* * * * *
J. Pinkney Hare lingered some time in the theatre after Miss Carstairs joined him, enveloped in a heartening whirl of new popularity. To the candidate it seemed that his star had changed with stunning swiftness. His advance to the door had been a Roman progress; and when he finally reached the lobby he was still the focus of a coterie of enthusiasts who would not be shaken off. Here a new halt was made: new people surrounded him; more hand-shakings and back-slappings took place; and everything seemed merry as a marriage-bell.
But Peter, coming out of the hall a moment after Varney had left, saw hovering about this intimate circle an elderly man of a faded exterior and shabby clothes, who wore a black felt hat pulled down over wary-looking eyes. Even at that moment of splendid triumph, Peter was annoyed to recognize in him the man Higginson, of whose too friendly interest in the candidate's doings he had complained to Varney a few hours earlier. Whether he was, in truth, the man who had followed them on the street the night before, he was not ready to make affidavit. But undoubtedly there was something furtive in the man's appearance and manner; and Peter, watching him from the door, was highly irritated to see Hare present the fellow to Miss Carstairs, who smiled on him as upon one of her friend's good friends.
"The sneak!" thought Peter. "I'll just drop him a quiet hint to butt out before he gets hurt."
But his "head-usher" due to vanish back to New York by the ten-forty-five claimed him just then for a business talk, and when Peter had time to think of Mr. Higginson again, he found that the man had disappeared.
CHAPTER X
THE EDITOR OF THE GAZETTE PLAYS A CARD FROM HIS SLEEVE
Varney slept badly. The night was long, like art and the lanes that have no turning; and interludes punctuated it, now and again, when he lay wide-eyed in his bunk, staring into the darkness. At these times without exception, he thought how, early in the morning, he would climb the hill to the white house, blandly proffering letters to show that he was no cad, no cur, but Laurence Varney, whom ladies need not flee from as from the plague; suavely putting Uncle Elbert's daughter so utterly in the wrong that he himself would grow merciful towards her abashment, and sorry.
He fell asleep, woke again, rehearsed once more what he would say to her. At last he saw the dawn break along the horizon and the gray of a new day meet and mingle with the receding darkness. It was Wednesday. To-morrow would be Thursday, and he could go away, his business done. The prospect was rich recompense for everything. It came to him, suddenly and for the first time, that he hated his mission in Hunston with a disheartening and sickening hatred. And formulating this thought, polishing it to aphorism and sharpening it to epigram, he slumbered and slept for the last time that night.
But on the heels of the morning came Peter, bursting in half-dressed, a newspaper flaunting in his hand, an unfastened suspender flapping behind him like a pennant on a clubhouse.