A positive mandate for the best box at the Horse Show, and a royal gallery box in the tiara-wearing tier of the Opera, were matters of pressing urgency.
Hathorn was already “broken in” as a “general advance agent” and “heavy man” for his wife’s “Great Moral Matrimonial Show,” and that lady, with the coming Hathorn-Willoughby feud first in her mind, had brought luggage enough for Cleopatra and all her nymphs on that record-breaking voyage of splendor to the Cydnus.
All these and many more things busied the disgruntled Hathorn until the hour set for the meeting with Vreeland. He had posted his wife and her train away up to the Buckingham, for he felt, instinctively, that the handsome groomsman was not just the party to linger around his newly-enclosed sheepfold.
He had already discovered several shades of color in his rosebud not visible to the ante-nuptial eye, and, moreover, he was hungry for news of Elaine Willoughby and of her state of mind. He now saw the “firm’s” interests seriously endangered.
There was the vastly profitable past business connection, and “Sugar,” too, loomed up before him now as a vanishing pyramid of alluring sweetness. He knew that the woman whom he had coldly left had been the very spirit of his own wonderful success.
But Hathorn never knew how eagerly Vreeland, at the Waldorf, his anxiety veiled by a thoughtful smile, watched the clock hands crawl around till seven.
“That fool has but one chance left to ruin me forever—and—to block my little game!” restlessly reflected Vreeland. “If he only had the manly nerve to dash up to Lakemere and to throw himself there on Elaine’s generosity, he might be forgiven—even now. The swaying bosom of womanhood is always ripe for forgiveness. A woman is fondly weak to a man who calls up a lost love. And he has been all in all to her, in the past days.
“She set him up on a high pedestal and fairly worshiped him.
“Perhaps he felt like the Frenchman, that two women are necessary to every man—one whom he loves, and one who loves him.”
But the telegraphed reports of his secret spies arriving every half hour, told the delighted Vreeland that Hathorn was still “at the office.”