“It would be simply a financial suicide—our joint ruin!” he had whispered.
“But wait—wait till I marry her!”
And then, their chiming laughter ended the daring woman’s pleadings. For the time was to come when the fortune of the generous dupe would be ruled by the victorious young Napoleon.
Harold Vreeland knew, in his heart, that the Queen of the Street was aware of the wild daily life of the men in the Elmleaf.
For after rout-ball, opera, and theatre there were often stolen visits, aided by the friendly mantle of darkness, and diamonds which had gleamed but an hour before on calm and unsullied brows at the opera glittered balefully in the crepuscular gloom of shaded rooms, where at least one of the passionate lovers was far away from home.
The schemer had, from the first, avoided all intimacies with these light-headed men.
He knew that each of his fellow locataires was a Don Juan, and that tragedy and comedy, sweet sin with shame, were traveling fast upon its heels and satiety stalking along; that aching brows upon rose-leaf couches haunted the decorous interiors of this abode of hidden pleasures. The Elmleaf was a Golgotha of reputations.
And only a fire or an earthquake could reveal the daringly desperate liaisons, which, urged on by the delightful zest of danger, would have made public, by any sudden disaster, a story far more ghastly than the untold record of that hideous night when the Hotel Royal went up in fire and flame.
It was in a dull resentment against Elaine, and spurred on by Potter’s tipsy confidence, that Vreeland, now fearing nothing, drew Mrs. Alida Hathorn aside as he met her by hazard once more in the reception room of the Savoy. He was waiting for a momentary telegram from Justine, when his eyes rested upon the alluring moonlight glances of that provoking young beauty, Mrs. Fred Hathorn. When she had gaily rallied him on the Sardanapalian splendor of his Elmleaf establishment, he whispered in burning words: “Why do you not ever come and see it?”
The costly fan trembled and snapped in her hand as she slowly said: “I wanted to ask you something to-day! The time has come!”