alace, and pried
the family loose from the primeval rocks of Nevada! She was cold as an
iceberg, tireless, pitiless to others as to herself; for seventeen
years her father had wandered and dug among the mountains; and for
seventeen years, if need be, she would dig beneath the walls of the
fortress of Society!

After Montague had had his heart to heart talk with the mother, Miss
Anne Evans became very haughty toward him; whereby he knew that the old
lady had told about it, and that the daughter resented his presumption.
But to Oliver she laid bare her soul, and Oliver would come and tell
his brother about it: how she plotted and planned and studied, and
brought new schemes to him every week. She had some of the real people
bought over to secret sympathy with her; if there was some especial
favour which she asked for, she would set to work with the good-natured
old man, and the person would have some important money service done
him. She had the people of Society all marked--she was learning all
their weaknesses, and the underground passages of their lives, and
working patiently to find the key to her problem--some one family which
was socially impregnable, but whose finances were in such a shape that
they would receive the proposition to take up the Evanses, and
definitely put them in. Montague used to look back upon all this with
wonder and amusement--from those days in the not far distant future,
when the papers had cable descriptions of the gowns of the Duchess of
Arden, nee Evans, who was the bright particular star of the London
social season!

CHAPTER XIV

Montague had written a reluctant letter to Major Thorne, telling him
that he had been unable to interest anyone in his proposition, and that
he was not in position to undertake it himself. Then, according to his
brother's injunction, he left his money in the bank, and waited. There
would be "something doing" soon, said Oliver.

And as they drove home from the Evanses', Oliver served notice upon him
that this event might be expected any day. He was very mysterious about
it, and would answer none of his brother's questions--except to say
that it had nothing to do with the people they had just visited.

"I suppose," Montague remarked, "you have not failed to realize that
Evans might play you false."

And the other laughed, echoing the words, "Might do it!" Then he went
on to tell the tale of the great railroad builder of the West, whose
daughter had b