Indeed, she won praise from all who came to know her. But that small part of the Springs--alien and exclusive--which considered itself higher if not better than the rest of the Western world, looked askance at "the gambler's wife and her freak friends," and Mrs. Crego, who was inclined to be very censorious, alluded to the Haneys as "beggars on horseback" as she met them on the boulevard. Of all this critical comment Bertha remained, happily, unconscious, and it is probable that she would soon have won her way to a decent circle of friends had not Charles Haney descended upon them like a plague. Mart had been receiving letters from this brother, but had said nothing to Bertha of his demands. "Charles despised me when he met me in Denver," he explained to Williams. "I was busted at the time, ye mind." He winked. "And now when he reads in the papers that Mart Haney is rich, he comes down on me like a hawk on a June bug. 'Tis no matter. He may come--I'll not cast him out. But he does not play with me double-eagles--not he!" Charles Haney was not fitted to raise his brother's wife in the social scale, for he belonged to that marked, insistent variety of actor to be distinguished on trains and in the lobbies of hotels--a fat, sleek, loud-voiced comedian, who enacted scenes from his unwritten plays while ladling his soup, and who staggered and fell across chairs in illustration of highly emotional lines and, what was worse, he was of those who regard every unescorted woman as fair game. Bold of glance and brassy of smile, he began to make eyes at his sister-in-law from their first meeting. She amazed him. He had expected a woman of his own class--an adventuress, painted, designing; and to find this sweet little girl--"why, she's too good for Mart," he concluded, and shifted his hollow pretensions of sympathy from his brother to his sister-in-law. Before the first evening of his visit closed he sought opportunity to tell her, in hypocritic sadness, that Mart was a doomed man, and that she would soon be free of him. Bertha was disturbed by his gaze and repelled by his touch, but tried to like him on Mart's account. His mouthing disgusted her, and the good-will with which Haney greeted his brother turned into bitterness as the boaster and low wit began to display himself. "We all grew up in the street or in the saloon," Haney sadly remarked, "and you finished your education in the variety theatre, I'm thinking." The actor took this as a joke, and with a grin retorted: "That's better than running a faro-layout." "I dunno; a good quiet game has its power to educate a man," replied the gambler.