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"However little it may be, Sir Marmaduke," said Lambert firmly, speaking directly to his employer, "I humbly pray you to excuse me before these gentlemen ..." The three players at the table, as well as the two Endicotts, had listened to this colloquy with varying feelings.
Michael, from the moment that he went forth from delivering his message in the church, saw no more of the Endicotts. He longed inexpressibly to call and enquire for Starr; to get some word of reconciliation from her father; to ask if there was not some little thing that he might be trusted to do for them; but he knew that his place was not there, and his company was not desired.
"I shall write and tell you how the lizard is," said Starr laughing, "and you will tell me all about the funny and interesting things you are doing, won't you?" "If I may," said Michael wistfully. At the station a New York acquaintance of the Endicotts' invited them to ride in his private car which was on the side track waiting for the train to pick them up.
"Who is in the know?" he queried, after a slight pause, during which he watched his unsuspecting victim with a deep frown of impatience and of hate. "Only the Endicotts," she explained. "But do you think that he will play?" she added, casting an anxious look on her brother-in-law's face. He nodded affirmatively. "Yes!" he said curtly. "I can arrange that, as soon as you are ready."
It was to the effect that the ranch next to that of the Endicotts was owned by a Mr. Felix Merwell, the father of Link Merwell, one of Dave's bitterest enemies at Oak Hall. Link had met Laura out there and gotten her to correspond with him. "It's too bad, Laura; I wish you hadn't done it," Dave had said on learning the news. "It may make trouble, for Merwell is no gentleman."
Laura had become well acquainted with him during her former visit to the ranch, and knew that the Endicotts trusted him implicitly. While he had taught her how to ride, cowgirl fashion, she had taken a number of snapshot photographs for him, to be sent to some relative in the South, and for these he had been very grateful.
In the narrow world of the Endicotts the average mind had not strength enough to conceive of a personality which embraced in itself a prize-fighter and a state senator. The terms were contradictory. True, Nero had been actor and gladiator, and the inference was just that an American might achieve equal distinction; but the Endicott mind refused to consider such an inference.
The child would be heir to his property; would have the sympathy and inherit the possessions of his Aunt Lois; would lull the suspicions concerning its mother, and conciliate the gossips; and might win him back from hiding, if only to expose the fraud and take shame from the Endicotts. What a clever and daring criminal was this woman!
The faces of ancient neighbors, of the Adams, the Endicotts, the Bradburys, severe Puritans, for whom the name of priest meant a momentary stoppage of the heart, looked coldly and precisely straight out from their frames on the Monsignor. Horace fancied that they exchanged glances.
"Who are they that still torment you in this horrible manner?" was the question asked of the children and young women, and they had their answers ready. There had been an old quarrel between the Endicotts and the Nurses, a family which owned the Bishop Farm, about the eastern boundary of said farm.
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