Vetch, why don't you fight him with his own weapons? What were you
doing, you and John, when the people voted for him?"

"To tell the truth nobody ever dreamed that he would be elected,"
replied Stephen, flushing. "Who would have thought that an independent
candidate could win over both parties?"

The Judge had moved to the door, and he looked back, as Stephen
finished, with a dramatic flourish of his long white hand. "Well,
remember next time, my dear young sir," he answered, "that in politics
it is always the impossible that happens." The long white hand fell
caressingly on the shoulders of old Powhatan Plummer, and the two men
passed out of the door together.

When Stephen turned to Corinna, she was resting languidly against the
tapestry-covered back of her chair, while the firelight flickering in
her eyes changed them to the deep bronze of the marigolds on the table.
With her slenderness, her grace, her brilliant darkness, she seemed to
him to belong in one of the English mezzotints on the wall.

"Did you buy that print because it is so much like you?" he asked,
pointing to an engraving after Hoppner's portrait of the Duchess of
Bedford.

She laughed frankly. "Every one asks me that. I suppose it was one of my
reasons."

As he sat down again in front of the fire, his eyes travelled slowly
over the walls; over the stipple engravings of Bartolozzi, over the rich
mezzotints of Valentine Green and John Raphael Smith, over the