, that, Hood. I really didn't think it was in you."

"Invoking the referendum, you mean?" said Hood, puffing a little with pride.

"Yes. But for that, the passage of the bill would have wiped out the whole red-light district, and quartered the rents I now get from my shacks down there. Now next year we will be better prepared to fight the bill. The press will be with us then--a little cheaper and a trifle more degraded than it is to-day."

A private messenger entered with a cablegram. Ames read it and handed it to his lawyer. "The Proteus has reached the African Gold Coast at last," he said. Then he threw back his head and laughed heartily. "Do you know, Hood, the Proteus carried two missionaries, sent to the frizzle-topped Zulus by Borwell and his outfit. Deutsch and Company cable that they have arrived."

"But," said Hood in some perplexity, "the cargo of the Proteus was rum!"

"Just so," roared Ames; "that's where the joke comes in. I make it a point that every ship of mine that carries a missionary to a foreign field shall also carry a cargo of rum. The combination is one that the Zulu finds simply irresistible!"

"So," commented Hood, "the Church goes down to Egypt for help!"

"Why not?" returned Ames. "I carry the missionaries free on my rum boats. Great saving to the Board of Foreign Missions, you know."

Hood looked at the man before him in undisguised admiration of his cunning. "And did you likewise send missionaries to China with your opium cargoes?" he asked.

Ames chuckled. "I once sent Borwell himself to Hongkong on a boat loaded to the rails with opium. We had insisted on his taking a needed vacation, and so packed him off to Europe. In Bombay I cabled him to take the Crotus to Hongkong, transportation free. That was my last consignment of opium to China, for restrictions had already fallen upon our very Christian England, and the opium traffic was killed. I had plans laid to corner the entire opium business in India, and I'd have cleaned up a hundred million out of it, but for the pressure of public sentiment. However, we're going to educate John Chinaman to substitute whiskey for opium. But now," glancing at the great electric wall clock, "I've wasted enough time with you. By the way, do you know why this Government withheld recognition of the Chinese Republic?"

"No," replied Hood, standing in anticipation.

"Thirty thousand chests of opium," returned Ames laconically. "Value, fifty million dollars."

"Well?"

"Ames and Company had advanced to the English banks of Shanghai and Hongkong half this amount, loaned on the opium. That necessitated a few plain words from me to the President, and a quick trip from Washington to London afterwards to interview his most Christian British Majesty. A very pleasant and profitable trip, Hood, very! Now tell Willett I want him."

Hood threw his chief another look of intense admiration, and left the room. Willett's entrance followed immediately.

"Get Lafelle here some time to-day when I have a vacant hour," commanded Ames. "Cable to acting-Bishop Wenceslas, of Cartagena, and ask him if an American mining company is registered there under the name of Simití Development Company, and what properties they have and where located. Tell him to cable reply, and follow with detailed letter."

He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. "The Congregation of the Sacred Index has laid the ban on--what's the name of the book?" He drew out a card-index drawer and selected a card, which he tossed to the secretary. "There it is. Get me the book at once." He seemed to muse a while, then went on slowly. "Carlos Madero, of Mexico, is in New York. Learn where he is staying, and arrange an interview for me. Wire Senator Wells, Washington, that the bill for a Children's Bureau must not be taken from the table. That's final. Wire the Sequana Coal Company that I want their report to-morrow, without fail. Wire Collins, at Avon, to tell the Spinners' Union I have nothing to discuss with them. Now send Hodson in."

As Hood was chief of the Ames legal department, and Willett the chief of his army of secretaries, so Hodson was the captain of his force of brokers, a keen, sagacious trader, whose knowledge of the market and whose ability in the matter of stock trading was almost uncanny.

"What's your selection for to-day, Hodson?" asked Ames, as the man entered.

Hodson laid on his desk three lists of suggested deals on the exchanges of New York, London, and Paris. Ames glanced over them hurriedly, drawing his pencil through certain that did not meet his approval, and substituting others in which for particular reasons he wished to trade that morning. "What's your reason for thinking I ought to buy Public Utilities?" he asked, looking up at his broker.

"They have the letting of the Hudson river tunnel contract," replied Hodson.

Ames studied the broker's face a moment. Then his own brightened, as he began to divine the man's reason. "By George!" he ejaculated, "you think there's quicksand along the proposed route?"

"I know it," said Hodson calmly.

"Pick up ten thousand shares, if you can get them," returned Ames quickly. Then--"I'm going to attend a meeting of the Council of American Grain Exchanges at two to-day. I want you to be just outside the door."

Hodson nodded understandingly. Ames concluded, "I guess that's all. I'm at the bank at ten; at the Board of Trade at ten-thirty; Stock Exchange at eleven; and lunch at Rector's at twelve sharp, returning here immediately afterward."

Hodson again bowed, and left the office to undertake his various commissions.

For the next half hour Ames pored over the morning's quota of letters and messages, making frequent notes, and often turning to the telephone at his hand. Then he summoned a stenographer and rapidly dictated a number of replies. Finally he again called Willett.

"In my next vacant hour, following the one devoted to Lafelle, I want to see Reverend Darius Borwell," he directed. "Also," he continued, "wire Strunz that I want a meeting of the Brewers' Union called at the earliest possible date. By the way, ask Lafelle if he can spend the night with me on board the Cossack, and if so, notify Captain McCall. That will save an hour in the day. Here is a bundle of requests for charity, for contributions to hospitals, orphan asylums, and various homes. Turn them all down, regretfully. H'm! 'Phone to the City Assessor to come over whenever you can arrange an hour and go over my schedule with me. By the way, tell Hood to take steps at once to foreclose on the Bradley estate. Did you find out where Ketchim does his banking?"

"Yes, sir," replied the secretary, "the Commercial State."

"Very well, get the president, Mr. Colson, on the wire."

A few moments later Ames had purchased from the Commercial State bank its note against the Ketchim Realty Company for ten thousand dollars. "I thought Ketchim would be borrowing again," he chuckled, when he had completed the transaction. "His brains are composed of a disastrous mixture of hypocrisy and greed. I've thrown another hook into him now."

At nine forty-five Ames left his private office and descended in his elevator to the banking house on the second floor. He entered the directors' room with a determined carriage, nodding pleasantly to his associates. Taking his seat as chairman, he promptly called the meeting to order.

Some preliminary business occupied the first few minutes, and then Ames announced:

"Gentlemen, when the State of New York offered the public sixty millions of four per cent bonds last week, and I advised you to take them at a premium of six per cent, you objected. I overruled you, and the bank bought the bonds. Within forty-eight hours they were resold at a premium of seven per cent, and the bank cleared six hundred thousand. A fair two days' business. Now let me suggest that the psychology of this transaction is worth your study. A commodity is a drug on the market at one dollar, until somebody is willing to pay a dollar and a half for it. Then a lot of people will want it, until somebody else offers a bid of two. Then the price will soar, and the number of those who covet the article and scramble for it will increase proportionably. Take this thought home with you."

A murmur of admiration rose from the directors. "I think," said one, "that we had better send Mr. Ames to Washington to confer with the President in regard to the proposed currency legislation."

"That is already arranged," put in Ames. "I meet the President next Thursday for a conference on this matter."

"And if he proves intractable?" queried another.

"Why, in that case," returned Ames with a knowing smile, "I think we had better give him a little lesson to take out of office with him--one that will ruin his second-term hopes--and then close our bank."

From the bank, the Board of Trade, the Stock Exchange, and his luncheon with Senator Gossitch, Ames returned to his office for the private interviews which his chief secretary had arranged. Then followed further consultations with Hood over the daily, weekly, and monthly reports which Ames required from all the various commercial, financial, and mining enterprises in which he was interested; further discussions of plans and schemes; further receipt and transmission of cable, telegraphic, and telephone messages; and meetings with his heads of departments, his captains, lieutenants, and minor officers, to listen to their reports and suggestions, and to deliver his quick, decisive commands, admonitions, and advice. From eight in the morning until, as was his wont, Ames closed his desk and entered his private elevator at five-thirty in the evening, his office flashed with the superenergy of the man, with his intense activity, his decisive words, and his stupendous endeavors, materialistic, absorptive, ruthless endeavors. If one should ask what his day really amounted to, we can but point to these incessant endeavors and their results in augmenting his already vast material interests and his colossal fortune, a fortune which Hood believed ran well over a hundred millions, and which Ames himself knew multiplied that figure by five or ten. And the fortune was increasing at a frightful pace, for he gave nothing, but continually drew to himself, always and ever drawing, accumulating, amassing, and absorbing, and for himself alone.

Snapping his desk shut, he held a brief conversation over the wire with the Beaubien, then descended to his waiting car and was driven hastily to his yacht, the Cossack, where Monsignor Lafelle awaited as his guest. It was one of the few pleasures which Ames allowed himself during the warm months, to drop his multifarious interests and spend the night aboard the Cossack, generally alone, rocking gently on the restless billows, so typical of his own heaving spirit, as the beautiful craft steamed noiselessly to and fro along the coast, well beyond the roar of the huge arena where human beings, formed of dust, yet fatuously believing themselves made in the image of infinite Spirit, strive and sweat, curse and slay, in the struggle to prove their doubtful right to live.

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Chapter 13

The Cossack, with its great turbines purring like a sleeping kitten, and its twin screws turning lazily, almost imperceptibly in the dark waters, moved through the frosty night like a cloud brooding over the deep. Yet it was a cloud of tremendous potentiality, enwrapping a spirit of energy incarnate. From far aloft its burning eye pierced a channel of light through the murky darkness ahead. In its wake it drew a swell of sparkling phosphorescence, which it carelessly tossed off on either side as a Calif might throw handfuls of glittering coins to his fawning beggars. From somewhere in the structure above, the crackling, hissing wireless mechanism was thrusting its invisible hands out into the night and catching the fleeting messages that were borne on the intangible pulsations of the mysterious ether. From time to time these messages were given form and body, and despatched to the luxurious suite below, where, in the dazzling sheen of silver and cut glass, spread out over richest napery, and glowing beneath a torrent of white light, sat the gigantic being whose will directed the movements of this floating palace.

"You see, Lafelle, I look upon religion with the eye of the cold-blooded business man, without the slightest trace of sentimentalism. From the business standpoint, the Protestant Church is a dead failure. It doesn't get results that are in any way commensurate with its investment. But your Church is a success--from the point of dollars and cents. In fact, in the matter of forming and maintaining a monopoly, I take off my hat to the Vatican. You fellows have got us all beaten. Every day I learn something of value by studying your methods of operating upon the public. And so you see why I take such pleasure in talking with really astute churchmen like yourself."

Monsignor Lafelle studied the man without replying, uncertain just what interpretation to put upon the remark. The Japanese servant was clearing away the remnants of the meal, having first lighted the cigars of the master and guest.

"Now," continued Ames, leaning back in his luxurious chair and musing over his cigar, "the purgatory idea is one of the cleverest schemes ever foisted upon the unthinking masses, and it has proved a veritable Klondike. Gad! if I could think up and put over a thing like that I'd consider myself really possessed of brains."

Lafelle's eyes twinkled. "I fear, Mr. Ames," he replied adroitly, "you do not know your Bible."

"No, that's true. I don't suppose I ever in my life read a whole chapter in the book. I can't swallow such stuff, Lafelle--utterly unreasonable, wholly inconsistent with facts and natural laws, as we know and are able to observe them. Even as a child I never had any use for fairy-tales, or wonder-stories. I always wanted facts, tangible, concrete, irrefutable facts, not hypotheses. The Protestant churches hand out a mess of incoherent guesswork, based on as many interpretations of the Bible as there are human minds sufficiently interested to interpret it, and then wax hot and angry when hard-headed business men like myself refuse to subscribe to it. It's preposterous, Lafelle! If they had anything tangible to offer, it would be different. But I go to church for the looks of the thing, and for business reasons; and then stick pins into myself to keep awake while I listen to pedagogical Borwell tell what he doesn't know about God and man. Then at the close of the service I drop a five-dollar bill into the plate for the entertainment, and go away with the feeling that I didn't get my money's worth. From a business point of view, a Protestant church service is worth about twenty-five cents for the music, and five cents for the privilege of sleeping on a soft cushion. So you see I lose four dollars and seventy cents every time I attend. You Catholic fellows, with your ceremonial and legerdemain, give a much better entertainment. Besides, I like to hear your priests soak it to their cowering flocks."

Lafelle sighed. "I shall have to class you with the incorrigibles," he said with a rueful air. "I am sorry you take such a harsh attitude toward us. We are really more spiritual--"

Ames interrupted with a roar of laughter. "Don't! don't!" he pleaded, holding up a hand. "Why, Lafelle, you old fraud, I look upon your Church as a huge business institution, a gigantic trust, as mercenary and merciless as Steel, Oil, or Tobacco! Why, you and I are in the same business, that of making money! And I'd like to borrow some of your methods. You catch 'em through religion. I have to use other methods. But the end is the same. Only, you've got it over me, for you hurl the weight of centuries of authority upon the poor, trembling public; and I have to beat them down with clubs of my own making. Moreover, the law protects you in all your pious methods; while I have to hire expensive legal talent to get around it."

"You seem to be fairly successful, even at that," retorted Lafelle. Then, too politic to draw his host into an acrimonious argument that might end in straining their now cordial and mutually helpful friendship, he observed, looking at his cigar: "May I ask what you pay for these?--for only an inexhaustible bank reserve can warrant their like."

He had struck the right chord, and Ames softened at once. "These," he said, tenderly regarding the thick, black weed in his fingers, "are grown exclusively for me on my own plantation in Colombia. They cost me about one dollar and sixty-eight cents each, laid down at my door in New York. I searched the world over before I found the only spot where such tobacco could be grown."

"And this wine?" continued Lafelle, lifting his glass of sparkling champagne.

"On a little hillside, scarcely an acre in extent, in Granada, Spain," replied Ames. "I have my own wine press and bottling plant there."

Lafelle could not conceal his admiration for this man of luxury. "And does your exclusiveness extend also to your tea and coffee?" he ventured, smiling.

"It does," said Ames. "I grow tea for my table in both China and Ceylon. And I have exclusive coffee plantations in Java and Brazil. But I'm now negotiating for one in Colombia, for I think that, without doubt, the finest coffee in the world is grown there, although it never gets beyond the coast line."

"Fortuna non deo," murmured the churchman; "you man of chance and destiny!"

Ames laughed genially. "My friend," said he, "I have always insisted that I possessed but a modicum of brains; but I am a gambler. My god is chance. With ordinary judgment and horse-sense, I take risks that no so-called sane man would consider. The curse of the world is fear--the chief instrument that you employ to hold the masses to your churchly system. I was born without it. I know that as long as a business opponent has fear to contend with, I am his master. Fear is at the root of every ailment of mind, body, or environment. I repeat, I know not the meaning of the word. Hence my position in the business world. Hence, also, my freedom from the limitations of superstition, religious or otherwise. Do you get me?"

"Yes," replied Lafelle, drawing a long sigh, "in a sense I do. But you greatly err, my friend, in deprecating your own powerful intellect. I know of no brain but yours that could have put South Ohio Oil from one hundred and fifty dollars up to over two thousand a share. I had a few shares of that stock myself. But I held until it broke."

Ames smiled knowingly. "Sorry I didn't know about it," he said. "I could have saved you. I didn't own a dollar's worth of South Ohio. Oh, yes," he added, as he saw Lafelle's eyes widening in surprise, "I pushed the market up until a certain lady, whom you and I both know, thought it unwise to go further, and then I sprung the sudden discovery of Colombian oil fields on them; and the market crashed like a burst balloon. The lady cleared some two millions on the rig. No, I didn't have a drop of Colombian oil to grease the chute. It was American nerve, that's all."

"Well!" ejaculated Lafelle. "If you had lived in the Middle Ages you'd have been burnt for possessing a devil!"

"On the contrary," quickly amended Ames, his eyes twinkling, "I'd have been made a Cardinal."

Both men laughed over the retort; and then Ames summoned the valet to set in motion the great electrical pipe-organ, and to bring the whiskey and soda.

For the next hour the two men gave themselves up to the supreme luxury of their magnificent environment, the stimulation of their beverage and cigars, and the soothing effect of the soft music, combined with the gentle movement of the boat. Then Ames took his guest into the smoking room proper, and drew up chairs before a small table, on which were various papers and writing materials.

"Now," he began, "referring to your telephone message of this morning, what is it that you want me to do for you? Is it the old question of establishing a nunciature at Washington?"

Lafelle had been impatiently awaiting this moment. He therefore plunged eagerly into his subject. "Mr. Ames," said he, "I know you to have great influence at the Capital. In the interests of humanity, I ask you to use that influence to prevent the passage of the immigration bill which provides for a literacy test."

Ames smiled inwardly. There was no need of this request; for, in the interests, not of humanity, but of his own steamship companies, he intended that there should be no restriction imposed upon immigration. But the Church was again playing into his hands, coming to him for favors. And the Church always paid heavily for his support. "Well! well!" he exclaimed with an assumption of interest, "so you ask me to impugn my own patriotism!"

Lafelle looked perplexed. "I don't quite understand," he said.

"Why," Ames explained, "how long do you figure it will take, with unrestricted immigration, for the Catholics to so outnumber the Protestants in the United States as to establish their religion by law and force it into the schools?"

Lafelle flushed. "But your Constitution provides toleration for all religions!"

"And the Constitution is quite flexible, and wholly subject to amendment, is it not?"

Lafelle flared out in unrestrained anger. "What a bugaboo you Protestants make of Roman Catholicism!" he cried. "Great heavens! Why, one would think that we Catholics were all anarchists! Are we such a menace, such a curse to your Republican institutions? Do you ever stop to realize what the Church has done for civilization, and for your own country? And where, think you, would art and learning be now but for her? Have you any adequate idea what the Church is doing to-day for the poor, for the oppressed? Good God! You Protestants, a thousand times more intolerant than we, treat us as if we were Hindoo pariahs! This whole country is suffering from the delirium of Roman Catholic-phobia! Will you drive us to armed defense?"

"There, my friend, calm yourself," soothed Ames, laying a hand on the irate churchman's arm. "And please do not class me with the Protestants, for I am not one of them. You Catholic fellows have made admirable gains in the past few years, and your steady encroachments have netted you about ninety per cent of all the political offices in and about Washington, so you have no complaint, even if the Church isn't in politics. H'm! So you want my help, eh?"

He stopped and drummed on the table. Meantime, his brain was working rapidly. "By the way, Lafelle," he said, abruptly resuming the conversation, "you know all about church laws and customs, running way back to mediaeval times. Can't you dig up some old provision whereby I can block a fellow who claims to own a gold mine down in Colombia? If you can, I'll see that the President vetoes every obnoxious immigration bill that's introduced this term."

Lafelle roused from his sulk and gulped down his wrath. Ames went on to express his desire for vengeance upon one obscure Philip O. Ketchim, broker, promoter, church elder, and Sunday school superintendent. Lafelle became interested. The conversation grew more and more animated. Hours passed.

Then at length Ames rose and rang for his valet. "My God, Lafelle, the idea's a corker!" he cried, his eyes ablaze. "Where'd you get it?"

Lafelle laughed softly. "From a book entitled 'Confessions of a Roman Catholic Priest,' written anonymously, but, they say, by a young attaché of the Vatican who was insane at the time. I never learned his name. However, he was apparently well informed on matters Colombian."

"And what do you call the law?"

"The law of 'en manos muertas'," replied Lafelle.

"Well," exclaimed Ames, "again I take off my hat to your churchly system! And now," he continued eagerly, "cable the Pope at once. I'll have the operator send your code ashore by wireless, and the message will go to Rome to-night. Tell the old man you've got influence at work in Washington that is--well, more than strong, and that the prospects for defeating the immigration bill are excellent."

Lafelle arose and stood for a moment looking about the room. "Before I retire, my friend," he said, "I would like to express again the admiration which the tasteful luxury of this smoking room has aroused in me, and to ask, if I may, whether those stained-glass windows up there are merely fanciful portraits?"

Ames quickly glanced up at the faces of the beautiful women portrayed in the rectangular glass windows which lined the room just below the ceiling. They were exquisitely painted, in vivid colors, and so set as to be illuminated during the day by sunlight, and at night by strong electric lamps behind them. "Why do you ask?" he inquired in wonder.

"Because," returned Lafelle, "if I mistake not, I have seen a portrait similar to that one," pointing up at one of the windows, where a sad, wistful face of rare loveliness looked down upon them.

Ames started slightly. "Where, may I ask?" he said in a controlled voice.

Lafelle reflected. In his complete absorption he had not noticed the effect of his query upon Ames. "I do not know," he replied slowly. "London--Paris--Berlin--no, not there. And yet, it was in Europe, I am sure. Ah, I have it! In the Royal Gallery, at Madrid."

Ames stared at him dully. "In the--Royal Gallery--at Madrid!" he echoed in a low tone.

"Yes," continued Lafelle confidently, still studying the portrait, "I am certain of it. But," turning abruptly upon Ames, "you may have known the original?"

Ames had recovered his composure. "I assure you I never had that pleasure," he said lightly. "These art windows were set in by the designer of the yacht. Clever idea, I thought. Adds much to the general effect, don't you think? By the way, if a portrait similar to that one hangs in the Royal Gallery at Madrid, you might try to learn the identity of the original for me. It's quite interesting to feel that one may have the picture of some bewitching member of royalty hanging in his own apartments. By all means try to learn who the lady is--unless you know." He stopped and searched the churchman's face.

But Lafelle shook his head. "No, I do not know her. But--that picture has haunted me from the day I first saw it in the Royal Gallery. Who designed your yacht?"

"Crafts, of 'Storrs and Crafts,'" replied Ames. "But he died a year ago. Storrs is gone, too. No help from that quarter."

Lafelle moved thoughtfully toward the door. The valet appeared at that moment.

"Show Monsignor to his stateroom," commanded Ames. "Good night, Monsignor, good night. Remember, we dock at seven-thirty, sharp."

Returning to the table, Ames sat down and rapidly composed a message for his wireless operator to send across the dark waters to the city, and thence to acting-Bishop Wenceslas, in Cartagena. This done, he extinguished all the lights in the room excepting those which illuminated the stained-glass windows above. Drawing his chair up in front of the one which had stirred Lafelle's query, he sat before it far into the morning, in absorbed contemplation, searching the sad features of the beautiful face, pondering, revolving, sometimes murmuring aloud, sometimes passing a hand across his brow, as if he would erase from a relentless memory an impression made long since and worn ever deeper by the recurrent thought of many years.

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Chapter 14

Almost within the brief period of a year, the barefoot, calico-clad Carmen had been ejected from unknown Simití and dropped into the midst of the pyrotechnical society life of the great New World metropolis. Only an unusual interplay of mental forces could have brought about such an odd result. But that it was a very logical outcome of the reaction upon one another of human ambitions, fears, lust, and greed, operating through the types of mind among which her life had been cast, those who have followed our story thus far can have no doubt. The cusp of the upward-sweeping curve had been reached through the insane eagerness of Mrs. Hawley-Crowles to outdo her wealthy society rivals in an arrogant display of dress, living, and vain, luxurious entertaining, and the acquisition of the empty honor attaching to social leadership. The coveted prize was now all but within the shallow woman's grasp. Alas! she knew not that when her itching fingers closed about it the golden bauble would crumble to ashes.

The program as outlined by the Beaubien had been faithfully followed. Mrs. J. Wilton Ames had met Mrs. Hawley-Crowles--whom, of course, she had long desired to know more intimately--and an interchange of calls had ensued, succeeded by a grand reception at the Ames mansion, the first of the social season. To this Mrs. Hawley-Crowles floated, as upon a cloud, attired in a French gown which cost fifteen hundred dollars, and shoes on her disproportioned feet for which she had rejoiced to pay thirty dollars each, made as they had been from specially selected imported leather, dyed to match her rich robe. It was true, her pleasure had not been wholly unalloyed, for she had been conscious of a trace of superciliousness on the part of some of the gorgeous birds of paradise, twittering and hopping in their hampering skirts about the Ames parlors, and pecking, with milk-fed content, at the rare cakes and ices. But she only held her empty head the higher, and fluttered about the more ostentatiously and clumsily, while anticipating the effect which her charming and talented ward would produce when she should make her bow to these same vain, haughty devotees of the cult of gold. And she had wisely planned that Carmen's début should follow that of Kathleen Ames, that it might eclipse her rival's in its wanton display of magnificence.

On the heels of the Ames reception surged the full flood of the winter's social orgy. Early in November Kathleen Ames was duly presented. The occasion was made one of such stupendous display that Mrs. Hawley-Crowles first gasped, then shivered with apprehension, lest she be unable to outdo it. She went home from it in a somewhat chastened frame of mind, and sat down at her escritoire to make calculations. Could she on her meager annual income of one hundred and fifty thousand hope to meet the Ames millions? She had already allowed that her wardrobe would cost not less than twenty-five thousand dollars a year, to say nothing of the additional expense of properly dressing Carmen. But she now saw that this amount was hopelessly inadequate. She therefore increased the figure to seventy-five thousand. But that took half of her income. Could she maintain her city home, entertain in the style now demanded by her social position, and spend her summers at Newport, as she had planned? Clearly, not on that amount. No, her income would not suffice; she would be obliged to draw on the principal until Carmen could be married off to some millionaire, or until her own father died. Oh? if he would only terminate his useless existence soon!

But, in lieu of that delayed desideratum, some expedient must be devised at once. She thought of the Beaubien. That obscure, retiring woman was annually making her millions. A tip now and then from her, a word of advice regarding the market, and her own limited income would expand accordingly. She had not seen the Beaubien since becoming a member of Holy Saints. But on that day, and again, two months later, when the splendid altar to the late lamented and patriotic citizen, the Honorable James Hawley-Crowles, was dedicated, she had marked the woman, heavily veiled, sitting alone in the rear of the great church. What had brought her there? she wondered. She had shuddered as she thought the tall, black-robed figure typified an ominous shadow falling athwart her own foolish existence.

But there was no doubt of Carmen's hold on the strange, tarnished woman. And so, smothering her doubts and pocketing her pride, she again sought the Beaubien, ostensibly in regard to Carmen's forthcoming début; and then, very adroitly and off-handedly, she brought up the subject of investments, alleging that the added burden of the young girl now rendered it necessary to increase the rate of interest which her securities were yielding.

The Beaubien proved herself the soul of candor and generosity. Not only did she point out to Mrs. Hawley-Crowles how her modest income might be quadrupled, but she even offered, in such a way as to make it utterly impossible for that lady to take offense, to lend her whatever amount she might need, at any time, to further Carmen's social conquest. And during the conversation she announced that she herself was acting on a suggestion dropped by the great financier, Ames, and was buying certain stocks now being offered by a coming power in world finance, Mr. Philip O. Ketchim.

Why, to be sure, Mrs. Hawley-Crowles had heard of this man! Was he not promoting a company in which her sister's husband, and the girl herself, were interested? And if such investments were good enough for a magnate of Ames's standing, they certainly were good enough for her. She would see Mr. Ketchim at once. Indeed, why had she not thought of this before! She would get Carmen to hypothecate her own interest in this new company, if necessary. That interest of itself was worth a fortune.

Quite true. And if Mrs. Hawley-Crowles and Carmen so desired, the Beaubien would advance them whatever they might need on that security alone. Or, she would take the personal notes of Mrs. Hawley-Crowles--"For, you know, my dear," she said sweetly, "when your father passes away you are going to be very well off, indeed, and I can afford to discount that inevitable event somewhat, can I not?" And she not only could, but did.

Then Mrs. Hawley-Crowles soared into the empyrean, and this self-absorbed woman, who never in her life had earned the equivalent of a single day's food, launched the sweet, white-souled girl of the tropics upon the oozy waters of New York society with such éclat that the Sunday newspapers devoted a whole page, profusely illustrated, to the gorgeous event and dilated with much extravagance of expression upon the charms of the little Inca princess, and upon the very important and gratifying fact that the three hundred fashionable guests present displayed jewels to the value of not less than ten million dollars.

The function took the form of a musicale, in which Carmen's rich voice was first made known to the beau monde. The girl instantly swept her auditors from their feet. The splendid pipe-organ, which Mrs. Hawley-Crowles had hurriedly installed for the occasion, became a thing inspired under her deft touch. It seemed in that garish display of worldliness to voice her soul's purity, its wonder, its astonishment, its lament over the vacuities of this highest type of human society, its ominous threats of thundered denunciation on the day when her tongue should be loosed and the present mesmeric spell broken--for she was under a spell, even that of this new world of tinsel and material veneer.

The decrepit old Mrs. Gannette wept on Carmen's shoulder, and went home vowing that she would be a better woman and cut out her night-cap of Scotch-and-soda. Others crowded about the girl and showered their fulsome praise upon her. But not so Mrs. Ames and her daughter Kathleen. They stared at the lovely débutante with wonder and chagrin written legibly upon their bepowdered visages. And before the close of the function Kathleen had become so angrily jealous that she was grossly rude to Carmen when she bade her good night. For her own feeble light had been drowned in the powerful radiance of the girl from Simití. And from that moment the assassination of the character of the little Inca princess was decreed.

But, what with incessant striving to adapt herself to her environment, that she might search its farthest nook and angle; what with ceaseless efforts to check her almost momentary impulse to cry out against the vulgar display of modernity and the vicious inequity of privilege which she saw on every hand; what with her purity of thought; her rare ideals and selfless motives; her boundless love for humanity; and her passionate desire to so live her "message" that all the world might see and light their lamps at the torch of her burning love for God and her fellow-men, Carmen found her days a paradox, in that they were literally full of emptiness. After her début, event followed event in the social life of the now thoroughly gay metropolis, and the poor child found herself hustled home from one function, only to change her attire and hurry again, weary of spirit, into the waiting car, to be whisked off to another equally vapid. It seemed to the bewildered girl that she would never learn what was de rigueur; what conventions must be observed at one social event, but amended at another. Her tight gowns and limb-hampering skirts typified the soul-limitation of her tinsel, environment; her high-heeled shoes were exquisite torture; and her corsets, which her French maid drew until the poor girl gasped for air, seemed to her the cruellest device ever fashioned by the vacuous, enslaved human mind. Frequently she changed her clothing completely three and four times a day to meet her social demands. Night became day; and she had to learn to sleep until noon. She found no time for study; none even for reading. And conversation, such as was indulged under the Hawley-Crowles roof, was confined to insipid society happenings, with frequent sprinklings of racy items anent divorce, scandal, murder, or the debauch of manhood. From this she drew more and more aloof and became daily quieter.

It was seldom, too, that she could escape from the jaded circle of society revelers long enough to spend a quiet hour with the Beaubien. But when she could, she would open the reservoirs of her soul and give full vent to her pent-up emotions. "Oh," she would often exclaim, as she sat at the feet of the Beaubien in the quiet of the darkened music room, and gazed into the crackling fire, "how can they--how can they!"

Then the Beaubien would pat her soft, glowing cheek and murmur, "Wait, dearie, wait." And the tired girl would sigh and close her eyes and dream of the quiet of little Simití and of the dear ones there from whom she now heard no word, and yet whom she might not seek, because of the war which raged about her lowly birthplace.

The gay season was hardly a month advanced when Mrs. Ames angrily admitted to herself that her own crown was in gravest danger. The South American girl--and because of her, Mrs. Hawley-Crowles and her blasé sister--had completely captured New York's conspicuous circle. Mrs. Hawley-Crowles apparently did not lack for funds, but entertained with a display of reckless disregard for expense, and a carelessness of critical comment, that stirred the city to its depths and aroused expressions of wonder and admiration on every hand. The newspapers were full of her and her charming ward. Surely, if the girl's social prestige continued to soar, the Ames family soon would be relegated to the social "has-beens." And Mrs. Ames and her haughty daughter held many a serious conference over their dubious prospects.

Ames himself chuckled. Night after night, when the Beaubien's dinner guests had dispersed, he would linger to discuss the social war now in full progress, and to exchange with her witty comments on the successes of the combatants. One night he announced, "Lafelle is in England; and when he returns he is coming by way of the West Indies. I shall cable him to stop for a week at Cartagena, to see Wenceslas on a little matter of business for me."

The Beaubien smiled her comprehension. "Mrs. Hawley-Crowles has become nicely enmeshed in his net," she returned. "The altar to friend Jim is a beauty. Also, I hear that she is going to finance Ketchim's mining company in Colombia."

"Fine!" said Ames. "I learned to-day that Ketchim's engineer, Harris, has returned to the States. Couldn't get up the Magdalena river, on account of the fighting. There will be nothing doing there for a year yet."

"Just as well," commented the Beaubien. Then abruptly--"By the way, I now hold Mrs. Hawley-Crowles's notes to the amount of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. I want you to buy them from me and be ready to turn the screws when I tell you."

Ames roared with laughter. "Shrewd girl!" he exclaimed, pinching her cheek. "All right. I'll take them off your hands to-morrow. And by the way, I must meet this Carmen."

"You let her alone," said the Beaubien quickly in a low voice.

Ames wondered vaguely what she meant.

* * * * *

The inauguration of the Grand Opera season opened to Mrs. Hawley-Crowles another avenue for her astonishing social activities. With rare shrewdness she had contrived to outwit Mrs. Ames and secure the center box in the "golden horseshoe" at the Metropolitan. There, like a gaudy garden spider in its glittering web, she sat on the opening night, with her rapt protégée at her side, and sent her insolent challenge broadcast. Multimillionaires and their haughty, full-toileted dames were ranged on either side of her, brewers and packers, distillers and patent medicine concoctors, railroad magnates and Board of Trade plungers, some under indictment, others under the shadow of death, all under the mesmeric charm of gold. In the box at her left sat the Ames family, with their newly arrived guests, the Dowager Duchess of Altern and her son. Though inwardly boiling, Mrs. Ames was smiling and affable when she exchanged calls with the gorgeous occupants of the Hawley-Crowles box.

"So chawmed to meet you," murmured the heir of Altern, a callow youth of twenty-three, bowing over the dainty, gloved hand of Carmen. Then, as he adjusted his monocle and fixed his jaded eyes upon the fresh young girl, "Bah Jove!"

The gigantic form of Ames wedged in between the young man and Carmen. "I've heard a lot about you," he said genially, in a heavy voice that harmonized well with his huge frame; "but we haven't had an opportunity to get acquainted until to-night."

For some moments he stood holding her hand and looking steadily at her. The girl gazed up at him with her trustful brown eyes alight, and a smile playing about her mouth. "My, but you are big!" she naïvely exclaimed.

While she chatted brightly Ames held her hand and laughed at her frank, often witty, remarks. But then a curious, eager look came into his face, and he became quiet and reflective. He seemed unable to take his eyes from her. And when the girl gently drew her hand from his he laughed again, nervously.

"I--I know something about Colombia," he said, "and speak the language a bit. We'll have to get together often, so's I can brush up."

Then, apparently noticing Mrs. Hawley-Crowles and her sister for the first time--"Oh, so glad to see you both! Camorso's in fine voice to-night, eh?"

He wheeled about and stood again looking at Carmen, until she blushed under his close gaze and turned her head away. Then he went back to his box. But throughout the evening, whenever the girl looked in the direction of the Ames family, she met the steady, piercing gaze of the man's keen gray eyes. And they seemed to her like sharp steel points, cutting into the portals of her soul.

Night after night during the long season Carmen sat in the box and studied the operas that were produced on the boards before her wondering gaze. Always Mrs. Hawley-Crowles was with her. And generally, too, the young heir of Altern was there, occupying the chair next to the girl--which was quite as the solicitous Mrs. Hawley-Crowles had planned.

"Aw--deucedly fine show to-night, Miss Carmen," the youth ventured one evening, as he took his accustomed place close to her.

"The music is always beautiful," the girl responded. "But the play, like most of Grand Opera, is drawn from the darkest side of human life. It is a sordid picture of licentiousness and cruelty. Only for its setting in wonderful music, Grand Opera is generally such a depiction of sex-passion, of lust and murder, that it would not be permitted on the stage. A few years from now people will be horrified to remember that the preceding generation reveled in such blood scenes--just as we now speak with horror of the gladiatorial contests in ancient Rome."

The young man regarded her uncertainly. "But--aw--Miss Carmen," he hazarded, "we must be true to life, you know!" Having delivered himself of this oracular statement, the youth adjusted his monocle and settled back as if he had given finality to a weighty argument.

The girl looked at him pityingly. "You voice the cant of the modern writer, 'true lo life.' True to the horrible, human sense of life, that looks no higher than the lust of blood, and is satisfied with it, I admit. True to the unreal, temporal sense of existence, that is here to-day, and to-morrow has gone out in the agony of self-imposed suffering and death. True to that awful, false sense of life which we must put off if we would ever rise into the consciousness of real life, I grant you. But the production of these horrors on the stage, even in a framework of marvelous music, serves only to hold before us the awful models from which we must turn if we would hew out a better existence. Are you the better for seeing an exhibition of wanton murder on the stage, even though the participants wondrously sing their words of vengeance and passion?"

"But--aw--they serve as warnings; they show us the things we ought not to do, don't you know."

She smiled. "The sculptor who would chisel a beautiful form, does he set before him the misshapen body of a hunchback, in order that he may see what not to carve?" she asked. "And we who would transform the human sense of life into one of freedom from evil, can we build a perfect structure with such grewsome models as this before us? You don't see it now," she sighed; "you are in the world, and of it; and the world is deeply under the mesmeric belief of evil as a stern reality. But the day is coming when our musicians and authors will turn from such base material as this to nobler themes--themes which will excite our wonder and admiration, and stimulate the desire for purity of thought and deed--themes that will be beacon lights, and true guides. You don't understand. But you will, some day."

Mrs. Hawley-Crowles frowned heavily as she listened to this conversation, and she drew a sigh of relief when Carmen, sensing the futility of any attempt to impress her thought upon the young man, turned to topics which he could discuss with some degree of intelligence.

Late in the evening Ames dropped in and came directly to the Hawley-Crowles box. He brought a huge box of imported candy and a gorgeous bouquet of orchids, which he presented to Carmen. Mrs. Hawley-Crowles beamed upon him like the effulgent midday sun.

"Kathleen wants you, Reggy," Ames abruptly announced to the young man, whose lips were molding into a pout. "Little gathering up at the house. Take my car." His huge bulk loomed over the younger man like a mountain as he took him by the shoulders and turned him toward the exit.

"But I wish to see the opera!" protested the youth, with a vain show of resistance.

Ames said nothing; but his domineering personality forced the boy out of the box and into the corridor.

"But--Uncle Wilton--!"

Ames laughed curtly. Then he took the seat which his evicted nephew had vacated, and bent over Carmen. With a final hopeless survey of the situation, Reginald turned and descended to the cloak room, muttering dire but futile threats against his irresistible relative.

"Now, little girl!" Ames's manner unconsciously assumed an air of patronage. "This is the first real opportunity I've had to talk with you. Tell me, what do you think of New York?"

Carmen smiled up at him. "Well," she began uncertainly, "since I have thawed out, or perhaps have become more accustomed to the cold, I have begun to make mental notes. Already I have thousands of them. But they are not yet classified, and so I can hardly answer your question, Mr. Ames. But I am sure of one thing, and that is that for the first few months I was here I was too cold to even think!"

Ames laughed. "Yes," he agreed, "the change from the tropics was somewhat abrupt. But, aside from the climate?"

"It is like awaking from a deep sleep," answered Carmen meditatively. "In Simití we dream our lives away. In New York all is action; loud words; harsh commands; hurry; rush; endeavor, terrible, materialistic endeavor! Every person I see seems to be going somewhere. He may not know where he is going--but he is on the way. He may not know why he is going--but he must not be stopped. He has so few years to live; and he must pile up money before he goes. He must own an automobile; he must do certain things which his more fortunate neighbor does, before his little flame of life goes out and darkness falls upon him. I sometimes think that people here are trying to get away from themselves, but they don't know it. I think they come to the opera because they crave any sort of diversion that will make them forget themselves for a few moments, don't you?"

"H'm! well, I can't say," was Ames's meaningless reply, as he sat regarding the girl curiously.

"And," she continued, as if pleased to have an auditor who at least pretended to understand her, "the thing that now strikes me most forcibly is the great confusion that prevails here in everything, in your government, in your laws, in your business, in your society, and, in particular, in your religion. Why, in that you have hundreds of sects claiming a monopoly of truth; you have hundreds of churches, hundreds of religious or theological beliefs, hundreds of differing concepts of God--but you get nowhere! Why, it has come to such a pass that, if Jesus were to appear physically on earth to-day, I am sure he would be evicted from his own Church!"

"Well, yes, I guess that's so," commented Ames, quite at sea in such conversation. "But we solid business men have found that religious emotion never gets a man anywhere. It's weakening. Makes a man effeminate, and utterly unfits him for business. I wouldn't have a man in my employ who was a religious enthusiast."

"But Jesus was a religious enthusiast," she protested.

"I doubt if there ever was such a person," he answered dryly.

"Why, the Bible--"

"Is the most unfortunate and most misunderstood piece of literature ever written," he interrupted. "And the Church, well, I regard it as the greatest fraud ever perpetrated upon the human race."

"You mean that to apply to every church?"

"It fits them all."

She studied his face for a few moments. He returned her glance as steadily. But their thoughts were running in widely divergent channels. The conversational topic of the moment had no interest whatsoever for the man. But this brilliant, sparkling girl--there was something in those dark eyes, that soft voice, that brown hair--by what anomaly did this beautiful creature come out of desolate, mediaeval Simití?

"Mr. Ames, you do not know what religion is."

"No? Well, and what is it?"

"It is that which binds us to God."

"And that?"

"Love."

No, he knew not the meaning of the word. Or--wait--did he? His thought broke restraint and flew wildly back--but he caught it, and rudely forced it into its wonted channel. But, did he love his fellow-men? Certainly not! What would that profit him in dollars and cents? Did he love his wife? his children? The thought brought a cynical laugh to his lips. Carmen looked up at him wonderingly. "You will have to, you know," she said quixotically.

Then she reached out a hand and laid it on his. He looked down at it, so soft, so white, so small, and he contrasted it with the huge, hairy bulk of his own. This little girl was drawing him. He felt it, felt himself yielding. He was beginning to look beyond the beautiful features, the rare grace and charm of physical personality, which had at first attracted only the baser qualities of his nature, and was seeing glimpses of a spiritual something which lay back of all that--infinitely more beautiful, unspeakably richer, divine, sacred, untouchable.

"Of course you will attend the Charity Ball, Mr. Ames?" The thin voice of Mrs. Hawley-Crowles jarred upon his ear like a shrill discord. Ames turned savagely upon her. Then he quickly found himself again.

"No," he laughed harshly. "But I shall be represented by my family. And you?" He looked at Carmen.

"Most assuredly," returned Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, taking the query to herself. "That is, if my French dressmaker does not fail me. She is dreadfully exasperating! What will Mrs. Ames wear, do you think?" She arched her brows at him as she propounded this innocent question.

Ames chuckled. "I'll tell you what it is this year," he sagely replied. "It's diamonds in the heels!" He gave a sententious nod of his head. "I overheard Kathleen and her mother discussing plans. And--do you want to know next season's innovation? By George! I'm a regular spy." He stopped and laughed heartily at his own treasonable deceit.

"Yes! yes!" whispered Mrs. Hawley-Crowles eagerly, as she drew her chair closer. "What is it?"

"One condition," replied Ames, holding up a thick finger.

"Of course! Anything!" returned the grasping woman.

"Well, I want to get better acquainted with your charming ward," he whispered.

"Of course; and I want you to know her better. That can be arranged very easily. Now what's the innovation?"

"Colored wigs," said Ames, with a knowing look.

Mrs. Hawley-Crowles settled back with a smile of supreme satisfaction. She would boldly anticipate next season at the coming Charity Ball. Then, leaning over toward Ames, she laid her fan upon his arm. "Can't you manage to come and see us some time, my sister and Carmen? Any time," she added. "Just call me up a little in advance."

The blare of trumpets and the crash of drums drew their attention again to the stage. Ames rose and bowed his departure. A business associate in a distant box had beckoned him. Mrs. Hawley-Crowles dismissed him reluctantly; then turned her wandering attention to the play.

But Carmen sat shrouded in thoughts that were not stimulated by the puppet-show before her. The tenor shrieked out his tender passion, and the tubby soprano sank into his inadequate arms with languishing sighs. Carmen heeded not their stage amours. She saw in the glare before her the care-lined face of the priest of Simití; she saw the grim features and set jaw of her beloved, black-faced Rosendo, as he led her through the dripping jungle; she saw Anita's blind, helpless babe; she saw the little newsboy of Cartagena; and her heart welled with a great love for them all; and she buried her face in her hands and wept softly.

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Chapter 15

"Wait, my little princess, wait," the Beaubien had said, when Carmen, her eyes flowing and her lips quivering, had again thrown herself into that strange woman's arms and poured out her heart's surcease. "It will not be long now. I think I see the clouds forming."

"I want to go back to Simití, to Padre Josè, to my home," wailed the girl. "I don't understand the ways and the thoughts of these people. They don't know God--they don't know what love is--they don't know anything but money, and clothes, and sin, and death. When I am with them I gasp, I choke--"

"Yes, dearest, I understand," murmured the woman softly, as she stroked the brown head nestling upon her shoulder. "It is social asphyxia. And many even of the 'four hundred' are suffering from the same disease; but they would die rather than admit it. Poor, blind fools!"

To no one could the attraction which had drawn Carmen and the Beaubien together seem stranger, more inexplicable, than to that lone woman herself. Yet it existed, irresistible. And both acknowledged it, nor would have had it otherwise. To Carmen, the Beaubien was a sympathetic confidante and a wise counselor. The girl knew nothing of the woman's past or present life. She tried to see in her only the reality which she sought in every individual--the reality which she felt that Jesus must have seen clearly back of every frail mortal concept of humanity. And in doing this, who knows?--she may have transformed the sordid, soiled woman of the world into something more than a broken semblance of the image of God. To the Beaubien, this rare child, the symbol of love, of purity, had become a divine talisman, touching a dead soul into a sense of life before unknown. If Carmen leaned upon her, she, on the other hand, bent daily closer to the beautiful girl; opened her slowly warming heart daily wider to her; twined her lonely arms daily closer about the radiant creature who had come so unexpectedly into her empty, sinful life.

"But, mother dear"--the Beaubien had long since begged Carmen always to address her thus when they were sharing alone these hours of confidence--"they will not listen to my message! They laugh and jest about real things!"

"True, dearie. And yet you tell me that the Bible says wise men laughed at the great teacher, Jesus."

"Oh, yes! And his message--oh, mother dearest, his message would have helped them so, if they had only accepted it! It would have changed their lives, healed their diseases, and saved them from death. And my message"--her lip quivered--"my message is only his--it is the message of love. But they won't let me tell it."

"Then, sweet, live it. They can not prevent that, can they?"

"I do live it. But--I am so out of place among them. They scoff at real things. They mock all that is noble. Their talk is so coarse, so low and degraded. They have no culture. They worship money. They don't know what miserable failures they all are. And Mrs. Hawley-Crowles--"

The Beaubien's jaw set. "The social cormorant!" she muttered.

"--she will not let me speak of God in her house. She told me to keep my views to myself and never voice them to her friends. And she says I must marry either a millionaire or a foreign noble."

"Humph! And become a snobbish expatriate! Marry a decadent count, and then shake the dust of this democratic country from your feet forever! Go to London or Paris or Vienna, and wear tiaras and coronets, and speak of disgraceful, boorish America in hushed whispers! The empty-headed fool! She forgets that the tarnished name she bears was dragged up out of the ruck of the impecunious by me when I received Jim Crowles into my house! And that I gave him what little gloss he was able to take on!"

"Mother dear--I would leave them--only, they need love, oh, so much!"

The Beaubien strained her to her bosom. "They need you, dearie; they little realize how they need you! I, myself, did not know until you came to me. There, I didn't mean to let those tears get away from me." She laughed softly as Carmen looked up anxiously into her face. "Now come," she went on brightly, "we must plan for the Charity Ball."

A look of pain swept over the girl's face. The Beaubien bent and kissed her. "Wait, dearie," she repeated. "You will not leave society voluntarily. Keep your light burning. They can not extinguish it. They will light their own lamps at yours--or they will thrust you from their doors. And then," she muttered, as her teeth snapped together, "you will come to me."

Close on the heels of the opera season followed the Charity Ball, the Horse Show, and the Fashion Show in rapid succession, with numberless receptions, formal parties, and nondescript social junketings interspersed. During these fleeting hours of splash and glitter Mrs. Hawley-Crowles trod the air with the sang-froid and exhilaration of an expert aviator. Backed by the Beaubien millions, and with the wonderful South American girl always at her right hand, the worldly ambitious woman swept everything before her, cut a social swath far wider than the glowering Mrs. Ames had ever attempted, and marched straight to the goal of social leadership, almost without interference. She had apparently achieved other successes, too, of the first importance. She had secured the assistance of Ames himself in matters pertaining to her finances; and the Beaubien was actively coöperating with her in the social advancement of Carmen. It is true, she gasped whenever her thought wandered to her notes which the Beaubien held, notes which demanded every penny of her principal as collateral. And she often meditated very soberly over the large sums which she had put into the purchase of Simití stock, at the whispered suggestions of Ames, and under the irresistibly pious and persuasive eloquence of Philip O. Ketchim, now president of that flourishing but as yet non-productive company. But then, one day, an idea occurred to her, and she forthwith summoned Carmen into the library.

"You see, my dear," she said, after expounding to the girl certain of her thoughts anent the famous mine, "I do not want Mr. Ketchim to have any claim upon you for the expense which he incurred on account of your six months in the Elwin school. That thought, as well as others relating to your complete protection, makes it seem advisable that you transfer to me your share in the mine, or in the Simití company. See, I give you a receipt for the same, showing that you have done this as part payment for the great expense to which I have been put in introducing you to society and in providing for your wants here. It is merely formal, of course. And it keeps your share still in our family, of which you are and always will be a member; but yet removes all liability from you. Of course, you know nothing about business matters, and so you must trust me implicitly. Which I am sure you do, in view of what I have done for you, don't you, dear?"

Of course Carmen did; and of course she unhesitatingly transferred her claim on La Libertad to the worthy Mrs. Hawley-Crowles. Whereupon the good woman tenderly kissed the innocent child, and clasped a string of rich pearls about the slender, white neck. And Carmen later told the Beaubien, who said nothing, but frowned darkly as she repeated the tidings over her private wire to J. Wilton Ames. But that priest of finance only chuckled and exclaimed: "Excellent, my dear! Couldn't be better! By the way, I had a cable from Lafelle this morning, from Cartagena. Oh, yes, everything's all right. Good-bye." But the Beaubien hung up the receiver with a presentiment that everything was far from right, despite his bland assurance. And she regretted bitterly now that she had not warned Carmen against this very thing.

The Charity Ball that season was doubtless the most brilliant function of its kind ever held among a people who deny the impossible. The newspapers had long vied with one another in their advertisements and predictions; they afterward strove mightily to outdo themselves in their vivid descriptions of the gorgeous fête. The decorative effects far excelled anything ever attempted in the name of "practical" charity. The display of gowns had never before been even closely approximated. The scintillations from jewels whose value mounted into millions was like the continuous flash of the electric spark. And the huge assemblage embraced the very cream of the nobility, the aristocracy, the rich and exclusive caste of a great people whose Constitution is founded on the equality of men, and who are wont to gather thus annually for a few hours to parade their material vestments and divert their dispirited mentalities under the guise of benefaction to a class for whom they rarely hold a loving thought.

Again the subtle Mrs. Hawley-Crowles had planned and executed a coup. Mrs. Ames had subscribed the munificent sum of twenty-five thousand dollars to charity a week before the ball. Mrs. Hawley-Crowles had waited for this. Then she gloated as she telephoned to the various newspaper offices that her subscription would be fifty thousand. Did she give a new note to the Beaubien for this amount? That she did--and she obtained the money on the condition that the little Inca princess should lead the grand march. Of course, Mrs. Hawley-Crowles knew that she must gracefully yield first place to the South American girl; and yet she contrived to score a triumph in apparent defeat. For, stung beyond endurance, Mrs. Ames and her daughter Kathleen at the last moment refused to attend the function, alleging fatigue from a season unusually exacting. The wily Mrs. Hawley-Crowles had previously secured the languid young Duke of Altern as a partner for Carmen--and then was most agreeably thwarted by Ames himself, who, learning that his wife and daughter would not attend, abruptly announced that he himself would lead the march with Carmen.

Why not? Was it not quite proper that the city's leading man of finance should, in the absence of his wife and daughter, and with their full and gratuitous permission--nay, at their urgent request, so it was told--lead with this fair young damsel, this tropical flower, who, as rumor had it, was doubtless a descendant of the royal dwellers in ancient Cuzco?

"Quite proper, O tempora, O mores!" murmured one Amos A. Hitt, erstwhile Presbyterian divine, explorer, and gentleman of leisure, as he settled back in his armchair in the fashionable Weltmore apartments and exhaled a long stream of tobacco smoke through his wide nostrils. "And, if I can procure a ticket, I shall give myself the pleasure of witnessing this sacred spectacle, produced under the deceptive mask of charity," he added.

In vain the Beaubien labored with Ames when she learned of his intention--though she said nothing to Carmen. Ames had yielded to her previously expressed wish that he refrain from calling at the Hawley-Crowles mansion, or attempting to force his attentions upon the young girl. But in this matter he remained characteristically obdurate. And thereby a little rift was started. For the angry Beaubien, striving to shield the innocent girl, had vented her abundant wrath upon the affable Ames, and had concluded her denunciation with a hint of possible exposure of certain dark facts of which she was sole custodian. Ames smiled, bowed, and courteously kissed her hand, as he left her stormy presence; but he did not yield. And Carmen went to the Ball.

Through the perfumed air and the garish light tore the crashing notes of the great band. The loud hum of voices ceased, and all eyes turned to the leaders of the grand march, as they stepped forth at one end of the great auditorium. Then an involuntary murmur arose from the multitude--a murmur of admiration, of astonishment, of envy. The gigantic form of Ames stood like a towering pillar, the embodiment of potential force, the epitome of human power, physical and mental. His massive shoulders were thrown back as if in haughty defiance of comment, critical or commendatory. The smile which flitted about his strong, clean-shaven face bespoke the same caution as the gentle uplifting of a tiger's paw--behind it lay all that was humanly terrible, cunning, heartless, and yet, in a sense, fascinating. His thick, brown hair, scarcely touched with gray, lay about his great head like a lion's mane. He raised a hand and gently pushed it back over the lofty brow. Then he bent and offered an arm to the slender wisp of a girl at his side.

"Good God!" murmured a tall, angular man in the crowd. "Who is she?"

"I don't know, Hitt," replied the friend addressed. "But they say she belongs to the Inca race."

The graceful girl moving by the side of her giant escort seemed like a slender ray of light, a radiant, elfish form, transparent, intangible, gliding softly along with a huge, black shadow. She was simply clad, all in white. About her neck hung a string of pearls, and at her waist she wore the rare orchids which Ames had sent her that afternoon. But no one saw her dress. No one marked the pure simplicity of her attire. The absence of sparkling jewels and resplendent raiment evoked no comment. The multitude saw but her wonderful face; her big eyes, uplifted in trustful innocence to the massive form at her side; her rich brown hair, which glittered like string-gold in the strong light that fell in torrents upon it.

"Hitt, she isn't human! There's a nimbus about her head!"

"I could almost believe it," whispered that gentleman, straining his long neck as she passed before him. "God! has she fallen into Ames's net?"

Immediately behind Carmen and Ames strode the enraptured Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, who saw not, neither heard, and who longed for no further taste of heaven than this stupendous triumph which she had won for herself and the girl. Her heavy, unshapely form was squeezed into a marvelous costume of gold brocade. A double ballet ruffle of stiff white tulle encircled it about the hips as a drapery. The bodice was of heavy gold net. A pleated band of pale moire, in a delicate shade of pink, crossed the left shoulder and was caught at the waist in a large rose bow, ambassadorial style. A double necklace of diamonds, one bearing a great pendant of emeralds, and the other an alternation of emeralds and diamonds, encircled her short, thick neck. A diamond coronet fitted well around her wonderful amber-colored wig--for, true to her determination, she had anticipated the now passée Mrs. Ames and had boldly launched the innovation of colored wigs among the smart set. An ivory, hand-painted fan, of great value, dangled from her thick wrist. And, as she lifted her skirts to an unnecessary height, the gaping people caught the glitter of a row of diamonds in each high, gilded heel.

At her side the young Duke of Altern shuffled, his long, thin body curved like a kangaroo, and his monocle bent superciliously upon the mass of common clay about him. "Aw, beastly crush, ye know," he murmured from time to time to the unhearing dame at his right. And then, as she replied not, he fell to wondering if she fully realized who he was.

Around and across the great hall the gorgeous pageant swept. The big-mouthed horns bellowed forth their noisy harmony. In the distant corridors great illuminated fountains softly plashed. At the tables beyond, sedulous, touting waiters were hurriedly extracting corks from frosted bottle necks. The rare porcelain and cut glass shone and glittered in rainbow tints. The revelers waxed increasingly merry and care-free as they lightly discussed poverty over rich viands and sparkling Burgundy. Still further beyond, the massive oak doors, with their leaded-glass panes, shut out the dark night and the bitter blasts of winter. And they shut out, too, another, but none the less unreal, externalization of the mortal thought which has found expression in a social system "too wicked for a smile."

"God, no--I'd get arrested! I can't!"

The frail, hungry woman who stood before the great doors clutched her wretched shawl closer about her thin shoulders. Her teeth chattered as she stood shivering in the chill wind. Then she hurried away.

At the corner of the building the cold blast almost swept her off her feet. A man, dirty and unkempt, who had been waiting in an alley, ran out and seized her.

"I say, Jude, ain't ye goin' in? Git arrested--ye'd spend the night in a warm cell, an' that's better'n our bunk, ain't it?"

"I'm goin' to French Lucy's," the woman whispered hoarsely. "I'm dead beat!"

"Huh! Ye've lost yer looks, Jude, an' ol' Lucy ain't a-goin' to take ye in. We gotta snipe somepin quick--or starve! Look, we'll go down to Mike's place, an' then come back here when it's out, and ye kin pinch a string, or somepin, eh? Gawd, it's cold!"

The woman glanced back at the lights. For a moment she stood listening to the music from within. A sob shook her, and she began to cough violently. The man took her arm, not unkindly; and together they moved away into the night.

* * * * *

"Well, little girl, at last we are alone. Now we can exchange confidences." It was Ames talking. He had, late in the evening, secured seats well hidden behind a mass of palms, and thither had led Carmen. "What do you think of it all? Quite a show, eh? Ever see anything like this in Simití?"

Carmen looked up at him. She thought him wonderfully handsome. She was glad to get away for a moment from the crowd, from the confusion, and from the unwelcome attentions of the now thoroughly smitten young Duke of Altern.

"No," she finally made answer, "I didn't know there were such things in the world."

Ames laughed pleasantly. How refreshing was this ingenuous girl! And what a discovery for him! A new toy--one that would last a long time. But he must be careful of her.

"Yes," he went on genially, "I'll wager there's millions of dollars' worth of jewelry here to-night."

"Oh!" gasped Carmen. "And are the people going to sell it and give the money to the poor?"

"Sell it! Ha! ha! Well, I should say not!"

"But--this is a--a charity--"

"Oh, I see. Quite so. No, it's the money derived from the sale of tickets that goes to the poor."

"And how much is that?"

"I haven't the slightest idea."

"But--aren't you interested in the poor?"

"Of course, of course," he hastened to assure her, in his easy casual tone.

For a long time the girl sat reflecting, while he studied her, speculating eagerly on her next remark. Then it came abruptly:

"Mr. Ames, I have thought a great deal about it, and I think you people by your charity, such as this, only make more charity necessary. Why don't you do away with poverty altogether?"

"Do away with it? Well, that's quite impossible, you know. 'The poor ye have always with you', eh? You see, I know my Bible."

She threw him a glance of astonishment. He was mocking her! She was deeply serious, for charity to her meant love, and love was all in all.

"No," she finally replied, shaking her head, "you do not know your Bible. It is the poor thought that you have always with you, the thought of separation from good. And that thought becomes manifested outwardly in what is called poverty."

He regarded her quizzically, while a smile played about his mouth.

"Why don't you get at the very root of the trouble, and destroy the poverty-thought, the thought that there can be any separation from God, who is infinite good?" she continued earnestly.

"Well, my dear girl, as for me, I don't know anything about God. As for you, well, you are very innocent in worldly matters. Poverty, like death, is inevitable, you know."

"You are mistaken," she said simply. "Neither is inevitable."

"Well, well," he returned brightly, "that's good news! Then there is no such thing as 'the survival of the fittest,' and the weak needn't necessarily sink, eh?"

She looked him squarely in the eyes. "Do you consider, Mr. Ames, that you have survived as one of the fittest?"

"H'm! Well, now--what would you say about that?"

"I should say decidedly no," was the blunt reply.

A dark shade crossed his face, and he bit his lip. People did not generally talk thus to him. And yet--this wisp of a girl! Pshaw! She was very amusing. And, heavens above! how beautiful, as she sat there beside him, her head erect, and her face delicately flushed. He reached over and took her hand. Instantly she drew it away.

"You are the kind," she went on, "who give money to the poor, and then take it away from them again. All the money which these rich people here to-night are giving to charity has been wrested from the poor. And you give only a part of it back to them, at that. This Ball is just a show, a show of dress and jewels. Why, it only sets an example which makes others unhappy, envious, and discontented. Don't you see that? You ought to."

"My dear little girl," he said in a patronizing tone, "don't you think you are assuming a great deal? I'm sure I'm not half so bad as you paint me."

Carmen smiled. "Well, the money you give away has got to come from some source, hasn't it? And you manipulate the stock market and put through wheat corners and all that, and catch the poor people and take their money from them! Charity is love. But your idea of charity makes me pity you. Up here I find a man can pile up hundreds of millions by stifling competition, by debauching legislatures, by piracy and legalized theft, and then give a tenth of it to found a university, and so atone for his crimes. That is called charity. Oh, I know a lot about such things! I've been studying and thinking a great deal since I came to the United States."

"Have you come with a mission?" he bantered. And there was a touch of aspersion in his voice.

"I've come with a message," she replied eagerly.

"Well," he said sharply, "let me warn and advise you: don't join the ranks of the muck-rakers, as most ambitious reformers with messages do. We've plenty of 'em now. I can tear down as easily as you or anybody else. But to build something better is entirely another matter."

"But, Mr. Ames, I've got something better!"

"Yes?" His tone spoke incredulous irony. "Well, what is it, if I may ask?"

"Love."

"Love, eh? Well, perhaps that's so," he said, bending toward her and again attempting to take her hand.

"I guess," she said, drawing back quickly, "you don't know what love is, do you?"

"No," he whispered softly. "I don't really believe I do. Will you teach me?"

"Of course I will," she said brightly. "But you'll have to live it. And you'll have to do just as I tell you," holding up an admonitory finger.

"I'm yours to command, little woman," he returned in mock seriousness.

"Well," she began very softly, "you must first learn that love is just as much a principle as the Binomial Theorem in algebra. Do you know what that is? And you must apply it just as you would apply any principle, to everything. And, oh, it is important!"

"You sweet little thing," he murmured absently, gazing down into her glowing face. "Who taught you such stuff? Where did you learn it? I wonder--I wonder if you really are a daughter of the Incas."

She leaned back and laughed heartily. "Yes," she said, "I am a princess. Of course! Don't I look like one?"

"You look like--I wonder--pshaw!" he passed his hand across his eyes. "Yes, you certainly are a princess. And--do you know?--I wish I might be your prince."

"Oh, you couldn't! Padre Josè has that honor." But then her bright smile faded, and she looked off wistfully down the long corridor.

"Who is he?" demanded Ames savagely. "I'll send him a challenge to-night!"

"No," she murmured gently, "you can't. He's way down in Simití. And, oh, he was so good to me! He made me leave that country on account of the war."

The man started slightly. This innocent girl little knew that one of the instigators of that bloody revolution sat there beside her. Then a new thought flashed into his brain. "What is the full name of this priest?" he suddenly asked.

"Josè--Josè de Rincón," she whispered reverently.

Josè de Rincón--of Simití--whom Wenceslas had made the scapegoat of the revolution! Why, yes, that was the man! And who, according to a recent report from Wenceslas, had been arrested and--

"A--a--where did you say this--this Josè was, little girl?" he asked gently.

"In Simití," she replied. "He is working out his problem."

His eyes shifted quickly from hers. But he could not hold them away.

"His problem?"

"Yes. You know, he never was a priest at heart. But, though he saw the truth, in part, he was not able to prove it enough to set himself free; and so when I came away he stayed behind to work out his problem. And he will work it all out," she mused abstractedly, looking off into the distance; "he will work it all out and come--to me. I am--I am working with him, now--and for him. And--" her voice dropped to a whisper, "I love him, oh, so much!"

Ames's steely eyes narrowed. His mouth opened; then shut again with a sharp snap. That beautiful creature now belonged to him, and to none other! Were there other claimants, he would crush them without mercy! As for this apostate priest, Josè--humph! if he still lived he should rot the rest of his days in the reeking dungeons of San Fernando!

Carmen looked up. "When he comes to me," she said softly, "we are going to give ourselves to the whole world."

Ames appeared not to hear.

"And--perhaps--perhaps, by that time, you will be--be--"

"Well?" snapped the man, irritated by the return of her thought to himself.

"Different," finished the girl gently.

"Humph! Different, eh?"

"Yes. Perhaps by that time you will--you will love everybody," she murmured. "Perhaps you won't go on piling up big mountains of money that you can't use, and that you won't let anybody else use."

Ames frowned upon her. "Yes?" he said ironically.

"You will know then that Jesus founded his great empire on love. Your empire, you know, is human business. But you will find that such empires crumble and fall. And yours will, like all the rest."

"Say," he exclaimed, turning full upon her and seeming to bear her down by his tremendous personality, "you young and inexperienced reformers might learn a few things, too, if your prejudices could be surmounted. Has it ever occurred to you that we men of business think not so much about accumulating money as about achieving success? Do you suppose you could understand that money-making is but a side issue with us?"

"Achieving success!" she echoed, looking wonderingly at him. "Well--are you--a success?"

He started to reply. Then he checked himself. A flush stole across his face. Then his eyes narrowed.

"Yes," the girl went on, as if in quiet soliloquy, "I suppose you are--a tremendous worldly success. And this Ball--it is a splendid success, too. Thousands of dollars will be raised for the poor. And then, next year, the same thing will have to be done again. Your charities cost you hundreds of millions every year up here. And, meantime, you rich men will go right on making more money at the expense of your fellow-men--and you will give a little of it to the poor when the next Charity Ball comes around. It's like a circle, isn't it?" she said, smiling queerly up at him. "It has no end, you know."

Ames had now decided to swallow his annoyance and meet the girl with the lance of frivolity. "Yes, I guess that's so," he began. "But of course you will admit that the world is slowly getting better, and that world-progress must of necessity be gradual. We can't reform all in a minute, can we?"

She shook her head. "I don't know how fast you might reform if you really, sincerely tried. But I think it would be very fast. And if you, a great, big, powerful man, with the most wonderful opportunities in the world, should really try to be a success, why--well, I'm sure you'd make very rapid progress, and help others like you by setting such a great example. For you are a wonderful man--you really are."

Ames looked at her long and quizzically. What did the girl mean? Then he took her hand, this time without resistance.

"Tell me, little girl--although I know there can be no doubt of it--are you a success?"

She raised her luminous eyes to his. "Yes," she replied simply.

He let fall her hand in astonishment. "Well!" he ejaculated, "would you mind telling me just why?"

She smiled up at him, and her sweet trustfulness drew his sagging heartstrings suddenly taut.

"Because," she said simply, "I strive every moment to 'acquire that mind which was in Christ Jesus.'"

Silence fell upon them. From amusement to wonder, to irritation, to anger, then to astonishment, and a final approximation to something akin to reverent awe had been the swift course of the man's emotions as he sat in this secluded nook beside this strange girl. The poisoned arrows of his worldly thought had broken one by one against the shield of her protecting faith. His badinage had returned to confound himself. The desire to possess had utterly fled before the conviction that such thought was as wildly impossible as iniquitous.

Then he suddenly became conscious that the little body beside him had drawn closer--that it was pressing against him--that a little hand had stolen gently into his--and that a soft voice, soft as the summer winds that sigh among the roses, was floating to his ears.

"To be really great is to be like that wonderful man, Jesus. It is to know that through him the great Christ-principle worked and did those things which the world will not accept, because it thinks them miracles. It is to know that God is love, and to act that knowledge. It is to know that love is the Christ-principle, and that it will destroy every error, every discord, everything that is unlike itself. It is to yield your present false sense of happiness and good to the true sense of God as infinite good. It is to bring every thought into captivity to this Christ-principle, love. It is to stop looking at evil as a reality. It is to let go your hold on it, and let it fade away before the wonderful truth that God is everywhere, and that there isn't anything apart from Him. Won't you try it? You will have to, some day. I have tried it. I know it's true. I've proved it."

* * * * *

How long they sat in the quiet that followed, neither knew. Then the man suffered himself to be led silently back to the ball room again. And when he had recovered and restored his worldly self, the bright little image was no longer at his side.

"Stand here, Jude, an' when they begins to come out to their gasoline carts grab anything ye can, an' git. I'll work over by the door."

The shivering woman crept closer to the curb, and the man slouched back against the wall close to the exit from which the revelers would soon emerge. A distant clock over a jeweler's window chimed the hour of four. A moment later the door opened, and a lackey came out and loudly called the number of the Hawley-Crowles car. That ecstatically happy woman, with Carmen and the obsequious young Duke of Altern, appeared behind him in the flood of light.

As the big car drew softly up, the wretched creature whom the man had called Jude darted from behind it and plunged full at Carmen. But the girl had seen her coming, and she met her with outstretched arm. The glare from the open door fell full upon them.

"Jude!"

"God!" cried the woman. "It's the little kid!"

She turned to flee. Carmen held her. With a quick movement the girl tore the string of pearls from her neck and thrust it into Jude's hand. The latter turned swiftly and darted into the blackness of the street. Then Carmen hurriedly entered the car, followed by her stupefied companions. It had all been done in a moment of time.

"Good heavens!" cried Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, when she had recovered her composure sufficiently to speak. "What does this mean? What did you do?"

But Carmen replied not. And the Duke of Altern rubbed his weak eyes and tried hard to think.

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Chapter 16

Before Mrs. Hawley-Crowles sought her bed that morning the east was red with the winter sun. "The loss of the pearls is bad enough," she exclaimed in conclusion, glowering over the young girl who sat before her, "for I paid a good three thousand for the string! But, in addition, to scandalize me before the world--oh, how could you? And this unspeakable Jude--and that awful house--heavens, girl! Who would believe your story if it should get out?" The worried woman's face was bathed in cold perspiration.

"But--she saved me from--from that place," protested the harassed Carmen. "She was poor and cold--I could see that. Why should I have things that I don't need when others are starving?"

Mrs. Hawley-Crowles shook her weary head in despair. Her sister, Mrs. Reed, who had sat fixing the girl with her cold eyes throughout the stormy interview following their return from the ball, now offered a suggestion. "The thing to do is to telephone immediately to all the newspapers, and say that her beads were stolen last night."

"But they weren't stolen," asserted the girl. "I gave them to her--"

"Go to your room!" commanded Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, at the limit of her endurance. "And never, under any circumstances, speak of this affair to any one--never!"

The social crown, which had rested none too securely upon the gilded wig of the dynamic Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, had been given a jolt that set it tottering.

* * * * *

It was very clear to Mrs. J. Wilton Ames after the Charity Ball that she was engaged in a warfare to the death, and with the most relentless of enemies. Nothing short of the miraculous could now dethrone the detested Mrs. Hawley-Crowles and her beautiful, mysterious ward. She dolefully acknowledged to herself and to the sulking Kathleen that she had been asleep, that she had let her foot slip, and that her own husband's conduct in leading the grand march with Carmen bade fair to give the coup de grâce to a social prestige which for many weeks had been decidedly on the wane.

"Mamma, we'll have to think up some new stunts," said the dejected Kathleen over the teacups the noon following the ball. "Why, they've even broken into the front page of the newspapers with a fake jewelry theft! Look, they pretend that the little minx was robbed of her string of pearls last night on leaving the hall. I call that pretty cheap notoriety!"

Mrs. Ames's lip curled in disdain as she read the news item. "An Inca princess, indeed! Nobody knows who she is, nor what! Why doesn't somebody take the trouble to investigate her? They'd probably find her an outcast."

"Couldn't papa look her up?" suggested Kathleen.

Mrs. Ames did not reply. She had no wish to discuss her husband, after the affair of the previous evening. And, even in disregard of that, she would not have gone to him with the matter. For she and her consort, though living under the same roof, nevertheless saw each other but seldom. At times they met in the household elevator; and for the sake of appearances they managed to dine together with Kathleen in a strained, unnatural way two or three times a week, at which times no mention was ever made of the son who had been driven from the parental roof. There were no exchanges of confidences or affection, and Mrs. Ames knew but little of the working of his mentality. She was wholly under the dominance of her masterful husband, merely an accessory to his mode of existence. He used her, as he did countless others, to buttress a certain side of his very complex life. As for assistance in determining Carmen's status, there was none to be obtained from him, strongly attracted by the young girl as he had already shown himself to be. Indeed, she might be grateful if the attachment did not lead to far unhappier consequences!

"Larry Beers said yesterday that he had something new," she replied irrelevantly to Kathleen's question. "He has in tow a Persian dervish, who sticks knives through his mouth, and drinks melted lead, and bites red-hot pokers, and a lot of such things. Larry says he's the most wonderful he's ever seen, and I'm going to have him and a real Hindu swami for next Wednesday evening."

New York's conspicuous set indeed would have languished often but for the social buffoonery of the clever Larry Beers, who devised new diversions and stimulating mental condiments for the jaded brains of that gilded cult. His table ballets, his bizarre parlor circuses, his cunningly devised fads in which he set forth his own inimitable antics, won him the motley and the cap and bells of this tinseled court, and forced him well out into the glare of publicity, which was what he so much desired.

And by that much it made him as dangerous as any stupid anarchist who toils by candle-light over his crude bombs. For by it he taught the great mass of citizenship who still retained their simple ideals of reason and respect that there existed a social caste, worshipers of the golden calf, to whom the simple, humdrum virtues were quite unendurable, and who, utterly devoid of conscience, would quaff champagne and dance on the raw, quivering hearts of their fellow-men with glee, if thereby their jaded appetites for novelty and entertainment might be for the moment appeased.

And so Larry Beers brought his swami and dervish to the Ames mansion, and caused his hostess to be well advertised in the newspapers the following day. And he caused the eyes of Carmen to bulge, and her thought to swell with wonder, as she gazed. And he caused the bepowdered nose of Mrs. Hawley-Crowles to stand a bit closer to the perpendicular, while she sat devising schemes to cast a shade over this clumsy entertainment.

The chief result was that, a week later, Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, still running true to form, retorted with a superb imitation of the French Bal de l'Opéra, once so notable under the Empire. The Beaubien had furnished the inspiring idea--and the hard cash.

"I wonder why I do it?" that woman had meditated. "Why do I continue to lend her money and take her notes? I wanted to ruin her, at first. I don't--I don't seem to feel that way now. Is it because of Carmen? Or is it because I hate that Ames woman so? I wonder if I do still hate her? At any rate I'm glad to see Carmen oust the proud hussy from her place. It's worth all I've spent, even if I burn the notes I hold against Jim Crowles's widow."

And often after that, when at night the Beaubien had sought her bed, she would lie for hours in the dim light meditating, wondering. "It's Carmen!" she would always conclude. "It's Carmen. She's making me over again. I'm not the same woman I was when she came into my life. Oh, God bless her--if there is a God!"

The mock Bal de l'Opéra was a magnificent fête. All the members of the smart set were present, and many appeared in costumes representing flowers, birds, and vegetables. Carmen went as a white rose; and her great natural beauty, set off by an exquisite costume, made her the fairest flower of the whole garden. The Duke of Altern, costumed as a long carrot, fawned in her wake throughout the evening. The tubbily girthy Gannette, dressed to represent a cabbage, opposed her every step as he bobbed before her, showering his viscous compliments upon the graceful creature. Kathleen Ames appeared as a bluebird; and she would have picked the fair white rose to pieces if she could, so wildly jealous did she become at the sight of Carmen's further triumph.

About midnight, when the revelry was at its height, a door at the end of the hall swung open, and a strong searchlight was turned full upon it. The orchestra burst into the wailing dead march from Saul, and out through the glare of light stalked the giant form of J. Wilton Ames, gowned in dead black to represent a King Vulture, and with a blood-red fez surmounting his cruel mask. As he stepped out upon the platform which had been constructed to represent the famous bridge in "Sumurun," and strode toward the main floor, a murmur involuntarily rose from the assemblage. It was a murmur of awe, of horror, of fear. The "monstrum horrendum" of Poe was descending upon them in the garb which alone could fully typify the character of the man! When he reached the end of the bridge the huge creature stopped and distended his enormous sable wings.

"Good God!" cried Gannette, as he thought of his tremendous financial obligations to Ames.

Carmen shuddered and turned away from the awful spectacle. "I want to go," she said to the petrified Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, who had known nothing of this feature of the program.

Straight to the trembling, white-clad girl the great, black vulture stalked. The revelers fell away from him on either side as he approached. Carmen turned again and watched him come. Her face was ashen. "God is everywhere," she murmured.

Then her anxious look faded. A light came into her eyes, and a smile wreathed her mouth. And when Ames reached her and extended his huge, black wings again, she walked straight into them with a look of joy upon her beautiful face. Then the wings closed and completely hid the fair, white form from the gaping crowd.

For a few moments dead silence reigned throughout the hall. Then the orchestra crashed, the vulture's wings slowly opened, and the girl, who would have gone to the stake with the same incomprehensible smile, stepped out. The black monster turned and strode silently, ominously, back to the end of the hall, crossed the bridge, and disappeared through the door which opened at his approach.

"I'm going home!" said the shaken Gannette to his perspiring wife. "That looks bad to me! That girl's done for; and Ames has taken this way to publicly announce the fact! My God!"

There was another astonished watcher in the audience that evening. It was the eminent Monsignor Lafelle, recently back from Europe by way of the West Indies. And after the episode just related, he approached Carmen and Mrs. Hawley-Crowles.

"A very clever, if startling, performance," he commented; "and with two superb actors, Mr. Ames and our little friend here," bowing over Carmen's hand.

"I am so glad you could accept our invitation, Monsignor. But, dear me! I haven't got my breath yet," panted the steaming Mrs. Hawley-Crowles. "Do take us, Monsignor, to the refectory. I feel faint."

A few moments later, over their iced drinks, Lafelle was relating vivid incidents of his recent travels, and odd bits of news from Cartagena. "No, Miss Carmen," he said, in reply to her anxious inquiries, "I did not meet the persons you have mentioned. And as for getting up the Magdalena river, it would have been quite impossible. Dismiss from your mind all thought of going down there now. Cartagena is tense with apprehension. The inland country is seething. And the little town of Simití which you mention, I doubt not it is quite shut off from the world by the war."

Carmen turned aside that he might not see the tears which welled into her eyes.

"Your entertainment, Madam," continued Lafelle, addressing the now recovered Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, "is superb, as have been all of your social projects this winter, I learn. The thought which you expressed to me some months ago regarding Catholic activity in social matters certainly was well founded. I perceive that our Protestant rivals have all but retired from the field."

Mrs. Hawley-Crowles swelled with pride. Carmen regarded the churchman with wonder.

"And have you not found a sense of peace, of satisfaction and comfort, since you united with the true Church?" Lafelle went on. "Are you not at last at rest?"

"Quite so," sighed the lady, though the sigh was scarcely one of unalloyed relief.

Lafelle turned to Carmen. "And our little friend here--can she still remain an alien, now that she has some knowledge of her indebtedness to the Church?"

Carmen looked blank. "My indebtedness to the Church!" she repeated. "Why--"

It was now Lafelle's turn to sigh, as he directed himself again to Mrs. Hawley-Crowles. "She does not see, Madam, that it was by the ladder of Holy Church that she mounted to her present enviable social height."

"But--what--what do you mean?" stammered the bewildered girl.

"May I not come and explain it to her?" said Lafelle. Then he suddenly thought of his last conversation with the Beaubien. But he shrugged his shoulders, and a defiant look sat upon his features.

Mrs. Hawley-Crowles dared not refuse the request. She knew she was now too deeply enmeshed for resistance, and that Lafelle's control over her was complete--unless she dared to face social and financial ruin. And under that thought she paled and grew faint, for it raised the curtain upon chaos and black night.

"Would it be convenient for me to call to-morrow afternoon?" continued the churchman.

"Certainly," murmured Mrs. Hawley-Crowles in a scarcely audible voice.

"By the way," Lafelle said, suddenly turning the conversation, "how, may I ask, is our friend, Madam Beaubien?"

Mrs. Hawley-Crowles again trembled slightly. "I--I have not seen her much of late, Monsignor," she said feebly.

"A strong and very liberal-minded woman," returned Lafelle with emphasis. "I trust, as your spiritual adviser, Madam, I may express the hope that you are in no way influenced by her."

"Sir!" cried Carmen, who had bounded to her feet, her eyes ablaze, "Madam Beaubien is a noble woman!"

"My dear child!" Lafelle grasped her hand and drew her back into her chair. "You misunderstand me, quite. Madam Beaubien is a very dear friend of ours, and we greatly admire her strength of character. She certainly does not require your defense! Dear! dear! you quite startled me."

A few moments later he rose and offered his arms to his companions to lead them back to the hall. Delivering Carmen into the charge of the eagerly waiting Duke of Altern, Lafelle remarked, as he took leave of Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, "I trust you will permit me to talk with your beautiful ward to-morrow afternoon--alone." And when the lady interpreted the significance of his look, her heart beat rapidly, as she bowed her acknowledgment of abject submission.

"Bah Jove!" ejaculated the young Duke, clutching Carmen. "Ye know, I was deucedly afraid you had gone home, or that Uncle Wilton had you. Ye know, I think I'm jealous of him!"

Carmen laughed merrily at the fellow. His grotesque costume made him appear still more ridiculous.

"It's nothing to laugh at, Miss Carmen! It's a bally bore to have a regular mountain like him always getting in the way; and to-night I just made up my mind I wouldn't stand it any longer, bah Jove! I say, come on!"

He fixed his monocle savagely in his eye and strode rapidly toward the refreshment hall. Carmen went in silence. She heard his murmur of gratification when his gaze lighted upon the chairs and table which he had evidently arranged previously in anticipation of this tête-à-tête.

"Ye know," he finally began, after they were seated and he had sat some minutes staring at the girl, "ye know, you're deucedly clevah, Miss Carmen! I told mother so to-day, and this time she had to agree. And that about your being an Inca princess--ye know, I could see that from the very first day I met you. Mighty romantic, and all that, don't ye know!"

"Indeed, yes!" replied the girl, her thought drifting back to distant Simití.

"And all about that mine you own in South America--and Mrs. Hawley-Crowles making you her heiress--and all that--bah Jove! It's--it's romantic, I tell you!" His head continued to nod emphasis to his thought long after he finished speaking.

"Ye know," he finally resumed, drawing a gold-crested case from a pocket and lighting a monogrammed cigarette, "a fellow can always tell another who is--well, who belongs to the aristocracy. Mrs. Ames, ye know, said she had some suspicions about you. But I could see right off that it was because she was jealous. Mother and I knew what you were the minute we clapped eyes on you. That's because we belong to the nobility, ye know."

He smoked in silence for some moments. Carmen was far, far away.

"Bah Jove, Miss Carmen, I'm going to say it!" he suddenly blurted. "Mother wanted me to marry Lord Cragmont's filly; but, bah Jove, I say, I'm going to marry you!"

Carmen now heard, and she quickly sat up, her eyes wide and staring. "Marry me!" she exclaimed.

"Yes," he went on. "Oh, it's all right. You're a princess, ye know, and so you're in our class. I'm not one of the kind that hands out a title to the red-nosed daughter of any American pork packer just to get her money. Not me! The girl I marry has got to be my equal."

"Oh!" murmured the astonished Carmen.

"It's all right for you to have money, of course. I won't marry a pauper, even if she's a duchess. But you and I, Miss Carmen, are just suited to each other--wealth and nobility on each side. I've got thirty thousand good British acres in my own right, bah Jove!"

By now Carmen had fully recovered from her surprise. She reflected a moment, then determined to meet the absurd youth with the spirit of levity which his audacity merited. "But, Reginald," she said in mock seriousness, "though your father was a duke, how about your mother? Was she not just an ordinary American girl, a sister of plain Mrs. J. Wilton Ames? Where's the aristocracy there? Now on my side--"

"Now, Miss Carmen," cried the boy petulantly, "can't you see that, by marrying my father, my mother became ennobled? Bah Jove, you don't understand! Were your parents both noble?"

"Indeed they were!" said Carmen. "They were both children of a king."

"You don't say!" he whispered, leaning far over the table toward her. "Then we've simply got to marry!"

"But," protested the girl, "in my country people love those whom they marry. I haven't heard a word of that from you."

"Now, I say!" he exclaimed. "I was just getting round to that. It was love that made me offer you my name and title!"

"Yes? Love of what?"

"Why--you--of course!"

She laughed musically. "My dear Reginald, you don't love me. It is yourself that you love. You are madly in love, it is true; but it is with the young Duke of Altern."

"See here, you can't talk to me that way, ye know!" he flared out. "Bah Jove, I'm offering to make you a duchess--and I love you, too, though you may not think it!"

"Of course you love me, Reginald," said Carmen in gentle reply, now relinquishing her spirit of badinage; "and I love you. But I do not wish to marry you."

The young man started under the shock and stared at her in utter lack of comprehension. Was it possible that this unknown girl was refusing him, a duke? She must be mad!

"A--a--I don't get you, Miss Carmen," he stammered.

"Come," she said, rising and holding out a hand. "Let's not talk about this any more. We must go back to the hall. I do love you, Reginald, but not in the way that perhaps you would like. I love the real you; not the vain, foolish, self-adoring human concept, called the Duke of Altern. And the love I feel for you will help you, oh, far more than if I married you! Come."

"But--Miss Carmen!" He stood before her with mouth open.

"Yes, Reginald."

"I--I expected we'd be engaged--I told mother--"

"Very well, Reginald, we are engaged. Engaged in handling this little problem that has presented itself to you. Do you see? And I will help you to solve it in the right way. For you need help. Reginald dear, I didn't mean to treat your proposal so lightly. I am sorry. There, give me your hand. We're just awfully good friends, aren't we? And I do love you, more than you think."

Leaving the bewildered youth in the hall, Carmen fell afoul of the very conservative Mrs. Gannette, whose husband, suffering from a sense of nausea since the appearance of Ames as a King Vulture, had some moments before summoned his car and driven to his favorite club to flood his apprehensions with Scotch high-balls.

"Ah, little sly-boots!" piped Mrs. Gannette, shaking a finger at Carmen. "I saw you with Reginald just now. I'm awfully wise about such things. Tell me, dear, when shall we be able to call you the Duchess of Altern? You lucky girl!"

Carmen's spirits sank, as, without reply, she submitted to the banal boredom of this blustering dame's society gabble. Mrs. Gannette hooked her arm into the girl's and led her to a divan. "It's a great affair, isn't it?" she panted, settling her round, unshapely form out over the seat. "Dear me! I did intend to come in costume. Was coming as a tomato. Ha! ha! Thought that was better adapted to my shape. But when I got the cloth form around me, do you know, I couldn't get through the door! And my unlovely pig of a husband said if I came looking like that he'd get a divorce." The corpulent dame shook and wheezed with the expression of her abundant merriment.

"Well," she continued, "it wasn't his threat that hindered me, goodness knows! A divorce would be a relief, after living forty years with him! Say, there goes young Doctor Worley. Speaking of divorce, he's just got one. It all came round through a joke. Billy Patterson dared him to exchange wives with him one evening when they were having a little too much gaiety at the Worley home, and the doctor took the dare. Ha! ha! The men swapped wives for two days. What do you think of that! And this divorce was the result. But Billy took his wife back. He thought it was just a good joke. Kate Worley gets an alimony of fifty thousand per. But the doctor can stand it. Why, he has a practice of not less than two hundred and fifty thousand a year!"

"I supposed," murmured Carmen, "that amount of money is a measure of his ability, a proof of his great usefulness."

"Nothing of the kind," replied Mrs. Gannette. "He's simply in with the wealthy, that's all. Dear! dear! Do look at that fright over there! It's Lizzie Wall. Now isn't she simply hideous! Those diamonds are nothing but paste! The hussy!"

Carmen glanced at the pale, slender woman across the hall, seated alone, and wearing a look of utter weariness.

"I'd like to meet her," she said, suddenly drawn by the woman's mute appeal for sympathy.

"Don't do it!" hastily interposed Mrs. Gannette. "She's going to be dropped. Name's already on the black list. I don't know what Mrs. Hawley-Crowles was thinking of to invite her to-night! Her estate is being handled by Ames and Company, and J. Wilton says there won't be much left when it's settled--

"My goodness!" she exclaimed, abruptly flitting to another topic. "There goes Miss Tottle. Look at her skirt--flounced at the knees, and full in the back so's to give a bustle effect. My! I wish I could wear togs cut that way--

"They say, my dear," the garrulous old worldling prattled on, "that next season's styles will be very ultra. Butterfly idea, I hear. Hats small and round, like the heads of butterflies. Waists and jackets very full and quite loose in the back and shoulders, so's to give the appearance of wings. Belts, but no drawing in at the waist. Skirts plaited, plaits opening wide at the knees and coming close together again at the ankle, so's to look like the body of a butterfly. Then butterfly bows sprinkled all over."

She paused for breath. Then she drew a long sigh. "Oh dear," she lamented, "I'd give anything if I had a decent shape! I'd like to wear those shimmering, flowing, transparent summer things over silk tights. But, mercy me! I'd look like a potato busted wide open. Now you can wear those X-ray dresses all right--

"Say, Kathleen Ames has a new French gown to wear to the Dog Show. Skirt slit clear to the knee, with diamond garter around the leg just below. How I'd look! I have a leg like a ham!"

Carmen heard little of this vapid talk, as she sat studying the pale woman across the hall. She had resolved to meet her just as soon as the loquacious Mrs. Gannette should seek another victim. But that genial old gossip gave no present evidence of a desire to change.

"I'm so glad you're going to marry young Altern," she said, again swerving the course of her conversation. "He's got a fine old ruined castle somewhere in England, and seems to have wads of money, though I hear that everything is mortgaged to Ames. I wouldn't be surprised. Still, his bare title is worth something to an American girl. Besides, you've got money. And you'll do a lot for his family. You know--but don't breathe a word of this!--his mother never was recognized socially in England, and she finally had to give up the fight. For a while Ames backed her, but it wouldn't do. His millions couldn't buy her the court entrée, and she just had to quit. That's why she's over here now. The old Duke--he was lots older than she--died a couple of years ago. Ran through everything and drank himself to death. Before and since that happy event the Duchess did everything under the heavens to get a bid to court. She gave millions to charity and to entertainments. She sacrificed everything. But, no sir! It wouldn't do. She had no royal blood. But with you it will be different. You're a princess, royal Inca, and such like. You qualify right from the jump. So you see what you're expected to do for the Altern crowd--

"Dear! dear!" catching her breath and switching quickly to another theme, "have you heard about the Hairton scandal? It's simply rich! You see, young Sidney Ames--"

Carmen's patience had touched its limit. "Don't, please don't!" she begged, holding out a hand. "I do not wish to hear it!"

Mrs. Gannette raised her lorgnette and looked at the girl. "Why, my dear! what's the matter? The scandal's about Ames's son, you know. The reason he doesn't go in society. Just come to light. You see--"

"My dear Mrs. Gannette," Carmen looked up at her with a beseeching smile. "You wouldn't deliberately give me poison to drink, would you?"

"Why, certainly not!" blustered that garrulous lady in astonishment.

"Then why do you poison my mind with such conversation?"

"What!"

"You sit there pouring into my mentality thought after thought that is deadly poisonous, don't you know it?"

"Why--!"

"You don't mean to harm me, I know," pleaded the girl. "But if you only understood mental laws you would know that every thought entering one's mind tends to become manifested in some way. Thoughts of disease, disaster, death, scandal--all tend to become externalized in discordant ways, either on the body, or in the environment. You don't want any such things manifested to me, do you? But you might just as well hand me poison to drink as to sit there and pour such deadly conversation into me."

Mrs. Gannette slowly drew herself up with the hauteur of a grandee. Carmen seized her hand. "I do not want to listen to these unreal things which concern only the human mind," she said earnestly. "Nor should you, if you are truly aristocratic, for aristocracy is of the thought. I am not going to marry Reginald. A human title means nothing to me. But one's thought--that alone is one's claim to real aristocracy. I know I have offended you, but only because I refuse to let you poison me. Now I will go."

She left the divan and the petrified dame, and hurriedly mingled with the crowd on the floor.

"The little cat!" exploded Mrs. Gannette, when she again found herself. "She has mortally insulted me!"

Carmen went directly to the pale woman, still sitting alone, who had been one of the objects of Mrs. Gannette's slighting remarks. The woman glanced up as she saw the girl approaching, and a look of wonder came into her eyes. Carmen held out a hand.

"I am Carmen Ariza," she said simply. "You are Miss Wall. I want you to be my friend."

The woman roused up and tried to appear composed.

"Will you ride with me to-morrow?" continued Carmen. "Then we can talk all we want to, with nobody to overhear. Aren't you happy?" she abruptly added, unable longer to withstand the appeal which issued mutely from the lusterless eyes before her.

The woman smiled wanly. "Not so very," she replied slowly.

"Well!" exclaimed Carmen; "what's wrong?"

"I am poverty-stricken," returned the woman sadly.

"But I will give you money," Carmen quickly replied.

"My dear child," said the woman, "I haven't anything but money. That is why I am poverty-stricken."

"Oh!" the girl exclaimed, sinking into a chair at her side. "Well," she added, brightening, "now you have me! And will you call me up, first thing in the morning, and arrange to ride with me? I want you to, so much!"

The woman's eyes grew moist. "Yes," she murmured, "I will--gladly."

In the small hours of the morning there were several heads tossing in stubborn wakefulness on their pillows in various New York mansions. But Carmen's was not one of them.

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Chapter 17

On the morning following Mrs. Hawley-Crowles's very successful imitation of the Bal de l'Opéra, Monsignor Lafelle paid an early call to the Ames sanctum. And the latter gentleman deemed the visit of sufficient importance to devote a full hour to his caller. When the churchman rose to take his leave he reiterated:

"Our friend Wenceslas will undertake the matter for you, Mr. Ames, but on the conditions which I have named. But Rome must be communicated with, and the substance of her replies must be sent from Cartagena to you, and your letters forwarded to her. That might take us into early summer. But there is no likelihood that Mr. Ketchim's engineers will make any further attempt before that time to enter Colombia. Mr. Reed in still in California. Mr. Harris is in Denver, at his old home, you tell me. So we need look for no immediate move from them."

"Quite satisfactory, Lafelle," returned Ames genially. "In future, if I can be of service to you, I am yours to command. Mr. Willett will hand you a check covering your traveling expenses on my behalf."

When the door closed after Lafelle, Ames leaned back in his chair and gave himself up to a moment's reflection. "I wonder," he mused, "I wonder if the fellow has something up his sleeve that he didn't show me? He acted suspiciously. Perhaps he's getting a bit dangerous. He may know too much already. I'm going to drop him after this trap is sprung. He's got Jim Crowles's widow all tied up, too. I wonder if he--by heaven! if he begins work on that girl I'll--"

He was interrupted by the ringing of the telephone bell. It was Gannette. "What?" shouted Ames, "you say the girl insulted your wife last evening? I don't believe she could--Yes, yes, I mean, I don't think she meant to--certainly not, no aspersion whatever intended--What? the girl will have to apologize?--Well! well--No, not in a thousand years!--Yes, I'll back her! And if your society isn't good enough for her--and I don't think it is--why, I'll form a little coterie all by myself!"

He hung up the receiver with a slam. Then he angrily summoned Hodson. "I want a dozen brokers watching Gannette now until I call them off," he commanded. "I want you to take personal charge of them. Dog his every move. I'll give you some suggestions later."

Hodson bowed and went out. Ames continued his meditations. "Lucile already has Gannette pretty well wound up in his Venezuelan speculations--and they are going to smash--Lafelle has fixed that. And I've bought her notes against Mrs. Hawley-Crowles for about a million--which I have reinvested for her in Colombia. Humph! She'll feed out of my hand now! La Libertad is mine when the trap falls. So is C. and R. And that little upstart, Ketchim, goes to Sing Sing!"

He turned to the morning paper that lay upon his desk. "I don't like the way the Colombian revolution drags," he mused. "But certainly it can't last much longer. And then--then--"

His thoughts wandered off into devious channels. "So Josè de Rincón is--well! well! Things have taken an odd turn. But--where on earth did that girl come from? Lord! she was beautiful last night. All religion, eh? Ha! ha! Well, she's young. There's a lot of experience coming to her. And then she'll drop a few of her pious notions. Lucile says--but Lucile is getting on my nerves!"

* * * * *

Monsignor Lafelle found Mrs. Hawley-Crowles and her ward awaiting him when his car drove up at two that afternoon. Carmen had not left the house during the morning, for Elizabeth Wall had telephoned early that a slight indisposition would necessitate postponement of the contemplated ride.

"Well," reflected Carmen, as she turned from the 'phone, "one who knows that God is everywhere can never be disappointed, for all good is ever present." And then she set about preparing for the expected call of Monsignor Lafelle.

When that dignitary entered the parlor Mrs. Hawley-Crowles graciously welcomed him, and then excused herself. "I will leave her with you, Monsignor," she said, indicating Carmen, and secretly glad to escape a presence which she greatly feared. Lafelle bowed, and then waved Carmen to a seat.

"I have come to-day, Miss Carmen," he began easily, "on a mission of vastest importance as concerning your welfare. I have been in Cartagena. I have talked with the acting-Bishop there, who, it seems, is not wholly unacquainted with you."

"Then," cried Carmen eagerly, "you know where Padre Josè is? And the others--"

"No," replied Lafelle. "I regret to say I know nothing of their present whereabouts. Leave them with God."

"I have long since done that," said Carmen softly.

"It is of yourself that I wish to speak," continued Lafelle. "I have come to offer you the consolation, the joy, and the protection of the Church. Your great benefactress, Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, has found peace with us. Will you longer delay taking a step toward which you are by race, by national custom, and by your Saviour admonished? I have come to invite you to publicly confess your allegiance to the Church of Rome. You belong to us. A Catholic country gave you birth. Your parents were Catholic. Your best friend, Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, is one of us. Come," he said, extending his hands. "We need you. And you, my daughter, now need the Church," he added with suggestive emphasis.

Carmen was not surprised. Mrs. Hawley-Crowles had hinted the probable mission of the churchman, and the girl was prepared.

"I thank you, Monsignor," she replied simply. "But it is impossible."

"Impossible?" He arched his fine brows. "My child, it is quite necessary!"

"Why, Monsignor?"

"For your eternal salvation," he replied.

"But I have my salvation, ever present. It is the Christ-principle."

"My dear child, do not lean upon your pretty theories in the hope that they will open the door of heaven for you. There is no salvation outside of the Church."

"Monsignor," said Carmen gently, "such talk is very foolish. Can you prove to me that your Church ever sent any one to heaven? Have you any but a very mediaeval and material concept of heaven? To me, heaven is right here. It is the consciousness of good only, without a trace of materiality or evil. And I enter into that consciousness by means of the Christ-principle, which Jesus gave to the world. It is very simple, is it not? And it makes all your pomp and ceremony, and your penance and rites quite unnecessary."

Lafelle eyed her narrowly. He had certain suspicions, but he was not ready to voice them. Carmen went on:

"Monsignor, I love my fellow-men, oh, so much! I want to see every one work out his salvation, as Jesus bade us all do, and without any hindrance from others. And I ask but that same privilege from every one, yourself included. Let me work out my salvation as my Father has directed."

Lafelle smiled paternally. "I have no wish to hinder you, child. On the contrary, I offer you the assistance and infallible guidance of the Church. You are very young. We are very old. Beginning nineteen centuries ago, when we were divinely appointed custodian of the world's morals, our history has been a glorious one. We have in that time changed a pagan world into one that fears God and follows His Christ."

"But for nineteen hundred years, Monsignor, the various so-called Christian sects of the world have been persecuting and slaying one another over their foolish beliefs, basing their religious theories upon their interpretations of the Bible. Surely that is not a glorious history!"

"Ah! You unwittingly argue directly for our cause, my child. The result which you have just cited proves conclusively that the Scriptures can not be correctly interpreted by every one. That is perfectly patent to you, I see. Thus you acknowledge the necessity of an infallible guide. That is to be found only in the spiritual Fathers, and in the Pope, the holy Head of the Church of Rome, the present Vicegerent of Christ on earth."

"Then your interpretation of the Bible is the only correct one?"

"Absolutely!"

"And you Catholics are the only true followers of Christ? The only real Christians?"

"We are."

She rose. "Come, Monsignor, I will get my coat and hat. We will take your car."

"Why--where are you going?" he asked in amazement, as he slowly got to his feet.

She stopped and faced him squarely. "Jesus said: 'He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also.' I am going to take you over to the home of old Maggie, our cook's mother. She is sick. You will heal her, for you are a true follower of Christ."

"Well--but, hasn't she a doctor?"

"Yes, but he can't help her. Doctors are not infallible. But you represent the Christ on earth. You should be able to do the works which he did. You can change the wafer and wine into the flesh and blood of Jesus. How much easier, then, and vastly more practical, to cure a sick woman! Wait, I will be back in a minute."

"But, you impetuous child, I shall go on no such foolish errand as that!"

She stopped again. "If the woman were dying or dead, and you were summoned, you would go, would you not? For she is a Catholic."

"Why--yes, of course."

"And if she were dying you would put holy oil on her, and pray--but it wouldn't make her well. And if she were dead, you would say Masses for the repose of her soul. Monsignor, did it never occur to you that the great works which you claim to do are all done behind the veil of death? You can do but little for mankind here; but you pretend to do much after they have passed beyond the grave. Is it quite fair to the poor and ignorant, I ask, to work that way? Did it never strike you as remarkable and very consistent that Jesus, whenever he launched a great truth, immediately ratified it by some great sign, some sign which the world now calls a miracle? The Gospels are full of such instances, where he first taught, then came down and immediately healed some one, thus at once putting his teaching to the proof. Do you prove anything? Your Church has taught and thundered and denounced for ages, but what has it proved? Jesus taught practical Christianity. You teach the so-called practical Christianity which makes a reality of evil and an eternal necessity of hospitals and orphan asylums. If you did his works the people would be so uplifted that these things would be wiped out. Your Church has had nineteen hundred years in which to learn to do the works which he did. Now come over to Maggie's with me and prove that you are a true follower and believer, and that the Church has given you the right sort of practical instruction!"

Gradually the girl's voice waxed stronger while she delivered this polemic. Slowly the churchman's face darkened, as he moved backward and sank into his chair.

"Now, Monsignor, having scolded you well," the girl continued, smiling as she sat down again, "I will apologize. But you needed the scolding--you know you did! And nearly all who profess the name of Christ need the same. Monsignor, I love you all, and every one, whether Catholic or Protestant, or whatever his creed. But that does not blind my eyes to your great need, and to your obstinate refusal to make any effort to meet that need."

A cynical look came into the man's face. "May I ask, Miss Carmen, if you consider yourself a true follower and believer?" he said coolly.

"Monsignor," she quickly replied, rising and facing him, "you hope by that adroit question to confound me. You mean, do I heal the sick? Listen: when I was a child my purity of thought was such that I knew no evil. I could not see it anywhere. I could not see sickness or death as anything more than unreal shadows. And that wonderful clearness of vision and purity of thought made me a channel for the operation of the Christ-principle, God himself. And thereby the sick were healed in my little home town. Then, little by little, after my beloved teacher, Josè, came to me, I lost ground in my struggle to keep the vision clear. They did not mean to, but he and my dearest padre Rosendo and others held their beliefs of evil as a reality so constantly before me that the vision became obscured, and the spirituality alloyed. The unreal forces of evil seemed to concentrate upon me. I know why now, for the greatest good always stirs up the greatest amount of evil--the highest truth always has the lowest lie as its opposite and opponent. I see now, as never before, the unreality of evil. I see now, as never before, the marvelous truth which Jesus tried, oh, so hard, to impress upon the dull minds of his people, the truth which you refuse to see. And ceaselessly I am now striving to acquire 'that mind,' that spiritual consciousness, which was in him. My vision is becoming daily clearer. I have been wonderfully shielded, led, and cared for. And I shall heal, some day, as he did. I shall regain my former spirituality, for it has never really been lost. But, Monsignor, do not ask me to come into your Church and allow my brightening vision to become blurred by your very inadequate concept of God--a God who is moved by the petitions of Saints and Virgin and mortal men. No! no! Unless," she added, brightening, "you will let me teach your Church what I know. Will you agree to that?"

Lafelle did not answer. Then Carmen shook her head. "You see," she said, "your Church requires absolute submission to its age-worn authority. According to you, I have nothing to give. Very well, if your Church can receive nothing from me, and yet can give me nothing more than its impossible beliefs, undemonstrable this side of the grave, at least--then we must consider that a gulf is fixed between us.

"Oh, Monsignor," she pleaded, after a moment's silence, "you see, do you not? When Jesus said that he gave his disciples power over all evil, did he not mean likewise over all physical action, and over every physical condition? But did he mean that they alone should have such power? What a limiting of infinite Love! No, he meant that every one who followed him and strove ceaselessly for spirituality of thought should acquire that spirituality, and thereby cleanse himself of false beliefs, and make room for the Christ-principle to operate, even to the healing of the sick, to the raising of those mesmerized by the belief of death as a power and reality, and to the dematerializing of the whole material concept of the heavens and earth. Can't you, a churchman, see it? And can't you see how shallow your views are? Don't you know that even the physical body is but a part of the human, material concept, and therefore a part of the 'one lie' about God, who is Spirit?"

Lafelle had listened patiently. But now his time had come to speak in rebuttal. And yet, he would make no attempt to assail her convictions. He knew well that she would not yield--at least, to-day. He therefore played another card.

"Miss Carmen," he said gently, "the Church is ever doing beneficent deeds which do not come to light, and for which she receives no praise from men. Your own and Mrs. Hawley-Crowles's elevation to social leadership came through her. There is also a rumor that the Church afforded you an asylum on your first night in this city, when, if ever, you needed aid. The Church shielded and cared for you even in Simití. Indeed, what has she not done for you? And do you now, alas! turn and rend her?"

"Monsignor," replied Carmen, "I am not unmindful of the care always bestowed upon me. And I am not ungrateful. But my gratitude is to my God, who has worked through many channels to bless me. My account is with Him. Leave it there, and fear not that I shall prove ungrateful to Him, to whom my every thought is consecrated."

Lafelle bit his lip. Then he spoke low and earnestly, while he held his gaze fixed upon the girl's bright eyes. "Miss Carmen, if you knew that the Church now afforded you the only refuge from the dangers that threaten, you would turn to her as a frightened child to its mother."

"I fear nothing, Monsignor," replied the girl, her face alight with a smile of complete confidence. "I am not the kind who may be driven by fear into acceptance of undemonstrable, unfounded theological beliefs. Fear has always been a terrible weapon in the hands of those who have sought to force their opinions upon their fellow-men. But it is powerless to influence me. Fear, Monsignor, is sin. It causes men to miss the mark. And it is time-honored. Indeed, according to the Bible allegory, it began in the very garden of Eden, when poor, deceived Adam confessed to God that he was afraid. If God was infinite then, as you admit you believe Him to be now, who or what made Adam afraid? Whence came the imaginary power of fear? For, 'God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.' God is love. And there is no fear in love."

"But, surely, Miss Carmen, you will not stubbornly close your eyes to threatening evil?"

"Monsignor, I close my eyes to all that is unlike God. He is everything to me. I know nothing but Him and His perfect manifestation."

Lafelle sat some moments in silence. The picture which he and the young girl formed was one of rare beauty and interest: he, weighted with years, white of hair, but rugged of form, with strikingly handsome features and kindly eyes--she, a child, delicate, almost wraith-like, glowing with a beauty that was not of earth, and, though untutored in the wiles of men, still holding at bay the sagacious representative of a crushing weight of authority which reached far back through the centuries, even to the Greek and Latin Fathers who put their still unbroken seal upon the strange elaborations which they wove out of the simple words of the Nazarene.

When the churchman again looked up and felt himself engulfed in the boundless love which emanated from that radiant, smiling girl, there surged up within him a mighty impulse to go to her, to clasp her in his arms, to fall at her feet and pray for even a mite of her own rare spirituality. The purpose which he had that morning formulated died within him; the final card which he would have thrown lay crushed in his hand. He rose and came and stood before her.

"The people believe you a child of the ancient Incas," he said slowly, taking her hand. "What if I should say that I know better?"

"I would say that you were right, Monsignor," she replied gently, looking up into his face with a sweet smile.

"Then you admit the identity of your father?"

"Yes, Monsignor."

"Ah! And that is--?"

"God."

The man bent for a moment over the little white hand, and then immediately left the house.

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