"Do I? You had better ask her—not go tilting at political windmills when more important matters should be——"
"If Charlie's foolishness is the only thing in my way, I'll force him to be a man if I have to gag him in joint assembly!" cried the lover, joyously.
"What transformations love will work!" sighed the matchmaker after he had bidden the light-hearted Danvers good-night. "Standing practically alone against the might of Burroughs' millions—holding his scant forces by sheer force of character, yet downed by the mistaken attitude of a mere slip of a girl!"
The next afternoon Winifred lay back in a low chair before a leaping wood fire. She wanted to think, to puzzle out all that was taking place around her. She recognized, yet refused to accept the verdict of her common sense. She was no unsophisticated school girl; she was a woman of the world. The social and political atmosphere in which she moved seemed charged with dynamic possibilities. Her closed eyes suddenly brimmed with tears. Winifred let them fall unheeded, feeling miserable consolation in her self-pity, as women will.
Apart from the senatorial contest lay her personal interest in the game being played by the scheming Burroughs, the unscrupulous Moore and the ambitious Eva, on the one side, and her brother on the other. What chance had Charlie against such a combination? Robert Burroughs had judged truly; Blair's degradation would hurt Winifred inexpressibly. He had chuckled as he had watched the growing attachment between his brother-in-law and the girl, and thought of his vow. He realized that here was a way to bring vicarious suffering upon the man whose distinction had first roused his envy and whose rectitude had won his hatred.
As Winifred groped in the tangle of State and private intrigues that enmeshed her, the fire burned low and the snapping of an occasional spark checked and soothed until her mind slipped into more peaceful channels. She looked about the quiet room. The firelight threw her face into relief and accentuated the faint lines of pain that had come during the last few weeks; a pensive touch had been added to a countenance that combined loveliness with strength. The yellow puff-ball in the gilded cage by the window stirred drowsily, with a faint, comforting chirp. The white and gold of blossoming narcissi, rising from their sheaths of green, gleamed purely from a tabouret, and their incense filled the room.
Presently she took up events of recent occurrence with clearer mind. She had probably exaggerated the seeming coherence of disconnected happenings. She longed to think so. Eva took great interest in the senatorial contest. Should that be an indictment? She craved excitement—expected to hold the stage in any episode; her position as the wife of an eminent jurist gave her a certain prestige in the political arena where pretty women were not unwelcome. The power they wielded, whether consciously or not, was almost unlimited—Winifred had seen enough of the average legislator to appreciate that fact.