The San Reve listened, but the gloom hung low on her brow. She did not believe her Storri who said he ate a weekly dinner for revenge. Yes, he had obtained a mastery over Mr. Harley; he had forced his way into the company of Dorothy and shut the door on Richard! The San Reve shook her jealous head; that was not vengeance, that was love.
And Storri would succeed, too! This Dorothy would come to love him as she, the San Reve, loved. Dorothy was a woman; and what woman could resist Storri? This Dorothy loved him even now; her coldness was an attitude, a fiction. It was meant to be a lure to Storri and whet his eagerness!
These were the thoughts like living coals which the San Reve hid in her heart. But while her head whirled, and her sight was blurred, and her pulses set a-throb with the jealous storms that swept her, it was wonderful to note how the San Reve's office-trained mind seized upon and registered those French shares. It was those shares that constituted Storri's hold upon the Harleys. Could she break the hold? Those shares were the locks of her Samson. Oh, if she might but shear the locks! Then she would have her Storri again—in his weakness she would have him. The San Reve knitted her brows.
These days of separation were more easily borne by Richard than by Dorothy. Richard was rich in a dogged fortitude common enough with men. Moreover, he had his work, and he went into it more deeply than before. Eleven o'clock still found him in the study with Senator Hanway, albeit Dorothy was no longer there to make a lovely third. Perhaps for that reason more politics and news of legislation were discussed by Richard and Senator Hanway.
The latter gentleman, these days, was in the best of tempers. Nothing could be more smoothly hopeful than the outlook for that nomination. Senator Gruff, who was indefatigable for Senator Hanway, told him that Speaker Frost reported his own State delegation as already in line. Also the President of the Anaconda, from whom Senator Gruff had letters every week, described the Hanway sentiment in Anaconda regions as invincible. The National Convention, in the interests of Senator Hanway and over the objection of the friends of Governor Obstinate, had been fixed for the last of May. This was a help; Senator Hanway's forces were organized and Governor Obstinate's were not. The less space permitted that candidate and his henchmen, the better for Senator Hanway. As Senator Gruff and Richard sat together in Senator Hanway's study one morning, the Senator pointed out on the map a sufficient number of States, and each certain to send a Hanway delegation, to carry the nomination.
"If the convention were held to-morrow," observed Senator Gruff, "we would win. The effort now must be to head off encroachments by Governor Obstinate."
The above came on an occasion when Senator Gruff was in a confidential mood. Commonly, as a chief Hanway manager, he lay as blandly close and noncommittal as a clam.
There was the issue of finance, Senator Gruff explained, and that was a growing source of trouble to Senator Hanway. The latter gentleman's endeavor had always been to say nothing upon finance, but silence was becoming difficult. Governor Obstinate was openly and offensively for gold in a sod-pawing, horn-lowering, threatening way, and just as a buffalo bull might have been for gold. This settled the standing of Governor Obstinate in silver communities; they would have none of him. Those same silver people, however, demanded all the more that Senator Hanway define his position in the money war. They gave tongue to those pig-and-poke objections voiced by Senator Coot. It was clamors such as these, so Senator Gruff told Richard, that made silence a work of weariness.
"Now I thought," observed Richard, "that Mr. Bayard talked wisely upon silver and gold the evening of the dinner. Why wouldn't it be well to talk to the people in the same manner even if one did not adopt the theories expressed? Let Senator Hanway clearly announce his views and give his reasons. The latter should defend him with thinking men."