d all his money
on."

After a few attempts he gave it up but resolved to make his fortune
equal to his father-in-law's, as Beatrice wished. He saw no other way
out of the situation. To do so in his present interests was
impossible--he had fancied that half a million was a fair sum to offer
a Gorgeous Girl--but he saw it was only a nibble at the line. He must
outdo Constantine. He cast about for some unsuspected fields of
effort, this time to strike out into work of which Constantine was
ignorant. He began to resent the fact that after his lucky strike on
the exchange he had played copy cat and gone mincing into the
hide-and-leather business, using Constantine's good will as his
stepping stone. The same was true of the stock bought in the razor
factory; he had merely paid for the stock; he did not know the steps
of progress necessary to the business.

This time he would prove his own merit, he would not take Constantine
into his confidence. Unknown to any one save Mary, Steve selected a
new-style talking machine to promote. He knew as much about talking
machines as Beatrice knew about cooking a square meal. But Steve had
lost his clear-headedness and he thought, as do most get-rich-quick
men, that, possessed of the Midas touch, he could come in contact with
nothing but gold.

He began backing the inventor and looking round for a factory site. He
sought it away from Hanover, for he wanted it to be a complete
surprise. He begrudged his father-in-law's knowing anything of it. He
went into the enterprise rather heavily--but it did not worry him, for
he was quite sure he possessed the luck eternal, and he must support
his own wife. Side speculating was the only way he thought it possible
to do so.

Meanwhile, Beatrice found Trudy to be both a good foil and a dangerous
enemy, one who was not to be ridiculed or set aside. Trudy had never
stopped working since the day Beatrice climbed the rear stairs of the
Graystone and had been bullied into buying the vanishing cream.
Beatrice scarcely knew the various steps which Trudy had climbed in a
figurative sense, dragging Gay after her, grumbling and sneering but
quite willing to be dragged.

"You see, aunty," she explained one stormy February afternoon while
they were having a permanent wave put in their hair, "Trudy is so
obliging and useful, and I'm sorry for her. She tries to do so many
nice things for me that I never have a chance to become offended. I've
tried! But she ju