Rhoda hastened to say that perhaps it was her father’s carriage he had heard, as he had had to make a night trip. Charlotte, chancing to look at her sister as Delavan asked his question, thought that Rhoda started and changed color ever so little. Immediately her alert mind began to wonder why, and she fixed her eyes sharply upon her sister’s face. Rhoda felt her gaze and endeavored to change the subject quickly in order to ward off the insistent questions which it would be like Charlotte to begin to ask. But at that moment Bully Brooks came unexpectedly to her assistance. Passing under her chair he emerged from beneath her skirt and playfully leaped at a bit of string on the floor. Charlotte saw him and, remembering certain kittenish tricks which he had not yet grown too old to play beneath her own hoopskirts, she smiled knowingly at her sister and dropped the subject from her thought.
Later in the day Jefferson Delavan took his departure, and under his escort Mrs. Ware and Charlotte went down the river to Cincinnati. Since their argument on election day Rhoda had given him no opportunity to renew his love siege. Nevertheless, her heart was like lead in her breast, now that he was really going, and she was afraid to trust herself alone with him lest she would find herself saying, “Stay, oh, stay a little longer!” And yet she felt relief at the thought that the dear torment would now be lessened, glad that she might rest from the keener strife within herself that his presence provoked.
When he bade her good-by he held her hand closely and said, “We’ve not spoken the last word yet, Rhoda Ware! I’m coming again some day,—though I hope I won’t be exploded into your house the next time!”
Her eyes were serious upon his face, but she felt her cheeks growing warmer with the pressure of his hand. She told herself that she ought to withdraw her own, but afterwards she knew that she had not even tried to take it out of his clasp. “You’d better not come,” she said gravely. “What is the use?”
“But at least I may come—to see your mother!” he exclaimed, smiling, and an answering ripple of mirth drove the gravity from her countenance.
It was nearly a week after the state elections before it was known certainly that the Democratic ticket in Pennsylvania had won, by a narrow margin, over the candidates upon whom the three other parties had united. Rhoda listened as her father, Hardaker, and the two Kimballs discussed the result. They were gathered around a cheerful blaze in the sitting-room fireplace, for the evenings had grown chill. Her mother and Charlotte had not yet returned.
“Oh, we’ve lost,” said Dr. Ware calmly, “and among ourselves we may as well admit it, though of course we’ll keep up a hopeful appearance in public.”
But Hardaker was more buoyant. “There’s hope yet,” he insisted. “Pennsylvania has always reversed her state victory at a following presidential election. And there’s no reason to suppose that she’ll do otherwise this time. I still believe we’re going to win.”
Rhoda saw her father suddenly compress his lips and throw a quick glance around their little circle. “To tell the truth,” he said slowly in a low tone, “just here among ourselves, though I wouldn’t admit it outside, I hope we are defeated this time.”
The rest started with surprise and Walter Kimball exclaimed, “For God’s sake, Dr. Ware! What do you mean?”