d been so much greater sum
than he had ever hoped for when he was a boy in a Western State--his
father went to Iowa in '49--and the changes in his finances had come
with such lightning rapidity (half a million made on a tip given him by
a friend, followed by other tips more or less profitable) that he loved
to pat his pride, so to speak, in speeches like this.

That he had been swept off his feet by the social and financial rush
about him was quite natural. His wife, whose early life had been one
long economy, had ambitions to which there was no limit and her escape
from her former thraldom had been as sudden and as swift as the upward
spring of a loosened balloon. Then again all the money needed to make
the ascension successful was at her disposal. Hence jewels, laces, and
clothes; hence elaborate dinners, the talk of the town: hence teas,
receptions, opera parties, week-end parties at their hired country
seat on Long Island; dances for Corinne; dinners for Corinne; birthday
parties for Corinne; everything, in fact, for Corinne, from manicures to
pug dogs and hunters.

His two redeeming qualities were his affection for his wife and his
respect for his word. He had no child of his own, and Corinne, though
respectful never showed him any affection. He had sent Jack to a
Southern school and college, managing meanwhile the little property
his father had left him, which, with some wild lands in the Cumberland
Mountains, practically worthless, was the boy's whole inheritance, and
of late had treated him as if he had been his own son.

As to his own affairs, close as he sailed to the wind in his money
transactions--so close sometimes that the Exchange had more than once
overhauled his dealings--it was generally admitted that when Arthur
Breen gave his WORD--a difficult thing often to get--he never broke it.
This was offset by another peculiarity with less beneficial results:
When he had once done a man a service only to find him ungrateful,
no amount of apologies or atonement thereafter ever moved him to
forgiveness. Narrow-gauge men are sometimes built that way.

It was to be expected, therefore, considering the quality of Duckworth's
champagne and the impression made on Jack by his uncle's outburst,
that the ride down town in the cab was marked by anything but cheerful
conversation between Breen and his nephew, each of whom sat absorbed in
his own reflections. "I didn't mean to be hard on the boy," ruminated
Breen, "but