Even before the wedding, Vreeland had made himself familiar with all the glories of Lakemere. Side by side with its beautiful mistress, he had threaded its leafy alleys, climbed its sculptured heights “when jocund morn sat on the misty mountain tops,” and gloated secretly upon the splendid treasures of that perfect establishment. “This shall be mine yet,” he swore in his delighted heart. Out upon the moonlit lake, speeding along in a fairy launch, Mr. Harold Vreeland followed up his policy of self-abnegation. “Do you not know that I can trace your noble kindness everywhere?” he murmured. “I am all alone in the world. Your veiled influence is making cold-hearted New York smile as a blossoming paradise for me. No; do not deny it. You are the very loveliest Queen of Friendship.” The beautiful brown eyes dropped before his eager gaze. She was a woman still. Elaine Willoughby marked him as he went away with a growing interest. “Graceful, grateful, manly, and sincere!” was her verdict, easily reached, but one, however, not so enthusiastically adopted by either Judge Hiram Endicott or the Conyers couple, whom the Lady of Lakemere had captured for a visit before sending them away to the delightful summer exile of her Adirondack cottage. “I don’t know what that fellow is after, Hugh?” growled the old Judge one day, as they were returning to town together; “but, he looks to me like a fellow who would finally get it.” Conyers uneasily said: “He is the ‘head panjandrum’ of this Hathorn wedding—old college chum and all that.” “_Arcades ambo!_” shortly said the silver-haired lawyer. “Mrs. Willoughby has a foolish fondness for picking up these Admirable Crichtons, and then forcing them along the road to fortune. It is only a generous woman’s weakness, a sort of self-flattery.” “Vreeland is immensely rich—a man of leisure. Has jumped into one or two of the best clubs by mysterious backing, and seems to be all right,” slowly answered Hugh, mentally contrasting his own plain tweeds with Vreeland’s raiment of great price. “I don’t believe a word of it,” sharply said Endicott. “Oblige me and just keep an eye on him—_about her_, I mean,” and the journalist was fain to give the required promise. Their hands met in a silent pledge of loyalty to the lonely-hearted mistress of Lakemere. The elder man alone knew the silent sorrows of her anxious soul. He alone knew of the quest of long years—a labor of love, so far fruitless. The younger guarded his own heart secret in his honest breast, and yet, while hiding it from the world, he wondered why some man worthy of her royal nature had not taken her to wife. As the train swept along, watching a “bright, particular star” mirrored in the flowing Hudson, Conyers sighed, “God bless her! She’s as far above me as that star, and yet, she makes my life bright.”