“Damned little snob!” wrathfully cried the Senator. “I hope that purse-proud young minx of a wife will make his life a hell. I fancy that she can be trusted to do that.” It was Alynton’s just idea of Nemesis.
The Senator had gone back to the Capital next morning with a parting pledge to make a flying visit to the “Circassia” in two weeks to settle the vital matter on Mrs. Willoughby’s winter hegira to New York, and the active lawyer and the busy journalist had also fled back to Gotham before Elaine Willoughby in the summer home had listened to all of Harold Vreeland’s accurate relation.
“I can not afford to tell her the whole truth—as yet!” he had rightly decided, and he wisely abstained from adding a shade of color. For she was watching him keenly. It was the turning tide of his life.
“You are my own true knight,” she gaily said, with an assumed lightness. “I wish you to ignore this coming social battle entirely. You are to be strictly non-committal. I will deal with both the Hathorns. Read that.” She handed him a paper. “In this way we will receive tenders from perhaps fifty individuals, and even from some good firms already established.
“I will myself, handle the secret side of the operations, and Judge Endicott will guide you in my general business. When we have found the right man as a partner, our whole party will examine his past through the various mercantile agencies, surety companies, business detectives, and then, Endicott and Conyers, too, can throw on the searchlight.
“The new firm will go ahead—I can answer for that—and I will then be free to openly meet Mrs. Alida Hathorn, on her chosen battle ground of Vanity Fair.
“You are to do nothing but to simply wait at the Waldorf—and come to me daily at the ‘Circassia.’
“As for Hathorn—a strict avoidance of him—that is my one condition.”
“The quarrel—but—the cold oblivion of the grave! Your friendship is dead to him!”
“And—you are never to mention their names in society. Leave them to me.”