Life in the most expensive hotels, an automobile by the month, gowns designed by the greatest modistes for his wife and daughter, summers at the most fashionable resorts, winter-skating in Switzerland,--all these luxuries were for him but a kind of uniform of respectability that kept him in the world of the powerful, permitting him to enter everywhere.
"This existence molded me forever, and has influenced the rest of my life.

Dishonor, death, anything is to me preferable to poverty....

I, who have no fear of danger, become a coward at the mere thought of that!" The mother died, credulous and sensuous, worn out with expecting a solid fortune that never arrived.

The daughter continued with her father, becoming the type of young woman who lives among men from hotel to hotel, always somewhat masculine in her attitude;--a half-way virgin who knows everything, is not frightened at anything, guards ferociously the integrity of her sex, calculating just what it may be worth, and adoring wealth as the most powerful divinity on earth.
Finding herself upon her father's death with no other fortune than her gowns and a few artistic gems of scant value, she had coldly decided upon her destiny.
"In our world there is no other virtue than that of money.

The girls of the people surrender themselves less easily than a young woman accustomed to luxury having as her only fortune some knowledge of the piano, of dancing, and a few languages....