However his money-cunning did not grow dull. He kept his golden touch and his impotent dollars piled higher and higher. The pile must have mocked Isabel Markley, for it could bring her nothing that she wanted. She stopped trying to give big parties and receptions. Her social efforts tapered down to little dinners for the new people in town. But as the dinner hour grew near she raged--so the servants said--whenever the telephone rang, and in the end she had to give up even the dinner scheme. [Illustration: As the dinner hour grew near she raged--so the servants said--whenever the telephone rang] So there came a time when they began to take trips to the seashore and the mountains, flitting from hotel to hotel. In the office we knew when they changed quarters, for at each resort John Markley would see the reporters and give out a long interview, which was generally prefaced by the statement that he was a prominent Western capitalist, who had refused the nomination for Governor or for Senator, or for whatever Isabel Markley happened to think of; and papers containing these interviews, marked in green ink, came addressed to the office in her stylish, angular hand. During grand opera season one might see the Markleys hanging about the great hotels of Chicago or Kansas City, he a tired, sleepy-faced, prematurely old man, who seemed to be counting the hours till bed-time, and she a tailored, rather overfed figure, with a freshly varnished face and unhealthy, bright, bold eyes, walking slightly ahead of her shambling companion, looking nervously about her in search of some indefinite thing that was gone from her life. One day John Markley shuffled into our office, bedizened as usual, and fumbled in his pocket for several minutes before he could find the copy of the _Mexican Herald_ containing the news of his boy's death in Vera Cruz. He had passed the time of life for tears, yet when he asked us to reprint the item he said sadly: "The old settlers will remember him--maybe. I don't know whether they will or not." He seemed a pitiful figure as he dragged himself out of the office--so stooped and weazened, and so utterly alone, but when he turned around and came back upon some second thought, his teeth snapped viciously as he snarled: "Here, give it back. I guess I don't want it printed. They don't care for me, anyway."