She uttered lying words which sent Alida Hathorn back to her summer cottage with pallid lips and heart aflame.
The story was soon wafted across the sea by a sister spider, who had easily followed on the first bitter quarrel between the two parties to the “marriage of the year.” And Harold Vreeland, now on post, a watchful sentinel at Elaine Willoughby’s side, was the first one to whom her own outraged heart was poured out, as Mrs. Volney McMorris drove back to her own lair at Larchmont.
Out in the dreamy gardens, in a summer house, to the accompaniment of falling leaves and sighing pines, the indignant lady of Lakemere told her ardent listener the story of a shameful jealousy and the outpouring of a maddened woman’s wrath.
It gave to Harold Vreeland the needed cue. The decisive moment had come, and he hazarded his future upon the chance of meeting her confidence with a fine burst of manly sympathy.
To range himself forever under her colors, and to craftily lie to her, and not in vain.
His audacious devil sprite once more urged him to be both bold and wise.
Elaine Willoughby’s eyes were flashing as she repeated the relation of Mrs. Volney McMorris, who, “so anxious that her dear friend should know all and not be exposed to the ignominy of a ‘dead cut’ from Hathorn’s headstrong wife.” “And, as he is a lâche, I would use the ‘baby stare’ first, my dear Elaine,” was the parting shot of the departing McMorris. The lady of Lakemere was a roused tigress now.
Harold Vreeland listened breathlessly to the story of the bitter taunt that the diamond necklace and parting dinner had been Elaine Willoughby’s crafty “sop to the social Cerberus” in giving her handsome secret lover, Hathorn, only a furlough for the honeymoon.
The insinuation that the young husband would carry on a ménage à trois had crazed the suspicious heiress, whose new wedding bonds burned like molten gold.
“I shall soon know if Frederick Hathorn is an unutterable craven,” proudly said Elaine to her serpent listener.