“Find out her past social history. Find out if she ever was really married. Find out if some one has a hold on her. _She is an unhappy woman at heart!_” cried Alberg. “It may be that damned cold-hearted cur, Hathorn’s, desertion has cut her to the quick! Find out if she really is a _free woman_!” “And, then?” said Vreeland, a strange light coming into his eyes. “_Marry her yourself_,” pleaded Alberg. “_She is one woman in a million!_ Take her away for a year. Lead her away from her old self. Pride brought low may have maddened her. I think that Hathorn first fathomed her past, and then, coldly left her for the younger and perhaps richer woman. It may have been too heavy a blow to her pride.” “Is there anything in this babble about Endicott or the Senator?” huskily whispered Vreeland, reddening with shame in spite of himself. The half-tipsy Doctor laughed. “The old man is only her business Mentor—he is as passionless as a basalt block. “The Senator is but a cold-hearted money schemer, a Yankee coining power into hard cash. I’ve followed all these trails out.” “And you yourself are absolutely in the dark?” persisted Vreeland. “I’ve thought at times that old Endicott may be the trustee under some quiet old marital separation. I’ve imagined, too, that Willoughby _mari_ may not be really dead; that she, in spite of herself, learned to passionately love Hathorn, and has ardently desired him, and that he selfishly married after she had pulled him up to fortune, and then, left her powerless and tongue-tied, to pocket his brutal ingratitude. “Whatever it is, we need each other, Vreeland. I will stand by you if you stand by me. Is it a bargain?” “I’ll see you here the same time next Sunday. Let me think this thing over,” faltered Vreeland, beginning to see light at last on his way. “I should have told you that she usually has these attacks after Endicott’s occasional long private visits. It may be that the missing husband is _alive_, and is bleeding her financially with extortionate demands,” was the Doctor’s last confidence. “I’ll be ready to talk to you next Sunday. Let me go now,” breathlessly cried Vreeland. “In the meantime, keep a close silence. You will find me to be the best friend you ever had in the world.” The schemer darted away with a sudden impulse. Ten minutes later he sat with Justine Duprez, in a hidden little nest of her own in South Fifth Avenue. It had flashed over his mind that Mlle. Justine’s Sunday off, just suited his purpose. It was not the first time that he had communed with her there, in a room once sacred to Frederick Hathorn’s private information bureau. The startled maid had barely time to meet her generous new admirer when he questioned her sharply upon the subject of Doctor Alberg’s recent revelations.