Baptiste was regarding him strangely.

"Have you heard the rest of it?" the other paused to ask. "Well, Reverend McCarthy became the father of her two sons. One was killed some years ago, the other lives in St. Louis."

"But what—what became of their mother?" Baptiste inquired curiously.

"Her? What becomes of women who are deceived? If you visited St. Louis and the district, you might find her. She was there the last I heard of her."

"And you?"

"Me?" the other repeated in a strangely hollow voice. "You know what I am. A gambler, and with an old score to settle with that man if I ever get the chance."

CHAPTER V

Table of Contents

THE PREACHER'S EVIL INFLUENCE

WITH all Ethel's excited ways, she was not to be reckoned a fool when she had in mind to accomplish some purpose. She understood full well, that it would be up to her at this time to keep Orlean from returning West with her husband, unless she recalled her father. This she did not wish to resort to, until she had exhausted all her force without avail. She appreciated the fact that Jean Baptiste could and would influence her husband as well as her mother, while as to Orlean, she would only need a half a chance to fall away from her influence and go back to her husband.

So with this in mind, Ethel, who had inherited from her father, much evil and the faculty of making people miserable began, as soon as Baptiste had left the house, to formulate plans to counter any effort on his part to see Orlean.

Her first move, therefore, was to recall Orlean who was visiting near, a fact which her mother had feared to tell Baptiste. She convinced her forthwith that she was sick, in danger, and sent her to bed, not telling her that Baptiste was even in town. She followed this by sending her mother to the kitchen, and keeping her there.

"Now what I must do—succeed in doing," she muttered to herself, "is to keep Orlean from seeing or meeting him in private and even in public for as much as an hour." She realized that keeping a man and wife apart was a grave task, and that she could not trust to the sympathy of any friends. But one person could she trust to be an ally in the task she was trying to accomplish, and that was her father. She rather feared her husband at this time, for, while she held him under her control at most all times, he was by disposition inclined to be kind and good. And, although he was jealous of Baptiste in a measure, this did not reach proportions where he was likely to be a very ready accomplice with the plan in hand. Indeed, if it was left to him, Orlean would sleep in her husband's arms that very night!