“Fine!” said Ames. “I learned to-day that Ketchim’s engineer, Harris, has returned to the States. Couldn’t get up the Magdalena river, on account of the fighting. There will be nothing doing there for a year yet.”
“Just as well,” commented the Beaubien. Then abruptly––“By the way, I now hold Mrs. Hawley-Crowles’s notes to the amount of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. I want you to buy them from me and be ready to turn the screws when I tell you.”
Ames roared with laughter. “Shrewd girl!” he exclaimed, pinching her cheek. “All right. I’ll take them off your hands to-morrow. And by the way, I must meet this Carmen.”
“You let her alone,” said the Beaubien quickly in a low voice.
Ames wondered vaguely what she meant.
The inauguration of the Grand Opera season opened to Mrs. Hawley-Crowles another avenue for her astonishing social activities. With rare shrewdness she had contrived to outwit Mrs. Ames and secure the center box in the “golden horseshoe” at the Metropolitan. There, like a gaudy garden spider in its glittering web, she sat on the opening night, with her rapt protégée at her side, and sent her insolent challenge broadcast. Multimillionaires and their haughty, full-toileted dames were ranged on either side of her, brewers and packers, distillers and patent medicine concoctors, railroad magnates and Board of Trade plungers, some under indictment, others under the shadow of death, all under the mesmeric charm of gold. In the box at her left sat the Ames family, with their newly arrived guests, the Dowager Duchess of Altern and her son. Though inwardly boiling, Mrs. Ames was smiling and affable when she exchanged calls with the gorgeous occupants of the Hawley-Crowles box.
“So chawmed to meet you,” murmured the heir of Altern, a callow youth of twenty-three, bowing over the dainty, gloved hand of Carmen. Then, as he adjusted his monocle and fixed his jaded eyes upon the fresh young girl, “Bah Jove!”
The gigantic form of Ames wedged in between the young man and Carmen. “I’ve heard a lot about you,” he said genially, in a heavy voice that harmonized well with his huge frame; “but we haven’t had an opportunity to get acquainted until to-night.”