“Now, I want you to find that daughter for me—and if you do, your fortune is made.” He quietly added: “You see the presence of that girl would spoil the Alynton marriage, and Elaine Willoughby has only a heart of stone. She has merely drawn Alynton on by an assumed resistance. My lady has played her cards well. I want to find the girl—and break off that match—for business reasons.”
The flood of burning jealousy which swept over Vreeland’s mind now washed away the last vestige of his calculating prudence. Alynton should never have the Lady of Lakemere.
For a moment a torturing, haunting resemblance was strangely made plain to him. And now he would hunt down that lost lamb which had escaped both himself and that thirsty she-wolf, Joanna Marble. There was a double motive for the chase now.
“Is that the girl whom you are searching for?” suddenly exclaimed the excited broker, as he thrust Romaine Garland’s picture before the gaze of the astonished Western millionaire.
There was a cry—an echo of the buried past surging now from Garston’s breast. The echo of a love long dead.
“By God! It is Margaret herself—at eighteen. Tell me—tell me—where did you get this?” He had seized Vreeland by both hands and the picture lay between them, smiling up at the excited men from the wine-stained table.
Vreeland bitterly thought of the vacant chair in his luxurious den—the chair that Romaine Garland had quitted forever. He began to see that plainly which as hitherto had only glimmered “as in a glass darkly.” And for a second time, Fate had dealt him a heavy blow. She had escaped him as scathless as the “Lady of the Red Rose.” He had a foothold left, however.
“That is my secret, sir,” sharply said Vreeland, as he wrenched himself loose, and pocketed the photograph sent “for inspection to Miss Marble.”
“And that secret is for sale to you, on fair conditions.”
“Let us make instant terms, Vreeland,” cried Garston, dropping into a chair. He was eager now. He reached out for a glass of cognac.