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.
"Because I thought you had done for me far more than I deserved already, and I did not wish to be any further burden to you."
"The dickens you did!" exclaimed Endicott. "You good-for-nothing rascal, didn't you know you would be far more of a burden running off in that style without leaving a trace of yourself behind so I could hunt you up, than if you had behaved yourself and done as I told you? Here I have been doing a lot of unnecessary worrying about you. I thought you had fallen among thieves or something, or else gone to the dogs. Don't you know that is a most unpardonable thing to do, run off from a man who has told you he wants to see you? I thought I made you understand that I had more than a passing interest in your welfare!"