“It may be only self-protection that made her shove him off on Alida VanSittart. How she hurried on that marriage?
“Was it jealousy, fear, or some of her craft? And I am used—used and only half trusted.
“Wait! Lady Mine! If Justine only plays me fair, I will have got all your game—and then I’ll be master of you, Lakemere and the money. Once inside your lines, then you will never be able to throw me off.” He was beginning to see the threads of the swift current now.
His own expression, “inside your lines,” haunted him through his three hours’ sleep, his bath, and early breakfast. Vreeland had the nerves of the Iron Duke, and he burned for a few words with Justine, who was to seek him that very morning, at her nest in South Fifth Avenue.
For there was a southward trip impending, and he wished to give his one faithful spy her orders.
“If I could only get at the wires in her room! If I could only manage to tap her talk and messages to old Endicott! For this woman here in the office is surely her spy. Bagley may be.
“By Heavens! There is just one chance. And her mail! Justine may help me. What can she not do?”
His heart burned with a dull jealousy of that past when Justine had aided Hathorn on his upward way. “If she could only get around the janitor of the ‘Circassia,’ and the letter carrier. What money can do, I can aid her in, and she must do the rest—” He closed his eyes in a fierce glow of sensual irritation, for the Parisienne had already forged chains upon him which, with all his cold craft, he could not lightly break away from.
“She is not to be resisted—if she plays her own game. First the trip, then the other idea. But I could never handle this pale-faced St. Agnes—this lame bundle of all the virtues. I must have some one else here to watch Miss Mary Kelly—this convent-bred marvel.
“Why not find a smart woman to be my private stenographer and one of the right kind? She could also keep an eye on Bagley and the little dove-eyed devotee. Justine may help me to the right woman. I’ll tell her all.” He began to see Lakemere moving toward him.