His days were pleasantly passed in gaining a growing intimacy with the club circles to which two powerful influences had now gained him an easy access. For, Elaine Willoughby was drifting under the charm of his apparent self-surrender to her generous leadership—another handsome protégé.
His rising social star was fixed in its orbit by the honors of groomsman, and in the visites de cérémonie
, the rehearsals, and all the petty elegancies of the “great social event,” Mr. Harold Vreeland showed a perfectly good form. There was a gentle gravity in his Waldorf life which impressed even the flâneurs
of that gilded hostelry
. “There, sir,” remarked an old habitué
, “is a man who holds himself at his proper value.”
Measured and fastidious in all his ways, Mr. Vreeland neglected no trifling detail, and he calmly went onward and upward. He well knew that, for some as yet hidden reason, the bridegroom was assiduously forcing his old chum forward into the glittering ring of America’s Vanity Fair. And it exactly suited his own quiet game.
He fully appreciated the extensive influence of the Lady of Lakemere, for her friends, moved on deftly by her, now came forward to open the golden gates for him on every side.
Even before the wedding, Vreeland had made himself familiar with all the glories of Lakemere. Side by side with its beautiful mistress, he had threaded its leafy alleys, climbed its sculptured heights “when jocund morn sat on the misty mountain tops,” and gloated secretly upon the splendid treasures of that perfect establishment. “This shall be mine yet,” he swore in his delighted heart.
Out upon the moonlit lake, speeding along in a fairy launch, Mr. Harold Vreeland followed up his policy of self-abnegation. “Do you not know that I can trace your noble kindness everywhere?” he murmured.