The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, March 20, 1904, Page 4

THE SAN FRANCISCO SUNDAY CALL. of reference books he had to consult for an article on the great actresses of the French stage from Clairon to Rachel. These light and brilliant es- says had been &n experiment of Shackleton’s, who maintained that the Sunday edition shonld furnish food for all types of minds. Dssex had pro- duced exactly the class of matter wanted, and recelved for it the gen- erous pay that the proprietor of The Trumpet was always ready to glve for good work. The reader was fiuttering the leaves of the first book of the pile when a knock at the door stopped him. He knew it was his neighbor across the hall, who had Leen in bed for over a waek, sick with bronchitis. Essex had seen the man several times during his seclusion and had conceived a care- jessly cynical interest in him. When sober, he had developed re- markable anecdotal capacity, which had immensely amused his new ac- quaintance. Tales of *49 and the early Comstock days, scandals of those now in high places, discreditable accounts of the making of fortunes, flowed from his lips in a high-colored and divert- ing stream. If they were lles they were exceedingly ingenfous ones. Hs- gex saw material for a dozen novels in the man’s revealing and lurid recitais. Of his own personal history he was reticent, merely saying that his name was George Harney, and his trade that of job-printer. Drink had almost de- stroved him. Physically he was a mere bunch of nerves covered by flab- by, sallow flesh. In answer to Essex's “come in.,” the door opened and Harney shambled in- to the room. He was fully dressed, but showed the evidenoes of illness in his hollowed cheeks and eyes, and the yellow skin hanging flaccid round jaw and throat. His hand shook and his galt was uncertain, but he was per- fectly sober. “I came to have a squint at the pa- per, Doc,” be sald in a hoarse voice. “] can't go out with this Dblasted wheezing on me. Don’t want to dle in my prime.” Essex threw the paper across the table at him. “There’'s news to-night™ he sald taking up his book; “Shackleton’s dead.” The man stopped as 1f electrified. “Shackieton? Jake Shackleton?” be sald in a loud volce. “Jake Shackleton,” answered Essex, surprised at the startled astonishment of his face. “Did you know him?” Harney snatched the paper and opened it with an unsteady hand. He ran his eyes over the lines under the black-lettered heading of the first pags. “By gosh!” he sald to himself, “so he 1 He sat down In the chair at the op- posite side of the table, smoothed out the sheet and read the account slowly and carefully. he said again when he finished, “who'd a thought Jake'd go off like tha “Did you know him? sex. “Once up in the Slerra, when we was all mining up there.” He spoke absently and sat looking into the fire for a moment, then said: “It's pretty tough Iluck to be whisked off that way when you just got everything in the palm of your hand.” Essex made no reply, and after a pause he added: “Between fifteen and twenty mil- lions it says there,” indicating the pa- per, “and when I saw Jake Shackleton first you wouldn’'t er hired him to sweep down the steps of The Trumpet office. But that was twenty-five years ago at least.” “Oh, Shackleton was an able man. There’s no question about that. They were saying in the office to-night that vwenty million is a conservative figure 0 put his money at.” “SWho does it go to? Do you know that?” queried the man by the fire. “Widow and children, I suppose. There are two children. Don't amount to anything. I believe.” “No; there are three.” Harney turned from the fire and looked over his shoulder. He was sit- ting in a hunched position, his back rounded, his chin depressed. His black eyes, that drew close to his nose, were instinct with eager cunning. The gkin across the bridge of the nose was drawn in wrinkles. As he looked the wheezing of his disturbed breath- ing was distinctly audible. Essex was struck by the sly and malevolent in- telligence of his face. “Three children!” he sald. “Well, I've always heard the death of a bo- nanza king was the signal for a large crop of widows and orphans to take the fleld.” “There time. She’s dead. and I've seen her.” He accompanied this remark with a second look, significant with the same malicious intensity of meaning. Then he rose to his feet and walked to- ward the door. “Good-night, Doc,” he said as he reached it; “din’t well enough to talk to-night.” Essex gave him a return good-night and the door closed on him. The younger man cogitated over his books for a space. It did not strike him as interesting or remarkable that Shack- jeton should have had an unacknowl- edged child, of whose existence George Harney, the drunken Jjob-printer, knew. He was becoming accustomed to the extraerdinary intermingling of classes and conditions that marked the ploneer period of California life. But shouid the unacknowledged child attempt to establish its claim to part of the great estate left by the bonanza king, what a complication that might lead to! These Californians were cer- tainly a picturesque people, with their dramatic ups and downs of fortune, their disdain of accepted standards, their indifference to t-adition, and their magnificently disreputabie pasts. As one of the special writers of The repeated Es- won't be any widow this But the girl's alive N\ Trumpet, Essex attended the funeral of his chief, e and Mrs. Willers 2nd Edna, in company with the young woman who .did the “Fashions and Folbles™ column, were in one of the carriages that Mariposs had seen from the hilltop. Mrs. Willers was silent on the long, slow drive. She had hon- ored her chief, who had been just to her. Miss Peebles, the “Fashions and Foibles” young woman, was S0 en- grossed by her fears that a change of ownership {n The Trumpet would rob her of her employment that she could talk of nothing else. To Edna, the sensation of being In a carriage was so novel it occupled her to the exclusion of all other matters ,and she looked out @f the window with a face of sparkling interest. That evening, after the funeral, Es- mex was preparing to work late. He had "gutted” the pile of books, and with their contents well assimilated was ready to write his three columns. There was no carline on the street, and traffic at that hour on that quiet thoroughfare was over for the day. For an hour he wrote easily and flu- ently. The sheets, glistening with damp Ink, were pushed In front of him in a careless pile. Now and then he paused to consult his books, which were arranged round him on the table, open at the place he needed for refer- ence. The smoke wreaths were thick round his head and the room was hot. It was nearly ten o'clock when he heard the nolsy entrance of ‘his fellow lodger. Harney was evidently suffi- clently well to go to work again and to come home drunk. Essex Ilistened with suspend pen and a half smile on his dark face, which turned to a frown as he realised that the stum- bling feet had turned his way. The knock on the door came next, and simultaneonsly it opened and Harney's head was thrust in. “What the devil do you want?” sald the scribe, sitting erect, his pipe in his hand, the other waving the smoke strata that hung before his facel “Let me come and get warm a min- ute. I'm wheezing again, and my room’s cold as a tomb. Don't mind me—all I want is to set before the fire for a spell.” He sidled in before the permission was granted and sank down in the armchalr, hitching it nearer-to the grate. He was a man to whom intox- ication lent a curieusly amiable and humorous quality. The ugliness and evi]l that were so evidently part of his nature were not so apparent, and he became cheerful, almost genial. Sitting close to the fire, he held out his hands to the blaze, then, stealing a look at Essex over his shoulder, saw that he was refliling his pipe. “Been to the funeral?” he said. Essex grunted an assent. “The family there?” “None of the ladies; Shackleton.” Harney was silent; then, with the greatest care, he took up a plece of coal and set it on the fire. The action required all the ingenuity of which he" was master. His body responded to his intoxication, while, save for an un- usual fluency of speech, his mind ap- peared to remain unaffected. After he had set the coal in place he looked at Essex, who was staring vacantly at him, thinking of ¢he second part of his article, “Did you notice a tall, fine-looking young lady there with dark red hair?” said Harney, without removing his glassy gaze from the man at the table. Essex did not move his eyes, but their absent fixity suddenly seemed to snap into a change of focus betok- ening attention. Gazing at Harney, he answered coldly: “No; I saw no one like that. whom are you referring?” “Oh, I dunno, I dunno,” responded the other with a clumsy shrug of his shoulder, and turning back to the fire over which he cowered. “But vou know her added, half to himself. “Whom do I know? Turn around.” The man turned, looking a little de- flant. “Now, what are you trying to say?” “I aln’t trying to say nuthin’. Al I done 1is to ask yer if yer saw a lady— tall, with red hair—at the funeral. You know her, 'cause I've seen you only Win To anyhow,” he with her.” “Who is she?” “Well,” slowly and uneasily, “she’s called Moreau.” 2 “You mean Miss Mariposa Moreau, the daughter of a mining man, who died last spring in Santa Barbara?” “Yes; that's her all right. She's called Moreau, but it ain’t her name.” “Moreau isn't her name? What is her name, then?” “I dunno,” he spoke stubbornly and turned back to the fire. “Turn back here,” sald Essex in a suddenly authoritative tone; “explain to me what you mean by that.” “I don’t mean nuthin’,” sald the other, looking sullenly deflant, “and I don't know nuthin’ only that that ain’t her true name.” “What is her name? Answer me at once, and no fooling.” “I dunno.” Essex rose. Harney, looking fright- ened, staggered to his feet, clutching the mantelpiece. He half-raised his arm as if expecting to be struck and said loudly: “If you want to know ask Shackle- ton’s widow. She knows.” Essex stood a few paces from him, suddenly stilled by the phrase. The drunkard, alarmed and yet deflant, could only dimly understand what the expression on the face of the man be- fore him meant. “Sit down,” sald Issex quietly; ‘I'm not going to touch you. I'm going to get some whisky. That'll tone you up a bit. The bronchitis has taken it out of you more than you think.” He went to a cupboard and brought out & bottle and glasses. Pouring some whisky into one, he pushed it to- ward Harnev. “There, that'll brace you up. You'll feel more yourself in a minute.” He diluted his own with water and B Q2D only touched the glass’ rim to his lips. His eyes, glistening and inten{, were on the drunkard’s now darkly flushing face. The glass rattled against the tatle ma HMarney set it down. “That puts mettle into me, again. Ainkes me feel like the old times be- fore the malaria got into my bones. Malaria was my ruin. Got It In the Slerra mining. People think it's drink that done it, but it's malaria.” “Ihat was when you knew Moreau? What sort of man was he?” “Poor sort; not any grit. Had a good claim up there beyond Placer- ville, he and 1. Took out 's much as eight thousand In that first summer. Moreau stayed by It, but I quit.. Both had our reasons.” “And Miss Moreau, you say, is not Dan Moreau's daughter. Is she a stepdaughter?” “Well—in a sort of a way you might gay 80. Any way, she ain't got no le- gal right to that name.” “T didn't know the mother was a widow when she married Moreau?” “She weren't. She marrted twict, and she weren’t divorced. There ain't but two people in the world that knows it. One's Jake . Shackleton's widow,"—he rose, and, putting an un- steady hand on the table, leaned for- ward *and almost whispered into his interlocutor’s face—'and the other’s me." “Are you trying to tell me,” safd Es- =ex quietly, “that Miss Moreau is Jake Shackleton’s daughter?” "That's what she 1s” The man turned round like a character on the stage and swept the room with an in- vestigating look—*“And she's more'n that. She's his lawful daughter, born In wedlock.” The two faces stared at each other. The drunken man was not too far be- yond himself to realize the importance of what he was saying. In a second’'s retrospect Essex’s mind flew back over the hitherto puzzling interest Shackle- ton had taken in Mariposa Moreau. Could it be possible the man before him was telling the truth? “"How does she come to be known as Moreau’'s daughter? Why didn't Shackleton acknowledge her if she was his legitimate ehild? Tha fairy tale.” “There was complications. Have you ever heard that Shackleton was conce a Mormon?” Essex had heard the gossip which had persistently followed Shackleton's ascending course. He nodded his head, gazing at Harney, a presenti- ment of coming revelations holding him silent. “Well, that's true. He was. I seen him when he was. Jake Shackleton crossed the Sierra with two wives. One—the first one—was the lady who died here a month ago, and passed as Mrs. Moreau. The other's the widow. But she was the second wife. She didn't have no children then. But the first wife had one, a girl baby, born on the plains in Utdh. It weren't three weeks old when I seen it.” “Where did you see it?” “In the Sierra back of Hangtown.i Me and Dan Moreau was workin’ stream bed there. And ofle day two emigrants, a man and a woman, with a sick woman inside the wagon, came down from the summit. They was Jake Shackleton and his two wives, and they was the worst looking outfit you've ever clapped your eyes on. They was pretty near dead. One er their horses did die, In front of our cabin, and the sick woman—she that afterwards was called Mrs. Moreau— #vas too beat out to move on. Shack- leton, who didn't care who died, so long’s they got into the settlements, calkalated to make her ride a spell, and when the other horse dropped make her walk. She was the orneri- est looking scarecrow you ever seen, and she hadn’t no more life’'n a mum- my. But she was ready to do just what they said. She was just so beat out. And then Moreau—he was just that kind of a fool—" He paused and looked at Essex, with his beady, dark eyes glistening with a sense of the importance of his comgnunication. His hand sought the glass and he drained {it. Then he leaned forward to deliver the climax of his story: “Bought her from Shackleton for a pair of horses.” “Bought her for a pair of horses! How could he?” “I'm not sayin’ how he could; I'm sayin’ what he dld.” “What did he do it for?” “The Lord knows. He was that kind of a fool. We had her in the cabin sick for days, with me and him waitin’ on her hand and foot, and the cussed baby yellin’ like a coyote. She wasn't good for anything. Just ust ter lie round sick and peaked and sprter pine. But Moreau got a crazy liking for her, and he was sot on the baby same’s if it was his own. I caught on pretty soon to the way the cat was goin’ to jump. 1 lit out and left 'em.” “Why did you leave if the claim was good?” “It weren't no good when no one worked it, and there weren't more'n enough in it for Moreau alone, with a woman and a baby on his hands. He said first off he was goin’ to get her cured up and send her to the Eldora- do Hotel to be a waltress, but I seen fast enough what was goin’ to hap- pen. And it did happen. They was snowed in up there all winter. In the spring he took her into Hangtown and married her—said he was marryin’ a widow woman whose husband dled on the plains. I heard that afterwards from some er the boys, but it weren't my business to give ’em away. So I shut my mouth and ain’t opened it till now. But Moreau’s dead, and the woman’'s dead, and now Shackleton’s dead. There ain’t no one what knows but me and Shackleton’s widow.” “And what makes you think this Is the same child? The baby you saw may have died and this may be a child born a year or two later.” “It ain’t. It's the same. There weren't never any other children. I kep’ my eye on 'em. Moreau was 4’/"/ . 1 y e NV V2, mining round among the camps and afterward was in Sacramento for a spell, and I was round in them places oft and or* myself. I saw him, but I dodged him ’cause I knew he didn’t want to run up against me, knowin’ as how I was onter what he’'d done. He was safe for me. But I seen the girl often; seen her grow up. And I Knew her in a minute the day I saw you walkin' with her on Sutter street, and I thinks to myself, ‘You're with the biggest heiress in San Francisco, if if you and she only knew it And that's what she is, if there was some- thin’ else but my word to prove it.” Essex sat pushed back from the ta- ble, his hands in his pockets, his pipe nipped between his teeth, his face partly obscured by the floating clouds of smoke that hung about his head. “A first-rate story,” he sald slowly; “have some more whisky.” And he pushed the bottle toward Harney, who seized it and fumblingly poured the fiery liquor into the glass. “And it's true,” he said hoarsely— “every blamed word.” He drank what he had poured out. set down the glass and stared at Essex with his face puckered into Its ex- pression of evil cunning. “And she don’'t know anything about it, doés she?” he asked. “If you mean Miss Moreau, she cer- tainly appears to think she is the child of the man who brought her up.” “That's what I heard. But Shackle- ton, when Moreau dled, was goin’ to do the square thing by her. At least, I heard talk of his sendin’ her to Eu- rope to be a singer. Ain’t it so?” “I heard something about it myself. But I'm no authority.” There was a pause. Harney settled back in his chair. The room was ex- ceedingly hot, and impregnated with the odor of whisky and * the smoke from Essex’s pipe. *He cpuldn't acknowledge her. Tt would er given the other children too big a black eye. But it seemed like he wanted to square things up when he was taken off sudden like that.” He paused. The other, smoking, with frowning brows and wide eyes, made no response, his own thoiights holding him in tense Immobility. “And the other wife wouldn't er stood it anyway. She’s a pretty com- petent woman, I guess. Oh, he could not have acknowledged her, nohow. But she’s his legitimate daughter, all right. She’s the lawful heir to—most er them—millions. She’s—" His voice broke and trailed off into silence, which was suddenly interrup- .ted by a guttural snort and then heavy, regular breathing. Essex rose, and, going to the window, opened it. A keen-edged breeze of air entered, seeming all the fresher from the dense atmosphere of the room. Its hurried entrance sent the smoke wreaths skurrying about in fantastic whorls and curle. The dying fire threw out a frightened flame. Essex moved toward it, saying as he approached: “Yes; it's a good story. to be a novelist, Harney.” ‘There was me answer, and, looking into the chair, he saw that Harney had fallen into a sodden sleep, curled agalinst the chair-back, his chin sunk on his breast, the hollows in his face looking black in the hard light of the gas. The younger man gazed at him for a moment with an expression of slight, cold disgust, then turned back to the table and sat down. He wrote no more, but sat motion- less, his eyes fixed on vacancy, the thick, curling smoke oozing from the bowl of his pipe and issuing from be- tween his lips. His thoughts reviewed every part of th® story he had heard. He felt certaln of f{ts truth. The drunken job-printer had never imag- ined it. It explained many things that be- fore had puzzled him. Why the Mor- eaus, even in the days of their afflu- ence, had lived in such uneventful quietude, bringing up their beautiful and talented daughter in a jealous and unusual seclusion. It explained Shackleton’s interest in the girl. He even saw now, recalling the two faces, likeness that the father himself had seen in Mariposa’s firmly modeled jaw and chin, which did not belong to the goft, feminine prettiness of Lucy. It must be true. And, being true, what possibilities might it not develop? Mrs. Shackle- ton knew it, too—that this penniless girl was the bonanza king’s eldest and only legitimate child, with power, if not entirely to dispossess her own chil- dren, at least to claim the llon's share of the vast fortune. If Mariposa had proof of her mother’'s marriage to Shackleton and of her own identity as the child of that marriage, she could rise and claim her Weritage—her part of the twenty millions! The thought, and what it opened be- fore him, dlzzied him. He drank some of the dlluted whisky in the glass beside him and sat on motion- less. It was evident Mariposa did not know. She had been brought up in ignorancé of the whole extraordinary story. The man and woman she had been taught to regard as her parents Had committed an offense against the law, which they had hidden from her, secure in the thought that the other participants in the strange proceed- ing would never dare to confess. The minutes and hours ticked by and Essex still sat thinking, while the drunkard breathed stertorously in his heavy .sleep, and the coals dropped softly in the grate as the fire sank into clinkers and ashes. CHAPTER XIIIL THE SEED OF BANQUO. «What says the married woman?'—Shakes- peare. As soon as Mrs. Shackleton was sufficiently recovered, the family had moved from Menlo Park to their town house, The long work of settling up the great estate which had been left to the widow and her children required their presence in the city, and the shock TN 3| You ought NS N ‘n GOV N 3 \ which Bessie had suffered in finding her husband dead had rendered the country place unbearable to her. The day after the funeral the women had removed to town. Win, however, remained at Menlo Park, to over such documents of his father's as had been left there. Shackleton had lived so much at hls country place for the last two or three years that many of his papers and letters were kept in the library, which had been his special sanctum. ‘Among these, the son had come up- on a small package of letters, which, fastened together with an elastic, and bearing a note of thelr contents on one end, had roused his Interest. They were the letters exchanged between his father and the chlef of the detec- tive bureau when the latter had been commissioned to locate the widow and daughter of Daniel Moreau. Shackleton, a man of exceedingly methodical habits, had kept coples of his letters. There were only seven of them altogether—three from him: four In reply. The first ones wers short, only a few lines, containing the request to find the ladles who, the writer understood, were In San Fran- cisco, and ascertain their clrcum- stances and position. Then came the acknowledgment of that, and then in a few days, the answer stating the whereabouts of Mrs. Moreau and her daughter, their means, and such small facts about them as that the mother was in delicate health and the daughter “a handsome, accomplished, and estimable young lady.” Win looked over this correspond- ence, puzzled and wondering. He re- membered the girl he had seen in The Trumpet office that dark after- noon, and how the office boy had told him it was a Miss Moreau, a friend of Miss Willers and a singer. What mo- tive could his father have had in seek- ing out this girl and her mother in this secret and effectual way? He read over the letters again. Moreau had died In Santa Barbara in the spring. the widow and her daughter had then come to San Francisco, and by the wording of the second letter he inferred that his father had been ig- norant of their means, and of the girl's appearance, style and character. It was evidently not the result of an interest in people he had once known and then lost sight of. It seemed to be an interest, for some outside rea- son, In two women of whom he knew absolutely nothing. Win had heard that his father con- templated offering a musical educa- tion to some singing girl, of whom the young man knew nothing, and had seen only for a moment that day in The Trumvet office. This was un- doubtedly the girl, But Shackleton evidently had not heard of her through Mrs. Willers, who was known to be an energetic' boomer of obscure geniud, He had hunted her out him- self; had undoubtedly had some ulte- rior interest in, or knowledge of her some time before the day Win had seen her. It was odd, the boy thought, meditating over the correspondence. What could have led his father to search for, and then attempt to assist a woman who seemed to be a com- plete stranger to him? It looked like the secret paying of an old debt. ‘Win put the letters in his pocket and went up to town. There was more work for him to do now than there had been before, and he rose to it with a spirit -d energy that sur- prised himself. Neither he nor any one else had ever realized how para- lyzing to him had been his father's cold scorn. From boyhood, Win had felt himself to be an aggravating failure. The elder man had not scru- pled to make him understand his in- feriority. The mere presence of his father seemed to numb his brain and make his tongue stammer over the simplest phrases. Now, he felt him- self free and full of energy, as though bands that had cramped his mind and confined his body were broken. His old attitude of posing as a fast young man of fashion lost its charms. Life grew suddenly to mean something, to be full of use and purpose. He was left very much to himself, his mother being still too much broken to attend to business, and Maud being absorbed in her affair with Latimer, which had recently culminated in a secret engagement. This she had been afraid to tell to her domineering father and ambitious mother, and her opportunities of seeing her flance had been of the briefest until now. Lati- mer haunted the house of evenings, when Bessie was lying on the sofa in an upstairs boudoir and Win was locked in his father’s study going over the interminable documents. The first darkness of her grief and horror past, Bessle, in her seclusion, thought of many things. One of these was the fate of Mariposa Moreau. The bonanza king’s widow, with all her faults, had that lavish and reckless generosity, where money was con- cerned, that marked the early Califor- nians. This forceful woman, who had made the blighting journey across the plains without complaint, faced the flerce hardships of her early married life with a smile, borne her children amid the rude discomforts of remote mining camps, was an adept in the art of luxurious living. She knew by in- stinct how to be magnificent, and one of her magnificences was the careless munificence of her generosity. Now, she felt for Mariposa. She knew Shackleton’s plans for her, and realized the girl’s disappointment. In her heart she had been bitterly jeal- ous of the other wife’s child, who had the beauty and gifts her own lacked. It would be to everybody’s advantage to remove the girl to another country and sphere. And because her hus- band had died there was no reason why his plans should remain unful- filled. Though Shackleton had as- sured her that the girl knew nothing, though every one connected with the shameful bargain but herself was dead, it was best to be prudent, espe- cially when prudence was the course most agreeable to all concerned. She C08000900635030035900000 et Z A, RN ”u\ \Q‘\ I would rest easier; her children would seem more secure in their positions and possessions, if Mariposa Moreau, well provided for, were safe in Paris studying singing. When she was fully decided as to the wisdom of her course, she wrote Mariposa a short but friendly letter, speaking of her knowledge of Mr. Shackleton’s plans for her advance- ment. of her desire to carry out her late husband’'s wishes, and naming = day and hour at which she begged the young girl to call on her. It was a simple matter to ascertain Miss Moreau's address from Mrs. Willers, and the letter was duly sent. It roused wrath In its recipient. Mariposa was learning worldly wis- dom at a rate of which her tardy de- velopment had not given promise. Great changes were taking place in her simple nature. She had been wakened to life with savage abrupt- ness. Dormant characteristics, pas- sions unsuspected, had risen to the surface. The powerful feelings of a rich but undeveloped womanhood had suddenly been shaken from thelr sleep by a grip of the hand of destiny. The unfamiliarity of a bitter anger against the Shackletons struggled with the creeping disgust of Essex, that grew daily. Morning after morning she woke when the first gray light was faintly defining the squares of the windows. The leaden sense of wretchedness that seemed to draw her out of sleep gave place to the living hatred and shame that the upheaval of her life had left behind. She watched the golden wheat-ears dimly glimmering on the pale walls, while she lay and thought of all she had learned of life, her faith and happy Ignorance de- stroyed forever. Six weeks ago Mrs. Shackleton’s let- ter would have represented no more to her than what its words expressed. Now, she saw Bessle’'s anxiety to be rid of her, to push her out of sight as a menace. How much more readily would the widow have gone to work, with what zest of alarm and energy e would she have contrived for her ex- - pulsion, had she guessed what Marl- "_‘"' posa knew. The girl vacillated for a @ day, hating the thought of an inter- o SNk view with any member of the family (Phcomee whose wrongs to her beloved mother "“S\\\\\‘“ were seared scars in her brain; but \ :»‘\‘\ - finally concluding that it would be better to end her connection with \ them by an Interview with Mrs. Shackleton, she answered the letter, stating that she would come at the appointed hour. Two days later, at the time set In | the afternoon, she, stood in the small reception-room, to the left of the wide marble hall, waiting. The hushed splendor of the house would have im- pressed and awed her at any other time. But to-day her heart beat loud and her brain was preoccupied with its effort to keep her purpose clear, and yet not.to be angered into reveal- X ing too much. (Continued Next Sunday.) JOE ROSENBERG'S. Made to Look Stout By Wearing These. It is one of the newest 1904 models. A distinct style of our own. If your corsets are made to order and you pay ten times the p ice we ask you could not a better made or better orm builder than these. It is modeled and designed for the fashionable, up-to-date women. Made of French batiste, with bias ribbon straps; aluminoid boning, which is unbreakable and rust proof. It has a short, straight front, cut low at top of front steel, with a deep bust curve. It is a great form de- veloper for slender or medium figures. Price §1.50 . Corsets fitted free. Experts in attendance to tell which corset is best suitad for your figure. 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