it; the "Countess" fitted my
mood better--had taken up residence in the grand Paris house old Hasluck
had bought for them.

It was the high-water mark of old Hasluck's career, and, if anything,
he was a little disappointed that with the dowry he had promised her
Barbara had not done even better for herself.

"Foreign Counts," he grumbled to me laughingly, one day, "well, I hope
they're worth more in Society than they are in the City. A hundred
guineas is their price there, and they're not worth that. Who was that
American girl that married a Russian Prince only last week? A million
dollars was all she gave for him, and she a wholesale boot-maker's
daughter into the bargain! Our girls are not half as smart."

But that was before he had seen his future son-in-law. After, he was
content enough, and up to the day of the wedding, childishly elated.
Under the Count's tuition he studied with reverential awe the Huescar
history. Princes, statesmen, warriors, glittered, golden apples, from
the spreading branches of its genealogical tree. Why not again! its
attenuated blue sap strengthened with the rich, red blood, brewed
by toil and effort in the grim laboratories of the under world. In
imagination, old Hasluck saw himself the grandfather of Chancellors, the
great-grandfather of Kings.

"I have laid the foundation, you shall raise the edifice," so he told
her one evening I was spending with them, caressing her golden hair with
his blunt, fat fingers. "I am glad you were not a boy. A boy, in all
probability, would have squandered the money, let the name sink back
again into the gutter. And even had he been the other sort, he could
only have been another business man, keeping where I had left him.
You will call your first boy Hasluck, won't you? It must always be
the first-born's name. It shall be famous in the world yet, and for
something else than mere money."

I began to understand the influences that had gone towards the
making--or marring--of Barbara's character. I had never guessed he had
cared for anything beyond money and the making of money.

It was, of course, a wedding as ostentatious as possible. Old Hasluck
knew how to advertise, and spared neither expense nor labour, with the
result that it was the event of the season, at least according to the
Society papers. Mrs. Hasluck was the type of woman to have escaped
observation, even had the wedding been her own; that she was present at
her daughter's, "becomingly d