“She proposes to ‘copper’ the game of ‘more sweetness and light,’ as well as play it for a sure winner.
“And I am to be her left hand, and the right (our firm) is to be ignorant of what the left doeth!”
He was well aware that in some way she was always early possessed of all the Sugar Syndicate secrets. Whether Endicott, Alynton, the statesman, or Conyers was her coach, he knew not.
“Perhaps all three—the law, the senate, and journalism,” he grinned.
“Or, is she going to betray these people to the newcomers? There would be enormous profits in that ‘sweet surrender.’
“I shall enjoy the run, and be in at the death,” he gaily cried, as he sought his hotel in a vastly enhanced good humor.
When he entered the Waldorf, a sudden encounter made him think that angels of light had invaded the crepuscular gloom of the long hall in the early winter evening.
He scarcely credited his senses when Mrs. Frederick Hathorn motioned him to a corner of the Turkish room, after his startled but gravely polite salute.
The lady was a ravishing example of the “survival of the fittest” in the line of Worth, Pingât, and Redfern.
With a wave of her slender hand she swept away the flood of easy lies that were trembling on his lips, and then, her bright eyes, deep and searching, seemed to delve into his very soul.