areer as a pedlar and keeper of
a Cheap Jack bazaar was forgotten and who, after the great fire, which
wiped out so many pasts and purified and pedigreed Chicago's present
aristocracy, called himself William G. Howland, merchant prince, had, in
his ideal character for a wealth-chaser, one weakness--a doting fondness
for his daughter. When she came into the world, the doctors told him his
wife would have no more children; thereafter his manner was always
insulting, and usually his tone and words, whenever and of whatever he
spoke to her. Women were made by the Almighty solely to bear children to
men; his woman had been made to bear him a son. Now that she would never
have a son, she was of no use, and it galled him that he could find no
plausibly respectable excuse for casting her off, as he cast off worn-out
servants in his business. But as the years passed and he saw the various
varieties of thorns into which the sons of so many of his fellow-princes
developed, he became reconciled to Theresa--_not_ to his wife. That
unfortunate woman, the daughter of a drunkard and partially deranged by
illness and by grief over her husband's brutality toward her, became--or
rather, was made by her insistent doctor--what would have been called a
drunkard, had she not been the wife of a prince. Her "dipsomania" took an
unaggressive form, as she was by nature gentle and sweet; she simply used
to shut herself in and drink until she would cry herself into a timid,
suppressed hysteria. So secret was she that Theresa never knew the truth
about these "spells."

Howland did not like Ross; but when Theresa told him she was going to
marry him she had only to cry a little and sit in the old man's lap and
tease. "Very well, then," said her father, "you can have him. But he's a
gambler, like his father. They call it finance, but changing the name of
a thing only changes the smell of it, not the thing itself. I'm going to
tie my money up so that he can't get at it."

"I want you to, papa," replied Theresa, giving him a kiss and a great hug
for emphasis. "I don't want anybody to be able to touch _my_ property."

For the wedding, Howland gave Theresa a free hand. "I'll pay the bills,
no matter what they are," said he. "Give yourself a good time." And
Theresa, who had been brought up to be selfish, and was prudent about her
impulses only where she suspected them of being generous, proceeded to
arrange for herself the wedding that is still talked abou