“A union of the Sugar Trust and the Standard Oil interests would make the heaviest financial battery of modern times—and—by Jove—they would be able to swing Uncle Sam’s policy at will. Yes! I will push Vreeland to the front.” With a hopeful glance at a sober banking structure, not far from the corner of Wall and Broad, the day-dreamer murmured, “I might even rise like him,” as he caught sight of a gray-mustached man, now supposed to be comfortably staggering along under the weight of a hundred brilliantly won millions. “I have Alida VanSittart’s money—as an anchor. I will use this Vreeland as my tool. He’s an open-hearted fellow.” Hiram Endicott, at the corner, watched the young banker dash by. The old lawyer’s thin form was still erect at sixty-five. His stern cameo face, and steady frosty eye, comported with his silken white hair. He strode on, with the composed manner of an old French marquis. His heart was wrung with the passionate appeal of Elaine Willoughby to reopen an unavailing search of years. For she bore, in silence, a secret burden. The morning had been given to the calm discussion of new means to unlock a mystery of the past, “to pluck out a rooted sorrow.” Endicott’s nephew was now in sole charge of the giant battle with loaded dice, in the ring of Sugar speculation. The lawyer alone knew that Hathorn’s sceptre had departed from him. He cursed the retreating gallant. “Can it be that the marriage of this cold-hearted young trickster has opened her eyes to the folly of educating a husband, _in posse_? “Or—is it the shadow of the old sorrow, Banquo-like, returning? God bless her. I fear it is a hopeless quest.” And yet, with all the fond dissimulation of Eve’s family, Elaine Willoughby was serenely radiant that night as the cautious Hathorn led the “open-hearted fellow” into the splendors of the Circassia. “This plan of mine will work,” mused Hathorn, who did not see the gleam of triumph in Vreeland’s eyes when the hostess asked him to visit her dreamy domain of Lakemere. CHAPTER III. A FRANK DISCLOSURE. Hathorn returned, thoroughly hoodwinked, from the introductory evening spent at the Circassia. It had seemed strange to him that a leading general of the regular army, and a dapper French author, then in the brief blaze of his “lionship,” with a grave senator and a returned Polar explorer should have been called to meet together at the dinner table. “It’s Elaine’s incomparable way of making a delightful _olla podrida_ of the social menu,” he mused, as he watched the hostess narrowly. “_Caviare_ to the General!” When he had found time to whisper a confidential word as to the enormous Sugar sales of the day, the Lady of Lakemere only laughed merrily. “I have now a soul above Sugar! I shall put my ‘Trust’ elsewhere!” And then, in her serious way, she slowly said: “Wait here with your Western friend, till all these other people go!” And he, with a budding hope, eagerly awaited her pleasure as of old.