He was cheerful and kindly; he was even benevolent.  And could it be that he had no idea of the trail of ruin and distress which he had left behind him?  Montague found himself possessed by a sudden desire to penetrate beneath that reserve; to spring at the man and surprise him with some sudden question; to get at the reality of him, to know him as he was.  This air of power and masterfulness, surely that must be the mask that he wore.  And how was he to himself?  When he was alone with his own conscience?  Surely there must come doubt and wonder, unhappiness and loneliness!  Surely, then, the lives that he had wrecked must come back to plague him!  Surely the memories of treachery and cruelty must make him wince!

And from Hegan, Montague’s thoughts went to his daughter.  She, too, was serene and stately; Montague wondered what was in her mind.  How much did she know about her father’s career?  Surely she could not have persuaded herself that all that she had heard was calumny.  There might be question about this offence or that, but of the great broad facts there could be no question.  And did she justify it and excuse it; or was she, too, secretly unhappy?  And was this the reason for her pride, and for her bitter speeches?  It was a continual topic of chatter in Society, how Laura Hegan had withdrawn herself from all of her mother’s affairs, and was interesting herself in work in the slums.  Could it be that Nemesis had overtaken Jim Hegan in the form of his daughter?  That she was the conscience by which he was to be tormented?

Jim Hegan never talked about his affairs.  In all the time that Montague spent with him during his two days at Newport, he gave just one hint for the other to go upon.  “Money?” he remarked, that evening.  “I don’t care about money.  Money is just chips to me.”

Life was a game, and the chips were dollars!  What he had played for was power!  And suddenly Montague seemed to see the career of this man, unrolled before him like a panorama.  He had begun life as an office-boy; and above him were all the heights of business and finance; and the ladder by which to scale them was money.  There were rivals with whom he fought; and the overcoming of these rivals had occupied all his time and his thought.  If he had bought legislatures, it was because his rivals were trying to buy them.  And perhaps then he did not even know that he was a wrecker; perhaps he would not have believed it if anyone had told him!  He had travelled all the long journey of his life, trampling out opposition and crushing everything before him, nourishing in his heart the hope that some day, when he had attained to mastery, when there were no more rivals to oppose and thwart him—­then he would be free to do good.  Then he would no longer have to be a wrecker!

And perhaps that was the meaning of his pitiful little effort—­an orphan asylum!  It seemed to Montague that the gods must shake with Olympian laughter when they contemplated the spectacle of Jim Hegan and his orphan asylum:  Jim Hegan, who could have filled a score of orphan asylums with the children of the men whom he had driven to ruin and suicide!