Win put the letters in his pocket and went up to town. There was more work for him to do now than there had ever been before, and he rose to it with a spirit and energy that surprised himself. Neither he nor any one else had ever realized how paralyzing to him had been his father’s cold scorn. From boyhood, Win had felt himself to be an aggravating failure. The elder man had not scrupled to make him understand his inferiority. The mere presence of his father seemed to numb his brain and make his tongue stammer over the simplest phrases. Now, he felt himself free and full of energy, as though bands that had cramped his mind and confined his body were broken. His old attitude of posing as a fast young man of fashion lost its charm. Life grew suddenly to mean something, to be full of use and purpose. He was left very much to himself, his mother being still too much broken to attend to business, and Maud being absorbed in her affair with Latimer, which had recently culminated in a secret engagement. This she had been afraid to tell to her domineering father and ambitious mother, and her opportunities of seeing her fiancé had been of the briefest until now. Latimer haunted the house of evenings, when Bessie was lying on the sofa in an upstairs boudoir and Win was locked in his father’s study going over the interminable documents. The first darkness of her grief and horror past, Bessie, in her seclusion, thought of many things. One of these was the fate of Mariposa Moreau. The bonanza king’s widow, with all her faults, had that lavish and reckless generosity, where money was concerned, that marked the early Californians. This forceful woman, who had made the blighting journey across the plains without complaint, faced the fierce hardships of her early married life with a smile, borne her children amid the rude discomforts of remote mining camps, was an adept in the art of luxurious living. She knew by instinct how to be magnificent, and one of her magnificences was the careless munificence of her generosity. Now, she felt for Mariposa. She knew Shackleton’s plans for her, and realized the girl’s disappointment. In her heart she had been bitterly jealous of the other wife’s child, who had the beauty and gifts her own lacked. It would be to everybody’s advantage to remove the girl to another country and sphere. And because her husband had died there was no reason why his plans should remain unfulfilled. Though Shackleton had assured her that the girl knew nothing, though every one connected with the shameful bargain but herself was dead, it was best to be prudent, especially when prudence was the course most agreeable to all concerned. She would rest easier; her children would seem more secure in their positions and possessions, if Mariposa Moreau, well provided for, were safe in Paris studying singing.