Hardin, plunging into the general madness of stock speculation,
destined to reign for twenty years, keeps his own counsel. He sneers
not at the households queened over by the "Doubtful Loveliness"
of the "Rearranged Aristocracy of the Pacific." He has certain
twinges when he hears the laughing girl child at play in the bowers
of his park. While the ex-queen of the El Dorado, now a marvel of
womanly beauty, gazes on that dancing child, she cannot yet see,
among the many flashing gems loading her hands, the plain circlet
of a wedding ring.
No deeper consecration than the red blood of the murdered gambler
ever sealed the lawless union of the "Chief of the Golden Circle"
with the peerless "Empress of Rouge et Noir."
Her facile moods, restrained passions, blind devotion, and
self-acquired charms of education, keep Philip Hardin strangely
faithful to a dark bond.
Luxury, in its most insidious forms, woos to dreamy enjoyment the
not guileless Adam and Eve of this hidden western Paradise.
There is neither shame nor the canker of regret brooding over these
"children of knowledge," who have tasted the clusters of the "Tree
of Life."
Within and without, it is the same. Philip Hardin is not the only
knave and unpunished murderer in high place.
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