"He's a child-stealer," said Louis with distinctness. "He kidnaps Catholic children and finds them Protestant homes where their faith is stolen from them. He's the most hated man in the city."
The man accepted this scornful description of himself in silence. Except for the emphasis which nature had given to his features, he was a presentable person. Flying side-whiskers made his mouth appear grotesquely wide, and the play of strong feelings had produced vicious wrinkles on his spare face. He appeared to be a man of energy, vivacity and vulgarity, reminding one of a dinner of pork and cabbage. He was soon forgotten in the excitement of a delightful day, whose glories came to a brilliant end in that banquet which introduced the nephew of Senator Dillon into political life.
Standing before the guests, he found himself no longer that silent and disdainful Horace Endicott, who on such an occasion would have cooly stuttered and stammered through fifty sentences of dull congratulation and platitude. Feeling aroused him, illumined him, on the instant, almost without wish of his own, at the contrast between two pictures which traced themselves on his imagination as he rose in his place: the wrecked man who had fled from Sonia Westfield, what would he have been to-night but for the friendly hands outstretched to save him? Behold him in honor, in health, in hope, sure of love and some kind of happiness, standing before the people who had rescued him. The thousand impressions of the past six months sparkled into life; the sublime, pathetic, and amusing scenes of that day rose up like stars in his fancy; and against his lips, like water against a dam, rushed vigorous sentences from the great deeps opened in his soul by grief and change, and then leaped over in a beautiful, glittering flood. He wondered vaguely at his vehemence and fluency, at the silence in the hall, that these great people should listen to him at all. They heard him with astonishment, the leaders with interest, the Senator with tears; and Monsignor looked once towards the gallery where Anne Dillon sat literally frozen with terror and pride.
The long and sincere applause which followed the speech warned him that he had impressed a rather callous crowd of notables, and an exaltation seized him. The guests lost no time in congratulating him, and every tongue wagged in his favor.
"You have the gift of eloquence," said Sullivan.
"It will be a pleasure to hear you again," said Vandervelt, the literary and social light of the Tammany circle.
"You have cleared your own road," Birmingham the financier remarked, and he stayed long to praise the young orator.
"There's nothin' too good for you after to-night," cried the Senator brokenly. "I simply can't—cannot talk about it."
"Your uncle," said Doyle Grahame, the young journalist who was bent on marrying Mona Everard, "as usual closes the delicate sparring of his peers with a knockdown blow; there's nothing too good for you."
"It's embarrassing."