“I am sure of your silence. I will go on undisgraced to the end of my career. I will cease to pursue you and her.
“I am to give you the receipt of the International Trust Company for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars of United States bonds, registered in the name of Romaine Garland.
“And I am to leave her in my will one-half of all my property. There is then to be silence—oblivion; for me repentance, for you peace, and so, for her in time, the enjoyment of her own.
“Should she learn from you in later years that James Garston was her father, there will at least be no cloud upon her name, and I leave the key of the future in your hands.
“This I would guarantee before either of the three men whom you trust; but, I implore peace and silence, for the child’s sake.
“Our only guarantee in this interview of good faith is the one unbroken tie between us, the child whom I have never seen.”
It was late in the day when James Garston read the lines traced by the hand which had once trembled lovingly in his own.
“I will come! I will trust to you once more, under the protection of the memories of all my sorrows, but only for the child’s sake. Our past is dead. Let us place the seal of silence upon its tomb. I will do as you bid me.”
There was a strange light in Senator Garston’s face as he hurried out of the Plaza Hotel, and when in the corridor, he met Harold Vreeland, he wrested himself from that desperate gamester’s clutches. He dared not break away from the haggard outcast. There was the meeting with Elaine—the one aim now of his awakened soul.
“Come into the writing-room,” said the Senator, after he had heard an appeal which caused him to fear that the man’s mind was wavering.