He brought the girl back to Archie, and then ingratiated himself with a shy elderly woman who was having a difficult time finding partners for her granddaughters. The Governor introduced himself with a charming deference, a winning courtesy, that gained her heart at once. He not only danced with her young charges but found other partners for them. Archie marveled; a man of the Governor's intelligence and address could hardly have failed to gain a high place in the world, yet his performance on the fire escape proved all the man had said of himself as an outlaw. The Governor was not one man but a dozen different men and in despair Archie gave up trying to account for him.
V
At midnight Seebrook and Walters came in from their card game.
"We've certainly had the best of you, papa! It has been a wonderful evening!" exclaimed Miss Seebrook.
"I knew it was going to be a good party," said the Governor warmly. "I regretted every moment I had to spend with my friends in Putnam Street. And yet should auld acquaintance be forgot, you know!"
"You were perfectly lovely to that nice old lady and her frightened little granddaughters. They will never forget you as long as they live! And I'm afraid Mr. Comly will always remember me as the girl who kept him all to herself for a whole evening."
"I didn't make it a hard job for you," Archie protested. "I shall mark the evening with a white stone on the long journey of life."
"I hope, papa, you will add a word to my invitation to these gentlemen to come and see us at home."
"Certainly," Seebrook assented cordially, drawing out his card-case.
"We shall be ready for a little sociability," remarked the Governor, "when we return from the West. We are motoring from Portland to Portland, with a few little side trips like this, and we ought to have some good yarns to tell when we get back."