"To be sure. Of course you didn't sit up all night? There's some trouble brewing around Kildare. I thought you might have heard something, but of course you couldn't have been awake at two o'clock in the morning?"
The secretary was so anxious to acquit him of any knowledge of the situation at Kildare that it seemed kindest to tell him nothing. The secretary's face lost its anxiety for a moment, and he smiled.
"The governor has an old friend and admirer up there who always puts a jug of fresh buttermilk on board when he passes through. The governor was expected home this morning, and I thought maybe—"
"You're positive it's always buttermilk, are you?" asked Ardmore with a grin.
"Certainly," replied the secretary with dignity. "Governor Dangerfield's sentiments as to the liquor traffic are well known."
"Of course, all the world knows that. But I'm afraid all jugs look alike to me; but then, the fact is I'm in the jug business myself. Good morning."
The governor's mansion was easily found, and having walked about the neighborhood until his watch marked eleven Ardmore entered the grounds and rang the bell at the front door.
Once within, the air of domestic peace, the pictures on the walls, a whip and a felt hat with a blue band, on the hall table, and a book on a chair in the drawing-room, turned down to mark the absent reader's place, rebuked him for his impudence. If he had known just how to escape he would have done so; but the maid who admitted him had said that Miss Dangerfield was at home, and had gone in search of her with Ardmore's card. He deserved to be sent to jail for entering a gentleman's house in this way. He realized now, when it was too late, that he ought to have brought letters to one of the banks and been introduced to the Dangerfields by some gentleman of standing, if he wished to know them. The very portraits on the walls, the photographs on the mantel and table frowned coldly upon him. The foundations of his character were set in sand; he knew that, because he had found it so easy to lie, and he had been told in his youth that one sin paved the way for another. He would take the earliest train for Ardsley and bury himself there for the remainder of his days. He had hardly formed this resolution when a light step sounded in the hall, and Miss Geraldine Dangerfield stood at the threshold. His good resolutions went down like a house of cards.
"Miss Dangerfield," he began, "I had the pleasure of meeting your father in New Orleans the other day, and as I was passing through town unexpectedly, I thought I should give myself the pleasure of calling on him. He said that in case I found him absent I might call upon you. In fact, he wrote a line on a card for me to present, but I stupidly left it at my hotel."