“Just the leading card to draw him into my hands. If he will only unbosom himself ever so little, then I can soon tie Mrs. Willoughby down, for this is the man she fears. Else why that stolen interview at Lakemere? And from all knowledge of that, even Justine was excluded. Let him but come forward, and they are both mine.” The second letter with its inclosure was the result of a long struggle between Miss Joanna Marble and the social reluctance of that “shy bird,” the stately Miss Romaine Garland. Joanna had gained ground at last. Vreeland smiled grimly as he read the corrupt agent’s letter. It was an evening invitation couched in his interest and skillfully arranged. “You are to come at 10:30, sir—fashionable hours. You will find me ready to greet you. “The musicale and supper, with a little informal dancing, will enable me to see that you escort Miss Garland home. I shall be ‘suddenly indisposed,’ and then you are easily the Prince Charming of the occasion. “The hostess is a trusted friend of mine. “But how ‘shy’ your beautiful bird is. Romaine has called several times on me, and yet she will not give me her personal address. She always receives her letters at Station Q, General Delivery. “And when I offered to come for her she said, quietly: ‘I will call for you, dear Miss Marble, with a carriage, and we can go together.’ I wonder is she one of us after all—a _sly_ bird, not a _shy_ bird?” The address given was that of a respectably situated residence in the West Eighties, a region blessed with slightly stiffening social aspirations toward “elitedom,” as the journals deftly put it. Senator James Garston in Washington was triumphant as he read Vreeland’s dispatch fixing a date for the private dinner. “I can easily tole this vain young fellow on with Katharine,” he gleefully cried. “And if I can only reach Margaret Cranstoun’s child, I will soon bring her proud head back to my bosom.” The stern soldier of fortune mused long over olden days, his days of youth and promise, when his girl-wife was only a plighted bride, a woman of awakened heart, “whose head, like an o’er-wearied dove, came fluttering down to rest.” “I will have them both,” the Senator swore. “Why should my life’s harvest be but chaff? “For, the child is mine. The mother was once mine, and through fire and flood I’ll go on and prove my title against the whole world. “If this young favorite can only find me the hidden girl, he shall not want for fortune, and a marriage with Katharine Norreys will tie him forever to me.” It all promised fair enough. But, plot and counterplot was forgotten as Harold Vreeland, superbly poised in his habitual adamantine calm, edged his way into the listening circle of the “select few” who had been gathered at Mrs. Ollie Manson’s ambitious musicale. It was a gala evening in the West End.