rom the fountain at the
foot of the hill. By his jaunty stride and his air of excessive
joviality--the mark of the successful local politician--Stephen
recognized Julius Gershom, the campaign-maker, as people called him, who
had stood behind Gideon Vetch from the beginning of his career. "What an
unconscionable bounder the fellow is," thought Stephen as he passed him.
What an abundance of self-assertiveness he had contrived to express in
his thin spruce figure, his tightly curling black hair, which grew too
low on his forehead, and his short black moustache with pointed ends
which curved up like polished metal from his full red lips.

"I suppose he is on his way to the Governor," mused the young man idly.
"How on earth does Vetch stand him?"

But to his surprise, when he glanced back again, he saw that Gershom had
passed the mansion, and was hurrying down the walk which the strange
woman had followed a moment before. Stephen could still see her figure
approaching a distant gate; and he observed presently that Gershom was
not far behind her, and that he appeared to be speaking her name. She
started and turned quickly with a movement of alarm; and then, as
Gershom joined her, she went on again in the direction she had first
taken. A few minutes later their rapidly moving figures left the Square
and passed down the street beyond the high iron fence.

"I wonder what it means?" thought Stephen indifferently. "I wonder what
the deuce Gershom has got up his sleeve?"

By the time he reached his office the wonder had vanished; but it
returned to him on his way home that afternoon when he dropped into the
old print shop for a word with Corinna.

"I passed that fellow Gershom in the Square to-day," he said. "Do you
know him by sight?"

She shook her head. "What is he like? Patty tells me that he has become
a nuisance."

"Ah, then you have seen Patty?"

A smile turned her eyes to the colour of November leaves. "She was here
for an hour this morning. I have great hopes of her. I think she is
going to supply me with an interest in life."

"Then she still amuses you?"

"Amuses me? My dear, she enchants me. She stands for the suppressed
audacities of my past."

He looked at her thoughtfully. "I wonder how much of her is real?"

"Probably half. She is real, I think, in her courage, but not in her
conventions."

"Well, I confess that she puzzles me. I can't see just what she means."

"I doubt if she means anything. She