“Oh, that’s a mere façon de parler,” laughed Fox, “I’m really as mild as a lamb and as harmless as a dove!”
“Quite so!” retorted his cousin dryly, “yet I think most of your enemies and some of your friends resort to the litany when you cut loose for an oratorical flight.”
“Well, it’s said that even the devil goes to prayers on occasions,” said Fox with a shrug, “so why not my enemies? By the way, the nominations were sent to the Senate just before adjournment to-night, and the Cabinet changes are slated; I heard it as I came out.”
“Does Wingfield go out?” Allestree asked, after a momentary pause, as they threaded their way between the electric cars and the carriages which were slightly congested at the crossing below the Peace Monument.
Fox nodded. “And Seymour gets his place, while Wicklow White is made Secretary of the Navy.”
His companion looked up quickly and caught only his pale profile outlined against the surrounding fog; his expression was enigmatical. “Upon my word!” exclaimed Allestree, “White’s luck is stupendous—you remember what a block-head we always thought him at Harvard? Well, well, Margaret will have her heart’s desire,” he added amusedly.
Fox slightly frowned. “So!” he said contemptuously, “you think the sum total of a woman’s desire is to see a chump of a husband with his foot in the stirrup?”
His cousin smiled coldly. “My dear fellow, it was for that Margaret married him,” he retorted, “that and his money. When I see her, as I saw her the other night, the most beautiful and charming creature, in a miracle of a costume,—she knows how to wear clothes that make pictures,—I longed to say to her:—
“‘You that have so fair parts of woman on you,
Have too a woman’s heart: which ever yet