"Am coming home at once. Will be with you in ten days. Let nothing
prevent our meeting in New York. Will act instantly in your matter.
Have had private news. They were secretly married a month ago at
Tacoma. Be on your guard!"
Seizing his hat, Randall Clayton hurried away to the nearest telegraph office, where he felt safe from Robert Wade's spies.
"Thank God for Irma's wit," he said, in his heart, as he sent the veiled words which would bring her to that quiet hotel on Staten Island, where, among Richmond's leafy bowers, they now defied all possible detection. It had been her own plan. The long weeks of Clayton's complete self-surrender had brought about no forward step in Irma Gluyas' intimacy.
The still silent Madame Raffoni was the careful guardian of the veiled beauty, and Clayton, loyal to a frenzy of romantic faith, had never broken his promise.
For he lived only now in Irma's whispered promise, "Wait, and trust to me. You shall come to me as soon as I can break my bonds. It shall be then you and I, for the rest of our days, if Love still holds the helm."
It was long after midnight when the defiant lover returned to his apartment. The Magyar witch had finally learned the last secret of his honest heart, and with clinging arms had whispered through her kisses, "If you leave me, Randall, it is the death of our love." And, trusting blindly to his honest love, Clayton wagered his life upon a woman's faith.
Under the door of his room lay a yellow envelope, and as the now resolute man read it he smiled grimly. "Victory!" he cried, for Ferris' words assured him of a coming triumph, a crown of life and love. It seemed that Irma's love had conquered after all.
"Await me in New York. I think that we can arrange all for your remaining as you are." The signature was that of the artful Ferris. "And I think that Jack and I can handle you, my false friend!" sneered Clayton.
While the young lover read the words which gave him a new hope, far across the Brooklyn Bridge, Mr. Fritz Braun, in his own private lair, was pondering over the words of Madame Raffoni, who had just left the man who was the iron tyrant of her soiled life.
"I must give him a little more line! And I must either land the fish now or lose him forever."