“Now keep still, Papa! I’m going to make this old house ring with joy and laughter. I won’t have any of your political quarrels. I’m going to be friends with everybody, as my mother was—they say she was a famous belle in her day, Mr. Graham?”
“So I have often heard,” John answered with increasing confusion, as he retreated toward the door.
“You will come again?”
“I hope to soon,” he gravely answered as he bowed himself out the door.
CHAPTER II—MR. HOYLE RECEIVES A SHOCK
STEVE HOYLE had called early at the Judge’s to see Stella the morning after John’s encounter in the hall. As he paced restlessly back and forth waiting the return of Stella’s maid, he was evidently in an ugly humour.
When he heard the story at the hotel late the night before, that his hated rival in politics and society had dared to venture into Judge Butler’s home, he could not believe it. And the idea that Stella should receive him had cut his vanity to the quick.
The richest young man in the county, he aspired to be the most popular, and he had long enjoyed the distinction in the estimation of his friends of being the handsomest man in his section of the state. In his own estimation there had never been any question about this. And beyond a doubt he was a magnificent animal. Six feet tall, a superb figure, somewhat coarse and heavy in the neck, with smooth, regular features. He was slightly given to fat, but his complexion was red and clean as a boy’s, and he might well be pardoned his vanity when one remembered his money.