Vreeland’s courteous declination of the dinner on the ground of “his impending departure,” had caused Mrs. Alida to dispatch the energetic Mrs. Volney McMorris to glean from Vreeland, in an artfully contrived “chance interview” at the Waldorf, all these details of the sudden estrangement which the bride of a few months could not extract from the morose Hathorn. But, always sedate and sly, Vreeland brought all his batteries to bear on the double-faced Madame Janus, who had already earned a diamond bracelet by her Vidocq operations from Hathorn’s reckless wife. The “McMorris Investigating Committee” was a flat failure. Vreeland—a glib liar—“voiced his yearning” for London and its extensive jungles replete with the social lion, alive or stuffed. He gracefully glided out of the buxom gossip’s snares and bore off a full account of Alida Hathorn’s plans, and a true relation of that encounter in the leafy mazes of Central Park, where the watchful Mrs. Elaine Willoughby, from the citadel of her victoria, froze the beautiful Mrs. Hathorn with a pointed ignoring of the woman whose “wedding dinner” had been the vaunt of Lakemere. The fortuitous presence of Senator David Alynton, with his secret partner, the Queen of the Street—the astonishment of that lovely blonde patrician, Mrs. Mansard Larue, the companion of Hathorn’s imprudent wife, had given the news of the “incident” to all the gentlewomen in Gotham, as well as to clubdom. Messrs. Merriman, Wiltshire and Rutherstone, in a noisy cabal at the Old York Club, waylaid every “good knight and true,” until, when their discussion had reached its height, the accidental incoming of Hathorn brought about a strained and solemn hush, in which “the beating of their own hearts was all the sound they heard.” With a whitening face, Hathorn sped away to the Fifth Avenue fortress of the VanSittart tribe, to angrily demand, “What new tomfoolery is on the tapis?” while the three young buzzards of the club spread the news that “the battle is on—once more—” and then, gaily whetted their youthful beaks accordingly upon the succulent elephantine tips of their “sticks.” Eager leopards of the “society journals” lurking in that dim penumbra between “the high tin gods” and the “toilers of New York,” seized upon the garbled details and, with rending sarcasm, and thinly varnished innuendo, hinted that the “first blood and knock-down” of this finish fight were to be credited to that remarkably knowing matron, Madame Elaine Willoughby, of Lakemere. “It has gone on too far ever to be healed, this breach between the sundered hearts,” delightedly decided the buoyant Vreeland, as he stepped out of the train at Irvington. “All I have to do now, is not to cross my own luck.”