Outside the hum of commerce played the proper accompaniment to Steve O'Valley's orders and Mary's thoughts and Beatrice's actions--a jangling yet accurate rhythm of typewriters and adding machines and office chatter, pencil sharpeners, windows being opened, shades adjusted, wastebaskets dragged into position, boys demanding their telegrams or delivering the same, phone bells ringing, voices asking for Mr. O'Valley and being told that he was not in, other voices asking for Miss Faithful and being told she was not at liberty just now--would they be seated? Trudy's giggle rose above the hum at odd intervals, elevators crept up and down, and outside the spring air escorted the odour of hides and tallow and what not, grease and machine oil and general junk from across the courtyard; trucks rumbled on the cobblestones while workingmen laughed and quarrelled--a confusing symphony of the business world. While Steve hurriedly gave his orders Mary Faithful in almost the panoramic fashion of the drowning swiftly recalled the incidents of Steve's life and of the Gorgeous Girl's and her own as well, forcing herself mechanically to say yes and no in answer to his questions and to make an occasional notation. [Illustration: "The Gorgeous Girl had never known anything but the most gorgeous side of life"] The panorama rather bewildered her; it was like being asked to describe a blizzard while still in it, whereas one should be sitting in a warm, cheery room looking impersonally at the storm swirl. First of all, she thought of Steve O'Valley's Irish grandfather, by like name, who spent his life in Virginia City trying to find a claim equal to the Comstock lode, dying penniless but with a prospector's optimism that had he been permitted to live _manana_ surely would have seen the turning of the tide. Old O'Valley's only son and his son's wife survived him until their ability to borrow was at an end and work would have been their only alternative. So they left a small, black-haired, blue-eyed young man named Stephen O'Valley to battle single-handed with the world and bring honour to his name. The first twelve years of the battle were spent in an orphanage in the Grass Valley, the next four as a chore boy on a ranch, after which the young man decided with naive determination that in order to obtain anything at all worth while he must be fully prepared to pay its price, and that he desired above all else to become a rich man--a truly rich man, and marry a fairy-princess sort of person. And as far as education was concerned he felt that if he was not quite so brushed up on his A B C's as he was on minding his P's and Q's the result would not be half bad. Unconsciously his attitude toward the world was a composite of the philosophy of Marcus Aurelius, the cynical wisdom of Omar Khayyam, and plain and not to be duplicated Yankee pep.