ved.

"I guess that's the reason she left him in the end. She stood for the
gambling joint, and, although she had a cool sarcastic way with her that
kept the men who fell for her at a distance, she was a good decoy, and
she looked a regular queen at the head of the green table. She was chummy
with Jim's intimates, two of whom were D.V. Bimmer and 'Gene Bisbee, but
even 'Gene didn't dare take any liberties with her.

"It was natural that a woman brought up as she had been should have kept
her child out of it, and I figger that she got disgusted with Jim and
came to the full sense of her duty to the poor kid about the same time.
But she didn't go until Jim settled so much a month on her through old
Lawton--who used to amuse himself at Garnett's a good deal in those days,
and who was one of her best friends.

"Well, she also got Garnett to make a curious sort of a will, leaving his
money to James Lawton, to 'dispose of as agreed upon.' She had a thrifty
business head, had that French dame, and she had made him buy property
when he was flush, and put it in her name, although she gave a written
agreement never to sell out as long as he lived.

"He agreed to let her go because he was dippy about another skirt at the
time, and, besides, she played on his family pride--lineal descendant of
the Delanos, Garnetts, and so forth. He'd never seen the kid after it was
taken to the convent, but I guess he liked the idea, all right, of its
being brought up wearing the old name, and gettin' rid of Marie at the
same time.

"She was too canny to leave him a loophole for divorce, even in
California; but I guess that didn't worry him much.

"If the earthquake and fire hadn't come so soon after the will was
probated there might have been a lot of speculation about it, among men,
at least. Those old gossips in the Club windows would soon have been
putting two and two together; but the calamity that burnt up all the Club
windows, just swept it clean out of their heads.

"I figger out that old Lawton continued to pay Madame Delano the income
she'd been havin' both from Jim and her properties, out of his own
pocket, until the city was rebuilt and he could settle the estate. He had
to borrow the money to rebuild the houses Jim had put up on his wife's
property, and when things got to a certain pass he wrote Madame D. to
come along and take over her property. She'll be good and rich one of
these days, when all the mortgages are paid off and