you think I don't believe in Ashford?" he asked.

"I asked out of curiosity. I wondered whether you had decided anything."

"No, and I don't mean to for a week. I'm dead beat, and I want to bring
a fresh mind to the question. There is hardly one appointment I'm sure
of except, of course, Fleetwood's."

She turned away from him, smoothing her hair in the mirror above the
mantelpiece. "You're sure of that?" she asked after a moment.

"Of George Fleetwood? And poor Grace thinks you are deep in my
counsels! I am as sure of re-appointing Fleetwood as I am that I have
just been re-elected myself. I've never made any secret of the fact
that if they wanted me back they must have him, too."

"You are tremendously generous!" she murmured.

"Generous? What a strange word to use! Fleetwood is my trump card--the
one man I can count on to carry out my ideas through thick and thin."

She mused on this, smiling a little. "That's why I call you
generous--when I remember how you disliked him two years ago!"

"What of that? I was prejudiced against him, I own; or rather, I had a
just distrust of a man with such a past. But how splendidly he's wiped
it out! What a record he has written on the new leaf he promised to
turn over if I gave him the chance! Do you know," the Governor
interrupted himself with a pleasantly reminiscent laugh, "I was rather
annoyed with Grace when she hinted that you had promised to back up
Ashford--I told her you didn't aspire to distribute patronage. But she
might have reminded me--if she'd known--that it _was_ you who persuaded
me to give Fleetwood that chance."

Mrs. Mornway turned with a slight heightening of color. "Grace--how
could she possibly have known?"

"She couldn't, of course, unless she'd read my weakness in my face. But
why do you look so startled at my little joke?"

"It's only that I so dislike Grace's ineradicable idea that I am a
wire-puller. Why should she imagine I would help her about Ashford?"

"Oh, Grace has always been a mild and ineffectual conspirator, and she
thinks every other woman is built on the same plan. But you _did_ get
Fleetwood's job for him, you know," he repeated with laughing
insistence.

"I had more faith than you in human nature, that's all." She paused a
moment, and then added: "Personally, you know, I have always rather
disliked him."

"Oh, I never doubted your disinterestedness. But you are not going to
turn against your candidate, are you?"

She hesi