ny could pay any such salary? How could he maintain the Riverside
Drive apartment now, unless he married Suzanne? How could he have his
automobile--his valet? Colfax said nothing about continuing his
income--why should he? He really owed him nothing. He had been
exceedingly well paid--better paid than he would have been anywhere
else.

He regretted his fanciful dreams about Blue Sea--his silly enthusiasm in
tying up all his money in that. Would Mrs. Dale go to Winfield? Would
her talk do him any real harm there? Winfield had always been a good
friend to him, had manifested a high regard. This charge, this talk of
abduction. What a pity it all was. It might change Winfield's attitude,
and still why should it? He had women; no wife, however. He hadn't, as
Colfax said, planned this thing quite right. That was plain now. His
shimmering world of dreams was beginning to fade like an evening sky. It
might be that he had been chasing a will-o'-the-wisp, after all. Could
this really be possible? Could it be?

CHAPTER XXII

One would have thought that this terrific blow would have given Eugene
pause in a way, and it did. It frightened him. Mrs. Dale had gone to
Colfax in order to persuade him to use his influence to make Eugene
behave himself, and, having done so much, she was actually prepared to
go further. She was considering some scheme whereby she could blacken
Eugene, have his true character become known without in any way
involving Suzanne. Having been relentlessly pursued and harried by
Eugene, she was now as relentless in her own attitude. She wanted him to
let go now, entirely, if she could, not to see Suzanne any more and she
went, first to Winfield, and then back to Lenox with the hope of
preventing any further communication, or at least action on Suzanne's
part, or Eugene's possible presence there.

In so far as her visit to Winfield was concerned, it did not amount to
so much morally or emotionally in that quarter, for Winfield did not
feel that he was called upon to act in the matter. He was not Eugene's
guardian, nor yet a public censor of morals. He waived the whole
question grandly to one side, though in a way he was glad to know of it,
for it gave him an advantage over Eugene. He was sorry for him a
little--what man would not be? Nevertheless, in his thoughts of
reorganizing the Blue Sea Corporation, he did not feel so bad over what
might become of Eugene's interests. When the latter approached him,