For it was Anne who was the driving force of the family!
Anne who had planned the great campaign, and selected
the Lamson palace, and pried the family loose from
the primeval rocks of Nevada! She was cold as
an iceberg, tireless, pitiless to others as to herself;
for seventeen years her father had wandered and dug
among the mountains; and for seventeen years, if need
be, she would dig beneath the walls of the fortress
of Society!
After Montague had had his heart to heart talk with
the mother, Miss Anne Evans became very haughty toward
him; whereby he knew that the old lady had told about
it, and that the daughter resented his presumption.
But to Oliver she laid bare her soul, and Oliver would
come and tell his brother about it: how she plotted
and planned and studied, and brought new schemes to
him every week. She had some of the real people
bought over to secret sympathy with her; if there
was some especial favour which she asked for, she would
set to work with the good-natured old man, and the
person would have some important money service done
him. She had the people of Society all marked—she
was learning all their weaknesses, and the underground
passages of their lives, and working patiently to find
the key to her problem—some one family
which was socially impregnable, but whose finances
were in such a shape that they would receive the proposition
to take up the Evanses, and definitely put them in.
Montague used to look back upon all this with wonder
and amusement—from those days in the not
far distant future, when the papers had cable descriptions
of the gowns of the Duchess of Arden, nee Evans, who
was the bright particular star of the London social
season!
CHAPTER XIV
Montague had written a reluctant letter to Major Thorne,
telling him that he had been unable to interest anyone
in his proposition, and that he was not in position
to undertake it himself. Then, according to his
brother’s injunction, he left his money in the
bank, and waited. There would be “something
doing” soon, said Oliver.
And as they drove home from the Evanses’, Oliver
served notice upon him that this event might be expected
any day. He was very mysterious about it, and
would answer none of his brother’s questions—except
to say that it had nothing to do with the people they
had just visited.
“I suppose,” Montague remarked, “you
have not failed to realize that Evans might play you
false.”
And the other laughed, echoing the words, “Might
do it!” Then he went on to tell the tale of
the great railroad builder of the West, whose daughter
had been married, with elaborate festivities; and
some of the young men present, thinking to find him
in a sentimental mood, had asked him for his views
about the market. He advised them to buy the
stock of his road; and they formed a pool and bought,
and as fast as they bought, he sold—until
the little venture cost the boys a total of seven
million and a half!
