“I’m pretty well followed up!” he smiled, with a cunning glee.
Continually on guard in society, and ever straining all his mental powers to familiarize himself with all the details of their growing business and the unwritten lore of the feverish Street, Vreeland was really only uneasy at heart as to his continued probation.
For he felt now, as the holiday season approached, that he was merely being hoodwinked by the dark-eyed benefactress, whose fullest confidence he had not as yet gained.
“Madonna’s” social manner was frankly charming, but he had made no progress toward any further intimacy. Some shade seemed to hold them tenderly apart. And he racked his brains in vain.
“Ami intime de la maison!” He had only learned more of her rare dignity in the repeated business interviews, and in the continued tableaux of her splendid social entourage, he was no nearer to her than others.
There was the cool Conyers, who always came and went at will; he had also seen Senator David Alynton and the silent Wyman out driving with his lovely patroness. There were also tête-à-tête dinners, too, with the old Judge and that young son of Anak, Noel Endicott, and moreover the well-bribed Justine spoke, too, of breakfasts where only Wyman and the handsome bookkeeper, Aubrey Maitland, were guests. All this was dangerous.
“Hang me if I can see why I am kept here,” uneasily fretted Vreeland. “The firm would move along just as smoothly without me,” but yet in his soul he felt that the steadfast woman still held him in reserve for some well-matured purpose of her own.
With admirable sang froid he awaited her orders in an expectant silence.
“She shall not weary me out; but once let the cards come my way, then I will play the queen for all she is worth.”
He knew in the drift of customers gradually drawn in by the now acknowledged solidity of their firm, that there were many spies and stool-pigeons of the angry Hathorns.