"Maybe I was wrong--maybe if your mother had lived it would have been
different. She would have liked Steve."

Beatrice played her final weapon against Steve's reputation in her
father's eyes.

"He is going to marry Miss Faithful. He has loved her for a long time.
Now you see what I have endured."

"Are you sure?"

"Oh, quite. He admitted it. So did she." Beatrice knew that Mary's
declaration against ever marrying Steve would have as much effect as
to attempt to keep the sun from shining if it so inclined. "I've no
doubt they will be the model couple of a model village, for if ever
there was a reformer it is Steve. He never should have been a rich
man."

"Not at thirty," his father-in-law championed. "So--it's the woman who
worked for him that won.... I guess it's the way of things, Bea."

"You uphold him?" Her temper was rising.

Constantine shook his head, closing the dull eyes. "I'm out of it
all," he excused himself. "There's a check for you on the table."

Either pretended or real, he seemed to go to sleep without delay.

* * * * *

Some months later Gaylord, very suave in white flannels, came in to
tell Constantino that he was to meet Beatrice in Chicago, en route
from the West, and that they were planning to announce their
engagement shortly after their arrival in Hanover. At which
Constantine managed to curse Gay in as horrid fashion as he knew how.
But Gay was quite too happy and secure to mind the reception. Besides,
there was nothing Constantine could do about it. It was a rather neat
form of revenge since his daughter would bring into his family the son
of one of the men he had ruthlessly ruined in his own ascent of the
ladder.

Gay had done nothing but write letters to Beatrice, in which he copied
all the smart sayings and quips of everyone else, purporting them as
original, impoverishing himself for florists' orders and gifts, and
even taking a desperate run out to see Beatrice ensconced in state in
a Western town with her tortured aunt and lady's maid and a stout
squaw to do the housekeeping. Gay knew that all this work would not
count in vain. So when he proposed to Beatrice, having taken three
days in which to write the love missive, he knew that he would be
accepted, and therefore counted Constantine's wrath as a passing
annoyance.

Everything considered, Beatrice could do no better. She had inclined
toward a minister as a second husband, she