She had risen. “And I to see you, Mr. Blake.” For all he had once vowed himself her lover, she had never overcome her girlhood awe of him sufficiently to use the more familiar “Harrison.”
“I knew you were coming home, but I had not expected to see you so soon. Please sit down again.”
She resumed her soft leather-covered chair, and he took the swivel chair at his great flat-topped library desk. His manner was most cordial, but lurking beneath it Katherine sensed a certain constraint—due perhaps, to their old relationship—perhaps due to meeting a friend involved in a family disgrace.
Blake was close upon forty, with a dark, strong, handsome face, penetrating but pleasant eyes, and black hair slightly marked with gray. He was well dressed but not too well dressed, as became a public man whose following was largely of the country. His person gave an immediate impression of a polished but not over-polished gentleman—of a man who in acquiring a large grace of manner, has lost nothing of virility and bigness and purpose.
“It seems quite natural,” Katherine began, smiling, and trying to speak lightly, “that each time I come home it is to congratulate you upon some new honour.”
“New honour?” queried he.
“Oh, your name reaches even to New York! We hear that you are spoken of to succeed Senator Grayson when he retires next year.”
“Oh, that!” He smiled—still with some constraint. “I won’t try to make you believe that I’m indifferent about the matter. But I don’t need to tell you that there’s many a slip betwixt being ‘spoken of’ and actually being chosen.”
There was an instant of awkward silence. Then Katherine went straight to the business of her visit.