Jerry did not at first hear these rumors. He was not only kept busy from morning till night but he was entirely preoccupied in his own affairs. His feminine love of intrigue for its own sake was overpowered by such respect and honest tenderness as he still possessed for June. After his interview with her he determined not to see her again. June was not like Lupé Newbury and his feeling for her was different. He said to himself with a sense of magnanimity that no unhappiness should ever come to her from him, and in order to be on the safe side he would keep away from her. As had been the case with Jerry all his life, there was method in his morality. He had gained at least one thing by his marriage and that was his connection with the all-powerful Graceys. Though he disliked both men, who, he knew, regarded him with secret contempt, their patronage was too valuable to be jeopardized. June’s happiness and honor were precious things, but no more so than his own connection with the owners of the Cresta Plata. So he stayed away from her, feeling himself a paladin of virtue, and sentimentally thinking of her alone in the Murchison mansion, dreaming of him. This agreeable arrangement of the situation was suddenly disrupted by the stories of Rion’s attentions. Jerry’s high thoughts of renunciation were swept away in a flood of jealous indignation. At first he refused to believe it. He was absolutely confident of June’s constant and long-suffering affection for him. That she should marry some one else he had deemed impossible. But one of the Gracey boys--it did not much matter which--the owners of one of the richest mines on the Comstock, was a very different matter. Money loomed the largest thing on Jerry’s horizon. He did not believe it could take a less prominent place on that of other people--of June especially, whose father he knew to be financially embarrassed. The thought of her--his own especial property--triumphantly marrying a millionaire, leaving him, as it were, stranded, having lost everything and been “done” on every side, infuriated him. The jealousy that had possession of him was fierce, the jealousy of the man whose love is of the destructive, demolishing kind. On the day he had risen up in a bad temper he had heard what amounted to confirmation of the rumor. One of the office clerks in the Cresta Plata had told him that Rion’s infatuation for the young woman was leading him into lovers’ extravagances. A man who had always been indifferent to his dress, he was now getting all his clothes from San Francisco. He had books, flowers, and candies sent up for her all the time. He was with her constantly. “Rion Gracey’s never looked at a woman before,” was the young man’s final comment, “and that’s the kind that it takes most hold on. He’s got it bad and can’t hide it. It’s out on him for any one to see, like the measles.”