The keen-eyed young schemer quickly noted the photograph of Miss Romaine Garland proudly given the place of honor upon the mantel.
Before he could announce his errand, Miss Mary Kelly painfully limped in from the other room, whence a murmur of voices had told him of her presence. If he could only trap her into revealing Romaine’s address!
All his gentle gravity of manner was manifest as Vreeland explained his personal call. “I desire to send to Miss Garland her uncollected monthly salary, and also to obtain some private papers which must be yet in her possession,” began Vreeland, carefully studying the girl’s plaintive pale face.
“If you would kindly give me Miss Garland’s present address, I can send a messenger to her. She probably forgot the papers.”
Vreeland paused, and then his heart hardened, as the young girl’s fearless eyes looked him through and through.
There was an indictment in her innocent glances which made him mutter, “Miss Majesty has surely blabbed about the Ollie Manson musicale. That was a clumsy failure.”
“I cannot give you Miss Garland’s address, Mr. Vreeland,” said the girl, with an uneasy glance at her old mother.
“She has left New York City for good, and I think has gone to California.”
“When she said ‘good-by’ to me, she mentioned that she would not care to continue as the only woman worker in your employ. I presume that you will hear from her through Miss Marble’s agency.”
Vreeland’s quick wit told him that here was “no thoroughfare.” And all his mean suspicions had been strengthened by Joanna Marble’s world-worn innuendoes. His lips curled in an unmanly sneer. “Ah, yes! I think I shall write to Miss Marble, and now inform her of the young woman’s dishonorable discharge. I can, of course, send her salary to the agency, and as for my papers, I presume that they went to California with her ‘character.’ Respectable young women are usually not ashamed to own their residence. Did she tell you this up at Lakemere?”