“Then let me volunteer a hint that I have never supplanted your husband with anyone nor sought to. My capital alone gives me weight in our firm. I have never even opened a ledger or made an individual transaction.
“Pride and old comradeship should temper each other in your husband. I have only avoided the distressing embarrassments which he alone has brought upon himself, and you will always find me your secret friend, though I can not seek you out in this witches’ parade of Gotham. You know all the reasons why I can not range myself openly at your side.” His devilish familiar was now whispering in his ear.
The victim was young, fair, and foolish.
The luxurious woman sighed. All her allures had been baffled.
“If I should need to tax your friendship?” she slowly said, her breathing quick and fierce, telling of her agitation.
It was now Vreeland’s eyes which “burned into her spirit’s core.”
“Yes; if you make the place where we can meet without a foolish risk and placing us both in a false position.”
He glanced around the debatable ground of the Turkish room. Any notable, from Chauncey Depew down to the last “Western bonanza beauty,” might surprise them there at any moment.
“Will you come, if you need me?” he whispered, taking her hand, with insidious suggestion.
“Perhaps,” she faltered, with pale and trembling lips, and when he looked up he was alone, but a knot of lilies of the valley from her corsage lay in his hand.