Miss Joanna, you are a good fairy, and a keen-witted genius. I will give you carte blanche to lead her out along the rosy path, step by step, and a path that leads always toward me.”
Mr. Harold Vreeland moved on serenely and laid his pitfalls for the pure young girl, whom chance had thrown in his way, with no compunction. In the blighted career of his own dishonored father, he had only despised the weaknesses which led to failure.
He had seen the downfall of Hathorn without a throb of sympathy and he resented the frank, honest predilection which was now leading the warm-hearted Potter to screen Alida Hathorn from a mob of cold-hearted “woman eaters” in honorable marriage.
Mean at heart, he even doubted the past life of the woman who had lifted him up to luxury. He hated her now only that his charms of person and manner had not brought her to his feet, a willing dupe.
“She seemed to be impressed at first,” he mused. “But the shock of Hathorn’s cold abandonment in his little tiger cat wife’s jealous frenzy seems to have turned her against man, for a time.
“But, let me only get a hold on her. I do not care to be the star actor in a modern ‘Romance of a Poor Young Man.’ She shall not shake me off.”
He plotted deliberately against her peace—his generous benefactress. “First, the tapping of the private lines. Then, to mold Romaine Garland to my will. If she does not yield to Joanna Marble’s smooth ways, then out into the streets of New York.
“There are others, more complaisant; but to awaken those dark eyes to pleasure’s glow. To have them quicken at my coming.”
It was with these “undreamed dreams” haunting him that Harold Vreeland arrived, in sedate splendor, at the “Circassia,” where “the feast was set” for Senator Alynton and that Western wonder of recent occultation, Senator-elect James Garston.
In the kaleidoscopic splendors of the drawing-room, where manly eyes gleamed upon the beauties of splendid womanhood, among the fair daughters of Eve he missed that brilliant blonde heiress, Miss Katharine VanDyke Norreys. A tap from Mrs. Volney McMorris’ fan recalled him.