The house was a spreading, two-story building of wood, each floor surrounded by a deep balcony upon which lines of French windows opened. Flowering vines overhung, climbed and clung about the balcony pillars and balustrades. Roses drooped in heavy-headed cascades from second-story railings; the wide purple flowers of the clematis climbed aloft. On one wall a heliotrope broke in lavender foam and the creamy froth of the bankshur rose dabbled railings and pillars and dripped over on to the ground. It was a big, cool, friendly looking house with a front door that in summer was always open, giving the approaching visitor a hospitable glimpse of an airy, unencumbered hall. The move completed, June and Rosamund began to taste the charm of the Californian’s summer life. There were no hotels near them. No country club had yet risen to bring the atmosphere of the city into the suave silence of the hills. It was a purely rural existence: driving and riding in the morning, reading in the hammock under the trees, receiving callers on the balcony in the warm, scented end of the afternoon, going out to dinner through the dry, dewless twilight and coming home under the light of large, pale stars in a night which looked as transparently dark as the heart of a black diamond. They were sometimes alone, but, as a rule, the house contained guests. The Colonel at first came down constantly, always from Saturday to Monday and now and then for a week-day evening. But in May the sudden leap of Crown Point to one hundred and eighty upset the tranquillity of even cooler natures than Jim Parrish’s, and the stock exchange became the center of men’s lives. The long expected bonanza had been struck. The San Franciscans, once more restored to confidence in the great lode, were seized with their old zest of speculation, and all the world bought Crown Point. Allen saw himself on the road to a second fortune, and threw his money about in Virginia with an additional gusto, as it had been the scene of some of his poorest days. Even the Colonel was attacked by the fever and invested. His financial condition had given him grounds for uneasiness lately, and here was the chance to repair it. A mine in Shasta, in which he had been a large owner, shut down. He owned property in South Park, and the real estate agents were beginning to shake their heads at the mention of South Park property. It surprised him to realize that for the first time in years he was short of ready money. He sold two buildings far out among the sand dunes on upper Market Street, and with the rest of his kind bought Virginia mining stock with Crown Point and Belcher at the head.