With that he steps into the elevator of the Fifth Avenue Hotel, leaving Whitehouse Southmead to saunter to the Unity Club and cards in rather a contemplative, though by no means legal, mood, for he chuckles to himself: "Jove! If that rapid Mr. West should capture rich and lovely Miss East? wouldn't it make Mrs. Livingston wild?"
CHAPTER III.
HER FATHER'S FRIEND.
"Mr. Kruger, how do you do?" says Miss Erma Travenion, some three days after; turning suddenly from the Cerberus who stands at the gate leading to the out-going trains of the Hudson River Railroad, in the Grand Central Depot, New York, waiting to punch her ticket. Then she calls again with the bright, fresh voice of youth: "Mr. Kruger! Mr. Kruger! Don't you recognize me?" and drawing up her dainty white skirts to give her pretty feet room for rapid movement, pursues a gentleman who, in the rush of the great station, apparently does not notice her.
The ticket puncher looks astonished for a moment, and then promptly and savagely cries, "Next!"
But the "Next!" is Mr. Oliver Ogden Livingston, who has also turned from the entrance, and is gazing after Miss Travenion, an occupation his eyes have become quite used to in the last few months, since her father had finished settling his million upon her.
Livingston, after a second's pause of consideration, says hurriedly to the lady who comes immediately behind him, "Mother, you and Louise had better go to our car. Ferdie will escort you. I will wait for Miss Travenion and see her on board before the train starts."
To this, Mrs. Livingston, who, though fair, plump and forty-five, is of a nervous tendency, cries out, "My Heaven! She's running out of the depot—she is so impulsive—if anything happens to Erma, what shall I say to her father?" And the chaperon casts anxious glances on her charge, who is still moving in pursuit of the abstracted Mr. Kruger, who is apparently looking for somebody himself.
"Next!" cries the ticket man savagely. "Don't block the way!"