Hardin, plunging into the general madness of stock speculation, destined to reign for twenty years, keeps his own counsel. He sneers not at the households queened over by the "Doubtful Loveliness" of the "Rearranged Aristocracy of the Pacific." He has certain twinges when he hears the laughing girl child at play in the bowers of his park. While the ex-queen of the El Dorado, now a marvel of womanly beauty, gazes on that dancing child, she cannot yet see, among the many flashing gems loading her hands, the plain circlet of a wedding ring. No deeper consecration than the red blood of the murdered gambler ever sealed the lawless union of the "Chief of the Golden Circle" with the peerless "Empress of Rouge et Noir." Her facile moods, restrained passions, blind devotion, and self-acquired charms of education, keep Philip Hardin strangely faithful to a dark bond. Luxury, in its most insidious forms, woos to dreamy enjoyment the not guileless Adam and Eve of this hidden western Paradise. There is neither shame nor the canker of regret brooding over these "children of knowledge," who have tasted the clusters of the "Tree of Life." Within and without, it is the same. Philip Hardin is not the only knave and unpunished murderer in high place. His "Gulnare" is not the only lovely woman here, who bears unabashed the burden of a hideous past. A merit is peculiar to this guilty, world-defying pair. They seek no friends, obtrude on no external circles, and parade no lying sham before local respectability. It is not so with others. The bench, the forum, the highest places, the dazzling daily displays of rough luxury, are thronged by transformed "Nanas" and resolute climbers of the social trapeze. The shameless motto flaunts on their free-lance banners, golden-bordered: "Pour y parvenir." Philip Hardin smiles, on the rare occasions when he enters the higher circles of "society," to see how many fair faces light up, in strange places, with a smile of recognition. How many rosy lips are closed with taper fingers, hinting, "Don't ask me how I got here; I AM! here!" In his heartless indifference to the general good, he greets the promoted "ladies" with grave courtesy. It is otherwise with the upstart men. His pride of brain and life-long station makes him haughtily indifferent to them. He will not grovel with these meaner human clods. A sardonic grin relaxes his dark visage as he sees them go forth to "shine" in the East and "abroad." Why should not the men of many aliases, the heroes of brawl and murder, of theft and speculation, freely mix with the more polished money sharks swarming in the Eastern seas of financial piracy? "Arcades ambo!" Bonanza bullion rings truer than the paper millions of shoddy and petroleum. The alert, bright free-lances of the West are generally more interesting than the "shoddy" magnates or "contract" princes of the war. They are, at least, robust adventurers; the others are only money-ennobled Eastern mushrooms.