who lived and loved and hated and died and was buried by--money.

For a second she looked into his face as one who escapes a pit gazes over
the precipice, and shuddered. As for Eliphalet, let it not be thought
that he had no passion. This was the moment for which he had lived since
the day he had first seen her and been scorned in the store. That type of
face, that air,--these were the priceless things he would buy with his
money. Crazed with the very violence of his long-pent desire, he seized
her hand. She wrung it free again.

"How--how dare you!" she cried.

He staggered back, and stood for a moment motionless, as though stunned.
Then, slowly, a light crept into his little eyes which haunted her for
many a day.

"You--won't--marry me?" he said.

"Oh, how dare you ask me!" exclaimed Virginia, her face burning with the
shame of it. She was standing with her hands behind her, her back against
a great walnut trunk, the crusted branches of which hung over the bluff.
Even as he looked at her, Eliphalet lost his head, and indiscretion
entered his soul.

"You must!" he said hoarsely. "You must! You've got no notion of my
money, I say."

"Oh!" she cried, "can't you understand? If you owned the whole of
California, I would not marry you." Suddenly he became very cool. He
slipped his hand into a pocket, as one used to such a motion, and drew