Waldron had just risen to make his opening address. His automobile had brought him quickly from another important engagement with a committee of Western bankers who had met in the stately library of his palatial home on the heights of upper Manhattan.
There was no mistaking the poise of the man, his dignity and conscious reserve power. Vassar studied him for the first time at close range with increasing dislike and suspicion.
He faced the crowd with a look of quiet mastery. A man of medium height, massive bull neck, high forehead, straight intellectual eyebrows and piercing steel gray eyes. There was no mistaking the fact that he was a born leader of men.
A high collar covered the massive neck well up to the ears, concealing the lines of brutality which lay beneath; and a pair of glasses attached to a black silk cord and gracefully adjusted, gave to his strong features a touch of intellectuality on which his vanity evidently fed.
A curious little smile played about the corners of his eyes and thin lips as if he knew a good joke that couldn’t be told to a crowd. The smile brought a frown to John Vassar’s sensitive face. He instinctively hated a man with that kind of smile. He couldn’t tell why. The smile was not a pose. There was something genuine behind it. A crowd would like him for it. But the man who looked beneath the surface for its real meaning felt intuitively that it sprang from a deep, genuine and boundless contempt for humanity.
The sound of his voice confirmed this impression. He spoke with a cold, measured deliberation that provoked and held an audience. His words were clean cut and fell with metallic precision like the click of a telegraph key.
“I have the honor, tonight, ladies and gentlemen,” he began slowly, “of introducing to you the real leader of the women of America—”
A cheer swept the crowd and Zonia stood on tiptoe trying to catch a glimpse of her heroine.
“She’s hiding behind the others—“ she pressed her uncle’s arm—“but you’ll see her in a minute, Uncy!”
“Doubtless!” Vassar laughed. “She’s too wise an actress to stumble on the stage before her cue—”