“Elaine is a deep one,” he wrathfully mused. “She is either flying too high for me to follow in this—or else, she is ‘moving in a mysterious way her wonders to perform.’”
He knew her nature too well to question her explicit orders.
The nerve of a duelist, the honor of a caballèro, the courage of a plumed knight—all these were her attributes, and he was not mad enough to doubt that she knew her own mind.
The “moaning of the sea of change” oppressed him. “She has got out beyond me,” he grumbled, and then, with all the experience born of his social life “above board” and “under the rose,” he failed to remember any case wherein a loving woman had gone madly wild in approval of a man’s devotion to another daughter of Eve.
“I was a fool to take Alida up there to Lakemere, and fret my best customer with the ‘billing and cooing’ act! It was a bad play—and—yet, the break had to come!”
He swore a deep oath that he would, when married, hold Alida VanSittart well in hand, and still cling to the desirable business of the woman who had made his fortune.
“Here’s Vreeland,” he hopefully planned. “Just the fellow! Ardent, young, an interesting devil, and, rich. He will help to fill up the measure of her lonely days—and, his game can never cross my own.
“He’s a mighty presentable fellow, too, and I can perhaps strengthen my hold on her through him.”
A cautionary resolve to keep the handsome Western traveler away from Miss Alida VanSittart was born of the slight uneasiness caused by the gilded Potter’s attentions to the tall young nymph of the court of Croesus. “She is my ‘sine qua!’” he smiled. “No fooling around there!”
It was four o’clock before the busy Hathorn could get the nose of his financial bark steered safely over the saccharine breakers of the Sugar market.