Mr. Harold Vreeland now felt intuitively that his “bluff” was a good one. He had always battled skillfully enough in the preliminary skirmishes of his conflict with the world, but he felt that the scene of action had been poorly chosen. Hard-hearted and pitiless, he cursed the memory of his corrupt and inefficient father, as he directed his lonely steps to the “Waldorf,” to register his name as a permanent guest. His heart beat no throb warmer in acknowledgment of the seven thousand dollars’ windfall which was to bring his star up from an obscure western declination to a brilliant eastern right ascension. He delivered his luggage checks to the night clerk of New York’s greatest hotel, and proudly inscribed himself as a member of the “swell mob” filling that painted Vanity Fair. A strange fire burned within his veins. He recalled Fred Hathorn’s final semi-confidential remark: “Do you know anything of handling stocks? If you do, we could put you up to a good thing or two on the Street now.” It was no lie. The glib story which had fallen easily from his lips of the six-months’ exciting experience in which he acted as dummy cashier for a San Francisco kite-flying “Big Board” firm of brokers during a sporadic revival of the “Comstock craze.” He had learned then how to “wipe out a margin” as deftly as the veriest scamp who ever signed a fraudulent “statement” for reckless man or sly, insinuating woman. He had artfully led Fred Hathorn on to describe the unique position of Mrs. Elaine Willoughby among the bravest of the swim. The New Yorker was over-eager in his fencing, and so Vreeland easily gathered him in. Lighting a cigar, he strolled along the silent Fifth Avenue, arranging with quick decision his preliminary maneuvers. “This lovely woman who has built up Hathorn must surely have a vacancy in her heart at present, vice Hathorn, ‘transferred for promotion’ to head the VanSittart millions.” “It’s a good play to come in between them now. He will never suspect my game, but I’ll block his little scheme some way, unless he carries me along upward. He evidently wishes to be rid of the old _rapprochement_ now, and yet not lose her stock business. By Jove! I would like to cut in there.” He strolled along toward the “Circassia,” that pink pearl of all sumptuous apartment palaces, and eagerly reconnoitered the superb citadel of Elaine Willoughby’s social fortifications. “Lakemere, a dream of beauty,” he murmured. “I’ll soon get into that same gilded circle, and work the whole set for all they are worth.” He plumed himself upon the approving glance of the beautiful brown eyes of the mistress of Lakemere as she had swept by on Fred Hathorn’s arm. “She accepted my bow as an evident homage to her own queenly self,” mused Vreeland, who was no dabster at reading the ways of the mutable woman heart.