That night, five years before, Elaine Willoughby had whispered to her own blushing face in her mirror, “I can make a social power of him. I can build up his fortunes. Men shall know and honor him—and then—”
She had never completed that sentence, framing a wish that she dared not name in words.
But he had at last coldly passed her by, and knelt before the feet of a mere girl, who valued him only for what the silent benefactress had made him. It was a cruel stroke.
“She is different from all the other women I have ever met!” ruefully sighed Hathorn, who now saw that the great Sugar intrigues were sealed from his future ken. He had watched the artful juggling of government bonds finally make a daring and aspiring New York banker rise to be a rival of the Rothschilds. He knew, by gossipy chatter, of the American Sugar Company’s alleged veiled participation in the great New York campaign of 1892.
He saw the Sugar Trust moving on to a reported influence in national affairs, and, keenly watching every lucky stroke of the Queen of the Street, he was persuaded that the finest threads of the vast intrigue in some hidden way ran through her slender jeweled hands. He saw his fault too late.
“I might have known all—if I had married her!” he decided, as he hid his disturbed countenance in a coupé on his way uptown.
He was conscious of that slight chill of change which is an unerring indication of a woman’s secret resolve.
But a last brilliant thought came to the puzzled trickster. It seemed a golden inspiration.
“Here is Vreeland, heart-free and foot-loose. I can exploit him and get him into the best houses in a month. He is not a marrying man.
“If I can work him into our stock business, I may regain her—through him—and I’ll keep Alida out of her sight. She may fancy him. I’ll post Vreeland, and, perhaps, he may find the key to her hold on the Sugar deals.