AN INTERVIEW AT LAKEMERE—SOME INGENIOUS MECHANISM.—“WHOSE PICTURE IS THAT?”
Harold Vreeland was seated in a blaze of light, in his own rooms at four in the morning, anxiously awaiting a night visit from one who might unravel the whole mystery while the lonely Elaine Willoughby lay helpless in her secluded rooms, feebly struggling toward a return of her self-control.
“What new devil’s jugglery is this?” muttered Vreeland, pausing in his wolf stride. He carefully recalled every action of the newly-made Senator and yet he was baffled at every turn. “Was the newcomer an agent of a morose husband, an old lover, or an unwelcome apparition from the clouded past?” He was baffled.
For, he began to realize how baseless were his meaner suspicions of the past. There had been no unworthy love between Elaine and Hathorn. The devil’s poison of slander alone had excited Alida’s burning jealousy. She herself had only sought “a dead straight point” in the daring visit to his rooms. Elaine’s record was clear so far. “Was it only an old sorrow?” He pondered long. Even the pale-faced, proud girl, whom he would trap, so far had hugged her honest poverty to a stainless bosom.
“I’ve been dead wrong on Alynton’s game all along. There’s neither an old love, nor a new intrigue, there,” he growled. “Justine has clearly proved that. Their union is only to be termed, ‘strictly business.’
“And the Senator’s frank, brotherly concern at Elaine’s sudden illness went no farther than Colonel Barton Grahame’s sympathy, Judge Endicott’s alarm, or my own undisguised interest. Here is a new jack-in-the-box. I must watch Senator Garston.”
It had been a galling mortification to Vreeland in the past, that faintly disguised disdain of Senator David Alynton, who had always practically ignored him.
But, this new statesman, sturdy James Garston, had brought to their meeting an unfeigned western bonhomie.
The newcomer had sought him out eagerly. He had drawn the younger man aside, in a lull of the entertainment.
“We must meet and talk over western matters; we have the world’s coming treasury out there,” largely remarked the new Senator-elect.