"And they've got it yet. Next
day the bottom dropped out. Some of them heard Mason laugh all the way
to the bank. He's cleaned up half a million and gone back home--'so
afraid his mother would spank him for being out late o' nights without
his nurse,'" and again Garry's laugh rang out with such force and
earnestness that the glasses on Biffy's table chinked in response.

This financial set-back, while it had injured, for the time, Arthur
Breen's reputation for being "up and dressed," had not, to any
appreciable extent, curtailed his expenditures or narrowed the area of
his social domain. Mrs. Breen's dinners and entertainments had been as
frequent and as exclusive, and Miss Corinne had continued to run the
gamut of the gayest and best patronized functions without, the Scribe
is pained to admit, bringing home with her for good and all both her
cotillion favors and the gentleman who had bestowed them. Her little
wren-like head had moved from side to side, and she had sung her
sweetest and prettiest, but somehow, when the song was over and the
crumbs all eaten (and there were often two dinners a week and at least
one dance), off went the male birds to other and more captivating
roosts.

Mrs. Breen, of course, raved when Corinne at last opened the door of her
cage for Garry,--went to bed, in fact, for the day, to accentuate her
despair and mark her near approach to death because of it--a piece of
inconsistency she could well have spared herself, knowing Corinne as she
had, from the day of her birth, and remembering as she must have done,
her own escapade with the almost penniless young army officer who
afterward became Corinne's father.

Breen did not rave; Breen rather liked it. Garry had no money, it is
true, except what he could earn,--neither had Corinne. Garry seemed to
do as he darned pleased,--so did Corinne;--Garry had no mother,--neither
had Corinne so far as yielding to any authority was concerned.
"Yes,--let 'em marry,--good thing--begin at the bottom round and work
up--" all of which meant that the honorable banker was delighted over
the prospect of considerable more freedom for himself and considerable
less expense in the household.

And so the wedding had taken place with all the necessary trimmings:
awning over the carpeted sidewalk; four policemen on the curb;
detectives in the hall and up the staircase and in the front bedroom
where the jewels were exposed (all the directors of the Mukton Lode
were re