Lawton paid back, but
it was wise for her to stay on the job. Lawton is dead straight, but his
partner is sowing wild oats in his old age--good old S.F. style, and I
guess it ain't wise to tempt him too far. Get me?"

"It's atrocious!"

"Oh, not nearly so bad as it might be. Just think, if it had been
Gabrielle, or Pauline-Marie, or even Mrs. Lawton. That's the worst kind
of bad blood for a woman to inherit. Marie Garnett hung on like grim
death to what the grand society you move in pretends to value most, and
the Lord knows she'll never lose it now.

"Nor need there be any scandal to drive your family to suicide. The thing
to do is to hustle Madame Delano out of San Francisco. She'll go, all
right, with you to look after her interests. She don't fancy being
recognized and blackmailed, or I miss my guess. You may have to pay
Bisbee something, but D. V.'s not that sort, and I don't think anybody
else is on. If they've suspected they'll soon forget it when the old lady
disappears from the Palace Hotel. Gee, but she has a nerve."

"She is an old cynic. If she had any snobbery in her she'd be here
to-night, rubbing elbows with the women who never knew of her existence
twenty years ago, although their husbands did. It has satisfied her
ironic French soul to sit in the court of the Palace Hotel day after day
and defy San Francisco to recognize Marie Garnett in the obese Madame
Delano, whose daughter is one of the great ladies of the city to whose
underworld she once belonged, and from whose filthy profits she derives
her income. Good God!"

He sat forward and clutched his head, but Spaulding, who had drawn out
his watch, tapped him on the shoulder.

"Come on," he said. "Time's gettin' short. The stunt is to be pulled off
just before supper."

CHAPTER XII

I

They walked rapidly up the close avenue--planted far back in the Fifties
by Ford Thornton's grandfather--the blaze of light at the end of the long
perspective growing wider and wider. As they emerged they paused for a
moment, dazzled by the scene.

The original home of the Thorntons had been of ordinary American
architecture and covered with ivy; it might have been transplanted from
some old aristocratic village in the East. Flora Thornton had maintained
that only one style of architecture was appropriate in a state settled by
the Spaniards, and famous for its missions of Moorish architecture. Fordy
loved the old house, but as he denied his wife noth