“I’m not given to springin’ measly jokes. I wanted that the little girl should have a show. She’s prettier an’ better educated an’ cleverer’n any of the people in the gold-shirt bunch. But I couldn’t get her into that crowd. I read in a noospaper about an English duchess that made a lot of coin by puttin’ American girls into the right surroundin’s, an’ it gave me an idee. There’s a slump in the Duchess market here at Granite. But the town’s crawlin’ with old fam’lies that are shy on cash. An’ about the oldest an’ hardest up are the Hawardens. So I arranged it with her. It was dead easy. She acted shy of the deal just at first; but that was only her way, I s’pose. Women that’s coy after they stop bein’ young an’ pretty always reminds me of a scarecrow left standin’ in a field after all the crop’s been carted away.” “Does Miss Shevlin know about--?” “Does _she_ know? What do you think she is? No, son, she don’t know, an’ I’ll break the neck of the blackguard that dares tell her. You’re the only one except the Hawardens that’s onto it.” “So I am the logical candidate for neck-breaking if the story gets out? Don’t be afraid, old man. I’d break my own neck sooner than to have Miss Shevlin’s pleasure spoiled. I suppose she _does_ get pleasure from being a protegée of Mrs. Hawarden?” “Pleasure? She’s tickled to death. It’s worth the money twice over to hear her tell ’bout the places she goes. Say, Caine, _you_ know more about that game than I do. Has she got any chance?” “Any chance?” echoed Caine in perplexity. “You know what I mean. Her father was kind of common,--like me. But Desirée ain’t. Even _you_ said that once. An’ I guess there’s few who can spot a streak of mud-color quicker’n you can. I’ve got her into a crowd where her father an’ the rest of her folks could never have gone. What I want to know is: Has she got a chance of stayin’ there always? Of bein’ took up permanent by ’em an’ made one of ’em?” “It depends entirely, I should say, on whom she marries.” “You mean if she marries some feller who’s high up in that set, she’ll be made to home there?” There was something wistfully eager beneath the Fighter’s gruff tones,--a something Caine detected in time to check the flippant reply that had risen to his own lips. He eyed Conover with veiled curiosity as he asked: “You would want her to marry such a man?” “Sure! If he treated her right an’ she was happy. But if she’s goin’ to be looked down on, an’ guyed behind folk’s fans, an’ reminded that her old man used to eat corned beef and cabbage in his shirt-sleeves--why, then I’m damned if I don’t b’lieve I’d buy up the whole of Granite an’ turn the swells out into the next County.” “It all depends, as I said, on the man she marries,” pursued Caine. “If she marries a man of good family and turns her back on her old associates and has enough money of her own--”