This was all as true before the Mavick failure as after; but, before, what was the use of effort?  Now there was every inducement to effort.  Ambition to succeed had taken on him the hold of necessity.  And with a free mind as to the obstacles that lay between him and the realization of the great dream of his life, the winning of the one woman who could make his life complete, Philip set to work with an earnestness and a clearness of vision that had never been given him before.

In the wreck of the Mavick estate, in its distribution, there are one or two things of interest to the general reader.  One of these was the fate of the Golden House, as it was called.  Mrs. Mavick had hurried back to her town house, determined to save it at all hazard.  The impossibility of this was, however, soon apparent even to her intrepid spirit.  She would either sacrifice all else to save it, or—­dark thoughts of ending it in a conflagration entered her mind.  This was only her first temper.  But to keep the house without a vast fortune to sustain it was an impossibility, and, as it was the most conspicuous of Mavick’s visible possessions, perhaps the surrender of it, which she could not prevent, would save certain odds and ends here and there.  Whether she liked it or not, the woman learned for once that her will had little to do with the course of events.

Its destination was gall and wormwood both to Carmen and her husband.  For it fell into the hands of Murad Ault.  He coveted it as the most striking symbol of the position he had conquered in the metropolis.  Its semi-barbaric splendor appealed also to his passion for display.  And it was notable that the taste of the rude lad of poverty—­this uncultivated offspring of a wandering gypsy and herb—­collector—­perhaps she had ancient and noble blood in her veins—­should be the same for material ostentation and luxury as that of the cultivated, fastidious Mavick and his worldly-minded wife.  So persistent is the instinct of barbarism in our modern civilization.

When Ault told his wife what he had done, that sweet, domestic, and sensible woman was very far from being elated.

“I am almost sorry,” she said.

“Sorry for what?” asked Mr. Ault, gently, but greatly surprised.

“For the Mavicks.  I don’t mean for Mrs. Mavick—­I hear she is a worldly and revengeful woman—­but for the girl.  It must be dreadful to turn her out of all the surroundings of her happy life.  And I hear she is as good as she is lovely.  Think what it would be for our own girls.”

“But it can’t be helped,” said Ault, persuasively.  “The house had to be sold, and it makes no difference who has it, so far as the girl is concerned.”

“And don’t you fear a little for our own girls, launching out that way?”

“You are afraid they will get lost in that big house?” And Mr. Ault laughed.  “It isn’t a bit too big or too good for them.  At any rate, my dear, in they go, and you must get ready to move.  The house will be empty in a week.”