“What is he thinking about?” said Leoline Lewin to herself, with awakened interest, her eyes on the Administrator’s reserved face.
“Denver employs six hundred on his estate alone,” was all Gregory remarked aloud. “I wish all the planters took as many.”
“Why?”
“If there were no idlers, there would be less likelihood of a rising. When the Key’landers begin to sit in the gutter and jaw through the Miroro (sleep hour) in a snarly sing-song, then look out. It began that way last time.”
“Ah!—Mr. Gregory, what would happen if you burnt the hemp-crops?”
“I don’t know.” But he looked at her in some surprise for the audacity of her question. It had been tacitly understood that such an extreme measure might be attempted by this Administrator only; but no one had even broached such a subject to himself. Gregory thought of the unlikelihood of his secretary even speculating on such an idea, and smiled even more broadly. Decidedly this girl ought to have been the boy!
“It might bring matters to a head, and I don’t know that I should be sorry,” he admitted after a moment. “There is a lot of underhand discontent, and the population is like a silly child who overestimates its own importance and power to be naughty. A sharp lesson might clear the air—see?”
It is wonderful how indiscreet men will be to a pretty woman. Mrs. Lewin knew how to listen; also as Evelyn Gregory talked he could see himself reflected in the big pupils of her eyes, and his mental attitude reflected in the equally receptive calibre of her mind. He was not very used to sympathy in his schemes, because he rarely confided them to any one, and he fancied Mrs. Lewin the more exceptional on this account, whereas she was merely more adroit in drawing him on. She was, besides, really interested, and he saw that, and saw also that she was a woman, which touched his senses, and ended by driving the more serious side of the conversation out of his head. For Chum, with a flash of genius, dropped the political standpoint at her own gate, and held out her hand with a merely social attractiveness.
“My husband will be ravenous, and I shall get scolded,” she said, with a smile in the changing colours of her eyes. “But I was very interested—it was your fault!”
The curve of her lips was not a pout, but Mr. Gregory suddenly saw himself as a successful rival to Captain Lewin as regarded his wife’s time—the masculine cause of a scolding too, for a more subtle suggestion than a late breakfast lay in the words. He smiled a little also, and the blood beat with a small pleased triumph in the hand that held hers.