when she had listened enraptured to Padre
Jose's compelling stories of the great world beyond Simiti. But the
gorgeous web of this social spider made even the Hawley-Crowles
mansion suffer in comparison.

"And yet," said the amused Beaubien, when Carmen could no longer
restrain her wonder and admiration, "this is but a shed beside the new
Ames house, going up on Fifth Avenue. I presume he will put not less
than ten millions into it before it is finished."

"Ten millions! In just a house!" Carmen dared not attempt to grasp the
complex significance of such an expenditure.

"Why, is that such a huge amount, child?" asked the Beaubien, as
accustomed to think in eight figures as in two. "But, I forget that
you are from the jungle. Yet, who would imagine it?" she mused, gazing
with undisguised admiration at the beautiful, animated girl before
her.

Silence then fell upon them both. Carmen was struggling with the
deluge of new impressions; and the woman fastened her eyes upon her as
if she would have them bore deep into the soul of whose rarity she was
becoming slowly aware. What thoughts coursed through the mind of the
Beaubien as she sat studying the girl through the tempered light, we
may not know. What she saw in Carmen that attracted her, she herself
might not have told. Had she, too, this ultra-mondaine, this creature
of gold and tinsel, felt the spell of the girl's great innocence and
purity of thought, her righteousness? Or did she see in her something
that she herself might once have been--something that all her gold,
and all the wealth of Ormus or of Ind could never buy?

"What have you got," she suddenly, almost rudely, exclaimed, "that I
haven't?" And then the banality of the question struck her, and she
laughed harshly.

"Why," said Carmen, looking up quickly and beaming upon the woman,
"you have everything! Oh, what more could you wish?"

"You," returned the woman quickly, though she knew not why she said
it. And yet, memory was busy uncovering those bitter days when, in the
first agony of marital disappointment, she had, with hot, streaming
tears, implored heaven to give her a child. But the gift had been
denied; and her heart had shrunk and grown heavily calloused.

Then she spoke more gently, and there was that in her voice which
stirred the girl's quick sympathy. "Yes, you have youth, and beauty.
They are mine no longer. But I could part with them, gladly, if only
there were anything left."

Carme