In the swim

A FRANK DISCLOSURE.

Hathorn returned, thoroughly hoodwinked, from the introductory evening spent at the Circassia. It had seemed strange to him that a leading general of the regular army, and a dapper French author, then in the brief blaze of his “lionship,” with a grave senator and a returned Polar explorer should have been called to meet together at the dinner table. “It’s Elaine’s incomparable way of making a delightful olla podrida of the social menu,” he mused, as he watched the hostess narrowly. “Caviare to the General!”

When he had found time to whisper a confidential word as to the enormous Sugar sales of the day, the Lady of Lakemere only laughed merrily. “I have now a soul above Sugar! I shall put my ‘Trust’ elsewhere!” And then, in her serious way, she slowly said: “Wait here with your Western friend, till all these other people go!” And he, with a budding hope, eagerly awaited her pleasure as of old.

Elaine’s unruffled brow bore no business shades when she drew Hathorn aside for a moment into her boudoir, leaving the luxury-loving Vreeland wandering around spell-bound in a frank admiration of the queen’s jewel-box. For so, the spacious apartment was termed in the circle of “le Petit Trianon.”

“This is only my catch-all, Mr. Vreeland,” cried Elaine, as she swept past him. “You must see Lakemere. There you can linger—and—admire.”

“It is only fair to tell you, Fred,” she simply said, “that I shall have to avoid all excitements this summer. Doctor Hugo Alberg is not at all satisfied with my heart action. And, a tranquil rest at Lakemere is his sole prescription. Now, as I shall probably stay there till October first, I shall leave my speculative stock account to be handled by Judge Endicott, who has my sole power of attorney.”

The mystified broker stood aghast at losing his pet account for such a long period. Was she leaving the Street forever? He faltered, “And this means—”

“That you must hasten your marriage. There are other things in life beside making money. Of course, I have confided only in you. Potter can not trust himself—and so, I can not trust him with the secrets of any of my financial movements. You are the one young Napoleon of your firm.

“So, if you really wish to go abroad, then make Alida a June bride. I shall avoid touching the Street till late in October—and then, when your European tour is over, I shall be able to take up the game of pitch and toss again.”

“I have already selected my present, Fred,” merrily said the Queen of the Street. “Take time by the forelock, and give up these lovely summer months to young love.” The broker’s eyes were gleaming as he said, “Can it be possible that you have gone out of Sugar on the eve of a ten per cent surplus dividend? I heard that inside rumor to-day. You know how dear to me all your interests are.”

He now felt that there was that behind the arras which was skillfully veiled from him. For her eyes were shining coldly over the smiling lips.

The dark-eyed woman simply said, “Tempt me not. I have promised Doctor Alberg to refrain.

“So, go and make yourself Benedick, the married man. It is the time of roses—you must pluck them as you pass. Come to me—when you have settled this matter. I will give you a social send-off at Lakemere worthy of ‘the high contracting parties.’”

Her voice was thrilling him now as of old, and yet, with all her kindness, he instinctively felt that something was going out of his life forever.

“It will be always the same between us, Elaine,” the young Napoleon murmured. She had risen and turned toward the door.

“Did you ever know me to change?” she softly said, as she glided out to begin a cordial tête-à-tête with Vreeland. There was no further intimate exchange of thoughts possible between the secretly estranged couple, and, now keenly on guard, in a disturbed state of mind, Mr. Frederick Hathorn lingered in converse late that night at the Old York Club, with his quondam friend.

The woman who once could have married Hathorn was now feverishly eager to see him haled to the bar of matrimony.

“Once that he is rangé—I am then sure of myself again,” she murmured, as she saw her perfectly composed face for the last time that night in the silver-framed mirror. And yet, she knew that it was but a social mask. There was an anticipatory revenge, however, in the fact that Hiram Endicott had reported the private pooling of her enormous Sugar holdings with those of the great chief of the vast Syndicate.

The ten per cent bonus dividend, long artfully held back, was her assured profit now, and Hugh Conyers’ watchful loyalty had made “assurance doubly sure.”

Endicott had already sent out a dozen agents to take up once more the secret quest which had so often failed them—and these “legal affairs” naturally gave him the excuse for a tri-weekly visit to Lakemere.

“So, Mr. Frederick Hathorn, as you have locked the door of my heart on the outside, you may now throw away the useless key!” she mused “I will find my best defense against any weakness in the keen-witted young wife who will surely show you yet the thorns on the rosebud.”

Dreams of the past mingled with the shapes of the present, as the lady of Lakemere laid her shapely head to rest.

And so, all ignorant of the power of this self-confessed womanly yearning toward the handsome young stranger, Elaine Willoughby fell asleep, to dream of the crafty man who had not yet forgotten how her liquid eyes had dropped under his ardent gaze.

The laws of nature are the only inviolable code of life, and blindly the lady of Lakemere had passed on, all unwittingly, toward a turning point in her lonely life. Her barrier of pride only fenced out the ungrateful Hathorn, condemned for ingratitude.

Vreeland, following carefully upon Fred Hathorn’s curvilinear conversational path, easily divined the uncertainty of the greedy young broker’s mind.

“He wants Miss Millions, and yet, he would not lose his fairy godmother,” thought the crafty adventurer. “I shall go slow and let them make the game.

“But wait till I am the guiding spirit of Lakemere. She shall come forward inch by inch, and he shall unfold to me every weak spot in his armor.”

They had finished a grilled bone and a “bottle” before Hathorn foxily sought to draw out his friend as to the details of the Montana bonanza. The plan of an amateur four-months’ Wall Street experience was quietly and deftly brought in.

“You see, Hod,” frankly said Hathorn, “Jimmy Potter drinks occasionally. He has that pretty devil, Dickie Doubleday, on the string, and he plays high. Now, my lawyer alone has my Power of Attorney. I can post our confidential man.

“You always were a cool chap. What do you say? I shall marry Alida VanSittart, and take the run over the water while I can. I don’t care, however, to lose Mrs. Willoughby. She is the heaviest woman operator in America. Her account is a young fortune to us. Think this over.”

The fine “poker nerve” of Mr. Harold Vreeland was now manifest in his quick perception of Hathorn’s trembling fingers. The smoke curled lazily from Vreeland’s Henry Clay as he said: “I will open my heart to you, Fred. All my money is already well invested. And I do not care to move a small block of my funds. Besides—

“I have been cut off from all phases of womanhood save the ‘Calamity Jane’ type, or some one’s runaway wife, for long years. I shall hurry slowly. You know the Arabic proverb: ‘Hurry is the devil’s.’ Now, by October the first, I will have had my summer fling. I will perhaps join you then, if you can make the showing that I would like. But, just now, I am going in for the ‘roses and raptures.’”

“You are not a marrying man, Hod?” cried Hathorn, in a sudden alarm.

“Heavens, no!” laughed the Western man. “Omar Khayyam’s vision of the ‘Flower Garden’ pales before the ‘embarras de richesse’ of the New York ‘Beauty Show.’ I am as yet a free lance, and also, an old campaigner. I will solemnly promise not to marry till I see you again. But I’ll stand up with you and see you spliced.”

His friend had “called the turn” correctly.

“Bluff goes, it seems, even in cold-hearted New York,” gaily concluded Vreeland, as he sauntered back alone to the Waldorf. “This strangely hastened wedding will bring me at once into the best circles. Mr. Fred Hathorn’s groomsman is a social somebody. The Lakemere divinity will soon do the rest, and by the time you return, my sly friend, I will be ready to kick the ladder down on your side.” He roared with a secret glee over his own “inability to disturb his invested funds.”

With a vulpine watchfulness, he noted all Mr. Jimmy Potter’s weak points. “I must get up my poker practice,” he smilingly said, as he laid his comely head down to rest.

“‘Mr. Potter of New York’ shall reinforce that slender seven thousand dollars, or else I’m a duffer. He will never squeal, at least, not to his partner. And so I’ll go in as a wedge between this ass and this fine woman who has unconsciously loved him. Yes, it’s a good opening for a young man! A mean and easy betrayal!”

The preoccupations of the splendid wedding of Miss Alida VanSittart gave Vreeland, now “the observed of all observers,” an ample opportunity to begin that “silent slavery” of a respectful devotion upon which he had decided as his safest rôle at Lakemere.

His rising social star was fixed in its orbit by the honors of groomsman, and in the visites de cérémonie, the rehearsals, and all the petty elegancies of the “great social event,” Mr. Harold Vreeland showed a perfectly good form. There was a gentle gravity in his Waldorf life which impressed even the flâneurs of that gilded hostelry. “There, sir,” remarked an old habitué, “is a man who holds himself at his proper value.”

Measured and fastidious in all his ways, Mr. Vreeland neglected no trifling detail, and he calmly went onward and upward. He well knew that, for some as yet hidden reason, the bridegroom was assiduously forcing his old chum forward into the glittering ring of America’s Vanity Fair. And it exactly suited his own quiet game.

He fully appreciated the extensive influence of the Lady of Lakemere, for her friends, moved on deftly by her, now came forward to open the golden gates for him on every side.

Even before the wedding, Vreeland had made himself familiar with all the glories of Lakemere. Side by side with its beautiful mistress, he had threaded its leafy alleys, climbed its sculptured heights “when jocund morn sat on the misty mountain tops,” and gloated secretly upon the splendid treasures of that perfect establishment. “This shall be mine yet,” he swore in his delighted heart.

“I am all alone in the world. Your veiled influence is making cold-hearted New York smile as a blossoming paradise for me. No; do not deny it. You are the very loveliest Queen of Friendship.” The beautiful brown eyes dropped before his eager gaze. She was a woman still.

Elaine Willoughby marked him as he went away with a growing interest. “Graceful, grateful, manly, and sincere!” was her verdict, easily reached, but one, however, not so enthusiastically adopted by either Judge Hiram Endicott or the Conyers couple, whom the Lady of Lakemere had captured for a visit before sending them away to the delightful summer exile of her Adirondack cottage.

“I don’t know what that fellow is after, Hugh?” growled the old Judge one day, as they were returning to town together; “but, he looks to me like a fellow who would finally get it.”

Conyers uneasily said: “He is the ‘head panjandrum’ of this Hathorn wedding—old college chum and all that.”

“Arcades ambo!” shortly said the silver-haired lawyer. “Mrs. Willoughby has a foolish fondness for picking up these Admirable Crichtons, and then forcing them along the road to fortune. It is only a generous woman’s weakness, a sort of self-flattery.”

“Vreeland is immensely rich—a man of leisure. Has jumped into one or two of the best clubs by mysterious backing, and seems to be all right,” slowly answered Hugh, mentally contrasting his own plain tweeds with Vreeland’s raiment of great price.

Their hands met in a silent pledge of loyalty to the lonely-hearted mistress of Lakemere.

The elder man alone knew the silent sorrows of her anxious soul. He alone knew of the quest of long years—a labor of love, so far fruitless.

The younger guarded his own heart secret in his honest breast, and yet, while hiding it from the world, he wondered why some man worthy of her royal nature had not taken her to wife.

As the train swept along, watching a “bright, particular star” mirrored in the flowing Hudson, Conyers sighed, “God bless her! She’s as far above me as that star, and yet, she makes my life bright.”

It was Mr. Harold Vreeland who later carried off all the honors of the sumptuous wedding as a proper “man-at-arms” in Cupid’s army. He was secretly approved by even the raffinée bridesmaids. He was also the diplomatic messenger who delivered to Mrs. Alida Hathorn that superb diamond necklace which was Elaine Willoughby’s bridal offering. Hathorn remembered after the ceremony how strangely stately were his lovely patroness’ congratulations to the radiant bride.

Larchmont, Lakewood, Irvington, and other summer mazes opened their hospitable golden gates to him, and a swarm of biddings to polo, golf, lawn tennis, and other youthful circles, were gladly offered by man and maid. In other words, Vreeland was launched “in the swim.”

In the hurried moments of the steamer parting, Vreeland would only vouchsafe a cool but diplomatic answer to Hathorn’s final pleadings.

“I will meet and answer you on October 1st, but I’ll look in on Potter a bit.”

He did cordially agree to give the bridegroom a friendly report of all the doings at Lakemere, and he had fallen heir to Hathorn’s intimacy with Justine—that spirited French maid, whose many life episodes had only deprived her of a shadowy candidacy for the honors of “la Rosière.” “I trust to you to look after my interests, Hod, in a general way,” eagerly said the bridegroom.

“So I will,” heartily replied the young Lochinvar à la mode, and then he mentally added: “After my own are safe.” And, so bride and groom sailed away on the ocean of a newer life.

He so far kept his promise, mindful of the gap already made by a dash into high life in his seven thousand dollars, as to closely cement an intimacy with Potter, begun over the “painted beauties.”

Mrs. Hathorn’s bridal wreath had hardly withered before the astute Vreeland, a good listener, had become the chief adviser of Potter in his doubtful warfare with that bright-eyed Cossack of Love, Miss Dickie Doubleday.

“I hope you will come in with us, Vreeland,” cordially remarked Potter. “Hathorn tells me that you are well up in stocks and as quick as lightning. I wouldn’t mind helping you to an interest. I must escape this—this—”

The puzzled little millionaire paused, for the first word was a misfit, and he was a good devil at heart. He could not abuse the tantalizing Miss Dickie Doubleday.

With a fine discrimination, the rising social star was touched with one pang of regret at the little man’s agony, now impaled on the hook of Miss Dickie Doubleday’s angle. He visited that bright-eyed young Ithuriel, and soon effected a “modus vivendi” which enabled Potter to cruise around on his yacht for one month of blessed and unhoped for peace.

In several sittings upon the “Nixie,” Mr. Harold Vreeland relieved his grateful host of some fourteen thousand dollars, by the application of the neat little Western device known as “the traveling aces.”

From this victorious encounter, Mr. Harold Vreeland gaily returned to Lakemere, after a brief tour of inspection of the seaside resorts sacred to the gente fina. He found everything “grist to his mill.” The gates were widely ajar.

With the patient assiduity of a well-conceived purpose, he now began to make the most of this “one summer.”

He was well aware, from the reports of the complacent Justine, that the Conyers were both out of the way, and his heart bounded with delight as he realized that Elaine Willoughby gracefully called him to her side on those four days of the week when Hiram Endicott was not in commune with her, in the splendid gray stone mansion bowered in its nodding trees.

He always paid her the delicate compliment of an implicit obedience, and in all the days of absence found the way made smooth for him elsewhere.

The circle at Lakemere was a large one, and Mr. Harold Vreeland, “with an equal splendor” and a touch “impartially tender,” became the favorite ami de maison. He failed not, however, to spread the balm of his cordial suavity on every side.

Day after day drifted happily by, the unspoken pact between the new friends becoming a stronger bond with every week, and the watchful vigilance of the young adventurer was never relaxed.

He was now grounded on society’s shores as a fixture, and apparently serenely unconscious, soon became the vogue without effort. The useless accomplishments of his college days now all came back to vastly aid the agreeable parvenu.

That one rare art of the woman-catcher, “never to bring up, in the faintest degree, the affairs of another woman,” victoriously carried Vreeland on into the vacant halls of the filles de marbre. And so, “Mr. Harold Vreeland” was universally voted “a charming man of vast culture and rare accomplishments.”

Fortunately, Mr. Fred Hathorn had widely trumpeted abroad the Montana bonanza, and the vulgar slavering over an easily assumed wealth carried him on both fast and far.

In his own heart, one carefully crystallized plan had already matured. To reach the innermost holy of holies of Elaine Willoughby’s heart, and then, to rule at Lakemere—to secretly lord it later in the Circassia. With a fine acumen, he refrained from making a single enemy among her sighing swains or her fawning women parasites. “They must not suspect my game here,” he sleekly smiled.

But one brooding shadow hung over the sunshine of these days. He was always aware of the frequent visits of Judge Endicott. And Justine’s recitals proved to him that a hidden sorrow had its seat in her mistress’ soul.

“I can be patient. I can afford to wait,” he mused, as with a faithful assiduity he came and went, and marked no shadows on the happy dial of those summer days.

“She is worth serving seven years for,” he mused; “and, for her fortune—with Lakemere—seventeen.”

“When I am master here,” he secretly exulted, “I can say: ‘Soul! thou hast much goods!’”

And so he bided his time, and yet, with keen analysis, decided to make his coup before the fretful and intriguing Hathorn returned.

“It is the one chance of a lifetime,” he mused, as he paced the lawns of Lakemere. “Once that her social support would be withdrawn, once that this suspicious devil, Hathorn, would ‘drop on’ the dangerous game I am playing, I would be soon ground between the millstones of fate.”

And his soul was uneasy as the October days approached and the blue haze of the golden Indian summer began to drift down the Hudson.

He came to the conclusion at last to put his fate to the test. For certain letters received from Hathorn at the Isle of Wight had prepared him for the explosion of a social bomb which wrecked forever Frederick Hathorn’s dreams of regaining the alienated heart of the woman who had led him up the ladder of life.

The thorns upon Hathorn’s rosebud were sharp enough. He already felt the keenness of the petted Mme. Alida’s egoistic and unruly nature. And, in a clouded present, he looked back regretfully to a golden past, with every fear of a stormy future. It was the old story of two women and one man, with the poisoned-tongued society intermeddler.

There had been a little happening at the Isle of Wight which was the direct result of the young millionaire matron displaying at a yachting ball the diamond necklace which had been Elaine Willoughby’s wedding gift. Then, the tongue of envy found its ready venom.

One of those sleek devils in woman form who are the social scavengers of the world, had glowered upon those secretly coveted gems as they rose and fell upon the bosom of the young moonlight beauty.

She uttered lying words which sent Alida Hathorn back to her summer cottage with pallid lips and heart aflame.

The story was soon wafted across the sea by a sister spider, who had easily followed on the first bitter quarrel between the two parties to the “marriage of the year.” And Harold Vreeland, now on post, a watchful sentinel at Elaine Willoughby’s side, was the first one to whom her own outraged heart was poured out, as Mrs. Volney McMorris drove back to her own lair at Larchmont.

It gave to Harold Vreeland the needed cue. The decisive moment had come, and he hazarded his future upon the chance of meeting her confidence with a fine burst of manly sympathy.

To range himself forever under her colors, and to craftily lie to her, and not in vain.

His audacious devil sprite once more urged him to be both bold and wise.

Elaine Willoughby’s eyes were flashing as she repeated the relation of Mrs. Volney McMorris, who, “so anxious that her dear friend should know all and not be exposed to the ignominy of a ‘dead cut’ from Hathorn’s headstrong wife.” “And, as he is a lâche, I would use the ‘baby stare’ first, my dear Elaine,” was the parting shot of the departing McMorris. The lady of Lakemere was a roused tigress now.

Harold Vreeland listened breathlessly to the story of the bitter taunt that the diamond necklace and parting dinner had been Elaine Willoughby’s crafty “sop to the social Cerberus” in giving her handsome secret lover, Hathorn, only a furlough for the honeymoon.

The insinuation that the young husband would carry on a ménage à trois had crazed the suspicious heiress, whose new wedding bonds burned like molten gold.

“I shall soon know if Frederick Hathorn is an unutterable craven,” proudly said Elaine to her serpent listener.

“‘Break it off!’ was Alida’s ultimatum, and she has publicly declared ‘war to the knife.’

“When Hathorn referred to our business connection, so profitable to the firm, Alida had cried: ‘I have money enough for both of us. I married a gentleman, not a counter jumper! You shall drop all this humbug business which has been the cloak to your amourette.’”

Elaine Willoughby saw the wonderment of Vreeland’s eyes. With a blush reddening her pale cheek, she faltered: “The maid overheard the quarrel, and she told Mrs. McMorris all. She was once her own attendant.”

“That McMorris is a genius,” mused Vreeland, as Mrs. Willoughby concluded: “And, Hathorn has been silent. I have not heard one word from him.” Her bosom heaved as she gloomily said: “I will give him a last chance to speak out, and if he acts the moral coward, then it is war to the knife!

“Her husband’s lady-love! An ex-goddess! ‘A star on the retired list!’ I will make her pay for these brutal vulgarities! I will force him to speak, and in her presence!”

The artful Mr. Harold Vreeland fancied that he had discovered the reason of the storms of sorrow which had swept over the lady of Lakemere. He knew not of Endicott’s bootless quest for a message from the misty shores of the past. “These two women foes will decide my fate!” he quickly decided. “Here is the place to leap into the breach and widen it.”

His voice had the ring of sincerity in it as he proceeded with a feigned reluctance.

“You need not wait, Madonna!” Mr. Vreeland had easily reached the stage of a special appellation for the Queen of the Street.

“He has already spoken, and I will fight in this good cause—to the death, under your colors.”

He drew out a letter from Hathorn and read it slowly, without a single comment, and with a dramatic, hushed solemnity.

Before he had finished he saw in her glowing eyes that she was his prey. The poisoned arrow had struck home. She was, after all, a woman at heart.

Hathorn’s jerky letter referred to the “end of the season,” “a return incognito,” and demanded an early meeting with his chum. “I presume that you know all of Potter’s troubles. He wants to become a ‘special partner,’ and then to go away for two years. You must join us at once, or I must find another man. So, have your answer ready.” Elaine Willoughby was silent until Vreeland slowly read:

“I count on you to control in future Mrs. Willoughby’s business. Make yourself her friend and confidant. My wife is a tiger-cat of jealousy. Some fools or fiends have been working upon her spoiled babyhood. I’ve vainly told her that the woman whom she hates was past her youth and old enough to be her mother; but she will listen to no reason.

There was a shrill cry of rage and defiance. Vreeland’s heart leaped up.

“Let me read the rest of that alone,” cried Elaine, with blazing eyes. After a moment’s pause, she handed it back, when she had noted Hathorn’s signature.

“He asks you to cable him your decision!” breathlessly said the Queen of the Street.

“I have simply telegraphed: ‘Impossible! I decline!’” answered Vreeland, and then, in the silence the shade of Judas Iscariot laughed far down in hell.

Their hands met in a silent pledge of a friendship which shone in Elaine Willoughby’s misty eyes. “How can I thank you?” she began; but gravely Harold Vreeland addressed her to her growing astonishment.

“Wait!” he said, with a seeming reluctance. “I never would have shown you that letter but to save your own noble soul from the humiliation of stooping to a conference with a man who would so meanly trade upon your past bounty and try to trap you, through me. Your confidence has brought this out. But, you must hear all. I claim no credit for declining to be the man to hoodwink you. ‘The pleasant days of Aranjuez’ are waning fast. I am soon going to leave New York and go back to the great West.”

Vreeland noted the quick, convulsive start, and his heart rejoiced as she grasped his hands, whispering: “Never! My one faithful knight shall stay here near me to battle in my defense, ‘even if I am old enough to be Alida Hathorn’s mother.’ Tell me all. It is my right now to know all your plans.”

The unspoken pledge of her eyes told him that his coup had succeeded. “By Jove!” he mused, “she is only a woman, like the rest. The taunt as to her age has cut her deeper than this fellow’s rank ingratitude.”

He gazed upon her Indian summer beauty, and his eyes strayed away to the pillared glories of the matchless country mansion. “She’s worth the risk—with Lakemere,” he reflected. “I’ll try it!” He yielded and spoke, and she listened with tender eyes.

And the shadows deepened around them, as the young schemer told a plaintive story of emotional lying embroidery to the woman whose agitated heart was swept with a storm of revengeful feeling.

A passionate desire to punish the younger woman whose husband had used the mean taunt of her sunset years to quiet the jealous little spitfire heiress.

“I did not come to New York City under false pretenses,” began Vreeland, “but, Hathorn has taken me wrongly to be a rich man. I am only a poor man to-day, and a weary and a lonely life lies before me.”

“I could not muster the hundred thousand dollars needed to go into their firm, for I have made myself poor in the discharge of a sacred duty.”

A knowledge of Judge Endicott’s encyclopedic memory, and some previous hints from the wary Justine, caused Vreeland to put in a hidden plea in bar, to offset any private researches of the only two men whom he feared in Elaine’s glittering entourage. They were the silver-haired Hiram Endicott and the manly Conyers.

Once or twice he had observed the latter’s eyes searching him in no unmeaning hostility.

There were tears on Elaine Willoughby’s lashes as he concluded with manly earnestness:

“Left with a supposedly ample fortune, I found, on an examination of my father’s private papers, that there was before me a sacred task of restitution. A work of self-abnegation, of simple honesty, lay before me.

“I had never known of the baleful influence of the woman who led my father (once in her clutches) on to lead a double life.

“But, in justice to his own better self and in honor of my beloved mother’s memory, I gave up nearly all, and so arrived here with only a few thousand dollars in my pocket.”

The shades had deepened around them when he concluded with his last master stroke of manly simplicity.

“Chance threw me across Hathorn in the train as I came here to collect the only honest money left to me after my work of secret restitution was done. I saw that he valued only money—success—and the glitter of your hot-hearted swell circles.

“And,” the young special pleader rose as he said, under his voice, “I met you there—at the depot! My heart and soul craved another sight of you. And that I might meet you again, I did not undeceive him.

“You know the rest. I have been true to you, and I have given up my last hope of fortune in refusing to be his tool.”

He could see her splendid eyes shining upon him through her happy tears.

“Let us go in, Harold,” she softly said. “I must think! I must think! But promise me that you will not go away from New York till I bid you. Trust to me.”

“I promise,” he gravely said, as he lifted her trembling hand and kissed it, and then, arm in arm, they wandered back to her splendid pleasaunce palace. It was the “betrayal with a kiss.”

After the dinner, to which a few of the nearest county magnates had been previously bidden, Vreeland watched Elaine’s imperial bearing as she proudly queened it in the drawing room.

A richer rose burned upon her cheek. Her eyes were lit up with a strange fire, and her magnificent voice echoed in every heart with a thrill of a quivering life, as her defiant soul rose to the prelude of that coming war with the jealous girl who had determined to shine down the Lady of Lakemere.

The Queen of the Street stood there with downcast eyes before the great carved mantle, as she slowly said: “They will arrive in three or four days. You must confirm your answer to him.

“He has told me that you know stocks, and are familiar with all board matters.”

Vreeland bowed in silence.

“Then,” she said, fixing her sparkling eyes upon him, “I will make you a confession. I had decided to withdraw gradually my entire business from their firm. In fact, I have been already secretly operating through a trusted friend on the outside.

“You must find a good man, one acceptable to Hiram Endicott.

“I will set you up, and Hathorn & Potter shall soon find a rival. I will carry the war into the enemy’s camp. So be on your guard. Hathorn must never know!

“It is the only punishment for his abandonment at the first hostile signal from his enraged wife. I have made him on the Street! I can unmake him!” Her voice had the ring of a singing bugle calling to arms.

“But, I have no money,” the crafty Judas faltered.

“Leave that to me,” laughingly said Elaine. “You are now my own knight. Here are your colors.”

She handed him a knot of ribbon blue. “Come to me next week. Meet him frankly and decline all connection. Senator Alynton will be here then.”

And she smiled and pressed a rosy finger to her lips.

“The Sugar magnate!” whispered the happy Vreeland, as he stood spellbound, while his goddess fled up the stair, leaving him there alone.