Vreeland very well knew that the sly German practitioner’s drugs had brought his patient “no surcease of sorrow,” but only “pushed the clouds along” to a new day of reactionary misery. For, the proud heart was sealed and yet surcharged almost to its breaking.
“I wonder what our opinion of each other would be if we all had to walk abroad with our life stories openly branded on our faces?” mused the anxious Vreeland, as he drove away to the station. The flying wheels of the coupé seemed to clatter “Not much! Not much! Nothing at all!” He meanly believed all men and women to be as base at heart as himself.
“Thank Fortune for the decent lies of a smooth appearance and a still tongue!” was the schemer’s cheering conclusion, as he finally dismissed all vain moralizing, and then, wondered how he would meet the crafty Justine first, and so be able to gain her budget of stolen tidings before he faced the watchful Lady of Lakemere.
The provokingly suggestive face of the French woman met him at the front door, on his arrival. “I am to see that you have your breakfast,” she smilingly said, “while Doctor Alberg, now upstairs, prepares Madame for your visit!”
And, as she drew him into a coign of vantage, she whispered, “He is now my very slave! For he, too, is hunting for an ally, and I had him all to myself last evening! Now for the news! You can afford to be liberal to me!”
Her eyes were beaming with that vicious triumph of an unfaithful underling discovering the naked soul of her helpless mistress.
The household traitor is the lowest of all human spawn.
“Tell me everything,” was Vreeland’s hurried response. “When I marry her, I will be the King of the Street, and you shall stay with us as long as you wish—it will be always the same between us.”
The woman’s gleaming eyes softened in a glow of triumph.
“And, your house at Paris shall be my pied à terre. But, give me every word—remember!”