Once around the corner, that old woman scuttered away to find roundsman Dan Daly, for the peep-hole had covered a keenly-glittering eye, even after Justine had left her sighing lover to his “last bachelor letters.” And thus the hiding-place was known to more than one. But Vreeland hastened away in a triumphant glow of satisfaction. The splendors of the Grace Church wedding, the gilded festivity of the Waldorf wedding dinner, and all the countless preoccupations of the impending voyage busied Harold Vreeland’s excited mind for three days. There were hundreds of valuable wedding presents to deposit in safety, for society had showered gifts upon the successful interloper with its hard-hearted, hollow flattery of success. It had been a “society event,” and his face, with that of the beautiful bride, had ornamented several “up-to-date” journals. The flower-decked bridal staterooms of the “Campania” had received Vreeland’s party, and Messrs. Rutherstone, Merriman and Wiltshire were joining the bride and bridesmaids in the parting “loving cup,” the table was covered with journals filled with the usual “glowing accounts” and piled up high with congratulatory letters and telegrams, when “Uncle James” drew the complacent bridegroom aside. In a private nook, he turned a scowling face to the happy Vreeland. A yellow telegraph envelope fluttered from his hand to the desk as he read again these disquieting words: “She has telegraphed for a cabin on the ‘Normandie,’ and is coming home alone. Took a special train from Vienna to Havre. All traces of girl lost.” “Vreeland,” growled the maddened man, “some one has betrayed us. Wait at the Hotel Cecil, London, for my cipher orders. “That woman is a devil in artfulness, and it is a fight to the death now.” Ten minutes later, the “Campania” was plowing down the beautiful bay. CHAPTER XIV. FOR THE CHILD’S SAKE! The crowding passengers lounging on the decks of the “Campania” and “Normandie” idly watched the fleeting waves torn up by the ocean racers as they swept by each other in mid-ocean four days later, but there were strangely agitated hearts, too, on the passing steamers, when the signal flags were broken out. For, the secret enemies now swept past each other at the distance of a few furlongs. “What the devil can the real motive of her quick return be?” angrily mused bridegroom Vreeland, as he called up again Senator Garston’s baffled fury on learning that for all his goading on, his detectives had failed to locate the missing Romaine Garland. He led his beautiful bride back to her room, and then left her to the enjoyment of “Les Denis-Vierges,” while he eyed the fast-receding “Normandie.”