“There is my hand!” Romaine Garland cried. “I see that you would have me understand why my mother does not openly explain to society my different name and my clouded childhood. You require my silence as to the past.” “Precisely, my dear young lady,” said the gallant old lawyer, as he fled happily away. “I have plausibly explained what I do not care to know myself, Conyers!” remarked the Judge, next day, to the grave-faced journalist. “But the whole thing will right itself when Senator Alynton marries the mother. I presume after her return from their trip abroad that Elaine Willoughby will find her final heart-rest in a good man’s love.” But when Endicott had finished his cogitations he was alone, for Hugh Conyers had hastily excused himself on the plea of urgent business. Endicott honestly believed that Garston had only held back Romaine’s property to prevent a marriage with Alynton. Mr. James Potter, driving down the avenue a few days later, bowed with deep respect to Mrs. Elaine Willoughby, who was passing, with her lovely daughter seated by her side. He turned to his wife, whose face was averted. “I wonder,” said he, “if that plunger Vreeland really impaired her fortune. He was a most reckless and insinuating scoundrel, and he diligently hunted his punishment. He, however, saved the State the trouble of keeping him in Sing Sing for a term of years, for it would surely have come around to him. “One-half the energy devoted to being an honest man that he expended in his schemes would have made him a colossal success.” But the Lady of the Red Rose at his side only sighed in a silent relief, for with a shudder she recalled what a permanent guarantee of safety for herself—for her past recklessness—lay in the immovable seal of death affixed to Harold Vreeland’s pallid lips. And in the crowded “Street,” as well as in the glittering booths of Vanity Fair, the light-headed men and women hurrying on in pursuit of the iridescent bubble Pleasure, or the Fool’s Gold, soon forgot that a stealthy-eyed man of conquering mien had ever come from the West to dazzle them for a moment. “_Étoile qui file et disparait!_” In the dark waters of Lethe soon was ’whelmed the memory of the man who had so miserably perished in the “swim.” The fleecy mantle of winter snows covered the “eligibly located” mound in Greenwood, where a marble cenotaph was soon to proudly record the many virtues of James Garston, and the same pallid mantle of charity hid the lonely mound in humbler Woodlawn where Harold Vreeland slept the sleep that knows no waking. He was already forgotten in the bustling Street, where the new firm of “Wyman & Endicott” was a stately and established fact. “_Le roi est mort! Vive le roi._” By some subtle freemasonry of the guild of Midas, the whole stock-dealing coterie soon knew that Mrs. Elaine Willoughby had doffed her crown as Queen of the Street.