So far as her former acquaintance was concerned she had no vestige of doubt. Peter Stevens had been absurdly shocked and offended by her exhibition of what had seemed to him unwomanliness. But personally Jack did not care a great deal for his opinion, she had not liked him particularly, and it had occurred to her that it might be just as well if he were shocked occasionally. He looked prim and too much an old bachelor for so comparatively young a man.
However, what really startled Peter Stevens was Jacqueline Kent's appearance, when he came into the drawing room a few moments before dinner and found her standing alone before a small fire.
He controlled with difficulty an exclamation of surprise, having not thought her even handsome earlier in the afternoon. And he had disapproved of her action more keenly than he believed himself to have revealed. Now as Jack began talking to him he appreciated not only her beauty, but the fact that she had become a charming woman of the world and probably had seen more of life than he had seen in spite of his success in his profession and his political ambitions.
"You are a Republican, aren't you?" Jack asked, and then added: "I believe you have been elected a member of the State Legislature in Wyoming and the people are talking about you for one of our United States Congressmen. Politics seem to me a great career, perhaps the greatest of all careers, these days, so may I congratulate you?"
Peter Stevens smiled, pleased of course, as any one might have been.
"Perhaps it is a bit premature to talk of my running for Congress, Mrs. Kent, but if I do may I count on your support?"
Laughing, Jack shook her head.
"No, at least I can make no promises. You see, I don't know whether I am a Republican or a Democrat, or what my politics may be until I have been in my own country sufficiently long to study conditions. Maybe my vote will go to a woman candidate, if there happens to be one in my district."
"You don't intend by any chance to be my opponent?"
Smiling over the impossible aspect of his suggestion but in an unusually pleasant frame of mind, Peter Stevens pushed a large chair over toward the fire so that Jack might sit down. An instant later he drew his own chair up beside her.