it do now, if he did love you?

The other guest has come; the one of whom Jerome had spoken. It is the
Honorable Archibald Pendergast, who is middle-aged, well-fed, and
somewhat portly, who has big round shoulders and a jolly way of
looking at things, who bellows out his words with a broad accent, and
says, Aw! aw! with tremendous effect; who wears his whiskers _a la
maniere Anglaise_, as befits a man proud of his British ancestry and
his English ways. This great man's marvellous wealth and honors, and
incalculable influence in national councils, and stupendous grandeur
of future prospects, carry everything before him--at the Bigge House,
and everywhere else.

Adapting herself with versatile cleverness, to these prevailing
conditions in her unaccustomed environment, Mell's conception of modes
and manners expanded day by day, and she began to see plainly a good
many objects only dimly discerned before.

"I don't think," remarked she, quite innocently to Rube, the day after
the great man's advent, "that Mr. Devonhough admires the Senator as
much as the rest of us."

"I shouldn't wonder!"

Rube looked knowing and laughed.

"If he was as badly stuck on you as he appears to be on Clara, _I_
wouldn't admire him either!"

"But," said Mell, "is Jerome?"

"Yes, certainly. Didn't you know that? I thought you did. They are in
the same interesting predicament as ourselves. Only Clara won't
announce, because she wants to keep up to the last minute her good
times with other men. I don't see how Devonhough stands it, and I'm
awfully glad you're not that sort of a girl!"

"How long?" asked not-that-sort-of-a-girl, trying to steady her voice,
trying to maintain her role of a disinterested inquirer.

"How long have they been engaged!" repeated Rube. "Let me see--Six
months at least."

"Six months!"

"You seem surprised, Mell." He turned his glance full upon her.

"Not at all," said she, pulling herself to rights. "I was only
thinking that you ought to be willing to wait as long as that."

"So I would; as many years, for that matter, if there was any good
reason why I should. But there is not; not one, and so, Mell--"

"Six months!" ejaculated Mell, in the privacy of her own room. "So all
the while he lay at my feet he was engaged to Clara Rutland!"

Mell began to understand Jerome's difficulties.

Later on she saw clearly some other things. Clara is fond of Jerome,
and would gladly, for that reason, marry him; but