The gay Eastern Elijah was overjoyed to see his rosy mantle descend upon the Occidental Elisha, and he cautiously confided to his deported “Gaiety Girl” the opinion that the “sun-burned buffalo of Butte would find out a lot of things before spring.” They drank the health of the faithless Dickie Doubleday in much champagne of rosy tint, as the white stars shimmered around them on the blue waters of the Mediterranean. And so, the “honors were easy” in this little game of hearts. In vain did many friendly financiers urge Jimmy Potter’s return by the often cabled news that “Hathorn was making a fool of himself in Wall Street.” “That’s his own lookout,” calmly replied the special partner, who rightly feared that the chasm between him and the all too amiable Dickie Doubleday was not yet quite deep enough for safety. “By Jove! that girl is capable of running a tandem,” he reflected, and, he had no desire to be hitched up later, even in silken harness, with the robust “brown buffalo of Butte.” For he had drawn a “queen” in the last deal. He would have quickly turned the prow of the “Aphrodite” homeward, however, if he had known of a strong-hearted woman’s resolute determination to run the firm of Hathorn, Wolfe & Co. ashore, and to sink it under the guns of the unsuspected enemy which was now “swinging the Street.” And as artful a game as Delilah ever “put up” for Samson, was one element of Mrs. Willoughby’s campaign, for she was now “fighting all along the line.” The watchful Harold Vreeland was soon made conscious that he was an object of general interest even in the cold-hearted hurry of Manhattan. He knew that he penetrated three varying atmospheres in his daily life. The society racket, the dress parade of the Waldorf and the clubs, was one phase of his busy existence; the shaded dignities of his Broad Street office another, and he was now assured that an invisible halo of assiduous espionage now followed him in his down-sittings and uprisings. There was the maddened Hathorn, the inscrutable Elaine Willoughby, and his cautious and silent partner, Horton Wyman. “_I’m pretty well followed up!_” he smiled, with a cunning glee. Continually on guard in society, and ever straining all his mental powers to familiarize himself with all the details of their growing business and the unwritten lore of the feverish Street, Vreeland was really only uneasy at heart as to his continued probation. For he felt now, as the holiday season approached, that he was merely being hoodwinked by the dark-eyed benefactress, whose fullest confidence he had not as yet gained. “Madonna’s” social manner was frankly charming, but he had made no progress toward any further intimacy. Some shade seemed to hold them tenderly apart. And he racked his brains in vain.