Page:Hard-pan; a story of bonanza fortunes (IA hardpanbonanza00bonnrich).pdf/135

Rh Street, and that they 'd only just moved away a few years when she married old Marcel Lajaune."

As Pearl rattled on thus, assisted by Tod and Mrs. Gault, Letitia let her lorgnon follow on the track of their comments, idly passing from face to face as their light talk touched on it.

She looked curiously at the wife of the Mexican gambler, a romantically handsome woman, with a skin like a magnolia-petal, and a frame of ebony hair setting off a face of Madonna-like softness. The lady in the box above was not pretty at all, Letitia thought. She had a broad, good-humored red face, an impudent nose, and a frizz of blond hair crimped far down on her forehead in the English fashion. Her black evening dress showed a section of white neck, and a piece of reddened arm was visible between her short sleeves and the edge of her long gloves. Letitia had been too young to remember her as Tiny Madison, and wondered how a Californian could come to look so like a British princess.

The Central American lady was much more interesting. She was like a lily among the gipsy-looking dark women and small, beady-eyed men of her suite. She was thin, pale, and haggard, with artificially reddened hair and heavy eyelids much painted. Her eyes from under these looked out with an air of languid