His mind was now agitated with fears of the future of the sugar speculating syndicate of a “few friends.”
In his feverish haste to make the living safe he had already forgotten the unloved dead man. He had not disturbed the silent grief of the repentant woman who bent over the pale silent lips now sealed in death.
The eyes were sightless now which had thrilled their unspoken messages into her very soul.
And the stormy heart of James Garston was as cold and pulseless as the marble wherein the tenantless shell would soon lie in the long rest.
Suddenly Katharine Vreeland threw up her arms and fell at the feet of her woman friend, wildly sobbing—
“There lies the only heart in God’s world that ever beat for me!”
“Ah! Some one loved him after all,” mused the Trust Company’s financial representative. “She deserves her good fortune. I wonder does she know of the other one?” His mind was busied with curious conjectures as to the source of the dead man’s generosity.
But the gates of the past were swung forever. The trembling heart of the “Western heiress” held a secret that was now sealed behind the mask of Garston’s waxen face.
For the strong man, loyal in his darling sin, was true as steel to the last, and the hidden crime of two lives “left no dark plume as a token.”
Alynton, closeted with Judge Endicott, was now urgent in his demand that Mrs. Elaine Willoughby should at once erase the name of the dead Senator from the dangerous document held by her in a mysterious trust. “That document must never see the light.” It must be destroyed at once, and a new “round robin” signed.