une
she controlled.

"Mart is just fool enough and contrary enough to leave every cent of his
money to her." Here he placed one finger against his brow. "Carlos, here
is where you get busy. It's us to the haberdasher. We shine."

Notwithstanding all his boasting, he was not only an actor out of an
engagement, but flat broke, badly dressed, and in sorry disrepute with
managers. "I've been playing in a stock company in San Francisco," he
had explained, "and I'm now on my way to New York to produce a play of
my own. Hence these tears. I need an 'angel.'"

He distinctly said "the first of the month" in this announcement, but as
the days went by he only settled deeper into the snug corners of the
Haney home, making no further mention of his triumphal eastward
progress. On the contrary, he had the air of a regular boarder, and
turned up promptly for meals, rotund and glowing in the opulence of his
brother's hospitality.

On the strength of his name he found favor with the tailors, and
bourgeoned forth a few days later in the best cloth the shops afforded,
and strutted and plumed himself like a turkey-cock before Bertha,
keeping up meanwhile a pretension of sympathy and good-fellowship with
Mart.

In this he miscalculated; for Bertha, youthful as she seemed, was
accustomed, as she would say, to "standing off mashers," and her
impassive face and keen, steady eyes fairly disconcerted the libertine.
"For Mart's sake, we'll put up with him," she said to her mother. "He's
a loafer; but I can see the Captain kind o' likes to have him
around--for old times' sake, I reckon."

This was true. When alone with his brother, Charles dropped his
egotistic brag and dramatic bluster, and touched craftily upon the
dare-devil, boyish life they had led together. He was shrewd enough to
see and understand that this was his most ingratiating role, and he
played it "to the limit," as Bertha would have said.

And yet no one in the house realized how his presence reacted against
Bertha.

"What are we to think of a girl so obtuse that she permits a man like
this fat, disgusting actor to dangle about her?" asked Mrs. Crego of her
husband, who was Haney's legal adviser.

"He's her husband's brother, you know," argued Crego.

"All the same, I can't understand her. She looks nice and sweet, and you
say she is so; and yet here she is married to a notorious gambler, and
associating with mountebanks and all sorts of malodorous people. Why,
I've