The compact was sealed over ’tother bottle, and then Hathorn departed in high hopes. “He will drift easily into our circle,” mused the sly broker, who, watching only his own loosening hold on Elaine Willoughby, jumped to the conclusion that Vreeland really controlled a vast fortune. His friend had “called the turn” correctly. “Bluff goes, it seems, even in cold-hearted New York,” gaily concluded Vreeland, as he sauntered back alone to the Waldorf. “This strangely hastened wedding will bring me at once into the best circles. Mr. Fred Hathorn’s groomsman is a social somebody. The Lakemere divinity will soon do the rest, and by the time you return, my sly friend, I will be ready to kick the ladder down on your side.” He roared with a secret glee over his own “inability to disturb his invested funds.” With a vulpine watchfulness, he noted all Mr. Jimmy Potter’s weak points. “I must get up my poker practice,” he smilingly said, as he laid his comely head down to rest. “‘Mr. Potter of New York’ shall reinforce that slender seven thousand dollars, or else I’m a duffer. He will never squeal, at least, not to his partner. And so I’ll go in as a wedge between this ass and this fine woman who has unconsciously loved him. Yes, it’s a good opening for a young man! A mean and easy betrayal!” The preoccupations of the splendid wedding of Miss Alida VanSittart gave Vreeland, now “the observed of all observers,” an ample opportunity to begin that “silent slavery” of a respectful devotion upon which he had decided as his safest _rôle_ at Lakemere. His days were pleasantly passed in gaining a growing intimacy with the club circles to which two powerful influences had now gained him an easy access. For, Elaine Willoughby was drifting under the charm of his apparent self-surrender to her generous leadership—another handsome protégé. His rising social star was fixed in its orbit by the honors of groomsman, and in the _visites de cérémonie_, the rehearsals, and all the petty elegancies of the “great social event,” Mr. Harold Vreeland showed a perfectly good form. There was a gentle gravity in his Waldorf life which impressed even the _flâneurs_ of that gilded hostelry. “There, sir,” remarked an old habitué, “is a man who holds himself at his proper value.” Measured and fastidious in all his ways, Mr. Vreeland neglected no trifling detail, and he calmly went onward and upward. He well knew that, for some as yet hidden reason, the bridegroom was assiduously forcing his old chum forward into the glittering ring of America’s Vanity Fair. And it exactly suited his own quiet game. He fully appreciated the extensive influence of the Lady of Lakemere, for her friends, moved on deftly by her, now came forward to open the golden gates for him on every side.