“If these people would organize a systematic search they might be successful.”
“They’re working on something better than system—upon an almost superstitious love for the dead ‘Lady of Refugio’ and her lost children, lost—through our fault!”
“Nonsense! Through the fault of that imbecile Cardanza! The fact of such a hot-head-idiot being left in charge proves just what sort of man this Adrian Manuel is, and how unfit to bring up even such stupid children as his.”
“Father, please don’t. I never saw two more charming little ones, and even you admired them, till they disappeared.”
“Which shows that I’m right again. At twelve years, any American who possesses common sense should know better than to be frightened out of his father’s house by the fairy tales of a blockhead foreigner.”
Mr. Rupert wearily smiled. His father had rung the changes on this sad subject till nothing new remained, and the son knew that a keen self-reproach pointed the venom of the old man’s words. He gently rejoined:
“It’s been a difficult business for a difficult client from the beginning, and I never would have persuaded you to try a personal interview with this man Manuel, if I hadn’t believed that the trip here would benefit your broken health.”
“The fellow has been a fool to so stand in his own light!” testily commented the elder lawyer.
“Once I thought so, too. Now I do not. I believe he is one in a thousand. His life is an ideal one and he made his wife supremely happy. She could have missed but little by what Mrs. Sinclair terms her ‘crazy elopement.’”
“You grow enthusiastic.”