Page:Jackson Gregory--joyous trouble maker.djvu/46

30 his daughter much besides a fortune in gold, stocks, bonds and lands. He had given her himself as an object lesson, he had passed into her hands the keen ability to hold the great investments of his millions in an integral bundle destined to swell and increase because of its potential force and her acumen. His present to her upon her sixteenth birthday was ten thousand dollars in mining shares. With it went a few words of advice to which she hearkened and which she assimilated because she was Ben Corliss' daughter. His ways, being eminently successful, became her ways, his methods her methods. For nearly four years before his death Ben Corliss had trained her as he would have trained a son and on his death bed he told her simply: "You have got it in you to be a bigger figure in the financial world than I could ever be. It's born in you, Beatrice, bred in the bone."

He and Beatrice's mother had learned to be autocratic; Beatrice was born to autocracy. They had learned the power of wealth; she knew it instinctively. They were clear thoughted, capable parents; she was the expression of their union. She loved them sincerely; perhaps she respected and admired them more. Where they had led she followed, blazing new trails here and there.

As Corliss had dealt with men, so did Beatrice deal with them. If a man defied Ben Corliss, why then, soon or late, Ben Corliss "got him and got him right." He could afford to bide his time. So could Ben Corliss' daughter.