Two men were following with their envious eyes the tall form of the fortunate Hathorn—“the very rose and expectancy of the state,” as he called his myrmidons around him. “Lucky devil is Hathorn,” quoth A. “Saw him get out of the train to-night with Mrs. Wharton Willoughby. Potter over there and a gang of girls have been up at Lakemere. He still holds her fast.” Quoth B: “He has a regular run of nigger luck. Elaine Willoughby is the Queen of the Street. Her account must be worth a cool hundred thousand a year to the firm. And here drops in to him, the whole VanSittart fortune, a cool ten millions.” Vreeland started as A rejoined moodily: “I had hoped that some other fellow might have a chance to make the running at Lakemere, now that Hathorn is _rangé_; but it really seems to be ‘a _petit ménage à trois_’ so far.” And B, thereat, enviously growled: “He ought to cling to the generous woman who made him. I always thought Hathorn would finally marry her. She trusts him with her chief account, the —— deals.” Vreeland cursed the caution which cost him that one keyword “but, there’s a mystery.” It was with a wolfish hunger for “more sweetness and light” that the unmoved Vreeland deftly arose and followed his host and Potter to a fair upper chamber of that narrow-chested corner club house on Fifth Avenue in the thirties, at whose critic-infested windows both Miss Patricia and Miss Anonyma “give a side glance and look down.” The royal road to fortune which had led the ambitious Hathorn “on the heights” seemed to be clear of mist now to his hypocritical visitor. Was there room for another chariot in the race? The familiar sprite was busy with daring suggestions. If a rich woman—not of an age _très tendre_—had made one man, some other woman of that ilk might be waiting with a willing heart in the babel of Gotham for the shapely young Lochinvar come out o’ the West. The fires of hope leaped through his veins. As they seated themselves to the enjoyment of that particular clear turtle soup which is justly the pride of the club chef, both host and guest were adroitly playing at cross-purposes. Hathorn, with a secret avidity entirely New Yorkish, determined to find out all the details of Vreeland’s financial windfall. He had a vague idea that the outlandish wilds of Montana were stuffed with copper mines, gold ledges, silver leads, cattle ranches, and “all sorts of things that might be gotten hold of,” _i. e._, other people’s money. And if this placid and lamb-like blonde guest had “dropped into a good thing,” then by a judicious use of a regulated social hospitality, Hathorn now proposed to “drop into that same good thing.” An uneasy fever seems to burn in a New York man’s blood from the moment when he knows his neighbor to have an unprotected penny. The keen-eyed Vreeland minutely examined his old chum’s “get-up,” and quickly decided that he would closely copy this easily graceful “glass of fashion and mould of form.”