“Your handsome lover Vreeland shall be my prey, my tool, my confidant. I will creep into your heart through your own pleasant vice. And, by God! He shall find out the girl for me.”
When James Garston’s passion-blinded eyes cleared, he was standing there alone, and a sudden fear smote upon him.
The ghastly silence of the splendid deserted halls weighed upon him. He staggered out into the blinding snows, now falling, and crossed the park to where a sleigh waited at the garden gate.
He was half mad, as he wandered away under the trees, and he hurled away his revolver lest he should be tempted to die there before her windows.
“I have lost a woman upon whose breast a king’s head might proudly rest,” he said to that ghost of his dead self which rose up to mock the man of mark, the millionaire. “And—she loved me once. Fool—fool—and—blind fool!” he muttered.
A mad resolve thrilled him now.
“The child! By God! she would hide her. The world is not wide enough. There’s my money—and this young fellow Vreeland. I have a lure for him.”
His busy brain thrilled with plots of the one revenge left to him. “I will steal away both child and lover!” he swore.
Senator Garston’s face was sternly composed that night as he indited his invitation to the rising young banker to join him at the Plaza.
“Katie Norreys can soon twist him around her slim, white fingers—he is young and rash,” the cold-hearted millionaire mused. “I am safe in Margaret’s silence. My money will talk. My record is safe. I have made my calling and election sure. I’ll get Vreeland into the fair Katie’s hands.