Not really, in the war, a divided community,
a debatable land, there will be thousands of able, hardy men,
used to excitement, spreading over the West. It is a land of easy
and liberal opinion. Business and the mine's affairs cause him to
visit San Francisco frequently. He reaches out for all men as his
friends. Seated in his silent parlors, walking moodily through the
beautiful rooms, haunted with memories of the splendid "anonyma"
whose reign is yet visible, he dreams of his wasted past, his
lonely future. Can he repair it? Enveloped in smoke wreaths, from
his portico he surveys the thousand twinkling city lights below.
He is careless of the future movements of his Parisian goddess.
It cost Philip Hardin no heart-wrench to part with voluptuous Hortense
Duval. Partners in a crime, the stain of "French Charlie's" blood
crimsoned their guilty past. An analytical, cold, all-mastering
mind, he had never listened to the heart. He supposed Hortense
to be as chilly in nature as himself. Yet she writes but seldom.
Taught by his profession to dread silence from a woman, he casually
corresponds with several trusted friends of the Confederate
colony in France. What is her mystery? Madame Natalie de Santos is
now a personage.
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