"One thing more, Jack," she said.
"Well, my dear; what is it?"
"We will take Beatrice with us, in our car, and you may include one of the gentlemen I have given you permission to ask. When you ask Dick Morton, tell him that he is to bring Patricia and the two Houston girls. That's all."
"How about the others, how are they going to get there?"
"The others may walk, for all I care," said Sally, and she returned to the library.
CHAPTER XIV
PATRICIA'S WILD RIDE
It was a gay party that assembled around the dinner-table at Cedarcrest, shortly after eight o'clock on Tuesday evening, although, had one possessed the ability to analyze deeply, it would have been discovered that the gaiety was somewhat forced. Each person present at the gathering was burdened by the intuitive perception of something ominous in the atmosphere; there was a portentous quality about the environment that had more or less a depressing effect upon Sally Gardner's guests, and each one was conscious of a determined, but silent effort to overcome this feeling, in the belief that he or she was the only one who experienced it.
Two of the expected guests had not arrived. They were Patricia and Richard Morton; but, because no message of any sort had been received from Morton, it was the generally accepted idea, that something had happened on the road to delay his car, and they were expected to arrive at any moment. The serving of the dinner was delayed as long as possible in expectation of their coming, but at last the other guests seated themselves around the table to enjoy the feast so carefully prepared by Jack Gardner's high-salaried chef. Agnes and Frances Houston, who were to have come out in Richard Morton's car with Patricia, arrived on time, accompanied by an uninvited guest, although he was one who was on such terms of intimacy with the Gardners that he had not hesitated to attend this country party, when the idea was suggested to him. It was the lawyer, Melvin; and the suggestion that he should be present, and that he should take out the Houston girls, had, strangely enough, been made by Morton. The young ranchman had gone to the lawyer's office early in the day of that Tuesday, and the conversation he held with Melvin will give a good idea of the drift of his intentions, and of his hitherto latent talents for planning and scheming. And the shrewd old lawyer quite readily fell in with the suggestions that were made to him.