"Damn it, it can't! It mustn't!" he reflected, as on the third evening
he returned to his Fifth Avenue house. "Now that I'm really in danger of
losing her, I'm just beginning to realize what an extraordinary woman
she is! As a wife, the mistress of my establishment, a hostess, a social
leader, what a figure she would make! And too, the alliance between
Flint and myself simply must not be shattered. Kate is the only child.
The old man's billion, or more, will surely come to her, practically
every penny of it. Flint is more than sixty-three this very minute, he's
a dope-fiend, and his heart's damned weak. He's liable to drop off, any
moment. If I get Kate, and he dies, what a fortune! What a prize! Added
to my interests, it will make me master of the world!
"Then, too, this new Air Trust scheme positively demands that Flint and
I should be bound together by something closer than mere financial
association. I've simply got to be one of the family. I've got to be his
son-in-law. That's a positive necessity! God, what a fool I was at
Longmeadow, to have taken those three drinks, and have been piqued at
her beating me--to have let my tongue and temper slip--in short, to have
acted like an ass!"
Ugly and grim, he puffed at his Londres.
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