That's how I know for certain. If Austen Vane said it, I'll
borrow money to bet on it," declared Mr. Tooting.

"You don't think young Vane is going to get into the race?" queried Mr.
Crewe.

"No," said Mr. Tooting, somewhat contemptuously. "No, I tell you he
hasn't got that kind of sense. He never took any trouble to get ahead,
and I guess he's sort of sensitive about old Hilary. It'd make a
good deal of a scandal in the family, with Austen as an anti-railroad
candidate." Mr. Tooting lowered his voice to a tone that was caressingly
confidential. "I tell you, and you sleep on it, a man of your brains and
money can't lose. It's a chance in a million, and when you win
you've got this little State tight in your pocket, and a desk in the
millionaire's club at Washington. Well, so long," said Mr. Tooting, "you
think that over."

"You have, at least, put things in a new and interesting light," said
Mr. Crewe. "I will try to decide what my duty is."

"Your duty's pretty plain to me," said Mr. Tooting. "If I had money, I'd
know that the best way to use it is for the people,--ain't that so?"

"In the meantime," Mr. Crewe continued, "you may drop in to-morrow at
three."

"You'd better make it to-morrow night, hadn't you?" said Mr. Tooting,
significantly. "There ain't any back way to this house."

"As you choose," said Mr. Crewe.

They passed within a few feet of Victoria, who resisted an almost
uncontrollable impulse to rise and confront them. The words given her to
use were surging in her brain, and yet she withheld them why, she knew
not. Perhaps it was because, after such communion as the afternoon had
brought, the repulsion she felt for Mr. Tooting aided her to sit where
she was. She heard the outside door open and close, and she saw Humphrey
Crewe walk past her again into his library, and that door closed, and
she was left in darkness. Darkness indeed for Victoria, who throughout
her life had lived in light alone; in the light she had shed, and
the light which she had kindled in others. With a throb which was an
exquisite pain, she understood now the compassion in Austen's eyes, and
she saw so simply and so clearly why he had not told her that her face
burned with the shame of her demand. The one of all others to whom she
could go in this trouble was denied her, and his lips were sealed, who
would have spoken honestly and without prejudice. She rose and went
quietly out into the biting winter night, and stood starin