A furtive conference with Miss Marble had caused him to slip into the hushed rooms during the period when the convives were hanging breathlessly upon Miss Bettina Goldvogel’s rendering of “Beauty’s Eyes.” The Prince Charming’s advent was unobserved.
When the music ceased, Vreeland, who had been gazing upon Romaine Garland, a sweet and lonely figure, seated there with her hands clasped and her stately head bent, was alarmed as he pressed forward through the unfamiliar throng.
There was a flush of sudden crimson on the tall girl’s cheek, and then, a swift Diana, she passed on, a vision of stately beauty in her unfamiliar evening dress. The excited trickster was swift in her pursuit.
Vreeland’s step was on the stair, but a warning touch at once recalled him. With serpentine swing, Miss Joanna Marble sought the secret precincts of the robing rooms. “Let me handle this matter,” was the whispered comment. “Wait below in the drawing-room.”
The effusive welcome of Mrs. Ollie Manson was lost upon the man who had caught one glance of aversion from those truthful eyes into which his veiled blandishments had never brought one gleam of tenderness in those long hours at the Elmleaf. “Had she taken the alarm?”
When he was released from the little circle with its sotto voce comments, “Clubman,” “Rich young banker, my dear,” and other social incense, he saw the thin, bewhiskered Mr. Solon Manson, with a startled expression, handing Miss Romaine Garland down the front steps to her waiting carriage.
It was a five minutes of agony, and the last strains of “Non è Ver” had reverberated from Sig. Trombonini’s swelling bosom before Miss Joanna Marble, her face ashen with the pallor of rage, drew Vreeland into the library.
“You’ll never see that young tragedy queen again,” wrathfully whispered the angered woman. “She only told her driver to take her to the elevated railroad station at Ninetieth Street. I had posted the little Manson to get her address.
“There must be someone nearer to her than you ever will be. She is as deep as the sea, and she dared to lash me with her icy tongue. ‘I see it all, Miss Marble,’ she snapped out. ‘Your friendly invitation was a lure to put me on a false basis with my elegant employer.
“‘You know the girl breadwinner has no protection against such a man but the honest independence of her daily labor. Should he bend to woo the woman who stands mute before him daily, pencil in hand? I can not meet my employer socially.’”