It was undeniable that the hats went off to right and left, as Vreeland paced the sacred precincts of Wall, Broad and Pine. A rising man—a successful man—a man of mark!
“A safe man, sir! A wonderful young financier! A man whose outside operations are enormous!” gravely said the cashier of the Mineralogical Bank to his esteemed colleague, the cashier of Henry Screws & Company.
“You see!” confidentially said the speaker, between two mouthfuls of “hasty lunch,” “the house is bound not to speculate, but—Vreeland, as an individual, is to-day, perhaps the heaviest single operator of all the young men of New York.” The young man’s fame was duly noised abroad.
“Where does he get all his backing?” grunted the other, as he dashed down a tankard of “bitter.”
“He owns the half of Montana,” dreamily said the Mineralogical’s Cerberus.
“And so, he is founded on the eternal rocks.”
It was not half an hour until this brilliant new canard was traveling like a winged locust—and, it soon achieved the voyage—even to the jungles of Harlem—and spread all over Gotham like the Canada thistle attacking a poorhouse farm. A new financial Napoleon had appeared.
The self-possessed Vreeland was astounded at the many offered social honors, the crowding attractive business temptations, and all the rosy lures now thronging his pathway. He knew not as yet the whole force of a lie “well stuck to,” which often treads down the modest and shamefaced truth.
And even the agnostic sneer of “parvenu” was spared him. He was suave, careful, chary in making enemies, and strictly non-committal.
His conduct toward Elaine Willoughby absolutely disarmed even that vigilant social scavenger, Mrs. Volney McMorris.