The crowd of guests, would-be suitors, financial and political friends hovering around her, embraced judges, generals, senators, governors, national statesmen, and party leaders.
Every social door was open to the mistress of Lakemere—and her smile, like the sunshine, beamed impartially upon all. So, the veiled espionage of the past had been fruitless.
The paid revelations of Justine had so far only rewarded him with the recurring details of the suing of many sighing gallants kneeling before her guarded golden shrine.
In the first months of the cementing of their past friendship, he had even dared to dream of a personal conquest, but the high-minded frankness of her kindness had soon killed that youthful conceit.
And now, to-day, he felt that the golden chain had snapped beyond him, and that he really had never fathomed the inner nature of the queenly woman.
But one unreserved intimacy characterized her guarded life. The union of interest between herself and Hiram Endicott.
Hard-hearted and mean-spirited, Hathorn clung for a year to the idea that the wealthy lawyer was perhaps the Numa Pompilius of this blooming woman whose roses of life were yet fragrant with summer’s incense.
But the vastness of her transactions, and even the results of his mean spying, left him, at last, absolutely persuaded that they were not tied by any personal bond.
The “man who had arrived” lacked the delicacy of soul to know that the prize might have been his, had he been true to the ideal which Elaine Willoughby had formed of him. For, he had never been frank-hearted enough to risk her refusal.
He had never forgotten the night, years ago, when he had boldly avowed to her that he had not a real friend in the world. It had been with only a coarse joy in his coming good fortune, that he had listened to her answer, “You must come to me again.”