"No, dear boy—forgive me! I was wandering from the point, thinking of her letters. They wander, too. She tells me all kinds of things about the place. She says it's amazing. She talks more of everything else than herself."
"What does she say about Garth?"
"Not more than she can help. But—oh, one thing! Tony, she tells me he's rich—very rich."
"Rot! He wants her to believe that."
"No. Someone else told her, not he. And the house, though it's simple, is the house of a rich man, she says. I should have been there by this time, if you hadn't wired me you were coming here to get my advice before—before deciding what to do next. And—besides, I was a little delayed by the visit of a charming Comtesse de Sorel who came to Los Angeles, and thought she might be distantly related to poor dear Louis. We fagged up the family tree together. It appears that Louis just missed being a comte himself, by descent, because of—ah—a family accident: a marriage that didn't take place. Think of the difference to us if——"
"I'm thinking of the difference to me because of a marriage that did take place!" Severance cut her short. "I shall start for the Grand Canyon at once. I suppose there's an hotel there."
"Marise says there's a dream of an hotel, close to the abyss, or whatever you call it. The name is El Tovar, after some old Spanish general who seems to have been even more of a brute than Garth. You'll go there—naturally. Yet I thought from what you said that all was over—that you couldn't pay Garth, and——"
"I'll do something! You don't suppose I'm going to stand quietly by and leave him in possession, do you?"
"Well, he's not exactly in possession. To put it like that is to exaggerate——"
"He's got the legal power of a husband over Marise, and, one way or another, he'll have to be kicked out!"