“Oh! It is you, young man! At last! Well, I should like to know what you have done with yourself all these weeks and why you didn’t keep your appointment with me?”
“Oh!” said Michael, pleasure and shame striving together in his face. He could see that the other man was not angry, and was really relieved to have found him.
“Where are you going, son?” Endicotts tone had already changed from gruffness to kindly welcome. “Jump in and run down to the wharf with me while you give an account of yourself. I’m going down to see Mrs. Endicott off to Europe. She is taking Starr over to school this winter. I’m late already, so jump in.”
Michael seemed to have no choice and stepped into the car, which was whirled through the intricate maze of humanity and machinery down toward the regions where the ocean-going steamers harbor.
His heart was in a tumult at once, both of embarrassed joy to be in the presence of the man who had done so much for him, and of eager anticipation. Starr! Would he see Starr again? That was the thought uppermost in his mind. He had not as yet realized that she was going away for a long time.
All the spring time he had kept guard over the house in Madison Avenue. Not all night of course, but hovering about there now and then, and for two weeks after he had talked with Sam, nightly. Always he had walked that way before retiring and looked toward the window where burned a soft light. Then they had gone to the seashore and the mountains and the house had put on solemn shutters and lain asleep.
Michael knew all about it from a stray paragraph in the society column of the daily paper which he happened to read.
Toward the end of August he had made a round through Madison Avenue every night to see if they had returned home, and for a week the shutters had been down and the lights burning as of old. It had been good to know that his charge was back there safely. And now he was to see her.
“Well! Give an account of yourself. Were you trying to keep out of my sight? Why didn’t you come to my office?”
Michael looked him straight in the eye with his honest, clear gaze that showed no sowing of wild oats, no dissipation or desire to get away from friendly espionage. He decided in a flash of a thought that this man should never know the blow his beautiful, haughty wife had dealt him. It was true, all she had said, and he, Michael, would give the real reason why he had not come.