The flowers and ornate wealth of decorations made the room a very dream of luxury. Vreeland sprang forward when he had locked the door, but the burning words of tenderness on his lips were stayed as a slender, uplifted arm stopped him. The visitor’s face was impassive.
“Not yet. We must understand each other,” was the whisper which sounded like the voice of a lost soul. It was, with a fatal overreaching, that Vreeland murmured, “This is hardly the place for a business interview.”
“I know it,” stolidly said Alida Hathorn, turning toward him a face whose burning eyes thrilled him to his bosom’s core. “You have as much to lose as I have, perhaps more.”
“My life is ruined,” she gloomily said. “We will play fair to-night, you and I, with the cards on top the table. I know all your game—you shall now know mine. And, I presume that both of us are willing to pay the price.”
A French clock ticked away in the awkward silence, and then, Vreeland, a master of woman’s moods, quietly seated himself beside the excited woman, and took her burning palms in his own.
“Tell me what your will is. It shall be my law,” he simply said.
Alida Hathorn coldly studied his face for a moment. “I will soon test your sincerity,” she answered. “I will tear off the lying mask we all wear for a moment, and let you see the real woman behind the society veneer.”
“I have found out that my husband is only a reckless stock gambler, a man who coldly married me simply as ‘means to an end.’ He is half crazed by his loss of influence in the Street.
“He has lately established secret branches of his house in Buffalo, Philadelphia, Washington, Chicago and Montreal.
“There seems to have been some devil crossing him everywhere, and, he has also fought out a silent duel to the death with Elaine Willoughby, who has torn the old firm to pieces.”