“I am housed at the Plaza, to be near Miss Norreys, who is at the Savoy. I shall stay here a few days, and, we will have a luncheon together.”
In fact the acute Mrs. Volney McMorris had very deftly arranged it, for she was eager to matronize the resplendent Miss Norreys, to bask in the smile of this rising financial sun, and to have her own private chat with the young Fortunatus about the vanished Lady of the Red Rose. Her prompt social fastening upon Mrs. Willoughby, was only a grim proof that “the one who goes is happier than the one that’s left behind.”
The new Senator’s round bullet-head, his curved beak-like nose, his uncertain gray eye and unsmiling lips marked him as a man of power.
He bore in every movement the badge of hard-won success.
His fifty-one years had marked him lightly, and, lawyer, mine owner, and capitalist, he was riding into the Senate on a chariot with golden wheels. It is the West that holds now the American sceptre.
Vreeland had watched Garston keenly at the dinner and noted his poised manner, his brilliant flashes of silence, and the grave, undisturbed courtesy of his demeanor toward the marble-faced hostess. “A man of a level head,” was Vreeland’s verdict. And he tried to read the secret of Garston’s imploring glances.
There had been no lingering cloud over the table, and no shade of Banquo was evoked to chill the later merriment. Love, veiled and unveiled, deftly footed it, among the revelers, and, only Doctor Alberg’s steady eyes, anxiously fixed upon his “star” patient, proved that but one, besides Vreeland, realized the desperate battle against Time which Elaine Willoughby was fighting out to the last. The egoistic revelers imagined their hostess’ seizure to be a mere passing weakness. They all knew the strain of the exhausting New York season.
“Charming woman, our hostess,” frankly remarked Senator Garston to Vreeland. “Type all unknown to our modest Marthas of the Occident. Here in America, our women will soon be crowned queens, if I may trust to the ‘tiara’ bearing stories of the society journals.” And a casual remark from Vreeland brought out the admission that Senator Garston had never before met the hostess. “It was to my colleague, Alynton, that I owe the honor of this presentation,” said the newly-made toga wearer. “And, as Mrs. Willoughby has been so kind to my ward, Miss Norreys, in this new acquaintance, both pleasure and duty join hands.”
But, the startled Vreeland, pacing his silent room had several times exclaimed, in his lonely rounds while waiting for Alberg, “James Garston, you are a cool-headed, thorough-paced liar! I will trace you back, my occidental friend, only to find ‘the wires crossed,’ somewhere in the past, and, from you, I will yet wrench the secret of Elaine Willoughby’s early life. Her child! Yes,” he cried, “It might well be.” He was thrilling in every fibre, for, in the dressing room, Justine had stolen to his side whispering:
“Doctor Alberg has sent for a trained nurse to help me watch with her to-night. Be on your guard.