“I see that you agree with me,” he went on, “and you are probably wondering, just as I am, how soon the need will come for us to prove our Party loyalty. It can’t be far away, dear lady. I have ten dollars in my pocket that says there’ll be a Cabinet vacancy before the spring.”
“And Dilling will get the portfolio!” barked Mrs. Pratt, thrown completely off her guard.
“What a head you have!” cried Sullivan. “I’ll wager there aren’t a dozen men who have suspected it! But he needs support . . . he must have it. We must stand solidly behind him, for no matter how divergent may be our views upon this question of western freight, we’ve got to train up a man—a good strong fellow—who will sweep the country and be able to step into the shoes of the Prime Minister, some day!”
“Prime Minister!” gasped Mrs. Pratt, and fell to preening herself in order that she might hide the trembling of her hands.
She hated the Dillings—Raymond for his reputed genius, the clear, cold brilliance that would not be eclipsed, and Marjorie for her childish friendliness and ingratiating ways. The meek might inherit the Kingdom of Heaven without provoking her envy, but that they should also inherit the earth was a contingency that aroused her cold fury.
She saw them sought after, deferred to, taking precedence over everyone save the representative of the King! Her thoughts fell into narrower channels and she pictured Marjorie opening bazaars, lending her patronage to this or that gathering of Society’s choicest blossoms, arriving at the state where she would be unstirred by invitations to Government House!
Under the turquoise velvet, her bosom rose and fell, heavily. At the moment she hated her husband no less fiercely than she hated the man whom she chose to consider his rival. What could Augustus carve in the way of a career? How could he ever hope to triumph over this aggressive man from the West? Where would she be when Marjorie Dilling had become the wife of Canada’s young Prime Minister?
The suave voice of Rufus Sullivan fashioned itself into words. The first ones she failed to catch, but the last pierced her like the point of a white-hot rapier.
“. . . and then, naturally, a title. And how graciously she will wear it, eh?”
A title . . . Mrs. Pratt felt suffocated. A portfolio was bad enough; the Premiership was a possibility that she could not consider without a cataclysm of emotion, but a title . . . the pinnacle of human desire, the social and political apogee . . .