The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, February 11, 1906, Page 3

arranged and she raised her hands to draw it into place and tuck a loosened curl under its restraint. He watched her Aixealy. “No he said, reaching out to draw the hat-te him, and taking one of the wistaria blossoms from it, “‘put thig in.” “I have mno glass,” she demurred, stretching a hand for the flower. “That doesn’t matter. T'll be your glass. T'll tell you if it isn't all right.” She tucked the stem of the blossom into the velvet band. so that its trail of deli- cate lavender bells fell downward behind her ear. “How 1= that?” she sald, facing him, her eyes downcast. Her coquetries of manner had deserted her. With the flush on her face a glowing pink and her lashes on her cheeks, fshe was a picture of un- easy embarrassment “Perfect,” he answered. He continued to stare at her for a moment and then sald suddenly in a low volce: “Good heavens, how you've changed! It's & little over & year now that I've known you and you're an entirely differ- ent person from the girl with the short hair I met up at Foley’'s. What have you done to yourself? What is it that has changed you?”’ “I think it's because I'm happy,” she said, beginning again to pick the wild fowers. “Why are you flappy?” % “I don’t know. It's hard to say. T she paused and began to arrange her flowers in & careful bunch. He suddenly dropped his eyes to the ground and there was a silence. The sleepy murmur of insects rose upon it. The sun, in an effort to penetrate the inclosure, scattered {tself in intermittent fiickerings of brilliant light that shifted in golden spots along the tree trunks or came diluted through the webbing of twigs and vine tendrils. It was still very hot and the balsamic odors of bay- tree and pine seemed to grow more in- tense with the passing of the hour. “You were such a quiet little thing up there,” Jerry went on, “working like a n in that garden of yours and never ng to go anywhere. Things down here may have made you happy, but I s wonder if they haven't made olous, t0o.” When Jerry ceased staring at her and be to talk in this famillar, half-ban- train, she felt more at ease, less rtable and conscious. She seized ng with eagerness and said, Gown at her little bouquet: vou know I am frivolous. I love nd pretty clothes and lots of spend, and all the good times money t C I was that way at Foley only I have any of those things. I can > , too, if it's necessary ‘When n't got the things to be frivolous I can do without.” hed out his hand and plucked 1k of feather-headed gra: yor said indolently. ure you're not telling a little story? o, mo, quite sure. 1 have two sides character, a frivolous one and a se- one. You ought to know that by ‘Are ‘Which have you shown to me ofter 12" He was peeling the stalk of its ding blade of grass. know. That's for you to say. s been an even division.” d up She was smiling slightly, faintly in evidence, e her dimple #And 1 suppose the dimple, he said, s to the frivolous side.” Even my face has two sides; the the dimple and the one without.” me see them,” he said. “Let me W of the two is the more at- ned forward and with the tip of iong spear of grass, touched her the che “Turn,” he com- “turn, till I get a good profile turned, presenting Wer face in pure as a cameo against the leafy background. ‘That's the serious side,” he said, raising her chin slightly, so that her curls slipped back, disclosing her ear. now for e frivolou he “I don’t serious side so wel Sae turned her head in the other di- rection,” her eyes down-drooped. He drew himself gearer to her over the ground, the grass spear in his hand. “And so this is the frivolous? Shouldn't the dimple be here?” He touched her cheek again with the tip of the grass, and as he did so the dimple tremb.ed into being. She looked at him slantwise, Jaughing, with some- thing breathless in the laughter. As she met his glance her laughter died awa His face had changed to something unfamiliar and hard. He was pale, his eyes fierce and unloving. e looked at him, some dying on her lips, n she made an attempt to rise, but drew close to her and caught her ands. She turned her head away, suddenly white and frightened. “June,” he whispered, “do you know how much I love you?” em to know the phrase of It was a whisper unlike anything she had evep heard before. A whisper within herself responded to it. She sat still, trembling and dizzy, and felt his arms close about her, and her con- sclousness grow blurred as his lips were pressed on hers. The instant after he had loosed her had shrunk from each other terror, the girl quivering rush of half comprehended the man struggling with con- ‘s passions. His face scemed to and they guilty with a her full of anger, almost of bhatred, as he cried to her: “Go home. TI'm sorry. I shouldn’t have touched you. We cay't come here again this way. I'm not free to love you. Go_home.” He made an imperious gesture for her to go, almost as though driving her from his presence. White as death and dazed by the terrifying strangeness of it all, she scrambled to her feet, and, turning from him, set out at a run. She brushe through the bushes, her eyes staring be- fore her, her breast straining with dry sobs. In one hand she still held her little bynch of wild flowers, and with the other she made futile snatches at her skirt, which she had trodden upon and torn. Gaining the end of the wood, she came into the open garden, glaring with sun, deserted and brilliant. Back of it stood the house, uttered to the afternoon heat ang drowsing among its vines:. She was about to continue her course over the grass to the open front door, when a footstep behind her, rapid as her own, fell on her ear. For an instant of alert, lightly poised terror, she paused listen- ing, then shot forward across the grass and on to the drive. But her pursuer was fleeter than she. Close at her shoul- der she beard him, his volce full of com- manding urgency. “Stop, I must speak to you.” 5 She obeyed as she must always obey that voice, and wheeled around on him, pallid and panting. “June, dearest, forgive me. myself and I've frightened you. I forgot But we mustn’t meet—that way—any more.” She looked at him without answering. He was as pale as she. The lower part of his face seemed to tremole. He had diffi- culty in controlling it and speaking quietly. “It's true what I sald,” he went on. “I love you. I've done so for months. I was to blame, horrioly to blame. You're so young—such a child. I was the one to blame for it all.” “For what?"” xhe sald. “What's there to wiame anyvody for? Wuat Has hap- pened all of a sudden?” He came closer to her and looked her steadily in the eye. “I am not free,”” he sald in the lowest audible voice. “I can’t marry you. I am not free.” She repeated with trembling lips: “Not free! Why not?” “No. If I were—oh, June, if I were!” He turned away as if to go, then turned back, and sald: “Oh, June, if I were, we would be so happy! If I could undo the past and take you—!" ' His voice broke and he looked down, biting his under-lip. She understood every- thing now, and for the moment speech was impossible. There was a slight pause and then he said: “I wouldn’t let myself see the way it was going. I lied to myself. I doved you better every day, and I persuaded myself I didn’t, and that it was nothing but a friendship to both of us. We mustn't meet this way any more. But we will see each other sometimes at people’s houses? We're not to be strangers.” She turned dazedly away from him to g0 to the house. For a step or two he let™ her go. Then he followed her, caught ier hand with its bunch of limp flowers, and sald with urgent desperation: “I'u see you sometimes. I can't give you up entirely. Perhaps—perhaps—later, hen time has passed we can be friends. June, I can't give it all up like this.” She turned on :um a face whose exprgs- sion plerced through his egotism. “Let me go into the house,” she whis- pered. “I can't say anything now. Let me go into the house.” He dropped her hand and, turning, walked rapidly toward the driveway. June ran to the house. " It was wrapped in complete silence. Not a sound or movement came from it. She had but one idea, to mount the stairs unseen, gain her room and then Jock the door. Noiseless and fleet-footed she sped up the veranda steps, flew through the open door, and then cowered against the wall. Rosamund was on the stairs com- ing down. “June,” she said sharply, ‘“where did Jerry Barclay come from, and what was ng to you out there? I've been watching you from the window.’ Then she saw her sister's face. Her own changed in a flash. Its severity van- ished, and concern, alarm, love, took its She ran downward to the figure stair-foot, pressed against the Us happened? June, what's the mdtter? Her startled whisper broke the sunny stillness with a note of the deadly real- ism of life amid the sweet unconcern of nature. She tried to clasp June, who made an effort to squeeze past her, crushed against the wall, her head dowd,g like one who fears recogni- ®yhen, finding it impossible to es- she suddenly collapsed at Rosa- mund's feet. curled up like a person in physical anguish, and cried with smoth- ered violence: “He's not free, Rosamund. It's all over; everything's over. It's all true, and we've got to end it all. He's not free.” Rosamund realized vaguely what had happened. She was a loving woman, but she was a practical one, too. There were people in the house who must not see June just at this crisis. She was much the larger and stronger of the two girls, and she bent down and attempted to raise the prostrate figure. “June, listen. We were going out driv- ing at five. Mary Moore may be down at any moment. Come quick; she mustn’t see you. She's the worst gossip in San Francisco. Come, I'll help you.” She dragged the girl up with an arm around her, hurried her to the top of thé stairs, along the hall, and into her room. There she let her fall into an armchair, anc, stepping back, locked the door. In the sweet-scented, airy room, with its thin muslin curtains softening the hot brilliancy of the landscape, June sat in the armchair, silent and motionless, her face pinched. Rosamund, who had never seen her sister like this, did not know what to do, and in despair, resorted to the remedies she had been accustomed to using when her mother had been ill. She softly rubbed June's temples with cologne and fanned her. Finally she knelt down by her side and sald tenderly: “What Is it, Junle, dear? Tell it to me. “T have told it to you,” said June. “He's not free; that's all. You all said it, but I wouldn’t believe it. Now he's said it and I've got to believe it.” She spoke in a high, hard voice, and Rosamund, kneeling on the floor, put her arms round her, and said with ingenuous consolation: “But now you know it, over.” “Bverything's over,” said June, dully. Her eyes fell to her lap, and there, in one hand, she saw the wilted remains of the little bunch of wild flowers. A sud- den realization of what her feelings had been when she picked them, how joyous, how shyly happy, how full of an elated pieasure of life, and what they were now, fell upon her with desolating force. She gave a cry, and, turning from her sister, pressed her face against the back of the chair and burst into a storm of tears. the worst's CHAPTER VL Readjustment, b, June and July passed, and the life in the De Soto house was very uneventful As soon as the group of guests left June requested her sister to ask no more vis- itors for a time, and the midsummer days filed by, unoccupied in their opulent, sun- bathed splendor. The blow at first crushed her. Despite the warnings she had received, it had come upon her with the stunning force of the entirely unexpected. The very fact that Jerry had been attacked by scandal had lent an exalted fervor to her belief in him. Even now, had there been a possibility of her continuing in this be- licf, she would have persisted. Weak, loving women have an extraordinary talent for self-deception, and June com- bined with weakness and love an irre- pressible optimism. She tried to piead for him with herself, argued his case as before a stern judge, attempted in her ignorance to find extenuating circum- stances for him, and then came face to face with the damning, incontrovertible fact that he himself had admitted. It was a blasting experience. Had she known him less well, had their acquaint- ance been of shorter duration, the blow would probably have killed her love. But the period of acquaintance had been Tong, the growth of affection gradual. By the time the truth was forced upon her, her passion had struck its roots deep into her heart, and she was not strong enough to tear it out. In the long summer days, wandering about the deserted, glowing gardens, she began the work of reconstructing her ideal. She told herself that she would always love him, but now it was with no confidence, no proud joy in a noble and uplifting thing. With agonizing throes of rebirth, her feeling for him passed from the soft, self-surrendering worship of a girl to the protective and forgiving passion of & woman. As it changed she 0 up to Virginia and put Rion off. What can I say to him?” “Tell him she doesn’t care for him,” said the truthful Rosamund. The colonel paused by the table, look- changed with it. The suggestion of the .ing down and jingling the loose silver child that had lingered in her vanished. The freshness of her $outh went for- ever. The evanescent beauty that happi- ness had given her, which on tne day of Barclay's declaration had reached its climax, shriveled like a flower in the heat of a fire. She looked pale, pinched and thin. Eying her image in the glass she marveled that any man could find her attractive. In the first period.of her wretchedness she was numbed. Then, the house swept of its guests and she and Rosamund once more alone, her silence broke and she poured out her sorrows to her sister. Rosamund heard the story from the first day at Foley's to its fateful termination In the Senora Kelley's woodland bower. She listened with unfailing sympathy, interrupted by moments of intense sur- prise. The revelations of the constant meetings with Barclay, which had been so skillfully kept secret, amazed and dis- concerted her. She tried to conceal her astonishment, but now and then it broke out in startled queries. It was so hard to connect the unconsclous and appar- ently candid June of the winter Wwith this disclosure of a June who had been so far from candid. It was nearly impos- sible to include them in the same per- spective. The culprit, engrossed in the recital of her griefs, was oblivious of her sister's growing state of shocked amaze, which sometimes took the form of silence, and occasionally expressed itself in gently probing questions. » “But, June,” she could not help saying in protest, “‘dion’t you realize something wasn't all right when you saw he'd rather meet you outside than see you at home?” June turned on her an eye of cold dis- approval. 5 YNo. And I don't see now that that's got anything to do with it.” Rosamund subsideu meekly, unable to follow the intricacles of her sister's men- tal processes. She did not argue with June—it was hopeless in the sufferer’s present state of mind—and she made few comments on Barclay's behavior. But she had~» her opinion of him, and jt was that he was one of the darkest villains. As to her opinion of June’s part of the story, she was a loyal soul and had none. All she felt was a flood of sympathy for the shocked and wounded girl, and a worried sense of responsibility in a position with which she felt herself unable to cope. It was with great relief that, toward the end of July she received a letter from the colonel, who had been six weeks in Virgiuia City, telling her he would be with them on the following Sunday. She drove dawn to the train to meet hem with the intention of preparing him for the change in his favorite. She had written to him that June was not weli. Driving back from the station she had ample time to expatiate on this theme and warn him not to exclaim unduly on her changed appearance. The colonel be- gan to be’ apprehensive and ask pene- trative questions, to which she had no answer., He leaped out of the carriage at the veranda steps and ran up to the top, where June stood. The change in her, flushed with wel- come, was not strikingly apparent at the first glance. It was later that he began to realize it, to be startled and then alarmed. She sat quiet through dinner, nibbling musingly at her food, once or twice not answering him. The empty si- lence of the house struck chill on him, and when he had commented on the ab- sence of visitors, she had said with sud- den gusty irritation: “There’s been nobody here for over a month. - I don't want anybody to come. I'll go away if anybody's asked. I like being alone this way.” He looked at Rosamund with an almost terrified inquiry. She surreptitiously raiscd her brows and gave her head a warning shake. It was late in the evening before he had a- chance to speak to Rosamund alone. Then, June having gone to her room, and he and Rosamund being left alone in the sitting-room, he laid his hand on the young girl's shoulder, and sald in a voice of command: “Now, Rosamund, 1've got to hear all about this. What the devil’'s been going on down here?” She told him the Wwhole story, greatly relieved to have a listener Who could ad- vise her. % The colonel was staggered by it. He said little, but Rosamund was not half- way through when he began pacing up and down, his hands in his pockets, every now and then a low ejaculation breaking from him. He, too, was astounded by the account of June's underhand beha- vior. He had thought the two girls as simple as children. That his own par- ticular darling could have consented to, and then so dexterously carried out, a. plan of procedure so far from what he had imagined a young girl would do, was painful and shocking to him. But as June’s love could not be killed by one sort of disagreeable revelation, so his could suffer no abatement from another kind. Maniike, he immediately began to make excuses for her. “She was too young to be allowed to go round that way alone,” he burst out an- grily. *“There was nobody to take care of her. What good are two old Silurians like me and your father to look after girls? I told him six months ago he ought to get some kind of an old woman in the house who'd knit in corners and hang round after you." } Rosamund continued her story and he went on with his walk. Now and then, as she alluded to Barclay's part in the affair, suppressed phrases that were of a profane character broke from him. When she had concluded he stood for a moment by the window looking out. “Well, the mischief's been done. He's made the poor little soul just about as miserable as she can be. I'd like to blow the' top of his head off with one of my derringers, but as I can’t have that sat- isfaction there’s no good thinking of it. All we can do is to try and brace her up some way or other.” Rosamund made no answer and after a moment of silence, he continued: “And I suppose it lets poor Rion out?” “Oh, ves,” breathed Rosamund with a melancholy sigh. The colonel walked to the other win- dow muttering in his wrath. A “He was coming down here, Rosie, to ask her. They've made a pile of money up there, in this Crown Point business, and they're buying up all the claims that might have clouded the title of the Cresta Plata. They believe there’'s a bo- nanza there, and the Gracey boys'don't often make mistakes. They'll be million- aires before they're dene. But that doesn't count. What does is that Rion Gracey’s the finest man in California, bar none. .ie woman that he married would be loved and taken care of, the way— the way a woman ought to bé. Good Lord, what fools we are and how we tear our lives to pleces for ne 8" “Don’t blame her, Uncle Jim. She's just got so fond of that man she hasn't any sense left.” 1 “Blame her! Have I ever blamed her? ‘Why, Rosle, I'd die for her. I'll have to «witched. in his pockets. “No."” he said, “I'm not going to tell him that. That would be harder on Rion than on most men. Women, you know, change. June's very young. She's stiil @ child in many things."” “She isn’t the same sort of child she was two months ago,” sald Rosamund sadly. Y “No, but she's young in years—only twenty-one. Dear girl, that’s -a baby. Your mother was older than that when I knew her, and—and—she changed.” “How changed?’ Rosamund asked with some curiosity. “Her heart changed. She—other men cared for her before your father came along. SBhe once cared for one of them.” The colonel paused and cleared his throat. : “‘Mother was engaged to some one else before father. She told me so once, but she didn’t say who.” “‘Well, there was no doubt of her sec- ond love being deep. - In fact, it was the deeper of the two.” “I wish June would care for Ricn Gra- cey. But if you'd hear her talk!"—with hopeless recollection of June's sentimental transports. “It sounds as if she didn’t know there was a man in the world but that miserable Barcla; She's just be- What's the matter with women that they're always falling in love with the wrong man?” There was another pause. “T'll ‘do my best,” sald the colonel at length, “to keep Rion from coming down and trying his luck. He mustn’t see her now. She’d refuse him in such a way that he’d never dare to come near her again. And you, Roste, try and cheer her ulp and keep her from thinking of Bar- clay.” On Monday morning the colonel left for San Francisco, and a few days later was again en toute for Virginia City. The rest' of the summer slowly passed, idle and eventless. June brightened a little with the passage of the weeks, but was far from her old self. Now and then she saw Barclay at the-station, in the house of friends, or met him in the village. At first he merely bowed and passed on. But before the summer was over he had spoken to her; in the begin- ning with the short and colorless polite- ness of early acquaintanceship, but later with something of his natural bonhomie. Once at an afternoon garden fete she suddenly came out on a balcony and found him there alone. For a moment they stood dumb, eye full on eye, then began speaking of indifferent things, their hearts beating hard, their faces pale. It was the first conversation of any length they had had since the meet- ing” in the wood. They parted, feeling for the moment poignantly. disturbed and yet eased of the ache of separation. From that on they spoke at greater length, talk- ing with an assumption of naturalness, till finally their fragmentary intercourse assumed a tone of simple friendliness, from which all sentiment was banished. This surface calm was all that each saw of the other's heart, but each knew what the calm concealed. In October the Allens returned to town. The colonel had managed to keep Rion Gracey from going to San Francisco “to, try his luck” until this late date. ;/ would have been impossible had not Fa: been with him. In the growing excite- ment of the reawakened mining town Ricn was gonstantly occupied, and he was a man to whom work was a para- mount duty, But in October he slipped his leash for & week and ran down to San Francisco. In four days he returned, as quiet as ever, and inclined to be harder with.his men. The colonel knew what had hap- pened, and Black Dan guessed. Outside these two, no one understood why Rion Gracey had become a more silent and less lenient man after a four days’ visit to the coast. It te CHAPTER VIL Business and Sentiment. The winter of 'T1-'72 was a feverish one for San Francisco. The rising excite- ment in Virgina ran like a tidal wave over the mountains to the city by the sea and there broke in a seething whiri. There was no_stock market in the Ne- vada camp. Pine street was the scene of the operations of capitalist and spec- ulator—the arena where bull and bear met. In Virginia men fought against the forces of nature. They matched their strength with the elements of the pri- meval world. Water and fire were their enemies. Their task was the tearing out from the rock-ribbed flanks of the moun- tains the treasure that nature had buried with jealous care. They performed prod- igies of energy, conquered the unconquer- able, rose to the height of their mighty antagonist, giant’ against giant. In San Francisco men fought with one another. The treasure once in their hands, the battle lost its dignity and be- came the ignominious scramble of the swindler and the swindled. The gold and silver—thrown among the crowd—ran this way and that, like spilled quicksilver. Most of it ran the way its manipulators directed, into pockets that were already ° full, carrying with it the accumulation of gold from other pockets less full, whose owners were less cunning. Through the winter Crown Point and Belcher—the neighboring mine into which the ore body extended—continued to rise. Confidence had been restored; everybody was investing. Clerks and servant girls drew their savings out of banks and stocking feet and bought shares. In April the stock had reached its highest point, seven hundred and twenty-five dol- lars. In May, one month later, it drop- ped to one hundred and seventy-five. It was the greatest and most rapid decline the San Francisco stock market had ever known. The city was for the moment stunned by it. The contidence in Virginia—for three years regarded as ‘‘petered”—had returned in fuil force. The sudden drop knocked the breath from the lungs ol those who had been vociferating the re- crudescence of .the Comstock. A quantity . of fortunes, great and small, were swept away in the collapse. The brokers’ cries for “mud” drew the last nickels from the clerks and the servant girls, the last dol- lars from their employers. When the wave receded the shore was strewn with wrecks. For the second time this wave had slowly risen, to' level-brimming ood, broken, swept back and left such a drift of human wreckage. Throughout the city there was wailing. Nearly everybow suffered. The last remnant of the fottune left to Jerry Bar- clay by his father was gone. His mother, too, had lost, fortunately not heavily. But she bemoaned her few thousands with as much zeal as her cook did the five hundred, which constituted the sav- ings of years. Among the heaviest losers was Beaure- gard Allen. Had not the Barranca been behind him he woulu have been a ruined man. As it was, the second fortune he saw himself possessed of was swept away in a few disastrous days. The Barranca, while its yield had not of late been so large or so rich as during its first year, 0 still gave him what he once would have considered a princely income. But he lived up to and beyond it. His expenditures during the last year had been exceedingly heavy. He had private extravagances of his own, besides the lavish manner of living in which he encouraged his daugh- ters. He had leased the De Soto house for three years at a fancy rent. The colonel’s mortgage on the Folsom-street house would mature in another year. The interest which fell due in January he had neglected to pay. He had had the money and then a had threatened to bring suit for an unpaid-for diamond bracelet, and the money had gone there, quickly, to keep the jeweler qulet. Three years ago at Foley's had any one told him that he would own a mine like the Barranca and enjoy such in- come from it such as still was his, he would have wondered how he could best expend such wealth. Since then the beg- gar on horseback had ridden fast ami fa: Now, in morose absorption, he reviewed his expenses and his debts. His petty vanity forbade him-to economize in his manner of living. He had raised his head before men and he would not lower it again. Some financlering would be nec- essary to pay up, his brokers, maintain the two fine establishments in which his dapghters ruled, and have the necessary cash for the diamond bracelets and sup- pers after the theater that absorbed so many uncounted hundreds. There was solace in the thought that Parrish held the mortgage on the Folsom-street house. However restive other creditors might grow Parrish could be managed. The colonel in these troublous days was also glumly studying Nis accounts. Crown Point, which was fo repair the recent decline in certain of his invest- ments, had swept away in its fall a por- tion of that comfortable fortune in which its owner had felt so secure. He had had several lossés of late. From the day of his relinquishment of the Parrish Tract bad luck seemed to follow him. Owing to an uncontrollable infiux of water the mine in Shasta had been shut down indefinite- ly. The South Park houses were declin- ing in value, the city was growing out toward the property he had sold on up- per Market street, which a year ago had been a bare stretch of sand. The colonel looked grave as he bent over his books; his riches were something more than a matter of mere personal comfort and convenlence. On a blank sheet of paper he jotted down what his income would be after all these loppings off. Then over against the last line of figures jotted down a sec- ond line of his expenditures. For some time he pondered frowningly over these two columns. They presented a discon- certing problem. For the past six or seven years he had spent some five thousand per annum on himself, the rest on certain charities and what he lumped together under the con- Venient head of ‘“‘Sundries.” It was a word which covered among other things numerous presents and treats for June and Rosamund. “Sundries” had con- sumed a great deal of ready money, near- ly as much as Allen's diamond bracelets and theater suppers,. and the colonel sighed as he realized they must suffer curtailment. The private charities were represented by a few written words with an affixed line of figures: at convent”; *Joe'’s bo; g widow.” When the figures were added up they made a formidable sum. The colonel looked at it for another period of frowning cogitation. Then on the edge of the paper he put down the items of his own private account. There was only one which was large—the rent of the sunny suite on the Kearny-street corner. Through that item he drew his pen. The next time he dined with the’ Allens he told them that he was going to move. He had found his old rooms too large and he had decided to take a smaller suite in the Traveler's Hotel. The girls stared in blank surprise. Allen looked at him with quick, sidelong curiosity. He wondered at the move., He knew that Parrish had been hard “hit, but he still must have enough left to live on com- fortably in the style he had maintained since his return from the war. The Traveler's Hotel was a come-down—a, place on the built-out land below Mont- gomery street, respectable enough, but far different from the luxurious rgoms on the Kearny-street corner. The girls were amazed. distressed, had endless questions as to why Uncle Jim should do such a strange’ thing. He laughed and parried their queries. Hud they forgotten that he was a pioneer, who had slept under the stars on the American River in forty-nine? In those days the Traveler's Hotel would have been regarded as the acme of luxury. “And why,” he said. ‘“‘should the old man to-day turn up his nose at what would have been magnificence to the young man in forty-nine?” During this winter of storm and stres§ Jung stood on the edge of the excitement looking on. The selfishness of a purely individual sorrow held her back from that that vivid interest and participation would once have been hers. She tender and loving to the colonel, and she bore patiently with the moody irritation “hat often marked her father's manner, but for the most part she gave to the matters that once would have been of paramount interest only a shadow of her old blithe attention. Yet she was not entirely unhappy. She had accepted the situation, and, knowing the worst, tried to readjust her life to an altered point of view. Her comfort lay in the thought that Jerry loved her, The enchantment of the days when she had dreamed a maliden's dreams of a life with the one chosen man, was forever gone. She marveled now at the rainbow radiance of that wonderful time when mere living hed been so joyous, and hap- piness so easy and natural. But Jerry loved her. In the rending of the fabric of her dreams, the shattering of her ideals, that remained. She hugged it to her heart and it filled the empty present. Of the future she did not think, making no attempt to penetrate its veil. Only her youth whispered hope to her, and her natural buoyancy of tempera- ment repeated the whisper. Of Jerry's feelings toward her she knew, without being told, but one evening, late in the winter, he again spoke of them. It was at a party at Mrs. Davenport's. For the first time during the season they had danced together. As a rule their intercourse was limited to the few words of casual acquaintanceship, greetings on the stairway, conventional commonplaces at suppers or over dinner tables. Under this veil of indifference each was acutely conscious of the other’s presence, thrilled to the other's voice, heard unexpectedly in a lull of conversation af the passing of couples in a crowded doorway. At Mrs. Davenport's party Jerry had drunk freely of the champagne and the restraint he keot on himself was loosened. Moreover, Lupe was not present, and he felt reckless and daring. After a few turns among the circling couples they dropped out of the dance, and he drew June from the large room into a small conservatory. Here in the coolness, amid the greenery of leaves and the drip of falling water, he took her two hands in his, and in the sentimental/ phrases of “which hehldnuehlmwdfwr of his love. She listened with down-drooped eyes, pale as the petals of the lilies round the fountain, the lace on her bosom vibrating with the beating of her heart. “Say you love me,” he had urged, press- ing the hand he held, “I want to hear you say it.” “You know I do,” she whispered; don’t need to say it.” “But I want to hear you say those very words.” She said them, her voice just audible above the clear trickling of the falling water. *“And you'll go on loving me, even though we don’t see each other except in these crowded places, and I hardly dara to speak to you, or touch your hand?” “I always will. Separation, or distance, or time will make no difference. It's— it's—for always with me.” She raised her eyes and they rested on his in a deep, exalted look. She was plighting her troth for life. He, too, pale and moved, and the hands clas round hers trembled. He cared ‘for her with all the force that was in him. He was neither exaggerated nor untruthful in what he said. When he told a woman he loved her he meant it. There would have been no reason or pleasure to Jerry in making love unless the feeling he ex- pressed was genuine. Now his voice was hoarse, his face tense with emotion, as he “g for life with me, too. There’s no woman in the world for me but you, June. Whatever I've done In the past, in the future I'm yours forever, while I'm here to be anybody's. Will you be true?* “THII I dle,” she whispered. Their trembiing hands remained locked together, and eye held eye in a trance- like steadiness that seemed to search the soul. To both the moment had the sa- credness of a betrothal. “Some @ay perhaps we ean be happy.” he murmured, not knowing what he meant, but anxious to alleviate the very genuine suffering he experienced. She framed some low words over which her lips quivered, and in his pain he insisted: “But you will wait for me, no matter what time passes? You won't grow_tired of waiting, or cease to care? You'll always feel that you're mine?” “I'm yours forever,” she answered. These were the only words of love that passed between them. but at the time they were uttered they were to both as the words of a solemn pact. For the rest of the winter Jerry avolded her. His passion was at its height. Between it gnd his fear of Lupe he was more wretched and unhappy than he had ever been in his life. During the spring, with its tumult of excitement and final catastrophe, and the long summer of dreary recuperation, June walked apart, upheld by the mem- ory of the vows she had plighted. Money was made and lost, the little world about her. seethed In angry discouragement while she looked on absently, absorbed in her dream. What delighted or vexed people was of insignificant moment to her. In the midst of surroundings to which she had once given a sparkling and intimate attention she was now a cool, indifferent spectator. Her interest in life was concentrated in the thought that Jerry had pledged himself to her. CHAPTER VIIL New Planets. The year after the Crown Point col- lapse was a sad and chastened one. Money was tight on all sides. Large houses were clcsed, servants discharged, dressmakers’ bills cut down. Many fam- ilies hitherto prominent dropped out of sight, preferring to hide their poverty in remote corners of the city, whence, in some cases, they never again emerged. The winter, shorn of its accustomed gaye- ti€s, was dull and quiet. With the spring there came a revival of lit> and energy. The volatile spirit of the Californians began to rise. Ome of the chief causes of this was a new series of disturbing rumors from Virginia City. In February a strike was reported in the recently consolidated group of claims known as the California and Consolidated Virginia. A vein of ore seven feet wide and assaying $60 to the ton had been uncovered. Talk of the Nevada camp was in the air. The San Franciscans were in- credulous, as fearful of mining stock as the singed cat of the fire, but they lis- tened and watched, feeling the first faint unrest @f hope and temptation. Social too, the city showed signs of n»mrm:? cheerfulness. This was due not only to the natural rebound after a period of depression, but to two new ar- rivals of the sort which those small segregated groups known as “society” de- light to welcome and entertain. The first of these was Mercedes Gra- cey. Glamour of many soris clung about the name of this favorite of fortune. To her natural attractions were added thess supposed to be. acquired by a sojourn in older and more sophisticated localities. Mercedes had passed from her New York boarding-school to the finishing influ ences of a year “abroad.” She had trav eled in Europe with a chaperon and taken on the polish of accomplishment under the guidance of experienced teach- ers. Such news of her as had drifted back to San Francisco was eagerly seized upoi: by the less fortunate home dwell- ers, From time to time the newspapers priled ltems about Miss Graeey's tri- umphant career. Before her arrival San* Francisco had already developed a pos- sessive pride in her as a native daughter who would add to the glory of the Golden State. Mcreedes weuld pot, probably, have beer the object of such interest had not the fortunes of her father and uncle been for the past three years steadily ascend- ing. The Gracey boys had of late risen from the position of a pair of weil known_and capable mining men to that of two of the most prominent figures in the State. Their means were reported large. They had been among the few who had got out of the Crown Point ex- citement at the right moment, selling their stock at the top price. They were now de- veloping their Cresta Plata property. Should this pan out as they expected threre was no knowing where the Gracey buys’ successes would end. Mercedes was the oply woman relative they Dossessed. Black Dan, who had gone to New York to meet her, brought herfback in triumph. His idolatrous love had known no abate- ment in the two years’ separation. To have her finally restored to him, in an even completer state of perfection, was a bewildering happiness to him. His primitive nature strove to show its grati- tude and tenderness in extravagant ways. He showered presents on her, ordered the finest suite in the newly completed Lick House to be prepared for her, offered to rent any country place she might choose. That she should accompany him to.the rough life of Virginja where he spent most of his time, he never expected. If would be enough for him to see her om his frequent visits to the coast. The other notable visitor who arrived in the city almost simultancously was a young Englishman, Harrower. He, too, w00k up his residence in the Lick House, and it was but natural that some of tha interest evoked by the appearance of Black Dan’s daughter should be de- flected toward him. « (Continued Next Sunday.) < £ i > =