“Still there is the lost child. If I only knew how old the girl was,” he fretted.
“It may be the child of the last decade, or the fruit of a girlish marriage. That secret, and the paper, I must have.
“But, Justine must steal the one, and I have got to reach her line of secret communications.”
As he met his calmly-smiling secret employer he could not divine the revengeful purposes hidden under her gently-heaving bosom.
CHAPTER VIII.
MISS ROMAINE GARLAND, STENOGRAPHER.
It was late that night when the excited Vreeland left the Circassia and he was still somewhat in the dark as to the real object of his veiled employment. He reasoned justly that there was not a grain of sentiment now in the frankly defined relations between himself and the Lady of Lakemere.
The money bond between them was only that cold one of employer and employed, and the unmistakable dignity of Elaine’s business manner held him decidedly aloof. Here was no lover’s thrall.
Not a single reference to her absence had escaped her lips. There was no pleasant, social white-lying going on between them, and he was still in the dark when he left, with the strictest orders to await every moment between ten and three, her signal for the beginning of stock operations of gigantic magnitude.
“This Sugar stock may pay twelve and seven per cent on common and preferred in a year, or else be driven down to half price. We must be wary,” she sighed. “No one can truly forecast the actions of our courts, journals, electors or government,” she mused. “The very principle of reckless instability is the one sure thing of all our American doings.”