“We shall have business uses for the apartment during the winter, and Miss Kelly will give Bagley all his orders and attend to the accounts. I have directed Judge Endicott to present in my name to your wife a proper reminder of the esteem which I have for her.” The notification three days before the wedding, through Noel Endicott, that Mrs. Willoughby had placed a year’s salary at his personal disposal on the books of the firm, as an extra bonus, carried away the last vestige of Vreeland’s haunting fears. Nothing remained of the awkward episode of the inquiry as to the stolen document, and Vreeland had already settled with Doctor Alberg, and Helms with an affected liberality, for his absence. Now socially entirely in the hands of Messrs. Wiltshire, Merriman and Rutherstone, his three groomsmen, and having seen the resplendent Mrs. Volney McMorris rally many beautiful Ishmaelites, married and single, around his bride, Vreeland was moved forward to the altar on the golden flood of Senator Garston’s splendidly liberal preliminary entertaining. The Western millionaire was touching up every cloud hanging over Katharine VanDyke Norreys’ social haziness with a golden lining. There remained but two things for the happy groom to do now. The one was to have a last interview with Justine, who was now reduced to a calm subserviency to the orders of the young “Private Secretary,” and the other to effect a safe deposit in some satisfactory place of the stolen document and its tell-tale copy. He had decided to be liberal with Justine in money matters, and to entrust her in his three months’ absence with the watching of Helms, the janitor, and the disgruntled German doctor. A famous plan suggested itself! Justine should feed out to these men money, in his name, during his absence. “And that, with the hope of more, will keep them true to me, as rascals go, till I return.” He had once decided to dismantle the secret connections with Mrs. Willoughby’s telegraph and telephone. It was the subject of a long, introspective reverie. But reflection had told him of a possible mistake. And perhaps in his absence, Justine might glean from the detained correspondence delivered at the “Circassia,” some facts to guide both Senator Garston and himself. Yes, the “underground railroad” should not be disturbed. Its existence was as yet concealed from all his enemies. The use in the next winter of the “Elmleaf” rooms for a concealed headquarters of speculation caused him to leave the wires in position. “It might excite these people’s suspicions. I must appear to trust them,” he decided, “and Garston may even make a million over the private tips I can give him if I am up to their game.” Suddenly it occurred to him that his own marriage might change the situation, and yet, there were Elaine Willoughby’s recent orders.