"It's good to have you back, Sir Peter. The house has seemed terribly big and empty without you."
"Empty!" echoed Fairfax with his sardonic chuckle. "Fancy a bride of a month complaining of emptiness in a house without her father-in-law."
"How does it happen that you have torn yourself away from the ranch, Nick?" interrupted Peter Courtlandt before Steve, who had grown white about the nostrils, could speak. "The last time you came on you said you would never leave it again."
Fairfax swallowed the bait which never failed to lure him. His western possessions were his pride, and he welcomed an opportunity to talk of them much as a fond parent does of his child.
"Didn't want to leave. Felt it my duty to come and see what you had done to Steve," he growled. "Greyson, of the X Y Z, is looking after things for me."
"Greyson of the X Y Z! Is your ranch near his?" Jerry demanded. A faint color stole to her face, her eyes were alight with interest.
"It is. What do you know about it?" Fairfax's eyes were interrogation points of suspicion.
"Not much. I met Mr. Greyson last winter, and I——"
"Met Greyson, did you? Humph! So that's what's the matter with him. I suppose the daughter of an oil-king looked down upon——"
"Have you had a profitable year?" interrupted Peter Courtlandt, adroitly getting between his son and the old man. "They tell me that this has been a banner season for wheat."