en anyone so
stupid."

"Give it to me, Eden; you shall make your own terms----"

"Ah! you capitulate, do you? It's too late! It's too late!" she repeated
in ringing crescendo. "You ought to have guessed;" and for greater
safety she held the letter behind her. "It's about stocks, Kansas-back
bonds, seven sights offered and nothing bid--I have guessed right, have
I not?"

"Eden--"

"Answer me; I have guessed right, I know I have." And laughing still,
she whisked the letter from behind her and held it to her eyes. "Why,
it's from a woman," she cried. "What is this? 'You have filled my life
with living springs.' Whose life have you filled?"

The merriment had deserted her lips, the color had gone from her cheeks.
The hand which held the letter fell with it to her side. In her face was
the contraction of pain. She looked at her husband. "Whose life is it
that you have filled?" she asked, and her voice, that had rippled with
laughter a moment before, became suddenly chill and subdued.

In the doorway before her the butler appeared in silent announcement
that dinner was served.

Arnswald made a step forward. "The letter is mine, Mrs. Usselex," he
said, "I--"

"Oh," she murmured, with a sigh that might have been accounted one of
relief. "Oh, it is yours, is it?" And eying him inquisitorially for a
second's space, she placed the letter in his hand.

"We may as well go in to dinner," she added at once, and with a glance
at her husband she led the way.

IV.

In Dogian days there was a Libro d'Oro in which the First Families of
Venice were inscribed in illuminated script. In New York there is also a
Golden Book, unwritten, yet voiced, and whoso's name appears thereon has
earned the cataloguing not from the idlesse of imbecile forefathers, but
from shrewdness in coping with the public, forethought in the Stock
Exchange, and prescience in the values of land and grain.

At the opera that night the aristocrats of the New World were in full
force. Among them were men who could not alone have wedded the Adriatic
but have dowered her as well. Venice in her greatest splendor had never
dreamed such wealth as theirs. There was Jabez Robinson, his wife and
children, familiarly known as the Swiss Family Robinson, the founder of
their dynasty having emigrated from some Helvetian vale. A lightning
calculator might have passed a week in the summing up of their
possessions. There was old Jerolomon, who through the manipulat