About five o'clock on the evening of the ball, the governor came home fagged and depressed. Aside from canal reform, still drifting through seas of talk, the legislative session presented several insistent public questions which seemed to have imposed their cumulative worry on his morning hours; later had come an acrimonious hearing over the removal of an incompetent district attorney; then a quarter-hour's fencing with the press correspondents, who wanted to know things which it was inexpedient to tell; and, finally, a rasping conference with the Boss, who, using the ball as a cover for one of his rare pilgrimages to Albany, had, throughout the day, held levee in his hotel parlors with such vogue that at moments both Senate and Assembly all but lacked a quorum.
Mrs. Tommy Kidder's brougham blocked the porte-cochère as Shelby mounted the steps of the executive mansion, and at the door he met the volatile lady herself.
"I've been watching the workmen give the finishing touch, governor," she gushed. "You are about to set foot in fairyland."
Shelby put her in her carriage, and entered the house. It did not seem fairylike. Only a dim light shone here and there through the dusk, and the floors were not yet clear of the rubbish of the decorators. From one of the smaller rooms came the sound of Handsome Ludlow's voice. He too, apparently, had been watching the finishing touch. The governor passed on to his own apartments in quest of peace. It was a vain search. His quarters had been invaded and curtailed for the event, and the corner left him was confused and forlorn. He lit a cigar, smoked a brief moment, heard a feminine cough on the farther side of a door leading to one of the rooms from which some guest had dispossessed him, and desisted.
He went downstairs presently, and left the house for the conservatory, a favorite haunt of his, usually troubled by no one else save Milicent. He scarcely knew one flower from another, but he delighted to potter about, smelling here and there, and the Scotch gardener idolized him as heartily as he detested the wife, who cared nothing for these treasures in themselves, and openly avowed that she preferred the odor of patchouli.
The greenhouses proved rather forlorn too, denuded as they were of so many potted things for the glory of the mansion; but their quiet obscurity ministered to Shelby's jaded mood. Then he perceived that he was not alone. Low voices drifted from another aisle—Ludlow's and Cora's—doubtless still absorbed in the finishing touch. After an instant's hesitation the governor moved toward them, till a vivid little picture framed by the fronds of a drooping fern brought him to a standstill. He beheld a deliberate kiss.
CHAPTER VII
The scene so nearly paralleled that crucial moment in his own life, under Joe Hilliard's roof, that the quarry owner seemed fairly to twitch his sleeve. Then, as the dead man had done before him, Shelby stayed his hand. Hilliard had respected his hearthstone because it held the ashes of a burned-out love; the governor respected his office. Unseen by the rapt pair, he left the conservatory, and regained his disordered room.
How should he act? There was scant opportunity for reflection. The dinner hour was presently upon him, with a chattering tableful of Cora's friends who were staying in the house. Shelby seldom shone in these mixed companies, and to-night he seemed to himself to stand off in wondering detachment, while somebody clothed in his likeness said and did many things. He made clear a bit of political slang for the woman in yellow on his right; he smiled appreciation of the quip of a young thing in pink three places distant down the left; he explained to a foreign gentleman, whose English was irreparably broken, that Albany was not the capital of the United States; and all this time he watched his vivacious wife at the table's end, and marvelled at her hypocrisy. So Joe Hilliard had probably wondered. Hilliard was very real to him. He seemed to have incased himself in Hilliard's personality. A little later, when Milicent, all exhilaration now that the bursting of the cocoon was instant, came in her bravery for his approval, he kissed her like one who knows no care, and extravagantly admired the roses he forgot that he had sent. The same mechanical self stood beside his wife and stepdaughter at the coming of the guests, spoke its automatic greetings, and extended its automatic hand.
For one brief instant the opiate lifted. The endless smirking procession had cast Ludlow to the front. The man was lingering with easy assurance between mother and daughter.