Page:Hard-pan; a story of bonanza fortunes (IA hardpanbonanza00bonnrich).pdf/15

Rh and proper that she should have first seen the light there, as in that day North Beach was fashionable. But that this should have occurred thirty-eight years ago was a subject she quietly ignored. She was still so effective in her dark, quick-flashing style, so much admired and so fond of being admired, that she turned her back on and denied the thirty-eight years whenever she had the chance.

Her husband looked at her with indulgent and humorous appreciation of her quickness.

"I don't see, if Colonel Reed has a daughter," he said, "what he keeps her on. She can't live on the memory of his bonanza glories. The old fellow has n't got a cent in the world. White Pine scooped the last dollar he had. When did his wife die?"

Letitia, who was twelve years her sister's junior, and, even if she had not been, would not have felt sensitive about her accumulating birthdays, answered:

"Oh, long ago. Colonel Reed 's always been a widower ever since I can remember."

"I remember hearing about his wife when I was a boy," said Mortimer." She was a young actress, and married the colonel when everything was going his way. Then she died in a year or two of consumption. I did n't know there was a child."

"She must be quite young, then," said Maud