The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, March 6, 1904, Page 4

gentlemen in California,” returned that lady, oracularly. It was nearly nine when Essex left the restaurant, and passing down Kearny street for a few blocks, turned to his right and began to mount the ascending sidewalk that led to his lodgings. These were in a humble and unfashionable neighborhood in Bush street. The house was of a kind whence gentility has departed. It stood back on the top of two small ter- races, up which mounted two wooden fiights of stairs, one with a list to star- board so pronounced that Essex had, once or twice, while ascending, thought the city in the throes of an earthquake. The darkness of night wrapped it now. As it was early a light within shone out dimly through two narrow panes of glass flanking the hall door. He let himself in and mounted a dirtily carpeted stairway. The place smelled evilly of old cooking and the smoke of many and various cigarettes, cigars and pipes. It was a man's rooming- house, and the men evidently smoked where and what they listed. Essex had no idea who they were and had seen only one of them: a2 man on the same floor with him who, he surmised, by the occasional boisterousness' of his en- trances, frequently came home drunk. His room was one of the best in the house, on the front, and with a large bay window commanding the street. It wes falrly comfortable and well fur- nished, and the draft of soft, chill air that crossed it from the opened window kept it fresh. Essex, after lighting the gas in the pendent chandeller, bent and kindled the fire lald in the grate. Like many forelgners, he found San Francisco cold, and after the manner of his bringing up would no mors have denied himself a fire when he was chilly than a glass of wine when he was thirsty. Different nations have their @ifferent extravagances, and BEa- sex’s French boyhood had stamped him with respect for the little comforts of that intelligent race. He pulled up an easy chair and sat down in fromt of the small blaze, with his hands out. Its warmth was pleas- ant, and he stayed thus, thinking. Pres- ently he smiled slightly, his ear having caught the sounds of his fellow lodger's stumbling ascent of the stairs. The man was evidently drunk again, and he wondered vaguely how he ever man- aged to mount the terrace steps with the list to starboard. The lodger’s door opened, shut, and there was silence. Hssex—an earnest der—was soon deep in his hook. m this he was interrupted by a step 1e passage and a light knock on the ) In response to his “Come in,” the door opened hesitantly, and the man from across the hall thrust in his head. It was a head of wild gray hair, with an old yellow face, seamed and shriveled beneath it. The eyes, which were beadily dark and set close to the nose, were bloodshot, the 1ips slack and uncertain. A very dirty hand was curled round the edge of the door. “Well, what is 1t?"” sald Essex. “I've lost my matches agin,” said the man, in a whiningly apologetic tone. “There are some,” sald Essex, desig- nating his box on the mantelplece. Take what you want.” The stranger shambled in, and after scratching about the box with a trem- ulous hand, secured a bunch. Essex looked at him with cynical Interest. He was miserably dressed, dirty, and ragged. He walked with an apologetic siouch, as If continually expecting a kick in the rear. He was evidently very drunk, and the odor of the liquids he had imbibed compassed him in an am- bulating reek. “Thanks to you, Doc,” he said, as he went out. “So long.” A few minutes later Essex heard a crash from his neighbor’s room, and then exclamations of angér and dole. These continuing with an increased vol- ume, Essex rose and went to the source of sound. The room was pitch dark, and from it, as from the entrance to the cave of the damned, imprecations and lamentations were issuing in a strenuous flood. With the match he had brought he lit the gas, and turning saw his late visitor holding by the foot- board of the bed, having overturned a small stand, which had evidently been surmounted by a nickel clock. “What the devil do you mean by making such a noise?” he sald angrily. “Pardon, pardon!” sald the other humbly, “but I couldn’t find the gas this time, Doc. This is a small room, but thipgs do get away somehow.” He looked stupidly about with his bleared eyes. The room was small and miserably dirty and uninviting. “There’s a room,” he sald suddenly in a loud, dramatic tone and with a sweep of his arm, “for & man who might have been a bonanza king!™ Essex turned to go. “If you make any more of this row to-night I'll see that you're turned out to-morrow,” he said haughtily, He wheeled about on the drunkard as he spoke. The man’s sodden face was lit with a flash of malevolent intelli- gence, to be superseded immediately by a wheedling smile. “I seen you before to-day,” he said. “Well, you'll see me again to-night if you don’t keep quiet, and this time you won't like it.” “You was with a lady, a fine-looking lady.” “Here—no more of that talk,” said Essex threateningly. The man stopped, looking furtively at him as if half expecting to be struck. Eessex turned toward the door and passed out. As he did mo he heard him mutter: “And I'd seen her before, too.” Back in his room the young man took up his book again, but the thread of his interest was broken. His mind refused to return to the prescribed channels be- fore it, but began to drift here and there on the wayward currents of memory. The house was now perfectly quiet. The little fire had fallen together into a pleasant core of warmth that genial- ly diffused its heat through the room. Essex, sprawling in his chair, his long arms following its arms, his finely formed, loose-jointed hands depending over the rounded ends. let his dreaming A - V= 2 [ESSNA WL 7S gaze rest on this red heart of living coal, while his pips smoke lay between it and his face in delicate layers. His thoughts slipped back over child- ish memories to his first ones, when he had lived a French boy’'s life with his mother in Paris. He remembered her far back in the days when he sat on her knee and was read to out of fairy books. She had been very pretty then and very happy, and had always talked English. with him while every one else spoke French. She had been an English woman,an ac- tress of beauty and promise, who in the zenith of her popularity had made what the world called a finé marriage with a rich Venezuelan, who lived in Paris. The stories of Essex's doubtful paternity wers falge. Rose Barry— Rose Essex, on the stage—had been the lawful wife of Antonio Perez, and for ten years was the happy wife as well. They were very prosperous in those days. Barry had gone to the lycee all week and come back every Friday to the beautiful apartment in-the Rue de Ponthieu. There were lovely spring Sundays when they droyve in the Bois and sometimes got out of the carriage and walked down the sun-flecked allees under the budding trees. And there were even lovelier winter Sundays when they loitered along the boulevards in the crisp, clear cold, with the sky showing leaden gray through the bar- ring of black boughs, and when they came home to a parlor lit with fire and lamplight and had oranges and hard green grapes after dinner. He had loved his pretty mother de- votedly in those happy days, but for his saturnine, dark-visaged father he had only a sentiment of uneasy fear. He was twelve, when at his mother's request he was sent to England to school. He could remember, looking back afterward, that his mother had not been so pretty or so happy then. ‘When he came home from school for vacations she was living at Versailles in a little house that presented a se- cret, non-committal front to the stony street, but that in the back had a de- lightful garden full of miniature foun- tains and summer-houses and grottoes. From the wall he could see the mossy trees and stretches of sun-bathed sward of the Trianon. His father was not always there when he came. One Easter vacation he was not there at all, and when he had asked his mother why she had burst into sudden terrible tears that frightened him. During the long summer holidays after that Antonio « Perez was only there once over a Sunday. Then he did not come again, and Barry was glad, for he had never cared for his father. He passed delightful days in the Tria- non Park with his mother, who was very silent and had gray hair on her temples. She walked beside him with a slow step, dragging her rich lace skirts and with her parasol hanging in- dolently over her shoulder. It pleased him to see that many people looked at her, but she took no notice of them. ‘When Barry went back to England to school that year he began to feel that he knew what was coming. It came the next vacation. His mother had not dared to tell him by letter. Her hus- band had deserted her and disappeared, leaving her with a few thousand francs in the bank and not a friend. After that there were three misera- ble years when they lived in a little apartment on the Rue de Sevres, up four flights of stairs with a bonne a tout faire. His mother had had to conquer the extravagant habits of a litetime, and she did it {ll. During the last year of her life the sale of her jewels kept them. Barry was eighteen when she died, and those long last days when ehe lay on the sofa in the remnants of the rich and splendid clothes ghe found it so hard to do with- ocut were burned into his memory for- ever. Their furniture—some of which was rare and handsome—brought them a few hundred francs, and on this he lived for another year, eking out his substance with his first tentative at- tempt at journalism. When he was twenty-one he recelved a legal notice that his father had died in Venezuela, leaving him all he possessed, which, debts paid and the estate settled, amounted to about $10,000. This might have been a fortune to the youth, but the bitter bread he had eateén had soured the best in him. He took his legacy and resolved to taste of the joy of life. For several years he lived on the crest of the wave, now and then diverting himself with jour- nalism, the only profession that at- tracted him and one in which his tal- ents were readily recognized. He saw much of the world and its ways, living in many citles and among many peo- ples. He tried to cut himself off from the past, adopting, after his mother’s death, her old stage name of Essex. Then, his money spent, there had been a dark interval of bad luck and despondency, when Barry HEssex, the brilliant amateur journalist, had fallen out of the ranks of people that are seen and talked about. Without means, he sank to the level of a battered and out-at-elbows Bohemian. There was a year or two when he swung between London and Paris, making money as he could, and not always frequenting creditable company. Then the tide of change struck him and he went to New York, worked there successfully till once again the Wanderlust carried him farther afield. He had now arrived at the crucial point of his carcer. In his vagabond past there many episodes best left in darkness, but nothing that stamped him as an outcast by findividual selec- tion. Shady things were behind him in that.dark, morose year when he found disreputable company to his taste. But he had never stepped quite outside the ;l;e, There had always been a mar- Now he stood on that margin. He was thirty years old with shame and bitterness behind him, and before him the dead monotony of a lifetime of work. He hated it all. No memory sustained him. The past was as sore to dwell on as the future was sterile. It was the parting of the ways. And where they parted he saw Mariposa P =2, e~ ¢ 7, THE SAN FRANCISCO SUNDAY standing drawing him by the hand one way, while he gently but persistently drew her the other. 3 In his softly lit library in his great house at Menlo Park another man was at that time also thinking of Mari- posa. He had been thinking of her off and on ever since he had bidden her good-by that afternooon at Mrs. Wil- lers'. As the train had whirled him over the parched, thirsty country, burnt to a drouth, he had no thought for anything but his newly discovered daughter. His glance dwelt unseeing on the tanned flelds withethelr beits of olive eucalyp- tus woods, and the turquoise blue of the bay beyond the painted marsh. Men descending at way stations raised their hats to him as they mounted into the handsome carrisges drawn up by the platform. His return to their salutes was a preoccupied nod. His mind was full of his child—his splendid daughter. Jake Shackleton had not forgottten his first wife and child, as Dan Moreau and Lucy had always hoped. He was a man of many and secret interests, pull- ing many wires, following many trails. He knew their movements and fortunes from the period of thelr marriage in Hangtown. At first this secret espion- age was due to fear of their betraying him. had begun to prosper shortly after his entrance into the State, and with prosperity and the slackening of the strain of the trip across the desert came a realization of what he had done. He saw quickly how the selling of his wife would appeal to the California mind, in those days fantastically chiv- alrous to women. He would be un- done. ;e ‘With stealthy pergistence he followed the steps of the peaceful couple who had it in their power to ruin him. Ser- enity began to come to him as he heard that the union was singularly happy; that Moreau, confildent no one would molest them, had gone through a cere- mony of marriage with Lucy, and that the,child was being brought up as their own. As wealth came to Shackleton he thought of them with a sort of jealous triumph. With his remarkable insight into men he knew that Dan Moreau would never make money; that he was one of the world's predestined poor men. Then as riches grew and grew, and the emigrant of the fifties became the bonanza king of the seventies, he wondered if the time might not come when they would turn to him. He would have liked it, for under the cold indifference of his manner the transaction at the cabin in the Sierra forever haunted him with its savage shamelessnesss. It was the one debas- ing blot on a career which, hakd, self- ish, often unprincipled, had yet never, before or after, sunk to the level of that base action. * ‘When Moreau died at Santa Barbara Shackleton heard it with a sense of re- lief, He was secretly becoming anxious to see his child. Bessie had borne him two children, a boy and a girl, and it was partly the disappointment in these that made him desirous of seeing Mar- iposa. He knew and Bessie knew that she was his only legitimate ghild. Though he had virtually entered Cali- fornia with but one wife, and the blot of Mormonism had been wiped from his record before he had been two days In the State, the rumor that he had once been a Mormon still carelessly passed from mouth to mouth. Should it ever become known that there had been a former wife, Bessie and her children would have mo lawful claim on him, though the children, as acknowledged and brought up by him, would inherit part of his estate. ‘With his great wealth the pride that was one of the dominant characteris- tics of his hard and driving nature grew apace. He had money by millions, but ng one to do it credit. It would have been the crowning delight of his tumultuous .career to have a beautiful daughter or talented son to grace the luxury that surrounded him. But Bes- sle’s children were neither of these things. They were dull and common- place. Maud was fat and heavy both in mind and body, while Winslow was, to his father, a slow-witted, character- less youth, without the wfll, energy or initiative of either of his parents. Af- fection not grounded on admiration ‘was impossible to Shackleton, who sometimes in his exasperation—for the successful man bore disappointment ill —would say to himself: “But they are not my real children; I have only one child—Dan Moreau's daughter.” After the death of Moreau he learned that Lucy and Mariposa were in San Francisco. There he lost trace of them and was forced to consult g private de- tective who had dope work for him be- fore. It was an easy matter to find them, and only a few letters passed be- tween him and the detective. In these the man gave the address and financial condition of the ladles, and added that the daughter was sald to be “‘a beauti- ful, estimable and accomplished young woman.” This fired still further the father’s degire to see her. He learned, too, of their crippled means and it pleased him to think that now they might be dependent on him. But he shrank with an unspeakable repug- nance from the thought of seeing Lucy again, and he was for weeks trying to find some way of meeting Maripura and not meeting her mother. It was at this stage that, purely by accident, he learned that Mrs. Willers’ daughter was one of Mariposa’s puplls. A day or two after he summoned Mrs. Willers to the interview that finally brought about the meeting. Satisfied pride was still seething in him when he alighted from the train and entered the waiting carriage. This magnificent girl was worthy of him, worthy of the millions that were really hers. She had everything the others lacked—beauty, charm, talents. Her whole air, that regalness of aspect which sometimes curiously distin- guishes the simple women of the West, appealed passionately to his ambition and love of success. She was bern' to conquer, to be & queen of men.. The image of Maud rose beside her, and seemed clumsier and commoner than ever. The father felt a slight move- CALL. of distaste and irritation against second daughter, who had sup- ted In his home and in the world’s regard his elder and fairer child. The carriage turned in through a lofty gate and rolled at a slackened pace up a long winding drive. Jacob Shackleton’s Menlo Park estate was one of the showy ones of that gathering place of rich men’s mansions. The road wound for some half mile through a stretch of uncultivated land, dotted- with the forms of huge live- oaks. The grass beneath them was burnt gray and was brittle and slippery. The massive trees, some round and compact and so densly leaved that they were as impervious to rain as an um- brella, others throwing out Ilong, gnarled arms as if spellbound in some glant throe of pain, cast vast slanting shadows upon the parched ground. Some seemed, like trees in Dore's draw- ings, to be endowed with a grotesque, ‘weird humanness of aspect, as though an imprisoned dryad or gnome were struggling to escape, causing the mighty trunk to bow and writhe, and sending tremors of life along each con- vulsed limb. - A mellow hoariness marked them all, due to their own richly subdued coloring and the long garlands of silvery moss that hung from thelr boughs like an eldrich growth of hair. A sudden greenness in the sward and brilliant glimpses of flower-beds pieced in between dark tree-trunks, told of the proximity of the house. It was a massive structure, architectur- ally ugly, but gaining a sort of majesty from its own ponderous bulk and from the splendor of lawns and trees about it. The last level rays of the sun were now flooding grass and garden, plercing bosky thickets where greens melted into greens, and sleeping on stretches of close-cropped emerald turf. From among the smaller trees the lordly blue plnu—tl‘tt with the oaks were once the only 'denizens of the long rich val- ley—soared up, lonely and somber. Their crests, stirred by passing airs, emitted eolian murmurings, * infinitely mournful, as if repining for the days when they had ruled alone. 3 At the bend in the drive where the road turned off to the stables Shackle- ton alighted'and walked over the grass toward the house. The curious silence that is so marked a characteristic of the California landscape wrapped the place and made it seem like an en- chanted palace held in a spell of sleep. Not a leaf nor pendent flower-bell stirred. In this hour of warmth and stillness evanescent breaths of fra- grance rose from the carpets of violets that were beginning to bloom about the roots of the Hve-oaks. As he reached the house Maud and a young man came round the corner and approached. him. The girl was dressed in a delicate and elaborate gown of pale pink frilled with much lace, and with the glint of falling ribbons gleam- ing here and there. She carried a pink sparasol over her shoulder, and against the background of variegated greens her figure looked modish as a fashion- plate. It was a very becoming and ele- gant costume, and one in which most young girls roula have looked their best. Maud, who was not pretty, was the type of woman who looks least well in handsome habiliments. Her irremedi- able commonness seemed thrown into higher prominence by adornment. The softly-tinted dress robbed her pale skin of all glow and made her lifeless brown hair look duller. She had a round, ex- pressionless face, prominent pale blue eyes, and a chin that receded slightly. he was not so plain as she was with- out vivacity, interest or sparkle of youth. With her matter-of-fact man- ner, heavy figure, and large, unani- mated face she might have been forty instead of twenty-one. She was somewhat laboriously co- quetting with her companion, a tall, handsome young Southerner, some six or seven years her senior, whom her father recognized as one of his supe- rior clerks and shrewdly suspected of matrimonial deslgns. At sight of her parent a slight change passed over her face. She smiled, but not so spontane- ously; her speech faltered, and she said, coming awkwardly forward: “Oh, Popper! you're late to-day; were you delayed?” “Evidently, considering I'm an hour later than usual. Howdy, Latimer; glad to see you down.” He stopped and looked at them with the slightest inquiring smile. Though he sald nothing to indicate it, both, knowing him in different aspects, felt he was not pleased. His whole person- ality seemed to radiate a cold antagon- ism. “It's geod you got down anyhow,” sald Maud constrainedly; “this {s much nicer than town, isn’t it, Mr. Latimer?"” All the joy had been taken out of Latimer by his chief's obvious and somewhat terrifying displeasure. Had he been alone with Maud, he would have known well how to respond to her remark with Southern fervency of phrase. But' now he only sald with Stiff politeness: ““Oh, this is quite ideal!” and lapsed into uncomfortable silence. “Was it some one interesting that made you late?” queried Maud, as her father made no attempt to continue the conversation. “Very,” he responded; and interesting.” “Won't you tell us about them?” the girl asked, feeling that the word “handsome” contained a covert allusion to her own lack of beauty of which she extremely sensitive. £ “Not now, and I don’t think it would interest you much, anyway. Is your mother indoors?” The girl nodded and he turned away and disappeared round the cormer of the house. She and Latimer sauntered on. “The handsome and interesting per- son doesn’t seem to have made your paternal any fuller of the milk of hu- man kindness,” said the young man, whose suit had progressed further than people guessed. “Popper’s often like that,” said Maud slowly—and in a prettier and more at- “handsome U R N tractive girl the tone and manner of the remark would have been charming- 1y plaintive—*“I don’t know what makes him so.” “He can be more like a patent con- gealing ice-box when he wants to be than anybody I ever saw. But I don’t see why he should be so to you.” “I don't either, but he is often. He never says anything exactly disagree- able, but he makes me feel sort of—of— mean. Sometimes I think he doesn't like me at all.” “Oh, bosh!” sald Latimer gallantly; “if that's the case he's ripe for a com- mission of lunacy.” Shackleton meantime had entered the house and ascended to his dressing- room. He was in there making the small change which marked his dinner from his business toilet when his wife entered. The years had turned Bessle into a buxom, fine-looking matron, fashion- ably dressed, but inclined to be very stout. Her eye and its glance were sharp and keen-edged, still alight with vigor and alertness. It was easy to see why Jake Shackleton, the reader of character, had set aside his feeble first wife for this dominating and forceful partner. He had been faithful to her; after a fashion had loved her, and cer- tainly admired her, for she had the characteristics he most respected. In his success she had been the same assistance that she had bfen in his poverty. She had ¢limbed the soaial heights and conquered the impregna- ble position they now occupled. Her rich dress, her handsome appearance, her agreeably modulated voice, all were in keeping with the position and great wealth that were theirs. The house of which she was the mistress was admirably erdered and sumptu- ously furnished. She had only disap- pointed him in one way—her children. “What made you late?” she, too, asked; “several people came down this afternoon.” “I was detained—a girl Mrs. Willers wanted me to see; who's here?” “Latimer and Count de Lamolle and George Herron and the Thurston girls; and the Delanceys are coming over to dinner.” He nodded at the names—Bessle knew well how to arrange her parties. The Thurstons were two impoverished sisters of great beauty, and that proud Southern stock of which early Califor- nia thought so highly and rewarded in most cases with poverty. Count de Lamolle was a distingulshed foreigner that she was considering for Maud. The other two yourig men filled In nicely. The Delanceys were a brother and sister, claimants of the great De- lancey grant waich was now in litiga- tion. It had come into their possession by the marriage of their grandmother, the Senorita Concepcion de Briones, in '3, to the Yankee skipper Jeremiah Delancey. “Who was the girl Mrs. Willers wanted you to seg?” Bessle asked. “Oh, Tl tell you about her to-mor- row. It's a long story and I don’t want to be hurried ower it.” . He had made up his mind that he would tell Bessie he had seen and in- tended to assist his eldest child. He had always been frank with her, and he was not going to dissemble now. He knew that with all her faults she was a generous woman. CHAPTER 1V. A GALA NIGHT. He looked at her as a lover can; She looked at him as one who awakes. —Browning. From his first meeting with her, Bar- ry Essex had conceived a deep interest in Mariposa. He had known women of many and divers sorts, and loved a few after the manner of his kind, which was to foster indolently a selfish ca- price. Marriage was out of the ques- tion for him unless with money, and some instinct, perhaps inherited from his romantic and deeply loving mather, made this singularly repugnant to his nature, which was neither sensitive nor scrupulous. The mystery and haz- ard of life appealed to him, and to ex- change this for the dull monotony of a rich marriage was an unbearably irk- some thought to his unrestrained and adventurous spirit. Mariposa’s charm had struck him deeply. He had never before met that combination of extreme simplicity of character with the unconscious majesty of appearance which marked the child of the far West. He saw her in that Europe, which was his home, as a con- quering queen; and he thought proudly of himself as the owner of such a ‘woman. Moreover, he was certain that her voice, properly trained and di- rected, would be a source of wealth. Bhe seemed to him the real vocal artist, stupld in all but one great gift; in that, pre-eminent. Mariposa was trembling on the verge of a first love. She had never seen any one like Essex, and regarded him as the most distinguished and brilliant of be- ings. His attentions flattered her as she had never beeen flatttered before, and she found herself constantly won- dering what he saw in 2 girl who must appear to him so raw. Her experience of men was small. Once in Sacramento, when she was eighteen, she had received an offer from a young lawyer, and two years ago, in Santa Barbara, she had been the re- cipient of a second, from a prosperous rancher. Both had been refused with- out hesitation, and had left no mark on imagination or heart. Then, at a critical period of her life—lonely, poor, a stranger in a strange city—she had fallen in with Essex, and for the first time felt the thrill at the sound of a footstep, the quickening pulse and flushing cheek at the touch of a hand, that she had read of in novels. She thought that nobody had seen this; but the eyes of the dangerous man under whose spell she had fallen were watch- ing her with wary vet ardent interest. He had known her now for three months and had seen her frequently. His visits at the Pine-street cottage were augmented by occasional meet- ings at Mrs. Willers’, when that lady was at home and receiving company, and by walks together. Of late, too, he had asked her to go to the theater W with him. Lucy was always included in these invitations, but was uvnb!e to go. The theater was an untarnished delight to Mariposa, and to refuse her the joy of an evening spent there was not in the mother's heart. Moreover, Lucy, in her agony at the thought of leaving the girl alone in the world, watched Essex with a desperate anxi- ety trying to fathom his feelings. It seemed to the unworldly woman, that this attractive gentleman might have been sent by fate to be the husband who was to love and guard the child when the mother was gone. A few days after the party at Mrs. Willers’ rooms Essex had invited Mari- posa to go with him to a performance of “Il Trovatgre,” to be given at Wade's Opera-house. The company, managed by a French man called Lepine, was one of those small forelgn ones that in those days toured the West to their own profit and the pleasure of their audiences. The star was advertised as a French diva of European renown Essex had heard her on the Continent, and pronounced her well worth hearing, if rather too fat to be satisfying to the esthetic demands of the part of Leo- nora. Grand opera was still something of a rarity in San Francisco and it promised to be an occasion. The pa- pers printed the names of those who had bought boxes. Mariposa had read that evening that Jacob Shackleton would occupy the left-hand proscenium box with his wife and family. “His daughter,” sald Mariposa, stand- ing in front of the glass as she put on finishing touches, “is ugly, Mrs. Willers says. I think that’s the way it ought to be. It wouldn’t be fair to be an heiress and handsome.” “It wouldn't be fair for you to be an heiress, certainly,” commented the mother from her armchair. . “You don’t think I abuse the privi- lege a penniless girl has of being good- looking?” said Mariposa, turning from the glass with a twinkling eye. She looked her best and knew it Relics of better days lingered in the bureau drawers and jewel boxes of these ladies as they did In the small parlor. That night they had been mus- tered In their might for Mariposa's decking. She was proud in the con- sciousness that the dress of flne black lace she wore, through the meshes of which her statuesque arms and neck gleamed like ivory, was made from a shawl that in its day had been a costly possession. Her throat was bare, the lace leaving it free and closing below it. ‘Where the black edges came together over the white skin a small brooch of dilamonds was fastened. Below the rim of her hat, her hair glowed like copper, and the coloring of her lips and cheeks was deepened by excitement into vary- ing shades of coral. As they entered the theater, Essex was aware that many heads were turned in their direction. But Mari- posa was too Imbued with the joyous unusualness of the moment to notice it She had forgotten herself entirely. and sitting & little forward, her lips parted, surveyed the rustling and fast-filling house. The glow of the days of Comstock glory was still In the air. San Fran- cisco was still the city of gold and sil- ver. The bonanza kings had not left it, but were trying to accommodate themselves to the palaces they were rearing with their loose millions. So- clety yet retained its ,Tosmopolitan tome, careless, brilllant, and unconven- tional. There were figures In it that had made it famous—men who began life with a pick and shovel and ended it In an orgy of luxury; women, whose habits of early poverty dropped from them like a garment, and who, carried away by their power, displayed the bar- baric caprices of Roman empresses. The sudden possession of wealth had intoxlcated this people, lifting them from the level of the commonplace into a saturnalia of extravagance. Poverty, the only restraint many of them had ever felt, was gone. Money had made them lawless, whimsical, bizarre. It had developed all-conquering personal- ities, potent individualities. They were still playing with it,” wondering at it, throwing it about. Essex let his glance roam over the audience, that filled the parque., and the three horseshoes above it. IT struck him as being more Latin than Ameri- can. That forelgnness which has al- ways clung to Californla was curious- ly pronounced in this gathering of va- ried classes. He saw many faces with the ebon hair and olive skins of the Spanish Californians, lovely women, languid and fawn-eyed, badly dressed —for they were almost all poor now, who once were lords of the soil. The great Southern element which, in its day, set the tone of the city and contributed much to its traditions of birth and breeding, was already falling into the background. Many of its women had only their beauty left, and this they had adorned, as Mariposa had hers, with such remnants of the days when Plancus was consul, as remained —bits of jewelry, old and unmodish cumbrously handsome, edgings of + », a pale-colored feather In an old hat, a crape shawl worn with an air, a strip= of beads carried bravely, though bea * °re no longer in the mode. Essex raised his glass from the pe rusal of the sea of faces, to the b which the Shackleton party had just entered. There was no question ab ur the Americanism of this group, ths young man thought, as he stared at Jake Shackleton. The two ladies in the front of the hox were Mrs. and Miss Shackleton. former was floridly handsome, almost aristocratic, the gazer thought, looking at her firmly modeled, composed faes under its roll of gray hair. The daugh- ter was very like her father, but ugly Even in the costly French costume she wore, with the gleam of dlamonds in her hair, about her neck, in the lace on her bosom,, she was ugly. Essex, with the thought of marrying money in the background of his mind, scruti- nized her. To rectify his fortune in such a way became more repugnant than ever. If Mariposa had only been Jake Shackleton’s daughter instead! Continued Next Sunday. g, R 3/ \\i’i =\ = A (o H NGNS, 4 MRS