Casino became a permanent gold mine. But at present it was being
conducted at a loss. It was inevitable, but it irked Mr. Scobell. He
paced the island and brooded. His mind dwelt incessantly on the
problem. Ideas for promoting the prosperity of his nursling came to him
at all hours--at meals, in the night watches, when he was shaving,
walking, washing, reading, brushing his hair.

And now one had come to him as he stood looking at the view from the
window of his morning-room, listening absently to his sister Marion as
she read stray items of interest from the columns of the _New York
Herald_, and had caused him to utter the exclamation recorded at the
beginning of the chapter.

* * * * *

"By Heck!" he said. "Read that again, Marion. I gottan idea."

Miss Scobell, deep in her paper, paid no attention. Few people would
have taken her for the sister of the financier. She was his exact
opposite in almost every way. He was small, jerky and aggressive; she,
tall, deliberate and negative. She was one of those women whom nature
seems to have produced with the object of attaching them to some man in
a peculiar position of independent dependence, and who defy the
imagination to picture them in any other condition whatsoever. One
could not see Miss Scobell doing anything but pour out her brother's
coffee, darn his socks, and sit placidly by while he talked. Yet it
would have been untrue to describe her as dependent upon him. She had a
detached mind. Though her whole life had been devoted to his comfort
and though she admired him intensely, she never appeared to give his
conversation any real attention. She listened to him much as she would