Laney O'Connor is desperate to repay a loan to an unscrupulous banker who has shortened the term by six months. She is tapping a judge of her acquaintance in a venture which verges on blackmail. Justifying the deal to herself because the judge pays nothing towards the welfare of his son, in Laney's care, she meets him in a hotel foyer and discreetly accepts five hundred dollars.

Marc Dupree, the hotelier, however has noticed the attractive young lady entering his premises alone, and suspects that she is a professional companion. He prides himself on running the finest hotel in Denver and won't stand for illicit liaisons. Marc collars the young woman and brings her into his office to explain matters to her but she refuses to admit anything. Marc isn't surprised - he can't trust any women since his wife Pearl took off with all the money she could lay her hands on, and he has offered jobs to several of the city's working girls to provide them with an alternative, but finds them unreliable.

Once Laney gets away all she can think of is protecting the children in her care. They are called orphans but are really the children of brothel girls, the men concerned taking no responsibility. Laney, daughter of such a woman herself, has to find the rest of the money for her loan on her house, and to do that she needs to accept Marc's offer of a receptionist job, however demeaning his attitude. She turns up to work, but finds her new boss rather too good- looking for comfort.

I enjoyed the tale and various details, such as the children playing the new game of baseball and a woman being addicted to both whiskey and laudanum, an opiate commonly sold as a sedative. I did think that the action was slowed by the two main characters spending several pages looking at each other, rather too often. The perennial double standard, whereby a man could walk into a house of ill repute but a woman was scorned for having any association with such a house, is well displayed.

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