And yet!--in her most vital qualities, her love of sensational effect, her scorn of half-measures, her quick, relentless imagination, her increasing ostentation and extravagance, she was the true child of the boastful mercurial Irishman who had married her Spanish mother as part of a trade bargain, on a chance visit to Buenos Ayres.

For twenty years Daniel Floyd had leased and exploited, had ravaged and destroyed, great tracts of primaeval forest in the northern regions of his adopted state, leaving behind him a ruined earth and an impoverished community, but building up the while a colossal fortune.

He had learnt the arts of municipal "bossing" in one of the minor towns of Illinois, and had then migrated to Chicago, where for years he was the life and soul of all the bolder and more adventurous corruption of the city.

A jovial, handsome fellow!--with an actor's face, a bright eye, and a slippery hand.

Daphne had a vivid, and, on the whole, affectionate, remembrance of her father, of whom, however, she seldom spoke.