his pulses while something held him there against his will and his
better judgment, as if he were caught fast in the steel spring of a
trap.

"Oh, that's nothing," replied Patty, with her air of mockery. "If there
were no worse things than that!"

He did not hold out his hand, though there was a flutter toward him of
her fingers--pretty fingers they were for a girl with no blood that one
could mention in public. There was a faint hope in his mind that he
might still vanish unthanked and undetained. The one quality in father
and daughter which had arrested his favourable attention--the quality of
"a good sport"--would probably aid in his escape.

"Drop in some evening, and we'll have a talk," said the Governor in his
slightly theatrical but extremely confident manner, "there are things
I'd like to say to you. You are a lawyer, if I remember, in Judge
Horatio Page's firm, and you were in the war from the beginning."

Stephen smiled. "Not quite." They were at the front door, and all hope
of escaping into the desirable obscurity from which he had sprung fled
from his mind.

"He is a great old boy, the Judge," resumed Gideon Vetch blandly, "I had
a talk with him one day before the elections, when you other fellows
were sitting back like a lot of lunatics and waiting for the Democratic
primaries to put things over. He is the only one in the whole bunch of
you who stopped shouting long enough to hear what I had to say. I like
him, sir, and if there is one thing you will never find me doing it is
liking the wrong man. I may not know Greek, but I can read men."