Meanwhile, the girl for whom John Dinsmore had risked his noble life a second time, was pacing up and down the floor of her elegant suite of rooms, with a very perturbed countenance, reading for the twentieth time the letter which her mother had but just received, read but half through, and had fainted outright; recovering only to go from one violent fit of hysterics into another.
Queenie Trevalyn had read it slowly through twice, controlling her emotions with a supreme effort.
It was from her father, and announced his utter failure in New York.
He had made an unsuccessful venture in Wall Street, and the result was that every dollar he had on earth had been swept from him.
“When you return to the city,” he wrote, “instead of your own home, it will be to a boarding house. For myself I care not; but my heart bleeds for you, my dear wife, and Queenie, knowing full well how much you both love the luxurious trappings of wealth and position! But my grief cannot mend matters. Our only hope of retrieving our fallen fortunes is by Queenie marrying money.”
CHAPTER V.
THE POWER OF GOLD.
“The eagle suffers little birds to sing,
And is not careful what they mean thereby,
Knowing that with the shadow of his wing
He can at pleasure stint their melody.”