“All this seemed just fun to old Mr. Mancredo, and he took so much interest in the ‘joke of the thing,’ as he called it, putting a lawyer on Grove’s track, and fixing things up a little, while getting at facts, that he grew better in health under it; and he had my eyes straightened, and gave me the best of teachers, of which he was chief. And with kindness, approbation, good treatment and all, by the time I was twenty-four I was not only quite handsome, but had everything all about my business in my own hands. But the poor little girl had died,—so somebody said, but I’m not sure,—and that took my courage down. And Reg was at West Point, ‘swinging round on my money,’ Mr. Mancredo said. But you see Reg had called me a liar, and I loathed the whole mess. But you see I had a woman’s pride in being, myself, _intrinsic wealth_ of a finer sort than that thing called ‘money’ can fully represent. I wanted to know how to do well (and in a way which would be of marketable value) every sort of thing which could be needed in the economics of a broad social-system. It made me sick to see men, who inherently had nothing worth exchanging, quarreling so much to get their clutch on the ‘medium of exchange’ called money. But not to stop about all that now, I can only tell you that old Mr. Mancredo laughed so much, and had such a good time over my theories, that he legally adopted me as his heiress and daughter, and then got so well that we travelled all over Europe and the Nile country, and he made my guardian stop bothering about the laws of the matter, and appearances, and the rest of it. For why should I go back to Reginald, who hated me, and force on him my money as a gift, which he now was enjoying much better under the supposition that it was his of right? Besides, I was really punishing old John Grove most deliciously; and I relished that. For he was a singularly offensive old animal; and besides, ‘if your enemy thirst, give him drink,’ and he was awful on the money-thirst. And I was helping him to pour gold down his own throat, with just enough of a scare with every gulp to make life a terror to the old animal; and it was fun to me. But just before we sailed for the Mediterranean I did send Reg one ringing slap. For I was angry that he was such a coward as not to have fought for me against his father. But then he was afraid as death of his ‘old dad,’ as he called him; just as his mother had been. I wrote to him that his mother in heaven would never forgive him for his treatment of me; for that she had left me in his care, as a younger sister. And that now, however low he sunk, he might look about him in the sloughs there, for any woman whom he met might be the sister to whom he had betrayed his trust. I did not mean to give him a chance to take much comfort in his badness. But I meant to do more than to merely put a ‘death’s head’ at the feast of life which he had spoiled for me. I knew that this letter would put him