“But, I can wait.”
And, so, never having dipped deeper into any true woman’s heart than the light-winged swallow brushing the lake, he forgot that he was not true to her. He knew not the force of those ringing lines of “A Fo’castle Ballad”:
“If you’re good to her, she’s good to you!
For a woman’s square, if you treat her right!”
The morning found the energetic Mr. Harold Vreeland in close conference with the thin-lipped Miss Marble, of “Marble’s Business Agency,” near that dingy little square where Greeley in bronze gazes vacantly down at his own feet, awed by the stony glare of the New York Herald’s singularly inartistic owls.
The wary woman broker had listened in silence to the young banker’s long description of his need of an accomplished “private secretary.”
She flushed slightly when Vreeland mentioned the Elmleaf as the scene of the varied “labors.”
The quiet orgies of that “whited sepulchre” were now the theme of much whispered comment over the whole Tenderloin.
There were other “rising men” besides Harold Vreeland burning the candle of Life at both ends there and covertly reënacting the lurid scenes of old Monte Tiberio, and infamous Baiæ.
“Expense is no object, my dear Miss Marble,” softly purred Vreeland. “I fancy you know now what I want. I would prefer a capable young woman who is a stranger to New York City.