"Oh, no, I am a stranger here." Her accents were ordinary, yet there was a note of the unusual in her appearance and manner. Whatever she was, she was not commonplace.
"But you were waiting to see him?" he said.
Her gaze left his face and travelled uncertainly over the mansion. "Oh, yes, I thought I might see him. I've never seen a Governor."
"You do not wish to speak to him?"
"No; why should I wish to speak to him? I'm a stranger, that's all. I like to see whatever is going on. Was that his daughter who went out just now?"
"Yes, that was his daughter."
"Then she is pretty—almost as pretty as—Thank you, sir. I will go along now. I'm staying not far from here, and I come out when I get the chance to watch the squirrels in the Square."
The explanation sounded simple enough; yet he suspected, though he could not have defined his reason, that she was not telling the truth. Again he asked himself if she could have known Gideon Vetch in the past? It was possible; it was not even improbable. Once, even ten or fifteen years ago, she may have been handsome in her coarse and showy style; and he had no proof, except Patty, that the Governor had ever possessed a fastidious taste.
The woman had turned with furtive haste in the direction of the outer gate; and when Stephen started on again toward the library, he crossed a man who was rapidly ascending the brick walk from the fountain at the foot of the hill. By his jaunty stride and his air of excessive joviality—the mark of the successful local politician—Stephen recognized Julius Gershom, the campaign-maker, as people called him, who had stood behind Gideon Vetch from the beginning of his career. "What an unconscionable bounder the fellow is," thought Stephen as he passed him. What an abundance of self-assertiveness he had contrived to express in his thin spruce figure, his tightly curling black hair, which grew too low on his forehead, and his short black moustache with pointed ends which curved up like polished metal from his full red lips.
"I suppose he is on his way to the Governor," mused the young man idly. "How on earth does Vetch stand him?"