Only old Hiram Endicott gravely shook his head at the mysterious movements of his social friends. The match-making prophecy seemed clouded.
Senator Alynton was busied dealing sturdy blows in the Senate at his party’s foes, and beyond a final conference arranging for the closing out of all past relations of his fair client with the Sugar Syndicate, Endicott followed neither the affairs of the giant partnership in Gotham nor their secret allies in Washington.
He was busied with much legal detail in arranging Mrs. Willoughby’s manifold affairs for a protracted absence. “I wish all to be in order, Judge,” she said, “for I know not what may happen, and Romaine’s future must be assured.” The bright-faced girl had simply stormed her loving mother’s heart.
“There is only one way to assure it,” gravely answered the old lawyer. “You must marry, for the child’s sake. This past life of yours has been a lonely, a wasteful and a forced one.
“Now that you are out of stocks forever, now that you have found a new happiness in that charming girl, it is for you alone to build a barrier for her against the future fortune-hunter or scheming knave.
“There are more Hathorns and Vreelands in the world than those two dead speculating lovers.”
“Whom would you have me marry?” asked Margaret Cranstoun, gazing demurely at her chivalric friend—the man who even now possessed but half her life secret.
Her woman’s heart was now beating wildly with a suggestion which she dared not own.
“Why, Alynton, of course! One of America’s most brilliant men, a man already of national reputation,” slowly rejoined the old lawyer.
He opened his eyes in a startled surprise as the beautiful woman frankly said, with a merry laugh: