share in Cora's programme, in the hope of lessening the
girl's ordeal. Where Mrs. Teunis Van Dam led, Albany naturally
followed; and with Albany subdued, Cora directed her conquering march
toward other worlds. In the year of her publicity she had, through
Mrs. Tommy Kidder and other agencies, brushed here and there at the rim
of the magic inner circle of metropolitan society, for every inch of
which she now encroached an ell. Shelby gained his first knowledge of
the astonishing extent of his wife's acquaintance when he scanned the
invitation list of a thousand names, and was told by the military
secretary that New York's quota was coming by special train.

About five o'clock on the evening of the ball, the governor came home
fagged and depressed. Aside from canal reform, still drifting through
seas of talk, the legislative session presented several insistent
public questions which seemed to have imposed their cumulative worry on
his morning hours; later had come an acrimonious hearing over the
removal of an incompetent district attorney; then a quarter-hour's
fencing with the press correspondents, who wanted to know things which
it was inexpedient to tell; and, finally, a rasping conference with the
Boss, who, using the ball as a cover for one of his rare pilgrimages to
Albany, had, throughout the day, held levee in his hotel parlors with
such vogue that at moments both Senate and Assembly all but lacked a
quorum.

Mrs. Tommy Kidder's brougham blocked the porte-cochere as Shelby
mounted the steps of the executive mansion, and at the door he met the
volatile lady herself.

"I've been watching the workmen give the finishing touch, governor,"
she gushed. "You are about to set foot in fairyland."

Shelby put her in her carriage, and entered the house. It did not seem
fairylike. Only a dim light shone here and there through the dusk, and
the floors were not yet clear of the rubbish of the decorators. From
one of the smaller rooms came the sound of Handsome Ludlow's voice. He
too, apparently, had been watching the finishing touch. The governor
passed on to his own apartments in quest of peace. It was a vain
search. His quarters had been invaded and curtailed for the event, and
the corner left him was confused and forlorn. He lit a cigar, smoked a
brief moment, heard a feminine cough on the farther side of a door
leading to one of the rooms from which some guest had dispossessed him,
and desisted.

He went d