A cautionary resolve to keep the handsome Western traveler away from Miss Alida VanSittart was born of the slight uneasiness caused by the gilded Potter’s attentions to the tall young nymph of the court of Croesus. “She is my ‘_sine qua!_’” he smiled. “No fooling around there!” It was four o’clock before the busy Hathorn could get the nose of his financial bark steered safely over the saccharine breakers of the Sugar market. And, still, a growing excitement filled the aspiring young banker’s veins. While he had struggled on the floor of the Exchange, he was suddenly smitten with a fear that his patroness had abruptly abandoned him. He sent a confidential lad over to watch Judge Endicott’s office, and he was soon rewarded with the reliable news that the serene goddess of Pactolus had calmly driven away after an hour’s stay at her trustee’s office. “What is she up to?” he fretted. “I’ll find out if she really goes home!” he then decided, with a growing uneasiness, as he marked the surging tide of Sugar speculation. He was fortunate enough to attract the personal attention of Harold Vreeland, of Montana, for that new member of the _jeunesse dorée_ was held socially in eclipse, until Bell’s minions should purvey the “robes of price” suited to the swelling port assumed by the bold social gambler. The hearty assent of the fancied dupe to the evening call, enabled Hathorn to call his patroness by the private wire at the Circassia. “By Jove! She is lucky to be out of this flurry!” he decided, when Mrs. Willoughby’s voice closed the telephonic interview without even a passing reference to “the market.” “She did go home after all!” And, so lulled to security, he remembered all the vastness of her varied moneyed interests. He knew only the magnitude of her transactions in the past. The hidden reasons of her Napoleonic moves he had never penetrated, and he had vainly shadowed her visits to Washington and sifted the guests at her summer palace. But now, his future control was endangered. The crowd of guests, would-be suitors, financial and political friends hovering around her, embraced judges, generals, senators, governors, national statesmen, and party leaders. Every social door was open to the mistress of Lakemere—and her smile, like the sunshine, beamed impartially upon all. So, the veiled espionage of the past had been fruitless. The paid revelations of Justine had so far only rewarded him with the recurring details of the suing of many sighing gallants kneeling before her guarded golden shrine. In the first months of the cementing of their past friendship, he had even dared to dream of a personal conquest, but the high-minded frankness of her kindness had soon killed that youthful conceit. And now, to-day, he felt that the golden chain had snapped beyond him, and that he really had never fathomed the inner nature of the queenly woman.