Then the ancient beau, Tremaine, spoke from a soul that was stirred to the depths.
"Churchill," he exclaimed, "I've been travelling about the world forty years, but there are times when I think you are the meanest man I ever met."
Churchill flushed and clinched his fist, but thought better of it, and turned off the matter with an uneasy laugh.
"Tremaine," he said, "the older you grow the fonder you become of superlatives."
"I admired Jimmy Grayson in his triumphs, and I admire him more than ever in his defeat," said Tremaine, still bristling, and fiercely twisting his short, gray mustache.
"Mr. Tremaine, I want to thank you," said Sylvia, who, turning to them, had heard Tremaine's warm speech; and she put her hand in his for a moment, which was to him ample repayment.
Harley stood by, and was silent because he did not know what to say. To state that Mr. Grayson had allowed himself to be beaten for a purpose would have an incredible look in print—it would seem the poorest of excuses; nor did he wish to make use of it in the presence of Churchill, who would certainly jeer at it and present it in his despatches as a ridiculous plea. He had begun to have a certain sensitiveness in regard to the candidate, and he did not wish to be forced into a quarrel with Churchill.
But Sylvia caught a slight smile, a smile of irony, in the eyes of Harley, and the tears in her own dried up at once. She felt instinctively, with all the quickness of a woman's intuition, that Harley knew something about the speech which she did not know, but she meant to know it, and she watched for an opportunity.
They were turning out the lights in the hall and the people began to go away, the correspondents closing up the rear. Sylvia fell back with Harley, and touched his arm lightly.
"There is something that you are not telling me," she said.