Page:Rowland--The closing net.djvu/232

214 and he emigrated from Ireland to Chicago, where he started in business driving a cab. You see, it's a sort of inherited gift. Pretty soon he owned most of the cabs, and then he owned a street-car line and a good bit of the city, and a lot of the people in it. But he stayed Mike O'Rourke, and when he married my mother there was an awful row from all the old snobs. Mother was proud, and asked odds of nobody, but a few years later they went to Wichita, where I was born. Mother never forgave the people who turned her down for marrying beneath her, so as soon as I was old enough she sent me to a French convent, saying that she wasn't going to have me grow up a snob. The last year that I was in the convent mother and father were both killed in a railway collision"—Rosalie blinked a few times—"and I went home and found myself a mighty lonesome heiress. Then my mother's sister came over for the winter and brought me with her, and while we were away her husband took such good care of my estate that in a few months there was nothing left of it but enough to give me a fairly decent dot. To compensate for what her husband had done my aunt made what she considered a very good match for me with the Comte de Brignolles. Of course, being convent-bred, it never occurred to me to object, so we were married, and started off on our honeymoon, and—and"—Rosalie's face got crimson—"and five minutes after we had left my aunt's I found that I loathed him, so I stopped the motor and got out and jumped into a taxi, and went straight to where the Mother Superior lived; for the convent had been