And there are strange wild things that take hold on the lives of men—vital forces against which one can but beat helpless wings of mortal spirit.
CHAPTER VIII
THE SPELL AND ITS WEAVING
And after the confusion, the distress and the joy of the afternoon out in the park when she and her gift had been accepted and acclaimed, there came days full of deep and perfect peace to Caroline Darrah Brown.
Long, strenuously delightful mornings she spent with Tempie in the excitements of completing her most comprehensive culinary education and the amount of badinage she exchanged upon the subject with David Kildare occupied many of his unemployed minutes. His demands for the most intricate and soul-trying concoctions she took a perfect joy in meeting and his enthusiasm stimulated her to the attempting of the most difficult feats.
His campaign was on with full force and his days were busy ones, but he managed to drop into the kitchen at any time when he deemed it at all certain that he would find her there and was always fully rewarded.
He often found Andrew Sevier in the library in consultation with the major over the management of the delicate points in the campaign and occasionally brought him into Tempie's kingdom with him. And Caroline laughed and blushed and explained it all to them with the most beautiful solicitude, Tempie looking on positively bridling with pride.
And there were other mornings when she took her sewing and crept in the library to work, while the major and Andrew held consultation over the affairs of the present or absent David.
The whisky ring had purchased one of the morning papers, which had hitherto borne a reputation for extreme conservatism, and had it appear each morning with brilliant, carefully modulated arguments for the machine; doctored statistics and brought allegations impossible to be investigated in so short a time.
And all of every afternoon and evening Andrew Sevier sat at an editorial desk down at the office of the reform journal and pumped hot shot through their flimsy though plausible arguments. His blood was up and his pen more than a match for any in the state, so he often sat most of the night writing, reviewing and meeting issue after issue. The editor-in-chief, whose heart was in making a success of the campaign by which his paper would easily become the leading morning paper, gave him full rein, aided and abetted him by his wide knowledge of all the conditions and pointed out with unerring judgment the sore spots on the hide of the enemy at which to send the gadfly of investigation.