“I told him I was sure you’d be glad to see him. I know what a good judge of character you are. You must have seen what a remarkable man he is—about the strongest I’ve come across, among the younger men. He’ll be nominated for governor next fall—and elected, I suspect. And he’ll go up—and up. There’s the sort of man you ought to marry, Eleanor.”
“I don’t want to marry anybody,” cried she with the pettish anger of a child.
Sayler made mental note of this sign of nervous tension, and proceeded:
“You are always saying that a husband who had already arrived would be uninteresting in comparison with one who had the makings of a career in him, and whom the wife could help—could work with, and go up with. Here’s your chance—and as good a one as ever was offered a woman.”
Eleanor was listening—was looking at the wily schemer with wistful eyes. “You’re not joking?” said she.
“I’m disappointed in you,” said Sayler. “You’re not so big or so clever as I fancied. You’re just ordinary woman, after all.”
Eleanor blushed, and her eyes sank.
“I thought you were big enough to see him,” proceeded Sayler. “But you saw only what you shallow women are able to see—the fit of his clothes, the absence of a valet, the lessons in manners he has yet to learn and will learn soon enough. You don’t want the man with the career to make. You want the ready-made man. You want to have nothing to do but shine by his light, be his trivial ornament and plaything. Oh, you women!” He laughed with good-humored mockery. “What frauds you are—and how little you count for.”
“I am engaged to him,” said Eleanor quietly—with a look that ludicrously mingled pride and fear and apology.
Sayler shrugged his shoulders. “An impulse you’ve repented,” said he.