His worst fears as to the “underground railroad” communications of the “uncle” and ward were realized when he finally received a positive request of Senator Garston for an immediate return.
“I want you at once. I wish to lay out our plans for the winter. And if I am to trap this underhanded, intrigant Mrs. Willoughby, I must finish my work before the opening of the session of Congress, and our committees will begin soon to meet. Come on, with no delay.” The words were almost mandatory, and they annoyed him strangely.
Returning from his banker’s with this letter, he found his wife’s two maids busied in packing up all her effects. He was startled, but took the defensive.
Something impelled him to keep the news to himself. “I am tired of Paris,” shortly said his wife, as she recognized the drifting odor of an absinthe frappée. “We can just catch the Gascogne, and so, I have ordered all my bills sent in. You must attend to them, and then, secure our passage.”
“Let me know their probable amount,” gruffly answered the husband, as he departed for the steamer office. He was beginning to feel a master hand now.
“She had the news before I received it,” he growled. “And I swear I will make it my pleasing duty to bring ‘Uncle James’ to book, on my return. I will get her property into my hands, and control it.
“She would beggar even a Vanderbilt, an Astor or a Goelet, if given a free hand.” Vreeland aspired to the conquest of this defiant beauty in rebellion.
It so happened that the game as laid out by “Uncle James” suited all three; but, while he thirsted to see Justine Duprez once more and to confer with Doctor Alberg, Vreeland was really anxious at heart to re-enter the comparative protection of his Wall Street office.
“By Jove! I am at least between the lines there,” he mused. “I can frighten both sides, and so, guard myself.”
It was on the Gascogne that he watched Katharine VanDyke Norreys as the Count de Millefleurs (a young attaché going over on his first appointment) bent over her steamer chair.